it's a dead man's party; who could ask for more?

[deadelfwalking]

Date & Time: 10/9, however many days beyond
Location: Around the city
Characters: Koltira Deathweaver, yOU?
Summary: this stupid fuck is back from the dead. you should probably punch him in the goddamn face.
Warnings: this intro prose is hideously purple pls forgive



He knew of the rumors, had heard the theories whispered throughout the halls of the Undercity, the muttering among the troops he once commanded at Andorhal. According to some, true death for the undead was a release, and perhaps this was the case for the petty troops of the Scourge: the ghouls, the geists, all those creatures who were merely shells for otherwise untainted souls. But for the higher orders of the undead, the reality was much more dire. Koltira's will was his own, but his soul was irrevocably stained, fractured by the Lich King and the unforgivable acts Koltira had committed while enslaved to that overarching dominance. He was damned in this life and the next, as he discovered soon after the last of his energy ebbed out of his broken, mangled body.

For a few brief, shining moments, he felt restored. Whole. Koltira had observed his corpse, now truly still, unattended on the forest floor, and felt nothing but serenity. But then he was thrust into another world, blinded and lost, beset on all sides by slavering, growling things that stared at him hungrily as they gathered for their feast.

Koltira had no defenses. He could not move, nor cry out; he was nothing but vulnerable spirit stuff here, tender and primed for the shredding. And the shredding had come. An eternity seemed to pass, and each inching, crawling second of it was stretched out beyond rational possibility. The creatures of this otherworld had fed on him, ceaselessly, mercilessly, until he was sure that there was no more of him left to take. But somehow their claws always found something to slice. His consciousness was reduced to the basest emotions: despair; terror; agony. He was nothing else, and he deserved nothing else.

Then, inexplicably, Koltira had woken up. He was back on the island, back in his monstrous body, Byfrost lying next to him. The Initiative had resurrected him, and for once he was relieved to feel the old, familiar pain coursing through his limbs. It was nothing compared to what he had just endured.

Koltira's armor was not there in the infirmary, but someone had laid out a suit and a pair of gloves, presumably taken from his sparse room in the apartments. He had climbed out of the bed, dressed himself, taken up Byfrost, and walked out. There was work to be done.

The memory of the past few days lingered, nevertheless, haunting him as he moved about the city, coming and going in brief, dark flashes. He supposed it would for some time.

[ooc: tags can be either action or prose; whatever is easiest! You may find him on the street, in the bars, or lurking in the apartment buildings over the next several days.]

Comments

SOON. but i guess not...that soon...

[firstroar]

Blue was not aware of the revivals and was not vigilant for this return. He didn't know to wait. He had a choice not to; his body felt light, young again...with guilt and grief at his heels, he moved against it. Against inaction. Against sleeping through strife. Away from pieces of borrowed memories he knew he had to thread to his own...but only for a little while.

What it all came down to was a simpler want: He wanted to fly.

Fly, not flee. Not chase. Not search. Not beset by warplanes or gunfire, not straining to reach another lost soul...Another.

In realizing he could not escape those awful feelings, he realized he'd been fleeing the whole time. Shameful. It stopped him mid-flight, weighed down his limbs, and exposed him to those many-dozen frustrations anew. He knew better than to wallow in the what-ifs. He knew. He'd known for so many years. He knew better than to naively question why it would be any different time and time again, yet even so it–

It was a heartbeat of awareness, a sensory flash. Color and sound and a chill...Appropriate in an unkind way, that cold. Yet cold did not linger where adrenaline stepped in.

Blue was no gentle, drifting light. He was haste and wind and the bright flash of power surging with a fresh purpose. He was a gust kicking up the dust and small debris of the street he descended upon, landing hard, feet sliding to a stop. He was breathless and wide-eyed, bristled and desperate.

He was seeing what he'd sensed, and it was no trick of the mind.

soon enOUGH

[deadelfwalking]

Koltira stopped short, impressed by the vitality in Blue's movements. In contrast to every previous encounter, Blue seemed fresh with health and vigor, and while Koltira could not guess the source, he was glad of it.

But then he actually took in Blue's expression, and a little worm of guilt twisted and squirmed in his stomach. Of course Blue knew; he was too sensitive to--well, everything--not to have realized the truth of the situation. Koltira would have kept it from him, if possible. He felt ever more certain that he should keep his entire self away from this man. Even if Blue didn't recall it fully, he had already suffered so much on Koltira's behalf. Koltira would not allow it to happen again, not to anyone, but especially not to his old friend.

"Ah," he said, finally, because he had to say something. "You're looking fit."

[firstroar]

A simple remark in light of a complex situation. It seemed to not even register right away as Blue stared, rather engrossed in a great deal more than such light talk. Heavier things blotted it out. Dark things. Echoes of an anguish he can't (won't?) touch.

What was there to even say to that? To the things spoken and unspoken. Blue was truly stuck, feeling something close over and tightly squeeze his heart, stop his breath for seconds longer.

Overwhelmed, but he couldn't waste time with that. It wasn't about him – couldn't make it about him. Wouldn't.

But I have an inkling now... How it feels...

With effort, the strain was slowly washed off his features, driven back to the smaller, subtle signs. A brow furrowed, jaw tensing and relaxing, shoulders lifting and remaining with another held breath. Calm was forced over the distress. But he could do little but stare for the longest time, lest he open his mouth and pour out the things he knew better than to say. It wasn't about him, even if Koltira's words were.

"How long have you been here?" Each word was spoken with care, sounded short when he felt even the slightest of wavering.

[deadelfwalking]

"Not long," Koltira said. He stayed where he was on the street, marveling. He hadn't missed the interplay of reactions across Blue's face, but he was still struck by the energy that underscored the other man's words, his very posture. It made Koltira wonder how much time had passed in that nightmarish afterlife, and about what might have happened in the interim.

He saw little need to elaborate on what had happened to him. His mind was an open book to Blue, as always, and if Blue wanted the knowledge he could easily take it. Koltira would not hide it from him, though he didn't relish the prospect of Blue reliving even a shadow of those experiences. Not the battle itself, not dying silently among the dirt and moss in the forest, and especially not what followed after. He supposed that if any of it mattered to anyone here, it would be Blue--though Koltira didn't, at this point, see why it should. He was only a half-formed memory to Blue, was he not? A remnant of a feeling, rather than the feeling itself.

He's been convincing himself of that, anyway.

[firstroar]

Pieces of the truth weren't lost on him, but Blue was loathe to think upon them, let alone speak of them. That he grieved almost as much – more, maybe – for what Kolitra offered than who he was...not an honorable thing. It didn't change the facts; Koltira was a window to a life he only had inklings of – flashes of emotion or sensory recall, often just barely whole, seldom clear. Things he desperately wanted to find and know...things he could glimpse in Koltira.

It wasn't the first infatuation Blue had fallen into. He had Physis – he had his goddess. And it had been her vision, the gleam of Terra, that had drawn him to her. Her vision that had compelled him to carry her away. Her vision that kept her close to him.

And now, new visions in a new form. Having lost them before making them become clear...it had rattled him. Those losses were what tensed his shoulders and tightened his throat then and there, so much more than Koltira himself.

It was unkind, but it was true. To have those things torn away from him again...he couldn't let that happen. And from Koltira, flickers of the fight, the voice – that voice he'd heard before, yes? From the tree...It had a name at last. And it – he – was here.

Blue grew very still in those seconds, piecing it together. He hardly blinked, staring hard at the elf from a distance.

"Do you intend to challenge him again?"

A name at last. Arthas.

[deadelfwalking]

Koltira answered without hesitation. "Yes. I must, for the sake of the people who live here."

He well remembered what Kel'thuzad and the Lich King had done to Blue. It was years ago, quite literally in another time and place, but he didn't expect that he would ever forget the image of his friend, crucified. His mutilated body left as a feast for crows.

"For your sake."

[firstroar]

Blue felt a pulse of anger under his skin. For his sake? The light of those memories snuffed out for his sake? More death...for his sake. In the light of the brewing disaster on Naska, it seemed all that was done for his sake was suffer. It was not a comforting addition, Koltira's words.

He stepped forward, and in doing so, felt more and more the memories and motivations behind Koltira's words. Blue willed himself through them to stand before him, look up with this face set.

"Then your strategy must change. His presence here warrants it."

[deadelfwalking]

"What do you want me to do?" Koltira said. He asked this question so often here. What do you want from me? To this day, to this very moment, he didn't know what anyone expected. Not Blue, not Chloe, not Bariyan. He had to stand against Arthas; the Ebon Blade's drive for revenge was fundamental to him, and it was deepened, intensified, by all the wrongs he remembered from the City.

"I can't let ... " Koltira broke eye contact, glaring down at the pavement. "He attacked you because of me. I cannot let that happen again. Not you, nor to anyone else here."

[firstroar]

"It appears to be something far from your control alone," Blue said softly. Unkind words, but not said unkindly. He leaned and tilted his head to catch the elf's straying gaze; in not getting it as soon as he wished, he reached and set a hand on his forearm.

"There are powerful people here. And...even without knowing or understanding this threat, they'll be as invested in stopping it as anybody. If you tell them. If you call for and accept this help."

It will do better than to have you vanish again. But that thought stayed with Blue. As did any further implication of letting he himself help; Koltira would hardly be eager for that.

[deadelfwalking]

Blue was right, of course. And, furthermore, he could not face that hellish otherworld a second time--he feared his psyche would break.

"I do not mean to approach him alone," Koltira said. "But neither do I wish to involve the other transports. The Initiative has its own troops. They could assist me, perhaps."

But no. Not you. Not anyone he cared for, though he was loathe to ask the Initiative for aid, either. Koltira had little desire to waste life, but Arthas's presence on the island was not a threat--it was a dark promise, waiting to be fulfilled.

[firstroar]

The Initiative?

Blue's frown tugged further for a moment, unchecked. The people who orchestrated this whole ordeal...humans. Powerless save for their technology and aspirations for it.

Spare the transports with power, throw the humans into the fire? It was absurd in Blue's eyes.

"Perhaps," he said anyway, his jaw starting to tense. He closed his eyes, beginning to withdraw from the conflict brewing within. What position am I in to command here? What knowledge he had of this Arthas was sparse, stilted...it was Koltira's, truly. Who knew better than he?

Yet even so...

"Koltira." He looked back up, not wholly resolved, yet compelled to speak up regardless. "You must be the one to know when I overstep. You know better than I do. Before I can ask anything..."