( Act 1) Chapter 4: The Oracle's Gift

Her body ached..

Her undead flesh burned..

Her soul raged..

She could feel.. and it was so.. alien now, after having been parted from it, and yet such a welcoming thing. As if in some macob way her God whispered to her, comforted her assuring her that the Gods were with her, and that she would be whole soon. That blessed pain she had missed.. it was back.  The pain of flesh, the pain of this agony she bore.. all of it mere preparations.. but no amount could of prepared her for this. She shuddered. Had ..Had she suffered enough? Was that.. day she had hoped, dared to dream.. prayed for, finally come? The day the Necromancer oft called "true death"? The great reward..? How had this happened? She did not.. remember clearly. Her mind was.. fogged, belabored and muddied.. as if the parasitic taint of the Denouncers sought to drag her down.

No.. She would not fail as she had before. She would endure. She had to. The General defied the Gods left and right. Focused on his carnal pursuits and led Abd'zoth's flock down a road of heresy. She would embrace this change, she would shape it, as readily as the Jaquio and her other servitors had. She was after all victorious. The Gods were pleased, and they were with her even if the Earthshaper like Deathwing before her defied the Gods and led her once friend through honeyed words to treachery.

Now she could see.. The mist parted. No contest to the Lord of a Thousand Eyes. No contest to the five ranges of doom. No contest to the masters of the inbetween places. She could see it now, the Jaquio's words caressing her mind as she focused. A battle.. a heavy one. It had flowed through her body. The Sufferer and Scarab Maiden had been in danger. She had acted.

Yes.. she remembered the elf.. She had broken him.

The Cult had brought her to the Temple, her private sanctum, a Temple of the Damned out in the ruins of Kyross. As with her brethren who had passed into the sweet embrace of the void and the perpetuity before her she had avenged her failures. She had fought for her sisters and brothers, and been broken for the battle. But it mattered not. The faith.. the believers had to be secured. It was the way the Gods had demanded her service to be. The sisters strange, the Scarab Maiden, and the Sufferer,  had graced Silvermoon with a sermon. They had been assailed, and she had fought to defend them. Her sorcery had been as potent as ever, perhaps stronger than ever prior. Many had come, as they came in the past, and many more were felled before the shadow of her gaze. Yet faced with an army, she had finally weakened, faced with a throng. Yet the sisters had.. escaped unharmed. That was all that mattered.. that was what the Inquisitor had taught her. She could almost feel a pair of ruby eyes in her mind even now. She would have approved. It was what her beloved former Lord had shown her. Taught her.

It was a better world.. 

Close at hand platitudes of Silithid moved curious as to what their mistress endured. It was strange and different to the swarms. What had happened..? What was happening? She had fought someone.. who.. how? A Ranger Lord. Easily crushed. Her new powers had seen to that. Easily devoured and cast from on high even like her God had cast down a Titan in ages past.

She like he had been wounded grieviously, but her opponent had fallen. She like he however had not died, but endured. But still before fading the Elf had delivered grievious wounds. Wounds that while her soul would laugh at her, body balked at.  Wounds that now sought to master her. As Gul'dan once said when he murdered the Necrolytes, they were willing but the flesh was weak.  But she refused to be mastered. Her hatred smouldered. It sustained.

Hatred for her Slave..

Hatred for Feoden..

Hatred for Venrome..

Hatred for Burx..

Hatred for the Confessors..

Hatred for the Necromancer Priestess..

Hatred for ALL not of the Gods..

Hatred for the Denouncers wickedness.. and the audacity of the Elemental kinds.

A blistering.. raw.. Cleansing Hatred, Darker than night, and Sharper than a razor's edge..

And then Chaos was wont to do it slipped and slithered out.

..The hatred only smouldered in her frame. Something yet was missed. Some stimulus still lacked.. Her undead flesh was cracked.. Like a porcelain doll dropped she was shattered, and yet even as her flesh was cracked, she still smouldered with rage. Under her body, flame and shadow hungrily slipped as hundreds of wispy black tendrils flowed off her. Her left arm had been cleanly severed and the stump pooled rotting meat and pustlent fluids. What was wrong with her..? She needed to gather her wits.. So hungry.. so very hungry..

The sound of chittering Silithid was heard as the Scarab Maiden returned with a human Warlock. Bound with Mage locks, the male looked at the undead shattered and at rest. He seemed unimpressed and angered. Words in common that sounded more like a mating call were uttered. The Scarab Maiden gave him a harsh blow from her staff, even as her mistress peeled from her resting place, a shambling wreck of a Forsaken.

Reaching the Warlock, her still good right hand and its raw phlanges dripped poison. A sense of uncertainty touched on the human finally. And that was when the undead opened her mouth. The same black mists that flowed from her wounds began to crack through the flesh of the Warlock. The human screamed as his flesh rolled back and his blood flowed freely. His life, his essence, his doubt, hatred, rage and anger all a delicious stew which the undead took in, bolstering herself. She drew from the Warlock as he rapidly decomposed, his screaming echoing through the room as his organs putrified and his body failed. As his flesh flaked off as powder, even then did his skeleton scream yet, and then as no more could be given, he collapsed in a pallid pile of dust at the woman's feet.

"...More.."

That was the only command given. The Sufferer and Scarab Maiden bowed and obeyed. The Oracle was dead.. but the Lightbreaker grew in strength. She was so very hungry.. she was so very tired. Her body screamed for a release.. but her God's presence told her that she must continue to feed.. she must continue to endure.. to know true hunger. To know true strength. Collapsing back on her resting place, the once Oracle waited for her next meal. A reddish violet aura flowing like a ghostly fire off of her form.  Soon.. Those little hoochees would know.. soon..

Addendum: Images are from the cancelled "Lord of the Clans" Game by Blizzard Entertainment, all rights reserved. Usage herein is for non-profit, and falls under the Fair-Use Doctrine.