When she tore into the half-frozen loaf of bread like a mare possessed, Stern Staff almost recoiled at her ferocity.
The small, feeble mare before him moved a lot quicker than he expected. Surprising, considering she resembled a skeleton with skin and fur draped over it.
Between mouthfuls of bread, the mare almost sobbed in what Stern Staff hoped was happiness, but he couldn’t be sure.
While the evidence that she was kept as a slave for his old comrades’... desires, was overwhelming, he had also never seen her before.
His last visit to the encampment was less than two weeks ago.
The mare before him had been starved for a month.
At the least.
The last of the sizable portion of bread disappearing down her throat caught his attention, along with the mare looking at him, her weary, tear-filled orbs piercing his own.
“T-thank you...” she cried, bowing low to the ground, literally grinding herself into the mud in an attempt to get lower. Stern Staff fidgeted with his hooves awkwardly for a moment, unused to such praise.
“You're welcome.” Stern plainly said, a simple smile decorating his muzzle.
The second he moved to grab the small iron plate the bread had been on, she yelped, recoiling into a nearby corner, her eyes showing intense fear at the quick move.
“I’M SORRY!” she cried, tears streaming down from her eyes, adding to the mess of mud that already caked her visage. “PLEASE!”
“Hey, calm down, I just wa-“ Stern began, only to be cut off by the next outburst, the mare curling even deeper into herself.
“I DIDN’T MEAN IT!” she sobbed, wretched, and wailed her absolute terror away, her muzzle buried in her forelegs, body collapsed before him like a whipped dog.
"I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY!!!"
"PLEASE DON’T HURT ME!!!"
.........
Stern Staff was dumbfounded.
For the few minutes that he had known her outside of the battle, the mare was the most docile, quiet pony he had ever met.
But when he attempted to take that plate away from her, she reacted like an animal long abused, backed into a corner.
While she continued to cry, Stern Staff removed his helmet, letting his messy, blood-matted mane down, shaking it a little to give it some bounce back. After laying his weapon and helmet on a cot nearby, the stallion kneeled down to her level, her form scrunching up further into herself. Her horn fizzled and popped in a futile attempt to overwhelm the inhibitor currently sewn into her scalp around the horn, prompting the stallion to try to stop her before she injured herself.
"Hey! Stop trying to use magic!" Stern Staff scolded, perhaps a little too loudly, as the mare did not respond. "You're going to hurt yourself!"
Again, the mare did not respond, the stitches around her horn starting to bleed heavily, impotent arcane energies leaking from her horn's base.
"Stern, go check on the meat wagons."
"General!" Stern turned quickly, his commander’s sudden entrance accentuated by a lower, more gurgled speech. Stifling his shock at seeing the baron’s fractured jaw and punctured throat, Stern nodded, his stare somewhat distant.
“Sir, do... do you need help?” Stern asked, disbelief evident on his face. Rivendare chuckled, a few spurts of brownish, congealed blood spurting from his neck wound.
“No, Stern Staff. I’ve received FAR worse than this...” Titus explained, looking behind the death knight at the mare cowering in the corner, obviously terrified of his appearance.
“Now...”
“Go check on the meat wagons...” the baron insisted, jerking his head slightly to the right to usher the younger death knight away.
“Yes, sir.” Stern saluted, looking back at his charge one final time with a slight tinge of remorse.
Goddesses... what happened to her?
As the tent flaps cluttered closed, Titus turned to the mare, a low, gurgling chuckle sending more droplets of brownish blood to the ground. Her eyes literally glowed with fear at this point, her cries becoming more... shallow.
“Please... I... I didn’t...”
With a dull, hollow ‘thud’, the mare fell, unconscious, to the muddy ground before the death knight, his magical grip tightened around a wooden club.
“Hopefully you’ll stay that way until we get back, my dear...” Titus chuckled, a gurgle following his every word, a rope levitating itself over to her at the baron’s whim.
“Wouldn’t want you to get any bright ideas...”
“From what my master has told me, you can be quite the inconvenient annoyance, Miss Lulamoon...”
.........
Four hundred and thirty-two bodies.
Not a bad first haul, but they were out of bodies that were stowed on Naxxramas.
All together, their ‘Unlimited Force of Destruction’ was only around two thousand strong.
And most of them were quite limited in intelligence.
Kel’Thuzad had spent the better part of three hours pouring over the several hundred bodies before him, all laid out on individual runed frostweave shrouds. As he inspected them, he muttered incantations, warding the spine, legs, and skull of each skeleton to give the bones more protection against damage, however slight.
Nearly the entirety of the Construct Quarter’s main floor was occupied by them, and the archlich was checking the dormant skeletons one final time for any imperfections or abnormalities.
As he reached the final row of bodies, a skeletal pegasus flew into the room behind him, his hooves clacking against the floor as he bowed before the master of the necropolis.
“Master, our lord requests your presence at the Frozen Throne...” the construct droned, his glowing blue eyes staring up at the lich. Kel’Thuzad nodded, waving his hand to dismiss the construct, who flew away without another word.
Satisfied with the bodies before him, the lich cleared his throat, his arms already bathing themselves in arcane power as he began muttering further incantations, the magic in the air starting to simmer and blacken as he continued.
With a crackling of necromantic power, the necromancer threw his hands into the air, his booming voice bellowing out over the long dead unicorns.
“WARRIORS OF THE FROZEN NORTH!”
“YOUR FEROCITY WAS LEGENDARY!”
“YOUR HATRED, UNRIVALED!”
“NOW IS THE TIME TO USE THEM!”
“DEATH HIMSELF CALLS FOR YOUR AID!”
“BONES LONG DORMANT...”
“RISE!”
“RISE!”
“RISE AND SERVE YOUR MASTER!”
Mists of raw, blackened, unchecked necromancy flooded the room, clinging to the fallen warriors with ease.
With a clattering of bones grinding and creaking, rabid growls filled the tall room, the Scourge’s first soldiers in a millennia roaring their appearant glee at being awakened.
Just as Kel’Thuzad began to smirk, however, a whip of arcane energy whisked him away, faster than he could blink.
.........
After he had gotten over his initial shock, Kel’Thuzad swiftly turned and bowed to his master, the dark silhouette of an alicorn glaring down at him from behind the unnaturally blue ice of the Frozen Throne.
”I apologize for yanking you away from your work, Kel’Thuzad, but this is a matter that cannot wait...”
Kel’Thuzad rose to his full height, clasping his claws in front of himself.
“Of course, master. What is it that you need of me?”
"The workload that I have dropped upon each of you is immense, and the profits of said labor are..."
"Underwhelming...
A cold chill ran down Kel'Thuzad, his form trembling at the prospect of failing his king.
"M-master..." Kel'Thuzad started, before a crackling smash caught him off guard, his arm instinctively rising to cover his face from the explosive force before him.
"I was not done speaking, Kel'Thuzad..." the Lich King spoke, his ivory coat wafting visible cold now that it was free of the Frozen Throne. The lich nodded shakily, his arms grasping together once again.
"While you have successfully recovered every possible body in the valley, as I ordered..."
"Our forces are... insignificant."
.........
"Which is why I need your help..."
"My friend..."
Kel'Thuzad somewhat relaxed at that, the thought that Shining was still... there, calming him. The archlich prostrated himself before the alicorn, his robes splaying out behind him to attain an illusion of kneeling.
"Of course, my king." Kel'Thuzad spoke, conviction returning to his voice. "I live to serve."
"Good..."
.........
"Then be still..."
Without another word, the Lich King broke through the powerful enchantments surrounding Kel'Thuzad's mind like they were paper.
Unable to react other than a strangled gasp of surprise, the archlich's body froze up, the king's potent magics paralyzing him as the alicorn poured through every memory he could find.
"If we are to win this war..."
"We will need more support..."
.........
The Lich King exhaled a frosted breath as he finished his speech to his servants.
"Lords and Ladies of the Frozen Wastes, you have your instructions..."
"Now... go."
As the Lich King's form reclined back into the Frozen Throne, the massive, horrific, skeletal forms before him bowed, their spindly arms already channeling teleportation spells.
All the while, from his king's side, Kel'Thuzad watched as each of his brethren popped from existence, their missions having begun.
His mind, however, raced with possibilities.
Just how powerful was his master?
Arthas had never been able to read his mind, let alone literally PILLAGE his brain for information and memories...
While Ner'Zhul was capable of reading minds at the height of his power, and forcing his will upon others in the vicinity to influence or cut off most motion...
Shining had done that... plus more...
.........
All the while, the Lich King chuckled to himself from within the reformed Frozen Throne, his friend's thoughts amusing him greatly.