Day gave way to night. As the White Lady, one of Azeroth's twin moons, slowly sank below the horizon, the Blue Child still stubbornly hung in the sky, though it too had faded to a faint shadow.
On the Burning Steppes, where red lava was everywhere, sunlight gradually drove away the darkness of dawn, revealing land as black as it had been beneath the night sky. It was a thick layer of volcanic ash that had accumulated over thousands of years.
Malone lay on that volcanic rock. In the game, he had visited this red patch on the map countless times; several important dungeons were located here. But now, for the first time, he truly felt how desolate the land was.
Malone looked to his right. A short distance away, several enormous volcanoes blocked his view. Red lava, trailing clouds of white steam, poured from openings at their summits and cooled into volcanic rock near the foothills.
"Blackrock Mountain..." Malone murmured. Bracing his hands against the cold ground behind him, he sat up.
Before this, Malone had never considered what he would do if one day he, too, crossed over into another world like the protagonists in those novels.
But now that it had really happened, Malone found himself terrifyingly calm. Maybe it was because he knew this land and this world so well. Or maybe... it was because he had already completely given up hope for the future.
Malone looked around. Countless naked men stood in small groups, talking to one another.
None of this seemed right. And, of course, he didn't mean the fact that they were naked. It was because...
Malone knew these men weren't alive. They were dead, risen from the grave. The bodies of Stormwind knights who had died long ago now housed the souls of Orc Warlocks.
Including Malone himself. Though he was the most unusual of these Death Knights.
The previous night, Malone had finally found a mirror. Teron Gorefiend had used a wooden basin—he'd found it somewhere—to fetch water from a nearby orc encampment.
Thanks to Azeroth's bright twin moons, Malone had been able to see what he looked like now.
He was fairly satisfied with his appearance. His face had been preserved intact, unlike Teron Gorefiend's, whose jaw had nearly been cut off. More importantly, his black hair and black eyes made his new appearance easier to accept. If he'd turned into some blond-haired, blue-eyed foreigner, that would have been too strange.
As a Death Knight... actually, Malone didn't even know if he still counted as one.
First-generation Death Knights like Teron Gorefiend had been created by placing the souls of Orc Warlocks into the bodies of dead humans. But Malone's situation... he really wanted to know what kind of monster emerged when three souls were crammed into a single corpse.
That man who claimed to be the God of Video Games... Malone thought again of the indistinct man who had appeared in that white room.
It seemed the man had done a pretty good job. Malone's soul—or perhaps his consciousness—had entered a body that didn't belong to him at all. He had gained the memories of both the orc and the body's original owner, then taken control of the body from them.
The orc's soul was named Maicomarlon. The previous night, Teron Gorefiend had kept calling him by that name.
Like Teron Gorefiend, Maicomarlon had originally been a Warlock in the Shadow Council. After Orgrim Doomhammer killed him, Gul'dan resurrected him and put him into this human corpse. Less than one night later, Malone had replaced him.
The human soul... interestingly enough, his name sounded a lot like the orc's: Michael Malone, a Warrior who had been assigned to defend Stormwind.
Less interestingly—but to Malone's relief—Michael hadn't been a good soldier. He'd deserted during the battle to defend Stormwind.
Malone didn't know how Michael had escaped while surrounded by orcs. Actually, he did know: Michael's memories held the whole story. But Malone found the sheer coincidence of it hard to believe.
Michael had fled Stormwind and headed north, crossing Elwynn Forest and the Redridge Mountains. Then, in the Burning Steppes, the orc army advancing rapidly north caught up with him, and he met his death—just a little later than he otherwise would have.
Of course, Michael hadn't had the courage to fight the orcs swarming across the land. Otherwise, he wouldn't have deserted.
As countless orcs charged toward him—Malone even suspected they hadn't noticed Michael at all—in any case, when Michael saw the orc army advancing in his direction, he was scared to death.
Perhaps not quite to death—Malone had his doubts. Otherwise, he shouldn't have inherited Michael's memories.
The man had probably only been half scared to death, or perhaps had gone into complete shock. Then the marching orc army had "picked up" Michael's "corpse" and handed it over to Gul'dan to complete the transformation into a Death Knight. And then...
Michael's soul and Maicomarlon's soul had both become part of Malone's memories.
That was all Malone knew about this body and his current situation. From Maicomarlon's memories, he had worked out what era he was living in—the era he occupied in Azeroth's sweeping epic history.
The orcs had just conquered Stormwind. After allying with the Amani Trolls, led by the Troll chieftain Zul'jin, they had briefly gathered near Blackrock Mountain, ready at any moment to march north and attack the human kingdoms of Lordaeron, Stromgarde, and Gilneas, as well as the mage city of Dalaran. And, of course, the Wildhammer Dwarves of Aerie Peak and the High Elves of Quel'Thalas.
As for the Alliance, Malone didn't know whether Anduin Lothar had yet arrived in Lordaeron with Varian Wrynn and met the wise King Terenas. He didn't know whether Thoras Trollbane and Genn Greymane still viewed Anduin Lothar's arrival with hostility, and...
And whether Aiden Perenolde of the Kingdom of Alterac and his Syndicate, the assassin organization under his command, had already begun plotting to side with the orcs and open the passage through Alterac Valley...
Malone knew almost everything there was to know about this world: the Burning Legion's invasion and the Sundering ten thousand years ago, the Titans' creation of the world even earlier, and the Scourge sweeping across the world in the future; Arthas murdering his father and mentor; the shadow of Deathwing throwing the world into chaos; the Alliance and Horde clashing again years later; the mysterious new continent of Pandaria; and so on, and so on...
But none of that mattered as much as the one thing Malone cared about most right now: what kind of power had that self-proclaimed god given him? A Death Knight? Was this all the power he had now—a perfectly ordinary Death Knight who hadn't even made a name for himself in Azeroth's history?
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