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Following in the trend of many other authors, From a Dusty Attic is a series of could-have-been & just-might-be stories. Some will be epic in sheer length and might be moved to their own one-shot, others just short enough to be called a chapter. All are open for adoption on the condition of asking first and if some garnish enough popularity, I may flesh them out into longer stories or at least add an additional scene or two. In any case, the dust and cobwebs have been wiped away so without further ado, I hope that you all enjoy:
From a Dusty Attic
By Corvus no Genmu
"Words from the Dead"
A Drabble Fic
My name is Salazar Schwarzblut and I have done many things…
I have killed soldiers who fought out of patriotic pride, slain knights defending the innocent out of duty, butchered those same innocents struggling to survive against my unending slaughter, and more besides… Much, much more… I have committed atrocities the likes of which only the truest of evils could ever conceive in the darkest pits of their delighted nightmares. I have sullied the honor I had possessed in life into dirtied tatters of the prideful banner it once was. I have sinned my soul blacker than the deepest void.
Who am I…?
I am Salazar Schwarzblut…
Once a warrior of the Light…
Once a slave cursed by primordial magic…
Once a patriot fighting in defense of men and country…
Once resurrected to fight again with no will, no hope, to call my own…
Now and forever more… a Death Knight…
In that final battle, in that last stand at the Light's Hope Chapel… where victory for our side was all but assured… My fellow knights and I lost as much as we had gained. By the Light or by fortune, the Argent Dawn had won against impossible odds of an army of undead until only the Death Knights remained, kneeling in defeat. Then… everything changed… I cannot speak for what my fellow knights witnessed but if I were to guess by my own experience…
Those who left the world before us, those who we held close to our hearts even under the cold grasp of the Lich King, came to us and broke the shackles that bound us to him. We were free to live again but as what? Most of us were not resurrected as the rest of the Scourge, we were whole and complete as we had been in life and we still bled, still hungered for the necessities of life. Whatever we had become, our leader Highlord Darion Mograine was the first to rise against the Lich King who assured Tirion Fordring's words true, that me and my fellow Death Knights had been sent out on a mission of death but not of the enemy…
The Death Knights of Acherus were indeed the Lich King's greatest soldiers… too great for him it appeared. For though our minds were shackled to his cause, there was something he couldn't keep chained forever, something that set us apart from the rest of the Scourge.
Our very souls.
Renamed as the Knights of the Ebon Blade, we took the floating base where we were born anew into Azeroth as our own, freeing it and what few undead denizens within that held no love for the Lich King from his control. We were free and, for the most part, allied with the newly christened Argent Crusade, a union of the Argent Dawn and the Order of the Silver Hand, but it was not enough to ally ourselves with such a small faction that was but a spark to the two great infernos that blazed against each other so readily across Azeroth.
I had heard that few of my… friendlier knights had been selected to approach King Varian Wrynn with Thassarian leading them. Imagine then my surprise at being selected to go as well.
What has happened since I died…?
I cannot say… the only one who could have told me is dead, killed by my own hand.
So here we were, standing before the closed gates of Stormwind, a single member of every Allied race. Thassarian stood at the fore with the banner of truce, his face shadowed beneath the darkness of his helm. The others and I remained close enough that we stood with him but far enough that our hesitance in entering was clear despite how cold and indifferent we were on the outside.
"This is foolish… King Wrynn hates the Scourge almost as much as he hates the Horde, what could possibly be in that letter that would stay his hand?" muttered Bilbo, a dwarf with an attitude outmatching his stature. At the training camp where we were to strengthen our new powers and abilities beneath the protective shadow of the floating necropolis of Acheron, Bilbo was a constant thorn in the side of many a newly resurrected Death Knight, constantly challenging duels and only ceasing in his badgering when the duel was accepted and won. He has little respect for anyone except perhaps for me, the only one of the "freshies" that actually beat him at his own game.
"The archers haven't fired upon us so perhaps Fordring was true to his word?" Rosewind suggested. A night-elf and by far the most compassionate of any Death Knight. From what few times our paths had crossed, it was plain to see that she was the closest to any of us to breaking free from the Lich King on her own. She still committed much of the same sins as any one of us but she was at least kind enough to only attack those who struck first and only landing a killing blow rather than the tortures that our shortest member is infamous for.
"More likely he's having the guards set up some cannons to blow us back to the pits." Gearfried, a gnome, was more easily recognized by his informal title of "Blood Clown". He earned that title for his mastery over Blood magic and his exuberance when he was in charge of gathering information from prisoners. Some say that if his jokes weren't enough to kill you, than his maniacal laughter as he set his magic upon you would drive you to the brink of madness. Since our freedom he has not so much as spoken more than a single word at a time since. That he said a whole sentence makes me wonder if he is the more scared than any of us for he, like Bilbo and Thassarian, were veteran knights compared to me and the last member of our intrepid band of monstrous misfits.
"Why we would be saved only to die now?" whispered Saria, a draenei, and one who spoke even less than Gearfried though for different reasons. Her race is one of the closest to the Light with more paladins and priests than all of the races combined. As she was now, Saria was everything that her people stood against and reviled. Out of all of us, she hid herself the most within the shadows of her cloak. For though we all were pale as death, even Rosewind was a few shades shy of being the same violet hue that was her people's skin tone, Saria truly looked like the walking dead with her skin pale and ashen, nothing at all like the vibrant azures and violets I have seen of her people.
"The gates," is my only contribution to the conversation, bring their attention to the gates of Stormwind now opened for us to enter with a small troop of guards standing on either side with enough venom in their glare to put down a full grown dragon in moments. We look to Thassarian, the elected leader of our Alliance band of Death Knights and spokesperson to our cause to King Wrynn.
"Let's go." Is all that he says and all that needed to be said. He goes and we follow and the gate guards let us by with open scowls and angry glares but do not attack or hinder us.
Sadly, such control did not last long for them or the citizens of Stormwind.
When it became apparent that we were maintaining our word of peace to the people within Stormwind's walls, whatever compunctions the guards had at keeping their own word quickly crumbled as jeering shouts and calls for a hangman's rope began to follow us as we traveled to Stormwind Keep.
The citizens, bolstered by the "bravado" of the city guards, joined in with their own ammunition of words and rotten food. Thassarian ignored everything around him, focusing only on the path ahead with a dedication I would have admired under different circumstances. Bilbo was trembling with suppressed anger, his hands clenching and unclenching as he fought to restrain the urge to unbuckle his hammer and lay waste to the growing crowd. Rosewind did her best to emulate Thassarian but she still flinched when comparisons were made between her and the leader of the Forsaken, undead free from the control of the Lich King like the Ebon Blade but have allied themselves to the Horde. Gearfried was quiet as always but I noticed that he stood closer to Rosewind, putting himself between her and the crowd. I followed in his example with Saria whose cloak held the most stains of food and spittle though the self-cleaning charms were operating as efficiently as our own. They saw the Burning Legion in her just as much as the saw the Scourge. It makes me wonder what they see in the likes of me.
I got my answer in the form of a woman running at me with a small dagger in hand and screaming what I can only assume was some form of battle cry. The blade shattered against my armor and she fell back from the force of it. She sat there shocked though compared to the crowd's reaction, more pertinently the city guards, hers was minute. The civilians were pale-faced and a good few had dropped whatever fruit they had in hand and making a very undignified retreat. The guards were no longer jeering and had their hands upon their weapons though a good number of them were trembling within their decorative armor. My fellow knights had stopped just ahead of me, all turned and facing the woman that had the gall to break the treaty of non-violence between us of the Ebon Blade and the people of Stormwind.
I glanced at the broken dagger in the woman's hand before gazing up into her eyes and seeing… despair, pain, and… acceptance. Her heart was broken, her loved ones dead by the hands of the Scourge or my kind I couldn't tell, and as much as she wanted to avenge them there was something else she wanted even more.
"I will not become the instrument to your suicide." I informed her quietly. Her eyes widened in shock from my ability to speak or perhaps by my words, either way she wept all the same. "You want to make a stand against the evils that assault our world… Then live. Live and be happy. Find a spark of light in the darkness and cherish it with everything you have and never let it go." I looked to Tharassian whose eyes shone just a bit brighter, his version of a smile I guess, before he turned and continued on to the Keep with the others and me following close behind.
I had hoped that would be the end of the drama for today; that we would speak our peace to King Wrynn and be done with it, for good or ill, and from there I… I could do something with myself. Of course I would assist in the downfall of the Lich King but I need, I want to become stronger… so that no one else can ever make a slave of me ever again.
I should have realized that whatever gods remain listening to the mortal coil of Creation turn a deaf ear upon me.
The throne room was outlined with the royal guards, those entrusted to protect the royal family with their freshly departed souls if need be. King Wrynn and the prince were present, both standing before the throne, the lad's face pale at the sight of us but he remained by his father's side with his hands held firmly at his side, a truer sign of belief in our intentions we've yet to see from anyone else even in his father the king. Varian Wrynn was every bit the scowling visage I had heard and while there was no missing the distaste evident on his scarred visage there was something else there as well, but it was not him that my eyes remained locked upon but the man, the king, at his left.
Greymane.
"You have mere moments to live, so I suggest you make use of them now." King Wrynn spoke frankly and Tharassian responded in kind though he kept his tongue still. Instead, he reached out and held the roll of parchment, the letter from Highlord Mograine. King Wrynn took it firmly and again that spark of something was there. Prince Anduin appeared surprise at his father's actions but pleased just as well.
I remained behind the others, blending as seamlessly as I could with Saria and Rosewind, the only ones close to my own towering height. It was not out of fear that I stood in the shadows of my sisters-in-death but of surprise. That Greymane had broken his own law of self-isolation, to clearly be here beside the very king he had all but spat upon before the Third War, something had to have happened in the world beyond the necrotic horrors spawned from the Lich King. Something that would have forced Gilneas back into this chaotic, bloodied world… and I had no desire to know what it was for I had made my plans, marked the path ahead and I could not be deterred by anyone.
Even by the man that I still called my king.
The rustling of paper drew my eyes back to King Wrynn whose eyes were starring off into the distant past and he at last looked his age as he spoke, "Indeed old friend… Blood and honor." He turned and affixed his gaze upon us, looking us each in turn and I could swear that his gaze lingered on me before they fell to Tharassian. "Were it not for this letter from Tirion, you would be stains upon my floor. Only an endorsement from one of the greatest paladins to ever live could have ensured your survival."
"Father…?" Prince Anduin prompted when no further word came from the man.
"We…" King Wrynn steeled himself further, "We will work together against the Scourge. Against the Lich King! GLORY TO THE ALLIANCE!" He raised a gauntleted hand up and spoke with a True Voice of Authority to all of the Alliance, "People of Stormwind! Citizens of the Alliance! Your king speaks! Today marks the first of many defeats for the Scourge! Death Knights, once in service of the Lich King, have broken free of his grasp and formed a new alliance against his tyranny! You will welcome these former heroes of the Alliance and treat them with the respect that you would give any ally of Stormwind! Glory to the Alliance!"
Tharassian nodded and glanced back at the rest of us, "Return to the Ebon Hold and inform Highlord Mograine of the news." We bowed as one and turned to depart, the incantation to the calling of the Death Gate already on my lips when—
"Hold." Though my back was turned, I could still hear King Greymane stepping forward. "There is among you a single member of every major faction within the Alliance." Shadows warped to an unseen wolf's calling. I whirled and openly stared at the man who had been my king in life and who now shared the same curse that plagued me still even in death. "I would know a hero of my people."
"… Your Majesty." I bowed with arms spread out, palms to the sky as was the proper Gilnean tradition. "If ever I deserved such a title it was in life, not as I am now."
King Greymane's nostrils flared, taking in my scent but I doubt he'd recognize—"Salazar Schwarzblut?"
Though I could not see it, I'm certain that my eyes flashed brighter as the temperature in the room dropped several degrees, frost crawling outward from where my feet touched the ground. My hands, my claws, were clenched tightly enough that I felt more than heard the knuckles pop. If he was at all perturbed by my reaction, King Greymane didn't show it. He merely stood there, waiting for me to answer for he had no reason to answer mine.
"… I am he. Though how you've come to learn of me…" There were ways, plenty of ways he might have learned of me, but none could allow him the scent that lingered still beneath the bloodied ice. Except… impossible. "Godric still lives…?"
King Greymane nodded once. "He has been making quite the name for himself. He was recruited by the Archivist Guild last that I heard." My hands unclenched. That guild of all guilds… he has changed in more ways than one I suppose.
"… I appreciate the warning your highness." I bowed once more. "For Gilneas…" To King Varian and Prince Anduin. "For the Alliance…" I turned and with a few whispered words, the Death Gate to Ebon Hold was before me. I stepped through and was immediately assaulted with the stench of death, blood, and decay.
So… he's gone and joined the Archivist Guild… The only guild on all of Azeroth with one stipulation, one basic creed… Its doors open to any sentient race capable or willing to follow that creed to the gates of oblivion with no regards to the warring factions or the numerous professional classes. Yet only the top could truly earn membership to this illustrious guild for they, like all other guilds, had a test of character, one that wasn't difficult to accomplish all considering.
One hundred undead, from skeletal warriors to flesh golems it didn't matter so long as they were dust beneath the dirt once more.
It wouldn't matter that I was tied to the Alliance or that I was seeking to bring an end to the Lich King and all the other horrors that threaten the fragile stability of Azeroth. If Godric and I ever crossed paths we would cross swords as well. He would do everything in his power to see me destroyed no matter that I would do far worse.
Because he is my brother… and I love him too much to do anything less.
