I picked up my quill and began to write, because no one else would.
***
Kauket was born to a family of Redridge stonemasons in the year 577 by the King’s Calendar. An idyllic childhood playing along the shores of Lake Everstill and scaling the nearby mountains came to an abrupt end in her fifteenth year with the opening of the Dark Portal.
As the Kingdom of Azeroth desperately built forces to withstand the Horde, Kauket lent her fledgling blacksmithing skills to producing arms and armor, and rejoiced when the Horde broke against the walls of Stormwind Keep.
However, the victory the humans celebrated was not peace, merely a lull in fighting. The Horde returned under Gul’dan and Blackhand the Destroyer, and when the Orcish advance broke through to Lakeshire, Kauket took up sword and shield in defense of her home. The defense turned into a fighting retreat through Three Corners into Elwynn Forest, where the refugees of Redridge collided with the refugees of Westfall in Goldshire. But Goldshire could not hold and, this time, neither could the mighty walls of the Keep. Deemed too young to stand in the final defense of Stormwind, Kauket watched the Kingdom of Azeroth burn from the stern of the last ship to leave the harbor.
***
A heavy hand came down on my shoulder. I spun, raising sword and shield, then nearly dropped both. “Sir Lothar, I’m so sorry!”
With a speed I could barely follow, the knight had stepped back out of range and raised his hands appeasingly. “Easy, lass. No orcs made it onto the ship.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” I slung my shield onto my back and tried to sheath my sword, almost fumbling it again as the chipped edge caught. Scrubbing the back of my hand across my face, I looked up to see a faint smile, kind but terribly weary, flicker across Lothar’s face, deepening the dark lines. Why, he’s just as grimy and soot covered as I am.
“Where’re you from, girl?”
“Lakeshire, sir.”
“Your folks?”
“I don’t know, sir.” I had to swipe a hand across my face again.
Another layer of exhaustion seemed to settle on his shoulders. “Light willing, they made it onto a ship. And they’ll be with us when next we board ship to return and reclaim our lands.”
“Yes, sir.” I straightened and lifted a hand in the best copy I could manage of the salute I’d seen soldiers give.
Lothar gravely returned the gesture, then walked off to clasp the shoulder of a man crumpled by the rail.
I turned back to the smoke rising from Stormwind. Weaponless, my hands felt light as air, my heart heavy as stone. A foundation stone–the stubborn solidity on which the strongest keep or highest spire was built.
“We will return,” I promised the orcs.
***
Lordaeron was startlingly peaceful. The cool shadows of Tirisfal Glades could not have been more different from the fires of Elwynn Forest. Quiet also ruled the survivors as they mourned their dead. Of Kauket’s once bustling clan of craftsmen, only her mother, younger brother, and a few cousins still lived.
Silence shattered as Lothar raised his voice in the tale of the Dark Portal and the fall of Stormwind, waking the northern kingdoms to war.
Kauket was determined to be in Lothar’s army. Another place and time, soldiers might have scorned a peasant girl in rough-made armor taking a place in the line, but the survivors understood a foundation stone laid in the heart. As her skills in both combat and smithing grew, Kauket encountered some other refugees, these from Northshire. Their leader, Archbishop Alonsus Faol, had determined that neither faith nor steel alone would be enough to win the coming war and founded the Knights of the Silver Hand. And there Kauket found her calling: paladin.
The Second War began as the Horde launched offensives north by land and sea. Kauket was assigned to the defense of the Arathi Highlands, and fought in the numerous, bitter battles for control of the Thandol Span. Alliance victories elsewhere finally culminated in sufficient relief forces to break the stalemate and push the Horde back south, where the human, elven, and dwarven forces converged to lay siege to Blackrock Spire.
There, on a day when blood flowed as thickly as lava down the slopes of the mountain, Anduin Lothar fell to Orgrim Doomhammer. Steel alone had failed, the Lion of Azeroth would roar no more, but the edifice of faith built in steel would endure. The paladin Turalyon rallied the armies, won Blackrock, and carved a red path to the Dark Portal where the Horde was at last broken.
Broken, but not gone. Further pursuit of the scattered Horde remnants would consume more of Kauket’s years.
Finally, nearly two decades after the opening of the Dark Portal, after over half a lifetime spent at war, Kauket returned to Lakeshire to find what remained of her family starving. She had heard tales of the rebuilding of Stormwind, grander and more glorious than ever. That there were disputes over payment of the craftsmen had been little more than whispers of rumors. The sight of her mother’s painfully thin face struck like a blade in the back.
She had not shed blood across the length of the continent to retake her homeland for fat nobles to sit in glittering castles ignoring the problems of the outlying regions of the kingdom. And so Kauket joined a just and honorable cause: the Defias Brotherhood.
***
I slammed open the cabin door. “VanCleef.”
The man started to his feet, chair clattering to the floor, but he managed to turn his step back into a bow. “Dame Kauket, I wasn’t expecting a visit from you.”
“What a coincidence. I wasn’t expecting a visit from assassins wearing Defias masks.”
“Obviously a ploy to drive a wedge between us. You know what the support of a Silver Hand Knight for the Brotherhood means to the populace.”
“And my support must be blind?”
“What does that mean?”
“Feigned ignorance doesn’t sit well on the man with the best spy network on the southern half of the continent. I’m sure you have an entry in a ledger somewhere: ‘Third month, fifth day, Lion’s Pride Inn, Goldshire: Kauket questions terrorizing Westfall farmers with mechanical harvesters.’ I’m apparently lending a legitimacy this organization no longer deserves.”
“We must have our revenge! These times require extreme measures, and the nobles will stop at nothing to suppress us. As you’ve seen.”
“Yes, those assassins carried tokens of House Prestor as well. But the arc of a blade can speak louder than any words: they fought like bandits, not men at arms. Nor did they seem the least bit reluctant to cut through my family to get to me.” I leaned forward, resting gauntleted fists on the desk. “You’re a survivor of the Fall too. None of us have enough family left as it is, and your endorsement of these tactics means it could well be your daughter in the line of fire next.”
“Is that a threat?” VanCleef stepped forward, hand clenching around a dagger hilt.
“Of course not. I do not harm innocents in support of any cause. But others, as you have just pointed out, do not have my scruples.”
“What do you want then?”
“I want the Horde never to have stepped through the Portal.” I laughed humorously, then straightened and shrugged. “Leave my family alone. I’ll go into exile–again–and you’ll be spared both my support and my questions.”
“Agreed.” VanCleef did not offer his hand.
I deliberately turned my back as I left the cabin.
***
Stories of a new trouble in Lordaeron turned Kauket to the north. “Plague” was whispered. “Death.” Then a new word: “Scourge.” More news came as she rested in Menethil Harbor: the kindly folk of Stratholme, where she had spent time as an initiate before being anointed as a paladin in Alonsus Chapel, had been culled by their prince, Uther’s protégé Arthas.
Rather than awaiting the next ship, Kauket rushed west only to find Dun Modr under the control of the Dark Iron dwarves. Wracked by nightmares of prior battles on the great bridge, she fought through. But the Span again took too much toll in time and lives, Kauket arrived only in time to help bury Uther, and sketch the design for his tomb.
As Lordaeron crumbled into chaos, Kauket sought the demoralized remains of the Silver Hand. Turalyon was missing on the far side of the closed Portal, Tirion Fordring discredited, Uther and Gavinrad slaughtered by Arthas… She turned to the last remaining leader of note from the Second War, Saidan Dathrohan, and joined in the desperate fight against the Scourge.
But town after town fell, and the dead of Andorhal, Caer Darrow, Darrowshire, and Corin’s Crossing rose anew as enemies. Even the great cities of Silvermoon and Dalaran could not stand before the Scourge. The Silver Hand proved utterly ineffective, and the immunity of the paladins to the plague made the survivors suspicious. Dathrohan founded a new order, one of the few that seemed to be accomplishing anything. And so Kauket joined another just and honorable cause: the Scarlet Crusade.
Once again, Kauket watched as a cause she believed in twist into extremism, and once again, she asked inconvenient questions. Having now made the entire continent too hot to hold her, she joined the few remaining brother and sister Knights of the Silver Hand in one last quest for glory and redemption: a journey to Northrend, to take the war to the fabled leader of the Scourge, the Lich King. No great leaders or famous personages would heed this call, only the nameless faithful, scarcely worth a footnote in the annals of history.
***
My portion of the watch complete, I huddled by the campfire. Joints cracked as I flexed my fingers over the meager warmth. My hands ached, every sad bone in my body ached. Light, I hated the cold. Twenty years lying in the sunlight on the shores of Lake Everstill might be enough thaw the chill. At least I could briefly set aside the weight of my armor; it’d be like donning a block of ice in the morning, but I’d sleep a bit warmer.
Footsteps crunched in the snow behind me. I didn’t turn, recognizing the deliberate pacing of the youngest knight in the expedition. Born between the First and Second Wars, named after the most prominent political leader of the day, he cultivated a serious mien. Still far too young to be on a quest like this, but then so many soldiers looked like children these days.
“Terenas,” I said, “shouldn’t you be patrolling the perimeter?”
“Yes, ma’am, but I think I’m seeing something strange.”
“Strange how?”
“Not a mist like the one that devoured one of our ships, not a disturbance under the snow that the great white beasts make, it’s…I don’t know. Can you come see, ma’am?”
The ceaseless wind chose that moment to whip into a gust, shrieking like the insane, crying like the damned. You learned not to listen to the voices in it.
I smothered a sigh. Remember Lothar: no matter how tired you are, you take care of your people. A foundation stone for their strength. “Right then, lad, give us a hand up.”
I followed him out, belting my sword back on and blinking hard to readjust my eyes to the darkness.
Just outside the perimeter, Terenas stopped and gestured towards the top of a small hill. “There.”
I shook my head. “Just more snow.”
“Here, follow my line of sight, ma’am.” He stepped behind me to point over my shoulder.
I squinted along his arm, then a blade tore through my back. I’d dealt, and nearly received, enough death blows to recognize when one was seconds from mortal. But the breath froze in my lungs as I tried to call on the Light and cry a warning. A boot under my shoulder flipped me over, and the last sight in narrowing vision was Terenas’ face made utterly strange by its maddened expression.
Death was warm, and almost unbearably brilliant.
“Am I done? Can I rest now?”
A resonant sound, a ringing bell, seemed to answer yes.
But then cold was stealing back, darkness rising. Like a fading note from a stilling harp string, the Light withdrew.
“No, don’t leave me!” I reached after the Light, only to have my hand crash into ice.
“Kauket, my dear, dear sister, you’ve stained those Silver Hands quite crimson.“
I knew that voice. Once familiar, now grating frozen black blood. I didn’t turn around. “I meant well.”
“We all do.“
A hand came to rest on my shoulder, bearing the weight of mountains. Then I could only scream as the ice crushed in.
***
A paladin cannot simply be turned by the plague. But a soul can be trapped, and flensed–the undesired, useless parts discarded. The process is both painstaking and painful, and very, very personal. Arthas naturally holds a special place in his lack of heart for the Silver Hand, and the effort was well spent as the champions of the light strong enough not to be lost in the transformation rose again as death knights.
It was liberating. Glorious. No remorse. No sorrow. No justice. No honor. Just the pure red joy of slaughter.
And killing was exactly what Kauket did, across Northrend and back again, crushing the Nerubians, corrupting the Valkyr, occasionally punting the Tuskarr and Wolvar just to keep things fresh. Indeed such was her enthusiasm that the Lich King began to look at her askance, and when Ebon Hold was sent to the Plaguelands, Kauket was assigned as a logistics officer to support the manufacture of the new death knights.
That was boring. Dull, dull, dull. Accented with highlights of the not-killing-of-things. But whatever other pieces had been ripped away, Kauket was still a soldier, and knew how to follow orders. Even when the orders came from a pup like Darion Mograine, who she had last seen in Hearthglen, crying behind the chapel because he was too young to follow his father into the Third War. She had offered a few words of comfort then, but didn’t say anything now.
At length, the command came to move on Light’s Hope Chapel and crush the Argent Dawn.
***
“Soldiers of the Scourge, death knights of Acherus, minions of the darkness: hear the call of the Highlord!” Darion Mograine yelled, “RISE!”
Thousands of Scourge clawed free of the ground and I joined the charge on the Chapel. Carving through the defenders, I took a particular satisfaction in seeking the few remaining familiar faces and watching them go slack in death. All too easy, but such a relief to exchange pen and numbers scratched in ink for sword and butchery written in blood.
“Spare no one!” Darion exhorted. “Kneel before the Highlord!”
I rolled my eyes, kicked a ghoul into a defender’s legs, and beheaded the man as he tripped. The sound of galloping hooves drew my eyes south. Was the Argent Dawn mounting a cavalry charge? It was a lone rider, and my lips curled back in a skull’s grin as Tirion Fordring arrived on the field. Finally, a worthy challenge–the soil of Azeroth would at last drink the blood of the only surviving founder of the Silver Hand.
The mass of Scourge now hindered me as I shoved and hacked towards Fordring. A great leap of his horse carried him through the Scourge lines to arrive on the Chapel steps. The building rang like a bell and began to glow. As the Light spread across the field, ghouls disintegrated, abominations crumbled, and plague giants fled.
“You cannot win, Darion!” Fordring yelled.
“Stand down, death knights. We have lost. The Light…this place…no hope…” Darion gasped.
“Have you learned nothing, boy? You have become all that your father fought against! Like that coward, Arthas, you allowed yourself to be consumed by the darkness, the hate…feeding upon the misery of those you tortured and killed,” Fordring said. “Your master knows what lies beneath the chapel. That is why he dares not show his face! He’s sent you and your death knights to meet their doom, Darion. What you are feeling right now is the anguish of a thousand lost souls. Souls that you and your master brought here. The Light will tear you apart, Darion!”
I remained standing as the other death knights fell to their knees. I struggled to raise my sword as the children wept for their crimes. What did they have to feel guilty over? Killing a friend and a small village? I buried whole civilizations. Then ripped them back out of the grave to serve me.
The tip of my sword lifted an inch, the smallest twitch, but the beginning of a motion performed so many millions of times that it was known in my very bones. Before I could complete the move, the Lich King appeared, and I laughed as he swatted away Darion and forced Fordring to his knees.
“You’re a damned monster, Arthas!” Fordring said.
“You were right, Fordring. I did send them in to die. Their lives are meaningless, but yours…” The Lich King let out a low, evil chuckle. “How simple it was to draw the great Tirion Fordring out of hiding. You’ve left yourself exposed, paladin. Nothing will save you.”
My sword came up another inch, and I willed my feet to move forward. So what if the death knights had simply been sent to die? They could just be raised again. As could I. I understood then why I had been sent to Ebon Hold: to die again, and be remade once more, this time as a more malleable minion, one who didn’t have the potential to be a far more effective sovereign of the Scourge.
The Lich King lifted his hands and began to gesture counterpoint to the words he chanted. I recognized the spell, Apocalypse, which would probably level the Chapel itself. I wanted to snarl at him, “No, fool, you’re grandstanding instead of winning,” but I needed all my strength to move towards Fordring.
The enemy was vulnerable, the time to strike now.
Darion, of all people, understood that simple fact of battle. He flung his sword Ashbringer to Fordring, who burst into Light and immediately struck.
Wounded, the Lich King staggered back from Fordring, passing close enough to me that his cloak brushed my side. “Impossible…” he said. “This is not over! When next we meet, it won’t be on holy ground, paladin.” The darkness of a portal swirled open behind him, but he paused and I saw the edge of his mouth curl under the shadow of his helm. “Suffer,” he hissed to me, then vanished.
The weight of mountains lifted from my mind, the ice around my soul cracked, and sword slipped from nerveless fingers. My conscience rose screaming from its grave. Remorse, sorrow, justice, honor…they would hobble me far more effectively than any titansteel chains. Touché, Arthas.
I stood in motionless shock as Fordring’s words babbled past. Something about an Argent Crusade. Then there were more orders: take back the Ebon Hold, kill some Scourge, deliver a letter…
“Yes, sir.” I looked from the parchment in my hand back to Darion, and felt something shift in the rubble of my heart. “I’ll deliver your letter, though I’m probably the worst messenger you could send. But I won’t be returning to the Ebon Blade. I’m done. I’m going home.” I stepped through the portal.
The walk through Stormwind to the castle was oddly comforting. A jeering populace, throwing insults and rotten vegetables? It was just like being a stonemason ejected from the city all over again.
***
Letter delivered, Kauket chose to walk to Lakeshire, past and present blurring around her. Smiling crowds would be crying refugees in the next moment. Bright sunlight would be obscured by drifting smoke. Cool green grass would become mud churned red. Compared to all the other miles, the walk was not a long distance, but it felt infinitely removed in time.
At Lake Everstill, Kauket knelt. Whenever she and her cousins would return home–whether from an overnight camping trip in the mountains or a longer trading journey with older relatives–they’d race to the shores of the lake, dip their hands into the water, and wish. Simple wishes in those days: success in crafting, the biggest fish on the next expedition, attention from someone cute…
Hands in the cool water, Kauket looked up at the beloved skyline, and wondered if she had any wishes left in her shattered soul. Peace? That seemed no more likely now than it had any time in the past quarter century and too much to ask of these placid waters. No, she would just wish to be able to remember what peace had felt like.
The memory remained elusive. But another long lost emotion sparked back to life: joy. Her mother, amazingly, was still alive. Terrifyingly frail in body now, but still sharp in mind. Even more unreal, her little brother was a grandfather. The family stead bustled with life once more. So she occasionally saw the walls weep blood, felt the roof ablaze in flames, heard the yells of a child protesting bath time as a death cry…that would surely pass.
Word came of great armies mustering to journey north, and the young generations answered the call. Kauket said nothing, but returned to the forge, determined these soldiers would have the best equipment she could make with the materials available. Some asked for training. Those she refused. When a quiet evening at the tavern could morph into a screaming melee, she didn’t trust her reflexes not to turn a training bout into a killing zone.
***
I lifted the steaming metal from the trough and regarded it critically. Behold the mighty horseshoe. I tossed it onto the completed pile and set another strip to heating. Someone else would have to actually shoe the horses: they were unanimously intolerant of my presence.
Hammering metal felt nothing like smashing flesh and bone, but the rhythm was similarly easy to relax into. Something struck my back. Without thought, I froze the air around me, gripped my attacker to me across the yard. One hand closed around his throat while the other rose to freeze the blood in his veins.
The tears on his face sparkled brilliantly in the red crystalline vision of battle. A child’s face. I forced open my hands.
The boy collapsed to the ground and scrabbled backwards. “Monster,” he sobbed, “Scourge!“
“If you truly believe me to be nothing more than a soulless, murdering monster, why were you provoking me, child?” My hands were shaking and the red was deepening. “It’s dangerous to surprise any veteran. Go home and put a warm cloth on your neck. You’ll be fine.”
He ran.
I closed my eyes. Don’t pursue. He’s not an enemy. There are no enemies here. I shuddered as the ache in my bones flared into agony. Sitting in the sunlight listening to the gentle lapping of waves on the shore had helped me contain that pain, though lately the time required had grown to hours. I didn’t think any amount of light on water would help me now.
My mother’s voice carried over the roaring in my ears: “You’re being ridiculous, Milly, there’s no reason why Kauket would’ve attacked your boy.”
“I still intend to have some words with her!” Milly replied.
I would kill the next thing I saw.
I shoved a workbench out of the way and flung open the chest I’d hidden there. Snatched up sword and armor. Ran out the back of the smithy, ripped my deathcharger screaming out of the ground, and spurred it north. I paused in the heights of the pass to yank on my armor, a comforting weight and confinement that whispered welcome back. Far below, I saw movement–a band of Blackrock orcs–and the hilt of my runeblade slid into my hand like the clasp of a lover.
The land was silent around me. No living thing remained, just piles of fresh corpses steaming warmth to the air. I felt at ease, better than I had for months.
I pushed off the solid wall at my back–apparently not even a blackout of blood madness could suppress the reflex to not be flanked–and bent to wipe my sword clean on the cloak of an eviscerated orc. Straightening, I stretched, enjoying the ease of movement free of pain. I hadn’t realized how deep the ache had grown.
It was scarcely the first time I’d seen slaughtered orcs on the flanks of Blackrock Mountain, but the sheer numbers were shocking, alarming–it looked like the aftermath of a pitched battle of armies, save that all the dead were from one side only. I turned slowly, trying to get a count, then froze.
The wall behind me was a pedestal. Atop it was the statue of Anduin Lothar.
“Oh my lord, what have I become?”
I rode back to Lakeshire in a daze. Snuck back into the smithy. I should put away the armor, get cleaned up… I wanted to go find more things to kill.
A soft gasp came from the front doorway. I spun, sword back in hand.
My mother stood there, hand clutched over her heart. I saw myself reflected in her eyes: a figure out of nightmare, blood drenched, wrapped in cruelly spiked black armor.
I yanked off my great helm.
“Kauket!” She swayed, and I dashed across the room to catch her and guide her to a seat. I began to step back, but she caught my arm, and winced as a sharp edge cut her palm. She didn’t let go.
“Where have you been? What have you been doing?”
I couldn’t move away without hurting her more. “Burning Steppes. Killing orcs.”
“Why?”
“So that I didn’t kill everyone here.”
She blanched, then shook her head. “You’ve been suffering, haven’t you? I’ve seen other soldiers come home broken, but this seems something…more?”
“I thought it was just shell shock. A comrade back in the Second War mustered out. We toasted his retirement, sent him off with the best party we could manage. Two months later, he was back on the line. The only explanation he offered was ‘You can’t go home.’ Two months after that, he was dead.
“I thought I was the same, but correct as usual, mother. I’m something else.” I rapped the armor over my heart. Unlike other metals, saronite didn’t ring, just emitted a dull thud like the closing of a coffin lid. “Death is my truth now. I need to go find someplace where that truth can do some good.”
“I don’t understand, but you go do what you must.” Somehow, she found a smile. “Just remember, you’ll always be my little girl.”
I bowed my head. I can’t go home. But home can still be there…for other people. I met her eyes, then pulled off my gauntlets and clasped her hands. “I’m glad you don’t understand. That you can’t understand. It means my sacrifices haven’t been in vain. I love you, mother. Goodbye.”
***
Kauket caught the first ship back to Northrend. Every step there echoed with memories of past slaughters, but that was like the insanity whispering in the wind: you got used to it. Greater difficulties lay in convincing some factions that screaming and fleeing in terror was no longer a necessary first response.
The Ebon Blade beckoned, but Kauket instead chose to accept an invitation from Coldheart, a death knight representing a different order: the guild Denial. Home can be where you decide to make it, and while a warfront would not be the first choice of most, it was a comfortable place for a person with a tombstone in her heart.
Kel’Thuzad and his forces in Naxxramas fell to Denial, then Malygos ceased to watch magic from the Eye of Eternity. Forces were spread too thin, however, so Coldheart led an advance team into the titanic halls of Ulduar to prevent the re-origination of the world. That group would also confront the Trial of the Crusader, winning the right to lead the fight to Arthas.
But there in the Citadel, Coldheart fell, not to the minions of the Lich King, but to a subtler foe–to despair. Kauket had looked to others for leadership most of her life and, time and again, seen them falter.
“Go if you must. I will take up the fight. What’s one more war after all? Arthas must pay.”
“Yes,” replied Coldheart, “make him pay for enslaving us.”
“No. He will pay for releasing me.”
On the sixth day of the sixth month, most of three decades after the opening of the Dark Portal, at the end of a desperate battle beyond hope, Erderick, Ickis, Cloudsbane, Favor, Iymriia, Replay, Gut, Trashmaster, Laterz, and Kauket watched Arthas gasp his last breath.
As he fell into endless darkness, I knelt beside him and whispered, “You should have kept me on your side, little boy.”
No longer a simple blacksmith, no longer a warrior, no longer a would-be champion of the light… Kauket had been forged into a perfect killing machine, and in this poor wracked world, there’s always something that needs killing.
~End~
“If this is the end of suffering, we can be content broken as we are by the brute heel of angry destiny.” –Clytemnestra, from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon
Published: Nov 16, 2014 02:31 pm