#﹙ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʜɪꜱᴛᴏʀʏ ʙᴏᴏᴋ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴꜱ ᴍᴇ. ﹚ interactions.

[acherys]

Send 💀 to walk in on my muse killing someone.@ridefourth sent: 💀 you're doing great sweetie

“ Ah --- ‘Sarian! There you are! ”

LOOK AT THE GRIN THAT LIGHTS HER FACE, brighter even than the lichfire gaze, the gleaming pale teeth, the fresh blood splattered like RUBIES. Does he notice? Even if he cannot hear her over the screaming, he should at least see the joy he evokes.

“ Have a moment? Need a little help here with some housecleaning. ”

On the slab between his brother and himself lies a noisy hunk of meat. Some of its sounds might still be words --- or are those pleas of the soul halfway fed to Lament? Zoen can’t quite tell, drunk as he is on every nerve ending’s song. 

She runs a talon along its… arm? that was probably an arm at some point… its form by way of gesture. ( Oh, how it howls… What a vintage. )

“ Found a rat in our basement. It’s not telling me which nest it came from, which is … very fun. Got any guesses? I’m leaning towards Twilight’s Hammer. ”

[acherys]

@noxianwill continuing this ask.

HE’LL BLAME IT ON THE BLOOD LATER -- how easily she slips past his bristling metalwork hide to alight on the nerves sparking underneath. The death at their heels is fresh enough that the meat still steams, and the souls’ cries yet echo through against the walls. Subtle that she is, ( familiar ) sly that she is, he almost mistakes her for one of his own.

He’s drunk. Seeing wolves in foxes.

Be kinder if she killed him.

“ That’s -- ah heh heh heh … ”

Everyone’s folly had a floor, and here is hers: the hand barely brushes flesh before her hand rises to shackle hers. A thin film of flesh, the matchstick bones beneath -- does it still hurt she asks -- does it indeed the Deathlord drawls as she clenches her fist with a splitting ---

Bone cracks. Elsewhere. One of the corpses’ … there. At the edge of perception, where Tiris bleeds delight all over their bond. Snout-deep in the gore, chewing contently at the heartstrings. Whining in joy.

She’s so busy feeling disgusted she hardly recalls what’s in her grasp. ( And recalls nothing at all why she hasn’t pushed it away, flung it down, bit it off. ) 

Metal clatters as she unfurls, slowly, every finger wrapped around Katarina’s arm. 

“ That’s a bit of a leading question, don’tcha think -- gets a ghost to wondering if you’ve got intentions towards him. Stabbing me in the face isn’t gonna do you half as much good as you’re gonna hope it did afterwards. ”

She’ll blame the blood later, why her hand lingers. The rogue’s pulse spikes clean through her armor. Want impales her. She could eat her. She could graft this warm to herself for a week or more.

“ No one gets far without developing a taste for either end of the blade. Not in our line of work. ” He pulls his lips into a rictus grin. “ Imagine someone spooked by a little pain … why would they ever wake up? ” 

… But the hangover would be awful.

[acherys]

@hemoarchy continued from here.

The mistake is his own, really.

Deep in his marrow generates forever the instincts of a knight, crawling forth to twitch at his knees and drag his chin down in deference. Servant before master, convict at the gallows --- was there much a difference for them, for here? Your Majesty blooms in his lungs, black petals fat with poisonous earnestness. Caught in the consideration of San’layn royalty once more, he could have never left New Avalon at all. There is an armada burning at his back, and Zoen is not celebrating as much as she should. The Lich King wishes to speak with her.

Her cheek aches. Zoen sinks into the pain, mouth curling into a contemptuous sneer. Irritation ( petulance ) razes him clean. He is Ebon Blade once more.

“ Bound by blood, are we? I’m sure old Terenas would be glad to hear that --- by the by, have you any kin left in Quel’Thalas whom I oughta be sending updates to? Parents of your own? ”

( A genuine offer. It’ll kill you later how genuine it is. )

What else had he expected of the answer? They were all of them maws snapping up whatever fit between their jaws. He couldn’t truly have expected better of the mosquito queen herself. A hand rises to scrape through his wintry hair, claws twining briefly through the pale locks to crush frustration against.

That damned smile on Lana’thel’s face doesn’t help matters at all. Zoen feels it like a maggot, burrowing beneath her cadaver skin in search of some morsel untouched by frost. It worms its way into the soft black soil of his lungs, and makes a meal of the rot within. 

She wonders, with a brief sharp twist of a knife, where Jaina is.

NEVER SO CRUEL, NEVER SO UNCARING --- The admissions rattle those thoughts out of her head. Zoen barely comprehends the words. Was this their unique hypocrisy? ( This is a royal court after all. ) “ Who do you love? ” the Archlich scarred onto her Highlord’s soul, and yet here in the frozen heart itself thrives a mother whose heart bleeds and bleeds. An allowance afforded the San’layn, some quirk born of their warm sanguine diet, or … or something …

“ --- as you are his. ” 

… Regardless.

It pissed him off.

“ Well. Maybe you’ll show a li’l more grace than he had, when she turns her teeth on you. ”

Irritation. ( Petulance. ) She fills her maw to the brim, and lets it dribble messily down her high held chin.

[acherys]

❥      NON - SEXUAL   ACTS   OF   DOMINANCE . --- accepting @throned sent: [ clean ]  darion cleaning a smudge of blood off of zoen’s cheek………

Zoen knows little of herbalism.

The practice catches his interest more oft than he cares admit, crowding his shelves with almanacs and guides and field reports as though the racks do not creak enough under the weight of proper grimoires. Useless information for a Deathlord. Rare is the plant which can abide his presence longer than a moment, after all. Rot loves little so well as fresh company.

Still. The shelves languish.

( You are ever a curator of suffering. )

Sholazar Basin seethes. With life, and with Freya’s will. Such verdance is intoxicating at the best of times. ( So much prey! ) A stone’s throw from Icecrown, with a Titan’s ancient ire beating upon her back, it’s a wonder she does not stumble like a drunken fool through the underbrush. Even with a fresh feast cooling at their feet, frenzy gnaws the back of her mind. It worries the edges where once dwelled the voices of Empire.

She’ll make do with speech.

“ Bit far from Ulduar, aren’t they? Not much of the Thousand Maws around here, unless the Titans were playing very fast and loose with their experiments. 

“ … Which… come to think of it … ”

In all lands grow mortals, and in all mortals grows a foolishness. Some get wise to it --- recognize this weed which curls through their garden and chokes the better plants. They dig it out, they rip it free. Root and stem are cast in flame. Every new infant bud joins its parent in the embers. But others. ( Most of them. ) They let it stay, and feed it water, and think to taste its petals once they bloom so prettily.

And so the Old Gods tend new followers, and the Lich King summons Acherus as pesticide.

Zoen yanks Lament free of the last twitching corpse. None of them had deigned reveal where their wretched fellows were squirreled away, no matter how persuasively he and his Highlord asked. Tiris snuffles around the carrion for the choicest meal, and Zoen never thinks to deny him. He twirls his blade idly, considering if undeath might loosen tongues wh--- when ---

It’s such a little thing. He could mistake it a breeze were it a shade less tangible. 

The flex of muscle and tendon sends armor clattering; she hears his mailed hand more than feels it swipe across the high sharp sweep of bone. Has she flesh at all upon that cheek? Zoen doesn’t know. He might as well have strummed raw nerves.

Rot has claimed her tongue. It festers in his mouth, useless as gristle. Only when Tiris shoves his way past her with determination does he figure out how to peel it off the floor of his mouth, and flap it around uselessly against his teeth.

“ Right. Ah --- thankyou. ” 

A miracle worthy of the light of dawn. Those were nearly words.

Through the brush her shadow disappears, yapping with bloodhound excitement, leaving her nailed to the ground behind. What has not decayed is frozen solid; she couldn’t move if she tried. 

( Why haven’t you? )

“ We should, uhm. Probably. ” Eloquent as a ghoul. “ Do something. ” And twice as wise.

A twitch cracks the ice around his knee. If he could do it again --- go so far as to take a step? --- he might know his first mercy, and simply shatter to dust glittering on the breeze.

( How little he knows. How useless all his tomes and scrolls, when not a one explains the bloom he feels blossom within his cold chest. )

[acherys]

Nothing less than a whine that travels the distance from pup’s pathetic throat to the death knights clustered at the dinner table. Pathetic, really. Unspeakably disgraceful. Zoen might have been embarrassed were anyone to leave this room alive.

A giggle scrapes out his throat like a nail on chalkboard. Blood-drunk in his brother’s company, it was easy to relax into something like contentment. 

( Pathetic. Unspeakably disgraceful. )

Thassarian’s observation drags her gaze down, where it pools bloody in the hollow he’s made of their face. How exciting --- how NOVEL! When last had they dealt with an annoyance not born of their own wretched god? 

“ Ah, ssssweetheart , you got so tongue-tied over THIS? ” A proper cackle rattles through his throat now to echo off the black-blood walls. The jag of her icicle teeth gleam behind her grin. How strange to meet a fanatic so shy. “ Coulda saved yourself a lotta trouble and me a LOT more joy if you’d just spoken UP … ” 

What is that noise the thing makes? Hatred, fear? Both and so much more? Zoen has sunk himself to the bone of this creature, and still this furnace vitality feels an arm’s length away. Close enough to taste. Enough distance to go mad. 

( At least a moth may incinerate in love. What can you do? ) 

“ You know how they are. Mortals. ” A fond pat to a mess of live nerves. Oh, that sound … “ Hot under the collar ‘til their turn on the slab. People only fear bloodshed when it’s their blood, and their shed. ”

Taking a pause in his work, Thassarian’s glacial stare drifts from the mangled form between them, following Zoen’s gesture to the hound settled at the lightless fringe of the room. Indeed, it seemed Tiris was particularly gracious in accepting an offering from their visitor, if the cracking of bone is any indication. He lingers that way a moment, pleased to see him. 

“Hello, pup.” 

It was true that Thassarian often displayed greater restraint than much of his ilk. Nor was he prone to recklessness. It was a dangerous misunderstanding to assume, then, that he did not know bloodshed, or the hunger, as deeply as his siblings. In their generation, he was old; as old as the disgraced prince, and had fed it for just as long. With Zoen’s invitation, he allows himself the indulgence of doing so now, drawing an agonized shudder from the mess of gore beneath his touch. The Ebon Blade’s methods, particularly of interrogation, had always been… a productive outlet for the death knights. The Deathlord had already reduced her prey to an open wound. 

The ends of his gauntlets come to a point at each finger, sharp enough to gouge, but not so razor-precise as to be clean. Just beneath the bulging eye, the battered flesh splits open, tissues torn apart. Thassarian peels a layer back, quietly observant.  “You may yet have your wish, brother.” Still glad to be in his company, Thassarian turns their guest’s once-face back in Zoen’s direction, allowing him to see. In the bloodied fissure now occupying the space where they boasted one of their markings, there is no sign of the blood magic required to impart the Scourge’s brands. No bruising down to the bone. Meager dye on skin. He did not think much or highly of the Twilight Hammer’s masters, not when the Lich King’s light forsaken voice superseded any mumbling from the void, but he supposes if one is in the business of worshiping masses of tentacles, one might have a preference for ink. 

“You would suppose this would be ecstasy, then,” he scoffs, referring to the saronite talons currently curled into the soft hollow of the cheek. Cultists didn’t always seem to be so enthused by oblivion when it was digging into their marrow.

[acherys]

‘ i saw myself! slaying the darkness! that’s what i saw! ’ :)

destiny item & quest description sentence meme --- accepting @uncontrolled

Sins of the father, sins of the --- oh how SICK he has grown of this!

Ignorance is a luxury he rarely affords, and today finds him especially short on change. How many stories has he heard of this one even before her own demise… how many more ever after! She’s man enough to admit the admiration that’d kindled to embers on his behalf, the sympathy like so many wood shavings feeding the pyre over the years. The Scourge made kinsmen of them all, one way another. Either under its banner, or behind with the wreckage.

Then she had to go and FUCKING MEET HIM!

“ Right, of course, that’s ah ---- very…. Impressive. Your Highness. ”

Not much her mother’s son, Zoen Mith. Diplomacy is a wasp’s sting on his tongue. The words jumble; they crowd behind her teeth. Tact sours to irritation like any perishable within her grasp. It all rots so swiftly.

“ I’m sure it went … well for you. ”

A wasp would be kinder --- then he might CHOKE to death already!

[acherys]

‘ how does it feel to land a six-meter jump in full armor? that depends who you’re landing on. ’ / SDFGJKFHDSG TESS.

destiny item & quest description sentence meme --- accepting. @abyssine

The stars are beautiful tonight.

He has such a clear view of them down here in the grass and rocks --- their glittering luminance, the spider-thin tree limbs slicing through them darkly, the manner in which they dance when he suffers what might be a concussion. Or is that too pedestrian a wound for the implacable undead? He’s never thought to wonder. Has little to do now but wonder. 

“ So glad to be of service, Highness. ”

It’s not a wheeze. The Deathlord does not wheeze. She does not know what the reedy, thin tone of her voice is, but certainly not that. There were limits.

She sweeps him off his feet with embarrassing ease. There’s no excuse for any knight to be caught so unawares, dragged to the dirt by one little bird’s initiative, much less their dread lord herself. Unacceptable, no matter how familiar the heartbeat --- especially for the familiarity. Nothing but a euphemism for stagnancy, and if she’s fallen so far as that she might as well crawl into a grave for some proper sleep.

… Though he’d miss this view, he thinks…

“ There any, ah… particular reason you didn’t use a door…? ”

[acherys]

‘ one throne beneath the howling dark. ’

destiny item & quest description sentence meme --- accepting @shcndralar

“ Oh, you’re gonna have to be a lot more specific there, sssweetheart --- we’re hardly one big happy family under the rocks. ”

How the grin SPLITS his face like a peach gone rotten in the sun. Surprisingly rare was it to find the Conjuror and Deathlord sharing space, time, breath ( ha ) without a horde of monsters bearing down upon them to muddy the conversation. He was determined to take advantage while he could.

Let it never be said Zoen Mith ignored opportunity. Particularly those crackling with such arcane potency...

“ Talk to a Twilight’s Hammer, to one of my father’s blessed idiots, or take a stroll around the Slaughtered Lamb, and they’re all gonna start swearing at you by a dozen different names. Be grateful for it! Imagine if we all got along --- you and yours wouldn’t have so many heartbeats, now would you? ”

More than likely, it was a genuine inquiry and not a threat, though Shadowcaller would be forgiven ( so to speak ) were she to presume otherwise. The corpse wore such a pleasant expression, as though they were already colleagues trading notes ahead of an exam.

[acherys]

@thasdorah || @deathweaved continuing this.

The Deathlord’s not a sentimental creature.

More the magpie than a scrapbooker in his particular brand of greed, snatching up anything shiny for the simple sake of possession. Rings here, a Highborne bracelet there, this god’s scythe, that lord’s gun. Glittery things. Couldn’t tell you the story of half the junk gleaming in his pockets, but he knows precisely which of your organs he’ll shove your fingers in if you touch them. 

Nothing but a maw yawning wide. He’d swallow the sun if it’d fit between his jaws.

Must be what draws him out here every morning.

“ Yanno I don’t mind rescuing you? ” Surely she cackled enough both times to make that clear. “ It’s good fun! Try to get locked up in a tower next time, see if you can throw your hair out a window. You think Thassarian’s good at climbing? ” Responses tumble through her brain, each image worse than the last. “ Don’t answer that! ”

The sun crests the horizon, bleeding red. It catches in Zoen’s eyes as Koltira’s words catch in her throat.

What’s kindness for their kind? Snow-soft is the best they achieve, and that’s as liable to kill as ice if you’re fool enough to sink deep enough within the drifts. Her brother means only well. She could fall asleep in the cradle of his good intentions if she needn’t wake.

Might even be intentional. How bygone could bygones be after so many years’ silence? Rescue can’t weigh that heavy against abandonment. Can it?

She shifts her weight, bringing one armored shoulder to rest against his own. 

“ Oh, wouldn’t that just please them all. ” Real genuine, this jack smile on her face.  “ Another lost son come calling, and this one not even fit for the rose petals. I don’t expect the current residents would take kindly to a visit, which I … wouldn’t take kindly in turn. ”

( You wouldn't even stop them. You wouldn't stop him either. )

" Might be best to wait for an invitation. Or 'til I wake up there ... One way or another. "

[acherys]

@sunnsworn sent: "Midnight, on the bridge. Come alone."

Really now. It’s like they don’t know him at all.

No suffering so great as solitude, he’s said time and again --- usually overhead some poor wretch stretched on the dinner table of Acherus’ dungeons. However succulent a feast she makes of them is nothing compared to the torment of walking away, and shutting the door. Letting the lights die down and silence descend in its suffocating shroud. You hear only your own breath.

The Ebon Blade understands. The Scourge ensures it. 

Zoen leans against the railing, humming some tune or another, and reaches for the chains twined ‘round his Horsemen.

Sally lingers like a vein throbbing at his jaw, near enough Tiris smells the blood on the air. What’s a mile or two to a death gate? Darion dearest in Acherus, Thoras and Nazgrim off past the hills … Distant as death and twice as fast. A stranger til it’s here, staring you in the face with ten blazing eyes. 

A grin knifes across his face. 

“ I arrived on time. You, though, are flirting with lateness. Rude as all hell, don’t you think? ”

[acherys]

@earthbinder sent: Wordlessly, his great hand comes to rest against Zoen's shoulder. A gesture of good will, greeting, and guidance all at once behind the momentary pressure of his palm; it is accompanied only by slightest of nods, and gentlest of gazes.

METAL TO SHADOW AND FLESH TO FLAME transmogrifies faster than thought beneath that great verdant span. What was a boy is a Wraith ; Thrall might as well grasp a pyre for how much is touched. No claws rise to sink beneath the green skin. Her fangs remain locked in place, far from the fresh warm blood thrumming a beat against her blazing skull. There is no expression to this form’s face, no tells --- simply a long, glacial stillness.

( Twice for flinching, you’ve learned. )

Affection floods his burn-razed brain. Tiris barrels against the orc’s legs in a torpedo of fur and muscle. Ridges of spine press to hip, belly, thighs; a slobbering wet maw noses at pockets shamelessly. Hesitation is a stranger to her shadow; he throws himself in throttling range of anything that’s yet to try.

It’s mortifying. And worse, brave.

Slowly, with a stuttering awkwardness akin to adolescence, she stitches herself back up into a person shape. Fire cools to bone stability. Smoke condenses into blood-black armor. He bears the weight of Thrall’s regard, Thrall’s affection, with all a lord’s majesty, fidgeting only slightly. 

If he tries, he can pretend he is merely embarrassed.

“ ‘Lo there, Warchief. ” The nickname came long after the seat was abdicated. Excuses varied, but honestly he’d simply never come up with something cleverer. “ It’s, uh… nice to see you around. ”

Her hands are too empty. Grasping, as ever, for the right choice. Not a blade, for once, something else is called for here. A reciprocal approach. Friendlier. Congenial.

She punches him in the arm.

[acherys]

destiny item & quest description sentence meme --- accepting @whsperwind sent: ‘ for this judgement, there is no protection. ’

Tyrande nails a shadow to the wall.

There’s little else to call this screeching pyre, now raking caliginous talons against the glaive buried in its belly. Lichfire and darkness flicker madly in the vaguest shape of the Deathlord. Nearby, just as nebulous, a black cloud that had been a wolf moments prior thunders with hatred. Around them is a child’s blizzard, ice slicking the stonework ruins.

Except the glaive.

Pain is strange friend; it comes calling rarely, but always with fanfare. It builds a bonfire in his entrails out of moonlight and holy wrath, and summons every dead nerve ending to tend the blaze. Had she the presence of mind, Zoen would have recalled the Chapel. 

( Darkness cannot abide within the light… ) 

As it is, she has only claws. 

It’ll do.

Sheer animal determination sees them catch just so, that he finally manages to wrench the blade out of the wall and out of himself and across the damn room. Zoen doesn’t see where it lands, too busy wheezing through agony’s aftershocks and trying to recall the sensation of flesh and bone. Tiris aids the latter, crossing the distance between them ‘til she can wind blazing talons through his shadows. It’s easy for a wolf to find his fur once more; he leads the way, and where there was a Wraith there is a girl.

“ For DARK’S sake, are you mad!? ” 

Screaming still, but now in fury.

They’re hardly acquaintances, but Zoen needs little to recognize that particular expression. They all wear it, the rats, eyes cold and mouth a line, struck by an affliction as universal as rigor mortis. The confidence. The conviction. 

He hardly need hear the words to know what she says. The righteous are, if nothing else, predictable. 

“ Evidently so. You’re not the first sanctimonious fanatic to make that claim --- you will not be last. ”

The Deathlord bares her teeth as she bares her runeblade, the sword's inscriptions blazing as brightly as she had.

[acherys]

destiny item & quest description sentence meme --- accepting @thasdorah / @hemoarchy : ‘ are you the dream of a sleeping god? or the nightmare of a dead one? ’

     “ Why don’t you ask him instead? ”

     How difficult it is to generate acid when one lacks most of the equipment --- stomach in shreds, gallbladder missing, and what’s likely her liver and a kidney caught in the chain links of her mail. One clean cleave of an ax and crack went the Deathlord, armor rent like a crab opened for the feast. And they had, the irksome things, until Tiris lunged forward and made a meal of his own. Nothing too serious, all in all. Disembowelment never killed any--- well. Never re-killed, at least.

     Still, she tries. How much ruder it would be to treat the Queen as though she didn’t merit the effort of animosity. Particularly when she’s caught him red-handed, a second bottle of bloodwine uncorked and half empty. 

     Zoen takes another swig. ( If she dies now, at least it was tasty. ) Lacking anything more civilized, she cants the bottle Her Majesty’s way in invitation. 

     “ The Lich King’s opinion isn’t much my concern anymore. He’ll honor our bargain, or he won’t. The Ebon Blade will do its duty regardless. ”

[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]

‘ to each a purpose, and to all a fitting end. ’

destiny item & quest description sentence meme --- accepting. @kingsmanne

To err is human; to forgive even moreso, he has come to realize. There is not a divinity he has met that took kindly to trespass, and fewer still that could forget the sin within a century. 

Take, for instance, his father.

The Vrykul who once clamored for the Lich King shut up very quickly after his first ignoble end, convinced by the simple logic that a Death God who dies is perhaps terrible at his job. Late to the party, but they got there in the end. Others came to the same conclusion, and Acherus found itself heavy with corpses in the weeks just fresh off regicide. Zoen can only presume the Twilight’s Hammer faced a similar deluge. 

It still surprises him, somehow, that Arthas turns his ire against these fairweather faithful before those who inspired the exodus. He has only ever been constant in his disdain for traitors, regardless of the hypocrisy. And the Ashen Verdict never claimed loyalty.

( No. Only your Ebon Blade. Subjugation isn’t loyalty, Lich King. Perhaps. But it is not my will which brought you here today, is it? )

Not her, no. Not specifically.

But her on the other hand.

“ Don’t speak to me about ends. ”

The glare he sends the ranger’s way might have melted steel were they still alive; as it is, Zoen merely notes the icicles hanging off his armor grow heavier. A roll of the shoulders cracks them off, sends them tumbling to the bloodied ice at his feet, but does nothing at all for the irritation knotted around his spine.

“ If you’re just gonna proselytize, the Cathedral’s not so far away. Otherwise, shut up. I’m busy here. ”

[acherys]

     There’s this dream she has, sometimes.

     Summer in Lordaeron, a picnic at the lake. The sun warms her skin, warms her heart, and she glides across the grass softly, the sword in her hand a paperweight. It strikes another in a caress before swirling away, partners in a dance… She laughs, and there is its echo, rich and warm as the deep dark earth. 

     Amidst the green paradise, laid upon her square of white. A woman: gold as the sun on waves, of gilt glowing soft in treasure chests. She speaks sweetly, calls her dear heart and my girl, and her insides melt into the river of veins that sing old shanties long-stitched to her heart. 

      A man: gold as leaves at autumn, as the fire in a hearth. He wears her old eyes. She doesn’t know his voice alone, but it’s so familiar, like an instrument devoid its accompaniment. It speaks things she has never heard before, and hears not still; but this is a dream, and she thus knows the silent words are said kindly. 

     A ( twist ) slant of the wrist and her sword arcs in rainbow glory towards the diamond pile of the lake --- and her father’s sword ( stabs ) caresses her throat with satin comfort --- 

     Zoey, says this voice she has never heard alone, you did so well, I love 

     The Deathlord jolts awake. 

     Her retinue of banshees frets in response. Acherus greets her flitting eyes, beloved and home, but there was someplace before, someplace else --- and the Wraith --- the Princess ---

     --- Zoey ---

     “My Lord?”

     “Get out.”

     They comply instantly, shuffling so much as a pack of ethereal floating ghosts are capable of. Her hand twitches of some unthinking instinct, something wholly undreamlike --- something born of this birthless existence --- 

      “Wait.” 

     The banshee nearest --- Anarial, she knows ( remembers ) --- pauses when she feels her lord’s hand brush the scraggly end of her roughshod braid. 

      “Who did this.” 

      “... Myself, my lord.” 

     “Pathetic.” Zoen lurches to a sitting position, and Anarial happily slots herself in place. “What were you aiming at? Fishtail? Here… this is how you start…” 

     She works through the mess of hair. The banshee’s sisters gladly pass brushes and clips into the gray scarred hands of their lord… and when Anarial is less a disgrace to the honor of Acherus, another takes her place, whose work is admittedly exceptional, but --- 

     Zoen weaves the hair of her banshees and tells them the operations of styles they are doubtless master, and in the rasp of hair and skin, the click of fingernails and pins, it drips away from her, that dream. That ( wanting ) weakness. 

      And she forgets, eventually. 

      And sometimes --- 

      And there’s this dream she has, sometimes ---