Friday fic
Oct. 2nd, 2009 05:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
norcumiHoly carp, it's Friday, and I've writing for y'all! I'm not sure when I cranked most of this out - before the latest... writing efforts I've had. ;) That's the most definitive I've got. This is the actual Kharisa and events surrounding her death knight-ness. So... fic! From the literal beginning of said fic.
Thawing
The fever had lasted for days. Burning, sweating, and knowing somehow, deep down inside that her very essence was being chased away by the plague. She had finally stumbled from the tent on legs that shook and should never have supported her weight; starvation-ridden muscles taking on the uncaring strength of the undeath that waited. She had walked out of the tent, into the field, under a brilliant moon.
There had been prayer.
Or perhaps there had been cursing.
Elune had been involved somehow, but the question of invocation or damnation was unanswerable. The Lady had not answered, whichever it had been. But things had gotten very, very quiet.
Deathly still.
And then the cold; beautiful, numbing, oh-so-distant cold that swept over her and carried her off with bony hands.
The Voice came later, but later came so quickly it was as if there was only nothingness in-between.
“Rise, and serve me!”
Colder than the cold that had brought relief from the fever, sharper than a blade, it rang not in her ears, but between them, somewhere maybe where her soul had once been. Her eyes opened, and for a moment there was only the impossible flawless blue found in the heart of ice magics.
Then a citadel. A room. Beings that spoke and demanded she move from the depths of that ice, and when all she could think of was to beg for more from that ice-like voice, they seemed pleased. Clothing was placed upon her, and she shied away from vague memories of a doll she once draped fabric over in a similar fashion.
Odd.
Frustrating.
This single action shielded her, sheathed her in plate that did not warm, preserving that cold, but those little actions of robed humans made the ice start to crack. Childhood had not been cold. Teldrassil had never been cold, never known the cruel breath of winter. And she, this new doll, was robed and maneuvered and presented -
Ah, that voice! Coming from the mouth of something like a mortal man, it did not have quite the majesty, or the power, but ice smoothed over those cracks, and he made his promises. Not with words – those were simple, direct. Go forth. Slay. Destroy my enemies. No, the promises whispered in her mind, his voice speaking words, other words, even as he sent her out to slay.
Kill. Let the chilling blood bathe away any warmth and humanity you ever possessed. Let the ice and plague consume you. Slay. Do not hesitate. Destroy my enemies. Be my newest blade of ice!
And she obeyed.
It was the little things that made the cracks reappear, deepen. It was not the slaughtered lives. It was not the pleas for mercy, groveled whimpers for a granny or children.
It was plucking one of those so-precious saronite arrows from an almost corpse the same way she remembered pulling flowers from the ground, with a care and precision to make sure the precious leaf fletchings remained true. No – leaves? Arrows! There were no plants, no hunt for precious herbs only the recovery of more weapons for The Voice.
Destroy them all!
It was the moon-soft glow surrounding a priest's hands and staff as he tried to strike her down, the Light flowing through him and brutally warm as it sliced open her skin. It cracked open the ice around her mind, and the memories flowed like the man's blood over her blade. When she had once opened herself to the Light, Elune's grace, haloing her with warmth, the rightness to the universe, the way it serenely carried her though anything but with a warmth that had her hands at least once wrist deep in a dwarf's guts as she healed him from the inside out because he had been wounded and she could heal and thus -
No mercy! the voice had cried as she had stared down at a human in scarlet priest robes. It had been long, long minutes while she stared, and more still until she slowly turned back to the slaughter.
Several of the cracks had become permanent at that time. Some of his blood lingered on her bracers, and she did not wipe them away.
END SEGMENT
Thawing
The fever had lasted for days. Burning, sweating, and knowing somehow, deep down inside that her very essence was being chased away by the plague. She had finally stumbled from the tent on legs that shook and should never have supported her weight; starvation-ridden muscles taking on the uncaring strength of the undeath that waited. She had walked out of the tent, into the field, under a brilliant moon.
There had been prayer.
Or perhaps there had been cursing.
Elune had been involved somehow, but the question of invocation or damnation was unanswerable. The Lady had not answered, whichever it had been. But things had gotten very, very quiet.
Deathly still.
And then the cold; beautiful, numbing, oh-so-distant cold that swept over her and carried her off with bony hands.
The Voice came later, but later came so quickly it was as if there was only nothingness in-between.
“Rise, and serve me!”
Colder than the cold that had brought relief from the fever, sharper than a blade, it rang not in her ears, but between them, somewhere maybe where her soul had once been. Her eyes opened, and for a moment there was only the impossible flawless blue found in the heart of ice magics.
Then a citadel. A room. Beings that spoke and demanded she move from the depths of that ice, and when all she could think of was to beg for more from that ice-like voice, they seemed pleased. Clothing was placed upon her, and she shied away from vague memories of a doll she once draped fabric over in a similar fashion.
Odd.
Frustrating.
This single action shielded her, sheathed her in plate that did not warm, preserving that cold, but those little actions of robed humans made the ice start to crack. Childhood had not been cold. Teldrassil had never been cold, never known the cruel breath of winter. And she, this new doll, was robed and maneuvered and presented -
Ah, that voice! Coming from the mouth of something like a mortal man, it did not have quite the majesty, or the power, but ice smoothed over those cracks, and he made his promises. Not with words – those were simple, direct. Go forth. Slay. Destroy my enemies. No, the promises whispered in her mind, his voice speaking words, other words, even as he sent her out to slay.
Kill. Let the chilling blood bathe away any warmth and humanity you ever possessed. Let the ice and plague consume you. Slay. Do not hesitate. Destroy my enemies. Be my newest blade of ice!
And she obeyed.
It was the little things that made the cracks reappear, deepen. It was not the slaughtered lives. It was not the pleas for mercy, groveled whimpers for a granny or children.
It was plucking one of those so-precious saronite arrows from an almost corpse the same way she remembered pulling flowers from the ground, with a care and precision to make sure the precious leaf fletchings remained true. No – leaves? Arrows! There were no plants, no hunt for precious herbs only the recovery of more weapons for The Voice.
Destroy them all!
It was the moon-soft glow surrounding a priest's hands and staff as he tried to strike her down, the Light flowing through him and brutally warm as it sliced open her skin. It cracked open the ice around her mind, and the memories flowed like the man's blood over her blade. When she had once opened herself to the Light, Elune's grace, haloing her with warmth, the rightness to the universe, the way it serenely carried her though anything but with a warmth that had her hands at least once wrist deep in a dwarf's guts as she healed him from the inside out because he had been wounded and she could heal and thus -
No mercy! the voice had cried as she had stared down at a human in scarlet priest robes. It had been long, long minutes while she stared, and more still until she slowly turned back to the slaughter.
Several of the cracks had become permanent at that time. Some of his blood lingered on her bracers, and she did not wipe them away.
END SEGMENT
