Nicholie: a World of Warcraft Tribute: Prolougue

The crimson sky rose into Nicholie’s view as she opened her eyes for the first time in her memory. Under her knee was the cold stone floor and before her stood a human three times larger than her kneeling body, four times as thick. King, her mind whispered Lich King.  He was facing away from her and his cloak nearly whipped Nicholie’s nose. Her body was covered in cloth and plate armor, her shoulders heavy from the pads, her head, covered by a dark cloth hood. Her fingertips brushed the ground, her gloves covering up to her knuckles. The wind blew her auburn hair into her face, but she couldn’t feel it. She watched her king breathe for what seemed like hours. She knew that he was aware of her, And She knew to stay still. When the Lich King turned finally, his plate gear grinding, Nicholie didn’t meet his eyes, instead she looked at his feet, breathing slowly, contently.
Arthas examined his new initiate. He hated her tan skin and healthy shiny hair, but the blue blaze in her eyes promised loyalty. Her long elf ears peeked out of slits in her hood, and she seemed not to move.  
Nicholie stared at her bare fingers, her nail beds were bloodied, the nails cracked up to the skin. She wondered silently what could have made a lady’s fingers so disfigured. Her skin was smudged with dirt around her gloves and chaffed where the plate had dug into her skin.
“So,” Arthas began, hoping to find the elf’s face. “You’ve finished your training?”
She didn’t know the answer, but she assumed that was why she was here. “Yes, sir.” She glanced up at Arthas’ face. His helm was atop his head, and his nearly clear hair peeked out from under the bottom rim. Faded blue hues where his eyes were started down at Nicholie’s.
“Well? What are you doing here then? You should be down at Death’s Breach, creating a massacre or skirmishing with the others what do you expect me to tell you?” Arthas boomed.
Nicholie shook under her robes. “I-I’m here,--”
The Lich King’s eyes grew wide. “You don’t know?”
“I don’t remember…”
A smile crept onto Arthas’ face. “Interesting. What’s the last thing you remember?”
Nicholie looked up at him frightened suddenly. “Being….here…..”
The Lich King extended his hand and offered her help up.
Her tiny blood elf fingers slipped through his easily as he pulled her to her feet. “Young Death Knight,” He said. “You will be of much use to me.”
She didn’t know if that was good or bad but Arthas released her hand and gestured her to follow him as he thumped through the dark fortress they resided.
A man, tall in shining armor, stared curiously as the Lich King led the new initiate into a training ring. In the center, a tall hay dummy was staked to the ground. Half of its body lay on the floor around it and it leaned to the right slightly, the stake poking out of its left shoulder.
Arthas crossed his arms into front of his clad-in-plate chest. “Fight.” He ordered.
Nicholie jumped a little at his order but reached for the blade in the holster around her frail waist. With a SHING! She held the feeble blade in her tiny grasp and her body fell into stance. She closed her eyes and swung the blade across her body and up, feeling the steel grind through the hay and leave the dummy easily, followed by a thump that brought Nicholie’s eyes open. A lump of hay that served as the dummy’s head now lay on the ground.
She found her King’s gaze and he smiled at her. “Very interesting. Again.”
Again, her legs fell into stance and she squeezed her eyes closed again and spun with the blade, slicing through whatever it hit.
FWAP!
She opened her eyes.
Arthas smiled at her. “Come, child. We have much to discuss.” He crossed over to her, placing his hand on her shoulder  and turning her away from the dummy laying on the ground and the splintered post where it once stood.

He watched the two of them leave. His master’s hand on her shoulder, approval glinting in his eyes. The envy spiking through his body for a second before returning to the training station he stood at and thrashed angrily at the target with his blade till that dummy as well, hit the floor.
***

Nicholie lay in her bunk, close to the ceiling, her auburn hair falling around her shoulders and hanging off the edge of the bed.  She flipped through a dusty book she found in the rubble of a destroyed home in Havenshire. Her dirty night dress gathered at her waist and showed her beaten knees and dirt caked feet. Her fingernails were painted with the blood of the lives that rested on her blade. In the chest next to the bunk bed was where her armor was stored along with her trusted rune blade, which she runed herself.  Too wrapped around the happenings in the story to hear the approaching footsteps.
Someone cleared their throat, loudly, and drug Nicholie’s sea blue eyes up to the face of another Initiate. His skin was pale, sickly even. His cheeks hollow and his eyes deep in their sockets. His eyes were ghastly and his hair was pulled up behind his head, bald spots behind his long pointy ears and along his hairline. He was tall, thin. His knuckles were white and his armor was cloth.
“Hello.” Nicholie said.
He paused, opened his mouth and closed it again. Then reopened it. “He likes you….”
Confused, she marked her page and sat up. “Who likes me?”
“Him, the King.”
Nicholie blushed. “He does not favor me.”
The death knight narrowed his eyes. “Yes he does, how many men has he had you kill? How many nights have you two trained, has he taught you what he knows? Have you not noticed his nearly undivided attention on you?” He snickered.
Nicholie shook her head. “I hadn’t.”
The Initiate took a step to her. “You are a liar. Everyone has noticed, you are his prize, his weapon. Why? Why you? I fight twice as good as some female and it’s you? You’re a third of his size! How?...Why!” He yelled, making Nicholie flinch and look around cautiously.
“I don’t lie. And…I don’t know.” She mutters.
He turned away from her mumbling. “How long have you been here? In Archerus? How long has it been since his blade touched your skin?”
Furrowing her brows she whispered. “I don’t know….I don’t know that his sword ever touched me…”
Spinning quickly, the elf gapped at her. “You don’t know?! You mean you don’t count every day that you wake in this death? You don’t wonder about your family, if they’re dead or alive?”
Nicholie frowned. “I don’t have a family.”
Snorting he turned to her. “Everyone has a family. Mine was murdered…but unlike me, they weren’t cursed into this death.”
“I don’t. I never have…or at least, I don’t think so…”
“Do you feel no pain? No agony? No resentment for the man who took your life?”
Nicholie shook her head. “No, because I’m not dead.”
“Everyone here is dead.” To prove his point he lifted his arm and pinched his dead skin, ripping it from his bone easily.
Nicholie recoiled. “What….are—”
“We are all dead.”
Her eyes grew wide. “No!”
He looked her up at down. “Give me your wrist.”
Her eyes dropped to her thin tan wrist, she clutched it to her chest instead. “Why?”
“Your pulse. Let me see if you have one.” He eyed her arm curiously.
She nodded and let her hand fall down to dangle in front of his chest.
He pressed his fingers against the inside of her wrist and waited. To Nicholie it seemed he was waiting for a long time. His eyes closed and his ears lowered. He clutched her arm and rocked on his heels.
She jerked her arm away from him. “What? What is it?”
He opened his eyes slowly, meeting her face. He frowned sharply and his bottom lip quivered.
“Who are you?” She asked him. “What is your name?”
“Celest Shadowscar, ma’am. Former blood elf.”
“My name is—”
“I know who you are, Nicholie. You’re the tan one, the one who breathes. You’re the only one…who lives.”


Arthas sat upon his undead stead and smirked as his little death knight grew stronger each day. In her, he saw the ambition he had held. He watched as she learned how to kill swiftly and slowly alike. She was being fitted for new plate armor, she stood still on the pedestal and held her arms out while a short lich flitted around her, taking measurements and writing them down. Nicholie sighed, and the lich flinched as the blood elf’s breath tickled it’s undead skin. Arthas frowned.
“It goes by faster if you simply don’t breathe.” He’d told her this before, but the girl couldn’t drop the habit.
“I’m sorry.” She muttered monotone. She sucked in a breath and held still for a few seconds. Then a minute. But for Nicholie, breathing was a needed thing, inside, her lungs were crippling in pain and her fingers tingled, she let a bit out of her nose and tried to look like she wasn’t breathing as she sucked another whoosh in, granting her insides temporary relief. Her mind kept wandering to what the undead initiate had said to her…. Alive. But how? Wouldn’t she know? Wouldn’t her King know? Her eyes flicked to Arthas’ face, in his dead eyes, hope shined. Hope for what?