Tirion was a man of honour. He knew it, his people knew it, even his wife knew it. It was probably the reason why she refused to join him when he was stripped of his title. "You are too good for your own good," she would say, while he would throw himself into whatever calamity plagued the land or others.
This would be no different, as he tried to hide his face under a hood of a cultist's cowl he wore, with his fellow crusaders in tow. Sneaking into the bowels of Arthas' frozen kingdom seemed like a clever ploy and a precise strike at the heart of the icy tyrant.
In reality, trying to hide the Ashbringer and his gear under robes designed for malnourished acolytes was far harder than he or his people assumed. Yet, strangely enough it did fool the undead that littered the Cathedral of Darkness.
He stopped as they approached the central point of the unholy temple and observed a cultist dressed in robes more elaborate than his peers.
"This is it," he whispered to them. "Careful now, or we will blow our cover. We must get closer…"
They approached the pews nearby and took their place, seemingly invisible among the congregation of other undead servants.
A procession of cultists moved past them and approached their leader, bearing a purplish crystal. They laid it out before him and the stone rose in the air, hanging in front of the cultists and shining with unholy light.
"We lost many to the faceless ones, my lord," uttered one of the acolytes, "but we succeeded in retrieving the heart from Naz'anak."
So this was it. The heart of Arthas himself, Tirion thought, as he looked at the transfigured organ. The depths of his monstrosity were truly beyond measuring, if he was capable of cutting out his own heart and throwing it away as if it was a piece of worthless meat. But it was still here.
His thought was violently interrupted as he felt a sudden darkening around his aura.
"Something's wrong... I sense a dark presence." he uttered to his crusaders. They seemed to share his feeling, as he noticed scowls and serious faces under the hoods.
The sound of heavy steps of steel boots on the stone floor permeated the entire Cathedral. The unmistakable sound of doom as it walked down the aisle towards the heart bore down on Tirion's own heart like a hammer. He turned to look and saw Him.
"The Lich King is here. May the Light guide our blades."
The Lich King, as always in his full regalia of dark armour and a black cloak, approached the pulsating stone, but uttered no word to the High Invoker. Instead, he turned towards Tirion, and the old paladin saw a deathly blue shine emanating from within the Helm of Domination.
"Uninvited guests! Did you think you'd go unnoticed inside my dominion?"
Raspy, terrible, yet booming and overwhelming, his voice assaulted Tirion and in that moment the man knew that his ruse was over. The Lich King was after all the smartest being among the undead and the armour and swords sticking out of their robes were not too difficult to see. It was too late to pull out. Maybe he was too good for his own good, but this time good wouldn't be good enough.
Tirion swallowed hard but he steeled himself and took the cloak off. With Ashbringer in hand, he approached the Lich King. Biggest mistake of his life, honour be damned, but his people were doing the same already, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he would not be pulling out any magic tricks or doing heroic jumps to save them all. Would Light be enough? The grim figure of cold iron in front of them was a definite no to that question.
"I must confess... you were not altogether unexpected. I hope you find your final resting place... to your liking." Arthas was not pulling any punches, seemingly enjoying his own smugness as he revealed this to be a trap. Why else would he be here?
"You sound a little too confident. Especially considering the way our last encounter ended." Tirion replied. Light's Hope was a hair breadth's away from a defeat, in truth but they prevailed somehow.
"Last time we met, you had the advantage of fighting on holy ground. You'll find that our situation has been... reversed."
"That might be, but I don't need to stand on holy ground to run that disembodied heart of yours through with the Ashbringer." Tirion tried to bolster himself a little, even if he did not feel as confident. But he would show that vile monster that he wasn't all he was cracked up to be, and that their mission would not be stopped.
"I call your bluff. You're a paladin after all. Your obsession with redemption goes beyond the inane." Arthas fired back without missing a beat.
Damn it, why must he be so perceptive? Arthas was a paladin once himself, but his conviction never ran as deeply as Tirion's. But his mission here was painfully predictable and the Lich King was playing him like a well-tuned instrument.
"You surely wouldn't destroy humanity's only chance to redeem its most wayward son. You'd sooner die!"
The redemption of Arthas Menethil, truly the greatest and yet the most elusive of all goals that this Crusade could have set up for itself - after all, was a man who willingly laid waste to his own homeland really redeemable? Was he a willing sinner or truly a soulless puppet of the Lich King? But if Arthas could be redeemed, then maybe, just maybe, it would be possible to fix everything else.
"The heart... the last remaining vestige of your humanity. I had to stop it from being destroyed. I had to see for myself. And at last I'm sure..."
Tirion looked into the heart. The Lich King stayed his blade, allowing the old paladin to look into the baleful shard of ice.
Inside it was a human heart. Ordinary, frozen in mid-beat, yet slightly shriveled, with a slight, barely visible scar, distorted by the ice encasing it and the seeming darkness that radiated outwards through the ice. Not an ounce of good feeling, not a grain of sympathy or warmth was left in the desiccated organ. Tirion tried to find some humanity in it, to feel something good inside, but found it filled with naught but indescribable darkness. It was as he feared, there was no redemption for Arthas, his humanity lost long before this heart left the chest it belonged to.
"Only shadows from the past remain. There's nothing left to redeem!"
Hilghlord Tirion Fordring, the chief paladin and commander of the forces of Argent Crusade in Northrend, leapt into the air, raising Ashbringer to spit the unholy heart and destroy it.
Yet, with all of his Light-infused power, Tirion was not an acrobat. Instead of shattering the levitating heart, he jumped on it and fell, and the mighty blade in his hand cleaved the High Invoker in two as he dropped to the ground.
Tirion landed with a heavy thump, with the heart under him, the cultist slowly sliding apart into vile pieces and the Lich King was seemingly, for the first time in his reign, truly dumbfounded.
Yet before anyone said a word, Tirion heard people enter the Cathedral and rush to him.
One of Tirion's disguised crusader yelled, "Tirion's down! Defend him with your lives!"
The three disguised crusaders that accompanied the Highlord rushed forward and took defensive positions around Tirion. While not injured, he lay still, as falling on the heart winded him and laying still seemed like the safest option in face of present odds.
The blue shine of Lich King's eyes turned into a furious blaze, as he pointed Frostmourne at them. "You will pay for your foolishness, Fordring! Kill them all!"
The undead swarmed at the command of their king and attacked the crusaders with reckless abandon. But before their numbers could be felt, combat could be heard coming from direction of the approaching intruders to the Cathedral.
Tirion dared to look up and saw Thassarian, Koltira Deathweaver, Highlord Darion Mograine, and a group of Knights of the Ebon Blade run into the middle of Cathedral.
"I hope you fellows don't mind if we crash this party. I brought some old friends with me!" Thassarian shouted at them. The death knight was far too optimistic for Tirion's current mood, but even this help was welcome.
"Take courage, crusaders. You do not fight alone!" Koltira Deathweaver called out to them as the Death Knight rescue party smashed into the undead surrounding the Crusaders.
"Traitors! Do you think you can escape your fate? Don't you know you already belong to me? I'll quash this revolt once and for all, here and now!" Lich King shook the Cathedral with his voice, the runeblade in his hand gleaming with evil light as he brandished it and lifted it upwards. Dark energies started to gather around the sword and the death knights suddenly did not look confident anymore.
At last, the old paladin got up, Arthas' heart in his hands. Even through his gauntlets and thick padded gloves, Tirion could feel an unearthly cold, almost painful as he held the crystal.
Mograine did not seem to be shaken as much by Arthas' words, as he swiped one of the few remaining undead away with his weapon.
"Quickly, we have to leave or we won't be able to resist his will!", he cried at them and Tirion and others turned to him. As the undead Highlord opened a Death Gate to Crusaders' Pinnacle, other fighters tried to slow down Arthas, but he only laughed as he was struck with ineffective spells.
When they crossed the threshold to get out of the cathedral, they did not turn to look back at the Lich King, whose eyes revealed an amused gleam.
"Run, run where your spirit will carry you, your souls are mine already." He growled. But Tirion did not hear that, as he found himself in the land of the living again.
"So… what do we do with it?" asked Koltira.
"What do you mean 'what do we do with it?'" Replied Thassarian. "We destroy the damn thing. Except Highlord Fordring seems to have hang-ups about it. Heck, he wants a council to discuss the issue. A council!"
The back and forth between the death knights went on for hours as the entire Crusade was abuzz with the word of Tirion's success. Only he knew however how spectacularly he failed and now, with the heart in their possession, he was forced to debate it openly with everyone, such was his honour. Damn thing was getting him into trouble again and this time would be no different.
The heart was kept under guard by the two death knights in a separate tent, where Tirion sat and thought about the impending meeting. He would not let the thing out of his sight and who knew what corruption it held, if not for Tirion's holy presence.
Everyone was invited, the Horde and Sylvanas too. He dreaded the outcome of having Garrosh weigh in on the issue, let alone have the Banshee Queen have any say whatsoever, given that the sole goal in her "life" was annihilation of Arthas by all and any means. He was more worried that they would start spilling blood between each other over who would get to destroy the thing.
"Lord Tirion?" A female voice interrupted his train of thought and he turned to see Jaina Proudmoore enter. Of course, she would be the one sensible person to sort out the issue, surely she could make everyone see reason, even though this would be purely about the pecking order of who would get to chop at the thing first.
"Ah it's you Jaina. Please, come in." He ushered her in and the young mage came up to the frozen heart, levitating in the middle of the tent.
Tirion's hope about Jaina's influence quickly vanished as he saw the girl transfixed by the sight of the heart. As if anyone could forget, this very organ once beat in his chest for her. Even someone as infused with Light and goodness as Fordring couldn't resist rolling his eyes.
Arthas was right - they were idiots, hanging on to a hope that was not there, and she would be the greatest fool of them all. After all, who else did not know that the only reason why she was here was to drag her prince out of the Lich King?
Secretly everyone wished, as impossible as it was, that they could fix things and put this all in the past. Tirion was honourable, but he was not deluded.
"It's his…." Jaina spoke up, still eyeing the heart, her eyes large and full of emotion.
"Yes, as improbable as it is, this is his heart." Replied Tirion.
"Do you think…" Jaina spoke up again, turning briefly to him, before taking one step closer to be within arm's reach of it.
"No girl, I don't think so. I've looked into it, and I saw only the past, as dark as it was and not a shred of humanity left."
"Oh, Arthas, why did you do this…"
She reached out with her hand and laid her palm on the heart.
"Jaina, no!" Tirion jumped as he saw it and approached her. Jaina leapt away, crying out in pain as she felt the deathly cold of the crystal.
"Arthas is gone, Jaina. He died when he took up that accursed sword." Tirion spoke to her as Jaina held her hand, still looking at the heart. He could see on her face what was going through her head, her eyes on verge of tears, her mouth quivering - despair, shattered dreams, endless pain. There was little he could do to console her and the tears started to flow. Jaina to tried to keep it together, covering her mouth with the back of her hand and wrapping her other arm around herself but it did little to ease her pained sobs.
As Jaina choked on her tears, Tirion thought he saw something. A glimmer of something different, a twinkle of bright light from within the heart, right where the crystalline surface reflected the image of Jaina.
Tirion had to rub his eyes and peer in closer to be sure that this was just not a reflection from an otherwise opaque crystal.
You've got to be kidding me, thought Highlord Fordring.