A/N: Hello, everyone. Just another note from your favorite elemental force of Nature. I intended to do another of the narrative dialogue things, but guys. I had to get some lyrics from this song sometime.
Also, on the tardiness: Guys. I got in the Heroes of the Storm alpha. I'm busy nuking Diablo while Kerrigan gets her ass kicked by a faerie dragon. Silly little fanfics are unimportant when such unmitigated fun is to be had.
Warning: Fairly graphic descriptions of gore up ahead.
For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are dead
- "Still Alive," GLaDOS
They moved from the foyer after catching their breath, the moaning and groaning of the ghouls too much for them to bear any longer. Thick, wooden doors separated the foyer from a long hall, and they heaved and shoved to shut them, muffling the sounds of the undead clawing at their door. No, at Scholomance's door.
(Don't think about it.)
Zoen wandered away from them, a headache beginning to throb at the base of her skull. She slid down a wall and rested her head against it, teeth finding the scar on her hand as she bit down to resist screaming. Tiris wormed his head into her lap and with her free hand she stroked him if only to have something to focus on besides the fact that they'd taken sanctuary in the most infamous academy of evil on Azeroth.
They're going to catch you and eat you and experiment on you and they will never, never let you die -
Voices filtered through, and she turned her head towards the door.
"We have to leave," said Salric urgently as he and Markus lowered a bar to bolt the door shut. "This is Scholomance, and we're not exactly equipped to deal with a school full of cultists!"
He had a point. Sans Zoen, no one was fully armored, wearing at most their chainmail shirts and maybe their bracers. Markus had abandoned his greatsword when it slowed him down too much during the escape, and Zoen was down to one knife. Her bow had been rendered useless just before the gate had shut; the string had snapped, and now all it was was a piece of wood.
What's a hunter without a bow? she'd thought morosely. She'd brought additional strings, of course, but they were all in her pack, which was by her bedroll, which had been overrun by a pack of ghouls. Even if she found the material to fashion a string, what use was a bow with only one arrow. Angry and scared, she'd thrown both it and the arrow away. Now, fingering the pommel of the knife, she wondered if maybe one of the boys could use it as a club. The idea of one of the paladins whacking a ghoul in the head was enough to make her smile widely, and she bit on the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing aloud.
"Scholomance was purged months ago," said Blaine, leaning against the door. Despite sleeping longer than most of them, he looked the most exhausted. "There are no Scourge here, not anymore."
"Just because a few adventurers cleared the place doesn't mean -"
"School is out, boy," interrupted Markus. Salric's jaw hung open for a moment before he snapped it shut, unwilling to challenge Markus.
It was agreed that they would rest in the hallway while Markus and Blaine created a plan of action, and soon Salric and Felix were both sitting with their backs to the wall alongside Zoen and Tiris.
"You're going to shred your hand again," she heard Salric mutter while Felix gently unmatched her hand from her teeth. She hadn't broken the skin this time at least. "Your dog's not freaking out anymore at least." He was surlier than usual, but no one cared to hold it against him.
No longer running on pure adrenalin, Zoen closed her eyes and rested her head on top of Tiris, running her hand along his spine as she began to doze. Salric and Felix seemed to have the same idea as her, their combined snoring filling the air along with Markus and Blaine's quiet murmuring. The muffled growls of the ghouls became nothing more than white noise at the edge of her perception. For now, she just wanted to sleep...
... sleep...
"Get up! All of you!"
Zoen jumped at the sound of Blaine's voice, cracking her head against the stone behind her and swearing in pain as stars exploded across her vision. He paid her pain no attention, though, and she shoved Tiris' head off her lap and dragged herself to her feet. Blaine turned from them towards the door at the end of the hallway, staring at it with a strange expression. "We have no food," he began slowly. Perhaps it was just exhaustion, but there was something incredibly melodic and soporific about his voice. "No water. The horse is undoubtedly dead, and we have no armor and few weapons to defend ourselves with. We -"
"To the point, Arnol," rumbled Markus. Blaine flinched and glanced at Markus briefly before clearing his throat and turning to the younger members.
"We shall scavenge Scholomance," he said, all melody gone, and Zoen's stomach dropped like a stone. "The school has been emptied, and the Scourge is not foolish enough to return here so soon."
"What about the ghouls?" blurted Zoen. All eyes went to her, and she just barely managed not to stammer. "I mean - how are we supposed to get past them?" There were so many, she thought, and surely someone would get bitten.
Blaine motioned to the whole of the hallway and the castle beyond. "This was once the castle of the Barovs. They will certainly have one or two secret escape tunnels. Make sure to keep an eye out for anything that could possibly conceal one. For now, we must rearm and armor ourselves. We may die here, but we most certainly will die out there." He pointed at the oaken door just as the groans of the ghouls outside grew louder.
"But -"
"We are wasting time," snapped Markus impatiently. "You may stay here and starve if you wish. Otherwise, we are leaving this hall. Now." He stalked towards the door that led into the castle proper, heedless of whether he was followed or not. Blaine went after him instantly; after a moment of shock, the others did as well.
"It's just an empty castle," muttered Zoen as Markus pulled open the doors. "It's just an empty castle. Filled with dead and rotting things."
"If we're lucky," snorted Salric. "It's Scholomance. At the very least, the Scourge must've come and cleaned out all the stuff. There aren't going to be that many weapons."
Zoen hummed in answer, jittery from nerves and (fear) excitement.
It was just a castle. She'd be fine.
I'll be fine.
Just a castle.
Did you know?
No one knew.
He did.
Yeah. He did.
"The creepy eyes are following me."
"They follow everyone, Salric." She shuffled through the ruined books, searching for the source of a glint she had just seen. The darkness made her search difficult, however, and the sick, green light that bathed her hands was... distracting.
Not the mention, the creepy eyes were following her.
He shook his head, leaning against the bookcase Zoen was currently rifling through. "I don't like this."
"You have said that. Many times." There it was again. She was too far to the left.
Salric whistled at her. "Someone's grown an attitude."
"Says the wiseass paladin."
"Says the bitchy hunter." He watched as she jerked her hand back, hissing in pain from a deep cut in her finger. The glint she had hoped was a knife blade was only a broken mirror shard. He murmured something and waved his hand at her, a flash of light illuminating her before the cut healed. Salric frowned. "You flinched."
"I do that." She looked around, past the cold, magical fires and strained to listen over the dead silence. No one but Salric, Tiris, and herself occupied the decrepit library. The other three were elsewhere, thoughwhere she did not know. "Splitting up might not have been a good idea."
"Oh, so you get to whine and I don't?"
"I suggested we stick together," she snapped. "Blaine's the one that said you and I should go looking for escape routes. All you've done is say this is a bad idea and not offer any other options."
"We all search for escape routes together," he replied automatically. "Starting with the old quarters for the Lords and Ladies Barov, comb through the usual places. Behind tapestries, pull at candlesticks, clear books out of cases, et cetera. Stop wasting time trying to get weapons and armor that aren't here and try to get back to Aerie Peak as fast as possible." He leveled her with a stare. "Those options enough for you?"
She grit her teeth, grumbling, "Don't know why you're in the Argent, Voltra. Brotherhood of the Light would love you."
Salric scowled. "Being pragmatic doesn't mean I'm like those maniacs." Zoen shrugged, whistling at Tiris and jerking her head forward. The wolf arose from where he had lain and padded over to her and the paladin.
"You didn't find any exits, no?" Salric shook his head. Zoen sighed, running a hand through her hair. "Think the others did?"
"Probably not." He glanced at a painting and grimaced. "There's nothing here. Can we leave? I can't stand those eyes."
Zoen nodded, deciding against mentioning that every single room they had entered and every single hall they had roamed had had eyes just as creepy as the ones in this library. She began to go after him before noticing a dark cloth hanging from a chair; grabbing it and holding it up, she called, "Hey, Sal." He turned, and she grinned as she held the cultist robe up. "Think this would fit me?"
"Oh yes," he said dryly. "Bleach your skin and get some face tattoos, and you'd fit right in with the Damned."
"You have to admit, their fashion taste is impeccable."
"Well, there have to be some perks to counteract the whole 'Sell your soul to a patricidal maniac who thinks listening to a sword is a neat idea.'" She snickered and cast the robe away and followed after him, slamming the door shut behind Tiris.
The sound of the ghouls' moans had long since grown too distant to hear. It was a sound Zoen quickly began to miss despite the terror it instilled in her. Scholomance was as cold and silent as the grave, devoid of any sound but the soft clacking of shoes and claws on stone. After days of rustling mail, banging plate, and clopping hooves, the silence was unsettling.
Salric was the first to break it. "Is this the part where we tell each other our life stories?" He'd turned to look at her expectantly as she pulled open a door that led into what must have been a den long ago.
"Huh?" There was no light in the room; the little illumination afforded by the hallway only allowed her to see the outline of a fireplace and the edge of a table. "Say that again, please?"
"Life stories." Casting a spell, Salric illuminated the dark room with a flare of holy light. The fireplace was bare of flames, and the couches were torn apart as though by some animal. Torn books of geography, history, and necromancy had been stacked on top of every table, threatening to break the rotting furniture. While the presence of weaponry was unlikely, it seemed as good a place as any for a secret passage. He moved forward to tug at sconces and pull all the books off of the shelves in search of a secret lever. "You know. Why we're here, things we regret, people we're leaving behind... Isn't that what people do in these sort of situations?"
"What situation?" She was pulling down books from a separate shelf, though more than once her eyes were drawn to the fireplace, which Tiris was sniffing at curiously. Something was off.
"You know." Now he had tipped a bookshelf over, only to be greeted with solid stone and not the passageway he'd hoped it had hidden. "No weapons, no armor, no hope. Ghouls clawing at the front door. We're at our lowest point. Some of us aren't going to make it -"
Tiris growled, hackles raising. "Be quiet."
"- and this is where we learn more about each other and come to regard ourselves as true companions, fire-forged friends who have been through hell and back together and -"
"And I said to shut up," snapped Zoen. Motioning, she said, "Look at the fireplace."
He did, reaching over Tiris to pull at a statuette set on the mantle. "What about it?"
"It was lit recently."
He froze. "How recently?"
"Couple of hours. Few days, at most. Unless the others stopped by here to warm up and just happened to have logs of wood on them..." But she stopped, because he had ended the spell that lit the room as he raced out of it, shouting the names of the others.
"Felix! Markus, Blaine!" He paused to wrench open a door, scanning the room beyond desperately before slamming the door shut. "Felix!"
"Are you stupid?" hissed Zoen as she caught up to him. "You're going to attract the wrong kind of attention!"
"Who cares?" he bit back. "We'll die without Markus and Blaine, and even then we only have a chance against whoever is here..."
"Who do you think is here?"
"Necromancers. Liches. Abominations, skeleton mages, bleeding death knights, for the Light's sake..." He turned this way and that, shaking his head as he muttered, "Felix is going to be dead, and it's going to be my fault and his mother will come back and haunt my... my ghost... because we're going to..." He raised his head, and hollered, "Felix! Markus, Bla-mph!"
"Lower your voice before I go deaf." Zoen removed her hand from his mouth. "It's not your fault if we die here -"
He reared away from her. "He wouldn't have come if I hadn't asked! There were - there were other initiations besides this one, and he could have gone to the Exodar if I hadn't - I didn't want to be the weakest, you know, not in a group of two senior paladins and some archer from the army -"
"I'm not a soldier!"
"I thought you were going to be a night elf!"
"Do I have foot-long ears?!"
"Stop screaming."
Zoen jumped and spun around, reaching for a bow and arrows that were not there. Markus towered behind them, face starkly illuminated by the gathered Light that balled in Salric's hand. Slowly, he let the power dissipate, and the behemoth said, "You called. I could hear you from nearly the other side of the castle, it seemed."
Salric had the decency to look embarrassed, but schooled his features into something more stoic as he addressed the elder paladin. "Zoen," he swallowed, and it occurred to her that his throat must be raw from shouting. "Zoen found something."
Eyes fell on her, and she (don't shrink back) cleared her throat before saying, "The, uhm, the fireplace in one of the rooms had been used recently. There was burnt wood in it, too, so it couldn't have been one of us." Markus said nothing; taking his silence for skepticism, she added quickly, "I could be wrong, of course, or it could just be from some scavengers that were here before us, but there's the possibility that it could be from necromancers who are trying to repopulate the school, or they're finally moving the more powerful corpses somewhere else."
A memory flashes, one of her own - running through the burning streets of Capital City while ghouls moan and people scream, and most were just getting eaten (stop thinking about this) but one man, a knight dressed in heavy armor and swinging an ax with a blade bigger than her eight year old body was, and surrounded by other less impressive swordsmen, got hit by a skeleton archer's bolt and his body was dragged towards a gaggle of necromancers -
(Stop thinking about this.)
- and she is in the Barov castle, not Capital City, and the sword bigger than her is outside with all the other useful weapons and the knight is alone -
- the knight is alone -
"Where is everyone else?" Felix and Blaine were nowhere to be seen; Markus was alone, and that was disturbing enough on its own. Had she grown so complacent that even a human mountain could sneak up on her?
He gestured behind himself vaguely before saying, "They had found an armory when Salric's screams reached us. I left them there and came to find you."
"An armor-"
He shook his head. "The weapons are broken, and the armor is useless. We have found nothing."
"Neither have we." She coughed, and glanced at Salric. He was tenser than she remembered, eyes shifting as he tried to see everything. Tiris was not much better, his hackles raised and his ears twitching restlessly. "Uhm, except for the ashes."
"Have you more evidence?"
More evidence? Zoen panicked for a moment, wondering if he doubted her. (He wanted to fire you.) She almost drew a blank before remembering, "A robe." Markus tilted his head, and she explained, "I didn't - I didn't think about it, but it wasn't rotted at all and it's one of the new ones anyways. They changed the design a few weeks ago at most, and Blaine said Scholomance was cleared out months ago." Salric and Markus were both giving her a strange look; realizing the implications of what she'd said, she quickly added, "I live in Old Town. It's impossible not to run into cultists there. It's like a breeding ground. One tends to notice changes."
She did not add that the oblivious were a favorite prey of the cultists, that the unwary disappeared almost as soon as they arrived. They did not need to know.
If they had doubts about her, they did not speak. Markus seemed to mull over her words mentally for a while, and she desperately hoped he was not actually mulling the quickest way to snap her neck and put Tiris down before he could retaliate. At last, he said, "Come. If there are necromancers, splitting up is unwise." He did not wait for a response, knowing and expecting obedience.
If Zoen had been uncomfortable with the silence before, now she was suffocating in it. Markus was unsurprisingly silent, but Salric's was unusual, lest his throat was still sore from yelling. Paranoia began to gnaw at her mind, twisting an already disturbing castle into a haunted nightmare. Shades hid in the shadows, cultists' eyes watched from the paintings, death knights lurked beyond the corners. The people who had died here - the students, the teachers, the servants and sadists, the masters and monsters - did their souls haunt this place? Had one gained enough substance, enough corporeality to make a fire, mindless of its own death? Could ghosts do that?
She would have asked the paladins around her, but the idea of "The ghost did it" sounded suspiciously similar to blaming the wolf for the broken vase.
(Sparks had never believed that one - but you never said sorry, and here you are, stuck in an evil castle, and you just ran away without saying goodbye and you'll never, never get to see her again -)
Voices were floating from a nearby room, the words indistinguishable but the owners undeniable, and the paranoia began to slough off little by little. Upon entering the armory, Zoen had to agree with Markus' earlier assertion: The arms and armor was useless. Those weapons that weren't broken were rotted and corroded so much so that they would more likely harm the user than the opponent. The metal armor was corroded and dented, and the leather was shredded as though by some insane animal. Blaine and Felix stood in the midst of the wreckage, tiptoeing around and carefully avoiding the rusty edges that littered the armory as they searched for anything that might last more than one hit and not give the wielder tetanus.
The elder paladin looked up, dropping the sword hilt he had picked up. "See, child? I told you your friends were not..." He saw the expressions on their faces, and asked, "What is wrong?"
You didn't -
No. Now shut up and let me finish.
"Why are you just now suggesting the servant's entrance?" To his credit, Salric recovered quickly. If his throat still hurt, he didn't let it show as he stared at Blaine with a mixture of indignation and outrage, and his refusal to back down from the withering look the elder sent his way was rather admirable. "Zoen and I just spent at least an hour searching for secret passages, and you didn't think the servant's entrance might be a good escape?"
"Watch your tone, boy," warned Blaine. "The servant's entrance leads out to the town, and the ghouls were still at the gate last I checked. I had hoped you would have found escape tunnels that led off the island so that we could go around the zombies. Now that there is evidence that it is more dangerous inside than outside, I believe it is safer to take the servant's entrance and risk the ghouls than to search for secret passages we may never find and run into necromancers in the meantime."
"Could we not use the Light?" inquired Felix. "Surely it would protect us from the cultists." The look Blaine gave him was somewhere between fond and exasperated.
"Perhaps, but braining them would protect us even more. Unfortunately, we lack the capability. The servant's entrance is as safe a choice as we have now."
"We have a choice?" muttered Salric bitterly under his breath. Zoen frowned, kicking at the back of his leg.
"You wanted to escape, we're escaping," she hissed quietly. Salric said nothing, hardening his expression as he moved past her. Blaine had edged his way to the front of the group, twisting his way through the halls confidently. The air seemed to chill as they ventured forward; Tiris grew wary and tense, but no coercion was required to keep him moving forward. In the dead silence, their claws and footsteps seemed loud enough to awaken the spirits that haunted the castle.
Blaine paused at a corner, turning his head to smile faintly at the hunter. "Dear girl," he said, "do you still have that knife?"
Zoen started. The knife - how could she forget the knife? Nodding mechanically, she reached inside her coat for the blade at her waist, feeling something hard and circular bump against her fingers before she slid out the knife. Blaine held out his hand, his smile widening.
"May I hold it?" he inquired. "I would not ask otherwise, but, well, taking point runs the risk of -"
"The monsters jumping out at you first," she finished, holding the grip out to him. He took it from her with a nod of thanks.
"Thank you, dear girl. Unless -" He looked behind her. "You are fine weaponless, old friend?" he addressed Markus.
The other grunted, shaking his head. "If it does not attack you, it will not attack me."
Blaine chuckled hollowly. "Yes, I suppose not." He glanced down at the knife, watching the blade glint in the unnatural light of a nearby magical torch. With a sigh, he looked up and continued to guide them down the dark halls.
It didn't take much longer after that for the paladin to stop before a large oaken door flanked by two ragged Cult of the Damned banners, their already-gruesome icons made all the more horrific by the harsh light of undying fire. Disturbed, Zoen looked down at Tiris, scratching at his ears in the hope to soothe the beast.
Blaine grasped the handle and pulled the door open, turning back to smile - See? Wasn't I right? - with that glint in his eyes as he stepped into the darkness. Zoen and Tiris followed after tentatively, Felix and Salric and Markus at their backs. The hunter blinked and screwed up her eyes, trying to adjust to the pitch blackness. "Can someone make light?" she requested.
"Of course." Metal shifted. A word was spoken, or many words, and braziers and torches flared to life, illuminating the blackness. And what the blackness had hidden from sight.
Leaning comfortably against a long, bloodstained, wooden counter, a night elven death knight smiled at her. A necromancer stood across from her; behind them, ghouls (one, two, three, four, five, and Zoen's stomach dropped like a stone) lurked like nightmares, empty eye sockets fixed on the living.
"Can you see now?" inquired the knight. She turned to the necromancer, and Zoen saw that half of her left ear had been torn off. "I told you they would come. Patience is a virtue you should strive for." The man said nothing; his face completely enshrouded in the shadows of his hood, he could pass as not a man at all but some ghost shackled to a purple and black cloth robe.
The knight did not seem affected by her compatriot's silence. Luminescent eyes fell on the living in the doorway, a grin tugging at her lips. At Zoen's side Tiris snarled, tensed to lunge. "So. Whose soul shall I rip out first?"
Markus bristled and stepped up towards the death knight and the necromancer, and Zoen thought she could see the Light shimmering around its champion, a righteous shell to protect him from the horrors of the Dark -
- and it faltered, shattered, as Blaine calmly closed the distance between them, reached forward, and slit Markus' throat.
"No!"
There was a wet, agonized gurgle as Markus staggered and pitched forward onto his knees, his hands reaching up futilely to staunch the flow of blood. Tiris jumped, growling as he backed up against Zoen, head low and ears pricked. Salric started forward before Felix latched onto his arms, holding him back as Blaine stepped back from the dying paladin, eyes firmly on the ceiling. "No!" Salric cried again, horrified. "You crazy son of a bitch, what did you do?!"
"You killed Markus." Zoen blinked, staring incomprehensibly as Markus stopped gurgling and fell to the ground, motionless. "You killed Markus?"
Markus?
"I fulfilled my end," said Blaine to the death knight. His eyes stayed up. "See to it that you honor yours."
She was laughing - when had she started laughing? - as she walked over to Markus (to the body). "This is one knight, Arnol. I'm owed two more." Jagged teeth were bared in a grin as her eyes fell on Salric, and Felix, and then Zoen. "How generous of you. You brought an extra." Motion behind her caught their attention; the ghouls (how, thought Zoen in terror, did we forget the bleeding ghouls?!) had crawled their way forward, jaws hanging open and clawed hands twitching towards the warm flesh before them. Saliva drooled from the mouth of the least-rotted of them.
The death knight smiled once more and gestured to Blaine. "Three souls, including Sir Tarren down there. That was the deal. We were just going to feed Arnol to the zombies," he finally looked down from the ceiling and squawked in protest, "but it seems he brought someone to take his place." She raised a hand, flicking her fingers towards the living. "Feast."
The horde descended.
Time broke. She could not explain it any other way. It had been stretched thin, pulled and tugged by peaceful lulls that lasted an eternity and bouts of terror that condensed an hour into a millisecond, unhealed by bronze dragons. The stress had been too much, and now it had snapped, torn apart at the seams and left everyone stranded in some place where it cared not to touch. Reality might have started to unravel at the edges of their little time-lost island; it would not have overly surprised the hunter. Her sanity was starting to unravel as well.
It took the zombies an eon to leap through the air towards the group, claws outstretched and jaws unhinged, horror incarnate at the height of the arc. Salric took advantage of that eon; where they had been slowed, he had been boosted with speed. It took him a half-second to wrestle out of Felix's grip. Another half-second was spent kicking open the door that had closed behind them. A full two seconds consisted of him curling his hands around the scruffs of Felix and Zoen, and one last moment was expended to drag them through the doorway and out into the dark hall. Tiris must have learned to teleport; he was already out there and waiting, snarling and growling even as he prepared to flee for his life. The death knight and the necromancer (and Blaine, can't forget Blaine, he's scarily good with a knife) had been frozen. Time did not seem to like them very much. Zoen couldn't blame it.
The door slammed behind them, the catalyst for Time's reparation. The group had just cleared away from it when the ghouls burst through, and belatedly Zoen thought, Oh yeah, it opens out to the hall as she bolted from the moaning host. Tiris was ahead of them, acting as (as Blaine) as the leader, growling and barking at them like some anti-psychopomp. It felt familiar. They had outrun ghouls before, they could do so again. For a few blessed seconds, escape even seemed possible.
The hunter should not have been so foolish as to hope.
"Darn it!" Earlier, she had thought it was so cute that he didn't swear, like a puppy trying to growl ferociously but just lacking the strength to back it up. It was just a reaction to glance back towards the sound, half-grinning in amusement, because at seventeen-eighteen-nineteen, who didn't swear every other word? Felix Soras, apparently.
So she looked back, forgetting for a brief second the gravity of the situation, because Felix Soras didn't swear even when he was running for his life and his soul. She looked back.
She should not have looked back.
He had tripped - stumbled over something she couldn't see. Air? His own feet? It didn't matter. He'd crashed down to his knees (like Markus), scrabbling to get up and get moving again. He almost got back up before the first ghoul grabbed him, claws tearing into his shoulder as its weight sent him back down to the ground. The other four were quick to join in, landing on Felix like some twisted dog pile.
Hands (claws) wrapped around her arm, and a palm came up to cover her eyes. "Don't look," she heard Salric shudder. "Run. Don't look back." He twisted her around and dragged her forward, towards Tiris and a hallway she recognized. Then the first scream pierced the air, and she looked back again. And couldn't look away.
Moldy, rotted teeth shone in the dim light, made shiny with red blood as they sunk into flesh and tore it off. Chunks of meat came loose from the wriggling, living corpse, harsh screams escaping from a throat that hadn't yet been torn out. Claws tore at one of Felix's cheeks, shredding it before bringing the mess to a broken jaw that couldn't even chew. Meat slipped out of burst stomachs to fall to the floor to join the pileup of gore that was sullying the unholy hallway. Bones snapped, ripped out of the flesh of fingers and arms and legs to get to the marrow inside.
And Felix was still screaming.
Zoen heard a snap, and thought it was another of his bones before she realized it was her own mind.
One of his arms wasn't covered by a zombie. The three fingers still attached to his hand began to glow in a soft yellow light that steadily grew in intensity. It spread up his mangled arm, towards his stripped back and quickly encompassed his entire body. The ghouls, which hadn't noticed the light in their feasting, began to shriek in pain and try to get away from their meal. Chains materialized from nothing, wrapping around their rotted bodies, the sound of flesh sizzling joining the cacophony of Felix's screams. The screams sounded different, though - not just cries of agony, but almost linguistic, almost like a chant -
- or a spell -
- and the Light reached a blinding luminosity, and the ghouls' shrieks reached a new decibel as they were engulfed in the fires of righteousness.
Just before she blacked out, Zoen thought she saw Felix smile and wave before the fires devoured him as well.
He could have been great.
He could have been a lot of things. But he was already great.
A hand gently pushed against her shoulder. A ragged voice that sounded suspiciously like Salric begged, "Please wake up." It wasn't Salric, of course; he was too proud to beg.
Then her eyes opened, and she remembered (knife knight Markus mangled screaming eaten flesh), and realized that her ability to judge character really wasn't as great as she had thought.
She blinked a few times to get used to the lighting before asking, "How long was I out?"
"Little more than five minutes. I told you not to look." The boy crouching before her had aged a decade in an hour. Inky hair drenched in sweat had fallen over blue eyes that were much, much too old, and the life that he had practically exuded before was gone, replaced by a haunted hollowness.
Life. She thought of Markus and Felix, and bit her lip and looked down, unable to look at those old eyes. "I'm sorry," she choked out. "Sal - Light, I'm so sorry. Your friends..."
His jaw clenched. His voice was emotionless, a stark contrast to the passion he usually spoke with. "Don't apologize. It wasn't your fault."
"But... but Felix...?"
"Gone." He shook his head, and more hair fell into his eyes. A broken laugh escaped him. "He escaped. Burnt himself and the ghouls down to ash. They won't be able to raise anything from it." She saw his fingers twitch, like Felix's (mangled screaming eaten flesh) had just before the spell had begun.
Would you do that? she pondered. Would you kill us to save us? Burn us to ashes to escape Markus' fate? Can you? She said nothing, though, merely reached up to brush the hair out of his eyes and ignored his trembling frame and didn't comment on how hard he must have been biting his cheek. A black mass moved at her side, and she looked away from Salric to where Tiris was skulking around scattered, rusted weaponry.
Salric followed her line of sight. "Your wolf's pretty smart." She ignored the crack in his voice. "I mean, he didn't find anything super useful, but it's better than nothing, right?" He offered her the most pathetic excuse for a smile she'd ever seen. "Better tetanus than d-" He stopped and rose quickly to his feet, turning from Zoen to grab a broken sword with a mostly intact hilt, minus the shattered pommel. He swung it experimentally, cursing when the grip gave out, snapping in half and sending the blade flying towards Tiris. The wolf dodged out of the way, snarling threateningly at Salric. "It's not my fault this is all junk!" the paladin snapped without bite. Carefully, he picked up a blade without a hilt. "Think this'll give me tetanus?"
Zoen chuckled, pushing back thoughts of (mangled screaming eaten flesh) earlier as she got to her feet, cracking her knuckles and twisting her neck. For being out for only five minutes, it was amazing how quickly -
She froze, the pop! of her neck exceptionally loud as she stared at the night elf leaning casually against the door frame, normal and torn ears shooting behind her head. The necromancer stood beside her, silent as a ghost. Blaine was nowhere to be found.
The elf grinned, showing off her fangs. "Boo."
The hunter didn't think. Dropping to her knees (like Markus, like Felix), she blindly reached out, her hand encircling a tarnished dagger. Gracelessly, she rose to her feet, and threw the blade as hard as she could at the necromancer's heart.
She missed, pitching too far to the side. The knife sunk into his shoulder and the magician shrieked in pain, staggering back as pale hands reached for the weapon to yank it out. The hood fell back, revealing a sunken, skeletal face twisted by fury. Blood dripped down from his new wound, staining his already-dark robes. The hunter barked a laugh. "Death's all great and good until it hurts, right?"
A bolt of shadow magic exploded beside Zoen's head, missing her by scant inches and leaving a crater in the stone wall behind her. The necromancer sneered. "Wretched little brat -"
A black monster surged forward, landing on the necromancer's chest and knocking the man over. There was a shout from within the cloak and a gleam of white in the firelight as powerful jaws stretched wide and made for the man's throat. A wet gurgle of a scream (Markus reaching for his throat) sliced the air as the wolf mauled him, ripping and tearing like the ghouls on Felix.
(Mangled screaming eaten flesh)
Movement caught Zoen's eye; horrified, she tried to shout for the wolf to return. The knight was too quick, though. Drawing a runeblade from her side, she grasped the blade in two hands and plunged down, through Tiris' spine, through his heart, burst through his ribcage to impale the necromancer below him. The screams and snarls silenced instantly.
Zoen couldn't move. A hollow, empty ache began to settle in her chest cavity, like someone had torn her heart out and left the space vacant to fester. Five years flashed by, the life of a wolf that should have been immortal, or at least outlived her. The wolf always outlived the hunter. They always spent their remaining years howling at sky, mourning their master until they joined them in the stars. It wasn't the other way around. She wasn't supposed to watch him die.
Satisfied, the elf ripped the sword out, letting Tiris' corpse slump to the side. She motioned to him. "I'll make sure his corpse goes with you," she assured. "I'm sure he'll serve you as well in death as he did in life."
Their eternity was supposed to be spent hunting in the stars together forever. Shackled together in the Scourge was never what they were promised.
"You really can't run," said the death knight, smiling unkindly. "If you don't die to me, you'll get eaten by the ghouls outside. If that other boy was any example, you know how awfully painful that is."
Zoen choked on air, thoughts of Felix (mangled screaming eaten flesh peeled from stained bones as marrow is sucked like malt candy) making her ill. Salric trembled violently beside her, whether from fear or rage or both she didn't know. He tightened his grip on the rusted blade, the ragged edges cutting into his palm. He was, thought Zoen, most definitely going to get tetanus.
The knight was still smiling. She held out her free hand enticingly, palm up as she crooked a finger at them. "You're not leaving this island alive. Food for the mindless or soldiers for the Master - either way, your souls will never reach the Light."
Salric snorted, "Worth a shot," and charged forward, blade raised high.
The hunter wasn't sure what she expected. Quick as thought, the night elf dodged Salric's downward swipe, the blade only barely managing to nick her good ear. With one hand, she bashed his head against the door frame, dazing him. The other came to grip his jaw. This time, Zoen did not look.
There was a sick crack!, and the sound of something crumpling to the ground.
The elf laughed. "No, it really wasn't." Bright eyes focused on the hunter, feral smile in place. "You might as well just come here. I'm going to kill you no matter what."
"No matter what." Hollow, dead words. Terrible last words.
We were promised the stars, Tir. One last sharp secret hid in a sleeve. She could feel the edge break into her skin, could feel the tetanus work its way into her system, determined to make a home for itself before the host went cold. Slow movements brought the hunter to her feet. Slower steps brought her towards the grinning death knight. Somewhere in the cracked, mangled wreck that her mind had been reduced to, she thought she could hear a funeral dirge.
We were promised the stars. The blade was rising, stained in wolf's blood and necromancer's blood, and Salric had died so bloodlessly compared to them. Quick and clean and painless except for getting his head smashed into a frame. Did she want a death like that?
No. Pure, unadulterated fear filled her as soon as she was close, and she pulled out the one last sharp secret, hearing the knight's roar as the blade sunk into her cheek and Zoen leaped over Tiris (his eyes like dead stars) into the hallway because everyone was dead dead dead and the Light couldn't just abandon them all in this forsaken wreck -
- and then she was on fire, her back split open from her left shoulder to her right hip, the blade slicing through her spine and she was falling -
The knight snarled, "Welcome to the Scourge."
- and falling and falling and blood was everywhere but inside her and she didn't want to die she didn't want to die
I don't want to die.
Where were the stars? Bleary eyes traveled up and up, past gory Cult banners and the un-light torches to the stone ceiling, and where was the sky she couldn't see the sky
and it was so dark she couldn't see couldn't breathe couldn't think couldn't live
it was so dark...
and she couldn't
she couldn't
... it's so dark...
A/N: Props to Buglet for helping me iron this out, and helping come up with the name Blaine Arnol as a reference to Benedict Arnold. If the prose started to sound a little... unhinged... after Markus' death, that was intentional. Zoen was, more of less, going into shock (and going completely mad.) I have absolutely no idea if what Felix did is possible in any form, but after that unceremonious murder of Markus, at leastsomeone deserved to go out with a bang. Might as well be the little badass I never properly developed.
Zoen's whole "eternity in the stars" thing is a reference to the Orion myth and constellation. Of course, it could also be seen as Kaldorei influence. As the premier archers of the Alliance, it's inevitable that their stories would hold some appeal to an up-and-coming hunter with an affinity for bows.
Antumbra was a bear, a bear that was rushed and yet took for bloody ever to finish. Next up: Nascency. You old readers of Lich Child, remember how Zoen acted as a death knight?
She's worse.
She is so very, very worse.
This is going to be so fun.