Beautiful and merciful Shadow, it was quiet. Cidé likened it to what true death was like, from what little he could remember of it. He lay in the dark, and the silence, for what felt like years, decades. Unable to sleep, and unable to die, instead of despair, he began to judge the silence, to understand its nature. In contrast to the sensory void he was experiencing, to the absolute darkness and the apotheosis of all quietness, the thoughts in his mind were like being underneath a waterfall. Like being in the thick of it under the Greymane Wall as it crumbled. Like the battlefields of Dragonblight, and the wide-eyed desperate screams of Scarlets facing his blades. There was no air any more, he faked a breath and felt nothing pass through his shrivelled lungs. The thoughts rang like thunder, like scrapes on the coffin’s seal. Like voices from above, muffled by earth and stone.
No, these were not his thoughts. Cidé opened his eyes, and the coffin’s interior lit up in amber glow. Catching a glint of the dagger that was meant to kill him, squarely embedded in his chest. There came the scrapes again, rasping hard against the wood. He felt it now, as the coffin jostled in the earth, his body moved. The chains wrapped about his corpse rattled. He started as something hard and metal struck his little wooden box. He began to stretch his fingers and found that they were stiff, and rigorous. The muscles in his back pulled, and he focused to ruffle about his toes. His body was slow to wake. An extended amount of time being motionless and without his regular embalmings, much of his body had begun to atrophy and wither. Once again, the thing struck against the wood, and then again where bits of earth and splinters fell upon his face. Again, and again.
Cidé had to shut his eyes as cool dirt poured around him, and within the earth were hands that grasped him and pulled. He was lifted and tossed.
He heard the sounds of the deepest night at long last, crickets sang, bats peeped. The wind howled above the leaves. The grey of the night greeted him as he opened his eyes. Blessed and loving Shadow, his mind would not rot within a nameless grave.
“Think he’s dead now? Like, dead-dead? Not moving much is he?”
Cidé managed to close a fist, his talons pricked into his palms. Long and sharp enough to rend chainmail.
“Think so. Give ‘em a good kick, see if he moves.”
Footsteps grew closer and he shut his eyes once more. A boot struck him on his upper arm, but he did not so much as flinch.
‘Our greatest gift is our direst curse, Cidé,’ he heard Executor Thracius speak in his mind, his great dull moustache nearly engulfing his words. ‘When Deathguard play dead, we do so using our practical experience. A smart Deathguard can play dead for days, waiting for the right moment to strike. The Living believe there is no coming back from death. They believe this on principle. Use it against them.’
“He’s done for, sir.” He heard the droning rasp so characteristic of his people. They were Forsaken, the same ones that put him in the coffin to begin with, probably. Fury began to boil in his foetid heart.
“Good. Let’s get that plate off him, then. Sell that for a fortune,” the superior of the two voices called back. She moved towards them now.
The chains around his arms were pulled, and crackled as they passed over his plate armour. The locks were being undone.
‘When will I know it’s the right time to strike?’ Cidé asked his captain.
‘When you feel it is right, before you even think it – that will be the right time,’ replied the Executor.
The chains fell dull upon the forest floor with a thud; Cidé had already driven his claws into the Forsaken’s neck, beneath his chin. Black ichor ran across his wrist before he pulled his grasp free from the sputtering mess he had made.
He rose, rattling steel and spitting the iron rod they gagged him with. The clap of black powder flattened the night, his armour struck with a bullet, above where the dagger they put into his chest rested. His thin, pale fingers wrapped around its hilt before pulling it free from his breastplate.
Cidé would work on this one for a while. There were questions that needed answering, and swords that needed locating.
Glorious and all-encompassing Shadow, there were people that needed killing.
The quietness of the Dead Scar was interrupted by a singular gunshot from a rifle piercing through the skull of a ghoul, followed by the growls and roars of the group of Undead. As the skeletons and ghouls began to mass and move their way towards the gunshot, Zoey sheathed her rifle and pulled out her crossbows, one in each hand as she loaded both up with bolts and fired towards the group. Instead of bothering to worry abou the threat of combat she was actively seeking, all she could dwell on was the chaos of that last meeting. One dead, two betrayals and one departure. She thought there was potential back when she joined them in Northrend.
She moved to “embrace” one of the skeletons: Grabbing it and spinning it around, tossing it forward before she brought up a crossbow and planted a bolt cleanly into the skull, followed by a few more into the spine for good measure. Killing usually helped sate her bloodlust but the frustrations of the past few weeks kept her still wanting more and more to kill.
Zoey span on her heel, quickly sending her crossbow to smack an approaching ghoul in the head causing the beast to stumble backwards before Zoey pulled out her knife, dashing forward and planting it deep into it’s skull. She joined the Warband to ensure a safe future for her people in the wake of the Traitor Queen’s betrayal, but instead of taking the fight to the Forsaken’s enemies, the Warlord and his warband were too focused on internal conflict. Whoever the Sanguine Eye were, they weren’t a threat to her people. Intentionally killing herself in a staged fight to try and spark another war wouldn’t help her people either. With every kill in the scar she got, the more she wondered if the Warlord she joined was just some old deranged veteran fuelled by internal propaganda and a mean authoritarian streak.
Zoey sheathed her knife and moved to reload her crossbow. Though she had little issue with some of the Warband’s members, the Warlord they all so “blindly followed” had barely impressed her in the slightest. Still, maybe it wasn’t worth giving up on them -just- yet. Maybe she’d be wrong and the Warlord would turn his act around. Maybe his followers would overthrow him and a better leader would step up to rule the warband instead.
Zoey gazed down the Dead Scar, nearing the border of the Ghostlands she spied an Abomination idly lumbering around. She sheathed her crossbow and pulled her rifle back out once more, ready to continue her killing spree.
Maybe it was worth staying with the warband for now to see how all this plays out.
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