Chapters View Online
Beware people with exclamation points over their heads at a convention for nerds
Well folks... Take it from someone who knows quite well that life can take sudden, and highly unexpected turns just because it can. For example, I knew a fella who could tap dance fit to impress... Something that would be hard pressed to be impressed by tap dancing. Oh give me a break, analogies are hard. ANYWAYS, one day he bends over to pick up something, pulls a muscle in his back, falls flat on his face, and gets run over by a runaway truck that was carrying, you guessed it, tap shoes.
Oh he lived, but he had this irrational fear of shiny pennies after that. Hey who can blame the guy, he did nearly bite the big one because of a little piece of copper, or whatever they're made of these days.
Ah, but I'm getting rather off topic here. This story is all about how MY life got flipped, turned upside down, and there weren't even any kids causing trouble in my neighborhood. Shame, would have been less weird than what actually happened to be honest.
I suppose I'd best begin at the beginning and go from there, so let's do that then shall we? We shall, no arguments here. I don't allow for back seat story telling, its almost as annoying as a june bug stuck behind the blinds... God gods I did it again, ramble that is... Ok here, deep breath... And begin!
"Look fellas, I honestly could care less if a weapon's allowed to be uncovered here or not. It hasn't got a sheath and its made of painted PVC anyways, not like this here axe could cut down anything..." I groused to one of the folks at the entrance of the biggest nerdout in my home town... Wow-con. Not officially sanctioned by Blizzard mind you, just something a lot of locals petitioned for and got rolling, myself included. Either way, it was an amazing yearly occurance (or so we hoped it would be... This was the first one ever)
"Look, I know it ain't real kid, but the rules are the rules, and they say you can't go bringing an uncovered weapon in here." one of the bald buggers said, his head gleaming in the sunlight that was bane to all pasty skinned people such as myself. He seemed fine, if reflective, though.
We spent another five minutes or so arguing before we eventually reached a compromise, I lashed my axe to the back of my armor (Yep, armor) and covered the "edge" with a spare bit of raw hide I'd kept for a skinning joke. They agreed to let me in before I melted, full costume was hot and I wanted some AC damn it!
I suppose at this point I should explain just what it was I was wearing, no? Simple, I went to con as a death knight, specifically my main toon, RuneWulf. Black enameled armor, some clever lighting effects, and bits of an old fur sute of mine came together to form the bad ass, sexy, and female Worgen that I played as online. Don't judge, when you gotta stare at your character's ass for eighty five levels, I'd rather stare at a nice one, so yeah I play female toons.
Granted, my costume was all home-made, but I'd made it well. The under lighting I'd put in the armor gave the effects of icy blue energy escaping from between some plates. I'd spent hours making the armor from plastic sheeting layred until it was almost solid. It had a nice sheen to it despite the paint I'd used to give it the right color. Heck, I'd even managed to make it look gender neutral so unless I spoke out loud no one would know I was a dude. The furred parts of my costume were well made as well, and they worked perfectly with the rest the black fur and fierce snarl giving the image I often imagined that Rune would wear in combat.
Long story short, I could have probably won a costume contest... Probably, but I'd never enter one, I was far too shy on stage.
See, that was always my problem. I'd put hours and hours into things, such as my costume, and then I'd be too nervous to show them off properly. Wearing this out to con was as far as I was willing to take it, and even then I made sure to stick to the fringes of the crowds. That's not to say I didn't go and take a look at some of the things there.
For the sake of time, I'll just say that I was kind of disappointed. Sure there were computers set up to allow people to play WoW for a bit, mostly for duels and the like just to give some folks a show. I didn't like PvP so I avoided that. The only other real interesting things there were the stands selling merchandise and books. That got shot down when I saw the price tags, yeah no... Fifty bucks for a small figurine. Not happening.
I was getting ready to call it quits and head home for a long questing session when I noticed something rather amusing that no one seemed to pay any attention to. Standing near the doors was a rather lovely woman dressed in one of the most perfect Night Elf costumes I'd ever seen and better yet, she'd sprung for a bit of humor and gone as a quest giver if that exclamation point over her head was any indication (It was indeed).
Smiling to myself I moved over to say hello and stopped myself short... It was too good to pass up. After all, what self respecting nerd can say no to a good LARP? Well, not this one that's for sure.
I stopped before her and gave a slight bow, motioning for her to speak. Speak she did and I'm not ashamed to say that her voice was fit to melt men into quivering puddles of "oh dear gods that's beautiful."
"Greetings RuneWulf. I've a job for you. I require a champion to go forth into a land of danger and adventure to gather fame in my name. Tell me brave hero, have you ever wished to see Equestria?" she asked, one perfectly styled eyebrow raising slightly. Up close like this I noticed she wore some kind of contact that gave her eyes a blank silvery color. Heck if I didn't know better I'd say they were glowing.
Her words however gave me a short pause. Never mind the fact that she knew my character's name, she'd mentioned Equestria. Look... I might love playing WoW, slaughtering things and freezing them solid as a frost spec'd DK, but I adored My Little Pony. There was just something about the show that put a smile on my face and made me laugh. Some woman asking me if I'd ever wanted to visit the damn place was kind of awesome when presented as a WoW quest like this. Therefor I did the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life...
I nodded, very enthusiastically.
She smiled softly at me and lifted a hand. "Then Elune's blessings upon you Death Knight... Go forth and enjoy yourself..." Next thing I know that shapely hand was slamming into my face, and everything went blacker than Arthas' soul. If he still had one that was.
Author's Note
LARP = Live Action Role Play - A bunch of folks getting together and role playing as various characters... Think of Ren-fair and you got the right idea.
View Online
Diamond Dogs are Cowards when Confronted with Battle Axes
"Ugh... Did anyone get the name of that bus?" I muttered softly as I sat up, scrubbing at my face only to wince as I wound up whacking myself on the chin. Well, nothing like a little pain to snap you to attention, yeah? I blinked slowly, vision clearing as I fought off the clinging cobwebs of unconsciousness. When I could finally see straight I noticed something was blocking the lower part of my peripheral vision just a bit. I reached up to swat it away and couldn't help the soft whimper of pain as my hand connected not with an object, but with something I was rather attached to.
Blinking back a few tears of pain I looked down at what was on my face only to realize... It WAS my face, or at least a part of it. My mind took a moment to process this before setting off the great big "NOPE!" button. Yeah... I freaked out slightly only to freak even more when I took a look at my hand. A metal half gauntlet encased it, leaving long slender, and FURRED fingers bare. My expression must have been rather comical as I stared at that, counting them over and over as I assured myself of what I was seeing. I was short a finger, I had three now and my thumb. The slender digits ended in wicked looking claws, and the fur on them was a deep ebony that blended well with the armor protecting the rest of my hand.
Speaking of armor, the gauntlet ran right up to the middle of my forearm. There was a brief gap that showed more black fur before my vision was blocked by a paulderon that glared up at me from the ram's skull adorning it. The eye sockets and nostrils glowed faintly with a blueish light the pulsed eerily, like a heart beat.
Looking down greeted me with another sight that gave me a pause. I recognized the armor easily enough, I'd sort of made it after all, but I hadn't given it the distinct bulges in chest department that obviously let whoever looked at it know it was a literal breast plate. Further more, I hadn't left my midriff bare, and I wasn't that shapely. Let alone the fact that, metal or no, my leggings should have been highly constricting and weren't... Yeah... Something was up and it wasn't anything I had any more apparently.
"Dear gods I'm a woman!" I exclaimed only to blink in surprise. Yeah... My voice held the demonic rumble that came with being a female Worgen deathknight. That echo-y quality made my words linger slightly longer than they should have as I shook my head in effort to clear it. This was too damn weird. Everything I saw, and felt, pointed at me being something that was completely impossible. I couldn't write it off as a dream either, you don't feel pain in dreams, and I knew I wasn't the kind to have a psychotic break. I was too plain for that. So that left one explanation... This was happening, and I didn't like it one bit.
In effort to distract myself from the fact that my body wasn't my own I took a look around and blinked slowly. I was in a forest, that was for sure, but no place I knew of had colors this vibrant. Everything seemed brighter, almost cartoonish in quality. It was strange to think that I was actually flipping out over technicolor foliage when I had bigger problems... And they were on my chest.
Sighing softly I moved to stand, and subsequently nearly fell flat on my face. Yeah, standing on paws was weird, especially when you had knees that bent the wrong way. Setting aside that I probably looked like a furry's wet dream (Myself included sadly) I decided to go and find some kind of reflective surface to get a good look at myself and give myself a crash course in walking on my new legs.
I had to wonder just how it was I was taking this so well... Must be on drugs I decided, wondering why I thought that to myself in the voice of Cybil Bennet. Made some sense really, but I was too busy trying not to fall over again to really give it much thought. Within five minutes I had the hang of it and something else came to my attention, the soft slap of metal against leather as I walked. Reaching back my hand hit something the felt distinctly like a haft. Frowning I gripped it and gave it a tug. Whatever it was came free quick and I held in my hand something that was physically impossible. It was a normal enough battle axe, save for the fact that the blade was separated and floating in distinct pieces, ending in a very sharp looking piece that reminded me of a fang, in shape at least. The entire head glowed brightly with the same pulsing blue as my paulderons. The glow in this case stemmed from a rune that I somehow knew. It was almost as if there was a little voice in the back of my mind that whispered to me "Fallen Crusader..."
Well, that clinched it... Things were officially weird enough for me to cease giving a fuck. So I did a quick mental recount here. Female, Worgen, Armed, Armored, Deathknight, Weird forest... Toto we ain't in Kansas any more. Of course in comedic timing it was while I was busy trying to cudgel my mind back into functioning in some semblance of order that things headed south.
"Look, I find bitch... We keep?" called a voice that snapped me from my stupor. "I want its pretty things. Shiny means tasty, yes?" it asked again as I looked around, only to come face to face with an honest to gods diamond dog. Needless to say I was beyond being surprised at this pint so I just kind of stared in silence.
"Backbiter, we here find little ponies, not find comfort female. Kill it, take stuff, and be hurried. Alpha say we near deadline." growled another D-Dog, one I hadn't noticed before as I was too busy focusing on the one in front of me. Still, I'd heard enough at the word kill. Hefting my axe I did the first thing that came to mind. I growled.
To call the sound that escaped me a growl was doing it an injustice, because there was no way that didn't come right outa the mouth of hell itself. The D-Dogs stopped dead, watching me closely as they readied their own weapons. Rusty pitted and notched swords qualify as weapons right? Well either way they looked pitiful when compared with the rune axe in my hands. Not to mention that the air arround me slowly dropped in temprature and an icy mist rolled off my body. I couldn't feel the cold, but they sure as hell seemed to. Within moments they were quaking in fear, their teeth chattering. I raised my weapon and growled again.
This time, there was no awkward glances at one another, no pulling of weapons, no this time... They just ran. Great... Ten minutes in this place, (I had to guess it was Equestria because where else do you find actual diamond dogs?) and I wind up scaring the locals so bad that I could follow the yellow trail... Man what a day.
...Sadly, They're Also Quite Devious
Well, once again all on my own in a strange place I did what any marginally sane individual would do. I went looking for something friendly. Needless to say, that went over as well as a lead balloon. Now I'm not saying I ran into anything here, but yeah... I have no clue what I was thinking stomping around in some unknown forest hollering out "HELLO?!" every few seconds. Sometimes I swear, I'm the biggest idiot I know.
After about five minutes of that, I gave it up and instead went back to looking for some water. Heck, at this point I figured if I was a deathknight I could just freeze it and use that as a mirror. Ice is reflective enough right? Well yes, but not normally. Gotta have something behind it like any mirror, but I didn't know that at the time so give me a break here. I'd like to see how'd you'd react to waking up sans testicles, covered in fur, and un-bloody-dead.
To make a long story short I found myself a nice little stream, and found out what it feels like to be a pin cushion thanks to a run in with a rather annoying porcupine... Well more like six of them, but I digress. Sighing softly I took a seat at the water's edge, finding it surprisingly easy to settle myself into a sort of sidelong position, the kind of position that left me mostly upright but with my legs folded beside me. Couldn't get comfortable any other way, so meh says I. I heaved a heavy sigh and did the smart thing. I dipped my hand into the water and drew a ring, cutting off a section of the stream from the rest. Such was the unnatural chill pouring off of me that I made a neat little arch of ice that ran right down to the stream bed. The water I'd contained went still, cut off from the flow by my impromptu divider.
Bracing myself for what I'd likely see I bent over the water and gazed into it. My hazy reflection stared back at me, and needless to say my jaw dropped a bit. I was looking right into the face I'd spent a good half hour in the character designer of WoW making. Don't judge me, I'm just very deliberate in my choices... Even when everything is kinda canned. Anyways, the face staring up at me was fierce, as expected of any Worgen, but held a few softly feminine notes that left my gender clear if my body didn't. The fir was as uniformly black as the rest of me, and that really made my eyes just pop. The clearest part of my reflection was those eyes, twin points of bright icy blue and slightly nebulous light that sent a soft shiver down my spine as I stared deeply into them. I almost missed the fact that my hair (or was it more of a mane now?) was wild, but by no means tangled as it tumbled down to drape lightly over my shoulders. My ears did catch my attention though, long pointed canine ears that twitched slightly in response to sounds just on the edge of my hearing... I'm not even going to mention the fact that having a muzzle freaked me out a bit though, that'd take too long to go into.
All in all, I can't say I wasn't shocked (well I could but I'd be lying through my teeth) to realize that I was now, indeed, Runewulf. Well... Mind, please kindly inform the rest of me that we're no longer in Kansas any more... Guess that'd make me Toto. Strange thoughts aside I couldn't help but grin a little. Dreams of power dancing through my head. Hey, don't judge the nerd... Everyone's thought of what they'd do with their videogame character's powers at one point or another, and I obviously was packing some now. Granted I couldn't really use them due to not knowing how... But what else was practice for?
DJ, if you would kindly queue the fail montage?
"YOUCH! Note to self, undead, can still feel pain..." I muttered as I freed my hand from a block of ice I'd dropped on my foot...Paw... Whatever it was.
"OW!" Making trees rot is hazardous to the wholeness of one's skull...
"Well at least this one worked..." I muttered as I looked down at the ghoul I'd made out of a rabbit corpse I'd come across. I wound up punting it with a slightly girlish "Eek!" when it looked up and croaked out in a voice that'd put Barry Manalow to shame in terms of depth "Mommy?"
Yeah, that's how my first day in wherever I was went... Making an utter ass of myself and just generally being a total failure when it came to wielding the powers of Frost and Death. I'm just glad I apparently healed up in moments from such minor injuries as a broken toe or being mauled by a disgruntled badger. Thankfully I could at the very least use my axe properly. Weapon triangle be damned, I'd wanted to learn to use one of these things since I watched some movie when I was a kid. Can't remember the name, but I thought battle axe's were cool... and they gave you an excuse to quote a certain dwarf when offering your services. As such I'd gone outta my way to learn such things, even if I couldn't really do anything with that knowledge being the noodle armed gamer that I was before.
Here was a different story. Here I had the strength to swing my weapon about like it was made of balsa wood, and as I worked my body through a few old forms I know about I couldn't help but smile brightly. Maybe this would be fun after all. Like something out of a fanfic, probably a poorly written one with a lot of cheesy lines and goofy misadventures.
It was these distracting thoughts that were interrupted when the haft of my axe was stopped with a resounding clang. Blinking I looked down and found a sword blade holding my weapon in place. Following the blade to its source I found a Diamond Dog giving me the stink eye. Frowning slightly I lifted my axe away and stepped back only to feel something stop me short and shove me back towards the D-Dog. The one who'd stopped me flashed me what can loosely be called a grin as he beckoned with sword of his. Glancing around I found myself surrounding by a good number of dogs, each armed and lightly armored ringing the two of us in. Well... Shit.
"Pretty bitch think herself warrior? Black Jaw wish to see this for himself. Bitch will fight, or she will be killed. If bitch win, we keep her... If loose she work mines." said the damned dog who'd decided that I was apparently supposed to be put in my 'place' here and now. Not surprising considering I spotted the two I'd frightened off earlier among the ring of bodies that surrounded me and my opponent. What a bit of opposition he was too. He was huge, standing head and shoulders over the other Dogs. He wore some weird harness adorned with several vials, and unlike the others his sword actually seemed to be in good condition. "So... Bitch ready to taste Black Jaw's sword?" he asked, accompanying that question with a rather lewd shake of the hips.
I heaved a soft sigh and settled into a rather open stance, holding my axe across my chest and close to my body. "My name..." I spoke softly, and got a small bit of satisfaction when the sound of my voice got a brief flicker of unease to roll through my tormentors, "Is not Bitch... I am Rune Wulf." With that I reached for that icy core where my heart used to be and let the cold of the Frozen North fill me... Or something like that. In any case the same icy mist rolled off my body once again, chilling the air and coating the earth a few inches around me in a light layer of frost.
The Diamond Dog before me just laughed and shook his head as a small glass bottle impacted with the earth at my feet. "That's fine, but you Bitch now. Alpha Black Jaw was right... Bitches be stoopid." I had enough time to blink before I passed right the hell out. I didn't know this at the time, but apparent the dog I'd been talking to wasn't Black Jaw... Nope that was his kid. Black Jaw had been chilling in the crowd right behind me, and apparently those little vials were full of knock out gas... Who knew?
First Blood and Meeting the Moon
I don't know how many of you've ever been knocked unconscious in any manner, but its not pleasant in the least. Everything just winks out. Thing is, that's nothing compared to waking up afterwards... Not that I'd know that of course, not like I've never been punched in the head by a jack ass who's life's ambition is to leave his fist imprint in... Yes yes I'll quit rambling...
Now then, to say that I came to would have been a lie, because opening your eyes and finding yourself quite literally among the stars isn't something likely to occur while awake. Cat's outa the bag there, because that's exactly what I opened my eyes to, a vast star-filled expanse that I seemed to be standing in quite normally enough. I could actually feel something solid beneath my paws, but damned if I could see anything but more stars. I'd try and say I didn't immediately think of a certain poor coyote, but once again I'd be lying out my arse. So yeah... My first reaction was to look up and wish I had a "Halp!" sign.
"Calm yourself my champion. There is no need for alarm, you are simply walking the astral. I thought it time we spoke normally..." rang out a gentle voice behind me. There was something calming about it, and not just because of how gentle the voice itself was. It was like the tranquility of a full moon's night washed over me with those words, that almost imperceptible feeling of the world at peace beneath the light of that heavenly body. A heavenly body that was the sphere of influence of the goddess standing behind me.
Elune smiled softly, an almost motherly expression on her face, as she watched me turn about to face her. I don't know how I knew who she was right off, but there was some little voice in the back of my mind that just seemed to tell me that the beautiful Night Elf before me was not just a goddess, but, in a manner of speaking, my grandmother.
I'm a lore junkie alright... So I know a few things about the actual pantheon of Azeroth. There's not a lot of information on them to be honest, but hey... I went and looked outa curiosity and the love of well written fantasy. Elune was, or is I guess considering she's apparently real, the father of Cenarius. Cenarius in turn was the father of the druidic order, as he taught the first Night Elf druid the arts of natural magic like that. Later on a splinter order of those druids took on lupine forms to help combat the Burning Legion. They went mad, got locked in the Emerald Dream, and were the first Worgen. Considering I was a Wrogen now... I guess I owed that one to her because without her I likely wouldn't be sporting the rather awesome claws.
"You're quite right there young Rune. No I shall not use your old name. That was taken, and I shall return it to you after this game is over... I'm sure you did not notice, but you gave those dogs your new name. You'll find that is the only name you'll know yourself by on Equis." said the goddess with a sad little smile. Well as long as she regretted taking my name I guess it was ok... Why was I not flipping out over that? I don't know, too calm here.
"Ok then..." I muttered by way of reply as I found myself dropping to all fours and curling up in a vaguely canine manner. It was nice there. It was even nicer when she bent down and scratched behind my ear with a soft, and clearly amused giggle.
"Pay attention Rune, for this is important. I have chosen you to be my pawn in a grand game of the gods. I cannot tell you the rules, nor the goal. I can tell you that you are to follow the quest I gave you at that convention. Go forth and bring glory to your name, and through your name my own... Now wake up little Death Knight... Wake up and show those who would dare try and dominate what is mine the folly of their ways..."
With that whatever solid surface on which I lay dropped out, taking me with it. Still, I didn't feel freaked out by this, the sensation of falling through the night sky was kinda pleasant... Landing back in my body and crashing back into consciousness... Not so much. yeah, instant head ache from the blackest pits of hell... Also that headache had been taking lessons from Chuck FUCKING Norris if the way it was round-housing my brain was any indication.
A quiet whimper escaped me as I slowly became aware of my surroundings. The first thing that greeted me was of course that headache with a mean leg. Following that of came the sensation of straw against my fur... And nothing else at all. Great. Not only was I now a chick, I was a naked (if covered in obsidian black fur) chick. Yay me. I opened my eyes slowly, and thankfully I could see despite what I'm sure was nigh pitch blackness around me.
I was indeed naked and dumped quite unceremoniously on a mound of old, and smelly, straw. Not quite sure how I could see as well as I could, must've been the glowy eyes. Perfect night vision and all at the low cost of one's soul being forced into their necromantaclly warped body. In other words, a perk of being a death knight. Though to be fair I'm sure that being a nocturnal predator had something to do with it, yay werewolf-esq things!
I found myself in a cell, and to be honest it could have been worse. I could woken up in someone's bed with... Yeah leaving it at that. I got to my paws and stretched slowly, various joints popping here and there as I moved. I sighed softly and let my eyes drift closed again as I focused on trying to think through the headache. All I could think of those was the blood pounding through my temples. Blood... Wait Blood! That was it. I reached for that word, focusing on it, and then I felt something give. The cold that had been clingng to me was gone, and in its place the air around me took on a faint coppery scent and seemed to thicken. I'd just tapped into the Presence of Blood. Extra stamina and increased heals is what that granted in WoW, and if the rest of my new powers were anything to go by it would work the same here. Long story short, the headache was gone soon. Second it was I switched back to Frost Presence and sighed with relief as the cold filled me once again. In a way it was comforting, not to have to feel anything but that arctic chill suffusing my entire being.
Now then, on to getting my ass the hell outa here without having something try and ride it. To that end I made myself a mental list of goals.
Get outa the cell so as to avoid any skill atrophy, I don't wanna serve my time.
Find my armor, AND MY AXE!!!!
Maybe free some slaves? Fuck it, free em and lets start a riot.
???
Don't make a joke about profiting somewhere in this list.
Disregard the previous goal and then profit.
I'd say that was a good set of goals, and the first was easily accomplished. Anything frozen is kinda brittle, locks included. It only took a bit of focus and a good hard shoulder to the block of ice that used to be the cell door to break it open. Surprisingly, finding my shit turned out to be kinda easy too. Yes that's a good idea Diamond Dogs, keep the "bitch's" gear in the same room with her... Yeah, as a certain bearded individual with a love for dead pig would say. "Fucking SMART!".
The weight of my armor and the heft of my axe in my hands was another comfort. Mostly because I was in an unknown place and I now had a measure of protection, both from damage and a way to deal it out if need be. Yeah, feels good man, feels real good. What didn't feel too good though was the fact that, despite being well armed now, I was in a place I didn't know with hostiles potentially around every corner.
Damn the universe and it's sense of irony because no sooner had that thought crossed my mind than than a door I hadn't really payed much attention to before now opened and in came a pair of dogs I recognized well. Black Jaw and his son... Yeah... Fuck you Murphy!
They stopped short when they saw me and slowly smiled as they noted that I'd not only "escaped" but had armed myself once again. "So bitch has found her things has she?" asked the son of Jaw. "Well... This one will enjoy taking it back. Shiny axe will look nice on wall." With that the younger dog stepped forward and drew his sword. Yeah... Wasn't having his dad interfere this time. My lips pulled back in a snarl as I called on something a little special just for him. Chains of ice formed around Black Jaw, shackling him and fouling up his movements. I could feel the cold sink into him, turning his bones brittle and marking him with Frost Fever. His eyes widened slightly as he shivered uncontrollably.
I'm glad I turned my attention back to the younger one when I did, because it took almost all I had to block the sword speeding for my unprotected guts. Yeah that woulda ruined my day. That blow parried with the haft of my axe I gestured at him, and let the cold touch him with its icy talons. He visibly paled, soft patches of frost forming on his fur as the Frost Fever took him as well. Smiling fiercely I raised my axe and backed away a bit. This was going to be sweet. I could already feel the necromantic energies gathering on my axe for a plague strike without any conscious effort from me. Yeah, things were finally going slightly more success shaped for me.
Again, fuck Murphy and his damned law, and fuck my brain for deciding to invoke it at every opportunity. Another few dogs came in to... do something, probably watch whatever these two had planned, and then things got kinda hectic. I'm kinda fuzzy on exact details, but somehow the two alphas slipped away, leaving me to deal with the annoying Dogs who'd come along like adds in a raid.
Combat was... Different than I'd ever thought it would be. There was no clarity, no time to think, there was just pure action. It was react or die, and so I did what seemed natural... I reacted with all the ferocity of my new form. Worgen, to put it mildly, were feral beasts without some form of control behind them. That control took many forms, be they a wizard who twisted the simple minds of the feral Worgen to his ends, or a blessing from Elune that calmed the beast within and let the mind of the man or woman a Worgen once was to remain fully in control... Or that control could be the will of the Lich King and the gift of undeath... In my case I had to guess it was a combination between the last one and the second one there. That said, I was still an animal now, and so I fought like one.
There were four D-Dogs, all but one armed with those shitty swords, the last one carried an honest to gods mace. A freaking metal club with a spiky head. Whatever, they were all armed and they were out for blood in defense of their alpha. Two of the sword swinging dogs came running at me, and I in turn charged them with a roar that was so full of blood lust it nearly scared me. That sound did more than mildly unsettle the dogs however, they stopped short and started to turn to run as I came upon them with the furry of a woman given a large sharp object and told that her mortal enemy had gotten the last pair of for sale shoes... Gods damn it brain, stop doing that to me! Imma guy in here damn it!
In any case, axe, meet head. Head meet ground, and introduce body to it while you're at it please? One dog down in a spray of blood and a sickening thump as a severed head fell to the earth with a sense of utter finality. His companion felt my dark powers in a different manner however. I just let the power flow and a black chain of necromantic magic formed around his neck, nearly crushing his windpipe as he clawed at his neck desperately. The other two had watched all this with wide eyes, but they were not about to fail their leader, they apparently feared him more than me. Can't say I blame em, that guy was way to bent on bending me over.
That dog with the mace did something kinda smart, he gave his buddy a shove in my direction with enough force to send him stumbling right into the waiting embrace of my axe. I didn't hesitate, I just buried it in his chest and watched the life slowly drain from his eyes.
Killing one dog from behind was as different from watching someone die face to face as a fly was to a dog. What shocked me however was how little I cared. The feeling of disgust at my actions was there, as was the shock of killing two, maybe three if the slowly quieting struggles behind me were any indication, living things was there too... But it was as if it was buried under a layer of permafrost. Visible, but untouchable. As I was lost in the contemplation of this, and it was only a second's hesitation, that mace came crashing down on my shoulder. I yelped and did something kinda stupid... I let go of my axe and lept back.
Unarmed, and facing someone obviously smart enough to find a way to render my weapon useless long enough to take a swing, a swing that had made my arm go numb from the force. Yeah, not a good position to be in... if you couldn't make use of certain powers such I had. I noted something in the few heart beats, not that mine was mind you, before he closed on me again. That frost blue glow had brightened, highlighting the runes on my armor. I smiled softly as something came to mind. Runes, a death knight's abilities were based on them, and it seemed mine were active in full again. Unholy, frost, and blood, all six, two of each, glowed brightly. Well I made use of that. My frost runes were consumed as a howling blast of pure arctic cold blasted the diamond dog before me, nearly freezing it solid. Oh it didn't die though, and it still kept coming. Well... Fine, a skull shaped blast of necromantic energy short forth from my hand to collide with the slowed dog's chest, taking one of my unholy runes with it. Still not dead, but he was down.
I was content to leave him there. He'd die soon of frost fever anyways, I think. Not sure how quickly that disease would kill. To be safe though I retrieved my axe, triggered my last unholy rune, and gave him a small cut on the arm. Blood Plague from that cut ran though his veins now, and I could feel it somehow, feel the diseases that I had infected him with by virtue of the dark abilities I carried... And I didn't fucking care. He deserved it for what he'd done to his friend. "Morte en agone..." I whispered to him, only to watch him shudder and break out in a scream of pure agony... Well I had just told him to die in agony in Latin... Guess that blood plague was painful. I stormed out of that room, and winter's chill ran before me even as death followed behind... Somewhere in these tunnels was a pair of dogs that would soom know the meaning of the word fear... And how painful frost bite could be.
Author's Note
Death Knights are scary things, very scary indeed. I treated the combat here much like a instance in WoW. Think of it this way, Let us assume that Rune is somewhere around level seventy. The normal D-Dogs are something around level twenty. One shottable monsters. Black Jaw and his son, are level 70 bosses, meaning they'll be tougher, stronger, and an actual fight.
I'd actually thought of doing something like a HUD for Rune, showing names floating over heads and levels as well, but that'd make me too tempted to make a very over used joke about numbers in excess of Nine thousand.
As always comments are much appreciated and I hope you all enjoy reading this. May the moon light your paths dear readers.
Ever been so angry everything seems to exist in a clarity that you just can't find the words to do justice to the feeling? Well if you have you'll know what I mean by that, if not I'll try and explain it as best I can. There exists, in my experience, a stage past blind fury. I'd not call it righteous anger or anything like that, never was a god fearing fellow (before all this anyways) and I'm sure as hell not some kind of paragon of virtue who'd have a reason to feel that. Even so, that's as close a term I can come up with for the crystal clarity my anger brought me at the sight beyond my little jail room.
Slavery is a nasty business, even if it gets things done, its still not right. Slavery doesn't even come close to describing the things I saw in there. Hitler himself would have been disgusted at the atrocities before me. I didn't step out in the slave quarters... No, the short tunnel led me into what I can only call a cattle pen and butchers stall. Broken and sobbing beings coated in blood, bruises, and rock dust.
Pegasus ponies had been treated cruelly to say the least, their wings hacked off and posed above their cages, just to remind them what had been taken from them and the freedom they'd never taste again. It was sickening to say the least, especially when I noted that more than a few of those severed wings belonged to foals. Even they had it better than the unicorns. Dear gods that one still haunts me to this day. The dogs hadn't been content with simply hacking their horns off... No, they'd done something worse.
Ever look into the eyes of someone who's given up all hope for anything? The bleak, soul crushing despair is writ large into every facet of their being, especially the eyes. They're empty of everything save pain and sorrow... These unicorns didn't even have that. I don't know how they did it, but they'd not only taken these poor ponies' magic, but robbed them of their souls in a metaphorical sense (those were still there... Don't ask how I know, its just one of those sixth sense sort of feelings.).
Of the three types of ponies the earth ponies had it best here. They'd been simply mistreated, nothing cut, nothing taken, just under fed, unwashed, and depressing to look at. I'd equait their appearance to that of a long time stray dog. That lean bony look that they get after awhile. That's what these guys had. What all three had in common though were the twisted metal torcs around their necks worked to look like a pair of jaws clamping down on their jugulars. These weren't slaves, they were thralls. Property to be used and disposed of. The Vikings had kept Thralls... But they'd been treated far better than this, so don't confuse the term when I use it here.
I don't know how long I stood there, staring at them all as the rage in my chest went from something burning hot to something so cold and hard that it made ME shiver, but when I did regain my senses I noted something else... Right in the center of this room was a simple contraption and a bunch of bloody saws, stained almost brown by the old blood upon them. They butchered these ponies right in front of the others. That was the nail in the coffin... I was going to wipe these Diamond Dogs off the face of the planet... Realm... Whatever it was, and it would take an act of Celestia herself to stop me.
I left that room behind, not before breaking the locks though, and continued on with the frozen flames of vengeance burning throughout my entire being. Nothing deserved what those ponies had been given... Nothing save for the one's who did that to them. Yeah, someone was going to SCREAM in mortal agony before I was through with this place.
My first victim never saw it coming, though his subordinates sure did. I came upon a group of D-Dogs, the leader of them, one of those ones with the bandoleer of vials, had his back to me. That was just fine with me... I put my axe away, affixing it to my back somehow... I suspect magnets, and took him before he knew what had him. My claws dug easily though the leather armor he wore, drawing runnels of blood that felt deliciously warm against my icy flesh and fur, as I tore into the side of his neck with my fangs. I won't sugar coat this, no I'll never sugar coat anything like this... The feeling of the life shuddering out of him and the taste of the blood pumping into my mouth as I tore away half of his neck and let him drop was one of the sweetest things I've ever experienced, and that sickens me. At the time however I just didn't care, they needed, they deserved, to die in agony for what they'd done.
I gave the body a shove towards his stunned fellows and came following close behind with a howl that echoed throughout the tunnels. The looks of fear on the faces of those dogs... Dear gods above and below, those looks... They just spurred me on.
Five minutes, it took five minutes, but when I was done the walls were painted red and I was covered in the vitae of those who'd roused my ire. The feeling of blood slowly drying on my fur was a strange one, but I payed it no mind. There were still dogs to put to the slaughter.
When I found Black Jaw and his son they were cowering in fear, their body guards long since fled in utter terror from the sounds echoing through out the warrens. The clung to one another, shivering in fear and the sickness that still clung to them courtesy of our earlier skirmish. The sight brought a grin to my face. I'd been about my grim work for an hour or so now, and I must have looked like an absolute demon to these two.
"How many...?" I asked them simply, Black Jaw Junior just whimpered in fear and clung to his father tighter. Pitiful whelp.
"B-Black Jaw no understand... Great one, p-p-please... Spare us... P-please. B-Black Jaw sorry he thought to take you as his..." muttered the worm of a dog before me. He'd said exactly the wrong thing, but he'd pay soon enough. I wanted some answers first.
"How many ponies have you butchered and enslaved just to dig your fucking gems?" My voice was icy calm, completely at odds with the blood matted demon of insanity that I looked like at the moment. "You'll answer now, or I swear on all you hold sacred that I will raise your corpse and make it tear your son apart with its claws. THEN I'll force the answers out of your soul. So answer me now dog."
The floor around the two of them grew warmer and wetter before I'd ever finished my little tirade, the acrid stench of urine filling the air. "H-hundreds...." he whimpered in fear. I smiled at his answer, I had all the more reason to make his death painful and slow now.
I turned my attention to his son and stalked forward with all the finality of a funeral bell in the sound of my paw steps. "Then for those hundreds, and for the hundreds, if not thousands more left to grieve, not knowing what became of those they love, I'm not going to kill you Black Jaw... Your son is." With those words, and a quick swipe of my razor sharp claws, junior was left to gurgle as his life poured through the thin lines that bisected his throat clear to the spine.
I watched as the dog slowly grew still, blood pooling onto his father lap before I began to chant softly. It wasn't required, but I felt the need to fill this abomination with dread, to know that he'd just lost everything and was about to loose his life too. The words poured off my tongue like a foul oil, sickening to hear and to speak, but they worked. A blackish glow suffused the corpse of junior as he twitched and rose, blank dead eyes looking in askance at me. I simply nodded and turned to walk away as the screams began...
With the object of my rage gone, entrails being flung about somewhere in the depths of those blood soaked tunnels, I felt so hollow and empty. I couldn't believe what I'd just done. I'd NEVER been a violent person, hell I went outa my way to not kill anything if I could help it when I was human... Now though, it just felt... natural, almost right. That frightened me. What in hell's name was I? How could I just butcher a whole bunch of living breathing things like that, even if they did deserve it?
I don't know, and I didn't want to know. I still don't to this day, its just a fact of my life now. Life is still precious, but taking it doesn't bother me like it should. I just do it and move on if I need to. That's neither here nor there at this point in my tale however...
Exiting the warren took awhile, the twisting tunnels were confusing to say the least, and it didn't help that the rage that had kept me going was just gone now. I was tired, so very very tired. I felt like I had lead weights attached to every one of my limbs, but I kept moving. I didn't want to spend another moment down here if I could help it. Help it I could, so I got my shapely ass out of there... Still kinda weird thinking that my ass would be attractive to dudes now. ANYWAYS!
The sun hitting my blood caked fur was like a kiss from a loved one, sweet as could be and warm in a way I'd not felt since I'd woken up here in this world. Oh I was still frozen inside, but I felt the warmth and life of the sun like any creature.
I made my stumbling way away from the entrance to that hell hole as quick as I could manage, mind blanking out here and there. My thoughts were a jumble of twisted images, blood, and the screams of terror from my victims as I tore them to shreds with my bare hands and runic magic. Before I knew it I was introduced to the earth in a rather familiar manner once again, but I didn't care. Sleep took me under its dark wings, sheltering me from my thoughts with the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness.
When I awoke I was naked once again, but blessedly clean. Only the lingering scent of blood clinging to my fur gave any indication of what I'd done in those tunnels. Not too far out of my reach sat my armor and weapon, cleaned just as I way and with the pony who'd done it still polishing one of my vambraces. He looked up at me and blinked in surprise. Eyes widening in fear just a bit.
"Sweet Celestia you're alive?!" he asked, well... More like exclaimed in a vaguely questioning manner as he scrambled back a bit. Large wolfish creature waking up when you thought it was dead... Yeah I'd probably freak out a bit too.
"No... I'm undead, mind telling me what you were doing?" I asked calmly, giving him a tired, if amused, look. Apparently it came off as a bit threatening, he squeaked after all. People, or ponies in this case, don't normally do that unless they're scared. That and his dark brown coat suddenly went a bit tan all over so I had to guess he'd paled quite a bit.
"Respecting the dead... You freed us, I was gonna clean ya up and bury you properly... After that you kinda deserved some proper rest. Some of those poor blighters had been down there since they were foals. You set em free, monster or not you deserve some respect." was his answer, quite a strong one considering the fact that he was obviously a bit frightened of me.
"Well... Thank you, nicest thing anyone's done for me since i got here really..." I said, scratching at the back of my head shyly. It kinda was the nicest thing anyone had done for me here after all. Everyone else I'd met wanted to use me for a brood mother. No thanks says I.
He blinked at that and sighed, finishing off his work and setting the vambrace down with the rest of my armor. "Look, I used to be a guard, so I know what a warrior's life is like. Still, if a bit of respect for the dead surprises you, you must've had a tough one... Whatever you are. I'm Broken Wall. What's your name then?"
Broken Wall eh? Odd name for a pony in my opinion, but who was I to judge. "Rune... You can call me Rune." I said after a moment as I climbed to my paws and busied myself getting my armor back on. The breeze was nice, but I didn't like being reminded of my missing wedding tackle by having the lack of it stare the world in the face. Properly outfitted once more I looked down at the earth pony who'd thought to pay me some respect after my apparent passing... He'd not even questioned the whole undead thing. Strange fellow really, but who was I to talk.
"Well Broken... I've no where's to go... Mind if I follow you to wherever you're headed?" I asked him with what I hoped was a charming smile. Charming is kinda hard to pull when talking to an herbivore considering that you yourself happen to look like a predator. So goes life eh?
He simply nodded and turned to go, giving me a good look at his cutie mark as I fell into step at his side. Broken, as I said before, was a brown earth pony stallion. His mane and tail darkened to something close enough to chocolate colored for that description to stick. A chocolate colored pony, yep Pinkie would likely try and take a bite of him. His cutie mark though, that was something special indeed. It was a wall with a gaping hole in the middle and a vague figure standing in the middle of that. The figure seemed to shine with a celestial brightness against the black of the wall. I had to wonder just what that mark meant... I'd find out later, for now though it was just nice to have company that was simply mildly indifferent as opposed to overly aggressive and rape happy.
Author's Note
Well fellows, anyone who's been following me will know that this is the darkest thing I've posted up here for public viewing to date. Comedy may be my forte, but that covers a rather black imagination at times. If I put a dark tag on a story it is there for a reason, for at times my writing will get like this. Like I said in a comment on FTOSI life isn't all sunshine and lollipops, the dark times make the bright ones seem all the brighter... Hopefully you'll agree with me on this.
As always I'd like you to comment on what you think of the story, any advice you may have for improvements, and just anything you wish to say in relation to my work. Thank you for reading and please keep being pony :3
The benefits of being (un)dead
"Is it much further Papa Smurf?" I quipped at Broken, who simply groaned in response. That would be the seventh time I've asked that in the last few hours. What can I say? I was bored and my only current forms of entertainment came in two forms, Freezing plant life via a few errant touches, or attempting to drive my mostly stoic companion up the unbroken portions of a wall. Ya see what I did there?
Horrid jokes aside I had to admit that Broken Wall was a pretty cool fellow, even if he didn't say much. I'm managed to get a few answers out of him after we'd set off for wherever it was we were headed. I myself was hoping for a small village up the coast, from what I hear its rather nice in the fall... Back on topic Rune, stop being so scatter brai- Oooh look, shiny objects!
Ahem... From what I'd managed to get out of him, Broken used to be a guard, not one of those annoyingly white, gold clad royal ones either. Nope my little pony fiend was a rough and tumble, down to earth, guard of some place called Trottingham, from what he told me it wasn't a nice place to visit if you weren't a pony. Something about racist guards and what have you. Not any place that'd welcome a six foot tall wolf creature who happened to freeze things if she held onto them for too long and didn't focus on not being fridged, but that's beside the point I think... Even though I could honestly say that I was now cold as ice and quite willing to sacrifice our love... Pardon me, that was horrid, mostly because I'm sure you honestly don't know me, and if you do I'm willing to bet that we're not in love or anything. Oh by Elune's light I'm doing it again...
ANYWAYS! Broken Wall, yes him. Used to be a guard, lost his job for, of all things, feeding a prisoner he wasn't supposed to because he wasn't a pony. Since then he'd just roamed wherever his hooves took him, unfortunately for him his hooves thought that right in the middle of a D-Dog scouting party was a good place to stop and take a rest. Whadda'ya gonna do in that situation? Well according to him buck the shit outa a few dogs before taking a vial in the gob and passing out. Yeah, been there and done that myself, sorta... Hush, I got taken by surprise.
I'd asked him just why it was he hadn't mentioned anything when I'd said I was undead and gotten a shrug in response. "Seen one weirdo, seen em all... You weren't breathing and I couldn't find a pulse, so when you go and sit up after an hour of that it only makes sense."
I couldn't argue with that really, and still, to this day, can't find a decent comeback to that besides "Uhh... Ok then."
That's enough recounting what, at that time, was the past (even if only by a couple hours) so back to the present of then! Who wasn't just confused by that? I'm confused just saying it.
There comes a time in every young woman's life when her body goes through certain changes... I was busy thanking the Lich King that I'd never wind up dealing with that. Best part of being undead is the biological clock has stopped ticking after all. On the note of that odd thought I glanced down at Broken and rolled my eyes a bit. We'd stopped to make camp for that night, and he was busy stuffing his face with some berries and nuts that he'd had me scrounge up for him. It was kinda fair, after all he did set up camp and get some fire wood collected.
"You know, just because I don't NEED to eat anything doesn't mean you couldn't save me a few black berries or something you know." I said, nudging him in the side with one of my paws. I could keep calling em feet, but that didn't fit at all any more. Four toes, rough pads, broad for weight distribution, and a dew claw... Yep, those aren't feet, they're paws... Which are a sort of feet, but I should quit before I get distracted again.
"My apologies... I've not had anything other than gruel for a couple months..." he said in response, subtly moving just out of reach of my prodding appendage. Aww, he thought I wouldn't notice, cute! "Next time I'll save a bit for you if you want it."
I just shrugged, quieting down and watching our flicking little camp fire. To be honest I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a little perturbed by the fact that I'd not eaten since some time before that fateful convention and I had no real clue how long I'd been in Equestria... If I even WAS in Equestria. Apparently, even though its a large one, its only a part of the land mass of this particular planet. (On that note, I was indeed in Equestria, just the extreme southern part of it. The last forest right before things got all savanna-ish.) Despite that, I wasn't hungry, thirsty, or even really tired. I wasn't sore, my arm was just fine even after taking a blow from that one diamond dog (a blow that on later inspection had actually put a decent dint in my paulderon). Heck unless it was immediately apparent to my senses, I couldn't feel anything.
Ever have someone walk up to you and just point out that at any given time your clothing is in direct contact with your skin and you can actually feel it? Well they're speaking the truth, our bodies and minds are just some acclimated to the feeling of cloth against out skin that we just sort of block it out as unimportant. Well, my senses were kind of like that, especially my sense of touch. Unless I focused on it, I couldn't even really tell that I had my paws close to the fire. My sight, hearing, and sense of smell though were working perfectly. Constant stimulation I guess. Kept them active and all that. I'd come to find later that I had no real sense of taste beyond "Hey this is bland." or "Dear gods, this hurts worse than ghost chilies!" In other words, unless it had an extreme flavor... I couldn't taste it. I could smell it though, interesting really considering that one's sense of smell is actually a large part of their ability to taste anything. Meh, I'm a walking talking corpse with the power to wield the energies of life, death, and cold... Why m I trying to be logical about my body in any way shape or form?
My little mental foray into how weird being undead was, was interrupted by Broken nudging me in the ribs rather hard. It didn't exactly hurt, but it wasn't really a pleasant feeling considering the fact that hooves are rather solid and one's that haven't been properly cared for in awhile have some interestingly jagged contours. In other words, sand paper right in my side, I think I actually lost a small patch of fur when I jumped a bit.
Surprised as I was I think my response quite intelligently worded. "AGHWHOWHAT?!"
"You looked dead again Rune... Something the matter?" Broken asked, an actual note of concern in his voice. I was honestly a bit touched by that. First person to show me any respect, and first person to seem to generally care about me here... Aside from Elune, but she doesn't count really... I was technically property from my point of view. Kinda like a pet really.
"Oh... Well yeah, I'm fine... Just thinking. Before you ask, I was thinking about how weird it is being undead. I mean really I doubt I'd notice if my paw was on fire until it was pointed out to me..." Why do I always set these things up? I've got to remember that Murphy and his buddy Comedic Timing, are total asshats.
"Funny you should mention that..." said Broken, gesturing in the direction of the fire.
First thing I noticed was the fact that it had gotten much brighter, funny I don't remember adding that much fuel to it... Wait a second, what smelled like BBQ... Oh, DAMN IT! Why me?! Err, wait a second here... Ahem.. "HOLY FUCK-NUGGETS I'M ON FIRE!" I yelled as I umped to my paws and took off running for a small (relatively) pond we'd passed not too far back. You know, like a few second run when you're on fire and freaking the hell out. That far back.
Cannon balling my way into the drink was an interesting experience, and a bit of a relief to be honest. Apparently my paw had been burned to the point of nerve damage, because I hadn't felt a thing, not even pain, right up until that moment when I hit the cold water. I wish to take this opportunity to point out again how monumentally stupid I can be some times. I could have just frozen my foot solid back at camp, or waded in a bit and let the water put out the fire here in the pond... Nope, I'd quite literally given it a running leap and cannon balled right into the middle of the pond. Well it was a bit deep to call it that, maybe a mini-lake.
Armor is heavy, cannon balls tend to put you towards the bottom of the body of water you leap into, and I was now in a rather large amount of pain. Is it any wonder I kinda panicked when I realized I wasn't going to be coming up due to natural buoyancy? I'd like to think not. Nor is it surprising to me that my little shocked gasp filled my lungs with water and pretty much made those hurt a bit too. Just ow, ok... Ow. This would also be a good time to mention that the water around me was slowly freezing due to my frosty personality (buh dum tish). More accurately due to the fact that I was just that damn cold.
When Broken showed up to find me he found a nice sized ice burg with a vaguely me shaped blotch in the center of it. Being frozen is a lot more pleasant than I would have thought, at least it's better than feeling like you're still on fire, or that your lungs are going to pop.
It took him an hour to fish my self made prison out of that pond and get me ashore. Needless to say getting me out took awhile too, so long in fact he just got annoyed and bucked the block, shattering it after a few blows. Strong little fucker ain't he?
There I was, sitting cross legged, holding my charred paw, well previously charred... One of the upsides of being a death knight as opposed to a normal undead... The ability to heal yourself through various methods... Most require a ghoul, I just hit myself in the foot with a death coil. Long story short, it worked. Yay for running on runic power and necromantic energies! Even though I'd fixed my foot I couldn't really say a thing. My entire respiratory system was filled with ice. In lieu of words I just settled on giving Broken the most thankful look I could manage.
It apparently was enough to drop what ever he was going to say down to a simple smack on the back of the head for sheer stupidity. Yay! I can pull off a puppy face now... But ow my head. Stupid, strangely selective, inability to feel pain... Why can't I just be comfortably numb?
With nothing better to do, and me unable to argue, we got our shit together and hit the road again. Broken Wall even went so far as to tie a vine round my neck... Yeah, I was on a short leash in a literal sense. I couldn't really complain... I knew I'd likely do something dumb again before the night was out.
Author's Note
For those wondering, no death coils (that black and green skull shaped bolt of necromantic magic) don't really work like that in game. Still, if you can use it to heal your ghoul I don't see why it couldn't apply to yourself. It's the same basic principal really. Pump the ghoul full of more black magic which heals it, pump the death knight full of more of the same (even if it's her own,) and heal her the same way. Quick someone get smashed and drunk science this for me!
You know, some times I'm forced to wonder just what it is I ever saw in My Little Pony that had me so hooked. Was it the way everyone seemed to just accept everyone else for their weirdness? Maybe the way the show itself kind of reminded me of the cartoons I used to watch when i was little and thought getting up early on a saturday was a good thing. Maybe it was the way that I felt some connection with a few of the ponies, Luna in particular, and could honestly relate to what they went through in their day to day lives as portrayed on screen. Whatever it was I honestly don't regret that I wound up here in Equestria, but I do wonder just what it was that I saw in ponies sometimes... Like how the moment I set paw in that little town I was assured would accept me I found myself stripped of my armor and my axe and once again in a cage. Broken had cried outrage at this, but the ponies just saw a lone creature that looked enough like a diamond dog for them to focus all their hate on... Me.
Make no mistake dear readers, ponies are racist little fucks sometimes. So much so that I have to consider Ponyville to be a mecca of love and tolerance among a world filled to the brim with xenophobia. In this case I suppose I can't really blame them though, from what I learned later they'd been terrorized here by the very same D-Dogs I slaughtered for years and years, so much so that it was a mandatory thing to teach your foals to fight here in this village. I suppose I'd better give you the name, not like you'll find the place though. It was wiped off the map. Colt's Breath Village, population one hundred ponies, mixed fairly evenly between earth ponies and unicorns with the odd pegasus here and there for the weather. Lets not forget one undead worgen who was trying his... Or rather her, damndest not to want to kill everything there.
I'd been in my little cell for a couple days with very little to do. The cell had been made to house unicorns who broke the law, but the gold-cored reinforced bars were strong enough to stop even a raging earth pony, I should know I watched one break both his legs trying to buck his way out of a similar cell. I've been told that the cells were made in a way that helped disperse ambient magic and the gold cores of the bars were inscribed with dampening runes that stopped all magic within. Even my own apparently, and yes I'd tried... I just wound up with the biggest humdinger of a headache I'd ever had the displeasure to make the acquaintance of.
In the time I'd been in that cell I'd gotten quite familiar with my new body, and not in the pervy way you guys are thinking either, I simply inspected certain aspects which had piqued my curiosity. First off was the fact that I indeed didn't have any kind of pulse or heartbeat, no wonder Broken had thought I was dead. That said there was a gentle sort of... Well pulse is a fitting word I suppose, where my heart should have been beating. Don't ask me just how I knew, but I knew it wasn't my heart. This was something else, a soft little drumbeat of icy energy keeping my soulless husk of a body "alive." Second thing I gave a good once over was my skin, and all that took was brushing my fur aside a bit to get a look... By the way, if you often rub your pets against the grain of their fur, don't... It feels weird as hell. Anyways, my skin was that dark blue color that a long frozen corpse gets, so blue its almost black at certain points, and for some reason that bothered me a little. I suppose I can't really and truely complain I could have been something worse than what I was given that Elune's usual chosen messengers were night elves, and who'd want to be purple? Not me that's who.
I was busy inspecting my claws, sort of admiring the play of light over the hard black surfaces of the flesh rending things that used to be my fingernails when I was interrupted by a rather loud bang. I yelped, jumping and winding up smacking my head against the top of my cage before I knew what had actually happened. Apparently the guards had decided to come poke some fun at the caged animal, and let it know just what had become of its things... I was far more focused on the fact that one of these guards just so happened to be my friend.
He'd cleaned up quite well since last I saw him, and for a cute pony he looked rather intimidating in his guard uniform. The cold grey of the iron armor clashed with that warm chocolate colored coat of his, making the armor seem all the more noticeable. What was even more noticeable though was the fact that he shared the very same look as the guards who'd come to make my day even more miserable.
A look of loathing and hate. He was the first to speak, and his words just broke me on the inside.
"Alright bitch, three things. Your armor and weapon have been melted down and used to forge more armor and weapons for the guard. Good quality metal is hard to get this close to the Equestrian border, so we take what we can get even if it comes from some weird mutant D-Dog like yourself. Secondly, You're to be publically executed tomorrow at noon, and we all look forward to seeing that head of your's roll dog... Finally... I want to thank you for being such a nice little tool. Turning you in got me my old job back, and a promotion. I promise, when I bring the axe down on your neck tomorrow it'll only be slightly blunted... Sleep tight Rune, you've got a big day tomorrow."
I stared at him as he turned to go, rocked to my core at how flippantly casual that how little tirade had been. I'd honestly thought of that guy as a friend, even though I'd only known him for a day or so. He'd been kind enough to me, had been the only one to show me even an ounce of human decency since I woke up here.,, Even Elune, though she'd spoken kindly to me, seemed to see me as more of a tool or faithful pet than a person, Broken Wall hadn't done that though, he'd spoken to me like he saw me as an equal of some sort... I was still mulling this over when I distantly heard the door of my cell open and hooves clop closer to me. All thoughts were driven from my mind other than pain when I felt those same hooves begin to beat me into unconsciousness. It didn't matter to me... I just wanted to know why. Why did those I let get close always do something like this. My last thought before a well placed blow robbed me of thought for awhile was that I was going to get my answers tomorrow... And I'd be damned if I went to the grave alone.
I opened my eyes to stars once again, though it wasn't who I was expecting who welcomed me to the astral plane this time around. A voice I knew well enough from a certain show rang out behind me, and it didn't sound all that happy to see me.
"I see another one of you aliens has made it here... And theres a touch of a foreign moon upon you too. So who was it who sent you then? Artemis? Tsukuyomi? Speak up girl, I haven't got all night you know."
I turned around, ears falling flat and a soft whine escaping my throat as I looked up into the disapproving face of Luna herself. I shuffled from paw to paw for a moment before I answered. "Elune..."
She snorted and shook her head slightly, a bit of the hostility falling away. "In that case, I'm sorry for what's coming for you girl. She's almost as bad as Sharr sometimes, not because she's a dark goddess mind you, but she cares little for those in her charge, Rest here in peace then, you look like you need it."
Just like that she was gone, leaving me alone in a field of stars. The astral plane was really quite beautiful when you didn't have anything to distract you just so you know. Since I didn't I sighed a bit and laid myself down, watching the stars all around spin through their celestial dance for awhile. Sleep took me unawares, but I wasn't going to complain, it was too peaceful here for me to care.
I awoke once again, and I woke to pain. There wasn't an inch of me that the guards hadn't pummeled, or so it felt. With nothing but fur between me and their hooves, it was no wonder I was sore as hell and hardly able to move.I really had to thank whatever it was that allowed me to heal as fast as i did, otherwise I'm sure I'd have been sporing enough broken bones to make me rattle when I moved.
As it was, moving hurt like a bitch... I hate that word... Moving hurt like a mother buzzard, there thats a bit better. I found that out the hard way as I pushed myself up onto all fours, a surprisingly natural position for me to be in. In effort to stretch out some serious kinks I padded around my cell as I was, and found the motion of walking about like a beast to be easy, in some ways easier than walking like I used to. I kept pacing for awhile, it was kind of calming even if it did make me feel like a zoo animal.
Noon rolled around and with it came the guard, and for once there was something else in their eyes as they looked at me besides blind hate and self righteousness. There was fear. For that matter I could smell it on them, an acrid stink akin to piss and sickness that made me wrinkle up my snout in disgust. They took a step back at the sight of my teeth, one's they'd broken in their beating the day before, once again whole and ivory white. It didn't deter them though, they had a job to do and a "Diamond Dog" to see dead. I let them slip the iron collar around my neck and lead me outside.
They lead me to a raised platform that was topped with a simple chopping block stained a rusted red, and I could smell the old blood on it, old blood and old darkness clung to it tightly. Broken stood nearby, a large iron axe resting against his side. If the block was blood stained, the axe was drenched in the stuff. It had a history... It had a certain... something to it, and that something whispered to me in a way my old axe hadn't. I knew I wanted that axe though and it wanted me... It was kind of... Exciting in a way that sent a shiver down my spine. A shiver that the guards chuckled at. "That's right, this is the end for you bitch..." he stage whispered, drawing a laugh from his fellow guard pony.
I was lead atop this platform and staked down, head centered over the block and my eyes facing the slowly growing crowd. I glared at them all, hating them a bit, but unable to blame them for this. No the one I blamed with busy hefting that axe up, holding the long haft in his mouth by the leather wrapped handle.
"For the crimes committed against the Equestria ponies by your kind and for heinous acts committed against the ponies of this village you are sentenced to death by decapitation. May Celestia have mercy on your soul, for we shall not." proclaimed one of the guards, and I took that as my cue. I clenched my clawed hands tightly against the wooden planks on which I stood and pushed down as hard as I could. With a thunderous crash I broke the platform around the chopping block, sending it falling though and dragging me right along with it as gravity took over. Even so, that axe came whistling down, and pain exploded throughout my head as it connected with my skull, deflecting off the bone and tearing a long ragged gash in my scalp.
I snarled, doing my best to ignore the pain and blood as it dripped down my face to splatter against the block below me. Gritting my teeth in effort I took hold of my chains and gave them a massive tug, shattering them and letting myself drop fully into the hole I'd opened up while Broken was busy trying to get the axe up for another swing. I wasn't having that, not at all. No, this bastard was going to answer me before he met the reaper. Just as he got that axe in position again I grabbed his forelegs and yanked him in after me, fouling up his swing and rendering that axe useless in the tight confines beneath the platform. Under here, I had all the advantages, claws, fangs, and a frame that allowed me a better range of motion in such tight confines, he had hooves and I made sure to lodge him up under one of the cross beam supports so he could get up well enough to put em to use.
"Why'd you do this, Broken?" I asked him, fangs bared an inch from his face. He just spat and did his best to hit me. Resigning myself to a bit of grim work I dodged around his flailing hooves, though the blows I took were pretty ineffectual as his position robbed them of much force, and dug a claw into his stomach, just ahead of his hind legs.
""Good bye then Broken Wall... Or Broken Promise as you should have been named..." I said, mostly to myself, as I gutted him, leaving him there to die under the stage as he flailed about in pain, panic, and his own spilled intestines. I turned back once as I was leaving after grabbing up that axe, that look of blind hatred hadn't left his eyes, nor had he taken them off me much despite the way he was obviously distressing. Shaking my head I climbed out of the grave I'd turned this little stage into and that day I made ninety-nine more... There was one other grave made that day too, a grave for who I used to be, now even I had to call myself a bloody demon, nothing else would put an entire town to the axe just to save its own skin.
"Momma! Momma!" the little colt screamed, writhing in the dirt as he tried and failed to get to his hooves again and again. His mothers screams rung in the air with the clarity of a bell, reverberating throughout the dying town and mingling with other blood curtling noises. I watched this pitiful foal slowly succumb to the necrotic energies slowly sapping the life from the very earth around me, and I felt nothing. I watched as his body shuddered one last time, a faint little breathy whisper of "momma..." escaping his lips as he breathed his last.
I watched as his body sat up slowly a few scant moments later and turned unblinking and horribly vacant eyes to me, jaw hanging slack as the new little ghoul rose up to do my bidding... Rose up to help tear apart the village that until a moment ago had been home, had been safe for these ponies... Had been blessedly ignorant of the fact that there are worse things out there than Diamond Dogs, and far far worse things than death. Turning my head skyward I howled, the eerie sound echoing with the reverberating quality that marked a death knight's words and showed just a part of their unnatural existence.
I turned my attention to the axe I held in my hand, the leather grip seemed made to fit it perfectly. The dark wooden and slightly curved haft of the axe was as blood stained as the old black iron axe head that topped it, the same axe head that I could feel baying for blood... Gods help me I gave it what it wanted that day, gave it all it wanted and more. Damn me for a demon or a monster, but I enjoyed it too, the satisfaction rolling off that axe spoke right to me, resonating with some slumbering beast within... And they were made for one another.
Those memories still haunt me, that first time I truly gave in to my nature and enjoyed it to its fullest. They don't haunt me because I feel what I did was wrong, no I know it was, they haunt me because I just don't care. They stay with me because, deep down I know that I've done so much worse by the standards of the ponies, by human standards for that matter, and I still just don't care. I know why I don't have a heart beat, and its not just because I'm undead... Its because Elune dropped me here as exactly what a death knight is meant to be... A force of dark, bloody, and violent change that brings death and decay in its wake, freezes solid that which opposes it, and bathes in the blood of the innocent as it wades through the oceans of sanguine vitae it spills. This is what I am now... And I embrace that fully. Ah, but I get ahead of myself here, and jumping ahead in a story is a big no no for me, so allow me to set us back on track dear readers, back to the night after I wiped the town of Colt's Breath off the map and feed one hundred new souls to my axe. Back to the night I finally realised just how nice it is to let go of that moral highground and sink right down to the level of those who'd try and claim the darkness for their own...
When I left that town I left with my new weapon slung over my back, stuck there somehow, I honestly have no clue. I suspect biomagnets or some such bullshit. I left with tears in my eyes, dirt staining my fur and mingling with the blood into a reddish brown mud that matted down the fur of my hands something awful. I left with the knowledge that even after I'd killed them all, either with blade or by forcing their undead loved ones to tear them limb from limb, I'd at least buried the foals properly. I'd cast a glance back over my shoulder at the nine little graves in the center of town, marked with crude wooden crosses, and drew some measure of solace from that. I wasn't a complete monster, I didn't raise them intentionally... That one colt and been accidental after all.
Gah, enough of that mopey shit. I left that blighted and dead town behind and aside from that single glance, I didn't look back. I had plenty ahead of me to occupy my attention. Seems I hadn't gotten all the Diamond Dogs down in those tunnels, there were a handful of escapees and they stood at the treeline, watching as I came closer with looks of almost religious rapture plastered on their faces.
"Great demon..." they whispered as I walked past them, "Bloody handed goddess... Death bringer, Life ender, most deserving of praise..." Don't ask me where the sniveling little fucks got a thesaurus, but apparently they added some basic english skills to their repertoire of tricks over the few days since I turned their whole world upside down and lopped it off at the neck.
I stopped in my tracks, turning back to face them as the whispered increasingly elaborate titles and piled them at my feet like offerings at a temple. When I'd had enough of it I let out a low rumbling growl and let my power roll free, freezing the ground at my feet. "What do you want you little shits?" I asked them, quite nicely all things considered, I mean I coulda just killed them after all. Aren't I such a nice chick when I wanna be?
"To go where you lead..." they said, speaking in a creepy sort of unison, all at once kowtowing to me. It was flattering in a way to know I'd broken these dogs so badly that they looked at me as some sort of vengeful deity. Flattering enough that I took them up on their little offer after a few moments thought.
"Who is chief among you?" I asked them, watching as one dog, slightly larger than the other twelves stepped forward... Well crawled really, like a good little submissive dog that he was. It took a moment to get him to stand upright, but when he did I looked him dead in the eye and found a feverish fanatical devotion staring me back with an unwavering strength.
"Why do you want to follow me Dog?" I asked him, and his response was predictable enough I suppose. I mean, seriously, how fucking cliche can you get?
"You are strong, you are alpha of alphas... We wish to be your pack."
That's honestly how I got my real start here in this world, got headed down the path I took to where I am now, but again that's getting ahead of the story. That's also how the cult of Wulf began, with thirteen dogs supplicating themselves to something they saw as their new god. They were rewarded for it too, made into something to better spread the word among other packs, to bring more to my cause and unite them under a single banner... So to speak, I didn't have a banner then.
The moon rise that night saw thirteen new undead sent out into the world, their eyes glowing with the icy blue flames of their leader's power... Hey I can wax poetic about making some D-Dogs into pseudo death knights, so meh to you all.
To be dead honest I really just did all that because I'd had my fill of killing that day, and frankly didn't have it in me to lop off any more heads, rend any more flesh, or horrifically maim anything else. I just wanted to be alone, and if it took starting a death cult to do it, by thunder that's what I'd do.
Sighing quietly I sat my furry ass down on the earth and leaned back against a tree to watch the moon rise over the clearing in which the village sat, looking peaceful under the silver glow of Luna's celestial charge. As I watched I wondered if I really had any reason to be here than some arbitrary quest from a goddess who just wanted a pawn in a grand chess game with undefined rules. I mean seriously, what was the point in taking a gamer like me, robbing him of his dangly parts, slapping him with the great estrogen makeover, and giving him the form and power of his MMORPG character? Seriously... That about sums it up doesn't it? Either way, I was here now and I didn't know why.
....ten
What the hell?
Lis...en
Ok... Apparently I was going nuts and hearing voices in my head, joy of joys, just what I needed at the moment.
Listen to me...
Ok... Sexy voices I'll admit. If you had to be hearing voices hissing in the back of your skull, who better than Morgan Fucking Freeman's voice? Well... It sounded like him anyways.
Ah... There we are. Now then bearer mine, take me up and carve thine name into the face of this world. Drench me in the vitae of those who'd dare to stand too tall in your path, let me drink of their heartsblood. I am Pravus, I am the malevolent edge of immoral perversions... Yes that's a bit long winded, but it all boils down to this. Imma axe, now go find some shit to kill with me or I swear I'll start singing show tunes.
I take it back... No one would want Morgan Freeman's voice in their head making demands like that... Even if he can make anything sound pretty fucking amazing.
I reached up and took hold of my apparent chatter box of a killing tool and held it up to inspect it properly for the first time. It looked plain enough, black and very old iron on a wooden haft. Thing is, it was so stained with blood that I almost missed the little rune carved on the axe head, right where the blade met haft. It whispered its meaning to me, same as my old axe had, and I blinked in surprise at what it said. "Rune Wulf." My name, on an ancient and sentient weapon that felt so very right in my hands... Yeah... Creepy right? Either way it was mine. Had my name on it any everything! Not to mention I'm pretty damn sure it was soulbound. Don't ask how, but it was meant for me and me for it. Rune and Pravus, two halves of a whole. An axe and a hand to swing it.
Still... It made me want to throw the damn thing into the nearest lake. Last thing I wanted was a voice in my head telling me to go kill shit for fun and profit... What's that? It said nothing about profit? Well I did, so there. Murder for fun and profit as directed by Rune Wulf and the rather vocal weapon in her hands. There will be enough explosions to make Michael Bay feel like he needed more. Coming to a theatre near you sometime in the far distant future.
Bah, I've rambled enough for one sitting. I'm a busy death knight. You all can wait a bit longer for more of this story, I have an invasion to plan after all, can't put that off just to reminisce about the past with my former people now can I? Tatty-bye for now readers... I suggest you try not to clamber all over the poor fellow I've got writing all this down for me, bad enough that he wears that weird hat of his all the time. Who the fuck wears a wide brimmed hat these days?
Author's Note
Oooh foreshadowing in a big way, and a bit of a self insert on my part there at the end for the sake of humor. This chapter was originally double this length, but I decided to edit out a bunch of rambling here and there and divide it in two parts. The second half will be released after editing, so expect that some time later today or tomorrow. Depends on when I get to it. Also, I'll be sitting down and drawing Pravus later on, drawing weapons is a lot of fun for me, and frankly the idea I have in mind for this drawing is pretty sweet looking. It'll be tacked on at the end of the next chapter for those who want to see it.
For now, have a good night my fellow ponies, and do please obey the death knight and don't come a mobbing me... I'm getting tired of playing hat turtle x_x
Oh yes, before I go and forget, my thanks to JarOFhearts for helping me come up with a name for the axe. You Jar, may consider yourself worthy of an epic hat like mine. Feather and all!
Well... That just happened. I died, mauled to death by badgers badgers badgers... Mushroom, mushroom... Ok, sorry, zoned out for a second there. Anyways, yep, I kicked the bucket. To be honest I can say without a doubt now that I've also had an out of body experience, and met as aspect of death or something of the sort... No real clue what the spirit healers are, they're just kinda there... Speaking of here or there, I found myself in the graveyard, whole once more, sitting on my ass, with Pravus across my lap. Again I say... "Da fuq just happened?"
It took me a good ten minutes to browbeat my brain back into working order, and another five for me to get up and get moving like I knew I needed to. Thing was, I just felt so damn weak. Accepting a resurrection from a spirit healer in WoW came with a cost, res sickness, left you much reduced in terms of stats and combat ability... Basically it equated to dropping your character back a good number of levels for about ten minutes. Something told me this was going to last alot longer than that. Either way, it was on shaky legs and the haft of my axe that I made my way into the town proper once again.
To be honest I wasn't sure how long I'd been away from the scene of my butchery, but I knew it had been long enough to expect a few crows or something... Maybe some flies, but no. Not a single living thing stirred in the remains of Colt's Breath, and no I don't count. Undead here. I didn't really know how to feel about that in hindsight, sure I felt right in killing them all, making their corpses rise and dance to my tune as the aided in the slaughter of their former comrades and townsponies. Didn't bother me then, still didn't bother me now. That said, it bothered me that it didn't bother me really. I was a human on the inside... Wasn't I? Weren't we, as humans, supposed to feel some kind of basic empathy in the very depths of out souls? Ah... Right... Souls, had to have one for that to apply I guess. And if I had to venture a guess I'd say mine was currently claimed by the axe I was using for a makeshift crutch.
Damn straight it does Rune, now... If you want to get out of here properly I have a suggestion... Pravus' voice hissed in my head... Even if the damn thing sounded like Morgan Freeman, that reminder was creepy and uncalled for.
"...All ears." I said with a sigh, allowing for a nice little awkward pause just to feel I'd scored some small victory.
Take what life remains here... Make it your's. Drain the very essence from the ground around you and mark this place for the undead that will rise in your wake... Here, let me give you a little taste of what's still here to take... Again with the hiss, oi-vey... Wasn't worth the epic voice that went with it.
No sooner had that thought crossed my mind when I felt every nerve ending in my body light up like vegas. Pain, pleasure, raw sensation of every kind danced through me. I didn't know if I should laugh, cry, or go mad... I just knew that in the few brief moments that I was under the influence of whatever it was Pravus was doing I felt alive again, truly alive for the first time since I'd woken up in Equestria. As quickly as it had come though it was gone, and I was left feeling that emptiness in myself all the more keenly. It hurt... So damn much to know just how empty I really was. I truly knew now what it was I'd lost by being what I now was, and again I say... It HURT.
It's no wonder then that when I had my voice back I let loose a howl that I'm willing to bet they heard clear over in Canterlot, if not Gem Fido or some place further north. (Never asked to be honest... Also, I didn't know about Gem Fido at the time so... Ignore that bit, yeah? Good listeners you.) There was something about that sound that stirred the restless dead to waking, be it the loss so evident in the howl itself, or what. Doesn't matter really, what does matter is the effect it had. I felt a chilling touch at my side and looked down to see the blueish form of a pony. Its features shrouded in mist and lost to the aether, or some such bullshit, leaning against me in what I had to assume was a comforting manner. I felt that touch again, repeated on my other side and found a similar sight there. Looking about I found myself surrounded by the ghosts of those who not so long ago I'd put to the axe in a literal sense of the words.
The ghosts hovered near me, some touching me barely, others simply providing me some small manner of comfort simply by being there. It'd be more accurate to say they tried to provide comfort really, though in general they were successful. Ponies, as much as I now hated them while living, were just as I imagined them to be when dead. Compassionate to all and willing to comfort anything that needed it simply because it needed it. You know, kinda like Fluttershy really.
I stayed there, among the ghosts I'd made for a long while, slowly calming down and letting that painful emptiness drift back into the background of my mind. Sort of like how everyone's got those little aches they just stop feeling because they're constantly there, but on a larger scale. Either way, by the time I felt like moving again the moon was high in the sky and I was alone again, alone save for a rather elegant cloak. The ghosts, or whatever they were, had left me a parting gift of themselves, a gift in the form of a greatcloak, the large thick piece of ephemerial cloth as light as a breeze, but warm as the embrace of a loving friend. Much like the ghosts themselves had been it was a silvery white and seemed to shed a soft mist that obscured the details of it, but as I gave it a closer look I'd catch sight of the faces of some of those ponies I'd killed here and there. They seemed at peace, and it was a nice cloak... I shrugged it on, which took a little repositioning what with how I normally carried my axe, and sighed in pleasure at the comforting feel of the dead at my back. Whatever I was, whatever I'd do, I knew without a doubt that the dead would always embrace me with loving and open arms... Or a really nice cloak in this case.
Gah, I'm waxing philosophical, which isn't a good thing for me. Be that as it may, I fell I may as well say this. I carried my sins in the weapon I wielded, the perverse pleasure I got from taking a life and bending the unliving to my will. The blood soaked blade a testament to what I was and how much I enjoyed it. I also carried the forgiveness of those sins with me, wrapped around me and sheltering me from the elements in the form of that cloak. The dead weren't angry with me, they pitied me, forgave me, and would watch over me even as I caused their ranks to swell... I decided then and there, my mind made up, I would do just that. If the living would no longer have me, if I was to be a toy for a goddess of any sort, I would do things as only a death knight can. I would kill and kill and kill until only the dead remained to wrap me in their, surprisingly, warm (metaphorically) embrace. They were like a white rose, a rose I would paint red with the blood of those who still drew breath...
Three months later the town of Colt's Breath was discovered to have been slaughtered, corpses untouched by any animals of any sort left to rot in three months worth of rain and weather. Bloated, blackened, and rotten as could be. An aura of utter wrongness hovered over the place, almost like the banner that hung on the on one of the gibbets in the town square. A black banner adorned with a single white rose, its petals adorned with streams of red that seemed to be about to drip onto the blackness surrounding the perfect whiteness of that rose. A banner that would come to be known as the crest of the order that dedicated itself to a being known as the Runed Wolf...
Author's Note
Thus concludes what is essentially the first arc of this story. You now know Rune's goals, her reasoning (kinda vague those it be currently) behind them. and the final fate of the village she slaughtered. If anypony has questions, then comment here. If you've a question for me directly PM me. I'l explain things in detail for you as required by your question. That said, I'd prefer you only PM me with questions that'll require a long answer... Please don't flood mah inbox
A week had passed since I found a purpose for myself here in this world. A week since I'd decided to kill everything in Equestria and let them all know the peace and love of death's embrace... Or some such bull shit. Really I'd just decided I wanted to do something I knew would get Celestia or Luna to kill me. Figured it'd take something akin to a god to do it now, and honestly, who wouldn't want to be able to claim they caused so much havoc they forced a physical goddess to end them?
Now then, getting back on track here, in that week I'd been rather busy with... Things. Mostly learning more about the body that was mine now... And get your minds out of the damn gutters people. I wasn't sitting in the woods getting acquainted with Ida Palm and her five friends for a week... Just thinking about that makes my fur crawl. I'm a guy damn it, I'm tab A, not slot B. Gah, anyways, I'd figured out I was essentially a max level Death Knight in terms of my powers, but I sure as hell had no idea how to use most of them. I was basing this on the time I ran into a unicorn who freaked out and tried hitting me with some spell. Dark Simulacrum took care of that. Granted I only got to launch a stunning spell back at the guy because of that... And how the hell I did it is beyond me. I blame reflex.
Powers aside, and my lack of ability to properly use most of them, my physical abilities were about what one would expect from what's basically a werewolf enhanced through dark magic and robbed of it's soul. You know, bench press a small car a couple times before calling it quits for a month. Super human, but not superman here. Either way, I was your typical Worgen DK.
Now that I've recapped the things I found out about myself, and no I'm not telling you all how... It's embarrassing to talk about... I mean really, who'd be comfortable talking about the time they spent five days trapped under a fallen tree because of an exploding unicorn? Anyways... To current events. I was seated at a rather crude table with the leaders of my little cult in the very same warren I'd slaughtered not too long ago. It was... odd being back here again, but I couldn't help but smile when I'd caught sight of Junior the D-Dog ghoul tending to the chores the cultists had given him and looking like he'd fall apart before too long. Rather satisfying to know that the rusty red round his muzzle was all that remained of Black Jaw.
"Great one, Thank you for answering the request of your humble supplicants. We wished to offer you a few... Choice targets for your glory to touch next." Rang out the gruff, but well cultured voice, of the spokes-dog for the cult. I rather liked the fellow. He had a gentlemanly moustashe and was rather pleasant... When he wasn't doing his other job. Gods... Flencing*... Nasty business.
I turned my attention to him, suppressing a chuckle at the look on his face when I gave him my full attention. You'd think he had a woman under the table the way he was grinning at me. "Get on with it then." I said, snapping him out of whatever little fantasy was running though his sick as fuck head.
"Yes mistress. We've come across two other border settlements of the ponies that would be easy to take, but have a sizable population and enough resources to help sustain this cult until we can establish a more secure and agriculturally viable base of operations." He cleared his throat and looked over a bit of what passed for Diamond Dog writing scratched onto a thin piece of shale.
"There's Brier-Bush, two days march from here with a population in the upper three-hundreds. Roan Oak, five days march from here and in the opposite direction, larger population and a booming trade with the inland cities. They send grain and other such goods as far as Appleoosa. Finally there is Fleet Hoof. Of the tree it's the smallest, likely the most well defended, but also the most isolated. Taking it would provide little more than we have now, but would be a good test run in my humble opinion."
My mind had pretty much shut down at the mention of Roan Oak. I couldn't help but find it funny, and I knew beyond a doubt that I wanted to take that one first. Seriously, a lost town named Roan Oak... Too good to pass up for anyone who's ever lived in North Carolina.
I waited a few moments before I said anything, may as well make the damn cult wait... Not like they had anything to do as of yet anyways. "We take Roan Oak. I'll raise enough ghouls to do so, but I want you to begin digging in it's direction. We'l take it in the middle of the night in one fel swoop. I want nothing disturbed in that town. You are to tunnel into the houses of residents however you can and direct the ghouls I assign you to drag the residents back with you. No blood is to be split anywhere in that town... Under it is another matter." I could her Pravus chuckling at that and ran my hand slowly down that haft of my axe, a feral grin on my own muzzle.
My cultists took that the wrong way. It's odd watching things with fur go pale ya know, shouldn't be able to see it what with the fact that they're covered in fuzz. Apparently they decided to take the grin and the petting of my weapon as a veiled threat to their lives should they fail in any way. I wasn't going to tell them it wasn't, that'd ruin my fun.
"Yes mistress!" was the rather resounding response after everydog had managed not to piss themselves... Every one of them save Moon Moon, but he was mostly there just so everyone would have something to laugh at... Even if the one he followed also lost a finger for bringing him along.
My grin stretched a bit wider as I watched them all scurry off to do as they were told. "Hey Pravus... Hear that sound?"
What sound, my wielder? ...I hear nothing that you do not Morgan Freeman's voice dosen't even sound bad when confused,
"Someone just gave the Drums of war a light tap..."
Author's Note
*For those not aware, Flencing is a torture's art. It's the use of scalpels and fine knives to peel a body apart layer by layer while preserving life as long as possible.
Stealth check critically failed
Pravus was soaked in blood, it's haft sickeningly slick with the life's blood of my opponents, I myself was bleeding from several wounds of my own, battered and bruised from multiple blows via those deceptively hard hooves the damn ponies sported. Let me tell you, I don't know why they really bother with weapons some times, they really don't need them with maces attached to their limbs. Holy hell they can crack ribs with a good solid blow. Be that as it may, trained guards with spears and cross bows are a bitch to deal with. Dealing with them we were though, me and my cultists... Those that were still living anyways.
Needless to say at this point, our little sneak attack plan did not go well. Did not go well at all. Personally I blame Moon Moon, but the blame rests on all of us and not taking into account a visit from royalty. No, not anyone important really, just Blueblood. While that doesn't sound like much of a reason for a well planned stealth mission to be botched, I have one more word to add. "Guards!" More accurately Blueblood's the one who added that the second Moon Moon popped up from his floor a full three hours before the proper time and interrupted his... Alone time.
Now, we were down one retarded comic relief, five cultists, and quite a few undead... Or and our banner boy, lil' Tim. Elune rest his soul (sadly she won't, his shambler's currently om nomin' on some poor guard's head and his soul is now a part of my cloak.) We'd gained some ground, but mostly we were still centered around the same house we'd all been forced to come up from. Three hours for a hard won fifty feet into town. How bloody paranoid can one little princling be to bring a whole battalion?! Didn't even get to get my claws on the fucker before he ran like a bitch too. Oh well, nothing I can do about that.
I do have to admit though, nothing made me feel alive like this. In some pain, my fur matted down by blood and the taste of pony flesh on my tongue as Pravus sang a song of rending flesh and shattering bones as I swung it. I didn't even mind the crow bow bolts jutting from my back and stomach to be honest. They didn't hamper my motion all that much and it not like I could really die from blood loss to be honest. Hard to bleed when your heart's still now isn't it? That's not to say I don't bleed mind you, its just more like a slow seeping than an actual bleeding.
"Great one! They come again!" one of my cultists whimpered, shaking in his fur at the sight arranged before us. Golden armored guards, some with weapons others with metal shod hooves, matching towards our little knot of resistance in a show of military force and precision. You know, the kind you normally see from an army expecting the opposing force to surrender or be slaughtered?
Well, that's exactly what they wanted apparently. "I am captain Shaker. You have thirty seconds to surrender or we will wipe you out here and now. Any acts of your disgusting magic will be seen as a declaration of non-compliance and we will slaughter you. Decide now and we promise you a swift execution after a fixed trial." Ever hear some guy's (or girl's) voice and immediately wanna just dick-kick 'em? Yeah... Captain Spear Shaker, as I later learned his full name to be, was one of those folks for me. Never have I ever wanted to render a stallion a mare so badly as when he opened his mouth. God's what a reedy voice.
Needless to say, I wasn't having any of his shit. Thirty seconds, pfft, that's all I needed. With a grunt I buried Pravus' head in the earth and raised my hands as I took a deep (and unnecessary) breath in preparation. "For my next trick, ghouls. Definitely definitely ghouls..." I muttered to myself as I let my powers go to work. Corpses around me stirred slowly, ponies clamoring ponderously to their hooves with slack jaws and raspy moans. More than a few had necks that hug at sickening angles, heads half severed from axe blows. There were even a couple missing a limb or their lower jaw. Does it say something about me that I found the disgusted looks on more than a few guard's faces to be funny?
Either way, not too long after the initial shock of watching the dead rise before their eyes, even if they likely had seen my other undead fighting, they charged and we were all lost to glorious combat once again.
I suppose I should go over the exact size of our forces here. One hundred guards ponies were what we had to deal with, the remaining fifty had already been dealt with over the course of this skirmish. My own forces numbered a pitiable twenty living cultists, down from the fifteen I came here with, and twenty undead, five of which I'd just made. None of us, save for the undead who didn't give a fuck, were without some kind of injury. To be honest I had the worst of it considering I fought like a damn bezerker, but most of my dogs were pretty bad off. I was pissed that I'd lost my favorite dapper dog in the first hour. Still, I could always resurrect him some time later I suppose... If I could actually do that. No real clue, hadn't tried anything save for making ghouls and shamblers when it came to necromancy.
It should be no wonder to any of you who may or may not be reading this (and if you are then maybe I should actually keep on topic eh?) that their initial charge was met with less than stellar resistance. In fact there wasn't really any resistance at all. We lost five dogs right then and there, their heads popping under the charging hooves like over-ripened melons. The undead fared better, their loud moans and such serving to demoralize a little even as they were run down a bit too. Still, stab a zombie and it doesn't really care, it just means it'll have to work harder to get at you and so it will. The satisfying sounds of chewing could be heard as more than a few guards learned this the hard way.
As for me, I was left to deal with the unicorns. After all, who else could? I don't know, but I'd hope they'd at least bring back up because they tend to need it. I let out a war howl as I charged right back at them, because fuck being logical and raising a wall of ice or something. I just wanted to kill some shit. Kill some shit I did. Out break is a wonderful ability, a small gesture and suddenly one very sick unicorn who didn't think to properly protect himself from magic. He faltered, shivering and retching as I came upon them with Pravus held high. One less unicorn, more blood for my axe.
Call me stupid, because I kinda am at times, but is it not rude to go shooting magic missiles off at some one when they're busy with killing something? Either way, those damn things hurt. They hurt more when about nine different mages go casting them at you. For those wondering, a cloak made of souls, even if its nice and warm when it needs to be, is still kinda incorporeal. No protection what so ever, so I caught a lot of pain and magic right in the back. Stumbling I fell to my knees, eye sight flickering a bit as I growled defiantly. Defiance or not, I could do nothing as a hoof came crashing down on my skull and the world went black.
When I came to I was in chains, muzzled, and caged. Pravus laid near my bound hands however. Didn't matter, I couldn't do shit really because when I say chained, I mean mage chains. By mage chains, I mean held immobile by magic. I wasn't going anywhere save where they wanted me to be... Likely a chopping block. Didn't matter, I'd failed completely. My first real battle and I rolled a damn one... Critical fail.
"What the buck is that thing"
"Ugh... Smells like a corpse"
"Why's it so cold. I've never seen a Diamond Dog bitch like this before."
"Oh who cares, it killed a bunch of ponies. Can't wait to watch it swing."
Ever have one of those days? Well I was having one that's for sure. As if being captured by ponies, twice in one life time I might add, wasn't bad enough... They'd turned me into a public display. There I sat in my cage, right in the middle of a busy intersection with nothing for company but my soul born cloak and Pravus. The second of which, I feel the need to add, had nothing to say unless in involved killing. As much as I really wanted to I kind of couldn't at the moment.
I'll say this for these guys, they were smarter than the villagers of Colt's Breath by a long shot. They'd bound my hands tight enough for me to actually feel the bindings cutting into my flesh. When I moved one of my wrists enough I could feel, and see, the rope scraping over the bone. Didn't hurt but it wasn't exactly pleasant you know? No, no you don't but just imagine if you will the feeling of your bones vibrating softly as a rough substance rubs over them with just enough friction for you to feel it faintly right up to your elbows. Maddening I tell you, simply maddening.
Enough about that, I'd hate to make you squeamish before I get to the really good part after all, you know, the part where they try and kill me in a public spectacle.
Sitting there in that cage was boring, degrading, and more than a little filthy. Some enterprising stallion had seen a business opportunity and had began selling rotten produce to the populous to pelt me with. Two words dear readers...
NOT. FUN.
I suppose I should make mention of the fact that I was in the city of Neighsville. Home of twangy guitars, low down blues music, and a startling number of rotten tomatoes, cabbages, carrots, and more than a few melons. For those taking notes, the last one there hurts the most and causes the most mess. With nothing I could do about it I was in a rather piss poor shape.
While my powers, still not sure if they can be called magic, dampened as they were I was helpless here. A sitting duck, and they all knew it. For three days I'd been sitting here, and every day right around noon someone'd start up a good hour long session of throwing things at me. Is it any wonder that I was now probably the most matted sack of fur and bones anyone'd ever see? No? Didn't surprise me either. What did surprise me once again was the complete and utter xenophobia of the ponies. Seriously, how could the show have been so wrong about these guys?
Whole families would turn up just to pelt the monster in the cage with rotten plant matter, parents telling their children that this was the right thing to do to anything different than them. Oh my ears heard every word. My eyes might've been half glued shut from all the sticky shit coating my fur and all I could smell was rotten vegetables and such, but my ears worked just fine.
"See this my little colt? This is what all of them deserve. We're better than things like this mindless beast, far far better. This is actually a kindness to it, oh no not the pelting, but the hanging tomorrow son. We'll come watch it swing after a short drop and a sudden stop. If you behave I'll even make sure we get something to remember the day by, how's that sound?" I heard one mare saying to her child. If I could have been I might've felt ill over that.
As it was I slowly, and much to the shock of the ponies standing around outside my cage and prepping their next projectiles, stood up. I was forced to stoop due to the cramped quarters, but hey I'm a bit girl... Who can't believe she's using feminine pronouns now.
I took a deep breath before I cracked my eyes open and looked out over the crowd, watching with some satisfaction as more than a few shrank back in fear under the icy blue glowing hatred in my eyes. Clearing my throat softly I paused for dramatic effect...
...
Still pausing... Ok done, before I spoke.
"Little pony, how are you any better than me, something that kills because of what it is and how it's made, when you so callously tell your child there that it will be fun to watch me die?" I took a certain pleasure in watching that mare I'd singled out work her jaw like a fish out of water for a few seconds before I continued.
"How are you any better than those idiot dogs who decided to form a cult based on following me when you preach such hate and bigotry to your child? Can you claim the moral high ground knowing that you're child is going to grow up to be the same monster you cast me as in the eyes of little pups down in the warrens?" Oh I was lying through my teeth with that one. Diamond Dog puppies were dumber than a sack of rocks, but these guys obviously didn't know that if the way they hung onto every eloquently delivered word I spoke... Well hung onto is a strong term for sat there staring dumbly in shock at such a speech coming from a "monster".
"Oh yes, all of them whimper in fear every night, thoughts of pony cages and crowds of jeering monsters pelting them with all manner of detritus. So tell me woman, why are you better than me hmm? Is t because you don't raise the dead to fight with you against things that want you to die for being different? Is it because you're not undead yourself? Maybe it's because you've never taken a life or that you have a loving family somewhere just as bad as you are... Whatever the case, once I die, every soul that wove itself into my cloak is going to go about its way, though I can promise several are going to haunt you and your child for life..."
Oh they would too, I could hear their soft whispers, promising things along that line. Do yourselves a favor my readers, never anger the remorseful dead. They'll show you the depths of true sorrow even as they wrap you in their warm embrace and tell you how much better being dead is. Lovely cloak I have isn't it, knowing just what every soul that forms it is capable of.
The reaction to my little speech was priceless, watching the ponies suddenly scream and panic, running off and leaving me alone with some blessed silence for awhile. The pleasure of this however was robbed from me by a sudden shadow falling over my chuckling self... A shadow every being silently fears, the shadow of the hangman's playground... The shade under the gallows. Tomorrow I'd be up there with a noose around my neck and more regret than I care to admit for not taking more of the damn ponies with me before I snuffed it out.
Halloween special: A glimpse of the future.
The moon hung turgid and heavy over the decrepit trees of the Everfree, not that one could even tell in the depth of the forest. Little to no light permeated the thick, and sickly looking, branches of the dark and foreboding tree. This mattered little to me, and even less so to the corpses at my paws. I couldn't help but crack a small smile as I watched my latest victim bleed slowly, corpse cooling in the icy mists rolling off my body. That smile turned into something depraved as I crooked a finger at the corpse, watching in perverse pleasure as it rose slowly to its paws and turned towards me. It's eyes glazed over in death and broken jaw hanging slack. "Good manticore..." I said softly, "So much more obedient in death aren't you... Join the others."
A simple verbal command was all it took for my latest pet to join its undead fellows in the small throng of shambling, shuffling zombies behind me, a rather respectable horde if I do say so myself. As it passed I wrenched Pravus from it's neck and resumed my march for home... Or what would be my new home anyways.
I suppose I should be slapping myself with some form of newspaper and yelling "NO!" at what I had in mind, after all it was cliched and over done in fan fiction... Be that as it may, the old castle in the center of this forest would make for an excellent necropolis. Secluded, dark, and with a history of dark magic. That would please my traveling companion greatly... As annoying as I found the little bitch, Sunset Shimmer made for a decent lich. It helped of course that I had her on a tight leash in the form of her soul jar. If she tried anything I'd snuff her out without a second thought... Or just maybe I'd sever her connection with that pitiful corpse of her's and show her why she shouldn't have messed with me... Speaking of my little pet bitch-lich...
"You know... Mistress..." I could hear the distaste in her voice at that word, and it brought a cold smile to my muzzle, "The princesses aren't going to ignore this like they did last time... I mean really, slaughtering a small village is one thing, desecrating their old home is another. You've got to be an idio-" That's as far as I let her get.
A flick of a finger and her words were cut off with a resounding scream of exquisite pain. It sent a small shiver of pleasure down my spine to know she was screaming for me like that... Even if she didn't want to.
Knowing full well she could hear my every word despite the ear splitting shriek bubbling from her half rotted lips I spoke softly in her ear. "What did I tell you about disrespect little mare? Here I thought you'd have learned your lesson after I killed you the first time." Chuckling softly I let her off the hook and the sudden silence was deafening. It was pleasant knowing that it didn't last long before a soft sob of the deepest hateful sorrow rent it not soon after it had begun.
A nod of satisfaction later and a flick of the wrist sent Sunset scuttling back where she belonged, with the other pets.
"You've learned so well my wielder, so well indeed... When may I taste the blood of those who dare oppose you again? I do so crave the caresses of their final breaths.
Laughing I stroked Pravus' haft and stayed quiet. No reason to answer that question really. Not when it was far more interesting to watch the path ahead as I picked my way through the forest.
Now anyone who's ever watched My Little Pony could tell you all about the Everfree, and they'd be sort of right. Dark, foreboding, and with a life of its own. That's where they'd stop, but there was so much more here for my senses to rejoice in. The feel of death and the dark presence of old sorcery permeated the very air here. I could feel the myriad of small corpses beneath my paws as I walked, everything from woodland creatures to the bones of long dead foals. Foolish children, wandering into such a dangerous place, eh? Oh well, I'd be back for them later most likely. Small skeletons made for disturbing guards in a way that your average zombie just couldn't match. Besides, their little souls deserved the peaceful embrace of my cloak as much as any other soul.
Aside from the feel of the place there was the flora itself. The trees, much like the show had... well, shown, were adorned with horrid faces. It seems it hadn't just been Nightmare's magic warping the place in effort to scare off Twilight and company. It was disturbing the way the eyes on those faces seemed to follow me as I moved past them and more than once I saw a few branches bend in effort to reach for me. It was amusing watching them recoil when they got too close to my icy body. A few of my shamblers were not so lucky. Every now and again one of the trees would catch one, pull it close, and devour it whole. I only knew because I felt each spark, the little core of necromantic magic, keeping them animated was snuffed out and consumed by a malevolent force. One I found myself wanting to harness for my own use.
It took another few hours before my destination came into sight, and it looked even better than I had thought it would.
"Home sweet home..." I muttered to myself as I continued on, plans rolling though my head and a feral grin on my face for all to see... Soon this place would be grand once more, but for an entirely different reason. It was from here I would rebuild my cult, raise my army, and from here I would eventually launch my campaign to wipe life from the world. Kill them all and let the peace of death settle over the land of Equestria... But first I had a lot of work to do here... The dead don't raise themselves after all.
Author's Note
This little preview is set a full year down the road for Rune. A lot can happen in a year and a geed deal was left unsaid in this little sneak peek at my future plans. A few things I didn't mention here were her meeting Luna face to face, acquiring a new set of armor, and of course how Sunset came back to Equestria... and just how she came to serve our antihero.
Regular updates will resume before to long. In the meantime a happy (if a day early at the time this is going up) All Hallows Eve. For my Druidic brothers and sisters, I hope your Samhain finds you well.
My Hangmare, the Comedian
You know, before everything that happened I don't think I ever stopped to appreciate the sheer beauty of the gallows. Now, as morbid as that sounds, there is a beauty to those wooden beams and platforms. They have the grace and loveliness only granted by something built for a specific function and perfectly suited to fill that function. They have the same allure to them that a well made sword has, no adornments, no frills, nothing but unfeeling and precision engineered functionality.
This particular set of gallows was a fine example of such things. The actual crossbeam was supported on either side by thick and sturdy struts. Those in turn rested upon a platform raised a god ten feet off the flagstone courtyard in which the whole kit and caboodle sat. The whole structure was re-enforced here and there with iron, ensuring that it would stand the test of time and the weight of the condemned for as long as it should stand to bring about the final sleep.
I suppose the shocking thing about this should be that ponies even had such things, but I was far beyond being shocked by such things in all honesty. My time here had gone and shown me that despite what I had been shown by an overly idealized television show this world had no place in it for anything like myself. No place, that was, beyond a dark being to be feared and hated... And a hole six feet deep soon to be filled.
As it was, that was starting to sound like it would be nice in all honesty. They'd gone and moved my cage to sit before this example of perfected capitol punishment, leaving me with nothing to do but sit and wait for the day I'd get a tight new neck tie and learn to dance the hangman's jig. I hated to admit it, but I'd pretty much given into despair at this point. I couldn't escape. Couldn't move too much. Couldn't do a damn thing to ease the discomfort I felt in any sense of the words. Mental, physical, emotional... It all piled up and not even those dear souls who clung tightly to my back could comfort me any longer.
I was honestly surprised that they had remained with me, those ghosts who'd been the only source of warmth I'd had since Colt's Breath showed its true colors to me. Ironic considering just who's souls these were, eh? Still, even with my limited range of motion I could still stroke the half ethereal substance of my cloak. Could comfort those souls even if they could not return the favor for me at the moment. Before anyone thinks to ask, not that you would considering that you likely shouldn't be reading this, they were quite saddened by my sadness. I have no clue why that would be, but it was. Best not to question such things, just makes that bastard Murphy cream his shorts and do something to fuck up your day.
Speaking of days, as the sun came into view above the rooftops I knew the day had dawned. My final day, less than two hours remained for me. Even though it was still fairly early in the morning the courtyard had already began to fill. Ponies packing in like sardines to see the monster swing. Young, old, didn't matter. They'd come to see something bestial die, see their world become all the safer. Sickening... Where was the love and tolerance when I'd needed it?
Ten minutes before my appointed time I was let out of my cage for the first time since I'd placed in there... And nearly burst into tears as the spirits left me, a final ghostly caress in parting was all I got before they took Pravus and vanished like mist before the dawn... Even the blasted axe was leaving me to my fate it seemed. I stood there, completely bare before my tormentors, and soon to be executioners, and for the first time since I awoke on Equis... I felt completely powerless.
I could feel the shackles around my wrists and ankles cutting tightly into my skin. Could feel the runic power restrained behind the wards placed on my bonds. Those mattered little however before the other things I felt. Soul crushing despair, deep seated fear, the finality of every shuffling step as I was herded up onto the platform. My head hung low, glowing icy blue eyes half closed and face set in what to the ponies must have been a horrid expression. To me, it was simply me trying to keep from crying.
"Citizens!" rang out the voice of the hangmare. "Today you all bear witness to justice. For the crimes of murder, with counts numbering far too high to recount in total in our allotted time. Necromancy, fifteen counts. Black magics, one hundred reported counts. Attempted regicide, one count. Formation of a necromantic cult, one count. And heinous misconduct unbecoming a lesser species, five counts, the courts have sentenced this being to hang by the neck until dead. Here, under the light of Celestia's charge, we carry out this sentence."
With that the noose was placed around my neck and tightened. I couldn't hold it back any longer, I finally broke. I stood there, staring out at the assembled ponies as icy tears rolled down my face, forming a frosted crust in their wake as the moisture froze.
"Has the accused any final words?" the hangmare asked. As I opened my mouth to respond she pulled the lever and the world seemed to slow down as I fell. "I guess not." I heard her add.
The drop, while stomach lurching, was short and the ending abrupt. The rope jerked taunt and I felt, and heard, my neck snap cleanly. A few twitches and shudders ran though my body as half formed signals were cut off abruptly with the severing of my spinal cord. I watched the ponies with slowly blurring vision, tears still streaming from my eyes, as I swung slowly. I couldn't move anything but my jaws and eyes, but that seemed unimportant as I struggled to draw some measure of breath. It was a reflexive action, and a pointless one. I didn't need air, so really this should have been bothering me... But it did. I could feel myself slipping away, vision going dark. Before everything faded away, I mouthed a single word.
"...Why?"
They left the body there for a few days, a warning to other non-ponies in the area as to what would happen should they get uppity. Three days in total they allowed that beast to sway in the wind. Three days before, in the night, they were awoken by a baleful howling as if the dead themselves had come marching upon them. The ponies cowered in their homes, afraid to leave and face whatever had made that horrid sound until the sun shone high above them all. The found their city untouched save for two things. The gallows courtyard had been torn asunder. The cobblestones ripped up and thrown about like confetti at a Pinkie Pie party and the gallows themselves laying broken and splintered. The only other thing that gave them pause was the missing corpse of the monster they'd strung high... They instead found the mutilated corpse of Gentle Swaying, the hang mare. She'd been hacked to pieces, nearly unrecognizable. Her head however had been left in tact, propped up upon the remains of the gallows. Carved into her forehead in careful script were the words... "Any final words?"
In the depths of the small village of Colt's Breath, home of naught but death, the body of Rune was laid upon the platform under which she'd killed the first pony whom she'd thought to call friend. The only pony she'd thought to call friend. For hours nothing stirred in the dead village, the grave silence unbroken. Without preamble or warning a sickening crack broke that silence and a pair of icy eyes opened slowly.
Have you ever had a night where, once your eyes are closed and all is quiet, when your heart slows and mind begins to slip the fetters of the waking world to frolic amidst the great Aether of the cosmos, all you find instead is blackness? No, not a great terrible yawning Dark, capital D, Dark that threatens to devour you. Certainly no smothering shadowy expanse poised to strangle you with fear of the unknown and a deprivation of that most wondrous sense that is sight within its cold clutches... But a peaceful quiet darkness.
The sort, I would venture, that is what one should always hope to find. There are no monsters there, no great things of teeth and claws poised out of sight, waiting for the lost and hopeless to stagger into their tender embrace. Not the dangerous sort of shadows that hide tangled roots to trip you on the way... No no, the calm quiet peace of a dark room and a comfortable bed. The sort of dark that whispers softly to that most primal part of your mind "You can rest here... It is safe... Nothing can find you here... Nothing hurt you in my embrace..." That is the sort of darkness I mean, dear readers who certainly shouldn't exist. (I swear I'll find whoever's reading this journal, you know who you are, and deliver a vicious twatting to your nose for reading other people's private thoughts!)
It is that sort of dark, I think, that is the most frightening... You don't wish to leave it once you're there. I know I certainly didn't...
I awoke with a soft gasp and gentle start, body giving a faint jerk as awareness came back to me with a jarring suddenness, ripping me away from that deep and quiet dark and it's insidious peace. I... I am not ashamed to admit I cried then, when the shock of waking had left me and I realized two things. One, that I was in fact still kicking, despite knowing I had died there on the gallows. And two, that death was a true peace, one denied to me due to my nature as a death knight... As the undead. I might court that peaceful black again, but it would never truly hold me. Not for long... Not as closely tied to the aspect of Frost as I was. So, no... It doesn't shame me to admit that I bawled my glowing blue little eyes out for a good solid hour, relief, confusion, and grief at what I'd lost hammering me down into broken sobbing. By the time I finally stopped, the moon had risen and its gentle glow coaxed me from my bed.
Now... I say bed, but... As I took stock, looking around and trying to get my bearings I realize that to be a very generous thing to call bare stone. Ah, Colt's Breath... How I didn't miss you. How I didn't miss you at all. I sighed deeply when I realized where I was, pulling my cloak a little tighter around me and wondering how I'd gotten here. Last I remembered, I'd been a lovely decoration in a town square... Gods, I couldn't even remember where it was exactly. It all seemed so foggy and distant, almost unimportant balanced against the fact that I had indeed survived... Somehow... If one could call dying and living once more surviving in any real truth.
I gazed about, taking it all in, the aftermath of my old handiwork, a town gone to ruins because of me. The half rotted platform in the center of the square, the still slightly rust colored patch of dirt and rock where I'd... I shook my head, hard, ears and mane flopping about with the violence of that motion. Slapping my palms to my cheeks to give myself a little jolt in effort to refocus, I heaved a heavy echoing sigh. Ahh, reverb... I needed to be away from here, away from thinking on what I'd done, even if it had seemed justified at the time... Sort of. And so, with nothing better to do and nowhere to go but elsewhere, I collected my axe from where it lay, picked a direction, and began to walk... I made it maybe twenty feet before I had to stop and stare down at my axe in confusion at to how it got there... I... Was pretty sure it had been taken from me, right? I certainly didn't have it on the gallows... And was that blood on the he-... No. Not thinking about it. NOT thinking about it!
Scurrying on as quick as my paws would take me, I tromped off, my cloak trailing behind me and my axe dripping a staggered line of fresh red that had no business being fresh still...
Author's Note
It's short, oh dear gods below is it short... But when insomnia strikes hard and nothing seems to help, it's time to be productive I suppose... I'm not going to make any promises, and certainly not say I'll do more any time soon... But... It is high time I stopped hiding behind every excuse I can conjure for myself, sit down, and start writing again.
My very very long hiatus was, in essence, a result of my own feelings of inadequacy about my work, depression, though that sounds like an excuse, and large changes to my life. In the last four years, I have moved about twice as many times as years, changing states no fewer than five times. I've bounced between NC, VA, and now most recently MD. I have struggled in finding a job, struggled in finding any worth in that job when found, and slipped into that curious state of being that is having a nine to five. I still don't feel... Satisfied? Comfortable? Happy? Any word I attempt to come up with doesn't seem to fit quite properly. All the same... It is time for a change. It is time for ME to change and to stop letting things fester in the back of my mind, taunting me as they do. So... I hope you'll excuse the tiny chapter and lengthy rant of an author's note that amounts to little more than self flagellation and venting... I can do better. I will do better, even if I have to force myself to do so. Thank you, all of you, for reading this and I hope sincerely to give you all something worthy of your time and effort in reading in the future.
-With hope
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A lesson learned by the skin of something else's teeth.
Ahem, I do believe I'm free to continue telling this tale now, after all not every day you get something such as myself willing to share about the biggest events in their unlife, now is it? In any case I suggest you all hold onto your various posteriors because I'm not really stopping or cleaning up the train wreck that's coming. If you want that done call FEMA, because it's sure as hell not my problem any more... Even though that scar still itches like a mother-bucker.
Ever sit and have a conversation with an inanimate object? I've done it plenty of times really, mostly because I was bored and maybe slightly insane before all this stuph (yes stuph as in stuff said stupidly) happened and what not. To be honest I don't really care any longer, I just enjoy the thought every now and again that I might be locked up in a rubber room gurgling blissfully about how my not so vorpal axe goes snicker-snack through the spines of ponies... I'm getting off track again it seems... Talking to things that don't talk back, if you've done it then you likely know theres a certain comfort to be found in the silence that greets your words. A non judgemental silence that just sort of takes what you have to say, pats you on the head, and goes about being silent. When that inanimate object just so happens to be a sentient and bloodthirsty ancient axe by the name of Pravus that's somehow been soulbound to you... Well theres not so much silence involved in the conversations with that particular object, at least for you... Or me in this case... COnfused yet? Me too... moving on!
Hey, that squirrel there gave you a funny look... Go kill it dead!
"Uhh... Wait a second how can you see anything, you're an axe, that kind of implies not having eyes ya know? Oh, and another thing... It's a squirrel, they look at everything that isn't a nut like it's funny." That's right, I was arguing with an axe that was speaking in my head... Or my lack of a soul... or something... Either way I heard it, so hush you.
Aww come on, find enough of em and you can make a new pair of underwear or something... Can't tell me there isn't one hell of a draft on your nethers oh weilder mine.
"Umm, yes actually I can. Fur's good for that at least, besides not like I feel the cold anyways considering I'm one frosty bitch in a very literal sense of the words... Now hush up, even if you do sound like Morgan Freeman you're getting on my nerves... I'll feed ya the next pony we come across or something." At the time I was just hoping that the universe didn't decide to say "fuck you Rune" and have Fluttershy land right in front of me somehow... It didn't so I was happy about that. I wouldn't hurt HER... Rainbow maybe, depends on how annoying she could be in person really.
Gah, side tracked, you missed the really awesome thing I did there, no I'm not going back and telling it again, I do need to keep this story moving along ya know. Not like I've got all... Well not like YOU'VE got all eternity for it.
After shutting Pravus up with the promise of some fresh sanguine paint for it's blade later I got back to what I was doing. Walking back to Colt's Breath. To be honest I kind of didn't want to. I just wanted to let the town rot and fester like some kind of really big town shaped moldy spot, but after a bit of thought I came to realise something... I was in Equestria, as a Death Knight. I'd been told to spread the world of Elune to the masses in any way I saw fit. Well ya know what, the way I see it, she'd fucked up a bit. Should sent a druid for that, I was gonna do what my kind did best... Spread the scourge instead and laugh my head off while doing it.
Thing is, kinda can't really do much like that without some kind of army and a decent amount of plagued ground. Oh well, I had the makings of an army waiting back in the village I'd slaughtered, and I could easily just start killing the land off and letting the taint of undeath seep into it. Now let me get one thing straight with you all here, I am not evil per say. I've never gone out of my way to cause undue suffering, save for that first little bit of butchering I did in Colt's Breath, at least I don't think I caused any that was undue in this magical land of peace, love, and immahugthefuckoutayoubecauseIcan-ness... Yes that's a word now. Besides, as previously stated, I was a death knight now... I'm simply following my nature, nothing evil about that at all really. I was always kind of a go with the flow sort of guy anyways, so no reason not to be a go with the flow undead she-wolf with a talking axe now is there?
Funny how rambling my thoughts get when I walk through the woods really, because that's almost verbatim what went through my head on the way back to down. What went though it that is right up until I tripped over something rather ornery... Well a lot of somethings ornery. Somethings ornery with rather large teeth and stripes... Fuck badgers man, just fuck em, especially when they're the size of your average dog and apparently intelligent enough to co-operate in taking down the worgen who accidently tripped over one of em... Or maybe they were just all hungry, fuck if I know.
Tell ya what I do know though, and that you don't step on a badger, ever... Little fuckers are mean, and when theres a lot of em, and trust me when it comes to badgers five is a lot, there not much anyone can do... Including me and I went and slaughtered almost a whole den's worth of diamond dogs. Let me cut right to the case and just say this... Ow.
After I tripped over that one badger and fell flat on my tits (not pleasant by the way) I found myself muzzle to muzzle with another one that wasted very little time in seeing what my face tasted like. Must be pretty damn good because he sure as hell wasn't letting go when he bit into me. His buddies decided to try out the rest of me and before I know it I was covered in biting, clawing, growling balls of black and white fur, that as I said, were the size of dogs. Again I want to reiterate something. Ow!
I can honestly say I've had very few experiences come close to that in terms of both humiliation and pain, but those aren't important right now. What is important is the fact that I was shrieking and thrashing about like a toddler in Toys R Us being told no by their mom. Let me tell ya, doing that while things have their teeth and claws in you will fuck you up fast, but at the very least it chased the badgers off... Little fuckers decided I was too unnatural to eat I guess... Or I actually taste kind of bad. Wouldn't know honestly. Either way, when they did leave they took pieces with them and left me in a bleeding heap.
From top to bottom I shall list what I was missing, so pay attention. Right side of my face right down to the bone, most of the flesh from my left shoulder and arm right down to the elbow, about half my right hand (some how not the fingers or bones though, thank goodness for that) about half my belly (I know how a sammich feels when ya bite into it now) and various pieces and parts from my legs. All of it just meat and tendon though, yay for being "in tact". Thing is though, my ass was going nowhere fast. Not to mention I felt like one gigantic ball of "Oh god make the pain stop!" and I hadn't really stopped screaming yet. Suffice it to say that there is no reason for me to go over just how badly I was fucked up any more, I think the picture s painted well enough...
It was after an hour of this that I realised something... I couldn't feel jack shit any more and I'd yelled myself into loosing my voice completely, couldn't even squeak really. Embarrassing that, to tell the truth, at least I find it so. To be honest my initial reaction to finding that I both, A: couldn't feel any pain any more, and B: couldn't feel ANYTHING any more, was to promptly pass out a little... You know, just kinda shut off and not really be alive at all in the normal sense of the word. Never really all that fun, but I knew a guy who could do it on command so it made for a decent party trick if ya wanted an excuse to leave... I know at that moment I sure as hell wanted an excuse to leave the party called life. I think I kinda did for awhile to be dead honest with you all, because next time I work up I woke up as a bleeding ghostly apparition in the grave yard back in Colt's Breath with a rather large buxom woman standing over me dressed in nothing but ribbons... Sexy really, but I digress.
"Everybody gets one." is all she had to say to me before she snapped her fingers and I found myself sitting flat on my ass in that same graveyard with Pravus across my lap... If I'm not mistake I think i just got respawned... What kinda fucked up place is Equestria if the Spirit Healers from WoW are both here and are quoting TF2?
Author's Note
Sorry for the delay on this. School took precedence to my editing, not to mention a corrupted file made me re-write it -_-" Damn it microsoft... Why are you so mean to me?
