Self & Sacrifice

[Nykkolaia]

Kill them all.

It was a directive very often given, but usually it was covered in euphemisms or with other sorts of qualifiers to make it seem better than it was. There was something to be respected in the straightforwardness of this one... and something utterly chilling. The words reverberated with particular strength, coming on the heels of the words before them.

...the paladin made a heroic stand...

Sad stories were not few and not muted here in Northrend. Outlands had been particularly hard for Kasharae, for a great many reasons that she didn't fully understand but could sense at the very end of her awareness and memory... but the North was something else. Something worse. Something that had a far sharper edge and cut far deeper.

...and charged. Most heroic thing I've ever seen...

Zul'drak was no different. The herds of scourge and trolls seemed endless and the tales were of wit's end.

Yet there was something about this particularly tale and this particular request that had shot straight through to the Draenei's heart. Many of the stories had saddened her, of course. She wasn't without emotion, but none had gotten to her in quite the same way as this one. This one had caught the strings attached to her spirit in a new way.

Standing before the floating, half-living body of poor Gerk, Kas' silvery eyes had welled up with tears never to be shed.

Kill them all.

There were Vargul everywhere. All too easily, and all too gladly, she took out the pain she felt on behalf of these others upon them. The Paladin cut a bloody swath along already blood-soaked ground. The dying grass was consecrated by duty taken to heart. It didn't seem to be enough to make up for what had come before, and it seemed even less so when she found the spirit of Dargath.

There was something about the other Paladin... that it was another Paladin. His heroism spoke to what she hoped to achieve. Selflessness. Sacrifice. The understanding of the world outside of one's self. Kasharae strove for that understanding in her training in the ways of the Light, but she knew it was hard to willing set aside one's self when one was only partially aware of who their 'self' was.

She was trying... and perhaps someday she would achieve the understanding of it as Dargath had. Obviously, she would rather survive the encounter, but it would not be the result so much as the intent that would truly matter.

Kas knelt briefly before the spirit and said a prayer to the Light before she rose again, setting to her duty with renewed vigor.

If the Light won't grant me vengeance, maybe you will, Paladin. Kill them all.

Kasharae had whispered to the dying that for him, for his lost brother and for the Paladin Dargath, that should would... and she did.