Theryl

The day was oppressive, hot and humid, and felt unnaturally still. The waves of thunderstorms which had passed over Raven Hill had seemingly finished, but the electricity in the sopping thick air was almost tangible. The dark manor called Nidhoggr crouched on its hill beyond the decaying village and graveyard, mold festooning its slate roof, fungus growing on the wooden beams of the porch despite every effort by the staff to attend to these unsightly problems. The unrelenting weather had simply exceeded their capacity to maintain the house and estate. Guardsmen patrolled with tense shoulders. Men who shifted between worgen and humanoid shapes depending on which they seemed to feel would best handle to brutal climate - dark pink tongues lolled out from toothy maws here, while red-faced men wiped sopping handkerchiefs incessantly.

I touched his hand
It burned like coal
I put paid to the devil
And I saw the mountain fall..

  I had duties to attend to, responsibilities to others and Dante had become a black void of moody teenage angst… so I took her with me.  I had things to sort though and evidently so did she, so we hunted and left corpses to become part of the scenery in Icecrown.

  Mother and daughter together.

Honey put down that flyswatter
And pour me some ice water
And would you bring me my hammer
And could you find me some nails
For soon I'll be going
To work for this living
And with you here to guide me
Then I cannot fail

Looks like it always did
This flesh and bone
It's just the way that we are tied in
Now there's no-one home
I grieve

I could feel it like a thunder in my veins.

The chamber hums to my footsteps. The dome above me whispers and flickers with coruscating light, pulsing as if to my slow heartbeats.

I finally finished a sketch I've been promising for two years, and of course I liked it so much that I decided to do more. This is going to be a series, each with a different style of dance and overall colour scheme and theme. Yay for inspiration and listening to way too much Roxy Music.

Sitting target
Sitting waiting
Anticipating
Nothing
Nothing

The coffee teases my nostrils, whispering of bitter, heady things.

Such things of late.

In the end, we each do what we must.

Ythgar asked for someone who deserves death. So that he may feed his hunger on someone...who deserves the punishment.

But how does one simply...obtain a criminal? By that time, Ythgar might have lost himself completely. And if that occurs...I am the best equipped one to...to...to put him down.

"Shoulder back, Whitedawn. You're leaning off center. STEPHAN! BRING THAT SWORD TIP UP, BOY!"

Lilliana glances at me and her face scrunches slightly in a frown of concentration in the morning light. But she re-adjusts her posture. My grandson at the other pell huffs, squares his jaw and brings his training sword correctly to guard.

The treatise was of passing interest to me after the cases of the day.

Learning to match the beat of the Old World man
Learning to catch the heat of the Third World man

He's got to make his own mistakes
And learn to mend the mess he makes
He's old enough to know what's right
But young enough not to choose it
He's noble enough to win the world
But weak enough to lose it --

The wood of the ship's railing was wet with salt spray under my grip and the swells of the heaving gray-green ocean made me strangely calm. Being on a ship is a place between. Between time, and between places. One is simply in transit. Time to think, to pause.

Her fingers raked through my hair, almost rough in her need.

I fly to her as often as I can. It enrages Svartja, but the feelings of my mount are of very little relative importance to me.

The sun was only peeping over the horizon when sleep loosed her hold upon my mind, and I came to myself.

The clouds had piled into a bruised mass high over the Throndroril Mountain range, as if increasingly sullen at the continued defiance of the untamed and rugged mountains, which stood in silent majesty for all the battering of the storm upon them. It was one of the strange moments of stillness, where the late afternoon sun shone along the rocks and crags and velvet-dark trees, turning grey into gold, and dark green into emerald. Against that extraordinary beauty, the purple-black looming storm was contrast, comparison - a waiting violence to be unleashed in waves of veiling grey. Nestled by a bend in the river, Marzheim stood in solitary splendour above a huddled village, and bathed in the rich bronzing of the pre-tempest light.

Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med

The three men did not speak of what had taken place in the high mountain groves as the young summer sun shone down to make their faces glow.

The twisted pines which clung to the granite rocks did not spring to life and dance before the Summer Lord, nor the old lord of Winter, as the three had seen. They were merely trees, adorned with wreaths of spiky green leaves, watching silently as the retinue descended through the pass, brilliant in the warmth. High above, an eagle spiralled on a rising current of hot air. Lining the rocks pass, straight pines defied the memory of winter, reminding watchers of the straight pole wrapped with ribbons which had stood in the square of the larger village beneath the oak grove.

Je suis un homme de Cro-Magnon                                    I am a caveman
Je suis un singe ou un poisson                                        I am an ape, or a fish    
Sur la Terre en toute saison                                            On the earth, in all seasons 

My eyes drifted over the chessboard and didn't really consider them beyond a brief assessment of the end of last night's game.

I still enjoyed playing chess with Hugh, though I do wish that his excellent solution to my ailment hadn't involved letting some damned heathen entity reshape me to its liking. I'd won the game. I generally do. The image of Ythfas's first effort to best me suddenly arose, and I banished it with a snarl which tugged at my face and urged it to lengthen, to grow bestial. My second son and murderer. His head was not yet in my hands, my vengeance not yet accomplished to my knowledge. That still rankled.

I focused on the names of the intricate moves, and the urge eased.

They urged me to do it. To trust her. Daenyra, Aelberyn.. elves. What do elves know about human hearts and fears? Rather a lot, as it turned out.

The flows of time shifted like hawsers whipping and slashing through history, severed by forces unmentionable and unnameable.

Heaved this way, ripped that, time shuddered like an intricate web laced with bound steel.

A future man stood speaking knowledgably with Shu'halo, another man beside him with dark skin and tribal tattoos, yet sharing a similarity showing their blood kinship. The men both wore the garb of Argent Crusaders, righteous and just, yet the darker skinned man's attire bore painted symbols not unlike the sigils of the Tauren.

Another future man, along a different timestream, stood near the ruins of his father's Tower, screaming demonic, hideous words ripped from the Twisting Nether, his eyes flaring with power as hatred boiled out in visible lashing waves from him. Screaming of inconsolable loss and outrage.

I woke with a pounding headache which even my Theryl's touch could not truly drive away.

As if my skull were being split from within.

Were I truly living, this might not have been of much concern.. but I am not. A life fashioned through necromancy, Light and fel together woven through my murdered corpse, making it.. and me.. feel as if we lived. And yet I do not. 'Death' is agony, yet it does not kill me. I require mending, or the stolen vitality which my sword conveys. The Light sent racing through me is searing... blinding.. but cleansing strangely. As if the evil I draw from my sword were held at a standstill by the holy power which floods my poor ravaged body as priests and paladins heal me alongside my runeblade's strength in the depths of battle.

Against such grandiose tug of wars between death, undeath and the Light, headaches are a trifle strange.

We've only arrived home from our weekend holiday early this morning, but I decided to come in to the office as some sort of show of support. I can't say it's a strong one, really. Mostly I'm a warm body and the lanterns are glowing, but I'm useless to any sort of actual work. Ace is in the lobby and there's tea and coffee brewing while she tackles the bulk of everything I'm not doing. There's all sorts of letters and scrolls on me desk to go through, and an unusual parcel wrapped in brown paper addressed to me from one Ixinane Stormcren. I'm avoiding that one.

The rain outside is keeping the office a bit chilly. I watch it come down sideways in thin, icy sheets of grey needles. The docks outside the window are slippery and miserable and most the veteran workers 'ave good enough mind to stand under Port Authority awnings an' nibble on hot fried sausages or chips until the dark, angry clouds pass over.

I pull me mechano-guitar into me lap and lean over briefly to flip on the amp. An electric pop fizzes to life and fills the quiet office with a low, expectant hum. Leaning back into the comfortable leather of me captain's chair, I cross me boots at the ankle on the windowsill and adjust the guitar to a lazy angle in me lap. Me fingers slide along the metal strings and pluck out a few tentative notes I've been putting to a song I've been writing off and on while my mind wanders away from the work I'm avoiding.