Post by Rhoenya Cossack on Jul 12, 2014 14:04:49 GMT -5
The death of Sanari Ashwither... the rise of Lady Shadowtear.
I DID A THING.
------
(Written by Sanari)
Sanari inhaled deeply the rank air of the Plaguelands and released it slowly from her nostrils, her form rising and sinking in time. She shifted the reigns of her horse with barely half a heart behind it. She had zoned out some moments ago and given her scourgesteed free reign of where it wanted to go.
She left the road that cut through the Plaguelands some time ago and weaved her way between the trees and underbrush. There was a place by the river where she had heard of the Kingsfoil plants that grew along the rivers that cut through the Plagueland. This plant, she heard, could be dried and processed into a very intense and very beautiful deep purple.
It was, of course, merely a reason to leave her current residence in Silverpine and find a change of scenery. Since the... happenings... concerning a time anomaly and its repair a particularly insistent feeling of ennui had crept through her mind. How sour it made her day to day activities, how hollow and pointless they were. She cared little to write and even less to read, even the hallowed texts she received from Saproph.
How tired she grew of the same for walls that kept it so tightly contained. The thought even now of them made the muscles of her throat go tight like an invisible hand was closing in on it. It made her stomach quiver as if she were still alive and ate something that didn't agree with her.
How she hated that place.
A light caught her attention some minutes of blind travel. Her horse swayed to a leisurely stop at her gentle tug of her reigns. She leveled her eyes to peer between the trees. It was through final dying throes of the sun she saw the shape of a small house in a small clearing of the wood.
It was the oil lamp in the window that caught her eye. Beyond that she bore witness to a small and young family.. humans. All sitting at their table, bowing their head in prayer before a rather conservative meal. Farmers, she would realize as her eye travelled to a nearby barn. More and more had been coming to these parts since Hearthglen stabilized the region.
How she hated them.
Her horse shifted and release a quiet protest. Her gentle claw rested upon its back, between its exposed vertebrae. Sanari's claw manoeuvred between each segment, though was absent minded in this action. She kept low, upon the withered rotten mane of her steed. She gripped a handful of its black hair and held it tightly within her gloved grip.
Sanari's eyes returned to the house. She zeroed in on the door.
That quivering in her stomach accelerated and her head swam. From her gut all manner of things came swarming up through her body and caused her form to tremble. So many things coursed through her so suddenly that she couldn't tell what she was: happy, sad, angry, afraid.. it was a perfect cocktail of chaos that Sanari felt. It begged... it cried for its release.
How she hated this feeling.
She kicked the side of her horse so suddenly and so violently that it took off with a fearful whinny. It launched forward towards the home.
She sped towards the door stopping short of it. She gave the reigns of the steed a great tug that encouraged it to rear up and slam its hooves into the door, reducing it to splinters beneath it. It reared up once or twice more, screaming in the horrible ethereal scream as a scourgesteed would.
The family screamed in fear of this sudden bear rending through their protective slab of wood. A chill pierced through her and travelled down her spine, like a parting in the ocean of feeling that flooded her brain. It was a sound she wanted, that she needed.
She slipped herself off of the saddle, quick as a whip, then slapped the beast's rump to send it away. A great anticipation built within her, pulsing in her temple and ordering her to press on. Sanari would wait, though, just beside the splintered door, out of sight. She knew humans, she knew their foolish bravery, especially when it concerned their families.
Her hand fell upon the hilt of her hammer, slowly wrapping her claws around it and taking in the rough, worn leather handle. Her eyes peered up with she saw a flash of metal and her arm responded. With a fluid motion, she tore her hammer from its resting spot on her belt and charged into the house.
It was the man, the father. A young strapping man of brown hair, chiseled jaw. Her had some skill with the sword he carried as he brought it up to parry Sanari's hammer. The family made a collective yelp of fear from the dining room.
She recalled her hammer and sidestepped to get a better vantage of the man, who in turn raised his sword defensively.
"Get away from here, abomination."
A grin slid across her feathers like a gash of teeth as he spoke. Sanari did not reply in offense, but reveled in his accusation. The word echoed through her chaotic mind and gave it definition. How close to the truth he was.
Sanari repositioned her hammer, preparing for another assault. The man responded in kind, yelling again. "GET AWAY!" He made a swing for Sanari with his sword, aiming to slice open her lightly armored arm.
The blade cut through air and fabric and Sanari sidestepped the blade, creating a hole in the fine fabrics that contained Sanari's rotting form. She didn't protest, she didn't care, her deadened eyes remained upon the man. Her hammer came around and slammed into the sword shoulder of the man. The wet snap only served to heighten the thrill of the man's immediate wail, and the clatter of the falling sword afterwards.
She brought her hammer around once more, raising it upwards to exact a vertical blow upon the man. It came down upon that same shoulder as the one she struck previously. Another horrendeous scream came from the man, and the wails of his family followed. He was forced to his knees before the robed Forsaken.
It was funny to her, truly, how much his tone changed in that instant. From slinging accusations of her character to pleads of her mercy.
"Spare my family, please, they are innocent.. they have done nothing!"
His pleads did not fall upon deaf ears, nor were they ignored. On the contrary they were savored. Sanari's gaze fell upon him for several moments, allowing him that moment of bordering relief.. perhaps, he would think, that the beast assaulting them was considering what it was doing.
Sanari allowed the moment to pass between them. A moment for him to hope and a moment for her to delight in. There this man was, begging, pleading for life at her feet. She did not know him, nor did she care but she created reasons to hate him.
Her mind began to reel again. She felt, even as her hand tightened around the hilt of her hammer, that it was a will beyond her own, as if some other force directed her. She wouldn't fight it. She wanted it.
Her hammer raised and drove down with every ounce of fury she could muster. The hammer found a new home within the grey matter of the man's skull. The spikes protruding from the mass of metal tore easily through the bone and tore into the meat inside. The man spasmed violently but did not fall - that would require Sanari let go of the weapon in her hand.
Her foot planted against his shoulder and with a wet jerk and her mace came free, letting portions of scalp and skull fly free. The writhing husk of man goes free and he falls forward to the floor in a heap. The family's watched with a wide-eyed horror as he physically struggled to comprehend what happened while his thoughts oozed out onto the floor.
"P-Papa!" One of the girls squealed before the mother grabbed her and tucked her gaze away from the scene.
The voice caught her attention and only made that grin sickeningly wider. Sanari grasped the bloodied shoulder of the man and forced him over onto his back, letting the slimy, slick gore to ooze much more freely from the holes in the man's skull. She knelt, driving her knee into the man's gut and raised her hammer high over her head. It was at this time she heard the shrill scream of the new widow.
"Please--PLEASE NO!" The mother tucked the faces of her daughters into her with desperation.
"Leave us alone!"
Her hammer fell once again with a thunk of meat and bone and cartilage. The mace made contact with the face of the man, crushing his nose and driving it into his skull. She pulled back the hammer with haste and a sick rip of skin. She raised it high and drive it down again, tore it free and brought it down again. Each time the blow grew in speed and intensity as the man's head became nothing but a tenderized pile of blood, bone and brain matter half on the floor and half on her mace.
When there is nothing recognizable left that could be labelled a human head did Sanari rise again with blood and brains splattered on her robes. She observes the woman, pale will fear and disgust clinging so hard to her offspring.
Sanari holds out her claws to the woman. "The children."
"NOOO!" The woman wailed while her children screamed just as frantically, calling with such desperation for the stain on the ground that was once their father.
Her claws tensed and from each side of Sanari tendrils of shadow lashed out towards the two girls.
-----
(Written by Ahamtik)
The muffled hoofbeats of a slowly trodding horse thumped into mounds of fresh ashes as an armored rider began to slow to a crawl. The steady clacking and grating of armor silenced itself as the horse finally came to a stop before the smoldering debris and remains of a recently torched farmstead, where the rider himself clutched the reigns, and took a brief glancing survey of the area.
Days before, he had passed this place, to see a family thriving here. A farm, a man, a woman, and two daughters. Now there was ruin, devastation, - chaos.
The cold dead eyes of the rider came to a pause over what seemed the burnt out remains of bodies, lying twisted and deformed in the ashes, embers still glowing from their charred bones and flesh. With a slight narrow of his eyes in recognition, he dismounted the steed, letting his armor scrape over the saddle and armor of the horse as he did.
As he landed with a faint thud of his own, he took a trudging step forward toward the ruin. The wind began to pick up with his stride, pushing his black cloak back somewhat, giving him a faint, but hollow reminder of days past. Of slaughters past. He'd seen this sort of devastation in the plaguelands before, with a chill wind blowing the flames and scents of blood wildly about.
But it had been some time since the death knights of Acherus had scourged New Avalon. The memories to those that survived were scars by now. The death knight came to a halt as the wind increased. With a slow motion of his right hand, he reached up to the massive hilt of the large blade on his back, and drew the weapon.
Its weight alone followed an arcing swing as he heft it, and let it pierce into the ground, planting it firmly as if it were some tool to assist in his walking. His right hand held to the hilt of the blade, while his left extended forward. In this motion, the blade's surface began to light up, causing several runic markings to appear, each a cold blue. Frost formed at his fingertips, and an equally chill wind began to gather and shift wildly about the smoldering debris.
In a moment's passing, the flames were extinguished, and nothing but the quiet sound of a gentle wind remained. No breath from the death knight, no breath from his horse. Just silence.
What had brought this place to ruin? He wondered. Some fiend on a rampage no doubt. What was left of the scourge there in the plaguelands was surely weakened enough for the old farmer to take care of a weak ghoul or shambling corpse... Such things were commonplace here now...
But to see them destroyed so utterly. This was no wandering scourge that burned away their farm and livelihood. It was a calculated act. One he could see almost perfectly in its planning. The ruin of a door, the snapping and breaking of supports. The slaughter of a family, and the burning of the house from the inside out.
Yanking the sword from the ground, he approached the ruin further, and took another glance around - for anything that stood out - anything at all.
And there it was, the one thing that stood out, miraculously not burned away by the fires. A simple scrap of black cloth, wreathed in shadows and chilled energy, and stained with both blood and black ichor. He took the cloth in hand and brought it closer to him, inspecting it.
He'd not seen it before, not anywhere in recent recognition, and though its make was similar to that of the twilight's hammer's garb, the likelihood of the hammer striking out here was already minimal. Not to mention the base shadow magics he could detect within the cloth were a far cry from the weavings of shadow he was used to seeing. No, this was something different.
Hand falling to his side, the death knight inspect the area once again before bowing his head, and finally he spoke. "Rest well, little ones..." He regarded two small corpses, then turned away from the ruin, and started toward his horse.
I DID A THING.
------
(Written by Sanari)
Sanari inhaled deeply the rank air of the Plaguelands and released it slowly from her nostrils, her form rising and sinking in time. She shifted the reigns of her horse with barely half a heart behind it. She had zoned out some moments ago and given her scourgesteed free reign of where it wanted to go.
She left the road that cut through the Plaguelands some time ago and weaved her way between the trees and underbrush. There was a place by the river where she had heard of the Kingsfoil plants that grew along the rivers that cut through the Plagueland. This plant, she heard, could be dried and processed into a very intense and very beautiful deep purple.
It was, of course, merely a reason to leave her current residence in Silverpine and find a change of scenery. Since the... happenings... concerning a time anomaly and its repair a particularly insistent feeling of ennui had crept through her mind. How sour it made her day to day activities, how hollow and pointless they were. She cared little to write and even less to read, even the hallowed texts she received from Saproph.
How tired she grew of the same for walls that kept it so tightly contained. The thought even now of them made the muscles of her throat go tight like an invisible hand was closing in on it. It made her stomach quiver as if she were still alive and ate something that didn't agree with her.
How she hated that place.
A light caught her attention some minutes of blind travel. Her horse swayed to a leisurely stop at her gentle tug of her reigns. She leveled her eyes to peer between the trees. It was through final dying throes of the sun she saw the shape of a small house in a small clearing of the wood.
It was the oil lamp in the window that caught her eye. Beyond that she bore witness to a small and young family.. humans. All sitting at their table, bowing their head in prayer before a rather conservative meal. Farmers, she would realize as her eye travelled to a nearby barn. More and more had been coming to these parts since Hearthglen stabilized the region.
How she hated them.
Her horse shifted and release a quiet protest. Her gentle claw rested upon its back, between its exposed vertebrae. Sanari's claw manoeuvred between each segment, though was absent minded in this action. She kept low, upon the withered rotten mane of her steed. She gripped a handful of its black hair and held it tightly within her gloved grip.
Sanari's eyes returned to the house. She zeroed in on the door.
That quivering in her stomach accelerated and her head swam. From her gut all manner of things came swarming up through her body and caused her form to tremble. So many things coursed through her so suddenly that she couldn't tell what she was: happy, sad, angry, afraid.. it was a perfect cocktail of chaos that Sanari felt. It begged... it cried for its release.
How she hated this feeling.
She kicked the side of her horse so suddenly and so violently that it took off with a fearful whinny. It launched forward towards the home.
She sped towards the door stopping short of it. She gave the reigns of the steed a great tug that encouraged it to rear up and slam its hooves into the door, reducing it to splinters beneath it. It reared up once or twice more, screaming in the horrible ethereal scream as a scourgesteed would.
The family screamed in fear of this sudden bear rending through their protective slab of wood. A chill pierced through her and travelled down her spine, like a parting in the ocean of feeling that flooded her brain. It was a sound she wanted, that she needed.
She slipped herself off of the saddle, quick as a whip, then slapped the beast's rump to send it away. A great anticipation built within her, pulsing in her temple and ordering her to press on. Sanari would wait, though, just beside the splintered door, out of sight. She knew humans, she knew their foolish bravery, especially when it concerned their families.
Her hand fell upon the hilt of her hammer, slowly wrapping her claws around it and taking in the rough, worn leather handle. Her eyes peered up with she saw a flash of metal and her arm responded. With a fluid motion, she tore her hammer from its resting spot on her belt and charged into the house.
It was the man, the father. A young strapping man of brown hair, chiseled jaw. Her had some skill with the sword he carried as he brought it up to parry Sanari's hammer. The family made a collective yelp of fear from the dining room.
She recalled her hammer and sidestepped to get a better vantage of the man, who in turn raised his sword defensively.
"Get away from here, abomination."
A grin slid across her feathers like a gash of teeth as he spoke. Sanari did not reply in offense, but reveled in his accusation. The word echoed through her chaotic mind and gave it definition. How close to the truth he was.
Sanari repositioned her hammer, preparing for another assault. The man responded in kind, yelling again. "GET AWAY!" He made a swing for Sanari with his sword, aiming to slice open her lightly armored arm.
The blade cut through air and fabric and Sanari sidestepped the blade, creating a hole in the fine fabrics that contained Sanari's rotting form. She didn't protest, she didn't care, her deadened eyes remained upon the man. Her hammer came around and slammed into the sword shoulder of the man. The wet snap only served to heighten the thrill of the man's immediate wail, and the clatter of the falling sword afterwards.
She brought her hammer around once more, raising it upwards to exact a vertical blow upon the man. It came down upon that same shoulder as the one she struck previously. Another horrendeous scream came from the man, and the wails of his family followed. He was forced to his knees before the robed Forsaken.
It was funny to her, truly, how much his tone changed in that instant. From slinging accusations of her character to pleads of her mercy.
"Spare my family, please, they are innocent.. they have done nothing!"
His pleads did not fall upon deaf ears, nor were they ignored. On the contrary they were savored. Sanari's gaze fell upon him for several moments, allowing him that moment of bordering relief.. perhaps, he would think, that the beast assaulting them was considering what it was doing.
Sanari allowed the moment to pass between them. A moment for him to hope and a moment for her to delight in. There this man was, begging, pleading for life at her feet. She did not know him, nor did she care but she created reasons to hate him.
Her mind began to reel again. She felt, even as her hand tightened around the hilt of her hammer, that it was a will beyond her own, as if some other force directed her. She wouldn't fight it. She wanted it.
Her hammer raised and drove down with every ounce of fury she could muster. The hammer found a new home within the grey matter of the man's skull. The spikes protruding from the mass of metal tore easily through the bone and tore into the meat inside. The man spasmed violently but did not fall - that would require Sanari let go of the weapon in her hand.
Her foot planted against his shoulder and with a wet jerk and her mace came free, letting portions of scalp and skull fly free. The writhing husk of man goes free and he falls forward to the floor in a heap. The family's watched with a wide-eyed horror as he physically struggled to comprehend what happened while his thoughts oozed out onto the floor.
"P-Papa!" One of the girls squealed before the mother grabbed her and tucked her gaze away from the scene.
The voice caught her attention and only made that grin sickeningly wider. Sanari grasped the bloodied shoulder of the man and forced him over onto his back, letting the slimy, slick gore to ooze much more freely from the holes in the man's skull. She knelt, driving her knee into the man's gut and raised her hammer high over her head. It was at this time she heard the shrill scream of the new widow.
"Please--PLEASE NO!" The mother tucked the faces of her daughters into her with desperation.
"Leave us alone!"
Her hammer fell once again with a thunk of meat and bone and cartilage. The mace made contact with the face of the man, crushing his nose and driving it into his skull. She pulled back the hammer with haste and a sick rip of skin. She raised it high and drive it down again, tore it free and brought it down again. Each time the blow grew in speed and intensity as the man's head became nothing but a tenderized pile of blood, bone and brain matter half on the floor and half on her mace.
When there is nothing recognizable left that could be labelled a human head did Sanari rise again with blood and brains splattered on her robes. She observes the woman, pale will fear and disgust clinging so hard to her offspring.
Sanari holds out her claws to the woman. "The children."
"NOOO!" The woman wailed while her children screamed just as frantically, calling with such desperation for the stain on the ground that was once their father.
Her claws tensed and from each side of Sanari tendrils of shadow lashed out towards the two girls.
-----
(Written by Ahamtik)
The muffled hoofbeats of a slowly trodding horse thumped into mounds of fresh ashes as an armored rider began to slow to a crawl. The steady clacking and grating of armor silenced itself as the horse finally came to a stop before the smoldering debris and remains of a recently torched farmstead, where the rider himself clutched the reigns, and took a brief glancing survey of the area.
Days before, he had passed this place, to see a family thriving here. A farm, a man, a woman, and two daughters. Now there was ruin, devastation, - chaos.
The cold dead eyes of the rider came to a pause over what seemed the burnt out remains of bodies, lying twisted and deformed in the ashes, embers still glowing from their charred bones and flesh. With a slight narrow of his eyes in recognition, he dismounted the steed, letting his armor scrape over the saddle and armor of the horse as he did.
As he landed with a faint thud of his own, he took a trudging step forward toward the ruin. The wind began to pick up with his stride, pushing his black cloak back somewhat, giving him a faint, but hollow reminder of days past. Of slaughters past. He'd seen this sort of devastation in the plaguelands before, with a chill wind blowing the flames and scents of blood wildly about.
But it had been some time since the death knights of Acherus had scourged New Avalon. The memories to those that survived were scars by now. The death knight came to a halt as the wind increased. With a slow motion of his right hand, he reached up to the massive hilt of the large blade on his back, and drew the weapon.
Its weight alone followed an arcing swing as he heft it, and let it pierce into the ground, planting it firmly as if it were some tool to assist in his walking. His right hand held to the hilt of the blade, while his left extended forward. In this motion, the blade's surface began to light up, causing several runic markings to appear, each a cold blue. Frost formed at his fingertips, and an equally chill wind began to gather and shift wildly about the smoldering debris.
In a moment's passing, the flames were extinguished, and nothing but the quiet sound of a gentle wind remained. No breath from the death knight, no breath from his horse. Just silence.
What had brought this place to ruin? He wondered. Some fiend on a rampage no doubt. What was left of the scourge there in the plaguelands was surely weakened enough for the old farmer to take care of a weak ghoul or shambling corpse... Such things were commonplace here now...
But to see them destroyed so utterly. This was no wandering scourge that burned away their farm and livelihood. It was a calculated act. One he could see almost perfectly in its planning. The ruin of a door, the snapping and breaking of supports. The slaughter of a family, and the burning of the house from the inside out.
Yanking the sword from the ground, he approached the ruin further, and took another glance around - for anything that stood out - anything at all.
And there it was, the one thing that stood out, miraculously not burned away by the fires. A simple scrap of black cloth, wreathed in shadows and chilled energy, and stained with both blood and black ichor. He took the cloth in hand and brought it closer to him, inspecting it.
He'd not seen it before, not anywhere in recent recognition, and though its make was similar to that of the twilight's hammer's garb, the likelihood of the hammer striking out here was already minimal. Not to mention the base shadow magics he could detect within the cloth were a far cry from the weavings of shadow he was used to seeing. No, this was something different.
Hand falling to his side, the death knight inspect the area once again before bowing his head, and finally he spoke. "Rest well, little ones..." He regarded two small corpses, then turned away from the ruin, and started toward his horse.
