Aunne: Time and Tide

Green fire lit the heavens – or, at least as much of the heavens as she could see.  She could probably see more heavens if the giant, green-rock-but-not-rock tower with its glowing column of fel energy wasn’t in the way.

Or if she were standing up.

Or if that alliance soldier wan’t on her face, being all bleedy.

With a heave, she shoved the body, limp and flopping and all deadweight and armor away, barely taking note of the shard of felcrystal embedded in the human’s no-longer-breathing chest.  Her new crescent blades were scattered nearby – it was barely the work of a moment to scoop them up, the painfully crude runes etched into their surface flaring to life with an effort of will.  The dreadguards were engaged with a Tauren who was not doing well, massive totem meeting fel-forged steel in a dance that was a testament to the Tauren’s strength and skill, but a forgone conclusion.  The dreadguards knew as well – after all, there was no one else from the little ad-hoc strike team left.  They’d killed everyone else – they knew it.

Aunne grinned.  THere was time, and she knew it – and /this/ was war.  Runes flared… and the power that radiated from her was something dark, something unholy, something… wrong.  Cold.

The dreadguards felt that; the one in the rear turned just in time to parry, shouting something in the raw, harsh language of his kind as the death knight’s blades ground with shrill squeal and the sound of tortured metal against his own.  He shoved, and she went sprawling, tumbling, black not-quite-blood oozing from the rent in her armor, her grace gone with the cuts across one thigh.  She rolled to her knees anyway, laughing, hollow and empty – eyes flaring. 

“Too late, yes?  Should have ended me /sooner/.  But, I will be curious to know what it is you taste like, yes?  Do you know fear, demon?”

Around her, the dead humans…. started standing, low snarls coming from undead throats.  “Can you feel the fear, demon?  When death does not work, do you know what it is you do?”  Conversational, happy, she levered herself to her hooves with that homemade runeblade… as a dozen new ghouls, still shedding alliance armor, flung themselves onto the Dreadguard with hungry howls and grasping teeth.  The Tauren, now dealing with only one opponent, held his ground, bellowing… and she charged, her laughter joining in the din of the battlefield, over the sounds of ghouls tearing demonflesh apart.

“You will /know/ fear, demons. I will teach you, yes?”

—————–

After the battle, it was the work of but a moment to let the remaining ghouls fall back to the earth – and she staggered.  Not exhausted, but, rather, frowning as muscles knitted too slowly, as armor hung at awkward angles.  As she cleaned her blades of fel ichor, using the body of a downed orc, she mused – 

“It is time to be getting back, yes?  Ygraine will be hungry.  Oh!  Perhaps apples?  Pie!  Yes.  Pie.”  She stalked away, humming – one of a half dozen survivors remaining after the building and its corruption vanished.  “Perhaps she will forgive me if there is pie?  This is good.”