lawl rp
Moar ficlets from WoW-RPland.
I listened to Wicked Game on repeat over and over for this one, therefore it is the title.
Nine hundred years and Adrasteius hadn’t the experience to deal with this. The feeling crept up his throat like sweet bile, coated and bound his tongue, pierced at the base of his spine. It was careful, delicate, cruel, and suddenly omnipresent, even during the most mundane moments of his life. He felt its barbed tingle run through the nerves of his hands as he passed a loaf of bread to Avali, who took it without so much as looking at him.
The campfire bathed them both in its comforting, crackling glow, its flames spitting embers into an obsidian sky that was crisscrossed with ribbons of dying stars, supernova remnants, and the general detritus of a shattered universe. From his position on the ground, the snaking curves of the reds, golds, and blues were beautiful, set against the full, luminous moons of Outland. This world was in pieces, but its majesty was undeniable.
He was surprised that Avali hadn’t left entirely yet, and said so, because spite lived in his mouth like teeth.
“I fulfill my promises,” she answered stiffly, focused on the crystalline pinecones that hung from the nearest olemba tree. The translucent blue cones gleamed and twinkled in the darkness, and Adrasteius felt a little ill as he mentally compared the effect to the radiance of Avali’s hair. He wrote poems when he was younger and thought that such frivolity was a good idea, but never about women-always about seasons, or fish, or the joy of serving in the Light. The urge to write lines had died in him long ago, but now it resurfaced with a vengeance, like a disease that had been incubating for centuries and was only now releasing its sinister effects.
This was a disease, he thought, but not one with the usual rules, not one that he understood how to fight. What was the antidote to love? Not hate. Hate only soured the pain, instead of abating it.
“You’ve kept your promise,” he pointed out. “I survived the Altar of Damnation.” This time.
“Return to Silvermoon,” she said, “and I’ll be satisfied never to look on your thin, pasty face ever again.” She bit into the bread like a bejeweled bird. He drank water too quickly, and it boiled down his throat, bubbling in the pit of his stomach. He had weathered much worse than this.
Hadn’t he?
“I have no need of your aid,” he said, but his voice was brittle and lame, and she just laughed at him, the way a mother laughs at a child who creeps near a cliff and insists he can fly. A mother who wished she had the courage to kill the child when he was a baby.
Adrasteius could have been burned all of Terokkar Forest to the ground, and her with it; sparks jumped between his fingers and the grass hissed. He breathed, and drew upon the will that had helped him expel so many seemingly more wicked forces.
She looked at him, and he felt his heart quiver.
“Losing your temper again?” she said. She finished the bread, and licked the crumbs off of her lips in a way that was surely pre-meditated.
His back ached, remembering the tracks her nails had left there, remembering her words, by turns hateful and loving, remembering the warmth and scrape of her mouth against his skin. He shuddered.
“No,” he said. “I am perfectly fine.”
“So you’re just melting the foliage for fun.”
He smiled. “Precisely.”
She broke eye contact, and gave her attention back to the fire. Her posture was closed: she sat with her knees drawn to her chest, and her chin resting on her knees, her back turned halfway from him, though she was close enough for him to trace a pattern between her shoulderblades.
She had said, on several occasions now, that she hated him, and he was trying to think this was for the best, especially since his latest plan could very well be the one to kill him. But if she hated him, why had she come at all, and why had she stayed? A promise was no flimsy reasoning, but he knew Maria would release her from it easily, had all but done so before he left Silvermoon, and he certainly had repeated that she needed to suffer the torment of his presence no more than necessary. And now, after the slow torture of last night, she treated him worse than ever, as though he were a gnat buzzing near her ears, inescapable and endlessly annoying.
And the worst part, the bit that cast a patina of pure awfulness over the proceedings, was that he didn’t want her to go, that he never had.
“Suit yourself,” Adrasteius said finally, and rolled over onto his back to sleep. Dreams would suffice where reality denied him, though their soft edges would be harshly blunted on waking. Adrasteius had never suffered a fever he couldn’t sweat out, and as his consciousness drifted into the twilight realms beyond mortal understanding, he convinced himself that this, too, would pass.
But only just.
I listened to 'Ready to Die' over and over for this one, but that is not its title.
“I know you’re out here!” Maria shouted, as she threw down her third flare. The flame spat and whistled as it illuminated a section of the woods, revealing nothing much besides some frightened spiders and scurrying caterpillars. What Maria hoped for was that tricky, loathsome night elf that Aurelius had allowed to enter Silvermoon City yesterday.
The foul purple woman wasn’t her original quarry, but she’d lost the trail of that one for now. On her way back to the city to calm herself over Kost’s slippery ways, she had caught the night elf’s tall shadow moving swiftly over the bushes of Eversong Woods; presumably she was leaping from tree to tree.
“Come on, coward!” Maria said to the forest canopy, scanning every rustling leaf for a sign of the intruder.
“Miss, I am a lot of kinds, but coward is not one of’em.” A good natured voice spoke from somewhere behind Maria, and she whipped around on her heel, firing an arrow in the direction of the sound. Maria heard the arrow’s wooden shaft break in two, and a deep sigh, followed by the whistle of three return arrows flying directly at her. Before she could dodge, the arrows struck their targets-the edges of her gloves, the side of her tunic-and pinned her neatly to a tree.
“Damn you,” Maria seethed, tearing away from the tree, breaking the arrows with the force of her forward lunge. She crouched on the ground, breathing deeply, but agitation clouded her senses-how could this fool have possibly surprised her?
“Also, I am not ‘you,’” the night elf said, and Maria saw her, hanging upside down from a thick tree branch, both calves gripping the wood, body swaying back and forth like a pendulum. “I am Eulalia.”
“No,” Maria said triumphantly, “You’re dead!” She fired a carefully aimed arrow, and Eulalia laughed as the bolt shot towards her. In a movement so fast that Maria could hardly recollect it, Eulalia swung up over and beneath the tree branch, then rolled to the side as Maria’s arrow splintered the bark, causing the branch to crash heavily to earth.
“Nice shot,” Eulalia said approvingly. “Lots of power.” She leapt into the air, her body curling into a flip, and came down a fingertip away from Maria’s face. Startled, Maria tried to pull back, but stumbled over the haft of Eulalia’s polearm, the blade of which then cut into her ankle. Laughing, Eulalia jumped over Maria as though playing leapfrog, and the blood elf turned quickly, only to be rewarded with a kiss on her nose as Eulalia dropped down, her boots crunching the grass. Snarling, Maria struck at the night elf with her swords, but Eulalia danced out of range, grinning like she was the guest of honor at the best birthday party ever and Maria was serving her cake.
She launched herself into the trees again and said, “Listen to what is around you, not what is inside of you.”
“I do that all the time!” Maria said, and groaned-her ankle was wounded, nearly immobilized, and she moved forward slowly, clutching it in pain. Another arrow hissed through the air, and Maria ducked low to the ground, narrowly avoiding the gruesome separation of her head from her neck.
“Excellent reflexes,” Eulalia called, then fired another arrow, which caught Maria in the side, tearing into the chinks of her chainmail shirt. The cut was shallow, but she winced, as frustration mounted to dizzying heights, and her muscles clenched.
“Try to attack,” Eulalia said encouragingly. “But mind the trees.”
“Shut up,” Maria said. “I don’t need a lecture from the likes of you, night elf.” She aimed an arrow into the trees, and Eulalia’s body hurtled downwards, thumping against the dirt and then lying still.
Maria blinked, and then, feeling satisfied, she approached the corpse, which was not stirred even by the vibrations of Maria’s steps, which was as limp and unmoving as a dead fern.
Until Eulalia’s eyes opened, and she swung her legs out in a circle, knocking Maria off of her feet.
“Mind the trees,” Eulalia repeated, towering over Maria, her spear point at the blood elf’s throat.
“I know these woods like the veins in my own body!” Maria cried, angry and ashamed at having fallen for Eulalia’s obvious trap. “Shut your ignorant mouth.”
“You might know them, but do you listen to what they are wanting to say?” Eulalia leaned forward, driving the point of her spear into the soil beside Maria’s head. “Or d’you just focus on the rushes of your own blood?”
“Raistlin,” Maria called, “Kill this woman!”
The lynx bounded forward, dashing at Eulalia, who smiled at it pleasantly. The cat slowed as it neared, and nuzzled Eulalia’s hand.
Maria screamed.
“That is exactly what I am saying,” Eulalia said.
“I’ll kill you,” Maria said. “I swear I will.”
“That should be a lot of fun,” Eulalia replied agreeably. She pulled her weapon from the dirt. “But for now, mind the trees.”
And then, she leapt into the canopy for the final time, disappearing into the forest’s mists.
Maria thrashed, punched the ground, glared at her sheepish cat. She rested her head on the nearest tree and exhaled, trying to calm down. She focused her mind, cleared it, thinking only of the rough bark scratching against her cheeks.
And, for a few moments, she thought she heard a whisper running through the wood, soft, welcoming, patient. So (ignoring the night elf’s words echoing in her mind), Maria huddled closer to the tree, and she listened.
Eulalia and Adrasteius = mine
Others = not mine
I listened to Wicked Game on repeat over and over for this one, therefore it is the title.
Nine hundred years and Adrasteius hadn’t the experience to deal with this. The feeling crept up his throat like sweet bile, coated and bound his tongue, pierced at the base of his spine. It was careful, delicate, cruel, and suddenly omnipresent, even during the most mundane moments of his life. He felt its barbed tingle run through the nerves of his hands as he passed a loaf of bread to Avali, who took it without so much as looking at him.
The campfire bathed them both in its comforting, crackling glow, its flames spitting embers into an obsidian sky that was crisscrossed with ribbons of dying stars, supernova remnants, and the general detritus of a shattered universe. From his position on the ground, the snaking curves of the reds, golds, and blues were beautiful, set against the full, luminous moons of Outland. This world was in pieces, but its majesty was undeniable.
He was surprised that Avali hadn’t left entirely yet, and said so, because spite lived in his mouth like teeth.
“I fulfill my promises,” she answered stiffly, focused on the crystalline pinecones that hung from the nearest olemba tree. The translucent blue cones gleamed and twinkled in the darkness, and Adrasteius felt a little ill as he mentally compared the effect to the radiance of Avali’s hair. He wrote poems when he was younger and thought that such frivolity was a good idea, but never about women-always about seasons, or fish, or the joy of serving in the Light. The urge to write lines had died in him long ago, but now it resurfaced with a vengeance, like a disease that had been incubating for centuries and was only now releasing its sinister effects.
This was a disease, he thought, but not one with the usual rules, not one that he understood how to fight. What was the antidote to love? Not hate. Hate only soured the pain, instead of abating it.
“You’ve kept your promise,” he pointed out. “I survived the Altar of Damnation.” This time.
“Return to Silvermoon,” she said, “and I’ll be satisfied never to look on your thin, pasty face ever again.” She bit into the bread like a bejeweled bird. He drank water too quickly, and it boiled down his throat, bubbling in the pit of his stomach. He had weathered much worse than this.
Hadn’t he?
“I have no need of your aid,” he said, but his voice was brittle and lame, and she just laughed at him, the way a mother laughs at a child who creeps near a cliff and insists he can fly. A mother who wished she had the courage to kill the child when he was a baby.
Adrasteius could have been burned all of Terokkar Forest to the ground, and her with it; sparks jumped between his fingers and the grass hissed. He breathed, and drew upon the will that had helped him expel so many seemingly more wicked forces.
She looked at him, and he felt his heart quiver.
“Losing your temper again?” she said. She finished the bread, and licked the crumbs off of her lips in a way that was surely pre-meditated.
His back ached, remembering the tracks her nails had left there, remembering her words, by turns hateful and loving, remembering the warmth and scrape of her mouth against his skin. He shuddered.
“No,” he said. “I am perfectly fine.”
“So you’re just melting the foliage for fun.”
He smiled. “Precisely.”
She broke eye contact, and gave her attention back to the fire. Her posture was closed: she sat with her knees drawn to her chest, and her chin resting on her knees, her back turned halfway from him, though she was close enough for him to trace a pattern between her shoulderblades.
She had said, on several occasions now, that she hated him, and he was trying to think this was for the best, especially since his latest plan could very well be the one to kill him. But if she hated him, why had she come at all, and why had she stayed? A promise was no flimsy reasoning, but he knew Maria would release her from it easily, had all but done so before he left Silvermoon, and he certainly had repeated that she needed to suffer the torment of his presence no more than necessary. And now, after the slow torture of last night, she treated him worse than ever, as though he were a gnat buzzing near her ears, inescapable and endlessly annoying.
And the worst part, the bit that cast a patina of pure awfulness over the proceedings, was that he didn’t want her to go, that he never had.
“Suit yourself,” Adrasteius said finally, and rolled over onto his back to sleep. Dreams would suffice where reality denied him, though their soft edges would be harshly blunted on waking. Adrasteius had never suffered a fever he couldn’t sweat out, and as his consciousness drifted into the twilight realms beyond mortal understanding, he convinced himself that this, too, would pass.
But only just.
I listened to 'Ready to Die' over and over for this one, but that is not its title.
“I know you’re out here!” Maria shouted, as she threw down her third flare. The flame spat and whistled as it illuminated a section of the woods, revealing nothing much besides some frightened spiders and scurrying caterpillars. What Maria hoped for was that tricky, loathsome night elf that Aurelius had allowed to enter Silvermoon City yesterday.
The foul purple woman wasn’t her original quarry, but she’d lost the trail of that one for now. On her way back to the city to calm herself over Kost’s slippery ways, she had caught the night elf’s tall shadow moving swiftly over the bushes of Eversong Woods; presumably she was leaping from tree to tree.
“Come on, coward!” Maria said to the forest canopy, scanning every rustling leaf for a sign of the intruder.
“Miss, I am a lot of kinds, but coward is not one of’em.” A good natured voice spoke from somewhere behind Maria, and she whipped around on her heel, firing an arrow in the direction of the sound. Maria heard the arrow’s wooden shaft break in two, and a deep sigh, followed by the whistle of three return arrows flying directly at her. Before she could dodge, the arrows struck their targets-the edges of her gloves, the side of her tunic-and pinned her neatly to a tree.
“Damn you,” Maria seethed, tearing away from the tree, breaking the arrows with the force of her forward lunge. She crouched on the ground, breathing deeply, but agitation clouded her senses-how could this fool have possibly surprised her?
“Also, I am not ‘you,’” the night elf said, and Maria saw her, hanging upside down from a thick tree branch, both calves gripping the wood, body swaying back and forth like a pendulum. “I am Eulalia.”
“No,” Maria said triumphantly, “You’re dead!” She fired a carefully aimed arrow, and Eulalia laughed as the bolt shot towards her. In a movement so fast that Maria could hardly recollect it, Eulalia swung up over and beneath the tree branch, then rolled to the side as Maria’s arrow splintered the bark, causing the branch to crash heavily to earth.
“Nice shot,” Eulalia said approvingly. “Lots of power.” She leapt into the air, her body curling into a flip, and came down a fingertip away from Maria’s face. Startled, Maria tried to pull back, but stumbled over the haft of Eulalia’s polearm, the blade of which then cut into her ankle. Laughing, Eulalia jumped over Maria as though playing leapfrog, and the blood elf turned quickly, only to be rewarded with a kiss on her nose as Eulalia dropped down, her boots crunching the grass. Snarling, Maria struck at the night elf with her swords, but Eulalia danced out of range, grinning like she was the guest of honor at the best birthday party ever and Maria was serving her cake.
She launched herself into the trees again and said, “Listen to what is around you, not what is inside of you.”
“I do that all the time!” Maria said, and groaned-her ankle was wounded, nearly immobilized, and she moved forward slowly, clutching it in pain. Another arrow hissed through the air, and Maria ducked low to the ground, narrowly avoiding the gruesome separation of her head from her neck.
“Excellent reflexes,” Eulalia called, then fired another arrow, which caught Maria in the side, tearing into the chinks of her chainmail shirt. The cut was shallow, but she winced, as frustration mounted to dizzying heights, and her muscles clenched.
“Try to attack,” Eulalia said encouragingly. “But mind the trees.”
“Shut up,” Maria said. “I don’t need a lecture from the likes of you, night elf.” She aimed an arrow into the trees, and Eulalia’s body hurtled downwards, thumping against the dirt and then lying still.
Maria blinked, and then, feeling satisfied, she approached the corpse, which was not stirred even by the vibrations of Maria’s steps, which was as limp and unmoving as a dead fern.
Until Eulalia’s eyes opened, and she swung her legs out in a circle, knocking Maria off of her feet.
“Mind the trees,” Eulalia repeated, towering over Maria, her spear point at the blood elf’s throat.
“I know these woods like the veins in my own body!” Maria cried, angry and ashamed at having fallen for Eulalia’s obvious trap. “Shut your ignorant mouth.”
“You might know them, but do you listen to what they are wanting to say?” Eulalia leaned forward, driving the point of her spear into the soil beside Maria’s head. “Or d’you just focus on the rushes of your own blood?”
“Raistlin,” Maria called, “Kill this woman!”
The lynx bounded forward, dashing at Eulalia, who smiled at it pleasantly. The cat slowed as it neared, and nuzzled Eulalia’s hand.
Maria screamed.
“That is exactly what I am saying,” Eulalia said.
“I’ll kill you,” Maria said. “I swear I will.”
“That should be a lot of fun,” Eulalia replied agreeably. She pulled her weapon from the dirt. “But for now, mind the trees.”
And then, she leapt into the canopy for the final time, disappearing into the forest’s mists.
Maria thrashed, punched the ground, glared at her sheepish cat. She rested her head on the nearest tree and exhaled, trying to calm down. She focused her mind, cleared it, thinking only of the rough bark scratching against her cheeks.
And, for a few moments, she thought she heard a whisper running through the wood, soft, welcoming, patient. So (ignoring the night elf’s words echoing in her mind), Maria huddled closer to the tree, and she listened.
Eulalia and Adrasteius = mine
Others = not mine