Icecrown Citadel

The story of Eberict Silverleaf should have ended long ago. It didn’t. It continues here.

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In those days Eberict Silverleaf was dead. I know because I held the knife that slid fluidly into his flank. I pulled back, twisted the grip, and then drove the jewelled pommel hard into the base of his skull. The impact was wet, messy, and incredibly satisfying; out of a long list, there was nobody I wished to hit more than that arrogant toad of a warlock. I left him there to bleed out onto the trampled snow and watched from the shadows. How many do you think stopped the march to mourn the loss of yet another imperious blood elf with a cause larger than he could manage? In war, as much as we pretend otherwise, we leave the fallen to bleed.

Perhaps someone could have called it an “out of body experience” if they had truly known where the young Rogue had come from, but to the body-snatching parasite in question, one body was simply the same as another.

Who is Skythe Hawkins?

Blue eyes stared forward as he leaned against the railing that kept him from falling off the edge. Eyes stared down at the crossroads of the Citadel, perched up near the Argent Crusade who usually left him alone. What they didn’t bother to look at though, was a matching figure standing next to him in the same post.

A giest? A double? The same person, perhaps…

“Reminds you of the good old days, doesn’t it…?”

(( Uhhh... I promise I'll make a concerted effort to not do the 'to be continued' thing all that often after this, since I still have to finish up the spirit realm bits from before Aji woke up >> This does, however, happen after the fact. I still have every intention of posting the rest of that particular storyline.

Anywho. Haven't written in a long arse time, feels like, but here we go. Aji bloggins- go! ))

He hadn’t thought there were all that many left. He even imagined that his job would be difficult, that his quarry would be in short supply, at least the ones he could pick off without raising suspicion. He had even gone so far as to think he would be forced to pull from a much more dangerous stock.

He was wrong.

The cold pervades everything here: The air that snaps at our lips as we breathe, the bright clattering of weaponry and armor, the low rumble of crunching ice beneath our feet.  The spire is brittle and threatens us with its tenuous surface; if our boot-heels catch the edge, shards break away, whirling down into darkness.  It would have us fall, tumble away from the icy throne and the evil we seek to destroy.  But we cannot fall.  We will not fall.

He will not fall.  Melersian Corinth is one with the abyss, despite the voice of amusement often rising from behind his mask.  How much is he still human?  He will not fall.

She will not fall.  Beisel Goldthread sets a dwarven table, feeds us with laughter, then disperses in a puff of shadow.  How can a shadow be smashed or broken?  She will not fall.

I let bowstring loosen, abandoned weapons. The sporebat lingered in the fresh spring night.

I shed my armor upon entering, death and plague left behind.

I went upstairs, my hair at my shoulders, every step one step closer.

I took her in my arms and lifted her up.

One step closer.

The Professor had fallen.

It is the middle of the week.  It is time to prepare.

Argent Tournament Grounds

Taneel sat by the fire small fire, a bit removed from the proceedings. Beside him lay the gargantuan form of his mammoth. The great creature’s chest rose and fell slowly against the young warrior but he paid it no mind. His eyes gazed deep into the bright orange flames as he thought back to the battles of the last few days.

Flames of searing cold, huge boney blades ripping at his flesh, what had awaited them in the citadel of Icecrown had not been wholly unexpected, and several times, it had seemed as though they had gained the upper hand, but in the end, the first step into the Lich king’s castle had been more than he could handle today.

I entered through the back door.  The maid's face, when she saw me, fell open like a sheet to a gale-force wind.  I found my voice, caught in my throat as it was, and rasped out hoarse words.

“Tell the lady of the house I am home.  Tell her not to come down.  I will see her in the morning.”

The maid nodded, her eyes still wide and fixed upon me, her mouth a thin line.  She turned away swiftly.  If she spoke words from the place of her expression, Cassie would know not to come down. 

I did not prop my polearm against the wall, or set my bow where I usually did.  I did not touch anything.  Another maid and a houseboy came into the pantry, their faces as wan and eyes as wide as the maid before them. I stood without moving.

“I need three vats of hot water.  One with lye, one with vinegar, one with soaps.  I need a pitcher of warm oil and one of boiling water, crushed icecap in each.  A fire in my den.  Many hot stones.  Many towels.  Many -”  My rough voice broke, and I swallowed back the interruption.  “Chamber pots.  Many of them.” 

I scatter bones in Icecrown. I must. They must be broken and they must be scattered, as much as possible. It had been a skeleton of a man or an elf or an orc... I had not looked closely when with a gasping howl it had attacked. It had been Scourge, I had dispatched it, and now I scatter the bones. Among them, clinging to the small bones of the hands and wrist, or twisted around a vertebrae, I often find little reminders of a shadowed past. Rings, trinkets, talismans. I found a rotting leather pouch once that broke open at the touch of my boot; teeth fell out, little whisps of hair, another bone, whiter than those here, untouched by the pervading evil of the Scourge. They scattered into the dust and snow and were whirled away by the wind. Lost in Icecrown, as the Lich King's cold hand must sweep away all such things.

AN ORC!

After bones were shattered, whispers silenced, airships driven back into the frigid dark -

One orc alone barred our way.

ONE ORC.

Slayers of our trees, murderers of our gods, minions of the last great evil...

They wonder why we fight the Horde even here.

Last night, she had to tie me down.