stealthy-addiction

[stealthy-addiction]

Chibi Krone!!!

[stealthy-addiction]

“Also, rude.”

Krone stood at the edge of the shore, one foot rested at the point of the raft, poised to press. He closed his eyes, the silent tears flowing freely as he remembered their time together. He remembered their galas, their walks, their talks, their embraces….their hearts were once intertwined, two vines racing to weave with one another to the top..but N’zoth’s corruption twisted him, leaving her to wither in her own. 

A loud, but muffled wail escaped his throat as he leaned forward, pushing the raft to sea as it carried her remains. Steeling himself once more, he looked to the sea and ignited the raft with a deliberate gesture.

“Yavianna...you chose your path, you chose your means, and you chose your end. I only wish, just once, you had chose me.”

[stealthy-addiction]

((not my art, I found it on pintrest. Amazing art though.))

[stealthy-addiction]

Interview of the Afternoon

“So, what’s happened since the war?” The young woman was ready with her pen poised to jot down whatever boons or mistakes Krone might speak.

“First of all, let’s get one thing straight. Fuck the Horde. Fuck the Alliance. Fuck their petty little childish wars. Fuck them for getting swathes of people enveloped in conflict. Fuck Tyrande for her pretentious little crusade. At least she had a home to lose. Ours burnt us instead.” The journalist’s jaw slacked slightly. Even though he was behind those bars, his passion was tangible. “Noted. So...the rest?”

Krone smirked. He did have to admire forwardness. “Since I was able to redeem most of the damage caused by my, of course involuntary, betrayal... I’ve been here. My corruption cleansed, I am a free man. Well...” He looked around at the cell surrounding him. “..as free as I can be. Thankfully I was spared execution!” He seemed far too light-hearted about that.

Her face was deadpan, “I’m sure. Now then, there were rumors of a lover or wife but authorities were unable to locate her. Have you been offered any sort of deal for revealing her location?”

For the only moment in the interview, his gaze dropped for a somber moment. A weak chuckle escaped his mouth before the rest of his bravado returned. “If only. I can point them right to her body. After N’zoth was responsible for her fall, I turned away from his will.”

His pause resulting in one of her own. She almost felt sorry for asking, but this was a hardened criminal! He killed members of the Alliance too! She looked back at him, eyes now locked. Don’t fight. You are safe here. She felt heady, her vision blurring for moments at a time. All finished, love. You rest here. Someone will be by shortly.

Her vision began to clear as the smokey tendrils of shadows rapidly dissipated to reveal him on the outside of those bars instead of him. His words clung to her mind as he seemed to vanish soundlessly down the hall. 

“I should thank you, dear. You reminded me of something I simply must do myself...”

[stealthy-addiction]

[stealthy-addiction]

On Wings of Twilight

He was falling through the sky, plummeting toward the ground so far below with hellfire racing past him. The debris of the ship above screamed in molten fragments, falling as if in challenge to his own speed. He twisted his body so that he could face his handiwork. Goblins, orcs, and more leapt from the now shattered zeppelin in fultie hope that they might survive. What few that had managed to find a parachute witnessed their saving grace incinerated, much to their chagrin, by his spiteful whims in the form of flame shrieking from his fingertips. When the last one fell from his sight he allowed his body to return to its natural, free falling position. He closed his eyes, now ready to embrace the cold earth below. A heavy beating of wings had other plans for him, however, and he felt himself soaring upward through the air on majestic purple and blue wings.

“You are too dangerous sometimes.”

“I know,'' he replied.

He awoke with a smile. It was the first night he had slept in peace in as long as he could remember.

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Night Mare

Krone sprinted to the sounds of her whimpering. He turned the corner, passing through crowds and walls like a god in his own right until he spotted her, knelt down, tears streaming down her face. She looked up at him, recoiling in fear before vanishing from sight.

Reality around him twisted and contorted as the crowds became hordes of fiends and vile creatures. Undeterred, rolling waves of green flame coursed from his palms, materializing at his will until only ashes remained. There she was again on the cold stone floor, scorched and shrieking. He rushed to her side, cursing his hands when reality shifted again, removing her from it only inches from his grasp.

He shut his eyes for more than the casual blink as the tears burned, running down his cheeks. Opening his eyes brought him to a new place. The mountain towered over him with her pleading, begging cries echoing from its peak. He reached up and began to climb the almost sheer face with rage and terror. Lightning struck protruding branches all around him as they grew thicker the higher he climbed. The skin on his arms grew painfully tight while the skin on his fingers began to rip, the blood making his effort all the more treacherous as he slipped and clawed. Krone howled in rage, blinking to clear the tears from his eyes. Wings sprouted from his back, black and leathery, and beat violently to propel him upward.The lightning seemed to be targeting him now but it was no matter to him. He reached the top and found her, her beauty beyond measure as she smiled, overjoyed to see him now. He lunged for her, cradling her in his arms, inhaling her sweet fragrance once more and feeling his world come to peace.

She crumbled.

He watched as it started at her feet, crawling up as she wept in silent agony. The sound of sand falling to the floor was all that he could hear. She gazed up at him, tears rolling slowly down her soft cheeks. She was cold now, almost too cold to bear. The last thing to fall to sand was her face, her eyes gazing up sorrowfully. 

In rage her stood, roaring at the skies and beating his wings. His hooves stamped and his clawed fists beat the ground while his fanged maw snapped at the air between furious bellows. The taunting,smooth voice echoed in his head. 

“She isn’t real, Krone. You can’t make her real. You are mine and I yours. You only need me.”

Krone sat up in a cold sweat, dried tears covering his face. He looked around his cave, at his bedding in a panic to find that nothing was wrong. He walked to the mouth of his cave to greet the twilight hours of the morning, feeling no peace from his slumber and no solace from his dream. Still, the peaceful sounds of gentle waves crashing against the short kept a slight calming effect. He would have to settle with that for today.

[stealthy-addiction]

Going Through “Changes”

His skin ached as the shifting beneath caused it to pulse and contort. Small patches ripped causing rivulets of blood to trickle down his arm. He felt as if his skull would explode from varying points at the top and front of his face. Fangs appeared and vanished like some macabre game of hide and seek. Falling to all fours, he slammed his fist on the ground, small sprays of blood from his hacking cough painting the soil at his doorstep. Nips was silent, for once afraid to speak or approach while the dripping, ever-viscous void essence Sra’tuul, watched on with only mild interest. Black, pointed claws pierced the tips of his fingers causing the flesh around them to rend and peel away. Krone’s eyes widened in a distinct mixture of horror and excitement as the purple skin fell away to reveal a black, bone textured and scaled claw drenched in shadowy energies. One of Sra’tuul’s tentacles laid upon the claw causing the flesh to regrow in a slow and agonizing fashion.

“Not yet. Now is not your time, my child. Be patient.”

[stealthy-addiction]

A Macabre Collection

The  warrior’s blade sunk through the heavy padding covering Krone’s shoulder ending with an audible “ting!” The warlock smiled at the tauren’s bewildered stare as the warlock used both hands to lift that same warrior’s blade away. With a few words resembling an incantation, a small explosion erupted between the pair sending both tumbling. The tauren stood quickly, already charging toward Krone when the rage filled expression on his face became one of abject horror. The warlock stood tall with a grin impossible to truly see through the contorted face filled with fangs and small, protruding spikes. His body, jet black and covered with scales, seemed unscathed by the current battle. What the Tauren feared worse was the black, barely green ball of flame already roaring in Krone’s hand. Like he was playing with a child’s toy, he tossed it inches from his palm once or twice before hurling it toward the tauren with a velocity thus far un-achieved by mortals. The tauren blinked, unsure what had happened. He dropped first to his knees, then to his face, as the clean and freshly cauterized hole in his chest where his heart had once been still sizzled and smoked.

Krone walked toward the body. The wicked claws on his feet, creating miniature craters in the ground, soon became elven toes once more. What was left of his armor adorning his skin quickly began to repair and reattach itself once more taking on his horrific visage. Krone leaned down, using a small blade to remove the tauren’s left eye, and added it to the collection kept in a pouch at his side. “Lambs to the slaughter… or cows? Cows to the slaughter.”

[stealthy-addiction]

[stealthy-addiction]

Unhinged

Krone smiled, shadows dripping from his clenched teeth. His armor seeming to repair on it’s own as sinister looking threads born from an unearthly force reached for one another, pull themselves back into a clean stitch. Singe and scorch marks faded away rapidly as the armor’s original dull green hue came to show once again.

“Sorry, that just won’t be enough…”

He sprinted forward with supernatural speed, his eyes alight with the iconic fel-green gaze, weaving to and fro between incoming incantations. Flames and shards of ice raced past him as the fear began to sink in to the mage casting them. Many had heard of this warlock but none expected a fight like this from a small time Brawl-Pub celebrity. 

Krone’s right arm was left to drag behind him as a fiendish ball of green and black magics materialize. With a leap and roar, Krone slammed the chaotic spell into the mage’s chest; blood and gore erupting like a geyser from the troll’s torso. The remaining two spellcasters, and elf and orc, turned immediately to flee with equally poor luck as tendrils of shadowy flames gripped their legs and ankles, searing them painfully while they did so. Krone clenched his left fist, chanting “Feed. FEED. Feed. FEED.” While he proceeded to ignite the robes of the elf, the orc’s legs were penetrated by the shadows. The skin bulged and bubbled while the sickening smell of burnt flesh filled the air all while Krone’s void essence drew the life from the orc with disgusting squelches and slurps.  The sound of bones snapping and twisting brought a twisted grin to Krone’s face.

“Good, Krone. Continue to feed me and you shall be rewarded. Beat fear into their quiet hearts.”

Krone said nothing as he continued to feed the flames now engulfing all three of the corpses. His potential realized, the laughter that escaped his mouth was far from human, elf, or other. It was otherworldly, haunting as it echoed through the gulch.

[stealthy-addiction]

Inspiration

Green and black flame roared around his hands as bolt after bolt of fel intertwined with void raced toward the gate. The commanders behind him roared “CONTINUE THE ASSAULT! STOP AT NOTHING!” as those around Krone renewed their assault. Behind that gate were Horde Loyalists, those still clinging to the Banshee Queen and her twisted machinations.

*“LOK TAR!”*

The orc barely missed knocking Krone over on the way to the gate. The voices in his mind shouted to redirect his flame, to strike down the orc mid-stride, but Krone gritted his teeth into a snarl as his gaze remained on the gate. His right hand now lifting high in the air, he shouted to his squad. “Be ready! We fight Her wills ONE BY ONE! VOID TEAM, CHARGE!” He swung his right hand downward in a mighty gesture as a green, shrieking meteor materialized landing with the fury of an entire naval battalion’s cannon fire on that single, now cratered, point.

The roaring clamour and earth shaking rage of both Horde and Alliance soldiers colliding with waves of the fort’s defenses was the most striking symphony of panic and singing steel that Krone could ask for. As if the macabre maestro, his arms continued to move in grand gestures as if standing before an orchestra. Instead of strings there was flame. Instead of horns there were crashing bursts of felstone. Instead of crescendos there were screams, shrieks of agony and regret as the forces of today’s good stormed the gate. 

Krone dropped to one knee, his magics exhausted and hands almost too damaged to continue. He looked up at the ongoing fray, hoping he had done enough. It wasn’t until he saw a Ren’dorei woman struck down that he was enraged. Maybe he grew a heart that day. Maybe the voices changed their mind. Or maybe she reminded him of someone.

He ran at breakneck speed toward to cluster, his lungs burning not unlike the fire he felt burning within him now. His body was weak, but in this moment he was as much a berserker as any orc that day. His skin began to crack and shatter away revealing a black, demonic scale pattern with mottled grays and greens. His eyes changed from their normal amethyst to an effervescent green alight with flame and rage. He landed behind the enemy forces, not even realizing that he had lept some fifty feet ago. Wicked claws tore through flesh. Horns gored, flipping bodies into the air above and behind him. Horrific flames and shadowy tendrils erupted from the corpses, grabbing any victim within reach and pinning them to the melting flesh soon to match their own.

“NO MORE! NOT! AGAIN!”

Krone was present in that mind, surely. But it wasn’t his normal state. He moved with horrific intention, a pure incarnation of his fear, his rage, and his sorrow. Some of the orcs cringed at the sight, other races stricken with brief moments of terror until those were replaced with gratitude that he was fighting with and not against them. With only a handful of retreating enemies remaining, Krone fell back to the ground in a slump, completely unconscious. The squad of Ren’dorei assigned to him hoisted him over their shoulders, carrying the battered hero to safety where he could recover. When he finally awoke he was in the outpost of Nazmir, his body mended but not clean, his robes intact but tattered all the same. He replayed the prior day’s events through his head over and over until a finely dressed imp appeared in an inoffensive plume of smoke delivering a most important letter...

[stealthy-addiction]

((Not mine, but a glorious picture that gives a fantastic idea of how I see Krone.)))

[stealthy-addiction]

An End

When I awoke, I was on a rock, floating through what looked like the twisting nether, with a handful of others hard at work on various tasks. Everyone looked as if they’d gone through something similar to my own experience. Everyone looked hopeless.

That point stuck with me. Sure it wasn’t too long before Alleria and her champions rescued us. Sure we were able to find some semblance of peace under the banner of the Alliance. And of course we all gradually resumed some sort of “normal” existence again. But when I see a a Child of the Void, the Ren’dorei as we are called, I know they too went through some horror...some infinite torture and that they too know the feeling of being exposed to a penultimate being and transformed.Nothing about what we went through was trivial or normal. We have seen the void, the abyss and it saw us deeper than anything we’ve ever experienced.

I’ve since moved on as best as I could. I find what ways I can to quiet the whispers but it never lasts long. Perhaps others of my kind know better ways. I’ll have to mingle amongst them...make friends…

“Damn.”

[stealthy-addiction]

Eternity Encapsulated

Some months later, my home in the Ghostlands was more of a temporary respite more than anything else. My “contracts” with the demons had kept me busy in a myriad of unpleasant ways even on Argus. I had followed the horde there and even managed to stowaway on vessels that had departed the Exodar. It wasn’t until after he was “let loose” on the planet that his demons were permitted to show themselves. Their information was valuable, of course. They were familiar with the “land” as it were. What drove me though wasn’t the demons themselves persay, but what ‘Nips’ had let slip once. He was prattling on about the Legion and their aims but after some creative conversation, he let slip what the Legion’s reason.

“It’s the Void Lords! Those fuckers throwing their fuckin’ shit into fuckin’ planets and we gotta fuckin’ fuck’em up so they can fuckin’ be free and shit. FUCK! Legion wants to stop the fuckin’ Void. Azeroth wants to stop the  fuckin’ Legion. Therefore, Azeroth needs to fuckin’ die!”

It was that snippet that drove me here. Sure the Legion was evil, and destroying my home...well..home planet was inexcusable...but they might not be wrong. I found the relics and devices I needed to amplify my own creations, and made way for Azeroth by any means necessary. I needed to return to my workshop if I was going to put my plan into motion.

Time rolled on, of course. I did return. Azeroth was triumphant. The Legion had fallen. My demons were PISSED. Thankfully, they were still bound to me. Nips was the only one who didn’t seem entirely put off by it all. He was happy to delve into my mechanical machinations with me. Argussian technology was fantastic in its applications. I was able to amplify my R.E.T.U.R.N. emitter, greatly increasing the distance at which it could travel and with how many could travel with me. Shadowy magics seemed to attune almost instinctively with my wills the more that I advanced my research. Everything seemed to be going flawlessly until Silvermoon, unoriginally, interfered.

**BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!** “Open the door! We have information that you are manipulating dangerous magics! The neighboring villages and towns want both you and the magics removed!”

Nips immediately dissipated, as he was instructed. I cursed under my breath, quickly reaching for the R.E.T.U.R.N. effectively warping myself and my creations somewhere safer. At least, that was my intention. I blinked my eyes as I pressed the black button on the device. I don’t know if I opened them again. I thought I had, but if I did, all that was around me was abysmally black, void of any light. A voice spoke to me, but I could not hear it.

I felt it.

I felt it vibrating through my very being as it spoke and it was nothing shy of utter terror.

“You meant to break the contract. You meant to cheat me my prize. I am the roaring destruction to your childish understanding. I am not the beginning of your end, but the end of your beginning. You are freed from your contract, the demons will be yours to entice. You however, will be mine.”

With those last words, I felt as if stones began to pile on top, beneath, and around me. They pressed and drove into every pore of my skin and when there were none left to press against, my mouth became the avenue. One by one, ten by ten, thousand by thousand they forced their way down my throat. Breathing was a forlorn hope at this point, a whimsical dream as I felt the “stones” begin to expand. I was not blessed with the luxurious mercy of unconsciousness. I instead felt my skin distend and burst, literally tearing at the seams until I ceased to be. For a moment “I,” whatever I now was, simply existed. I had no form, no mind, no soul as it were. The first thing I felt was an overwhelming, throbbing pain. I experienced the maddening agony of each fiber of my being reassembled. The process took what felt like a millennia.

“I will reshape you. I will craft you into my perfect image of you. I will make you clean.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. What the voice said implied an end and it was the only thought that occupied my mind. By the time I return, will there even be an Azeroth? Will my race exist? What of my demons, even they aren't immortal anymore.

I tried to shout, “How long will this take? How long will you keep me?!”

The voice returned, “One month is all the time I will take from you. Congratulations, you’ve just survived the first second of your transformation…

...Let us continue then, shall we?”

[stealthy-addiction]

“Fiends in Low Places”

[stealthy-addiction]

“Fiends in Low Places”

The coming months were strange. One at a time, my new friends introduced themselves. The first was a heavier man by the name of Azrarion. I was afraid at first. The idea of having to feed the man was intimidating but much to my surprise, he ate nothing at all, at least not in front of me. 

The next to introduce themselves was a vixen in every sense. Rhirylin was beautiful… the curves of her body, her hips...her breasts...and those sweet, soft looking lips kept me up for nights. I couldn’t touch her though. Every conversation we’d have made me sick to my stomach. Something in her voice made me feel as if I was sitting across from a predator, a hunger without end and it terrified me but I couldn’t stop looking. There’s no harm in looking, right?

Gorgok was entertaining to say the least. He claimed to be a retired pirate equipped with an eyepatch, pegged leg, and all. He, at first, was my least favorite. He didn’t necessarily do anything wrong, mind you. It was just… he was distracting. I would be casting the simplest of spells and I could swear I would hear him say something to distract me and I would forget whatever spell it was that I was casting. I swear that he got some sort of glee from this.

I can’t forget about Nipsillin, “Nips” for short. Nips was an anomaly. One might ask him how old he was and a fair answer would be between eight years and 70 years old. He was the size of a child but as stout as a man. He moved with the youth of a young man but bore the wrinkled, dry skin of a venerable old man. All of these things aside, Nips was the kindest to me as we shared so many interests in engineering and explosives. Nips was a “keeper.”

The last companion was the strangest. To this day I don’t know their name. I don’t know if they are male or female nor even the sound of their voice. This one only arrives if I’m in legitimate danger. They appear, enraged and violent destroying anything that would bring me harm. I can only surmise that it is the final attempt to ensure my contract is maintained. I fear to think of the outcome should I decide to break my terms.

Over the next year, their forms changed in subtle ways each day. It took nearly the entire year in Tanaris to realize what I had agreed to. These “friends” were nothing but ravenous demons bent to my will... for now. The agreement I had made was a pact, a soulbound contract, with a force far too powerful to rescind on. For better or worse I was now a “warlock” with no means to turn it all around.

With my “initiation” complete, it was time to leave Tanaris. What a shame.