I do not own Warcraft. I do not profit from it.
Descent
Ah, the things that could be done to living flesh...was she dead yet? He smiled. So much useless mewling, all that pointless fighting, and for what?
He had found that if he looked long enough, hard enough—into the mirror of the blade—he could see another struggler—down deep in the darkness there. Familiar, little puppet…foolish, hurting, innocent thing.
He hated it...this ghost. Racked by pain and guilt, the tortured thing could not comprehend what had befallen it. Anguish was now the full sum of its meaningless existence.
You are nowhere...he taunted...forever... Laughing, he watched it squirm.
Here is your grand destiny…embrace it...
Stop screaming, goddamn you…!
Uther had been a great believer in destiny, he recalled...such a pity that the holy Light never gave him an inkling of his own. Just another broken bug—twisting out its life in the bloody mud of its ignominious end...
Arthas tilted his head, musing. Am I insane? His smile glinted, a cold reflection of hungry steel.
Yes.
Otherwise, without this altered state of mind—this elevation—he would never have the fortitude—the courage—to even dare contemplate the matters that compelled him now. Yet, he was perfectly lucid, well aware of the fact that he should be horror-struck, shivering with revulsion, for his actions, but all such capacity had departed him. Saturations of pedantic morality had been dismissed. All was serene now, in chaos. What is the value of a compass, in the black belly of the maelstrom?
He investigated this fearsome threshold where he now stood—this empowering, new dimension of himself. Terrible needs and deeds clamored to entice him. He smiled. No more Light, with its constant, tiresome questions of worthiness. Such a liberating thing—the destruction of that tedious burden of conscience. There was no indecision here…no reckless impatience to squander him. All those matters that had once tormented him had been cast out.
Now, there was simply…nothing. Perfect, thinking, fiendish emptiness. The prospects were limitless.
He glanced back to his immediate concern.
Calmly, methodically, he turned the dagger in his hand. It was so much more intimate with a dagger. With a sword—even sensitive, voracious, beautiful Frostmourne—there was a loss of resonance, of connection—a muting of the sensation of death's subtle delicacy.
He laughed. A lack of…was it not a dark sort of empathy…?
The narrow, exquisitely sharp blade did its work.
Steel made a certain blithe sound as it divided aching flesh. Peeling away the layers of conceit and all its banal misconceptions of reality…and worth. The ponderous lies, so feverishly cherished, were easily dismantled, eradicated—purged—with just one arc of singing steel.
He thought it seemed a sigh of satisfaction—that harvesting sound.
The steel seemed not so much to cut…as to eat its way through living flesh. He wondered, as he so often had of late, just how death tasted to the impeccable blade.
Bright blood welled—a red beast surging from its lair. Arthas chuckled at the thought, rather surprised that she had so much left to shed…
And yet, somehow she still lived; he smiled.
But not for long.
He would give to her this gift of the void. The heady freedom of lifelessness.
He considered her, tilting his head, drawing runes upon her pale, trembling skin. It seemed only appropriate to use her own blood for his artistry. He smiled as her eyes rolled to look at him. Once striking azure blue, now bloody and dazed with horrific injury, they stared glassily, as if trying to fathom what leaned over her.
Your worst nightmare…he thought, amused. And one from which you will never wake…
The moment of realization, of recognition…ah, yes. Well worth waiting for. He laughed a little, a glow of murderous blue in the red-edged darkness of her dying mind.
"I warned you…" he whispered.
She tried to speak, but there were no words for this revelatory juncture, only a sweet shriek of mindless agony, as the dagger delved deeper in its relentless search. Slowly, exactingly, it bared her to his scrutiny. Revealing all she was to him…yes, he required full confession.
Living is a sin.
He would absolve her.
She tossed her head, face blood-speckled, shining hair spilling from her crumpled cowl; she writhed, as if she thought to escape the pain. How foolish of her. She was its chattel. He pressed the blade, but gently, only urging it. He did not wish to incite it to excess—not just yet.
She opened willingly for him—Oh, yes, such a virgin to the reaping, raping blade…he thought. This flesh needs ravishing, he decided. To become complete. Finished. Mine.
Smooth skin, flayed down to taut, quaking muscle…yes, it was all about getting underneath the skin of things. Sloughing off the extraneous—the vain inanity of life. He laughed. The knife laughed with him.
"You will not cross me again, will you?" he murmured softly to her, stroking her cold brow with gentle, bloody fingertips. Her head rolled; the muscles in her wisp-thin neck convulsed, grotesque in their prominence. Her slender limbs flailed. Pretty little insect, pretty little mouth stretching wide in a beautiful, voiceless scream.
Well, the blade had burrowed into her lung now; it was no great mystery that her only exhalation was dark gouts of blood. "Don't leave me just yet…" he whispered; his cold mouth caressed her quivering ear. Her eyes flickered to his. "There's so much more for you to see…"
He moved to kiss her then, tenderly, her soft, bloody lips so sweet...she tasted like the tainted Sunwell; she tasted like him. He smiled fondly, smoothing the bright beads of blood that dappled her hair, making of them a slick, dark gleam amid the vanquished gold. She was chilled now; and cold was so much better.
The knife tunneled on, twisting, winnowing; he watched it, fascinated. It was a brutal servant to the masterful hand that worked it. She gasped a soft plea for conclusion…as if he were a god to supplicate, one who might benevolently grant her peace. He smiled. Yes, he was a god…just not the one she sought. But he was the one she had found.
He lifted it then—the tiny, still-pulsing heart. Tenacious little thing. Who would have guessed there was so much resolve in such feeble flesh. The exposed vessels squirmed with the final, frenzied rush of blood—vibrating, screaming their horror at this awful trespass.
She looked at it, her expression twisted, esoteric.
He leaned into her and ate what he was hungry for—her suffering, her despair—he gobbled it up; and it was delicious. Her mouth gaped, lips bowing down, a mask of anguish.
He sighed, tilting his head. Not very pretty…he decided, unsatisfied, glancing away from the ugliness of her failure to the pale, pounding thing in his hand. Only it was beautiful now. He glanced at her wild eyes, brimming, overflowing with murky tears. Yes, she was still there; she was still helplessly watching.
Still his…
"You won't be needing this…" he said, of the part of her he held in his hand. "Not for any purpose…"
He smiled, lifting it for a mocking kiss…goodbye...
And then he took a bite.