This one is also quite long. Apologies.
Crimes and Punishments
((Preliminary content warning: suicide))
A bitter gust blows across the north coast of Icecrown. It blows across the sharp water, swaying back and forth all around Northrend, surrounding it, the way the real world surrounds a child’s playground, always waiting, for when the sun sets and the games are over. It blows at the back of a death knight, Quincinatus Shadowbane, who trots gently atop his dreadsteed, Spite, armed to the teeth, approaching the icy cliff. When he’s close enough for his satisfaction, he dismounts. He sits on the cliff’s jagged edge, staring out over the water. A death knight has no need for sitting.
He stares down, straight down, into the ever churning tempest beneath his dangling boots, an unbecoming, melancholy pose for a former commanding officer in the Ebon Blade, an undead war machine looking like a lost child. He stares so that he might witness reflection, true reflection, in the icy water. He wants to see his sallow, gnarled skin, and his cobblestone gray hair, unchanged for the last thirty years, since he died in the aftermath of the Third War. He wants to see his eyes, glowing and permanently half-lidded, unaffected yet also disaffected, with his degraded soul, somehow always filled with disgust yet nothing at all–or nothing relatively, nothing that’s enough, nothing that’s enough for what he’s seen, heard, and done. He wants to see the black cloth that covers his mouth, hiding the swathe of desecration on his face, out of courtesy and out of shame. But Quin is too far up, too far gone, for any of that. He can’t see a thing. The water is too tempestuous, the cliff too high, or the water too low. He had hoped for a clear pond, and he got an empty hole. There is no capacity for reflection here.
The death knight draws the serrated runeblade on his back, purple smoke peeling from the ignited runes. He debated for years about what to do with it. He could shatter it, but someone could recollect the pieces, or enough of it to reforge it. He could throw it in the ocean, but if anyone found out, they could retrieve it, in theory. He discards these considerations, as they’d been keeping him from following through long enough. With the sword resting in his lap, he rests precariously on the empty, misery-sewn hunk of ice, looking just over the toiling sea of death. When does the former become worse than the latter? With this question in mind, he remembers the events of several hours ago.
Night time was hard for Quin Shadowbane. He had tried sleeping before, but for a death knight, the best sleep one ever gets is the mortal’s restless sleep, lying in the darkness only as a formality to separate one day from the next, trying frustratingly to lose consciousness. Instead, he allowed days to bleed into one, a ceaseless, stupefying string of laps the sun makes around Azeroth. To make sure he doesn’t go mad, he tries to get something done in this time.
Under a cloudy, moonless sky, he rides slowly through the wide, rural woods of Elwynn, dressed in his civilian clothes that he wore to functions, functions which he almost never had, but made him feel better to imagine he did have. His armor clacking on the sides of his ghastly steed announces his coming. His steed approaches a small home, nestled in the forest.
Inside, a tired Ken Shadowbane, tired from delivering a sermon that day, flips through pages of an old book through his spectacles, under candlelight. Just before bed time, a knock ccomes at his door. He pauses, before meeting the knock. At this time of night? He had not had visitors this late since he was involved with death knights.
The door swings wide. The old paladin’s face tightens. “Quin,” he groans, his shoulders bunching around his neck. The death knight stands in the doorway, dressed in black clothes, his mask around his face, his unholy cloak wrapped around his shoulders, his rotten runeblade mounted on his back.
“Ken,” the death knight nods, somehow his monotonous voice sounding more cheery than Ken’s. “It’s a pleasure to see you. It’s been a long time.” He looks down at his brother, intending to sound and look affectionate and happy, for those are the feelings he would feel if he were alive, but he’s not alive, he isn’t happy, and he doesn’t look it. A death knight often settles for less in their emotional life.
Ken, now just over fifty, hesitates. He looks over his shoulder, at his empty home. He wasn’t doing anything besides going to bed. “Yeah,” he, again, groans. He steps aside from the doorway, letting the death knight in, acknowledging the inevitable.
“Thank you,” Quin steps through, looking around the place–the bedroom with two beds, one always empty, the kitchen, the dining room. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in here, after all these years. It’s nice.” A death knight’s small talk sounds strange. The words are there, but in Quin’s voice, almost everything sounds like it was read from an actor’s script.
“Uncle Greg kept the place well, him and Aunt Belinda,” Ken recalls. More tombstones. The tombstones of the elderly, rather than the young, at least. Ken disappears into whatever room Quin isn’t in. In this case, it’s the kitchen. He calls, “I know from having death knights here that you probably don’t want anything.”
“That’s correct,” Quin retorts. He stops, eyeing the shrine to Gavinrad the Dire, the tutor to Ken’s tutor, Uncle Greg. He eyes the hammer, still, after all these years, glowing like a torch. Something he could have had.
After pretending to do something in the kitchen, the old paladin returns to the small foyer, finally looking Quin in the iridescent eyes. "What brings you here?"
Quin turns to him, trying to stand straight and dignified. "I just wanted to see you, catch up. Connect with my family."
Somehow, Ken’s face tightens more. He turns from him, and motions towards the bed. He sits on his bed, “Well, come in. I was just reading.” Quin follows and sits on the other, empty bed.
The two brothers sit, facing one another, festering in the candlelight, with nothing to say between them. Ken fidgets, wrings his hands, looks towards his hammer. Though it was twenty years ago, now, seeing the man in front of him brings to mind the weight of the holy hammer in his hands, the weight he raised against Quin, and nearly killed him. A trial by combat, with no one dead. A miracle that only the Light can perform.
But, Quin, the death knight, will be the last to initiate conversation, despite his charismatic personality in life. As soon as the darkness and the quiet settles in, his shoulders slope, and his posture degrades. A glance in every direction reminds him of what he doesn’t have.
Ken breaks the silence, out of courtesy. Maybe he should talk about something he can feel good about. "I remember when we last spoke you talked about reforming a few Cult of the Damned prisoners–and that seemed to show progress."
Quin’s dignified tone falls away, too. Now, something he lost. “They… she, really, died. Illness. Couldn’t recover this time,” he groans, now staring at the floor. A sole friend, an ember in his darkness that he tried, feverishly, over many decades, to turn into a fire. Decades of work to try and convince one person, one person he cared for and respected, somehow, to be a better person, to live a good life. Decades of work to change one person’s life for the better, and she died, as everyone else thought she would, alone, in a cell in Icecrown. He wants to weep, to feel like weeping. But he can’t. He’s a death knight.
Ken sighs, a different perspective. She. He never really knew Death Knight Quin the way he knew living Quin, but if any of the two were alike, this woman was a poor soul that Quin took advantage of, in some way, to make him feel better and help him evade responsibility. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he offers politely.
Quin can’t keep himself from continuing. “I’m… no longer a commander at the Blade. I’ve left, for good.”
"Why? What happened?"
The death knight shrugs his shoulders. He recalls stepping into the timeless, black chamber of the Shadow Vault, where it is never day nor night, after decades of watching close friends and comrades kill themselves, returning after carrying out orders. His ruthless, unfeeling dread commander marched in behind him.
“I couldn’t do it anymore,” the death knight shakes his head. “We… destroyed a small village. Multiple reports, multiple investigations into Cult activity. Every trail ran cold. Dread commander’s orders.”
Ken watches his brother recall, his harsh, tense face softening. Every now and again, in dealing with his brother, he’s reminded that he’s not the same man he was in his life. He watches him speak, with surprising sensitivity and character, the kind of which, despite being undead, he never had in life. He recalls that look he gave him during the duel, before what would have been the killing blow, that look that the Light commanded him to spare. The look that ushered in a shrewd, unholy, battle-ending sword swipe. For as much respect as Ken finds himself helpless to afford Quin, a dark knot of anger sits in his stomach when he looks at him, even at his age.
“And did you stand firm? Insist otherwise?” As the words leave his mouth, something doesn’t sit right with the old paladin–he couldn’t stop them? Die defending the village? This is why, though he was at times a decent fighter, he never made a good soldier–not enough respect for orders.
“I did,” the death knight admits, sorrowfully. “But, even now, days later, I… wish I’d died defending them.”
Ken tries to look at him, look at him the way he does his parishioners, give them a wise, soothing, graceful speech. “You did what you could do,” he says, and that’s it. He pauses and turns to the book on his nightstand. “You’d think they’d remember that kind of thing. Arthas, the Culling of Stratholme. One of the first steps on his path to darkness, and they’ve just emulated it.”
Quin shrugs, again. “You’d think,” he starts, still looking down, now down at his hands, his hands that did nothing to help. “I’ve said the same thing for years now. No one cares. Believe me, I’ve defended that hill for decades. It’s as if the Northrend campaign ended, and defending the world, redeeming ourselves, preventing unholy magic from sweeping over the world, all fell away.”
Ken hides himself in his book. Redemption. Of course that’s what this is about. He recalls a line, handed down to him by his mentor, and from him to his parishioners. Redemption is like sleep–the more you try for it, beg for it, bargain for it, the more it eludes you. It is also like comedy–you can always tell the deficient by their desperation to be proficient. He rolls his jaw. He only hopes to keep the conversation moving. “What’re you going to do now?”
Quin’s chest swells, vestigial breathing. He knows how this’ll be received, but he has to say it anyway. “I want the farm,” he blurts. The farm on the east side of the Thondoril River. The farm whose fate they dueled for. The farm Quin abandoned in his youth, when his parents needed him most. The farm where their parents’ bodies lay–or so they hope. The farm that Quin, as his last act in life, unwittingly condemned to desecration for all eternity.
The old paladin slams his book. He glances again towards his hammer, burning fervently, though he doesn’t any longer–or so he thought. He suddenly rises, firm. “Get out,” he growls.
Quin’s arms slacken. Though it is not visible, his infected jaw hangs. He stares up at the paladin, his younger brother, his eyes wide. “I…” he mutters.
“Get. Out.” The paladin insists, more firmly yet, somehow, more calmly. He doesn’t want to fight. He wants this to be over. He doesn’t want to ever have this conversation again.
Quin’s head drops, hanging by his neck between his shoulders, his hair shrouding his face. He wants to scream, and to feel like screaming. But his impending speech is as dead and coldly delivered as anything else a death knight utters, despite how much he hopes otherwise. “I… I know,” he starts, “I just want… to use my undeath, for once. Use it to live better, to be better. To live a good life, instead of squandering it the way I did my life.”
The old paladin storms away, everything the death knight said only infuriating him further. His hands find his hips. He paces back and forth, in front of the doorway to his bedroom, huffing and puffing. Only after he stands still can he respond. “You don’t get it,” he declares. “You do not get it.”
The death knight, genuinely dumbfounded, rises. “What?” he asks, earnestly. “What… what can I do? To make this better?”
“To make–?!” The paladin reels. He latches his eyes shut and stops himself from shouting. He inhales, and exhales. “Why do you want that farm?”
Quin freezes. “…Why?” he hesitates. He looks around, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “I don’t know, I… Ma and Pa wanted me to have the farm, so I thought–”
“They did not want you to have the farm!” The paladin shouts, finally. “They wanted you to accept the farm before you left, and take care of them! But, you left to join the army, and the Dawn, and left me to take care of them! After which, of course, you came back, and wanted the farm, and Ma and Pa rightfully refused you!”
A death knight, no matter how much they resist, no matter how much they train, is prone to flaring anger–and the Shadowbanes are already known for their tempers. “What… are you joking?” he retorts, “It was after the Third War, Ken! The Scourge overran Lordaeron! Did you not expect me to go and join?”
"Of course, because civic duty is what that was about! Those empty bottles you hurled at the side of that house, when you were off duty? Those young women that you promised you were going to become a paladin, and a powerful warrior, with a farm? You gave yourself–allegedly unwittingly–to the wiles of a Cult spy, and handed them a death knight, which ravaged the river, and killed his–"
“Get to the point!” the death knight shouts. He doesn’t want to be shouting. He doesn’t want to be angry. This isn’t how this was supposed to go.
“My point,” the paladin continues, “is that you do not get to come around and defile that farm with your presence, after what you’ve done!”
“I’ve done everything!” The death knight cries. If the paladin had neighbors, they would be awake at this very moment. Birds flutter beyond the window. The shout rings in the paladin’s ears. “All of these years! Every moment, those damned shades, tormenting me to my face! Every lingering torment! I’ve done everything to be better! Defended everyone! I’ve suffered thirty long years–!”
"Because you deserve it!" The paladin interjects. Crickets thrum outside. The candles flicker.
Despite both feet on the ground, the death knight feels like he’s swimming. His hands fall to his sides. “Excuse me?” he growls, because he’s angry, but his tone has changed. He didn’t need the paladin to tell him this.
Regardless, the paladin does anyway, and he shouts it. “When you throw a murderer in prison, and he cries and begs and swears that he’s seen the Light, and wants a chance at redemption, do you think they throw him out onto the street?” The paladin is upon the death knight, the death knight that bested him in combat in his prime, the death knight that is taller than him, stronger than him. “Do you think that, if Arthas, after the Citadel had been stormed, threw down that frosted runeblade and said, ‘I’m sorry! I’m so, very, very sorry!’ Fordring would have taken him into his arms and forgiven him? Returned him to paladin training?” Ken shakes his head, without breaking eye contact, “In both cases, both men are offered two things–a priest, and a swift death! Nothing else!”
Quin stares back at him, incensed, according to all his instincts. After everything he’s done? The people he’s saved, the good he’s done? His brow furrows, his face twitches violently. After suffering the torments of the Lich King’s curse, for all of these years? That curse goads him on, implores him to remain angry, furious. But his eyes cannot maintain his flame. They droop, hooding themselves. His body relaxes. His gaze averts. In an act of small virtue, the kind of which he wasn’t capable of in life, he admits, internalizes that he is wrong, in the heat of the moment, despite everything–and, according to the mystical contours of his undeath, he feels nothing. He wants to cry, but there are no tears. He wants to want to cry. But he’s a death knight. And he’s a death knight because his brother is right.
Ken, even more closely than at that fateful duel, bears witness to that change of heart, visible on his face, yet again, twenty years later. But he is not surrounded by the energy of the Holy Light to guide him. He marches past the death knight to his bed. “I thought for years about why the Light commanded me to stay my hand that day,” he spits, looming over his nightstand, “and I thought that the Light respected your virtue. But I see now. You are already in hell, and judgment has already been passed!” The paladin shakes his head, staring out the window at his brother’s reflection, not daring to so much as look at him.
Quin stares into the hilt of his runeblade, a necrotic jewel, resembling an eye, staring back at him. He knew the answers a long time ago, but he looks at them only now–anguished souls fueling his every unnecessary breath, every violent swing, that cements him. His steed neighs unnaturally over his head. On another day, he would think it feels camaraderie. He knows better, now. He stares back into the turbulent ocean, the real world, the thrashing and struggling and punishing that he has forgotten all this time. The death knight turns over his plated shoulder and commands the steed to flee–flee far, far away. It’ll enjoy a more honest afterlife soon enough.
He rises to his feet, still staring down. He fears little, except the judgment that he thought awaited him in true death, but all the convictions that animated him for all these years return. There is good left to do. This is the coward’s way out. Good faith, and honest work can make all of this worth it. But this is no longer about being “worth it,” anymore. There’s nothing to gain. He lost it all thirty years ago, when he threw himself into damnation. It’s time to throw himself out.
He witnesses, almost before his eyes, a line of defense, a vanguard of all the lives he’s touched. Dozens of knights–some murderous villains that he thought he could make better, some honest folk who didn’t deserve the undeath they’ve received, and more than a few noble souls, who lived–and died–far more admirably than he. On the general’s steed, a manipulative, half-blind Cult of the Damned acolyte who promised, though she did not realize it, salvation, if he could just push her over the edge, and convince her to change. All he ever did was prolong the life of a criminal and a monster, to be degraded and tortured by callous death knights for their own gain, while he foolishly played into her hand, nearly freeing her unto the world, sometimes wittingly, sometimes unwittingly, dozens of times.
With that last image, he tosses the runeblade into the ocean. Without a runeblade, a death knight is nothing. It will serve as motivation. He turns his eyes from the sea to the horizon, and remembers one of the most noble of that vanguard, of all those reasons to stay. A noble comrade he met in his first days at the Vault, feeding upon a helpless prisoner with reckless abandon. In his last days with that comrade, she had sworn from killing the innocent, saved several from the Burning of Teldrassil, and still longed, each and every day, to make herself better–not for forgiveness or praise. As this inspiring image conjures before his mind, he feels nothing, and it’s the last of the motivation he needs.
Quin Shadowbane throws himself from the cliff face, never to be seen again.
![:joy:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/joy.png?v=6" ":joy:")
![:laughing:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/laughing.png?v=6" ":laughing:")