(8, 174 days)
"Come to me," the chill had said. The seduction was effortless; the effect on its victim stifling-soothing-cold. As sensual as a lover's murmur, as terrifying as a monster's howl.
"Come to me…" it purred (growled).
He followed, and awoke alone in the cold dark.
He could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing. The chill had called him and then left him for dead.
He couldn't move.
He couldn't move. He couldn't move. He couldn't-
A voice rang throughout the room. It was deep, steely, unfeeling. Where was he? Where-
The voice rumbled, again, impatiently. He couldn't understand a word. It was a language he had never even fathomed, and whenever it was uttered, his entire being ached.
Rise for your new master, the cold whispered with feather-light touches into his ear. The chill breathed into him, almost bringing a twisted almost-life to his bones. He found himself struggling, stumbling as he was forced to his feet. And finally, his eyes opened.
"Where… where…" he began feebly, reverting to his native tongue. He was half-frozen and shaking with terror. The voice had come from what used to be human; the blessed curse of winter had killed him, strengthened him, obvious by his frigid armor and frigid gaze. A second former-human, much smaller and more fragile, looked upon him similarly with scathing eyes. "Where… Shu-"
The man of frost cut him off, snapping something between grinding teeth, stone-still and lifeless aside for his ethereal blue glowing eyes. They had to be in the catacombs. They had to be; bodies of all races, ages, and gender were strewn about the rough obsidian floor and stacked high against the dirty walls.
The smaller one replied with a mechanical voice, the multilayered sound grating and harsh, raising her hands in a fluid motion. The dark of the room seemed to slither up into her hands and turn to black fire.
Kill her, boy, kill her, the chill urged, choking him with wintry talons of fingers. Kill her, it commanded. He lurched forward as if pushed, fell into a familiar mindlessness, and descended upon the smaller of the two.
Within what felt like seconds he had ripped her numb flesh to shreds and was drenched in her congealing ichor. As he looked to his shaking, bloodied hands and the remnants of the corpse, the chill purred its approval, not only to him but to the man of stone as well. The man's face, previously as motionless and cold as a statue, had softened and his eyes had rolled to the back of his head, as if dazed by some holy presence.
And for the life of him, he couldn't remember what he was.
He couldn't remember what he had abandoned to follow the lord of winter and death.
(8,206 days)
In life, his name was "Maraj."
That's what the chill had told him (that's all the chill had told him). Everything else, the stone-man told him, which really didn't amount to much when the stone-man only ever spoke in those tinny, unfamiliar words. He'd taken to calling him stone-man because he couldn't remember his name. He knew he had heard it more than once, but it was so difficult to discern anything specific from this wight's tongue. He only managed to differentiate it when placed in hushed mutters when the elf-prince came. The elf-prince only came for new recruits that were deemed worthy.
Maraj was not a worthy initiate. One would think that he was by looking at his long, muscular, frame- he was examined and evaluated several times by the red elf-prince because of this- but he failed to measure up. All the worthy initiates were taken away within the week they first came, speaking strongly, demanding to be used. Whenever he spoke, he stuttered and mumbled in his native tongue, the same question spilling like water involuntarily from his mouth.
"Where… where…" he would mumble, and they would cut him off before he could finish the question he didn't even realize he was asking. Elf-prince would sigh at him, disappointed, and stone-man would seethe quietly in disgust. Then, when he was to be disposed of, the chill would lovingly whisper words of murder, and he would fall into a state of violent mindlessness he wasn't aware he was capable of. And when he came down from that state, he would be shaking and drenched in blood. The chill would praise him, and stone-man would shake his head and mutter in frustrated disgust.
He was not even fit to be a ghoul.
(8,211 days)
Once, an initiate had spoken to him as if the two of them were still alive.
It was before her turn for evaluation, and the chill had gifted many with the cursed blessing for whatever reason, so there was a glut of initiates and walking corpses that day. Many had awoken of their own accord, and she was one of them. She was bored.
She began to say something- amiably, he thought- when she approached him. He regarded her with a good deal of confusion- she spoke in the language of death which made him writhe and shudder whenever he heard it, yet he felt no pain nor fear. It was very clear what she was- her icy, glowing eyes proved that- but she did not terrify him, as most initiates did, and she spoke in tones of kindness and a feeling he vaguely remembered as warmth.
She finally noticed his confusion and accurately interpreted it as him being unable to understand. She reached a small, stout hand up for one of his boar-like tusks (he could scarcely imagine her doing that; she was so small), grabbed a hold of it, and gently tugged him down to her level. He had to kneel to see her eye to eye, and he was still so much taller than she was. She patted her collar bone with her other hand, keeping eye contact with him.
"Orene," she stated very clearly. She looked at him expectantly, gesturing towards him with the same hand. He blinked, almond-shaped eyes narrowed with worry.
"…Maraj," he answered finally. She smiled. She said something else, praise perhaps, before her eyes rolled to the back of her head for a few moments before returning to where they were previously. She continued on, in a tone that sounded like an apology, and then released him, making her way to the instructor.
She wore the curse beautifully, he decided, following her with his long-legged, loping gait. (He felt awkwardly large and gangly next to her short-legged, bird-quick steps.) He stopped a good ways from the prince, however; he didn't want to be noticed, lest he disappoint him and wake up covered in blood again.
Do you wish to join her? the chill whispered. He nodded eagerly, trying to keep his head as his vision grew dizzy. It had been speaking with him for over a month now, but he still wasn't used to its voice that was simultaneously so light that he convulsed at its teasing feather-touches and so deep that it rattled his bones. The chill sent a surge of pleasure through the vessel's body to express its approval, and Maraj very nearly moaned.
He found that his feet were moving forward as if possessed. He stopped in front of the stone-man and the red elf prince, anxiety holding him from going any nearer. The prince watched him with a certain curiosity, and the stone-man just looked annoyed.
The elf prince asked him something, he thought, but Maraj just looked away timidly. The elf's smile was placid and playful, but in his eyes was a leering, volatile hunger. He said something else, and kept looking at him, but he thought it was directed at the stone-man, who replied in his stead. The elf-prince was not pleased, not this time; his words were short and biting, edged with a smile with far too many canine teeth. The stone-man, of course, was very tired of his presence, and made no attempt to hide his irritation whatsoever. The elf prince talked to Maraj again, a question maybe, but Maraj just looked at him, puzzled.
"Can you hear me?" the elf prince asked again, common this time. "Can you hear me, boy?" Maraj's head snapped up to stare at him.
"Y…yes," he replied, surprised and hopeful. The elf's expression brightened. "Miscommunication was the only issue? Why didn't you say so earlier?" His tone, again, was playful, but there was an undercurrent of barely suppressed fury. He didn't wait for the stone-man to respond. "Even some of our greatest death knights had trouble learning the scourge tongues." He smiled a bit too brightly to the vessel's liking. The elf placed a surprisingly large hand over Maraj's face, pressing his thumb and pinky to his temples and the other three fingers to the crown of his head.
"Hold still, brother," he said too sweetly.
Before Maraj could respond, a dull throb had taken up residence somewhere behind his eyes. It quickly escalated into a distinct, sharp stabbing. It spread to the rest of his body, to the very tips of his toes, in what felt like waves. He rode out the first dozen, becoming dangerously light-headed, when suddenly, they stopped.
The elf tried to pull his hand away but Maraj was starting to lean into in for support, until he realized what he was doing and stumbled backwards to give the elf-prince room.
"Can you hear us now, brother?" Prince Keleseth asked in those jarring, metallic words.
Maraj only nodded, still shaken. The chill- their master- was laughing at him.
(8,402 days)
He remembered things in bits and pieces.
At times, he would remember a glimpse of a singular image without any sort of context, or suddenly have a flash of tangible memory that took him over, without any idea of what had triggered it or what was going on. At times, his master would explain the memory without his asking, or he would ask and his master replied. There were other times still when his master wouldn't explain to him at all what was going on, even when he did ask.
One of the first things he remembered was that Orene was what was called a dwarf, and that he was a troll. She had laughed when he had this revelation (probably because he'd jumped out of his skin when he'd realized that he'd made friends with an enemy).
He noticed that the only things he remembered fully was either basic information about the state of the world in general, although that just could've been Orene helping him with that one, or terrible moments of life that made him glad he was dead.
He'd tell Orene about this, and she'd say that it was alright, that their master preferred it this way. But then she'd frown and become very quiet, which was unbecoming on her. Her charcoal-black brows would knit together across her pale, dusty skin, her ethereal blue eyes would narrow, and her chubby, cherub lips, which somehow retained their rosiness, even in death, would stretch into a downward descent to express her unease.
He wondered why she became this way if that was what their master intended, why the master would want it this way at all. But then he felt that familiar chill run down his spine to his toes and all was well again.
(8,539 days)
Their training as initiates was finished today.
They'd been having their usual skirmishes when suddenly Instructor Razuvious stopped barking orders at them in his frosty monotone and the other knights-to-be ceased to attack each other. Then he turned, and there He was.
His master.
In Maraj's life, in his entire existence, his master was without a doubt the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. There was a simultaneous clanking of armor as roughly twenty knees (roughly because he wasn't sure who still had their knees) dropped to the floor, including himself and Orene. He went to each of them, praising them, touching each of them on the crown of their heads. The knights-to-be were held in thrall of the Lich King, all with a timid, hopeful want replacing the cold gleam of their gazes. Even Instructor Razuvious, though he wasn't on one knee, had this same look to him, although he was slightly more subtle in his worship.
Their master began to speak of war and conquest, how all should embrace the blessed chill, and Maraj agreed with him completely, and wondered who wouldn't want to serve such a wondrous lord.
The master came upon Orene, who in her reluctant, shy reverence, chose to look at the floor rather than him. He lifted her head with one of his all-consuming hands, made her look at him, worship him, and for the first time since he had been blessed, Maraj felt the most peculiar anger towards the dwarf. But then the moment passed when the master moved onto him. The Lich King's massive fingers brushed against the top of his head, and he found himself leaning into his touch. In response, his lord and master sent jolts of phantasmal cold through his bones, and the troll couldn't help but whimper meekly. The hand was removed and the master moved on, continuing to speak of death and destruction, of slaughter and revenge. Maraj had never heard anything as beautiful as this.
Tomorrow, they would go to war on the living.
(5, 844 days)
Maraj wakes up, and he's laying on something soft and warm.
Then he opens his eyes, and he sees her.
Kind eyes as orange as the desert wastes watch him, stoic except for her brow which was slightly furrowed. Her skin (-fur?) is a calm sky blue, and her long, braided hair is an oceanic turquoise. She looks strikingly like his mother, and he probably would've mistaken her for his mother if he didn't know any better.
"Good to see you've rejoined us, brother," she says. "Maraj, what have I told you about losing yourself like this? You might not come back if you're not careful," she scolds. He realized that his head is using her lap as a pillow, and that the rest of him is on a blanket. Her hands are on the sides of his head, covering part of his ears. The lush green background and the calm blue horizon are blurry and unformed. He thinks he should be suspicious of this, maybe, but he can't come up with a reason and can't bring himself to care.
He says something, but the words don't reach his ears, and her brow furrowed a little more. She makes a small, displeased grunt. Her lips purse with ease; her tusks had not yet grown in. He marvels at how young she is (how small she was); she can't be much older than fourteen, yet here she is, caring for him as if she is his mother.
"You know damn well I don't care what father says." She says 'father' in the way that one would say 'murderer.' "You better not go hurting yourself again or else. What were you thinking, trying to take on the jungle by yourself? You're only sixteen, you could've been killed!" She speaks as if she were four or five times her present age. He's not surprised; he and the child lurking behind her are a testament to her aged and wizened mind. He doesn't like it, however; that's his little sister he's looking at, he remembers. She shouldn't be speaking of these things, she's not his mother. The child- his brother, he remembers- seems to think so, unfortunately. He doesn't blame him; the child doesn't know any better and his sister makes for a wonderful façade.
He says something else, still deaf to his own voice, and now she's just frustrated.
"You know that doesn't matter to me or Keeta; they don't care about us, so why should we care about them?" She says this nastily, the immaturity of her actual age overriding her thought processes. He murmurs something, and suddenly she looked guilty.
"You're right, brother, I'm sorry." She looks as if she is about to snap and break, which he understands without really thinking about it is unacceptable. He sits up by himself, and turns around. The child is surprised but pleased; it usually takes him another day to recover from the state of being berserk. He wraps his long arms around her. The child sneaks into the embrace before it closes. "Just don't do that again. I th-thought you wouldn't come back…" She leans into his chest, and so does the child, burying himself in the warmth of his siblings. The child starts to weep, but he's not sure why other than the fact that his 'mother' is weeping.
"Don't worry." He nearly jumps up, awake; that's his voice he hears. "I'm not going to leave you anytime soon, Shu-"
(8, 702 days)
The dream cut off, and suddenly he was wracked with arctic, quaking shivers.
Touching, the chill breathed icily. Maraj was surprised and hurt at this; his master has never shown disgust with him before. They abandoned you, boy. They left you for dead. Never forget that.
When he woke up, he only remembered bits and pieces. (He remembers the girl vaguely, and doesn't remember the child at all.)
It was just as the chill desired; Maraj neither questioned nor doubted this, but he found it odd that his master would use such tones with him. Had he been nothing but loyal and obedient this past year and a half? What could he possibly have done to incur such disdain from him?
He told Orene about the bits and pieces left from the dream, and she just shook her head and told him that it was alright, that their master was right to cut him off. But he wasn't too sure, because her cherub face was marred with a frown.
"It's best not to question," she said, mostly to herself. "Only to act and obey, because there is nothing left for us but this."
And he wasn't sure why, but after she said this, he felt uneasy.
(8, 986 days)
The preparations were going well.
It'd taken months upon months to organize and amass a force large enough to be called unstoppable, but they had done it. It'd taken them months upon months to construct his master's plague-ridden weapons of destruction, but they had done it. And it'd taken them months upon months, hand-selecting individual warriors to be trained and shaped into champions worthy of his master, but they'd done it. Maraj was proud to say that he and Orene were among them.
All that remained was the purging of the Scarlet Crusade from the Plaguelands, and then the total annihilation of every living thing ever known. Their master demanded blood and frost and destruction, and he would have it. Anything else simply was not acceptable.
The Lich King would have his revenge.
(In the back of his mind, beneath the thrall and hysteria induced by his master's presence, Maraj had a nagging feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong. He didn't even know why.)
(9, 270 days)
At one point, he remembered how he died.
He and Orene (along with dozens of other death knights and hundreds of ghouls and geists) had been raiding one of the settlements of the Scarlet Crusade. The human soldiers were vastly outnumbered by the scourge. Some fled, but most held their ground and fought, such was the way of the crusader. They were overwhelmed at first, but the borderline rabid, fanatical crusaders and their blind faith in the light managed to somehow stave off his master's forces, at least for the moment. Thus, a small group was sent to inspire terror in the civilians, the innocents in order to destroy the morale of the crusaders. War was dirty work, Orene had said. He found it appropriate that she'd been in the midst of removing her sword from the stomach of her prey at the time.
And no one inspired pure terror quite like the troll did. No one else could produce that feral, milky-eyed stare that turned even the bravest into a shaking, stuttering mess. More often than not, his prey cowered before him, reduced to screaming children flinching before the striking hand of an adult. It was never the attack that excited him, though; it was the scent and feeling that was warm blood. Cold blood held no interest for him and rather frightened him. Orene found this ironic and funny. Prince Keleseth thought it practical; if he was driven towards warm blood, he would never attack his fellow cold-blooded Scourge.
("You're never gonna get to have that ever again," she had laughed angrily when he had run down a scarlet soldier with blood running down its arm. "Stop trying.")
He and Orene were nearing one of the last houses on the edge of the settlement. The terrified screams of the living filled the air- and there was much to fill; the air was empty and dry and toxic thanks to the fires- but when it happened, he became deaf and blind, swallowed up by his own mind.
Surprisingly, this cottage had remained untouched by the destructive wake of the Scourge ("Not for long," the dwarf had muttered bitterly under her breath when she thought he wasn't listening.)
Almost immediately upon closing in on the house, two humans, normal, breakable civilians, burst out the door, wielding makeshift weapons. Maraj destroyed them in a matter of seconds.
"Save some for the rest of us, will you?" Orene teased, preparing to torch the house's thatched roof. A distinct, childish cry came from inside the cottage, and Orene rolled her eyes as the troll rushed in, still riding that berserker high. There were two more here, both children. He gutted the first one without a second thought. Then another, not quite an adult but definitely not a child, came running from the other room.
"Damned scourge cowards!" she shrieked. "How dare you!" She made to lunge at him, but as he readied to parry, she feinted and threw herself in front of the child. "Try it! Just try it!" she screamed. He found that he was unable to. "Just try to take his life! I'll tear out your innards, you heathen jackals!" He was fairly sure he heard the dwarf cackle at those words, but he couldn't be quite sure because he had lost the coherency to listen.
He found that he couldn't move.
They had to have been siblings. They were too alike to have been anything else. She couldn't have been much older than fourteen. For one brief moment of insanity, he was positive he was looking at the child's mother. His mother.
No, no, it was the child's sister, he was sure, but his mind was reconstructing someone else's face onto hers, even as he struggled to fight off his own thoughts.
"Sh-" he found himself saying, stumbling over his words as if he had just been awoken by his lord for the first time.
"Shuu… na…?"
(8, 066 days)
"You don't have to do this, brother," she says, worried eyes boring into him as a scorpion burrows into sand, like she is afraid and wants to tuck herself into him as shelter. But that's ridiculous; he is the scorpion that takes shelter in the cool desert sand when the heated gaze of the heavens is too much. They both have orange eyes, but he looks like their father, and was expected to act as such until their father died. She is lucky enough to look more like their mother, lucky enough to learn to speak to spirits and nature sprites, when he had to be the warrior that no one but father wanted him to be. But he is not bitter. Not at all.
"I do, Shuuna," he replies, adamant for once in his lifetime of bending to others. "De' Warchief been real good tah' us. Leas' I cou'do is help when 'e asks foh' it." He says this in Orcish, still thick with his native tongue. She frowns, her tiny canines peeking out from her bottom teeth to poke her upper lip lightly.
"It's not Thrall that needs aid, it's Sylvanas," she snaps back stubbornly in Zandali. "What good is it to aid an offshoot of the scourge?" Her comment is rough and jaggedly wounding, like the salty sea dragging sand to skin the knees and other joints so that he cannot move. She is spitting venom. She bites but she does not sting; she does not want him so hurt as to resent her, but enough to not let him leave.
"Dey en't Scourge, an' you know dat," He frowns back at her. (How could his mother be so childish?)
"Never trust the living dead," she says. "I am not so young that I haven't been witness to such treachery." She remembers Zalazane and his slaves. She remembers their mother- their real one, not the canonized avatar she has become- was lost because of the witch doctors.
She remembers Hyjal. But he's not quite ready to confront that- she's too young, that's his little sister he's looking at. He's still not entirely sure how or why she would bolt like that, to leave him and Nikeeta to the mercy of the worry of her not returning, grating like sand in open wounds, while she cleansed the restless dead and bleached their bones. He can't believe her because he was never there. "Too cowardly," his father had said.
His father was now dead.
(5, 840 days)
"Too cowardly," his father says, harsh and unforgiving. "The boy is too cowardly to be of any use to anyone," he tells the village elder. His father is embittered and ragged like an old wolf left to die. His skin is stormy purple and calloused, scars lightly etching his arms and shoulders and back, sporadic and electrical. His hair is wild and murky ocean blue-black, and his body language and expressions are savage, just as a troll's should be. He sees Maraj's cloudy violet skin and night sky blue hair and is disappointed that he is not a hurricane like himself.
Maraj is outside the shack and trying not to be seen, but his father knows he is there and continues to degrade him. If anything, he degrades him because he is there to hear it. "Do not invite him to join the hunt; he will only lead to its failure." Maraj can feel his father's heated gaze though he isn't looking at him, and he can see the elder frown. His heart clenches; the wind whispers to him soothingly and the ground pulses beneath his feet. The spirits of nature, of his ancestors, adore him, even if he can't quite hear what they say. His mother wanted him to be a shaman, a shadow hunter perhaps. His father came from a long line of berserkers, however, and was not about to let that line be broken.
"You should have more faith in your son," the elder says carefully through the cloth covering his mouth. "He has much potential to become a warrior we can all be proud of." His father shakes his head.
"No," he persists. "He does not." But he'll expect him to become one anyway and then punish him when he doesn't, because that's the kind of person he is. The elder regards him almost disbelievingly, as if he believes the passive cloud will suddenly turn to wind and thunder. He should have been a shaman. His mind is too fragile, too easily lost to have been anything else. His sister says the spirits, his mother among them, always speak lovingly of him though the world at large does not. "Mother is here and not here," she says to their younger brother. " She will watch and guard the best she can from her evanescent form."
But he will continue to be a berserker, though he will lose himself to it and he knows it. His father will accept nothing else.
(8, 170 days)
He hasn't been there a week and already the Scourge attacks.
The attack is unorganized and desperate, but somehow it's enough to take the lives of him and a few others. True desperation, though hard to summon, is the most powerful of muses. He and his berserk tendencies were perfect examples of this.
His world has gone black, the spirits have fled from him, but his soul clings to his corpse. He will not join his father in the ranks of the embittered dead, a poltergeist, nor will he join his mother, undeserving of her company. He has done nothing to deserve her company.
Were he still alive, he would have felt his hackles rise and being shiver at the sudden, pervading presence of cold.
Come to me, the chill says. Come to me… He followed.
His last thought that was entirely his own was how he thought it cruel of the chill to use his mother's voice rather than its own.
(9, 720 days)
It was Orene's voice that jarred him from his memory.
"Maraj!" she yelled. "Get out of there, you damned idiot!"
He realized that he hadn't moved from his place in front of the children. Their corpses were gnarled and black and their fingers were curling, and it took him a moment to realize they were burning. It took him another to realize that the cottage was burning and though he was not in flames, so was he.
It was Orene and her frost-caked hands that dragged him from the fire. It was Orene and her blessed dwarven frost that cooled his armor and prevented him from going up in flames. (The chill hasn't spoken to him in months; it will not put them out.)
"Magni's teeth, boy! You could've been killed!" she yelled, but her cherub face was wrought with worry. She grabbed him roughly by his tusks and yanked him down. "What were you thinking?" He didn't answer.
He could still hear their screaming from the depths of the cottage, could still smell them burning. He tried to scrape the images of his sister and brother from his head, but all he can see and hear and smell is them burning.
(10, 000 days)
"Soldiers of the Scourge, stand ready!" Highlord Mograine screamed. "Prepare to unleash your fury upon the Argent Dawn!" The forces of the Lich King roared back in response. The death knights were loudest, for no one was closer to the chill than them. No one else had been raised up such as them, to the sanctity of knighthood like they were.
Maraj could barely speak, let alone scream his unwavering loyalty. He was not a storm, cannot call one, cannot be one. He was but a cloud, passive and easily blown away. He cannot blot out the sun, can still feel the judging gaze of his father. He can still hear their screaming.
"The sky weeps at the glorious devastation of these lands." He could still hear his sister weeping, sobbing in anguish. "Soon Azeroth's futile tears will rain down upon us!" She couldn't possibly have been there, but her voice echoed and rattled through his head until he could hear nothing else. The horizon- the blue sky he kept pasting over the red plague clouds for halves of seconds- became shapeless and murky. There was a lapse of what little sanity he had left, and for the longest moment, he thought it was raining blood. It was cold and fetid and unpleasant and it made his skin crawl off his muscle and melt into the half-frozen dirt beneath them.
"Bit overdramatic, isn't he?" Orene joked. She pointedly ignored the subtle glares from those around her. She and her dwarven frost are not welcome among those loyal to the king- the king, who welcomes her just the same. She looked towards Maraj finally, child-like face becoming concerned when her gaze fell upon him. "You alright, Rajah?" The nickname is not new; she was not the first to call him that. He remembered abruptly that his younger brother, Nikeeta had called him that. He remembered his brother's name for the first time in months. "You're shaking like a leaf, lad."
He wasn't quite aware if he was or not, fighting off image after image of his younger brother. How old was he now? How long had Maraj been gone? Did Nikeeta remember him at all?
He looked down to his hands tightly gripping the reins of the charger he had been given. He was. He looked back to her, and he couldn't speak. Her brow furrowed, but she smiled weakly.
"Soldiers of the Scourge, death knights of Acherus…"
"Now's not the time to be getting cold feet, lad," she tried to say gently. She probably would've laughed at the irony had the situation been different, but she was very loyal, very conscientious when it was necessary. Only when it was necessary.
"…hear the call of the Highlord! Rise!"
The ground started to pulse beneath him, and he lurched forward as if pushed. He couldn't speak. He couldn't breathe; he was gasping and wheezing but no air was coming in. He realized distantly that he did not really need to breathe, but it didn't stop his grey lungs from trying their damndest to.
"Maraj," Orene barked over Mograine's frenzied cries. "Listen- listen to me, Rajah. I don't care what Arthas or anyone else has or hasn't said to you, you are one of the most capable people I've ever met…" Both of them knew the only reason he was a death knight in the first place was because of his cowardice and his body's trollish instincts. "…and let no one tell you otherwise."
"Death Knights of Acherus…"
"You can do this, lad. I know you can. We'll pull through this." She sounded like she was trying to assure herself more than him, and looked at him desperately like she could hide in him and be provided safe harbor from this blight. She was wrong, but he would still try his best to be what she thought he was.
"…the death march begins!"
There was a sudden rush of wind as the forces of the Lich King launched forward all around him. Orene grabbed the reins of his charger as she rushed forward on her own, and somehow he managed to stay on. The decaying scenery all around him turned to blurs of bitter reds and browns, of seething charcoal and black, as his charger sped up.
The deteriorating visage of Light's Hope Chapel came into view. He couldn't tell if time was speeding up or slowing down, some things coming into sharp focus while others warped into unrecognizable shapes.
The ghouls, abominations, and geists rushed in front of the leading death knights and began the carnage. Maraj very nearly fell off of his mount but Orene steadied him as she leapt off hers, and they, too, joined the fray. The crusaders charged, undaunted, coming with a battle cry of their own, and he lost himself to that familiar madness, the call of bloody slaughter sending him over the edge.
There was nothing to call him back, this time, and his last coherent thought was that he wasn't sure if he wanted to come back.
(3, 658 days)
He is ten. His mother hasn't been dead a week and already his father grabs him too hard, pushes him too hard, as if it was his fault, as if he were the one who killed her, when really she just deteriorated away suddenly, like time was going faster for her than anyone else. Nikeeta was going to die when he was barely a toddler, and the only thing that would help him, the witch doctors said, was his mother's blood. So she gave and gave and gave until there was nothing left. Of all of them, Nikeeta looks the closest to their mother, and it shows.
One day his father boxes his ears after one perceived mistake too many, and then Shuuna stops looking at their father with anything but contempt.
It is around this time that Shuuna becomes he and Nikeeta's mother- their caretaker, their martyr. It rather disturbs him how alike those two words sound.
(5, 842 days)
He is sixteen. He is stumbling around the jungle, looking for something to eat when the raptors find him. He'd only been out there a couple days, trying in vain to prove that he could take care of himself, that could measure up to something, but running away is much harder than it looks, as it turns out.
It doesn't take him long to lose himself; he just hopes nobody will find him, that nobody will see him while he is like this.
(1, 867 days)
He is six. His mother is busy concocting something with the liferoot and steelbloom he has gathered for her, and his sister is watching with a most avid curiousness. His mother asks him how he found such things, and he says the earth told him. Then she smiles between her modest fangs, and says that he'd make a wonderful shaman, that the spirits love him.
He can feel his father's frown like the heat of the sun when she says this.
(7, 322 days)
He is twenty. His sister has left to fend off demons and heal the wounded for a people that would most likely go straight back to hating them and their Orcish allies as soon as the demons are gone. His father calls him cowardly for choosing to remain at the village and watch over his brother and the other children rather than go to war for ungrateful, unlikely allies with his father and sister.
His sister comes back.
His father does not. (He feels terrible but he is so relieved.)
(10, 000 days)
It was Mograine's voice that jarred him from memory.
"THE BLADE DEFIES ME!" he shrieked. Maraj was not surprised at this; the Ashbringer will not obey a master whose master's affections are as inconstant as the moon.
There was a volley of light bouncing from crusader to crusader. He was very nearly blinded by it, and stumbled back as if dazed by some holy presence. The earth shook (pulsed) beneath him at the weight of the abominations and flesh giants, but the wind wouldn't come anywhere near him except to roar at him in righteous fury (how dare he leave them) and Orene was nowhere to be found. Once he realized this, he panicked, for then there was nothing to light his way through this endless night.
He bolted and dodged through the crusaders of light and the crusaders of dead to find the dwarf among them, frighteningly aware of how expendable they really were.
"OBEY ME, BLADE!" Mograine screamed in vain, and dozens of ghouls and skeletons went to him in hopes of rousing the sword once more. It wouldn't work- it was his will that was in the way, not the sword's; Mograine could've bent the blade to his will if he truly wanted to.
A group of crusaders tried to jump him, but Maraj knocked them back with the force of his runed soulblade. He thought it cruel of the Lich King to keep the souls of death knights- the thing they wanted most- in the very weapons they used. It wasn't right to keep something as precious as a soul so close to something as defiled as the husk of the body it belonged to, both attached and detached. He was taunting them, he realized. He tried to call out for Orene and her starry-eyed gaze, but no sound came from his throat. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.
The volley of holy light was closing in on him, but strangely enough, he wasn't afraid. He'd already died once; a second time didn't faze him. He was sure that he'd never seen anything like that holy light, but it was so familiar.
He very nearly lost himself again at the sound of the crusader's anguish, both terrified and giddy at the constant screaming, but then the volley of light, purging the ghouls and geists it bounced off of and cleansing the crusaders, landed on him. His mind was about to disperse into shards, into bits and pieces so small no one would ever see them, let alone find them, ever again, but then the light pulled them back together, sewed them up, and threw them back into his head. He was right to be familiar with it, that much was true when it brushed against his tattered soul and in the split second before the debilitating pain, he saw lush jungles too recognizable to be anything but his home. Or perhaps the light merely offered a glimpse into paradise, a sort of promise as it cleansed and cleansed and cleaned undeath until it was gone.
He felt himself restrained by that light, brought to the ground, and the earth, although unforgiving, welcomed him. Time slowed down as he made his way to the ground, and he watched the carnage all around him, disgusted and saddened. It was a wonder that he wasn't trampled to death by the time Orene reached him. Despite her size, she managed to drag him roughly to his feet, though the light had numbed him and his arms were limp. The image of paradise still haunted him even as everyone around him died.
"Don't die on me now, lad," Orene said, her voice strained."You have to live through this." She sounded as if she was about to snap and break. "You have to live through this, Rajah," Somehow, in her desperation, he found his voice.
"…Why…?" he asked quietly. He was soft-spoken because he disliked the sound of his own voice- it is too deep, too jagged, too much like the abyss his master has made of his soul. He was surprised when she heard him.
"Because," she started. But then she bit her lip, reluctant. "Just because." He muses that they are much like Koltira and Thassarian, whom rumors surround like swarms of insects, but who is who he isn't sure because he has Koltira's awful luck and ruined soul but Thassarian's simplicity and quiet nature, and she has Koltira's sarcasm and bitterness but Thassarian's borderline obsessive need to protect those he is attached to. Their respite lasted only moments before another volley of light launched toward them. In it, he saw the islands where he was born, and he couldn't bring himself to move.
"I AM THE ONE IN CONTROL!" Mograine shrieked again, and he ducked reflexively.
Orene tried to deflect the volley with the runed sword she was given, but the light sizzled and crackled once it hit the blade's runes, dispelling them. The dwarf was thrown back violently, the remainder of the holy fire striking her, vindictive and justified. Her soul was neither strong enough nor stupid enough to deny her salvation. She didn't even scream- the light gave her no time to.
He felt the most peculiar fury at the sight of her felled cherubic form. Peculiar, because although he knew that yes, undead had emotions, despite the fact that most undead denied having anything resembling them (even as they screamed with rage and sobbed without tears), he didn't know that his fury could reach depths such as this.
He whipped around to find the source of that light, the paradise wretched in his eyes after it felled the dwarf, and after dragging Orene out of the fray and hoping desperately that no one would notice he did, he charged at his target, sword in hand and battle cry ripping itself from his throat.
The martyr turned, hearing his vengeful cry, preparing a counter attack, a bolt of holy fire to rain down upon them forming in her three-fingered hands, but stopped immediately once she saw him clearly with her sand-orange irises. She stared straight ahead at him, a torrent of emotion passing through her expression as he ran right towards her. She said but one word, but this one word almost broke him.
"Maraj…?"
Maraj stumbled at the sound of his name (he's not surprised he heard her- he learned long ago that one tends to fixate on the voices of the people one cherishes most). He stumbled, but he kept going. His line of vision was slowly warping- the bitter red background and bitter red horizon were starting to look lush green and calm blue, respectively. He was slipping up. He was slowing down. The martyr began to move towards him, but he couldn't tell how fast she was moving because suddenly everything around him became so still-
Then, he realized with a sickeningly acute clarity that that was his little sister he was looking at.
He was falling, he realized. Something caught him but he wasn't sure what.
"Maraj- Maraj, what are you doing here?" The martyr's voice sounded strained. It was going right into his one ear; she had to have been right next to him, because he could hear every word over the cacophony of battle and Mograine's frenzy but he couldn't see her, he couldn't see her-
"What… what have they done to you, brother…?" She was speaking in Zandali, their native tongue, he remembered. He twitched, trying to get up onto his own two feet but something held him back, held him down. (He thought it rather embarrassing, a death knight of his caliber to be taken down by a mere priest.) She has started to collapse, he realized, her hands trembling as she was trying to remove his helmet, using the holy light to keep him tethered to this earth.
"You keep away from him, priest!" That was Orene yelling, he thought. The martyr's head snapped up just in time to see the dwarf, injured but tenacious, attempting to charge her. But the dwarf stopped suddenly, and held her hands to her head, writhing.
"And you from her, monster," said a worn, subtly furious woman's voice. It was odd- she sounded just like one of the living dead such as him, but he was sure he'd never heard her before. An ominous, poisonous violet aura was starting to seep out of the dwarf's shaking form.
"Don't act as if you have room to talk, forsaken bitch!" Orene hissed in return, forcing herself to pick up her dropped weapon despite the horrible pain that the apparent shadow priest had inflicted upon her. She practically flew from his line of vision to attack the forsaken, and their awful banshee screaming was added to the noise.
He tried to get up again, but the other troll continued to keep a firm grip on him.
"Maraj… please, don't-" He managed to rip himself from her soul-chains and very dizzily stand up. She clutched at him obstinately, as if her life depended on it and her soul was still intertwined with his though he was already dead.
"Brother, please-! You don't have to do this…!" She was hysterical now. He would say desperate but he's not quite ready to confront that, because desperation is a powerful muse, and that would mean that his sister has simultaneously become much stronger and much weaker than he has.
The crusaders perished much quicker, now, without their martyr to protect them. There were crying out for her attention, a child to its mother, but she wasn't listening. She was trying to keep him in one place but he kept wriggling out of her grasp and staggering away.
She was panicking now; she seemed to realize that the crusaders were dropping like flies without her constant volleys of light to save them. She tried to send a few out and grab her brother, prevent him from escaping yet again (she would not let him out of her sight, not again; the last time she did, he became one of them).
"You will not leave us again!" she spat, casting holy shackles onto him. It did not hurt but it was so bright. She ran to him the instant he fell, and stood over him, protective and paranoid- a scorpion guarding its burrow. But that's ridiculous, because she can't be one; it they're both scorpions, then where is their nest? Where will they hide their youngest sibling from their father's cruelty?
There was a cry, heard above all others, that effectively silenced all of the crusaders, both of light and of dead. They all ceased in their onslaught immediately upon hearing this one command.
"STOP!"
And then a powerful burst of light erupted from the chapel, stunning all who would try to desecrate its grounds.
"You cannot win, Darion!" Fordring exclaimed. But Maraj did not hear this- he was too fixated upon what was before him, above him.
His sister knelt beside him quietly, slowly as not to startle him, as if he were a trapped, frightened animal. She leant over him, and for a moment, all he saw was her.
"Maraj…?" she began faintly. "Maraj… can you hear me, brother?" He listened closely, and found that… yes, he could. He was engulfed in sound, and all he could hear was her. He nodded weakly, his strength leaving him swifter than he would've thought possible. She looked relieved beyond rational thought.
"Shuuna," It was not him who spoke, it was the forsaken from before. Her Orcish was surprisingly eloquent. "Is everything alright?" She looked coldly at the death knight, sparks of mania flaring from her distrusting yellow eyes, turning to sparks of what he knew to be jealousy. Shuuna nodded serenely, placing a slender, calloused hand on his chest. To him, the palm (the center) was soft, and that's all that mattered. He realized that he was probably insane if he could feel her hand's warm, soft glow through his thick, icy plate even though her magic was not even bathing her hands in radiance anymore.
Maraj went to say something, but the other troll shushed him. She knew what he was going to ask.
"What of the dwarf woman?" she asked softly. The forsaken looked infinitely displeased, but answered honestly just the same.
"Hurt," she spat tersely. "But she'll come around." Shuuna smiled, silently requesting the forsaken to fetch her. The undead complied, but pouted as she turned and limped away, jealous. Maraj understood this reaction rather intimately; he and the forsaken were not the first to lose their light, and were justified in their possessiveness in the light of others. At least, they thought so. The troll turned back to her brother.
"A friend of yours?" she asked. "Or something else?" The second part was not said but vaguely implied. Maraj, in his weakened state, did not catch it and merely nodded, and Shuuna smiled in an oddly satisfied fashion. Her tusks were long enough that they poke her cheeks when she smiled, and a feeling of dread passed over him at implications of the length of time he was gone. "Nikeeta misses you, Rajah," she said, and despite her smile, there was a sort of sadness to her voice and her eyes shone bright and wet. "As do I." He reached a massive, gloved hand and brushed it over the one on his chest. His martyr did not shiver, did not flinch at his deathly cold.
Touching, the chill hissed, and all bittersweet melancholy that Shuuna had combusted into a corrosive, vengeful hatred. She was spitting venom again, and sought to sting and punish. She did not release her protective grip on him, as if he were her light, however dimmed and cold it may have been.
There was a stirring among the crusaders- one of betrayal, anger, and fear. Most everyone was tense, but not all were still- some were shaking but with fear or rage, no one was quite sure. There was a very distinct feeling, and although described with different words and different situations by different people, the feeling was the same across the souls of the crusaders. He would not take from them. Not again. Not when salvation lay so close.
Maraj was dizzy and shaking with rage but he got up by himself all the same. The death knights are the most intense in their hatred, for no one was closer to the chill than them, and no one was more betrayed. Fordring shouted something he did not hear, so focused was he in his wrath, and he, along with hundreds of crusaders, shot out towards his master with a resolution that rivaled the Scarlet Crusade.
The Lich King batted them away without even raising Frostmourne.
Maraj vaguely wondered as he was sent flying back if his master even had a soul left at all for the sword to carry, or if it was patched and sewn up so many times that he stopped giving a shit and let it rot along with Ner'zhul's and his rancid army of living corpses.
Fordring shouted something else, and Mograine, not for the first time in his life, became a martyr and the Ashbringer his crown of thorns.
The paladin dove towards the Lich King and dealt a fatal blow, but found it necessary somehow to let the rotting, rancid soul shuffle away to lick its wounds (an embittered, ragged old wolf left to die and kept alive only out of pity). Fordring cried for zeal and endurance, strength and loyalty, and Mograine answered without a second thought.
Then, suddenly they were free. Maraj no longer felt the presence of his lord anywhere in him, in any of them.
Maraj was fairly sure he was hallucinating this, but Shuuna was leaning over him again, along with Orene and the forsaken. Shuuna removed his helmet, but it was Orene who leaned in close, until their faces were only a hand's width apart.
"You did good, Rajah," she began. He thought her eyes would have been watery, had she any tears to shed. The Lich King was not merciful enough to leave them this kindness. "I mean it. You really did good."
"…thank you," he found himself saying. He thought he might be smiling, but he was still too numb from relief to really discern it.
"Good job not dying again, you stupid git," she insulted affectionately, voice cracking halfway through. Her lip wobbled ominously, and he sat himself up, bringing her into his arms the best he could with the plate armor.
"I'm not crying," Orene declared stubbornly, sniffling. "You didn't even get hurt that bad. I am not crying."
"I know," Maraj affirmed passively. Shuuna smiled at him, and he smiled weakly back at his sister.
Her hair was cropped jaggedly short now, her bangs hanging in uneven pieces over her face, and she was slightly taller than the last time he saw her, just a little bit. Her hair didn't look like it had been braided in years, her body was shapely in a way her teenage self wasn't, and she wasn't quite so pale a blue as she was when she was younger. He realized with a faraway horror that his younger sister was older than him now. He was twenty-one when he died, and she was nineteen. Nikeeta was twelve.
"How long…?" he asked.
"Five years," Shuuna replied dismally. "I'm twenty-six." He just stared at her unbelievingly, before pushing himself up from the ground and from the dwarf. He looked her right in the eye, and she did not falter, keeping her gaze even with his, even as she starting quivering.
"Nikeeta is seventeen," she continued, stopping just short of sobbing. Maraj pulled her into an embrace and she wept for what felt like hours. He thought he might have been as well, noisily, tearlessly weeping for the first time in years.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled into her hair. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"
"Just come home," she begged. "Please."
"Alright," he choked. "Alright."