"Oh no… it's him! " Her neighbor cried out. The terror caused the woman to shake like a leaf, and she struggled to suppress her frightened sobs. "Do not let him take you into the back room, whatever you do. I hear screams coming from there at all hours and I pray I never discover what goes on in there!"

"There is no letting,” he corrected, “I will do what I please, and there is nothing either of you can do to stop me."

“Please, don’t hurt her. She was just telling me who you are, that I should fear you. As I do.” Her own pleads were sorrowful and she knew she was taking a risk but she always put herself before others.  “Please sir.” Sylrissa repeated.

Her companion spilled out offers, land, gold whatever a death knight would find desirable in exchange for their release.  Sylrissa’s own lips pressed closed.  She knew not to make deals with the dead after a foolish contract she had once fallen into.  She burrowed deep within her mind, telling herself that this was all just a show to scare her.

As if something had called him away he left them and headed for the room she was warned of.  Sylrissa tried her best not to think what was on the other side of the closed door.  From the place where their jailor had gone, screams of pain vibrated against the cell walls.  Both ladies held onto each other trying to shield out the pleads of his victim.  Sylrissa’s thoughts of it all being a show started to fade, and the reality of her situation causes tears of fear to water her eyes.

“Which one of us is next?” Liandria questioned.  Sylrissa had no words for her, as her own hope of escape was starting to perish.  Were they to die here or was this all an act?  Someone was being killed this very instant and she could not save them.  Her attempts to be brave where starting to crack.

With the two ladies left alone once again, they begin to open up about the families they would leave behind.  Liandria’s job a magister kept her too busy for children, but she talked about her three sisters.   Seeing Liandria’s need to speak of herself, Sylrissa finally spoke of her daughter, Lily, her light, and the reason why she had to survive this.  They whispered to each other trying to block out the torture, but it did not change the fact it was occurring a stone’s throw from them.

When the screaming fell silent, the jailer returned with a present for the lady.  Sylrissa’s locked cell was unlatched by plated hands, and she did not know what to expect.  His gift was far from anything she had prepared for.  When the cell door opened, he tossed the tormented body in with her and her gut twisted inside itself.  The floor was splattered with blood and the diseased ridden corpse looked up at her.  The foul touch of the death knight had stolen away what once was living flesh, leaving behind boils and open wounds that oozed with thick pus. 

As Sylrissa recoiled as far as she could away from the dead, Liandria began to beg.  The other’s own cries were breaking apart Sylrissa’s walls and she wondered how they were going to escape this.  Was there any hope?  Would that become them?  He laughed once more at their useless pleas, and as he left, his cold presence remained behind with the two women.  He had work to do; to ready to the room for the next.  Tearing her skirts, Sylrissa fashioned a pair of masks to stifle the horrid stench of the corpse, but she knew it would only get worse with time.

“You must allow me to go in your place.  You have Lily.  All I ask is that you tell my three sisters of me.  Please, find a way out of here and bring justice to those who have done this to us,” Liandria begged her friend in the darkness.  Their fate was written in blood, and Sylrissa could see the other had given up the fight to preserve her own life.

“No, we both have to make it out of this,” she whispered reassuringly.  It felt like false words, a lie she told her friend, but fear had taken over her mind, and every word she spoke of freedom felt empty.  She had been promised a horrid death, threatened to be made into a ghoul by another.  Any pain or heartbreak she had witnessed before didn’t hold a flame to the pain her soul was feeling now. Was her ill fortune coming true?

“Who is next?” Sylrissa’s lock rattled open as he came for her.  Her eyes snapped closed and her mind reached out to Lily, praying the child would grow up happy even if it was without her.  

"NO!" Shouted the Magistrix from beneath her makeshift mask, and she leaped at the bars trying to grasp Sylrissa by the arm.  "You can't take her!  She has a family!  Please, I beg of you... take me in her place!"  Tears streaked down her face as she resigned to the fact that she had signed her own death warrant in that moment, but she had been down here for so long that she was slowly succumbing to madness.  The idea of death, to bring this nightmare to an end seemed more and more appealing by the minute.

He closed the priestess’s cell leaving her with the last victim still rotting on the floor.  Instead of unlocking the cell that held the magistrix, he wrapped his plated fingers around the lock and crushed it. "I won't need to keep this cell closed anymore," he announced.  Another soft chuckle escapes his lips, and a chilling wind blew through the cell, pushing the door open. "I wonder how long it will be before you regret your decision to volunteer. I wonder if she will hear you begging that you changed your mind, that you want her to die instead... anything to stop the pain."

Full fledged sobs rocked the magistrix's slender frame, and she tried her best to be brave but it was obvious she was absolutely terrified.  She backed away as far as she could get from the door, but the shackle on her ankle kept her anchored to the floor.  She was underfed and weak, having been held captive for a while now, and she lacked any strength or magical fortitude to stop him.  In addition to the suppressing runes surrounding them, she had been rendered completely powerless.  "Promise me you will find my sisters and tell them how much I loved them, Sylrissa, promise me!!!"

As he grabbed the brunette by the hair and began dragging her away, Sylrissa could not remember exactly what she cried out, only her promise to tell the woman’s family.  In vain, she lunged toward the pair, and it caused her to trip over the blighted body, and the corpse served as a reminder of what her friend was about to become.

Her maiden form no longer pristine, she was now completely covered in fluids of the dead.  Sylrissa scrambled on the floor and shoved the body into the corner but her cries for her companion never stopped.  The door closed, and it was not long before the screams of Liandria overpowered the cries of the mourning priestess.  The mage’s pleas became a desperate beg for death until suddenly it stopped.  Everything fell silent, and Sylrissa knew her friend was no more.  Death had found the woman Sylrissa once tried to comfort.

Though she remained untouched, Sylrissa swore someone had reached into her chest, took her heart and ripped it from its cage.  She cried out in pain but even her sobbing would not ease it.  The noble lady who once graced the streets of Silvermoon with her elegance, curled up into a ball.  Her eyes swollen shut as she wept tears of sorrow and remorse.  She could not save the other, and she feared her death was next.  Lily would never remember her mother.

When exhaustion claimed her and she drifted toward sleep, the cell was opened once more.  Another body was heaved in on top of the next and it would be exactly as before, until... it reached out a hand.  Unable to to raise itself off the ground, the body drag itself slowly toward her. Certainly not alive, but not quite dead, it has been brought within a hair's breadth of death and bound there, unable to find the release of oblivion.  Craving the feeling of warmth and life, it reached for the priestess.

Touch, once used for comfort, was sought out once more.  As the corpse grasped the living, Sylrissa felt all her sanity break within her.   Her whimpers became shrill screams of terror cascading to new heights as she tried to escape with no avail.