#magicwrought

“Is that all.” She speaks as though it were as easy as breathing, as easy to simply exist. But stealth and subterfuge were a way of war that he’d shunned when he’d once had breath and now he finds his own shortcomings rising from the grave he’d left behind to haunt him. “The living always know when death is near. They sense it.”

         “I’m not what you think.” It was a BOLD move to LIE in such a way. To deny what he was when it more than likely would have HELPED his own goals, but times were more DIFFICULT than they had ever been before, “Nor am I a danger.”

                 o’!  how fruitlessly does the worm squirm under the grasp of a matron as grand  &  serene as lady proudmoore.  ( many mistake her for menethil. no, not her. she rips the heart out of one, controls that of the other. love is a weakness, she will never be weak. )  the daughter who foolishly bears her heart to a mother unwitting. a mother who would rip it from her chest, were it still beating. but o’!  some fortunate fools that still remain at-large have beaten proudmoore to that feat already.

                 “my child —-”  proudmoore coos in a way that is almost welcoming, like the sweet release of death after strenuous pain. even the knights of death had a flaw in their masterwork,  &  that was how terribly frail their physical forms were capable of being.  (especially when they wore leather coats &  had pups at their heels. )  

                 the necromancers hands have become more akin to animalistic claws after her resurrection, as if spear  &  blade weren’t sufficient enough. captors would have to rend proudmoores hands from her corpse if they were to assure their own safety.  ( fortunately, she never had any captors. )  

                 like a reaper ready to reap the soul of someone who has their time coming, the woman towers over her battered daughter, nothing more than a feeble wretch trying to make a martyr of themself. one index finger pokes at zoens collar bone, tapping once, twice, as she speaks.

                 “still, you fight.”  the third tap is much harsher this time, piercing into macabre skin with such ease that seems almost impossible for one of arthas’ own.  “still you refuse our humble hospitality?”  a question asked in utter rhetoric, no intents for answering, no room for pause. there are no more taps of that boney claw.

                  like digging through soil for the buried heirloom, proudmoores grasp digs deeper to the girls still beating heart. of course the knights would have no use for it, calia didn’t.doesn’t. the lich queen had ripped that one out herself,  &  that menethil is still fine.

                   for what is a knight to do with the useless weight of a battered, dead heart?  there is only one answer the mother can find sufficient enough for her heavens–high standards.

                   “tear it out –” she grasps the organ as if it was a toy, unwrapped  &  ready to be played with, “–  and devour it whole.”  there is a srrch of the queen plucking the entrail from where it uselessly sat for years on end. she would no longer need it, not now, not ever. so why hoard something so useless?  sentiment?  figuratively?  the answer is wholly irrelevant. with a simple  &  easy gesture. lady proudmoore plucks it from the girls chest like plucking feathers from a molting bird.

     The Wraith bares her teeth at the abomination wearing her mother’s face like a harlequin’s mask - a gruesome, grotesque parody of the woman Jaina Proudmoore, who had never known the fatal bite of Frostmourne, who had not (yet) experienced the all consuming possession of the Lich King. The wrath that blazes cold through her veins feels so similar to that inspired by the lord of the citadel, even tampered down by the same sort of wariness born from recognizing she faces a greater power. There’s only the slightest embers in the pyre, ashes she tries to ignore, that are vacant from the king’s flames. Pity, perhaps, were she capable. Arthas made his choices. Jaina didn’t.

     (SHE CHOSE HIM OVER YOU.       SHE ALWAYS CHOSE HIM OVER YOU.)

     And so like in the face of the Scourge’s Lord, her wrath is useless when thrown the Lady’s way. What concern has a goddess for a young wolf’s disdain? None, certainly, if her attitude is anything to go by. The Queen’s claws scrape along glacial skin, inciting something nearly pain and yet not. Zoen snarls, strains against icy chains, teeth clacking together as she snaps fruitlessly at her captor.

     “I’m not yours.”

     She hates her. (She loved her.) Oh, how she hates. (How she loves.)

     “You can’t - you can’t throw me away again and again and a-fucking-gain and then just - just claim me. It doesn’t work that way, Majesty -”

     Claw pierce skin, and her words stutter, cease. Her touch is so cold - ice, except Zoen is ice, so how can it be that a shiver wracks her spine? She follows Proudmoore’s progress via the burn of frost; can hear bones creak and snap as the Queen navigates through her ribcage -

     What is she...?

    - wraps her talons around Zoen’s heart and yanks.

     It does not - it should not hurt, veins snapping, arteries popping, aorta tearing apart shred by agonizing shred - Zoen gasps, chokes on pain and confusion, because this should not matter. It is but flesh, vestigial tissue, and she is - she is beyond this - she should be beyond this, why does it hurt so Light-damned much -

     “Māter, dēsine.”

     Death knights do not plea and yet she does, voice the cracking ice of a frozen lake caught in springtime heat. A child sobs beneath her skin, echoing through her marrow - there is a memory here somewhere but she doesn’t want, she doesn’t want, she doesn’t want -

ᵃᶰᵈ ʷʰᵉᶰ ʸᵒᵘʳ ᶠᵃᶰᵗᵃˢᶤᵉˢ ᵇᵉᶜᵒᵐᵉ ʸᵒᵘʳ ˡᵉᵍᵃᶜʸ

                                        𝓘 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔥 𝓘 𝔠𝔬𝔲𝔩𝔡 𝔟𝔢𝔩𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢

                                       𝔜𝔬𝔲’𝔡 𝔫𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔯 𝔴𝔯𝔬𝔫𝔤 𝔪𝔢

                                                                    ᵖʳᵒᵐᶤˢᵉ ᵐᵉ ᵃ ᵖˡᵃᶜᵉ ᶤᶰ ʸᵒᵘʳ ʰᵒᵘˢᵉ ᵒᶠ ᵐᵉᵐᵒʳᶤᵉˢ

     @hinmilitus, @brothersindeath, @unholysunblade

                                      𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎'𝚜 𝚗𝚘 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚎.

multimuse aesthetic for the king, the lady, and the knight

     Here’s my atrocious headcanon that horrified myself and @thesealovesme when we realized it:

     THE PLAGUE IS MADE FROM PEOPLE.

     Here’s why, here’s why: y’all remember Noth in the Scarlet Enclave? How we had to help him set up a Plague Cauldron, so he’d give us Noth’s Special Brew and we could hoard them in our banks for the rest of eternity? 

     Remember how we had to throw human skulls into the cauldron to get more brew?!

     I am completely, utterly convinced that the brew was just Plague. Had to be. Nothing else makes sense. Canon is pretty clear that Plague can heal and vitalize (geddit) the undead. So death knights consuming Plague the way we would down health potions is a logical conclusion one could come across. After nearly dying at the Wrathgate, I can see Arthas drinking a lot of Plague to counteract the Blight still poisoning his systems.

     Plague.

          Which, as we’ve established, is made from people.

     Postmortem, everyone’s a cannibal imo. Have to be. The Forsaken straight up om nom on people to regenerate health (although that could just be an in-game mechanic) and if Plague heals, then even those deadies who don’t eat unprocessed people are still cannibals. It’s also kind of fun, in an abstract sense. How the dead must consume the living to avoid being returned to the grave, like they have to constantly re-tie themselves to the mortal plane. Or how the undead are like a disease, ravaging their hosts so that they themselves can continue on. Again, this is just how it appeals to me in a metaphorical, abstract sense.

     I don’t think Arthas is in the habit of chewing on raw hearts or anything, and he can’t cook worth a damn so we’re not gonna go all Hannibal Lecter up in here. But he does drink Plague, and it does contain people, so yeah. Arthas eats people. 

     Look upon your cannibalistic mass murderer of a son, Terenas, and despair.

a response to memes so ancient they have a new url now: @arcanemagic

        she  knew  not  what  had  been  on  the  mage’s  mind  this  time.  truthfully  it  was  rare  that  she  ever  would  know;  close  as  they  may  have  been,  neither  of  them  had  truly  mastered  the  art  of  talking.  more  often  than  not,  they  simply  knew  when  the  other  was  upset;  angry;  distressed…  or  all  of  those  things,  rolled  into  a  single,  cacophonous  symphony  –  and  one  which  only  the  sufferer  could  truly  hear.

        it  was  difficult  on  those  days;  the  emotionally-draining  ones.  Dawnstrider  was  a  being  who  was  drawn  to  those  who  needed  aid,  and  yet  this  was  not  something  she  could  help  with  easily.  in  their  silence  she  often  attempted  to  fill  in  the  gaps;  to  understand  as  best  as  she  could,  despite  the  radio  silence  from  Proudmoore.  

        perhaps  to  others  it  may  have  been  obvious  as  to  why  she  raged;  why  she  wept.  those  who  hardly  knew  her  wound  sing  the  song  of  Theramore;  of  Wrynn;  of  Arthas.  there  was  truth  in  their  chorus  –  of  this  the  half  elf  was  certain  –  but  there  was  always  more;  there  was  always  something  else  to  consider.  the  source  was  not  a  simple  one  to  decipher;  such  was  why  she  oft  saw  the  mage’s  brow  knit  tight,  or  watched  as  her  fists  clenched  to  the  point  of  trembling,  or  saw  the  once  jovial  smile  upon  her  face  be  swept  away  by  a  numbness  so  terrifying  that  Dawnstrider  could  have  mistaken  it  for  a  burning  frostbite,  caused  by  the  archmage’s  own  destructive  frost  spells.

        oh,  how  she  wish  it  had  been  the  cold  that  caused  Proudmoore  to  be  numb.  cold  she  could  help;  cold  she  could  counter.  yet  no  blanket  or  hearthfire  could  solve  this  weather;  no  treaty  proclaiming  peace  could  resolve  these  inner  conflicts;  no  army  of  light  could  stand  before  the  endless  swarm  of  demons  that  ran  rampant  inside  her  own  head.

        gods,  how  Dawnstrider  wished  she  could  do  more…

        such  thoughts  continued  stirring  in  the  paladin’s  mind;  yet  the  world  remained  silent  until  faint  words  fell  from  the  human’s  lips.  how  long  had  they  been  sitting  there  with  each  other  now?  the  details  did  not  matter.  she  stretched  her  limbs  slightly;  an  attempted  recovery  from  the  stiffness  that  had  set  into  her  own  bones.  a  hand  carefully  wrapped  around  Proudmoore’s,  offering  a  gentle  squeeze  alongside  a  kind,  warming  smile;  something  to  perhaps  battle  the  cold.  

        the  half  elf  had  accepted  long  ago  that  she  could  not  fight  this  battle  for  her.  such  internal  conflicts  could  only  truly  be  faced  by  the  person  suffering  from  them;  she  was  not  ignorant  to  such  facts.  she  would  be  damned,  however,  if  she  did  not  at  least  try.  Dawnstrider,  in  her  typical  fashion,  would  fight  hordes  of  demons  –  invisible  or  not  –  until  she  triumphed  or  until  she  could  no  longer  stand.  and  in  such  fighting  moments,  she  would  always  look  to  Proudmoore.