Rise of the Undead

[Islefr]

((Any and all criticism would be vastly appreciated. Don't want to be offendin' me fellows, now do I? And if I suck, I should know. Yup-yup.))

The last thought drifted through his head, a horrified fascination as he watched the other villagers, unaccustomed to wielding weapons, were cut down as they tried to destroy one of the hateful plague cauldrons. An arrow pierced his throat, and darkness descended. Or, he thought it did. Soon enough he realized his body was moving, and he could only watch in revulsion as his reanimated corpse began to move about, under the influence of some foreign entity. His life began again as this walking monstrosity, controlled by the Lich King, and his consciousness was only a recorder, unable to interfere as his body killed and ate so many of his opponents. His skin turned the color of a week-old bruise, purplish gray with a tinge of green about it, his flesh slowly decayed, sloughing off of his bones, exposing his spine, part of his skull, his elbows, his knees, and the tips of his fingers. Years passed, and he became numb to the disgusting things his body did under the power of the Lich King, and he became cold, calculating, and began to appreciate some of the things the Lich King did.

Whatever one might say about the atrocities committed by Ner'zhul, the abomination had efficiency.

But slowly something came to pass; he realized that his conscious thoughts were beginning to control some of his body's more miniscule movements. Then, there came the second darkness.

A breath wheezes into cold lungs, rattling past lips decayed, blue-black in the dismal dungeon sarcophagus. Bony handles lifted upward, and slid the stone lid to the side, and listened as it crashed to the floor and shattered. Ears that had heard nothing but the faint crashes as other corpses regained their identities suddenly heard a cacophony of noises: the chirping of crickets, the hollow moan of the wind rushing past the mausoleum, the mournful wail of a wolf in the distance. Eyelids, stiffened with disuse, fluttered open, revealing both an empty, skull-grin eye socket, and a milky-white eye, never again to see things in shades of the visible spectrum. Joints snapped and cracked, protesting the sudden movements as the Undead lifted himself out of his tomb, and surveyed the world about him with cold, indifferent eyes. He was clothed in a gossamer linen tunic, its original color faded to a dull gray from the passage of time, a pair of threadbare woolen breeches, their brown color seemingly unaltered by the months of wear and tear, and a pair of leather shoes, scuffed, scratched, and worn thin by mile after mile of shuffling, scraping steps. No weapons adorned his body, nothing except for the thin clothes of the dead and buried. A thin hand, the skin stretched parchment thin over the bones, shifted brittle, hoary hair off of a moldering brow, then dropped to the side of the coffin. The body heaved itself out of its coffin, hunched with the horrid weight of death that filled it. Slowly, step by step, as if relearning how to move, the Undead shuffled across the sepulcher and up the foot-worn steps and into the light of a full moon, blocked by a lunar eclipse. The wolves howled again, and a raven flew from the darkness and landed upon the rotting shoulder of the once man. He stared with new vision at the creature, and watched noncommittally as it pecked a maggot from his cheek, and flew off again, squawking. From the darkness emerged an older Undead, who greeted him, and passed him a wrought iron sword, blunt at the edge, and coated with the rust of ages. Only one thing remained.

"What is your new name, my Undead brother?"

Raising a skeletal finger to his throat, the recently risen Undead said only one thing, in a voice tarnished from disuse.

"Ravenwulf."

[Mortica]

((

I like it!
Looking forward to reading more :)

))

[Islefr]

The silver disc of the moon slid slowly out from behind Azeroth's shadow, and bathed the land before Ravenwulf in soft light and shadow. A mist wreathed in and around the buildings before him, and half-shapes, the stuff of nightmares, wandered through it. Other Undead souls, released from their tenure either on the mortal coil or in the thrall of the Lich King, came into sight like horrible zombies rising from the crypts. These once-living creatures stalked down the hill, their movements uncoordinated, and proceeded to attack the pitiful creatures still under the Lich King's subjugation with fire and steel, magic and arms. And yet there seemed no end to the wretched monstrosities, they poured out from some unseen abyss, only to be beaten back by the freshly risen recruits to the Undead army.

Ravenwulf began down the hill, his movements jerking, stumbling, like a Tauren with too much drink in him. He reached the bottom of the hill and up came his sword, coated as it was with the stuff of ages. It barely topped two foot of blade, the cross guard had shattered long ago, and the hilt had lost all of its padding, which would make it a most uncomfortable weapon for any living creature to wield. But Ravenwulf cared neither one way nor the other for creature comforts, so he continued on, and swung his weapon at the first Scourge zombie he could find.

The zombie was in an even greater state of decay than Ravenwulf: its right arm had long ago decayed to the point of bone, and fallen off of its body; its left leg was naught but skin and bones, suitable as a kick-stand to hold the zombie up as it stumbled around on its usable right leg; its left arm had no hand, but the exposed bones of its arm were sharpened to points, sharp enough to gouge an opponent; the thing's entrails hung from a gaping wound in its stomach, green and giving off the noxious stench of rot and shit, hanging just beneath the exposed heart, which fluttered fitfully in the breeze, occasionally giving off a soft squish as it pumped thick blood through frozen veins; the head upon the abomination's shoulders lolled to the side, the lower jaw was gone, and its tongue, distended with the maggots writhing in it, twitched upon the creature's neck; its eyes were no more, a pair of empty sockets exposing purple-brown brain, beneath a shock of lanky sallow hair.

Ravenwulf froze for a moment, overcome with revulsion at the thought that he might have turned into something like this...atrocity against nature. A scowl covered his face, and the blade descended to quench the life from the horrid biped in front of him.

But he missed. The weapon felt wrong in his hand, like a boot prepared for someone else's foot. Flying free of Ravenwulf's grasp, the weapon skittered across the broken and mossy cobblestones, striking sparks before settling inert beside the road. Staring dumbstruck, Ravenwulf was unprepared when the abomination, formerly so passive, swung a vicious blow at his head. It connected with the side of his face, gouging out a pair of grooves in his skull and hurling him to the ground. So came the third darkness.

Something was different in this darkness though, shapes coalesced in the darkness.

A man sits before a fire; his feet are uncovered, and extended towards the flames. The boots that had previously hidden these feet sat beside the front door of the cabin, coated with mud, grime, and blood. The man's legs are covered with kodo-hide leather leggings, gray with ash and travel. The shirt on the man's torso is made of homespun linen, but has been softened by years of wear and tear. The man stares into the fire, his warm brown eyes turned a fiery orange by the writhing dance of the flames. A thin hand, which would have been delicate had it not been so calloused, brushes back a lock of raven-black hair from his forehead. The only sign of the man's age is the silver turn of hair at the temples. A book lies open before him, written in a smooth, flowing hand, which details the latest adventures this ranger has been on. A smile crosses the man's face, revealing a set of opalescent teeth, with unusually long canine fangs. A large black wolf has shoved his nose underneath the book in a bid for attention, and it was this that caused the man's smile. A smooth voice issues forth from the man's throat, the warmth evident in the playful timbre.

"Oh what, do I not pay enough attention to you, you great black fur ball?"

A pair of thin fingers scratch the wolf's head, before the puppy-like creature decides to go warm himself before the fire. A knock comes at the door, and the wolf, previously so frolicsome, lays back his ears and growls at the door.

"Shh, calm down, Loga. Who's come knocking upon my door at such a late hour?"
The knock sounds again, almost imperiously, and the man steps forward, picking up a rifle from beside the floor. He aims the rifle, and then opens the door.

Beyond the door lies an impenetrable darkness, which dissolves again into nothingness.

[Mortica]

(( very nice :) ))

[Islefr]

Shapes again formed in the darkness, but they were different this time, sharper, more tangible. The side of Ravenwulf's head hurt only distantly, like someone had numbed his head, and only a ghost of what should be existed. A face swam into view, topped with greasy red hair tied in a ponytail, and a face with a skinless jaw. The Forsaken woman looked down at him, and tsked silently to herself. Her voice echoed sibilantly in the ramshackle cottage she had dragged him to, and it seemed to grate on Ravenwulf's nerves.

"You sshould know better than to fight sso...sstupidly. I sswear, all you new bloodss know nothing about sswinging a ssword."

Ravenwulf sat up, listening as several of his exposed joints popped as they had upon his Forsaken awakening. The emaciated finger rose to his throat again, closing up the gaping wound left by that arrow so long ago.

"Perhaps not all of us were designed to wield a sword."

The woman tsked again, and left Ravenwulf where he sat, going out into the breaking dawn, eerie in its raiment of green and gray, instead of the brilliant scarlet of the sun rising over a calm sea, as the wind gently cupped the face of a ranger and his wolf.

A slight growl emanated from Ravenwulf's throat at the unwanted memory, and he shoved himself to his feet harder than he intended, and crashed to the floor on the other side.

Godsforsaken corpse! You will bend at my command!

Immediately Ravenwulf stilled, old habits kicked in and he rose gracefully from the floor, stalking from the cabin like an ebony panther. The red and brown sword lay just outside the cabin's door, untouched by the mindless ghouls limping around it. Ravenwulf's clawed hand gripped the weapon, but the memories that had begun to surface changed his view of it. It no longer felt rough and unwieldly, but more like an old friend, forgotten by the turn of seasons. Swinging experimentally, the Forsaken warrior stepped before the same freakish miscreation that had bested him before. Again, it seemed to ignore him, as if its enfeebled brain took no notice of its surroundings. The downswing of Ravenwulf's blow connected, and the monstrosity's left arm fell to the dirt, sheared off by the blow. Hissing, the thing hurled itself at Ravenwulf, who met its bodily missile with the point of his rusty blade, running it through. But still it continued, biting at Ravenwulf's face until his fist snapped its neck, dropping the thing off his sword and to the ground like a sack of rotten, misbegotten meat. It thrashed, until Ravenwulf's foot caved in its skull, leaving it twitching and leaking on the broken cobblestones. An expression of disgust fell upon the Forsaken's rotted features.

Is this what I could have been?

Frowning still, Ravenwulf proceeded to loot the thing's tattered clothing, knowing that any and all cloth, money, or weapons could be bartered in the dismal shop on Deathknell's hill. The body contained few things worth killing it for, only a few coppers and a pair of leather shoes just barely better than the pair Ravenwulf was already wearing. These found their moldy way onto his feet, and the rest went into the bag that he had found underneath the ghoul's torn shirt. Standing once again, the shortsword swaying back and forth in his fencer's grasp, Ravenwulf proceeded to slaughter the abomination's brethren, slowly filling the back on his back. Once the bag, made of a tan colored heavy canvas, was brimming with goods, Ravenwulf set off up the silent hill of Deathknell. The merchants would buy his goods, and then he would leave this dank place, to search the greater world for a complete oblivion, to drown the sorrowful memories of a bygone life.