Scourge

Don't leave me here.

Restless sleep soon turns into no sleep at all, when memories flood your dreams.

My mind is capable of the most wicked torture, in my sleep.

It isn't fair.

They don't deserve this.

None of them.

I lit votive after votive in the tiny chapel that sat flanked by tall, pruned trees. At each flicker of a new flame's life, I saw the face of another friend...another Sin'dorei.

NATURAL "UNDEATH"

"Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated." *

(more after the break)

THE VIRUS

"Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real." *

(more after the break)

 

The ghoul collapsed and momentum dragged it forward, the piled snow crowning his head jerking the lifeless corpse to a crumpled standstill.  A goggled eye stared upwards, already calloused before he had met permanent death by the priest’s hands.  Jaw dislocated hanging to one side with a rolling purpled tongue catching snowflakes.  Meters from him Melidane drew in a breath, the whipping wind and oncoming warning of a blizzard made the simple act of breathing a burning line through her lungs.  

Is this it?

Is this all the mighty Horde could muster?

Pathetic.

He was a proud man, and a good man, and an able leader. His mind was given more to thoughts of strategy than the rage of battle, however, and he relied more on cunning than strength. So it was that when Scourge forces swarmed through the icy waters of the Dragonspine Tributary and continued on toward Zeb'Halak, he executed a daring plan to push them back. Of the thirty men he commanded, twenty survived to tell of his bravery.

The downpour created a gray haze that denied vision past a few yards. The rotted and dead ground quickly became soaked as the two parties stood across from each other. The banner of the Argent Crusade was held upon a long polearm of some mounted paladin, white armor seeming to light the area around the force of thirty Crusaders. They stood at the entrance of a valley leading to ziggurats that powered the Scourge forces in the Plaguelands.

The "heroes" of Azeroth smashed through the thick wooden doorway in the Vyrkul keep. A Troll in chain mail was just finishing off a guard with his large staff as the armored Orc, Sin'dorei in battle robes, leather-clad Forsaken, and a Tauren in armor that resembled the Earthmother's gifts, glared at the four Vyrkul fodder, Prince Keleseth and Lathaire. Immediately the Vyrkul attempted to slay the so-called "heroes", of course they failed. The group of "heroes" took no second thought as they charged forward, aiming to slay the Prince. Lathaire stepped between the charging Orc and the Prince. The Orc gave a gasp of shock as Lathaire quickly avoided the heavy hammer, grabbing the handle with the warrior's hand. There was a shout of pain as the Orc's hand was crushed under the Death Knight's grip. In despairation the green-skinned "hero" swung his shield, bouncing it off the thick saronite plate.

The dawn and dusk struggled in the unending battle, claw and tooth bare, blood streaking the massacre in the skies, reflecting the horrors upon the sacred ground below.  The barks and screams had faded away, for the most-part.  A few screams of pain, a few cracks of bone, a few roars of flame.  Deep, echoing bells.  Hallowed bells.  Forsaken bells.

Blood matted his eyes shut, his vision already blinded by the mud-packed hair that hung before his sealed eyes.  His chest rose and fell, stinging with an impishly playful squeal of pain, coming from shattered ribs.  It was a pain that was easy to get used to.  The kind that kept your feet on the ground, pushing you forward, as you strove to live.  He didn't feel that pain.  He didn't feel anything.  He was empty.  Cold.  

*He stood outside on the frozen veranda, looking below at the vapid valley. Untold numbers of Scourge soldiers stood guard, mumbling, scattered about the glacier floor. Hungering for fresh living flesh, Horde or Alliance. Some dared to stare back at him, miles above chanting nonsense, utter gibberish at the former Scourgelord.*

Things were about to get....darker. From the moment I became Duke of Frostmana, things seemed to go downhill for most of the remaining Quel'dorei. We heard of reports from soldiers on the front lines of horrendous losses of the Alliance forces. Lord Lothar would be lost at the Blackrock Spire, an untold amount of force trapped in an alien world behind the dreaded Dark Portal. In the twenty-fifth year, everything had changed....

Lyst snarled as she leveled the blade at the undead soldier that moved towards her. "Come to your fate, damned brother." The skeletal man ran forward, getting cut down by the death knight. She turn to the others that surrounded her and laughed. "It looks like I'll be by your side soon enough Lester." A large Scourge warrior let out a unholy roar as they charged in at the traitor of their ranks. Lyst smirked and gripped Hellreaver as the undead closed in around her.

“When a crusader’s sword turns rusts and his bones turn to dust may their soul reside with the light.” 

Finishing the prayer as I close the unseeing eyes after the captain’s last breath escaped her lips. 

It would be considered a victory to lose so few storming a Zuggernaut  and putting it to flame and this was just a mopping up operation to prote

((The events in this blog took place between late May and mid-June 2010))

The days after meeting with the Marquis Vinguld and Hakkajin to discuss how to save Faraji were mostly lost to me now. Most of them I ‘ave no recollection of at all. I had fallen asleep at some point, and the evil in Ythgar’s runesword had sank her hooks into me well an’ good – cracking me mind open and turning me into a babbling, Scourge-obsessed nutter. There were a few vague memories, but they might ‘ave been nightmares or just fragmented images still floating around in me subconscious. I thought I remembered seeing Ixinane, like an angel washed in red light, in a back alleyway that stank of rotted trash. I remembered countless days of fighting side by side with Ythgar in the frozen North, an army of death knights at our command as we pushed further south, slaughtering everything in our wake. I remembered falling asleep in his lap, me arms curled around his thick waist, as I let sleep embrace me. 

The first solid, real memory in days was when I woke up. Me body didn’t ache with fatigue. It felt like I must have slept for hours an’ hours. I felt relaxed, bloody fantastic even. I was lying on sheets so fine that they felt like pure spider’s silk. The pillows under me head were as soft as clouds - enormous, fluffed and lightly scented with some sort of flower. The mattress neither too ‘ard or too soft, and lifted so high I felt like I could have been floating. I could hear birds singing but there wasn’t light in me eyes. It was as I lay there, enjoyin’ the quiet, that I realized it was quiet. The voices were gone. I let me mind wander, searching for them, purposefully calling fer their answer – but there was only the blissful, peaceful silence. Finally! Me lips had curved in a smile against me pillow as I stretched, loosening back and calf muscles that had been cramped with stress for far too long, when I heard the soft breathing in the room. Not asleep, just relaxed into a resting cadence. Deep breaths into a large chest – male, obviously – but so very subtly whistled through thin nostrils over mustache. Ythgar.  

((The following occurred over a month ago towards the start of Faraji’s "The Adventures of Sefu the Ravenous" blog series. I am far behind, but attempting to play catch up!))

I had a lot on me mind. This wasn’t completely unusual – I kept a lot in there most times: meeting schedules, running bar tabs, gambling debts owed to me, names and faces to avoid, Drunken Fishball League scores, delivery schedules for me clients, mana & thissle orders, produce Kharris wanted me to pick up, sailing conditions in Booty Bay, and so on. But this was on a completely different level. It wasn’t just me own inner voice bouncing around in there. It was mine. It was Mum’s. It was Ythgar’s. Strangest of all, it was Halodante’s.

“You’re here!” she giggled, her voice wispy and young – seductive in all the wrong ways – in me ear.

The source of her elation was the enormous, dark gothic club I was pacing in front of. It towered up into the Underbelly of Dalaran, built right into the stone – dank sewer water ran down the mossy, black stones and pooled under my boots as I stepped in puddles – the only sound echoing down the large annals of the floating city. Somewhere deep and far off, a pin prick of light cast creeping shadows that rats and frogs shifted through. Outside, it was noon – the sun high in twinkling blue sky with gauzy white clouds. Down here the club sat silent, waiting patiently for visitors to trickle in after dinner hour and fill its dance floors with writhing, sweating bodies. Overpriced drinks to be served, lines of mana dust to be snorted, pulsing music by the latest mechano-jockeys to be discovered. And then later, of course, it’s back rooms with bolts set into the floors and walls to be utilized in ways that I highly doubted the girl I was meeting here had even heard of. Had I been in a better mood, I’d have liked nothing better than to set about horrifying her by sharing just what she was to be walking into. But as it was, I was hardly of the mind to bother. 

“I’m ‘ere for Aji,” I reminded the voice, but we both knew it was half truth. I sucked nervously on the Thalassian Black bloodthissle cigarette hanging between me lips.

The sword seethed.

There was no other word for it. The symbols carved on the rough blade caught what light there was and gleamed ominously, while the metal itself seemed to absorb the shadows. Its appearance promised pain and death, and not necessarily in that order. But it wasn’t dangerous.

Not planted in the barely-moist Barrens soil like a shovel.

Cold has a tendency to place things in a state of suspension. Mages who use the power of ice and cold are able to slow the advance of an enemy, giving them time to flee or destroy. Even hunters use frost and ice in their traps, stopping a foe long enough for them to dispatch missiles of death.

I was a blood elf, a child of the addicted masses to whom Prince Kael’thas promised deliverance. I was a blood knight, the bastardized version of a paladin, come late into the class but still knowing of the Light. How can you live on Azeroth and not know of the All Power? I was called to wield the power of the Light but the Light of the Sindorei is tinged with crimson and laced with green; like looking through a glass darkly.

Scourge.

The thought of them was a hot complex taste in his mouth. The motive which could make a living man willingly sicken others, innocents, peasants. Knowing that they'd wake undead, lurch forth and haul their womenfolk, their very children, screaming, to their gaping rotting maws, to rip and tear and consume.

It turned his stomach.

A stomach which had once fed upon that very same raw hot human flesh. Had he not once been a whipped ghoul, a creature raised to serve and kill and kill again? Oh, he had. The memory was a nightmare, a hot coal of hatred and terror that he flinched from even now. He salved his conscience. Oh, how many nights had he knelt praying at the small chapel in his Stormwind townhouse, to forget and drive away those hideous memories.

Perhaps some onlooker might mock him for this prudery. Why, he was the Marquis of Vinguld! An evil man, who freely admitted as much! A man who preyed upon women, and ruined his opponents!

The dreams started the same way they always did. Her husband and she, hand in hand in a sunny orchard while their hands, and souls, were slowly bound in an age old ritual. They were two sides of the same coin, meant to be from the day they met though her father disapproved.

They moved to the city and lived happily. She and her father opened a bow shop while he had his duties as a ranger and scout. Time passed quickly as it did in dreams, she’d had the twins and by some miracle they’d all survived. 

The Death Knight let out a hacking cough, walking into the ruins of a once well kept house. He looked at the charred wood, the furniture and the walls. He let out another hacking cough, soot shifting from its resting place on the foundation of the house. He held his gloved hands behind his back, looking out at the ruins from beneath the wrappings on his face. 

Gåwåin let out a sigh. He hadn't wanted this, this had come from nowhere, for no reason. He unclenched his hands and closed his eyes as the thin, frail appendages fell from where he had held them down to his waist.

 The feeling of cool metal sliding across her hand startled her to her surroundings. Her eyes flutter open, meeting the warmest gaze she had even come across. “Alin?”

He smiled, brushing her hair back from her brow. “How you feeling?” Zephin blinked weakly, looking down at her hand. A small silver band entwined with a darker metal snugly wrapped around her ring finger. She smiled, “Good?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The woman's hands swept across the puss-filmed skin. Fumbling to keep the thread taunt against the creature's wounds, she pulled at it with her teeth the loop pulling tight against her fingers. Hadn't asked for a briefing on this one, hadn't needed it. It was never her place to ask questions of her master. They brought the wounded in, she stitched them up and sent them back on the field.

“Quicker! The beast needs to be ready now- medic!”

There wasn’t. Lazhira let go her grip on the trapped sword and dropped into a defensive crouch as the breaker advanced, blade ready. Clawed fingers and toes dug into the floorboards. Her mind raced.

Xannivard locked eyes with her as he dropped Mairead's body to the floor, slowly he sunk into the floor and vanished. Laughter echoed in Tess' head. That was the last memory she had of him.

Cre-eak. Cre-eak. Cre-eak.

The wood beneath the ghoul protested each step with a soft squeal, which might have worried her if she hadn’t been preoccupied. Lazhira didn’t weigh much. But the rickety stairs were the only way up that wouldn’t draw attention.

Once again, she forced herself upright and continued climbing.

(...bediscreet...shouldbediscreet...shouldbe...)