It was cold, the snow and ice making it difficult for the base's construction to advance as quickly as everyone wanted. But Faith was so enthusiastic that it was hard for people not to share her excitement. In the three weeks since they had landed on Frostfire Ridge, one building had been erected in what had come to be known as Frostwall.

The building was two stories high, built along the lines of Forsaken architecture, which Faith favored. Magic had colored the stones and lumber black, and another spell had made it possible for heat to remain inside the structure, which was a boon to the living people using it.

"It reminds me of the inn we have in Brill," Rotvine told Faith. "Is that what you were thinking of?"

Faith nodded, "I figured it would remind people of home."

She had placed beds on the second floor of the building, using the leaves and twigs of the trees they were cutting down, but performing spells on them so that the branches became larger, the leaves much softer. She and the mages had taken one of the pillows used on the benches and had altered it to fit the bed, before using another spell to duplicate it, so that they would have enough for everyone. The inn now had around twenty beds to accommodate anybody who needed it.

Two other structures were currently being built, and, despite the fact that none of them were architects, they thought the work was moving along well enough, despite the weather.

"It's a good thing we have so much arcane magic around," said Liadrin as she examined the walls that they had put in place to surround their base. "Otherwise, I have no idea how we would have built anything."

"Maybe it would have taken longer, but we would have managed" Thrall told her. He was supervising the building of what Faith had dubbed the Magic Tower. It was to be three stories high, and would encompass portals to various parts of Draenor. Twice already, Khadgar had created a portal from the Alliance's base in Shadowmoon Valley in order to visit them. He had brought lumber and several other things from the draenei settlements in the area. Faith, in turn, had sent back furs and stones that they had mined from a nearby quarry.

"Aren't you a little astounded at the fact that we're trading with the Alliance? Our leaders would blow a fuse if they found out about this."

Thrall shrugged, "It makes sense. We're not here to fight each other for once, so we might as well work together. Don't forget that Faith has a nephew in Shadowmoon Valley."

"Not her real nephew."

"He's Sylvanas' nephew, which basically means that he's Faith's as well."

"They're not married yet."

Thrall chuckled, "I think it's just a matter of time. Faith misses her."

Liadrin gave a nod, "She doesn't really show it. But… I caught her crying the other day. I'd never heard her make a sound like that. Not since…" her eyes veiled for the briefest of moments.

"We all have someone we love on Azeroth. Agra is alone with the children, and I have no idea whether I'm going to see them again. Faith knows better than to show us how she feels. She's a commander now, not some low-level sergeant."

"When I say I caught her crying, I mean I was on the ship to get some more fish, and she was below decks in the shadows. She didn't see me. I didn't see her either, actually, I just heard her."

"You think we'll find a way to get home?"

"Yes, I do. The mages have been working on that since we got here."

It was true. Ever since construction of the base had begun, Faith and the mages had been working on portals. Thrall had seen them more than once huddled together in the caves, making complicated calculations and mapping out star charts with the help of locals.

She was there now, working with Rotvine and Felix, who was surprisingly good with numbers despite his young age. Around them, some of their people were planting a garden with seeds Faith had brought from Azeroth in one of her bags.

Felix had stared at her when she'd done that.

"What possessed you to bring peacebloom and mageroyal seeds to Draenor?" he'd asked.

"Simple. I knew there was a possibility we would come here, and I didn't want to be caught here without herbs to make potions, that's all. I keep these on me at all times in case of an emergency."

"What kind of emergency?" he asked. "I mean, there are herbs here, I saw them."

"Frostweed," she replied. "I don't know what those herbs do yet, I can't just use them in a potion. I need things I know. So I always make it a point to carry basic potion ingredients with me."

"I guess it's a good idea…"

"It is, it's actually a great idea. Especially since it wasn't mine."

Rotvine began to laugh, "Let me guess, Sylvanas had this idea a hundred years ago."

"Well, thirty years ago, but yes actually."

"Unbelievable. She really is your reference for everything, isn't she?"

"She's been the one constant in my life, except for the one year she wasn't." Faith shrugged, "I reference her a lot, because I focused a lot on her when I was alive."

"Honey, you focus a lot on her now."

She didn't deny that, "Anyway, something she said to me once caused me to start carrying around a bag of herbs when I was away from home. It's served me well." She went back to the star chart she was holding, adding notes to it, "A lot of what I know about star placement in this part of the Twisting Nether is from what I learned in Outland. I wonder if that'll affect our calculations."

"Khadgar said it shouldn't," said Rotvine. "We're here. I don't think we can accidentally teleport to another planet, especially since we're in another dimension."

"This is giving me a headache… and I don't even get headaches anymore!"

"Look, we're going to figure it out. Even if we don't, you can bet that the best mages on Azeroth are looking for a way to open their own portal to get to us." Rotvine looked at her, not really surprised to see that she was showing mild signs of panic. To anybody else, she would have looked normal, but since he knew her… "You will see Sylvanas again, you have to believe that."

Iron Horde orcs in the Arathi Highlands.

As much as Sylvanas hated to admit it, there was no questioning the veracity of the messenger's statements.

"How many, did you say?"

"I don't know. It could be as many as a hundred."

A hundred. A hundred members of the Iron Horde on her doorstep. "We'll have to make sure that people can differentiate between them and friendly orcs in case they try to infiltrate."

"How, though?" asked Nathanos.

"I'll leave that up to you, Nathanos. Once you've come up with an idea, let me know." She wished Faith were here. It would have been so much simpler with her there.

I miss you.

"I suppose we could have them use passwords of some kind."

"Passwords, really. Because you don't think that it's easy for someone to pick up a password just like that. If I wanted to infiltrate an organization with a password, I'd be able to do so in a couple of days."

Nathanos stared at her, unused to that level of sarcasm coming from her. "What else have you got in mind?"

"Like I said, I'll leave that up to you." She shook her head, unwilling to admit that, for the first time in her life, she had no idea what to do. She knew that she could deal with the Iron Horde: a couple of batches of new Plague would take care of them nicely. But nobody would trust her again if she were to use that.

And if Faith found out…

Besides, before she could deal with them, she'd have to find them.

"Just find me one of them and bring it to me."

"That easy, huh?" asked Nathanos. He had sensed a change coming over Sylvanas. Only two days had passed since their return from the Blasted Lands, but he could tell that his queen was antsy. She was never going to admit it to anybody, but she was worried sick about Faith, and until the two of them were reunited, he feared that he wouldn't get much out of her.

The garrison in Shadowmoon Valley was magnificent to behold. Nestled between fragrant trees, it already looked like a pretty little town, despite only being half-built.

"They've really made something of this place," said Faith, impressed by what she was seeing.

"Hey, don't sell yourself short," Khadgar told her. "You've managed to build a huge inn already. Most of us are still sleeping in tents."

Faith smiled, "You have a bit of a milder climate here than we do up in Frostwall. While the Forsaken don't mind the cold, those of us who are living would have died, even if they'd stayed on the ship, because it's colder out on the water. We couldn't keep them living in tents."

She had brought five mages with her to Shadowmoon Valley, in Lunarfall, on a mission that seemed insane, yet deceptively simple.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" asked Rotvine suddenly. "It seems too easy."

"Of course it seems easy. But we haven't tried yet, have we?"

"Tried what exactly?" asked one of the Alliance mages, a high elf named Cerynne.

"To open a portal home."

"What, to Azeroth? Just like that?" She looked at Faith skeptically, "How are we supposed to do that?"

"That's just the thing, I want us to try it. It occurred to me earlier that we hadn't attempted to open a portal. We all know how to get home if we need to."

"Yeah, of course," said Rotvine. "I can get to Undercity from anywhere on Azeroth. But we're not on Azeroth."

"And if it were that easy to make a portal to Azeroth from another world, the Burning Legion wouldn't be needing to resort to so many wars in order to get to us," added Khadgar.

Faith nodded, "I know what you're saying, but we are from Azeroth. We should be able to go home at any time, shouldn't we? We're connected to the magic there."

"I don't know if it's going to be that simple," murmured Khadgar. "But I suppose that we should give it a try. We don't have to step through any portal we create. We'll see an image of where it opens up anyway."

"What if it opens up in the middle of a star?" asked Cerynne.

"It shouldn't, unless we vastly misdirect our energies. If we focus enough on Dalaran, we should be able to create a portal there."

"How did you do it when you were on Outland, Khadgar? I seem to recall that you were able to create a portal back to Azeroth from there?"

Khadgar glanced at Rotvine, "It took a lot of calculations, I can tell you that. And the first few times I tried, I completely failed. I ended up creating a portal directly into the Twisting Nether, which was terrifying… imagine if I'd actually stepped through it."

Faith's eyes widened, "I'd rather not…"

Khadgar chuckled, putting a hand on her shoulder, "We're all a lot more experienced now than we were when we were on Outland. I mean, you've killed Arthas since then – it's huge. And you died, which gave you more of a power boost than you care to admit."

"I haven't –."

"Yes you have. Sylvanas all but infused you with her life's essence when she raised you. You're more powerful now than you were then, which means that you are invaluable to us. Please don't forget this."

Not knowing how to respond to that, Faith chose to keep quiet. After a while, Khadgar gathered several other mages, and all of them went to one of the clearings near Lunarfall to see what they could do about the portal.

She pulled a star chart from her bag, examining it.

"You think we have the coordinates right?"

Khadgar gave a nod, "We should. It's the same coordinates I used when I teleported home from Outland."

"Should we focus on Dalaran?" asked Felix.

"Yes. All of us have made portals to Dalaran before. This is pretty much the same principle. You just need to account for time and space."

"Time and space," repeated Rotvine. "How are we supposed to factor that into our spellwork?"

"Focus," said Faith.

Focus. It wasn't easy. Gathering ten mages in order to make one portal was already difficult under the best of circumstances, because people never thought about exactly the same thing. The fact that they were trying to create a trans-dimensional portal that also went through different timeways was next to impossible.

"All right, everyone," said Khadgar. "Now."

Nathanos walked through the halls of Undercity, noticing how much quieter it was than usual. Half the city's officers were patrolling Lordaeron, keeping an eye out for the Iron Horde. The others were patrolling the city itself, while several others guarded Sylvanas as per his orders.

"You do realize I don't need you to protect me, right?" she asked him, surprised when he doubled the number of deathguards in the Royal Quarter.

"Faith's not here, so someone has to do it."

"Is that what you think Faith does? Protect me?" She glanced at him, "Why are you so focused on me all of a sudden?"

"You're my queen."

"I've been your queen for years, and you've only recently started to focus on me. What's going on?"

He shrugged, "Since Faith is gone –."

"Since Faith is gone, what?"

The look he gave her might have been the glowing one of the undead, but Sylvanas read it like an open book.

"What in the world are you thinking about?"

He shook his head, knowing better than to say anything about it. Instead, he changed the subject, "Have you heard from Lor'themar?"

"They haven't been able to create a portal yet, although they've tried twice."

"Do they have any ideas as to how they're going to get it to work?"

"I'm sure they do, but they didn't share it with me."

"Did they think about getting some Sands of Time?"

"Of course they did, but it's not easy for them to get, is it? They're trying to find another way of opening it."

"But if Garrosh used the Sands of Time to get the portal open… I mean, if we don't have any on hand, how are we supposed to get our people home?"

Sylvanas closed her eyes briefly against the question. She had been asking herself that ever since Lor'themar had left Undercity. She worried that they wouldn't be able to do anything. She'd even gone as far as to write to Chromie, but so far hadn't heard anything back. "They'll come home," she said. "In the meantime, why don't you update me on the Iron Horde?"

Nathanos winced, "Ah… well, I have some good news and some bad news about that, Your Majesty."

She waited, blinking once.

"The good news is that we know which area they're in. They're in Silverpine Forest now. The bad news is that they're heading this way, and leaving a trail of deaths in their wake."

"Deaths?"

"I sent people to intercept them. Only one of them came back, and he wasn't really in any kind of shape to talk. I don't know how he got away from them."

"He was tortured?"

"That's one way of putting it. More like he was mutilated. He was missing three fingers and his tongue."

His tongue? She raised her eyebrows.

"The one who came back was a troll, not a Forsaken."

"So you're sending Vol'jin's people to fight the Iron Horde in Silverpine Forest?"

Nathanos shook his head, "He volunteered to go with the hit team. I bet that, at the moment, he wishes he'd never heard of us."

"Where is he now?"

"With the healers. They're doing the best they can with him, but they're saying he'll never be able to use his right hand again."

She nodded once, then got to her feet, making her way to where the healers were located. With Faith's help, they had created quite a nice area for themselves in one of the far corners of the Apothecarium.

Green moss grew in a round patch on the ground and against the walls, along with tiny orange plants. In several trays, someone had planted peacebloom, mageroyal, briarthorn, and kingsblood, plants that Faith had often used in potions. A couple of small tree trunks had been brought from outside to make a sitting area for the healers, and Sylvanas saw with some surprise that moss and plants were also growing out of them.

The troll was currently laying on a hammock that had been magically suspended in midair next to one of the walls. He was covered from head to toe in bruises, and a clean white bandage had been wrapped around what was left of his hand.

He looked over when Sylvanas approached, and tried to get to his feet, but she waved him down.

"I know you can't talk," she said. "But I wanted to ask you what happened when you were with the Iron Horde. Be still." She gently laid two fingers on his forehead, letting her own brand of magic go through him. With it, she saw into his mind. The glimpse was brief, but enough. She pulled away from him, a fine sheen of sweat beading up on her forehead as she did so.

"Did you just… I didn't know you could read just anyone's mind, Your Majesty," said one of the healers.

Sylvanas spared the female a glance. "It's a recent development," she told her, keeping her voice low. She had no desire to talk about the experiment she had conducted just the previous evening with one of her remaining Val'kyr. She turned back to the troll, "You heard these orcs talking about their orders to kill all of the Forsaken?"

He nodded.

"Orders that came from Garrosh Hellscream? They actually said that?"

Another nod.

"What does that mean?" asked Nathanos, who had joined her.

"It means that Garrosh Hellscream has a longer arm than I thought he did. I wonder whether he's given similar orders to –." The troll was nodding vigorously. "He did? They mentioned it?"

He nodded again, pointing to himself, and to one of the other healers, a tauren, before running one of the fingers of his good hand over his throat.

"He's ordered the Iron Horde to kill Forsaken, trolls, and tauren."

The troll pointed at her insistently.

"Oh. And me."