Chapter 8

When he was convinced there was no one coming, he went back to reading. Several pages passed again with no mention of anything. She continued to perform her tasks in Terokkar, assisting in the war efforts there through various errands. At last, another entry caught his attention:

I finally decided to go back to Shattrath and try again. I managed to make it past the refugees without an excess of heartache. Of course, when I got to A'dal, I once more became entirely besotted with the strange music and the alluring light that he exudes. Canker, after several more hours of this, reminded me quite grumpily that he was tired of standing about.

So I dismissed him and sat down for a while to listen. How rude of me to not have thought of it sooner!

At long last, however, I made the decision I've been putting off for months. I decided to ally myself to the Aldor. When asked why, I informed the one who asked me that I felt they could better serve my equipment needs.

I wholly and completely lied. I found that I desired to ally myself to the light, despite the foul nature of the beastly creature I am now. Perhaps I felt it would be a form of atonement. But in honesty, I simply felt drawn to it. A remnant of the Holy Paladin I once was? Perhaps something deeper, who knows?

But that was the choice I made, though I feel defensive about it, even a bit ashamed. That I not only shunned my own kind in the Scryers, but I allied myself with creatures of the Light.

Even, I'm sure, my strange infatuation with the music of A'dal is something which, should any learn of it, would bring derision or worse down upon me.

For am I not evil incarnate? Am I not simply a machine of destruction, devoid of personality, choice, or worth? Of course I am. Am I not reminded of this constantly? Indeed, I am.

Once more, I sit and wonder what will become of me in that dark day yet to come when I am no longer an instrument of their wrath, but rather a reminder of their losses. Sometimes, as I fight the never-ending ranks of demons and the possessed in this terrible, Gods-forsaken place, I think that I need never fear, for that day shall never come. That I will always have a place here, here in the dark depths of the broken world that nearly collided with ours.

But this is I, fooling myself. There is no place for my kind anywhere. We are anathema. And so we will remain for the rest of our lifeless lives. For we committed the unforgivable sin. We died and were used by Arthas in his twisted madness. For this, we are forever monsters, demons, or worse.

I ask you now, though, if you cut me, do I not bleed? If you tear out my heart, will I not die again? Am I, then, so very different after all?

Perhaps I am, if you include the fact that my heart has already been torn from me. I don't know how I live on with this pain and torment.

Okthar sat the journal down. He was conflicted. It was as if she hated everything about herself, even her obvious desire to do, and be, good. The brilliance of her caring came through, despite the seemingly beastly nature of her current existence. He felt both an aching sadness, yet also a poignant admiration for her.

And he understood. He really, really understood. She was alone in the world now as she was before. The vestiges of her past life only served to show her that her life was an eternal state of aloneness. The starkness of her reality penetrated him with a painful poignancy. Even among the sexually profligate elves, the Death Knights were shunned. It was unlikely that she took lovers, unless they were trolls.

He shuddered. The trolls, alone among the races, seemed to be fascinated by the Death Knights. Their morbid, grotesque fascination was impersonal and dark, but he supposed that when the loneliness became too much, perhaps even being the object of a dark and pernicious obsession would be better than nothing.

The trolls' necromantic proclivity was well known and documented. Many of the Horde trolls claimed to decry it, yet they also seemed to seek out the Death Knights and inspect every inch of them. Their corpses were often stolen when they died, for experiments. Thrall and Okthar had discussed this on two separate occasions, and they reached the same conclusion each time—the trolls wanted to recreate what Arthas had done.

Unbidden, Okthar's mind considered the thought of the trolls capturing and experimenting on this gentle woman. She would be raped, then dissected alive for as long as she survived the operation. The interest the trolls had in corpses was anathema to the Orcs, and he occasionally wondered how the two races got along in Orgrimmar.

But they did, and they were allies, for better or for worse. And the problem with the Death Knights was that, despite Thrall's decree, the Orcs turned a willingly, even delightedly blind eye when the trolls tortured them. The Orcs couldn't act against the Death Knights, but they could ignore their suffering.

Okthar stood and paced again. The real question, he thought to himself, was how many Death Knights felt the way Sanabeau did? Were there enough who did to focus already stretched resources on them? He sighed heavily. So many questions, all with no answers.

He sat down and reached for the journal again. As he did so, footsteps sounded on the stairs below, heading his way. Hastily, he stood and replaced it on the desk. Crossing his arms, he faced the door.