Heresy

I am the jigsaw man, I turn the world around with a skeleton hand

– ‘More Human Than Human’ by White Zombie

**

A perfectly-formed Blood Elf mage makes her way to the mailbox. Blazing emerald eyes are even more vibrant, framed by her short, flaming auburn hair. A rich royal purple robe follows every curve as she walks; trimmed neatly in gold brocade and maroon velvet. Her ears bob attractively, tiny golden rings glinting in the afternoon sunlight. She walks with a confidence, but something more; there is a singularity of purpose, a haughty malevolence even, in her stride.

Despite the apparent flawlessness of this woman, something isn’t right about her – as if someone stared at a painting for an hour, appreciating its bright colours and lurid imagery before realising that the perspective is utterly wrong; that in fact it’s a rather bad painting, and you were only seduced by an illusion.

This is a scenario that happens every day in the world; the nubile dancing girl that seduces with the blessed veil of lighting and alluring costumes that disguise her bloodshot eyes and pallid skin; the deal that sounded so good, the offer that one could not refuse.

The promise of sweetness, so true until the moment of taste.

A guard watches her a moment, offhandedly, before turning away.

By the time he turns back, the mage is gone.


Little human,

You’re messing with something beyond your control. If you are indeed so fond of the Halfling, I might suggest you stop filling her head with bizarre living man’s ideas and words.

Leave the demon girl to those of us that understand her best - before you make it worse. It will only force us to take more drastic measures.

After all, we know how to take care of her. How can you? She said you were weak, after all.

Azrethoc knows of you.


**

Numb.

Zik usually felt numb. Or tired. Or some combination of numb and tired, and that’s when the perpetual lingering cold of his own magical activity wasn’t chilling his fingertips and what remained of his toes.

But right now, what he felt mostly was the wind that had begun whipping up around Lower City; causing his robes to flap annoyingly at his legs as he walked towards World’s End tavern.

A particularly strong gust blew across his face, whistling relentlessly into the tattered remains of his left ear, strands of his own hair lashing his cheek.

Absentmindedly, he lifted a hand to shield it from the wind.

An ear? Hardly. It was a stub on the side of his face with a hole in it. It was barely more than a bump of knotty scar tissue on the side of his head.

A small thing, but it would be there forever, a testament to his misery and need.

He’d been so damn…weak. A bleeding, drunken and shattered man, he had bedded misery when misery was all that was offered to him. Offered away to be used and destroyed as they saw fit, because at least it was some sort of contact, even if it killed him.

He felt a flash of shame, and closed his eyes a moment. It passed.

Zik wasn’t prone to vast amounts of introspection. It was done. It was over.

He was more now. He felt he had to be. And while he had felt so bleak when he’d left Azeroth, Northrend had given him something else; something more than the sound of his own, howling loneliness. The knight had shown him the runes. The runes, and the gifted sword that made his hands feel as if the frost turned to ice, hard and cold and impenetrable.

It felt good. Cold was something he understood. Cold was something he’d come to be used to – except when she was there. Then everything turned on its head, everything started to matter again. She needed him. She depended on him.

”Weak! A weak vessel!” Fireflower had chided him coldly then, all those months ago her frustrated little face twisted into a scowl, cutting her own arm to feed him in the dark weeks that had followed.


Zik shuddered, remembering his own blind need and her own callous manipulation of it. She’d been removed from it all, so businesslike. She never even flinched...

It was so easy for her back then. But now?

Now she was struggling with a certain degree of human consciousness. Now she felt moments of exhaustion and pain, of joy and loyalty. She was mad, she was chaos walking, but in her fledgling state of humanity, far too vulnerable. She needed him to protect her, he’d come to see that. And the more he tried to reach the humanity within her, the more she would be at risk.

Fond.

He had taught her the word; and in doing so taken on a sudden responsibility he hadn’t predicted.

Zik stopped walking as a strange thought suddenly struck him.

Suddenly he was the SANE one?

“I wonder when that happened.” He muttered, half-amused and half-resigned, rubbing his stub of an ear a moment before stepping inside.

He sighed quietly and turned towards the sound of tankards, the faint scent of beer being tapped. The entrance to the inn lay just ahead now.

A drink..he had time for one. He didn’t drink so much now. Not out of a conscious decision so much as he just…stopped. He wasn’t even sure why he’d stopped.

He’d just had time to sit down and stare a moment at the tankard in front of him when a waitress approached.

“You Zik Darkssyllah?”

“I am.”

“Letter for you.”

Zik frowned, tilting his head. A letter to him here, now…? He’d just arrived.

He’d had no plans to even come in until a moment ago.

He shrugged and tore the seal and began to read.

As he finished the letter his brow furrowed slightly in thought. He stretched his back and gazed idly around the tavern before smirking to himself, crumpling the letter in his hand.

“We’ll see about that.”

Azrethoc.

Her father – but wasn’t he dead? She’d killed him. He had remembered the day she told him so.


“I should have been there.”

Fireflower had merely shrugged listlessly and patted his shoulder. “ ‘s dead now, Misterzik. I killed him an’ saw his blood soak into the sand. Then the wind came and blew it around me, the wind, I could feel it! And feel it, felt the wind an’ screamed at the sky cause it wouldn’t stop.”

“I see.”


He hadn’t seen, not really – not like he did now. She possessed enough emotion to feel, to react, but never to comprehend or fully absorb. And to be self-aware for that brief moment had terrified her, assaulted with sensations and complexities of human existence and she had never once considered, much less experienced. And no amount of explaining would have helped her to understand.

And now Azrethoc was back…revived somehow? What did he want with his half-daughter now that she’d tried to assassinate him?

And to top it off, threats issued against himself…..

Zik frowned again. But from whom?

It had to be the succubus; she seemed instrumental somehow in this little tug-of-war between Fireflower’s demonic heritage and the living world into which she’d been thrust. It was Cattwyn that knew how to play on egos and weaknesses, her subtle manipulations even at work here, toying with Zik’s own skeletons and bruised ego.

We know how to take care of her. How can you? She said you were weak, after all.

“She had...once." he thought, defending himself in silence. He was stronger now.

He hoped.

He gazed into the leaping flames of the brazier and sighed before taking a long, slow sip from the tankard; its chill barely noticeable against his own frost-laced flesh.

***

(future posts to follow)

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"I wrote the story myself. It's about a girl who lost her reputation and never missed it." - Mae West
Fireflower's Words of Wisdom: http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ompilation.jpg