"Cold Forged"
Cold.
Quiet.
Empty.
There was nothing to see and there was nothing to hear.
There was nothing to taste and nothing to smell.
There was nothing but the cold.
Soon, it too abandoned her.
And that was where it should have ended.
The moment the last flicker of life's torch was snuffed out- that should have been the ending to her story. Lying, lifeless, upon the ashen plane of some bloody battlefield far from her home where she had fallen and irrevocably, violently, been ousted from the world of the living- that was the way it was supposed to end. It was there that she had died and she knew as much, but memory beyond that knowledge which doubtlessly would have provided her with much needed context for the event was muddled and incorporeal. Untouchable, like strands of mist lingering on in the barely glimpsed periphery of her mind, they taunted her, teased her with their very existence.
Try as she might, only fractured imagery and sensations could be solidified enough, given enough purchase, for her to grab a hold of. One of the few tattered remnants of memory she'd been able to derive from the haze was nothing more than a fleeting feeling. It was a simple and earnest emotion befitting the living.
Hope.
She wondered if her previous incarnation would have been able to appreciate the irony of such a thing as she stared through the water's reflection at her soulless, luminous blue eyes. No. Whoever that person was? They had died. Their feelings or input, real or imagined, were no longer relevant in this world. All that remained was an entity raised, specifically, to sow terror and destruction; to bring untold devastation down upon the heads of the Lich King's enemies.
It had been her purpose, at one point, to obliterate life. Her entire persona prior to today's events was built around that fact. The Lich King had willed the Scarlet Crusaders' deaths and so it was done, by her and her brethren's collective hands. With blood, bone, and ice, Archerus's contingent had slaughtered them down to the last man, woman, and child. Not even their livestock or mounts managed to escape the genocidal purge. All that remained of the Scarlet Crusade in the Plaguelands was smoldering ash and still burning flame. Even now, her armored hands were still coated in a thick layer of gore.
Earlier, this broken knight, tainted by death, had wandered off from the group of her recently "freed" companions and dropped, quite suddenly, to her plated knees. She'd sunk a good few inches down into the mud, but had become transfixed by an image, glittering silently within the confines of a nearby puddle. There she had knelt for what seemed like hours, parsing through her thoughts and coming to the conclusion that her previous identity was hidden behind an impenetrable veil. And yet...
Hope.
With an audible gasp, her face and that of the reflection, contorted into a disbelieving grimace. Her skin was a dark, nearly black purple and her hair shared a similar hue. The contrast between their tones and the sharp, clear azure phosphorescence of her eyes was doubtlessly rather jarring for an onlooker, but it was not what she'd reacted to so agonizingly.
Hope.
There, beneath two large, vertical horns protruding from her skull and unkempt bangs was a rune of sorts. It was raised a bit and looked as though it had somehow been imprinted directly into the flesh.
Hope.
Her mind held on to that word and as it was repeated, she felt something swelling up within her. Something vibrant. Something that began to eat away at the previously uninterrupted cold. Something...warm! Something... something alive! She shivered involuntarily, not from fear, pain, zeal, or bloodlust, but due to a feeling of ease. It was as though light itself was pouring into the core of her being and before her eyes, a symbol of purest radiance appeared. It was elegant, glorious even, and all at once, a veritable torrent of memories flooded back. Understanding caused the dull luminance of her eyes to brighten momentarily as her lips unconsciously began to part.
"I- I am a Draenei," She heard her voice break the silence, reverberating through her hollow chest and echoing out through the trees, "I was- I am a vessel for the light. I- The light? But, I can no longer...I am one of..."
Something is wrong.
The feeling of jubilation she'd felt not a second before instantly turned to dread. The light within was not a welcome feeling, as she'd previously thought, but was instead rapidly beginning to burn. It felt as though a torch had been lit within her chest cavity, prompting a cry of agony to tear itself from her throat.
No. No. No. Stop. Why is this happening? Please, stop. She pleaded and begged, only to be met with the most cripplingly debilitating pain she had experienced since becoming one of Arthas' slaves. It was as if she were being punished simply for attempting to evoke such sensation in this shell of a body she now resided in. As a final insult, the symbol, which had hovered protectively over her forehead, just as it did in life, first flickered and then, amid her tortured pleas for it to remain, was expunged along with every last trace of the holy light she once revered.
She sat, frozen in place, for several long minutes, shocked and unwilling to believe what had just transpired. Slowly, however, comprehension began to take hold and with it the realization that the light was now her enemy. She was an abomination in its eyes. It had turned its back on her in her hour of most dire need and all that was left was the cold, empty dark. To a former Vindicator, there was no greater perceivable horror.
The young Draenei collapsed in on herself then, arms wrapping around her person in a fierce hug, gauntleted hands grasping viciously at the saronite plate, all the more devastated by the fact that tears would not come. No matter how much she flailed and whimpered in the mud and filth of the Plagueland soil, not a single erstwhile tear would or could be loosed from her abhorrent undead eyes.