With his head bowed, and his mind empty, the man paid tribute to soldiers that he had long forgotten. His mind was in tatters, befitting his role, and his total sum of memory encompassed a few moments in time, a few lessons on combat, a few battles fought, and a mithril core of morals underlying it all. The one thing that remained untarnished through his captivity with Arthas Menethil, the Lich King... his predecessor.
He remembered little, all told.
Training, calling on a power that encompassed all the good in the world, a great light that lit up the very soul.
A tall, regal man, one of his best friends, his posture emanating his indomitable force of will.
Striking his blade through a thick, green chest, corded with gargantuan muscle.
A black-haired beauty, that evoked simultaneous feelings of admiration and hatred in him.
Carving his way through rotting flesh, the stench of death surrounding him as brittle bones snapped and shattered beneath his sword.
Betrayal - the feeling cut deep inside of him, as if the cause of every misery he experienced.
And finally...
Pain.
Agony so intense as to white out all else, overwhelming his mind to the point of being able to comprehend nothing else.
He remembered vaguely demanding something from a man that he was once familiar with, but now he knew little, and his soul was oh so weary. He felt tired of conflict, of pain, of battle, even if he could not remember them. On the edges of his mind he could feel similar echoes, and he stretched out his psyche.
With the exertion of his will he could feel millions of vessels and souls, puppets truthfully, strings to dance to his will. They clamoured at his mind, countless voices whispering and yelling, talking and shouting, raging and campling accepting their fates. Some hated him, knowing nothing except an undying fury directed solely towards him. Some loved him, worshipping him with a fervent fanaticism.
There was much he could have done. He could have accepted his role as their master, taking full control and becoming the Lich King in more than simply title. He could have done something entirely different and laid them to a true rest, as some part of him adamantly demanded.
He pushed it all aside.
He would always have a connection to them, this he knew, but he did not want to deal with it. He did not want to have to bear the burden of commanding them on every single movement, so he ignored them, to an extent. He focused his mind, set certain limitations into place, things such as attack only when attacked or trespassed upon, things that that little voice above all the others demanded, but other than that he ignored them. They could do mostly as they wished - those that still had minds. The others would simply wander around or stand where they were, doing nothing.
The snow melted upon contact with him, often even before that, and the heat that made up the entirety of his being had long since dominated the cold that once lived in his helm. An exertion of will flared up the heat inside of him, and the flames that lurked underneath his skin shone brightly, exposing the hard, black ground around him to the sky for possibly the first time in decades.
He looked down at his hands. His skin was black, not the natural colour that could come to humans, but the colour of burnt metal or flesh. In between that black, however, were... cracks in his skin, glowing red with the heat that he felt within him. He knew that if he focused now that the heat would burst out and melt his surroundings, that he would be wreathed in flame, and he wondered what exactly he was. He was not human, as he knew he once was, but something else. Something more, as if the light of his soul had been augmented by embers, and dimmed by darkness, but never left.
He stood slowly, his mind gaining purpose. For once he would be selfish. Truthfully he did not even know what he would be selfish of, but if not in life, then in undeath, 'For that is what I am now, is it not?' He mused absently to himself. 'Undead.' Some flicker of memory arose from the depths of his undermind at that term, something that he had fought against, something that he had hated with every fibre of his being. A sardonic chuckle rose from his chest, amused at his situation - amused that he could not truly remember what it was that he was amused about. A brief expulsion of breath before he followed the purpose in his mind.
He felt as if he had never travelled in his life, merely travelling to destinations for a purpose and leaving when that purpose what complete. He could not remember what those reasons were, or why he needed to do them, or even the destinations that he visited, 'But then,' he supposed, 'That will just make my journey sweeter, will it not?'
~~~
He trudged forwards, every step a freedom that he relished. The crunch of snow beneath his feet was something both old and new, and he reigned in his heat to be able to feel it. He stopped, raised his face toward the sky and breathed in, then reached up to his head and pulled off his helm. It was something important, he knew. It was the center of what he was, although he did not quite know what that was, but it was just a symbol. An icon, a crown, and a king was no less a king when he took his crown of to rest his head.
He could still feel the souls of the damned attached to him, although he hoped that they were less damned now that they were given free will. He wondered, briefly, what the impact of his decision would be, giving the souls relative autonomy after so long under tyranny, but he decided that it did not matter. They would still be forced to obey him should he call, this he knew, but he did not wish to deal with them for the present.
He began his walk once more, his helm held in one hand as he moved forward, his gaze sweeping the wide plain of snow before him, the white mountains on his sides gradually spreading outwards to reveal a pristine pale landscape as far as his eyes could see. In the distance, far above him, he could see the silhouette of a dragon in the sky, but the snow, light as it was, hindered him from seeing further. To his left he could just barely see the outline of a ramshackle tower-like structure set along the mountains, while further off to his right he could see a more developed set of structures.
For a brief moment he considered approaching them, but decided not to. Even though the development to the right sparked some familiarity in him, he also felt apprehension, as if his undermind recognized that he would not be received favourably. No matter, though. He would simply continue the way he was.
He walked for a long time, long enough for the snow to ease up and strengthen again, before easing up once more becoming nearly clear. As he traversed the stark white landscape, gradually land began to change from the flat, barren surface of the Citadel lands to a more jagged scenery, rife with sharp outcroppings of rock. He rested his hand for a moment upon the pale bone of a great skeleton impaled on one of those rocks, and wondered to himself what caused the creature's death. As he wandered further, he came across more and more of these skeletons, relics of an era long passed, until he was in a veritable graveyard of the bones of creatures far, far larger than he. For a second he entertained the idea of one of these beasts attacking him, and felt a deep certainty of his ability to defeat them.
Eventually he stumbled upon something different. Great cracks in the land, forcing him to make large detours around them for fear of falling down, spread before him. As he passed them he wondered what could have caused it - a massive upheaval of the earth itself? Something more... violent and unnatural? He could barely imagine.
He turned around where he was standing, wanting to take in all that he could see, when something caught his eye.
A glow of red through the haze of the snow in the distance, enticing him with its apparent heat and difference from the rest of the landscape. It's uniqueness drew his attention, but he decided that he would visit it later. He was already heading in one direction, and he had just moved around those cracks in the earth, so he didn't want to walk all the way around again. The snow was still nice and delicate on his skin, and he wanted to enjoy it for a while longer.
He walked further, the jagged landscape beginning to gain details: a large drop in the distance, and beyond it a gigantic shadow rising to the heavens, barely visible through the nearly clear snow. He set his first destination to be the large drop. He wondered what it was.
Small peaks erupted from the covering of snow every now and then as he approached what was quickly becoming evident as a crater. The closer he got to it, the more evident it became that something truly massive impacted the earth here, and the bones that it had left behind gave a glimpse as to its size. Each bone was wider than five times his height, and he tilted his head in bewilderment. It must have been titanic in life, something that made the earth tremble with each step and the winds bellow when it moved.
'It must have been amazing to witness. Possibly terrifying, but amazing.'
While he stood there pondering, he slowly became aware of sounds on the wind. Steady "thumps" of wind being beaten by wings and soon enough, a shape appeared before him, circling once, then twice, each time coming closer and losing speed, before landing in front of him.
Its red scales sparked some shard of memory in him, drawing his focus on a tangent before he brought it back to the creature in front of him.
It was large, not even a tiny portion of the scale of the skeleton in the crater, but large. Twice, maybe three times his height and quite a few times longer, its ruby hide glittered in the light surrounding him. Its tail was covered in bony growths at the end, and horns grew from its head. Its eyes glowed red as it regarded him and he regarded it in turn, drinking in the primal beauty of such a creature. Finally, it spoke.
"Who are you, that feels so like our own, yet coloured by the taste of undeath? Who are you, that carries the helm of the Lich King, the mark of the Jailor of the Damned, yet radiates life to my senses?"
He answered truthfully.
"I do not know."
