Chapter 7: The Avenger (Part Two)

Sassuran initially wanted to reject the voice filled with darkness and the scent of death, but when he thought of his fallen comrades and his father's teachings, his hesitation turned into absolute resolve.

"I am willing."

"Very well, heed the call of our master, and become the blade in his hand!"

A violent pulling sensation rushed through every part of Sassuran's body. He felt like someone struggling against drowning, and then, after a terrifying sensation of suffocation, he was dragged back onto the shore.

"Hah—huff—"

Sassuran sat up abruptly from the ground. Everything that had just happened felt like a nightmare, and the surrounding environment rapidly regained its reality.

He found himself lying in an unfamiliar hall. The entire hall was cast from an unknown black metal, and the illumination came from a eerie blue light that Sassuran had never seen before.

"You're awake? It seems my workload has increased a bit."

Sassuran traced the voice to find the speaker, but when he laid eyes on that face, he froze in place like a wax statue.

The person standing before him was someone he should only have ever seen in portraits—and only in portraits.

He swallowed hard with difficulty. "Sir... Sir Lothar?"

"Oh? Am I that famous, that even a kid like you knows me?" Lothar touched his chin. Is it really true that one must die to achieve true fame?

Upon hearing Lothar's confirmation, Sassuran simply could not believe it. Had not Sir Lothar been dead for over a decade? How could he be standing right in front of him, alive and breathing?

Yet, after observing a little more closely, Sassuran noticed that Sir Lothar's appearance was still vastly different from a normal living person. His skin was extremely pale, and his pupils glowed with a piercing blue light.

These were hardly the traits of a living man... Wait!

A sudden realization struck Sassuran. He looked down at his own hands; the healthy, wheat-colored skin of his youth had transformed into the same deathly pallor as Lothar's.

"I... I should be dead. I died in the battle against the dreadlords." Sassuran clutched his head, the chasm between perception and reality throwing his mind into chaos.

"Well, strictly speaking, neither of us can truly be called living anymore." Lothar tossed a tunic to Sassuran. "I had the necromancer reattach your shattered upper body—tsk, that battle must have been brutal. You were practically torn apart like a tattered ragdoll."

"The demon's claws pierced through me..." Sassuran felt his unharmed upper body; the cavernous wound in his abdomen was gone, leaving his torso completely intact.

"What on earth is going on, Sir Lothar? What has happened to us?"

"Just as you think, we are both dead." Lothar's voice carried a lingering, resonant echo of the soul—a distinct trait possessed only by high-tier undead. "Yet you were unwilling to simply perish. Some emotion allowed you to rise from the dead. I know not whether it was hatred or devotion, but it must have been exceptionally intense."

Arthas did not select death knights blindly; he only resurrected those who harbored deep obsessions with the world of the living. Such individuals often possessed enough inner drive to pull themselves out of their graves for reasons of their own.

The other soldiers sent to Icecrown Glacier in the same batch as Sassuran had believed they died honorably, their final wishes fulfilled, and thus passed into eternal slumber.

As for Sassuran, he was resurrected during this selective awakening of death knights, becoming yet another dark knight within the Scourge.

"How can this be—I clearly died! Is this some sort of wicked witchcraft?!"

Clearly ignorant of these truths, Sassuran still believed he had been resurrected by demons.

Lothar patted Sassuran on the shoulder. The involuntary pressure radiating from him helped Sassuran recover from his near-panicked state. "Power itself is neither righteous nor foul; it all depends on how we choose to wield it."

"You and I both harbor lingering attachments to this world, or perhaps duties we must fulfill." Lothar's words carried a trace of worldly weariness.

Sassuran remained silent, neither agreeing nor refuting Lothar's words as he quietly put on the tunic.

Noticing the soldier's profoundly despondent mood, Lothar realized he needed time to digest the shock of death and resurrection. "It seems you need time to process this. If you have any further questions, you can find me on the upper level of the stronghold."

"Wait, Sir!—I want to know, what will happen to the others who were sent here just like me?"

Sassuran remembered Lothar mentioning earlier that he was not the only candidate.

Lothar smiled faintly. "They had no regrets left. We are sending them home."

Leaving Sassuran in a daze, Lothar stepped out of the ritual hall. As he passed a certain chamber, he paused and placed his hand upon the fel-iron door.

After a moment of thought, Lothar pushed the door open. This was the training room. Inside, a towering, massive figure was furiously striking a training dummy with a rune warhammer.

Even while wielding a two-handed warhammer, his assaults were as fierce and continuous as a tempest. The dummy clearly could not withstand such relentless blows. With one final, shattering smash that reduced the dummy to a heap of scrap, theorc stopped, expressionlessly hoisted the ruined mannequin, and tossed it onto a nearby pile of debris.

"Vented enough?"

Lothar leaned against the doorway, coming face-to-face with Orgrim as the orc walked back from discarding the trash.

"Did you come here just to taste the might of my warhammer again?" Orgrim scoffed coldly, though he placed his warhammer back onto the weapon rack. "I serve that creature, but that doesn't mean I have to take orders from you."

"Yet before Arthas left, he appointed me as the supreme commander here. Defying me is, in essence, defying the Lich King himself."

"Hmph, your tongue is as sharp as ever; you haven't changed a bit." Orgrim strolled over to the dummy storage area to select a new target.

"What's the fun in pounding lifeless objects?" Lothar casually drew a longsword from the weapon rack and practiced a few swings. "If you're truly itching for a fight, I can oblige you for a while."

"I have no desire to smash your skull to pieces only to have to go find a necromancer to piece you back together."

Orgrim locked a new dummy into place. Pressing a hand against it, the former orc Warchief suddenly asked after a moment of silence, "Lothar, do I look ridiculous to you right now?"

Lothar hadn't expected Orgrim to ask such a question out of nowhere. He paused slightly before replying, "To be honest, a little."

"I knew it—he resurrected me just to make a mockery of me." Orgrim sneered. Though he had submitted to Arthas's iron fist, he had yet to truly emerge from his confusion.

"Precisely because of that, I say you are ridiculous," Lothar shook his head, knowing Orgrim far too well. "You still haven't realized who you are."

"Who I am? I know full well; I'm merely a pathetic wretch who has lost all his honor," Orgrim mocked bitterly, driving a fist directly into the dummy, leaving a deep indentation.

"Honor? All of our honor vanished the very instant we died—" Finding Orgrim's attitude rather tiresome, Lothar lowered his longsword.

He had expected Orgrim to see reason, but it seemed the orc remained trapped within the confines of his own rigid mindset.

"We are no longer among the living; the word 'honor' has nothing to do with us. There is only one reason left for us to act upon our own will."

"To eradicate every single threat to Azeroth."

"We are no longer Grand Marshals, nor Warchiefs, nor even those legendary heroes or bitter rivals recorded in history books. We are avengers."

"Orgrim, Arthas does not hate the orcs; he could have wiped you all out long ago, but he chose not to. Think about it carefully."

"As for the target of our vengeance, you should know very well who they are."

With those words, Lothar strode away. The fel-iron door slammed shut once more. The soul-flames in Orgrim's eyes flickered relentlessly as the powerful death knight muttered to himself in solitude:

"Avengers?"