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28th chapter

Because of my marvelous coming and my prowess in battle, the dwarfs allowed me to stay at their side.
The ironwolves made their voice heard in an argument against it until I rained fire upon an undead raiding force and took out half of their numbers.
After that they invited me to their ranks more than thrice and more than five times.
Althought truly to make a long and a brutal story short, I spent the next four years there. My memory slowly returned to me and with the help of Mesfer I’d pieced the puzzles of most of the last few years before I came there.
My memory has never fully returned to me ,it seems shrouded, pieces of images float around with no certain point in timeline.

Four years flew by faster than one would think. When all there is to life is to survive you quickly let each day as it likes with its pain and joy.
But after four years of blood and gore in the frozen wastelands I was getting tired.
How the dwarfs had actually lasted for so long after nearly a raid a day is still beyond me.
But by then the dwarfs had taken their toll. Only a handful remained, most of them Ironwolves, so with my help we could have probably have held the base for a year or
two.
But the end of it all was sure. Although we fought a valiant battle we could never make more than dent in the armies of the undead.
After a particulary hard battle where we suffered more casualties than in years, I tried to break it to magnir who had somehow survived through all of this.
„Magnir?“ I asked as I wrapped dirty cloth around a dwarf’s hand.
Waitaminnit lad he said patient as he closed an open wound with a glowing iron.
He shoved the iron to the wound on a dwarf’s back and kept it there, paying no heed to the dwarfs screaming and panting.
It always looked brutal to me but my own experience with the wounds the ghouls inflicted. The raking savage scars across my chest still ache today from the ghoul’s poison. If the wounds weren’t sealed immediately it would lead to a greater poisoning and then death.
As the whimpers died out and the dwarf collected himself and began to walk out.
Magnir managed to turn to me but looked in completely wrong direction.

Why and how we trusted him to do the things he did were quite beyond me but it had become clear to me that although he didn’t see with his eyes he made do with all his other senses plus some kind of a sixth sense.
„I’ve been wondering ,i said, I think I should leave.“
„Well if you don’t like the smell ye kin probly get yer own tent be now.“
I chuckled , coughed and continued:„ no I don’t mean the tent, I mean the camp.
I’m losing sight of what I am doing here.
I mean there is no real reason for me to be here is there. I ‘m not going to die for a lost cause where my dead body will be mutilated by ravaging ghouls.“
Magnir looked directly at me quite sad.

„Aye lad tis true what ye say. I knoe no reason for any of us ta be here.our blood dabt is long sance finished a’ some of the men also wan’ ta go home
I dunno, I don’ knoe any reason why we shouldn’t leave
Except ma’be to honor tha bronzebeard but in thas frozen hell I doubt thar’s any honor.
If ye wan’t te go, then go there‘s the boat in two months. “
He left after that. I knew he was pretty upset but it didn’t matter . I knew I couldn’t continue like this forever. But it didn’t matter.
What you have to understand is that in these kinds of circumstances one forms a strange sort of friendship. Every day could very well be your last and you begin to know better than to hold grudges or make ones.
So for a while I didn’t bring up the discussion but always hinted at it in my conversations with Magnir.
But when the time came and the ice melted in the spring a messenger came from the south.
Apparently the alliance had at last decided to strike defensive measures in northrend.
A fleet had supposedly landed on the southern reaches of the continent with fresh troops to build and hold it.
You couldn’t have believed the joy when we heard the news. Suddenly there was hope and splendor in the world.
Suddenly we weren’t alone and we were possibly heroes.
There was so much drinking that night when the undead came the next day for their usual raid we were about to ask them kindly to reschedule the raid for the following morning.
Two days later the camp was empty and we were gone.
The messenger said that it would take us a week to get to the alliance camp.
We made it in five.
But whether we would have rushed or not it wouldn’t have mattered.
High atop a mountain on a clear spring morning we looked upon the alliance base.
Burning.
Apparently Arthas had heard of the intrusion on his lands and finally gave up on the living presence in Northrend.
With a force you cannot imagine he swarmed the base.

At least a thousand abominations, wyrms so many they blackened the sky and the empty wasteland so full of ghouls that the ground seemed alive.
And then they spotted us.
You cannot witness the fury of a full charge of an undead army.
They owned the sky, the ground was theirs and the air was so full of destructive spells that the weave of the magic at that place was left burned.
They dwarfs tried. By the light, they tried.
But against that army nothing on heaven or earth could have prevailed.
Except me.
And magnir.
Me and Mesfer joined and I must have blown up half of the country side before the necromancers managed to stop me.
Why they kept Magnir I don’t know. I didn’t know he had survived until I killed him.
But that comes later. Much later.
They kept me frozen in a wyrms ribcage.
I have no memory of my trip to the frozen throne but I knew where I was when I found myself in a cell made of ice.

I didn’t know then why they captured me nor do is till know why they captures magnir.
But I was there. Chained up in a cell so well protected against any magic I could muster I didn’t even bother to summon Mesfer.
For a year they kept me there. You cannot imagine what it was like. Sometimes it would be days between meals and they were never good.
Ghoul meat I suspect, most of it . I tried to escape quite a number of times but after the first three tries there never was any true meaning in them. i just felt that if I didn’t do something to escape all hope would truly be lost.
But the worst part of it all was that every second of my stay there I could feel mthe lich king in my head searching, scouring my mind for something.
I could never sleep for more than ten minutes for as soon as I laid back my eyes nightmares crept in my mind and woke me up screaming and sweaty.
Then one day something finally happened. But it wasn’t exactly pleasant.
After a session where necromancers tried diligently to tap enough of my life energy for themselves, probably just a training in the ways of necromancy I was brought trough a series of different tunnels and left in a room I had not seen before.
Necromancers took me up and put me in a chair of some sort, tied me up and positioned himself on the floor in a straight line before me and lay down.

I didn’t understand, what was going on? Was this some kind of a new torture?
And then I heard the sound of his steps. Heavy, slow and powerful.
I gulped and found his aura of dread and terror loom upon me.
I fought the shackles On my chair like I was going crasy.
Asif it wouldhave made a difference.
And then he opened the door like he did that fateful summer day in the capital of lordaeron.
Arthas. the lich king. King of the dead.
The last demigod on our plane.

Before me.

And he bore a dreadful grin of a butcher going to the saughter house to pick the fattest cattle for the favaorite customer.

That day I was that cattle.

And his favorite customer was himself.