#﹙ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ᴀɴɢᴇʟꜱ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴅɪᴇ. ﹚ interactions.

[necroarchy]

“Death takes something with it. What did it take from you?” - ALEX ( CHANTING )

VICIOUS sentence starters. @violetarcs

“ Nothing of value. ”

The sun is a rare sight in Icecrown.

She arrives in a dripping red procession, streaming golden warmth, stirring the hearts of every stubborn last weed and miserably hopeful insect into wakefulness. The furnace blast of her presence invigorates them. Soft yellow light coaxes them forth, pulls them from the dreary murk -- yes, you can do it. Reach out. Lap up this bright sweetness, let it fill you to bursting, ‘til you’re foolish enough to dare think, for even a moment -- Maybe I’ll make it after all.

Then returns the dark.

How much sharper the pain, worse the cold -- what did you expect, honestly? Salvation? After all this? The shadows in her wake are twice as deep. Frost guillotines through the pathetic verdant crowd reaching for her, and leaves behind so many little corpses for the carrion creatures and ravening plagues to feast upon. He flourishes in all his aspects. 

Arthas can’t recall when last he felt the sun upon his skin. ( Last he felt anything. ) But he likes when his subjects do. At least for a little while. The aftermath is delicious.

“ That which remains is what matters -- if those vestiges shed with my mortal coil were of such importance, they would not have been so easily discarded. Do you mourn your every scale lost? ”

[necroarchy]

“My life is yours. Kill me or let me live, if it even matters to you.”

❥     𝐁𝐈𝐓𝐄  𝐓𝐇𝐄  𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐃  𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓  𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐓  𝐘𝐎𝐔  ,  𝐀  𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄  𝐎𝐅  𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒  𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄   𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑  . --- accepting

She arrives in hurricane procession.

He keeps no storm watchers on hand, regardless of this one's frequency and carnage. Precaution is kin to anticipation. It bleeds the same color as expectation. All of it, a kind of awaiting. ( A wanting. ) Arthas finds her often enough without making a place for her, and besides --- she would never deign to fit the design.

( “ Jaina usually runs a little late.” ) 

The cost is to ever be blindsided by her. ( You would be blindsided regardless. )

“ … What? ”

The Shadow Throne swallows his slack-jawed stupidity whole. Its walls are soundproof, unlike the rest of his Citadel, whose veins and ventricles were carved to carry the cries of the damned from rampart to spire. He is not his father, to leave unlocked the doors of his imperial chamber for any bad omen winging its way in. He does not accept with open arms his murderous dark son. 

Merely her mother, it seems. ( Again. )

What stands before him could be a stranger. Her golds are bleached to silver. Her hands are metal gleaming. Even this grief is new, kindled to rage by furnace flames he hadn’t known she even possessed. ( Turnabout is fair play. You surprised her first. ) Jaina places herself in his hands with a truly murderous spite, and he can barely bring himself to appreciate it.

Whence comes this sudden sense?

And whence has his fled? 

“ Here you are, come to this place once more … searching this time, for …? ” He rises slowly from his throne, armor clattering in protest. “ You must know by now there are no golden princes awaiting you. ”

One step, another. How easily he crosses the distance. You could think there nothing but air between them.

My life is yours, she says, as though it had ever been elsewise. Why else would her breath suffocate his lungs. What other reason explains her blood leaking still within his cavernous dark chest. He has flensed himself to the bone for nothing. She lives in his marrow, sleeps on those factory floors. There is none of his construction free of her.

A laugh clots in his throat; he feels it throb just below his jaw, at the place a hangman’s noose tightens.

“ There is only me. ”

Overhead: the faint creak of a guillotine. ( Or is that your armor? ) It must be. His gauntlet has risen to her face. Thumb pressed to the long sweep of her pale cheek, blood-black against the snow --- a twitch of his wrist would render her to dust.

( A twitch of hers would rend you both. You wonder, as always, if she knows. )

She wears heartbreak the same as ever, his Jaina. He sees it in the turn of her mouth first; watches, rapt, as it spreads plaguelike to dull her lilac-strange eyes, and drag her shoulders down. Bone presses heavier against his palm, and he does not know if she leans into the touch or merely wilts towards her sad grave.

No difference, really. No difference at all.

If it even matters to you.

His throat unclenches. A wet, red laugh dribbles from between his teeth. Always, she mistakes him for someone kind.

“ Would that it didn’t. ”

His other hand knots through her hair in a barbed-wire grip. A tilt of the wrist makes her ( dust ) gasp, and he surges upon her as an avalanche.

Ghost-pale, but this warmth … this he recalls. She burns his mouth as though he seeks to swallow the sun. Ozone crackles against his tongue, coats the back of his palate in a metal sheen. Magic, or a brewing storm --- he never could parse the difference, married as they are in her flesh. Their teeth clack, clumsy from the long years’ absence. He tilts her head, adjusts his approach --- and here they are. Every betrayal and broken promise washes away in the tide. They could be young again. They could be in love.

The hand not snarled in her hair trails from her jaw to the hollow of her throat, the jut of her sternum. His palm flattens, fingers spread wide over that steady, nauseating beat. He could pluck it free so easily. He could bring it to his lips, and make her last sight him taking a bite.

( You could put it back where it belongs. )

Arthas licks into her mouth as ice pours into her red heart. Frost folds softly over every ventricle, smoothing over fluttering tissues and shuddering wet veins. Close as they are, entwined as they are, he can feel the faltering staccato echo within his hollow rib cage.

( You could --- )

He bites her lip bloody as it cracks in two.

[necroarchy]

open starter.

   There comes this MOMENT in all the great long winters, where the wood runs low and the shrinking mortals pile up in stacks of kindling twigs, clustered around the dying orange embers flickering fitful against the press of chilling dark. Lips chapped, throats raw, but how they pray, these little stick folk, calling for distant light, dead sun — do you not KNOW what they will give for even the slightest spark with which they might ignite the fuel once more and weather the freeze just one more night?

    ( Have you seen the relish as they seize a fellow stick and hurl them screaming into the embers, the way in which they wash their sap-covered hands clean by calling this murder ‘sacrifice?’ )

   They stand in so much such human wreckage, cold homes and withered corpses littering the stage long before even he crossed the curtain to debut in the scene. The ROT of the land welcomes him as joyfully as this village must have any other bright warm lord who came to save them from their own inescapable mortality. Appropriate. He has, after all, brought them the gift of flame.

    White-blue, colder than their fatal winter, it kindles to life within sunken ribcages and eyeless sockets, and this fire — no need has this fire for fuel and tender care to burn eternal. A few skeletons stir, fingers twitching, legs jerking against the sticky hold of mortis and frostbite. They inhale nothing; they exhale ethereal smoke.

    Let it never be said the Lich King was an ABSENT god.

    THEY alone stand in isolation, a twig burning within the bonfire but not WITH it — lonely, errant little thing pantomiming rebellion for the amusement of no audience. Easy enough to grasp this stick and cast it into his conflagration, but —

   But.

   “ I CAN SEE YOU. ”

   Where’s the entertainment in that?

   “ WON’T YOU STEP INTO THE LIGHT? ”

[necroarchy]

@hemoarchy continuing this

This is a joke.

Share your woes, his father once invited their gutless rabble of a populace, throne room made a forum for all the hat-in-hand representatives ( wickermen ) pathetic enough to be awed by this show of magnaminty. They had come shuffling in one by one, shoulders bowed, heads high, pleas tripping as water from a stream. What adoration they heaped upon him. How approachable our king, they thought. How well he understands us.

( the confusion on his face, its slow roll into terror --- your subjects, their screams ---   yes. you can see the resemblance. )

It’s not a tradition Arthas maintains. There is no need. Nothing of his empire lies beyond his reach, no matter how distant nor vulgar. They are his --- they are him, his divinity made manifest in every shard as a sprawling, pestilent mirror. ( A better reflection some days than others. ) But he can appreciate a well-wrought pantomime, and there are few amusements more charming than spitting on the old man’s grave --- thus they find themselves here in this reflection of the old Capital, king and petitioner, silhouettes the same as years gone by were there light enough to support such puppetry.

“ I despair of you. ”

With minor changes.

Irritation makes a wasteland. Half a foot of snow and twice as much of ice blankets the saronite floor, while the banners hang in icicle stillness. Only a fraction of this is the fault of his Blood-Queen --- lion’s share belonging to the demonic fever that has become his skies these last weeks --- but it is enough. It is hers. 

“ Seeking her salvation … such an interesting turn of phrase. You’re usually more careful than that --- should I take this as proof of you slipping? ”

Bite laces his words, though the teeth are smaller than he’d prefer. Fondness is a maggot eating away the hollow of his chest; it squirms over the rejection that should be at his lips, yet cannot rise further than his sternum. He has little enough patience for saviors when they are not draped in his Blood-Queen’s finest, yet …

( I would not leave my subjects to be slaughtered by this rabble. )

The mirror has had better days.

He sees nothing of Lana’thel’s shift. Her spine straightens for none; the set of her jaw goes unnoticed. His eyes have shut to the tableau before him, lulled by recog boredom. There is no reason to watch this sad display, when all she brings before him are these petty, insipid desires he thought long purged from ---

“ Those beasts took her from me. ”

This vicious wrenching snap --- her voice like barbs, dug into the words to let blood spill upon his wintered grounds … where has he heard this before? Never from her, surely, else he’d never have allowed her the gift. It reminds him of 

( a smear of gold in the discard pile, overlooked and unconsidered --- irrelevant, barely worth a glance --- until …  and then this ... this is --- )

nothing at all.

“ … Indeed. ”

Still, the refusal festers at the bottom of his ribs.

" I suppose it is quite the insult we have suffered as a result of this. That does not explain why you must be the response. Are your princes so inadequate? "

[necroarchy]

❥     𝐁𝐈𝐓𝐄  𝐓𝐇𝐄  𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐃  𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓  𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐓  𝐘𝐎𝐔  ,  𝐀  𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄  𝐎𝐅  𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒  𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄   𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑  . --- accepting @throned: ❛  we  should  be  honest  with  each  other  ,  don’t  you  think  ?  ❜ varian to arthas. :')

Within his chest is a graveyard.

Here rest his lungs, gone still at last. Never mind how they might sometimes inhale, and half-taste the air outside --- cadaveric spasms are a common affliction, and unworthy of attention. Look in vain for a hitch in them as Varian approaches, and fills the air between them with his dagger voice. Turn to his long-lost heart, and listen for the drumming that shall never again increase. Do you see? Do you understand yet?

Thirty years between them, and here he stands at last. Unaffected.

“ Have I ever been less? ”

You could float on a voice this light. Breathe it into your own lungs, and suffocate in joy at the sensation. 

     ( Not that he knows. Breathe. Suffocate. Concerns of a mortal nature. Beneath him now. )

Before him, Varian hardly seems something real. Flesh and blood are such petty materials to compose his form --- and yet that is all there is to him, thumping heartbeat and jungle heat nauseating with so little distance between them. Arthas must focus on the lines of his face to quell his disgust. He counts every grey hair he can see bound in that ridiculous style.

( There are so many now.

    There is so much you never --- )

 “ I find little use in deception anymore. Nothing ruins a man half so well as the truth. ” His lips pull back into a rictus grin. “ Particularly one such as you. ”

[necroarchy]

@thasdorah liked for a starter!

     “... You can’t be serious.”

     He could yearn for Sylvanas at sight of her.

     Little irked so easily as a creature drenched in some other’s darkness --- at least the Light-soaked idiots were consistent in their folly, determined to wallow in their self-righteousness ‘til the time came for him to drown them in it. But this. This was just… atrocious.

     “What next? Shall they summon up some festering prisoner to stand with us? Did Yogg-Saron ignore their call, and you were the best replacement on hand?”

     The Void bubbled thick around her, leaving a greasy taste in the back of his throat, the pit of his stomach. Vile. Disgusting. An utter, complete waste of ambition and intent ---

     “Never mind --- a few days, and I suppose the differences will be hardly notable.”

[necroarchy]

** villain / hero sentence starters . @thasdorah || @deathweaved asked: “ i don’t have to prove anything to you. ”

“ No --- we’re far past that point, aren’t we, boy? ”

OUT IN THE WILDS roam his Deathlord and that fool Thassarian, seeking some beast or another --- Arthas does not care. Hounds haring after any ferret to cross their attention, careless of the master come to the kennels with a proper fox hunt planned. Ill-bred he might consider them, if not for … well.

No fault of his own, of course. He’d taught them better. All of them, even this litter runt now mewling at his feet.

The petulance rolls off his shoulders as yet another ripple in the cloak he’s mantled since agreeing to this puerile bargain. Wrath grew ill in such thin soil; they were just so pathetic. Yammering and chattering, and scraping to obey regardless. Hilarious, most days. 

“ There are only so many ways to disappoint, after all. Impressively, you have managed them all. Congratulations. ”

Other days as well. With certain efforts.

( Certain expenses. )

“ You may skulk off to whatever degrading peril you’re content to linger in if you so wish … or you may take the chance to prove me wrong. ”

[necroarchy]

@xaaxas sent: "I feel nothing but disgust for children of this world's FALSE masters. All the same, you have my eternal favor for degrading that bloated beast Sindragosa further by turning her to your thrall. I hope it STUNG Malygos when he came to learn of it."

“ SILENCE, YOU WRETCHED BEAST. ”

WAS THERE ANYTHING MORE NAUSEATING THAN AN OOZING PUSTULE not chained and bound deep beneath the earth!? The bellows of its magma heart pounded a headache into Arthas’ skull --- he wasn’t sure he’d ever escape its disgusting drumbeat, even after SILENCING IT FOREVERMORE! 

Hardly enough a creature to consider reanimation. Kel’Thuzad might enjoy the challenge of separating flesh from ferrum --- but Arthas would find pleasure enough in tearing the thing apart PLATE BY SHRIEKING PLATE. 

“ There is little I wish from you, praise least of all --- less than worthless from a machine too stupid to cast the yoke of a few festering old parasites. If I sought the ignorant’s opinions on my Frost Queen, I would PICK THEM FROM HER TEETH. ”

[necroarchy]

@arcanemagic ❛ I should have found the words to keep her with me. ❜ // abt zoen………

“ He wouldn’t have listened. ”

Rare are the times when parents and child should all haunt the same room. He could keep count on a hand if he cared, tallying even the incidental moments when they lingered in his periphery. He doesn’t, naturally --- though Zoen doubtless had. Arthas had seen it in her shoulders, tension coiling the muscles into so many knots with abacus intent. The boy was over-sensitive that way.

Was. Now, she is just insensate.

The Maw had not agreed with his Deathlord. Details remained scanty --- none who’d ventured with him had returned, and all Zoen managed in consciousness was a cackling Deathspeak babble. She’d fallen to frenzy soon after, and reached teeth-first for the nearest warm throat, and … well. 

It is surprising to find Jaina at her bedside so soon.

( But then, it was not from him their son inherited self-flagellation. ) 

“ If she’s ever listened to a noise besides her own barking, I’ve yet to see evidence. Serving the Scourge hardly rectified the flaw --- what chance did you have? ”

Might Jaina mean another instance --- Irrelevant. Arthas does not care. The past is a shackle she bears by no will but her own. Let it remain so. He will not travel that road with one who has refused to take a single step beside him.

[necroarchy]

“ it’s been a long time. how have you been? i’ve been really busy being dead. you know, after you murdered me. “ / I UNDERSTAND THIS IS CRACK BUT... lilian.

portal 2 sentence starters --- accepting @abyssine

“ Oh, wonderful. I had been so worried.

     … Remind me your name? ”

The memory lurks somewhere within the shallows of his mind, covered in the thinnest layer of silt. Hardly any effort at all to uncover it, had he the inclination. ( Ha. ) It had been expected of him to know faces well, once, and while there’s little need these days --- it is not god’s responsibility to remember --- he’s never eschewed the practice. Something about knowledge and power. He hadn’t been paying attention.

[necroarchy]

"how... curious,” the ruined king’s voice is as ominous as the mist that that both follows and embodies him, but if viego had to guess, he would wager it is hardly as if the man—or creature, if he was more sincere, considering how similarly etched in undeath he is; if he has abandoned the veneer of mortal, then he imagines another of his ilk would, too, below themselves as it may be—before him would find it foreboding. the camavorian tilts his helmeted head, gaze of lurid green lighting the thick darkness of his mists even behind such carapace. “i have yet to meet another as foul as i, but it seems it holds true most evils can meet its match.”

it almost thrills him as much as it offends him, the very notion he puts forth himself. but for now, he will hold his tongue.

the once-king undoes the appearance of the wraith, hidden as it is beneath his magic, shedding the black armor of the ruination, revealing pallid countenance. "tell me, stranger: who would you be?”

@hubrisi sent a starter.

     He arrives in avalanche procession.

     Lich-light spiderwebs delicately across the great pale darkness of foreign ruin; it flows as water through faultlines, fluid-smooth. Miniscule movements. Unremarkable. Nearly natural, were such an insult to be borne by either of them.

     Naturally. Nigh close as kin, weren’t they? And he had ever had such an… interest in his kin.

     There comes a crackling noise as light freezes alike ice. Spiderweb expands to cracks; the tremulous land shatters to so many more pieces. Ruin of his own making dusts this ~~pretender~~ king’s land in as rude a welcoming gift as he’s ever bequeathed. How shameful. What a travesty his father would consider him.

     Ah well. There were so much worse things to be. Such as… 

     “Are you so banal as to peddle in evil? My expectations lower by the moment.” Subterranean to start, and now the foggy wretch threatens to drive them further unto the earth’s core. Unbelievable. 

     Would be. Are not yet --- not ever? Did he really think… did he dare presume ---

     Would be ---

     “Myself,” he chuckles afloat a river of shrieks, “and everyone else. Don’t tell me you’ve foregone ambition in favor of some puerile morality.”

     A grin shears across his face, beneath the shadows of his own helm and the burning pits of his own eyes. A sheet of ice bare on the cliff-face, precarious and jagged. Stable ‘til the wrong (right) step or word.

[necroarchy]

“ i only want you gone.  " 👀👀

He laughs along a blizzard.

Hear that noise, that rattling, wintry wind? Feel the way it scrapes down nose and throat to nestle in the lungs, wicking every waterdrop encountered? The land’s spirits rise with his. They crawl from the grave soil. They sink their icicle claws into blood-warmed flesh. Nowhere does he walk unaccompanied. Unacknowledged. 

All utterly wasted on this wretched shade.

The distance between them is not quite blade-close, not quite far enough he’d claim she held the advantage. ( There is nowhere so far as that. ) The yearning gnaws at his guts like a carrion hound, starving, ragged-toothed. It would be so easy. ( For once. ) That vile resemblance rises forth with the rest of the long-dead and floods his mouth like Blight. He licks his teeth as his lips curl into a grin, banishing the taste.

“ Well, it’s nice to want things. ”

Save him -- keep her close -- protect them from Plague -- ha. Ha. Ha. How well it all turns out. He’d never thought to employ a jester for his court, but as ever, Sylvanas surprises him. 

“ For instance -- I want to fling you back onto those saronite spikes where you belong … but where would that leave us? Unfortunately for everyone, you’re yet useful. ”

[necroarchy]

Smoke plumes slowly from the half-breed’s nostrils as he sizes up the Lich King before him, clawed fingers scratching at his beard contemplatively. Graves is perhaps more … curious than he should be.

“So … does it smell in Icecrown? It’s gotta, right?” he asks in the way that one would casually speak to a friend, gesturing haphazardly to the air around him. “Y’know, ‘cause everybody’s dead, guts hangin’ out, all that … Maybe you ain’t got the nose for it anymore though, I dunno. Or maybe it’s so cold, folk don’t rot so bad?”

Graves puffs absently on his cigarette again, shrugging. “Or maybe they do. I dunno. Always wondered ‘bout that.”

@endlines

“ Come to my halls and find out yourself. ”

AREN’T YOU PROUD OF HIM, FATHER? So politely does the invitation flow off his tongue, honey-smooth and silken, precisely as befits the Prince King of Lordaeron. Should the querelous little rat avoid his gaze, Arthas could nearly pass for genuine.

His eyes, though. That coldfire blaze.

How terribly honest of him.

“ My kind has little use for scent -- some few retain it, but vermin of your ilk are not particularly difficult to root out. ” A grin knifes across his mouth. “ Even when trying to make sport of it. ”

[necroarchy]

@vixtionary continuing this

“ Of course there’s worse -- it stands before you. ”

Ankles crossed, shoulder pressed against the wall at a lazy slant -- he shows more interest in adjusting his gauntlets than his … friend’s mortal coil. All things in good time. 

“ What freedom is there in your little existence? Death has collared you all. Its shackles will drag you down into the dirt eventually. You speak of liberty and The Inevitable with the same breath and don’t choke on the contradiction? General. I thought higher of you. ”

All things.

[necroarchy]

@shxwmaster continuing this thread

“ Not everything. ” Ice splitting underheel. ( A hairline fracture underhand. ) The correction comes so easily you could miss the rumble of a distant avalanche. “ Not yet. ”

His smile never changes. What need is there to wear ire himself when Northrend mantles it much better?

“ But I do have you. ”

When glee suits him so well?

Shaw’s insults fall as so much dust, shaken off by the rapid patter of his pulse. Arthas feels it through his gauntlet, bashing about like a caged hawk. Perhaps an unfair comparison … a bird at least has courage enough to dash itself against the bars. All this man does is plead.

Disappointing.

“ At least pretend you’ve more to contribute than a ghoul. I once had such a high opinion of your skills, Mathias. ” His grip tightens ( hairline split ) as consideration narrows his gaze. Past flesh, beneath bone, squirming for space within the marrow pockmarks --- there it is. His torch-bright, boiling soul … did he truly think he could hide in these cold shadows?  

“ Was I mistaken? ”

[necroarchy]

❥     𝐁𝐈𝐓𝐄  𝐓𝐇𝐄  𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐃  𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓  𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐓  𝐘𝐎𝐔  ,  𝐀  𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄  𝐎𝐅  𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒  𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄   𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑  . --- accepting @wormsaga sent: ❛  you  can  see  that  your  presence  has  become  a  bit  of  a  problem  .  ❜

“ That was rather the goal, yes. ”

Nothing but smiles he proffers this insipid little worm, his teeth-bright best even, as though it were more than a smear beneath his solleret. He adopts the demeanor which comes most naturally, here in this place of death and rot --- in his kingdom, undoubtedly, forgetful though it may be to that fact. 

Irrelevant. A body may forget gravity; it will still smash to pieces at the bottom of a cliff.

" On the subject of the obvious --- you are rapidly proving a disappointment. Your hospitality most of all. "