Orlando Alleandruin

Reconciliation - Part 1

This is a bit of backstory on Orlando that took place shortly before his previous marriage to Levyn Ari.  Prior to this point in his undeath, Orli had never managed to appropriately manage his affliction in regards to the blood lust that all death knights must succumb to.  Since it was rumored but never proven that he had murdered previous partners in a state of black out rage induced by the dark bidding, it was decided that he would be forced to come to terms with it through the aid of his brother and close friend.  The following is a recounting of his ordeal. 

The knight sat curled against the wall, his head leaned back against the worn wood, knees curled to his chest as his hands hung idly over them.  Turning his gaze towards the low ceiling of the room, he exhaled a slow and heavy breath, narrowing his eyes as they began to focus, and then blur, into the dim, flickering light of one of the enclosure’s few lamps.  Watching the flame dance within its glass encasement, the briefest hint of a grin would flit across the corner of his lips, before disappearing into the pale features of the elf’s tortured face.  Exhausted, bright blue eyes would slip closed, his body remaining still upon the stoned floor.  Almost instinctively, his mind would begin to float to a different place, memory that he fought to keep in the front of his distracted mind.  A half elf stood before him, a young priest, pale hair illuminated by the noon-day sun.  The smile washed back over Orlando’s face, feeling the fleeting warmth of the Silvermoon sun as if he were still standing in it.  

Snapped quickly back into reality by the heavy footfalls echoing against the wooden floor above, the knight winced, shifting where he was with another, almost mournful sigh.  His eyes reluctantly lifted open, his head turning over one shoulder to face the distant corner, and in it the demon-forged blade which held him captive.  The darkened spear stood propped beside the knight, cold and dormant, it’s blackened blade satisfied for the moment.  As far as he may try to distance himself from the accursed metal, Orli knew it would only take time before his master would call to him again, whispering, calling, and then demanding to be sated once more.

Closing his eyes again, the knight would force his thoughts back to the light of the city, refusing to acknowledge his current state of imprisonment.  In his mind, he caught sight of the young priest, their eyes meeting for the smallest moment before the opposing hazel gaze dropped swiftly to the pavement below.  With a quiet laugh and a crooked, beckoning finger of the elder elf, the two would finally meet.  Hours would pass, or days…in the hazy darkness of the cellar.  The pair found themselves on the bank of a small pond deep in the woods of Eversong, sheltered by the ageless forest as they lay quietly beside one another.  With scarlet hair splashed against the ground behind him, the knight turned his head to face his companion, hands folded and still over his chest.  “I love you, Levyn…”  His quiet words drifted down now into the calm water below.

The priest would shake his head, eyes narrowing as if pained by the phrase, the sting of tears reddening his eyes.  “”No, you can’t…you couldn’t.”  The half-elf’s gaze remained pointed towards the setting sun above them.  I love you, Levyn Alleandruin… The knight would stubbornly repeat himself, without failing, until the words took their  meaning in his lover’s ears.

The footfalls would return, followed again in kind by the knight’s attention.  His eyes tilted upwards, following the sound of movement until it ceased, punctuated by the finality of a heavy door swinging shut.  He was now alone for the time, left only with his thoughts and the ever-present pull of his bloodthirsty companion.  “How do you intend to do this?”  Within a moment of rare silence the words of a familiar feminine voice would echo in his ears.  He means to barricade me in the basement until I break the door down… With that thought, bright blue eyes would turn towards the dark staircase, and then upwards. “Until I lose all sense of myself and break that door down…”  Orli whispered into the shadow.  The inevitability of this outcome left him vulnerable…raw…stripped back bare to nothin but the boy he’d been a lifetime ago, small and helpless.  His head dropped, hanging between his two thick arms, a sliver of red spilling over to tease the corner of his vision.

With a slow, purposeful inhale, the elf would reach an arm behind his head, releasing the remainder of his unruly mane, an inexplicable warmth encompassing him as he felt the phantom embrace of his lover…his husband…surround him.  How long would  it be before he would feel such light again?  The knight’s hands rose to surround his companion’s face, drawing the smaller frame towards his own body, held prisoner there by the joining of their lips.  Now they were sprawled upon the sands of Tanaris, the tips of their feet dipped in the warm waters of the vacant beach.  Careless as young lovers could ever be, they would lay there until the dawn, lost in the space of each other and ignorant of the world beyond.

Returning once more from the fog of his own cluttered mind, Orlando’s eyes would raise, his shoulders splaying back to stretch against the hard wall behind.  Adjusting to the dim light, they began to wander around the expansive room.  He had been trapped there, only partially of his own volition, with nothing more than the clothes on his back…for how long, he had no way to know.  With no light to seep in from the outside, and no trace of the world beyond, the cloud of his own consciousness was left to decipher how much time had passed.  The knight was, however, no stranger to his surroundings, for whatever small comfort that would provide.  The room was hazily familiar; somewhere he had been perhaps less than half a dozen times before, the dank and oppressive underbelly beneath a place he’d once called home.  Following the damp, stone wall, he took his time reacquainting himself with its occupants.  Hung on one slab was an arrangement of various armaments, a vicious array of remorseless metal, hung with care by their master and left to ominously stand guard over the remainder of the cellar.  His eyes slipped over each blade in turn, following each curved and sharpened line as if surveying a former lover.  Half of these instruments he’d forged with his own two hands, a handful he’d wielded in practice.  The familiarity of each piece would awaken another memory from somewhere deep within the elf’s fractured mind, the clattering ambience of an active forge, the hissing from deep within the flame’s heart, the rhythmic pulse of metal upon metal.

The slightest flit of movement caught his eye from across the room.  There, in the farthest corner emerged a dart of white, no bigger than a thumbprint.  He sat straighter, his forearms pushing against his bent knees as he strained his vision, following the flicker as it coursed against the wall and closer to him.  Half of a laugh fell from his lips as the figure paused, then began its path again, this time turning towards the knight.  A mouse, he smirked.  Somehow still quite bright and clean despite its unkempt habitat.  The creature made its way to the tip of Orli’s boot, where it stood quite fearlessly on hind legs, sniffing curiously at the elf.  He grinned in return, offering a fingertip to the creature to inspect.  The mouse would rest a tiny paw against the outstretched digit for a moment before abruptly returning to its cover within the crevasses of the room.

With a sigh, Orlando leaned himself back onto the wall, alone again with his thoughts now.  Once more, the knight found himself within Silvermoon’s walls, standing before a vaguely familiar flame, coaxing a delicate blade from the relentless heat.  Another moment found the knight slumped on the floor, leaning with utter exhaustion against a wooden beam with no recollection of how he’d come to rest there.  Sprawled across from him was his lover, tears streaming down the half-elf’s reddened face.  A flush of anger rose in the knight’s own cheeks, a surge of disappointment mixed with utter terror.  What had he allowed to transpire in this place?  And at what cost… The depths of his own selfish emotion hit hard against the pit of his stomach as he was forced to watch the damage play out before him yet again, soul ripped apart and laid bare at his feet, for no other reason than to satisfy his own childish desires.  Is this what the worth of mortal men had been reduced to in his lichborne eyes?  Was he no longer capable of understanding something so complex as love?

Darkening, his shadowed eyes would slowly continue their path, following the room around its raw edges as the true nature of the place gradually revealed itself.  In the corner opposite the knight’s imposing blade, a small, iron barred cell stood, simple in its purpose.  Orlando couldn’t help but smirk at the fact that he’d not been chained within it, as would seem befitting to so many.  One less thing to destroy…the quiet voice in the back of his head would whisper softly.  One less piece of iron in your way…. Orlando’s head began to swim with darker thoughts, a flood of shattered memory threatening the small slivers of light that he clung to.  He would find himself again, this time in the darkened woods of Northshire, in the shadow of the great capital city.  A man stood before him…no, he knelt…beaten and broken, presented for surrender at the knight’s plated feet.  “Mercy…” the dark-haired man would cry, though he would find none.  With a curl of his cursed finger, the lich would command the human to his feet once more, eliciting a slender strand of electrified shadow to trace its way around the captive’s neck, demanding his compliance.  A steel covered hand would clasp the bare throat before it, as ancient words of an unholy tongue spilled forth their torturous intent.  A thin smile of satisfaction crossed the knight’s plush lips as he watched his victim slowly strangle to death for the second time at his hand…

Dark, sultry voices would pull eagerly at the elf’s subconscious again, the seductive enchantment playing upon the corners of his mind, perforated sharply by flashes of barely coherent vision.  A young rogue lay before him, auburn hair streaked with red, his bare chest littered with welted lash marks, purple and stark against the boy’s pale skin.  Orlando knelt still between his feet, ever watchful blue eyes focused on the now quiet breaths of a lover who’s voice he would never hear.  Another’s now echoes in his ears.  It is the anguished and impassioned cry of a young priestess as their bodies join to become one, the edges of each soul blurred by their union.  Willfully the knight struggles to replace the insistence of one with the memory of the other as it begins to fade into the shadows, ever distancing the elf from what he held most dear.  He clung to the phantom feel of the warm, bare skin beneath his own, grasping desperately at the thin strands of remembrance as they slip through his fingers like so much sand in the wind.  Would this be the last time he would know of such an embrace?  The thought would pollute his presence as the darkness continued to haunt him, lingering over the knight’s shoulder like a patient predator, waiting for the opportune moment of weakness.  But he would not succumb so easily, it was his inherent nature to suppress such invasion, to outlast the persistence of his nefarious suitor until his body had no choice but to comply.  Never a willful submission; that was his creed.  To abstain from the sinister temptation until reckless abandon took hold, until all he had left in service to the dark call was a physical presence and nothing more.