#then he looked me in the eyes and committed the most unholy cacophony AGAIN right in my face

[findmeagreenlight]

I realise that birds might not understand how glass, a transparent material works but you'd think they eventually catch on that flying in a certain direction thwacks them in the beak

but no

[istrys]

Memories of a Requiem Pt 4

A clench of the fingertips was all it took as he violently ripped his hand away, the sound of her pliable hyoid clacked several times as it hit the wall and floor. He left Istrys coughing and bleeding along the floor as he took his sweet time to meet the eyes of all the others. Syrahn, the Priestess, gasped desperately for air as the panic overwhelmed her, barely escaping the grasp of the undead he summoned. Rethandus was attempting to balance and recover his undead composure after being caused abrupt trauma by the former Spell-Breaker. At this point, the Hunter Ijiro was the most likely to be able to focus on his target- if it were not for the hyperventilating Priestess that held his heart captive. To sum up the situation, it was a clusterfuck.

He held the advantage and he knew it. More aberrations crawled into existence from the stone walls and floor as the structure began to give way around them. Much to Whistan’s pleasure, it was merely more stone behind the crumbling interior. A short burst of dark energy later, the door was slammed shut and trapped them all within the dim and grimly dark prison meant to contain him. The irony allowed him the slightest of grins. Unholy power sparked flashes of bright green as the bolts of energy cracked against the walls emanating from him. The power he gathered and held for decades unlocked with his true self being unleashed from his own mind. He was locked away no longer.

Tears stained the stone floor as Syrahn struggled to bring herself up. Her hands rested on the cold foundation of the room as she desperately looked to Whistan, wishing this was all a mistake- all a nightmarish dream. Within her broken heart, she knew that this was the direct result of her actions in wanting to help a broken man. She winced away from another bright green spark that flashed nearby as it burned her face. Istrys also remained on all fours as she attempted to focus on her newest enemy, taking advice from the Val’kyr spirit of Vesk bound to her. She stretched her right arm out as if casting an incantation but her words drowned from within her broken throat. Whatever she was attempting was interrupted with a swift kick to her teeth from Whitstan’s boot.

 “Annnnd let’s stop that right there.” he commented calmly as he looked about with a calculated gaze. “I said one of you all could walk away from this alive. But you’re still intent on fighting me. That wasn’t the point, if you hadn’t figured it out by now.” he explained void of agitation or emotion. “The point is… that all of you have a choice right now. I’d like to think I’ve evened the playing field for the most part, maybe not so much for my Death Knight brother and sister. Rethandus seems to still be intact, Istrys, has a well-deserved handicap. And I really, really truly do appreciate your help Lady Bloodfeather. Also, Ijiro, you’ve been such a true friend. I’ve left you both mostly intact. So… I suppose maybe… it’s the living against the dead at this point? I’ll let you figure it out.” he commented as he thrusted himself into a seated position on the stone table he was laying on not too long ago. “Now that the ground-rules are clear, do we understand each other?” he asked openly glancing to each of his opponents. “Hmmn?” he sounded out inquisitively. He wanted to ensure his guests were receptive.

 Syrahn refrained from speaking, letting her gaze drift toward the stone floor; her body trembled as images of her family at Whitstan’s mercy flashed through her mind. Fearing this man was a sensation she thought she had long forgotten, but such a dreadful sensation was flooding back to her all at once. Whitstan was once again a colossal threat, only this time she didn’t have Alucieus and an army of seasoned soldiers to defend her.

“You did this…” Rethandus hissed through his frozen teeth. “I told you this would happen, and you didn’t listen…” Syrahn slowly closed her eyes in a desperate attempt to hide her grief, but the stream of tears flowing freely down her cheeks told a different story. “Your precious family… all the friends you stabbed in the back… I hope you remember their faces well… when you die.” A light laugh escaped Whitstan’s grin, “Oh, don’t blame it all on her. Ijiro helped. But so did you and Istrys. Let’s not blame this all on the one person who was an altruist in all of this. At least she had good intentions. Blaming her for your misfortune… that’s not very fair… is it… Rethandus?”

 “Rethandus…” Ijiro slowly opened his eye to stare maliciously at the Harbinger. “... that’s enough.”

 “No…” Rethandus shot his glare at Istrys, who was still struggling to keep the weight of her head from snapping what was left of her throat. The ghouls seeping from the walls remained still, awaiting their master’s orders; it seems Whitstan was truly intending them to kill each other for his amusement. “If this black-haired bastard won’t bury you both… then I will!”

 The Harbinger shot forward toward Syrahn and Ijiro, crushing a ghoul’s head into the wall with his shoulder along the way. A sneer escaped Whistan’s visage as a spark of green lightning reanimated the destroyed ghoul. He wasn’t about to suffer a disadvantage masked by vengeance. He would hold his advantage regardless of anything. Ijiro leapt to his feet once Rethandus got close enough, putting all of his might into his left hook to smash against the Harbinger’s face. Rime showered Syrahn as a result of the forceful blow, but it was only enough to slow him down, not stop him.

 Rethandus slammed Ijiro into the wall, sending his knee upwards into his stomach. While the Hunter coughed out in pain, a frozen gauntlet connected with his face, splattering blood onto the Harbinger’s shoulder.

“STOP! STOP IT!” Syrahn wailed, too terrified of Rethandus’ wrath to come to Ijiro’s aid. With a bloodstained grimace the Hunter struck back, smashing their foreheads together in an attempt to give himself some room. His hand shot back for a hidden blade tucked behind his waist, and he thrust it forward with hopes of slicing Rethandus’ skull open like a coconut.

 Unfortunately he saw the blade coming from a mile away. Rethandus caught Ijiro’s thrust by his wrist, stopping it just before the tip of the blade pierced his ghostly pale skin. The Hunter struggled to finish the Death Knight off, but his wounds were starting to catch up to him; slowly Rethandus turned the blade toward the Hunter’s throat.

 “Oh… that’s not very fair.” Whistan commented as a ghoul protruding from the walls grasped at the dagger, then another joined in from nearby. They assisted Ijiro in turning the blade back. “I like you both. A little bit. But Ijiro is such an earnest fellow. Let’s not cut him short just yet.”

 “I’m sorry Reth…” Ijiro spoke, inadvertently spitting blood at him. “I can’t let you kill the Light of my Life.” With the assistance of the other two ghouls, the Hunter gained just enough strength to begin pushing the blade toward the Death Knight again. The Harbinger fell to one knee while he grabbed his own wrist to help stop the blade from piercing his eye, but he had to use all of his strength just to keep it at bay.

 Syrahn held her mouth in horror while they struggled to kill each other, but a faint hissing caused her gaze to fall to Istrys. Before she could speak, the rune beneath the Necromancer’s feet violently erupted in a blast of light, sending her flying up into the ceiling as the lesser undead trapped with them in this cell were instantly incinerated.

 Whitstan cradled his face as the blinding flash disintegrated his creations. He grit his teeth as more green lightning sparked along the walls with him as the epicenter. Several decaying and skeletal hands broke through the infrastructure as the shrieking voices of women and children joined the cacophony of noise within the room. He shook his head rapidly to rid himself of the influence that had smashed against his consciousness. “That’s not very nice… Istrys, I didn’t know you could still cast spells. Maybe I need something to fix that?” he continued as the arms of darkened spirits protruded from the walls to strangle her. “I thought I was giving Syrahn and Ijiro the advantage? But then again… if he won, he’d just try to fight me or kill himself to save her. This is somewhat interesting.”

 “You want interesting?” Ijiro barked, pausing to drive his blade into the head of the nearest ghoul. “Every guard in the Glade heard that explosion… you’re going to die down here with the rest of us…”

A boisterous laugh echoed throughout the room. “I’m already DEAD. If you think a few guards will stop me, then I will let you embrace that dream as your dying thought. Whether I live or die, I will win here. They will be too late. Worse comes to worst, I will murder all of them on my way out before setting the Amber Glade aflame. So… convince yourself of whatever you need to justify what you’re about to commit. I’m more than happy to wait here and hear the justifications. Just beg me for mercy if you need the help.” he commented before he offered a malicious wink.

 He continued to rasp out with a malevolent tone. “The only way you can walk away from this with any sort of victory… Ijiro… and I share this with you because I think you’re my friend… is that you kill all the others and let your lover survive. She will be able to rally a force against me. Maybe even save the Amber Glade. As I said, the winner of this fight… I will let live. Even if that means I must withdraw. But that offer comes with an expiration time. And that is tonight alone.”

 “W-Whitstan…” Syrahn finally spoke, slowly gazing up at the former Spell-Breaker. “Don’t do this… you are better than th-this… please… let us go…”

 The raging sapphire hue that existed in his eyes dimmed for just the slightest moment as he regarded Syrahn. “It’s… no longer up to me, my Lady, but your vassal. Let’s wait to see how it all plays out?” he responded with a smirk. With Istrys incapacitated from her rune, and Rethandus barely strong enough to stand, driving the knife through their heads would be easy; for a moment Ijiro genuinely considered it, if there was the slightest chance Syrahn would escape this nightmare.

 “Will you torture my family like this?” Syrahn asked, with her tears burning in her eyes. “We’re your friends!”

 He sighed. “And that’s where you misunderstand me so greatly… I’ve bent over backwards to give you all the chance to live… yet no one is embracing the opportunity. It almost breaks my heart…” he said as he looked to Syrahn again, with a somber expression. “But I need you all to make the choice. Who lives and who dies? It sounds difficult… but it’s really a simple decision.”

 “Alucieus will hunt you down to the ends of the earth for this.” Ijiro weakly spoke, collapsing to one knee; he tossed the dagger away as a final ‘fuck you’ to Whitstan. He would never dance to someone else’s tune, not now, not ever. “Before you grow tired of us and end our lives, tell me something, yeah? Will you have that smug look spread across your face when the Sun’raels avenge our deaths?  I hope it’s Kaevia that finishes you off, once and for all.”

 “I’ve survived the blades of both the Sun’rael brothers. You think invoking their names would cause even a moment of hesitation-.” His mind paused as it swam through a torrent of memories he refused to consider.

They ate venison by the fire and washed it down with whiskey. During each stitch she made into the tabard was coupled with sentences of stories and past mistakes laced with mishaps that he was keen on reciting to her. A dozen times she had prompted him during their walk through the woods to the manor house but only when they settled, did he finally give in.

 He cradled his head has he shook again, viciously, to wipe the thoughts from his mind. “As I said… You must…” he spoke out before he paused. His concentration was shattered while he continued to speak. The memory invoked by a single word seemed to affect him more than should be allowed.

 The longer she held it, the more she found herself looking to pry on how the Death Knight obtained it. Certainly it held some significance and furthermore, there might have been a strong chance that he didn’t remember. After all; Whitstan didn’t seem able to recollect many of her memories and in that, Kaevia had offered to assist him once the Legion had been dealt with. For all they knew or hoped for, was that neither of them would have fallen in battle before such things could be brought into light. Much of her pitied the Knight but furthermore just found an odd compassion within him as if though it never truly died with him when his lungs stopped reaching for air. The compassion and care was stale but it was that none the less.

“What is this… I… You must all die before… All of you will suffer my wrath.” he barely voiced out as he continued to eye his potential victims. “The deal still stands… one of you wi-” he began to shout before another memory triggered.

 After having sated her curious mind and trying to have Whitstan try every drink and nib of food she had in the manor – to test his taste buds – the Priestess was not long falling asleep within the chair and the fireplace crackled into cozy flames to time worn embers by the time the morning rolled around and still…still Whitstan remained as watchful as ever and far from the need of rest and recuperation.

 “I… could care less of your… glances at my memories, Syrahn.” he stood. “This is but a means to an end, And you all should simply embrace the end…”

Syrahn saw her moment and took action. She quickly shot up to her feet and pushed her lover away, pausing only for a split second to point the open palm of her right hand directly towards Whitstan’s face. She had to make this count. The threat of her family, all three of her sisters, and all of her nephews and nieces, fueled her with a righteous fury she had never felt before. Her penance shot forth from her hand with the intent of searing the flesh off his skull, sending a blisteringly white volley of Holy Light to purge Whitstan and cleanse him of his existence. Three seconds was all it took to fire four bolts of her wrath, filling the cell and the hallway of the dungeon with enough illumination to light Silvermoon City.

Both Ijiro and Rethandus charged at Whitstan, using their combined yet diminished strength to slam the former Spell-Breaker against the wall; the Harbinger used every ounce of his might to pin his left arm while the Hunter did his best to subdue his right. Syrahn rushed forward soon after, leaping over the table with both of her hands extended. The moment her fingers brushed against his temples, a burst of shadow magic danced along her fingernails, seeping into Whitstan’s chaotic mind once again.