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The guards barely look at her papers. “You understand, once you go in, we’re not letting you out,” one says.
“Yes.”
Jaina understands very well. She hasn’t spent two weeks trying to get access to these wings without thoroughly learning the consequences thereof. It hasn’t dissuaded her yet.
Eventually the guard shrugs. “In you go, then. It’s your funeral.”
It had better not be. It should be her masterwork. But one thing at a time.
The facility isn’t a hospital proper. It’s not really anything, except for a recently abandoned manor house in northern Lordaeron. Perfect for putting survivors of the Scourge whilst the Alliance worked out what to do with them. It is, however, also a hospital: Very few of those survivors were uninjured.
Inside is another pair of guards. These are quel’dorei, lean and scowling. They should have been sent word of her arrival, but they don’t seem pleased about it. Both have unstrung bows next to them and swords on their hips. One has rank badges on her shoulder and chest, and she’s the one who speaks.
“Identify yourself.”
She knows the patients agreed to this experiment. She knows papers were put in through the mail slot, explaining who she was and when she’d be coming. This is a power play. It’s just also one she has to submit to. “Journeymage Jaina Proudmoore, here to conduct a study authorized by Archmage Antonidas on behalf of the Council of Six.”
The officer looks at her skeptically. “Ranger Velonara Windspear. I have the day watch.” Her Common is slightly accented, which is better than Jaina’s Thalassian.
Perhaps she has read the papers, because she doesn’t ask what Jaina’s study is.
“Understand first, Journeymage, that this is a hospital and a prison. I stand here because my comrades are injured and dying, and also because the Alliance has found us contaminated. If you are looking for eager cooperation, prepare to be disappointed.”
A month ago, Jaina might have explained that the Alliance is wrong, that she can prove the contamination is not dangerous, that her entire goal here is to end this quarantine. It has been a long month, however. She simply nods. “I understand. Where are my quarters?”
Ranger Windspear gives her a skeptical look. “Clea, hold the gate. Follow me.”
Jaina follows. She packed light, bringing nothing but what could fit into her satchel—which, admittedly, holds rather more than it should. This is a fact-finding mission, though, and hopefully a rescue operation as well. She doesn’t need her whole library for this.
The building is well organized. The corridor has a handful of doors, most of them closed. The rooms Jaina can see bear signs of unexpected occupancy: Quivers leaned up against the walls, a kitchen with dishes overflowing the drying rack, a room with two rows of neatly made cots.
Ranger Windspear shows her to this last. “There’s no private suites here.” Her tone is challenging.
Jaina hasn’t shared a room in three years, not since she made Journeymage, but she wasn’t expecting otherwise. The quel’dorei survivors are being held in one building, and while it may have been a manor house, there's only so much space.
Compliant, she picks a cot without any personal possessions near it, and sets her satchel down. “Understood, Ranger. I would like to get to work now.”
“You need to speak with the commanding officers first.” Ranger Windspear crosses her arms. “Ranger-Captain Areiel has the night shift and overall command. Lady Liadrin is in charge of the medical concerns. Without their permission, you may not see any of the wounded.”
More unnecessary roadblocks. Jaina grits her teeth against her immediate retort. She knows that the infection will not progress before death, there is no rush. Now that she’s here, she can bide her time. “I see. When may I speak with them?”
Ranger Windspear looks like she wants to refuse, but eventually says, “Lady Liadrin may be free now. She is often upstairs seeing to patients.” With that she leaves, to return to her—unnecessary—post.
Jaina can only hope that Lady Liadrin is somewhat more eager, otherwise this will be a very irritating assignment.
Upstairs is similar, flagstone flooring and plaster walls, identical doors leading now to dormitories turned into surgical rooms. Jaina controls the urge to pry and instead follows the light to an open door.
Or perhaps that should be Light. The priests in Lordaeron had not been so strong with it, more pity to them. Lady Liadrin is a powerful priestess indeed, and despite this is bending over a patient, talking lowly.
Jaina shuffles her feet, loud enough to be heard, and waits by the door.
Lady Liadrin casts something, most likely a healing spell, that results in the room filling with a dry heat. It’s both reminiscent of and utterly unlike the Tidesages—the same focus, the same attention to detail, but their magic is wet and cold, a visceral reminder of what comes after.
After that, it seems Lady Liadrin sees no need for power plays. She turns to Jaina and says, “I see you are our Journeymage. I have a couple questions for you, if you have time.” Her Common is strongly accented but the grammar is accurate.
“I am at your service,” Jaina says with a curtsey. At some point she would like to see her new patients, but there’s no point in rushing this.
Lady Liadrin looks at her—really looks, otherwise still, golden eyes sweeping her up and down. “You are here to investigate progression of the Scourge. What do you hope to find?”
That is, admittedly, the impression Jaina had deliberately given in her paperwork. It’s also incorrect. The precise details are politically delicate, and Jaina has no intention of sharing them until absolutely necessary. Which it isn’t. Yet. “If I can pinpoint the cause of various turning points, then there is no reason to keep your people imprisoned here. If we know what triggers the last phase, that is the danger, not the Rangers alone.”
The patient says, “A good ranger is always a danger.”
Lady Liadrin stares at the ceiling briefly before returning her attention to Jaina. “I hope you were prepared for who you’ll be dealing with then. Second—you claimed to have a spell array already formed. Demonstrate on me, please.”
She really should’ve seen that coming. The array is complicated, and she hasn’t had much opportunity to cast it spontaneously. “Right. One second.”
Lady Liadrin does not respond, other than to cross her arms and wait.
Fine. Jaina has chalk in one pocket, string in another, and she can do it with just those. Antonidas would consider this ‘sloppy shortcuts that you’ll regret later’ but he isn’t here and also isn’t often called upon to demonstrate his skills on the fly.
A string circle around Liadrin—the ranger in the cot is now watching as well—and chalk runes at the four corners. A little bit of spit—Liadrin raises an eyebrow, the ranger looks intrigued—and then Jaina casts.
The spell takes immediately. It is not, as she had put in her research proposal, an array to identify plague contamination. It goes deeper. Broader. It finds all external power sources in a person and shows them to any viewer. It is absolutely going to need some constraints before Jaina submits it for publication. It is also color coded, because why not.
Not surprisingly, Liadrin is a near-equal mix of yellow Light and aqua Arcane. Right now the Light dominates but just barely; Jaina immediately wants to know what she would look like near the Sunwell.
But that’s not the goal right now. Liadrin examines herself, pokes a couple of the light zones, and then nods. “May I assume I came up clean?”
“Yes, Lady,” Jaina says, and cleans up her mess with a twist of one hand. The chalk disappears; the string curls back up into her pocket. “Undeath is a very distinct color, it will be very obvious.”
Liadrin frowns and opens her mouth.
The Ranger gets there first. “Can you do me?”
“Ranger Eversong!” Liadrin hisses. “You have four injuries, none of which will be aided with experimental magic!”
Jaina rather doubts that, but she needs Liadrin’s permission to carry out her experiment. Once she’s demonstrated the basic efficacy, she can hopefully transition to being actually useful.
Ranger Eversong looks completely unrepentant. “I meant the other sort, Lady.” She smirks at Jaina.
Liadrin flicks her fingers and a golden net appears over the Ranger. “You’re forbidden from doing that too.” She fully turns away from the bed to face Jaina. “I’m not the only person you need to talk to. Ranger-Captain Areiel is off-duty and most likely asleep right now. All of her injuries were superficial and she returned to duty last week. She can give final clearance.”
Jaina nods. Polite. Compliant. She has a concern though. “I thought the Ranger-General-?”
Ranger Eversong is watching closely.
Liadrin groans and rubs the base of one ear. Too bad for her. Jaina knows that Ranger-General Windrunner took severe injuries in the final battle, and that therefore makes her the person Jaina most wants to see. “No. Not...yet. Speak to the Ranger-Captain, start your research, and we can discuss it. Later.”
It’s a familiar refrain. Jaina nods, polite, and retreats. Polite. The key to this game is persistence. Or simply being sneaky, but Jaina suspects she can’t out-sneak the legendary Farstriders. She is, however, perfectly willing to out-stubborn anyone else on the planet. Ranger-General Windrunner is the person best suited to endorse her research, and Jaina does not intend to just let her fade away in a room.
Jaina returns to her dorm, unpacks, does a casual assessment of the cots surrounding her, puts some basic wards on her bed, and goes to find the limits of her new domain.
The building is not wholely dedicated to quarantine. Mostly she gets this one large wing, three levels, a large kitchen, canteen, access to a rooftop patio. The exterior doors are locked. The doors to the other wing are locked. None of this will stop her if she really wants to get out, but she doesn’t, yet. She worked too hard to get in here to bolt out right away.
But it provides an understanding of the rangers, who are all twitchy and irritable. Two thirds of them have some degree of injury—some critical, some stable but with broken bones or otherwise limited mobility, and some returning to active duty with bandages. The other third appear fine, might be able to sneak out and disappear into the population without attracting suspicion.
They don’t.
Anyone who came within melee range of the Scourge is supposed to be quarantined indefinitely, until they show symptoms or die. This means almost every surviving person from Lordaeron, plus most of Quel’Thalas’s military. Unsurprisingly, large numbers of people are attempting to defy the quarantines, some more successfully than others. It says something about the Ranger bonds that there are so many here who could escape and are choosing not to.
Around sunset Jaina follows the smell of cooking to the canteen, where the Rangers are also congregating. There’s maybe a dozen other personnel here, all quel’dorei, working as kitchen staff or nurses for Lady Liadrin. Most of them have injuries on their arms, scabs or scarring; most likely they’d be quarantined regardless and at least this is a position where they can continue earning a wage.
This time is also shift change, so Jaina collects her food and narrows in on the Ranger with captain’s rank bars and heavy scarring on her face.
“Ranger-Captain Areiel? I am Journeymage Jaina—”
“I know who you are.” Ranger-Captain Areiel continues eating. Something had grabbed her by the ear and cheek, leaving her ear in rags and long clawmarks from her nose to jawline. They’re partially healed, scab-covered, stitching visible in the deepest portions, pulling as she chews.
Jaina sets her plate down next to the Ranger-Captain. “Oh good. I assume you signed off on my proposal?”
There’s a long pause as she chews, swallows, contemplates the next bite. “Hope is valuable,” she says finally.
Jaina takes this to mean that Areiel has no faith in Jaina’s proposal, but allowed her entry in order to bolster morale in the rest of those quarantined. “I see. I will begin tests on the morrow, then?”
“No.” Another bite. More chewing.
After a moment, Jaina says, “Hope will fail without evidence to support it.”
Areiel’s uninjured ear flicked towards her. “Ask me on the morrow.”
Jaina finishes her dinner quickly and leaves. Areiel is transparently uninterested in the actual research, and doesn’t believe Jaina can do it. She’s used to that. Antonidas believes in her, but no one else thought she had any chance. As far as most mages in Dalaran are concerned, Jaina signed her own death notice when she came here. She’ll prove them wrong, though. Out-stubborning Areiel is just one more step.
Here’s the thing: Areiel is on night-watch. That means she’ll be at the entrance. And that means she won’t be standing in front of the Ranger-General’s door. Jaina sits at her cot for a bit, lets the day-shift trickle in, and then excuses herself to go check for books in the offices. It’s a lie but it’s a plausible one; it’s just possible that a manor in northern Lordaeron might have information on the Scourge.
Once out of the dorm, though, she turns herself invisible. Nobody else needs to follow her. Down the hallway, up the stairs, to the third level. There’s a guard on this level specifically, who she slips by without issue. Then there’s another guard on one door in particular.
It’s a good thing the Ranger-General’s presence isn’t supposed to be a secret.
Jaina has a couple options. Eventually she opts for the least risky, and goes one door down. Still invisible, she flicks a pebble past the guard. The guard turns to look and she lets herself into the other room.
A nursery, most likely. There’s no connecting door to the master bedroom, but there are windows. She opens one, climbs out it, and—balancing carefully on the narrow ledge—scoots one window over.
Aha.
The window is thick and bubbled; Jaina knows her Teleportation instructors would have a fit. Antonidas would just sigh and shake his head, making no effort to stop her. Her look at the room is distorted, but she knows where the bed is, where the wardrobe is, where empty floor is.
She portals in.
The elf on the bed growls and lunges for a sheathed sword.
“Wait-wait!” Jaina puts her hands up, which maybe isn’t the most reassuring, but at least Windrunner can see she isn’t holding anything in them. “Maybe Liadrin mentioned me, I’m a Journeymage researcher from Dalaran, I have permission—”
Ranger-General Sylvanas Windrunner looks awful. Skin so pale it’s nearly translucent, dark bruising under her eyes; bandages wrapped over her entire torso, with blood faintly visible around her sternum. She’s gotten a hand on the sword, but it’s shaking too badly to unsheathe. Her hair is lank and matted with sweat. And she’s snarling at Jaina.
“You force entry into my room and say you have permission?”
Her Common is smoother than anyone’s here bar Liadrin’s.
“Right, yes, but they said I couldn’t see you and I have a theory—I can prove you’re not contagious!”
Windrunner’s ears twitch. “The Ranger-Captain has my full trust. If she did not want you to enter, there is a good reason.” But her hand moves away from the sword.
“The reason is she thinks I’m a fraud,” Jaina says bluntly. “She heard ‘Journeymage’ and stopped listening.”
But the Ranger-General hasn’t stopped listening. At least not yet. There’s something to be said for being brazen.
“She didn’t ask who my mentor is.”
Windrunner arches an eyebrow. “I suppose I am meant to ask who your mentor is.”
“Antonidas.”
The Ranger-General looks up at her. Despite everything—the injuries, the quarantine, the unexpected mage in her room—her gaze is commanding. “Words cannot express the consequences for you, should you be wrong.”
Jaina rocks up on the balls of her feet. “I tested it on myself and it works perfectly.”
Windrunner’s eyebrows fly up. “What did you say your name was?”
“Journeymage Jaina Proudmoore,” she says. “Under the supervision of Archmage Antonidas.”
“And where in your training in Dalaran did you come into exposure with the Scourge?”
She’d been expecting this question since arrival. Why would Jaina Proudmoore, who has golden futures in two countries, voluntarily sequester herself in a hospital of invalids? Why would she potentially doom herself? And even if she’s right—which she is, because again, tested it on herself—this is a lot of work to go to for a population that doesn’t affect her.
“Two years ago, Antonidas asked me—” This is basically a lie. “—to assist Prince Arthas in the investigation of Stratholme.”
Impossible to miss the way Windrunner’s expression shutters at Arthas’s name. Or the way those ears pin back to her head.
Right. Of course. “Which didn’t—you know, I didn’t come in close contact at that time, but after I left, I wanted to—” She takes a deep breath and tries again. “I’m not responsible for his failures.”
Something she’s told herself over and over. Maybe she’ll believe it sooner or later.
“But I didn’t want to just leave it there. I knew more, after Stratholme, than any other mage. Probably anyone outside of the Scourge. I had to do something with that.”
Windrunner’s expression remains stiff and formal, but she hasn’t moved to interrupt.
Here’s the bit that made Antonidas yell at her in concern. “Once I had my theory, the spellforms, the plan—nobody listened. The concern for my life, as if there weren’t hundreds, thousands infected, affected…So I exposed myself.”
Another surprised look from Windruner. “You exposed yourself.”
“I left Dalaran, went into Lordaeron, found some Scourge, let one bite me, killed it, had my adviser watch, and treated myself.”
It had been an irritating two weeks. Until she’s ready to publish, no one else can know. Legally, she should’ve been under quarantine herself since the bite. Antonidas knows, of course, and agrees with her results. But he’s just one member of the Council.
She’ll need unanimous consent for this, especially since it’s a law across the Alliance. So every member of the Council of Six, and then she needs to convince at least one other Alliance nation.
One step at a time though.
Windrunner stares at her. “And they believed you.”
“I lied,” Jaina says blithely. “Well, not to Antonidas, but to everyone else.” Up on her toes again, back to her heels. “Even the Lady Liadrin, which I will apologize for. Nobody believes I can detect Scourge infection, let alone treat it.”
“It’s a wonder they haven’t locked you up already.” Windrunner lays back on her pillows. She’s breathing harder than she should be, for the amount of talking that they’ve done.
Jaina smiles, somewhat fake, not her best attempt. “If I went through the proper hoops, they probably would have. The Council doesn’t like to approve anything without a six month debate beforehand, so all that time I’d be in a hospital.”
This whole conversation has been nothing but chances, so she takes another one. “I don’t think you have six months.”
A tense, silent look from Windrunner. “Why do you say that?”
Perhaps there are shorter ways to get to the point, but Jaina always likes proving her results. “You are Ranger-General Windrunner, the woman who personally killed Arthas and stopped the Scourge. Obviously you have the best healers in Quel’Thalas, but it’s been two weeks. You’re still bleeding the moment you try to sit up.”
Windrunner shows her fangs. “I am recovering.”
Jaina steps over to the side of the table. With Windrunner watching closely, she nudges the sheathed sword six inches to the side. “I see.”
The Ranger-General twists slightly—just a little, weight onto one shoulder, lifts her arm—and falls back into the pillows. Sucking air through clenched teeth as she closes her eyes tightly.
“Fuck off, Proudmoore,” she says eventually. She looks steadfastly at the ceiling.
Not going great. Jaina takes a breath. “Can I cast the diagnostic array and show you?”
Windrunner grunts. “Liadrin will know better.”
“I cast this on Lady Liadrin.”
Windrunner closes her eyes and keeps her mouth shut.
Jaina seizes the opportunity. “Just this. This one spell, a diagnostic only, and then I’ll leave. I will go straight to the Ranger-Captain if you want, or wherever. You can lock me in an unused room, whatever, just let me show you something.”
No response.
If she hasn’t read Windrunner correctly, she’ll probably get killed for this. But if she’s right… “Otherwise, the next step is to trial it on one of your infected Rangers.”
Windrunner’s eyes snap open, piercing and grey. “Go ahead then.”
Good.
Same ritual as before. String around the bed. Chalk on the bed. Spit on the knot of the string. Windrunner looks even more skeptical, but she doesn’t take back her words.
And when she casts it, there’s a little bit of arcane in Windrunner’s chest, but it’s surrounded by undeath. Green-black threads, concentrated in the injuries, stretching out from there, clawing their way through Windrunner’s body.
Who says, “That’s going to kill me.” She sounds flat. Neutral. Absolutely deadpan.
“I can stop it.” Jaina collects the string and—manually—moves the sword back within reach. “I can stop it from expanding and, separately, stop you from becoming Scourge on your death.”
Windrunner sits up carefully, staring at her. “You have a lot of confidence for a Journeymage. Explain yourself.”
Exactly what she’s wanted to do since walking in. “When the Scourge break skin, right, they implant a curse. The curse does nothing. It just waits while you’re alive, until you die. Once dead, it activates and you’ll rise to join them.”
“You claim you can stop that.”
No hesitation. “Yes.”
Windrunner nods. “Go on.”
“Sometimes the injury also gets infected. Usually these are the deeper, more serious wounds, and it’s like being bitten by anything else, except that they’re not responsive to Light. Logically they’ll respond to Nature, but you’d have to get a kaldorei for that and they’re not…All that pleased right now.”
Windrunner’s expression has softened perceptibly; her ears are more relaxed and her eyes are curious, not harsh. “If I asked,” she says, with the confidence of someone who just defeated an apocalypse.
Jaina says, because she’s young and enthusiastic and this is her first major research, “You won’t have to. I can do it. The same cleansing that will handle the Scourge curse can take care of the other one, the infection. Some people survive this, if the infection is shallow enough; it can be cut out or just outlasted. I suspect your Ranger-Captain did.”
“He stabbed me in the chest,” Windrunner says, unprompted. “That—cursed sword.”
Jaina walked away at Stratholme. Since then she’s largely seen either those exposed but not infected, or outright Scourge—the undead, without any semblance of humanity left.
The only person she’s seen before, whose injuries were severe enough to kill if left untreated, who did desperately need her spells to survive—was herself.
This is new.
Jaina swallows and nods. “Right, so, I can’t heal the injuries themselves. But if you’ll let me remove the infection, then Liadrin’s healing will take effect.”
Windrunner apparently just takes this in stride. “You mentioned that the curse waits until death.”
“Yes.” She bites back the further details about how she worked this out, because Windrunner is nodding already.
“Until we die,” Windrunner says, with a narrow and sharp smile, “we are no danger to anyone else. According to you.”
This is the important part. The healing is good, the removal of the Scourge infection is good, but those could be handled other ways. Healers could cut out the inflamed flesh and recreate it; dead bodies can be cremated rather than buried.
But if any infected person could become Scourge at any moment, of course they need to be quarantined. “Yes,” Jaina says. “Whether I treat you or not. Whether your injuries heal on their own or not. Yes. You are no more danger to anyone while alive than you ever were.”
“Do you swear.” Flat and dangerous. The Ranger-General.
There are parts of this Jaina is unsure of. Not this one though. Every single result has been perfectly consistent. “Yes.” She thinks about what to swear on, and then says, sincere, “This is my masterwork. I know Quel’Thalas has an academy for mages, so when I say this is the most important thing I have ever done…”
Windrunner grins. “I am familiar with the sort.” She takes a deep, careful breath. The bloodstain has grown slightly, but not concerningly. For the first time, she looks relaxed. “Go to sleep, Journeymage Proudmoore. In the morning we’ll revolutionize our understanding of the Scourge. Right now, though?”
Jaina rocks side to side, hands behind her back.
“I’m exhausted.” Windrunner’s ears flick, and Jaina thinks her expression might be called wry. “You have had a long day. Open the door and I’ll give you permission to come back tomorrow.”
She can wait until tomorrow, now that she’s actually spoken with the Ranger-General. Now that she’s shown some of it. Now that someone else knows, someone else understands what she’s been sitting on.
“Yes, ma’am!”
As she turns for the door, the Ranger-General speaks. “Call me Sylvanas.”