Rhowen-Prea
05-19-2006, 01:46 PM
(( Haven't posted in a while, I know. I wanted my first post in a while to be something a little more battley, a little less emo, but RP goes where RP goes... >.>'' Anyway, hope you enjoy! Go go emo Night Elves! ))
The sun hung oppressively over the Eastern Plaguelands. She would have expected a sweltering heat, but the forsaken place was detached from all normal law. The air stank of rotting flesh, of rotting flowers, of stagnant and ever-lasting undeath. She had gone so far as to wrap a bandage around the jagged end of her right ear; the bleeding hadn't stopped, and it was going to stain the platemail pauldrons that protected her shoulder. In all her long years, Rhowen still hadn't figured out why exposure to the plague made it bleed like that. Perhaps it was a secret gift from Alexstrasza, may her hate drive the world.
The large, darkly-colored cat stuck out like a boil on an ivory-skinned virgin, obvious and angry. The cat itself was irritated. It didn't belong here anymore than she did, and while it did not hesitate under her command, it made it quite clear it was not happy. She had not found a name for him yet, calling him "hey" and "friend" and "that's a good cat." She missed Kadian. She missed her old mount, as well. Riding through the Plaguelands, she realized there were a lot of things she missed. A lot of people she was never going to see again. And that one day, she was going to die. He hadn't been lying, when he'd pulled her mortality into stark contrast, in that room, in that inn. If it weren't for him, she'd have met her Maker months before.
But the price he expected.
A price I wish I could pay.
She heeled the stormsaber hard, and set off down the rocky hill. When they entered Scholomance, it was with the intention of setting some souls to rest. The paladin was the last thing she'd expected to find. When last written, he'd been holed up on some island in Dun Murough, hiding from life. And yet, there he was, chained to a table, at the whims of the Butcher Krastinov. Their brave little party of four - herself, the rogue Barke, an ex-Warder by the name of Aanijm and Llucia, the only druid worth her weight these days - had dispatched Krastinov momentarily, freed the paladin, and only narrowly escaped Gandling with their hides. She hadn't been looking for him. She hadn't expected to find him.
He had no memory of what came before. She could not pry it from him. Short of a few new scars, looking like frostbitten ones, he seemed right as rain. But something had plagued him, something was wrong, and she could smell it. It was this horrid, pungent odor that made coherent thought impossible if one did not focus. Something was very wrong with her old friend, and she did not know what it was, and there was nothing she could do. She pushed the cat faster, demanded more speed.
Those scars, taken in service of me.
She'd been neglectful, she'd been blind. She'd ignored it, and brushed it off, and told herself it wasn't true. But there it was. Pouring his heart out, the way mortals are wont to do, confessing feelings she'd always suspected but never thought to be true, and she'd stood there, with nothing to say. And that horrible smell like impending doom hung in the air of the room of the inn, a room too familiar still, a room that brushed the cobwebs from her memories, that moved the coverstones to the tombstone of her memory. A room that brought all the still-fresh pain so desperately to the surface. He would know what to do, she thought, he would have answers, were he here, if he lived. He would have some idea. The Plaguewood loomed up ahead.
They are going to kill my friend.
The terrible finality of the thought clouded her vision, and she swung off the stormsaber into the massive bulk of an abomination. Aptly named, she thought to herself, and drug the long, curved blade through the stinking, rotting meat. It swung at her, and she slid back a step, the axe coming to glance over her breastplate, and leave a tear in an old, plain grey tabard. That single, stark thought, a blot of black, nay, red on a pristine white robe, blocked her judgement. Something fogged her vision. What a pair - a creature given immortality, a creature stripped of it. A spectator to her mind might have tasted resentment. The thought turned her stomach. She swung with abandon at the beastly creature; the sound of stitches popping reached her ear, and an excess limb dropped to the ground. The shluck of it hitting the earth was lost in the ringing sound of steel parrying steel. The sound of the parry grabbed the attention of near-by ghoul. It came barrelling down the fungus-mound towards the dueling pair.
A second blade, her off-hand, raised to meet a swinging fist of the ghoul. The edge of the blade did not stop the swing - it did, however, split the ghoul's fist nearly halfway down the center. It screamed; the sound carried pain. Nonsense, she told herself, these creatures do not feel anything. They are the lucky ones. She cleaved the blades through them both with a single swing - the abomination fell to the ground, a pile of twitching pieces. The ghoul was still screaming, clutching its hand and coming for her.
These are the things that will take my friend from me. Inhuman, horrible things.
Kaldorei are inhuman.
A dull pain rose in her ribcage - a thrown punch from the ghoul had pounded into her platemail and the shock rode through into a boney, malnourished ribcage. A feral scream tore itself from her throat, enraged. For the briefest moment the earth shifted beneath her, reacted, responded. The sword, the long, curved blade of it, came up, around, and took the head from the ghoul. Rhowen drove her blade down into the chest of the ghoul, if only to be sure, perhaps only in bloodlust. Dark, rank blood mottled her face and armor. The pieces of the abomination had ceased their spasms.
For a brief moment, Rhowen thought she could see some flickering image of a woman. Average height, average build, standing over the corpse of the ghoul. She was smiling the saddest smile the warrior might have ever seen.
Death is the only true respite for the Plagued. If you see any survivors of Darrowshire... tell them I am free.
The spectre was gone.
The tall Elvish warrior made no move, despite the silent return of her stormsaber. It came behind her, pushed it's huge nose against her wrist. It took all her effort to resheathe her blades, eyes locked upon the fallen ghoul. All this time, he'd been the only one to stand with her. To be her friend, unconditionally, to never expect her to choose sides. He'd absolved her of her promise not to harm the paladin whore. He'd absolved her of responsibility and duty. He'd tried to set her free. She'd held a blade to his throat, and he'd only leaned into it. A voice in the back of her head pressured her to do it, to teach him a thing or two about calling her out. But he was all that remained of a past she had loved, he was the only thing not lost to memory.
There is nothing I can do.
Rhowen pulled herself back atop the mount, the nameless cat that carried her to and fro. Her arms felt weak; her gaunt body trembled beneath plate. Memories sat on the surface of her mind like oil in water, seperate, shiny, persistant. Home... Ashenvale. The voices of the trees. Another memory. Her time on a ship, the smell of the sea. The scream of the seabirds, the feel of the wind... And more. People dear to her. Dangerous jaunts through wild, dark places. A ball, a red dress, a room full of warm touches and fond smiles. Smiles, those of people she had faith in.
She lifted her face to the moldy sky. "Everyone else gets what they want, why in the bleeding Dream can't I!?" The scream did not reach far, or echo loud - the wretched earth ate it up like a thing starved.
You did this to yourself, woman. You wanted to be alone - so the world will take from you every person who cares about you. Every person who you care about.
And after everything he'd told her, everything he's said... all she could do was walk away. The selfish pain of her own loss had taken over, and his words, those words, echoed in a voice that wasn't his, but His. And all she could do was walk away. Shaking, trying not to sob. She pulled the cat around and raced towards Scholomance.
She would have answers.
((To be continued!))
The sun hung oppressively over the Eastern Plaguelands. She would have expected a sweltering heat, but the forsaken place was detached from all normal law. The air stank of rotting flesh, of rotting flowers, of stagnant and ever-lasting undeath. She had gone so far as to wrap a bandage around the jagged end of her right ear; the bleeding hadn't stopped, and it was going to stain the platemail pauldrons that protected her shoulder. In all her long years, Rhowen still hadn't figured out why exposure to the plague made it bleed like that. Perhaps it was a secret gift from Alexstrasza, may her hate drive the world.
The large, darkly-colored cat stuck out like a boil on an ivory-skinned virgin, obvious and angry. The cat itself was irritated. It didn't belong here anymore than she did, and while it did not hesitate under her command, it made it quite clear it was not happy. She had not found a name for him yet, calling him "hey" and "friend" and "that's a good cat." She missed Kadian. She missed her old mount, as well. Riding through the Plaguelands, she realized there were a lot of things she missed. A lot of people she was never going to see again. And that one day, she was going to die. He hadn't been lying, when he'd pulled her mortality into stark contrast, in that room, in that inn. If it weren't for him, she'd have met her Maker months before.
But the price he expected.
A price I wish I could pay.
She heeled the stormsaber hard, and set off down the rocky hill. When they entered Scholomance, it was with the intention of setting some souls to rest. The paladin was the last thing she'd expected to find. When last written, he'd been holed up on some island in Dun Murough, hiding from life. And yet, there he was, chained to a table, at the whims of the Butcher Krastinov. Their brave little party of four - herself, the rogue Barke, an ex-Warder by the name of Aanijm and Llucia, the only druid worth her weight these days - had dispatched Krastinov momentarily, freed the paladin, and only narrowly escaped Gandling with their hides. She hadn't been looking for him. She hadn't expected to find him.
He had no memory of what came before. She could not pry it from him. Short of a few new scars, looking like frostbitten ones, he seemed right as rain. But something had plagued him, something was wrong, and she could smell it. It was this horrid, pungent odor that made coherent thought impossible if one did not focus. Something was very wrong with her old friend, and she did not know what it was, and there was nothing she could do. She pushed the cat faster, demanded more speed.
Those scars, taken in service of me.
She'd been neglectful, she'd been blind. She'd ignored it, and brushed it off, and told herself it wasn't true. But there it was. Pouring his heart out, the way mortals are wont to do, confessing feelings she'd always suspected but never thought to be true, and she'd stood there, with nothing to say. And that horrible smell like impending doom hung in the air of the room of the inn, a room too familiar still, a room that brushed the cobwebs from her memories, that moved the coverstones to the tombstone of her memory. A room that brought all the still-fresh pain so desperately to the surface. He would know what to do, she thought, he would have answers, were he here, if he lived. He would have some idea. The Plaguewood loomed up ahead.
They are going to kill my friend.
The terrible finality of the thought clouded her vision, and she swung off the stormsaber into the massive bulk of an abomination. Aptly named, she thought to herself, and drug the long, curved blade through the stinking, rotting meat. It swung at her, and she slid back a step, the axe coming to glance over her breastplate, and leave a tear in an old, plain grey tabard. That single, stark thought, a blot of black, nay, red on a pristine white robe, blocked her judgement. Something fogged her vision. What a pair - a creature given immortality, a creature stripped of it. A spectator to her mind might have tasted resentment. The thought turned her stomach. She swung with abandon at the beastly creature; the sound of stitches popping reached her ear, and an excess limb dropped to the ground. The shluck of it hitting the earth was lost in the ringing sound of steel parrying steel. The sound of the parry grabbed the attention of near-by ghoul. It came barrelling down the fungus-mound towards the dueling pair.
A second blade, her off-hand, raised to meet a swinging fist of the ghoul. The edge of the blade did not stop the swing - it did, however, split the ghoul's fist nearly halfway down the center. It screamed; the sound carried pain. Nonsense, she told herself, these creatures do not feel anything. They are the lucky ones. She cleaved the blades through them both with a single swing - the abomination fell to the ground, a pile of twitching pieces. The ghoul was still screaming, clutching its hand and coming for her.
These are the things that will take my friend from me. Inhuman, horrible things.
Kaldorei are inhuman.
A dull pain rose in her ribcage - a thrown punch from the ghoul had pounded into her platemail and the shock rode through into a boney, malnourished ribcage. A feral scream tore itself from her throat, enraged. For the briefest moment the earth shifted beneath her, reacted, responded. The sword, the long, curved blade of it, came up, around, and took the head from the ghoul. Rhowen drove her blade down into the chest of the ghoul, if only to be sure, perhaps only in bloodlust. Dark, rank blood mottled her face and armor. The pieces of the abomination had ceased their spasms.
For a brief moment, Rhowen thought she could see some flickering image of a woman. Average height, average build, standing over the corpse of the ghoul. She was smiling the saddest smile the warrior might have ever seen.
Death is the only true respite for the Plagued. If you see any survivors of Darrowshire... tell them I am free.
The spectre was gone.
The tall Elvish warrior made no move, despite the silent return of her stormsaber. It came behind her, pushed it's huge nose against her wrist. It took all her effort to resheathe her blades, eyes locked upon the fallen ghoul. All this time, he'd been the only one to stand with her. To be her friend, unconditionally, to never expect her to choose sides. He'd absolved her of her promise not to harm the paladin whore. He'd absolved her of responsibility and duty. He'd tried to set her free. She'd held a blade to his throat, and he'd only leaned into it. A voice in the back of her head pressured her to do it, to teach him a thing or two about calling her out. But he was all that remained of a past she had loved, he was the only thing not lost to memory.
There is nothing I can do.
Rhowen pulled herself back atop the mount, the nameless cat that carried her to and fro. Her arms felt weak; her gaunt body trembled beneath plate. Memories sat on the surface of her mind like oil in water, seperate, shiny, persistant. Home... Ashenvale. The voices of the trees. Another memory. Her time on a ship, the smell of the sea. The scream of the seabirds, the feel of the wind... And more. People dear to her. Dangerous jaunts through wild, dark places. A ball, a red dress, a room full of warm touches and fond smiles. Smiles, those of people she had faith in.
She lifted her face to the moldy sky. "Everyone else gets what they want, why in the bleeding Dream can't I!?" The scream did not reach far, or echo loud - the wretched earth ate it up like a thing starved.
You did this to yourself, woman. You wanted to be alone - so the world will take from you every person who cares about you. Every person who you care about.
And after everything he'd told her, everything he's said... all she could do was walk away. The selfish pain of her own loss had taken over, and his words, those words, echoed in a voice that wasn't his, but His. And all she could do was walk away. Shaking, trying not to sob. She pulled the cat around and raced towards Scholomance.
She would have answers.
((To be continued!))