Elirtache “Tache” Kuvaeth

He realized, trudging over the frozen landscape, that he truly did love her. It had to be love. Only adoration of the deepest, most soul binding kind could see him follow her into that wretched castle. This made Tache feel noble, that what he desired, even if it was against her wishes, was pure because it was put through the crucible of love.

The voice in his head knew when to urge him on with gentle encouragement and praise. The voice had been masculine but was now feminine and gentle. The most beautiful voice he had ever heard. It told him his heart was good and true, to keep moving, that every step closer meant a swift end to all of his suffering forevermore.

Shadows moved through the trees. Shadows made of wine dark crimson, flowing like mist. Girlish laughter chased him with mocking sweetness. The voice assured him they were only there to help should he falter. Should the cold prove too much for his weak…mortal…flesh.

The laughter became the braying cackle of hyenas, of animalistic things giggling with snarls and growls, hisses and low rumbles under the bright mirth. Hungry sounds in the dark. When he staggered, they closed in, beautiful elvish women with snow pale skin and bright red mouths. They were as cold as the ice that crunched underfoot, like animated marble, smooth and hard to the touch, delicate feminine flesh merely an illusion for sharp teeth and endless appetite.

They carried him as if he weighed no more than a child, nipping at him, drawing blood, though no more than teasing scratches to amuse their palettes. Up close, they were not beautiful and winsome. Their eyes were bloody and their smiles too wide, filled with serrated teeth. His whimpered protests were lost to the howl of the wind.

He could scarcely comprehend what had become of the ruins of the Shadowglade estate. What was once a crumbling wall of moss and algae stained stucco, scorched black from the lethal fire…what was once a field of barren earth littered with bones and toppled garden statues…a pond with brackish water…now was a sprawling complex of strange buildings. The air felt warm and humid even as the snow fell. The buildings looked like black marble temples to some wicked god and only now did he feel the first licks of mortal terror.

The voice had no need to soothe as it had him where it wanted him. Gone was the presence bleeding comfort into his brain. Too late he realized this had been an act of control, like Lillandyr’s magic, but more refined and far more insidious. It had all seemed like his idea.

He clutched a dark Dracone rose to his chest and had a wild thought. There was magic in this blossom, surely. He had sensed and seen it, shimmering in the air, the pollen infused with arcane. Could it sense his peril? Could it save him, alert Lillandyr who…he hoped…would come to his rescue?

He prayed to it like a child who didn’t understand the esoteric and the way of gods as the strange women dressed in diaphanous gold and crimson silk dragged him past the temples and altars that littered the steaming landscape. He had never gone this far back, through the brittle, dead orchards. Lillandyr told him all that was there was a lifeless irontree, bark black, with twisted branches clawing at the sky. The symbol of House Shadowglade. He had thought it terribly romantic and a little eerie that a house should have a dead tree as its symbol, but seeing it disavowed him of any sweet notions.

It was a horrid thing, huge and gnarled, ancient and malformed. It seemed to writhe as if in pain, massive roots coiled above the earth before obscenely plunging deep. Not even the roaring wind of the winter storm could bend the branches or make them sway. It looked like a tree carved out of dusky, dark stone. The tree filled Tache with such profound dread that he began to beg and whimper.

“Please…no,” he said to the heedless, jubilant women who only dragged him onward, his protests lost and half hearted at best.

He knew then that this was not what was promised. He had been seduced and misled. He had bet on the wrong horse when he had devoted himself to a woman who had never loved him. The sick part of him that desired degradation threaded through the terror, spilling horrified arousal through him as he was hauled inside of the dead irontree.

The inside of the tree was hollow and lit by flickering torches spilling dark smoke into the air, stinking as though they burned something greasy and foul. Something that smelled like cooking, rancid meat. He twisted and struggled then when in the circle of the torch light. Tache could see a long, stone slab and half of a body resting on its blood drenched surface. Two genderless, reanimated corpses, skin like crinkled, dry parchment, dipped silk cloth into bowls filled with blood they held. They squeezed and dribbled the blood over the desecrated remains on the slab.

It had no face, not anymore. Only a few leathery strips of flesh clung to the skull. But oh, it did have eyes. Intelligent witch lights that flickered and flared when they rested on his struggling body. He knew that this was the voice in his head. This thing was Anya’s father…or what was left of him. Only a torso and head remained, shining wet with blood that kept it ‘alive’. Dried, curled entrails spilled out of the jagged mess of the abdomen.

Tache screamed and thrashed wildly. The voice murmured in his head, but he refused to listen. He crushed the Dracone rose in his hand, the thorns biting into his palms. His prayers continued to spill from his lips as his tears wet his face. Please, please, please…

There would not be an answer. The magic did not work for him. It rejected him as the foul, craven worm that he was.

The flickering torchlight caught on something golden, something at the back of the inside of the irontree. Tache had the impression of eyes, of being seen by this shine of gold in the darkness. Through the stench of lurid blood and the giggling of the ravenous creatures that pressed him down next to the ruined corpse on the slab, he saw shimmers in the air that held all of his attention rapt.

Whatever it was…was going to save him. He knew this. He felt it as he crushed the black petals in his trembling hands. These gilded motes of light settled on him, moved over his body, tingling and warm, eating through the numb, frozen cold. He wept at their touch, filled with a sense of completeness…of rightness. He thanked these lights for delivering him from what he knew would have been a grisly fate.

The little lights all coalesced and sank between his fingers before pulling open his fists. They wound around the crushed petals and lifted them from his hands. He watched as they floated gently above him, drawn to the back of the irontree. As the little lights bore the crushed petals, for a moment, what he thought was woman’s face was illuminated by these motes. She watched the petals from her prison and tomb of twisted roots that pierced her frozen flesh. The motes of light flared, consumed the petals and the face was gone as it was swallowed by darkness. The golden eyes closed again, and Tache forgotten if he had even been acknowledged at all.

That was the moment the blade crunched through his sternum and pierced his racing heart. Tache’s death was swift, barely even registered by the Shal’dorei who let out a pathetic wheeze. The lights had not come for him, but for the rose. A gift for the spirit of the tree.

The natural order was not allowed to continue. His spirit was needed as much as his blood and anima were. The cursed blade that pierced his heart drew his howling spirit into it as the ruined body of Anya’s father was placed on top of his. The reanimated corpse of Astalon Shadowglade began to hiss and smoke, old mummified flesh melting, bones disintegrating until it was all a vile, bubbling, viscous liquid. The muck slithered into Tache’s nostrils and gaping mouth as the blade tore apart his spirit and used the energy of it to bind Astalon to his new body.

When it was done, the body of Elirtache Kuvaeth sat up and pulled the dagger free from his chest it left a forever wound that would never fully close, weeping dark blood and ichor. Astalon’s cold gaze was drawn to his palms where the Dracone rose’s thorns had pierced the skin. These bled too but had the taste of the enemy.

And this pleased him. Very much.

Without a master or mistress or any regard from anyone at all, he simmered in a rancid cocktail of terror, desperate longing, and boiling hatred.

He hated Lillandyr with every fiber of his being. He hated that if she beckoned him with crooked finger and slick smile, he’d crawl back to her and kiss her feet. He pictured it often, his favorite fantasy. She would humiliate him, make him beg even though it was her that had wronged him. He’d crawl on the ground on his belly, prostrate himself in worship and grovel for her abuse.

He wept as he abused himself in a variety of erotic ways, chasing pleasure and pain in equal measure, knowing he was pathetic and enjoying writhing around in the muck of his own sick desires. When he had finished and made a mess of himself, his spend over his fist, snot and tears on his face, he heard a smooth voice in his head, a soothing rumble, tell him all would be well. That he was good. That he was doing just as he was supposed to.

Tache reckoned he had finally gone completely mad.

Narrow chest heaving, flesh stinging from the harm he’d done, he heard the voice again.

Forget them all. Anya and Varistan. You do not need to serve them because you were meant to serve me.

Tache recoiled away from the voice but as it came from inside his own skull, he merely stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over rubble and debris. He’d taken to living in ruined parts of the castle where Manus’s presence felt the most thin. The places the entity turned his attention from.

His home for now was a ruined room in a ruined tower, not knowing the history behind it and not really caring. No one came here and his only company was the moaning of the wind. Now, he swore the wind was playing tricks on him, whispering to him.

Inside this room he had boxes of Lillandyr’s things he was able to save from her basement. Often, he fondled and held them to feel closer to her. Sometimes, he’d sniff them, hoping for a whiff of her perfume of juicy peach and smoky cognac.

He tore the tape off a box he’d yet to look in and pawed through it. Lock picks, quills and bottles of ink. Trinkets were towards the bottom. An earring made of fake sapphires with no match…and oh? A very handsome pocket watch.

Narrowing his eyes, Tache scooped it up and gave the winding mechanism a twist, feeling the watch tick against his palm. He’d like to pocket it, he thought. It was very nice. Turning it over in his hands, he saw the engraving on the back. H. Dracone.

Of course.

He drew back his fist to sling it…and felt it leave his palm. It vanished. Sputtering, Tache spun in a half circle, looking for it. It couldn’t have just vanished! He had to have dropped it surely.

As he looked around, feeling insane, the voice slid into his skull again. And with the words came knowledge and emotion. And the intense need to obey immediately.

The voice told him a great many things, dangerous things. Poisonous things. If he hated everyone in the castle including the entity itself, then he could come and see it destroyed. He could have a hand in the final downfall. He could even serve Anya again, when the time was right.

Lord Astalon Shadowglade, Anya and Varistan’s father, used shadowy magic that Tache didn’t understand. Every foothold in a mind could spread like a disease to other minds. Varistan merely delivered the contagion unknowingly. Varistan, the voice told him, wasn’t important enough to understand the role he played. The manipulative coo seemed to imply that Tache was important enough.

Desperate to believe this, to know he could have his revenge, Tache obeyed the voice implicitly. And while Manus was distracted with Lillandyr and Leonardo, Tache gathered one, perfect, Dracone rose and left the castle in the driving blizzard to make his trek to the ruins of the Shadowglade Estate.

His presence in the Castle was not noticed. Not by any of the abominable residents or even his former Mistress. Even the entity, Manus, largely ignored him after frightening him horribly. Tache never asked Manus for a crumb. He was like a man who lived in the walls, sneaking out very late to eat leftovers off Lillandyr’s plates, smoking her half smoked cigarillos and drinking her flat champagne, pressing his lips to the rouge marks on the glasses and groaning at the waxy perfume and texture.

His unrequited love soured inside him, making him think foul, bitter thoughts. How could she DO this to him? After all he’d done, after how faithfully he served her for a fucking decade. He sat at the great dining table alone, at three in the morning, drinking flat champagne and smoking. His shirt was undone to his navel, his long, white hair in a tangled disarray. He had no idea how handsome he was all unhinged and half mad…maybe it would have bolstered his spirits a little if he’d known.

He sat there, barely moving, staring, tears sliding down his face, until dawn. Until mid morning. And finally until afternoon. All of his failures, his disappointments wound around his heart and squeezed the very will to breathe right out of him. Tache had never before considered…not existing, but he was certainly at his lowest. He hadn’t even wanted her love, he thought pathetically. He’d just wanted things to be as they had been. Before fucking Heathcliff bastard Dracone ruined everything.

Tache had never understood the relationship between Lillandyr and Heathcliff. He’d been there for nearly the whole thing. Held her as she cried. Listened to her rant about being JEALOUS OF HERSELF when Heathcliff wrote fan letters to her pen name, not knowing it was really her. He’d consoled her, told her she was the most beautiful woman in the world, the most clever, the most wicked and pleasing. The man had tormented her! Dragged her heart around endlessly. She should have crushed him. Tache’s disappointment at her fawning behavior over this ABOMINATION was more than he could bear.

At first, he’d assumed she meant only to take all of Heathcliff’s wealth. He’d hoped they could have conspired together to kill him and make it look like an accident…but oh no. She had to actually love him. Tache couldn’t understand it!

He looked up sourly, eyes red rimmed. Fucking Castle, he thought. He had the sudden, overwhelming urge to take the entire place apart, stone by stone, even if it took him a million years.

Tache had offered Manus endless servitude. He’d groveled like a fucking dog…for what? To be ignored again. He supposed he could blame himself. He was repulsive, he knew this. His behavior, desires, all aberrant and sick. But he was very tired of hating himself and putting others on gilded pedestals just so they could spit on him.

That glorious afternoon, the alchemy of unrequited love, frustration, heartache and ambition all conspired to change the course of Tache’s life forever. The Castle…was suddenly empty. Heathcliff and Lillandyr left and so did Manus.

All the finery vanished. The place became an inhospitable ruin. Dust covered everything and the only tracks through it were little mouse paw prints. There was no light, enchanted or otherwise. All was crumbling desolation.

It delighted him.

Until a strange woman came into the dining hall.

She had white hair, all in a wild tangle around her arresting face. The woman was lovely, with delicate features and huge, wide eyes, but she looked so obviously unhinged and insane that Tache recoiled in his chair, wishing he wasn’t quite so hammered. If there was any time to be sober, it was right then.

She wore a tattered, white shift streaked with blood. The rust colored stains originated between her breasts, over her heart. Obscenely, vines sunk into the skin there and spread out to curl around her throat and arms. Dark, glossy rose blossoms clung to the vines. The Dracone roses that Tache had seen growing on everything. He hated them. They made him exceptionally uneasy. Any time he saw one on the inside of the castle, he plucked it and stomped on it until it was dust. He knew (from eavesdropping, a favorite pastime), that the roses grew from Dracone blood. It seemed this woman fed the roses with her flesh and blood, the mark of their thorns all over her pale skin.

“You are not he!” She shouted, pointing at him.

He rubbed a hand over his haggard face. Of course she was insane. Everyone in the castle was mad, he was convinced. “Of course I’m not. I’m never what anyone wants,” he said sourly.

“The God trapped here has fled, it seems,” the woman whispered, looking around with wide eyes.

“Manus? Oh, yes he fucked off,” Tache said, waving a hand. He reached for the bottle of whiskey and took a long pull. He’d grown more bold in stealing things he found around the Castle, including top shelf liquor.

The woman let out a low, keening wail of despair. She collapsed to her knees and began to tear at her hair. Tache did not like this. He found it intolerable. Frightening. All he wanted to do was leave. And perhaps that was the answer.

“Right. I’m leaving,” Tache said, pushing up from the table and staggering towards the foyer.

He’d had enough of terrifying entities in haunted castles. Enough of Heathcliff. Enough of listening to the trilling laughter of his former Mistress and seeing her so happy. It nauseated him.

Tache left the castle…with no direction. No idea of where he was going. He followed the winding road down and was lured by the sound of the sea. He’d never much cared for the ocean, considering how he’d smuggled himself out of Suramar.

He had been a well respected vintner and thus, considered upper class though he hadn’t been. The revolution was not any of his fucking business so he just kept working, making sure the gentry got their arcwine. Apparently, this was just as bad as cavorting with demons and slaying babies in their cribs and he was slated for…elimination just like the nobility. So, he simply smuggled himself out of the situation in a wine barrel. The journey by ship…in a wine barrel…had been harrowing to say the least and he definitely got seasick. In the barrel.

He’d not enjoyed that adventure at all and had avoided the sea ever since.

All the same, the salt, chill air and the crash of the waves soothed him and he walked down to the beach, bottle of whiskey in hand. Tache sat on a flat rock and looked out over the ocean, trying to think just what the hell he was going to do with himself.

Suddenly, someone settled beside him, close enough their thighs touched. Tache let out a startled shriek and whirled to face the interloper.

“Varistan?” He sputtered. The disgraced nobleman was the last person Tache expected to see. His pulse raced wildly as he readied to defend himself.

But Varistan Veyne Sunmourne only gave him a wide, closed lipped smile. The man looked pale, unwell even and his eyes were a ghastly shade of subtly glowing red the same shade as the bloody spill of his long hair. After a moment, Varistan looped an arm around Tache’s shoulders.

“Look who wandered down to the beach,” Varistan cooed, yanking Tache close. “Relax,” he soothed, “Shhh…not so tense. I’ve seen the light. I’m a changed man. I’m not going to…attack you,” he said…very unconvincingly.

Tache cringed and tried to gently and diplomatically extract himself. “I…I don’t work for Lady Shadowglade anymore. Really. I don’t want any trouble.”

Varistan rolled his eyes. “Blah blah blah. I don’t care! It doesn’t matter. Anya is quite safe from me, you don’t need to fret. In fact…you’re just the man I needed to see. You are going to help me keep a close eye on my baby sister.”

None of that made any sense to Tache. Varistan clearly knew about Lillandyr’s deception. He spoke her real name. But…if he knew, Tache wasn’t sure why he called her his sister. Not that it mattered! He didn’t want anything to do with any of these people anymore.

“She’s quite fine, I assure you,” Tache snipped. “Engaged. Living in the lap of luxury.”

Varistan tsk’d. “My little sister sleeps in the heart of the enemy. She’s far from ‘fine’. I don’t expect you to understand, but you will. In time.”

Lord Sunmourne slid his arm from off Tache’s shoulders to cup his cheeks, much to Tache’s horror. Looking into Varistan’s eyes was a mistake. He felt strange…warm (which he blamed on the whiskey). Without intending to, he leaned in, smiling stupidly, he could feel his lips pull into a sloppy grin against his will.

“You were such a loyal dog to Anya,” Varistan murmured, his face suddenly horrible. The silvery scars like shattered glass across his visage were barely noticeable and not what made him monstrous. It was the cold, shark-like quality of his crimson eyes, the way they glittered…how empty and hungry they looked. It was the pallor of his skin, just colorless, tinged with gray. It was how fucking cold his long-fingered hands were.

“And now…you’re my pet…aren’t you? My good boy. My little dog. My spy,” Varistan hissed before wrenching Tache’s head back by his hair and sinking his teeth into his throat.

As he lay in bed, awaiting his lord and master’s command, Tache felt his leash pulled. When commands from his Master came, he didn’t hear a voice. He saw no pictures in his head. If he had ever thought Lillandyr was powerful with her shadow, it was only because he had never before touched the power that was Manus. Now that he had, he was the unseen mystery’s creature.

This command slid into him and Tache shuddered, eyes fluttering shut, white lashes trembling on his indigo cheeks. He sat up in bed, breath quickened. Fuck, he thought, he was going to be punished.

“Thank you,” he breathed as he wasn’t reprimanded for stroking his cock.

Lillandyr had returned to the Castle and he was to serve her as he had before. Better than before. He was her toy. He was her servant in all things. She owned him. Manus willed it. This was his punishment and so, if the Lady Shadowglade wished, she could tell him to slit his own throat and he would. Without hesitation.

What a wicked, cruel torture. His Master had quite the sense of humor and put him in mind of a child pulling the wings off a fly. Not because Manus was childish, it was because he was beyond conventional morality and Tache was merely an insect under the gaze of him. Tache was the fly, his wings yanked from his body, his pain too small to consider.

His back bowed as he pleased himself, teeth clenched. And though she aroused him to the point of idiocy, he hated Lillandyr. Despised her. And he would never act against her again. Because Manus willed this.

When he’d finished with himself, Tache dressed in the smart, black silk shirt and black suit that had been conjured for him. He tied his white hair back neatly with a ribbon. His former, preferred attire was unacceptable, offensive to Manus. And while he’d been insulted, Tache also felt the warm regard of being important enough in the moment for his fashion sense to be observed by something so ancient and powerful.

He found Lillandyr late in the afternoon in Dr. Dracone’s bedroom. Thankfully, Heathcliff seemed to be off elsewhere. She sat at a small desk and was writing with quill and ink, dressed only in a sheer black robe trimmed in inky marabou feathers. Her golden hair was piled atop her head and a black cigarillo clung to her painted bottom lip.

God, he thought, I hope she kills me.

Tache cleared his throat politely, excited to see her turn and glare at him. Or worse.

”Lady Shadowglade,” he said, unable to wipe the stupid grin off his face.

Lillandyr whirled around in her chair, eyes blazing, her sneer making her cigarillo fall from her lips. Her poisonous gaze slid over him. “Explain yourself. Quickly,” she said, getting to her feet.

He held up his hands in a placating gesture, swallowing convulsively, prominent Adam’s apple bobbing. “I’m here to resume my duties, my Lady. Manus-“

Lillandyr snatched up a very sharp letter opener fashioned in the shape of a dagger decorated with roses and pigeon’s blood rubies.

Tache took a step backwards, tripping over an overstuffed ottoman and falling painfully onto his backside, long, spindly legs akimbo over the ottoman. “N-now…ha…yes, I can see you are very cross with me,” he stammered, nervous, excited laughter spilling out of him. He was painfully hard.

Lillandyr didn’t say anything. Her lip ticked up at one corner. Tache knew that look and yelped as she advanced on him.

“Lillandyr! Please…listen to me!”

That was the wrong thing to say.

In one, smooth motion, she sat on the chair behind him, bent and snatched his bony wrist. She slammed his hand on the low, occasional table, making little set arounds jump. There, glittering malevolently on her ring finger was a huge, black diamond.

“M-manus!” He gasped out as she raised the letter opener to stab or slice. “He commanded me to serve you. And for you…ah…to punish me,” he said in a rush.

She paused, eyes narrowed. “I should kill you,” she hissed.

He nodded. “Yes. I behaved foolishl-“

”Foolish? You scheming cunt. Plotting to kill Heathcliff and you call it foolish?” She snarled.

Tache’s lips thinned and his shoulders drooped. “Yes, fine! Foolish was too weak a word. But I won’t betray you again. I can’t. Manus wouldn’t allow it.”

Before he could say anything else, Lillandyr stabbed the letter opener into his hand. Strangely, it didn’t hurt at first, but the sight of it was quite shocking and he gasped as his brain caught up to what had happened.

Tache cried out in pain, body going rigid. He desperately wanted to pull the letter opener out of his hand and out of the coffee table, but he didn’t dare. He writhed and bit back whimpers and moans of agony instead.

“Fine,” she snapped, admiring her handiwork. “I have something for you to do, Tache,” she said, tone suspiciously cheery.

“Oh good,” he wheezed, sweating profusely, whimpering.

Lillandyr rose to her feet, standing over him, sneering. “You’ll go to the basement and retrieve my things. My books and tools.”

Tache blanched. The path between the Shadowglade manor ruins and Castle Dracone was dangerous, filled with Wretched and violent naer do wells.

“I’d be delighted to,” he said, voice trembling and strained. His hand felt like it was on fire and he could feel his blood start to puddle under his palm.

Lillandyr kicked him suddenly, making him jump. He yelped pathetically.

“Now. Say you’re sorry,” she told him. “And mean it. I’ll know if you’re lying,” she threatened in a velvety purr.

It was hard to feel anything other than the fiery pain in his hand, but it helped that he had absolutely no dignity left. “I’m terribly sorry for plotting to kill your beloved,” he told her…not feeling sorry for that…just feeling sorry for himself.

Huffing out a sigh, Lillandyr looked as though she might kick him again. He hoped so.

“That will have to do, I suppose,” she said, then she turned to leave.

“Don’t you dare help him!” She shouted at the air, presumably to Manus, as she exited the room.

Ah, Tache thought, a feeling of rightness settling over him even as his hand throbbed. He drew in a sharp breath and wrapped his hand around the letter opener and started to yank it free of his flesh, blood and bone.

It was good to be back.

@wraheathcliff

@draconecastle