Chapter 3: Succumb
Koltira spat out a mouthful of blue-black blood.
He grinned up at Sylvanas scornfully. "I must admit, Your Grace, I am somewhat disappointed. Arthas knew and utilized far more effective and agonizing torments. Did he teach you nothing when he killed you? Or have you simply gone so mad that you've forgotten?"
Sylvanas's lips curled up into a menacing smile that did not extend to her cold, whitely glowing eyes. She approached him, her cloak rustling against the flagstones of the dungeon like dead leaves in a windblown winter wood.
"Oh, my dear Koltira." She reached up and cupped his gaunt cheek in her cold hand. "The Lich King did teach me a great many things. It is amusing that you believe that I've even begun to show you the things he didn't teach me." She dug her fingernails suddenly into his cheek, gouging out furrows of grey flesh, drawing rivulets of blood. More disgusted than pained, Koltira wrenched his face from her grip, scowling, straining at his bonds as his hands itched to reach his starving runeblade and plunge it into her dead heart. He did not truly wish to kill her, his queen, despite her cruel torment; but she was being careful to withhold his relief, and the blood frenzy was now swiftly and inexorably leeching his sanity and his restraint. Sylvanas's smile became a leer, a crooked and cruel death's-skull baring of teeth, her eyes alight with a tinge of madness.
"He's ready," she announced to her deathguards, with triumph.
...
He remembered the last time.
They met like the crush of a battle: numb, intent, all discipline and restraint forgotten; obliterated. It was all they knew. Theirs was not a tender, hesitant partnership. Their slowly churning, icy blood dulled their nerves and made the roughest of touches feel like the brush of crystalline snow on their skin.
They were both acutely aware of what they were, so they were unreserved. They sunk their teeth into one another, dug fingernails into flesh, their wounds knitting together instantly and constantly. Rime formed on their skin, and the shearing rustle of ice sliding against ice made an eerie, song-like whisper.
A chill shivered up Koltira's back as he remembered. The memory of simultaneous pain and release was a heady toxin. He thrashed as the edge of the craving drove into his mind like a shard of glass.
Thassarian had come to him - he caressed Koltira's face and moved his hand down his chest. A white, stabbing pain, and he held Koltira's still-beating heart; watched it thud to a stop.
He was delirious with withdrawal. Blood-vein threads of light pulsed at the corners of his vision, and his waking nightmares were growing more visceral and intense. As he was incapable of sleep, he was becoming unable to distinguish between the reality of his imprisonment and his visions.
Byfrost, his own sword, jutted from his chest like a tower from a dark sea, lashed with blood.
Koltira watched, eyes dim and glazed over with blood-hunger, as the Forsaken priest conjured a shimmering well of white light. Having glimpsed this new implement, he let his head slump back against the wall.
He was unconcerned. He had felt the burn of the Light before, and was largely desensitized to the agony that had given way to mere discomfort through repeated exposures in battle to various Light-infused spells. He expected that the priest would bathe his fingers in the basin, or pour its contents down his back, or, if he was particularly sadistic, force the liquid down his throat. He was therefore mildly surprised when the priest turned away from him and gingerly lifted Byfrost with both hands, lowering it over the lightwell until its tip brushed the surface of the blinding light. An unfamiliar sensation, acute and biting, crept up Koltira's spine as the blade's fuller grooves drew up the holy fire like paint into a brush, and he involuntarily hissed through his teeth in discomfort. When the priest suddenly plunged the entire point-end of Byfrost into the well, Koltira's back arched and he let out a choked gurgle of pain through his tightly clenched teeth. The holy fire, magnified through the lens of his runeblade, lapped at his muted synapses like real, roaring flames; but these flames, instead of cauterizing the nerve endings and deadening the pain, were actually intensifying. The ravenous runeblade drank of the Light, unaware in its indiscriminating lust for magic that what it was consuming was horrifically tormenting its wielder.
His mind was instantly blank with agony. His gleaming blue tattoos snapped under his skin like banners in a storm. He could not see: everything was the light, the burn of it, and it was like having his eyes held open while staring into the sun. It became nothing more or less than one long, high note of pain, screeching, and he suddenly knew not where he was or who he was and he sank with relief into the dark.
There was a voice with him, in that cool, comforting darkness. It was low and smooth, sumptuous and beguiling, redolent of longing and regret. Its soft hands, tendrils of an aching desire, caressed his face. They promised him relief and peace in unknowing, in succumbing.
Who are you? Koltira asked the voice. To what must I succumb?
I am between, the voice answered simply, and you must become both, as we have.
He opened his eyes, and found that he was no longer blind. The world was grey and pale, but points of light shimmered in the haze like figures seen through a wall of rain. The only light in this calm, muffled place came from the figures. They were not corporeal, and he could not bring them into focus. The voice pressed upon him again, less gentle this time: insistent.
As he made us, so must we make you. The voice stabbed into his head suddenly, white-hot, and he recoiled, screwing up his face in pain. It lasted only a moment, however, and when he opened his eyes again he saw that one of the figures of light had drawn nearer to him. He squinted and realized with a rising thrill in his throat that it was his brother, Faltora.
Brother! Koltira greeted him joyously, reaching out his arms to embrace him. Faltora stopped before him, his figure wavering and flickering in the grey. He was as Koltira had last seen him, resplendent in his Silvermoon armor, but he was ethereal and colorless. He bore an astonishingly close resemblance to how Koltira had looked in life: he had the same almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones, and slim, long nose.
You killed me, Faltora said abruptly. His voice was flat and without inflection. His silver eyes bored into Koltira. His vaporous countenance shivered, as if with anger.
I…brother, it was not I who killed you. Thassarian, he spared you, and—
And one of his abominations finished me. You did nothing to stop it, and you even spared my killer when he led you into the forest and promised to kill you. And he: did he hesitate, then, when he drove his sword through your ribs? When he drew your life from you to feed his blood craze?
No, but he did spare me. He raised me, to fight by his side.
Faltora laughed, a chilling, ringing, shivering sound. But not as his equal…as his slave. When he no longer needed you, when he was freed, did he not cast you aside? You were nothing to him…nothing…only an instrument in his, in the world's, struggle for power. That is all you are, Koltira, and all you ever will be.
Before Koltira could respond, Faltora's image faded into the mist. Koltira was unsettled, and relieved to be alone again in the grey. But a thought, a doubt, had trickled into his mind, insidious.
Whispers, now - a multitude of voices, not just the longing voice—told him of betrayal and greed and lust for power and revenge. He thought at one point that he glimpsed himself, in one of the figures of light, but he slipped away, vanishing from sight.
In and out of the light, he flitted, through pain and cool dark. He began to lose his grip, and he felt it, yet again, the tugging, insistent voice in his head that enticed him to succumb. He realized then with revulsion and terror that the feeling was all too familiar. He struggled, then, and the light increased, tunneling into him, seeping into the cracks.
But this magic is even older and deeper than he. He only awoke us, forced us from between. The voice was now a crackling roar, deafening and triumphant. Koltira sunk, spiraling, into the grey, down, down, and his tether to the world of undeath and unliving slackened.
A/N: Hello again! I am very sorry that I've been so slow to update this story. A bit of writer's block put a damper on its progress, but I am still working on it! Thank you for reading thus far, if you have, and I hope you enjoy!
