A short drabble. Eldorin, Nirodle, and Soulstace do not belong to me - they belong to Eldorin/Nirodle and Soulstace of US-Llane. The World of Warcraft game and universe belongs to Blizzard Entertainment, and I do not claim any ownership to them. Thank you.

Drown

It was all over.

The day the Lich King fell, he was suddenly released from the narrow prison his mind was trapped in. His jailors were the icy cold whispers of death that licked like cold flames at his thoughts. They kept him in check. They kept him loyal.

But now, everything he knew and believed in was suddenly ripped out from under him, and he didn't know what to do with himself.

As if a tidal wave had hit him, he had felt the wind knocked out of him - memories that he always had suddenly meant something. Emotions that he had killed and thought were dead resurrected themselves and flooded back into his heart. He had never cared about any of this before, and it was so much easier that way. The Lich King had become a mind-numbing drug that eased the pain of life and morality. Nothing was forbidden fruit with the Lich King as his master; the world was his.

Yet nothing was his, he realized now.

"I was just another body."

The Death Knight now sat in a tavern in Orgrimmar, slouched forward over a table with a drink in his hand. He stared at it, mindlessly, lost in his memories that once seemed so beautiful and fun - the blood, gore, slicing, dicing, mangling, tormenting, torturing, killing of anyone and anything that stood in the Lich King's way.

Before he realized what was happening, he began drifting off to sleep in the half-empty tavern. He watched an Orc woman who could be beautiful if not for her green skin wash tables, and a young blonde Blood Elf girl sat nervously at another table not touching her drink as the Undead man across from her drank heavily and dominated the conversation. The Death Knight fixated his gaze on that Blood Elf and her bright green eyes as he drifted away from consciousness and into a drunken sleep.

I stood above her with the most menacing smile while she cowered before me. She begged for her life as blood seeped from her plate armor, staining it beautifully with crimson. The golden armor shone through the blood, but all of the light she could muster couldn't save her after the blows I had dealt. Her green eyes shimmered with utter fear.

"Coward," I accused with enjoyment obvious in my cry. "You come here with your weak Paladin magic and think you can defeat a Death Knight of the Lich King?"

"You're the coward, Eldorin!" she screamed at me. Her eyes lost their fearful look temporarily and were replaced with rage. "You gave into his will like a coward and slaughtered innocent people! Have you forgotten everything you once stood for as a Paladin? Have you forgotten our loss and our suffering when Arthas stormed our city and massacred us?"

I was untouched, yet touched. I felt the words dancing around my heart and mind. However, a shield protected me. I heard the voice. I heard the demands.

Kill her. Finish her. Convert her.

No, I replied to the voice, I will make her unusable even to us.

I will make her suffer.

In a flurry of movement, I began my work. Even the cold of Icecrown would not slow me. I released my rage, agony, and pain for my own loss onto her. Instead of taking the blame, I blamed her, and all of the Paladins, and all of the Blood Elves, and all of the Horde, and everyone who wasn't already as dead as we were. I cut her to pieces, slowly, keeping her alive for as long as I could while she screamed and screamed and screamed, and I continued without hesitation with a smile on my face, and the dragons circling overhead like dark angels ready to dispose of her body once I was finished with it.

And the cold.

I felt her blood upon my face. I smelled it. I felt no warmth.

But what I did feel was the most satisfied, orgasmic happiness I had ever felt in my entire existence. I laughed as the skeletal dragons began to swarm upon the body. No, the flesh heap that was once a body of a beautiful Paladin woman that I had taken in as my apprentice, and the only one I would ever love.

He opened his eyes, sleepily, and felt as though the dream was still continuing. He thought about how he had done what Arthas had never managed to do - he killed his love. Under the Lich King's spell, he would have gladly done it again and again.

But the Lich King was gone. His voice dissipated, and now the Death Knight was forced to relive the memory he once enjoyed. Only now, he felt remorse and guilt. Something he thought he had completely rid himself of, even without the Lich King's presence.

"Humanity is more difficult to kill than you thought, Nirodle."

The drunken undead from earlier stood next to him with a rotting hand on his shoulder armor. A comforting gesture, he realized.

"Away with you, Soulstace," he muttered.

The Undead did as told while Nirodle allowed himself to drift back into the haunting memories of his past.