Chapter 1
Rogan stumbled once his feet cleared the portal, the whispers of his Highlord and former master still clawing at the edges of his mind. The force of having his memories returned to him had been staggering, and had he not been mounted on his Deathcharger he would have struck the ground.
He gripped the reins of his warhorse and glanced up at the impressive battlements of Stormwind, aware that his sudden and inexplicable arrival had attracted the attention of several guards posted outside the gates. He did not fear the guards. The ability to do so had been stripped from him alongside his mortality and humanity.
He was something else now. Something born of darkness and hate, freed from the Lich's will but still bound to his malice. Rogan doubted he would be welcomed with open arms into the city that had sent him off to die.
Anger burned through his veins at the sight of the city sitting smug and unharmed here in Elwynn. He had lived there once, in peace and safety, confident in his own ability to live at ease alongside the other races of the Alliance. He had known soldiers went off to die in order for him to live, but he had taken them forgranted. He had accepted their deaths as a necessary evil; they had died so that he may live, and therefore his life was worth more than theirs.
Necessary evil. Rogan snorted. There was no such thing. Necessary good perhaps, but evil is evil no matter how you look at it.
That lesson had been branded into his soul the moment he awoke inside Acherus.
Then it had been his life on the line, and suddenly everything he had ever taken for granted became a luxury denied him as he lay broken on the battlefield. He would never feel his heart beat within his chest. He would never taste his wife's homemade apple pie, never experience the joy of fatherhood.
He was no longer human.
He was a Death Knight. He was the Scourge, at least as far as the rest of the Alliance would be concerned. And therein lay his problem.
He ignored the stares of the guards and pulled the letter the Highlord had handed him from his bag, staring at it. Fordring and Mograine expected him to deliver this to the King? Were they insane?
He doubted the guards would allow him within a hundred paces of the front gate, much less King Varian. There was very little about him that even remotely resembled the man he had once been.
He still had his full head of dark hair, for which he was grateful—some of the other initiates had not been so fortunate—and he had use of all his faculties. More than one of the initiates that he was forced to cut down had been missing limbs or digits.
He supposed it was a stroke of fortune that the abomination's hook had not torn any permanent holes in him other than the obvious scars on his torso. It had surely not seemed like it at the time.
Being in one piece just wasn't very important in the grand scheme of things while you had the Lich King whispering in your mind and the bloodthirst burning in your soul. If you lost a limb or a jaw, it was a minor inconvenience that simply made it all the more rewarding when someone fell to your blade.
But now, staring at the gates of Stormwind, he was thankful for small blessings. Going in with glowing blue eyes and looking like the picture of death would be hard enough without adding looking like a deformed cripple to the mix.
With a mental command he urged the Deathcharger forward at a walk. A Scourge planning to storm the gates would not be walking calmly, and he hoped the gesture would be enough to stop him from being shot on sight.
Not that an arrow would be able to bring him down, but he had enough scars as it was and didn't really desire any more.
The guards were tense and he could see their wide eyes through the slits in their helms as he passed. They were probably too startled to react to his presence. That, or they were just waiting for him to get inside before swarming him. He almost wanted them to attack. The bloodlust ached within him and his fingers itched to draw his Runeblade and bury it to the hilt in the chest of the nearest guard immediately.
He resisted the urge. Barely.
The first few guards' lack of reaction proved to be the exception, not the rule. The other guards began cursing him and spitting at his feet, but none drew a blade against him. He supposed keeping his own blade sheathed and his flaming steed to a walk was enough to stay their hands, and this surprised and disappointed him.
Once he reached the Market District, time seemed to slow as everyone stopped what they were doing to watch the Scourge on horseback stride confidently through the streets. He saw more than one merchant bolt back into their homes or stores and slam the door as if a piece of flimsy wood would be enough to stop him should he desire entrance.
Two children darted in front of him from around a corner, screaming and backpeddling once he and his steed came into view. The boy dropped the doll he'd been holding and fell to his rear, staring wide-eyed with terror as guards took a step closer.
Rogan spared the boy a cold glance and his Deathcharger pawed the ground with a flaming hoof, snorting as sparks flew from the cobblestones.
How many children had decorated his blade during the Scarlet siege? A dozen? A hundred? He had lost count once keeping score with his fellows had become tiresome. When the fool child stayed frozen to the ground, he sighed and guided his horse around the obstacle and continued on his way.
The desire to let his steed trample the boy underfoot had passed through him briefly, but he figured doing so would be counterproductive to his current goal of reaching the King. The guards had hesitated once he passed the child, confusion and fear still written on their faces.
He snorted as he passed a group of them. They thought to understand the workings of the Scourge? No wonder the army had failed so spectacularly the day he fell. Had he had the knowledge he did now, he could have turned the tide.
He knew how they thought. He knew how they worked. He knew how they reasoned—or didn't. He knew the mind of the one who controlled them as well as his own. The Scourge were not a collection of individuals; the Scourge were a unit, a single consciousness devoid of free will, guided by the iron mind of the Lich King.
Only the Death Knights had been outside the cycle, and only then after facing betrayal.
He drew his Deathcharger to a halt at the entrance to the keep, slightly amazed that he had made it this far unhindered. He had expected to have to carve a swath of death and chaos through the city proper in order to reach this point; it was the only reason he had agreed to deliver this message in the first place. The possibility of violence and the absence of fear had been enough to convince him, though he was no more able to deny the will of his Highlord than he had the Lich King… if for different reasons.
Swinging down and dismounting in a practiced, fluid motion, he left his steed among the startled guards and advanced into the Keep. It was grander than he remembered, although there was no way to know how long ago it had been since he had fallen in battle.
Months? Years? Decades? Time had not ravaged him thanks to the Lich King's tainted magic, but so much had changed he could only assume years had passed.
The guards in the keep were more vocal in their displeasure, calling him names and crying out for someone to bring a rope, or commenting on the upcoming execution they were sure to have. He didn't so much as glance at a single one of them.
They were inconsequential. Unimportant. Useless. Weak. He could tear them apart with his bare hands if he had to, and he would if they so much as twitched in his general direction. The Highlord had not forbade him from defending himself, after all. They may have been the elite, but he was worth any ten of them in a fight. He knew this as well as he knew the patchwork of scars and welts crossing his back and torso from his times as a harbinger of death. He was far from invulnerable, after all.
He was merely much, much harder to kill.
He paused at the thought. Could he even be killed? Could a walking corpse re-enter the afterlife? Had he entered the afterlife at all? He was uncertain, and he found himself curious to discover the truth for himself. It had seemed only a matter of seconds between falling on the plains and awaking as a servant of the Lich King, although the pale flesh of his skin and the deterioration of his mind hinted at a much longer period of inactivity.
It awoke a new torrent of hatred towards the Lich King, to have stolen from him what he had been promised upon his death. He may never enter the Light now. How could he? He was an instrument of the Scourge, the walking dead. With a snarl that had the guards backing up a step he continued his trek.
No point dwelling on what he could not control. He had learned that early on during his stay in Acherus. Attempting to fight what was out of your reach was as pointless as resisting the Lich King's will. He would win in the end, he always did, so there was no point delaying the inevitable.
He entered the chamber and was stunned at the lack of response from the guards as he approached the King.
At least the fool human had the sense to have his swords drawn. Empty threats fell from his lips and Rogan ignored them, much to the King's irritation. He was no king of his, after all. Rogan answered to the Highlord, not this vessel of flesh and spirit.
He handed the king his message and waited dispassionately while the he read over Fordring's message. Rogan did not know what it said; the letter was not sealed but he had no reason to care about the contents. If it had concerned him, the Highlord would have told him what rested within.
Rogan was almost surprised when the King announced that the Death Knights would join as a part of the Alliance, but nothing truly surprised him anymore. Especially not after a lone member of the Scourge managed to get all the way to the King—at a walk—without so much a blade raised in opposition.
He considered telling the King this, or at least warning him about future attacks that his guards decided to ignore and throw insults at rather than prevent. He chose not to, for he really didn't care.
The human King was a fool, and Rogan had slain enough men in his rebirth to recognize a lost cause when he saw one. He toyed with the idea of severing the human's head while he spoke his decree. It would be amusing to watch his guards scramble to defend him in the span of three seconds it would take to accomplish the task.
'Harness your hate; make it useful.'
Rogan stilled the bloodlust rising in his veins. The Highlord was right, of course. This was not the King he had set his eyes upon, and not the one whose blood he desired to spill.
He turned on his heel and departed the Keep, not wishing to spend a moment longer than necessary within its halls. Being within the city walls was… he supposed unnerving would be the proper term.
For the first time since he had re-awoken, he had a choice. He had free will, with only the remnants of malice at the edge of his subconscious. He could do what he wished.
And he wished to get out of this forsaken city before he began slaughtering everything that breathed. With a flick of thought he summoned his Deathcharger from the Void and mounted, giving the steed the free reign to run as fast as it wished so long as it didn't crush anyone underfoot.
The last thing he needed was to cause an incident so soon after accomplishing his quest. With a grin Rogan listened to the crack of his steed's hooves against the flagstone, the thunder of their strikes a crack in the silence.