Drekh

Drekh’s Mantra for Restraining the Monster Inside
I stand before me and look upon myself.
Behold, I hear myself howling yet I an silent. I am still.
Behold, I feel myself burning yet I am cold. I am frozen.
Behold, I see myself broken yet I am whole. I am nothing. I am all.
==Background==
Grim Histories
As he arose into unlife, Drekh could neither remember who he was before, nor could he understand what he was now. The only thing he knew and experienced in every fiber of his being was a seething cold, always there, always causing him unrelenting, excruciating pain to his deepest core, a pain that would take hold of his senses and leave him little more than a deranged ghoul. Wandering around aimlessly, unaware of what he was doing, he discovered by accident that the only thing that would drive away the cold and make the pain slacken its steel grip for a while was also the only warmth that he could still feel – and that was the warmth of fresh blood.
Finding this new way of alleviating his pain, Drekh slowly but surely evolved into an ever-improving killing machine, fighting for years on end just to feel the release of being drenched in his victims’ blood.
When he found the opportunities placed at his disposal by the Lich King through his elite core of bloodthirsty Death Knights, Drekh signed up without a second thought and unleashed his hunger on the Lich King’s enemies, constantly learning from the others around him as well as from his enemies how to perfect his art of killing.
After the battle of Light's Hope Chapel and Mograine’s consequent association with the Alliance and the Horde, Drekh sought new opportunities in Undercity, where he attained exceptional achievements while working with the Apothecaries as a member of their field-active “Plague Sweep” parties, researching experimental weapons and diseases. From daring kidnapping raids upon unsuspecting Alliance (and, on occasion, not only Alliance) settlements to acquire test subjects, to getting literally “elbow-deep” in the actual testing, Drekh shone while finding new and improved ways of causing pain and misery. His exquisite proficiency at what he was doing, together with the fact that he was doing the most vile activities while always humming the same tune, an unidentifiable snippet of what sounded like a song about war, camaraderie and loss in an unknown language, caused him to earn the epithet “Soulless” (a word never spoken to his face, though) among even the most ruthless, cold-hearted Apothecaries of Undercity.
On one occasion which remains in the background gossip as the night when the “Soulless Fiend” finally succumbed to his poorly-disguised madness, Drekh had selected as his test subject a newly acquired female night elf warrior who had proved to be a particularly aggressive and potent foe, one who had provoked crippling losses and who would have surely escaped the raiding party had it not been for her foolish attempts to save the other prisoners too.
Drekh had just commenced experimenting on her using a particularly grisly and fast-acting strain of organ rot. As he was studying the deadly spread of the infection in the body of the night elf, surgically-opened to display the bloody innards for scientific purposes, Drekh began to hum his tune once more. At the sound of the tune, the night elf, still barely bound to life by dark magic with the purpose of observing the effect of the disease on the psyche, widened her eyes and picked up his tune, humming faintly as the last breaths deserted her, and she whispered “Shindu fallah na, dalah’ebrath…”
The apothecaries around him stopped from their observing and note-taking activities and stared, bewildered, at this new development. Drakh looked in the elf’s eyes for the first time, and something seemed to erupt inside him, burning within like a thousand fires. His hand clenched around his throat, and his pointed nails pierced his flesh. “And yet I still stand beside you…”, Drekh muttered in Common speak. The whispers around him slowly grew more unsettled. Drekh was staring at the elf’s now vacant face, on which – how curious – a sad smile had frozen. He had no idea what was going on, or where he was, or what was happening to him.
New Transformations
For what felt like an eternity, he seemed to have no body or memory of what a body meant, staring from somewhere far above at an inanimate group of horrid monsters, clustered around a hideous, vile creature who stood next to its broken prey. From so high up, they seemed like nightmarish insects, and he felt an urge to rid the world of them. The creature in the middle was the worst surely, it would have to die first – but he couldn’t reach it, or harm it, or convince the other creatures to attack it.
But as he tried, he saw the creature in the middle twitch. So he could control that one! Then, using it to lay waste to the other monsters would have to do for now – and as he thought this, the creature reached for a great axe leaned against the dais on which the broken prey’s body lay. The other tiny monsters tried to back away, but now everything was a blur, bones and flesh flew everywhere, and screams and curses and spells filled the air (good, maybe the little ones would kill the creature in return), and then everything was black.
When the light came back, he was encased (again?) within that horrid creature, only now the monster was bound in unbreakable magical shackles. The monster was him, yes, but now he was also the monster – apparently the same thing, but not really. Now he had control of the monster, was aware of him, and would keep him at bay – if he could. Already, the unbearable freezing pain was digging in the marrow of his bones.
“I always thought your kind was nothing but trouble, and I am proven right”, a high voice spoke from somewhere beyond his field of vision. It was one of the high-ranking Apothecaries. “You shall be disposed of…”
A second voice cut in, in a low menacing growl: “I must be mistaken… I appear to be witnessing an outsider cast judgment on a Knight of the Ebon Blade… but surely, no one would be so foolishly careless with their afterlife… Yes, I must have been mistaken, I will await to hear more…” Drekh moved his head slightly, and saw a gigantic Death Knight next to the Apothecary, staring down at him in contempt.
The Apothecary stared at the Death Knight defiantly: “This mindless fiend has killed and maimed all these brethren of mine, without provocation, and you presume to cast threats in Her Majesty Queen Sylvanas’ domain?”
“Like I said, Apothecary, I await your decision...” The Death Knight’s carefully pondered, maddeningly slow spoken words dripped deadly venom, and his fist was clenched on his gigantic sword.
Contemplating his distance to the Death Knight for a short while, the Apothecary shrugged and finally continued on: “I do not care about idiots, plainly too stupid to see the danger they are in next to this rabid demon until it is too late for them. Yes, in a way, this mad fiend may have cleansed our ranks of the more… unfit for service. But he is a threat, and so my decision stands." Turning to Drekh, he continued: "You shall be disposed of by being cast out of the city, and if you ever set foot in Undercity again, you will be destroyed on sight. Take him away!”
Tainted Beginnings
Cast out of the city, Drekh spent a long time trying to get control over what he now recognized as an inner demon, a twisted rare curse of the Plague. He secluded himself from others, living in snowy mountains and freezing caves, where at least the cold eating away at him would seem justified.
Finally, when he deemed himself somewhat trustworthy, he joined the forces battling the Lich King in Northrend, with the burning wish to one day take part in the destruction of the bringer of the Plague, the source of his curse, and to maybe, just maybe find out who was the soul behind those tortured, smiling eyes that haunted him every single night, calling him “friend”.
Category:Characters
Category:Death Knight