//------------------------------//
// 16. Shattering 
// Story: Rebirth of the Damned 
// by Borsuq 
//------------------------------//

When Matthias and Fluttershy left, the rest did as he suggested them. They went to Applejack's house and cleaned themselves up. They were all grateful that nopony was here: Granny Smith went to visit one of her friends, Big Mac was selling apples at market, and Apple Bloom had stayed with Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo at school working at the school newspaper, the Foal Free Press. They didn't think they could explain to anypony why they were all covered in Applejack's blood.
"So... what do you all think?" asked Twilight when they were cleaning themselves.
"About what, darling?"
"Oh, I don't know: about the weather, the sun, or that our friend was saved by a weird earth pony that can use a weird magic!"
"Calm down, sugarcube." said Applejack. "Ah was the one dying, Ah should be nervous."
"Right, sorry." said Twilight, but then noticed something. "Wait a second, you're right! You should be nervous, or depressed, or something!"
"What'ya mean?"
"You can just have a near death experience and just act normal so soon. But here you are, calming me."
"Ya know, ya're right." said Applejack, rubbing her head. "Ah know Ah shouldn't be calm, but... Ah am. Ah don't understand, but when Matt did... whatever he did, Ah felt..."
"Felt... what?" asked Twilght after few moments when her friend stayed silent.
Applejack thought few seconds more, then shook her head.
"Ah don't know how to explain that. Rainbow, he did the same to'ya." she said, turning to the cyan pegasus. "Could'ya tell what that feeling was?"
Rainbow Dash made a troubled expression, and after a while also shook her head.
"Trust Dash to talk about feelings." Twilight frowned.
"Does it matter?" asked Spike. "Shouldn't we be just glad that Matthias healed them?"
"It's not that I'm not glad." replied Twilight. "I just want to know how an earth pony could use magic. It doesn't make sense!"
"Sugar, remember how'ya tried to figure out somethin'bout another earth pony?"
They all looked through the window. Pinkie Pie was outside, apparently talking to some bird.
"And how did that turned out?" asked Spike.
Twilght turned her sight at the wall.
"Point taken." she admitted. "But still..."
She was interrupted as Fluttershy entered the room.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I interrupt you?"
"No, Fluttershy." she sighed. "Back so soon?"
"Yes, we found that poor wolf quickly, and..."
"'Poor'? Fluttershy, dear, it tried to kill Applejack!" Rarity said.
"Only because he was hungry!" the shy pony defended the wolf, cringing at Rarity's tone of voice.
"Hey, where's Matt?" asked Spike, and only now they realised that he didn't come with Fluttershy.
"Oh, he said that he needed to think about some things. He said that if anypony needs him, he will be by the river."
"Did he went sulking again?" thought Twilight, half annoyed, half worried.
"Lets go everypony. I have some questions for him."
"Alright, Ah need to thank him properly, anyhow."
As they made their way out of Applejack's house, they were approached by Pinkie.
"Pinkie, we're going to see Matt. Are you coming?"
The pink pony nodded her head energetically.
"Of course I'm coming, how else I'm going to deliver Mattie that message?"
"Well then, lets... Wait, what? What message?" asked Twilight.
"This message." Pinkie replied, giving her a piece of paper.
Twilight looked at it. To her astonishment, the paper was covered with some strange symbols she didn't recognise.
"Pinkie, where did you find this?"
"Oh, I didn't find it." replied Pinke. "This really nice raven asked me to give it to Mattie."
"A raven."
"Aha."
"A bird."
"Correctamundo!"
"Pinkie, birds don't talk!"
"Well, that one did."
Twiligh facehoofed herself.
"Did this 'raven' told you its name?" she asked, figuring it would be easier to play along instead of objecting.
"He said his name was keeping secrets... wait... or that it was 'Keeper of secrets'."
"That’s not a name!"
"Well, that's what it meant."
Twilight was about to burst into flames out of irritation, when Applejack put a hoof on her shoulder.
"Sugar? Matt?"
"Right." Twilight replied, irritated even further that her friend, that almost died not even an hour ago, was calming her down again. "Lets go, everypony. The sooner we get to Matthias, the sooner we can get some answers."





Matthias sat at by the river bank, not looking at his reflection this time. This time, he had his eyes closed, as he tried something he never actually tried to do before.
Meditating.
He knew he wasn't going to find any answers by thinking things over and over, so the only way to figure out why he was here that was left for him was to try to use his renewed connection to the Light and get into a trance, in which he might find those answers.
The problem was, the spiritual aspects of the Light never were his speciality. In fact, that actually fell more into a priests' area of interests rather than paladins'. However, paladins were as much as warriors as priest, so he hoped that Light would answer him. He knew it spoke to Uther, Tirion and Turalyon, the three greatest of this calling ever to be born among humans, or even other races. While Matthias was definitely far from being a perfect paladin, if he could muster enough patience, it would surely bring results.
"Then again, patience isn't really my speciality, either." he mused, but quickly brushed that thought off and resumed his trance.
He could feel the Light. That alone brought him happiness, joy, pride, and inner peace... as well as pain and deep shame. But it was there, in his heart, and even if it wasn't speaking to him like it did at the moment when he healed Applejack, he could feel its warmth. That the Light forgave him, or at least trusted him enough to let him help somepony filled Matthias with wonder at its purity.
"Lad, no one feels ready. No one feels he deserves it." Uther's words, said to him at the day of his introduction to the Order of the Silver Hand came to him now. "And you know what?  Because no one does. It's grace, pure and simple. We are inherently unworthy, simply because we're human, and all human beings--aye, and elves, and dwarves, and all the other races--are flawed. But the Light loves us anyway. It loves us for what we sometimes can rise to in rare moments. It loves us for what we can do to help others. And it loves us because we can help it share its message by striving daily to be worthy, even though we understand that we can't ever truly become so. So stand there today, as I did, feeling that you can't possibly deserve it or ever be worthy, and know that you're in the same place every single paladin has ever stood."
"If all human beings are flawed, than how would you have called me?" Matthias thought, feeling the tears to start gather in his eyes again.
He shook his head. He couldn't meditate with those kind of feelings - or, in fact, any kind of feelings or thoughts. He took a deep breath...
"Hi mister!" shouted three familiar fillies.
Matt sighed and felt his tail twitch in annoyance.
"Hello, girls." he replied, opening his eyes.
"What are you doing, mister?" asked Sweetie Belle.
"You know, you can call me Matthias, or Matt. 'Mister' makes me sound old." Matthias said with a grin. "As for what I was doing, I was meditating."
"Medy-what?" asked Apple Bloom.
"Thinking." Matt simplified.
"Ouhh... what were you thinking abo..."
"HE HAS A CUTIE MARK!!!" shouted Scootaloo.
"Oh, no." Matthias thought as the three fillies stared at him wide eyed.
"When did you get a cutie mark?"
"About... an hour ago."
"How did'ya get it?
"What is you special talent?"
"Yeah, what is that, some kind of statue or something?"
"You do realize I can't answer all you question at once, right?" asked Matthias, hoping somepony would come and save him.
The girls looked at each other, and Sweetie Belle was about to repeat one of the questions, when suddenly:
"There he is!"
Matthias and the fillies looked at the direction the voice of Twilight Sparkle came from. She was followed by the other mares and one dragon. For some reason, she appeared to be almost angry.
"Did'ya do somethin' bad again, Matt?" asked Apple Bloom.
"Nothing I know of." replied Matthias.
"I'm not going to meditate today, aren't I?" he though, regretting for what he wished a moment ago.





"Hey." the paladin asked his companion.
"Yeah?" the death knight replied, not taking his eyes off from the frozen wasteland that was below them.
"You ever wonder why we're here?"
" It’s one of life’s great mysteries, isn’t it?" said the death knight, looking up at the sky. "Why are we here? Are we just a product of Titans failed experiments, or is it Light's doing? I don't know, man, "he added with a sigh, "but it keeps me up at nigh."
His friend from the Argent Crusade stared at him.
"...What?! I mean why are we out here, on this freaking ice spire?"
"Oh. Uh... yeah." replied the Knight of the Ebon Blade.
"What was all that stuff about keeping you up at night? You don't sleep!"
"Uh...hm? Nothing."
"You wanna talk about it?"
"No."
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
"Seriously though, why are we out here?" asked the paladin, getting back to the subject. "As far as I can tell, it's just a pile of ice in the middle of nowhere"
"Well, it is the Icecrown Citadel." reminded him death knight. "We're suppose to guard it."
"Guard it from what? The sleeping beauty over there?" said paladin, pointing at the frozen figure behind them.
As everyone within the Ashen Verdict, the combined force ot he elite Argent Crusaders and Knights of the Ebon Blade, they knew who sat on the Lich King's Throne, as well as why.
"You know, for a paladin, you have surprisingly little respect for someone who chose to be damned to save Azeroth."
"It's not that I don't respect him, it's just that I don't understand why we have to freeze our asses up here."
"If you're asking specifically why here, it's because it was our turn to stand here. Just be glad it wasn't our shift when the Banshee Queen came, those two are still standing guard at the bottom of the Citadel, near the entrance to Naz'anak."
That got the paladin to shiver. The Forgotten Depths were the home to the faceless ones, servants of the Old Gods. Where they walked, only madness stayed. The commander left in charge felt it was a perfect place to have stationed two imbeciles who let the Dark Lady do whatever it was she wanted to do without anyone from Ashen Verdict accompanying her.
"And if you mean the Citadel in general," continued the death knight, "it's because both of the Highlords ordered so. Write them a letter of complaint."
"Before it would get to them, I would be an ice sculpture." muttered the paladin. "It's easy for you, you don't feel cold anymore."
"One of the perks of being dead." replied the death knight with a typical for his kind dark humor.





"Hello." said Matthias as the group approached.
But for the moment, their main focus wasn't he.
"Apple Bloom, ya told me ya'll were stayin' at school to work at the school paper!"
"We are!"
"Yes, we were hoping we could get an interview from Matt!"
"What?"
"I hope you weren't going to write anything like during the whole 'Gabby Gums incident', weren't you girls?" asked Rarity.
"Wha... Of course not!" replied Sweetie Belle.
"We were going to ask him about where he came from, how did he got here, where did he learned how to fight..."
"But now we wanted to ask how did he got his cutie mark!"
"I'm sorry, girls, but that talk will have to wait a bit." interjected Twilight. "We have to talk with Matt about some... grown up ponies stuff."
"'Grown up ponies stuff'? What'ya mean?"
"Why do I have a weird feeling that none of them is going to ask me out on a date?" thought Matthias, suspecting what they wanted to talk in general. "It would seem that I'm not the only one with questions."
This time he was prepared to tell them almost everything; that he was from another world, that he wasn't always a pony...
Everything except his crimes. He doubted that they would have wanted to have anything to do with him if they knew, despise their declarations of trust and friendship yesterday.
"But we want to know how he got his cutie mark now!" begged Sweetie Belle with an eyes of a puppy.
"Come now, girls." said Matthias before anypony else answered her plea. "I'm sure this won't take too long. And besides, we can always talk another time, right?"
The fillies looked at each other.
"Ya promise?" asked Apple Bloom.
"Yes, I promise. And a gentlecolt always keeps his word." he added with a courteous bow.
"Okay then." replied fillies, brightening up. "See you."
"So..." asked Matthias when the three of them were out of earshot. "What do you want to talk about?"





Thrall, Former Warchief of the Horde, looked at the piece of Cairne's shattered runespear he selected from his pyre. It bore a single rune: healing. He would keep this, to remember Cairne by. To always be in touch with his heart.
Thrall jumped lightly to the earth and began to walk slowly toward the setting sun. He didn't look back.
The wind was slightly chill after the sun had gone, Thrall reflected. There was much that yet needed to be discussed with Baine, much planning that still needed to be done. Yet before that, Thrall desired a little time to sit with Aggra in this peaceful land.





"Who you really are?" started Twilight. "How can you use magic despite not being a unicorn? What kind of magic was that? Why are ravens sending you messages?!"
Twilight cursed at herself as she yelled in her frustration Pinkie's ridiculous story.
"Ravens?" asked Matt with wide eyes.
"Yeah, I..."
"You mean Medivh?"
"Yeap, that’s his name." replied Pinkie Pie.
Twilight stared at both of them.
"What?!" she screamed finally. "Pinkie, you said that its name was 'Keeper of secrets'!"
"Yes, it is!" confirmed the pink pony happily.
"Eee... I don't know how she knows this..." interjected Matthias quickly. "... But his name, Medivh, actually means 'keeper of secrets'. What was the message?"
"Here you go!" said Pinkie, giving him the piece of paper with strange symbols on it.
As Matt read the message, Twilight fought hard to calm herself.





Deep within the Alterac Valley, Drek'Thar and his attendant Palkar sat in the hut, eating dinner. News of Baine victory over Grimtotem and reclaiming of Thunder Bluff spread quickly, even to this faraway corner of the world, and they warmed everyone's hearts. Even Drek'Thar, who has once again started to lose his contact with reality, joined in public joy.





Matthias looked at the brief message that Medivh for some reason wrote in Thalassian and entrusted to Pinkie Pie:

Well done, young king
-Medivh

Matt made a mental note to hit the Prophet as soon as he sees him next time.
"What a confounded..." he muttered.
"What did it say?" asked Twilight.
"Nothing of a significance. I swear, annoying others must be the only amusement he has left."
"Okay..." said Twilight, visibly handling the situation as well as Matthias. "Matt, look. I respect your privacy, and understand that you have reasons for not telling us everything, but...
"Yes, I know." interrupted her Matt. It was time for some confessions.





Deep within the middle of Azeroth, the Maelstorm, the gigantic rift that was created when the Well of Eternity collapsed into itself during the Great Sundering, was furiously spinning, as it always had in the ten thousand years of it existence.
If there was anybody unfortunate enough to find himself close to it, he would have noticed that suddenly, the water shook.
That there was a light coming from the center of the Maelstorm.
That you could hear a laughter.





Twilight listened as Matthias spoke.
"I know it must be hard when you are trying to trust somepony that you know close to nothing about. That's why I decided to tell you everything. Make no mistake - I will still not tell you what it was that I did during my time as 'evil', not just because I dislike thinking about it, but for your own good. I doubt you could get much sleep after hearing this story."
Twilight enthusiasm for hearing the truth about Matt was a bit shaded by the feeling of offense at his comment; they fought Nightmare Moon, they fought Discord; what could possibly he worst than the two of them?
"Were should I start?" wondered Matthias. "I guess it would be best if I told you that-"
Whatever Matt was going to say, it was immediately interrupted by a terrifying yowl of pain that came out of his mouth.





Arthas Menethil screamed.
He screamed louder that he ever did, as the pain that he felt, that some part of his mind knew to not be his, erupted within him with an intensity that he never thought to be possible.
And in the back of his mind, he could hear two other screams.





Icecrown Citadel, until now silent as death, shook.
The paladin and the death knight desperatly throw themselves away from the gasp, trying to grab anything that was attached to the Citadel. The Knight of the Ebon Blade managed to get a hold of one of the ice spikes coming out from the frozen floor near the Throne. Noticing that his friend was about to fall over, he reached with his hand, barely managing to grab him in time.
He hawled the paladin up to where he stood and they waited. Waited for whatever the hell was going on to stop. At some point, they looked at the Frozen Throne.
The paladin felt his heart stop beating, and he had no doubt that if his friend's would still beat, it would also had stopped.
It was cracking!





The earth split before Thrall.
He leaped aside, landing and rolling and getting swiftly to his feet only to be knocked off them again. The ground beneath him surged upward as if he were riding the back of the great creature, lifting him up and up. He clung to it, unable to rise and flee, and even if he did flee, to where?
"Earth, soil and stone, I ask of you calmness. Share with me what it is you fear, name it, and I will-"
The earth did have a voice, and now it screamed, a rumbling agonizing cry.
Thrall felt the rip in the world. It was not here, not in the Thunder Bluff, nor even in Kalimdor-it was to the east, in the midst of the ocean, in the center of the Maelstorm.... This, then, was what the elements had been afraid of. A shattering, a cataclysm, breaking the earth as Dreanor had been broken. Through his connection with them, their terror surged through him, and he, too, threw back his head and shrieked for a long moment.





Drek'Thar, who had been dozing, bolted upright.
His blind eyes could see what other's could not, and he now beheld the full terror of what was happening to Azeroth.
A scream was thorn from his throat.





Twilight and everypony else looked terrified at Matthias, cowering their ears.
Matthias, who fought with timberwolves without uttering a single sound of pain, who had his ribs shattered and hooves burned by a dragon and merely grunted, who endured medieval medicine's treatment with only few yowls, was now screaming in a voice that nopony would believe a pony could utter, as if he was pelted from his skin.
They weren't the only ones that heard it. As Matthias scream grow louder and louder, and he was squirming at the ground in pain, few ponies came, alarmed, to see what was making such terrible noises.
Twilight knew that even more were cowering in fear.
As Matthias screams seemed to go on forever, it shifted, and everypony could hear the words...
Words that were uttered by three voices.





Arthas Menethil, Ner'zhul, Bolvar Fordragon, Thrall and Drek'Thar all sreamed the same words at the same time:
"The oceans will boil! The land will weep, and the world will break!"
After that, they knew nothing.





Twilight gazed at Matt, who finally went silent.
However, she was now more afraid for him than when he screamed.
"Quick, we have to take him to a hospital!" said somepony, Twilight didn't know who; Matthias scream deafened them all.
"No." she said. "Bring him to my library."





The paladin of Argent Crusade and the death knight of the Ebon Blade looked at the Frozen Throne. Now that the quakes has ended, so did the cracking of it. The cracks that were already made started to disappear, as the ice prison repaired itself.
"I'm going to report this." said after a while the death knight. "You stay here."
"Why me?" asked paladin in a bit too high voice.
"Because I already died once, it's your turn now." replied death knight as he made his way down.





"There he is!" shouted Aggra to Baine.
Thrall was laying on the earth, a short distance from the funeral grounds. Baine quickly followed the brown skinned orc to see if his father's friend was alive.
"He's just unconscious." she said with relief.
"Good." grunted Baine, letting a humor to slip into his voice. "I doubt my father would have liked if he joined him in death so soon."





Drek'Thar wept despite being unconscious, tears falling from his blind eyes. Palkar knew better than to doubt him. He felt nothing, at least not here, not physically, but he could sense the world's distress. And so when Drek'Thar awakened, inhaled a sobbing breath and turned his face up to his young caretaker, Palkar waited for what the seer would impart. The younger orc's blood seemed to run cold in his veins at the words.
"Someone is breaking down the door! Bar it! Do not let him in!"