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He watched the manticore taking flight, higher, surpassing the setting sun. The handler, a sad looking goblin with thinning white hair, had taken special care in depositing the corpse, holding it tight to the saddle. The Death Knight had seen a pale, greenish hand slipping out of the blankets.
The manticore turned north in the evening sky of Orgrimmar.
Winterspring, Junre thought.
He moved a little closer to the blanket. Even though the evening was giving away to the twilight, the air was still hot and humid. He touched the sheet, softly, not pressing enough to feel what it covered, as if he was afraid. The cold spell, preserving what was beneath from the weather, was taking its toll, hard on him, weakening him more and more. He didn't care.
He looked around and felt reflected in millions other faces. All weary, tired and mourning their own dead below makeshift stands, over the Orgrimmar gates.
He shifted and felt the pain in his back where he was wounded, his own armour at fault. He wasn't sure if he was bleeding again, or maybe it was the humidity.
What did it matter, though? He was dead.
And he felt like that day, years before at the gates of Silvermoon, again. Maybe worse because now he had a mind of his own and remembered…
Five days earlier
Crack.
The screams, his body in his arms; he must protect him.
Crack.
Bleeding, the whip still slashing his back, and his own blood mingled with Nyquist's all over the stone floor.
Crack.
But Nyquist's voice was gone and his body was cold and he didn't move.
Crack.
A tight grip, just as cold, and he knew, in his heart, he knew what he should do because now, his anchor gone, he didn't have anything else to lose.
So he let go.
And it felt liberating, it felt like he was on Icecrown for the first time, but now no voice guided his actions, no Arthas ordering him to unleash.
No Nyquist stopping him, either.
I'm free, he thought. And it was dark.
He deposited Nyquist's body softly on the floor, and his own skin was now as cold as the paladin's. The chaos around him, the whip, the shaman… He saw it as if a thin veil was between him and the world and, on the other side, everything moved in a different time.
Crack.
His source of power appeared before him in a pure display of will, clear, because he just wanted it so, the shackles of power undone. He was still kneeling on the stone and with a swift movement he pulled his arms apart and the chains fell apart, broken.
I'm free.
He turned around fast before the next crack of the whip fell over him and he saw the dark shaman looking at him from above and stopping, caught mid-movement, her eyes wide with surprise that soon turned into fear when she saw the broken chain.
She hesitated for a mere second. It was enough. Time was different now. He had all the time in the world.
I'm free.
He raised his arm and felt the power extend over his fingers like a cold, invisible hand, clutching her neck. Her whip fell to the floor as her hands sprang up but there was nothing to grasp there. She gasped when her feet left the floor and tried to scream but she didn't have a voice anymore, choking, held by the cold grip. And he raised along her, both moving in a macabre dance.
He felt more than saw the Kor’kron soldiers approaching, yelling for him, charging with their axes ready to strike him down.
They thought they stood a chance?
I'm free.
A mere thought and the floor around him flashed with dark blood runes. The orcs, caught on them, screamed as their faces, their entire bodies, withered and fell to the floor, their skin charred.
He approached the dark shaman, the decomposing and still moving bodies at his feet like a macabre corridor.
She was still kicking below her long fur tunic, her hands clutching at nothing in her neck. His gaze still locked with her, he let her fear feed him.
He put a cold hand on her exposed belly and felt her squirm, her skin hot and clammy. His fingers then found their way into her abdomen, digging like she was nothing more than warm, wet sand. He felt her screams in his fingers as he felt her blood, seeping down over the fur tunic. His hands grasped her bowels and pulled out, pulled out again until there was nothing inside and his own arms were entirely red.
Her squirms turned into death throes, slowly.
He saw her life leaving her eyes and savored it, like he did long ago. And it felt like it lasted an eternity, but time was different now.
I'm free.
He let go, closed his eyes and threw his head back, screaming in rage; he heard other voices echoing his own.
And then the gates opened and chaos erupted all around and he let it wash over him because nothing mattered anymore.
He was free.
A voice interrupted his thoughts.
"Get out of that armour,” Menes said, his tone tired but stern.
The priest looked miserable even in the dim light. His dark tunic was dirty with dust and blood—other’s, most likely—his hair unkempt. His normally stubbled looks now seemed disheveled. He sat tiredly on a broken crate and deposited his staff beside him. Junre stood up with his sword, still on vigil, and eyed him. He kept silent.
Menes sighed and continued, “I should have opposed it when Delyanis gave it to you. It’s been two days and you need to—”
“I don’t,” Junre cut him.
“And I don’t care what you think,” Menes growled, his voice and temper rising. Junre hadn’t looked at him but he could feel the priest’s furious stare on him. “Nyquist wouldn’t have wanted this nonsense. So park your fucking honor for a while and rest for fuck’s sake.”
Junre thinned his lips and gripped the hilt harder; he felt his rage rise too.
Free.
But the word tasted bitter on his mind this time. He looked at his hands and, for a moment, they were all red, bathed in the dark shaman’s blood. It dripped on the stone floor—
Nyquist wouldn’t have wanted…
Menes must have noticed his inner turmoil because he spoke again and his tone had lost its wrath.
“Look… I’m sorry. I’m tired and you…” He passed a hand over his own hair, to keep his bangs from getting into his eyes, and motioned over to the sheet. “It’s… I am the oldest brother, I should have… I still can’t believe he’s there… that he is…” The priest trailed off and his voice hitched. The sentence hung out into the air.
Junre closed his eyes and sighed. His rage was gone, replaced by a cold and hollow feeling that was somehow way worse.
He laid off his polearm on the floor near the shroud carefully and approached Menes. He sat down on the crate near him.
“You are right,” he said, lying his elbows over his knees and clasping his hands. The movement made the armour and chainmail scratch his back again. He winced unwillingly and Menes turned to face him.
“Of course I am,” he said, quieter, and his tone didn’t quite mask the sorrow beneath. “Now get out of that fucking armour and let me check your back.”
Three days earlier
When he had woken up, the siege was over.
At first it felt like he had a hangover. As if he could remember what it was like, from older, way older times. He felt the air—fresh air—on his face. He slowly opened his eyes and saw the evening sun glittering over the wall, the outskirts of Orgrimmar.
Orgrimmar.
The surface.
His eyes hurt as they tried to acclimate to the suddenly bright light, after weeks with just torches. He was lying face down in a makeshift bed and he could hear the groans around and knew he was in some sort of infirmary—
“Thank the Sunwell, you’re awake,” a familiar voice interrupted his already fragmented thoughts.
A man with dark raven hair kneeled beside him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Nyq…”, he tried to speak and his own voice sounded hoarse in his ears. He blinked, eyes still weary, and tried to focus.
Menes stared back at him, a sad expression like he never—
No no no no—
He looked at his own hands then and saw the blood, still there, poorly cleaned, and the cold realization washed over him.
He was drowning.
He growled, tried to sit up on the bed, throwing away Menes' hand, still on his shoulder. A thousand needles like they were made of fire exploded in his back and he swayed, suddenly silenced.
“No!” Menes cried. He had managed to get up and hold his shoulders again, tried to make him lie down, but Junre just gritted his teeth through the pain and swapped his hand off.
“Where... is he… ?!” he managed to say.
“You need to lay down! We couldn’t heal those…! ” He didn’t care what Menes was saying and got up. His vision blurred, his back burnt and the pain was almost unbearable, but he managed to take a wobbly step towards—
“He is dead and you know it!”
Junre stopped suddenly, looking ahead without really seeing. Of course he knew it but Menes' voice, all his rage and sorrow channeled into that one statement, felt like a mace. He hesitated for a moment.
“Please…” He heard the tears in Menes’ voice.
No, no… but you don’t understand… He had to—
Strong, cold arms, took him from behind and forced him to sit on the bed again. He growled again and tried to get rid of the hold but the pain in his back was too much this time.
Menes appeared up in front of him again, his breath hitched and irregular, looking at him with eyes like a wild deer.
But I can’t leave him alone, down, cold, below...
Y’shaarj...
“Bring him… out! He can’t stay there!” Junre cried to him and he found new strength in his vision, but the arms didn’t concede. He then managed to get a glimpse on his captor and saw Delyanis.
He felt the despair, stronger. He couldn't outdo her.
Delyanis tightened her grip on him. She still hadn’t muttered a single word and that somehow made everything worse; he felt her pity like a physical weight, almost as bad as the back pain.
No! His own voice screamed and rebelled in his head. Don’t leave him below with the heart…
“He is out, we… brought him back,” Menes said then, kneeling before him. He was trying to appear soothing but his voice was cracking. “He is not alone, Light guards him now…”
His words still felt distant but they made him stop.
Light didn’t have power below. There was only darkness. Void, he thought bitterly, his strength giving up.
With short and firm movements, Delyanis made him lie down on his side, and he allowed her, defeated. He felt numb. The pain in his back lessened a bit then but it still pulsed, burning him. She sat beside him and laid his head on her lap.
She put a hand over his eyes, like trying to calm an animal, her hold still firm on him.
“Leave us,” he heard her say in a soft, authoritarian voice, but it sounded as if it was too far, muted by the ringing on his ears, like he was underwater.
In his mind he was dying again, raised, made to obey. He was killing Eladren, killing Sothemar, he was being liberated by Tyrion Fordring in the battle of Light’s Hope Chapel.
And he was taking the pendant, hearing it sing its forgotten song, saving him from the worgs, facing Saavira back in the Argent Tournament.
Kissing him in Dalaran.
Delyanis was saying something but it sounded too far; her cold hand was still soothingly covering his eyes.
The images went on his mind and then he was killing the Dark Shaman, gutting her, and the other Kor’kron guards and anyone who tried to get close. None could stop him. He was free.
He heard it then. It was an old litany to the Light. He had heard it many other times. Paladins used to sing it.
Nyquist had used to sing it.
Delyanis’ voice managed to get through all of that and had traded her tone for another, softer one, that still managed to have a stern note.
Junre clung to it.
He felt Delyanis tighten her embrace when he started to cry.
Moons were out and torches illuminated the zone by the time Menes considered it enough.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he started to bandage his back with fresh clothes. Junre raised his arms to allow him, still hurt and tired because of the Light energies. “I still don’t know what the hell these are.”
It had been three days since he had woken up and this was the fourth time he had heard the priest say that. Everytime Menes healed the whip wounds they turned fresh again. As if they didn’t respond to the priest's abilities.
Junre didn’t even care anymore but he refrained from saying it aloud.
He looked at the sky and thought about the last time he had seen the two moons. A sky that felt welcoming after the days below in the darkness where the heart--
“Don’t go there again,” Menes said softly, but it startled him nonetheless. He had finished bandaging and it was the priest himself who took his arms down.
“Thank you.”
The priest nodded.
“I need to sleep a bit. There is so much to do, still…” He stood up and looked around the little camps, illuminated by the torches and fires. A gust of wind rustled his tunic. Night was chilly in Durotar, as opposed to the hot days.
Junre stood up as well.
“Let me take some wood, I will set up a fire for you,” he said. He didn’t need it but he had noticed Menes shivering.
Not giving the other man time to reply he set up to work and looked around for spare wood. In the end he found it, took some broken ram pieces that would yield enough.
He was about to get back when he saw her familiar figure.
Shez’raa stood up beside Menes, who had left his crate and they were both facing Nyquist’s shroud. For a moment, an irrational sense of rage and dread bubbled up inside Junre.
Free, his own voice whispered inside his mind. He silenced it.
She had her hood on and her clothes were dirty and thorn, so unlike her usual pristine appearance. None of her usual demons seemed to accompany her, either. Menes had said she knew and that she was helping clean the Ragefire Chasm and the Underhold, and then said nothing more. Junre had never seen her once.
They appeared to be arguing. Menes looked bewildered and he didn’t quite make out his words but it seemed something like enough and not going through it again. He wasn’t sure if he should intervene in what seemed a private conversation between the siblings. He then saw her kneel beside the shroud but Menes gripped her arm and violently made her stand to her feet again.
A cold feeling gripped Junre’s gut. He dropped the wood and ran until he stopped in front of them both. Menes startled but Shez’raa only turned around fast to face him.
Below her hood, he could barely make out her uncombed hair. But it was her eyes that stood out, bright with tears and greener than ever, and he saw nothing but hatred, contempt, for him.
“This is your fault.”
The words hit him like a physical blow.
She looked at Menes, her face a mix of sadness and rage, like she was about to say something but didn’t.
Her tunic twirled around her when she spun on her heels and walked out. It looked like the night had swallowed her.
Junre didn't know how to react. He felt the chaos inside him, those words twisting in his gut, triggering him to—
“Enough!”
Menes had put his hand on his arm.
“She is hurt, we all are, and she… didn’t mean it.” Menes was looking at him, tears on his cheeks. He growled and tried to dry them with his sleeve.
Junre thinned his lips.
“She isn’t wrong, though,” he said quietly. The words felt cold and grounded and dreadful.
If he had run faster. If he had been stronger. If he had waited. If he had broken the shackles earlier. If...
He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried not to scream. The words took hold of his gut, deep below.
“It feels like we are all falling apart,” Menes said in a strange voice. His hand, still on Junre's arm, was shivering. “My family is falling apart.”
Junre put his arm over his shoulders in reassurement, having no answer himself. The words were rooting on him. He noticed Menes relaxing against him and sighing tiredly.
“You should try to sleep,” Junre told him. “Put down your blankets and I will get the wood and light up that fire, yes?” he added with a ghost of a control he didn’t really feel he had.
“You need to rest too,” Menes replied, sniffing a bit. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re trying to do here. I know you’re using your cold magic to preserve him during the day, and that’s tiring as fuck...”
Junre just nodded, not wanting to argue.
When he got back with the wood, Menes was already under his blankets, tired but not asleep. Junre built the fire in silence and when he finished he sat up on his own makeshift bed near his armor, with his back on the broken crates.
With the fire crackling and his cold gone, Menes fell asleep fast.
Junre looked at the campfire making strange shapes against the crates. He knew Menes was right and he would have to sleep eventually but the times he had tried it had been a restless nightmare.
The void in the form of a dark, still beating heart, deep below Orgrimmar. Yogg Saron or Y'Shaarj, everything got back to the Shadow once again.
And the voice of the Light, Nyquist’s voice, dying out all over again. Dark freedom.
This is your fault.
He laughed quietly and bitterly, and then put a hand over his mouth to muffle out the sobs. He dropped his head back over the crates and let the tears flow, slowly, in silence.
Evening, again. Four days since he woke up to this new reality.
He stood there, still. His polearm drawn up in front of him, his hands on the staff, ceremoniously guarding the shroud, never leaving it alone.
And still, around him, Orgrimmar was recovering from its wounds, burying its dead.
From where he was on the wall, he could see the entrance of the city. The pyres and their smoke columns never stopped raising during the day and long deep into the night too.
He let his mind wander for a bit, even knowing the anguish that would overcome him later, and thought of Nyquist. He wondered if it was gonna be like this all the time and Nyquist’s memories would mean just pain for him.
“I know you would have laughed at me because you hated these cliches,” he said fondly, quietly, to Nyquist’s shroud. “But I miss you so much. And I…” His voice faltered and he turned it into a whisper. “I don’t know what I am gonna do, Nyq…”
“I know we promised, and damn it… I am tired…” He sighed. “How do I go on again when everything...”
He really thought they would have all the time in the world and now… All gone. He felt the sorrow drowning him again, his back wounds hurting, opening and bleeding. Menes would scold him when he learnt he had put on the armor again. But Nyquist deserved to be kept vigil for, honorably. It was the least he could do.
You deserved the world, and not this.
He raised his eyes and saw a goblin boy approaching him, timidly. The goblin apparently noticed him looking because he got startled and hesitated.
His clothes were dirty, so was his brown hair. He had seen him around; he was thin, even for a small goblin boy. Especially one rescued from the Underhold.
All around he would have thought he was lost but he was looking straight at him. He didn’t get closer though, and stood by the column of the tent, in the meager evening shadow that it cast.
“Hi, hum… Sir... Death Knight…” the boy said and waved timidly at him.
“Hello, lad,” Junre answered, unsure of what to say. He looked around and saw several groups of trolls and blood elves, but no goblins. “Are you lost, maybe?”
The boy shook his head.
“Ah… Well… Do you need something, then?”
“Yes! I have a thing for you,” the boy rummaged through his clothes, like looking for something, until he smiled triumphantly, holding something tiny in his hand. Junre looked at him with curiosity, but couldn’t make it out from where he stood.
He laid the polearm on the floor and kneeled down to look at the boy’s yellow eyes.
“Come here, don’t be afraid,” he said with a low voice, gesturing with his hand. “I can’t see it from here.”
The boy looked around and approached him warily. Junre extended his hand and the boy let a ring drop on it.
Junre took a sharp intake of breath.
It was Nyquist’s ring.
The boy looked down, fiddling with his ragged shirt.
“It fell down when the big orc lady beat him... He was really nice to me. Gave me his spare food. I know it wasn’t spare, though!” the boy talked nervously and Junre looked at him again. “I was hiding with my mom, he saved her and came for the big scary lady. And then she beat him, and then you came and protected him and did that thing to her…”
The boy was suddenly silent and eyed at Junre from below his brown bangs.
“That was scary too,” he whispered. “But I’m glad you did it… She was horrible, she hurt my mom and she hurt him.”
Junre stared at the ring with a pained expression and held it lovingly with his fingers. That simple silver ring. He touched the delicate J engraved on the inside.
The boy must have noticed his sorrow because he stepped back and pleaded:
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I thought you would like it! I promise I didn’t steal it! I didn’t want to make you sad, sir Knight!”
Junre smiled sadly and raised a hand in a conciliatory manner.
“No, no! Wait, I’m not sad because of it,” he said hastily.
I’m sad, I rage, because my husband was killed in this nonsense of a war over Garrosh’ fucking pride. Over yet another Old God.
The boy stopped and looked at him again.
“Thank you…” Junre said. “It… it means a lot to me.”
The boy smiled timidly and was about to say something when a voice yelled out.
“Xinik!” An adult goblin with similar brown bangs appeared running from the other side of the crates. He was missing almost an entire ear and his clothes were also as disheveled.
“Where were you going?! The manticores are ready! I was looking for you—” He stopped and hesitated when he saw Junre.
“Oh… I’m sorry, Knight.” He approached slowly and took the boy—Xinik—by the shoulders and looked at Junre. “I hope my son didn’t bother you…”
“I didn’t!” Xinik said.
“Not at all,” Junre raised to his feet again. “He found something I lost that I… hold very dearly.” He still held the ring in his hand, not letting go. Ever.
Xinik smiled up at him. The father was also staring and Junre noticed the recognition in his eyes.
“Oh..” he said, looking at him. “You… You are the one who killed the dark shaman.“ He kneeled and turned to his boy. “Go get mom, she needs your help. I’ll be with you in a bit.”
Xinik nodded, waved at Junre and disappeared through the people.
“Name’s Rizzvek.” The goblin extended a hand. Junre shook it.
“Junre.”
Junre retrieved the polearm on the floor and stood near the shroud again. Rizzvik sighed and fidgeted with his feet, in a similar motion his son did moments ago.
“I just wanted to say that I’m really sorry for your loss,” the goblin said, looking serious. Junre turned to him as the goblin glanced to the shroud. “He… saved my wife.”
He stood and saluted the shroud with respect.
“He fought against that bitch chief when she screamed. Her friend had just been killed in front of her and… I think she was going to take her up next, for those creepy experiments they did way below,” Rizzvek continued, frowning. “It’s only because of him she is alive right now.”
The goblin huffed through his nose and turned to look at Junre.
“And it’s because of you that bitch is now dead. I wanted to say thank you, too. You’re an honorable man.”
Junre smiled bitterly.
“What I did was anything but honorable.” He wanted to laugh and he thought he could feel the blood dripping over his arms again.
Rizzvek shrugged.
“He started it, kindled the fire, gave us hope. We all desperately needed it. And then you carried on, got off those damned to hell magic-dampening shackles. Finished the job. That was enough.”
Junre fell silent. When the shaman had fallen, he had continued fighting, killing, murdering.
Free.
His memories were hazy from then on but he knew his actions weren’t… He didn’t exactly regret it, though, and Rizzvek was only being practical in the way goblins were. He should not judge that.
“I know he was dear to you. His sacrifice will be forever remembered by my family.” Rizzvek smiled sadly. “I know my words are a paltry price for this. I wish I could offer you something worth it.”
What I want you cannot give me.
“No,” Junre shook his head. “Your words mean well, and I appreciate them.”
Rizzvek saluted again and Junre did as well. The goblin then left.
Junre poked at his neck, below the chestpiece, and got out a fine silver chain. The other ring, with an N engraved, was hanging on it. He opened the latch delicately, dropped the other ring and put it on again.
He looked at the two rings hanging together in the dusk light. Nyquist should be buried with his, that J engraved, part of his name, part of him. Gone forever.
He thought of Sothemar too. Touched the silver chain and found the different links, that long lost ring back then now part of it. Like a scar.
He briefly wondered about the other ring, still in the dark snow, forever lost in a shadow world.
He closed his eyes and kissed the rings, then tucked them over his chest piece again. They would hang together for a while more.
He wished he could have had that, too.
He flew back to the Ebon Hold when the funeral at Silvermoon was over.
Saviira, her sister, had insisted on him having a few days off at their family home, where she resided with her husband, but he declined politely. Too big of a house, too many commodities. It was not his place, not now.
He needed to do something else, not to think, not to feel...
This is all your fault.
His thoughts went back to the funeral, even though he didn’t want to.
None had seen Shez’raa since she left that night at Orgrimmar. Menes said she had her own way of mourning, but Junre could see the pain in his eyes. A disappointed expression.
“What will you be doing?” he asked the priest when the rest of their family left and they were alone in the woods.
Menes looked lost, too.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “There is… much to do at Orgrimmar. Cleanse all that hell of a mess.”
Junre nodded. Although the sun shone brightly a chill wind whistled through the trees. An appropriate day for Nyquist’s funeral.
Luminous and cold, he thought fondly.
“And you?” Menes asked after a long silence. “Are you really not going to attend the trial?”
“No,” Junre said simply. He looked at his hands, once red, bloodied, dripping, and allowed himself, for a moment, to feel the hunger, the killer instincts that came so natural and gouge Garrosh’ eyes out--
“No,” he added and sighed, regaining his composure. “I don’t want to see his face… or lose control. I just will let the Shado-Pan justice handle his crimes.”
He looked at the lake, its waters calm and quiet. He had been here with Nyquist countless times. He wondered if everything would come to him in the end again and again.
“So, back to the Ebon Hold, then?” Menes was looking at the lake too. Junre noticed the sad note in his voice, not because he was very emphatic but because the priest didn’t actually bother to conceal it. Junre turned to him, and held out his hand.
“I’m still here, whatever you need”. He smiled sadly. “For what is worth, we are still family.”
Menes looked at the extended hand and took it hard, and then pulled him into his arms, hugging him hard.
“What kind of fucking family just shake their hands? You upper class nobles are so weird, geez…” Junre could hear the tears on Menes' voice even though he couldn’t see him and reciprocated his embrace.
A rattling squeak from the undead gryphon drew him back from the memories and he looked ahead; they were approaching the Ebon Hold. The massive citadel floated above the Western Plaguelands, illuminated eerily by the rising moons. It had been a while.
Delyanis was waiting for him on the balcony, her beatific smile eternal. She saluted solemnly and so did he, no words exchanged, as there was no need between them.
He couldn’t very well distinguish one day from the other, letting them pass either training or assisting in raids. Some days were better. Some others, he just cried himself to sleep.
The nightmares began then, and he would wake up bleeding. The necrosurgeons didn’t understand his back scars either, but they mended them every time, no questions asked.
And there was that morning Delyanis approached him at the training hall, a frown on her usually blissful face.
“Word is Garrosh escaped,“ she just told him.
Junre gripped his polearm harder and allowed his rage to wash over him, devouring everything and leaving just boiling blood in its place. He channeled it through the weapon and in a heavy movement, struck the wooden decoy that shattered in a million splinters. Red runes tilted and faded off in the air.
So much for justice, he wanted to scream. Delyanis stood serious before him, unfazed by the display of power.
He swung the polearm again and thrusted the blade on the stone floor.
“Blood it is, then,” he growled.