Ashes of Memory
Ogrimskar watched as the world burned, and the ashes of what was were blown out to sea. With impassive eyes he stared at the past and allowed it to pass through his metal clad fingers, like sand. He closed his eyes once during that endless time, to fight back tears that would never truly come. Nothing could be returned, and nothing could be regained. And it still hurt so bad, that even in his unbeating heart he could feel the ache.
He had come here to find something. What was it he came to find? The past, history, old and unburied. He had prayed that it would lead him somewhere, that it would lead him nowhere. The duality is what upset him the most. How bad he wanted it, and how he couldn’t conceive of finding what he sought. It had not been burning in the beginning of course. It had been standing open and naked, stark and raving to the night skies above. The skeleton of his history, the bones of his origin. It had not been touched since they left long ago, left to moulder beneath uncaring sky. Had they left soon after he? Or had they lingered there? Pretending to be what they were no longer, keeping up the charade for as long as they could.
There were few who knew his story, the shameful tale that led to his death in the cold land of Northrend, left behind by those last few who cared for him. He saw her ghost in those smouldering bones of a settlement, walking along the well worn footpaths with her light step. Her hair bouncing with every movement, windblown and tousled. She passed him, with that challenging look in her eye. She had always challenged him. And he had loved her for that. When he saw that ghost, his cheeks stained with red, bloody tears forming. She vanished as she passed, gone like smoke in the night. The rest came and went, but had not the power that she had. His father, his brother, his mother. Argyle and his gruff words, Uhlrid and his quick wit. The ghosts of his clan came and went, though perhaps not ghosts. No, these were phantoms of memory not death. Many could still yet live, luxuriating in their damnation
The yawning abyss opened beneath him, like a great fanged maw in the earth. The thing that had swallowed up his people. It was cold and old, hungry and unyielding. The Twilight’s Hammer had come slowly and sickly, a disease which had swept over the weak minded. It consumed even the most powerful in the clan, promising power and riches. Even as Ogrimskar had mourned his fallen bride, his family betrayed him. They knew he would never understand, would never yield before the Void. And they had tried to take the last thing he cared about, the last tether to the living world.
He saw her in his plated arms, where once she lay in his bare hands. His child, his daughter. She who had become his whole world. This last little shred of his beloved. She had never cried, dwarven children were strong and stoic. He flexed his gauntleted fingers, remembering her weight and the way she shifted. He could still feel it after all these years. Another raw ache which would follow him for all time. She vanished, as he remembered what he had to do. The lengths he had to go to protect her from his family. He had left his wife behind, and would never be able to visit her body again. But that was a small price to pay to protect her. She deserved to grow up without the taint of her clan, of her family. So he did the unthinkable.
He fell to a knee before the bones and the spirits, unable to hold his footing. He was weighted down now by his armor and his deeds. Was he any better than what his family had become? He had served a terrible power, and had been saved from it. Could they too be saved? Or had the passing of time so irrevocably damaged them? He had no idea, he couldn’t even find them. He had seen not one clue of his people since he had returned. Perhaps they were all gone, and their echoes really were their ghosts. Was that comfort? Or was that just more pain? He could not tell any longer, unable to distinguish the two aches from one another.
He had decided to burn it. There was nothing left of the past to preserve, and it remained only a mute testament to what had come before. Better to obliterate it and move forward as best as one could. It had not taken much to set them aflame, the structures of rotted wood had gone up quickly. There was nothing left of Gunnar Ironhands, and the people he was of. Now there was only Ogrimskar, and the scars he bore. Mental and physical, marring him for the rest of eternity. And as he turned his back on the burning past, and looked toward a bleak and unforgiving future, he could only grit his teeth and steel his spine.
For there was nothing but darkness ahead of him and only ashes behind him. And the transformation of those two things, was the gift he gave the world. He would be the one to burn the shadows. For was it not better to burn, than to drown?