#﹙ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴜꜱᴛ ᴏғ ᴍᴏɴᴀʀᴄʜɪᴇꜱ. ﹚ legion.

[acherys]

destiny item & quest description sentence meme --- accepting!

@reborns​ pleaded: ‘ just… come on. just don’t. ’ ( ok, hear me out: this one made me chuckle the most, because tell me this doesn't have Eldest Sibling Energy. ) 

     “ Brilliant argument! I’ll take it under consideration. ”

     IT’S TIME FOR A SCIENCE EXPERIMENT!! Or is it a cooking lesson? Zoen can’t recall if he’s ever attended a school, much less in which discipline this particular enterprise lands. The Nathrezim might have known the answer if he could still speak --- but alas, reduced to a ghost in a shard as he is, he can only vibrate furiously in her grasp.

     Just in case, she rattles the crystal. Perhaps it’s merely wishful thinking, but the vibrations grow in intensity. Ornery bastard.

     “ Don’t tell me you’re not the least bit interested. Imagine the possibilities! A death dreadlord --- a deathlord you might s---- nnngn. I’ll work on the name later. Once we’ve got an idea of what he is. ”

     Hypothesis: if fel magic sired necromancy, then necromancy can affect fel creatures.

     Ingredients: one (1) Nathrezim soul, painstakingly harvested and stored. Four (4) unholy relics of Scholomance, Naxxramas, Icecrown Citadel, and Acherus, easily commandeered. And one (1) Slayer, who ought to be more excited about this than he is.

     Ah, well. He supposes every experiment had to go awry in at least some manner. Dark forbid an atrocity go smoothly for once around here.

     “ Besides, I’m doing this whether you’re here or not. Least this way, you’ve got a chance to say you told me so, eh? ”

    He needn’t see the grin which splits her face akin a rotten peach to know it’s there, infected as her voice is with sheer, rotten excitement.

[acherys]

** villain / hero sentence starters --- accepting @warwaged​​ said: “ every story needs a hero and a villain. ” (from darion? 👀)

     “ Are we having the Highlord talk? Is this really how you’re introducing the Highlord talk. ”

     They’re on the balcony again. The one where... well. The one.

     She’s trying not to think about such things right now.

     Blood dribbles down her mouth to hang in red icicles at her chin. A dreadlord’s claws had sunk through her chest and twisted just so before she could slip from flesh to fire. If Mograine hadn’t assisted when he did... he’d be Highlord proper again, wouldn’t he? The other Highlord, not the Silver Hand one of whom they speak, the one who wasn’t there that day.

     Zoen wipes her chin. Leans forward, and spits scarlet into the sea. 

     She does not turn to look at him. If she did, she might spy right past him that dark, dark stain where his ---

     “ We’ll deal with the Silver Hand. Eventually. ” 

     --- corpse had been.

     “ They’re not going to start a fight over a bloody nose with the teeth of the entire Legion around our throats. Not yet. ”

[acherys]

[ point + knife ]

❥     𝐕𝐈𝐎𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓  𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄   𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍   𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒   . --- accepting[ point + knife ]   your muse holding mine at knife point.@fatesblades

keep the WOLVES from the door.      I hear them scratching like I don’t know  B E T T E R !

     Credit where it’s deserved, she never heard her coming.

     Nothing to fear in dark alleys and dim streets these days when she’s the meanest thing in area nine times of ten, an astounding display of blind arrogance that in this sharp moment she can acknowledge as being a mite foolish. Everyone’s untouchable until they’re not, and with blades near as long as her own forearm shoved against her throat...

     ... Well.

          No reason to give Thorval a bloody new mess to fix, now is there.

     “ Didn’t think I was your partner of choice for this kinda game, Sanguinar. ” A sharp click of the tongue bids Tiris back, to put distance between his snapping teeth and the elf’s thigh. “ Not that I’m complaining, of course... ”

     Fingers curl around the grip of Lament. Anduin might take exception to Sanguinar being returned in pieces, but she can bear his disappointment much better than admitting to her neglected Blood tutor that she was mugged in an alley and lost.

                                                                     won’t you  k e e p  the wolves from the  d o o r ?                                                     it won’t be long before I CAVE IN and open up the —

[acherys]

SUMMARY: Set during Legion. On the steps of Icecrown Citadel, there be demons. More the pity for them. OR: Zoen gloats about things that don’t deserve gloating, and Arthas has no sense of humor at all. Until he does.

_______________________________________________________________________

     There’s something HOLY in witnessing the Lich King at war.

     ( Forgive her, Fordring. )

     Some distance away there looms a Cathedral crafted of god’s blood in his name, dedicated to his service and worship, and they ought to just blast it from the ground. Here is a chapel fit for him, this bloody killing field. The nave is constructed by the path he treads through the dozen squirming bodies he stamps down to dust with all the difficulty of a boot landing upon an ant. In this heart shall rest Frostmourne, through that skull will a thorn of ice burrow - with the same lazy summertime thoughtlessness of a boy taking an apple from a tree in the garden, does he pluck a felbat from the air --- and in his hand its arm crumbles like browned fruit --- and under his boot does its head splatter with a rotten wet crunch.

     Fall to your knees and weep, cultists, drag your flesh across the paths of broken stones. Not one in one hundred of you shall be granted this honor for all your ghoulish devotion. But she --- heretic and apostate and antitheist, she has front row seats. She was invited to observe this mirac---

     A spear jams into her shoulder. 

     It very nearly hurts.

     Man’ari are meat between wolf’s teeth as much as any other prey, and so Tiris drags the eredar shrieking to the ground to make a mess on the floor. There’s the high dry snap of wood as the spear’s shaft splits, but the head is still buried beneath her collarbone. She scrabbles for it; the demon hit her right shoulder, and pulling it out with only her right hand is awkward. More damage is done in the removal than was done in the stabbing. 

     Then, lancing through her skull: Harness your rage and FOCUS!

     “ Maybe if you didn’t YELL AT ME EVERY FIVE--- ”

     He flings a doomguard at her.

     This mild annoyance she feels, the lack of any true outrage --- how far have they come ( how far has she fallen ) that she shrugs this off as easily as a teasing quip? She pitches forward with a snarl, grabbing for horn, armor, anything to bridge the gap between demon’s throat and Lament’s edge. The monster dies eventually, and she’s angrier at it for taking so long than she is at him for sending it at her in the first place.

     Shadows knit the flesh of her shoulder, reconstruct her ruined collarbone. Elsewhere, a skeleton warrior in his prime falls to ash and dust. The Lich King does not look at her, thinks as little about how he consumes and invigorates his soldiers as he does those apples --- no, bats --- no --- what was the point of this, again?

     “ If you die here, Deathlord… ”

     “ Bit late for that, ya? ” 

     He doesn’t even react. Had she wanted him to react?

     She laughs regardless, because fuck you Cole Mathis of Scholomance and Black Knight of the Tournament and Noth and Heigan and all the rest --- you’ve sold heart and soul and body and mind to him and still not a one of you will ever be close enough to this damned divinity to laugh at your own atrocious jokes.

    Tiris yelps in pain.

     She stops laughing.

     All that I am, he once said, but you know, he can keep his apple trees in the garden, she’s fonder of back alley knife fights, and guess what, you knock-off Tichondriuses, she sent Defias running all the way back to bloody Westfall when she was just a little rawboned brat of broken bottles and split knuckles. It’s been five years and four deaths since then, so see what she can do now. 

     There was a girl once.

     There is a monster now.

     Flesh to fire, coat to smoke, there’s this thing of teeth and talon where Zoen Mith once stood. Lichfire clothed in pitch Void: Death God’s Beast, Herald of Winter, the Wraith. 

     “ Ģ̯̳͎̥Ȩ͍͉͖͖T̤͙̝̫̲ ̨̯̳͔ͅḆ̻̲͚̣A̗͕̞͎͙C̫̟͙̪͕K̡̢͓͜ͅ ̡̦̱͚̠U̪̪͖̝͈P̢̢̜̮̘!̹̮̞̗͉ ̡̲͖͖̩Ḑ̰̦͎̠I̮̭̠͖̟D̟̗̝̤̘ ̼̙̭̝̙W̡̥͎͖̥E̗̠̬͙͈ ͈̱̣̣͇S̡͎̦̫̠A͙͙͚ͅͅY̹̜͉͓̩ ̡̢̪̼̪Y̨͕̟̘̙O͔̝͉͉͕U̲͚͚̳̣ ̳̹̣̙��W̭̯̼̯͇E̡̺̠̙̳R̡͎̥̠̦Ȩ̧̭̜͜ ̧̨̢͉͓F̯̬̻͈̯I̖͓͖̳͔N͖̼͉̳̳I͍̞̱͕͕S̙̤̦̤̫H͍̱̻̦̱E̫̦̮͓̦D̦̪̰͎ͅ?̨̬͈͔̙ ”

     Wine-dark magic seeps through broken bodies and the few yet sleeping beneath the ice and snow to bloom within them in pale puffs of lichfire radiance, and it’s not by his will that these soldiers are torn from their deserved respite, but oh... you could be forgiven thinking otherwise...

     The Wraith does not see how the Lich King pauses a moment to watch her, head cocked to the side.

     She does not hear the chuckle that tumbles like a stone from between his teeth.

_______________________________________________________

     The Legion recognizes defeat eventually, and scrambles a retreat eventually, scurrying into their sharp ships to lick their wounds and pestering the living down south for a while longer. Up north, the cleanup begins.

     She’s a thing of flesh and bone once more, seated atop the rubble of a destroyed Infernal as she combs through Tiris’ matted fur. Their bond allows her to know already the triviality of his injuries, but there’s yet something soothing in double-checking. Just in case. 

     The Deathlord does not look up as the Lich King approaches. Her skin crawls at leaving a predator at such advantage, but worse is the way her chest hollows at the thought of acknowledging him. Too much all at once, she thinks. It’s all too much at once.

     “ You coddle him. ”

     Such disgust. She grins so brightly at it.

     “ How’s your horse, Lich King? ”

     He doesn’t respond because he’s a spoilsport, and Zoen doesn’t continue the thread of conversation. Those cultists are back on her mind; that Cathedral is visible just past a mountain range. 

     Because she’s on the steps of Icecrown Citadel, because she just defended it ---

     “ We. ”

     She looks up. It’s as terrible as she expected. “ What? ”

     “ You said we. ” Arthas pauses a beat, and she needn’t see past the helm to know of the smile crawling across his face. “ Come inside once you’ve finished fretting. We’ve things to discuss, Zoen. ”

     He leaves her alone on the ice.

     Except leave is such a strong word these days, isn’t it?

[acherys]

‘ for this judgement, there is no protection. ’

destiny item & quest description sentence meme - accepting

@lightsblade

     There is a weight in her chest, and Mograine is screaming.

     ( all that i am, she thinks distantly, incomprehensibly )

     Mograine screams, Mograine screams - the Light is blinding and Mograine is screaming as he bears fire and fury meant for her - he has made of himself a shield at her back, dying in her place, and he’s screaming, he’s screaming, it’s all she can think, all she knows, why is he screaming -

     The knife of Liadrin’s voice plunges into her ear and twists.

     “ Darkness, ” she spits acid, spits blood, oh what a mess Zoen has made of her, “ cannot abide within the Light. ”

     They abided just fine ’til that last moment, thank you very much, they - they. Her Horsemen. Thassarian. Tiris, where’s Tiris? Where’s anyone? There’s her and there’s Mograine and they’re burning, Lords of Acherus soon to be Lords of Cinder, but where are their vassal knights? She cannot see past the radiance which kills them ( him ) but she knows their ( her ) knights survive, can feel it in her chest, so where are they?

     She makes to move, but Mograine is a weight at her back, and if she moves he will fall, except -

     Blindness becomes blackness, a nothingness edged by familiar violet. A darkness born within the Light.

     “ The death gate.” Mograine sags, the ancient stonework of his body crumbling to rubble atop her. “ Take… it. ”

     He does not scream. He does not make any noise at all.

     Zoen howls.

     ( anger, cruelty, vengeance )

     Tiris howls, mad with grief, and she sees them, finally, her Horsemen and knight and wolf. They have clustered around her in an honor guard. Sally lays a hand on her shoulder. Thoras retrieves Lament from where she dropped it. Nazgrim wraps an arm around her waist. Which he can do, she realizes with the horror generated by an oncoming avalanche, because Mograine has slouched off, tumbled to the ground, just a thing of smoking metal and charred meat. She scrabbles; crooks an arm around his arm, elbows entwined, a parody of… her mind blanks. He hangs as a ragdoll must have when she was younger, just as lifeless, just as beloved. 

     Dark, what has she done?

     Liadrin is speaking. Liadrin is still here, thumping migraine heartbeat and warm rushing blood, beaten but unbroken. It’s not fair, Zoen realizes as Nazgrim drags her, as she drags Mograine, towards the gate. To victor the spoils, and she won, she breached castle and chapel and crypt as even her father could not - I assaulted Light’s Hope Chapel and all I got was a dead Highlord Mograine, it’s not fucking fair.

     Liadrin is still here - no, she’s there, over there. Intolerable. Zoen flings out an arm, the one not clinging to the… the corpse. She pulls at the death in the room, draws every last Shadow from its hidden lurking place and yanks. Darkness arcs like lightning to wrap around the Matriarch’s soul and send her skidding across the vaunted bloodstained nave into the Deathlord’s waiting claws, and with this hand does she pull her Highlord through the gate, and with that hand does she drag Liadrin kicking into the Dark.

________________________________________________________________________

     Acherus is a house in mourning. 

     News spreads wildfire fast, and the city comes rushing to attend its masters. The discipline masters dismiss class, and come to grieve alongside their students. Frost wyrns sail over head, roaring dismay. Even the drudges find themselves at the balcony, clustered at the feet of knights like so many dogs alarmed at their owners’ melancholy. 

     Koltira cleaves to Thassarian’s side as Thoras curls her fingers around Lament’s hilt. Her mouth twitches at sight of her brothers, but she cannot maintain it for more than a second.

     Mograine sizzles quietly before her.

     Father murmurs in her mind, Darion Mograine has sacrificed - and there is more, she knows, she can feel the burning ice sensation of his voice in her skull, but what’s a glacier to this yawning Void-black consuming endless hollow singularity which has swallowed her soul and chewed her heart and Mograine, I killed Mograine, he said he would follow me and I killed him.

     “ The Light of Dawn,” Fordring once titled her and the other Kingslayers. But Fordring - Highlord - you died in agony and she could do nothing, Varian died in agony and she did nothing, Father is back and Mograine died and she did worse than nothing, she led him. Her master is dead and she killed him, Fordring, so tell her - 

     ( she knows you can’t; you could have if she were stronger but she isn’t and Mograine is dead, you’re dead, everyone is dead ) 

     - tell her, Highlord ( Fordring ; Mograine ) what is she to do now, here alone, ice in her mind and this fucking paladin on her porch?

     There is the agony of ripping as she looks from Mograine to Liadrin. It’s so much less than she deserves.

     Liadrin’s chin is high, to her credit. Her head does not waver an inch despite the pain of her injuries and the rotten Dark surrounding her. That’s admirable, the Deathlord thinks. I hadn’t been so admirable in my time. Her hands bleed shadows as she tries to think of the right path from here back to there. She has done so much, she does not need to hear the paladin Highlord harp on about kidnapping the Matriarch on top of everything el-

     Liadrin’s eyes flicker. Roam past Zoen to land on the charred, empty husk. Harden to an emerald glint. 

         She sneers.

     “ For this judgement, there is no protection. ”

         and Zoen

         Menethil

         snarls.

     She lurches to her feet, silencing the calls of her title with a swipe of her hand. She prowls forward, Tiris a shadow at her side, rumbling his buzzsaw growl. She drops to a crouch before Liadrin. Her clawed gauntlet cards through that bright red hair and twists, knotting in the tresses, pulling back to bare the throat so Liadrin can understand that she’s just another broken thing of meat and bone dragged into the wolves’ den for suppertime. 

     ( i bestow upon you )

     A secret: she was a hunter before this, some nameless small poacher of the king’s woods armed with a bow she could barely use and a wolf too small to help. They were lucky once, and she brought down a doe in one clean shot. And it was swell, it was glorious, her heart was full to bursting with pride, right until her knife burst an intestine and ruined the meat.  

     Lament slides past metal and flesh and bone and entrails to make of them a slurry, and Menethil yanks to the side, dragging muscles into intestines into veins, Menethil ruins. This is no swift end, a spurt of pain and then the soft blackness of peace. Oh no. Liadrin spills to her gruesome end, an ugly fetid thing, and that hair - it’s not so bright now, is it, that tongue isn’t so acerbic anymore when it chokes on stomach acids, is it. The claw in her hair holds her up even as all that vital filth slides to the floor.

     “ Isn’t it fascinating, ” her voice is a quiet thing of clipped wings and razor claws, “ how the Light protected his rotting corpse, and left your life in my hands. ”

     Ghouls cluster around them, hunger and their lord’s agitation riling them. A flick of her wrist, and they’ll converge. Consume. Leave not even a stain.

     There’s such an empty silence in her head when she realizes that’s not what she wants.

     The shadows come at her call, fluid as water here in the heart of her domain, her kingdom, here wherein the Darkness abides as well as it so-bloody-much-pleases. She lets Liadrin see - no. She makes Liadrin watch in her final gurgling moments, she makes Liadrin know what’s coming, just as he knew, as she ignored, and led them cheerful to that fiery hellish nightmare.

     Liadrin dies. 

     Liadrin wakes.

     Liadrin wakes, Zoen Menethil smiling a knife at her pale burning eyes.

     ( my chosen knight )

     My dearest child, her father murmurs so softly. There is a quality to his voice she cannot recognize.

     Mograine is not beyond your reach. 

     There is a weight in her chest, and Arthas is laughing.

[acherys]

[ approval ]

NON-SEXUAL ACTS OF DOMINANCE - ACCEPTING

     [ approval ]  your muse complimenting mine on a choice they’ve made.  

     There is a wolf in the den of lions.

     She stands stained in shining ruby blood and ichor the shade of bad jade, armor rent, right arm limp from the elbow, swinging in the breeze as it were, and breathes. Inhalation, exhalation, hold for seven seconds in between, don’t mind the whine of fractured ribs as lungs jostle them, it’s just noise, they don’t even hurt. Bring to mind all those bloody recollections of how this Citadel fell, the grim skeletal deaths of its court and masters. The shatter of Marrowgar’s bones on the floor, Lana’thel’s rasping last words as she was shot from the sky, Saurfang’s arm swinging in the breeze (as it were) as his father carries him away. In this way, a lord may remember she is not Scourge.

     If her breath stutters, if she holds for three seconds only, if what escapes her throat is not a smooth stream of mist but a clatter, a death rattle, it is because of those whining fractured ribs, and nothing more. Certainly not because she stands broken-armed and broken-armored in this Citadel which had fallen but not stayed felled, summoned by a King whose overthrow had only been a setback, with Galen Trollbane’s ichor splattered across her face and his father’s resignation as he was led to be fitted for his Horseman’s regalia still ringing in her ears. 

     It’s just her ribs. Nothing more. 

     The snarl which rumbles through Tiris’ chest heralds the oil slick of the Prince’s voice which slides down her spine with greasy nauseation. Her knees buckle, her good arm rises to her chest - thoughtlessly, she starts to kneel before him, the Deathlord of Acherus sliding off her shoulders like a discarded mantle ‘til nothing but that hopeful young acolyte slaughtering the Scarlet Enclave remains. She rears back, face twisting into a sneer, chin up, shoulders back - she is Lord of the Ebon Blade, she does not need this.

     Doesn’t want this.

     “Am I supposed to thank you, Highness?” 

     There’s not nearly enough bite to her voice. That bloody little knight still hovers in her skin, and Zoen would prefer the whining of bone, the staccato of breath, to the sudden warm bloom of pride which fills her chest at his approval. 

[acherys]

verses and locations tags.