Covenant of Ashes

Akirae · Disciple Joined: 12 Jun 2006 Posts: 262

The night is cold... a calm wind blows gently across the slopes and hills of the countryside. Here and there plaguehounds roam and stalk the landscape, surrounded by forests, dark and eerie, almost alive…howling, screaming with each breeze, yet they are dead…beyond dead even, like most of her surroundings.
Every leaf, every branch drained of its life, replaced by some chilling essence, neither alive nor dead, but dreadfully suspended in a state of torture.

Sorrow and despair linger here, like an eternal requiem played out under the clear night sky. A horrific scene for most, terrible like any nightmare, but for her… it is home.

She greets the caretaker as she enters the graveyard; it has been ages since she’s been here. Carrying a bouquet of crimson roses, withered yet flushed with a morbid aura, it was their favorite kind.
She walks slowly, passing several gravestones before she reaches a small mausoleum; it still stands, even after all these years. The caretaker had performed his services admirably, even though the tomb had clearly been pillaged by roaming grave robbers.

She touches the cold granite as she enters, the crypt is dark and smells of decay, yet the moonlight shines in through several cracks of its hallowed dome, lighting up her surroundings and revealing two marked sarcophagus.
She glides her fingers across the stone coffins, removing the cobwebs and crusted moss along the way. Her index circling several small gaps where shining rubies used to be, most likely taken since her last visit two years ago.

When she finally reaches the end she sighs slightly, their epitaph still stands as she remembered it: “Here lies Rydrion Dawnstrider, loving husband and stalwart defender of Quel’thalas and his beloved wife Illydria Sorrowmoon, loving mother and esteemed high priestess of Belore, may they rest in peace.”

As she places the roses in the broken vase before her, a sense of regret overcomes her, followed by envy and anger.
She knew the truth, she knew he was still alive and he knew of her as well. It had been almost two decades since he went missing in battle, lost in the frontlines when the troll bands attacked.
But she knew he was alive, she could still sense him and even after all this time, he loved Illydria still and not her. What he ever saw in the priestess she never understood and she did not care. Why not her, what did Illydria had that she didn’t?

She took her own life she did, the priestess of Belore, drinking a flask of acidic poison that burned her from the inside out. Burned her sins, burned her love and her soul, for reasons only Illydria knew, reasons that she took with her into her grave.

Anger takes over and she strikes their coffins with her blade, scratching the surface, ruining the delicate etchings that decorate the tombs. The moonlight shines through as she drops to her knees, illuminating a short inscription below the epitaph:

“A tear for duty, a tear for love, a tear for silence and all above.
In this sea of sorrow and solitude, we search for the reasons that had elude,
may Belore guide us so we can make amend, before we die and reach our end,
granted peace and be embraced by light, may future generations take on our plight.”

But there are no more tears and all the light has faded…
She stands up and sheathes her sword and dagger, giving the shrine one final look she takes off a small gold ring with silver etchings and leaves it on his sarcophagus.

Leaving the sepulcher and the graveyard, she greets the caretaker one more time, it will be a few years before she returns again, if at all. She picks up the bag she left on the ground before entering, still drenched with fresh blood. Thinking to herself ‘No point in desecrating these grounds with scarlet blood’, she glances at the content. The commander will surely have a headache when the warlocks reanimate it. She tightens the bag again, sealing of the severed human head within.
With a simple wave of her hands she animates a few bones on the ground into a fearsome steed, pulsing with malign purplish energy.
She mounts her surprisingly docile creation, glances one last time at the graveyard and rides off.

The wind has calmed, the night grows darker as the clouds slowly gather above. The air thickens and somewhere in the distant one can hear several plaguebats shrieking and lost spirits wailing.

Back at the graveyard, the light within the crypt wanes as the moonlight withdraws. The ring glistens and a small inscription can be discerned upon the ring:
“To my loving wife Illydria, my love for you, like this ring, knows no end.”

The clouds close in above the mausoleum and with the last ray of light, a shimmer, a shimmer and then, a shimmer no more…
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Akirae Sorrowmoon, Deathstalker of the Covenant.

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