Summoned
This was supposed to be the third and last Hadeon story. It's the third, but probably not the last. I hope it's entertaining. Short commentary on how I feel about it at the very end, under the cut.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summoned
. . . . . A pulse of unholy energy rent the air in front of Andular Tieran. He had just enough time to think Huh. What is that? before bolts of deep violet death magic wrapped around his torso and yanked him forward twenty-five yards. The fel-imbued robes of the Illidari cult that Andular wore were no protection against the rock he slammed into. Dazed and winded, still wrapped in those unusual tendrils of death magic that had come from nowhere, he looked up to see a massive suit of plated armor coming around the rock towards him. From a slit in the helmet glowed a pair of blue orbs so cold and hate-filled that Andular wet himself for the first time since his first battle as a teenaged medic with Turalyon's Sons of Lothar.
. . . . . The tendrils of death magic faded, but the feel of death in the air did not. Andular opened his mouth to speak a demonic incantation and blast the suit of armor with a bolt of shadow magic. A dark gauntlet shot up, the articulated plates of the palm searing the skin of Andular's neck with frostbite as the hand closed around his throat. He did not even manage a squeak. Those evil eyes never looked away from him as the blackness closed in. The cultist kicked his feet, clawed at the hand around his throat, and finally went still.
. . . . . Death knight Hadeon sighed and set the corpse down gently on the stone. He'd been watching the cultists for a few days and knew that another patrol wouldn't be by for ten minutes. It was enough time. This was the largest of the humans he'd found and it would still take some extra scraps and some work to make the cultist's robes and cowl fit him. He touched two fingers to his forehead and whispered a prayer for the human's soul, although it had already fled the body. Quickly, he removed the robe and cowl from the body, grimacing at the rank scent of urine from the robes.
. . . . . His heart sank as he lifted his hand over the body and blasted it with foul, unholy magic. This was the worst part of his plan; he hadn't been able to come up with any other way to get the body out of the area before the next patrol. Sickened by his own desecration of the dead, he snapped his fingers at the reanimated corpse. It mindlessly shambled after him as he slung the robes over his shoulder and headed for the tree line of Terokkar Forest.
. . . . . As soon as it was safe to do so, death knight Hadeon led the ghoul to a clearing amid the trees. He set down his pack and the cultist's robes, and then pulled out a broken sword he'd claimed from a ruined settlement near the Black Temple. Using the sword as a shovel, Hadeon began to dig.
. . . . . You really should make the ghoul help, goat, came the dry tones of warlock Retz in his mind.
. . . . . "Shut up, Retz. I am not making this poor man dig his own grave."
. . . . . He was a member of a demon cult. You hate demon cults. He's not even worth a grave.
. . . . . "Even dead cultists deserve a little respect." Hadeon kept digging.
. . . . . The grave wasn't as deep as he would like, given the wildlife in the area, but a broken sword did not a decent shovel make. The death knight shoved the unresponsive ghoul into the hole and murmured a brief apology. He took back the infusion of unholy magic he had lent the ghoul and it became an inert corpse once more.
. . . . . Ignoring Retz's complaints about the effort involved, the ignominy of the deed, and the tedium of the work, Hadeon filled the grave in with dirt and tamped the mound down with his hooves. He left the broken sword planted in the dirt as a marker and picked up the robes to go wash them in a nearby river.
. . . . . As he had travelled across Shadowmoon Valley, Hadeon saw enough of the demons of the Burning Legion to know that Draenor was lost. He had seen several Kro'kul among the roving bands of cultists, so his plan was to pass as a Kro'kul cultist when he got close enough to Auchindoun to need a disguise; he was probably Kro'kul himself at this point anyway. He'd only been away from Draenor for a few years - somewhere around two or three, although he wasn't sure - and he was certain that the former temple of the dead was still teeming with Shadow Council and now Illidari cultists too.
. . . . . The disguise had been Retz's idea. Retz was not terribly keen on slaughtering his fellows, but not because he owed them a lick of loyalty. It was a waste of their time, he reasoned. Better to just go in looking like one of them, do the weird little death rituals Hadeon was so set on performing for the soul in the shard he carried, and get out with minimal fuss. Hadeon had agreed that it was a sound enough concept, and so now he was trudging through the Bone Wastes in too-short, too-tight robes and wincing at every pile of draenei bones he passed as he made for the ruins of the temple. At least the cowl was roomy enough to hide his face.
. . . . . To Hadeon's surprise, his parasite warlock had been right. No one questioned his right to be in the temple while he looked like a Kro'kul Illidari servant. One human woman had glanced at his hooves and murmured something about giving her regards to Akama to him. Hadeon had nodded beneath the cowl and kept moving across the massive, ruined courtyard towards the Auchenai Crypts.
. . . . . Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that being here again was pushing him to the killing edge, that his grasp on the Light slipped farther away the longer he was here, but he owed it to Ramdor to try. This was why he had overpowered Retz and retaken control of his body, after all - he owed it to his fellow Death-speakers to send all their souls to the Light.
. . . . . "Death-speaker Malieos!" came the cry of a hollow-eyed draenei woman as she flagged down a bald, hornless Kro'kul man in the robes of a Shadow Council member. It took every ounce of control Hadeon possessed to not spin around to find out what was going on. He kept walking, slipping behind a large piece of debris in the courtyard so he could overhear the conversation. Had the woman just called that Kro'kul a Death-speaker? Those robes she wore, they looked almost like an anchorite's attire, just...the wrong dye batch. Horror set in as he listened to the conversation.
. . . . . "What is it, Paandri? I'm running very short on time." The Kro'kul sounded bored.
. . . . . "My apologies, Death-speaker. I only wanted to inform you that there is a new batch of corpses ready for your work in the Shadow Labyrinth. Five ‘brave adventurers,'" she scoffed, "who seem to have been sent here by those Light-addled fools holding out in Shattrath. One of the preservers found a scroll containing orders from the Aldor on one of the bodies."
. . . . . The Kro'kul waved her away. "Drain the blood and keep the corpses on ice for me. I will be there in a few hours. The Council wants us to reanimate a bone dragon today."
. . . . . Leaning heavily back against the debris shielding him from the conversation, Hadeon closed his eyes. This abomination was called Death-speaker? His own people were now participating in this travesty at Auchindoun? The Aldor yet survived? He banged the back of his head against the stone behind him a few times.
. . . . . Worry later, goat. We need to hurry.
. . . . . With a curt nod, Hadeon pushed away from the debris and walked to the crypts. The massive pile of bones just inside the doorway nearly pushed him over that knife's edge of madness he'd been treading since he'd gotten within sight of the ruins. The level of disrespect and downright blasphemy made him want to find some power which would allow him to raze the entire ruined temple to the ground. But as powerful as he'd become, he knew that was far beyond him. Too close to the killing edge, he knew he shouldn't do it, but he had to... Hadeon opened his senses to the dead, looking with otherworldly eyes at the pile that was twice as tall as he was.
. . . . . The rush of screaming, anguished souls would have knocked him to his knees if he hadn't locked them in anticipation of the influx. Now that he was listening, he could hear the maddened screaming from the magenta shard at his hip. Fumbling with the robes, Hadeon pulled the blood-stained case from his belt and unrolled it. There were still six vials of Anuurhi rum in the twelve slots for the case. Something frozen fell onto the leather. Hadeon stared at the tiny piece of ice until another fell and joined it. He realized then that he was weeping. Derius had given him the case and the rum. Along with the vials, tucked into one of the empty slots like some sort of bizarre supply, was the magenta soul shard with Ramdor's soul in it.
. . . . . The shard felt warm to the touch as Hadeon picked it up. It was probably hot enough to damage his skin if he was feeling it at all. He heard a quiet sizzle over all the screaming of hungry ghosts. Yes, it was that hot, then.
. . . . . "I'm not sure I can find your body here, Ramdor," he rumbled quietly at the shard. "This may be the best I can do." Casting a quick glance around to ensure there were no cultists in the alcove, Hadeon dropped to one knee and set the shard down on the pile of bones. "Retz," he asked his soul parasite, "how do I get his soul out of the shard?"
. . . . . You really should have asked earlier, goat. Retz sounded annoyed. Just break the shard. A demon would snap it and suck the soul out before it escaped, but since that's not what you're after... Just break it.
. . . . . Hadeon had left his mace in a cache with his armor at the edge of the Bone Wastes. Cultists didn't carry them and he couldn't figure a way to hide it beneath the too-tight robes. Whispering an apology to its former owner, Hadeon picked up a bone from the pile - human thigh bone, he thought - and brought it down hard on the magenta crystal.
. . . . . It shattered, although Hadeon could barely hear the sound of it amidst the crying souls all over the crypt. A dark mist, quite unlike any soul or shade he'd ever seen, slid out of the crystal's pieces and coalesced into a black puddle hovering above the bones. The first notes of the prayer to sing a soul home emerged from Hadeon's throat before the puddle rose up and formed into a ghostly image of Ramdor. A truly mad gleam lit his eyes as he looked at Hadeon.
. . . . . "Deathhhh-sssspeaker," the ghostly soul rasped, voice destroyed by decades of screaming. Ramdor's soul grimaced and shook his ethereal head. When he spoke again, his voice was rough still, but sounded much more like the living Ramdor's rumble. "Get out of here, abomination."
. . . . . Despite the gray tint ever-present under his blue skin, Hadeon went grayer still. "Ramdor, no, I just want to guide you to the Light."
. . . . . "They are all mad here. I am the only sane one left! The only one with any common sense!" The soul paced atop the pile of bones. "Go! Gogogo! I stay. You... Look at you... Look at what you have become... Walking death, an abomination to your own ways. And you want to sing ME to the Light? Get away. I am the only one who can see it now. Get out! Get out!"
. . . . . Hadeon rose and backed away as the ghost continued to scream at him. Movement at the crypt's lower entrance caught his eye. A cultist was coming. He snatched up the leather case, cast a look over his shoulder at the raving ghost, and hurried out of the alcove.
. . . . . In the shadowed corners of the tavern in Shattrath's Lower City, the only thing which separated Hadeon from the patrols of Vindicators in the city was his darkened, battered armor. Well, that and the subtle scent of decay, but he tried to keep his skin icy to help conceal the smell. With everything covered by armor, he looked no different from his own people in the city.
. . . . . He felt worlds away, as if this was just some new planet they had landed on which happened to have a people who looked like him. The joyous bonding and connection to the Naaru his people had was almost a tangible presence in the air. Yet all he had were the roiling memories of slaughter and failure and bones. A bloodied haze filled his vision as he huddled in a chair in the corner and tried not to dwell on how much he would really like to see the inside of that ogre, or how interesting he thought that human woman might look in several pieces.
. . . . . Inside the restraining bubble of holy energy, warlock Retz's soul giggled in Death-speaker Hadeon's mind. And you thought you could be around the living. Ha!
. . . . . "Shut up, Retz," growled the death knight as he put all the darkness of his visions into his regard for the parasite soul in his head. Auchindoun had snapped something inside him. Whatever part of his soul which still clung to the Light was missing in action right now, leaving him with nothing but an amused demonic orc and his own killing rage.
. . . . . His own skin was so icy he did not even notice the chill which settled over the tavern as two warriors in heavy, dark plate entered. Whispers raced around the patrons and several stood up to discreetly leave. The bartender paled. One of the warriors, a female draenei by the hooves and the curvy build, waved a plated hand dismissively at the bartender. He seemed relieved that he did not have to serve them. Her companion's build under the armor suggested a human male. They both had two-handed blades slung over their backs.
. . . . . Hadeon was so lost in envisioning the walls of the tavern painted navy and crimson and blackened-red with blood that he didn't notice the two dark warriors approaching until the draenei woman's dark plated fist slammed down on the table in front of him.
. . . . . "You are in my seat," she grated out in heavily-accented Common. Beneath her helmet, her voice echoed weirdly.
. . . . . Hadeon knew not a bit of the language she spoke, but thankfully, Retz knew some Common from his time with the Shadow Council, fighting the influx of Azerothians from the Dark Portal. He looked around at the empty tables all around him as he stalled for enough time for the warlock to feed him the syllables he needed. "I see many seats here."
. . . . . The human didn't waste time posturing; he simply sat down in the chair across the table from Hadeon. He pulled a flask from his belt and set it on the table, then pulled off his helmet. Hadeon growled as he took in the waxy skin and glowing eyes of a human death knight. Switching rapidly to his otherworldly sight, he looked for the orc behind the human's eyes. To his deep confusion, it looked like there was only one soul there; he might've been ripped out and stuffed back in backwards, but he seemed to belong in the body.
. . . . . Another set of glowing eyes met his as Hadeon looked up at the draenei woman. No simple warrior either...she smelled like old blood and oiled metal, but the feel of her said nothing but death. She made an irritated noise at his stilted Common words and leaned back slightly on her hooves. "Exiled one?" she asked quietly in Draenei.
. . . . . Hadeon gestured to his hooves below the table. "What else?" he responded in kind.
. . . . . "From the size of you, a small Tauren." Her helm moved from side to side as she shook her head.
. . . . . The human at the table snarled in Common, "Stick to bloody Common, will ye? All I got from that was 'Tauren.' Is he?" He waved a plated hand towards Hadeon across from him.
. . . . . "No. Draenei," the woman responded. She seemed to give up the idea of confronting him for the chair against the wall and simply pulled the one next to him at the table to the side so her back was to the wall.
. . . . . It was finally at this point that Hadeon noticed the chill emanating from them both. How many of them had the orcs made? And why did these two seem to have their own souls? The human walking corpses had never felt dual-soulled like the two draenei death knights he had known, but they had also felt like souls in the wrong body to him. The human male seemed to fit in his own body, although it seemed like a piece here and there might be broken or mangled. The draenei female didn't give off any sense of being dual-soulled, although she also seemed to be more than a little damaged on a soul's level. The conundrum distracted Hadeon from his dark thoughts of raising the entire tavern as an army of ghouls.
. . . . . "You must be ze one ve have been gettink reports about," the woman said conversationally, her voice still echoing inside her helm. "Been sittink back here in zis corner for six days, blastink so much ice no one vill sit vithin ten yards of you, yes?"
. . . . . The human took a swig from his flask and looked around at the empty tables surrounding the corner. "I'd say this is our deader, Corporal."
. . . . . From within his own helmet, the glow from Hadeon's eyes dimmed as he narrowed his eyes at the human. Most of the conversation's meaning had escaped him, but the word "deader" wasn't hard for Retz to translate. He couldn't come up with the words in Common to express his offense quickly enough, so he settled for pulling his helm off and scowling at the human.
. . . . . "Bloody hell," the human breathed, a grin settling on his face. "Bet you get all the ladies with that mug." His voice was dry beneath the faint resonance they all seemed to have.
. . . . . "Len, ve did not come here to insult ze man," the draenei reprimanded coolly, although her tone held the barest hint of amusement. She turned her head and seemed to be regarding Hadeon. "Vhat unit vere you vith, zen?" she finally asked.
. . . . . Inside his head, his parasite warlock soul had to puzzle out her meaning through her heavy accent. He couldn't do it. Who cares about the human? I want to know where which warlock made these two. He did an excellent job fitting their souls back in! Just speak to her in your goat gibberish. Here, this is an apology in Common. "I am sad and will talk to her," Hadeon said, repeating the syllables the warlock gave him.
. . . . . The human arched an eyebrow. "Sad, huh? That's why you've been cryin' in this corner?"
. . . . . Hadeon growled and switched into Draenei, focusing on the woman. "Tell him I'm sorry, but I don't know more than a few words of Common. What question did you just ask me?"
. . . . . She informed the human that he'd meant "sorry" instead of "sad," and promised to translate the conversation shortly. Her helmet still on, she appeared to be looking at him through the slit in its face. "I asked what unit you were with." she repeated in Draenei.
. . . . . "Unit?" Hadeon stroked his chin, puzzled. "I'm not with a unit. Just me here."
. . . . . The draenei woman made an exasperated noise that echoed within her helm. "Not now. Back then. Before Light's Hope. Which of the Lich King's units were you with?"
. . . . . Hadeon blinked at her. "The what king?"
. . . . . There was a thumping sound. He rather thought it might have been her stamping her hoof against the stone floor. "Are you addled? You certainly look like you took a good blow to the head. The Lich King," she said with great emphasis. "He who created us. May the Ebon Blade shred his corpse into specks and send his soul in thousands of pieces to the Twisting Nether."
. . . . . "So the warlock who made you calls himself the Lich King?"
. . . . . "That blow to the head must have done permanent damage..." She switched to Common and looked at the human. "He acts like he does not know who ze Lich King - may he eternally rot in agony - is."
. . . . . While the human began to laugh - at least, that's what he thought that rasping sound was - Hadeon glared at the draenei woman. "Look, lady, I don't know what you're getting at here, but I don't know this Lich King," he said in Draenei. "I was once under Teron Gorefiend's command, but have long since escaped."
. . . . . There was another thump, but this time it was her fist hitting the table again. "I'd heard rumors," she murmured, her voice so soft he might not have heard it without the echo chamber of her plate helm. "That explains why you feel so strange..."
. . . . . The human might not understand the language, but the woman's tone was clear enough. "I take it," he said evenly, "that something just went wrong." He took another swig from his flask.
. . . . . "Zis one is from an entirely different group of death knights," she said quietly in Common. "He was created before you and I. Possibly even before ze Lich King."
. . . . . There was a strange expression of pity on the human's death-stiffened, waxy face. "Damn. Rough blow, brother," he said, nodding at Hadeon.
. . . . . Inside his head, Retz tried to translate what he could, but his grasp of Common was fairly limited. He managed to convey to Hadeon most of the meaning, however. He nodded back at the human before a new concern struck him. "Wait," Hadeon said, "so there are enough of our sort around that when you meet a strange death knight in a tavern, not only do you immediately know what sort of creature he is, you have to ask him which unit he was in?"
. . . . . The draenei woman's helm bobbed up and down as she nodded. "Let me put it this way," she said in Draenei. "Len and I here are from the 1113th Infantry Unit."
. . . . . Hadeon blinked. He swiftly calculated how many soldiers made up a unit. Then he considered that - at a minimum - there had been so many units for their numbers to surpass the thousand mark. "Kil'jaeden's foul teat," he cursed softly.
. . . . . The woman's laughter echoed inside the helm. "Something like that. Not all of us broke free, but many did. He's still making more, though."
. . . . . As Hadeon considered the horror of legions of his kind of abomination set loose upon Draenor and Azeroth, the woman reached up and pulled her helm off, unsnapping the clasps on the side which helped it fit around her horns. The strength of his reaction to her caught him so off-guard that he grabbed at the edge of the table to keep from falling out of his seat. Thoughts of blood and ghoul armies and razing ruined temples receded behind utterly unexpected thoughts of sunlit meadows and swimming nude in the ocean. She was absolutely captivating...if somewhat dead. Short and wild white hair, tarnished slightly golden, curled around her face and cupped the base of perfectly arched horns. Her skin was a deep gray, probably more of an ebon-gray shade before she'd died, and showed no signs of rot. There were crinkles at the edges of her ice-blue glowing eyes - she had laughed a lot in life, perhaps she still did. One of the tendrils trailing down from behind her ears had a crack in it, the skin showing a bit of the fragility of death. Where the ends of her facial tendrils brushed her shoulders and the top of her dark breastplate stopped, a thick scar ran across the front of her neck. The golden rings on her tendrils had been scrubbed blank with a coarse grinding stone, the usual Draenei markings of family and home and deeds wiped clean. Hadeon had no idea why he found her so attractive, but the strength of it concerned him deeply - especially since he was dead and supposed to be free from that sort of thing now. Even his parasitic warlock was momentarily struck dumb.
. . . . . The woman scowled at him the longer he stared. "Yes, I am dead. So are you. Get over it." Her voice was curt, a rusty alto without the echo of her helm. It made him want to tell her his name just so she would say it.
. . . . . A loud laugh from the human finally dragged his attention away from her; it seemed that the human had gotten the gist of her Draenei response to Hadeon's staring. He glared until the human stopped. "You say 'Len and I'... Who are you? Who is he?" Hadeon wasn't entirely sure why he asked.
. . . . . The woman waved a plated hand at the human. "This is Ardros Lendenson." Understanding his name among the Draenei syllables, the human nodded. She went on, "I am Valdiis. We are both members of the Ebon Blade, and our unit now calls itself the Knights of Menethil." She gestured down at the black tabard covering her breastplate.
. . . . . "You mentioned them once before. What is the Ebon Blade?"
. . . . . Valdiis put her elbow on the table and lifted her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. She looked over her hand at the human male, who appeared to be cheerfully draining his flask. "Len," she said in Common. "Go get some drinks from ze bartender, yes? Ve vill be here a vhile..."
. . . . . By the time the three walking corpses finally left his tavern, the bartender was about ready to get some "No Death Knights" signs made. If he never saw one of them again, he would give his entire profits for a year to the Aldor temple.
. . . . . A chill crept into the room on little gnome's feet as a two-foot tall abomination in dark plate entered the World's End Tavern. So much for tithing.
. . . . . The world had changed a great deal in the decades since his death at Auchindoun. Death knight Hadeon was fairly sure that the remaining Death-speakers he had known on Argus had perished in that battle, but he had not felt their souls among the cacophony in the Auchenai Crypts. That left five unsung souls somewhere that he felt it was his duty to guide home to the Light. Ramdor, he thought, was probably an impossible task. The decades had been too cruel, had solidified the soul's presence away from the Light. Preserver Tena and Death-speaker Grenar had been found and guided home. Where he would find the other five...he had no idea. But he owed it to them to look before he gave his own soul up to rest.
. . . . . The parasitic warlock complained at the idea, but perhaps even he was starting to get weary of this strange unlife, because he didn't complain loudly or long.
. . . . . When Valdiis offered him a place among the Knights of Menethil, Hadeon politely turned her down, although part of him - alright, most of him - wanted to take the excuse to be her comrade in arms if he couldn't be her comrade in bed.
. . . . . "I walk alone," he explained to her in their own language as they sat on a bench outside the Aldor temple. "And my methods may not always be...honorable...enough for your order. My mission is to guard the souls of the dead. Even now that I am on the wrong side of my own mission, I owe it to the rest of the Death-speakers to find them and sing their souls home."
. . . . . Valdiis nodded, looking thoughtfully towards the beam of light from the Seat of the Naaru. "It is understandable. You do not have the same drive for vengeance that we do anyway." She tapped her hoof on the stone for a moment. "Although... If you went through the Dark Portal to escape Gorefiend, there is a great likely-hood that other warlocks and their minions did too. The souls you seek may no longer be on Draenor." She dropped this added complication into his lap and stood with a clatter, her armor settling into place. "It might help your search to have access to a network from time to time."
. . . . . As Hadeon put his hand to his face and groaned at the added difficulty to his search, the female death knight pulled a small fawn-colored pouch off her belt. She pulled a tiny purple crystal from it and held it out towards Hadeon. "A communication stone. I had three, and if you take this, I will have but one. All you have to do is whisper my name to it and if I'm in a position to hear you, I can and I will help." A smile stretched the death-stiffened muscles of her face as Hadeon looked up. His hand shook as he took the stone, but she was entirely oblivious. "My brothers and I used to use these to communicate. There are two more out there...somewhere. I'm not sure how I got three, actually." Hadeon watched her babble and palmed the stone. By Velen's beard, why couldn't he have met her when he was living?
. . . . . Her head tilted to the side and her mouth stopped moving. It took him a moment to realize that she was waiting expectantly for an answer to something. "I'm sorry. Ehm. Momentary madness. Ghosts talking to me. Or something. Could you repeat that last?"
. . . . . "I said you will keep in touch, yes? I find you rather easy to get along with and would like to stay updated on your mission."
. . . . . "Oh. Oh! Yes. Ehm. Yes, of course." He held up the stone and tried to remember how to make his face form a smile. A rusty, quiet laugh slid from her lips and she patted the pauldron covering his left shoulder. Hadeon watched her walk away, fascinated by how plate armor could suddenly look so shapely.
. . . . . Goat... You're dead. Besides, weren't you a holy man? Dead holy men do not get the chicks.
. . . . . "Shut up, Retz."
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A short commentary about the ending: I am not completely and utterly satisfied by it, but it is more or less how it should be. Len is an invented character, no actual RPer on Moon Guard is responsible for him.
Was it necessary for Hadeon to fall in love at first sight with one of my other characters? No. But I am tired of the emotionless, cold, crazy, or eternally angsty death knights. I prefer to write about resilient characters whose personalities survive in the face of the hell they are thrown into. Part of the beauty of life - and of fantasy life - is those people who can endure, even spit in the face of their past, and come out of the darkest places of the soul with something akin to humanity and normality. They'll never be normal, they'll never be quite right again, but they are still - at their core - themselves.
Was it necessary for one of the darkest characters I have to lighten up a little and have a little more dimension to his purpose for not offing himself when he's done with his original duties? Yes. Will Valdiis ever notice? No.
I don't do eternally dark and sad stories. It's not my thing. If it makes me a bad writer for not being so angsty, whatever.
The orignal plan had been to wrap up Hadeon's story with just three parts, but I find I like him and his parasite warlock, so I purposely wrote the story to be able to continue it should I feel inclined.
TL;DR? My story. My ending. Screw off.
Written while listening to Sophia by the Crüxshadows. (I try not to repeat bands, but the first one of theirs I used was a remix, so this is more like their actual sound.)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summoned
. . . . . A pulse of unholy energy rent the air in front of Andular Tieran. He had just enough time to think Huh. What is that? before bolts of deep violet death magic wrapped around his torso and yanked him forward twenty-five yards. The fel-imbued robes of the Illidari cult that Andular wore were no protection against the rock he slammed into. Dazed and winded, still wrapped in those unusual tendrils of death magic that had come from nowhere, he looked up to see a massive suit of plated armor coming around the rock towards him. From a slit in the helmet glowed a pair of blue orbs so cold and hate-filled that Andular wet himself for the first time since his first battle as a teenaged medic with Turalyon's Sons of Lothar.
. . . . . The tendrils of death magic faded, but the feel of death in the air did not. Andular opened his mouth to speak a demonic incantation and blast the suit of armor with a bolt of shadow magic. A dark gauntlet shot up, the articulated plates of the palm searing the skin of Andular's neck with frostbite as the hand closed around his throat. He did not even manage a squeak. Those evil eyes never looked away from him as the blackness closed in. The cultist kicked his feet, clawed at the hand around his throat, and finally went still.
. . . . . Death knight Hadeon sighed and set the corpse down gently on the stone. He'd been watching the cultists for a few days and knew that another patrol wouldn't be by for ten minutes. It was enough time. This was the largest of the humans he'd found and it would still take some extra scraps and some work to make the cultist's robes and cowl fit him. He touched two fingers to his forehead and whispered a prayer for the human's soul, although it had already fled the body. Quickly, he removed the robe and cowl from the body, grimacing at the rank scent of urine from the robes.
. . . . . His heart sank as he lifted his hand over the body and blasted it with foul, unholy magic. This was the worst part of his plan; he hadn't been able to come up with any other way to get the body out of the area before the next patrol. Sickened by his own desecration of the dead, he snapped his fingers at the reanimated corpse. It mindlessly shambled after him as he slung the robes over his shoulder and headed for the tree line of Terokkar Forest.
. . . . . As soon as it was safe to do so, death knight Hadeon led the ghoul to a clearing amid the trees. He set down his pack and the cultist's robes, and then pulled out a broken sword he'd claimed from a ruined settlement near the Black Temple. Using the sword as a shovel, Hadeon began to dig.
. . . . . You really should make the ghoul help, goat, came the dry tones of warlock Retz in his mind.
. . . . . "Shut up, Retz. I am not making this poor man dig his own grave."
. . . . . He was a member of a demon cult. You hate demon cults. He's not even worth a grave.
. . . . . "Even dead cultists deserve a little respect." Hadeon kept digging.
. . . . . The grave wasn't as deep as he would like, given the wildlife in the area, but a broken sword did not a decent shovel make. The death knight shoved the unresponsive ghoul into the hole and murmured a brief apology. He took back the infusion of unholy magic he had lent the ghoul and it became an inert corpse once more.
. . . . . Ignoring Retz's complaints about the effort involved, the ignominy of the deed, and the tedium of the work, Hadeon filled the grave in with dirt and tamped the mound down with his hooves. He left the broken sword planted in the dirt as a marker and picked up the robes to go wash them in a nearby river.
. . . . . As he had travelled across Shadowmoon Valley, Hadeon saw enough of the demons of the Burning Legion to know that Draenor was lost. He had seen several Kro'kul among the roving bands of cultists, so his plan was to pass as a Kro'kul cultist when he got close enough to Auchindoun to need a disguise; he was probably Kro'kul himself at this point anyway. He'd only been away from Draenor for a few years - somewhere around two or three, although he wasn't sure - and he was certain that the former temple of the dead was still teeming with Shadow Council and now Illidari cultists too.
. . . . . The disguise had been Retz's idea. Retz was not terribly keen on slaughtering his fellows, but not because he owed them a lick of loyalty. It was a waste of their time, he reasoned. Better to just go in looking like one of them, do the weird little death rituals Hadeon was so set on performing for the soul in the shard he carried, and get out with minimal fuss. Hadeon had agreed that it was a sound enough concept, and so now he was trudging through the Bone Wastes in too-short, too-tight robes and wincing at every pile of draenei bones he passed as he made for the ruins of the temple. At least the cowl was roomy enough to hide his face.
. . . . . To Hadeon's surprise, his parasite warlock had been right. No one questioned his right to be in the temple while he looked like a Kro'kul Illidari servant. One human woman had glanced at his hooves and murmured something about giving her regards to Akama to him. Hadeon had nodded beneath the cowl and kept moving across the massive, ruined courtyard towards the Auchenai Crypts.
. . . . . Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that being here again was pushing him to the killing edge, that his grasp on the Light slipped farther away the longer he was here, but he owed it to Ramdor to try. This was why he had overpowered Retz and retaken control of his body, after all - he owed it to his fellow Death-speakers to send all their souls to the Light.
. . . . . "Death-speaker Malieos!" came the cry of a hollow-eyed draenei woman as she flagged down a bald, hornless Kro'kul man in the robes of a Shadow Council member. It took every ounce of control Hadeon possessed to not spin around to find out what was going on. He kept walking, slipping behind a large piece of debris in the courtyard so he could overhear the conversation. Had the woman just called that Kro'kul a Death-speaker? Those robes she wore, they looked almost like an anchorite's attire, just...the wrong dye batch. Horror set in as he listened to the conversation.
. . . . . "What is it, Paandri? I'm running very short on time." The Kro'kul sounded bored.
. . . . . "My apologies, Death-speaker. I only wanted to inform you that there is a new batch of corpses ready for your work in the Shadow Labyrinth. Five ‘brave adventurers,'" she scoffed, "who seem to have been sent here by those Light-addled fools holding out in Shattrath. One of the preservers found a scroll containing orders from the Aldor on one of the bodies."
. . . . . The Kro'kul waved her away. "Drain the blood and keep the corpses on ice for me. I will be there in a few hours. The Council wants us to reanimate a bone dragon today."
. . . . . Leaning heavily back against the debris shielding him from the conversation, Hadeon closed his eyes. This abomination was called Death-speaker? His own people were now participating in this travesty at Auchindoun? The Aldor yet survived? He banged the back of his head against the stone behind him a few times.
. . . . . Worry later, goat. We need to hurry.
. . . . . With a curt nod, Hadeon pushed away from the debris and walked to the crypts. The massive pile of bones just inside the doorway nearly pushed him over that knife's edge of madness he'd been treading since he'd gotten within sight of the ruins. The level of disrespect and downright blasphemy made him want to find some power which would allow him to raze the entire ruined temple to the ground. But as powerful as he'd become, he knew that was far beyond him. Too close to the killing edge, he knew he shouldn't do it, but he had to... Hadeon opened his senses to the dead, looking with otherworldly eyes at the pile that was twice as tall as he was.
. . . . . The rush of screaming, anguished souls would have knocked him to his knees if he hadn't locked them in anticipation of the influx. Now that he was listening, he could hear the maddened screaming from the magenta shard at his hip. Fumbling with the robes, Hadeon pulled the blood-stained case from his belt and unrolled it. There were still six vials of Anuurhi rum in the twelve slots for the case. Something frozen fell onto the leather. Hadeon stared at the tiny piece of ice until another fell and joined it. He realized then that he was weeping. Derius had given him the case and the rum. Along with the vials, tucked into one of the empty slots like some sort of bizarre supply, was the magenta soul shard with Ramdor's soul in it.
. . . . . The shard felt warm to the touch as Hadeon picked it up. It was probably hot enough to damage his skin if he was feeling it at all. He heard a quiet sizzle over all the screaming of hungry ghosts. Yes, it was that hot, then.
. . . . . "I'm not sure I can find your body here, Ramdor," he rumbled quietly at the shard. "This may be the best I can do." Casting a quick glance around to ensure there were no cultists in the alcove, Hadeon dropped to one knee and set the shard down on the pile of bones. "Retz," he asked his soul parasite, "how do I get his soul out of the shard?"
. . . . . You really should have asked earlier, goat. Retz sounded annoyed. Just break the shard. A demon would snap it and suck the soul out before it escaped, but since that's not what you're after... Just break it.
. . . . . Hadeon had left his mace in a cache with his armor at the edge of the Bone Wastes. Cultists didn't carry them and he couldn't figure a way to hide it beneath the too-tight robes. Whispering an apology to its former owner, Hadeon picked up a bone from the pile - human thigh bone, he thought - and brought it down hard on the magenta crystal.
. . . . . It shattered, although Hadeon could barely hear the sound of it amidst the crying souls all over the crypt. A dark mist, quite unlike any soul or shade he'd ever seen, slid out of the crystal's pieces and coalesced into a black puddle hovering above the bones. The first notes of the prayer to sing a soul home emerged from Hadeon's throat before the puddle rose up and formed into a ghostly image of Ramdor. A truly mad gleam lit his eyes as he looked at Hadeon.
. . . . . "Deathhhh-sssspeaker," the ghostly soul rasped, voice destroyed by decades of screaming. Ramdor's soul grimaced and shook his ethereal head. When he spoke again, his voice was rough still, but sounded much more like the living Ramdor's rumble. "Get out of here, abomination."
. . . . . Despite the gray tint ever-present under his blue skin, Hadeon went grayer still. "Ramdor, no, I just want to guide you to the Light."
. . . . . "They are all mad here. I am the only sane one left! The only one with any common sense!" The soul paced atop the pile of bones. "Go! Gogogo! I stay. You... Look at you... Look at what you have become... Walking death, an abomination to your own ways. And you want to sing ME to the Light? Get away. I am the only one who can see it now. Get out! Get out!"
. . . . . Hadeon rose and backed away as the ghost continued to scream at him. Movement at the crypt's lower entrance caught his eye. A cultist was coming. He snatched up the leather case, cast a look over his shoulder at the raving ghost, and hurried out of the alcove.
. . . . . In the shadowed corners of the tavern in Shattrath's Lower City, the only thing which separated Hadeon from the patrols of Vindicators in the city was his darkened, battered armor. Well, that and the subtle scent of decay, but he tried to keep his skin icy to help conceal the smell. With everything covered by armor, he looked no different from his own people in the city.
. . . . . He felt worlds away, as if this was just some new planet they had landed on which happened to have a people who looked like him. The joyous bonding and connection to the Naaru his people had was almost a tangible presence in the air. Yet all he had were the roiling memories of slaughter and failure and bones. A bloodied haze filled his vision as he huddled in a chair in the corner and tried not to dwell on how much he would really like to see the inside of that ogre, or how interesting he thought that human woman might look in several pieces.
. . . . . Inside the restraining bubble of holy energy, warlock Retz's soul giggled in Death-speaker Hadeon's mind. And you thought you could be around the living. Ha!
. . . . . "Shut up, Retz," growled the death knight as he put all the darkness of his visions into his regard for the parasite soul in his head. Auchindoun had snapped something inside him. Whatever part of his soul which still clung to the Light was missing in action right now, leaving him with nothing but an amused demonic orc and his own killing rage.
. . . . . His own skin was so icy he did not even notice the chill which settled over the tavern as two warriors in heavy, dark plate entered. Whispers raced around the patrons and several stood up to discreetly leave. The bartender paled. One of the warriors, a female draenei by the hooves and the curvy build, waved a plated hand dismissively at the bartender. He seemed relieved that he did not have to serve them. Her companion's build under the armor suggested a human male. They both had two-handed blades slung over their backs.
. . . . . Hadeon was so lost in envisioning the walls of the tavern painted navy and crimson and blackened-red with blood that he didn't notice the two dark warriors approaching until the draenei woman's dark plated fist slammed down on the table in front of him.
. . . . . "You are in my seat," she grated out in heavily-accented Common. Beneath her helmet, her voice echoed weirdly.
. . . . . Hadeon knew not a bit of the language she spoke, but thankfully, Retz knew some Common from his time with the Shadow Council, fighting the influx of Azerothians from the Dark Portal. He looked around at the empty tables all around him as he stalled for enough time for the warlock to feed him the syllables he needed. "I see many seats here."
. . . . . The human didn't waste time posturing; he simply sat down in the chair across the table from Hadeon. He pulled a flask from his belt and set it on the table, then pulled off his helmet. Hadeon growled as he took in the waxy skin and glowing eyes of a human death knight. Switching rapidly to his otherworldly sight, he looked for the orc behind the human's eyes. To his deep confusion, it looked like there was only one soul there; he might've been ripped out and stuffed back in backwards, but he seemed to belong in the body.
. . . . . Another set of glowing eyes met his as Hadeon looked up at the draenei woman. No simple warrior either...she smelled like old blood and oiled metal, but the feel of her said nothing but death. She made an irritated noise at his stilted Common words and leaned back slightly on her hooves. "Exiled one?" she asked quietly in Draenei.
. . . . . Hadeon gestured to his hooves below the table. "What else?" he responded in kind.
. . . . . "From the size of you, a small Tauren." Her helm moved from side to side as she shook her head.
. . . . . The human at the table snarled in Common, "Stick to bloody Common, will ye? All I got from that was 'Tauren.' Is he?" He waved a plated hand towards Hadeon across from him.
. . . . . "No. Draenei," the woman responded. She seemed to give up the idea of confronting him for the chair against the wall and simply pulled the one next to him at the table to the side so her back was to the wall.
. . . . . It was finally at this point that Hadeon noticed the chill emanating from them both. How many of them had the orcs made? And why did these two seem to have their own souls? The human walking corpses had never felt dual-soulled like the two draenei death knights he had known, but they had also felt like souls in the wrong body to him. The human male seemed to fit in his own body, although it seemed like a piece here and there might be broken or mangled. The draenei female didn't give off any sense of being dual-soulled, although she also seemed to be more than a little damaged on a soul's level. The conundrum distracted Hadeon from his dark thoughts of raising the entire tavern as an army of ghouls.
. . . . . "You must be ze one ve have been gettink reports about," the woman said conversationally, her voice still echoing inside her helm. "Been sittink back here in zis corner for six days, blastink so much ice no one vill sit vithin ten yards of you, yes?"
. . . . . The human took a swig from his flask and looked around at the empty tables surrounding the corner. "I'd say this is our deader, Corporal."
. . . . . From within his own helmet, the glow from Hadeon's eyes dimmed as he narrowed his eyes at the human. Most of the conversation's meaning had escaped him, but the word "deader" wasn't hard for Retz to translate. He couldn't come up with the words in Common to express his offense quickly enough, so he settled for pulling his helm off and scowling at the human.
. . . . . "Bloody hell," the human breathed, a grin settling on his face. "Bet you get all the ladies with that mug." His voice was dry beneath the faint resonance they all seemed to have.
. . . . . "Len, ve did not come here to insult ze man," the draenei reprimanded coolly, although her tone held the barest hint of amusement. She turned her head and seemed to be regarding Hadeon. "Vhat unit vere you vith, zen?" she finally asked.
. . . . . Inside his head, his parasite warlock soul had to puzzle out her meaning through her heavy accent. He couldn't do it. Who cares about the human? I want to know where which warlock made these two. He did an excellent job fitting their souls back in! Just speak to her in your goat gibberish. Here, this is an apology in Common. "I am sad and will talk to her," Hadeon said, repeating the syllables the warlock gave him.
. . . . . The human arched an eyebrow. "Sad, huh? That's why you've been cryin' in this corner?"
. . . . . Hadeon growled and switched into Draenei, focusing on the woman. "Tell him I'm sorry, but I don't know more than a few words of Common. What question did you just ask me?"
. . . . . She informed the human that he'd meant "sorry" instead of "sad," and promised to translate the conversation shortly. Her helmet still on, she appeared to be looking at him through the slit in its face. "I asked what unit you were with." she repeated in Draenei.
. . . . . "Unit?" Hadeon stroked his chin, puzzled. "I'm not with a unit. Just me here."
. . . . . The draenei woman made an exasperated noise that echoed within her helm. "Not now. Back then. Before Light's Hope. Which of the Lich King's units were you with?"
. . . . . Hadeon blinked at her. "The what king?"
. . . . . There was a thumping sound. He rather thought it might have been her stamping her hoof against the stone floor. "Are you addled? You certainly look like you took a good blow to the head. The Lich King," she said with great emphasis. "He who created us. May the Ebon Blade shred his corpse into specks and send his soul in thousands of pieces to the Twisting Nether."
. . . . . "So the warlock who made you calls himself the Lich King?"
. . . . . "That blow to the head must have done permanent damage..." She switched to Common and looked at the human. "He acts like he does not know who ze Lich King - may he eternally rot in agony - is."
. . . . . While the human began to laugh - at least, that's what he thought that rasping sound was - Hadeon glared at the draenei woman. "Look, lady, I don't know what you're getting at here, but I don't know this Lich King," he said in Draenei. "I was once under Teron Gorefiend's command, but have long since escaped."
. . . . . There was another thump, but this time it was her fist hitting the table again. "I'd heard rumors," she murmured, her voice so soft he might not have heard it without the echo chamber of her plate helm. "That explains why you feel so strange..."
. . . . . The human might not understand the language, but the woman's tone was clear enough. "I take it," he said evenly, "that something just went wrong." He took another swig from his flask.
. . . . . "Zis one is from an entirely different group of death knights," she said quietly in Common. "He was created before you and I. Possibly even before ze Lich King."
. . . . . There was a strange expression of pity on the human's death-stiffened, waxy face. "Damn. Rough blow, brother," he said, nodding at Hadeon.
. . . . . Inside his head, Retz tried to translate what he could, but his grasp of Common was fairly limited. He managed to convey to Hadeon most of the meaning, however. He nodded back at the human before a new concern struck him. "Wait," Hadeon said, "so there are enough of our sort around that when you meet a strange death knight in a tavern, not only do you immediately know what sort of creature he is, you have to ask him which unit he was in?"
. . . . . The draenei woman's helm bobbed up and down as she nodded. "Let me put it this way," she said in Draenei. "Len and I here are from the 1113th Infantry Unit."
. . . . . Hadeon blinked. He swiftly calculated how many soldiers made up a unit. Then he considered that - at a minimum - there had been so many units for their numbers to surpass the thousand mark. "Kil'jaeden's foul teat," he cursed softly.
. . . . . The woman's laughter echoed inside the helm. "Something like that. Not all of us broke free, but many did. He's still making more, though."
. . . . . As Hadeon considered the horror of legions of his kind of abomination set loose upon Draenor and Azeroth, the woman reached up and pulled her helm off, unsnapping the clasps on the side which helped it fit around her horns. The strength of his reaction to her caught him so off-guard that he grabbed at the edge of the table to keep from falling out of his seat. Thoughts of blood and ghoul armies and razing ruined temples receded behind utterly unexpected thoughts of sunlit meadows and swimming nude in the ocean. She was absolutely captivating...if somewhat dead. Short and wild white hair, tarnished slightly golden, curled around her face and cupped the base of perfectly arched horns. Her skin was a deep gray, probably more of an ebon-gray shade before she'd died, and showed no signs of rot. There were crinkles at the edges of her ice-blue glowing eyes - she had laughed a lot in life, perhaps she still did. One of the tendrils trailing down from behind her ears had a crack in it, the skin showing a bit of the fragility of death. Where the ends of her facial tendrils brushed her shoulders and the top of her dark breastplate stopped, a thick scar ran across the front of her neck. The golden rings on her tendrils had been scrubbed blank with a coarse grinding stone, the usual Draenei markings of family and home and deeds wiped clean. Hadeon had no idea why he found her so attractive, but the strength of it concerned him deeply - especially since he was dead and supposed to be free from that sort of thing now. Even his parasitic warlock was momentarily struck dumb.
. . . . . The woman scowled at him the longer he stared. "Yes, I am dead. So are you. Get over it." Her voice was curt, a rusty alto without the echo of her helm. It made him want to tell her his name just so she would say it.
. . . . . A loud laugh from the human finally dragged his attention away from her; it seemed that the human had gotten the gist of her Draenei response to Hadeon's staring. He glared until the human stopped. "You say 'Len and I'... Who are you? Who is he?" Hadeon wasn't entirely sure why he asked.
. . . . . The woman waved a plated hand at the human. "This is Ardros Lendenson." Understanding his name among the Draenei syllables, the human nodded. She went on, "I am Valdiis. We are both members of the Ebon Blade, and our unit now calls itself the Knights of Menethil." She gestured down at the black tabard covering her breastplate.
. . . . . "You mentioned them once before. What is the Ebon Blade?"
. . . . . Valdiis put her elbow on the table and lifted her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. She looked over her hand at the human male, who appeared to be cheerfully draining his flask. "Len," she said in Common. "Go get some drinks from ze bartender, yes? Ve vill be here a vhile..."
. . . . . By the time the three walking corpses finally left his tavern, the bartender was about ready to get some "No Death Knights" signs made. If he never saw one of them again, he would give his entire profits for a year to the Aldor temple.
. . . . . A chill crept into the room on little gnome's feet as a two-foot tall abomination in dark plate entered the World's End Tavern. So much for tithing.
. . . . . The world had changed a great deal in the decades since his death at Auchindoun. Death knight Hadeon was fairly sure that the remaining Death-speakers he had known on Argus had perished in that battle, but he had not felt their souls among the cacophony in the Auchenai Crypts. That left five unsung souls somewhere that he felt it was his duty to guide home to the Light. Ramdor, he thought, was probably an impossible task. The decades had been too cruel, had solidified the soul's presence away from the Light. Preserver Tena and Death-speaker Grenar had been found and guided home. Where he would find the other five...he had no idea. But he owed it to them to look before he gave his own soul up to rest.
. . . . . The parasitic warlock complained at the idea, but perhaps even he was starting to get weary of this strange unlife, because he didn't complain loudly or long.
. . . . . When Valdiis offered him a place among the Knights of Menethil, Hadeon politely turned her down, although part of him - alright, most of him - wanted to take the excuse to be her comrade in arms if he couldn't be her comrade in bed.
. . . . . "I walk alone," he explained to her in their own language as they sat on a bench outside the Aldor temple. "And my methods may not always be...honorable...enough for your order. My mission is to guard the souls of the dead. Even now that I am on the wrong side of my own mission, I owe it to the rest of the Death-speakers to find them and sing their souls home."
. . . . . Valdiis nodded, looking thoughtfully towards the beam of light from the Seat of the Naaru. "It is understandable. You do not have the same drive for vengeance that we do anyway." She tapped her hoof on the stone for a moment. "Although... If you went through the Dark Portal to escape Gorefiend, there is a great likely-hood that other warlocks and their minions did too. The souls you seek may no longer be on Draenor." She dropped this added complication into his lap and stood with a clatter, her armor settling into place. "It might help your search to have access to a network from time to time."
. . . . . As Hadeon put his hand to his face and groaned at the added difficulty to his search, the female death knight pulled a small fawn-colored pouch off her belt. She pulled a tiny purple crystal from it and held it out towards Hadeon. "A communication stone. I had three, and if you take this, I will have but one. All you have to do is whisper my name to it and if I'm in a position to hear you, I can and I will help." A smile stretched the death-stiffened muscles of her face as Hadeon looked up. His hand shook as he took the stone, but she was entirely oblivious. "My brothers and I used to use these to communicate. There are two more out there...somewhere. I'm not sure how I got three, actually." Hadeon watched her babble and palmed the stone. By Velen's beard, why couldn't he have met her when he was living?
. . . . . Her head tilted to the side and her mouth stopped moving. It took him a moment to realize that she was waiting expectantly for an answer to something. "I'm sorry. Ehm. Momentary madness. Ghosts talking to me. Or something. Could you repeat that last?"
. . . . . "I said you will keep in touch, yes? I find you rather easy to get along with and would like to stay updated on your mission."
. . . . . "Oh. Oh! Yes. Ehm. Yes, of course." He held up the stone and tried to remember how to make his face form a smile. A rusty, quiet laugh slid from her lips and she patted the pauldron covering his left shoulder. Hadeon watched her walk away, fascinated by how plate armor could suddenly look so shapely.
. . . . . Goat... You're dead. Besides, weren't you a holy man? Dead holy men do not get the chicks.
. . . . . "Shut up, Retz."
--------------------
A short commentary about the ending: I am not completely and utterly satisfied by it, but it is more or less how it should be. Len is an invented character, no actual RPer on Moon Guard is responsible for him.
Was it necessary for Hadeon to fall in love at first sight with one of my other characters? No. But I am tired of the emotionless, cold, crazy, or eternally angsty death knights. I prefer to write about resilient characters whose personalities survive in the face of the hell they are thrown into. Part of the beauty of life - and of fantasy life - is those people who can endure, even spit in the face of their past, and come out of the darkest places of the soul with something akin to humanity and normality. They'll never be normal, they'll never be quite right again, but they are still - at their core - themselves.
Was it necessary for one of the darkest characters I have to lighten up a little and have a little more dimension to his purpose for not offing himself when he's done with his original duties? Yes. Will Valdiis ever notice? No.
I don't do eternally dark and sad stories. It's not my thing. If it makes me a bad writer for not being so angsty, whatever.
The orignal plan had been to wrap up Hadeon's story with just three parts, but I find I like him and his parasite warlock, so I purposely wrote the story to be able to continue it should I feel inclined.
TL;DR? My story. My ending. Screw off.
Written while listening to Sophia by the Crüxshadows. (I try not to repeat bands, but the first one of theirs I used was a remix, so this is more like their actual sound.)