//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3: Day 15 Afternoon - End of Days 
// Story: (Cancelled) A Death Knight's Ramblings 
// by Nox Drachen 
//------------------------------//

	
Day 15, Afternoon: Confound the element of surprise, it drives me to pain.

I did not expect this. And I don't think the library doorway expecting it either when I crashed the back of my head into it.

At least it wasn't my face.

I wasn't startled. Much. Maybe a little. Cut me some slack, I haven't been surprised by anything the last seven years, how was I supposed to be prepared for... THIS? The whole library was filled with several ponies I had not even seen yet, and unlike yesterday these were different ponies. Not mirror images. Which there should still have only been three of! Not to mention the pink ponification of a sugar rush that greeted us with a continuous flow of words. Where does she keep all that air, her mane? SO MANY WORDS. Maybe that’s why her mane is all poofy.

She offered me a cupcake. Couldn't hurt to try so I took one covered in some red frosting. As I took the first bite, I noticed Lorn pulling his head out of a barrel of water, gasping for air. Turns out the frosting was actually hot sauce.

That was delicious, and it explained why the barrel was conveniently placed next to the table. This probably happens a lot.

I like her already.

As for myself, there were two reasons why it didn't affect me. One should be obvious by now, and the other is that I might've drowned in lava a few times. One was on purpose (hey, I was curious at the time), the other times mostly due to my so called "team mates" "accidentally" knocking me into it. Never do something with stupid people you do not know, no matter how easy the task at hand is. If you knock a magic meteor in one direction, THAT'S THE DIRECTION IT WILL GO.

Why did I team up with random people again? Oh yeah, boredom. Confound it. And it makes me appreciate my guild all the much more. The only thing better than continuous slaughter is continuous slaughter with fellow misfits, and that’s how the guild system was made. I miss my guild mates. But enough about them.

The party actually went rather smooth, which means something terrible is going to happen in the future. I somehow managed to avoid mentally scarring anypony else, which is good. Apart from a few glances, everypony seemed more focused on enjoying the party which let me gather my thoughts. This world confuses me, I haven't had a single attempt on my life from these ponies. It's somehow... relaxing.

But what was that beating sound? It kept getting faster, firmer, stronger. I knew it from somewhere, but couldn't quite put my hoof on it.

Some of the activities were actually quite fun, especially the first one I tried. "Pin the tail on the pony" they called it. Precision while blindfolded isn't that much harder for me than normal, but that requires the target to be alive. Paper is dead, so I ended up putting it on the throat of the picture. Then the chest, the muzzle, and somehow one of the front hooves (how did that happen?) before finally hitting the right spot. It only took me like... twenty three tries. Twenty two of them were after the party was over. The trick is to remember where it is relative to the live factors, which means everything around it that's alive.

I'm not obsessed. Much.

Lorn challenged me to an armwrestling match. Or hoofwrestling, I suppose. Which I won, oddly enough.

I didn't rub it in his face. Much. It went somewhere along the lines of “IN YOUR FACE!”, which is a perfectly normal reaction.

Afterwards, he introduced me to Rarity. She had an overly stylized purple mane/tail and a trio of diamonds on her flank, and gave the impression of being a socialite. Seems odd of her to be in such "common" company, but perhaps there is something I don't know yet.

I spent the rest of my time looking through you, and spotted a few things that I cannot edit out because you won't let me. Xia did this on purpose, didn't she. I wish I had found these apples sooner, it would've spared me that horrible incident with Lorn's blood. Paladin blood, oh how I hate thee. One of the few substances left in our world to contain a good amount of life force due to its purity, which is also why some claim they cannot become undead. Right, and Sir Zeliek is just a fragment of our imagination. You're immune to the Plague, not necromancy you self righteous bastards.

Yes, I did ask Xia where the ink you use comes from. It’s my blood.

AWESOME.

And now I have to tell them what I am.

Not so awesome. You try explaining to six ponies, who have probably never even seen a death, how your purpose in life is to cause death! Five if you count my slip up on the farm.

I noticed Applejack looking at the others, possibly concerned with their reactions. Suddenly I knew how to deal with the situation. So of course I attempted to run out the door, only to crash into somepony who was already there. A white pegasus stallion wearing yellow armour. Who must have special training in being a wall, as he didn't even flinch when I crashed into him.

Generic guard voice aswell, a bit rough. Seems Xia "forgot" to tell me we were actually going to explain this to the princess as well. Both of them. Which made sense, we were a foreign entity after all and a potential threat. At least the trip would give me some more time to handle the subject of my specialty. Maybe “world optimizer” would be the proper description.





By the Night, how I have missed flying. The wind flowing through your hair and the sheer freedom from not being grounded, it's awesome. And it reminded me of the fact that I do not have wings, which is not awesome. Watching Lorn and Dash fly alongside the chariots didn't help. The other girls were split up between two other chariots, while I was stuck with Xia. Joy. And she wanted to talk. Double joy.

She cast a bubble around us, which she explained was capable of suppressing sound. It wasn't an anti magic zone, or a power word: barrier. Which meant she must have picked it up here. As per usual she started going on about magical theories to which I very politely asked her to shut the buck up.

Then I asked her if she’d asked them about dying yet. She hadn’t. Of course she hadn’t, she assumed they had spirit healers here aswell. Spirit healers are basically these blue human women wearing white cloth spiraling around their bodies that totally isn’t revealing at all. Except it is.

She lost her tongue once I told her how this world was actually free of their influence. The bubble disappeared, Xia seemingly deep in thought. I didn't bother asking what the fuss was about, mainly because we arrived shortly after. Canterlot, it's so... bright. White things everywhere. And ridiculously tall spires, giving the impression somepony was overcompensating for something. Maybe one of the princes, if they had any.

The castle itself had more white things inside. It all looked so... clean. No bloodstains, no dust, no nothing. It was like something out of a fairy tale. So I bit myself on the left front hoof. Nope, fully awake. And in pain. Luckily I had my saddlebags with me, filled with the remaining apples. Naturally I ate one. I'm running out of these too fast. SO DELICIOUS.

Then the beating sound appeared again, what was up with that? I was going to ask Xia, but we arrived in a hall filled with stained glass windows, each showing a different picture. There were six ponies on several of them that looked like the six we came here with, fighting a dark alicorn in one and a... creature mishmash in another. The hay? It had a horse-like head, rather different from the ponies I had seen, with a deer antler on the right, a goat horn on the left, one long fang, yellow eye with a red iris, a snake tongue, and a goatee. It had the right arm of a lion, the left claw of an eagle, the right leg of a lizard, the left leg of a goat, a bat's right wing, a pegasus' left wing, and a snake's tail. It was like all the mentioned animals had fallen into a grinder and the remains had fused together to take revenge on the contraption.

Xia interrupted my important line of thought, which is when I noticed Celestia and another grayish blue alicorn had arrived. Clearly alicorns can multiclass, as only rogues would be able to sneak up on me like that. Lorn doesn’t count, because he didn’t sneak up on me. I KNEW HE WAS THERE, SHUT UP. I bowed regardless, mainly because Xia pushed me.

We introduced ourselves properly, one at a time. Xia’s full name is Exicia Esoce, she’s a mage who specializes in different schools of magic. Currently she’s focusing on arcane magic for reasons unknown, which is stupid. Why anyone would be a mage and then not specialize in fire magic is beyond me, as fire is awesome. She also takes care of our guild library, which contain all our books and tomes. Including the evil ones who want to eat me.

As AJ pointed out, she and Twilight were very similar, except she didn’t write to any princesses. Mainly because the closest thing we have to a princess is the crazy banshee bitch in the Undercity. They thought I was talking about a fancy female dog, to which I explained how the gilnean royalty had that one covered. The people of Gilneas are a bunch of werewolves, thus their queen is a real bitch. Sylvanas is a crazy zombie woman and the leader of the Forsaken, which is just a fancy word for emo zombies. Xia and her family doesn’t count, they’re crazy. Crazy is awesome. Also, Syllie’s a former blood elf. And no, she’s not my type.

Lorn’s full name is Ralorn Dawnrunner, and he’s a paladin. He claims to serve the holy cause of the Light, but he lies. There’s nothing holy about using the essence of a being of pure holy energy to perform paladin spells. I’m so proud of him. Apart from the lying part, he should be proud of being a blood knight! Lying is stupid, as telling the truth is so much easier not to mention it tend to lead to hilarious moments. The general population of Azeroth hate hearing the truth when it makes them look bad.

He explained how we got here as a result of a small experiment with an urban myth involving the collision between two objects named after absolutes: The Immovable Object and The Unstoppable Force, and how we were "somewhere" before finally ending up deep within the nearby forest they call The Everfree Forest. Why somepony would call something "Everfree" is beyond me, aren't forests free anyway? Did that have something to do with how AJ mentioned being done before the "scheduled" winter? The idea was absurd, you cannot control weather on a grand scale.

There it was again. What's up with all these feelings of déjà vu?

And then it was my turn. There was a lot of information to be said, and many wrong ways of saying it. But then it struck me: Buck censorship.

My name is Larorn Dawnrunner. Born on a monday, slain on a friday, raised on the same friday, freed on a thursday, revenge fulfilled on a saturday, mainly bored every other day. I’m a death knight, My specialty is beating things to death with themselves or anything else I can get my hands on. Hooves.

Rarity asked me what I mean about “raised”, so I told her exactly what it meant. I’m a scary zombie pony, woohoohoohoo. Xia unwrapped her bandages, showing her bony joints.

Rarity fainted dramatically, which turned out to be an act. Drama queens.

Then I told them about Azeroth, how our world is slowly dying, becoming lifeless as the meaning of death diminish with the passing years. Death is no longer permanent in Azeroth, except in some very minor cases like age. And because of it, everything is at war with everything. It's been like this for seven years, and it shows. Can you guess what the main, or rather, ONLY strategy being used in these "wars" are?

I’ll give you a hint: It involves throwing bodies at each other until one side gives up. If I weren’t as creative as I am I would’ve grown tired of genocide a long time ago. Imagine a catapult that fires catapults that fires bombs containing catapult firing catapults. And then get disappointed when you realize it doesn’t exist yet and no one wants to make one.

The natives looked at eachother with concerned looks, almost as if they felt sorry for us. There was an odd sincerity in their eyes. They told how their kingdom had not been at war at all for almost a thousand years since some childish squabble between the two royal sisters a thousand and almost two years ago. Which meant the war ended some time after the two of them stopped. And that the two alicorns are more than a thousand years old.

They look good for their age.

The other princess was indeed Luna, the goddess of the night. I declare her to be the best princess ever. Going slightly off topic, I commended her night sky as the piece of art it was. Of course I enjoy other things than killing people, why limit yourself to just one hobby?

Back on track, I told them about the spirit healers and everything else there was to say about my abilities as a death knight. Which mainly involves different ways to kill things and manipulation of the dead. I can create temporary ghouls, even small armies of the things if there’s enough death in the vicinity. Thinking about it, seeing as Xia made so many mirror images... I shall have the biggest volleyball team of all time. Buck the rules.

And then I told them about Arvenrarth. My sword, my partner in death, and my first true friend. Technically. She did try to kill me after I runeforged her. That’s the sign of true friendship. Her name is a mix of the ancient elven words “arven” and “ferarth”, which means “despair” and “delicious”. Despair is Delicious, or Delicious Despair. I gave her that name when I first defeated Falric, a human death knight, in a duel during my death knight training. Man was obsessed with pears.

I hate pears. That fruit is evil and conspires with bananas.

Celestia asked us about our world, more specifically about the warring factions. There are two major factions, the Horde and the Alliance. One likes wearing red and beating things to death, and the other likes wearing blue and make excuses as to why they are beating things to death. Guess which one I prefer. There’s also a whole lot of other factions consisting of less interesting races, except the dragons. Dragons are awesome unless they’re stupid.

Both the Horde and the Alliance are made up of six races each. The Horde has orcs, trolls, tauren, the Forsaken (undead humans), blood elves, and goblins, while the Alliance has humans, dwarves, gnomes, night elves, draenei and worgen, the last one being the gilnean werewolves who are basically humans with a wild side. Woof. All “twelve” races walk on two legs, more or less. Technically it’s just ten, but try saying that to any of the human races. They keep using the word race, but it doesn’t mean what they think it does. I’M RIGHT.

Most of the human race are proud, honourable, and terribly BORING. Take a monkey, shave off all fur except the part on top of their head and make the part that should contain the brain larger and you have a human. Then you have the slightly shorter race of the dwarves, wearers of epic beards and unable to fight sober. Dwarves, unlike most humans, are awesome. One of them even has a gun that uses squirrels as ammunition. Their skin colour is usually a tone of peach, some cases browner.

And then there’s the gnomes. Put a human in a box which you then press down to about a quarter of its original size and the result is a gnome, a race of angry midgets with a knack for technology and a desire to make everything else smaller. The Horde mainly use them as footballs in gnomeball, a sport involving two teams each trying to kick the gnome into the other team's goal. Like a reverse Warsong Gulch skirmish, only without the clever use of flags. Whose bright idea was it to decide victory based on whoever had the most flags?

Which brings us to the night elves, who are humans with extremely long life span, long ears and a fair face. The latter being mainly the females, the males: not so much. They’re like my kind, the blood elves, only they worship the moon goddess Elune, and their genders have very different roles. The females fight with a ferocious grace while the males spend their time hugging trees. It’s gotten more equal the last few years but gender roles still linger. Males are still pansies. Their skin are usually a colour between blue and purple, with glowing eyes to match.

The fifth Alliance race are the draenei, whose genders couldn’t possibly be more different. Where the females are graceful and beautiful, the males are muscular to the point of absurdity. How they mate is beyond me- DAMN YOU MENTAL IMAGES- and not important let’s talk about something else. Differences, yes. Much better.

Males have thick tendrils for beards. Their beards are not awesome. Females have much thinner tendrils that reach their shoulders from behind their ears. Males have big boned foreheads while the females have horns, and both have a tail. The female one is ridiculously tiny, while the male one is the size of their arms. Which are fat. Blue glowing eyes and the same skin colours as the night elves, only more blue than purple.

Also they’re related to Eredar, a race of demons, which is not important.

Then there’s the worgen. Looks like every other human except they can turn into bipedal wolves and they speak with an accent THAT I DO NOT HAVE. I’m not gilnean damnit! If anything they’re copying me!

Stupid dogs.

The Horde races are a different breed altogether. They’re savages and proud of it. My kind of people, unless you’re talking about the “adventurers” and “heroes”, or Garrosh.

Garrosh is an orc, a brown skinned crossbreed between a human and a gorilla with short tusks. Turns out orcs are alien to Azeroth as well, and guess who their old neighbors were. The draenei, which was obviously just a coincidence. They orcs were all part of shamanistic tribes, until some demon lord got bored enough to make them all bloodthirsty brutes which ended up turning their skin green, unless of course you were lucky enough to belong to one of the uncorrupted tribes.

If you ask me the whole situation was something out of a bad book. Fast forward some human bloke makes a portal, they end up in Azeroth, it’s all orcs versus humans and shit happens. I didn’t fight in the second war either, mainly because I was busy with other things... which is none of your business.

Then some years ago the draenei crash landed on Azeroth with their crystal ship because their pilots are terrible drivers. And they joined the Alliance because the Horde is led by orcs and they’re both racist. Something about the orcs almost committing genocide on their race. And they’re immortal and thus can live forever, which is a very long time to hold a grudge.

Onwards. Tauren. A human once loved a cow a bit too much, and thus the tauren race was created. The end. Yes, they are really just cows walking on two legs with fingers and arms and everything.

Trolls. Dat accent. Long tusks, males are always walk hunched because if they didn’t, they’d hit their heads every time they walk through doors. And that blue skin of theirs? It’s not skin. It’s fur. Get it right.

The Forsaken. Consisting mostly of the undead population of the fallen kingdom of Lordaeron, they’re a bunch of life hating zombies. Mostly. Xia’s remaining family is among the few who don’t waste their time bitching about how unfair it is that everyone else is still alive and how the world hates them for existing. Which is actually true. Like we’re worth less because we don’t have a pulse. JEALOUS, ALL OF THEM.

No, I’m not Forsaken. I’m a death knight, we’re a different type of undead. You’d have to ask Arthas how we work, all I know is I stab people and they die. And our swords have a mind of their own, in most cases one smarter than their owners. I’m an exception. Arthas is not, as he committed both patricide and regicide when he killed the king of Lordaeron and got the Forsaken into their current mess in the first place.

No, I am a blood elf. We’re mostly looked upon as both beautiful and shallow, which is mostly true. I may look gorgeous, but at least I’m not rubbing it in people’s faces all the time. That’s what weapons are for. We’re like the opposite of night elves, worshipping the sun instead of the moon which I’m not a fan of as the sun is too bucking bright. You can’t look directly at the sun, not like the moon. The moon is several times better. FACT.

Last there’s the goblins. Cross an orc with a gnome, add fifteen dozens silos of liquid greed and put explosives in every piece of technology they create and you end up with something resembling a goblin. They’ll blow up everything except their fortunes. Sometimes that too.

I’m so glad I didn’t have to tell them all that, nor write it. Xia gave them the politically correct version, combined with actual pictures. As if my descriptions weren’t good enough. She always carries around an entire encyclopedia in her bags, which is awfully convenient, along with all the books she’s currently reading.

She then questioned their reactions. Celestia assured them that we possessed no threat to them, and they seemed fine with that.

What the hay is wrong with these ponies? They're about as carefree as me, only without my charming personality. So I asked how she could possibly know that, considering I just told her what I am. She told me why. I did not faint as a result of that. It was merely a setback.

Fine. I fainted, which is the appropriate reaction to being told you’re under a pacification spell or something like it. I woke up to find myself still surrounded by ponies, so everything was normal... ish. So I’m pacified. This is just dandy. Apparently I cast it on myself when I arrived in this world, but she didn’t tell me anything else. And honestly I was okay with that, too much information not enough murder. I’m a soldier, not a leader. Point me in the direction of something and I kill it. End of story.

I need an apple. And now Xia’s looking at me oddly.

…

My eyes do not glow.

MY EYES DO NOT GLOW.

WHAT MATTER OF SORCERY IS THIS?

Xia blames the apples. Claims they’re making me alive... wait. My looks are more colourful, my mane livelier. And I recognize that beating sound, it’s a heart. My heart. I’m alive again. I’ve overdosed on life. NIGHT DAMN IT. Quickly brain, push all the buttons! No! Panic is not the right answer to this AHA LICHBORNE!

I instantly turned back into what can only be described as myself on a very bad day. My coat was tattered and filled with rotten holes, giving way to the decayed bones underneath. The beating had stopped, and my eyes were glowing bright blue once again. I’m still immortal!

My celebration fell short when Xia told me to drop it, mumbling something about magic theories and how my “shapeshift” had surpassed its usual ten second duration. I would’ve refused, but I was overwhelmed by a searing pain more powerful than any holy spell I’d ever been hit with. This does not make me less of a man. Stallion. Whatever. My heartbeat is still creeping me out.

Xia said something about me being a battery, to which I suggested using “power cell” as a description instead. Dash agreed, so it was two to one. FRIENDSHIP.

So according to her, my appearance reflects the amount of life force I contain. Seeing as our world is made of suck, I’ve never gotten enough to become this lifelike. That and I haven't really spent much since I got here seeing as my equestrian kill count is currently zero. At least it won’t kill me. Right?

Letting the others depart, Celestia asked me some questions whose answers she didn't want to share with neither my group nor her subjects. Which was rather odd, as she asked me about my childhood, my age, and if I felt at home here. I'm a hundred and twenty six. I think. Don't really know as I'm an orphan. The "Dawnrunner" part of my name is from the family who adopted my brother and I. Barely even remember my childhood apart from a few incidents only I can remember. THEY HAPPENED.

As for feeling at home... I do. I don't get it, I've never been here and this place feels more right than any part of Azeroth ever has. Then again, when you think about the state it's currently in I guess anywhere else would feel more like home in comparison. She also told me that just because I've been a horrible person, pony, whatever for as long as I can remember (which isn't much) I don't have to be. Do I sound like I need moral lessons?

Then she let me go, calling me "her little pony". She is not my favourite princess, but she’s the weirdest monarch I’ve ever met. It’s like she has a brain but pretends she doesn’t, which the complete opposite of azerothian royalty. At last the whole gathering was now over, to which Pinkie suggested we have a "officially welcomed to Equestria by the princess" party. Twilight suggested a picnic instead.

Did that shadow just move?