//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: Arrival // Story: World of Warcraft Equestria: A Death Knights journey // by Nosoni //------------------------------// "Watch out!" was the last thing Vandline heard before she was violently thrown backwards but instead of hitting brick, she heard bark breaking and twigs snapping. Shaking the daze out of her head, she looked around to find that trees surrounded her. "Where on Azeroth did that blasted mage send me to?" She says with a low, hollow, echoing voice. She looks around the forest as she remembers a region just outside of her home of Silvermoon known as the Ghostlands. Feeling better after having her back hit the tree, she stood up. "This place almost looks and feels like the Ghostlands," She thinks to herself, "I can't stand here thinking all day there's a war going on, and I must return to Acherus as soon as possible." Getting ready to return to Acherus, Vandline brings forth her necromantic energy to summon a death gate but soon realizes that, somehow, the gate is unresponsive and refuses to operate thoroughly. She stops feeding power to the spell, learning that the gate will not come to her. "Strange," thought Vandline, "I never expected the gate spell to fail like that." Pulling out her Hearthstone, she feels that there isn't any energy coming from the stone, almost as if it lost the location she was supposed to return to when out on missions for the Ebon Blade. "This is getting rather annoying," Vandline thought angrily. "When I get back to Acherus, there's going to be hell to pay upon those cursed Nightborne." Suddenly feeling the insatiable thirst kicking in, Vandling starts heading in a random direction, hoping to find something to beat up or outright kill. After about a third of the day walking, she suddenly hears what sounded like a low growl. Looking in the direction of the growling, she was confused as to what she was looking at. At first, she thought it looked like a wolf, but upon further investigation, it looked to be a spirit in the shape of a wolf with its body wholly made out of wood and twigs. "What the heck?" she said. "I don't think I've ever seen a creature like you before." As she continues to look at the strange thing, she suddenly hears a few more growls. Upon looking in those directions, she sees more of these wooden beasts. currently surrounding her was a pack of seven creatures "So that's how you want to play?" she said, "fine then, LET'S DO THIS!" She draws her twin runeblade swords. As she clutches her blades in her hands, she pulls in one animal using her death grip spell and slices the beast in two. What she wasn't expecting was the whole thing to break apart suddenly. "Strange," she said, "I guess any amount of significant damage and the thing falls apart rather easily." While she thought Vandline was suddenly bit on the wrist, thankfully, her wrist guards were kept in pretty good condition, so the bite mark didn't leave much of a scratch. "Well, aren't you a little opportunist," she said, much to the confusion of the beast. With one stroke of her free sword arm, she stabs the wooden creature in the general heart area. "I didn't expect you to try and bite me through my armor!" she exclaims "now feel the wrath of the Sin'dorei!" As she pulls her sword arm away from the slain creature and yanks the head off her other arm, she suddenly feels the weight of a paw as she is flown out from the location and into a nearby tree, nearly cracking it in half. As she shakes her head to get rid of the dizziness, Vandline looks up to see what hit her before growing concerned and then excited to see that the remaining beasts were somehow gathering together to form one colossal creature. "Well, color me impress!" she says. "You think you can outpower me? a Death Knight of the Ebon Blade?!" The creature, in response, growls very loudly as if to say, hit me with your best shot. Rising to the challenge, Vandline summons forth all her energy she can and then lets out a breath of Sindragosa; she had no idea if these creatures can freeze to death, but that wouldn't stop her from giving it her all. The substantial wooden creature suddenly faced what looked like a dragon head, shooting forth a frost breath attack, having not faced such a thing before the animal suddenly lost control on one of its front legs, and the neck was suddenly stiff. Seeing her opportunity to strike at the weakened creature, Vandline shot forth, drawing her twin runeblades and jumping towards the neck of the beast, and in one fell swoop, she chopped the head clean off. Vandline, feeling accomplished with the fact she had defeated the creature, turned around and saw the thing just crumbling apart twig by twig. "Well, that was a nice exercise," she says, "and you sated the hunger for now." After taking a moment to feel amazing for a short time, the Death Knight continues her journey, encountering passive and the occasional hostile wildlife. After about half a day of walking, Vandline comes across her first signs of civilization, or what was left of it anyway. She looks up to see a crumbling ruin of a castle. "First signs of civilization, and it's a bloody ruin...perfect," she groans. Realizing what time it was, she decides to head inside the castle and makes camp for the time being to recollect her scattering thoughts and think about what to do to return home. As she enters the front of the castle, several points of interest were present to her. She entered what she guessed must be the castle's main hall, where she could see two flags of interesting designs. They pictured horses with wings and a horn. "They must be what the locals believed in" thought Vandline, "one to control the moon and one to control the sun". Investigating the castle further, she doesn't find much aside from a hallway with interesting armor designs, another hallway with way too many torch scones in the shape of a hoof. She eventually heads up some stairs to reach a room that looked barren, so deciding to take a break, she made camp in. After making her temporary home more comfortable, Vandline thinks back to how this all started. Inside a tavern at the floating city of Dalaran, Vandline was drinking a local brew when she was approached by her younger sister and Demon Hunter Nosoni. Taking a seat next to Vandline, she proceeds to talk to the Death Knight. "Some heroes invited me to go to this dungeon inside Suramar, and I was wondering if you would like to join me," she says. "Oh yeah? who are the heroes, and whats the objective of their dungeon run?" asked Vandline "Arcanist Valtrois has tasked a few of the heroes to see if they can find a map of Suramars Leylines, and I was unfortunate enough to get chosen," Nosoni says, rather grumbling. "The people who invited me are a priest and a hunter from the Alliance and a warrior from the Horde." "Oh? Well, I'm sure the Illidari can spare one of their soldiers for a quick dungeon run, and besides, we need to spend some quality family time together after all; I did spend so many years looking for you only to discover that the damnable Wardens imprisoned you" Vandline said with a drip of anger hanging in the air. "Oh, believe me, I almost feel bad for them. I don't want to be in their shoes when Lord Illidans chosen second in command gets mad remembering what they did to us all those years ago at the Black Temple," Nosoni says gleefully. "I guess I'll learn what happened to you when you stormed the temple last I remember. Weren't you a Blood Knight?" she asks. "Was I? I can't seem to remember my memories from my previous life. I do remember dieing but who I was back then is a bit of a blank," Vandline says, "The Scourge was rather thorough with their selection process for Death Knights, and I guess the Scourge beat memories from back then out of us." "So anyways your answer? Will you come with me to that dungeon?" Nosoni asks. "Sure, I can spare a few minutes. Clearing out a dungeon should be a good exercise when we start clearing out Suramar of those traitorous Nightborne who sided with the Burning Legion!" Vandline says with enthusiasm. Vandline jolts out of her memories at what sounded like combat. Deciding to investigate, she got up and proceeded to move towards the sound of shouting something that sounded like harmony and friendship. Once she entered the corner to where the shouting came from, Vandlines eyes shot wide open at what she was seeing. At first, she couldn't believe her eyes but standing right there were what looked like tiny horses talking to each other. Upon seeing them getting up from what looked like a weird one-sided battle, she looks around to see a taller version of the tiny horses laying on the ground as if she, or at least she assumed it was she, was also defeated. Taking a moment or two to sort through her memories, she remembered that the humans from the Alliance had a name for these tiny creatures called Ponies. However, she wasn't sure if the prone dark blue creature was also called a pony or simply a more miniature, younger horse. She was about to leave when suddenly a bright light was coming from the roof, almost as if the sun had just barely risen. Vandline looks to see that a different horse creature had arrived though she could tell that she was regal in nature. What surprised her the most was that while the ponies were varied, two of which had horns while another two have wings and the last two had neither, this one had both wings and a horn. The last thing that she was expecting was for the creatures to speak in common, the language of the humans. "Well, that's good news for me, at least since I didn't know if these creatures could even understand me," thought Vandline. Immediately the other five ponies bowed down to the tall white horse while the tiny lavender pony went up to it. "Princess Celestia!" cried the lavender pony walking up to her and giving what looked like a very odd hug for a tall horse. "Twilight Sparkle, my faithful student, I knew you could do it!" Said Princess Celestia. as Vandline was listening to the conversation, she couldn't help but chuckle a little at the odd-sounding names; then again, her parents named her and Nosoni odd as well. While watching from the shadows, the conversation soon leads to the currently prone, apparently younger sister to the tall horse. "Princess Luna," Celestia spoke; Luna gasped and was awoken by the regal horse. "It has been a thousand years since I have seen you like this," she said. While the White horse and the younger-looking dark blue horse were speaking, Vandline couldn't help but be shocked since the dark blue horse looked almost the same as the white horse with having both wings and a horn. "Interesting," thought Vandline, "and it's been a thousand years since they had seen each other, which begs the question as to what happened" while she was thinking this, her instincts suddenly were telling her that now would be a good time to leave before she was spotted. Not even a foot away from the room before Princess Celestia calls her out. "You can come out of the shadows now, creature," Celestia said. "You better explain your intentions for spying on us." Deciding to get it over with now rather than later, Vandline shows herself and explains her situation. "Who are you talking to, Princess Celestia?" Asked Twilight a second later, she got her answer when a voice around the corner near where the old Elements of Harmony used to be. "I'm impressed that you managed to detect me," she said, talking around the corner. "I didn't know if you could sense me or not" When Vandline entered the room, she heard barely audible gasps coming from the six miniature ponies while earning a glare from Celestia and Luna. After walking a few inches towards the group, the rainbow maned pony and the orange pony with the odd hat got into a protective stance while the yellow pony with the incredibly long mane and tail and the other white pony with the purple mane backed away from the group. Twilight, the lavender pony she remembered hearing the name from Celestia, had what looked like a curious and somewhat scared expression, almost like she was studying Vandline. The pink pony just minded her own business as if she didn't have a care in the world. While Vandline was getting a good look at the group, Twilight was doing the same, looking over her armor and appearance. She was a bipedal creature. Her mane was blond, short cut, and had a tiny sliver of hair covering one of her eyes, almost like what Fluttershy does when she is shy and looks away. She wrapped her shoulders in armor with spikes and what looked like fur at the end of it. The chest plate, legs, gloves, and boots of the armor didn't have many features that stick out. The color of the entire thing was dark blue, like it was mined from deep within the ice. What scared her the most, however, were the weapons this person was wielding. Her swords were radiating power and glowed a misty blue hue, the pommel of the blades had very vicious carnivore teeth; she couldn't see the guard since the swords were attached to her back. Her eyes radiated the same misty blue that the blades were giving off, and the skin was slightly off-color. "Who the hay are you?!" said the rainbow maned pony. "If you are here to fight the Princesses, then you better get ready to face me!" yelled the pony, but before she could charge, the orange pony stopped her by biting on her tail. "Wow, aren't you a fighter!" Vandline said, "fortunately for you, I'm not exactly looking for a fight at the moment." "Taunting my subjects cant be the only reason your here," Said Celestia. "Maybe you should start enlightening us on where you came from and how you got here?" "Right, so where exactly to begin?" Says Vandline "My name is Vandline, and to what I am, my people are called the Sin'dorei, or "Children of the blood" in the common tongue. You can also refer to me as a Blood Elf." "Blood...?" said Luna Vandline could tell that the princess was thinking about something. "And no, let me stop you right there. I'm not sure what your thinking, but when we call ourselves the Sin'dorei, it's to represent the fallen kin we lost during the Scourge Invasion of the Third War," Vandline explained. "Scourge Invasion?" said the purple maned pony Vandline can detect the pompous sounding voice. "Third war?" Said Twilight, of which Vandline caught a glimpse of intrigued. "I won't go into too much detail for fear of your yellow friend fainting on the spot," Vandline said to which both the orange pony and the rainbow maned pony went to comfort the yellow pony, "Now that my introductions are out of the way I would like to know your names though I already know you three," she said pointing to Celestia, Luna, and Twilight. "Because of yer eavesdropping, right?" Said the orange pony with a very odd accent that Vandline cant place. "My name is Applejack." "I'm Pinkie pie!" Pinkie said, followed by random questions that the Death Knight quickly tuned out. "Not dealing with her right now," Vandline thought, taking the hint relatively quickly, Pinkie Pie proceeds to act like her unusual self. "Rainbow Dash! I got my eyes on you, so don't try anything funny," Said Rainbow Dash Vandline thinks that maybe she might be a good sparring partner now and then. "You can call me Rarity though I'm not a huge fan of your attire," said Rarity. "It's too ghastly for my tastes." "Good, I'm supposed to strike fear into my enemies!" Vandline said, "I don't have time to look 'pretty' when I'm fighting on the battlefield!" "Eep!" cried the timid yellow pony. "Can someone give me her name, please? I think I scared the poor child," Vandline said with a soft chuckle. "Her name is Fluttershy," said Twilight. "And can I ask you a question?" "Sure, as long as it's nothing too personal, my memory is a bit fuzzy, so ask away," Vandline said "Well, it's just that your skin tone is a bit lighter than what would be considered normal, almost as if..." said Twilight. "As if I was raised from the dead? yes, that is true." There were hints of dread and resentment as Vandline is raised to the ground and coughing suddenly. She turns angrily to see that Celestia had a look of anger towards her. "Your undead?!" Celestia said, "Who is your master, and where may I find him so that he can be put down!" "Good luck getting to him, your highness!" said Vandline with some difficulty talking. "Because he is already long dead when both the Alliance and the Horde along with the Knights of the Ebon Blade and The Argent Crusade ended his reign of terror!" and just like that, she is dropped to the ground coughing. She looks up to see that Celestia had a look of confusion, so she explained her situation. "I can understand your situation with hating the undead but rest assured I have no intentions on bringing the same kind of suffering on your people," Vandline said though she couldn't say the same for her comrades. "Then why are you still here? shouldn't you be dead again?" Rainbow Dash said "Guess I should start at the very beginning," Vandline thought. "About ten years ago, I was raised in undeath to serve The Lich King where he had Initiates fight to the death before they were branded as 'true' Death Knights." "I already hate the sound of this 'Lich King'" Rainbow Dash said "Continue," Celestia said impatiently. "At this moment in time, we were assaulting a pathetic human settlement that belongs to a group of fanatics called the Scarlet Crusade though I dare not explain what I did there," Vandline smugly said. "After the slaughter of New Avalon, our "master" sent us on a mission to this place called Light's Hope Chapel." "Before the battle began, the army we were facing at the time was called the Argent Dawn and had around three hundred soldiers defending the crumbling chapel, of which I'll explain later why it was crumbling, and our forces numbered at around ten thousand." Gasps were heard around the room. "ten thousand?! there's no way in Tartarus those ponies survived!" said Applejack. "You no-good varmints should feel ashamed." "Your opinion of us is noted, Applejack, but rest assured the Argent Dawn, which consisted of many races from my world, did survive as the casualties at the time were roughly one hundred dead on their side and roughly one thousand five hundred dead on our side with the remaining Scourge underlings disappearing on us," Vandline said "The reason for their survival is because two points of interest happened at the same time. The arrival of the Argent Dawns leader, Highlord Tirion Fordring, and the weapon of my leader, Darion Mongrain, was rebelling against him." "How can a weapon 'rebel' against their wielder?" asked Twilight "I could tell you the history of the blade, but do you honestly have time for that?" Vandline said, and indeed, the group realized that they still needed to finish the summer sun celebration. Before they left, Celestia had one question for Vandline. "What will you do now?" she said. "Don't you need to return home?" "I would if I could; unfortunately, my normal means of traveling around is not responding to me," Said Vandline. "Although I do have some idea on what I should be doing." "Princess Celestia?" Twilight said, "I have an offer to make for Vandline if she can't return home." "And what would that be?" Celestia said "Yes, I'm intrigued by what you have to offer for me," Vandline said "Well, since she can't return home, she is going to need a place to rest in, right?" Twilight said, "If we explain to the ponies at Ponyville, she could stay with either me or Fluttershy." "As kind of an offer as that is, I'm going to decline," Vandline said. "What would these ponies do when they see something like me?" "You should take the offer Vandline," Celestia said, "knowing Twilight, I have a feeling she won't let you cause too many problems for the residents of Ponyville." "And how would you explain to them about me, Your Highness," Vandline said "I'll tell them that Twilight here has made contact with a never before seen Intelligent lifeform and that you will be staying close to Ponyville to improve relations with one another," said Celestia "Well, I guess it does solve my problem of where to go," Vandline said, then she looked to Twilight "this is probably a stupid question, but how familiar are you with magic?"