Desecration

[Greebo]

He rode hard over the bridge and quickly left the road, angling off to the side. He was grateful that for all its shortcomings, his corpse no longer had a beating heart that would be deafening him and setting his limbs a-tremble with the fear he struggled, and failed, to master. He was half-way to Lakeshire before he dared to pull on the reins and stop the cursed Dreadsteed that answered only to the name of Fluffy. He yanked hard, but the demon had the bit well between it's teeth. With a whinny that let him know that he was not in charge, his mount turned and began to course it's way back through the rolling wooded hills of Elwynn Forest toward Goldshire. He approached from the north, wary of the screaming that was disrupting the midsummer celebrations. He saw a dancer running toward the small shimmering form of The Inquisitor and unleashed a stream of fire oh so delicately tuned to burn the flesh slowly, causing maximum pain. The stumbling figure collapsed at her feet, a few drops of fel-fire splashing on the hem of her robe and sizzling for a few seconds before guttering out.

Her shoulders shifted disdainfully as she muttered something about expecting him to fail again. He gritted his teeth and took a deep breath to calm himself. He knew that the daggers of her words were to be accepted, welcomed, until such time as the roles were reversed. With a false air of insouciance he said "He might not have, Inquisitor, but you of all people should know that I have a particular knack for extracting myself from these situations." As usual, she ignored his glib words, focusing on the task at hand and paying attention to him only when her keen battle sense let her know that he was stumbling at a task.

His face hardening as he berated himself for continuing to treat her as human, as female, he dismounted and strode over to the guards in front of the inn, leaving her to finish off the revelers. "Phuuzum nal hamru. Nal!" he shouted, making a circular gesture as the fel-hound shimmered into view. Eagerly the demon leapt forward and began to slaver and bite each of them in turn, gathering them into a panicked circle of hacking blades. One by one they began to fall as the bolts of shadow streaked over the desecrated fire until the last one, realizing that the demon was not the greatest threat, turned to run toward him and, raising his sword arm high, collapsed in a bloody heap as Phuuzum tore his entrails out. Angaroth stepped over their corpses and entered the inn, anger and blood lust seething within him. He remembered the scorn of the Stormwind guard the first time he visited, he felt a vulnerability between his shoulder blades as he waited for a dismissive command from the Inquisitor. Vision already clouded with corporeal decay turned red and he began to cast shadow-bolts about wildly, striking at anything living in the room. The hapless townsfolk shrieked and died as the fel-energy and the demon hound ripped them into soggy piles of barely recognizable flesh. As the last scream faded, his rage began to subside and he looked around in satisfaction at the carnage he had wrought. Tilting his head to one side to admire a particularly artful pattern of blood spray on the wall he heard a slight scrape of wood on wood. Phuuzum too, sensed something and began to growl at a seat along the wall. Angaroth realized that the bench was hollow and, smiling, wandered toward it. Throwing the cover open, he saw a young woman cowering within the cramped space. He reached down to caress her pale skin, her warm tears splashing his talons. He quickly seized her by her jet black hair and hoisted her small body high into the air with inhuman strength. Eyes of cornflower blue stared at him, wide open, unseeing. Eyes of a shade he had seen on another small woman in Old Hillsbrad, eyes missing now, hollow sockets and ichor replacing the blue of a summer sky. "Don't worry my love, this will only hurt a very great deal. Your life isn't a failure, it is your whole race who fail." Her body began to twitch and dance in his grasp as he began to delicately unwind her soul, draining it into his palm one day, one layer, one kiss at a time. Her flesh shrivelled slightly as her essence coalesced in a glowing matrix, her screams hoarse and weakening. He drove his taloned hand deep into her belly and sickening purple glow of the spell trace begin to gleam from the wound, from her mouth, nose, eyes. The noise she was making rose several notches, a keening wail that would tremble on the note as he twitched his fingers. "How does it feel, my sweet? Do you like it?" There was no sanity left in the thing he held to answer him so he crafted her answers for himself instead, listened to her plead and beg for more, listened to her stumbling apologies and promises to behave. He imagined her in robes similar to his own, kneeling before him, abject, he imagined her reaching up ...

"Are you quite done yet?" she sneered from behind him.

The last motes of life settled into place in his hand and the body twitched and was still. The glowing energy drained away, her life not potent enough to crystallize into a shard. He flung the slender form away and turned to face her.

"Far from it, Inquisitor, far from it. But there is always another day. And Menethil Harbour calls, does it not?"