Sitting around a refugee campfire, a young man and his three children stared into the glow on the flickering flames. The father, Corbun, couldn't stop thinking about his recently deceased wife, taken so early in their lives together by an unforeseen, disastrous conflict. His only daughter, Daelashi, broke the silence of grief that had long ago settled onto the entire camp, totaling a mere twenty-seven people.
"Dad, what happened? Why did those scary monsters kill mom..." she said, tears building back into her eyes at the recollection. Her voice began to choke up, which made Corbun's heart feel as if someone had rammed a bent nail into it.
"Well, that's a long story sweetheart. I'm not sure your brothers would like to hear about it either." he suggested, trying to avoid the topic.
"No, we don't mind, do we, Runrial?" the older brother, Asrial, asked his brother, pulling him into their subtle bet. The older one always liked to make the younger prove his mettle.
"Yeah! We want to know. How else will we be able to get them back for mom!?"
"Alright." he sighed, a hand sweeping his hair back as the sweat from his brow, only partly from the heat of the fire, glided across his now slicked back hair.
One day, a day like any other, where the young men tended their farms, the women cooked and gossiped, and the children ran through the small footpaths playing, a merchant cart came into town. It was transporting goods to Stormwind, the capital city of the Alliance. They had spices, materials for the metalworkers, mead, and a few niche items for the odd collector. Unbeknownst to them, they had another piece of cargo that they failed to account for. A Forsaken, one of the rotting corpses under the influence of Sylvanas Windrunner, had managed to sneak into the undercarriage of the cart. As the cart traveled along the unkept country roads, it hit a sizable bump in the road, knocking the Forsaken and several boxes of merchandize through the rotten, now broken, boards and onto the road. As is natural to any undead within Alliance territory, what with the dangers of the humans and the disgusting fresh air in the skies, he scurried to his feet and moved down a hill, off the road and ducked into a large drainpipe that ran under the little town. He decided he would stay the night there, among the filth, until dark when he could make his escape.
As he explored the recesses of the tunnels, looking for any sort of dry-ish area to lay down at until night fell, he heard a noise leaking down through the above manhole. It sounded like a young child, screaming in terror. The undead took a step forward before the entire meaning of the sound hit him. Despite feeling nothing since he became undead, he had been a priest in his past life. As such, he wanted to hold onto that piece of his life in his new one, and most importantly, that meant holding a value for all life. Against his undead desires, he climbed up the ladder and pushed away the cover just enough to see what the cause of the screaming was. The little boy was against the wall of a building, with two more on either side of him. In front of the boy, and to the right of the undead, he saw a man stalking towards the boy. Seems even here, trouble worms its way.
"Come 'ere, boy. I ain't gonna hurt ya." the man said, trying to calm the boy.
"No! I saw that knife on your belt. Go away! MOM! DAD!" the boy cried again.
The undead saw that there would be little time for anybody to make their way around the walls to aid the child, and so he took it upon himself to save the boy. Pulling his body through the manhole, sliding the cover to the left side. Both the boy and man looked at the figure rising from the black pit in the path, and then he turned to face the man. That grown man screamed and ran back the way he came, afraid for his life. The young boy ran up behind him and tugged on the bottom of his old, stained pants.
"Thanks, mister!", the boy said, "What's your name?"
The figure turned around to face the boy, and the boy's face went from joy to horror. The thing that had just saved him was no human. Its eyes glowed a bright amber, it gave off the stench of death, most of its clothes had blood dyed into the fabric. The defining feature of his figure however, was the metal piece he had installed to replace his missing lower jaw. His voice, like all undead, was gravely and deep.
"My name...is Rashock." the undead introduced itself. The boy wanted to run, but with the undead blocking his path, and seeing as it had saved him from that kidnapper earlier, he had to play along.
"Oh, n-nice to meet you, Ra-rashock. My name is..is Andy." the boy returned.
"Yes, good to meet you. I'll be going now." he declared, cutting off the conversation, to both of their reliefs. Before Rashock could even start towards the drain though, the boy's father and mother came around the alley without his knowing and knocked him out with a swift punch in the back of the head.
Rashock wakes up on a hard, jagged floor. He opens his eyes and sits up to see that he was balled up on the floor of a prison, with bars of iron and floor of stone. That was the only things he could focus on during his waking hours for a week. Then, trouble came back, and this time, it brought friends.
Rashock could hear screams and blood-curdling groans coming from the small barred window just outside the cell on the opposite wall. He couldn't make out what the origin of the groans was, but he knew it couldn't be good. He began to frantically look around the area he could see from his cell, but alas, he couldn't make out any shape of keys, or an instrument to unlock or destroy the bars holding him to his prison. He began to throw his magic at the bars in an attempt to wear them down, but they were too thick. To destroy them with magic alone would take hours, if not days. With little choice left however, he continued to cast Smite on the bars singlemindly. He was shocked from his effort when the door crashed open, a panicked Andy pushing into the building. He had a keyring in his hands, likely to the cells. If he was going to tease him with them, he was ready to mind control the poor child.
"Quick, you've got to help! Some people and these scary monsters are attacking us. If you were willing to help me, you've got to help my parents too." Andy blurted out in a stream of words.
Rashock put two and two together and realized what was happening. Those warlocks had caught up to him. Two months ago, he had stumbled upon a group of warlocks who were escorting some sort of gem. As a priest, he held a deep disgust for the warlocks, and even though his soul in undeath was owned by these very demons, that fact only fueled his hatred of the twisted beings from the Nether. He'd stolen the gem and used Psychic Scream to escape relatively unscathed. Unable to find a way to destroy the artifact, he carried it with him where ever he went, refusing to use the demonic energies contained within, though it whispered to his tainted mind and body daily.
The two rushed outside to utter chaos. Buildings that weren't burning were being torn inside out as the demons searched for him and their lost artifact. Their warlock master stood on the direct border on the village, acting as a guard against any who may try to flee from their slaves of the Nether. The boy pulled Rashock through the streets, having to fend off imps and voidwalkers as they went. Andy led him to his home, which was decimated. The furniture was thrown and broken on the road, and the windows were smashed out. The carpets inside were flurried from the talons of the imps and the hoofs of the succubi who drained the men of their life essence. The worst part, however, the most disgusting display of brutality Rashock had seen in his un-life, was the boy's parents. They had been skinned, turned inside-out, and speared on poles that hung out of massive holes in the walls on either side. Andy broke down in tears, his whole family slaughtered within near minutes. Rashock couldn't allow these hellish fiends harm the boy who had freed him, and so, without more than a second's hesitation, he scooped the boy into his arms and fled down a side road. He winded through the streets, using Fade when needed to sneak by the demons who still prowled the town in search of them, until he found another sewer hatch. He put Andy down for a moment and pushed the cover to the side, and practically forced Andy down the ladder, with Rashock following right after, covering the hole behind them.
"And, that's what happened, little ones." Corbun concluded the tale.
"What happened to that zombie and Andy though?" cried Daelashi, whose tears had dried, becoming enamored with the story.
"No idea. They just...vanished." Corbun replied sadly.
"Who cares what happened to them? I'm just glad we had the same idea." Asrial said, clashing with the somber attitude of the rest of the camp, most of which had settled down into what few blankets they managed to save.
"Alright now, don't be so loud. Everyone else is going to bed, and we should too. We've got a long walk ahead of us all." Corbun soothingly declared. The children grumbled under their breaths as they got the small sections of light rug they were using as blankets and prepared to sleep on what soft grass they could find to themselves.