A/N (from 11/05/2019):
The reveal of the Shadowlands expansion has me more excited than the other expansions, although the wait is the one thing I'm not looking forward to (among many other ARPG/JRPG games I have my eye on). It's going to be a bit of a wait before I can really hammer out SL-era content, but for the time being I have this and two other ficlets I'm going to write before I fall back on BfA-era fics for Visions of N'Zoth/AU fics (Classic, too, if I can find a storyline that interests me). As much as I'd love to get my hands on exploring Shadowlands lore and returning characters (KAEL'THAS!), it's way too early to really dig into it - especially since PTR is a ways off and, as always, subject to change.
This story is part one of a two-part couplet that takes place after the WotLK-era piece, Poison, picking up right after the final line of the story. This was done in a way reminiscent of Samuel R. Delaney's "Dhalgren" (a story I've yet to actually sit down and read past what little preview I could glean off Amazon), whose narrative begins and ends in a circular fashion. Although Virus is far from a mind-screw (although I suppose Bolvar getting his teeth kicked in by Sylvanas might count as one for his more die-hard fans), it does end the same way as it began - that that no-good Sylvanas is nothin' but trouble.
And when next he sees her again, several years later, she comes before him wrapped in a cloak of swirling darkness, walks with the slow, sure steps of a woman who dares to take the gods by the throat and crush them in her hands.
He is not as strong as his knights think him to be. The Helm of Domination is a prison, a conduit between worlds seen and unseen that overlap each other. If there is power to be found in the Lich King, Jailor of the Damned, it is not within himself. He cannot say, with utmost, sincere honesty, he is even worthy of being called king. Immortal, yes, for the dragonfire still burns in his veins regardless of this never-ending winter that is his domain, his tomb, his hell.
But he is no king. He is not even a god.
He is naught but the shell of what once was a man who wears a crown heavy upon his brow, burdened with the screams and cries of the dead ringing eternal in slumber beneath the ice. In this mockery of daylight called warmth.
I will try, he tells himself, body flaring red to blue with an agony that has long since become normal to him.
I have to try. He takes hold of the skull-mounted mace and charges down the steps of the Frozen Throne.
I must.
I must.
I must.
This is not normal. He looks down at the pull on his wrist. The black mist hardening into thin, iron chains.
This is too much. He falls to his knees.
No mortal on Azeroth should be wanting of this much power. He feels her hands grip the Helm, one hand on each side.
It hurts—and she pulls.
It hurts—and ice cracks like a gunshot, the wind blowing soft torture in his face.
It hurts—and screams as the Helm slides off his head. (His is the scream that is loudest of all. It drowns the silence that now settles like the final knell of the world's end upon his brain.)
She holds it aloft— the folds around the eyes, the blue gem upon the brow, the frost caked over from countless storms and high-altitude winds. Turns it over in her hands, one long, slim ear twitching.
"You are unfit to wear this crown," she says. "To wield so much power."
For one brief, horrifying second, the dragonfire winks out with a sputter.
The Helm is in her hands. The gaze in her eyes curious, quaint, hungry.
She could have it all, he thinks. The world will be at her fingertips. Who would stop her?
"That power...will be your prison," he rasps. It is not a fate I would wish on anyone—not even you, he would tell her, In a different world, under different circumstances.
This is not that time.
Light bleeds through the Helm . The gem glows.
Black, misty wings unfurling from her back, she tears the Helm of Domination in half with a shout and flings them onto the floor in front of him .
The sky shatters. Pieces of it descend from the heavens in a glassy rain, wet snow, shooting stars.
Above their heads, above the spires of Icecrown Citadel, a tower hangs upside-down in an unmoving, scarlet vortex.
He stares at her.
She stares back. "...and I will set us all free."
Free, he mouths, and imagines: the Scourge, running free; cities and towns, on fire; people, catching illness and plague that will see them doubled over in fever and die in a matter of hours; pyres, piled with corpses.
The Balance, upturned like a house of cards.
Ruined fingers dig furrows in the snow., closes one by one until they form a fist. A small, red flame flickers anew in his breast, spurts and sparks in his hand.
Trouble, he snarls. You are nothing but trouble.