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...