Ripples of Shadow
Chapter 8 - A Grave Mistake

There was a time when Moria could remember what it felt like to laugh or smile. A time when she could feel the warmth of the sun’s rays on her face, or the kiss of a cool breeze on her cheek. Those memories were gone to the fading of time. She had felt nothing but pain the last couple weeks, or what she could only fathom was weeks. It seemed her entire existence was consumed with pain and death. Moria had been reborn more times than she could count, always when her body became too mangled to function. But there was one thing she did not forget, how to cry.

Tears streamed down her face now, but not due to the pain of her endless torture. It was not from her hatred of her captor, Malkalor. No, these tears were shed because of her failure. She had been reanimated again, just a few hours ago, and was left alone this time. Moria sat on her all too familiar table, in the center of a lonely and dismal room. Her eyes scanned the room, by now she was accustomed to the dim lighting. Her cheeks were moist from her incessant sobbing. Shivering in the dank air, she wrapped her arms around her naked body, pulling her knees to her chest. Moria hung her head, strands of hair clinging from her scalp invaded her vision. Her ragged hand brushed them aside. Moria wrapped her arms around her body and allowed the river of tears to continue. She cried not because soon she would be tortured, no…she cried because she had given them a name. The most important name…to her.

During her last life, in the midst of unrelenting pain and agony, a single name erupted from her lips in a scream of pure unadulterated anguish… Rash. Instantly her interrogator, the instrument of her suffering, paused. A wicked grin split his cracked lips, showing his broken yellow teeth. “Very good…” He whispered to her, and after he wrung every detail out of her about Rash, he signaled for her body to be discarded, and for the reanimation process to begin anew. Oh how she wept then, as she did now.

Moria soon learned, after being reborn again, that agents were being sent to scour Azeroth for this Rash, and bring him here. Malkalor made it very clear that he would have the names of her collaborators if it meant bringing Rash to her piece by piece.

A clattering sound at the far reaches of Moria’s vision brought her head up. Malkalor was back.

“My my, you’re looking quite…mmm vile today. Not much left of your original humanity.” The repulsive ghastly figure crept closer to her. Moria’s only comfort was that she could no longer smell his nauseating stench.

Moria straightened her back as much as her body would allow, and squared her shoulders to the interrogator. “I told you before, you may have my body but you will never have my soul.”

His cackling filled the room, and made Moria shudder. It was like the sound of broken bones rattling against stone. “We shall see about that, mmhmm. You’ve had a respite, one that was not of choice but of necessity. It seems I have found your friend. Rash is his name? Mmmm, yes. Perhaps he will join us shortly…” His eyes grew with intensity as he neared her table, a smile again splitting his horrid face in two. “Shall we begin?”

His outstretched boney fingers laid all too-familiar instruments on the table. Moria howled.

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