Vinguld

Here in the woods, only Mother Moon can see me. I have left the comforts of the cabin for now... The pieces inside grate and push nerves, far beyond what this shell can subvert. The pain threshold is lower with the feeling of warmth flowing through my body, the cool air doing much to soothe me.

I must cast the pieces out. It is so strange ... the pieces are so tiny, yet they hurt so much. More than the saronite that put me down.

But now I am past dying.

I settle into the middle of the clearing and disrobe. The unfortunate hunter next to me may be innocent, or he may not be. He strains against his gag, his eyes wide and crazed at the situation. He will be there for me to generate more necrotic energy.

First to rebuild, sometimes we must destroy.

I take a deep breath. Another, and then another. And then the agony of those little pieces, slowly but surely being forced out, begins.

I am not a masochist. And I am not a sexual creature. I am not friendly. But even I still have a heart.

A pretty vase to be smashed. A pretty face to be slashed. She spills my secrets, spews them for fun ... drapes herself on the collateral damage, and twists as though in ecstasy at my suffering.  And then the truth begins to leak, here and there, warm spots on a cold desolate field.

In my heart it should always be winter but never winter's veil.

She has broken me before ... And now, in the warmth that has been hiding for so long... the feeling I smothered like a babe asleep in the bed ... now it roars anew. Runesword and Lord alike, destroying me on the outside, and on the inside as well.

And soil my hands I must too, or else suffer the same fate as he.

But first... I bring back the bottom feeder, kicking and screaming, to the top of the food chain, and into the den of the beast.

"Don't even start."

I could hear her manifesting behind me, shivering into being, and spoke before she even truly finished. I could feel the muscles in my face tightening with some of the anger I felt. My response was to smooth it over before turning around, still panting, my load still half lowered into the dust behind me. I felt old. Incomprehensibly useless, old, and offended. I watched as she clasped her hands together, her long fingers a warped steeple. No doubt she would take my rage and increase it a hundredfold. Curse the day I was resurrected to face this part of myself.

"Oh come now Daenyra. You cannot possibly say that you did not expect this to happen."

I pointedly turned away and began to ignore her, taking the shovel I had brought along with me in hand.

Then did the idolaters call on the names of their gods, and did I call on the Light, who answers with fire.  And the fire did consume their sacrifices, the wood, the stones, and the earth, for it sought them and with divine relentlessness found their works and judged them.  Then did the first kings command, "Seize their false prophets and expose their wickedness!"  And they did seize them, and took them into the valley and cast them far from memory.

My sword brother is dying.

He came like a shade over the snow in the perpetual winter's dark and I confess that I did not know him.

His eyes are fish black, his hair and beard witch white. As pale as ice with the shadows about him, I thought Tanas a mirage made of blowing snow. Not until he called my name aloud did I recognize him.

 * A letter to the Lord of Nidhoggr Manor, left tucked neatly and sealed with wax underneath his study door*

Brother Knight,

Your utterances from the gnome-box as of late have been startling. In their most abstractness, I grow concerned given that I have a gut feeling that this has evolved from your reluctant entwining with the arcane junkies, also known as Blood elves. Mairead as well, has been sobbing over the box and I am utterly confused in my own quiet way about the solution thereof for both of you. Yshri as far as can be told, has been fine as of late, though quiet. But I sense the unrest in the house from my humble basement lair.

She checked the locks on her shop briefly, and listened closely for the sound of her daughter. Nothing. Good.

Stalking down the cobbled road of Silvermoon, it was all Thienna "Vinguld" could do to control her anger and fury. How DARE they threaten her? Send their pansy to do their work? HOW DARE he? Wasn't it enough, the hell he put her through while she was with his son?

A seed. Riddled by plague. Skin rotting. 

A sigh escapes my lips. Glass cuts my hand as I bellow and fling it all to the floor. I grip the table to stay upright. Once I felt nothing. Now I just feel empty and as dead as the old man. Unprovoked laughter escapes my throat as I collapse onto the floor mad. The imp scurries away. Worthless. So very worthless.

They never understand. I can't make them understand. Soon they will join me in the nether.

I am back.

His eyes were playing tricks.
Eyes... they weren't eyes. The fish had eaten those. The hollow empty places filled to the brim with sickly greenish-yellow light that he somehow saw through... were playing tricks.
He'd stopped running an eternity ago, and simply walked in the blackness. Swish, swish, swish.
Every footstep took willpower at first, but now it was harder to stop than to keep going. If he stopped, he'd be down here forever, under the leaden weight, and in the terrifying cold.
He saw things in the eternal midnight of this icy hell he'd chosen. Sometimes they were horrific fish twisted by some unknown hand into shapes of nightmare and demonic visage.. sometimes they were worse.

He absently detached another fleshy eel-thing from his elbow and squeezed it as he walked.

He crested the last hill, and the glimmer of the mansion’s windows was faintly distant through the thin mist.  The dreadsteed clopped its hooves impatiently on the dilapidated road, but Ythfas ignored it.

And then, he felt it again.

The candle had burned low when the three ruffians rapped soundly on the inn room door. From inside a muted, "Enter" slithered around the cracks in the rough shod wooden barrier. From his shadowed chair Terenius cast a contemptous glance on his hired hands who blustered through the entry way with a false bravado betraying their inner fears.

They are as below me now as they were when I contracted them. Still, to be a spider, I need my webs. I've worked these long months on my Mask at the detriment of my Craft. If my time with my 'family' taught me anything, it made clear that I needed to learn to wrap my inner monster in a veneer of civility for that is what is meant to be truly noble. It is time to emerge from my cocoon.

The three Defias cutthroats shifted uneasily as they squinted trying to pierce the obfuscation the warlock cloaked himself in like an imprenetable womb. "It is done," Terenius stated.

Ythfas stood on the icy pier, watching the slaves work by the feeble light of their guttering lanterns and the soft glow of starlight though the thickening mist.  The frame was nearly re-assembled here, though the sound of their hammers droned on.  Nailing plank to crossbeam; crossbeam to post.

How could she?  He ground the sleeve of his robe against his eyes again, blinking away the blur that had nothing to do with the winter fog rolling in from the icy northern sea.  He looked over his shoulder at the tower, still visible in its milky stone against the black sky.  How could she?

Sekhet frowned, staring into the flames at Chillwind Camp. One of the few bastions left against the Scourge, the Scourge that had destroyed her home. Sorrow Hill, of all the places to run into that damnable elf…. She shook her head, remembering.

__

She had just slain a skeleton when she caught sight of the priestess on her hawkstrider. Instantly she stepped into nearby shadows, not wanting to be seen. Unfortunately, she had not been fast enough.

He had to get out.  He’d sent his hounds to hunting, and done his duty, but now he had to get out.  The tower’s whispers, so often a comfort to him, were like torture.  When they weren’t speaking in Thienna’s voice, they spoke in Swallowtail’s; that halting and careful Common she’d used to try to show him she was more than a savage.