I do not own Warcraft. I do not profit from it.

Fallen Angel

He caught the beautiful man in his arms as he fell, hearing the soft, mortal groan, the singing pleasure of the rune blade as it fed. The fair head dropped back, limber throat bared, pulse pounding its desperate last. The delicate, paling lips parted, gasping for breath, as the glowing, elven eyes turned to meet his, wide and disbelieving. Caught fast in the death knight's brutal, unrelenting fist, the long, pale hair, a cascade of purest gold, rippled with the elf's faint struggles against the coming darkness. He wanted so badly to live.

Thassarian had fought against the terrible need to hurt this perfect man; but the rage, the hunger to sate unappeasable death, could not be quelled. Had the elf not pursued him, he might have survived this deadly day—but he had been relentless, and the death knight was no longer capable of anything but harm. The hesitation, the empathy he had felt, lingering remnants of a forgotten past, could only torment him now; there was no deliverance from what he had become.

Take him, Thassarian...the irresistible voice whispered softly in his mind...that you may heal him...of life...

The death knight held his dying victim closer, leaning into him, into the warm aura—slowly chilling now—as death approached and life faded. He listened to the soft groan of resistance, pressing a kiss to the smooth, warm skin of the elf's arching throat. A glittering tear, disturbing, beautiful, slipped from the corner of the elf's eye, across his cheek to the curved corner of his soft, panting mouth. Thassarian pressed his lips to it. Salty, delicious, he took it for his own.

"Be mine..." he whispered, his lips lingering. The long lashes quivered slightly; Thassarian felt their light, feathery brush against his skin, a delicacy of sensation the death knight had thought long lost to him. "Give yourself to me..." he urged, and there was a soft hiss of breath, surrendered.

So beautiful, Thassarian thought. He might have been an angel. The elf tried to speak, but life, quickly departing, took with it, all purpose in words. He no longer possessed the strength to raise his head, and resistless, he accepted the cold, hungry kisses of his destroyer.

A faint, aching cry of anguish escaped the elf as Thassarian slipped his hand between the edges of the savage wound he had inflicted—the red passageway for death's possession of this perfect flesh; he pressed cold fingers into tremulous heat, gently seizing the fluttering heart, feeling the lithe, failing body shiver in his powerful, icy arms. Slowly, tenderly, he squeezed until what life remained subsided.

"Soon..." the death knight murmured urgently, holding the body close; but the still bright, still living eyes pleaded for true death, for mercy, where there was none. "Soon you will understand..."

You will understand...me...

Thassarian embraced him then, stealing away the very last of the elf's warmth, even as he had stolen his life. He watched the golden skin pale to silver marble; the shining hair seemed to stir in an unfelt breeze, as all living vibrancy faded to a frost veil that spread upon the succumbing earth. What little grass remained, died where that pale, silk drift caressed it.

There was a hushed whisper of sound, hopeless as a prayer to a dead god. Thassarian gently lowered the elf onto his back in the blackening grass. He held him there, his face pressed to the now-snowy hair, breathing the sweet, fading scent of forfeited life.

The beautiful eyes watched him, now serenely removed—devoid of comprehension, or its necessity—a glittering vacancy, all radiance lost to the ravenous shadows that had now come to this once-perfect place.

The dead gaze sparkled—empty, in the angled sunlight; but soon, he would wake—murdered and murderer would exchange the first, telling glance—and once-gentle eyes would roil, insane, with a hunger that would forever after possess him.

The angel would fall; a fury would rise.

And they would be brothers, in the cold fellowship of death.