Cannibal Etiquette

Ysmere Flory had a bad life. That was just a fact at this point. No matter how she tried to improve things for herself, the tide of people who came with intent to hurt her never seemed to stem. And when Ysmere found herself in the grasp of the notorious Yreine Greyhart, she was sure that this would be the last time she saw anyone, evil or not. You simply did not survive an encounter with the fallen warmage– that was a fact as well.

It must have been a good month since Ysmere was taken to what she could only describe as Yreine’s “people farm”. She wondered if anyone was looking for her still, but knew in all likelihood no one would come. Her brother Therran, her last living relative, had fallen ill not long before her kidnapping and was unlikely to recover anytime soon. Yreine knew this too, and would taunt her about it when she opened the small hatch on the door of Ysmere’s squalid little cell to push in a tray of highly-nutritious food. It was designed specifically to make her gain weight– Ysmere knew that Yreine preferred her meals on the plumper side. The horrid woman would make sure to remind all her captives of that.

“The more you eat, the sooner I’ll have you, and the sooner you can finally die,” she would croon, scraping her blackened nails across their doors. Weeping could be heard from some, while others begged in futility for release.

But Ysmere was nothing if not stubborn. She ate the bare minimum to keep alive, and took pride as she grew thinner and thinner. If Yreine was ever going to let her go, she would return to Stormwind and eat until she was back to normal. She had always been happy with her weight, even if others would sometimes have the gall to tell her she could stand to lose a little. She felt healthy and strong. Now, with her skin pulled taught over her bones, she felt weary and weak. But it was temporary. Hopefully.

One by one her fellow captives were taken by Yreine, never to return. It only served to harden Ysmere’s resolve. She had read fairytales similar to this situation, and had a pretty good idea of what to do if Yreine ever let her out. She was a mage too– nowhere near as good as Yreine, but probably good enough to cause a distraction and get out of there. The walls of her cell dampened her magic, but who was to say the rest of this place would?

The day finally came. Yreine had dragged the last screaming prisoner from his cell and came back a few hours later empty-handed. Two in one day? Yreine must be hungry.

The lock of the door clicked and Ysmere jumped to her feet, ready to dart past the mage. But the door opened a crack, and a blast of dizzying magic hurtled right into her face, knocking her back.

The next thing she knew, she was tied to a nice-looking dining table. Lying on her back she could see an aged and dusty chandelier adorning the ceiling, cobwebs fluttering in the slight breeze that permeated the place. She struggled against her bindings and shivered, now noticing she was without her clothes.

A hoarse chuckle to her right made her snap her head towards the noise. There sat Yreine, folding a napkin onto her lap. She looked down at Ysmere with eyes that glowed with malice, and dragged a black tongue across her dead lips.

“A pity you had to starve yourself like this,” Yreine said, prodding Ysmere in the side. “I should have eaten you weeks ago. Ah well, no point dwelling on it now.”

And with that, she picked up an ordinary knife and fork.

Ysmere’s blood ran cold. ''No… surely she wouldn’t…? ''

Yreine smirked, noticing the look of terror on her meal’s face. “Oh darling, you didn’t think I was going to kill you first, did you? I prefer my meat warm.”

Ysmere couldn’t pull her eyes away from the knife and fork. They were so normal, the exact same as the sorts you’d keep in a kitchen drawer to eat all your meals with. The knife was not long nor all that sharp. How it could puncture flesh Ysmere did not want to know– but it looked like she was going to find out.

Her heart thundered in her chest, and a cold sweat coated her skin. She bit down on her lip hard enough to make it bleed, and pulled desperately against the ropes fastening her to the table. No… no… please, she has to be bluffing– she wouldn’t…

She did. Yreine cleared her throat and reached out with her fork, poking the cold metal prongs against the soft flesh of Ysmere’s side, making her shudder in revulsion. Yreine prodded here and there, as if looking for a good spot to make purchase. She found one, and pushed the tip of the fork through the skin. Little beads of blood oozed from the tiny incisions. Ysmere made a strangled sound of terror and tried to wrench herself away, but was held too firmly in place.

The knife came next, breaking the already-wounded skin with unexpected ease. Ysmere cried out breathlessly– it was so cold, and hurt so much. The metal tools pulled at the skin until a piece ripped away. Yreine held her fork up for Ysmere to see, turning it slowly as she examined the red chunk of flesh it held there. She inhaled deeply, satisfied with the quality, and put it into her mouth as casually as she would a vegetable. Ysmere’s stomach churned painfully, and she turned her head away from the ghastly sight. But she could still hear it. She suspected Yreine was eating noisily on purpose. Eating her.

A few cuts and mouthfuls later, Ysmere went from a yelping, thrashing mess to lying silent, trembling all over as tears she could not control spilled down her cheeks. Her heart hurt with every vicious thud, and each time she internally begged it to stop. Please let me die, I want to die, I can’t take this… 

A little blood spattered onto Yreine’s hand as she cut through a vein, and with a polite laugh of amusement she sucked it from her fingers. Ysmere wanted to vomit, but there was nothing in her stomach. The hole in her side kept getting bigger the more Yreine ate. It stung horribly, sending jolts of red-hot pain through her body. Part of her wanted to look at the wound to assess the damage, but she knew she shouldn’t. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to focus on her breathing, but it would hitch in interruption with each new forkful Yreine tore out of her.

It felt like days had passed when in reality it was perhaps an hour at most, but Yreine set her utensils down and mopped her blood-smeared mouth primly with her napkin.

“Hm, you were enjoyable at first, but I only have so much of an appetite for lean meat,” Yreine said as she rose to her feet, tucking her chair in after her. “You may go. I’ve no further use for you.”

She reached across and undid the ropes around Ysmere’s arms and legs. The second Ysmere sat up, that dizzy feeling came again and the world went black. This time when she came to, she was outside somewhere. There were pine trees tipped with evening frost, and unhealthy grass poking through the stony soil beneath. Was this Silverpine Forest, perhaps? It was hard to tell in the night’s darkness. The chill dug into the hole in her side, and the blood that dribbled from it steamed in the cold air. She was naked still– the blasted warmage hadn’t returned her clothes or any of her possessions. Despair set in as fast as the cold did– what was she supposed to do? Where would she go? Silverpine was far from home and crawling with Forsaken. Attempting to make a portal in her current condition was out of the question. She needed to do something about her wound.

Standing up was an uphill battle, but she made it. She held one hand over the steaming hole, still refusing to look at it. It felt wet and tender. Her fingers squished against the gore. She could feel the neat incisions from Yreine’s knife and fork in the tortured flesh. It hurt so much. The land before her kept blurring, and all she could smell was metal. So cold…

She did not make it far. Her thin legs gave out from under her, and she did not bother to rise again from the grass. She barely felt the frost, and was too numb to notice the first flakes of winter snow settling in her hair. Dark spots danced in her vision, and she welcomed them.

—

There were no dreams, just darkness. But that was okay. In the dark she didn’t have to see her wound, and in time she had almost forgotten about it. Who was she, anyway? Did it matter? Probably not. It was dark, and that was good.

What was not so good was the sound. Voices. It had been silent for the most part, but now she could faintly hear a conversation between two men. One spoke softly, the other a little gruffly. It reminded her of how worgen talked with a trace of a growl. She was not sure what they were talking about, but curiosity prevailed and she tried to listen in. She could make out a few words now.

“…know that knifework anywhere. Yreine did this, there can be no doubt,” said the soft voice, sighing.

“That means she’s near, then. No way could this girl have come far,” added the other. “S’pose we’ll have to move soon, it’ll be dangerous to stay.”

The first made a noise of agreement, and Ysmere felt a hand touch her shoulder. It was cold. She flinched at the contact, and the hand retracted.

“…She’s alive?” the soft voice said, surprised. “…Hmm. Can you hear me, girl?”

Ysmere tugged her eyes open, blinking away the frost settling in her lashes. Her vision was foggy still, and she peered at the man speaking to her. He was… pale, she thought. His hair was a dirty blond and seemed quite long. From his shoulders sprouted… wings? They definitely looked like wings.

“…Am I dead?” Ysmere mumbled, squinting in a vain attempt to focus her sight. “Are you an angel?”

The man chuckled at that, and Ysmere could faintly pick out a smile forming on his face. “No, not an angel. But close enough, I suppose. Let’s see if we can do anything to help you.”

He inclined his head to the second man– a worgen, Ysmere saw, and quite a large one at that– and beckoned him over. “Give her your cloak. And perhaps you should carry her. I doubt she’ll be able to walk.”

The worgen nodded and complied, unfurling his cloak from his shoulders and winding it carefully around Ysmere, who had just about managed to sit up. She was grateful for the cloak, for it was warm and quite soft. The worgen knelt to lift her, careful not to jostle the wound. Ysmere was even more grateful for this. Everything was warm and soft now. If not for the pain in her side, she might have drifted to sleep there and then.

The walk to wherever the men were taking her was mercifully short, and very soon Ysmere found herself lying on some sort of bed surrounded by medical equipment. It was still hard to concentrate on much, but her vision had cleared enough for her to see the two that had helped her. The worgen was large and gruff-looking, but had a relaxed demeanour that put Ysmere at ease. The other was not an angel, Ysmere realised, but he wore shoulderpads crafted to resemble angelic wings. He was undead, and reasonably well preserved. That unnerved her a little.

As if the small man had read her mind, the undead turned to smile at her. “Oh, I hope my… condition… will not unsettle you too much. I am not with the Horde, if that is any consolation. And perhaps more importantly, I am not with the woman that did this to you.”

A chill crept up Ysmere’s spine. “You… you know her?”

The man nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. She hunts me and my, ah, assistant there. I knew she caught humans to eat, but, I’ve never encountered a survivor before. You’re quite the anomaly.”

He pulled a stool up beside the bed and took his place, observing the wound. “I can’t imagine how this must have felt. And I will not ask. All the information I would like from you is… well… whatever you can tell me about the place you were kept. The woman– Yreine– she has to be stopped. But we’d need to find her to do  that.”

Ysmere nodded. That made sense. She frowned in thought, trying to summon images of the cell and the dining room Yreine had brought her to. “It… it was… cramped, and… badly kept… there was a chandelier…”

The undead waved a hand to silence her. “No no, we can do that once you’re all patched up. No need to worry about that right now.”

“Okay,” Ysmere said, resting her head on the pillows. “Thank you, uh…?”

“Rhamiel,” the man replied. He produced a syringe from a tray of surgical tools and held it closer for Ysmere to see. “Now, I know this can look a little scary. But all it will do is put you to sleep. I doubt you’d want to be conscious while I work.”

Ysmere thought that was reasonable, and mumbled in affirmation. The injection was quick and as painless as possible, bringing with it a feeling of pleasant numbness. She could hear Rhamiel and the worgen chatting idly about what was to be done to fix her wound, not that she understood much of it. It all fell away, and that lovely darkness met her again.

—

Once the woman was asleep, Rhamiel gave a stressed sigh and planted his small hands on his hips. This wound was bad. Very bad. And there was a good chance it was already infected. Yreine never kept herself as well as he did, and the living in her vicinity would suffer as a consequence. There was little doubt something similar was possible in a subject that she had partially eaten. It was fortunate, though, that Ysmere would be tended to by him instead of some other healer, for he had extensive stores of skin to be used for instances just like these. He was quite sure he had some very similar to Ysmere’s shade.

And so he got to work, painstakingly disinfecting the gory hole and stemming as much of the bleeding as he could. It was all rather mindless work, so he poked his consciousness into Ysmere’s memories every now and then to take a little look at what she had been through. It was almost exactly what he’d expected– people in cells being forcefed and then eaten up to a table with a knife and fork. It was exactly Yreine’s style, and it was disgusting. Rhamiel knew he had the moral high ground on her by only a minuscule amount, but was proud of it all the same.

Once he’d harvested the information he wanted, he decided to stick around a little longer to see what sort of life the young woman was leading. And what he found both surprised and delighted him. This girl had witnessed her father murder most of her family, and carried deep scars of trauma still. He found it admirable that with that sort of tragedy in her past and this new horrifying experience under her belt that Ysmere had any sanity left whatsoever. Some humans were made of stronger stuff, he supposed. He played the memory of Ysmere’s father, Darven, running wild through the farmstead with a bloody axe in hand, eyes bloodshot and unfocused as he screamed for her to stop hiding. Ysmere had not recognised it at the time, but the things her father gibbered were not nonsense– but shath’yar, the language of the Void. A language Rhamiel just so happened to be fluent in. Ysmere’s memories fascinated him, and he found himself sifting through more and more, building up a vivid picture of the woman’s life in his own mind. She was close to her brother, the other survivor of the killings, and had recently met her old neighbour from the Spoonser’s farm, a skittish but sweet fellow by the name of Gideon, though most called him “Spoons.” Rhamiel liked this “Spoons” rather a lot, and made a mental note to investigate the man further. He also, just for fun, attached a rudimentary tracking spell into Ysmere’s mind. She was interesting, and he wanted to see how her trauma developed in later years.

With Emrys’ help, he was able to graft a patch of skin over the wound and sew it up neatly, wrapping Ysmere’s midsection up carefully in antiseptic bandage. Emrys smirked as he watched Rhamiel work.

“You’ve been weirdly nice to this one,” he remarked. “Fancied a change?”

Rhamiel laughed. “Ah, you know me well. There is that, and also I wish to test if a person would give me as much information through positive prompting as they would through torture. Its an experiment, nothing more.”

—-

Ysmere woke some time after. Her side was sore, and her head swam. It took her a moment to recognise her surroundings, but when her wits returned she was relieved to find the blankets had been tucked up to her neck, preserving some modesty at least. She took a peek beneath them, and ran a hand over the thick bandages around her torso. They were tight and clean, perfectly concealing whatever mess of flesh and twine her wound had become. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, turning when she heard footsteps approaching. It was Rhamiel, holding a tray in his hands. There was a bowl of what looked and smelled like stew, and a folded linen robe for her to wear. He set the tray at the foot of her bed and looked at her approvingly.

“You woke sooner than I anticipated,” he said. “How do you feel?”

“Better,” Ysmere replied. “A lot better. The… the operation, did it go well?”

Rhamiel nodded, smiling. “It went perfectly. You’re all sewn up, but I would replace those bandages in a few days if I were you. And don’t prod at the stitches– they’ll fall out on their own once you’re healed. Now, then.” He took his place on the stool once more, and held the tray out to her. “You had best eat something. Don’t worry– the stew is perfectly safe for human consumption.”

Ysmere trusted that, and reached out for a fork. Her hand froze the moment it touched the metal, and her side twinged painfully. She could feel phantom pains of the prongs sinking past her skin, pulling, twisting, tearing…

She snatched her hand back. Her breath came short. Everything was shaking.

Rhamiel peered at her questioningly, and then looked to the fork. “Ah,” he said. “This is… probably to be expected. But you can’t live your life afraid of something so… commonplace. Steel yourself, and when you are ready, try to pick it up. Take your time.”

Ysmere nodded, taking a good while to calm her breathing. It was a fork, for Light’s sake! Nothing scary about that. Nothing should be scary about the knife that lay beside it either, but Ysmere felt the exact same sinking feeling and cold touch of metal just from looking at it. She clenched her fists, willing herself to calm down.

It took a few attempts, but she did it. She held the fork in one trembling hand.

“Very good,” Rhamiel said, his voice gentle. “Try to eat with it. Again, take as long as you need.”

This next step proved to be much harder. Her mind kept flashing back to Yreine reaching forward with her own fork to dig out chunks of Ysmere’s flesh. The feeling of sinking the fork into whatever the food was in the bowl made her cringe painfully, but she did it. She brought it to her face, squeezed her eyes closed, and put it in her mouth.

Meat. It was meat. Probably pork or something. But, to Ysmere’s suffering mind, all she could think was flesh. She gagged, dropping the fork and spitting the mouthful into her hand. Her breath came in ragged gasps. The taste would not go away.

Rhamiel sighed sympathetically. “Perhaps starting with a vegetable would be a better idea. Look– there’s some carrot. Try with that.”

Ysmere nodded miserably, spearing the carrot. This was easier. It tasted of… carrot. Not flesh. Just a normal, safe carrot. She decided to just stick to the vegetables for now, and when Rhamiel suggested she try the meat again she politely declined.

“I… think I’m off meat for a while now,” she said quietly.

Rhamiel nodded. “I understand. I’ll have my assistant dispose of the rest of this. Oh, the robe is for you. I don’t know whether it is your size, but its still better than nothing.”

Ysmere agreed and thanked him, taking the robe and slipping it over her head while the worgen took the tray of food away. It was simple, but comfortable.

“Ah, it actually fits rather well. How fortunate,” Rhamiel said. “Now then… before we get you on your way home, I would like to ask you what you remember of your… experience at whatever hovel Yreine had you trapped in. In as much detail as you are comfortable with.”

Ysmere sighed as she gathered her thoughts. Her hands bunched into fists around the blankets as the memories came to her. She started from the beginning– of the day Yreine suddenly snatched her from her morning walk through Elwynn Forest. Of the cell that became her home. The filthy conditions, the wailing from the other captives. She had learned some of their names, and she shared them with Rhamiel. She had only seen a little of the dining room, but she described everything she could in excruciating detail. The chandelier, the wallpaper, cobwebs in dark corners, even the quality of the cutlery and the table itself. Incredibly, it seemed to be enough. Rhamiel’s eyes lit up in recognition.

“I know the place,” he said, rising to his feet. “I know it. Its the ruined Aster Manor on the border with Tirisfal Glades. How fitting of her to go there. Despicable.”

Ysmere was amazed. “You knew that from what I described?”

Rhamiel nodded. “Yes. It was the chandelier and the table that gave it away, along with the fact we found you in Silverpine Forest. Yreine can be lazy–lazy enough to not portal those she terrorises away from her location. I always knew her carelessness would be her downfall.”

Ysmere wasn’t sure she liked how casually Rhamiel spoke of Yreine, but he had just saved her life, so she felt it inappropriate to question him at this point. She simply nodded along, intrigued.

“–Anyway, you don’t need to worry about all that,” Rhamiel said, pulling himself away from a possible rant about Yreine’s sloppy methods. He patted Ysmere on the arm. “Do you feel you have the strength to portal yourself back home?”

Ysmere considered the question. She was exhausted still, but there was warm food in her stomach that slowly gave her energy. She nodded in reply. It would be a struggle, but she would be able to do it.

To her surprise, Rhamiel turned her arm around and placed a few gold pieces in her palm. She looked at him in confusion, and he simply smiled in reply.

“Just in case you need it,” he said.

It took Ysmere a moment to reply. “I… thank you, you’ve shown me so much generosity. I really don’t know what I could do to properly repay you for everything you’ve done.”

Rhamiel laughed, and his smile grew wider. “Ysmere, you’ve repaid me more than enough already. Now then, why don’t you get that portal going? I’m sure your friends and family are worried sick about you.”

In all the confusion of the last few days, Ysmere never stopped to wonder how Rhamiel knew her name, for she had never told it to him. She slipped out of the bed into a soft pair of slippers that had been laid there, and pulled her focus together to make her portal. It was difficult– and easily the most unstable portal Ysmere had ever conjured, but it was a gateway to Stormwind, her home, all the same. She turned to bid farewell to Rhamiel, and he waved her off. She stepped through and was at once in the cobbled streets she knew so well, blinking up at the morning sun. It seemed so surreal, almost dreamlike to be back home. But she knew where she must go– to the medics, to see her brother. She prayed for everything she was worth that he still lived.