The story of Wayland Blood, Warlock of the Forsaken

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The ground was dead. He sympathized with it. He was dead too.

The Crusaders were also dead. Their swords were drawn and their crimson surcoats flapped like deteriorating flags on their armor, but you could see their rotting faces and the glow of infernal magics that kept their bodies moving. Wayland wasn’t an expert in such things, despite his own decaying body — it wasn’t a field of study that appealed to him.

The lead one hissed as it came running. Wayland held up a single gnarled arm and slashed his fingers through the air in a gesture he never could have managed when he was alive, his fingers nearly dislocating. Sickly green flames erupted from the air around him and with a hissing sound, the chest of the leader began to pulsate. Snarling, the three of them moved as one, their progress swift if unsettling to watch. Wayland watched, fascinated to see their limbs twitch them closer to him.

They were upon him, blades drawn, ready to destroy him.

He smiled, and lungs that barely knew the taste of air wheezed out a single one.

“Boom.”

The demon seed he’d placed in the lead Crusader’s corpse exploded in a shuddering burst of fire, and waves of unholy flame lashed out at the other two. They writhed, their garments aflame, and so he was free to gesture and twist at the world until a wave of pure shadow erupted from his hands, smashing both of their corpses to the ground. He snickered for a moment. They’d already been dead, but now, they were dead and not moving. That was an important distinction in the Glades.

He stopped to lift the skull of the leader, the one with the red winged helmet. It seemed stuck in the metal, so he lifted both, staring at the smoldering features of who in life had likely been some kind of Paladin, some champion of life and order.

“Not so different now, hey?” He wondered if it had even been aware of what was happening, what gender it had been, anything. The meeting had been accidental — Wayland on his way to the Agamand Mills, and the former Crusaders rotting as they enacted a patrol that no longer had any significance. “What takes you so far from the Monastery? Useless to ask you now, I suppose.”

With a sigh he tossed the head aside to clatter where it would. He had other business.

In life, Wayland’s surname had not been Blood. He often snickered at himself for the vanity of it, a choice made when he was a much fresher corpse. If he’d been born Wayland Blood one might have expected him to run away from the Mills and find a nice pirate ship. Sure, and get yourself sent to a wet grave by the Kul Tiras fleet. Would have saved you a lot of trouble.

He could have ridden to the Mills, but he was in the mood to walk. In his fresher days, when he’d opened his eyes and found himself a rotting corpse in Brill, held together by foul magic and his own inability to let go he’d hated walking, hated seeing his body move. But that had been a while ago. Since then, Wayland Blood had walked alien worlds and commanded demons to serve his most trivial whims, and watching his own body convulse and twitch its way through simple motions was no worse than watching those three rotten soldiers charge at him. In a way, it was even soothing. You’re still dead, Wayland.

He came to the Mills an hour or so later, clutching his new staff in front of him. What was there to say about his existence? He’d gone from a young farmhand to a thing out of nightmare, and throughout everything — his vengeance on the Scourge, the coming of the Black Dragon and the wreck of the Horde on Hellscream’s ego, the Dark Lady’s ascension and his own role in storming the Demon King’s palace, which led to the wound in the world and the loss of a relic of enormous power he’d once used proudly — none of it changed that one essential fact. He was dead, but still moving.

At last he came to stand in the place he’d died. The Agamands had been fools. It was easy enough to say this now, of course. They were all dead and he’d personally killed their moving corpses because Sylvanas — or someone ordered by someone who’d spoken to someone Sylvanas ordered to attend to it — had wanted them to stop moving. If not for their pride and their This is our land stubbornness, they would have fled Lordaeron and they and their farmhands — farmhands like a young Wayland, who knew no better, had never suffered more than a cold in his seventeen years — would at that very moment likely be living out their lives in Stormwind. Or I might have sailed west with Jaina and died at Theramore. Life’s a gamble. Not that he cared much for life anymore. He hadn’t fled. He hadn’t been safe elsewhere. He’d died right there and then his broken corpse had fought its way back to the world and this was his graveyard.

The few remaining Scourge in the area were weak things, far from their strongholds in the north. He could incinerate them in pure shadow fire if he wished, but he let them be. They weren’t bothering him and he was occupied looking down at the Mills. He’d eaten his simple meals in a common room shared by most of the hands next to the largest of the windmills. Next to that, there was a small tree. Now the tree was rotten, but back then it had been a tall green shield against summer heat and he’d sat against its bark and pined for Yvette Farthing, who of course had not known he’d existed. He remembered that this had been so, but he no longer remembered why or how it had felt. Just the scar tissue of a wound long since gone.

He found it easy to stand in one place and not move. It was what his body wanted to do, now — forcing his limbs to action was the part that took effort. So several hours passed while he remembered harvesting grist for those giant mills, the sun strong on his face and sweat — what a novelty the memory of sweating and grunting, of aching with effort was.

The staff in his hand quivered and he looked down at it curiously. It wasn’t the staff at all. It was his hand. Why had he…

Over the Mills he saw them. At first just one set of sails. He’d noticed them but assumed they had to be Forsaken, one of the Dark Lady’s ships. But no, these were large and white and untouched by the rot that seemed to seep into anything Forsaken hands touched. He watched, fascinated, as more and more of them appeared on the horizon. Ships.

Many ships.

His eyes were far from perfect but his vision was keen enough to make out a detail. A golden lion on the side of one of the lead ships as it pulled around the coast, seeking harbor. There was a landfall to the south, near the Solliden Farmstead. He clicked his jaws together, amazed at just how many ships he was seeing. How was it possible?

He gestured and green flames called a monstrous thing, equal parts corpse steed and pure hellfire, out of nothingness to his side. Speed wasn’t his best feature, but he mounted as quickly as his limbs would allow, pointed the flaming skull of the beast to the south. He was dead, but he could still move, and the Glades were his grave. His place of unlife. He would not cede it easily.

Besides, the idea of attacking those ships appealed to him. He’d always thought he’d have made a good pirate.

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