Finding King Varian on the Broken Shore is easier than they all initially anticipate: it's simply a matter of following the trail of demon bodies. He stands with a retinue of Stormwind guards, their once-gleaming silver armor now tarnished, scorched, and smeared with ichor, holding the bottleneck, cutting the demons down before they can flow to the beach.
There is something about him she's never seen before: something savage and wild and utterly beautiful in its ferocity.
They've fought together before, briefly and infrequently, but he'd always been contained then. Surgically precise with each swing of his greatsword. But now...now he stands on the Broken Shore, all trappings of a king shed, and he is brutal. Untamed. With a heaving cleave of his twin blades he decapitates a demon and, as it falls, she realizes that she isn't fighting beside her king. She is fighting beside Lo'Gosh.
The stories are true.
Their small warband regroups, Lady Jaina and King Greymane moving to the head to watch for incoming attacks so the rest of them can catch their breaths.
King Varian takes up the rear position, and Camdyn moves to his side, unclipping a water skein from her belt. "Majesty," she murmurs as she holds it out to him.
He takes it from her with a grateful nod and something that sounds like a sigh. His grasp had been delicate, but the greedy gulps he takes belie how thirsty he truly must have been. "It's good to see you, Camdyn," he says, voice hoarse and deep as he hands the skein back. "But I'm not your king. Not anymore. That title belongs to my son now."
She isn't sure which to protest first: that the skein he'd handed her back is still half full or that he will be her king as long as there is breath in her lungs.
Before she has a chance to even gather her thoughts, a meteoric blast of felfire ignites the ground at the trailhead.
"To Jaina!" King Varian bellows beside her, already charging down the hill.
Without a moment's hesitation she follows behind, reaching to loosen her hammer from her baldric as she does. The weight is comforting in her hands, the balance perfect, the heft and swing what she counts her breaths by.
She relies on the familiarity of it all, refusing to focus on her king at her side. Refusing to focus on the sheer overwhelming numbers of the demon horde.
They fight through waves of them, until it feels the ground beneath her feet is more demon blood than it is solid stone; they fight through Gul'dan summoning countless more, through the bittersweet realization that this is truly a suicide mission. She won't be coming home to her brother, but she will be stopping the Legion at Azeroth's doorstep. She'll be giving everyone else a fighting chance to live, to actually stop the Legion once and for all.
But through it all, she stands fast, relying on her faith in the Light. Relying on her faith in her king.
All of that changes when Sylvanas abandons them to die, to save her own skin.
Righteous anger burns in Camdyn's veins as King Varian calls the retreat. They were so close to decimating the Legion's foothold, and Sylvanas's cowardice had cost them that opportunity and left good people to be slaughtered.
She barrels for the gunship as it pulls in close. This is a fight they have no hope of winning. Not anymore.
Camdyn turns as she scrambles onto the deck, and her heart hammers in the back of her mouth. King Varian had been the last to leave the battlefield, and he now dangles from the rope ladder, swaying dangerously as the gunship banks hard to port, the behemoth below him laboring itself up and out of the ground.
There's a shivering sound, akin to stone sliding against stone, and she realizes it's going to take them down if they don't stop it. She's loved her king for more years than she cares to remember, and her first instinct is to dive after him, but all of them surviving depends on her denying that base instinct.
The gunship continues its bank, the deck beginning to list dangerously beneath them and she refuses to contemplate the potential costs of her next action because if she does, she might not follow it through and she needs to follow it through. The fate of Azeroth depends on it.
"Paladins!" Camdyn barks as she clamps a hand around the railing for stability. "Consecrate the perimeter! Now!" The few of them that are left - and there's a throbbing ache in her chest at how few it truly is - spread across the deck of the gunship on her word, the sound of their boots pounding across the planks drowned out by the thunderous rumble of tumbling rocks and the sharp cracking of stone.
Next to her, King Greymane is leaning over the railing, reaching for King Varian to haul him up. It takes every ounce of her will to ignore them both; she can't afford to lose her focus.
The Light flows through her, through them all, warm and alive, her skin tingling with potential and promise as her lips move in silent prayer and benediction. The fel reaver's giant arm swings in the direction of the gunship, attempting to crash through the decks and drag them back, but the gunship lists just out of its grasp, its fingers crushing uselessly around empty air before they leave it behind entirely. The gunship begins to level, and her vision is golden and pure and her breath catches in her throat at the sight of Varian's head, limned in golden light, clearing the edge of the deck. King Greymane hauls him the rest of the way aboard, and for the first time since Sylvanas abandoned them, the knot in Camdyn's sternum loosens and she feels she can truly breathe.
The prayer dies on her lips when, after he's gained his footing, he looks around to take in the motley crew of survivors and his eyes meet hers. The hand he'd had clamped in thanks around King Greymane's bicep reaches for her now, cups her elbow briefly before falling away. "Thank you," he says with a nod and the barest quirk of his lips. "That was quick thinking."
Her tongue is like lead and her mouth is dry, but she manages to form a response. Somehow. "Majesty," she responds with a dip of her chin before turning on her heel and giving her attention to a wounded soldier. By the Light, there are a lot of them.
Camdyn can't help the glance she sneaks over her shoulder as she helps a dwarf to his feet, her lips already moving in a prayer of healing. Varian is with King Greymane again, heads close together in discussion, and just the sight of him, battered and bloody but blessedly alive, is enough.