#knightsofmenethil

Chapter 1: ARGUS Asking a Draenei to retell the story of his life is almost like asking a tree to remember when it was just a sapling. Childhood and youth become whispers in the recess of the mind, the memory fades throughout the centuries. Only the key events of life still stand out after so long; eventually those too will fade with age.

From my youth, only one series of events truly stands out.

~ ~ ~

"The School of Anchorites is still available, perhaps you should reconsider." Mhelaa called from the back of our home. My mother, the mage, begging me to become a Priest, of all things. I sighed as my facial appendages twitched in frustration. "Mother, we have been over this. I am bound to the Vindicator’s call." Suddenly, from behind, my brother Versuun clapped his hands around my shoulders. "Let him be, mother, he wants to be like his father and me!" Versuun said brightly. He’d just qualified as a Vindicator himself, and was aching to be assigned. He wore his Hand of Argus tabard already, pride emanating from his face. I shrugged him off with an indulgent grin just as my mother walked in with food. She never conjured food, preferring to prepare it herself with her own hands. It tasted better for it. "Yes, and look how he ended up. Dead! I wish you two hadn’t chosen paths that place you right on the front lines..." "Our mother, the mage," Versuun said dramatically. Mhelaa clucked at him and put the food on the table. "So, Cel, will you be seeing Doraam later?" I blushed - unnoticably, I hoped. My brother, though, had keen eyes and almost fell over laughing. "Be nice to your brother. Go on, both of you. Be off! Come back in a few hours, I have important work to attend to." Versuun stood, and stretched his arms. "A meeting of the Hand has been called anyway. Best not to be late!"

~ ~ ~

Doraam... it has been so long since I thought of him. I used to dream that we would start a family. He was an Anchorite which, frankly, put me off the idea from the moment I met him. Two Anchorites in a family seemed almost too Holy. So many joyous memories of afternoons spent walking amongst the temple gardens, fishing in the lakes of Mac'Aree and studying together under the shade of crystalline trees. So many memories, eclipsed by the events of that day.

~ ~ ~

"Doraam!" I called. He was sitting at a bench in the middle of the city, hair long in two tails draped across his shoulders. His Anchorite garb blew in the strong breeze, creating almost a glow as his robes whipped about. As I approached I saw his face was dark, worried. Concern creased his smile, and I was filled with a feeling of dread. "Doraam, what troubles you?" I sat down beside him and grabbed his hand in mine. It was clammy, and shivering. I held it tighter. He looked at me and I saw panic shining from his eyes. It caught me so off guard I tried physically to pull away. He held my hand tightly. "Do you trust me, Celuur?" he breathed. His eyes darted across the city. "Of course, Doraam, what is this about?" Doraam's eyes searched my face, intently examining every corner of it for what I can only imagine was falsehood. He then cast his face downward, and began to stammer out words that would change my life forever. "The Triumvirate.. some – creature! - Sargeras, he called himself - offered them unfathomable knowledge and power! Two have accepted his offer already..." Doraam cut off, and looked around again. I said nothing, despite my many questions, simply squeezed his hand in reassurance. He continued, almost breathless. "But Velen - he has seen! He has seen what shadow, what evil would consume us, and has been given an offer of escape! This.. being of pure Light - Celuur, to see Velen describe it! - we are to escape.. today!" My mind reeled with the images Doraam’s tale conjured in my mind. I knew of Velen, one of the wisest of the Eredar. And Doraam was part of his order of Anchorites. I trusted the word of them both, but still.. the concept was almost too much for me. "Cel, we must leave with them. Velen has told those he trusts to gather people. We are to meet at the mountain peak, tonight." Doraam whipped his head around, almost in a panic. I had never seen him in such a state, yet I know he spoke truthfully, even if I did not completely understand. "I must go. Pack lightly. I shall see you tonight. Trust no-one…” We stood and embraced. I kissed him lightly. As he began to pull away, I called after him, trying to reach him with my hand. “Dor! Are you certain? This sounds…” “Yes, Cel! Please, go!” He broke into a run towards his home. I stood for a moment, paralyzed with fear. And then we left, each of us almost running in separate directions to our homes.

~ ~ ~

“Forward! Into the city!” An answering roar came as the Sha’tari defenses swelled outwards from the outskirts of Shattrath heading deep into occupied territory. My mind was filled with the smells and sounds of my surroundings; I was struggling to separate the reality playing out around me from the memories burned into my mind.

“Let me fight! You need every one that you can have!" He laughed at me.

"Yes, we do, but not as a Vindicator." He paused, and really looked at me for the first time.

"I am sorry, Celuur. I know you wish to honor those who came before you. A noble ambition. But we are at war. Orcs attack us daily. And if we were to admit you, we would all wish to keep you safe, untrained as you are. And that would be a distraction. Do you understand?"

My mace hummed as my runes activated, sending a whirl of ice around me as I charged into the marketplace. With each swing, I felt the life seep from the orcs I made contact with. With each death my resolve grew stronger and darkness spread from beneath my hooves to envelop the enemy.

“For Auchindoun!” I heard a soulbinder cry out as she took down any I sent her way. She had somehow stayed near me since we left the staging areas. Though we were certainly nothing alike, perhaps she found a familiarity in my undeath that made her comfortable enough to fight alongside me. The corner of my eye caught on vendors I had not seen since the first attack on Shattrath – the one of my memory, from so long ago. I had not saved them that day. I hurled myself to the left and shadowy tendrils lifted their attackers into the air, suspended and gasping for breath. My soulbinder and I made quick work of them.

For what felt like eternity I stared at the vendors. ‘They should be dead,’ I thought to myself. Of all of my experiences as an undead on Draenor so far, this was the strangest. It caught me off-guard. ‘These people should be dead.’ Was it possible for the destinies of a whole people to be changed so radically? Part of me thanked whatever force had led me to propel myself on a one-way mission through the Dark Portal.  Perhaps none of the pain my people had suffered need never happened.

Yet how could that be? I would remember it. All the draenei that came back through the portal would still bear the scars of those terrible events, as would the ones on Azeroth. Which events are real? If we change fate, here and now, what becomes of those of us who lived it before? Are our memories and experiences just a dream? A possibility that never came to pass?

All of this whirled through my brain. I could feel the glances of the unknown soulbinder on me between her kills. I am certain that my freezing in place for even a moment was confusing to her, but perhaps she realized that I needed that time and protected me from the oncoming orcs. I decided that my musings could wait – temporal philosophy is for the dragons and mages, not for the soldiering dead. I turned back around and held my mace high, preparing to strike down the next wave that approached my vendors. ‘They will not die today,’ I told myself.

I swung my mace down on the skull of a particularly short orc and heard his bones crack open. It was a satisfying blow. Shadow continued to build beneath me and I reached out my hand to pull a group of orcs towards me. Then I saw who stood in the middle of that group.

“I was pulled out of my musings by a terrible clang from the east of the city, followed by the terrified screams of children in the lower city. I looked over, and saw a dark red cloud spreading across the horizon, with orcs leading the charge. I could hear their warcries, and in that instant they came. Storming through the city as though it were paper. I charged forward, intending to meet them with my draenei brethren in battle. Though, in moments I had fallen beneath falling rubble, not getting the chance to test my blade against them.”

There was no rubble surrounding the man who swung his hammer in a circle, light flaring out in all directions. There was no precision in the swings, but there was a passion to continue living that kept the orcs at bay. I stared at him, and my arm fell limp to the side. The soulbinder looked at me directly for the first time before turning her head to follow my gaze. I heard her gasp. Despite the colour in his face and the light emanating from his body, the man in the group of marauders was most unmistakably me.

I couldn’t move. I just stared. ‘This is not my fate,’ I kept saying to myself. I was meant to be broken.

"I am Broken too!" I paused, the first time I had named myself, and Nobundo paused also, but did not turn to me. "Yes, I am. I feel the Light in me, but much of it is gone.. yet I feel there is another way! After a moment in eternity, Nobundo spoke.

“I have a class. Of three Broken, and one draenei. Tomorrow evening. I give you one chance only. Do not appear, and you shall not return."

I was meant to die at the hands of the Scourge.

The Death Knight grinned at me and pulled his sword from my leg. As pain shot through me again, he kicked me swiftly in my side, putting me on my back before him.

I called to the elements for help, but I so weak and there was no answer. He continued grinning, and placed his sword against my chest. He opened his mouth, and from it issued a deep, echoing voice, like nothing I had heard from a human mouth before. "All shall serve the one true King," he said, before his sword pierced my chest and through my heart.

I was meant to find myself free of the Lich King’s evil and to take the fight to his doorstep.

“Orders?” I looked down at the diminutive Gnome behind a desk, outside the Slaughtered Lamb. She gave me a withering look.

“Yes, orders! See? Right here. ‘Initiate Celuur, transfer from Acherus Central to the 1113th unit, Knights of Menethil, rank Private, effective immediately.’

And yet, there I was. With Light flashing around me, and orcs bearing down on me. I saw an orc charge forward, behind him – me – with a long dagger in his hand. I raised my mace and readied myself to charge – but I didn’t move. I stood, frozen like I had chained myself to the ground. The soulbinder sprung into action, but it was too late. I cried out towards my younger self as the dagger was plunged into his back. My back.

I looked on without moving, horror creeping through me that I had just let myself die. There were no words forming in my head, no thoughts that I could grab on to and try to rationalize what was happening in front of my eyes. I watched my own life seep  away. The soulbinder easily took care of the orcs. I found myself slowly able to move. One hoof in front of the other, walking over to myself as blood gargled from that familiar face. I remembered how it was to die painfully. The first time I was alone, and denied my soul’s release. This time would be different. I knelt in front of the man who had been so eager and desperate to prove himself. The man who had lost so much and still been filled with optimism and hope for a future in the Light. The man I used to be. He looked up at me and gasped, the effort of his chest heaving causing more blood to empty onto the stone beneath.

He reached out his hand to me, and I took it. I looked him in the eyes; he looked so confused as he looked back into eyes that had once been his own. We just stared at each other and stayed there, while the battle raged on around us, until the light in his eyes – my eyes – went dark. For him, his soul was released. I could feel it leave on its next journey. There would be no second service for this man who got his wish to fight against the Horde and protect his people.

I should have been jealous or comforted – I should have had some sort of feeling at watching myself die in the way I desperately wished I had. Perhaps those feelings will come. At that moment, I only had one thought.