Another Dawn

The sun was peeking over the scenic mountains, dimly lighting the quaint valley village. The hustle and bustle of life was already audible; from the blacksmith, the sounds of hammer against metal and faint conversation echoed, and from the water mill the sounds of little people bringing woolen bags filled with wheat to be violently smashed against two rocks in the building could be heard even as far away as the farms.

"Daddy, when we're done bringin' the wheat to the big old mill on the brook, can we go to Lanny's house?" begged a slight, flaxen blonde girl, tugging softly at the folds of her father's tunic with one hand, struggling with a heavy sack full of wheat with the other. "Please?"
The man smiled at the child, patting her light yellow hair. "If you're good and hurry up, Mala, maybe," he hinted to her, then sighed as she sped off with a giant smile, the sack swinging haphazardly at her side. "Don't drop your bag, Mal!" he called out after her, a half-grin gracing his face despite his slight exasperation with her. He looked up to the sky just as the sun rose above the mountains, and was almost blinded by the sheer brightness.

'If only every day could be like this forever,' he thought to himself, with - was it, could it be? - a touch of melancholia. Then he shrugged it off. Every day would be like this forever.

Wouldn't it?

Drowning in sentimentality.

That was the only way Mal could put it, as she sat up in her creaky, old, wooden bed. She wasn't very fond of sleeping - it was fitful and often she was plagued with dreams.
Dreams of the past. Dreams of the future.
Dreams of what could go wrong at any second.

She couldn't really understand why she could dream. Most Forsaken had lost the ability to even sleep when they had been taken from the precipice of death into this barren, morbid mockery of life.
Perhaps it was the same thing that tied her to the Light.

She had a special connection to the force. Most Forsaken, even those who specialised in the healing profession, could not truly connect to the Light, only twist it into a terrible form infused with the undeath that pervaded every aspect of the magic they cast. What mended bones was not Light - it was a facsimile, an excellent one, but it was not the real deal.
Mal could.
And she wielded it with impunity.

With the Light, however, she also held another force up her sleeve; the Shadow. Duality, irony, was always a major force in her life, and unconsciously or not, she had taken up many of its aspects. She was never the brutal, Byronic unfeeling entity that most free-willed undead were, nor was she a single-minded human, devoted solely to preserving what was bound to fall.
She was not naive.
But she didn't understand everything.

She didn't understand why these dreams - recollections of what her childhood was, if she could identify them clearly - kept coming back. Over and over she'd watch the same nostalgic vignettes in her sleep, not wanting to see any of it. Life as a petty little farm girl sickened her now that she had become accustomed to her work as a powerful piece in the game that was Horde politics.
Not to mention an exceptionally powerful shadowpriest (at least, that was all most people knew.)

Over the years, her practising of defensive magicks: Healing, Renewing, and most importantly, the Power Word: Shield, had shrunk to perhaps a quick spell at the crack of dawn, a shield on herself when no one was looking and she was changing. She was - well, she couldn't call it ashamed, but she was scared. Scared of what they might say when they found out that she was calling upon the very Light that had quickened their demise. Scared of what would happen to her.
Disappearances, as they were called, happened very often in this day and age.

Mal didn't want to Disappear.

A knock on the door interrupted her long soliloquy, and she rolled out of bed reluctantly, still wearing her bedclothes, (as though it'd make a difference, she chided herself, no one in the Undercity can smell anyway) and ambled over to the wooden door.

She turned the doorknob, pulled back, and gave the guest a querulous look.

"Why are you here?"

Even in the dim light of the corridor, Mal could see her uninvited guest - a rotting Forsaken male, in a slightly more advanced state of decay than she was. He was garbed in the usual warlock gear that was commonplace for officers of the Dark Lady that were into more esoteric arts than that of dicing up meat. In his left hand he held a nondescript book; in his right, a bloodstained, pearl-handled knife. Mal looked at the knife with distaste.

"Greetings, Madame Maladicta Goldshrike," he stated in a guttural voice, with a toothy grin that seemed to grow wider as Mal's obvious agitation grew.

"I no longer answer to that name, sire," she said flatly in between clenched teeth. "What is the point of this visit, Mordus? Pointless conversing bores me."

Mordus put his hands up in the universal "stop" gesture, though he continued to grin that disconcerting grin. "The Dark Lady has need of you, dearest Mal, and it's apparently quite... classified information, cough, sorry. I'm very sure it's extremely important, however."

"Do not humour me, child. Give me her letter," she snapped, and to her slight surprise he handed over a black letter with white lace embroidery and some type of... lock? on the front. She attempted ripping open the letter with one of her yellowed nails, and was greeted by a sharp howl that seemed to come from nowhere and -

"Call it a parting gift," Mordus yelled out, as he dashed down the hallway and out of sight, leaving Mal to contend with the monstrosity that was apparently being summoned by the act of breaking the seal on the letter. She watched in feeble wonder as demonic fel magicks - even darker than the shadow magicks she wielded - came together, morphed, and slowly swirled to form a vaguely humanoid shape, with arms and a vague sort of head, something that she'd once heard described as a voidwalker. She'd never seen one in real life before...

It threw its arms up and wailed another unearthly scream, and this time Mal sprang into action. With a hiss of annoyance, she extended both arms out in front of her, palms out, and a clear, spherical bubble emerged around her. The voidwalker seemed to be in delirium for the time being - summoning apparently took a lot out of demons - and she made the most of this advantage. She incanted a quick sentence, and a series of concentric, thin purple circles appeared around the voidwalker, which began to writhe violently. Her Power Word: Shield was beginning to falter, she noticed with slight annoyance; she hadn't had much time to practise anything that wasn't Shadow magick.
The voidwalker roared again, and this time it started to move forward, slowly but steadily, its arms morphing from indistinct blobs to sharp, thin spindles. It winced every few steps - her Vampiric Touch had never lost its deadly efficiency, Mal noted with a grim smile. Now it was time to join it with other spells, in the manner of a true shadowpriest.
She punched the air in front of her with her left hand, and a dark blob of shadow magic exited her body and slammed into the voidwalker's "head" with full force, knocking it back a good foot or so, before it righted itself. A void in its head suddenly opened, and from it spewed a black, caustic ink, aimed directly at her face. She was very glad for the shield now - the ink merely rained against it feebly, before it popped and the ink fell to the floor, eating away at the wood. This'll be expensive if it continues any longer, she mused, better make this fast...
She ducked down behind a rather expensive Titanium table and took in a deep breath. When she exhaled, a dark fog exited her mouth and coalescenced into another shapeless blob, slightly reminiscent of an octopus or squid. Go, she thought, and the Shadowfiend jumped out from behind the table and began to attack the voidwalker's face.
As the voidwalker attempted to stab off or otherwise skewer the shadowfiend that was draining its vital fel energies, Mal prepared a Shadow Word: Death, her fingers interlocking in something vaguely resembling a heart, and her whispering ancient arcane secrets...

She jumped out from behind the table and reached her hand out to the voidwalker, and instantly it destabilised, imploding upon itself and leaving only a pile of black, shiny residue and a pair of jeweled bracers that she had noticed on the voidwalker's arms previously. On the floor next to it was the letter she had dropped, minus the lock. She opened the envelope and took out the parchment.

Maladicta Goldshrike,

Your presence is formally requested at the Dark Lady's throne room in the Royal Quarter at once. Urgent news to tell you regarding the Firelord, Ragnaros.

Sharlindra

"They'll have to wait for me to get everything in order," she muttered sourly. "Come along now, Woe, we've got work to do..."