Disclaimer: I own nothing. If I did, I would have the money to buy all the bacon I wanted. But I don't. So, no bacon.
The first thing you notice after you take your second breath is the same we - your best friends forever - have noticed.
It hurts a lot. Every muscle is stiff from the freezing air - well, and the undeath, of course.
But like all of us, you didn't give in to the pain, didn't cry out, no, you soldiered on just like you did before you died.
After all, we are fighters, we are survivors, we are the goddamned most stubborn sons of bitches you can find.
And so, you hear the fateful words that we all hear, you swear the same undying (ha, undying!) oaths those who came before you swore, and you are clad in the same ebon plate we all once wore.
Since you're standing next to me now, you endured the same trials the rest of us endured: The cruel, cruel training, the cruel, cruel missions, the hilarity of nailing one of those Scarlet fools to the wall with the broken shinbones of their comrades.
Unlife is good, isn't it?
Bah, of course it isn't. Or neither of us would be standing here right now. But still, undeath is liberating. No more petty morals or ethics, just the mission, your weapons and a bit of wayside entertainment with Scarlet civilians.
But you, like me, probably started thinking about what happened before you were raised in His service, before He crammed your quivering soul back into the ruined sack of flesh that once was your prison. Those necrosurgeons... hate them or not, but they are responsible for our striking good looks and the fact that all of us still have ten fingers, toes and whatnot.
Still, His inescapable presence means that you do what you are told - and trust me, it's what we all did. Most of us died following orders in the first place, and back then we couldn't make people explode with a snap of our fingers. Yeah, I can see your grin even under that silly helmet of yours, you probably shocked some Scarlet mother to death by exploding her children too, didn't you.
But then, after a nice few weeks of butchery, murder and arson, the assault on their felfrost-cursed fortresses. Not even His bloody valkyries could save all of us that day. But yeah, you were there too. There isn't much left of a man to save after they get hit in the chest by one of those fortress cannons.
Still, we won, we raised the dead soldiers as zombies and then we had them eat their families. Good times, eh? Yeah. Goooood times.
But all good things must come to an end, it seems.
An attack that should have been a one-sided slaughter turns into a fucking ambush. No, really, three hundred fucking light-blessed fools and ten thousand of us. But then Darion Fancy-shmancy-Mograine-pantsy gets his ass kicked by an old man.
What? Cool old man or not, the guy is positively ancient.
Yeah, I just called him a cool old man. Unlike the boss, Ol' Ironhead kicks ass. The boss is just an angry kid that never grew up, not even in undeath.
Bah.
So yeah, the boss gets his ass kicked, then He comes along and goes all "Har Har, puny minions, you are BAIT so I can kill THIS OLD GUY THERE."
'Cept the old guy kicks His ass, too.
Yeah. Cool old guy: two; physical god and his lieutenant: zero.
Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't really like the whole bait thing, but really, we were His fucking soldiers. What did the boss expect, that He loves us like ninety-pounds-of-metal-clad baby children? Fuck no. It's not like He ever had a reputation for mercy.
And so we left His employ, so to speak, broke the bond that chained us to him, took over his cool flying assault fortress and then the Boss went off to sulk in the darkest corners of Northrend.
Yeah, I don't like the Boss, not at all. Goddamned pansy kid who tried to become his father and fucking failed at that. Boss D's old man? Now he could give Ol' Ironhead a pounding any day of the week.
'cept our friends over there killed him and His fucking sword ate the old man's soul.
He's really not big on the whole mercy and forgiving failure thing.
But coming back to the whole "trying to remember what happened" thing.
You were like me, hell, you still are. You left the Boss with roughly the same sentiment and choice of words I used, hell, our strike teams even had to merge after the fucking Wrathgate. You remember we told them not to go and join the assault? But nooo, nobody listens to the echo-voiced, glow-eyed freaks. It's not like we have the most intimate knowledge of His tactics... EXCEPT THAT WE DO.
Bah. But we survived. Most of us did. And we grew stronger. We improved the enchantments on our armor, we found better weapons... and then everyone gets sidetracked.
Fucking Old God. Oooh, creepy-crawly multi-mouthed-tentacled-what-the-fuck-IS-this-thing-anyways asshole out to corrupt the world with his powers.
So everyone spends months trying to crack that asshole's defenses. Yeah, I know, I know, don't glare at me like that, I liked saving Thorim as much as you did, hell, we all were glad to get him out alive and in one piece.
Maybe it was worth the time, effort and lives that were wasted in that place. Maybe not.
Still, all that fucking time we could have spent hunting His minions, crucifying them as a warning to everyone else.
Not that those pansies let us crucify anyone. What's the use of just killing 'em. Send their dirty rotten souls to whatever soul-collecting device He has bound them to, woo, genius. I say, kill 'em slowly, send their souls back to whatever He has bound them to while they are screaming from the unending agony. Anyone who sides with Him is too stupid to live anyways.
Still, man, we're here, now. His very own popsicle throne.
We both know, better than anyone else in this group of madmen, adventurers and suicidal fools, that He can kill us all within moments. If he doesn't, he most likely wants something from us.
But it's not like it matters. Maybe Old Man Fordring has some ace up his shiny sleeves. Maybe not.
Just remember: So long as you can still hate, you still live... and as long as you live there is the one mission that unites us Knights under the Ebon Blade.
No king lives forever. And we, His former deathknights... we are here to make sure that we, the weapons He created, are the ones that kill him.
Explainations: two Deathknights talking (or rather, one deathknight talking and one making faces under his silly helmet providing clues for the other guy to talk more) on the eve of the climactic battle against the Lich King.
Dramatis Personae:
Boss D: Darion Mograine (the deathknight in question serves as an author tract about what I think of Darion Mograine)
Ol' Ironface: Tirion "Chuck" Fordring
"He": Arthas "Not Really Ner'Zhul" Menethil, a.k.a. The Lich King(, Baby)