I do not own Warcraft. I do not profit from it.
AU
Shadow in the Sword
The Light cannot shine here.
It seems a thousand years have come and gone, leaving me doomed to this forever darkness—the taunting blade, my jailer.
There is no reaching past this rage that encapsulates me. I am beset, unraveling beneath the burden of its horrific crimes.
It feasts on me, reveling in my useless struggle to regain myself, harrying me with regret, with terrible shame. And it is changing me; even in my resistance, its inroads move to engulf me.
Yet, there remains one course, the one hope, in the midst of this desolation; and it has become my fixed purpose.
I can feel them. The dead ones. Lost, in the directionless dark. Sometimes they falter, moving in response, uncertain in their mindless hunger, and in those moments I can...hold them, allowing them to feed off me, thus binding them to my will. I draw them close as they shamble through my thoughts—terrifying, pathetic—and I cling to the grim accord of that one thin thread with all my might, with all resolve, holding them back from their final, savage intent. For if they are loosed upon the world, it will be left a bloody, eaten ruin...
'The Light loves us...' Uther once said. 'It loves us for what we sometimes can rise to in rare moments...'
I pray that I may rise to mine.
We battle here, in the darkness, this other one and I. It creeps into me, a smiling glutton, ever hungry; and I ache beneath the onus of unforgivable sin. Hate has a cold glamour—one that echoes through the secret part of me that still resists its tantalizing reverberation.
It beckons me to look...to relent, to fall...
And I recall...a rose petal. Drifting, sacrificial, to rest upon my outstretched palm. I keep its memory close—one of loss...of stolen life, collapsing, shriveling from my touch.
Oh, but I want to be touched... Just one breathing moment...brief warmth, the caress of a merciful hand...
It tortures me for this irresistible, living need...and for that desperate longing, it took my heart in a brutal fist, besieging me with final, silent cold...
Yet, even it cannot steal from me the lost rhythms of life—and in its fragile thunder, I remember her...but there is only so much that even love can heal.
My father's face—I see it still—his dying eyes searching mine. His last breath, a mist of blood, warm, upon my frozen face. How unwilling, how unable he was to believe it was me...tearing out his life.
My hands, so red. Blood feeds the beast that ravens me.
It whispers, You are sickness; you are death. Now we are one. I fear I become more so every day that passes in its thrall; and it hates me...hates me more than any other, as I am the constant reminder of what it truly is.
A thief of life. Feared, denied, and despised.
It rages and rends, wounding me with its poison; it seduces, it tempts, promising peace for my compliance.
It lies.
It would rather torment and twist me to its will than be free of the mirror that I am...such is the magnitude of its malevolence.
Forgotten...it whispers. Marooned. Lost outside the uncaring Light.
Words are the weapons it wields to tear and break me. It tells me that even death has forsaken me...and I believe, for it is true; I am misplaced—I am as it is...cast out...apart.
All else—life, love, Light—I now set aside as less, and with all self I still possess to command, I take my stand against the darkness.
This is my one imperative, my duty...my penance. I will not succumb.
Faith remains—it armors me—and tightening the fraying thread that binds us, I embrace the dead...I hold them fast...even if it need be forever.
I can.
I must.
I do.
For life's sake,
I dare not fail...
