Chapter 11: Through the Rubble
The Lord Malicebound treaded the ground. It was filled with fel energies, and most surprisingly, Light energies. The demons of the Burning Legion freely walked the halls, and remnants of the Scourge had been driven off into the Dead Scar.
Faint memories, like slivers of glass, like splintery thorns pierced his dead mind. Images of children and old elves dying, withering away like dried plants, the Sunwell glowing in a hellish light which was no better than darkness, a kind of anti-light; the Death Knight brushed these away. Old memories weren't why he was here. He strode up to the crumbling ruins, seeing finally what the fool of a *boy had wrought. Kael'Thas had decided to destroy the corrupted Sunwell, and the land around it showed the effects easily.
The old Sunwell was dead. It wasn't entirely sure where the Light energies emanated from. The exact location eluded his senses; somewhere near the old Magister's Terrace probably. No matter, to scout here wasn't his intention; rather, it was to collect something of his. So short a time, to his perception, was still enough for it to have been looted, yet somehow he doubted it.
There were stains and cracks in the old paving stones. Marble, granite, and red basalt gave way to blight-encrusted dirt. Malicebound didn't care. He needed a core for his new rune weapon. And for that, he needed a corruptible core; a Light-infused weapon was needed.
Malicebound didn't know why he needed his old blade, but it seemed right to him. It seemed as if, it would be easier to infuse his own weapon with his own dark energies at the runeforges in Icecrown.
The crumbling stone of the once glorious fount soon came into sight. Malicebound remembered falling here and breaking his back, before being brought to Northrend. His blade had to be here. He could sense it.
He saw old and desiccated corpses, remains of the old battle. Blood-encrusted High Elven armor, a Farstrider's bow, the string having been cut and frayed by time, large bones of defeated Frost Wyrm's, and the stony exoskeletons of gargoyles littered the ground. It seemed as if the battle had only just ended. The corruption had drawn other beings; invisible, clammy hands caressed his leg greaves, old ghosts who'd been left here. Death was unafraid of death.
Malicebound kicked a plated boot through the debris, roughly where he had fallen. His ghoul companions keeping guard around him, babbling incoherently to one another in the language of those who can no longer be saved. Flotsam and jetsam clattered away, a cracked elven skull still in a helmet, rattled around inside its shell like a pair of odd gambler's dice.
He looked around, trying to feel its now repellent aura, trying to feel a trace of its old magic. His eyes flashed a dull blue. He stepped onto a leather sheath and kicked it away as well. He noted how strange he would have looked, rooting through the refuse like a common gnoll or a repugnant kobold.
He picked up the rusted helmet of a magical guardian, one of the siege golems, looked it over and threw it away. He watched it hit and clang as it bounced, his eyes not leaving it as it rolled before coming to a stop with a dull ring. It stopped right beside a sky blue hilt. Despite a shudder of malefic disdain, Malicebound, who was once Xephyrien the Mourner, smiled in a dark and evil satisfaction as he strode up to take his old sword.
Malicebound, held the newly reforged greataxe. Inscribed already with the runes of death, destruction, and decay, it was a shadow of what it could become, it was incomplete still.
It lacked the triune powers of a Death Knight. He's subdued the light-bound powers of his old saber before shattering the blade. The pieces were remade into the axe he now wielded, but it was still far from finished.
He had felt a brief tremor of regret laced with nostalgia upon wielding the unhallowed hammer to shatter his old blade. But it was soon eclipsed by elation so great that he almost smote it a strike so overpowered that had he not caught himself in time he was sure he would have cloven the runed anvil in two, as indicated by the large shear at the place that he hit.
Looking back to that, Malicebound found it strange. A Death Knight was usually more controlled. He had then needed to shift to another anvil because of the wound he'd inflicted on the one he'd been about to use.
He didn't know why he wanted a different style of weapon. Necromundis had been a large zweihander with a handle almost twice as long as usual, and his old blade – though he called it a saber – was more of a one-handed falchion. He ended up with a greataxe. He designed his new weapon to contain elements of the Lich King's awesome power. It even had the trademark demon's skull perpendicular to its eye where the haft anchored the blade.
In its current state it was without power and was simply a sharp blade of Saronite and pieces of the shattered Throne. It even reeked of the Holy Light at this point, from the shards of his saber that had been forged into it, and was of no use in the hands of a Death Knight of the Scourge.
He needed the Unholy powers coursing through it, he needed the Cold madness of the land of Northrend, and he needed a sacrifice of Blood, but above all, he needed angry, hateful souls for the blade to drink and be glutted with.
He set upon his task with a drive he hadn't known in long centuries, nor in the eleven millennia he'd been alive. He realized that the souls were already present. In and around the forges were repositories of captured souls to fuel the dark magics of the Death Knight smithies, or to infuse into the corpse husks to make the grunts and fodder of the armies of the Scourge.
He was a loyal disciple of the Lich King; one of the Lords of the Undead Scourge was denied nothing of the resources at its disposal.
The axe gorged itself, slowly steeping in a vessel that comprised of the eye socket of an ancient blue wyrm, filled to the brim with soul essences. He could feel the weapon scream in ecstasy within his tortured soul. A soul that was freed from the confines of Necromundis, yet still a slave to the Lich King.
Lord Malicebound could hear the faint cries of anguish as it devoured the souls, growing stronger. The greataxe howled in sheer gluttony as the souls drained into it screamed in rage at their defilement. Malicebound gloried in his soon to be completed weapon. His soul would be bound by it again, just another meal.
It had been a month since he had returned from the dead remains of the Sunwell. The Lich King had inspected his work once through his own eyes, interrogating him on its purpose, and praising his imitation of the hallowed blade, Frostmourne.
Malicebound felt pride then despite the unfinished nature of the blade, his skill having been considered noteworthy by his master.
Other members of the Scourge had begun to take notice as well, though only in passing. The Lich King's commands took precedence over any gawking done and many turned away to fulfil their tasks.
A booming regular beat could be heard at regular intervals
Malicebound turned his tall frame and looked skyward, his cloak's cowl slipping off his head making his hair flutter in the icy winds of the Ebon Hold, which had still to be powered for flight to its deadly purpose. He was here to search for a means to infuse the greataxe with the three powers, thinking that maybe some of the runesmiths had any idea. They had none that he hadn't considered for himself already and as he went out of the unfinished necropolis he saw an answer.
A flight of three frost wyrms bellowing their stentorian roars through the bleak and sunless skies swept overhead, their wingbeats bludgeoning the thin air.
Malicebound, later to be known as Crest the knight-errant, and Darkeye the mercenary captain, smiled in a wicked sort of glee.
* He's talking about Kael'Thas here, if you haven't figured it out. Not Arthas.