Good news, everyone!  A bad round of depression rendered me useless on the creative front for nearly three weeks, but now I can channel a certain death knight very effectively!  So here’s a look at what I’ve been working on – the battle of Light’s Hope Chapel, through the eyes of Serreina Nightfury.  The full piece will be up soon(tm).

I hope.  =P

This is a rough draft and it’s only a small part of the full story, but comments and the like are, as always, both welcome and appreciated.

—

It is time.

New Avalon is a smoldering ruin, laid to waste at the command of the Lich King.  The Scarlet Crusade is all but gone;  the few who survived the siege have fled to Northrend.  They are not important.  They will be dealt with soon enough.

Our target now is Light’s Hope Chapel, the Argent Dawn’s tiny foothold in these plagued lands.  Why they insist on staying, I do not know, but that too is irrelevant.  They will not remain much longer.  They are outnumbered.  We are protected by the Lich King himself.  They will be destroyed as completely as the Scarlet Crusade has been.

The chapel will fall.  The Argent Dawn will fall.

Our king commands it.

—

I stood at the top of the rise with my fellow knights, my runeblade in one hand, my charger’s reins held loosely in the other.  The chapel was easily visible from where I stood;  in fact, I could see the enemy forces scurrying about, attempting to prepare for the assault.

There were ten thousand of us and only a few hundred of them.  They would fight admirably, I was sure, but this would be a slaughter.  And yet …

“Strange creatures, the living,” a familiar voice remarked.  “Even in the face of certain defeat, they insist on fighting.”

“In fighting, they condemn themselves to the very fate they fought so hard to avoid.”

“And that, my sister, is what we call irony.”

I turned to the death knight beside me.  With hair a shade of pink so vibrant it practically glowed in the dark and a slight smattering of freckles that even undeath and the scourging process couldn’t erase, Syliah often found herself standing before startled foes rather than frightened ones, but their surprise never worked in their favor.  She killed them anyway.

“You call it irony, I call it justice.”

Syliah started to speak, but another, more powerful voice cut through the air:

“Soldiers of the Scourge, death knights of Acherus, minions of the darkness:  hear the call of the highlord!  Rise!”

I watched as an army of ghouls rose from the earth to join the forces already assembled, wondering idly what sort of oratory training Highlord Mograine might have received in life.  Not that it really mattered – we, the death knights of Acherus, would have willingly followed these particular orders no matter who led us.  We were the faithful soldiers of the Lich King;  we did whatever he wished us to do.  Still, if one were feeling bold, one might be tempted to say the Lich King lacked a certain spark, which Mograine happened to possess in large quantities.  He did not simply command;  he inspired.  There was strength in his words.

“The skies turn red with the blood of the fallen!  The Lich King watches over us, minions!”  Mograine raised his sword, the infamous Ashbringer, and pointed it toward the chapel.  “Onward!  Leave only ashes and misery in your destructive wake!”

The army surged forward, and the battle was joined.