Memories of Never, an Unofficial Warcraft Story

Chapter Two: A King's First Battle

-JP-

She happened upon them as they dragged Tirion Fordring's body between them. Like a fully-organized unit forming rank, Lady Jaina Proudmoore watched the Horde champions part in the front as Arthas walked forth, to meet with the hardy Tauren fighter who'd dragged Tirion from her. A massive duo of shields greeted her, with a greatsword drawn from a death knight acting as bulwark. The Tauren, twin axes slung over his shoulders, moved past the line of once-Horde champions, and it closed around him and his defeated captive in a single side-step.

Their raiding party had formed combat groups, and these aggressive fighters were serving as first-linesmen. The classic blue glow of the vicious undead bled from their eyes in glowing embers, and even with ragged armors torn from their certain fight with the Lich King, they'd no flutter of the irresolution she'd expect of living creatures that had something to lose. They could not lose anything ever again. They could not love life ever again.

"Arthas," she managed, her grip on her staff tightening, its point glowing a brilliant green like a blade of grass ignited by the morning sun. "Why can't you just leave this world in peace?" She felt fresh tears fall down her face, tears she thought had already been shed long ago. "You aren't the man I knew. Why can't you just die?"

The response came conversationally, but morosely, and she knew that he was thinking her very thoughts. "If this is the last time we talk, Jaina," he spoke, in a low echo, "then I want you to know how weak you made me." The twisted blade, Frostmourne, began to glow, almost smiling, like an evil puppet-master as its puppet obeyed. Runes along its length burned brightly, but it wasn't facing her. Instead, it aimed downward, at the feet of the burly Tauren that had stolen away the body of her honorable ally. "It takes strength to walk the path of the damned. This world will fall to ruin, but I will unite it. Nothing else needs to die further if it has already died. Nobody else needs to lose their life."

Frostmourne's runes dimmed again, and Arthas let his arm fall limp as he addressed her more acutely. "I thought that I needed to save everything from this Scourge, and when I took up Frostmourne, I wanted to save all life from death. It's grander than that, Jaina. I realize now that there are larger beasts at work, and I must save Azeroth from everything else. No free force of Gods or men can stand against the tide. I will not let it ruin us, so I must destroy us all. In death, we are one."

"Arthas," Jaina spoke again, this time through gritted teeth. There was an insistent prod at her shoulder, and a whisper, but she shook it off without consideration. Those she'd brought with her pressed, and she knew she hadn't the time. She could only hold them back at the peril of the world, and this man she'd loved was no longer the same. He could never be deserving of Azeroth, and they would help ensure that he never left this place. "The united forces of the world of Azeroth have already judged you, and I knew it would be me charged with carrying out this sentence. I hereby sentence you to die, by whatever means are at my disposal. Heroes of the Alliance, please begin."

The laugh, cold and high, filled the chamber of ice like a gong's beat. "You've delivered more to me? You must see then, I have a whole world to conquer! Two dozen simply will not suffice! Well, show me, champions of the Scourge! Show me the force that unites you, and throw it at the Alliance!"

Jaina stood fast, as did her champions twenty-five, and yet she felt something stirring within her that she couldn't explain. It robbed her of her concentration, and she felt her concentration snap. She raised her staff, and in like measure Arthas drew forth Frostmourne. "Champions, I hope you won't disappoint your King." As he spoke, Arthas stepped backward, and his champions followed suit, in perfect unison. None stammered, none slowed; their pace was robotic, fluid as one.

Jaina's own were not so resolute. A ripple ran through the group, not so much able to be seen but felt. It was as if their spirits were testing the possibilities of the better part of valor, so strongly that every one of them could feel the others' apprehension but not evident enough to really be seen in their faces, or the raising of sword and wand.

"My Lady?" a voice beside her asked, a tiny thing, a hopeful thing. Jaina smiled, but it was hollow, and sorrow stole through her breast like a bad memory. Josalynn, such a young thing, was the exact opposite of someone like Arthas, and as Jaina turned to look into her eyes, that fact solidified evermore.

She couldn't be more than fifteen or sixteen years of age, and it was at Jaina's most insistent request that she not accompany these heroes into this place. Yet, Josalynn had already faced the Scourge, and time and again the young prodigy had thwarted the Lich King's plans. She was almost legendary among her peers, this tiny girl, and her powers almost intimidated Jaina; her potential was staggering, even compared to the Kirin Tor and Jaina herself, and her accomplishments had solidified the Alliance's position in the Howling Fjord.

Jaina had taken the girl under her wing, if only in a modest sense. Her first visit to Dalaran had been met with a mugger who'd roughed her up, and despite the power Jaina had felt in Josalynn even from their first meeting, that ruffian had managed to blacken her eye and lay a dagger against her throat. He'd walked away with almost seventy gold pieces that day, accordingly all of the girl's savings from her contributions and her late father. Jaina herself had exacted a toll from that thief, a toll that still to this day held him in a manner of service; at her other shoulder, that rogue stood bearing thin-bladed scimitars, their keen craft reflecting the hard-working passion in his eyes. Yes, all of that seemed to have happened in another world altogether.

No, Josalynn was no warrior. She held a very particular spot in her heart for all of life, and had she not pursued the arts of magecraft, Josalynn might well have been the most zealous of druids. She had been clear that no life was deserving of a show of her power, an honor that had stayed her mighty hand that day and in so many other ways. Jaina feared what the girl had had to go through, even just knowing the mortal races as she did.

As her ward looked to her again for guidance, it was clear, in Jaina's eyes, that Josalynn was terrified. She'd spent her whole life fighting against this menace, but the ripple of uncertainty that had so afflicted them all almost seemed to personify itself in her overlarge, deepest-blue owl's eyes. "I can't do this."

"Jaina, take your eyes off the board and you will die sooner," Arthas taunted, but Jaina's eye narrowed and nothing more. A pathetic goad, Arthas. I never took my eye off you.

"This is the end, my dear," she spoke, seeing the possibility herself, a world without the horrors of the Lich King. "There is nowhere else you can be, and nothing else you can do. I will not leave you here alone, but we need you. We need every one of you, champions of the Alliance!" she proclaimed to the gathered heroes, who all shouted their resolve and affirmation. "Azeroth may fall, but not this day, not this way. Not if I still live."

"Touching words," Arthas spoke, and she watched as he strode away, toward the Throne. Bound above it, she could see the weak, limp body of the paladin Bolvar Fordragon, and it tore into her like a knife. Bolvar's head rose, his arms held to either end and clasped in metal cuffs, and all she saw was defeat. Arthas may not have realized it, but with the fall of the Horde champions also came the cracking of Bolvar's resolve. Of this, Jaina was certain, and she could feel his unbelief as plain as her own trepidation.

In the time she'd been occupied, the Horde's risen champions were now fully arrayed before the stairs up which Arthas now walked, defending them but not advancing. Arthas was waiting for her to make her move, treating her like the white king on a chess board. She grit her teeth, and venom rose with a nauseating hate. "Arthas, turn and face your death like a man, you coward!"

This drew his attention, but he only stopped walking. He did not turn to face her, and indeed did not threaten with his blade or his soldiers either. "Arthas Menethil is the name of a dead man. Arthas Menethil is the name of a lover, a true believer, a coward and a weakling. You address the King, Lady Jaina Proudmoore. You've passed judgment upon the King? No. A King doesn't receive judgment, but grants it. Approach at your peril, flee, or watch your trial unfold, and die by the hand of a true hero of Azeroth."

Frostmourne rose toward Bolvar then, and Jaina's heart beat with the rhythm of a war drum. "HEROES, STOP HIM, NOW!" she shrieked, her sonorous words tearing the fabric of peace that had existed between the ranks. She could see the bulwark of the new Scourge champions, had seen it from the beginning. To have acted immediately would have spelled disaster for the Alliance, so close to the cliff's edge and so disorganized compared to their enemy. Enough time had passed. Enough resolve had been redeemed. She was finally in a position to send her troops into the fray, and no longer could she reason with him. Arthas Menethil, the Lich King, had to die tonight, or he never would.

Her forces rushed the opposition, bringing shield and sword to bear, axe and mallet up, and the slightest trip or stumble on the ice could very well have resulted in failure. Josalynn stood by her side, one violently-trembling hand raised, veins burning with the violet arcane. Jaina's own raised with practiced calm, and three large shards of ice started to form in front of her. A duo of warlocks, two shaman, a priest and others joined, charging spells that merely waited for a clear shot to release. Jaina only felt horrible that she knew so few of these heroes by name, and that there was a solid chance she'd never get to hear their voices, their thoughts, one to another. They were all people, all heroes, and yet history might even forget them this wicked night.

One that she did know, a paladin named Ruby Mistweaver, was the first to connect sword to axes, as she met the mighty Tauren warrior who'd taken Tirion's body away head-on. Her sword rang shrilly, but the advantage was clear right from the start, as first one heavy double-headed axe swatted the blade away and the other tore a trench in her cheek. The blood shot from her in a terrific slash, and the wound was sealed as she was tossed through the air. In a moment, Ruby was back on her feet, clearly shaken but not broken, and drew forth again for a piercing charge on her enemy.

Jaina needed an opening, but her own troops were in the way, so she edged along, the crystalline ice shards splitting into six and following her. Her eye inevitably fell upon the rogue, Avery Hayes, and her face screwed up in a measure of respect and sadness. He was out of his element, fighting toe-and-toe with a shaman whose attacks were a blur of lightning and steel. He scored several quick hits with his slashing weapons, but nothing stuck; the shaman, enhanced with his own powers and those of the Scourge, did not even falter, and soon was parrying and recoiling the seasoned, hardened and humbled rogue. Two hand-axes came down then, and Avery's face exploded in a scene of gore far more vile than any she'd seen on her way up the Citadel's winding way. Lighting poured out of the red, an explosive hit, and Jaina roared in grief as the man fell.

Shouts rang out along the battlefield, but above all of them were the tormented cries of a particular paladin hanging overhead. Jaina did not let this deter her, though, and loosed three of her bolts in a fury that could only come from this kind of war. As if in slow motion, the first axe tore up through her bolt, shattering it, and the second through her second. The shards kept going, though, and dozens of spots of blood squirted from the shaman's body a split-second before her third bolt tore through his skull and threw him back with tremendous force to land on the Throne's stairwell.

A shadowy priest garbed in dreary mists from her side of the field threw a bolt of dark energy, almost at random, but it cleared the distance and struck home on a dead-eyed, young paladin, and her hand was blasted to pieces before them both, hovering as if stuck to the air around her. It quickly reformed, green energy drawing the pieces back together, and she shrieked an inhuman banshee cry and charged, flanked by a death knight cloaked in a bloody aura and wielding a keen great doubleaxe, and a wolf whose fur bristled like steel from its body. A Blood Elf bowman turned dexterously, firing once and then twice, and both bolts flew true across the distance right at the priest. At the last moment, though, they were deflected by an invisible shield, and clattered harmlessly to the ice.

More broke through, those not needed to hold back her modest group of melee harassers, and she knew she needed a plan. Suddenly, Jaina felt a spell overhead and one beneath, and the ice writhed in a flaming orange that existed for her heroes who'd stayed to a range but not for the world itself began to materialize. It was a hell-fire, a warlock's most loved soul-burning spell, and she knew that it could devastate them. "GROUP ONE, PRESS THE FLANKS!" she cried. "GROUP TWO, HARRY THE HEALERS! THREE, OUT OF THE FIRE!"

Her people listened with a military cohesion, and nearest her they spread out, not needing to be told twice how deadly fire was. She herself let burn through her the frosty energy of which she'd become so very acquainted, and a great wall of ice rose four, then eight, then ten feet into the air. She hadn't secured the flanks, but that would give her a moment to let her people out wherever and hold back the clearer threat of an advance assault.

A thunderous volume broke from above, and she let the magic seep into her again. However, she knew almost instantly that she needn't worry about a hurricane; a brilliant shield of golden energy snapped into existence a moment before the first lightning bolt struck down, and as it hit the shield both reddened from the impact. Otherwise, she was unharmed, and not in danger. Casting the power into another spell, she aimed to thank the disciplined priest for his support later.

She conjured then, and just above the (now) two pools of hell's furious fires spawned ice-fall areas of effect. The ice fell and melted, and in so doing quickly put out the flames of her weaker conjurer opponents. At that moment, she heard the cries from her third group, and turned to the left to spot that vicious young paladin and her entourage. She needed to free their movement, and that meant the icy wall would have to come down, but she would use it as a weapon too, she thought.

Or, as the righteous cries of a familiar voice told her, she wouldn't. She turned just in time, flicking her wrist at the right moment, and a barrier of frost spawned to deflect a mythical piece. The Ashbringer tore through the thick ice like a heated blade through bare flesh, making much the same noise, and her own shield held just barely against the powerful Holy Light of that pure weapon. In the same instant, the blade dulled, but the terrible blue of Tirion's eyes stuck her in shock for a moment too long. The Ashbringer rang out again, this time dulling from a glowing gold to a resonant purple-black, almost crying out in pain. The icy wall shattered and clattered to the frozen floor as her concentration snapped.

She felt the blade pierce her stomach far before ever feeling the pain, and screamed out as she threw a raging flame directly into those blue eyes. Tirion flew backward with the force of an Archmage's cast, through almost to the fighting at the Lich King's stairwell, and Jaina took this moment to launch a grand assault on the King of the Dead.

A massive fireball, even more pronounced than the first and growing to thrice the span of her hand from palm to fingertip, was loosed. Yet, with impossible speed and strength, a single character leaped from the fighting, enshrouded in an aura of green. The fireball smashed against it, throwing the body at the Lich King but doing none of the damage she'd intended to the target she'd elected. Arthas was shoved, but he barely minded; instead, he grabbed the bony neck of the Forsaken death knight, hefting it backward into the fracas once more, and continued his work with Bolvar.

"ARTHAS, FACE ME!" Jaina screamed, but in a moment Tirion was back up to her, and the Ashbringer was back to bear once more. She expected the pain, and even had to step back with the force of his connection, but none came. She might have been bleeding, but she had total faith in the healers she'd brought. They were keeping an eye on everyone, and she needed to focus on where her talents could be most useful. At this moment, she knew she was the only one who could fend off Tirion, but she needed to be rid of him as soon as she could be.

A cry from her right brought Jaina to stammer, but she held her own against the master fighter with only her staff and wards, drawing back to her fight as quickly as she could. She watched a body fly across her periphery, and a double-set of daggers flourish as an orcish female leapt overhead, driving them down. She couldn't keep an eye on who'd fallen, though, as she parried and evaded all of Tirion's heavy slashes and stabs. She didn't even notice the tears in her eyes until after she ducked a thrust, drove her staff into the base of his chin and sent the paladin reeling.

He recovered, quicker than she could, and yet as she watched he flew backward with an arcane force. "Joss!" she cried, and sure enough, Josalynne ran forward and held out a harried hand.

"My Lady, I'm sorry," she squeaked, and Jaina could see a face drained of color and soaked with tears. "I got scared, I - I hesitated, and people are dying, and it's all my-"

"Enough!" Jaina cried, but at a glance to her delicate, child's face and hurt eyes, the mage softened. "You're here now, and that's all that matters. We need you, Josalynn. Help them."

Tirion raged, and Jaina looked up in time to see his tantrum. Laying on his back, he raised the Ashbringer, and then with his other hand swatted it down and bound it. "GET OUT OF MY HEAD! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" They were the shrieks of a helpless dog being beaten. He was a schizophrenic, warring against an antithetical personality.

"I need you to prepare your strongest spell, Josalynn," Jaina spoke. "And kill the Lich King with it. I won't ask you to hurt another person, ever, for as long as I live. Please," she finished, staring into the owl's eyes with hope and desperation. "You are the only one."

Jaina stood, and as she did, she could hear the cries of warfare once more. Her mind was back to seeing all, and she saw it all. Blood and arms lined the floor, and the fighting still persisted. She was certain that there were at least five less on each side, but the combat went on unhindered, faster and more expertly-danced than any war stories she'd ever believed. These were not fighters. These were not mere champions. These were the most elite, the most prominent, shunned by some and envied by most, outshone by none.

"Kill me, Jaina," Tirion spoke, in control of himself again but only slightly. The Ashbringer's crystal shifted between golden and black nothing so quickly it was dizzying to watch, as if it couldn't tell whether the lightest or the darkest of souls beheld it. "While I still have him stalled. Please."

"Lady?" Josalynn asked, but Jaina waved her off; she was still pleased to see the charging of an arcane wave of energy, bands of the stuff weaving together like waves riding the air.

Jaina drew another icy shard into existence, and she watched as Tirion's face drew into a smile once more. "My Lady!" a sudden shriek announced, and Jaina turned then to note the very same.

Bolvar, atop his King's throne, was no longer Bolvar. The laugh that met her ears was not his, but she could feel that laugh in the flame-veined man she saw now. "Please, no," she whispered, a moment before Josalynn screamed and loosed her weapon. The arcane bolt was less a bolt than a fount, and Jaina knew it would hit. If any of his kind broke through, the Lich King would still feel the fullest of its wrath. Jaina took to the scene as well, and a great dart of ice shot forth, riding the tail of the arcane blast.

The Lich King removed his helm them, and in his left beholding that and his right holding Frostmourne, she saw Arthas Menethil the Prince of Lordaeron. She wavered, but her bolt didn't, and a second before impact the King threw his arm and armor upward with great power. The arcane smashed into him, sending him reeling with a force out of this world, and he drove back like a doll tossed across a room. Smashing the Frozen Throne directly, he shattered the ice with a sick bone-crunching and drove back to the rear ice wall that marked the end of his Kingly platform. In almost-simultaneity, the icy shard drove through the smile he still wore and the wall behind it, and he hung there like a scarecrow of old, pinned by her fierce magic.

In the next heartbeat, the chains binding the paladin snapped like metallic twigs, the sharp ring cracking through the Throne room and sending the fighting into a lull, then a halt. The champions of the Scourge just stood there, blank slates, humanoid nothings, but the forces of the Alliance that had survived the encounter gathered together. Jaina noted that Avery Hayes was not among them, and watched two others as they stumbled closer, one a bear that looked to be bleeding even still as it closed the gap with great effort. Heals went out, but they somehow were not as effective as such things had been when the heroes were freshest to the fight, and though the wounds sealed the pain remained on the faces of all of the heroes.

Jaina could barely have eyes for them, though, as transfixed she was on Bolvar. Something was dangerously wrong here, even though his gaze tore through her with the ferocity of a warrior of the light, and a light that did not glow a brilliant blue. He stood in the air, holding the helm of the King of the Dead and a blade she and the rest of the world had come to know as Frostmourne. He did not smile, or frown, or anything; his face was stoic, as his burnt neck surveyed them to what surely must have been great personal pains.

"Your King is dead, heroes of the Horde and Alliance," he spoke, his voice a mighty boom. "Warriors of the Alliance, I release you from your contract, barring your offering to ensure our continued good faith and honorable dealings. Warriors of the Horde, you must remain here, for there is no other place for you."

He turned in Jaina's direction, and she thought she could see his resolve, his honor and his power. She thought she could see the old Bolvar, but his words were nothing if not a testament against that potential truth. "The world is over. I saw everything he saw, Lady Proudmoore. But that is for another time. You have a place to be, very soon, and I have a Throne to establish." He looked down at the runed blade, Frostmoune. "I understand, now. There must always be a Lich King."

Jaina stepped forth, sorrow in her eye, and Bolvar stared her down the moment she did. "Bolvar, what are you talking about?" she asked, feeling the tears at seeing him moving again but terrified for what he was. If nothing else, how was he alive, standing motionless in the air? Was Arthas finally dead, and if so, why couldn't she believe it?

"The world heaves with my torment," Bolvar spoke quietly. "And the world will burn beneath the shadow of my wings."

"Bolvar!" she cried.

"My son, a terrible darkness returns to our world," he continued, his words spoken conversationally but carrying like proclamation. "Jaina! It will not happen the same way as it might have, but they are coming back! You have several places you need to be, but I think home is the safest place right now. Remember that home is not where you leave your hearth, but where you set your heart. Theramore is not going anywhere that its people cannot protect it, if you protect its people."

"Please start speaking sense, Bolvar!" she cried, but she knew that this was well-past such a time.

"Great things are to come, Jaina Proudmoore. We will need all of the Alliance heroes we can find to fight against them. Please take those who've survived, and leave those who are dead. That is your payment for your lives, and it is the only thing I will accept." Jaina's eye was caught by movement, and she looked down to see a man thickly clad in leather stand up, holding a pair of scimitars to bear. His face was a patchwork of magically-sewn skin, hastily put together again, a true bastardization of the handsomeness it had once held. A sigh beside her told Jaina that Josalynn thought much the same, and she wondered just how close the two of them had become.

"You can release them, and we will go to prepare together," Jaina spoke, her voice loud and commanding, but not stern.

"The dead will stay with their King," Bolvar spoke. "This is not a body that can be released to the rest of the world, and not a face I can show another. There is no cure for a death caused this way, Jaina, and you are well-aware of this. The Horde champions have died this day, and that is how the world will know of them. The Alliance met with losses, but managed to lay a decisive kill on the Lich King. Bolvar," he spoke, with a humorless chuckle, "Bolvar Fordragon died at the Wrathgate, and Tirion Fordring gave his life to defeat the Lich King."

Jaina could not retort. However, she needn't. "You must be ready, as I will be. Leave this place now, and this land, to the Jailer of the Damned. Northrend is no longer the place for you, or for any living creatures. It is a hold only for the Damned, and they must survive in rumination. The world will become far less interesting up here anyway, after the first wingbeats rend the world."

Jaina tried again, but Bolvar did not respond. He hung there, in the air, sprawled as though the binds still held him despite them hanging limp on the pillars to either end. She called out to her heroes, whose understanding may well have been less even than her own, by their faces. "Come, heroes. It's time to leave," she spoke, almost a whisper but with the echoes of a gunshot. It was morose, lost, and she needed the closure here that she knew she would never receive.

With a flick of her wrist and a simple tapping of the magic within, she reopened the very portal she'd used to enter this place before. It would lead them down to Light's Hammer, the outpost established by the Argent Crusade and the Knights of the Ebon Blade in the entrance hall of Icecrown Citadel. She was absent a just conclusion, but she was sure that Bolvar would have no more of anyone here. He was not the same, but she knew his honor was still intact. For that reason, she knew she had to leave him.

As the heroes stepped through the magical door, knowing it would take them away from here forever, Jaina faltered. She let Josalynn, the last to walk through, leave her with a reassuring pat on the shoulder and a comment she couldn't even remember anymore.

"Bolvar, I won't ask you how you know this, or even what most of it truly means. You are keeping secrets, to what end I cannot know. Just tell me where it's going to happen, and I will make sure that everything is in place to deal with it."

She turned then to look into his eyes, and when she did, she saw a contingent of risen warriors, of the Horde and Alliance, and they stared back at her with flaming red eyes. None of them moved, but they were in perfect raiding formations, split apart equidistantly into four groups. A shield-bearing Tauren and a Blood Elf paladin were by themselves at the base of the Throne's stairwell, their bulwark defending the place with the most vigorous servitude, and a powerful-looking death knight that reminded her of a time of war was alone at the forefront, staring her down as he leaned on his great weapon.

The man who'd called himself the Jailer of the Damned, Bolvar Fordragon, lay in a sheet of ice on a Throne fit for a King of the Dead. Frostmourne, laying outside the ice and on his lap, was dormant, its runes no longer glowing and its once-perfect sheen marred with blood and shreds of cloth. She almost felt its dullness, its exhaustion, and wondered if she could and should break it. Seeing the champions of the Horde and even a few of her own Alliance forces, in their steadfast and peaceful service to their Jailer, she thought against it. Such was an act that would have to wait; even with all of her warriors, they would be on the losing side at this point. She lamented letting the souls continue in their torment, but resigned herself to choose another time for that battle.

As she turned to leave, however, she heard her reply. It's happening right now, Jaina, the voice told her. Everything is happening right now. If I told you about this, you would lose sight of that, and if I told you about that, you would lose sight of everything. Those who command time understand why it should never be mentioned.

She did not turn around, but bowed her head and closed her eyes in silence for a moment. "Goodbye, Arthas," she spoke. "Goodbye, Bolvar." And in the next moment, she walked through the portal, and Icecrown Citadel's Frozen Throne was left to its quiet once more.

-LK-

And so it stayed, for hours or months or years, its denizens could not tell. Ice licked up the plated boots of a lithe shield-bearer, along the roughened gloves of a green-skinned sneak-thief, over the delicate cheek of a carefully-preserved paladin. The scene was so picturesque that it may have been that way forever, immortalized in ice the same way as had been the whispers of death from a place concocted by Titan hands. Yet, it was fragile as a sculpture of glass, and the slightest shift in the earth might bring the whole thing crashing down upon the Throne's floor.

That was a room for the wicked, the twisted and the stolen. A King sat in that room, with fiery veins burning him not despite, but in tandem with, the frozen meteoric shower raining down sadly on those that had been lost to Frostmourne. In another time, another place, another dream of a world yet, he also sat upon a throne that was absent the chill of the north and the burn of dragon's fire.

It was here that a King met with his kind of evil, that a Jailer resided over the affairs, that a whisperer survived under his lord's nail, and that an ephemeral peace was held by an assembly and its Councillor. Upon a podium sat four, those the Jailer considered with great effort to be of potential value this day. There were no stands for speakers, no amplifiers or any amenities that would make the sound carry; the Jailer didn't need that for his words to reach every soul, less in this place than even the world of Azeroth entirely.

"In this world, there must always be balance," Terenas Menethil spoke to the congregation, leagues of seats for his voice to carry over nodding as one. "The undead are evil, of that there is no doubt, but the living may yet be even more evil than that. There is no way to tell. Why, then, must we keep the living and not the undead?"

"Because it is the way of nature, and in nature, there must always be balance," an exasperated voice spoke, a green-skinned Orc spoke, his face a-paint with white like a skull and his neck spangled with a cord of bone. "Terenas, must you keep preaching these things to an old spirit?"

"I believe that honor would tell that story itself," Bolvar Fordragon returned, his shoulder-length brown hair matted to his face as though he'd been running a gauntlet and sweated it all over himself. His burning red eyes still bored through the mess, however. "The living have a choice, and the undead do not. I would think that undeath is really just life without the ability to choose. Even if that choice is the wrong one, the right to have it should be upheld."

"You two could just talk one another into bliss," the Orc said, shaking his head. "I wonder where the other guy is. He had some ideas, and there was no question that he thought through none of them. The world doesn't need more idealists. It needs more people willing to follow their mindlessness, because that's how everything comes into the Void. That is how everything becomes nothing, and nothing is truly a sight to behold. Have either of you seen it?"

"To be honest, Bolvar, I second his sentiment, but only as to where Arthas is," the fourth member of their party finally spoke up, and Tirion Fordring stood from a seat provided to those on the podium. "He's dead, I suppose, but what happened to him, Bolvar?"

"That is none of your concern, fallen," Bolvar spoke quietly, but then his voice was never quiet. "Arthas being dead is a choice, like everything else. Whether he chose wrong or right is not up to us. It's simply a choice he made."

"Yes, do shut up, Lightborn," the Orc spoke. "At least the Jailer and the King have something to say. You haven't stopped asking about little Arthy since you got here. We should be considering the next, 'righteous' move for the Lich."

"The next move is to hold the undead, and keep ourselves away from the living!" Terenas retorted.

"You need to learn where the phrase 'Lord of the Dead' comes into this game, King," the Orc returned, with a rude gesture.

"Enough." Bolvar's word was calm, and as quiet as he could make it, but it was law. "I think that's all I can tolerate of you, Ner'zhul. The same for all of you. Leave." And so it was that, in a single word, the assembly faded all at once, and the trio of minds that had so plagued Bolvar with their ideas and their selfishness were nothing but new memories for him.

As he sat, alone and in the dark with closed eyes, Bolvar pondered his own question, one which the spirits could not answer. There were few who could, for it was a very particular question. "What can change the nature of a man?" To this, he had no answers, but he knew that it was possible to do. He knew this, because Bolvar Fordragon had died above that icy Throne, and what was reborn into that body was not the same thing that had inhabited it previously. Perhaps he should bring Tirion back to guide him? Or perhaps Ner'zhul had actually been on the right track, and there was some deeper meaning to his mutual prison with the undead that he needed to understand.

It was a very particular question, and only one lord of death remained to answer it. There were few who could even understand it, and fewer still who knew the other side. "There wasn't an escape in the last life, or in this one," he spoke to the Void. "Where does the answer lie?"

Silence was the only answer he claimed.