The lich had to admit that it hadn't all gone quite to plan. His shift in focus towards eradicating the Stormwind soldiers stumbling across the wastes had allowed the death knight he had trapped separately to break, and she, in turn, had saved the soldiers. Worse, he hadn't the resources near enough to them - or near to himself, in the safety of his tower - to continue with a pursuit. They had slipped through his bony fingers, and would be safe to proceed into the Dragonblight.
He clenched a fleshless fist, cursing his impatience, his imperfection, his failure. But then, he reasoned, alive or not, they are still broken. They will be easy pickings for the Scourge in the Dragonblight, with or without that death knight to protect them.
And there were the specimens he had managed to spirit away, already on their way to his master. Some were fit only to be mindless drudge, but perhaps a few of the others would serve a higher purpose.
Yes, and then the master may reward me with even greater power...
He was so caught up in his musings and fantasies that he didn't notice the man with two swords standing behind him until the dark chains had already started to bind him in place.
His bones produced a dry grinding noise as he twisted around, desperately trying to smite the intruder with a blast of shadow, but it was too late.
"Now then, lich," he heard, in the last few moments before his body seized up entirely. "You and I are going to have a little talk about the current location of your phylactery."
The knight was angry, vengeful, and for some reason seem dead-set on killing them.
If the figure had used the powers that they had exhibited against the Scourge, the fight would have been over in an instant, but they came at the group with their swords alone.
The first attack came so swiftly that Applejack didn't have the chance to get between the knight and her friends. The only thing that saved Twilight from literally losing her head was the shield of mana that she managed to conjure in the split second before the strike landed.
She blinked away a heartbeat later, and the rest of her friends scattered away from the knight's rage, with only Applejack staying close, trying to draw their attention to her.
"Woah!"
"Hey, what're you doing that for?!"
"What's going on?" Pinkie found herself closest to Twilight amidst the confusion, and directed her questions at her friend. "Why are they attacking us?"
"I don't know!" Today was a day filled with far too many questions and not nearly enough answers. "They were fine with us a moment ago, but now—"
"STOP. TALKING." They were impossibly fast for the weight of the armour they were wearing, and came at Rarity, who was now their closest target. She had to dance back to avoid their attacks, but was very obviously outmatched in this form of single combat. Her leg having only recently healed, she was nowhere near as graceful as she needed to be to dodge, and skidded over onto the ground.
The knight loomed over Rarity, poised to deliver the deathblow...
"Enough! I yield!"
The other knight let his runeaxe fall from his fingers, and held his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
It didn't stop her from bringing her swords down.
She stood back, revelling in her victory. Drawn to them by her opponent's scream, their teacher approached and examined her handiwork.
His head cocked to one side. The eternal frown he wore didn't change. "Aim for the head, next time."
Lifting her blades back up, she turned to look at the gruff figure in icy plate behind her. "Yes, Instructor," she replied.
"Nevertheless, you have the right instincts," Razuvius said, as he moved on to check on the next pair. Warm praise, coming from him. "You pass, knight."
Her opponent glared up at her furiously, blood and ichor seeping from his wounds. She walked away without offering to help him to his feet. It wasn't like he had hands for her to pull him up by. Not anymore.
Knight. She was an initiate no longer.
It had felt much longer than two days. In truth that was no time at all, but there was little need for basic training for those filled with the indomitable will of the Lich King. The tests had been more about ensuring that each knight had been worthy of the Lich King's power - and if not, that they, or at least their body, could be put to better use in some other way.
But she was worthy. She was a knight.
There was to be no respite after training. The Lich King waited for no man or woman.
She made her way over to Acherus's main teleporter, striding alongside a stream of gibbering ghouls and leaping geists. The lesser undead gave her a wide berth as she clanked her way over, driven to this mockery of respect by the magic that controlled them. A few of the newest initiates, still as yet unclad in plate of their own, snapped to attention as she passed by.
A gaggle of mortal necromances hurried past her, and she heard them whisper, "It's Lady Memoria!"
She frowned. It appeared that the nickname had already stuck. It was a little aggravating, a mocking reminder of something she had lost that most other knights had not, but then they had had to call her something, and admittedly she hadn't been very forthcoming with any suggestions herself.
There were worse names. One of the initiates raised at around the same as her had declared their name to be "Harmony"; the Lich King had not tolerated that for very long at all.
Some knights had taken a new name to mark their new life within the Scourge. Deathweaver. Bloodbane. Perhaps I ought to do the same.
Putting such trivialities behind her for the moment, she stepped onto the teleporter and surrendered to the shimmering purple light as it whisked her to the plaguelands below.
It was time to join the front line.
"Why don't you pick on someone your own weight?" Rainbow's shout preceded an almighty crash, as the hammer she had conjured with her power hit the knight squarely in the ribs.
It was the first time they had seen the knight staggered by anything - and Rarity made good on the opportunity to escape it had created - but it didn't last long. "Cursed light," they snarled as they recovered their balance, and then, gripping their sword tight in a fist around its hilt, they pointed at Rainbow.
She fell to the ground clutching her throat, gasping for air that refused to fill her lungs.
The source of what had stricken her was obvious.
"Hurts, doesn't it? Well, Rainbow Dash? Can't get up? Having trouble breathing?"
"Having trouble there, Lady Memoria?"
What predictably rotten timing, she thought, ignoring the outstretched hand and pushing herself to her feet. She could barely see the figure looming over her, a person rendered a mere silhouette by her temporary blindness and the obstruction of the mess of her own blonde hair, but she could only imagine that they were grinning.
The Scarlet priest's final prayer - which he had finished a moment before her magic had claimed his life - had been for a pillar of holy flame. It had blinded, scorched and stunned her, and it had been fortunate that she had already slain all of his bodyguards before turning on him, else they might have taken advantage of her incapacitation to lay her low.
Of all her fellow death knights, she found Valdrana to be the most annoying.
It was a curiosity that she felt as such, as emotions came in different ways to them, now that they were undead. Some, such as anger and hatred were a part of their nature - something that they could no more avoid than a living being could escape the need to eat or drink - and came more quickly and strongly upon them as a result.
But she hadn't quite expected frustration and annoyance to be the constant companions that they had ended up being.
Perhaps it was something about herself, rather than about being a death knight. The lich king had created them to be generals, not automatons, and as a result, some aspects of their former selves had to remain. Some things about their personality were dulled; others, usually the more negative of traits and feelings, were amplified.
It was hard for her to tell, personally, because she had no memory of what kind of person she had been before her rebirth.
Valdrana looked down at the priest and tapped the frozen half of his face with her boot experimentally. It crumbled into fragments of gore, and pieces of solid blood tipped out onto the ground.
"A shame," she commented. "He would have made a good ghoul."
The staggered knight shrugged, and got to her feet. The ringing in her ears was still there, but it was fading fast. "I prefer to fight our foes in my own way."
She could create undead. They all could. She just preferred to annihilate and exterminate, which gave her a far greater sense of satisfaction than the art of corruption ever could. It was better not to waste her power animating her victims as lowly undead.
And she knew the same held true for Valdrana. Where "Memoria" specialised in an icy offence, the other knight focused heavily on defence, fighting with a single greataxe that was almost two-thirds her height, and using blood and shadow magic to leech vitality from her foes.
"You, fighting?" Now able to see again, she could be certain that the blood elf was grinning. "I would think "laying around on the floor" would better describe what you were doing just now, my dear Memoria."
She wondered if sarcasm was a trait that could develop in a knight after they were raised, or if Valdrana had always been as infuriatingly sarcastic in life as she was in undeath.
She suspected It was probably the latter.
"Go away," she snapped, earning herself a wry salute for her trouble. "and stop bothering me."
I have to stop them, maybe if I-
Twilight wove a polymorph spell, but her movements were too obvious, and easily noticed by the knight.
"Not good enough, Princess Twilight!" they cried, and waved their left hand contemptuously. A sickly green shell surrounded her intended target, and the energy of her spell was cast to the winds.
It did at least result in their focus shifting away from Rainbow, who was suddenly able to breathe again, and who sucked in a few frantic gulps of air as soon as she realised that she could. Before the knight could try again, or round on the distant Fluttershy or Rarity, she found herself confronted by Applejack, who had decided that the best way to defend her friends in this situation was by providing a good offence.
They know my name? And Rainbow's, too? And that I am - I was - a princess?
How is that possible? Could they have overheard us speaking before? Did we even mention that level of detail?
It wasn't just that. There was familiarity there. Familiarity laced with hatred, but familiarity nonetheless.
"I'll have my revenge on him," the knight was raving, swords flailing with abandon against Applejack's stalwart defence, "but you're not without blame for this, and I'll MAKE SURE that you get the PUNISHMENT you deserve!
"Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie-" they recited, almost like a prayer, as she bore down on the desperate warrior.
"If y'all've got any ideas, now'd be a good time!"
"Rarity, Fluttershy... TWILIGHT SPARKLE!" And then, jinking right to flank their target, they - quite literally - took a step too far.
"Soldiers of the Scourge, stand ready! Prepare to unleash your fury upon the Argent Dawn!"
To her right stood Valdrana, who was not grinning, for once, but bore a solemn expression instead. To her left, Orbaz Bloodbane, Thassarian and Koltira Deathweaver. Behind them, rows upon rows of other knights. A legion of lesser Scourge waited much further back; this ceremony was for the Lich King's chosen alone.
And standing before the knights was Highlord Darion Mograine, Hand of the Lich King, Ashbringer in hand and already mounted on his revenant steed.
"The sky weeps at the glorious devastation of these lands! Soon, Azeroth's futile tears will rain down upon us!" he roared, waving the sword in an arc above his head. It left a trail of noxious fumes as it cleaved through the air.
They'd all heard stories of the corrupted blade, but to see it in person was something else... and to see it used in battle would be an even greater honour.
Her own weapons were sheathed for the moment. Dual-wielding on horseback was neither very efficient nor very safe, as she had quickly learned. There was no reward for a foolish, unworthy death within the Scourge.
"Death knights of Acherus!" he continued, and this was their cue to saddle up. Deathchargers galloped out of shadowy portals and stood ready for their masters. She hoisted herself up atop her own and gripped the reins tightly in aniticipation.
"The death march begins!"
The explosive trap triggered with a bang beneath the feet of the knight, throwing them some distance away from the group, and they hit the ground hard on the snow, wreathed in smoke. The blast knocked off their helm, too, and it landed a further distance away with a crash.
"Clever... clever," they - no, she said, as she got to her feet, pushing her pale blonde hair behind her head. Unobscured, her golden eyes, glowing an unnatural icy blue, glared out at the group with undisguised rage.
As well-placed as Fluttershy's trap had been, it appeared to have done little to injure the knight in any way. "But now I'm really mad."
Her appearance gave Twilight pause, and then filled her with horror and realisation. She'd seen someone who looked exactly like this once before, in passing, at Canterlot High.
No - it isn't possible!
But the resemblance, how the knight had been able to recognise and name them...
"It c-can't b-b-be!" she stammered. "Y-you're—!"
Derpy Hooves.
Before Light's Hope, she'd had single-minded certainty. She was a death knight of the Scourge, champion of the Lich King and extension of His will.
She and her brothers and sisters would break the Argent Dawn at Light's Hope Chapel and establish the Scourge as the only power in the eastern plaguelands.
But things hadn't gone to plan. Despite outnumbering the defenders almost ten-to-one, they had struggled to win any significant amount of ground. Each paladin fought as though they were ten ordinary men, and their leaders fought as if they were twenty.
It had seemed - for one brief moment - that the tide was turning in their favour.
And then Tirion Fordring had arrived, and all their hope was lost.
Not only did the defenders fight even harder in their lord's presence, but the light that shone from each of them had exploded from oppressive to overwhelming. Her powers sapped and her might diminished, she'd been forced to the ground and bound by glinting holy chains.
The paladins had dragged them all before the chapel so that Fordring could determine their fate. Highlord Mograine, Thassarian, Koltira, Valdrana, some twenty, thirty or so other knights... only Orbaz had escaped, fleeing like a coward the moment the tide had turned.
And then... oh, how a life could change in five minutes.
The hatred she'd felt towards the Dawn, the Light, the living.
The hope she'd known when the Lich King had appeared.
The betrayal she'd borne when he'd revealed his true intentions for his loyal knights.
The certainty that she had held, the control of the Lich King, was ripped away, and her free will had returned in its place - alongside her memories. They had all come rushing back, flooding her mind to the brink...
It had nearly driven her mad. The knowledge of who she had been. The sheer horror of what she had become, and everything she had lost.
The first thing she had remembered was her name.
Derpy Hooves.
And then had come the rest.
Ponyville. Equestria. Mailpony. Delivering letters. Magical storm. Scared... so scared.
Death. Rebirth.
After their victory over the Scourge remnants in Acherus - after they had cut through Patchwerk, claimed the necropolis for their own and bloodied themselves as the Knights of the Ebon Blade - she had gone to the one of the balconies, and looked down at the land she had helped bring to ruin.
She wouldn't ever be able to go home, she had realised almost immediately. She couldn't ever go home. Even if she had the means to do so, her friends, her family... they would never accept her. How could they ever accept her as the undead abomination that she had become?
All that she had left to push her forward - all that mattered to her now - was her hunger for vengeance. Vengeance against the Scourge, and the Lich King himself, for what had been done to her. What they had done to her.
What he had done to her.
And she had sworn to achieve that vengeance, whatever the cost.
"Derpy!" Twilight shouted desperately. "Derpy Hooves, please stop!"
"What're you sayin', Twi?" Applejack shouted, still wary of another attack, but then the others saw what Twilight saw, too.
"Her hair—" Rainbow gasped.
"Those eyes—"
"It isn't possible!" Rarity exclaimed. "The storm - we were the only—"
"Did you arrogantly think that everyone made it out of Ponyville safely?" Derpy snapped, rounding on the fashionista with such intensity that she flinched. "That your sacrifice had saved the day for everyone?"
"B-but, we—"
"Not that I knew you'd even tried. I was too busy being dragged away by it. Then being killed. Raised. Losing my memory. Committing atrocity after atrocity, then getting it back with my freedom. And now, just when I finally have control again - the universe throws you at me. The last people I wanted to meet."
"Derpy! Derpy, calm down," Twilight begged, hands outstretched. Conciliatory and pleading. "Just stop - just think...!"
"I'll never stop!" she cried. "Arthas may be out of my reach, but I can still make all of you pay for your failure. For failing me!"
And with that, she charged at Twilight again.
Too fast for Applejack or Rainbow, still out of position, to intercept her. The mage had seconds to react.
Blink? No - she might just change her target again. I'll be putting the others at risk if I start zipping around.
A mana barrier won't stop more than one attack.
I have to stop her - maybe, given where we are, I could try...
Conjuring everything she could from the plane of water, and taking advantage of the naturally low temperature, Twilight took a deep breath and muttered a few, well-chosen words, ending with a single command.
"Freeze!"
It worked better than she could have hoped. Under normal conditions, she might have hoped to hold Derpy in one place for a few seconds, as she had once done to Wilder, in the Elwynn Forest, before Fluttershy had tamed him. But here, in the frozen tundra...
In her rage, in her haste, Derpy had neglected her magical defences - and there was no use in putting up another antimagic shell when she was already encased in ice up to her chest. She struggled against the prison for a few seconds, but quickly realised the futility of trying to break free while her bonds were still so solid. She couldn't even move her hands to summon her own magic.
"You were always good at magic," she huffed. "I guess I should have expected this."
The others in the circle around them breathed a sigh of relief, and hesitantly walked over to join Twilight, eyeing Derpy carefully.
"Well," Rarity said brightly, "That seems to have cooled her off nicely."
"...when I eventually get out of this, I'm going to hurt you for that pun."
"We're going to let you out, right away."
"Uh... y'sure about that Twilight?" Applejack asked nervously. She and Rainbow Dash now flanked the mage on either side, and were looking at the frozen knight with a mixture of fear and... pity? Revulsion? Something in between?
"Yeah," Rainbow agreed. Both she and Applejack clutched their weapons cautiously, earning a roll of Derpy's eyes when she noticed. "I mean, she was trying to kill us, only a second ago..."
"Will you promise not to hurt us?" Twilight addressed Derpy again. "We just want to talk this over. We want to understand. Please?"
The spell had done more than just stop Derpy in her tracks. It had given her pause - just for a moment, but enough that she might listen to them.
"Fine."
Happy that this was sufficient, and keen to show a little faith, Twilight looked to Applejack and nodded.
Reluctantly, her friend reached over and tapped the ice on Derpy's right side with her sword. It cracked and splintered, weakening enough for Derpy to pull her arm - and one of her own swords - free. She put it to good use straight away, and she was quickly free from the ice.
She looked at the six arrayed before her, those she had once called "friends"... and, with another sigh, sheathed both her swords at her waist.
"That day, with the storm... we told everyone to get to safety..." Twilight murmured.
That day, their very last day in Equestria, seemed so long ago now, but she remembered giving orders in the library to the assembled crowd. All looking to her, their newest princess, for guidance, and safety.
Then her first efforts to calm the storm had failed, and it had taken the elements, their last resort...
"But Derpy - you were there, in the room with everyone else...?"
"You were going to take care of it, you said! It wasn't a big problem, you said... and so I thought it would be safe to finish my rounds, but..."
"...you found the storm," Twilight finished for her. "Or rather, the storm found you. Oh, Derpy..."
"Then I woke up in the plaguelands, in the north of the continent... right next to a nest of Scourge." Derpy continued. "I was alive in this world for less than five minutes before they killed me."
She gestured towards her belly. "You won't be able to imagine what it was like, but I can tell you that it hurt. A lot."
"The plaguelands are in Lordaeron, in the north of the Eastern Kingdoms, but we landed right in the Elwynn Forest, much further south," Twilight mused, out loud. "Entering the storm at a different time, and in a different place, must have had an effect on the location where we each landed..."
She trailed off as Derpy's expression twisted from a neutral frown back into a mixture of resentment and hatred, and Twilight realised, too late, that she had made a thoughtless mistake.
"That explains a lot," she snarled, balling her fists. "Living the high life in Stormwind City, were you, while I was up north? While I was suffering? Hurting? Dying?"
Out of the corner of her eye, Twilight could just about see Fluttershy trembling. Whether from anger, or the pain of the loss that she had suffered in Westfall, the mage couldn't be sure.
"I won't try to compare our experiences to yours," she replied, her voice starting out as a whisper. "I wouldn't dare try to suggest that we've had it worse than you have. But our time in this world hasn't been easy on us either.
"We're shocked. We never expected to find you here, in this world. But we do care, and we do want to understand... and try to help, if we can."
Derpy looked back at Twilight, considering the mage's words, and then swept her gaze slowly across the rest of the group.
Their faces suggested that - at least on some level - they weren't all entirely in agreement with their friend on the matter.
Derpy's expression eased from anger into resignation. She shook her head, and then trudged a short distance through the snow and bent down to retrieve her helm from where it had fallen. She replaced it where it was meant to be, and became the implacable, unreadable knight that they had first encountered once more.
The message was clear. In her eyes, their "discussion" was over.
"I just want to be out of this accursed tundra." Her voice, already cursed as it now was with an unholy echo, took on the same metallic distortion that had additionally marred it before. "I'm going on to Star's Rest. Follow me if you want to. Or don't. I really couldn't care less."
With that, she stalked off in the direction of the platoon, her cloak swaying as the wind began to pick up again.
The six looked at each other in silence, and then, one by one, followed after her.
For the moment, they too had no words to share.
Twilight lingered the longest, staring at the spot where Derpy had stood, and then finally moved to join her friends.
Valdrana found her by the portal to and from Stormwind, moments after she stepped back into Acherus. She'd hoped to return to the necropolis without having to deal with the other knight, but it appeared that life would not - would never - be so kind.
"Lady Memoria!" She looked up at the name. It had become something of a reflex for her to do so - which, given that she had chosen to adopt it herself, was probably for the best.
She wouldn't use her old name in this world, even though she could now remember it. It just sounded too ridiculous compared to the Azerothian names that she had encountered so far, even compared to a mockery of a name like "Memoria", and frankly...
...it just wasn't her. Not anymore.
"I take it, from the look on your face, that you've been assigned to the first wave?"
"Indeed I have, " Valdrana replied, and her smile grew a little. "And I take it, from the look on yours, and the fact that you are back here in Acherus, that you have been posted to the second."
Memoria shrugged, but the lack of an answer was answer enough.
"I've been assigned to ride straight for a Forsaken outpost in the Dragonblight," Valdrana said, twisting the knife further. "I believe it's called 'Venomspite'."
"I'm sure you'll have a pleasant time there, " Memoria replied. "It sounds like a wonderful place."
She turned to walk away from the portals, to the sparring arena, anywhere else, and intending to leave the conversation at that, but the other knight put a hand on her left spaulder. She sighed, but stayed, fighting the urge to separate the offending limb from its owner.
"Chin up, my friend—"
"We aren't friends."
"—the war in the north won't be over that quickly. There will be plenty of time for you to join the front lines."
"I don't care about such things," she retorted. "I'll do my duty to the Knights of the Ebon Blade, whenever and wherever I am posted."
Lies, of course. The fact that she wouldn't be first to the fray frustrated her tremendously, and she didn't give a damn about duty, or the rest of the Blade.
Seemingly satisfied, or perhaps just bored of teasing her, Valdrana let go of her armoured shoulder, and nodded.
"Suffer well, Lady Memoria," she replied and strolled off towards the portal to Orgrimmar on the other side of the room.
"Hmph." She chose not to dignify the blood elf with a proper response. Her fellow death knight could go rot, as far as she was cared.
She pondered, for a moment, what Twilight Sparkle would have made of that kind of attitude. How it would go against the virtues of friendship that Equestria's newest princess had been so keen to promote.
She'd found herself thinking quite a bit about Twilight, Rainbow Dash and the others a lot lately. How they had promised so much... and had failed her so deeply, when it had mattered the most.
She wondered what she would say, if she ever had the chance to see them again... what she would do... but it was probably lucky for them that she would never get the chance.
Hmph. Friends...