~ Author's Note ~
I love the DK lore and their tragedy, though (true to the ditty I wrote before LK was even launched and still to this day) I don't play a DK.
This story belongs to the "Cat in the Bag" storyline though I am trying to write it to be stand-alone as I am unable to figure out how to add it to that "Cat in the Bag", especially since it starts of much earlier than Kayas' story does.
This story is set two years before the Light's Hope Mishap that I'm sure Arthas still thought of as a 'minor setback' even as he was being pwned to death by his own former minions and then teabaged by Sylvanas.
~*~ Chapter 1 ~*~
~ Acherus: the Ebon Hold ~
A long Death Knight sat on the rails of Acherus and contemplated the echoing emptiness under him. Balancing on the ball of one bare food, the other wavered out into the air as if any second he would step off and float away.
"You can't fly. I've told you that before." A whisper of heavy robes over cold stones were all the warning afforded him at the approach of another set of bare feet. The sound of the female necromancer crossing her arms invaded the silence.
Slanted back over his shoulders, the long ears of his race quivered in irritation. "I'm well aware," he told the other Kaldorei, "The facts will not stop me from trying. One of these days."
"Right, then." Eyes he couldn't see narrowed at his dourness. "Get down."
Immediately he spun to face her and dropped from the railing, stepping away to show willingness to comply. "Mean." he accused. Necromancers were so damned mean. Just because one could control the dead with words did not –
"I care." She patted his cheek and walked away, black robes flowing as she went. The mock loving gesture clashed horribly with the hollow voice. Her plain brown eyes, somehow immune to whatever caused the rest of the living residents of the hold to glow, were sunk into her face too much for his liking.
He watched her go, sighing and rattled at the disturbance to his brooding. It wasn't often a Death Knight of the Ebon Hold got the opportunity to be alone for just a few seconds and have their thoughts. She ruined his solitude and so he determined it only fair he ruined hers.
Silently he followed, feet padding over the slimy floor of the foul smelling necropolis. Positioned high in the skies above a Scarlet stronghold, it was amazing that a place open to so much fresh air still smelled so foul. Of course…
… the bodies laying everywhere didn't help.
"I've been alone so long, my love is fair gone. The Will of the Master has become my own," he sang under his breath as one particularly stubborn door gave him trouble. The hinges were rusted in place, as all the hinges belonging to the Scourge had a tendency to do. As he worked the door, certain that she had come this way and annoyed that the closure would open for her and not for him, he continued the song, "Dashing the foes of our King to dust; where once there was life now a glorious rust."
That last line needed some work, he though. "'Where once there was life, now a rotting old husk?' No, that sounds lame. "'Where once there was life, now the world burns to dust?'" A little better…
Around a corner, and down a hall covered in glowing black slime he heard the sound of screaming. One of the new recruits had woken up with a head full of memories in a body that bent to the service of whichever necromancer reanimated him. The Death Knight followed the sound thinking perhaps watching someone else's solitude being ruined would make him feel better.
She had gone threw that door he was certain!
Leaving the offending slab behind, the dead man followed the sounds. The hallways lead into the reanimation pen, where the corpses of fallen former champions were hauled in by the cartloads. The place was rank with the smell of decay; floor covered in clotted blood and feces and even the ceiling was caked in grime.
Of course, when everything is dead what need is there to clean anything? Well… most everything was dead.
The little Gnome howled again as strong ghoul hands drug him into the center of the room and chained him in the circle with the rest of those with memories. He was bare down to his boxers, little legs kicking but having nothing in the way of strength.
"The love of a woman betrayal is sewn; I'll know no release save the Will of the Throne."
The soft scrape of old cloth on stone was his only warning once again. "Your song is terrible."
Closing his glowing blue eyes in surprise he tried not to show the shiver that ran up his plate-bound spine. "For your, my dear. A ballad detailing beauty and prowess."
"A lion has prowess, Thanis Deadspeak. I do not prowl." She almost twirled around him and went back to her work. The students working on raising up the former living corpses were given sharp scolding for wasting the Gnome; he was suppose to serve as a necromancer himself since he had been a warlock in real life. The turnover rate for their kind was very high, considering the living conditions in most Scourge owned locations, so their Master was always on the lookout for living beings skilled in the arts of mental control. Especially when it can be flexed against another.
Thanis leaned against the wall and watched them. The ghouls drug in carts from the landing deck outside and dumped their contents into the floor. Students then went threw the remains and separated the living from the dead. The journeyman necromancers evaluated the living to see if they would serve their Master better alive than dead and if not handed them off to be slaughtered. If so then they were taken away to private chambers.
The Kaldorei man shuttered at remembering what that had been like when he had made the transition from Alliance to Scourge so many, many years ago. His death and reanimation were the oldest memories most of his kind possessed. The rest were stripped away like so many layers of slimy leaves from a cabbage a farmer intends to harvest and make good of. The farmers in this case were the dread necromancers.
The dead were sorted threw to see which ones were salvageable as Death Knights and which ones would only become undead. The rest were turned into ghouls. The students got the lovely job of rising up those particularly foul and clumsy creatures. For their hideous appearance and want of rotting even with a plague that sustained undead life inside them, they were an unholy happy lot. Truly carefree, which is more than could be said for their makers.
Of the ones slated to become champions of the Lich King there were always in short supply. They needed strength and the ability to wield magic; the needed to be able to be scrubbed clean of all memories of the living world; they needed to be installable with the insane loyalty their entire breed possessed. They needed battle prowess and fearlessness and most importantly they needed to be able to fully comprehend their utter helplessness in the service of their Master. If all of these fine qualities were possessed in one body then a new Death Knight would be reborn in Acherus.
It had been almost a month since any of that kind had been found though. The ones now were Scarlet, recruits from the field who fell in battle and didn't have the sense to somehow foul their bodies with the Light so the Scourge could not salvage them. Just where a Gnome had come from was unknown though Thanis suspected the Argent Dawn might be involved in the workings of New Avalon. Either way, Scarlet or Dawn, they rarely produced a champion worthy of the Lich King. Their will and the Light inside them was too hard to break else their minds were too fragile to survive the process.
"Are you wondering if we're going to get any new brothers or sisters out of this batch?" A heavy hand came to rest on his shoulders. Turning he met eye to eye with those of another elfin Death Knight. The pale Quel'dorie stood half a head shorter than he did, though a few pounds heavier. And not all of it was that impressive silver and black bird skull themed armor.
He clasped his fellow warrior by the gloves and answered, "Yes, actually. She seems restless enough to go looking for one herself if they don't bring one back soon."
Koltira's small smile matched the light in his blue eyes. A Death Knight was forever bound to the 'mancer who raised them and it just so happen that these two had been raised by the same one. "She is in a mood, isn't she?"
Koltira and Thanis were two of the three elves aboard Acherus and got stuck together whenever possible. It was no coincidence they were both raised by the third as elfin minds knew elfin minds better than a human 'mance would. Though Death Knights were bound in loyalty and servitude to the Will of their Master, the ones who had prejudice before they died often kept it after. None of the humans on board agreed with the non-human presence in their midst, except him who chose to slay Koltira for the Lich King. The one who had chosen Thanin for the dark knighthood was long gone some years past, a victim of the Scarlets.
If the humans had it their way Mograin and the rest would toss all of them off the Ebon Hold and come up with some grand lie to tell their King when asked what became of the two champions. The 'mancer they would keep, as she was almost completely purged of anything tying her to an obvious Kaldorei ancestry and acted mostly human. Her want of going barefooted drove the Highlord up the walls but the man kept his peace to avoid adding fuel to the fire.
"I'm working on a song but so far she hates it." The long hair, which had once been a deep aqua blue in life, now hung jagged and unkempt around his armor. The mats and tangles, unwashed slime and gore almost made it blend into equally unwashed armor. Though Thanis was capable of smell, his nose had long ago adjusted to his own stench.
Acherus did not have a day spa, much as one of the human recruits had tried to make one. His insistence that the Lich King would love to have his nails done earned him a permanent place as a decoration on the outside of the enormous steel and stone hold. The bath he managed to fly up only saw use by one person…
Koltira was spotless. His skin was moisturized, white hair gleamed soft and breezy and even his armor shone. The vanity most High Elves had in life did not diminish in death. If anything it was amplified, as evident by the perfectly shaved eyebrows that were in keeping with modern Sin'dorie in the living world. Something about having them 'touched up', as human women were like to do, made the younger elf look wicked in a way Thanis made a point not to think about.
"Perhaps," the pale elf commented softly, "you should not make the song a tragedy. Give her something pretty."
Thanis laughed, "I'd have to go to New Avalon to bring her something pretty. A maiden perhaps, a child as yet untrained in any art and unaware of what lies inside her. That would make her smile."
And that decided it. Even as he opened his mouth to speak Koltira put up a gloved hand to stop him, "No. If you want to go traipsing threw the Scarlet stronghold in search of new servants for Him then by all means do it. I have a training session starting on the hour."
"Private session with Thass-?"
The plated fist that hit him in the jaw didn't stop his Kaldorei counterpart laughing and jumping away from the next swing. Luckily Byfrost had been left at the forge for repairs after their last mission to test the defenses of Light's Hope, else Widower would have gotten a chance to kiss that runed blade once more. Thanis' own weapon he was sure was fair in love with that of the smaller elf, though neither of them spoke of it. When ones weapon has a mind of it's own and they wanted two people to fight so they could dance with their lover it took a strong mind to separate the make-believe feelings from the real ones.
"Off I go then." Thanis stepped away from the wall and the furious white Quel'dorie and waved a dismissing hand as he trotted out of the chamber singing, "Together and gone, my purpose withdrawn; the touch of my runeblade makes mortals His pawn."
"Belore, Deathspeak, that song is terrible!" Koltira's mock puking followed him down the hall and out onto the landing once more.
Thanin frowned, not knowing if the other 'Knight meant it or just being mean by saying.
No one tried very hard to hide their want of their maker as Koltira did for Thessaurian. But when a group of people spent enough time together, as they all had in the floating necropolis, there were no secrets.
Thassarian had chosen Koltira and groomed him to be his second. The dead did not know father and son relations; when a new champion was reborn in service of the Lich King they went threw a transition period of being broken as a servant of their creator first. Student-teacher was one thing humans knew well; slave and master was how the Scourge worked.
Of course Koltira seemed to be as young and brash as he was hot headed. Stalking out in front of everyone wearing nothing but those striking blue tattoos and blood on his thighs and turning up a kettle of boiling water over his unwary master had probably been the biggest hint as to what was going on in private.
Thanis grinned as he hopped an unliving mount and flew out of the hold. The chase that lasted all day and into the night had provided the most entertainment any of them had seen since their living days. The bets and booze and whores passed around had been the death of many a mortal occupant of the Ebon Hold.
Even his cold-hearted non-mistress had participated, dancing like the worst of the Shadow Sisters she had once been and stripping down to nothing but fuzzy matching undergarments. Widower had been all that stood between her and receiving matching blood stains that night, though she used him more as a prop for her erotic display than a shield between she and her would-be attackers.
His laugher echoed out over the empty space between the ground and the hold disappearing above him. That had been the turning point for him. The Scourge were incapable of feeling love but if anything could cement a man's loyalty to a woman it was finding out that she was the most in tact and uncorrupted Scourge in the whole of the Eastern or Western Plaguelands. Well, physically that is. Inside she was as much a loyal servant of the Lick King as he. The difference was that she had chosen her path whereas his had been chosen for him.
Down, down and down into the blackness and night they spiraled. He himself could see everything for miles, a gift of his Kaldorei heritage though he was aware most of the others above him could not see two feet in front of their face in the pitch black. Not even the glow of the frost magic that held them bound to their bodies would help.
That is of course why they were gifted with such supreme senses of smell, though most of them didn't bother to bathe and the rotting smell of decaying flesh stuck in their own hair and spikes of armor often dulled it. Again, his Kaldorei heritage did him one better, allowing him to turn off smelling the rank scent of himself and hone in on the smell of living heartbeats.
The reins tightened as he pulled back slightly, telling the bony beast to fly strait so he could follow the currents to better pinpoint his prey. Though it took quite a while to actually find the scent of a living being that wasn't infused with that tainted brand of Scarlet Light, eventually one drifted up to his nose. It was mixed with the scent of campfire and food. Just as he smelled it did he see the winking fire in the distance.
"Hide in the night or try and take flight," he sang as he steered his mount to land half a mile away from the camp, "but Scourg hounds do not hunt the living with sight." His blade had been left back at the hold but he would not need it tonight. He was as adept at fighting with just his diseases and damnations as he was with blade and rune. Tonight he fully intended to bring his mistress a prize worthy of his … loyalty.
