((This is the first installment of "In the Fires of War," a collection of stories about the tests and trials of war, the importance of the weapons used to fight them, and how it all effects the people who wield them. As usual, these are written from Xynrael's perspective, and about people he knows/weapons he's created or helped create. The first is about Skyshatter, his runemace. I hope you enjoy!))
No one can escape the effects of war. Even the civillian, many miles away, safe behind his city walls, is somehow or another taken prisoner by the rage of battle, though he may not know it. I do not believe in violence as a solution to everything, for this reason. It is the -final- solution. No one can escape it, and it settles all matters permenantly, when used correctly.
Contrary to popular belief, the Lich King did not employ this method exclusively. In several instances, fear was his primary method of battlefield domination, only using violence to achieve this end. However, there are certain times when we are forced, in one manner or another, to exercise violence against even those we care about.
The fires of the Forge of War are relentless, and a place where only the strongest can survive, and that which is not strong is often remade.
~From the journal of Xynrael Frostbane
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From the hills beyond Dawnhaven, Xynrael the Dawnbreaker watched the town burn. The ghouls had, but for a few, gone to join the ranks of the Scourge in Northrend, and the first part of his initial task complete. From the west, a risen rider had broughten him word of six Paladins of the Silver Hand fast approaching the smoldering wreckage of the Dawnbreaker's first conquest. Somewhere in the east, the sun was rising, but smoke and ash rising from the town blotted it out.
The day was darkened against the Light, precisely the way he liked it. With the dismissal of the rider, all the ghouls were gone, and the shadow of the hills hid him well enough for now.
The Dawnbreaker felt their approach before he saw it. The feeling of tingling, nagging at the back of his mind, alerted him to the presence of the Paladins before the sound of their hootbeats and shouting did. They had seen the town was abandoned from the road no doubt, and thought the Scourge had moved on.
The entire hillside fell into silence as the Paladins searched the houses, finding signs of the carnage that had ocurred a few hours earlier; snow and streets stained with blood, windows cracked, doors caved in, torn flesh and bone, but no corpses. The Death Knight moved from his perch on the hills and made his way into the town, cloaking himself in the shadows of the buildings.
In the back of his mind, Xynrael heard a lustful growling. It grew stronger as he approached the three pairings of Paladins now gathered in the square, discussing what they had found. By now, they had swept the perimeter of the town and conceeded that what looked to have been an ambush was simply the burning remains of a town the Scourge had used to replenish their numbers.
On the blades and shaft of the Dawnbreaker's mace, six runes shimmered, begging to be filled.
A tug of steelweave over his head, the replacement of his hood, and Xynrael stepped into the street, armor shuffling and scraping slightly as he walked. The Paladins turned, in ones and twos, to face the newcomer. At the head of them was one who held a massive mace in one hand, a libram chained to his side, and upon his back, a great-sword that would ordinarily have taken two men to lift.
This man was their leader. An animal among men. A zealot, Xynrael could feel, as the light crackled around the Paladin. His sword was ancient and powerful, most likely a runeblade as well, though not vampiric.
"Your down is gone. It's inhabitants are dead." Xynrael proclaimed, lifting his runemace to his shoulder. "The Light is all but departed, this place is now a house of death."
He could feel their blood pumping, adrenaline rushing through their veins, feel the sweat beginning to run down their flesh as if it was their own. He could -smell- their fear, as palpable as the ash hanging on the air, all of it clouding their vision and their judgement. The Dawnbreaker's face remained impassive as all this washed over him, his blue eyes the only thing visible in the shadow of his hood.
Somewhere, through the ash and against the roof of one of the houses, it began to hail.
"What manner of monster are you," asked one of the younger Paladins, his voice cracking as he growled, "that you could do this?"
"I am Xynrael the Dawnbreaker, Death Knight of the Scourge, and I did not do this. I killed only a handful myself, you see. After that, I turned them loose upon their own people. A giant of a man, a lumberjack, one of them. Though, really, I let his little girl kill him after I cut her open. Would you like to see?"
As he asked this, the Paladins looked on, momentarily rooted in place as they attempted to evaluate this new threat. From atop one of the houses, a small thing in a torn dress leaped, landing at Xynrael's feet. She bounded on all fours, knees bent like an ape, her face contorted and dessicated, but obviously that of a little girl.
The Paladins continued to watch as the Death Knight knelt, placing his hand on the little girl's head. She fell over almost immediately, the necromancy sustaining her suddenly gone. Her body struck the floor, and before them was simply the mutilated corpse of a small girl, as it would have looked after several hours of death by bleeding.
"Monster. The Light bind you!" One of the Paladins called out, rushing forewards, screaming out a litany of penance for the wicked. By his language, his rage, and his movement, this man was a novice, newly initiated into the ranks of the Silver Hand. And by their armor, so were the others, taken out of need more than skill, most likely.
The others followed, but at a distance; the man ahead of them was clearly the fastest of the bunch, and far more impulsive. On the back of his neck, Xynrael felt the runic ward begin to burn against his flesh, and grinned. The words fell upon his ears, but he did not understand them. The ward protected him against all but the Lich King's will, and deafened him to the commands of the Light.
Xynrael backed away as the first Paladin approached, and turned to dart down a side-street, not even made over with cobblestones, but grass and dirt between houses. The Paladins would have to come at him one at a time here, and sure enough, they did, the first rounding the corner not five steps behind Xynrael. The Death Knight rounded on his heel to face his first opponent.
The Paladin swung downwards, his hammer surging with the Holy Light. Xynrael stepped to the left and brought his mace down in an arc. The Paladin flew backwards as Skyshatter contacted with his stomach, his breastplate caved in, and blood pouring from his mouth. As the young Paladin hit the ground, the Dawnbreaker could feel the viel of the Light lift like a curtain, revealing the frightened, faithless young man beneath.
He shook only briefly as every blood vessel in his brain erupted.
By this time, a second Paladin, partner to the first, had reached striking distance of Xynrael. The second Paladin did not lunge foreward quite so readily, but instead stepped off and swung downwards from over his head. The blow was met by Xynrael's mace, catching just under the head of the Paladin's hammer. The Death Knight twisted the pommel of his mace upwards and around, over the shaft of his opponent's weapon, forcing it into the ground before slamming Skyshatter's spiked pommel into the second Paladin's throat.
Another twist of the mace brought one of the weapon's scythes into the Paladin's temple, killing him almost instantly and throwing him aside like a ragdoll.
The third that approached drew a shield from his back, deflecting the oncoming blow of Xynrael's mace and lashing out with a strike of his own. It glanced off of the slant of the Death Knight's chestplate, at which point the Dawnbreaker drew up his left arm, the runes tattooed into his flesh glowing brightly beneath the armor. A discharge of runic energy from the Death Knight's left palm seared the Paladin's face. When the smoke and Xynrael's hand pulled away, a grotesquely burned visage remained.
Xynrael stepped out of the way as the burned Paladin's shield began to glow. A side-step, twirl, and swing of Skyshatter brought the Paladin to the ground, neck shorn straight through by the weight behind the giant runemace's blades.
Three to the ground, and Xynrael's runemace howled with delight at their blood. It was a sound he knew only he could hear, but still he could feel the weapon's power grow. It had feasted on the souls of the innocent, and now it was gorging on the blood of the righteous. As the runes filled with the corrupted energy of their souls and blood, the Death Knight opened his mind. Skyshatter still hungered- it needed the power of the cold, and the power of death still, and each had to be achieved by the sundering of mortal flesh.
The size of the hail increased as it spread.
Suddenly, the runic wards on Xynrael's armor began to smoke and glow like sun striking a gem. Two of the three remaining Paladins had stopped and were reading from their librams, hammers slung back over their shoulders, hands extended, Light flowing from their fingers like a river.
Priests. Priests who had taken up the mantle of the Silver Hand, but Priests just the same.
Struggling with great difficulty under the weight of their rebuke, the Dawnbreaker raised his left hand. For the briefest of moments, the hail refocused on the two chanting Paladins, striking them heavily upon their exposed skin. In his peripheral vision, the Death Knight saw the leader of their party moving foreward with a determined step, as if the fate of the monstrosity before him was certain.
Then the Death Knight felt it. The chanting let up, for only a moment. The concentration of the former Priests broken, Xynrael reached out, swelling the blood in their throats and freezing that which ran through the veins in their heads.
They fell to the ground, spilling blood from ears, nostrils, and eye sockets onto the snow.
Finally, they were alone. The power of the other Paladins paled in comparison to the one that stood before the Dawnbreaker now, and it was visible. The giant hammer and runeblade this Paladin wielded glowed with the Light, and even the countenance of this living monstrosity seemed brighter. Though the ground at his feet was desecrated with innocent blood, the snow seemed to shake away.
Here was someone who could strike fear into the unbeating hearts of the fearmongers. A man to frighten death itself away.
Still the Paladin kept his steady pace, right hand tensing around his hammer's shaft. "I am Diomidus the Bright, I undo all that is unholy and bring the Light's justice to dark places. The blood of the innocent cries out to me; you have slain many good men, and I am their vengeance."
The aura around Diomidus grew as his foosteps thundered against the ground, boots leaving a dim glow of the Light in his path. His hammer appeared to crack, as if it were about to break apart, but the cracks filled with the Light and shined all the more brightly. His tremendous left paw drew up his libram, and Diomidus began to read.
"We who walk in darkness fear neither the shadow, nor the death, nor the evil that surrounds us..." The space between the cobblestones on the street began to glow as the Light filled them.
"We who go out among evil men shall fear not their forked tongues and wicked ways..."
The stones themselves took on the hue of molten steel as Diomidus chanted, glowing brightly beneath the ash and hail of Dawnhaven.
"And we, who are thine blade and thine shield and thine word of comfort, who slay the wicked, and protect the innocent, and heal the sick, shall not fear nor be turned astray from our path, for where we go the Light walks with us, illuminating before us and guarding behind us, banishing all evil from our way." The Paladin slammed his libram shut, the ground within the limits of Dawnhaven catching alight as it was purified and consecrated
The wards on Xynrael's armor shined brightly, even the tattoos carved and inked into his flesh smoking as they absorbed the Light. The Death Knight watched, an amused smirk tugging at his lips as he unstrapped the helmet from his left side and placed it firmly on his head. The single, ice-blue gem at the top of the helmet's center spike shimmered when he lifted his mace, and the smoking of his armor stopped.
"You are very powerful, Paladin. Your faith is strong indeed. It will be good to see you break." He challenged, setting his mace onto his shoulder.
"Not even if it could bring back the dead, bastard." Diomidus charged foreward with inhuman speed, raining blows the the swipes of a bear down upon his quarry.
Xynrael matched him, each time catching Skyshatter's shaft below or aside the head of the Paladin's hammer. Each time the Death Knight threw off the blow and prepared to counter, another blow came, forcing him to parry or duck aside instead. For some minutes, the exchange of blow-parry-blow continued, until finally Xynrael was forced to take a step back to balance himself. The Paladin pressed his advantage and took the sword from his back, this time holding his hammer firmly against Xynrael's mace.
Protective though it was, the Death Knight's armor could not defend against the sheer force of the blow, and it sent him flying through the door of the nearest house, which splintered and fell in under his weight.
Diomidus growled with satisfaction and moved to enter the house. Before he could, a dim glow of eyes, helmet-gem, and shoulderplates burst from the door. Though he held with both weapons, the raw, unrelenting power of Undeath was not something to be parried endlessly. He stepped off after each attack landed, backing away and backing away until, finally, he was caught off-balance.
"By the Light!" Diomidus cried out as the head of Skyshatter fell upon him. The Light answered. Beneath the mace's head erupted a bright, thunderous shield, blooming over the Paladin's chest, where the killing strike would have landed. The Death Knight growled and pressed against the shield for only a moment longer, until Diomidus threw him off.
From the Paladin's runeblade erupted with the fire of the Holy Light, and again he swung, the power of his left arm sending Xynrael soaring back into the house from which he assault had begun.
He went through a wall this time, and did not return.
Diomidus charged blindly through the breach, only to find another, this one far more methodically smashed in, leading out the other side. He caught sight of the Death Knight's cloak disappearing into an alleyway, and gave chase, roaring like the bear he was when standing among men.
The pair erupted with a great crash and shower of splintered wood at the other side of Dawnhaven, where the Dawnbreaker vanished into the stalks of a wheat field. Diomidus' charge did neither halt nor slow, and he barreled on through until he came to a clearing in the field.
He stopped in his tracks, falling to one knee to keep from skidding foreward any further in the dirt.
The Paladin could see nothing beyond the horror of it all, his own rage and revulsion filling his vision with a red miasma like a veil of blood, his stomach swimming with bile.
In the clearing, still squirming and moaning and crying out ,were the twisted, broken, bloody forms of a hundred villagers, their flesh mounted upon metal spikes, arms and legs twisted around wooden crosses with bones protruding, jaws broken and dislocated to accomodate great stones that had been jammed into their mouths and were covered with blood from severed tongues.
The display was arranged in what from above would have looked like the form of a rune of death, and very slowly, down the spikes and crosses, blood dripped into a small trench that connected their mountings and formed the shape proper.
At the center of it all stood Xynrael the Dawnbreaker, mace point-down in the ground, drawing power from their blood. The second strike from Diomidus' sword had left neither dent nor gash, but a searing yellow streak of the Light, and that was now fading rapidly.
Beneath horror and disgust, doubt began to creep into the mind of Diomidus the Bright, and like a dagger in the night, it struck silently at his faith, though the rest of the fortress that was his mind remained unaware of it.
The Dawnbreaker, however, knew it well, and what little of his face could be seen beneath his helmet twisted upwards into a grin. It was not a friendly, pleasant thing, but the grin of a madman, a murderer, a rapist who has laid the perfect trap, and is now watching as his sickly artful creation snare its first victim.
That was enough to make Diomidus find his fury. Again he charged, drawing up both weapons over his head.
The Dawnbreaker remained impassive safe for the infuriating smirk. He spread his boots to shoulder-length and tensed his fingers around his mace, waiting as the Paladin closed distance, rushing forewards like a man possessed.
Then the base of the giant death rune rose up, a thousand hands of the other dead villagers, the company Xynrael had turned to help him destroy the down, even the arm of Long-John Leman, all grabbing and tearing at Diomidus' legs, ankles, and feet. It was inevitable that one would find purchase, And Diomidus fell just as he passed into the center of the rune, writhing and twisting and smashing against the ground to force the grasping arms of the dead from him.
Skyshatter fell upon his chest, and Diomidus the Bright was no more.
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Xynrael the Dawnbreaker stood alone amongst the dead and soon-to-be dead in the Dawnhaven fields. He could feel their heartbeats ceasing, and finally stopping one by one as the last drops of blood passed from their broken, twisted bodies. The souls and blood drained into Skyshatter, the souls drawn from the corpses and the blood from the ditch that formed the line connecing each point on the giant rune. The ditch ended in a pool under Diomidus' corpse, and from that pool the mace gorged itself on the power of blood and flesh and passing life.
Soon the mace would be full, and soon the Dawnbreaker would not be alone in the field.
He felt the last of the runes charge fully, and lifted his helmet from his head, placing it once more at his left hip. Then, satisfied that all was in order, he raised his left hand as if clutching something in it. Dark tendrils snapped from his fingertips and palms, seizing to the body of the Paladin, causing it to writhe and twist grotesquely in the sanguine pool beneath it.
"Diomidus the Bright," Xynrael called, as he felt the last of the bodies submit to the veil of death, "Rise, and hereafter known as Diomidus the Blight, Death Knight of the Scourge, servant of the Lich King. Rise, and be reborn!"
Diomidus jerked again, and placed his hands in the pool. He attempted to force himself up once, failed, and attempted again, coughing up blood and bile and flesh, and letting out a mighty roar. The pool turned dark as the former Paladin's blood mixed with it, and indeed, the ditch and river of blood still swirling within turned, as well.
Soon the unholy essence of the plague had crept up the crosses and spikes, corrupting dead flesh and giving it a sick, twisted version of new life.
As Diomidus rose, he took in his hands his blade and is libram, leaving the hammer beside the pool. As the plagued blood soaked into the libram, it changed. The words reformed as they were corrupted, the very make of the book turning into a giant patchwork of skin bound with bone.
His runeblade turned from a blade of gold to a far darker metal, and upon the hilt, gnashing teeth made of metal formed. He could feel its hunger deep within himself, a painful lust burning in his belly.
Then, last of all, from the cavity in his chest, new flesh grew. Pustules and twists od bone and masses of muscle erupted from the place where Skyshatter had struck, covering over his armor, splitting and entwining with old flesh to make new muscles and organs; the final culmination of the corruption of Diomidus' holy power, his former faith now twisted and forcing his body to mimick his new fervent passion.
The last and mightiest of Xynrael's runes filled as Diomidus was reborn. Runes of death.
Diomidus knelt before the Dawnbreaker and breathed his allegiance, plague pouring from the edges of his breath.
The Dawnbreaker grinned.
