The various Ythfas stories (I found them)
With permission from the player who plays Ythfas!
I am Zignar, minion of Ythfas and MONARCH of the 1,324,521,837th pit of the third hell from the bottom! Granted, it’s a very small pit. More of a slight depression, really without much of a view, and a bit off the beaten path in the Twisting Nether. Not the most prestigious real estate, and nothing really lives there but a few felworms and an obstinate dung beetle, but it’s MINE, and I rule over it with an iron fist, so if you should find yourself in my domain, prepare to be subjugated or driven two paces back to its very borders!
Master Ythfas has sent me into these archives with a bottle of ink and a quill pen and charged me with setting down the tale of his life. I wasn’t really there at the beginning, but I can assume that there was some sloppy human copulation that resulted in his birthing. Your parents should have explained this part to you, so I’m not going to go into detail about it.
SILENCE! I am getting to the good parts, mortal!
He was born to a noble family of Lordaeron, with all the rank and privilege due his station. His father was the Marquis Vinguld, and counted among his holdings vineyards and winepresses throughout the kingdom and beyond. If you've ever uncorked a bottle of Andorhal Red, it had his family seal pressed into the glass. He was the middle child of three. His brother was his elder by a year, and his sister his junior by three years.
Even within his own family, he was always distant, but wickedly intelligent. He learned to read at the tender age of three, about the same time he mastered the art of potty use. Those two events were pretty much the last real “bonding” he did with his family. After that, he spent his time pouring over books, taking frequent bathroom breaks, probably just to prove he could.
His father and brother traveled extensively throughout the human lands, cultivating favor in the courts of Stormwind, Stromguarde, and Lordaeron. On some of these trips, Ythfas was dragged along, always with a servant or two loaded with a back-breaking chest of books. They tried so hard to interest him in the petty politics and power-brokering, but for Ythfas, the journal of a dead three-hundred-year old miner, or a classification of the various breeds of swamp ferns was infinitely more fascinating. He was an odd boy, but as I said, very distant.
That is not to say there was not love in his family. When he was sixteen, his sister’s betrothal was broken, and he spent all night with her crying on his shoulder like some spineless simpering weakling trying to comfort her. Don’t ask me why, I mean, if it were me, I’d have knocked her upside the head with a pewter candlestick just to shut her up, but I guess that’s what separates the men from the demons, eh?
Anyway, he spent a lot of time with his mother and sister at their ancestral home in the city of Lordaeron, (which, if you ever get a chance to visit Undercity, is going to be somewhere above your heads, burnt to the ground except for a couple of blackened chimney stacks, but I’m getting ahead of myself.) With his father and brother constantly on inspection tours of this farm, or that vineyard, or attending parties and balls in the finer houses of the human lands, Ythfas was free to indulge his passion for books and learning, devouring everything written in common, then dedicating himself to the mastery of other languages, simply so he could read the books written in those.
Eventually, he had devoured all of the knowledge in the books easily obtained in Lordaeron, and found that his hunger was not abated, so he applied to study with the High Elves of Quel’thalas, who were renown for their expertise in the arcane arts, for indeed, the high elves were the first practitioners of magic.
At the time, there was a university of sorts, dedicated to teaching humans of talent, and Ythfas passed their test easily, and packed up his few cherished belongings to go and begin his studies as a mage. For two years he lived among the Queldorei, studying their arts and sciences, learning what secrets they would teach him.
Why did he want to become a mage? He will tell you that it was simply an excuse to study in Quel’thalas. Myself, I think he longed for power, even then. Power was freedom, and his future as a man of his noble house loomed like a prison sentence before him. I think he saw the power of magic as a means of escaping that prison. But what do I know? I’m just an imp.
He found that his talents toward fire magic were most satisfying, but soon reached a point where his instructors would teach him no more. They said that further knowledge was dangerous, that he was not old enough, and never would be. That those secrets were only for the Queldorei, not for humans. He wrote articulate and compelling letters to the dean of the school, he begged for an audience to plead his case - eventually granted, but then denied at the last moment. As a human, on the basis of his race alone, was he denied, and that infuriated him.
But did my master lose his temper and rebel? He did not. He plotted. For weeks he brooded and planned. Sipping wine one night and reading a treatise on the merits of various types of wand varnish in a Quel’thalas tavern, he happened to overhear a conversation that would open more doors than he could know.
A Queldorei girl, and her soon-to-be ex-lover were quarrelling nearby. The male in question was some pasty-faced poetry undergraduate at the university, but the girl, he knew. She was his Conflagration class professor’s assistant, a girl by the name of Visasti Sunstrider, and a relative of the ruling Sunstrider house. She returned some token to him… a necklace or ring or some such sentimental trinket that lovers exchange, and left.
In an instant, Ythfas made his move… not to chase down the girl, but to invite the heartbroken elven boy to his table to share a drink. One drink turned quickly into ten, and as the Queldorei could never hold their wine as well as a human, the elf gushed forth every tearful secret that Ythfas needed.
Before a full day had passed, Ythfas managed to meet with Visasti alone, and though he had never known the touch of a woman, proceeded to seduce her. He spouted just the right poetry, at just the right moments. He smiled in just the right way. He made her feel like a queen as he laughed dutifully at her jokes, and when she hinted that he could touch her, he did what her former love could not… he touched her roughly.
He showed her the savagery of humans, which no Queldorei could match. He bound her to the bed, the way she had asked her former lover to bind her, but could never convince him to do. He took her, quickly, and clumsily at first, but he took her. Whether she was amused by his style, or truly taken with it, no one can say. But one night turned into a week of nights, and her infatuation with him grew with his imagination and willingness to learn.
It was then, perhaps, that Ythfas developed his taste for elven women. He will claim that he was simply using her for his own purposes, to learn the deeper secrets of fire magic, but the way he talks about her when the bottle runs low and the sky brightens with its pre-dawn glow on those long nights… You’d almost think he loved her.
Not that that was any impediment. Eventually, he learned the secret of the blood-fire, igniting the blood in the skin of an enemy with searing pain. His lover swore him to secrecy for as long as they both should live, but she taught him, and as she is now dead, and they are “both” not alive, you may as well know. Many times since, his enemies have felt that agonizing burn, weakening their will to fight with the intense pain of fire under their flesh. I wonder how they would react if they knew he earned the knowledge of that spell in bed with some Queldorei girl, coaxing the secret out of her with lashes from a riding crop.
She was ready to teach him more. Much more, perhaps than any human had ever known about fire magic. He was well on his way to becoming a great mage, and were it not for a messenger pounding on the door of his Quel’tharas home in the middle of a rainy night, while he lay panting in bed with his lover, he might well have been.
Perhaps he should have continued his loveplay and simply ignored the pounding on the door, but for whatever reason, he wrapped himself in a robe and answered….
_________________
The roads were impossible to navigate. At first due to the thick mud of that season, but as he got closer to his goal, because they were choked with refugees. Hundreds of families were fleeing the doomed city. Some part of my Master must have hoped that among the refugees, he would find his mother and sister.
But the search for them only delayed him, and as the road was clogged with broken and embogged carts and wagons, every moment was precious. He pressed on toward the great city of his birth.
When he arrived, the city was all but abandoned. Looters roamed the streets like packs of wild dogs, smashing windows, breaking down doors, carrying what they could in chests, bags, and makeshift sacks of stolen draperies blankets and carpets. These they were loading into carts for their own flight from the city, and my master did not bother to tell them how futile their petty crimes would be once they tried to make good their escape.
Corpses lay sprawled in doorways, some of them locked in the pose of someone desparate to be let in.. some of them fallen halfway through on their way out. Someone had started a pile of corpses on the cobblestone street. They had either given up on the pile or joined it, before it could be burned.
The constant hum of flies mingled with the scent of death as my master ran through the streets to the High Quarter, the place where his family's ancestral manse stood. He found the doors boarded up, the wall beside them painted with the dreaded red "X" of a plague house.
I like to think that his blood burned in rage at the defilement of his home, but my master admits only to the terror he felt as he climbed the ivy trellis to the second floor. He smashed a window and entered the darkened room that used to be his own. A simple spell brought a flame into the palm of his hand, and he saw his nursemaid's body curled up in a corner. The sight of the nest of maggots writhing in her ribcage, and the smell of rancid meat overpowered him, and he vomited on the imported rug, the light in his hand winking out to let the darkness flood the room again.
He sat there, coughing and retching for a moment, trying to cope with the madness creeping upon him. He had known the nursemaid since his birth, and to see her again, her face dead, blue, and twisted in pain while her flesh was slowly consumed by rot and maggots, his innocent mind trembled, his sanity threatening to tear under the strain, or harden to defend itself.
Thankfully, my master found his strength there, kneeling over the steaming puddle of puke, and he drew himself shakily to his feet, lighting a candelabra and opening his door. And if the strength of his will needed testing again, it was tested just at that moment as a hoarse voice called up the stairway, saying:
"Ythhhfassssss? Brothhhherrrr?"
His blood ran cold at the sound and his stomach, empty and aching though it was, dropped in his gut like a lead weight. It was his sister's voice, but with all the life and vitality of youth drained away from it. He saw her eyes, glowing a dull red, snap to life at the foot of the stairs as he slowly descended, holding the candelabra forward like a holy symbol.
Death had not been hard upon her body, only in the pallor of her skin and the hollowness of her face could one tell that she had stopped breathing. Still, her hair was flattened and sticking out in odd angles, showing the way her corpse had lain before awakening just now.
"Ssssso hunnnnngry, Ythhhfasss"
He called out to her, but she just continued her slow hungry stagger toward him.. he retreated a step, then two... then scrambled back to the second landing above the tiled floor, candlelight illuminating only the small area around him, her glowing eyes visible beyond.
Horror and panic took hold of my master, backing further up the stairs as his dead sister climbed, the fangs in her mouth now visible in the gleam of the candlesticks. The flames roared through the air as he waved the candelabra to keep her at bay.
Then then, an icy hand descended on his shoulder from behind - its grip like iron, he turned his face in a panic to see his mother's open mouth descending toward his neck.
Something inside him snapped at that moment, and all of his fear and horror, grief and sadness, all of that turned to pure rage. How could destiny DARE to do this to him? To HIM!
His hands flared up like torches and the base of the candelabra CRACKED into his mother's skull, sending her over the banister of the spiral stairs and tumbling to the tiled floor below. He dropped the candelabra and simply took his sister by the neck and leg, upending her light body over the railing, not even watching as she tumbled down to join his mother.
Instead, he ran his hands along the tapestries, the drapes, the rugs, the furniture, everything he could touch with his fiery hands, he ignited on this way to the door. He burned his way through the boarded-up portal and left his house in flames, never looking back since.
But that was not the only fire my master started that night. No, his anger was directed that night at cruel fate, and since he could not burn fate, he burned everything else he could. He burned corpses in the streets, he burned plague houses. He burned the waking dead as they awakened in scattered ones and twos, or in clumps and clusters. He killed the newly risen, fresh in their hunger, and the flames of Lordaeron were kindled that night to twist into the sky like never a city has burned before.
But then, something came to Lordaeron that gave my master something to hate, and something from which he could learn: The Burning Legion came.
So, you have returned to hang upon my every word, have you? As well you SHOULD! I am Zignar, the FIRST among my master’s servants and his most highly favored. I am the mightiest demon at his command, and should any of you stray in your attentions in what I have to tell you… well you will fell my FIERY WRATH which comes swift and terrible upon those who would fail to grovel and scrape at my master’s feet! KNOW YOUR PLACE, MORTAL!
Now, listen well, as the tale I am about to unfold involves the circumstances that surround my coming into my exalted master’s service. Those among you that fancy yourselves equal to the might and mastery of the path of the Warlock would do well to heed the lessons that my master---
FINE! I’ll cut to the heart of it. Where was I?
Ah, yes. My master, or rather, the man who would later become my master, was burning his soul clean of love and attachment by setting the city of his birth afire. Long did his rage burn, and in the green mist of the plague cauldrons’ smoke, he raised high the flames of cleansing. Many of the Scourge died that night before they could even arise, and many more died but newly risen to their hunger.
But those undead who had come before, those risen by the Lich King before the great plague, came into the city at that time to guide their newly risen brethren to their master, and to rid the city of those not taken by the horrid plague. They were not an army, by any means. Lordaeron’s conquest was complete already, after all, and an army was not called for. The plague had seen to that.
My master at the time was an undead warlock of mediocre skill, assigned to one of these small groups, and charged with gathering the newly made undead, and leading them to their master at the Frozen Throne to be assembled into the most terrible army that Azeroth had ever seen. His name was Thoth, and the bond that held me to him was hastily forged, as the mastery of demons upon Azeroth was in its infancy, and so students to the art were taken haphazardly and taught the basics only, before being sent into the field to fight.
So it was that Thoth found himself going from house to house in the high quarter, rousing what fresh corpses as he could, and gathering a following of nearly a dozen before he met Ythfas.
But it seemed that each time he turned his back, another of his newly risen charges had vanished. He would enter a dark alley where the freshly risen dead were feasting on a hapless looter or stubborn vagabond, show the Lich King’s sigul to them to draw them into his service if they had not heard the call, and come out of the alley to find that those who had already been gathered were missing.
Nearby, Ythfas would hide; a rope in one hand and the flames of rage in the other. Not far away, a pile of twice dead corpses burned beyond recognition and sapped of motive power.
Thoth made his way deeper into the city, but he was no fool. He set me to watch over his freshly gathered recruits as he entered house after house.
I am not sure if Ythfas had ever seen a demon before that night, so naturally, he was intimidated by my awesome presence. Nevertheless, when he brought his searing pain to me, I screamed. The fresh scourge were afraid, and scattered. I hurled a bolt of fire at Ythfas, but his mastery of flame surprised me, and the pain I dealt to him only urged him on and his own fires grew hotter and more savage. I was dispatched - my physical form reduced to soot and ash while my true body was sent netherward.
What came next, I cannot say, but when again I heard my master’s call the summoning was not strong and clear…. It was pleading and pitiful. Still, I followed the twisting currents of the nether and took shape where my master bade me, but the sight before my eyes was horrible.
There stood Ythfas, both hands upon the shaft of a hayfork, and Thoth’s body impaled upon it at the waist, thrust against the wall of a barn. I burned to help my master, but the weakling cried out for me to stay. My binding was weak, but still I cannot break it when my master gives an order.
Then I heard Ythfas speak… his voice calm and cruel, soothing in the way ice soothes and numbs. He said “Very good. Now dismiss it and call it again.”
Thoth stared at him in horror. “You seek to learn the way it is done? They will kill me for teaching you!”
Ythfas reached up and stroked my master’s face, and the flesh beneath his hand began to smoke and burn. “Not as slowly as I will,” he said, his low, calm voice somehow audible beneath the terrified screams of my former master.
With a gesture, my master consigned me to the Nether again… only to draw me back on a thin and wavering summons a few minutes later. This time I saw that my master’s foot had been completely burned away. His body dangled from the barn wall, held in place by that cruel hayfork while Ythfas stood a bit further back, eyes narrowed, studying me, studying my master, learning.
This went on for a while. How long, I cannot say, though it seemed to be days. Finally, I heard the summoning call again from the nether, but incredibly strong this time. The words thrumming in my mind snapping me from the chaotic comfort of the twisting nether and hurling me into the world with tremendous force. Ythfas had summoned me.
Now, I was on Azeroth for the first time without a master, since I was not bound to Ythfas, and his summoning had freed me of Thoth’s command. I was free to attack either of them now. I considered fighting Ythfas to free my old master, but, to be honest, I never really did like Thoth.
Besides, by this point, Thoth was barely a shadow of himself. A pair of long gardening shears had been thrust into the wood behind his throat, the blades surrounding his neck on either side. The hayfork still held his torso up, but one of his arms had been burned down to a stump at the shoulder, and the other was so blackened and blistered that my master probably wished to be rid of it as well. Freeing Thoth would have just prolonged his agony.
So, I just stood there a moment, waiting to see what Ythfas would do. Would he destroy me again and send me back to the Nether? Had his ordeal weakened him? But then he spoke to me.
“This fool on the wall doesn’t know what power he had. I have taken it from him, and I will take still more. I will bind you, demon.”
I laughed. He was no warlock. No pacts had been made, no power granted. How could a mere human bind me?
Yet, he did. Better, more securely than I had been bound to Thoth, he sealed my obedience, cutting his arm in the first of what would eventually be dozens of parallel scars, and the pact was made - unbreakable even now.
He forced me to teach him all that I knew, and he devoured the knowledge and mastered the skills almost instantly. Then he demanded to be introduced to other demons who could teach him more. Soon, his mastery of fire began to pale in comparison to his mastery of shadow.
Finally, the time came to burn down the barn, complete with the mutilated but still aware body tacked to the inside wall. As my master put that fire behind him, he had become a warlock.
In the aftermath of the plague, many paladins and warriors marched to Lordaeron to fight the undead menace. It was not long before Ythfas was recruited by these holy warriors, and given his noble birth, placed in charge of a group of four dozen refugees, and a few paladins.
To say his battalion was a rag-tag group would have been a compliment. I mean these guys were farmers and tradesmen with makeshift weapons, and armor made mostly from rawhide and wishful thinking. Add to this the fact that Ythfas had never given orders to any but a few household servants, and you can quickly see that his leadership skills were to be sorely tested.
That test came scant days after his recruitment. Haunted by dreams of his dead mother and sister by night, and the screams from the Twisting Nether all the time now that his senses were opened to them, he was hardly ready for what was to come. He had not slept properly since I had met him, and probably for some time before. There was little food to be had, but even when it was placed before him, he could do no more than peck at it.
I remember him swaying on his feet, struggling to keep his reddened eyes open, his clothes, formerly of the finest cut, now hanging in singed tatters about his emaciated body. His will kept him upright, but even that was flagging. The black mud of Lordaeron squished under the sodden grass on the hilltop, and a cold mist rolled below on the road to the ruined city. Behind him, the troops muttered, many of them pointing at me, or my master.
He heard the creak and rumble of the wagon wheels long before he saw them. Crouching low, he beckoned with his hand over his shoulder. The muttering ceased, but the troops did not advance. He turned his head, and beckoned again. Still, they did nothing. The paladins at the head of the column sneered, looking to each other in their gleaming mail armor, then back to Ythfas, their message clear: They would not follow.
The wagon advanced on the muddy cobblestone road, and through a thin patch of fog, the drivers and guards appeared, shambling undead, their gait erratic, their eyes aglow. A pair of undead horses struggled to pull the overloaded cart. The Scourge were hauling their spoils from the ruined city and bearing it to Icecrown. My master scowled, anger lending strength to his weak frame. He said nothing, turning back to the caravan and rolling his hands before him, whispering the words to a spell. I did the same.
Our magics hit one of the horses, bringing it down in its harness and stopping the wagon immediately. The undead guards snapped their gaze toward us and began to charge, no fear in their glowing eyes, only a terrible hunger and purpose: our death alone would satisfy both.
Ythfas watched them scramble up the hill, sliding on the slick mud, but climbing relentlessly, inhumanly fast. He did not turn to his troops, but said, “Flee or fight, dogs, I don’t care which. I will retake Lordaeron on my own if need be.”
As the first of the Scourge crested the hill, their dull grey steel lifted above their heads, jaws hanging limp and eyes glowing with horrible purpose, many of the troops fled. The paladins, to their credit, did not, and this inspired those closest to them to stay. The roar and flash of my fireballs seemed the only color under the steely sky until a paladin was slashed across the throat, spraying everything with a jet of bright blood as he twisted to the ground and died. My master smeared the blood from his eyes with the back of his hand, his face grim.
Fire danced in his hands, and he thrust the flames into a charging corpse, then turned to another as it fell, speaking the word of agony with a curled lip. The peasant infantry banded together to bring down a third guard, their hoes and short-blades rising and falling in a chorus of meaty crunches.
Another guard scrambled up the hill and charged my master, who drew his sword awkwardly to defend himself. He lifted it, his arm trembling, barely able to grip the hilt of the weapon that he had never wielded before. His jaw was set, though he knew the coming blow would not be deflected.
But it was a paladin’s sword that stopped the deadly arc with a dull CLANG. The paladin, little more than a boy, gave Ythfas a grudging nod before turning back to his foe and shouting holy words with each blow. Ythfas smiled and chanted the words that pulled the black shadows into his hands, casting them in a powerful bolt that sent the guard reeling in pain. The Paladin’s blade finished him while my master claimed the undead’s soul in an outstretched hand before it could be freed to the nether.
The battle, little more than a skirmish in retrospect, lasted for perhaps ten minutes, and when it was done, only a few of those who had stood in ambush on the hill were left alive.
Of the two dozen refugee warriors, Ythfas now found himself commanding five. Of the four paladins under his command, only one remained: the boy who had saved his life. None had escaped without fresh wounds, some of them grievous. As the young holy warrior tended to the wounded and dying, my master asked, “What is your name, Paladin?”
The boy looked up, glancing at me dubiously, then back to my master. “I am Xavier, of Strathome. Son of Antil.”
Ythfas nodded. “You don’t like me, do you?”
The boy gestured to the twice dead corpse that had tried to take my master, and said, “I liked him a little bit less, my lord.”
“I summon demons, Paladin.”
The boy nodded, taking a length of linen in his teeth and ripping it to bind a warrior’s bleeding leg wound. “Even so.”
Ythfas smiled. “Then I’ll call you a friend, Xavier, son of Antil. Perhaps one day you can call me one.”
The next part of my master’s tale is preserved well enough in a letter. I was dispatched to deliver it, and as it happens, I still have it. I will copy the words:
Dearest Visasti,
Please forgive the many weeks without a letter. I live still, and continue to fight for my homeland, though each day that passes makes it less and less worth fighting for. The streams are fouled, and the ground is all but barren. Gone is the rich black soil of my family’s vineyards, to be replaced by hardpan furrows of grey earth.
The Scourge is truly an inhuman foe, devouring livestock where they are encountered in the field… eating their fill and letting the cattle and horses to rot into worm-ridden meat. Sometimes the horses rise, plagued by undeath to wander the fields until they are put down again.
Today we came across a pack of children, their blue faces smeared with blood, not one of them past the age of ten, but ravenous with hunger as they devoured a sick and half-starved steer. Giant bats circled above, waiting for their turn at the feast. Some of my men still refuse to kill the undead children when we find them. Most do not. We are harder now. Something of our humanity withers in war.
We burned them, as we burn our own dead now. It was a lesson learned hard, when the first of our fallen comrades began to rise from their battlefield graves and hound us, who had honored them with their funerals. Each of our fallen becoming a soldier again for the other side - morale was low and remains so. Each of us hopes that a comrade will remain to light the pyre when we fall, for if our band is taken completely, we are all of us damned.
While I am happy that you submitted my application to the Kirin Tor, and that I am being considered for such a high honor as an apprenticeship among them, I am afraid I must decline. My powers grow in another direction now, and as the messenger who delivered this will attest, my control over the demons of the nether grows with it. The Kirin Tor would never accept one such as I have become. My men are distrustful of this, even my closest friend, the paladin Xavier, who nightly prays for the salvation of my “corrupted soul” as he puts it.
I long for the hour when I can set aside this newfound power and have no more to do with it, or even with the cleaner magic of fire. It leaves a foul taste in my mouth now to wield shadows and flame, to draw the souls out of the dead and feed them to my demons. But though my men might wish otherwise, this power has turned the tide for us many times, and so I must pursue it. Victory means coming home to you, and no cost is too high.
But there is good news among all of this. We find that the Scourge are not so thickly infesting the lands. Our battle is taking its toll on them, and where we might face a band of two score or more, we see only a disorganized few to challenge us. For what it is worth, we appear to be taking back ground, though there is no one left to till the soil, rebuild the roads, or to reap any benefit from this corrupted land. Our victories give me hope only in that I may soon return to you. All the wealth and holdings of my family in Lordaeron are gone, and laying the Scourge to rest will not bring my mother or sister back.
I will instruct my servant to linger in hopes that you may write back. I miss you more than words can say, and hope that within another month, we can be together, my love. Believe me when I say that your image is cast unto the backs of my eyelids on these long nights, and is the only shield protecting my sanity. The constant howl of the twisting nether in my ears, the gibbering screams of the scourge wafting to me on the winds, and the visions of my men falling, hacking, killing, the scent of burning flesh in our pyres - all of these things retreat before your face when I summon your image. Soon, my love I will come home to you.
With my undying love,
~Ythfas Vinguld
Of course, I still have the letter, because it could not be delivered. While my master was occupied in the mountains with his guerillas, wondering where all the scourge had gone, the Lich King’s army was marching on Quel’Thalas. By the time his letter reached that city, it had been destroyed, and Visasti Sunstrider was dead
Ythfas was relentless in his long march - making camp only for a few hours each night. As soon as he had heard the news that the elven nation had fallen, he had taken his men on the eastern road. His men were not happy with the change of direction.
A long string of victories had convinced them of their prowess and the righteousness of their cause. To turn around when they were on the cusp of pushing the scourge from their lands seemed like retreat. They had no stomach for it. They were on the verge of rebellion as they passed by human towns, villages, and farmsteads alongside the frost-lined roads, still infested with the Scourge, and yet my master would not be delayed by so much as the hour it would take to clense them. He marched his men toward the elven city of Quel'Thalas. When they did not think my master could hear, they muttered among themselves.
"Where were the elves when Lordaeron was taken? How many elves were at the battle of Andorhal?"
"It is said that Prince Arthas has fallen, or betrayed us - probably both. Yet we do not march to Lordaeron. The captain marches us to death to save his elven girl."
"You've seen how few of the shambling corpses we fight lately... I wonder if that's by accident, or if the demon-summoner captain means to keep us from the fight."
"Noble of Lordaeron or not... none was more than Arthas, and if he has turned on us, Ythfas surely will."
"He speaks with demons in their own tongue. Who is to say he is not one?"
Naturally, my master did not bother defending himself. Such allegations were beneath him, as far as he was concerned, and what did it matter what the men thought of him so long as they obeyed? Even when his best friend, Xavier, approached him to ask answers, Ythfas refused. Simply snapping fresh orders for breaking camp. My master was about to learn another harsh lesson in leadership.
When they reached the city of Quel'Thalas, the fires of its destruction were long since cold. The invaders long since gone. Mighty columns that had stood for nine thousand years had been knocked down and shattered. Streets that had been paved while men still dwelled in tents and huts were cracked asunder. The mighty city my master remembered was no more. As the morning mist thinned on their walk through the ruined avenues, they saw the bodies on the ground, the parts of bodies from the Scourge that had attacked. They saw the blast-marks of high magicks used in the city's defense... all in vain.
The men were quiet as they entered the silent ruins, only the crunch of their boots in the scattered rubble could be heard until they reached the ruins of the Sunwell, and found a detachment of paladins that had arrived only a day before. They were encamped and breaking their fast when we came upon them, and when they saw the tired, starving men of my master's company, they shared the food they had foraged - still fresh from the elven pantries. My master alone did not accept their hospitality, electing to search the city on his own for his lost elven love.
What was said around that campfire, I do not know. My master found out later that this detachment of paladins went on to help found the Scarlet Crusade, and it came as no surprise. Perhaps it was the betrayal of Prince Arthas, still fresh in his mind, or perhaps it was the memory of his fallen brethren rising up again, to fight as foul undead. Whatever caused it, those men convinced Xavier to embrace his fears and make them holy.
So it was that in the hour before dusk, after much searching, my master was building a pyre, his face dirty and streaked with tears. He had found his Visasti after all. He was wracked with grief... in no condition to defend himself, and Xavier stepped from around a fallen column to confront him.
"Captain Ythfas Vinguld, you are hereby charged with treason against the crown of Lordaeron for missapproriating your men, for consorting with demons, for--"
My master interrupted him, "The crown of Lordaeron is fallen. I have no king to betray, nor country to defend. I fight simply for revenge, the same as you."
I could hear the quaver in the paladin's voice, even as he shouted, trying to convince himself, as well as my master, "Wrong! I fight for the Light, and you are an abomination!"
Then, from around a broken wall, another of my master's men stepped into view. A short-sword gripped in his hand, his eyes steady and full of hate. From the other side of the wall, a third man appeared, then a fourth rose from behind a watering trough. Then another, and another. A half-dozen men in all, arranged in a circle around him, stepping forward slowly.
Ythfas grew angry... the sadness of a few moments before, building the pyre for his love, had left him raw inside, with little control left to him. He shouted at Xavier: "You DARE speak to me of betrayal while you plot and plan to assassinate me?"
The circle closed in slowly, but my master's hate was building - the cavernous depths of his sadness... in that moment, he cared not whether he lived or died, only that his hate be appeased... and so for the first time, the fires of the Nether burned in him. Raw, untapped fires ached to escape his soul, and when they were close enough.. he unleashed those hellfires.
Wave after wave of searing flame washed over the traitorous Xavier and his men. They screamed, they tried to run, they fell and cooked, their skin bubbling and crackling - they charred. The pyre of Visasti was lit, and still my master's fire burned... his own skin burning, his robe on fire, his hair crisping away... he nearly died, but somehow, he reigned in that fire. He has carried it inside him ever since, as any who touch his skin can attest.
As the last of the twilight expired, and the body of his love was consumed, he added the traitors to the pyre and began to walk south. He had lost everything now, and had nothing left for which to fight in the northlands. But his father and brother were still alive by all accounts in Stormwind. So it was to them he set his path.
Stormwind had been devastated by the invading orcs during the war, but even so, the destruction was not nearly so complete as that of the northern lands under the Scourge. As it happened, my master's father maintained an estate in Stormwind, where he had been staying with his eldest son, Stephan, since the first hints of a plague in Lordaeron.
When the orcs had wreacked their destruction and turned their eyes to the west, the deluge of refugees; starving, cold, and homeless, began to arrive from Lordaeron. My master's father, ever a shrewd businessman, smelled easy profit in this.
So it was that he opened his arms to the starving refugees of his homeland, he took them into his house, fed them, sheltered them, and waited a week or more until the call went out for laborers to help clear the streets, carry stones, lay bricks, and rebuild the ruined city.
The masses of Lordaeron refugees, nearly two hundred of them under his roof at that time, accepted my master's father's promise of a generous wage, and so it was that Ythgar Vinguld offered his substantial labor force to the city at an exorbant price. But, the shortage of labor being what it was, the city's treasury had no choice but to pay, and pay they did.
The former craftsmen of Lordaeron worked tirelessly to restore the city to better than its previous glory, all the while eating refugee rations at a makeshift soup kitchen at my master's family estate, and sleeping on borrowed cots and mats of woven reeds in the very grip of poverty. Nevertheless, they were a proud people and to have a job seemed to wash away the shame of poverty in the wake of their losses.
Citing the extremely high post-war tax rate imposed by the king, my master's father withheld their pay for this work, promising them continued shelter and food until the job was done, and then a lump sum at the end that would help them reclaim their lives and settle into their new home without being taxed to death beforehand. For the most part, his labor force had no complaints in this arrangement.
A week or so before my master came to Stormwind, the work had run out, and my master's father had doled out the wages to his laborers... far, far less than they had expected. A mere fraction of the wage they were promised. Like the other nobles who had hired refugees and craftsmen for the reconstruction effort, and likewise cheated them, the lord of the manor Vinguld offered no apologies for this, merely declaring that any who would complain would be thrown out of his house to starve in the street.
Within a day, that estate which had for so long housed over two hundred, was emptied of all but its lord, his son, and a handful of guards. There were whispers in dark corners of every tavern and inn, in the shaded places in the countryside around... an uprising was threatening under the head of the Stonemason's guild... secrets signs were made, and soon the conspiracy had a name... the Defias Brotherhood.
Unto this, my master came to Stormwind.
When my master approached the gates of his family's Stormwind manor, he might easily have been mistaken for any other refugee of the war. His clothes were burned and ripped, hanging from his emaciated frame like afterthoughts, his gait was weary, and the guards, at first, refused him entry.
I couldn't blame them. He had the gleam of insanity in his eyes and though the fires of his rage were banked, they were near the surface still. Nightmares still plagued his sleep, lending a haggard look to his features. By day, the memories of the horrors he'd witnessed, culminating in the slaughter of his own men for their treachery, were never far away. On top of this, the mad howls of the Twisting Nether were a constant drone in his ears, one of the prices of his newfound power, and one that stretched his sanity thin in the best of times. In him, the seeds of obsession grew, and I was well-pleased to see it. Humans are most delightful when they are stark raving mad.
It was his brother who came to the gates to confirm my master's identity, and he looked little better. Unlike my master, Stephan was a large lad; tall and broad and heavily muscled. He was a warrior of surpassing skill and strength, but the man who greeted my master at the gate had the beginnings of a drinker's gut, bloodshot eyes, and hair that hadn't yet seen a comb, though the sun was high overhead. His clothes looked slept-in, and a purple stain on his shirt spoke of wine the night before.
The two Vingulds stared at one another through the wrought-iron bars of the manor's gates, each trying to see in the other the boy they had known. Perhaps they thought back to the countless boyhood squabbles between them: the thrashings the older boy had administered, the cruel pranks and tricks of the younger. Perhaps to gentler moments, boyhood games and laughter in a world untouched by war and death. In the end, Stephan opened the gates, and whatever history they'd had seem to fall away as they embraced.
Still clutching his smaller brother, Stephan asked hesitantly, "News from the north?"
Master Ythfas withdrew from his brother's arms and shook his head sadly, looking to the ground. "I would give it to you both at once. Where is father?"
Immediately, tears began rolling down Stephan's meaty face. He didn't need to hear the news, he'd seen his brother's face. With a crack in his voice he said, "It's good to see you again, Ythfas... but with news like this, I'd almost wish you'd stayed away."
Entering the villa, Ythfas was impressed by how very empty it felt. No servants scuttled about, and a fine layer of dust had begun to accumulate on the bronze busts, marble statuary, and the glossy ebon wood of the piano in the parlor, where his father sat sipping wine, his fingers on the keys as if ready to begin playing, the portrait of his wife, my master's mother, looking down on him from the opposite wall.
Ythfas's footsteps echoed from the bare walls, so much colder than the ones he remembered from his boyhood, covered with paintings, mounted trophies, and framed honorifics from various deeds and accomplishments of his ancestors.
"Welcome home, boy," his father said. He stood up, setting his wine glass down and turning to regard his second son. His father was a good deal thicker of bone than my master, and favored a silver-shot mustache to the clean-shaven face of his son, but the family resemblance was most notable around the eyes. This one had a thin hold on sanity too. They stood at six paces away from each other, and unlike with Stephan, there was no danger of an imminent embrace. Only a cold distance. "You look a mess, boy."
"I came straight here," Ythfas said, his tone empty and without further connotation - a recital of fact.
"It shows," his father said, his tone thick with disapproval. The man looked at the well-used sword hanging from his son's hip, the tattered clothes, finally resting on the wand shoved through his belt. The look on his face was one of disgust. He paced to a plush armchair, gesturing to the couch beside it, and uncorking a crystal bottle of gin from the table between them. He set three glasses up, and filled them halfway.
Stephan entered then, his arms bearing a bundle of fresh clothes. His eyes locked with his father's for only an instant, then turned away, lighting instead on the glass of gin. He set the bundle aside and took one, looking nervously at Ythfas.
The elder Vinguld cocked his head at the exchange, turning to his younger son. "You have news to share?"
"They are dead, father. Mother, Yshka... both dead."
It was as if his father had been shot, the vitality drained from him and he collapsed back into the chair, his hands trembling.
Ythfas went on to explain how he had found the servant dead, the woman who had once been a noble baroness herself, rotting in his room. How his mother and sister, eyes aglow with foul necromancy, had risen from the dead to shamble after him, hungry for his flesh. He related with tear-filled eyes and wavering voice how he had thrown them over the railing to break them on the floor below.
"...and Light save me, father, I burned them. I lingered and watched as they blackend and crisped... as they were consumed and destroyed, and the house along with them."
But from his father, there was no reaction... a cold, blank, deadly stare. His hand, where his untasted drink was clenched in white-knuckled grip, was trembling.
Stephan, to his credit, poured my master another drink, then insisted he finish it quickly, and go out with him into the night to leave their father alone with his sorrow.
They went from tavern to tavern, and as the wine flowed, my master's mood improved. His strong brother at his side, the comforts of good wine, and the nostalgia of commiseration with his kin... all of these things seemed to move him back from the brink of madness where he had teetered for so long. To my consternation, hidden as I was between worlds not far away, it seemed as if my master might actually be on the verge of happiness for the first time since I'd known him. And there I was, powerless to emerge into the physical world to prevent it. You can imagine my frustration.
It was at the third tavern the pair visited that I finally saw some hope. They were both fairly drunk by then, sharing a memory of their sister learning to fish at their summer retreat, squeamishly losing worm after worm to the mud as she struggled to bait her hook, and a man with a short, thick club came up and struck Stephan across the back.
_________________
Even with his head clouded with wine, his battle-senses came to the fore; the curse of agony was past my master's lips before he even knew he would speak it. The skills that had kept him alive for a year and more against the Scourge were perhaps too much for a mere barroom brawl, but this didn't seem to be an average tavern dust-up.
Chairs around the room scraped and clattered across the floor. Even as his sword cleared his scabbard, Ythfas swept his eyes across those who stood, seeking to separate friend from foe by the look in their eyes, but immediately, spying their red bandanas like uniforms, he knew he would find no friends among them. From the uncertainty in their eyes, he could tell they were leaderless, but the savage hate they held for Stephan was just as visible. They were were a mob of a dozen - and not yet a gang. And yet in the dim torchlight and wine-soaked blur, he and his brother had wandered into this tavern and into their nest. The serving wench, ducked through a swinging door, sensing the violence to come. The barman turned his back.
My master saw all this in the time it took for the first assailant to hammer three more blows against the folding Stephan. A group of four, gathered around a nearby table, took out belt-knives and stepped toward Stephan, my master called me forth, and the foremost of them received a bolt of flame to the head, setting his hair alight and taking the fight out of the others. Their eyes lost their leering hatred and widened in fear as the two nobles were joined by a demon. The men were not fighters, not soldiers like my master, and even the man with the club seemed surprised when his blow was blocked by my master's sword... and then his face twisted in pain with my master's curse. The club clattered to the floor and bounced once, rolling under the table, forgotten.
The others with their red bandanas dared not move, they could only watch in horror as their comrade fell to his knees, screaming in agony and clawing at his own face, leaving red gouges along his cheeks in an effort to make the pain stop. Blood trickled from one ear, and the man's screams begged, "Oh gods make it stop! Makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop!" he flopped sideways to the beer-soaked wood floor and writhed, kicking impotently and gouging at his own flesh.
It was then that Stephan rose on shaky legs, the initial shock of his assault fading from him as quickly as the drunken haze. He looked in horror at what his brother was doing to the man on the floor, and then looked to my master, seeing the cold sneer that was his mask whenever he killed. He took my master by the shoulders and shook him. "Ythfas, stop! You're killing him!"
It took my master a few moments, still war-shocked from his year in the northern fields, to remember that murder, no matter the reason, was still illegal in civilized lands. He tore his eyes from the dying man, and looked into his brother's, and saw fear. Perhaps that is what finally brought him to his senses. With a gesture, he cancelled the spell, and the victim stopped his hideous screams, laying upon the ground gasping for breath. After a moment, he scuttled backwards like a wounded crab. His friends helped him to his feet.
One of them, an older man with a close-cropped beard, leveled his gaze at Stephan, saying, "We're coming for you, oathbreaker. You and your miser of a father. Your pet wizard won't always be around."
With that, the dozen or so men dropped coins on their tables to pay for their drinks, and then filed out, one after the other. My master watched them go, his hand gripping his sword, and his eyes narrowed, as if daring... or begging them to attack. Yet they did not, simply leaving in groups of two and three and four, casting scathing looks over their shoulder that silently promised revenge.
When the last of them had gone, the barman turned back to the room, busying himself wiping up a puddle of spilled mead, and pretending the scene had never happened. Ythfas turned to his brother, whose terrified eyes flicked back and forth between my master and me, the demon at his feet. Some moments passed, and Ythfas sheathed his sword. Finally, Stephan spoke, asking, "What have they done to you, Yth? What have you become?"
My master sent me back into the between-place, where I hid and watched. Then he turned to his brother, and said, "I am what I have to be. Nothing as bad as an oathbreaker. Tell me what he means, and why you did not deny it."
That was when Stephen told my master of the worker's rebellion. The Defias Brotherhood, which had declared a vendetta against all the nobles that had cheated them from their fair wages, his father among them. Ythfas was shocked that his father would throw honor out the window for a handful of gold. He made up his mind to make his father see reason, and to do so quickly, before the Defias could find a solid leader.
But the long road, the wine, and the fight were catching up to him... and so he and his brother headed home through the darkened streets. They were, miraculously, unaccosted, and upon reaching the house, found it dark and empty; the elder Vinguld presumably asleep at that late hour. Ythfas found his way to an empty room and collapsed, after hearing Stephan mention something about checking on their father.
I am Zignar, minion of Ythfas and MONARCH of the 1,324,521,837th pit of the third hell from the bottom! Granted, it’s a very small pit. More of a slight depression, really without much of a view, and a bit off the beaten path in the Twisting Nether. Not the most prestigious real estate, and nothing really lives there but a few felworms and an obstinate dung beetle, but it’s MINE, and I rule over it with an iron fist, so if you should find yourself in my domain, prepare to be subjugated or driven two paces back to its very borders!
Master Ythfas has sent me into these archives with a bottle of ink and a quill pen and charged me with setting down the tale of his life. I wasn’t really there at the beginning, but I can assume that there was some sloppy human copulation that resulted in his birthing. Your parents should have explained this part to you, so I’m not going to go into detail about it.
SILENCE! I am getting to the good parts, mortal!
He was born to a noble family of Lordaeron, with all the rank and privilege due his station. His father was the Marquis Vinguld, and counted among his holdings vineyards and winepresses throughout the kingdom and beyond. If you've ever uncorked a bottle of Andorhal Red, it had his family seal pressed into the glass. He was the middle child of three. His brother was his elder by a year, and his sister his junior by three years.
Even within his own family, he was always distant, but wickedly intelligent. He learned to read at the tender age of three, about the same time he mastered the art of potty use. Those two events were pretty much the last real “bonding” he did with his family. After that, he spent his time pouring over books, taking frequent bathroom breaks, probably just to prove he could.
His father and brother traveled extensively throughout the human lands, cultivating favor in the courts of Stormwind, Stromguarde, and Lordaeron. On some of these trips, Ythfas was dragged along, always with a servant or two loaded with a back-breaking chest of books. They tried so hard to interest him in the petty politics and power-brokering, but for Ythfas, the journal of a dead three-hundred-year old miner, or a classification of the various breeds of swamp ferns was infinitely more fascinating. He was an odd boy, but as I said, very distant.
That is not to say there was not love in his family. When he was sixteen, his sister’s betrothal was broken, and he spent all night with her crying on his shoulder like some spineless simpering weakling trying to comfort her. Don’t ask me why, I mean, if it were me, I’d have knocked her upside the head with a pewter candlestick just to shut her up, but I guess that’s what separates the men from the demons, eh?
Anyway, he spent a lot of time with his mother and sister at their ancestral home in the city of Lordaeron, (which, if you ever get a chance to visit Undercity, is going to be somewhere above your heads, burnt to the ground except for a couple of blackened chimney stacks, but I’m getting ahead of myself.) With his father and brother constantly on inspection tours of this farm, or that vineyard, or attending parties and balls in the finer houses of the human lands, Ythfas was free to indulge his passion for books and learning, devouring everything written in common, then dedicating himself to the mastery of other languages, simply so he could read the books written in those.
Eventually, he had devoured all of the knowledge in the books easily obtained in Lordaeron, and found that his hunger was not abated, so he applied to study with the High Elves of Quel’thalas, who were renown for their expertise in the arcane arts, for indeed, the high elves were the first practitioners of magic.
At the time, there was a university of sorts, dedicated to teaching humans of talent, and Ythfas passed their test easily, and packed up his few cherished belongings to go and begin his studies as a mage. For two years he lived among the Queldorei, studying their arts and sciences, learning what secrets they would teach him.
Why did he want to become a mage? He will tell you that it was simply an excuse to study in Quel’thalas. Myself, I think he longed for power, even then. Power was freedom, and his future as a man of his noble house loomed like a prison sentence before him. I think he saw the power of magic as a means of escaping that prison. But what do I know? I’m just an imp.
He found that his talents toward fire magic were most satisfying, but soon reached a point where his instructors would teach him no more. They said that further knowledge was dangerous, that he was not old enough, and never would be. That those secrets were only for the Queldorei, not for humans. He wrote articulate and compelling letters to the dean of the school, he begged for an audience to plead his case - eventually granted, but then denied at the last moment. As a human, on the basis of his race alone, was he denied, and that infuriated him.
But did my master lose his temper and rebel? He did not. He plotted. For weeks he brooded and planned. Sipping wine one night and reading a treatise on the merits of various types of wand varnish in a Quel’thalas tavern, he happened to overhear a conversation that would open more doors than he could know.
A Queldorei girl, and her soon-to-be ex-lover were quarrelling nearby. The male in question was some pasty-faced poetry undergraduate at the university, but the girl, he knew. She was his Conflagration class professor’s assistant, a girl by the name of Visasti Sunstrider, and a relative of the ruling Sunstrider house. She returned some token to him… a necklace or ring or some such sentimental trinket that lovers exchange, and left.
In an instant, Ythfas made his move… not to chase down the girl, but to invite the heartbroken elven boy to his table to share a drink. One drink turned quickly into ten, and as the Queldorei could never hold their wine as well as a human, the elf gushed forth every tearful secret that Ythfas needed.
Before a full day had passed, Ythfas managed to meet with Visasti alone, and though he had never known the touch of a woman, proceeded to seduce her. He spouted just the right poetry, at just the right moments. He smiled in just the right way. He made her feel like a queen as he laughed dutifully at her jokes, and when she hinted that he could touch her, he did what her former love could not… he touched her roughly.
He showed her the savagery of humans, which no Queldorei could match. He bound her to the bed, the way she had asked her former lover to bind her, but could never convince him to do. He took her, quickly, and clumsily at first, but he took her. Whether she was amused by his style, or truly taken with it, no one can say. But one night turned into a week of nights, and her infatuation with him grew with his imagination and willingness to learn.
It was then, perhaps, that Ythfas developed his taste for elven women. He will claim that he was simply using her for his own purposes, to learn the deeper secrets of fire magic, but the way he talks about her when the bottle runs low and the sky brightens with its pre-dawn glow on those long nights… You’d almost think he loved her.
Not that that was any impediment. Eventually, he learned the secret of the blood-fire, igniting the blood in the skin of an enemy with searing pain. His lover swore him to secrecy for as long as they both should live, but she taught him, and as she is now dead, and they are “both” not alive, you may as well know. Many times since, his enemies have felt that agonizing burn, weakening their will to fight with the intense pain of fire under their flesh. I wonder how they would react if they knew he earned the knowledge of that spell in bed with some Queldorei girl, coaxing the secret out of her with lashes from a riding crop.
She was ready to teach him more. Much more, perhaps than any human had ever known about fire magic. He was well on his way to becoming a great mage, and were it not for a messenger pounding on the door of his Quel’tharas home in the middle of a rainy night, while he lay panting in bed with his lover, he might well have been.
Perhaps he should have continued his loveplay and simply ignored the pounding on the door, but for whatever reason, he wrapped himself in a robe and answered….
_________________
The roads were impossible to navigate. At first due to the thick mud of that season, but as he got closer to his goal, because they were choked with refugees. Hundreds of families were fleeing the doomed city. Some part of my Master must have hoped that among the refugees, he would find his mother and sister.
But the search for them only delayed him, and as the road was clogged with broken and embogged carts and wagons, every moment was precious. He pressed on toward the great city of his birth.
When he arrived, the city was all but abandoned. Looters roamed the streets like packs of wild dogs, smashing windows, breaking down doors, carrying what they could in chests, bags, and makeshift sacks of stolen draperies blankets and carpets. These they were loading into carts for their own flight from the city, and my master did not bother to tell them how futile their petty crimes would be once they tried to make good their escape.
Corpses lay sprawled in doorways, some of them locked in the pose of someone desparate to be let in.. some of them fallen halfway through on their way out. Someone had started a pile of corpses on the cobblestone street. They had either given up on the pile or joined it, before it could be burned.
The constant hum of flies mingled with the scent of death as my master ran through the streets to the High Quarter, the place where his family's ancestral manse stood. He found the doors boarded up, the wall beside them painted with the dreaded red "X" of a plague house.
I like to think that his blood burned in rage at the defilement of his home, but my master admits only to the terror he felt as he climbed the ivy trellis to the second floor. He smashed a window and entered the darkened room that used to be his own. A simple spell brought a flame into the palm of his hand, and he saw his nursemaid's body curled up in a corner. The sight of the nest of maggots writhing in her ribcage, and the smell of rancid meat overpowered him, and he vomited on the imported rug, the light in his hand winking out to let the darkness flood the room again.
He sat there, coughing and retching for a moment, trying to cope with the madness creeping upon him. He had known the nursemaid since his birth, and to see her again, her face dead, blue, and twisted in pain while her flesh was slowly consumed by rot and maggots, his innocent mind trembled, his sanity threatening to tear under the strain, or harden to defend itself.
Thankfully, my master found his strength there, kneeling over the steaming puddle of puke, and he drew himself shakily to his feet, lighting a candelabra and opening his door. And if the strength of his will needed testing again, it was tested just at that moment as a hoarse voice called up the stairway, saying:
"Ythhhfassssss? Brothhhherrrr?"
His blood ran cold at the sound and his stomach, empty and aching though it was, dropped in his gut like a lead weight. It was his sister's voice, but with all the life and vitality of youth drained away from it. He saw her eyes, glowing a dull red, snap to life at the foot of the stairs as he slowly descended, holding the candelabra forward like a holy symbol.
Death had not been hard upon her body, only in the pallor of her skin and the hollowness of her face could one tell that she had stopped breathing. Still, her hair was flattened and sticking out in odd angles, showing the way her corpse had lain before awakening just now.
"Ssssso hunnnnngry, Ythhhfasss"
He called out to her, but she just continued her slow hungry stagger toward him.. he retreated a step, then two... then scrambled back to the second landing above the tiled floor, candlelight illuminating only the small area around him, her glowing eyes visible beyond.
Horror and panic took hold of my master, backing further up the stairs as his dead sister climbed, the fangs in her mouth now visible in the gleam of the candlesticks. The flames roared through the air as he waved the candelabra to keep her at bay.
Then then, an icy hand descended on his shoulder from behind - its grip like iron, he turned his face in a panic to see his mother's open mouth descending toward his neck.
Something inside him snapped at that moment, and all of his fear and horror, grief and sadness, all of that turned to pure rage. How could destiny DARE to do this to him? To HIM!
His hands flared up like torches and the base of the candelabra CRACKED into his mother's skull, sending her over the banister of the spiral stairs and tumbling to the tiled floor below. He dropped the candelabra and simply took his sister by the neck and leg, upending her light body over the railing, not even watching as she tumbled down to join his mother.
Instead, he ran his hands along the tapestries, the drapes, the rugs, the furniture, everything he could touch with his fiery hands, he ignited on this way to the door. He burned his way through the boarded-up portal and left his house in flames, never looking back since.
But that was not the only fire my master started that night. No, his anger was directed that night at cruel fate, and since he could not burn fate, he burned everything else he could. He burned corpses in the streets, he burned plague houses. He burned the waking dead as they awakened in scattered ones and twos, or in clumps and clusters. He killed the newly risen, fresh in their hunger, and the flames of Lordaeron were kindled that night to twist into the sky like never a city has burned before.
But then, something came to Lordaeron that gave my master something to hate, and something from which he could learn: The Burning Legion came.
So, you have returned to hang upon my every word, have you? As well you SHOULD! I am Zignar, the FIRST among my master’s servants and his most highly favored. I am the mightiest demon at his command, and should any of you stray in your attentions in what I have to tell you… well you will fell my FIERY WRATH which comes swift and terrible upon those who would fail to grovel and scrape at my master’s feet! KNOW YOUR PLACE, MORTAL!
Now, listen well, as the tale I am about to unfold involves the circumstances that surround my coming into my exalted master’s service. Those among you that fancy yourselves equal to the might and mastery of the path of the Warlock would do well to heed the lessons that my master---
FINE! I’ll cut to the heart of it. Where was I?
Ah, yes. My master, or rather, the man who would later become my master, was burning his soul clean of love and attachment by setting the city of his birth afire. Long did his rage burn, and in the green mist of the plague cauldrons’ smoke, he raised high the flames of cleansing. Many of the Scourge died that night before they could even arise, and many more died but newly risen to their hunger.
But those undead who had come before, those risen by the Lich King before the great plague, came into the city at that time to guide their newly risen brethren to their master, and to rid the city of those not taken by the horrid plague. They were not an army, by any means. Lordaeron’s conquest was complete already, after all, and an army was not called for. The plague had seen to that.
My master at the time was an undead warlock of mediocre skill, assigned to one of these small groups, and charged with gathering the newly made undead, and leading them to their master at the Frozen Throne to be assembled into the most terrible army that Azeroth had ever seen. His name was Thoth, and the bond that held me to him was hastily forged, as the mastery of demons upon Azeroth was in its infancy, and so students to the art were taken haphazardly and taught the basics only, before being sent into the field to fight.
So it was that Thoth found himself going from house to house in the high quarter, rousing what fresh corpses as he could, and gathering a following of nearly a dozen before he met Ythfas.
But it seemed that each time he turned his back, another of his newly risen charges had vanished. He would enter a dark alley where the freshly risen dead were feasting on a hapless looter or stubborn vagabond, show the Lich King’s sigul to them to draw them into his service if they had not heard the call, and come out of the alley to find that those who had already been gathered were missing.
Nearby, Ythfas would hide; a rope in one hand and the flames of rage in the other. Not far away, a pile of twice dead corpses burned beyond recognition and sapped of motive power.
Thoth made his way deeper into the city, but he was no fool. He set me to watch over his freshly gathered recruits as he entered house after house.
I am not sure if Ythfas had ever seen a demon before that night, so naturally, he was intimidated by my awesome presence. Nevertheless, when he brought his searing pain to me, I screamed. The fresh scourge were afraid, and scattered. I hurled a bolt of fire at Ythfas, but his mastery of flame surprised me, and the pain I dealt to him only urged him on and his own fires grew hotter and more savage. I was dispatched - my physical form reduced to soot and ash while my true body was sent netherward.
What came next, I cannot say, but when again I heard my master’s call the summoning was not strong and clear…. It was pleading and pitiful. Still, I followed the twisting currents of the nether and took shape where my master bade me, but the sight before my eyes was horrible.
There stood Ythfas, both hands upon the shaft of a hayfork, and Thoth’s body impaled upon it at the waist, thrust against the wall of a barn. I burned to help my master, but the weakling cried out for me to stay. My binding was weak, but still I cannot break it when my master gives an order.
Then I heard Ythfas speak… his voice calm and cruel, soothing in the way ice soothes and numbs. He said “Very good. Now dismiss it and call it again.”
Thoth stared at him in horror. “You seek to learn the way it is done? They will kill me for teaching you!”
Ythfas reached up and stroked my master’s face, and the flesh beneath his hand began to smoke and burn. “Not as slowly as I will,” he said, his low, calm voice somehow audible beneath the terrified screams of my former master.
With a gesture, my master consigned me to the Nether again… only to draw me back on a thin and wavering summons a few minutes later. This time I saw that my master’s foot had been completely burned away. His body dangled from the barn wall, held in place by that cruel hayfork while Ythfas stood a bit further back, eyes narrowed, studying me, studying my master, learning.
This went on for a while. How long, I cannot say, though it seemed to be days. Finally, I heard the summoning call again from the nether, but incredibly strong this time. The words thrumming in my mind snapping me from the chaotic comfort of the twisting nether and hurling me into the world with tremendous force. Ythfas had summoned me.
Now, I was on Azeroth for the first time without a master, since I was not bound to Ythfas, and his summoning had freed me of Thoth’s command. I was free to attack either of them now. I considered fighting Ythfas to free my old master, but, to be honest, I never really did like Thoth.
Besides, by this point, Thoth was barely a shadow of himself. A pair of long gardening shears had been thrust into the wood behind his throat, the blades surrounding his neck on either side. The hayfork still held his torso up, but one of his arms had been burned down to a stump at the shoulder, and the other was so blackened and blistered that my master probably wished to be rid of it as well. Freeing Thoth would have just prolonged his agony.
So, I just stood there a moment, waiting to see what Ythfas would do. Would he destroy me again and send me back to the Nether? Had his ordeal weakened him? But then he spoke to me.
“This fool on the wall doesn’t know what power he had. I have taken it from him, and I will take still more. I will bind you, demon.”
I laughed. He was no warlock. No pacts had been made, no power granted. How could a mere human bind me?
Yet, he did. Better, more securely than I had been bound to Thoth, he sealed my obedience, cutting his arm in the first of what would eventually be dozens of parallel scars, and the pact was made - unbreakable even now.
He forced me to teach him all that I knew, and he devoured the knowledge and mastered the skills almost instantly. Then he demanded to be introduced to other demons who could teach him more. Soon, his mastery of fire began to pale in comparison to his mastery of shadow.
Finally, the time came to burn down the barn, complete with the mutilated but still aware body tacked to the inside wall. As my master put that fire behind him, he had become a warlock.
In the aftermath of the plague, many paladins and warriors marched to Lordaeron to fight the undead menace. It was not long before Ythfas was recruited by these holy warriors, and given his noble birth, placed in charge of a group of four dozen refugees, and a few paladins.
To say his battalion was a rag-tag group would have been a compliment. I mean these guys were farmers and tradesmen with makeshift weapons, and armor made mostly from rawhide and wishful thinking. Add to this the fact that Ythfas had never given orders to any but a few household servants, and you can quickly see that his leadership skills were to be sorely tested.
That test came scant days after his recruitment. Haunted by dreams of his dead mother and sister by night, and the screams from the Twisting Nether all the time now that his senses were opened to them, he was hardly ready for what was to come. He had not slept properly since I had met him, and probably for some time before. There was little food to be had, but even when it was placed before him, he could do no more than peck at it.
I remember him swaying on his feet, struggling to keep his reddened eyes open, his clothes, formerly of the finest cut, now hanging in singed tatters about his emaciated body. His will kept him upright, but even that was flagging. The black mud of Lordaeron squished under the sodden grass on the hilltop, and a cold mist rolled below on the road to the ruined city. Behind him, the troops muttered, many of them pointing at me, or my master.
He heard the creak and rumble of the wagon wheels long before he saw them. Crouching low, he beckoned with his hand over his shoulder. The muttering ceased, but the troops did not advance. He turned his head, and beckoned again. Still, they did nothing. The paladins at the head of the column sneered, looking to each other in their gleaming mail armor, then back to Ythfas, their message clear: They would not follow.
The wagon advanced on the muddy cobblestone road, and through a thin patch of fog, the drivers and guards appeared, shambling undead, their gait erratic, their eyes aglow. A pair of undead horses struggled to pull the overloaded cart. The Scourge were hauling their spoils from the ruined city and bearing it to Icecrown. My master scowled, anger lending strength to his weak frame. He said nothing, turning back to the caravan and rolling his hands before him, whispering the words to a spell. I did the same.
Our magics hit one of the horses, bringing it down in its harness and stopping the wagon immediately. The undead guards snapped their gaze toward us and began to charge, no fear in their glowing eyes, only a terrible hunger and purpose: our death alone would satisfy both.
Ythfas watched them scramble up the hill, sliding on the slick mud, but climbing relentlessly, inhumanly fast. He did not turn to his troops, but said, “Flee or fight, dogs, I don’t care which. I will retake Lordaeron on my own if need be.”
As the first of the Scourge crested the hill, their dull grey steel lifted above their heads, jaws hanging limp and eyes glowing with horrible purpose, many of the troops fled. The paladins, to their credit, did not, and this inspired those closest to them to stay. The roar and flash of my fireballs seemed the only color under the steely sky until a paladin was slashed across the throat, spraying everything with a jet of bright blood as he twisted to the ground and died. My master smeared the blood from his eyes with the back of his hand, his face grim.
Fire danced in his hands, and he thrust the flames into a charging corpse, then turned to another as it fell, speaking the word of agony with a curled lip. The peasant infantry banded together to bring down a third guard, their hoes and short-blades rising and falling in a chorus of meaty crunches.
Another guard scrambled up the hill and charged my master, who drew his sword awkwardly to defend himself. He lifted it, his arm trembling, barely able to grip the hilt of the weapon that he had never wielded before. His jaw was set, though he knew the coming blow would not be deflected.
But it was a paladin’s sword that stopped the deadly arc with a dull CLANG. The paladin, little more than a boy, gave Ythfas a grudging nod before turning back to his foe and shouting holy words with each blow. Ythfas smiled and chanted the words that pulled the black shadows into his hands, casting them in a powerful bolt that sent the guard reeling in pain. The Paladin’s blade finished him while my master claimed the undead’s soul in an outstretched hand before it could be freed to the nether.
The battle, little more than a skirmish in retrospect, lasted for perhaps ten minutes, and when it was done, only a few of those who had stood in ambush on the hill were left alive.
Of the two dozen refugee warriors, Ythfas now found himself commanding five. Of the four paladins under his command, only one remained: the boy who had saved his life. None had escaped without fresh wounds, some of them grievous. As the young holy warrior tended to the wounded and dying, my master asked, “What is your name, Paladin?”
The boy looked up, glancing at me dubiously, then back to my master. “I am Xavier, of Strathome. Son of Antil.”
Ythfas nodded. “You don’t like me, do you?”
The boy gestured to the twice dead corpse that had tried to take my master, and said, “I liked him a little bit less, my lord.”
“I summon demons, Paladin.”
The boy nodded, taking a length of linen in his teeth and ripping it to bind a warrior’s bleeding leg wound. “Even so.”
Ythfas smiled. “Then I’ll call you a friend, Xavier, son of Antil. Perhaps one day you can call me one.”
The next part of my master’s tale is preserved well enough in a letter. I was dispatched to deliver it, and as it happens, I still have it. I will copy the words:
Dearest Visasti,
Please forgive the many weeks without a letter. I live still, and continue to fight for my homeland, though each day that passes makes it less and less worth fighting for. The streams are fouled, and the ground is all but barren. Gone is the rich black soil of my family’s vineyards, to be replaced by hardpan furrows of grey earth.
The Scourge is truly an inhuman foe, devouring livestock where they are encountered in the field… eating their fill and letting the cattle and horses to rot into worm-ridden meat. Sometimes the horses rise, plagued by undeath to wander the fields until they are put down again.
Today we came across a pack of children, their blue faces smeared with blood, not one of them past the age of ten, but ravenous with hunger as they devoured a sick and half-starved steer. Giant bats circled above, waiting for their turn at the feast. Some of my men still refuse to kill the undead children when we find them. Most do not. We are harder now. Something of our humanity withers in war.
We burned them, as we burn our own dead now. It was a lesson learned hard, when the first of our fallen comrades began to rise from their battlefield graves and hound us, who had honored them with their funerals. Each of our fallen becoming a soldier again for the other side - morale was low and remains so. Each of us hopes that a comrade will remain to light the pyre when we fall, for if our band is taken completely, we are all of us damned.
While I am happy that you submitted my application to the Kirin Tor, and that I am being considered for such a high honor as an apprenticeship among them, I am afraid I must decline. My powers grow in another direction now, and as the messenger who delivered this will attest, my control over the demons of the nether grows with it. The Kirin Tor would never accept one such as I have become. My men are distrustful of this, even my closest friend, the paladin Xavier, who nightly prays for the salvation of my “corrupted soul” as he puts it.
I long for the hour when I can set aside this newfound power and have no more to do with it, or even with the cleaner magic of fire. It leaves a foul taste in my mouth now to wield shadows and flame, to draw the souls out of the dead and feed them to my demons. But though my men might wish otherwise, this power has turned the tide for us many times, and so I must pursue it. Victory means coming home to you, and no cost is too high.
But there is good news among all of this. We find that the Scourge are not so thickly infesting the lands. Our battle is taking its toll on them, and where we might face a band of two score or more, we see only a disorganized few to challenge us. For what it is worth, we appear to be taking back ground, though there is no one left to till the soil, rebuild the roads, or to reap any benefit from this corrupted land. Our victories give me hope only in that I may soon return to you. All the wealth and holdings of my family in Lordaeron are gone, and laying the Scourge to rest will not bring my mother or sister back.
I will instruct my servant to linger in hopes that you may write back. I miss you more than words can say, and hope that within another month, we can be together, my love. Believe me when I say that your image is cast unto the backs of my eyelids on these long nights, and is the only shield protecting my sanity. The constant howl of the twisting nether in my ears, the gibbering screams of the scourge wafting to me on the winds, and the visions of my men falling, hacking, killing, the scent of burning flesh in our pyres - all of these things retreat before your face when I summon your image. Soon, my love I will come home to you.
With my undying love,
~Ythfas Vinguld
Of course, I still have the letter, because it could not be delivered. While my master was occupied in the mountains with his guerillas, wondering where all the scourge had gone, the Lich King’s army was marching on Quel’Thalas. By the time his letter reached that city, it had been destroyed, and Visasti Sunstrider was dead
Ythfas was relentless in his long march - making camp only for a few hours each night. As soon as he had heard the news that the elven nation had fallen, he had taken his men on the eastern road. His men were not happy with the change of direction.
A long string of victories had convinced them of their prowess and the righteousness of their cause. To turn around when they were on the cusp of pushing the scourge from their lands seemed like retreat. They had no stomach for it. They were on the verge of rebellion as they passed by human towns, villages, and farmsteads alongside the frost-lined roads, still infested with the Scourge, and yet my master would not be delayed by so much as the hour it would take to clense them. He marched his men toward the elven city of Quel'Thalas. When they did not think my master could hear, they muttered among themselves.
"Where were the elves when Lordaeron was taken? How many elves were at the battle of Andorhal?"
"It is said that Prince Arthas has fallen, or betrayed us - probably both. Yet we do not march to Lordaeron. The captain marches us to death to save his elven girl."
"You've seen how few of the shambling corpses we fight lately... I wonder if that's by accident, or if the demon-summoner captain means to keep us from the fight."
"Noble of Lordaeron or not... none was more than Arthas, and if he has turned on us, Ythfas surely will."
"He speaks with demons in their own tongue. Who is to say he is not one?"
Naturally, my master did not bother defending himself. Such allegations were beneath him, as far as he was concerned, and what did it matter what the men thought of him so long as they obeyed? Even when his best friend, Xavier, approached him to ask answers, Ythfas refused. Simply snapping fresh orders for breaking camp. My master was about to learn another harsh lesson in leadership.
When they reached the city of Quel'Thalas, the fires of its destruction were long since cold. The invaders long since gone. Mighty columns that had stood for nine thousand years had been knocked down and shattered. Streets that had been paved while men still dwelled in tents and huts were cracked asunder. The mighty city my master remembered was no more. As the morning mist thinned on their walk through the ruined avenues, they saw the bodies on the ground, the parts of bodies from the Scourge that had attacked. They saw the blast-marks of high magicks used in the city's defense... all in vain.
The men were quiet as they entered the silent ruins, only the crunch of their boots in the scattered rubble could be heard until they reached the ruins of the Sunwell, and found a detachment of paladins that had arrived only a day before. They were encamped and breaking their fast when we came upon them, and when they saw the tired, starving men of my master's company, they shared the food they had foraged - still fresh from the elven pantries. My master alone did not accept their hospitality, electing to search the city on his own for his lost elven love.
What was said around that campfire, I do not know. My master found out later that this detachment of paladins went on to help found the Scarlet Crusade, and it came as no surprise. Perhaps it was the betrayal of Prince Arthas, still fresh in his mind, or perhaps it was the memory of his fallen brethren rising up again, to fight as foul undead. Whatever caused it, those men convinced Xavier to embrace his fears and make them holy.
So it was that in the hour before dusk, after much searching, my master was building a pyre, his face dirty and streaked with tears. He had found his Visasti after all. He was wracked with grief... in no condition to defend himself, and Xavier stepped from around a fallen column to confront him.
"Captain Ythfas Vinguld, you are hereby charged with treason against the crown of Lordaeron for missapproriating your men, for consorting with demons, for--"
My master interrupted him, "The crown of Lordaeron is fallen. I have no king to betray, nor country to defend. I fight simply for revenge, the same as you."
I could hear the quaver in the paladin's voice, even as he shouted, trying to convince himself, as well as my master, "Wrong! I fight for the Light, and you are an abomination!"
Then, from around a broken wall, another of my master's men stepped into view. A short-sword gripped in his hand, his eyes steady and full of hate. From the other side of the wall, a third man appeared, then a fourth rose from behind a watering trough. Then another, and another. A half-dozen men in all, arranged in a circle around him, stepping forward slowly.
Ythfas grew angry... the sadness of a few moments before, building the pyre for his love, had left him raw inside, with little control left to him. He shouted at Xavier: "You DARE speak to me of betrayal while you plot and plan to assassinate me?"
The circle closed in slowly, but my master's hate was building - the cavernous depths of his sadness... in that moment, he cared not whether he lived or died, only that his hate be appeased... and so for the first time, the fires of the Nether burned in him. Raw, untapped fires ached to escape his soul, and when they were close enough.. he unleashed those hellfires.
Wave after wave of searing flame washed over the traitorous Xavier and his men. They screamed, they tried to run, they fell and cooked, their skin bubbling and crackling - they charred. The pyre of Visasti was lit, and still my master's fire burned... his own skin burning, his robe on fire, his hair crisping away... he nearly died, but somehow, he reigned in that fire. He has carried it inside him ever since, as any who touch his skin can attest.
As the last of the twilight expired, and the body of his love was consumed, he added the traitors to the pyre and began to walk south. He had lost everything now, and had nothing left for which to fight in the northlands. But his father and brother were still alive by all accounts in Stormwind. So it was to them he set his path.
Stormwind had been devastated by the invading orcs during the war, but even so, the destruction was not nearly so complete as that of the northern lands under the Scourge. As it happened, my master's father maintained an estate in Stormwind, where he had been staying with his eldest son, Stephan, since the first hints of a plague in Lordaeron.
When the orcs had wreacked their destruction and turned their eyes to the west, the deluge of refugees; starving, cold, and homeless, began to arrive from Lordaeron. My master's father, ever a shrewd businessman, smelled easy profit in this.
So it was that he opened his arms to the starving refugees of his homeland, he took them into his house, fed them, sheltered them, and waited a week or more until the call went out for laborers to help clear the streets, carry stones, lay bricks, and rebuild the ruined city.
The masses of Lordaeron refugees, nearly two hundred of them under his roof at that time, accepted my master's father's promise of a generous wage, and so it was that Ythgar Vinguld offered his substantial labor force to the city at an exorbant price. But, the shortage of labor being what it was, the city's treasury had no choice but to pay, and pay they did.
The former craftsmen of Lordaeron worked tirelessly to restore the city to better than its previous glory, all the while eating refugee rations at a makeshift soup kitchen at my master's family estate, and sleeping on borrowed cots and mats of woven reeds in the very grip of poverty. Nevertheless, they were a proud people and to have a job seemed to wash away the shame of poverty in the wake of their losses.
Citing the extremely high post-war tax rate imposed by the king, my master's father withheld their pay for this work, promising them continued shelter and food until the job was done, and then a lump sum at the end that would help them reclaim their lives and settle into their new home without being taxed to death beforehand. For the most part, his labor force had no complaints in this arrangement.
A week or so before my master came to Stormwind, the work had run out, and my master's father had doled out the wages to his laborers... far, far less than they had expected. A mere fraction of the wage they were promised. Like the other nobles who had hired refugees and craftsmen for the reconstruction effort, and likewise cheated them, the lord of the manor Vinguld offered no apologies for this, merely declaring that any who would complain would be thrown out of his house to starve in the street.
Within a day, that estate which had for so long housed over two hundred, was emptied of all but its lord, his son, and a handful of guards. There were whispers in dark corners of every tavern and inn, in the shaded places in the countryside around... an uprising was threatening under the head of the Stonemason's guild... secrets signs were made, and soon the conspiracy had a name... the Defias Brotherhood.
Unto this, my master came to Stormwind.
When my master approached the gates of his family's Stormwind manor, he might easily have been mistaken for any other refugee of the war. His clothes were burned and ripped, hanging from his emaciated frame like afterthoughts, his gait was weary, and the guards, at first, refused him entry.
I couldn't blame them. He had the gleam of insanity in his eyes and though the fires of his rage were banked, they were near the surface still. Nightmares still plagued his sleep, lending a haggard look to his features. By day, the memories of the horrors he'd witnessed, culminating in the slaughter of his own men for their treachery, were never far away. On top of this, the mad howls of the Twisting Nether were a constant drone in his ears, one of the prices of his newfound power, and one that stretched his sanity thin in the best of times. In him, the seeds of obsession grew, and I was well-pleased to see it. Humans are most delightful when they are stark raving mad.
It was his brother who came to the gates to confirm my master's identity, and he looked little better. Unlike my master, Stephan was a large lad; tall and broad and heavily muscled. He was a warrior of surpassing skill and strength, but the man who greeted my master at the gate had the beginnings of a drinker's gut, bloodshot eyes, and hair that hadn't yet seen a comb, though the sun was high overhead. His clothes looked slept-in, and a purple stain on his shirt spoke of wine the night before.
The two Vingulds stared at one another through the wrought-iron bars of the manor's gates, each trying to see in the other the boy they had known. Perhaps they thought back to the countless boyhood squabbles between them: the thrashings the older boy had administered, the cruel pranks and tricks of the younger. Perhaps to gentler moments, boyhood games and laughter in a world untouched by war and death. In the end, Stephan opened the gates, and whatever history they'd had seem to fall away as they embraced.
Still clutching his smaller brother, Stephan asked hesitantly, "News from the north?"
Master Ythfas withdrew from his brother's arms and shook his head sadly, looking to the ground. "I would give it to you both at once. Where is father?"
Immediately, tears began rolling down Stephan's meaty face. He didn't need to hear the news, he'd seen his brother's face. With a crack in his voice he said, "It's good to see you again, Ythfas... but with news like this, I'd almost wish you'd stayed away."
Entering the villa, Ythfas was impressed by how very empty it felt. No servants scuttled about, and a fine layer of dust had begun to accumulate on the bronze busts, marble statuary, and the glossy ebon wood of the piano in the parlor, where his father sat sipping wine, his fingers on the keys as if ready to begin playing, the portrait of his wife, my master's mother, looking down on him from the opposite wall.
Ythfas's footsteps echoed from the bare walls, so much colder than the ones he remembered from his boyhood, covered with paintings, mounted trophies, and framed honorifics from various deeds and accomplishments of his ancestors.
"Welcome home, boy," his father said. He stood up, setting his wine glass down and turning to regard his second son. His father was a good deal thicker of bone than my master, and favored a silver-shot mustache to the clean-shaven face of his son, but the family resemblance was most notable around the eyes. This one had a thin hold on sanity too. They stood at six paces away from each other, and unlike with Stephan, there was no danger of an imminent embrace. Only a cold distance. "You look a mess, boy."
"I came straight here," Ythfas said, his tone empty and without further connotation - a recital of fact.
"It shows," his father said, his tone thick with disapproval. The man looked at the well-used sword hanging from his son's hip, the tattered clothes, finally resting on the wand shoved through his belt. The look on his face was one of disgust. He paced to a plush armchair, gesturing to the couch beside it, and uncorking a crystal bottle of gin from the table between them. He set three glasses up, and filled them halfway.
Stephan entered then, his arms bearing a bundle of fresh clothes. His eyes locked with his father's for only an instant, then turned away, lighting instead on the glass of gin. He set the bundle aside and took one, looking nervously at Ythfas.
The elder Vinguld cocked his head at the exchange, turning to his younger son. "You have news to share?"
"They are dead, father. Mother, Yshka... both dead."
It was as if his father had been shot, the vitality drained from him and he collapsed back into the chair, his hands trembling.
Ythfas went on to explain how he had found the servant dead, the woman who had once been a noble baroness herself, rotting in his room. How his mother and sister, eyes aglow with foul necromancy, had risen from the dead to shamble after him, hungry for his flesh. He related with tear-filled eyes and wavering voice how he had thrown them over the railing to break them on the floor below.
"...and Light save me, father, I burned them. I lingered and watched as they blackend and crisped... as they were consumed and destroyed, and the house along with them."
But from his father, there was no reaction... a cold, blank, deadly stare. His hand, where his untasted drink was clenched in white-knuckled grip, was trembling.
Stephan, to his credit, poured my master another drink, then insisted he finish it quickly, and go out with him into the night to leave their father alone with his sorrow.
They went from tavern to tavern, and as the wine flowed, my master's mood improved. His strong brother at his side, the comforts of good wine, and the nostalgia of commiseration with his kin... all of these things seemed to move him back from the brink of madness where he had teetered for so long. To my consternation, hidden as I was between worlds not far away, it seemed as if my master might actually be on the verge of happiness for the first time since I'd known him. And there I was, powerless to emerge into the physical world to prevent it. You can imagine my frustration.
It was at the third tavern the pair visited that I finally saw some hope. They were both fairly drunk by then, sharing a memory of their sister learning to fish at their summer retreat, squeamishly losing worm after worm to the mud as she struggled to bait her hook, and a man with a short, thick club came up and struck Stephan across the back.
_________________
Even with his head clouded with wine, his battle-senses came to the fore; the curse of agony was past my master's lips before he even knew he would speak it. The skills that had kept him alive for a year and more against the Scourge were perhaps too much for a mere barroom brawl, but this didn't seem to be an average tavern dust-up.
Chairs around the room scraped and clattered across the floor. Even as his sword cleared his scabbard, Ythfas swept his eyes across those who stood, seeking to separate friend from foe by the look in their eyes, but immediately, spying their red bandanas like uniforms, he knew he would find no friends among them. From the uncertainty in their eyes, he could tell they were leaderless, but the savage hate they held for Stephan was just as visible. They were were a mob of a dozen - and not yet a gang. And yet in the dim torchlight and wine-soaked blur, he and his brother had wandered into this tavern and into their nest. The serving wench, ducked through a swinging door, sensing the violence to come. The barman turned his back.
My master saw all this in the time it took for the first assailant to hammer three more blows against the folding Stephan. A group of four, gathered around a nearby table, took out belt-knives and stepped toward Stephan, my master called me forth, and the foremost of them received a bolt of flame to the head, setting his hair alight and taking the fight out of the others. Their eyes lost their leering hatred and widened in fear as the two nobles were joined by a demon. The men were not fighters, not soldiers like my master, and even the man with the club seemed surprised when his blow was blocked by my master's sword... and then his face twisted in pain with my master's curse. The club clattered to the floor and bounced once, rolling under the table, forgotten.
The others with their red bandanas dared not move, they could only watch in horror as their comrade fell to his knees, screaming in agony and clawing at his own face, leaving red gouges along his cheeks in an effort to make the pain stop. Blood trickled from one ear, and the man's screams begged, "Oh gods make it stop! Makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop!" he flopped sideways to the beer-soaked wood floor and writhed, kicking impotently and gouging at his own flesh.
It was then that Stephan rose on shaky legs, the initial shock of his assault fading from him as quickly as the drunken haze. He looked in horror at what his brother was doing to the man on the floor, and then looked to my master, seeing the cold sneer that was his mask whenever he killed. He took my master by the shoulders and shook him. "Ythfas, stop! You're killing him!"
It took my master a few moments, still war-shocked from his year in the northern fields, to remember that murder, no matter the reason, was still illegal in civilized lands. He tore his eyes from the dying man, and looked into his brother's, and saw fear. Perhaps that is what finally brought him to his senses. With a gesture, he cancelled the spell, and the victim stopped his hideous screams, laying upon the ground gasping for breath. After a moment, he scuttled backwards like a wounded crab. His friends helped him to his feet.
One of them, an older man with a close-cropped beard, leveled his gaze at Stephan, saying, "We're coming for you, oathbreaker. You and your miser of a father. Your pet wizard won't always be around."
With that, the dozen or so men dropped coins on their tables to pay for their drinks, and then filed out, one after the other. My master watched them go, his hand gripping his sword, and his eyes narrowed, as if daring... or begging them to attack. Yet they did not, simply leaving in groups of two and three and four, casting scathing looks over their shoulder that silently promised revenge.
When the last of them had gone, the barman turned back to the room, busying himself wiping up a puddle of spilled mead, and pretending the scene had never happened. Ythfas turned to his brother, whose terrified eyes flicked back and forth between my master and me, the demon at his feet. Some moments passed, and Ythfas sheathed his sword. Finally, Stephan spoke, asking, "What have they done to you, Yth? What have you become?"
My master sent me back into the between-place, where I hid and watched. Then he turned to his brother, and said, "I am what I have to be. Nothing as bad as an oathbreaker. Tell me what he means, and why you did not deny it."
That was when Stephen told my master of the worker's rebellion. The Defias Brotherhood, which had declared a vendetta against all the nobles that had cheated them from their fair wages, his father among them. Ythfas was shocked that his father would throw honor out the window for a handful of gold. He made up his mind to make his father see reason, and to do so quickly, before the Defias could find a solid leader.
But the long road, the wine, and the fight were catching up to him... and so he and his brother headed home through the darkened streets. They were, miraculously, unaccosted, and upon reaching the house, found it dark and empty; the elder Vinguld presumably asleep at that late hour. Ythfas found his way to an empty room and collapsed, after hearing Stephan mention something about checking on their father.