Pix’s note: Watch out, folks. There’s torture. It’s not ultra-graphic by any means, but if this is a little heavy handed for you, you might want to skip it.
If you missed the earlier posts, part 1 is here, and part 2 is here.
I lost all sense of time, which is very easy to do when you’re being tortured and brainwashed. Hours of blinding pain, followed by hours of psychological assaults… there was no mercy, no reprieve, and the only thing I could have hoped for – death – had already happened.
No one outside of Acherus or Naxxramas would know it, but Instructor Razuvious is more than just an instructor of martial skills for the Lich King’s Death Knights. He is also an inquisitor, for lack of a better word; he is quite skilled, and knows the tools and techniques to keep a victim alive under torture for hours on end. Even more fortunate for him, his victims are already dead, and he does not need to practice his usual restraint.
I tried to resist… but the body and mind can only take so much. I spent hours each day under his knife, as Razuvious cut and poked and prodded at every inch of skin. I wailed in agony as hot needles were driven through flesh and bone alike. I wept, sobbed, begged and pleaded for mercy as I was cut open again and again, made to stare wide-eyed at my unbeating heart as it was held before me, or watched in horror as Gothik’s undead legion were given samples of my insides to consume. I could only watch, completely terrified, and wonder if I would be completely devoured.
At the end of every session, my health, if you could call it that, was completely restored… except for my life, of course. That is when He came. You see, the mind has its own will, a protection granted to each one of us. Priests have the ability to try to ease their way past this protection in order to gain control of someone’s mind, to fool your mind into allowing something else to take control, even only for a little while. He doesn’t bother with such an indirect path.
It always started with the same command… Join me… join me and with my powers, you will be able to take your revenge on those who abandoned you, those who abandoned your trust… swear your soul to me, Minessa, and I will end your suffering. Every time, I said no… that I would rather suffer than turn my back on the Light.
And suffer I did. Imagine a never-ending scream of rage crashing down on you; a tirade of hate, condemning you for your faith, questioning your worth… accompanied by needles of ice and the feeling that your mind is on fire. Imagine it an onslaught of pain, as though you’ve fallen from the top of a tower and survived the fall only to lay broken and bleeding on the ground, and your body isn’t allowed to buffer that pain by letting you fall into unconsciousness… and then, suddenly, it is gone, as though it were never there, replaced once again by that one simple request.
Join me…
Days… weeks… months went by, and every time, I said no. The physical pain became more and more unbearable, and the psychological assaults were even worse. I could feel it – my will was beginning to crack. At the end of one long session with Razuvious, one where he had forced me to watch in a mirror overhead as he sawed through my body, letting the sharp, jagged teeth tick so tauntingly against my spine from the inside, I knew I could bear no more. When He came to me after I had been healed, it was almost like He knew that this time… this time I would say yes.
I told Him that I would fight and kill for Him. I told Him that no one: not man, woman, child, nor infant would be safe from my blade. I told Him that I would revel in death as He does. I told Him that I would die for Him… and that was when the chains fell away. His power flooded through me, and his instructions were simple enough: You must choose a name… one fitting to your new life. Then, come to me… I have a task for you.
Borne from hatred, spite, and cruelty… I chose my name from His many sins – that of malice.
Minessa was dead, and Malyss was born.
On the back of my Deathcharger near Havenshire, I smiled. I would make these weak, simple fools suffer as I have suffered, to stare death in the face, and know despair before they die. I joined others in this task, this common goal to wipe out the Scarlet Crusade and raise their bodies as our undead army. All the while, He drove me onward, his voice echoing in my shattered soul, promising me that once my work was complete, I would be able to claim my own vengeance. Vengeance against those who had betrayed me.
My sister would never see it coming.
