Shining gasped as he awoke, the icy air soothing his dry windpipe. He coughed, blinking several times, only to be greeted by darkness every time he did. He looked down, only to find nothing. No hooves, no fur, no mini-Shining, nothing. He twisted his head, attempting to look around, looking for anything, anyone. He gave up after several moments, though. As far as he could tell, he was completely and utterly...
Alone...
'W-Where am I?' he thought, his voice echoing through his mind, the endless darkness unnerving him terribly.
'The Twisting Nether...'
'Kel'Thuzad?!' Shining whirled around, his consciousness seeing nothing but darkness in all directions. He was frantically spinning now, looking up to down, left to right. Anything to see at this point was better than nothing...
'Breathe, my king, the anxiety and paranoia will disperse, just a side effect.' Kel'Thuzad droned, his echoing voice hurting Shining's head, the sound reverberating infinitely across the endless black. The lich, rather immaturely, chuckled to himself. The first resurrection is always... awkward.
'A side effect of what?!' Shining's panicked voice echoed, reaching the lich's soul quickly. The lich chuckled lightly, most likely to alleviate the tension of the answer.
'Dying.'
'WHAT?!' Shining shouted, the sound hurting Kel'Thuzad's invisible ears, as he had recently been killed as well. The lich sighed, and replied to his King. 'I'M DEAD?!' the lich grimaced, and shushed him quickly.
'Master, all is well, I will explain everything... But first, you need to calm down, and tell me what you remember, please!'
Shining continued to panic, however. Was he really dead?! How long has it been since he got there?! H... He might never see his angel again...
Kel'Thuzad lightly growled in annoyance, and summoned up what little necromantic powers he had left.
This will be much easier to explain, face-to-face...
Shining's mind sobbing was interrupted by... a light.
A LIGHT?!
'NO! I DON'T WANT TO GO ON! I WANT TO GO BACK! I'M SICK AND TIRED OF ALL OF THIS! I just... I just want things to be the way they used to be...'
He closed his soul's eyes, praying to anything, anyone...
He didn't want to die.
'Calm down, my king!' Kel'Thuzad exclaimed, the stallion appearing before him inside of his personal chambers aboard Naxxramas, inside of his mind. While not the most comfortable, it was compact, and required little energy to retrieve...
"Kel'Thuzad... I... I don't want to be the Lich King! I want to go back to being just a regular old unicorn!" the stallion broke down, his eyes watering immensely before the necromancer's eyes, the mage cringing at his masters... sorrow.
"My king... I... I have not been truthful with you... I am sorry." Kel'Thuzad admitted, the blow to his pride hurting more than anything. He never wished it, it just... it was uncomfortable to talk about, even with someone he trusted completely. His king, while...inexperienced, had one thing that Arthas and Ner'Zhul never had.
Emotions.
He felt sorrow, he felt grief, he felt joy, he felt anger.
But... he forgave.
He had forgiven... a murderer.
A man who had nearly single-handedly wiped the entirety of AZEROTH clean of ANYTHING living.
A man who broke into his old home city, and butchered the inhabitants like pigs.
He had killed his friends, his colleagues, his FAMILY. All for one being.
The Lich King.
And there wasn't a damned thing he could do to stop it.
But, this man... this stallion, had given him... everything. A home. Friends. More compassion than he had ever deserved, and more. Even though he had only been in his company for a little over a month, this stallion had given him his life back...
He deserves the truth...
All of it...
.........
Before his blurred, tear-stained eyes, the world began to change around Shining. He saw...
That tower...
The one part of Kel'Thuzad's... story, that hadn't made sense...
The tower...
He remembered that tower...
From where?
"It's called Karazhan, Shining." the stallion turned his head, to met with the archlich, who floated silently behind him, free of the chains that regularly orbited his skeletal form.
"What... what happened here? Everything is..." Shining hesitated, trying to find the right word.
"Dead. Everything is dead, Shining."
Ah, that's the word.
"What happened?" the stallion looked around for the first time, taking in his surrounding for a moment, scanning the area with his eyes. They sat near a large, crumbled building, one of many next to the tower, maybe housing? To his right and left, rivers flowed around the tower, putrid with rot and decay. To his far left, a small cemetery was atop a small hill, at the base of a cliff...
The crypt...
"You have seen this place before, then?" Kel'Thuzad asked, his voice devoid of emotion. Cold, calculating even. The stallion nodded, his head spinning from nausea, which decided to hit him for a surprise attack, rendering him speechless at the moment. "Deadwind Pass, they call it. Always hated the place, myself..." Kel'Thuzad began. "It was once a wonderful little valley, in an age long forgotten." He continued, floating silently over to a crumbling wooden fence, resting his claw upon one of its posts. "It was all dead, when I first saw it..." he chuckled, turning his head to his king.
"But it didn't stay dead."
In a flash, they were inside it. The crypt. The massive, horrible, terrifying crypt.
The had teleported in on top of bones. THOUSANDS of bones. Shining gagged lightly, his hooves crunching and snapping the frail bones he walked on when he was beckoned by Kel'Thuzad to move towards him, down a narrow corridor.
"No one is quite sure HOW the crypts began, yet there are theories. One, it was an ancient burial ground for Night Elves, sentient humanoid creatures that had made their home somewhat nearby, in a large forest. Another stated that a powerful necromancer butchered and culled every living being that living within the pass, and dumped everything down here when he was done... Another states that the last proper owner of Karazhan, Medivh, Last Guardian of Tirisfal, was driven mad, and he butchered his family, his workers, his followers, and everyone that had lived in the tower..."
Shining, for one, was horrified. Not only did Kel'Thuzad... blatantly talk about such horrible things, he seemed to be somewhat boastful about the way he described it, the stallion getting more and more nervous the further they walked in.
"They were all correct." Kel'Thuzad turned to the stallion, stopping outside a heavily rusted wrought-iron gate. "Shining, I must tell you this. I am a necromancer. A VERY POWERFUL NECROMANCER. When I found this place, and its... inhabitants, I was overjoyed. A saw a new army for the Scourge. A saw a new respite for my FAMILY. I just didn't know just HOW many bodies were buried beneath Karazhan, Shining," the lich... sobbed?
"I resurrected them, Shining. Every single tormented soul inside of the damned, bloody crypt! Nay, the VALLEY! I set them free upon THOUSANDS of innocent lives, SHINING!" yelled the lich, the scenery changing swiftly to a view of... a world? A globe? Yes... a globe.
"Kel'Thuzad... how many did... you... raise?"
.........
"A quarter of a million... at least..."
"I killed them, Shining."
"I killed them ALL."
"Every single living thing... no army could stop THAT many..."
"I killed my homeland."
"And I... I liked it..."
Shining, backing away from the crazed lich, turned to the globe. A single skeletal finger from Kel'Thuzad's hand was pointed at one of the continents. Slowly, the lights from every city, town and village... died. Snuffed out. The continent then quickly turned the dark, dead grey of the pass...
"You... you killed... an entire continent..."
"Kel'Thuzad... I... I..."
.........
The stallion slowly stepped forwards.
He embraced the sobbing lich around the ribcage.
"You are forgiven."