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Ice
I awoke, dazed, upon the icy stones, tasting blood, aching in every part. It was then I remembered my duty; and with a grunt of effort, I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. There was no going further, the world was a roaring blur of red and black, of agonizing pain. I coughed suddenly; and dark gore streaked the ice. I could feel it, the suffocating weight of blood filling my lungs. Gasping, I collapsed, prone, praying for death's deliverance.
"Is that the best you have, Alliance?" a voice murmured. I knew who it was; the soft, deep timbre of that voice was unlike any other. I heard footsteps and the toe of a boot cruelly nudged my splintered ribs.
"Finish me..." I gasped.
"You have no more for me? So bold, only moments ago... I had hoped for more of a challenge; and yet, you fail me." The toe urged me again. "I shall punish you for that, paladin..."
I turned my head to the side, opening my eyes. He was standing over me, one foot on either side of my dying body. I saw the plated boot, the white fur test, now dappled with blood... the diabolic greave, its gaping depiction of skeletal rage. The dreaded runeblade rested point down in the ice, mere inches from my face. It hissed and whispered to me of darkness and loss—of eternal ice, binding magic, and empty relentlessness...
"Light, deliver me..." I whispered.
He laughed, cold and mocking, "There is no Light here," he said, a seductive, terrible voice—one that resonated with truth. "Shall I show you what awaits your mortal flesh?" I heard the scrape of armor on ice, as he crouched down astride me; and the blood, flowing from my wounds, froze in crimson rivulets from the nearness of his horrific chill.
"Look at me," he commanded. Compelled by his voice, as if it were a hand, moving to remake me, I strove to raise my head, but all strength was gone and I could not.
Take me, I prayed to the fading Light. Take me before it is too late...
"It is already too late," he whispered, his gauntleted hand seizing my hair in a brutal grip, lifting my head; red ice cracked and broke away as he turned my face towards him. I struggled for focus, and when it was finally mine, I quailed at what I saw leaning over me, so close. He was helmless, and I could see his face—what was not hidden by the long, white hair that had fallen, in a frosted tangle, across his eyes. Even so, behind that white silk veil, I could see the glowing smoke of his gaze. It was fixed upon me and I was mesmerized.
He was a pale, rimed apparition, a god of ice, of ancient malice. Held by his gaze, I could not move, not to struggle, not even to simply look away. He compelled me past any resistance. I could feel the burden of my imminent death turning from me, towards him, moving, seeking his will that it might obey.
The Light was gone—extinguished, as a dim lamp, cast into a floe-choked sea. I was alone. Hope, life, salvation... all falling into the darkness. His darkness.
His pale lips drew back from strong, white teeth, in an icicle smile. It seemed his intent was to devour me. Terror beyond scope, beyond anything I had ever imagined, suffused and ravaged me. Lost in the spider's web, I was falling, drowning in his deadly aura.
"You are mine..." he hissed.
He lifted his hand, an almost idle gesture, and I felt the corruption of his unspeakable powers envelope me. I twisted, groaning in agony; it heightened, peaked, and his hand tightened as I coughed out more blood for the hungry ice. He was healing my injuries, I realized in despair, forcing life back into my broken body. Death had seemed, in those dark moments, my one deliverer; and now, even that cold reprieve he would deny me.
"Please," I cried, "let me die..."
With a cold laugh, he turned my face back towards him; it seemed his cruel hands would tear my head from my shoulders. His touch was a horrific weight upon living flesh. "In due time," he murmured, "you will serve me in death. For now, however, I am not finished with your life. Your suffering has only begun, mortal, as you shall see."
I could only stare at him, feeling my blood, my sweat, my final, halting breaths, freezing in the deadened space between us—more from his nearness than even the bitter cold of this fiend's lair.
Again, he forced my head around. "Do you see the dead? Observe your comrades."
I moaned, for there they were, pitiable in death, twisted, cold lumps, barely recognizable as what they had once been. Huddled there, slowly freezing into the permanence of this frozen prison, while the master of Hell leaned closer still, his icy breath caressing my ear.
"Now, see the truth of things," he murmured.
The very air itself seemed to quiver, a shimmering, sapphire mist... and my dead friends began to stir. They writhed, mindlessly as marionettes on severed wires, breaking free of the thin crust of ice that had quickly confined them with their deaths. Quaking unnaturally, with hollow moans, they lurched to their feet, turning blindly to face him, as he commanded them back to a travesty of life. Breathless bodies groaned, shattered bones grinding, as corpse flesh moved to respond to his irresistible summons.
"Where is your Light, now?" he whispered in my ear. "You see the price of your devotion to a lie..."
They began to draw near.
Kallis first—he, of the Argent Crusade, the most fixed in his purpose of them all. Righteous past reason, patriot, fanatic—how could he ever fall to the very power he hated above all else. The cruel irony was the King's meat; and he was ravenous. Steffen came next, once warrior, skilled swordsman, his head skewed, spine shattered, his throat an opened, frozen ruin of clotted ice. Last, was Treka—she who could make steel sing its deadliest song—my laughing, dearest friend. I wept to see her dismembered body reassembled, shambling brokenly, as she crept closer. She would never laugh again. Her destroyed face angled down towards me, jaws gaping in the rictus of death, a red mass of shredded tissue, the delicate mechanisms of life bared and lost. She dragged her entrails as she came, inexorable—white, dead eyes gleaming, gazing hungrily upon the savage source as he gathered them all into his monstrous service.
I began to scream. I struggled in vain; but there was no escape. They were as relentless in death as they had been in life.
He held me close, oh, that cold embrace... forcing upon me—there at the precipice of madness and death—sights and sounds past all living experience. Of the dead returned to life—yet not alive—of bone and flesh responding where there should be no possibility.
They did not pause; and moved only by his pitiless command, there was no thought, no memory to guide them as they tore off my armor, seeking the still-living flesh beneath, their vacant eyes aglow with his unearthly light as they descended upon me.
Laughing, he tossed me into their hands. The caresses of trusted friends dismissed, once so adept in life, now but clutching, fumbling clay, the stench of bodies gone to sudden decay... All was waste. Life, awareness—these were the enemy; I prayed for death. My sanity wavering upon that brink; and I cried out to the Light that I might fall. I cared not what took me now, whether death, madness, or oblivion, anything but this present hell that ruled me... anything, but this...
All memory of smiles, of laughter, forgotten—their teeth bared in grimacing voracity—those I had once loved now ravened me, divesting me of my flesh, tearing me away in shrieking pieces. Hell, in its worst, most brutalizing form, had come for me... to feast.
And when it ended, I was left bleeding, barely living, yet not allowed to die, shattered upon the icy stones. Shock, horror and injury had wrecked me. I was a tattered leaf in a monster's bloody wake. Weak, I was nothing but prey; I had never been anything but prey... to him.
Snow and scattered sleet ground beneath his plated boots, as the predator approached once more. I grunted as a stinging spray of ice struck my face as he plunged the brutal point of Frostmourne into the frozen stones near my head. Through a bloody film, I gazed at its glowing length, watching the slow, lethal sloughing of its runic mist. It curled about me, whispering of heinous requirements, of unendurable acts. I groaned, cringing when he touched me.
"Where is the Light?" he asked again. I could not think to speak, nor could I move. My soul was wrecked, according to his will; the long-sought Light was dead to me, emptied of meaning. There was nothing here but darkness; and I was forfeited, devoured. I was ruin.
The icy hand stroked my back, my skin quivering from its passage; and he seized me, with sudden ferocity, effortlessly hoisted me off the frigid stones. When his hands closed on me, and I realized his intent, I screamed, my tortured mind recoiling in horror. I fought him with all the strength remaining me, and it was nothing to him. I was nothing.
Did I beg for death? Yes. Did I plead for mercy? Yes. Only to have him laugh, leaning close across my back; his hard length, pressed close, rigid ice. His hand upon my nape, shoved my cheek to the stones, tears and blood freezing me to the floor.
I wailed; abjectly, I beseeched him, blood bubbling from my mouth, my screams a mist of red snow. Was there no end to his rage? Was I not already broken apart? Now this final atrocity, this cruelest mockery of life. His cold mouth, incongruously soft, caressed my ear, his head nestling against mine.
"Yes," he whispered, "Beg me. Perhaps I will be... merciful..."
And beg him I did, while he laughed coldly in my ear, murmuring his savage intentions, until I was screaming in mindless terror, struggling uselessly in his fierce grasp. He growled, pressing closer, and with a vicious thrust, he shoved into me, impaling me; my body convulsed in pain. It might have been an ice dagger forced into my flesh. His hate moved to consume me, his terrible grip tightening as he brutally filled me with his torturous cold. And it was my pain, my tears of anguish, the horrible vulnerability of twisted, torn, agonized flesh forced to compliance that gave him his dark pleasure.
His every move was made to further my pain, to deepen my despair, to lessen me, and deprive me of all hope, of all desire for life. And he attended to my subjugation masterfully. As he forced his ferocious body into mine, the cold, the fear, the pain, the desolation of his nearness—all, worked to my destruction. The low grunt of his release seemed almost human; I cried out, hearing it, soft against my ear, and I wept for that lost sound of faded life.
He was perfectly still for a moment, his lips pressed to my temple—a gentle caress—and then he moved, pulling away from me, shoving me to the floor as he rose to his feet. I did not move; I could not. My will was crushed, the devastated flesh too badly broken. I waited, despairing in the knowledge that even past life's boundaries, there was no end to his merciless dominion.
His toe prodded my ribs, slowly pushing me over onto my back. I felt the frozen skin of my cheek tear away as my head lolled. I cared not, only gazing up at him as he stood over me. His head was tilted down, the terrible eyes pondering me, his long mane of icy hair rippling in a sleet-filled wind that came to cloak him.
"Why...?" I whispered; it seemed, in that moment, so important to know.
He inclined his head and coldly smiled. "Because I can..." he answered, devoid of pity or remorse, the very substance of the wrath that served him.
He reached out, his hand closing on Frostmourne's grip. Lifting the sword, he studied it thoughtfully, before slowly lowering the lethal point to press it to my chest.
Its covetous rumble shivered through me, even as the blue smoke rolled down to hungrily enfold me. His murderous eyes came back to mine. "Time to die for me..." he whispered tenderly.
I watched him, as he leaned upon the sword. It took me as easily as he had. Ravenous, it annihilated my life, slicing through me, severing my faltering heart, and the sight I took into the coming darkness was one of blue fire and a bitter, ice smile.