User:Selenium/Phaydes

The two figures walked the mold covered passages beneath the Undercity. One wore a mottled robe of crimson and dark green, the other black leather armor buckled with blackened iron and a brace of knives across his chest.

"She is going to prove useful, you think?" asked the armored Forsaken.

The robed mage laughed, a dry crackling noise that went ahead of them down the hallway like a frightened rat. "Useful? Oh yes, Abram, and more than that, entertaining. She absolutely loves what she does."

They splashed through a puddle of pooled water the color of pea soup vomit.

Abram shrugged. "As long as she gets the job done I could care less about her personality."

The mage smiled wryly. "So like you were about your women in life as well, my friend."

Abram laughed. "Too true...too true. When do I meet her?"

They entered the bustling hallways of the Undercity and the mage paused. "Soon. She is..away at the moment."



Phaydes crept quietly up the ridgeline, barely able to contain her excitement.

This is the best, this is the fun.

Aheead of her a mailed Scarlet Crusader paused in his patrol to look out over the Glade. He was tall and muscular with flowing black hair. In life Phaydes may have had her head turned by one such as him.

But as she moved silently toward the man, all she could think of was how pretty the jet of arterial blood from his throat would look in the afternoon sun, how his burbling death cries would make her want to dance a few steps in accompanying rhythm and that she would be adding to her eye collection. She needed a green one....she so hoped he had green eyes.

A twig snapped under her foot and she scowled even as the Crusader spun around, his sword coming free from its scabbard.

"By the crypt and coffin! That's what I get for daydreaming!" She smiled at the Crusader who was now either jabbering a threat at her or mouthing a prayer. She didn't understand Human speech anymore, not since she'd risen. "Hello! I'm The Corpseknife, and you're dead and just don't know it."

The man strode forward, his sword held in an attack position, no doubt expecting the slim Forsaken to drop into a defensive crouch being armed only with her two long knives.

Phaydes did not oblige him. Her eyes burning brightly with excitment and just a bit of madness, she screamed a wordless cry of rage and leapt forward.

The move and the noise caught the man by surprise, as did the fact that the Forsaken attacking him seemed oblivious that her side had been slashed cruelly by the sword she had all but impaled herself on. Sparks flew as one of her daggers skittered along his blade and forced it downward even while the barbed knife in her left hand slashed out at his neck.

He felt a sudden chill as the wind passed over his now exposed inner throat, a chill replaced by heat as blood gushed out of the gaping hole she'd torn in his flesh. His eyes opened wide and he saw her grin and heard her say something he didn't understand as she gazed into them. Then the dagger sliding along his sword leapt up and into his chest and there was only darkness.

"GREEN!" Phaydes yelled happily as the human fell to the ground. "Green eyes, green eyes! I found me some green eyes!"

She poked at the wound in her side that was oozing the green pusslike substance that filled her veins and shrugged. "Fix that in a bit..now for the GREEN!" She sat on the man's stomach and pried one eyesocket open, carefully sliding the long nail of her pinky finger into the corner, then under the eyeball, fitting her finger to the second knuckle snugly down inside before curling it and tugging. The eye popped out with a satisfying florp noise and she snicked the connecting tissue with her blade before kissing the shining eyeball and tucking it away in a special pouch lined with an alchemical mucous she kept for just this sort of occassion.

Glancing around, just in case he had had a friend or two skulking around, she wiped her blades on his tabard and sheathed them. She was forgetting something.

Oh yes.

She grabbed his hand and looked, finding the signet ring the loopy wizard in The Undercity had bade her recover. It was stuck. The man was fat fingered. She shrugged, took the finger in her mouth and bit down, snapping the digit off at the last knuckle. She spit the ring out into her palm and continued chewing the flesh from the finger.

She stood up and grabbed the man's coin purse, humming a tune she didn't really remember, then faded into the shadows of the underbrush as a questioning call could be heard from the other side of the clearing.

"Green," she said, giggling a bit around the now nearly fleshless finger bone and heading back to town.