Sedrai: Consequence

Post your RP stories/character descriptions/other cool stuff here!

Moderator: Guild Officer

User avatar
Sedrai
Posts: 18
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2011 1:38 pm
Contact:

Sedrai: Consequence

Postby Sedrai » Tue Nov 29, 2011 11:22 am

Here it is: the last and most recent piece of Sedrai's story. These events take place very shortly after the Cataclysm first hit Azeroth, at the end of the last expansion. While there is a bit more story that has happened since, none of the new plot points have been revealed. Essentially, this is where Sedrai stopped due to my personal lack of time for playing and roleplaying. Something I'm trying to change. :)

The first portion, in italics, is a lightly paraphrased and gently filled-out version of the chatlog from the Netherbane's final event of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. In reality, I was unable to attend the event beyond the first ten minutes, but ICly, Sedrai was there, a quiet observer only, to bear witness to the outcome of her mission and see if the Netherbane could use the information she got them (played out in-game but not reflected in many of the writing excerpts).


“Taldarion! Kill him!” Shizukera’s voice is rough with strain, cutting through the din of battle, the rattle and groan of the shambling undead around them.

Not far away, the demon Xonath in Danalas Moontreader’s body slams his massive polearm, Deathbreaker, into the ground where its dark power begins to pull forth a fresh horror from the tortured earth.

Taldarion spins his blades, grasping each in an underhand grip even as he growls, “ Oh, no, you don't!”

With one, he slashes at Moontreader's eyes, mimicking the blow that took his own eyes so many years ago. With the other, he stabs at the demon's abdomen.

“Do you hear them, Moontreader?” the tall nightelf says, biting off the words between sharp inhales. “The Unquiet Dead. My Shatterbound Army. We have been waiting... for months. Biding our time! Bringing together all those souls that they might reach out and take their retribution!”

Taldarion 's voice devolves into a feral growl as his blades sink deep into the distracted demon’s flesh. “You took everything but my life, Xonath.”

The nathrezim growls with a mixture of pain and anger, staggering back as the demon hunter presses his advantage, driving both blades to the hilt into his opponent and holding them there with all his might.

Leaving no pause for Xonath to recover, Taldarion begins to chant in eredun. The words sound remarkably similar to a ritual binding, but they are subtly different. Moontreader screams in pain, fighting to maintain his concentration from the power that surges up behind Taldarion’s words. The faint dreadlord form that hangs in the air above him shimmers at the struggle.

All around the clearing, voices rise, audible to all of the Netherbane, now. Names. Names of families and fathers. Of mothers and daughters. Sons. Soldiers. Children. All of Xonath’s innocent victims, their names whispering in the night air.

“Xi nvoric akreesh! X'il draenon kalimah! Krin'do Shervash!”

Moontreader looks up at Taldarion, his eyes wide with alarm. He shudders, as wounded by the ritual words as the weapons. Empowered by the vengeful dead, the Risen who still fight against being controlled, the demon hunter’s twin blades suck at the nathrezim’s essence, drawing the demon from Moontreader's body.

“It is finished.” Taldarion pulls the blades apart, slicing the body of the dreadlord in two.

Around them, the undead creatures, whether of shadow or flesh, crumble to dust. The grass, the trees, the foliage, all slough off the sickly taint with which the demon had infected them and return to their natural coloring.

The stench of the undead, however, is still heavy in the air. The sickly feeling of fel magic, too, lingers long after the demon hunters have gathered their wounded and trickled away.

______

The game ended in a scream and a spray of fouled blood. It ended in the confusion of allies turned enemies turned allies, again, and the whispered mutiny of the dead. It ended in a shattering, shuddering dissolution of all that the dreadlord had created. Chaos and destruction. Pain and weakness. In short, the game ended with everything Xonath might have wished for the world.

It felt too unlike a victory.

Sedrai watched with a furrowed brow as the last of the Netherbane disappeared into the distance, gone to lick their wounds and recover their strength. A sense of unease settled like a stone in her belly. Something intangible and inexplicable felt wrong. Felt false. As if the script had been read to perfection, yet the acting was weak enough to leave doubt. As if an ellipse marked the end instead of a period.

The shadows of the copse of trees protecting her from unwanted attention, the draenai took long minutes to reflect and replay, to analyze the events to which she had borne witness, seeking the flaw. The azure glow of her eyes, like the deep waters of a frosted mountain lake, swirled gently with the currents of her racing thoughts. They lead her in circles, whirling along eddies of misdirection and ending in the stagnant waters of questions unanswered. The night’s outcome may have been exactly what it seemed… or it may have been very much not.

Even his demise had a purpose. The thought came, unbidden, from somewhere in the back of her mind, born of intuition developed in the weeks and months of her involvement with the sundered dreadlord. Foul though it was, it rang too true to be banished, humming with an odd combination of threat and promise that she could not bring herself to examine.

She frowned, her gauntlet creaking as she squeezed her left hand into a fist. The motion did nothing to erase the dull tingle left there by the oath the demon had demanded of her, the final price paid against the success of her mission. It never did.

“Enough.” Sedrai said the word aloud to break the power of her own reverie, the sound an anchor to the reality of the Moonglade.

Fat raindrops had begun to fall, the land’s tears hissing against the leaves and soaking the ash that was all that remained of the Xonath’s Risen soldiers. The moon, high and full and peeking through a gap in the clouds, hovered above the shadow of Mount Hyjal. Its clear light turned the fallen rain to liquid silver, gilding it as if to draw attention to the way it flowed, the way it smoothed away the rough edges of the ravaged sod.

The promise was subtle, but one nonetheless: nature would reclaim what the demon had sullied, would cleanse him away and continue on, ageless and pure.

It was enough to coax the wary death knight from beneath the trees, her hooves sinking into the mud as she stepped into the meager light and turned her face to the sky. The rain against her skin was cool and steady, heavy enough to run down the planes and angles of her face in rivulets. Heavy enough to smooth away the rough edges of her anxiety as surely as it worked to smooth the land beneath her hooves.

Sedrai stood, still and calm under the storm’s touch, thoughts slipping sideways to land on the memory of a whisper of names. So many dead at the demon’s hand… and so many dead at her own in his name. She knew them all by heart, their names inscribed in her mind by the blood she’d cleaned from the dagger at her belt. Her innocents. Her victims. Her price, paid in full to the duty she had accepted. They deserved no less than to be remembered always by the hand that slew them, that offered them up to the dreadlord's army of the damned.

She stayed that way for long minutes before a gleam caught her eye, distracting her from her penance. Metal winked as the clouds danced shadows over the moon, silently beckoning from a tangle of brush, the remains of an upturned bush. Blood red metal. A hilt wrapped in pale leather and inlaid with runes that seemed to skitter sickeningly without moving at all.

“Deathbreaker.” The draenai whispered the name aloud, drawing herself taut with alarm. Xonath’s cursed blade lay abandoned where his lifeless hands had dropped it, half-buried and forgotten in the aftermath of chaos. With it…

Power. Promise.
“I am Sedrai, no more and no less. This is my oath.”
A touch. A sickening touch. “You will become so much more.”


The memory whispered in her mind and then evaporated like smoke. She blinked, shaking her head at the odd, empty moment of distraction.

Greyseer would want the demon blade, would want to know that it was safe in his keeping. And recovering it would put a nice period to her mission. One final, physical prize to end her watch over Danalas Moontreader and her association with the demon hunter shan’do and his kind. It was time.

Reaching out her left hand, Sedrai sent a thought tapping at her binding to the Runeblade strapped to her back, letting its power rip her shadow free and send it crawling across the ground to wrap around the exposed hilt. The rush of wind as Deathbreaker was yanked into her waiting palm set the blade whistling, a keening cry that bloodied the steady whisper of the rain. She ignored the sound just as she ignored the shiver that ran down her spine as she weighed the weapon, appreciating its fine form and balance.

Harder to ignore was the pressure, the weight that started out easily mistaken for the press of the rain and soon grew to a stifling intensity. The death knight raised her gaze, alarmed to see the residual fel energy left in Xonath’s wake coalescing into faint ribbons of putrid green light that danced in the fouled air, writhing and licking at her. She wanted to dodge away from their nauseating touch. She wanted to throw the demon blade back into the mud and forget the feel of it in her hand.

She did neither, fighting instead to merely stand against the sudden, inexplicable evaporation of her strength. Sedrai staggered, gritting her teeth and willing her trembling legs to hold where her arms had already failed. Deathbreaker’s tip dropped like a rock, digging in to the slurry of mud and ash at her hooves, its weight suddenly profound and impossible, an anchor holding her in place while the trap was sprung around her.

“Still standing, eh?” The smooth, masculine voice came from somewhere to her left. “Maybe the dreadlord’s confidence wasn’t completely misplaced, after all.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Another voice, this one higher and harder and feminine, joined the first before Sedrai could manage to force her sluggish frame to turn. “She doesn’t look like much to me. Scrawny. Probably break and ruin the fun.”

They stepped from the cover of the very copse in which she had stood only moments ago, a thin-built human man and a dark-skinned eredar woman. Their forms danced in and out of focus, her vision as afflicted as her limbs. Growling wordlessly with frustration, the death knight shook her head as if the motion could help force her eyes to function. The best she could manage was a squint that allowed her to make out the man’s patterned red cloak with its cowl pulled up against the rain and the way the eredar’s armor gleamed under the moon, evidence of the sharp edges that bristled along every surface.

And, of course, the emblem of the Shadowed Sun carved brazenly across her breastplate. Xonath’s creatures.

Abandoning her grip on Deathbreaker’s hilt, Sedrai gathered herself as straight as she could manage and reached over her shoulder to draw forth her Runeblade. That the blade shuddered and shook in her hand, that its point dipped perilously close to the ground, these were immaterial. She would not be destroyed without a fight.

“Oh, ho!” The eredar smiled at the sign of defiance, her grey eyes lighting with feverish anticipation as she reached for her own weapons, a pair of blue-silver blurs that might have been an axes strapped to her belt. “She may not break so easily, after all. How delicious!”

“Az.” The odd word, spoken with reproof by the man, stopped his companion from actually drawing forth the blades, her heart-shaped mouth compressing into a disappointed moue.

“I wouldn’t have destroyed her, yet.”

“You say that so often, my pet, and yet what happens every time?”

The woman grimaced, somehow managing an expression both petulant and contrite. “… not quite every time.”

The man was just opening his mouth to issue a rejoinder when both suddenly turned to look back at the copse of trees, as if in reaction to a sound. Sedrai frowned, hearing nothing but the continued hiss of the rain.

“Exactly so,” the human said with a laugh, addressing a new, hulking blur that stepped forth from … nowhere? A portal? The death knight shook her head, again, willing her vision to clear enough to seek the source of this uncomfortable influx of enemies. The world swam before her, dizzying and frustrating.

“Who…” she coughed, clearing the rasp from her throat, “who are you?”

The words gained her their attention, once more, and the man stepped forward, unafraid despite the unsteady blade she still held between them.

“How darling you are. All bristling ineffectuality and stubborn pride.” The man grinned beneath his sodden cowl, leaning close enough that she could see the mahogany of his eyes and the stubble that darkened his pale cheeks. Close enough that she could have struck him, if only she could summon the strength to lift a hand.

“You really did think it would be over, didn’t you, you adorable, naïve little creature? That the big, bad dreadlord would go away and take with him all of the evidence of your treachery and lies? That you would skip along on your way, free of your promises?

“Tsk. If I were a less admirable man, that level of naiveté would vex me sorely. As it is, I’m afraid you’ve vexed someone far worse. We aren’t all content to be both player and played, little toy. Your part in the game comes with rewards… and punishment.

“Azladora, if you please…?” He gestured, a vague motion that meant much more to the eredar than it did to Sedrai.

She had little time to ponder, however, as the woman moved like a coiled snake. Two blows landed, faster than she could follow in this state, and her hands went nerveless and numb. Her Runeblade dropped beside Deathbreaker, splashing the fouled mud up her legs. The third strike connected with her chin, snapping her head to the side. Only a fighter’s instinct kept her on her hooves as she stumbled away from the weapons, her ears ringing with a mind-numbing clamor.

“Az!” The human’s shout stopped the fourth blow from landing, giving Sedrai time to shake her muddled head and straighten. Her defiant glare earned her another wild smile before the other woman unclenched her fist, patting the draenai’s cheek instead.

“There’ll be scads of time for that later. For now, let’s keep her on her feet, shall we?”

“Yes, yes.” Sighing, Azladora stepped back, making way as the newest addition to the clearing took her place.

Sedrai glanced up… and up, gasping at her first clear sight of the third demon.

It was hideous. Malformed and misshapen hints of a dozen races and species of creatures peeked out from the canvas of its huge body: twisted, uneven eredari horns at its crown, a boot over a presumably-human foot, a draconic claw with only three digits for a hand, a pair of aberrant octopodal tentacles sprouting from its left upper arm. Its bare, barrel-thick chest was partially furred, a splotchy, patchy mange from under which peeked small islands of naga-like scales swimming in an ocean of smooth, blue flesh.

From head to toe, it was wrong. An abomination. Staring up at it, the death knight struggled to identify and catalogue the creature around a revulsion that was overpowering and instinctive.

Until the moment she met its gaze.

Sedrai stood, stunned and transfixed. It had… beautiful eyes. Clear and bright, they were the sweet green of new spring leaves and filled with a cunning, an intelligence at great odds to the ugly, brutish body. In them were questions and answers, whispers and demands, and a power that seemed somehow familiar. Knowledge. “It” was a “he”, and staring into his mesmerizing gaze, the draenai felt her revulsion give way to an icy fear.

He was a spider, and she was already in his web.

Gasping, the draenai ripped her eyes from the demon’s and turned her head away. Both the human and his eredari companion laughed at her reaction, but the monstrosity answered it with a guttural, animal growl. He reached down and grabbed her chin with claw-tipped, webbed fingers, forcing her to face him. Holding her still as those eyes dug deep. Searching. Pushing. Looking for … what?

It didn’t matter. She did not want his gaze on her for another second.

Sedrai clenched her teeth and forced herself into motion, bringing up her hands to claw at the demon’s massive arm. “R… Release me.”

His initial reaction was to tighten his grip, an increment for every blow she rained on him until she felt certain she would hear the snap of her jaw breaking in the next moment.

But the next moment never came. The demon’s grip gentled abruptly, and he slid the misshapen hand from her chin to her cheek. It was an oddly tender caress, made even more eerie by the confusing mix of anticipation and regret shining in his expressive eyes.

You will never be free again.

His words, whispering soundlessly against her mind, stole her breath away. The old fear, the only fear, rose, and with it the desperate will to renew her struggles, to force her traitorous body into motion. She stumbled back, away from the demon’s touch, away from his horrifying promise, as he lifted a malformed limb and beckoned to his companion.

She managed two steps before the human stepped forward and grabbed her arm, the dark magic dancing around his hand sucking away whatever last vestiges of strength she possessed. No amount of her indomitable will could save her from collapsing like a rag doll, betrayed by her undead body, into the waiting arms of the monstrous demon. He scooped her up like a parent might a sleeping child, cradling her limp form against his massive chest.

“Azladora, if you would be so kind as to fetch the weapons…?” Awake and aware, she heard the man’s robes rustle as he spoke the order, smelled the tang of magic in the air as the fel energy ripped a hole through reality and back again. A portal.

“I… choose.” Sedrai forced the whispered words past numb lips. A reminder. An oath. A warning to those who would seek to try to take from her the one thing she held most dear.

The monstrosity looked down. You chose. Now you answer to the consequences of that choice.

Return to “Roleplay”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 40 guests