Ythgar

We've only arrived home from our weekend holiday early this morning, but I decided to come in to the office as some sort of show of support. I can't say it's a strong one, really. Mostly I'm a warm body and the lanterns are glowing, but I'm useless to any sort of actual work. Ace is in the lobby and there's tea and coffee brewing while she tackles the bulk of everything I'm not doing. There's all sorts of letters and scrolls on me desk to go through, and an unusual parcel wrapped in brown paper addressed to me from one Ixinane Stormcren. I'm avoiding that one.

The rain outside is keeping the office a bit chilly. I watch it come down sideways in thin, icy sheets of grey needles. The docks outside the window are slippery and miserable and most the veteran workers 'ave good enough mind to stand under Port Authority awnings an' nibble on hot fried sausages or chips until the dark, angry clouds pass over.

I pull me mechano-guitar into me lap and lean over briefly to flip on the amp. An electric pop fizzes to life and fills the quiet office with a low, expectant hum. Leaning back into the comfortable leather of me captain's chair, I cross me boots at the ankle on the windowsill and adjust the guitar to a lazy angle in me lap. Me fingers slide along the metal strings and pluck out a few tentative notes I've been putting to a song I've been writing off and on while my mind wanders away from the work I'm avoiding.

Kharris danced.

Moonlight and surf courted her on the waves, and her bare feet were wet from where they hovered and over the ocean’s chilly, tentative touch.

The beach was close, but each step took her farther. Bonfires from Shadowprey dotted the coast, their own shapes dancing in the brisk wind. They marked the town, but Kharris did not see them, her eyes were closed.

She was lost to the rhythm of the sea and the dance. Light skirts snapped around her legs  but she was unhindered—she was dancing, her body would adjust. Her hair was pulled back from her face in four tight braids that hung down her back and with beads threaded in by nimble trollish fingers, clacking like conversations in a language unknown to any elven ears.

She was lost to the rhythm of the dance and it was the closest she’d been to peace in months. But it was not peace. Peace was an active process, in its way. This was something… blank.

The events of the past few days had lead to this.  I had reached my limit.  Torn through emotionally, beaten down physically…. What was left in the aftermath was the ruin of the gates to my home.  The spattering of battle and bodies along the smoldering ground of a once healthy garden.

Dearest Olaff,

Light, how I do miss your eyes right now. Though you are dead and I come closer to accepting that fact and letting you go, I write these letters and mail them in the hopes of prolonging my own delusion that you still live, that you will come in shining armor on that hill. The sun will shine, dispersing all storm clouds, and you will sweep me off my feet. And when we kiss, even my toes will tingle with joy.

((I was listening to Altus Silva repeatedly when the idea for this post came to mind, the events of the post happened close to two weeks ago, it's just taken me a while to hammer out the post around the song.  Listen along http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHxCmwa-lQM ))

3 Sundew Boulevard, the Conservatory. SZEHARIA, attired comfortably in a scarlet, floral-print kimono, is draped across a sofa, a board of directors of some sort half-circled before her. Each figure arranged there seems both the perfect distillation and apotheosis of their corporate type; a mere glance at any one of them would reveal an individual who conducts only their chosen business, and conducts it better than anyone else. To SZEHARIA's immediate right rests the only recumbent member of the board, FESTUNIA, who seems in heliotrope to have just sauntered in from the grandest evening party ever thrown. A vivacious, lithe young woman, she holds martini glasses in both hands, and one gets the suspicion that her body has adapted itself to distill spirits even from water; in spite of this frivolous power, one catches no scent of a hangover in the air about her.

(Trying to get the hang of galleries yet. Here's an image of Ixinane, Iloam and Ythgar set in an alternate universe, as inhuman semi-demonic thingies, with their fellow supervillain, a la Matt "Batt" Berring's 1990's somewhat goth comic Ascension.))

(The notion of drawing and colouring our notorious trio as 1990s comic book villains in the same style Matt "Batt" Berring made so well with Witchblade and Ascension sort of bothered me happily until I did it. So here it is. I have to versions - one without lens flares on every glinty bit.. one with. Here's without first.)

“Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction” -Pablo Picasso-

There are tests we each are given, twisted paths and lines written with warning signs.  I was never good with rules, with limitation or with a set of standards to follow.  But there are some lines never meant to be crossed, ones where the civilized gives way to carnal beasts and base reactions.  That line was so far from me I couldn’t even see its horizon.  I had crossed deep and so fast its realization was a brick wall to my brain.  Not even healed from my last dance I already found myself treading into another two.  One with a demon who always was lucky enough to be a few steps ahead, and the other with a beast who drove syllables into my soul.

"You are most certain?"

"Yes, Deva."

Auctus luna refulgere id niger vultus
Sanguis ex donum virgo fervefacere in Ahenum
Et in ara id summus dominus tenebrae benedicere

...nobis...

I have done my duties. The wine flowed in honor of Lordaeron. The man known as Ythgar seemed pleased in my choice.
I have his blessing. The man understands my intents and yet I believe he wishes more to have the matter settled for more than duty of the ruling patron of his lineage.

In quinque hominis nobis occludere id quinque acuminis
Ac sicut donum virgo juvenil eam Satanas
Non sine id sanctus pugio ego tolere manus caellum
Ac profere verbum ex odium affinis invocare dei

...sopire Inferna...

Midnight in my small garden was the perfect time to think, warm nights like this one with the curling scent of flowers left over from the day. Halodante’s weight pressed against my leg, her soft humming voice, sightless eyes staring off into darkness none of us would ever see. I ran my hand through her fine white hair, it was getting long. Strands of silk run though my fingers, it caught the scab healing in my palm. Another scar, another mark of loyalty, another blood promise to someone else.

The bay gelding shuffles under me and snorts, still skittish from the strange weight on his back and the smell of blood.  I pat the horse's neck and mutter something reassuring.  His former owner, or what's left of him, is lying by the road a mile or two back.

Vinguld's chief gentleman-in-waiting bows from the doorway.  "You asked to see me, my lady?"  My relationship with the marquis' senior servants is tense.  They're better born than I am and aren't shy about letting me know it.  They're pretty subtle for the most part - like the man's bow, just barely deep enough to be polite, and nowhere near as deep as he'd give Vinguld.

I tap the box.  "We've just had a threat against his lordship.  Might be serious so I thought you should know.  I'm having the house locked up tight and the wards raised."

We never do find a mage that night.

Imagine the sky stretched out along Hellfire with its twisting colors and ethereal light. Each of us somewhere inside has a place that houses our soul, our own personal realms, maybe it’s different for each, maybe even the position of the soul in each of us is different.. But the sky of Hellfire was mine, for the Harpy, the Lady Viper, the She-wolf and Diamond, it was filled with stars, colors and shifting planes.

"I'm lost."

"Who do you trust?"

"I'm not sure, I never really trusted anybody."

  One green light, then another. ........ 

   I entered the Hero’s Reward Inn with as much courage as I could gather, but every step I took I wanted nothing more then to run screaming. This was a bad idea, and I had no way of stopping it now, I was here and I would go through with this.

They rode all day, following a trail leading north and west into the undulating forested hills, eventually picking their way through a rocky pass through the looming northern mountains. The pass itself had an arching gray stone bridge soaring over a cataract far below, still unfrozen despite it being winter. Still, the weather was fine but cold, and the horses' breath left plumes of white in the crisp air as Ythgar led his lover over and through the pass, his stallion's somewhat shaggy rump bunched as the path led back down, into an evergreen forest which dappled the winter sunlight into a facade of summer. Sparse bare oaks and other such trees stood like ragged matrons surrounded by the lush dark green boughs, barren branches clawing at the sky's upturned azure bowl as if at the few scudding white clouds.

(This blog dosen’t take place in one single moment but is a composite of the haze of a crazy week of roleplay. From somewhere last week to when Daenyra succeeded in her task. This entire blog represents his POV and opinions. They are not absolute facts.)

The Blond Devil cuts across the skies like the scissors of a well trained tailor through a starry cloth.

At night I give the fog machine a break and push the engines to higher speeds.

It’s the greatest feeling, to feel yourself advancing while not moving a single muscle. With no mind of its own, the ship feels like part of me now. I truly feel connected to it, like an assassin to his shadows, a warrior to his weapon.

Daenyra succeeded in her task. She connected the dots I could not. I’d made a deal. No living soul could undo the agreement. But like all contracts done in hell, there are always ways to circumvent them. Daenyra was such a way.

She asked me before, why her.

This life of mine is not what I had bargained for.

Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand

Everyday, someone new is threatening my life. Throwing me about like I’m nothing.

Trying to kill me, hurt me, break what little pride I have. Despite the fact that I’m trying to help them, they all feel the need to make sure

I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the sky from me

The club works well, but it is not mine, no matter what the title says. I can feel him around. The club, my oasis, is drowned in Ythgar.

I can’t attune myself to this place like I had planned, either it’s because I don’t have enough juice, or he has too much of it.

Take me out to the black
Tell them I ain't comin' back

It's quiet with him gone. I still can't believe he gave me this, a house of all things.  It's a nice little place, just a few rooms and a bit of garden out back.  Never really had a place of my own before.  Rented rooms in all sorts of places, the fixed up cowshed Pete and I had, the place Yuta and I have in Nighthaven.  But that's a Kaldorei place and it's the clan's, not mine really.  I want to make this place mine.  Maybe make the bedroom all lacy and frilly, just because I can. 

Guess this makes me his mistress after all.  There are worse fates, I guess.  It's not that I don't like the man, because I do; I'm just tired of the labels.  I'm the one who'll get stuck with it, not him.  But it's always the woman who gets labeled isn't it?

It’s mid-afternoon in. The rain is cold, the sort that makes people want to get off the streets fast or huddle under cloaks. Most of the guards stand under doorways and mutter directions to tourists with a sort of misery to their voices. The smells of warm Winter food, fresh bread and crackling meats pour from taverns and bakeries, as well as little tucked away shops along backstreet cobblestone alleys.

I’m walking about, the rain doesn’t touch me. A device that was gifted to me evaporates it before it lands on my person. Normally, people in Dalaran are mostly would be heroes, villains and other various people of importance. Each of them glows with their physical pasts. I see them through their experiences. Like a flow of moving pictures, moments where their sensations were pleasant, from a simple hug, a kiss, to their wedding night.

 My participation had cost me. I stumbled out of the front doors of the club, catching myself with hands and knees on the cobble stone. The guards at the door paid me no mind, I was just another drunk patron and there wasn’t enough blood to be concerned about. Dalaran spun around me, blurs of colors, faces, walls I would collide into. I was disorientated, sick, fel raced through my blood like so much fire. Everything on me hurt, the teeth marks on my neck and collar bone and the deep slices on each palm were the leaders in the throbbing melody my body had become. Warlock magic is a fickle thing, one must give to receive, the only reason I was so dangerous is because I held no self preservation, I drained myself dry on a regular basis, laid my life in the hands of my magic, and would expel my very soul if it meant I accomplished my means. Just another half mad warlock…….

  I had tried to avoid the situation, getting up before dawn could even reach its fingers forward and caress the sleeping city of Dalaran. I figured if I could get to the flight master fast enough, then I could just hunt on my own, no controlling thick headed marquis to follow. Apparently… nobody sleeps in this blasted city. I rounded the corner, and there, shifting next to the wyverns was the Marquis Ythgar Vinguld, riding atop a rather impressive drake. Damn it.

She was asleep, finally.   Couldn't blame the poor thing after all she'd been through in the last couple of days.  Kharris was clinging to Iloam, her hair spread across the pillow like a flood of ink.  I drew a blanket over the pair and went in search of food; Elune only knew when the last time the two of them had anything to eat.  As close as I'd been to both of them, there was something there I couldn't share.  Maybe that was a good thing, maybe some things aren't meant for sharing.  I'd seen the same thing flit across Ixinane's face during the exorcism.  It occurred to me that maybe I'd been a little unfair to her.  Didn't mean I liked or trusted her, but everything I'd heard about her had been from Kharris; who might be a little biased.  Just a little.  Not that I could blame her.

(( I feel it's important to mention. This is, as always, HIS point of view. His vision of things. The internal monologue, the first person I use in most of my blogs, are my way of showing that it's what he perceives as the truth, not the truth itself. I apologize if I ever made some think otherwise. ))

In chess, the final stage is called the end game.

There are only a few pieces left on the board and the pawns, ordinary foot soldiers in a game of powerfull knights and bishops, suddenly become very important.

Sometimes, a game's outcome resides on a single pawn.

It seems easy enough to see life's challenges as chess games.

Each situation brings you a different game, to which you have your pieces to play.

But the trouble with chess games is that it dosen't take into account the player's frame of mind.

I often wonder if demons are really so different from us.

Everyone's there. Waiting.

Iloam's in the chair. I can see his heart racing. The pain of his wrists and ankles chaffed by the iron bands holding him down.

I do what I can. Ease his discomfort. A drop of water in a lake, compared to what's coming. I wish I could give him a taste from our session from last night. The boy has talents. I'll give him that. And his fantasy? Oh my. Ironically, all of the actors are in the same room right now. However, two of them want to kill the third one. Not the same conclusion to our session from last night.

My new shadow is by my side. No one questions her presence. No one cares I suppose. Of all the people in the room, I'm the least dangerous. And yet, I'm the only one the demon can't hurt. It's ironic.