The Taste of Pain

((Following The Battle for Lordaeron | Part One / Part Two))

The hour was late when Harrowheart said his final goodbyes and left Isidor Durant with a pair of unequal gifts.

The first, the sweeter of the two and yet so terribly temporary, was a parting kiss. It was made of love and sent by his heart, and long after his departure it was meant to remain in hers.

The second gift, if it could be called that, was forged from a decidedly different emotion and ripped, screaming and bleeding, directly from the soul. His runeblade — half of it, anyway. That foul thing he often called his phylactery was left under the capable watch of Isidor Durant. To protect her, he’d said. To remember him by, he’d really wanted to say.

A curse of a gift, to leave behind a dark and wicked thing that any wise mage would never otherwise associate with. A thing, much like Harrowheart himself, that Isidor Durant never ought to have touched. But whether she remembered it or not, she had touched it. So very long ago, so unfathomably far away, in the depths of a frozen tomb, she’d so lightly — so briefly — laid her hands on it. To save him, she might have reasoned. An act of foolishness from such an otherwise thorough woman. A decision which had, thank the Gods, never grown into misfortune. A mistake which, it might seem, had been forgotten by fate.

With Harrowheart’s departure and a blade in her possession, she did what she could — what she had to, really: She boxed it up. Practical as always, Isidor Durant found the perfect prison for the thing. Magically fortified, nothing would be able to escape the confines of the box. It may have been a gift, and it may have contained a shard of her lover’s soul, but it had a mind of its own, and its own desires, and neither of those were to be trusted.

Trapped as it was, it sat in passive silence. If it blinked its runes, would anyone see? If it tapped the edges of its case, would the outside world hear? Better not to try, perhaps. Better to sleep. Better to let her forget it even existed until the moment she needed it. Then it might make itself known. Until then, to rest.

And so it did. For a week, at least. A week without a hand on its hilt or its blade resting comfortably between a pair of cold shoulders. A lonely week, to be certain, but it had learned to accept this sort of disrespect. It had gone longer without being fed, though not since its forging had it gone quite so long without the reassurance of a touch. Even all that time ago, when it had courted another master, it now and again felt cold fingers on its blade. This, though? This was entirely different. It really was a prison. It really would have to content itself with being a simple sword, sheathed and out of sight in a time of peace.

Peace on this world, at least. No matter the distance between itself and its other half — and the hand that swung it — it knew when it was being put to its purpose. It felt the sweet taste of life on its blade. It relished the influx of fresh magic, of new souls. Somewhere far away, Harrowheart held its other half by the neck, and like a flattened goose he forced gore and torment down its gaping maw. The pain. The ecstasy. This is what it longed for! This is what it so desired! This is what it missed so desperately.

The light of its runes swelled with hardly a moment’s reprieve to fade. They grew brighter and brighter until they no longer merely glowed but shined like a beacon, triumphant.

It was all too much. Even in its prison, it couldn’t contain itself. It had to move. Had to burn the excess energy it hardly knew how to process. The blade began to vibrate, to buzz like a hive of riled wasps.

And then it stopped. It stopped, because the killing had stopped. Its feeding had ended. Was it over? Was the battle done? Had it slit every throat in Lordaeron? It felt true. It felt right. It felt—

It felt—

It felt—

The blade was still for just a breath. Its runes faded. Its blade ceased to move.

And then it screamed. Like a boiling kettle it shrieked in agony. As if an unseen hand had swung it, it thrashed against its case. It beat its blade against the wall, but the enchantments held it captive inside. Metal and magic sparked as it stabbed and sliced with what little room it had to move, and all the while it howled. It seized and convulsed, throwing itself from side to side only to stop abruptly, wracked by pain. Its runes flared to life and were snuffed in an instant, and over and over again they lived and died until at last the whole sword burst.

From the hilt to the tip each of its six runes popped, shooting cyan sparks that hit the walls of its confines, and just like that disappeared against the wards. A bubble formed in the topmost rune, black and opaque, growing thinner by the second until it finally collapsed under its own size. Dark blood ran in rivulets from the bottom of each rune, dripping down the contours of the blade like tears roll down a cheek.

Finally the fight was done. The weapon rested, motionless, against the edge of the case. Its voice spent, it stood in silence. All that was left of it was its final, dying gasp. A sigh — almost of relief — and a gentle, blue breath. The mist of magic and souls swirled around it, trapped, as it had been, within the case, until soon the color faded, and all that remained was bloodied steel.

It was, at last, merely metal again.

So what would be the harm in freeing it?