Over the Edge

The sound of heavy footfalls on the stone floor brought Xynrael's attention out of his documents and back to the world, however, he did not snap up to look.  Instead, he listened for a moment.  The boots themselves were leather, covered by platemail.  The light shuffling indicated that the armor itself was not very bulky, and the telltale "clank, clank" indicated a longsword held at the hip.

The even pace suggested no immediately aggressive intent, causing the death knight to gradually look up from the lounge on which he had seated himself.

The Blood Knight Laehym Adrastus stood before Xynrael, a small folder in one hand, the other resting easily on the pommel of his blade.  The two regarded eachother for a brief time, then Laehym extended his hand, offering Xynrael the document.

"We found him," he stated easily, as if the words explained it all.

Silence reigned again as Xynrael looked over the file, his brows knitting together in great concentration.  Laehym simply stood, hands folded over his weapon's hilt, as the death knight read deeper and deeper into the file.  Eventually, he reached the end, and, folding the document shut, stared down at it as if in disbelief.

"Shadowmoon," he muttered, "with an army of whores.  I should have known.  The information is current?"

Laehym nodded in reply.

Xynrael rose immediately, lifting his mace onto his back and offering both his own folder and the one Laehym had given him back to the Blood Knight.  "You'll be certain these get to where they need to go?"  He asked, quickly pulling up his hood.

"Aye," Laehym responded, calling after Xynrael.  "And be careful!"

The heavy sound of plate thumping and scraping barely kept up with Xynrael's bleak visage as he fled the inn.

* * *

Xynrael's fingers tensed around Ironheart's reins  as the drake rapidly approached the Dark Portal.  The flapping of its wings on the winds gave just enough background noise that he could turn silently introspective.  The Portal came quickly into view as the death knight's thoughts descended into memory, memories of the man he was heading to Outland to slay- a job three years in the making now.  Something he should have done before.

"But how, Xynrael?  How do I protect them without becoming the monster everyone thinks I am?"

As the conversation in his head grew louder, Xynrael's fingers tensed further, holding the reins so tightly the leather of his gloves was digging into itself and chafing against the skin of his palms.

"Sometimes you can't.  But, you must, above all other things, pledge your loyalty to the people.  The flag doesn't matter, Aerather.  The popularity contest doesn't matter.  But, you must keep them safe.  Collateral damage isn't acceptable- one innocent life for ten still means you sacrificed one innocent life.  It means you failed."

The sight of the old fortifications only served as a backdrop for Xynrael's memory, and failed to jar him from his reverie.

"I'm going to burn this city to the ground.  These people aren't worth protecting.  They never were.  They never will be."

"That may be, Aerather.  But, I still have a place here.  I won't help you if you and your Felbloods come for them."
"And what place is that?"

"Right here.  Between you and those gates."

The drake passed through.  The portal swirled and enveloped both drake and rider, and on the other side produced them.  The great metal beast lost no momentum as it soared through the broken sky of Outland, turning south from the Hellfire Peninsula towards Shadowmoon Valley.  A stretch of the Twisting  Nether was all that lay below them, and still the death knight was unseeing, his eyes clouded over with images from the past.

"Stop this!  Do not draw your weapons!"

The sharp song of metal cutting through the air rang out, Xynrael stepping between Eriene and Aerather.  His crossed arms caught and held Silithrim, Aerather's longsword, between them, stopping it cold against his armguards.  Aerather simply swung around, heaving another blow, this one sending a hammer of pure Light towards the death knight's face.

A barrier of runic energy met the hammer, which crashed against it and shattered.  Aerather resumed his assault, this time bringing Silithrim up in diagonal swing, which met Xynrael's left legplate, causing the death knight to shift balance.
As the drake touched down at the northeast end of Shadowmoon Valley, Xynrael finally awoke, jarred from his recollection of his last fight with the man he was about to attempt to kill.  He tugged his hood up further a bit, so that it fell forward nearly over his eyes, and moved forward into the Valley's starlit mountains, seeking the compound he knew was tucked away within.

* * *

Aerather Sunrender leaned back on a massive, purple lounge, dismissing the two women who had been kneeling before him with a wave of his hand.  For but a moment, he allowed himself the fleeting, now-fading pleasure of surveying the den of decadence and fel-corruption that surrounded him, and fueled his attempts to ascend to a fully fel-possessed creature.

The touch of corruption no longer disturbed him by way of sight or feeling, and had long since lost its novelty.  As he once again donned his armor, he reflected that what he had become would shock any ordinary man, and perhaps many not-so-ordinary men.  The veins in his blood pulsed green with his heartbeat, his eyes were aglow in such a way as to rival most death knights', and his muscles and flesh had long since begun to turn purple.  The locks of black hair which had once been kept in a neat ponytail now swirled around a set of demonic horns.

So thorough was the corruption to which he had subjected himself that his bodily fluids would likely be lethal to non-corrupted creatures in large enough a dose, which is why he was fortunate that the harem surrounding him was quite thoroughly fel-tainted themselves.  This was reinforced in his mind as he watched the two most recently used languish in front of a demonic crystal, siphoning the fel magic from it as if they were drinking from a spout.

As Aerather reached out to consume a crystal himself, there was a great commotion and a metallic rattling at the top of the stairs leading down into his compound.

Two women, once guards and now corpses, came sailing down the stairs.  One of them struck the stairwell with her head and bent backwards, and audible crack resounding as the entirety of her neck snapped.  Another one was already dead, her chest both crushed inward and cleaved ope, and somehow already seeping with maggots.

Aerather's eyes narrowed; he recognized the tell-tale mark, but only just.  The weapon that caused the mark was largely unfamiliar to him.

The savagery, however...

There was more noise as the women of his harem rushed to the walls, pulling down weapons rom racks and preparing to defend their benefactor.  Their movements and density would likely have obscured anyone else, but the death knight that crouched slightly to enter the room was unmistakable, even with his hood casting shadows on his face.

"Xynrael," Aerather intoned, brows raising slightly.  "What an unpleasant surprise."

The women hesitated as the death knight lifted his runemace onto his shoulder.  "Spare me the banter, Aerather."  He snapped in reply, the echo of his voice carrying the harshness of his words to every corner of the lounging area.  The two addressed eachother over the heads of Aerather's harem; there was little other way to do it.  The women were too many in number to speak otherwise.

"I believe I've earned a few words with a man who was once like a brother to me.  I'm shocked you haven't come to join me, what with how all those precious people you wanted to protect have been treating you.  Tell me, how IS Eriene?  Nikkitah?  Oh, and what about the men and women who wear your colors?"  Aerather shot back, once more dropping into his loung chair, shield laid over his lap, Silithrim resting point-down against the floor and held upright by his right hand.

"Getting on fine without you," Xynrael answered, moving forwards, causing a rippling shift in the mass of women before him.

"I'm sure.  Without someone to pin their disparate bickering on, they've probably descended into chaos.  Face it, Xynrael, Silvermoon was a better place with me.  At least they had one enemy.  But, I got tired of thanklessly bearing their burdens.  How is it treating YOU, oh great protector?"

"Let me show you."  Xynrael's first swing shattered weapons and skulls, knocking back a wave of the women who were now pressing in around him.  Aerather turned and withdrew, but did not flee.  He departed the carnage, heading for an altar that extended out of the side of the Valley itself, out over the Twisting Nether.

For his part, the death knight began wading through wave after wave of the women.  Though drunk and empowered by fel energies, they broke around him, most of their strikes only scoring hits against his armor.

Their numbers worked to his advantage, each death and spray of blood fueling his ability to fight on, as Aerather suspected they would.  The former Knight-Lord took a knee before the altar, not to worship, but to brace himself, and immediately extended both hands.  From the massive crystal at its center, he drew in wave after wave of demonic magic, his body heaving and buckling with the ecstacy of devouring so much power at once.

The ranks began to thin; with each swing, each spent rune, each spray of blood, and each death, Skyshatter struck all the harder, the runic discharge from the mace's blows leaving the room stinking of burnt flesh.

By the time Xynrael had waded through to the hallway, most of Aerather's harem was dead, dying, or sufficiently injured to feign it and attempt to escape death.  The women possessed little combative skill, and none could have been very effective in a mob that thick; the room itself and his sheer size forced them to engage him only a few at a time, an advantage for which the death knight was grateful in retrospect.  This, especially because the women were unarmored, so Skyshatter tossed their weapons aside like twigs, and destroyed their flesh as an ogre might crush a rabbit by stepping on it.

The result of this was that Xynrael was drenched in blood from his hood to his boots as he marched down the hallway towards Aerather's altar.

"Look at you, Xynrael!"  Aerather roared as he rose, his body still soaking in the fel magic.  He turned to face the death knight, felfire burning in his hands, his veins alight as if glowbugs were surging through them.  "Bathed in the blood of innocent women!  Why couldn't you have done that before?  It is exactly what I did: Taking a few lives to get the important things done!"

"No, Aerather."  Xynrael said, lifting Skyshatter in both hands, but not quite striking.   It would be over quickly, one way or another.  The two men could spare a moment to speak.  "It is not the same.  I slew the irrevocably corrupt to reach the irrevocably corrupt.  They knew what you were, and still protected you.  Others protected you because they did not know.  They thought you were a savior."

"I would have been their savior!  But, instead, they- YOU- tossed me aside and pinned all your sins, all of Avanda's sins, on me!"  Aerather replied, drawing Silithrim from his side.  "I united Silvermoon.  I contained Avanda, I even kept Nikkitah and that gang of rabid dogs in check!  And -YOU- tried to protect them."

Xynrael exhaled slowly, and thought a moment.  Finally, fixing the piercing blue of his eyes on Aerather's own corrupt visage, he responded, "And it was you that beat them and whipped them until they learned to bite at every passing stranger.  It was you who would have had me turn Nikkitah into a killing machine.  Probably so you would have had one to rival me in case I ever decided to simply gut you."

Aerather's lips twisted into a sadistic grin.  He opened his mouth to speak.

Xynrael charged.

Skyshatter met with Aerather's shield.  Aerather staggered backwards and swung, Silithrim's blade igniting with felfire.

The death knight was no longer there to be struck.  The slaughter earlier had empowered him much as Aerather's own fel consumption had.  The two were evenly matched, which, for trained killers, meant it could not go on long.

Aerather swung around, bringing Silithrim around with him in a horizontal slice.  It met Skyshatter's shaft, held vertically in Xynrael's hands.

The death knight used the temporary halt in Aerather's momentum to slam his former compatriot backwards.  Aerather lost ground, but recovered, and bashed his shield forward against Xynrael's body.

He drew back.  Xynrael aimed a blow with Skyshatter's pommel straight for Aerather's gut.

Xynrael's blow connected, and so did Aerather's.

The death knight staggered slightly as Silithrim's blade pierced his gut, the blade's tip having found purchase against his armor rather than simply sliding off.

Aerather locked eyes with Xynrael, exhaling slowly, with a combination of relief and sadness pervading his voice as he spoke.  "It's over, brother."  He said, as the felfire singed around Xynrael's stomach.

The death knight nodded slightly, then reached up, slamming his mace's shaft against Aerather's chin.  "Yes, it is.  That's for Blightheart."  He said, twisting his mace to slam the pommel into Aerather's left arm, causing the fel-touched Sin'dorei to drop his shield as the armor caved in over his forearm.

Aerather snarled in pain, attempting to wrench Silithrim from Xynrael's gut, all the while attempting to summon up enough magical prowess to drive the death knight back.  He could not, however, speak the words necessary- his veins were expanding in his throat, making it impossible to breathe.

Any other time, against any other foe, Aerather's blow would have been fatal.  The bloodbath before, however, sustained Xynrael despite the felfire coursing into his body through the wound.

Another strike, this time the death knight's knee to the former Knight Lord's crotch.  "That's for Eriene," he said, as Aerather staggered back, gasping for breath.  The impact had jarred him despite his armor, and he was forced to release Silithrim's hilt as Xynrael hooked one of Skyshatter's scythes around Aerather's right wrist, twisting the mace to force the other man aside.

Aerather was now staring into the abyss below.  He turned, hurling one final strike towards Xynrael's chest.  The blow connected, a fel-formed hammer similar to a Paladin's strike.  It sent Xynrael backwards, but his reach was still sufficient.

Xynrael fell with his back against the altar, braced his arms against it, and kicked outward, sending Aerather tumbling back over the railing.

The living of the pair made no attempt to plead for his life as he gripped the edge of the platform, and Xynrael gave no parting words.  He slammed Skyshatter down on Aerather's gauntlet, and Aerather Sunrender fell out of view.

Xynrael slumped to the ground almost immediately, his energy spent on the final exertion needed to send Aerather falling towards the Nether.  He did not know if there was anything nearby to stop the plummet, he did not know if Aerather could possibly have survived the fall, and he did not care.  The shock to his system forbade him from caring.

He wondered briefly if the felfire surging through his veins would kill him, then passed into unconsciousness as he felt the beating of his drake's wing stirring the air around him.

"I am done with them and their petty struggles, Xynrael.  If they will not have peace by choice, they will have peace by force."

"Then, my brother, when next we meet, we shall see whose peace is stronger."

As the blackness overtook him, Xynrael's last thought was that he could hear Aerather laughing as he tumbled over into the abyss.

He could hear it even in the veil of his dreams, chasing him all the way to Netherstorm.