World of Warcraft®

It started, as most things do, with a man deciding to run.

Liore Bloodwing engaged frequently in war. It was inherent to his occupation, it was inherent to his frayed and impatient nature. The instinct for battle coursed through his poisoned veins, the crucible of physical struggle an explosive release for the turbulence that stormed against his hollow heart.

And when it came to the fighting, he did not possess the cunning or sociopathy of the rogue, or the destructive flamboyancy of the mage. There was nothing left of him to offer a demon, to draw pacts of sacrifice and power as a warlock might. He could not trim the savagery of his thoughts to focus at the bow. He did not possess the discipline or tranquility to walk like wind, or flow like water, detached and calculating, empowered by the transcendental power of chi.

Liore did not have foul scourge magics to mend his bleeding wounds. When he cried to his ancestors, nobody replied. The Light, in its sovereign wisdom, was something that happened to other, worthier people.

All he had was himself. His body, lean and strong. His rage, bilious and acidic.

His fear. Fathomless, and unrelenting.

So he took great cares to keep himself strong. Pressing weights, martial drills. Shaping and honing himself, chasing perfection. The muscle of his flat stomach looked angry. Veins traced his forearms. Slicked blonde tresses hung over brutishly powerful shoulders.

Tonight, he ran. Threw on a pair of Guttersnipe fatigues and worn-out boots. Frowned in the mirror at the loose fit of the camouflaged pants. There was weight he simply could not put back on. To add some resistance, he filled a bulky mountaineer's backpack with some scraps of metal gleaned from the armory. It was heavy and unbalanced. The leonine elf shouldered it with a grunt.

The forsaken shuffling about the Cathedral watched on in silence as he stretched and strode out the door. The Snipes shared a few unencouraging glances before resuming their tasks. Benoite Dawnsong was lost in the sweetest sleep, bundled against the chill in what had become her room. He intended to be back before she woke, for their morning's ritual of breakfast and crosswords.

He set off at a soldier's pace, the loping jog that could swallow miles and miles and miles.

The silvery moon strutted like a conqueror through the shimmering black of the sky, thrusting shafts of ghastly white through the fingers of dead trees stretching to strangle it. Silverpine was otherwise dreary and cloaked in a low skirt of mist. Bloodwing sped through, stretching into a full sprint. The backpack slunk sharply against his back, tugging him this way and that. He resisted, placing his steps to compensate. Already, he was puffing and huffing, plumes of heat escaping his clenched teeth in pale streamers. Lances of weariness traced up his legs, gathering at his knees. He increased his pace and vaulted a fallen tree.

There was much to think about.

Work, for the Inquisition. The complexities of social life, a crisscrossing and razor-sharp web. The inevitable confrontation with Asimenios, and how it would likely mean his death. How terribly he did not want to die, now that she'd come.

What a sobering experience.

Benoite Dawnsong was worth more than a brief blurb snuck into his obituary. She was deserving of a gratitude that he was incapable of expressing, and that really pissed him off. Liore Bloodwing, murderer and kinslayer, was a hollowed out husk stitched by cobwebs to a rotting throne, when she was sent to him. Now she was running his entire operation. Effortlessly, graciously. A graceful approach that she carried on, and carried herself in such a way that could never be recreated.

Maybe it was time for a change. Maybe it was a time for boldness. Maybe she was biding her own time, until he was capable enough a being to drag them both someplace approaching happiness. Not settling. Happiness.

He figured it would have to wait until Asimenios was buried, and the cruelty of the being they had released from its prison in Northrend left to the flame. Liore figured he could focus on that monumental task, take in the knowledge needed, build the strength required. It occurred to him, only now as he sprinted through Silverpine Forest, that he was just running away.

How do you promise something to somebody when you don't think you'll live to see it through?

You don't make those choices alone, !@#$%^-.

Liore Bloodwing was very disturbed by his thoughts and his worries. He no longer noticed the ache spreading through his knee, or the burn in his lungs, or even the rattle of the metal plates in his pack.

And he certainly didn't notice the congregation of wolves until he was already among them.

(continued)

They had gathered to this place in the woods, to hold council with corruption. A hundred dead eyes boring into him from every angle.

It was an unnatural clearing, a near-perfect circle of rotted timber and decayed fronds. A perfect circle of a fist had smashed this giant hole in the forest. Likely an errant explosive lobbed from one of the Dark Lady's miasmic machines, Liore assumed as he came to a jogging halt. Nature had been vaporized, and that vapor had settled like ash upon all that remained.

He found he could smell them before see them. That rank, cloying stench of meat past its prime. Smelled like home, he realized with an un-smirk. Smelled like family.

Diseased wolves emerged from the copse of unhealthy trees ringing the clearing, fixated on him. Growling. Limping. Many were missing patches where fur had simply melted off. Others trailed useless organs, licking lipless teeth.

Liore breathed heavily. The moon revealed his situation in its full, with no crisscrossing branches to scrape away its light.

Where he had just emerged, dark figures now sat, watching him with deathly patience. Some of their eyes glowed with malicious gold. Others had no eyes at all, and it was the cold appraisal of these latter ones that unnerved him the most.

He turned, and turned, fingers creaking into fists. Trapped.

“My one true weakness,” he murmured to nobody in particular. “Being torn relentlessly from all sides.”

The trees furthest from him shuddered as something massive lumbered through them. A wave of nausea swept suddenly over him, and he coughed reflexively into a palm. As the thing detached itself from the shadows of its kin, he realized suddenly that this sickness was not physical. A damp blanket of psychic dullness was being draped over him, thicker and thicker as the figure emerged into sight.

It was huge.

Once upon a time, it might have been a truly magnificent sight, a towering white wolf with the proud and commanding poise of an alpha. It might have loped through these silver pines as a brilliant, shimmering blur, effortless strides carrying its sleek form ahead of its pack.

Now it was malformed, covered in horns and filth. The skin of its skull had peeled away, blossoming out like the rubbery flesh of some misshapen fruit. All that remained of its face was a fangy skull-grin, a lolling tongue, and the most striking eyes Liore Bloodwing had ever seen.

They were hard and hateful, radiating a deep and ancient intelligence.

It padded closer still, emanating this tangible aura of timeless oppression. He found his senses dulled as it neared. He flinched as it threw back its flesh-mane and howled a broken note at the sky. Ninety nine voices joined in. The lesser denizens of the forest quickly found someplace else to be.

It spoke, with no voice intended for mortal ears. It spoke in his head. Cutting in like a rusted nail, right between the eyes.

I am Ruckora, and I am a God.

At the moment, Liore found he could not deny the validity of that statement. His Kal'dorei cousins extolled and worshiped many demigods of the forest. Could one have become corrupted? Scourge-eaten? Swimming in invisible agony, he found no real answers. Indeed, they could wait.

“And I am Lior-”

Another nail in his temple. Flakes of rust scraped his precious, precious thoughts.

Who you are is monumentally insignificant compared to what you have come to possess.

A piece of him, a piece that was not him at all, coiled tightly around his heart in panic.

You have been drawn here, elf. The voice rumbled on. Deep as the caverns of hell. I have drawn you so. Now you will deliver to me the Artifact of the Black Rain.

“How the hell did you-”

A psychic mace wrapped in poison-barbed wire smashed him in the back of the skull and dropped him to his knees.

Your kind are famed for dabbling with powers you cannot comprehend, or contain. You do not possess the resolve needed to put an end to such a monstrosity. You would think yourself its master, and allow it free passage through this world. A fate I will not allow.

The Artifact -must- be obliterated! And so it shall be, by MY hand!

Limbs shaking with strain, head reeling with dizziness, Bloodwing forced himself to his feet.

“Take it then! Let it plague YOU instead! I have seen into it, and I have no more desire to be subject to its madness.”

Ruckora laughed. A terrible sound, to be sure.

A cowardly heart, befitting your mewling people. Present the Artifact, and I may yet spare your meaningless life.

He must have been a sight, he realized. A damn Inquisitor, quailing before some dead mutt. Mad dog indeed. Where's your spirit?

Elsewhere. Up and ran off, two years ago, with your pride and your dignity, to find a fourth for poker and whoring.

It was hard to maintain a wall of hatred with this -thing- surging against him with waves of its indomitable will. Still, Liore squared his shoulders and threw out his hands.

“The Artifact of the Black Rain is no bauble, no artificer's trinket! It is a piece of me now. If you don't have some GODLY means of removing it from me, then you cannot have it at all.”

The ancient lowered its hideous head, lidless eyes boring into the warrior before it. It inspected him more thoroughly than he had ever been inspected before. He was laid bare, each secret, and each betrayal brushed aside like dust from a tombstone. Ruckora read the truth, and something in its frayed throat bubbled with a physical growl.

I was mistaken. You are no coward.

You are a madman.

“So... it would seem,” Liore whispered through labored breaths. That scrutiny had taxed him. More nightmares, surely.

Massive, dead god Ruckora straightened on his tattered haunches, a great tail of horns and vertebrae sweeping the air with irritation. Massive, taloned paws spread into an unmistakably balanced pose.

Yes. It would seem I will have to destroy you after all.

Liore's thoughts flickered back home. “Now that- I cannot allow.”

Ruckora was upon him a breath later. The warrior didn't even see it move. It simply was no more, and then something struck his chest and he was sent soaring through the air. He impacted against a distant tree, splinters and leaves spattering everywhere. Metal from the backpack jabbed into his spine, his lungs. He fell to the ground, a crumpled heap.

The tree started to crack. It was falling, a strong old Pine, its stoic form devastated by the force of the collision. When his vision stopped swimming, Liore found it was full of sunspots and the eyes of one hundred dead wolves. Ruckora had reappeared where he had stood before, like he'd never moved at all.

Not a good start.

He forced himself up on his hands, coughing up something hot and coppery. Rolled his shoulders and shrugged off the backpack, sliding it off an arm to the ground as he steadied himself on his feet. Something heavy and urgency filled the top of his vision.

The tree fell.

He reached inside, drew out a bloody fistful of rage and dove up at it. His boot smashed through, breaking it in half mid-fall, and with a twist and a kick he sent one of the halves hurtling at the Ancient.

Ruckora's form blurred side to side. The heavy treetop spun harmlessly through it, smashed into the distant copse across the clearing.

They stood and faced one another. A bit of the old wolf's confidence had simmered into cool respect. They howled horribly and darted at one another.

Liore crouched and turned a quick, spinning sidestep. He threw himself into a low, powerful kick. The kind that would break boulders, or smash through old bones. Ruckora blurred again, ceased to be.

Materialized somewhere over his shoulder and raked into his spine with a single swipe. A dozen claw marks shredded his shirt. He straightened sharply in pain, twisted and lashed out with a straight-fingered knifehand. Liore struck only air.

The massive wolf stood patiently, several yards away. Its laughter grated the back of his thoughts, dulled some by bloodlust.

For all your plundering of the Black Rain's secrets, you are a pitiful combatant. My children will feast upon your carcass, and we will raze your decrepit lair and scatter your corrupt army. That archaic evil will be cast into oblivion, and Azeroth will remember no more the name of those foolish enough to bargain with it!

Steaming with sweat and blood in the cold of the night, Liore Bloodwing swallowed his pain. He forced the words out of his ragged frame, too thin and too weak to be standing in judgment before this assembly of death.

“Hurry it up then. You're going to make me late for breakfast. She'd kill me, for sure.”

A bellowing roar shook the forest. Ruckora shot in for the kill, resonating hatred and disgust. It was a pace away when it disappeared. And Liore spun on his heels, a full one eighty, and lashed his hands into the open air.

He caught Ruckora's jaws as they slammed shut upon his head.

And he held them, unnaturally sharp canines inches from his cheek.

Liore's powerful body strained. It did not fail him. He shook and bulged, and the massive wolf's jaws resisted with the power of a mechanical vice. But so slowly, they started to open.

“I... don't... need...”

His knee gave out, and he fell into a kneel. The wolves massive mouth opened still, inch by inch, until it reached its limit. And began to open more. Ruckora emitted a psychic whimper, eyes wild.

“...any !@#$ing... artifact...”

A too-dead tongue slashed over his bare fingers. They dripped with blood, lesser teeth shredding their slender tips.

“TO SLAUGHTER A GOD”

Liore Bloodwing jerked abruptly and tore the ancient's jaws apart, tore it in half from snout to tail. Filth and gore rained all around him, and he unleashed a hateful howl as long and as harrowing as the great wolf himself.

~~

It was dawn. A couple of the Guttersnipes tending the grounds caught sight of him first, and called out for help.

The Dreadlord emerged from the forest, leaning heavily upon an undead wolf. He was caked in blood, and carried a most sour expression. He rose his palm to shield his eyes from the morning sun, and shifted his weight to favor his hurt knee. Late.

He looked over his shoulder at the ninety nine dead wolves pouring from the woods beside him. They watched him intently, their snouts lowered. He grunted and gestured at the Cathedral grounds with a sharp nod. As one, the pack trotted to their new home. A forsaken boy, all curls and wonder, approached one, who whuffled at him with a wagging tail.

Liore straightened to stretch his aching back. The make-shift skull adorning his shoulder, lashed into armor with scrap metal stripes, lolled its dead tongue and stared blankly into nothingness.

He supposed he would have some explaining to do.

[ Cruella de Vil, Cruella de Vil, if she don't scare you, no evil thing will! ]

[IM A BOY]

Exceptional.

Indeed, very well done my friend.

[Thankyou, thankyou, for reading.]

[So good. So, so good. Continue your output, prease, OR ELSE THINGS!]

[How dare you kill my puppy!]

[Danke, Fineaeus.

Your puppy, Kyalin?! I thought it was your slipper!]