Ythika

When I served the Marquis, I was blinded by his charms. He sought to turn me into a mewling pup, and in some ways he had succeeded.

And then my Arethzael was born.

My son, my beautiful son. With a heart and soul and hopes and dreams. As pure black as his half-sister had been utterly divine alabaster. They were complete opposites in all things. The blood in their veins had quickened growth, and I lost so much time with my son in a blink of an eye. What I would have given to keep Arethzael swaddled and safe, kept in the sanctum at my breast. His appetites grew, and he could not stay cloistered here. Xannivard tells me Arethzael took many thoughts and dreams from me to whet his appetite on the emotions there.

My son. My beautiful demon.

He wrote poetry. He painted like a master. He could smile and melt a lich's heart. When he was born, I was blinded by his beauty and the love a mother has for her child. Man'ari I may be now, but I am still mortal enough to feel such things. Love and betrayal. Loyalty and duty. These things are part of what makes me... alive.

And then my Arethzael was murdered.

The pain…

It was some of the greatest Xannivard ever endured. The Light coursed through his shell, his crafted body. It’s source the Paladin Tiradell, the golden warmth flowing down his arm and onto his own.  In any mortal body, Xannivard would have been ejected from its fleshy confines as puss from an overripe pimple. But Melanim had done his job well, crafting with magic and flesh a shell that would protect his Fel twisted soul…to an extent.  The Light’s searing heat licked at his soul, flaying, burning, a fire seeking to purge it’s polar opposite in the universe.  And Xannivard let it happen.

It is the sixth month of the fourth year on my time here on Azeroth. The planet I now call home. The planet whose inhabitants destroyed me utterly; and forced my hand to take my own daughter's life that I might continue to serve my husband and protect our son despite his mistakes.

It had not occurred to Xannivard to be worried. That low, throbbing ache he felt through the bond he and Ythika shared, nestled in the back of his mind. He had barely noticed it, how slowly and steadily it had built over the weeks, a frog in a pot of slowly heated water. He had been to preoccupied, plans upon plans, the manipulation of the Silvermoon Government using his son Arethzael and Sinsaria Dawnrose’s Sun worshipers. How to turn the tables upon a Black dragon who had been observing him for months now, who knew so much when he knew so little. Then there was the ever present irritation of Faceless.

I am staring into the nether. I can see forever...

Standing on the ledge. Watching my heart leap.

For weeks, I have watched. Silent even when my heart sings for him.

Months, I have waited. Still, though I am stirred.

I hugged my knees to my chest and watched Giles Jackson driving his flocks in for the evening.  There was just the faintest bit of chill to the late summer breeze and a hint in the air that it might rain tonight.  Out back of the Miller's house was the cowshed Pete and his brothers had turned into a cottage.  He'd be there, bouncing Maybelle on his knee, waiting for me to come home.  I shifted my feet, feeling the soft, sheep clipped grass between my toes.  It was always like this here, just around harvest time in a little pocket of the Lordaeron of eight years or so ago.  Just over the hills, the memories faded into the misty green of the Dream; only the road south lay open, running down to that November morning in Alterac where my old life had died.

The Marquis Ythgar of Vinguld smiled to himself in the quiet space of his... workroom. Ythika was gone, tucked in bed by the trained gentleness of servants. Her armour waited by her bedside for her waking. Not needing sleep, and preferring no hands touch what was within the room save his, Ythgar had quietly stepped into and closed the door on the small windowless place.

Then laughed a soft, rumbling, amused laugh.

Trust me, trust me, give it all to me...

Now.

Ythika had begun to tune conversations out, a measure to remain polite and aloof as one of the elves silently accepted the Marquis' words and offers of consideration. She stood close to him as his attention was diverted to the Kal'dorei. Suddenly she felt the cool touch of fingers on the base of her tail, and... oh... look at that! The eredar stiffened, eyes widening a little as she struggled to not look as surprised as she was. Failure on that end, as evidenced by the blush that warmed her ears.

Ythika had watched as the Lord Marquis Ythgar Vinguld-- the man she protected with her life, explained quite plainly to Velion where he stood. Fel-green eyes flicked between the two as the saturnine face of the older noble all but sneered and crooned to the jealously protestant Sin'dorei. It was not until the once-living human lifted his hand that the plate-clad eredar's attention was truly caught on the scene unravelling. Velion had begun to settle down, and Ythgar continued speaking smoothly.

"Has the Lion hungered since he returned?" he asked the mad little elf almost gently.

The attack had devastated Xannivard, pierced deeply into his pride, creating an inferno of anger. His Sanctum, his place of recuperation, of devoted experiment and creativity, where he kept his family safe, desecrated by Faceless, by Drakys… by Laurai. It angered him how easily his defenses had been surmounted, his creations bested. How easilyAshe, his daughter, had been taken.

He seethed, his body roiling with potent Fel-magics as he stepped over the rubble of ruined walls, of the dismembered abominations of Faceless, his plagued and suffering Creations. His strongest creation, a drake of the Red flight a twisted being he had spent months creating and bending to his will, was now banished to the nether, with no way of being retrieved. What remained of his forces now began to repair his home, calling upon the magic to seal holes caused by Faceless’s devastating magic’s, to seal doors destroyed by Radiae’s advanced technologies.

The beat has shifted by the time the brown-clad servant bows Drakys from his dingy room and closes the door into a sensuous flowing rhytm beneath cascading shifting electronic pulses from the gnome's machine.

The mass of bodies has thinned slightly as tired dancers seek refreshment at the curving black bar, their orders taken by one Draenei and an elf with dead greedy eyes.

At his booth, Ythgar's face is turned away form the room, bent over a swooning plaything's reclining body, his circular glasses resting on the table and catching the reflected light.

The pet seems to be female, her body already half nude by choice, garbed in a loose chain mesh alone, beneath which breasts thrust upward, barely obscured, gleaming beneath the sheen of the metal and lights, the bass moaning of sex and hunger.

You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God'll cut you down
Sooner or later God'll cut you down...

Destroy everything you touch today. Please destroy me this way...
Anyone who may desert you, so they cannot hurt you...

Ythika raised her weapon, snarling as her scarlet vision gave her a moment of clarity. Flashes of a smile, remains of a lovesick heart; amidst the ruin of a human keep. The towering eredar could feel the burning blue of her employer's eyes, scowling disapprovingly for this mindless killing of his own people. She sent the maul down in a heavy, angry arc into the face of the rogue, barely aware of the sickening thud which demolished his skull.

How did everything come to this?

 The withered brown grass crunched beneath my feet amidst faded gold and brown leaves, gnarled tortured looking trees groaning in the wind as I left the gryphon, the animal scampering away from this place as so many others had. I could hear the Eredar's heavy hooves behind me, Ythika following shortly behind. She'd given me a simple nod in acknowledgement, saluting me as a fellow servant. I needed not to walk far before I sighted the fetal curved geist under one of the many dead maples in Terrordale. Admittedly, the elf might have deserved it. But it was not deserving we were concerned about. 

[ Something has given Ythika a fresh new outlook. Inspired by the phrase I have always heard. ]

Drakys walked the grounds of the estate his lord called home. He moved about with purpose, heading to see the man who would quite possibly kill him in the next hour. Or make him live the worst possible tortures that had made him so renown in certain circles. He entered the manor, heading for Ythgar's quarters. At the top of corridor above the grand stair was a simple oaken door, polished by the hands of obedient servants to a high satiny finish. The weathered brass knob of the door caught the light with an oily gleam.
Drakys knocked and waited for permission to enter. He was dressed in simple black and grey cloth, his goggles on, a wrench in lieu of a weapon.

A deep rumble from within, muffled by the wood: "Come."

Drakys had lived a bland life thus far.

Bland of course, meant that his life had been fabricated. He hadn’t grown up in the body he was in right now. He had been born a very long time ago, for a normal human anyway. Then, Arthas had come and purged his city, to protect them they said. Save their soul. Protect the land.

Of course, some time after, the nice men and women of the scourge saw fit to bring him back to life, as an undead. To pass off as forsaken, he’d need to be free willed however. That was their first mistake. He joined the forsaken; being undead there was little choice, considering the Scarlet crusaders were on a burn first and burn some more later basis with what he had become.

((

Here are some photos I took of the 4th Annual Shadow Council Meet and Greet.

Moving through these motions... these simple motions, as if I had them from birth. Killing... it's not a big thing on it's own, it's one of the few ways to make it by in this world, killing. I make a forward thrust, twisting the blade so I can follow through with a lateral swing, bring it back around dragging their weapon away from me and carving up what's left of the body with a diagonal slash. A time ago I might've felt a little sad or might've gotten a little high from the bloodlust after killing something, but now it's a dead feeling... now I think I'm starting to understand why all the old veterans act the way they do. There is one thing that is starting to happen more often now when I killing a person...

I see faces, not just one, but many. Crystal clear as if it's the actual person to whom the face belongs to.

[ Oh, Ithy... she's taken a turn for the worse. Sadly, her talks with a vindicator haven't helped her, despite the outward appearance of repentance. ]
[ Inspired by this remix I found of Nine Inch Nail's "My Violent Heart". It's actually a mashup, and it's friggin great. ]

Light, what a day.

What abysmal luck. I was getting my bearings, trying to orient myself in these strange surrounds.. like and yet so unlike! And of course.. went to relax at an inn. You know, I even had a slice of apple pie a Draenei had made. A lovely pale young woman with the lightest eyes I've ever seen entered.. after I spoke with some hulking warlock with a body he evidently made. Strangeness piled upon strangeness. And what would you know?

She was a Vinguld. So was the gray-haired man who entered to find her. Worse, I knew of them both, and why he sought her. A death knight guard came with her..

of all the possible taverns, why did mine have to be immediately inundated with VINGULDS?

[ A bit of closure to one part of Ythika's story. ]

[ snipsnip. ]

This world itself is a show of our devastating power. The very air reeks of the sulfur from our flames of malice. So many years ago the Draenei had lived upon this land in peace with the orcs, only to be ripped apart by our insidious plot. The orcs had done the work for us. There was little that needed to be done but enjoy our bloody show.

I find it peaceful now.

Regardless of my past transgressions, I am free of the Legion. I pick out each and every peice of the land, placing it together in my mind of how it once looked. The heat is pleasant in my armor, though it brings sweat to my brow and dries my lips like nothing else. The ache of my self-inflicted scar flares at the heat, reddening even more so. Perhaps this is part of my redemption. Attempting to save the few remains of the worlds I have devastated.