Had he been asked beforehand, Anduin Lothar would have guessed that having his spirit summoned to the physical world and then placed back into his resurrected, undead body would have hurt, or at least have been slightly unpleasant. But it wasn't. It was easy, comforting even, like slipping into a warm bath.

He closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath, savoring it, the first he'd had in years.

"How are you feeling?" asked the elf, the one who'd given him this second chance.

Lothar opened his eyes again, looking around uncertainly. Now that he was here, he realized he was surrounded by strangers, including people of multiple races...ones he didn't recognize but felt that he should. He remembered the conversation with Arrelon – that was her name, she'd told him – when he'd been offered this version of his life back, but as she'd said, nothing between that and the time of his death. He glanced at one of them, a blue demon-like creature with curving horns, and thought again he should know what she was.

"I'm…good," he said at length, and swallowed hard. Actually he felt awkward, unused to his body after all this time without it. Now he was back in the world, the physical world, and he took an unsure step forward. He frowned. Memories of his life, and his death, came flooding back to him. His last memory was of battle, ending with a blinding pain at the side of his head, and he reached up instinctively to where he'd taken that final blow.

"Don't worry, it's been healed. You are whole once again," the elf assured him.

"The Deathlord's magic is very powerful," added another one of the knights, this one a human man with long white hair and tattoos on his face.

"Deathlord?" Lothar repeated dubiously, glancing between the two, and then at the others in the small group around them. "That's a bit melodramatic, don't you think?"

She chuckled. "I agree. But then, I didn't come up with the name, or the title."

Lothar reached up again, just to make sure he really was all in one piece, but stopped when he caught sight of his raised arm. He was no longer wearing the armor from his final battle. What he had on now was something much less elaborate, but familiar, as was the timeframe it had come from. It was something from out of his past, from the time the orcs first came to Azeroth, and he didn't understand.

"Why this?" he asked, gesturing to himself. This was what he'd been wearing on the day he met Khadgar; he would have recognized it anywhere. But she could never have known that. Shouldn't bringing someone back from the spirit realm re-create what they'd been wearing when they died? And if not, shouldn't he have just been naked? He supposed he should be thankful that he wasn't. "Why these clothes?"

"I don't know," she replied. "Your mind supplied them, the magic just brought them through."

Lothar ran his fingers over the leather of his sleeve, then through his hair. It was the wrong length. Just as the armor hadn't matched what he'd been wearing when he died, neither did this. He pulled some of the strands forward, surprised to see that they were no longer gray, but brown; and he gazed at the 'Deathlord' in confusion.

"What use would it be if the magic restored a Horseman to their exact physical state at the time of their death?" she said with a shrug, as if she knew what had just passed through his mind.

"You are not one of the rank-and-file members of our order," stated another elf, one who stood at the side of the tattooed man. This one looked as if some time had passed between his demise and his resurrection as a death knight. "If you had been raised by a lich and not the Deathlord, you wouldn't be in such good condition."

"You would not be of much use with your skull still smashed in," the blue demonlike creature pointed out. "But even so, you do not look very much like your statues or portraits."

"They were most likely created when he was older than he currently appears," mused the man with the tattoos.

"And when he had much less hair," the blue woman replied dourly.

Lothar gazed at the 'demon' curiously. She appeared to be another death knight, but beyond that, he couldn't tell. He didn't even know what race she was. "You seem to know who I am," he said. "But I've never met anyone who looks like you do. Who are you?"

"This is Xaelaan, one of your fellow Horsemen. She's a draenei," said the Deathlord. "Her people fled their homeworld after it was taken over by the Burning Legion, twenty five thousand years in the past. They settled on Draenor, the orcs' homeworld, several hundred years ago, and lived there peacefully until the Burning Legion found them."

"The Legion corrupted the orcs. They almost wiped out my people before we came to Azeroth. But now we will kill them all, every demon that has come here," the draenei declared. "And then we will chase them back to their own worlds, where they can be killed and not come back. The Legion will fall."

The Deathlord nodded solemnly, then glanced at Lothar. "Come with me. We need to get you caught up on current events, and once you're up to speed, we'll begin your training."

"Training?" Lothar replied, his eyes narrowed. "I may have been gone for a while, but I'll have you know my fighting skills haven't been diminished. I'm still one of the most proficient warriors my part of history ever produced, even if I do say so myself."

"That may be," Arrelon replied slyly. "But now you are more, much more, than simply a warrior."

"We all are," the male elf stated.

"Precisely. And speaking of which, we should be getting back to the Acherus…Koltira, will you do the honors?"

"Of course, Deathlord." He bowed his head to her, and then – to Lothar's surprise – he cast a spell. What he'd assumed was a warrior, albeit an undead one, had actually cast a spell; and Lothar gazed with wide eyes at the shimmering portal before them.

The elf blinked, his expression smug. "What, did you think the Deathlord was the only member of the Ebon Blade with magic?"

"We can all use magic," declared the tattooed man at his side. "And very soon, you'll be able to as well."

Lothar simply nodded in wonder, and followed the Deathlord through the gate.