#one version of this involved him threatening l.eryssa & i only changed it back

[necroarchy]

@brothersindeath

    Thassarian shifts. The rusted chainmail beneath his breastplate clinks quietly when he moves, the only sound he produces at all for a few moments, save for a much fainter grinding of his teeth. There’s good reason he’s often the Ebon Blade’s representative when it comes to Arthas — he can hold his tongue.

For the most part.

    He tempers himself. Death knights were prone to outbursts, and he was not any different, but he was old, and he knew the Lich King in a way much of his vast army did not. Loved and admired him once, which few could say these days. Most who would were dead.

Arguably, that made the personal vendetta worse.

    “With all due respect,” none, to say, in a way, “I was under the impression our accord was mutual.”

    Since the rise of the Deathlord, communication had been... balefully more frequent. Being beholden to Arthas in any way was no small weight on the minds of the Ebon Blade, but their debt did not start and end with him. They owed Azeroth as much, even if they had always been a touch underhanded about it... although this always felt like a personal low. Damn if it didn’t work, though. Four new horsemen and fresh ghouls hadn’t been anything to sneeze at.

So he’s just being difficult. They both are. They always are. It’s always personal.

    “That is a poor way to speak of your own creations.”

     Snap a crown in half and suddenly all the rats thought themselves entitled to an opinion.

     Neither hands nor gaze would waver from the battleplans laid before him, the pale ghost of Maldraxxus shimmering transparently and obediently. With a flick of his wrist, a castle crumbles; its defenders rally; its reinforcements arrive in time, and slaughter the remainder of the invaders. Look upon how swiftly the ranks reform, the stones uncrack, the bones rattle out of the muck and back into their proper stacks? Are you looking, Thassarian?

     “ And yet as your… singular Deathlord delights in reminding me, you are wholly your own creatures now. ” A tombful of children, biting and ill-tempered. “ Whatever significance my influence in your existence pales compared to the shining opportunity of your… liberation. ”

     Defection. Treason. Betrayal. Abandonment.

     He rolls his neck in a slow arc, bones popping one by one in little sharp cracks.

     If there remains any proof of his lingering divinity, find it in his patience with these feckless heretics.

     A concoction snags at his mouth. He snarls --- smiles? Like he’s caught between reaction, half-laughing at a joke and half-murderous at an insult. 

     Mutual. Mutual? Mutual.

     Zoen to her knees by no greater virtue than exhaustion, Tirion yet moldering in his bright grave, the red sanctum festering undisturbed like a wound abandoned to gangrene ---

     Did he actually ---

     Surely they weren’t ---?

     “ Speak with a surgeon, lieutenant. ” He speaks so softly. Quiet as the frost crawling across the battlefield, shrouding the projection in an ice age. He could not be quiet before, not when the lands screamed for him. “ I worry for the integrity of your senses. ”