Plans within Plans

My body moved like a machine as the recorders trilled, mind spinning and whirling. I touched wrist to wrist, met eyes, and let my feet shift and slide, the steps of the elaborate dance requiring little actual thought. The body remembers. My partners, all highborn Stormwind noble women, giggled and flirted, and I replied in kind, barely noting what sly subtle teasings I rumbled, shaping my voice deep and commanding, so used to these fine simple dances of word and glance and body that in truth, I needed no great conscious effort and could permit my mind to work away at recent events beneath the whine of women and the deeper rhythm of my own comments.

The servants from Lordaeron were not pleased with Kharris - they'd not forgotten the last apparently docile elf I'd held. Thienna'd left one man a babbling idiot with her magics.

That wretched rogue's barbs had sunk deep. And then to hear some puling puppy whining on the gnome box of my Theryl... how many more? Would I need fear that every filthy elf I saw might regard me with a knowing leer? The rage was in my blood, pulsing like the drum which moved my feet in deliberate movements, well known patterns. The trotto, the saltarello.. a rondo.. my mind seething with fury.

What had humanity truly come to?

Why did women like my love let elves rule them? Why did men like my son Ythfas abandon culture and ancient tradition so that he could have some slender nonhuman slut writhing under him? Use them if you must, but love them?

And yet what of my life now? What of the humans in it? My wife Paxineau, a necromancer, a warlock, a terrifying woman yet one who'd sworn herself, submitted herself to me.. is dead. She failed at her own ultimate test, and her body is ruled by a conglomerate of the very souls she tried to consume and dominate. I'll have to destroy 'Millicent', the dominant soul which possesses her corpse. I suppose that makes me eligible once again for the power games I scarcely need to consider as I dance at this ball which Lady Helminthe invited me to lend my considerable influence.

And my Theryl... no. I don't want to think about it. Not of her and some wretched elves, her voice lifted as it is so often at my touch. I don't want to think of her declaring the love she cannot ever say to me.. to one of them. Light, I can feel the hatred biting at my mouth behind the dominant smile I wear at these functions.

I'll think of Rhonnwyn. Dear pious child, properly wary of those wretched elves.

And what of them?

Ixinane came to me the morning after the attack to ask me to restore her soul's integrity.. except that I had her Iloam at that point, bound and bleeding, at Nidhoggr. I'd just come from binding Kharris by her guilty responsibility for her husband's assault. I chose to tell her greatest rival where he was.. it was a useful tool, and she gave me a way of getting rid of the wretched rogue before I ended up with a second Velion. Her service, bound by blood to me, in return for him, with her guarantee that she could control him. She's offered me good coin. And she's more valuable than some mad dog I might have to kill if I cannot break him.

A shame Ixinane isn't a human noble - her mind is intriguing and enjoyable. I find myself looking forward to our breakfasts.

I let her take him.. and was pleasantly surprised when she bypassed meaningless efforts to convince a mad dog of her intentions, and simply employed a demon wench to control him. Lovely to watch.

As for Kharris.. she's mine also now. I'll take from her what Iloam took from Theryl.. yet I must be careful.. so careful. Neither Theryl nor any other need or can know my true intentions.. so I shall be a stern patriarch, disappointed with his ward. Glad to teach her to control herself, wishing only the best, forced by sad necessity to be more stern than I might wish to be. And gradually, so gradually, remake her into the woman I intend her to be. Looking to me for every hope, every dream.

Iloam, you scarcely understand how much I will take from you for your threat to my love. Your touching of her ever in her life. You've not changed much from the effete catamite I knew long ago in my own boyhood. I have, Iloam. I have. I'm not guided as you are by emotion and rage.. but by my own discipline. And best of all... I know who you are now. Who you were. And what I took from you then.. I'll take so much more now. Because before.. you were just a foolish whore. Now.. you're hurt me, Iloam. More than you realize. And when I'm finished? Be certain, boy.. you'll belong to me. You always did, in a sense. My very first, Iloam. You were the first.

Dance, smile, nod. Pause to sip some sparkling wine and let another fluttering powdered face approach.

Next ball perhaps I'll bring Rhonnwyn. She's learning to dance beautifully.

Maybe I'll bring Cerwis. Or Theryl.

I'll kill that whining voice in the box - no reason not to. Theryl, Theryl... how many more, my love? I'll kill every last one if I must. Wrench their screams from their strangling throats as I prove once again what evil I am capable of. I've been too kindly of late.. too cautious.

Maybe I should take a third wife from these foolish women. No.. Likely unwise, that idea. Arrange my pawns on the board. I have no need for wealth or title.. only temporal influence in Stormwind. Paxineau proved a failure at the end... I'll avenge her, be certain.

Still, caution has its uses. Never act too quickly. Weigh the consequences. Ixinane is a useful piece on this board.. perhaps a queen as my sword named her in that dream I watched. Let us see how much else I move when I move her.

Thwarted in breaking him. No matter how wisely done.. or how cautious... I need to kill. To hurt. To be who I am. I can't look at Theryl... until I know the extent of who else I need to... know about. It's like a knife twisting in my breast to think of the woman I love impaled on one of them.

I fear I may do something very rash indeed. Light preserve the innocent. I am not one of them.