Inspired by the song 'Harvest of Sorrow' by Blind Guardian.
watch?v=Mid40GsrBgc
The evening had long drawn in over the Crossroads. The Warband were gathered in the warmth and firelight of the Inn. Some sat in circles, drinking the bar dry, trading stories and/or bragging rights, some fought amongst themselves out of insulted honour, wounded pride, or just sheer boredom, and some kept to themselves, away from the others.
He was one of these solitary figures, and he gazed at the others from his place in the comfort of the shadows. The General cast his gaze around the rest of the Warband, though the look in his eyes made it clear his mind was on other things. As the leader of the Warband, the burden upon his shoulders was immense. But he was a level-headed and pragmatic man. He admired that.
Maenna, the assassin, one of the Warband's anointed Champions, stood with her back to the wall, twirling a knife between her fingers, looking thoroughly uninterested in her surroundings. Disdain practically radiated from her. He could only recall one time where he actually ever saw her smile. Or, at least, seen her tusks and cheeks strain against her mask in such a way that would suggest a smile. He had never seen her face. He mused none of them had. But then, she hid much from everyone. He often wondered what marvelous and tantalizing secrets she held...
Then there was Goreblood. A Death Knight of the Ebon Blade. A fallen Orc, raised from the dead by the Lich King. He remembered how that felt. To be called back from death to serve a tyrant at the head of a merciless war machine. None of the others understood. None of them cared. They merely tolerated their presence, at best. Were openly hostile at worse. But, for the most part, they were simply shunned and despised by their fellows. But Goreblood understood. He knew how it felt, what it was to be undead. He may have had some bond of brotherhood with him, if he didn't act like such a contemptuous arse. In many ways, the Death Knights as a whole reminded him a little of Arthas himself; Angry children with daddy issues and a chip on their shoulder, and they would take it out on the world. His mouth twisted into as much of a smile as he was capable at the irony.
He struck a match, and anyone who cared to look into the darkened corner of the inn would have seen the lit match vanish inside the wooden bowl of a long-necked tobacco pipe. The flame flickered into life as he sucked hard on the mouthpiece, lighting the shredded tobacco within. Thin, boney hands with protruding, elongated, skeletal fingers held the pipe up to a mouth full of cracked and rotten teeth. He discarded the match and inhaled, causing the embers in the bowl to glow brightly enough to just about illuminate his hooded face, thrown into a flame-coloured hue. Grey, dead flesh clung to sunken, hollow cheeks, and as a cloud of acrid smoke rose from both his mouth and several old lacerations in his neck, swirls of it wafted into hollow eye sockets that gazed endlessly and unblinking. Where eyes had once been, there was an unnatural blackness, darker and colder than the empty night sky between the stars. But then, there was very little that was natural about Longstride anymore.
He took another deep drag of his pipe, feeling the hot smoke fill his mouth and sinuses, but his sense of taste and smell were both long dead. Some had asked why he still bothered, "Old habits die hard", he always told them. But there was more to it than that; It allowed him to cling to the last part of the man he once was. It felt like a lifetime ago... but then, in a way, it really was. And a much simpler life it had been, the only child of a fisherman and a seamstress, growing up in the green fields and woodlands of Hillsbrad. He would spend his days with his father fishing, his evenings playing with the other children of the village and practicing archery, and every two weeks he would travel with his father to the markets of Andorhal to sell their catch. Life was good. Life was simple. Granted, there were the turbulant periods when they would flee to the safety of Lordaeron when the Horde first reared their ugly heads, but life would always return to normal. But, as he would learn again and again throughout his long and eventful life and unlife, time changes all things.
As he grew older, he found himself yearning to remain in the grand capital city. But he knew he would never achieve this if he followed in his father's footsteps. By the time he had reached his teenage years, his years of archery practice had really shone through. He had even won first prize in a couple of local archery contests. And so, with a heavy heart, he had left home, and led a life within the woods of Silverpine and Lordaeron, living off the land, hunting bird and beast alike, and he sold his game meat to the noble houses, who were always after the most exotic meats to impress their guests, and he sold hides and leathers in both Lordaeron and Andorhal, whenever he felt homesickness pull at his heartstrings.
He still remembered the first time he saw her, as if it was yesterday. He still remembered the touch of her hand, and the scent of the perfume she had worn that day. A nobleman's daughter, Emilia was a being of incandescent beauty. Eyes like sapphires, skin like cream, hair that shimmered like a blanket of pearl and silver. She had been smitten by the strapping trapper. Oh yes, he was a tall, handsome fellow once. They spent many clandestine evenings together in the trees, beneath the stars, whispering promises of everlasting love and eternal devotion. How the notion of such things sickened him now.
He remembered the day Arthas murdered his father. He had been in streets, peddling his wares, when the Scourge began pouring over the walls in an endless tide. He had attempted to make for Emilia's family home, but the streets there were already swarming. So he did what any other archer would have done; He went for the high ground. As he up-righted himself, he loosed arrows into the teeming mass that had swarmed through the streets. It hadn't taken him long to work out that a headshot would put these things down. It wasn't until he finally ran out of arrows, that he had realized the futility of his efforts. Four score of these abominations was of little consequence, as they had kept pouring over the walls. He may as well have thrown pebbles to try and stop an avalanche. Then, as he looked around from his vantage point, the true horror of the situation unfolded before his eyes.
To have called it a massacre would have been a tasteless attempt to romanticize the truth of it. This was butchery. Barbarous, sadistic butchery. As his eyes scanned the hordes of undead, he finally saw the things happening in between their advancing numbers... and he wished he hadn't. People, torn to pieces, begging, praying for a deliverance that would never come. Victims wept and cried for their mothers as they tried to flee, holding in their own entrails. Some knelt and prayed, singing hymns to the Light in a final act of defiance as they were torn apart or eaten alive. When children saw the monsters claw into their little bellies and pull out their insides... they didn't have children's faces anymore. The air stank of blood, death, rotted meat and pus, and the baleful tolling of the bells was almost drowned out by the endless cacophony of screams.
Then he had seen her. She had screamed and kicked as she had been pulled this way and that... and then she had simply ripped apart with a wet crack and a spray of viscera, as if she had been made of paper. He had watched, numbed with horror and grief as the life drained from her sapphire eyes, right before one of the things that killed her began to eat her face. He had been so pre-occupied watching her die, he didn't notice the swarm behind him. He had been dragged to the ground, clawed, hacked, bitten... but he had felt nothing. As he lay dying, he had looked into the sky through smoke thick with blood and fat, and the Light was not there.
The last thing he had been aware of was his own flesh being eaten. And when he had next awoke, he wasn't a creature of the Light anymore.
Longstride's mind was brought back to the present when a half full mug of ale exploded not too far from him. He saw another brawl had broken out, and the rest were either cheering it on, or ignoring it altogether. Longstride sighed, then realized his tobacco was spent. As he tipped the bowl upside down and patted it against his hand, watching the ashes fall to the floor, a thought occurred to him; That, right there, was the universal truth of all existence. In the end, everything turned to ashes. Kingdoms and Empires had risen and fallen, and, no matter how great their power and legacy, eventually, everything dies. No matter how great a man or woman had been, no matter their accomplishments, no matter how brightly their fire had burned, even if their legend lived on for generations afterwards, all flesh rots and decays. Everything crumbles to dust and ashes.
He himself had seen the fall of Kingdoms and Empires, in the service of both the Lich King and the Dark Lady. He had repeated the butchery he had witnessed in Lordaeron many times over. He had washed his hands in an ocean of blood. He still felt its stain upon his hands. And it made him remember.
He remembered everything.
Some Forsaken chose to forget their lives before undeath, as a way for them to cope with what had happened to them. Some lost their minds at the realization of what they had become. Some, perhaps the lucky ones, he mused, lost their memory entirely if they had been dead for too long, or their mind was too far gone. But not Longstride.
He remembered everything.
Every life he had taken. Every face he had killed, every voice he had silenced, every man, woman, child, undead or otherwise, he had looked in the eye as he had ended them.
He. Remembered. Everything.
He put his pipe away and continued to silently watch his companions. Even as they slept, he still sat in the darkness. Goreblood sometimes remained in the Inn. They would remain silent and motionless, staring into the abyss as they stood vigil over their sleeping companions. The watchers in the dark.