--One year before the Shattering--
Eleutherios did his best to maintain his balance in the saddle as Dionysus trotted into Lakeshire late one night. Not bothering to raise his hooded head, the Death Knight nevertheless picked up the confounded and prejudiced stares of the townsfolk still milling about at this hour as he approached the town’s inn. He felt the faint pinprick in the back of his head that he was somehow supposed to know some of these people, but he simply could not reach back far enough into his fragmented, wind-scattered memories to understand why. Shaking himself away from those sombre thoughts, Eli pulled the letter he had received a few days earlier from a friend of his out of his vest pocket, and perused its contents. It was nothing more than a blank paper with a single glyph, actually, but it served as an analogue to one of those fancy memory stones this particular friend often employed.
The message contained in the memory rune was simple: there was an acquaintance of the rune’s sender waiting at the Lakeshire inn, and Eli had been instructed to help her out. Along with the message were several gold coins, a small, smooth, spherical object, and a description of the person Eli was looking for … or, at least, an audio snippet of the voice he was to be listening for, sealed into the glyph inscribed onto the paper. In the back of the Death Knight’s mind, he couldn’t help but think that he recognized the woman’s voice in the rune.
Tying Dionysus’ reins to the nearby horse post, Eleutherios pulled out several oaken casks from his mount’s massive saddlebags, and walked into the inn, the house’s tavern filled with noisy patrons. He trudged toward the bar, trying to listen past the laughing and chatting and the occasional jeer shot in his direction. Some people were suicidal when drunk.
“Eli! I was wonderin’ where you were,” the tavern's barkeeper, Daniels, greeted the courier, a broad smile heard in his voice along with a tone of relief. “Got the goods?”
“Right ‘ere, Daniels,” Eli replied, smiling lightly himself as he set the casks down onto the counter. “The usual weekly deliv’ry: Duskwood Moonshine, Elwynn Pinot, Goldshire Sweet Rum, and Thunderbrew Ale straight from Westfall.”
“They’re always drained before week’s end, Eli,” Daniels said wanly, inspecting the casks before putting them behind the bar. “Shame we can’t get you deliverin’ here more often.”
“Ya ain’t my only customer, Daniels,” Eli reminded the barkeep. He then leaned forward onto the counter and whispered in a very low voice: “‘Sides, I’m stickin’ ‘round fer another job, and it ain’t the d’liverin’ kind.”
Daniels only raised an eyebrow, assuming the same furtive volume. “Who are you meeting here, then?”
Eleutherios shrugged. “Search me. Alls I know’s that it’s a woman, an’ an ornery one.”
“Ahuh.” Daniels coolly cleaned a tankard and set it aside. “A woman fitting that description rented a room here, and she’s stuck around nigh a week now. I figured she was waiting on someone. Might be a good idea to ask her yourself.”
“Jus’ point me in ‘er direction, Daniels.”
--Two Years Prior--
He awoke to darkness.
His first instinct was to gasp for breath, and as he did, he cried out as he felt pain lancing through his broken body. The cold, hard, damp stone floor under his back made it clear he was naked, stripped of any and all possessions he had had in life. He groaned as his stiff muscles tensed and reacted to a dark ritual that kept feeding the dark energy coursing through his coagulated veins. His consciousness started to clear ever so slightly, and with an excruciating heave, he managed to roll over and pick himself up on his hands and knees.
The first thought that came into his weakened mind was simply thus: “Why can’t I see?”
He raised a trembling hand to his face in the hopes he could make out his hand, but there was only blackness. As he laid his fingers on his face, he felt the rough linen bandages that literally held his head together. For a moment, he recoiled in horror internally, but he did not have the foggiest idea just why. Part of him screamed that this entire situation was wrong, but there was a small voice – a small, terrifying, but oddly soothing voice – that was stating otherwise.
Other voices were then heard, this time from beyond the confines of his mind. Whispers. Some were concerned, others giddy. Most were chanting something eldritch over and over and over … still, above it all, that small but terrifying voice held sway over his disordered attentions.
“Where am I?” his fragmented mind asked the deep, dark, and comforting voice that had made itself known to him.
“Where you have been reborn …” the voice hissed and echoed in return. “Where you will serve me …”
“This one,” an authoritative voice beyond his mind barked. “Dispose of it. It is taking far too long in the raising circle to get to its feet.”
“Patience, Lord Razzuvius-ssss,” a meeker voice spoke in pleading. “This one was once very potent in the infernal ways of the holy Light …” – there was no small amount of acid at that word – “… and it is taking all our effort to purge its power from the husk. He should be able to hear the Master’s voice right about now.”
“If it does, then maybe it will be of some use … but if it cannot prove its strength in the immediate future, then I am consigning the weakling to the Liches for experimentation.”
“Of course, Lord Razzuvius-ssss …”
As if responding to the threat Razzuvius had made, the small voice in the raised corpse’s mind turned from a whisper into a roaring bellow. “RISE UP, YOU WORTHLESS SCUM. YOUR MASTER HAS NEED OF YOUR POWER.”
It had been a long night.
Eli, as the locals had taken to calling him these days, sat at the table under the staircase within the Pig and Whistle tavern in Stormwind’s Old Town. The spot was often saved for the tavern's more taciturn guests. It had been yet another “day” of more of the usual for the reformed Death Knight – running about from one end of Stormwind to another, ferrying packages of varying importance hither and to. The technical term for his occupation was “freelance courier”, but he knew he was really not much more than a glorified delivery-boy that just so happened to have the mark of death and the Scourge written all over him. It was somewhat of a monotonous duty, since most of his clients were the usual shopkeeps in and around town, and they often supplied each other with the materials for wares they sold off during the daylight hours. Had he been the adventurous sort, this monotony would have been torture, but it was a welcome sign for one who had come back from the dead and sought to find his place among the living once again.
Dropping by the Pig and Whistle was basically what he did when he had finished his usual errands, and at that dark and early morning hour, it allowed him some time to reflect and learn from the day. The nature of his death before being raised by the Scourge left him with nary a memory of his life before he became a Knight of the Ebon Blade, and that was on top of a very impaired sense of vision and the occasional headache. This time by himself to learn and reflect was key to why he was so well adjusted among the living citizens of Stormwind, as opposed to most of his brothers in the Ebon Blade. In his hands were papers – some were letters, others scrawled over with notes – and over a pale ale, he studied them by running his fingers over the lines of ink, lighting each letter briefly with the dark magic he was forced to house so long ago … His hope was that these pages he no longer could see with seeing eyes would reveal the answers he had been seeking for so long.
It had been nearly two years since he had walked down the guarded halls of Stormwind Keep with Thassarian and a score of other Knights of the Ebon Blade, and pledged their allegiance to the Alliance, to Stormwind, and the King. Unlike others of his kind, who were eager to return to Northrend to exact their vengeance upon the Lich King for his treachery, Eleutherios had chosen to stay behind in Stormwind in an effort to learn from the people, and perhaps to find clues as to who he was before the Scourge claimed his body as their own. In that time, in between courier jobs and the occasional security or bodyguard detail, he had studiously gone through the records kept within the Royal Library of Stormwind (the clerics had made it very clear that he would not be welcomed within walking distance of the Cathedral Square) in the hopes of finding out his name or if anything could ring bells in his revived mind.
---
The various guards and drudges of the Sons of Lothar went about their multitudinous chores, in much the same way as they always did and had for the past decade and a half. The fortification had long since adjusted to its manpower being constantly at a premium, and those living in it were not going to grow lax due to the recent influx of material and military support from their only just re-established superiors in faraway Azeroth. Hence, personnel rotations ground in years ago remained firmly in place, every single man and woman knowing exactly what was expected of them in every waking moment. These were people that had weathered the charge into an entirely unfamiliar world, withstood the full fury of the Legion’s machinations and endured through and beyond the climactic destruction of Draenor and the momentous resealing of the Dark Portal that was even now ferrying fresh supplies and soldiers to bolster the battlefront raging beneath the Stair of Destiny. In a way, they had become the epitome of the tenacity inherent in the Alliance’s finest, and it would take quite a display of power to jostle them from their stoically carried-out duties.
Such as the dark and brooding Hellfire Citadel, far away along the gruesome Path of Glory, suddenly becoming enveloped in a blazing spike of surging felflame that could be seen across the entire region.
Trained warsteeds nickered and stamped their feet nervously as a faint tremor ran through the very bedrock itself (what remained of it, at any rate), and those versed in the mythical arts could swear on their ancestral graves that they heard a demonically charged roar of vindictive rage roll through their minds like the buffet of air that follows a distant explosion.
Trollbane was already on the topmost rampart of the main keep, gripping the worn stone tightly with gauntleted hands as he stared, eyes cold and hard, at the flaring beacon that even now had begun to fade away. His lieutenants were behind him, talking agitatedly among themselves, but he paid them no heed.
“Light help me, if I have sent you three to your doom …” he whispered hoarsely, bowing his head and shutting his eyes tightly to hold back the tears of regret that kept burning just behind his eyelids.
“Commander Trollbane! Through the northwest gate! They are back!”
