As Harry stepped through the threshold of the temple, half heard whispers filled his ears, and his eyes darted about at unseen shadows. He could sense no undead, but it was as if something was devouring his Light given senses and causing numbness where sensation should be. Impa stayed close behind him, and together they followed Ron through the whispering hall.

"Mmmm, the Ancient Ones, they sense your presence," Kilix said, scuttling on the ceiling below-no, above! Harry. The twisting sensation of the halls made Harry's stomach flip flow, and he tried to keep his composure as they ventured forward.

"I feel the breath of the Old God," Ron growled. "This is madness. I saw that thing die. Watched Hellscream splatter its brains over the ground."

"Dead gods do not truely die," Crok said, his axe in his hands. His wounds from earlier were healed, and to think of how he had cannibalized the Blood Prince made Harry's stomach churn even more. "They lie dreaming within the Halls of Madness, waiting for the day when they shall awaken, and return."

Maraad shook his head, his chin tendrils swaying slightly. "By the Naaru, I wish we had a company of anchorites to cleanse this place."

Fred and George stayed silent, but Harry noticed they were holding hands, watching each other's backs. For all their bickering, the twin mages seemed to implicitly trust one another when things became grim.

They walked down the halls for what seemed an age, until they came to a large torch lit chamber.

"Hault!"

Ron jerked to a halt, and out of the shadows stepped a male human and a troll in bright robes with madding patterns down the hems. "Who trespesses in the Halls of our master?"

"Mmmm, I have brought a Prophet of the Ancient One," Kilix said, dropping down between Ron and the strangers. "Jedoga will wish to see these ones, mmm, yes."

"Bloody hell, there's people living down here?" Ron demanded, edging around Kilix so he could get a clear shot.

The man glared at Ron, raising a staff in a warding gesture. "We are the Harbingers of Doom! We have heard the Whispers, and obey! Who are you, child?"

"Mmm, he is the Prophet," Kilix declared. "He has seen the Thousand Maws. They call him Godslayer."

"Oh?" the female troll stepped forward, peering at Ron. "Dis one be a servant of the Old Gods as well?"

"Bugger you!" Ron snarled, his off hand igniting in flame as he raised Asuega. "I serve the Spirits, not a dead god!"

"Hmph. Well, perhaps we should allow Jedoga to decide their fate," the man said. He motioned Kilix forward. "Take them to the Chamber of Visions. Jedoga communes with the Herald."

Harry edged around the man and troll, keeping his sword ready. What were members of the Horde and Alliance doing in a temple of the Dark Gods?

"Cultists," Fred whispered as they moved down a passage lit by braisures. "The Twilight's Hammer."

"Twilight's Hammer?" Harry asked.

George blanched, glancing back over his shoulder where the two watchers had resumed their positions to guard the temple entrance. "People who have given themselves over to the service of the Old Gods. They heard the whispers, and went mad, or they seek power, and the dark gods can give it. This is where we'll find the Infinite Dragonflight."

"Are they servants of the Old Gods?" Ron demanded, shivering. "That would make too much bloody sense."

"They are servants of one who seeks to become an Old God," Fred replied. She shook her head. "I will say no more. It hasn't happened yet, and we'd best bloody well hope it doesn't."

As they went down the passage after Kilix, they could hear chanting in a strange, warped tongue. Harry couldn't quite understand the words, but they lingered in his mind. He focused on the Song of the Naaru, driving away the chants, and filling himself with the Light. Maraad was doing the same, and took a position at the rear toward their party from madness.

After moving through the spiraling halls for a time, they went down deeper into the earth, coming at last to a large open chamber. A profane altar covered in blood and growing blackened tendrils lay at the center of the chamber, which was filled with robbed humanoids, chanting together. Around the altar were scattered the remains of dozens of nerubians that had been carved up and offered as dark sacrifices, as well as the corpse of a bronze drake, its head missing.

At the altar stood two figures: one an orc woman naked save for a slick of dark blood on her skin, and a harness of dried bones tied to her that did nothing to hide her nudity. The dripping skull of a drake sat upon her head as some sort of mask, and her eyes glowed with madness.

Beside the orc was a figure that made Ron and the twin mages halt in their tracks. Aeonus the Infinite stood in his humanoid form, his glowing white eyes stark against his skin as black as midnight. He smiled, nodding to the party that had stopped in the entryway. "And so fate draws you all forward once more. You seek to avert disaster, and yet, you are here, in the halls of your enemy. At last you see that the time you thought you still had, has run out."

From behind, Harry heard the sound of tramping feet. He looked back up the twisting staircase to see infinite dragonspawn walking down the steps towards them, weapons at the ready. The party spilled out into the chamber, taking up a defensive circle.

"Mmmm, what is this, Jedoga?" Kilix demanded, his eyes spinning about wildly as the Infinite Dragons closed in. "These are not servants of the Ancient One. They are usurpers, mmm, servants, not the master."

"Yogg Saron sleeps once more, nerubian," the orc woman laughed. "And the Infinite Dragonflight offers power now! They seek the same as us: for time to end, and our masters to rise and consume all! We only seek the rising of a different god now: Murozond! The Black Wings that shall shatter the hourglass of time forever and put an end to this miserable existence!"

Aeonus smiled and nodded. "Indeed. And for that to happen, I require two sacrifices: the blood of-"

As one, three voices roared,"GET STUFFED!" and balls of flame and ice flew from Ron and the twin mages hands to crash into Aeonus. The dragon roared in anger, his form flickering for a moment.

"KILL THEM ALL!" Aeonus raged. "FATE DEMANDS THEIR DEATHS! THE SANDS OF TIME HAVE RUN OUT!"

With shrieks of rage and howls like mad beasts, the cultists in the room rushed forward as from behind the dragonspawn struck. Harry's sword struck down the first cultist to attack him, he saw that she was but a human woman in her middle years. For the first time he took the life of a fellow sentient being, not just a beast or one of the undead. The feeling sicked Harry, but he saw Impa take a slash from a knife at his side, and righteous anger filled him. The Song of the Naaru burst out of Harry like a storm as angelic wings sprang from his back. His sword glowed with power as his eyes blazed with holy fire. Casting aside his doubts, Harry roared a battle cry and cast a dazzling spell, causing the cultists to see nothing but him.

The wave of maniacs broke over Harry, their blades bouncing off his armor. He took a few minor wounds, but with the Light flowing through him they closed quickly. Harry bashed and slashed, blind to all but the foes before him. He had a vague sense that Maraad and Crok had taken up the rear, defending the staircase so that the dragonspawn could not flank him, but Harry's eyes stayed forward, and he stood like a bulwark before his friends.

After what felt like an age but what must have been only minutes, all the cultists that had filled the chamber lay dead or dying. Behind Harry, Crok and Maraad still guarded the staircase, but the dragonspawn were in retreat, unwilling to continue their assault for now.

"It's time to put you down like the mad dog you are, Aeonus," Fred growled, stepping forward beside Harry. She raised her fiery orb, teeth bared in a feral grin.

"Fools!" Jedoga laughed. "The sacrifice has been made! The blood has been spilled in offering! Let our dark master accept it!" Raising her staff, the orc cult leader chanted a dark spell. Harry tried to hurl his shield at her to end it, but before he could he slipped as the blood that slicked the floor began to flow towards Jedoga.

After a moment Harry managed to right himself, but then it was too late. Jedoga grasped the dark sphere of blood in her hands, laughing madly. "Accept my offering, O Murozond the Infinite, Aspect of the End!"

"Your offering is...suitable," Aeonus hissed. He slid behind Jedoga, who suddenly grunted, looking down at her belly. A single white dragon claw stood out from her abdomen, so large that it separated her torso from her legs. "Worry not, mortal. Your life would have ended regardless. But with your own time poured out, fate's circle will be complete here!"

Jedoga coughed up blood, chuckling one last time before toppling over, dead. Aeonus retracted his claw, resuming his fully human form. "And now, let the sins of the past be delivered! Behold your failure, mortals, and despair!"

The blood flowed out of the orb, forming two figures. One was huge and distorted, an amalgamation of three corpse: an abomination. Harry gasped in horror as he recognized the undead: it was Hagrid, the half giant groundskeeper of Hogwarts who had been Ron and Harry's favorite teacher, combined with their former bullies, Crabbe and Goyle, stitched together in as a bloated festering corpse.

"'arrry...Ron...why'd...why'd you leave? We...we waited...but yah never came," Abomination Hagrid groaned. Crabbe and Goyle's heads, sprouting from Hagrid's shoulder and thigh, just blinked stupidly as the extra arms waved about.

The second figure formed into a human figure in black plate, his sword smoldering with black fire as his white dead eyes stared through Harry's soul: it was King Varian Wrynn, now an undead Death Knight. "You failed, children. You failed the Alliance and Stormwind. Now, you will bow down to the Queen of Death, and join my eternal family!"

"What...what madness is this?" Ron gasped, taking a step back. "Hagrid...what the bloody hell happened to you?"

"You-Know-Who came back," Hagrid moaned as he shambled forward on three legs. "He came back different, though. A floating skeleton. Summoned by the Cult o' the Damned, students at Hogwarts who betrayed us all. I tried to fight, honest, but...but ye can't fight the Lich Queen. Ye have to obey her. And she wants you lot dead."

"Screw you old man!" Fred shrieked, throwing fire at the dead Varian. "I don't remember you anyway!"

"They're not real, they're just conjurings," George shouted as he summoned his water elemental. "Tricks Aeonus is playing on us to unnerve us! Fight on!"

"They come again!" Maraad called from behind Harry. "We shall hold them off! You five, deal with this Aeonus and his summonings!"

Harry steeled his nerve and charged, raising his shield to block the blow from the Hagrid Abomination as his sword parried a thrust from the fel blade of Varian. Behind him, Ron and Impa hurled lighting as George and his water elemental shot bolts of frost. The spells hit their foes, but didn't seem to injure the undead much.

Raising her orb, Fred glared at Aeonus. "I'll see my own fate burn before I let you have your way, 'fin! Sick 'em, boy!"

"RETH RETH RETH RETH!" a massive fire elemental burst from Fred's orb, its arms covered in golden bands of power as it grew to nearly fill the chamber. Sweat burst out all over Harry's body as the temperature went from chilled to roasting in an instant. Impa immediately called upon water spirits to soothe and cool Harry and the others, keeping the worst of the heat off of them.

The Death Knight Varian spun away from Harry, raising his blade to strike at the fire elemental. He unleashed a blast of unholy power, but the elemental didn't even seem slowed. It swung a burning fist at the fallen king, who met the attack with his blade. The sword smoked and hissed, glowing red hot as it deflected the blow, but the undead warrior was driven back.

The abominable Hagrid began to smoke and smolder, the ichor and putrid liquids that oozed from him hissing and popping as they began to boil. The undead half giant still struck at Harry though, who forced aside his revulsion and sliced at Hagrid with his sword. Ron circled around to the side, then fired a bolt of lightning directly into the abominations head. Hagrid's beard caught fire and he roared in pain. Seeing his chance, Harry sprang forward, calling upon the Light and stabbing Hagrid in the gut. Rotting offal poured from the wound, and Hagrid sank to his knees and Crabbe and Goyle's heads wailed in agony.

"I'm sorry," Harry whispered. "I'll find a way to save you." Then he plunged his sword into Hagrid's right eye. The abomination flailed about, and Ron bashed Crabbe's head with his mace as Impa shot a bolt of lightning at Goyle's. With a moan, the abomination fell, twitched, then lay still.

Hagrid was dealt with, Fred and George were not idle. The fallen Varian and the fire elemental still battled, but the twin mages circled around to the side, then went back to back. In a on odd, graceful dance, they twirled around each other, balls of fire and ice racing around them like orbiting planets. They came to the end of the dance clasping their left hands as their right hands stretched forward. The ice and fire crashed together, creating a beam of both ice and flame that enveloped the undead Varian for an instant. The Death Knight screamed, his armor freezing, then melting, finally shattering from the drastic shifts in temperature. He fell, a gaping hole in his chest. The fire elemental slammed it's fist down, melting the Death Knight's helmet to his bones. He twitched, then did not stir.

Harry stepped forward, his for companions at his back as he raised his sword in challenge to Aeonus. "Now you die, dragon. Whatever folly you conjured is ended! Now we shall put paid to you once and for all!"

"Conjured, you say?" Aeonus laughed, his too white teeth flashing in the light from the fire elemental. "Oh no. These nightmares are all too real: a glimpse of what has been, and will be. Farewell, mortals. We shall meet again, and then your destiny shall be fulfilled." The dragon dissolved into sand as Harry sprang forward over the corpses, his blade meeting only empty air.

"Damn him," Fred growled. She raised her orb, now a simple glass sphere. "Back in you go, boy. Play time's over."

The fire elemental stretched out a single finger to touch the orb, then began to dissolve like smoke as it was sucked inside. The room went back to it's previous chill, and Fred pocketed her trinket.

"That…" Ron said, staring at Fred. "Was Reth."

George sighed and sat down heavily on a stone bench as Fred cringed and tried to find somewhere to hide. "Oh, um, that? It was a fire elemental, yes, but you know, not just shaman can summon and bind elementals!"

"I know that," Ron growled, stalking over to the mage. He had not yet gotten his full growth, so he was still a good two inches shorter than Fred. Nevertheless, she scrambled away as if she were a child who had been caught using her father's forbidden tools. "But that wasn't just any bloody fire elemental! That was Reth!"

"You know Reth just means burn in Kalimag, don't you?" George said tiredly. "It's a pretty common word and name for a child of Ragnaros."

"I ken that, but she has my elemental!" Ron thrust his hand into his tunic and pulled out a wooden totem carved in the shape of a gryphon's head. "Now give it back before-" he paused, a look of confusion coming over his face. He raised the totem, and a much smaller fire elemental sprang out.

"Reth reth reth," the elemental chanted. It was about the size of Ron, not nearly as big as the nearly twenty foot monster Fred had called forth.

"Bloody hell," Ron muttered, scratching his scalp. "He's right bloody here. But I felt...I felt Reth when you called your elemental forth."

"It is fascinating how moronic you are, fleshling," Crok growled as he stalked forward, dark armor covered in dragon's blood. "But we do not have time to marvel at your stupidity. We must not linger here. Kilix! Come out from your hiding place, and lead us from here!"

A strand of silk dropped from the ceiling, and Kilix slid down, dry washing his hands. "Mmmm, did not know...did not think...mmmm, Jedoga betrays the Ancient One. Prophet, this lowly one apologizes. Mmmm, our life is yours. Our blood must pay for our transgression."

"Oh shut up and just show us how to get the hell out of here," Ron growled, raising his totem and recalling Reth into it.

Kilix scrambled forward towards an exit behind the altar, but Harry fell back to check on Maraad with Impa. The Vindicator was breathing hard, his armor dented and his body bleeding from half a dozen wounds. Impa lay her hands upon Maraad, and he sighed in relief as his wounds closed.

"Are you well?" Harry asked.

Maraad nodded, shouldering his hammer. "I shall live, thanks to the Light and you, Impa. Come. We must hurry, or we shall be left behind. No telling what else lurks in this foul place."

"What of Crok?" Impa asked as they hurried after Kilix. "Was he wounded?"

"Perhaps, but I cannot tell," Maraad said, shaking his head. "I know he is our ally, but his powers and bearing disturb me. He does not flinch, does not falter, only continues on. But when he fights...it is like watching a beast be unleashed. I have no love for wicked dragonspawn, but they are living creatures, if twisted ones. But he cut them down as if he were making wood for a fire. His only pause came when he could not raise their corpses as his vile creations."

"I do not like working with his kind," Harry muttered. "But I know of no better guide in Icecrown, and we must have Quel'Delar. The Highlord seems to trust the Ebon Blade. We must put our faith in his good judgement."

"The Highlord is but a man," Impa said with a sigh. "Even the Prophet Velen has been deceived and lead astray from time to time. And he has far greater experience and wisdom to draw on. Crok is an undead orc. He is twice our foe."

"Are the orcs really our enemies now?" Harry asked. "Impa, we've talked about this. They have repented: we must forgive them."

"To forgive is one thing. To forget the past, another," Impa said, looking ahead and not meeting Harry's eyes.

"To be draenei is to recall the lessons of the past," Maraad agreed. "We harbor no ill will against the orcs. But their lives are short, and their memories, shorter. Their friendship today may mean little tomorrow."

Harry looked up at Crok, striding implacably forward just behind Kilix, and recalled his savaging of Taldaram's corpse, and could not find it in himself to argue. He did not trust Crok in the slightest, and while he might trust the living orcs, he had not lost his mother to them.

As the progressed through the tunnel, the black stone began to be threaded with an odd, shimmering blue metal. Ron ran a hand over the veins of ore, frowning. "What kind o' ore is this, Kilix? This is the wrong rock to be carrying ore. It's volcanic."

"Mmmm, ore? Yes...yes I suppose it could be used as such. Saronite, the two legs call it."

Ron jerked his hand away, his face going pale. "Saronite? It's...made from the Old God?"

Kilix paused before a vein of saronite, bowing before it. "Blood of the Maw, dripping through its prison. Mmmm, for time beyond time, the Thousand Maws lay within its prison, its blood seeping through the walls. Seeding the land with its blessings. It was with saronite that made my people became the nerubian: the many legged. Before, we were the aqir, those of four legs. Mmmm, but the Thousand Maws blessed us with many legs, to more resemble it's holy form."

The party followed Kilix as the passed more silvery blue veins, glowing with a throbbing inner light. "Mmm, before time, before the world, there was nothing: the Void. From the Void came the Ancient ones. From nothing they came, from nothing they shall go, as all reality shall, for all is nothing, and nothing is all. Mmmm, the Ancient One's writhed and struggled. From their juices emerged the aqir: the four legged ones, the first race. They served the Ancient Ones, feeding them, tending them, worshiping them. Mmm, there was no time, no history, only an endless cycle of emergence, feeding, and nothing."

"But then came the Light, the terrible, burning Light. It sought to eradicate the aqir, but the Ancient One's sheltered their spawn in their shadow. We dug beneath the earth, mmmm, deep in the earth, away from the Light. The terrible Light sought to destroy us still, and bound the Ancient Ones in the earth. The shook and struck at the earth, mmmm. In their fury, the forced time into the nothingness, and from that came pain and sorry. Mmm, the Light blinded, and the Light burned, and the Light put the Eye of Wrath in the sky, and eye of Sorrow even when the Eye of Wrath closed."

"The Light formed the two legs, the great curse upon the land. Mmm, the two legs hated us, tried to destroy us, for they were abandoned by the Light. Mmmm, the Ancient Ones gave us gifts, gave us power, for our sacrifices, for our worship. We fought the two legs for a thousand years, but the Eye of Sorrow fell to the Earth and made the tall things grow; the trees. Mmm, the Eye of Sorrow wept, and from its tears came the pools of sorrow that drove back the Ancient ones, and the children of Sorrow, who you two legs call the elves, mmmm, the wicked elves, the terrible elves, the elves that kill and hunt. We fled far away, where the elves could not find us, and sheltered in the shadow of the Thousand Maws, the greatest of the Ancient Ones."

"That is how the world came to be, mmm, and how the world is. Ever shall the children of Light and the children of Nothing battle. Mmmm, for even now the Dead Ones seek to bind the Ancient Ones, for they too are children of the Light, of the sun."

"I have listened to your nonsense, but no more!" Maraad snapped at Kilix. "The Scourge are no children of the Light: they were once the tools of the Burning Legion, tools that proved to be as dangerous to the hand the wielded them as the foe they were to be used against. The Naaru made all and brought order to the Universe. Your Ancient Ones are nothing but mockeries of creation, brought into existence by those that choose to walk the path of evil instead of the way of the Light."

"You have your stories, two legs, and we, ours," Kilix replied. "Mmm, I wonder, what are your Naaru hiding from you? Mmmm, have they brought you good, or sorrow?"

Harry shook his head. "The Light hides nothing. You are blinded by your masters, condemned to serve the god of death. Walk in the Light, Kilix. Then your people shall be free, used no more as servants of the Scourge or as fodder for your dark masters."

Kilix chuckled. "Bold words, young two legs. But you are in my masters realm, not yours. Mmmm, I would speak with more respect. Your Light has little power now."

Indeed, the further into the tunnel they went, the more Harry felt the Light fade. He couldn't even sense the undead now, so numbed were his senses. He felt as though he were being smothered slowly, and struggled to breath, to find the Song of Naaru within him, but it was muted and distant, distorted by the evil all around him.

The tunnel widened slightly, and the whispers that had surrounded them since they entered the Temple grew in intensity, so much so that Harry felt like covering his ears to block out the noise.

"Mmm, they come. The Faceless have sensed you, Prophet. They come to see your visions, to lay bare your mind. Give in, two legs. Give in to the madness, and you may yet be spared." Kilix flung himself down, going prorate and chanting along to the whispers, endless rambling madness that seemed to hold meaning, but in the end, were nothing.

"Oh bloody buggering hell," Ron whispered, raising his mace in two trembling hands. "It's the Faceless ones."

Sk'yahf qi'magg luk sshoq anagg'qen

From the darkness before them, figures emerged. Some tiny, the size of a gnome, others the size of a man, still others bigger than Maraad. Each had writhing tentacles and tendrils that seemed to sprout into many flailing limbs, only to shift back to one single appendage, only to bloom and split again and again. They had no faces, only eyes that burned in a writing mass of tendrils. Some were a single color, purple, pink, fluorescent blue, or shimmering green, others were black as night, and still others shifted through rainbow hues. To gaze upon them was to know madness, to hear them was to lose all meaning.

One faceless, however, stood twenty feet tall and came to the front of the shifting shambling mass, bearing a staff that seemed to be made of a single piece of wood that curved back in on itself in impossible lines that twisted back and forth upon themselves.

"Death and madness," Crok hissed, raising his axe. "We must slay them before they drive us all insane!"

Harry tried to draw his sword, but his fingers were clumsy, and he felt as though he were moving through liquid. Impa reached out for him, and Harry grasped on to her, trying to take strength from his beloved. The giant faceless raised its staff, saying:

Y'knath k'th'rygg k'yi mrr'ungha gr'mula.

Somehow, Harry knew what it meant: Truth lies in death, your dreams shall end.

Harry wept, clinging to Impa as madness filled his mind.