Beginnings

Cold.

In the void, all I could feel was a piercing cold, a frost that permeated to the very core...yet I was not shivering.

All too quickly, my consciousness snapped into full awareness, and yet no matter how much effort I put into it, I could not open my eyes let alone move a single part of my body. It was if I had become ice itself, immovable and frozen cold, etched as though sleeping upon my back.

Dead. I know I was dead, and yet...

"...is not rotting...," I could just barely make out voices, echoing and distant as if they were at the end of a tunnel."...began rebirth immediately after..."

It was too hard to hear, to hard to focus on anything but the cold.

Then, like a hot iron through wax, I felt something pierce the frozen fog that surrounded me - a voice, soothing in it's strange intonation, assuring me that all would be well.

With words of encouragement, I felt myself slid back into the unfeeling void.


Cold and burning pain.

Though I still felt as though I were made of ice, there seemed to be a burning fire creeping slowly through my veins. Screaming, I realised that I was only screaming within my mind, the body lying completely still despite my ravaging.

It was then the cool and calm voice intoned in my mind again, soothing in it's strange sound.

"Stormblade, my cold-forged dagger, your pain shall make you stronger," it whispered, "three days of pain in exchange for exaltation..."

Despite the reassurances, the pain was unbearable the first few hours. I could never have imagined that I could feel ice cold and blazing hot all in the same second, let alone for hours on end. To feel as if I were melting, and freezing all at once was nearly too much, and I found myself praying to the Gods that it would end whenever I felt the cold presence leave my mind.

The Gods were silent. My only companion was the elusive frozen presence.


After hours of madness, I needed something to focus my frantic mind upon aside from the mysterious voice, which left me in panic once it vanished. The words of one of my mentors echoed in my thoughts; she had believed that if one focused hard enough on a wound, they could stave away it's pain long enough to find treatment for it. Sadistic to some extent, she would cut me with thin, sharp needles in the most tender places she could find then force me to remain motionless until I either fainted or forged my way past the pain.

It took some time to find any sort of focus at all, but I eventually began trying to track where the burning lava that filled me already was, and where it was headed. Within the many - or few? - hours I had been lying wherever I was, the strange molten 'blood' had spread from somewhere in my neck, down into my upper arms and somewhere just above my jaw but below my nose.

While still undyingly painful, concentrating upon the progress of the fire within the ice held the last vestiges of my sanity in tact. The soothing voice of winter spoke less, but I felt his presence more and more acutely as the fire crept further along my veins; there was some sort of distinct respect for what I was doing, though I felt a slight edge of caution to it.

Soon, the pain, the cold and the presence were all I could remember. They were all I knew, and all I believed were ever reality - Silvermoon faded from my mind, the defiling ritual at the Sunwell, my family all became lost as the fire burned them away and expanded my mind.


Oddly, the fire did not wash over my toes last, as I had expected it to. No, once my body had been burned away and changed by the molten blood, it slowly crept into my heart and the furthest depths of my mind. The last few hours passed in a slow haze as the last of my mind and heart burned away, the frozen presence was all I could feel, and I wished for nothing but His will's desires.

But I was greeted by hesitation, caution and an overwhelming anger from the presence, as if I had done something wrong within the confines of my frozen body at some point during the past few days. Something within me panicked, and without realising it was possible, my eyes snapped open.

There was a strange stone ceiling above me, darkened with age and magic energies while blue flames burned in braziers all about the area. Despite the darkness within the cavernous hall, I could see every detail perfectly upon the stones, each lichen-filled crack and water-worn crevasse.

Deafening echoes fell to silence as my eyes opened, and the startling their abrupt ending gave caused me to consider sitting up, perhaps even standing when I realised that I already was off the side of the large stone slab-like table and on my feet. The mage beside me turned with wide eyes as an ornately armoured figure slowly turned, hand resting upon a sword I knew I should recognise, but could not remember why.

His presence was familiar, but there was nothing to compel more than fear from me now. Blue mists flared within His eyes, and I felt an iron vice grip my mind before I realised I had crouched into a fighting stance - He refused to allow any more motion, any more thought other than the singular desire to answer any questions He asked.

"Master, is it truly wise to allow any memory of..." the physician began before he was abruptly cut off by the flare of anger. "Of course, Lord, forgive my transgression."

The cold knight returned His focus to me, eyes narrowing as He commanded me to kneel; the action was instantaneous, my knee bending even as the suggestion was given. The physician looked back at the cold knight, then to myself, his mist-filled blue eyes troubled as his eyebrow raised upward.

"Such control - and she did not rot a bit during the intake or raising processes," the strange blood elf prattled. "She will make a fine addition to your Knights, Master."

Frost-filled eyes continued to stare into my own, and another overwhelming desire filtered through the vice-grip upon my mind, causing an echoing feminine voice to answer for me immediately though her words were only vaguely familiar.

"...drank an experimental elixir of immortality, a failure that more than likely was my cause of death," the echo replied, my lips moving in time with her dictation.

My voice...my death?

The vice like grip filled my mind again, the memory fading immediately, replaced only by the awe of the cold knight. He looked back to the mage, then nodded once before lowering His hand from His sword hilt as he turned and strode out of the hall.

I was oddly fascinated by the weave of his cloak and the adornments of His armour, awed at the intricate designs that seemed to be telling of something that the cold knight would not allow me to understand yet; I knew, however, that it was only a matter of time - the Master had plans for me.

And so begins my...life...in the thrall of the cold knight.