#﹙ ʀᴇʟɪsʜ ᴛʜᴇsᴇ ᴛɪᴍᴇs ᴏғ ᴘᴇʀɪʟ. ﹚ battle for azeroth.

[necroarchy]

plague in heaven.

description: Arthas is ill. Zoen isn’t. 

     She is not a subtle thing, his Wraith.

     The sickness is minor. Hardly notable at all in comparison to the wrenching illness that hounded him for weeks following his introduction to the disease. The disorientation, the slow ( horror ) vexation of being able to see the threads of the Scourge fraying, his grand tapestry of an empire unravelling at the seams as his ungrateful subjects railed against their rusting chains… Once or twice he had thought he heard Ner’zhul’s voice murmuring at his ear, hissing retribution, but each time he looked there was nothing and no one haunting him.

     This is little. Compared to that. But it is not nothing.

     And so Acherus had inquired, curious of the strange tremor they sensed up north.

     His Wraith is not a subtle thing. The cold and dark herald her in a pale simulacrum of his own winter harbinger, announcing her presence clearly despite the distance between his Shadow Throne and the foyer through which she has just walked. It catches at his attention like a burr, disrupting his hunt for those murmurs that should not murmur. One or two subjects slip from his grasp; they stumble, shrieking at the violent severance from his kingdom, and are swiftly put down by their former brethren. No one important is lost, nothing of worth destroyed --- but it is irksome. And it is her fault.

     He holds onto the irritation for only a moment before letting it slip away into the sludge pit of his exhaustion.  

     ( The sickness is… minor? )

     He plunges beneath the mental chattering of his kingdom, and drowns peacefully in the white noise of divinity. 

     So deeply entrenched is he, he hardly notices when the doors of his throne room slam open to admit her.

     The height is his; the stalking gait, his as well. She lowers hood and helm as she approaches, belatedly revealing the wreckage of her face just as… as he… had...

     Seeing her now, standing tall before him, no poison to weigh down her veins, an image flashes as lightning through his mind: his hand on his father’s shoulder, Terenas’ look of confused terror mirrored on the blade of Frostmourne as Arthas aligns. The smile his son grants him before ---

     Succeeding you, Father...

     A snarl curls his lips back into an expression more at home on the mongrel at her side. His shoulders tense and his elbows dig into the armrests. Fingers wrap around Frostmourne; its runes glow faintly in preparation. He makes to stand --- he will not die slumped like a dog, pinned in place by negligent strength --- not like this, not to her ---

     His abdomen spasms, tremors shattering resolve. Arthas curls up on himself, hacking wetly at his feet. 

     “Gross.”

     What parts of him aren’t clinging to the Scourge and howling in fury at his state of affairs are dryly amused by the faint disgust in his daughter’s voice. 

     “Where’re your janitors?”

     “Standing before me.”

     She makes a hoggish noise somewhere between a scoff and a snort. It’s alarmingly disarming. The king relaxes into his throne almost unwillingly.

     “Ha, no. I’ve got an Eddards or something --- figure he won’t be missed a moment ---”

     Her back is turned to him already, a sheer dark silhouette swallowed by the void of the Gate she opens but for the pale halo of her hair, and Arthas... he does not remember, this is not his image, it was not him who saw the doors flung open and Death’s best shape taking form before him. But.

     “What are you doing.”

     What are you doing, my

     “What do you mean?”

     It is not his confusion she wears on her face but her mother’s: the furrowed brow, lip worried between teeth. It grounds him as much as unsettles, allows him to wipe away the ink blots of his father’s death from his vision. 

     “Lich King?”

     And that clears his sight wholly. Always Lich King, Majesty and Menethil from her --- never the long rasp of Father that carried Terenas to his unhappy end.

     “You just got here, girl.”

     The furrow deepens. ( Jaina, struggling with a particular fire incantation. )

     “Felt something go wrong with you. Came to see what it was.” She gestures dismissively with one arm, and he’s reeling so badly he doesn’t even consider cutting it off for the insolence. “If it’s just a little run-in with Blight, I’ve got no reason to stick around. We dealt with worse at Wrathgate.”

     We?

     “Is that it?” He pierced the heart of his beloved father for power. He is not a fool, girl, he knows your thoughts on him ---

     “Mhmm.”

     “That seems unlikely.”

     “You’re deeply unpleasant company. Why else would I be here?”

     “To kill me.”

     Her eyes widen, and there is nothing subtle in the way she looks incredulously at the blade slung at her side, as though she had utterly forgotten its presence and its purpose. Her gaze swings back to him, and there they are at last: the steel glint of calculation, the long shadow of ambition.

     He tightens his grip on Frostmourne.

     “You’re joking.” It isn’t him she seeks to convince. “You think you’d win.”

     “Were it us alone, yes. With your Horsemen, however...”

     He needn’t have spoken at all; he sees her reach the same conclusion before he even mentions her pathetic little minions. She could be a mirror for how precisely she wears his own bloody hunger on her face. Arthas is less optimistic for her venture than he implies --- is quite sure that he could rally a powerful opposition before she returned --- but that does nothing for the shiver that crawls down his spine, does it?

    Father. Is this what last you saw?

     Her foot jerks towards the Gate. His arm twitches in response.

     An emotion he does not recognize flits across her face, bullet-fast.

     “... Do you. Want me. To kill you?”

     Arthas blinks.

     It hurts to laugh as raucously as he does, but there’s really no other response.

     “Yeah.” Her nose wrinkles in distaste. ( Jaina. ) “Figured.” She rocks back on her heels, appearing less the patricidial heir and more a frustrated child by the moment. He laughs at it, the puerility, until she does something that shuts him up entirely.

     The Gate closes. No longer outlined by its pitch darkness, she appears softer, less stark. Younger. She was seventeen, wasn’t she? When…

     Her hands rise. Towards the blade at her side --- and he lurches again, viper-fast, he will not --- and past it, to jam harmlessly into the pockets of her coat.

     His Wraith doesn’t even notice him. Her gaze is anchored to the door. “Putricide’s around?”

     She walks as she speaks, her back to him again, twice in ten minutes. “Deathlord.”

     “Plagueworks? Obviously.” There’s not even a hitch in her step, he could as easily not even be here ---

     “Zoen.” 

     “Tryin’ to figure out Drust magic. Constructs aren’t my specialty - I figured he can help me.” Her hand closes around the door. She wrenches it open, steps outside ---

     “Zoen Menethil, come here.”

     Her full name stops her as instantly as it ever had stopped himself, or young Calia, or any other child caught in the net of parental ire. And the scowl on her face as she rounds on him. Curled lip, narrowed eyes. Adolescence in an expression. 

     “I’m not going to kill you, Lich King,” his daughter snaps. 

     Then why are you here? is a throat-baring sort of query. Instead, he drawls, “Then leave.”

     That hoggish noise again. Where did she inherit it? “So you can jump at shadows wonderin’ where I am, when I’m gonna repeat history? No. I’ll be in the Plagueworks ‘til you’re less a wreck.”

     “Insolent thing,” he says, not unkindly. “I could kill you now.”

      She grins, bright and sharp, and there. That’s him. That’s all him.

     “You could try.”

[necroarchy]

@viragod​​ liked for a plotted starter!

|| what is this that  I  C A N ’ T   S E E               with  ICE COLD HANDS  taking hold of me? ||

     “ IS YOUR CURIOSITY among the ashes of dear Theramore?” 

     Does there still exist a knife which he will not pluck from the floors of these mortals’ histories and twirl between his fingers with idle consideration, before thrusting between ribs four and five and twisting counterclockwise?

     They just make it so easy, you understand. Crunch bone and slurp blood with ghoulish fervor, and then rail righteously against him for providing for his kingdom --- do you see the contradiction --- the gaping crack in their holy armor? No different than his, no better than his, but how they wish…

     “ It took you a few years to catch up, but tell me, Jaina: how did it feel to cull a city? ”

     How did it feel to look in the mirror, and see ivories where were once golds?           Had it been as lonely as it’d been for---

     Lips pull back into a snarl. ( Aimed at whom, Menethil? ) 

     She always had such an ugly effect upon him.

                                        || when  GOD IS GONE  and the  DEVIL  takes hold                                                                who’ll have  M E R C Y  on your soul? ||

[necroarchy]

@windrunnerrs​

Icy blue that shines colder than her eyes had ever shone in life do not lack usual resent, the gleam of hatred that is so faithful mirror of her heart (heart; as if she still possessed one at all, as if it hadn’t long rotted and turned to dust, nothing left of her but the ancient bones of one long dead).

He enjoys playing with his food, is thought that occurs to her; a cat pawing at a mouse as if it were a toy, only to leave it battered and bruised and dying and decide not to eat it at all. Too much of a flair for drama, heralding end he shall bring as inevitable as words echo towards those that brave Northrend in attempt to breach his domain — if the Lich King won’t succeed, he is nevertheless not wrong in fate he sentences mortals to, for they are bound to find the dark of death and its chilly embrace sooner or later regardless.

There is no hope.

There was none for her, and she finds some grim delight in that there shall be none for them as well, even if she resents invisible chains that bind her to her master. The queen of the Frostbrood shifts behind him, an antithesis of anticipation and loathing all at once; it gets dull, hearing speeches (it is infuriating to be used as mere mount, as if she were but a common beast, but in the least there is death and destruction to relish on, and she is less displeased when sharp wind hits what is left of her winds). “Words are wind. They will not fear until true cold has a grasp on their hearts.”

|| what is this that I  C A N ’ T  S E E            with  ICE COLD HANDS  taking hold of me? ||

     GIVE HIM A MOMENT, if you will, to relish the chorus he’s stirred to life — listen to the woodwind trill of human throats screaming their last, the way they shred themselves hoarse from fear and fury, or fall into a wet bloody gargle when the blood bubbles high. The percussive beat of metal against metal as weapons clash, bodies collide, doesn’t it just get your BLOOD PUMPING through veins gone stagnant and cold?

     Ah --- of course.           A difficult sentiment to share, when your blood is but stains on the bones.

     “ Impatient. ” Her hatred is so lovely. All that churning wrath raging against the great chains that bind them together. Nothing but fondness affects his voice, amusement curling like a cat in sunlight. “ You may join now, if you so desire. As for myself... ”

     What man doesn’t pause in the face of all this vital violence? How worthwhile would divinity be if he could not breathe deep the reek of their muddy copper deaths? He can tear his heart string by string from his chest, but even that darkest hollow must be moved by the frenetic, fever pitch of mortals killing each other in the name of prolonging their scrap-yarn existences. There is little so beautiful ( yes, he remembers that word ) as a battlefield frothing crimson, so dark as to be nearly black.

    “ A moment more. ”

                                     || when  GOD IS GONE  and the  DEVIL  takes hold                                                          who’ll have  M E R C Y  on your soul? ||

[necroarchy]

@terraforged​ liked for a starter.

|| what is this that  I  C A N ’ T   S E E                    with  ICE COLD HANDS  taking hold of me? ||

     There’s a rat in the larder! he recalls a new servant shrieking once, Larger than the hounds! It’d been a kobold, they realized after - and the specifics of its infiltration are lost to time, but he still sees how it’d squirmed in Captain Falric’s grasp, hopelessly outnumbered and doomed, yet still railing against inevitable fate....

     It comes to mind as he sights the young prince in his garden of bones.

     “ You seek much from silent bones, Wrathion. ”

                                             || when  GOD IS GONE  and the  DEVIL  takes hold                                                                     who’ll have  M E R C Y  on your soul? ||

[necroarchy]

💀 pleas.

Send 💀 to walk in on my muse killing someone. - accepting@embercrestedd

|| what is this that  I  C A N ’ T   S E E                  with  ICE COLD HANDS  taking hold of me? ||

  THE BEAST WHINES AT HIS FEET. It’s not alive, not even in the sense of him and his, no mind or soul at all ever having inhabited its form. Just a scrap of wood and cloth roughly bound by twine and animated by others’ will, lupine only in the vaguest silhouette of shape and manner. Dread is beyond its capacity, but a sensation basic to existence, general as atoms, compels it to shudder and claw desperately at the blade pinning it to the ground.  

   “I can hear you.”

   He does not look for her, engrossed as he is by the pantomime death throes. ( The percussive violence of her heart is enough. ) A coat of frost has spread across its body, creeping towards jerky limbs and the thrashing antlers. The rot is minimal, by his command; that’s not what he’s here for. Not yet.

    “ Step into the light. ”

                                           || when  GOD IS GONE  and the  DEVIL  takes hold                                                                   who’ll have  M E R C Y  on your soul? ||

[necroarchy]

starter call for canon dialogue. @embercrested is about to get wowpedia’d

     “ DO YOU FEEL IT, MORTAL? Death seeps through me, enveloping all that I touch. With just a snap of my finger your soul will languish in damnation for all eternity. ”

[necroarchy]

@lichrisen liked for a starter. - accepting

     “Is it arrogance or loyalty which brings you here?”

     How bitter the cold can be. His voice is ice chips rattled free from the cavern ceiling in ominous portent of the collapse to come, all sharp-edged warning and unwelcome. 

     “Either way - you’re like to never leave again.”

[necroarchy]

     @brothersindeath liked for a starter.

     “Thassarian! What an unexpected pleasure.”

     So like the orca is he as he circles this lone seal pup of a knight, cruelly masking as patience compelling him to draw this hunt out bite by bite. His hands remain empty, another factor of the pretense, though the crying winds undoubtedly reveal the blade sheathed at his side to the little prey. Poor thing; adrift in unfriendly waters, snapped up by the first predator to catch the scent of weakness.

     ( A concession: he is uniquely suited to this hunt. The boy never stood a chance. )

     “Acherus has been so silent lately. Is Amal’thazad well? I’ve missed our communiques.”

     There’s nothing cetacean in the smile which blooms in the dark of his helm, sharp and biting, vicious, starving with the bottomless hunger of the shark, and what a shame that dear lost alone Thassarian cannot see this killer’s grin.

     “One might start to think they were being ignored.”

     But he may certainly hear it.

[necroarchy]

“ this hate keeps me warm in the winter. ”

     collection of prompts  /  starter sentences - accepting     @lightsblade

     If she looks down, sees the feet which have trodden smooth this path she so blithely walks, how long will it take her to realize that it’s in his footsteps in which she follows? He who had stood monumental against the bite of Northrend’s cold, wrought stalwart with wrath against the icy fangs which sunk marrow-deep into his body - it’d been Mal’Ganis who served as unwitting fuel for the fire which had burned him from the inside out and warded off the cold until he was ready to claim it as vassal. There’d been something so purifying in the inferno which consumed him inside out. Hate broke him down to ash and ember, and from those base components, a godling was crafted. 

     But he doubts her transformation will be so radiant. Even so - he’ll enjoy watching the pyre. 

     “I must wonder, Lady, at the righteousness of your fury. It wasn’t until I took up Frostmourne that I began utilizing the power of suffering. You rebuilt your entire civilization around it.”

     Amusement lightens his voice, grants it a dreadful sort of buoyancy. He speaks with all the casual curiosity of scholars debating the finer details of a historian’s turn of phrase.

     “At what point do we acknowledge your Sunwell is fed by necromancy?”

[necroarchy]

“ Even the godless end up worshiping something. ”

Iconic Lines From Modern Media - accepting

     “Yes - a GOD.”

     The reek of their influence heralds her arrival, that deep oceanic un-rot which sends his stomach roiling and his teeth vibrating at the root. No snarling victory burns beneath his ribs to quell the worst of the sick. He’s built no kingdoms out of the blood of that which drives HER.

          … not yet, at least.

     “When the higher powers prove frail and unworthy, mortals have a tendency to create new deities from whatever ash and soil they can scrounge up.          Me, for instance. Though you must be familiar with this process by now.”

     His smile is serrated behind the shadows of his jagged crown. 

     “Is this your way of offering fealty, great wyrm? You’re being unnecessarily circumspect about it.”