Kinndy sat on a bench at the perimeter of Krasus' Landing and fidgeted. She had barely slept the night before; nerves and fear and excitement rolled around in her stomach like a bad meal.
Her advisors in the Kirin Tor were variously alarmed and disappointed by her interest in joining Lady Jaina in Icecrown. They sent her along to the Council immediately, proclaiming that they didn't have the authority to make a decision about her potential for re-admission.
The Council debated for a full day. Kinndy lost the right to return to the Kirin Tor. She could return to Dalaran, but she would never study there again.
She laid awake every night for a month arguing with herself. Despite what she told Jaina on the day Theramore fell, Kinndy hadn't decided what she was going to do right away. Ultimately, what Roxie the mail carrier said was right: Jaina was one of the most powerful living mages in the world. Studying under her was an opportunity too good to pass up, regardless of where she lived or what else she was besides a great mage. Kinndy would regret it for the rest of her life if she didn't go for it.
When she told her parents that she would accept Jaina's offer, her mother burst into tears. Her father gave her a fancy writing kit and postage, and made her promise to write them every week. Then her mother went out and bought her a jacket, hat, and mittens, fretting over the colour.
"You're certainly not wearing black," she declared. "You're too cheerful for that. Do you like this lavender? You'll give that gloomy place a spot of colour."
The coat fit a little big but it made Kinndy feel like she was wearing a cozy blanket, which she liked immediately.
So here she was, waiting for her escort to Icecrown Citadel.
She didn't have long to wait. Kinndy had seen Death Knights before; hollow-eyed, frowning people moving briskly through the city, ignoring everyone else.
This one, despite having the same gaunt look and forbidding black armour, waved to her as soon as his skeletal gryphon landed.
"Hello, Miss Sparkshine." He had that weird, echo-y Death Knight voice but his tone was friendly. "Lady Jaina sent me to retrieve you. My name is Martin Starkweather." He held out his hand and Kinndy gingerly shook his gloved fingertips.
"Um, it's nice to meet you."
She tried not to stare. The guy was human, but his eyes glowed pale blue and his skin was somewhere between yellow and grey, clinging to the planes and angles of his face. He cocked his head at her.
"Is that all you're bringing?"
Kinndy tightened her grip on her two bags. "It's, uh, it's all I have. Just my books and things and some clothes."
At this, Starkweather turned and pulled a small bundle from the saddlebag on his skeletal gryphon.
"A gift from the Lady King," he said. "She thought you would need them."
The bundle was a pair of goggles with padding around the edges.
"Gets cold flying up there. I don't feel it but you will."
"Oh. Yeah. Ha ha, I guess you wouldn't. Uh. Thank you. Thanks." Kinndy put them on.
Starkweather secured her bags, mounted, and helped her up into the saddle behind him.
"Hang on, Miss Sparkshine."
Kinndy watched Dalaran shrink behind them. She tried to suppress a shudder and failed.
"Should've brought you a scarf too," said Starkweather, evidently mistaking the shudder for a shiver. Kinndy consciously made minimal contact with his armoured back and hung on to the edges of his tassets.
The flight took a little over two hours. Kinndy twisted around as they began to descend but Dalaran had vanished to the south. Before her, Icecrown Citadel loomed like a tombstone.
An enormous frostwyrm circled above the highest tower and another one wrapped around a smaller turret. Maybe it was asleep. Do they sleep? A lot of smaller things that Kinndy didn't look too closely at scampered or glided around the building on the parapet walks, on the glacier beyond, on the bits of dark stone that protruded through the ice.
"I'll show you to your room," Starkweather said. "And then the Lady King will meet you."
"Thank you."
Kinndy's 'room' was huge. It didn't look like it was originally meant to be living quarters but whatever it had been was now converted into an apartment. Aside from the somber colour scheme, it was pretty nice. And it had a window, which she hadn't expected. It was tall and narrow, fitting the overall shape of the building, but the thickness of the Citadel wall meant there was a Kinndy-sized window seat. She touched the glass; it had two panes. They were perfectly clear and gave Kinndy a view of… well, not very much. At least it let in light.
Jaina arrived promptly, leaning on her cane, bright and smiling. "Are you hungry?"
"Er," said Kinndy, who had been too nervous to eat breakfast, "a little, yeah."
"We'll start with the mess hall, then."
Everything in the Citadel was black or dark blue or slightly lighter blue and sometimes silver. There were scary-looking tapestries on the walls and the main decorative theme seemed to be giant spikes. Kinndy expected it to be colder but the temperature was pleasant.
Kinndy got a sandwich in the mess hall. The number and variety of people in the hall surprised her, especially given the early hour. About half of them looked like adventurers- people in elaborate armour, carrying weapons. The rest of them appeared to be civilians and that surprised her too.
"It's summer," said Jaina when Kinndy expressed curiosity about the number of people in the hall so early. "There is no true night, only twilight and then daylight again. It can change your sleeping patterns. You might find yourself awake longer than you intend."
Kinndy remembered the frostwyrms. "Do undead thi- people sleep?"
"Sometimes. It's healthy to let the mind rest, even for the undead."
They moved on.
"There's so many… people in here," said Kinndy as some kind of lanky undead thing loped past them up the hall. "I thought it would be more empty."
"There aren't many permanent residents, but between the Scourge and living visitors, the population is usually a little larger than Stormwind."
"That's a lot." Kinndy shuddered.
"That's why we need to control them."
By 'we', Lady Jaina means her, thought Kinndy. The enormity of her mentor's role began to dawn on her.
Lady Jaina introduced her to several people- living and undead- and Kinndy attempted to greet them all with civility.
"People come and go," said Jaina, "but if you're looking to meet a partner for study or sparring, you should be able to find someone."
"How?" Kinndy stared after a trio of Death Knights, followed by dutiful ghouls.
"We keep a census. The front door and the eyrie are the only ways in and someone is always monitoring them. There is a list of arrivals and departures, their specialties and intentions."
"Aren't there secret entrances? Side entrances?"
"There were. I had most of them sealed. There is also the entrance to Azjol'Nerub, but few people from the surface show interest in going down there and similarly, the Nerubians mostly aren't keen on coming above ground. But it is monitored, by the Nerubians and by the Scourge."
Kinndy's skin crawled. "I thought that was just a rumour."
Jaina stopped in front of a tall wooden door. Warm light spilled into the hallway from beneath it, not the cold blue light of the frostfire torches that lit most of the Citadel. "Not at all. The commander of the Nerubian Icecrown unit is a friend of mine. I would introduce you but she's conducting some business among her people at the moment."
"A friend?"
Jaina looked down at her. "Yes. A friend and a fierce ally."
Kinndy thought about the rumours she had written off as fancy and exaggeration. How many of them were true, or even half true? Lady Jaina had tried to warn her.
"Is the Frozen Throne real?"
Jaina nodded. "It's on the roof, up a very long stairway. Would you like to see it?"
While Kinndy pondered her answer, Jaina pushed the door open and Kinndy found herself looking at a sprawling arcane laboratory.
"No, thank you," she whispered. "This is… this is wow."
"This is where you will perform your practical studies."
The lab had a vaulted ceiling- it had to be at least thirty feet high- with book-laden shelves climbing all the way up two of the walls. There was equipment that Kinndy recognized from the labs of mages who conducted advanced research; there were tools she couldn't name, materials she had only heard about, and best of all, there was an impressive mosaic of carbon scoring, stains, corrosion, and candle wax in the middle of the floor. That meant the lab was functioning. There was work being done here regularly.
"In here?" she said. "I mean, this looks like… your lab?"
Jaina nodded. "It's shielded and reinforced. Every mage makes mistakes and it's best to have them contained. Here, you can make all the mistakes you need to."
Kinndy stared around her. "What if I make a really big mistake?"
"Failure is a poignant teacher."
"I mean, what if I damage something in here?"
"That won't be an issue. Let me show you. Hold this for a moment, please." Jaina handed her cane to Kinndy, rolled up her sleeves, and gestured with both hands.
The magic that bloomed around Kinndy was so powerful she could taste it. It was like nothing she had ever seen: layers upon weaves upon arrays, slowly rotating strings of symbols, interlaced and intersecting. The spellcage made a dome around Kinndy and Jaina that took up the middle of the room, where the floor was damaged. The walls, the ceiling, the books, all the furniture, and the doorway were outside the shielding.
"Wow." Kinndy gaped. She couldn't hear any outside sounds. There was no draft from beneath the door or heat from the hanging lanterns. "This is crazy!"
Jaina moved her fingers and the spellcage deactivated. "Well, it has to hold… a lot of innovation and disappointment. Every mage makes mistakes or encounters unexpected results."
Kinndy returned her cane. "That spell was amazing!"
"Thank you. It's a composite spell with eight component patterns."
"Eight? And you called it up just like that?!"
Jaina twitched her fingers and smiled. "Well, we worked an on/off switch into the outer pattern so that preparing the shields doesn't take longer than the actual work."
We, thought Kinndy. Who is 'we'?
From behind her, someone said: "I had a thought-"
Kinndy jumped a foot in the air and screamed a little.
That voice had the same sepulchral harmonics of the Death Knights, but with an added sibilant rasp that raised the hair on Kinndy's neck. Both Lady Jaina and the owner of the voice looked down at her.
"You scared me," said Kinndy defensively, one hand pressed to her chest.
"Good," said the man. Kinndy recognized him- he had been with Jaina on the day Theramore fell.
Jaina folded both hands atop her cane. "Kinndy, this is my teacher and casting partner Kel'Thuzad. Kel'Thuzad, this is my apprentice Kinndy Sparkshine."
Kinndy felt a little warning would have been nice. On the other hand, she had known he was at the Citadel, hadn't she? That was not a rumour nor an exaggeration. Kel'Thuzad's continued existence was an on-going perturbation to the Kirin Tor.
"Delighted." He did sound delighted and Kinndy was quite certain that wasn't good.
"Hi," Kinndy squeaked.
Aside from his dizzying dark aura, Kel'Thuzad looked like a normal (albeit undead) human man and somehow Kinndy was disappointed. His robes were black and violet with some sinister designs on them, but he was blandly handsome, had shoulder-length silver hair, a tidy beard, and no apparent inhuman features. He reminded her of some of the older mages in Dalaran, then she remembered he had once been on the Council of Six.
"Uh, Lady Jaina? I heard stuff in Dalaran," Kinndy said hesitantly, edging closer to Jaina and away from Kel'Thuzad. "Mostly dumb stuff. Obviously not true stuff."
"I'm sure you heard a lot in Dalaran." Lady Jaina rolled her eyes.
"But you do practise necromancy."
Jaina was still for a moment. "I am the Lich King." Her expression was soft but her words were firm. "It's more than a title. I had a suite of powers thrust upon me, magic that I had no training to understand or control. You know how dangerous it is for any mage to practise magic that they don't understand. And I knew nothing of necromancy."
"That makes sense." Kinndy could grudgingly accept the wisdom in that. And it didn't mean that Lady Jaina enjoyed being a necromancer.
"This all must be overwhelming for you right now. I don't expect you to be comfortable immediately."
"Yeah, it's- it's a lot," said Kinndy. She tried to summon the giddy resolve she felt when she first declared her intentions to Jaina, or the rational argument that Jaina was a phenomenal mage who wanted to teach her.
Kinndy darted a look sideways at Kel'Thuzad. He was thumbing through a book, ignoring them. And Kinndy realized that this creature who appeared as a man was Jaina's equal. Well, more or less. Kinndy had to acknowledge that Kel'Thuzad was a talented mage. You didn't make it to the Council of Six if you sucked at magic.
Kinndy felt sick with nerves when she made her case before the Council, but here, in this casual setting, between two extraordinary mages- one benevolent, one considerably less so- the gravity of her choice finally settled in. This was a moment that history would remember; these people weren't footnotes.
And Kinndy hadn't stumbled here on accident; she had invited herself in.
Jaina didn't teach her anything that afternoon. Distantly, Kinndy appreciated that her mentor understood how overwhelmed she was and how that wasn't an ideal learning environment, but without Jaina as her focus, Kinndy didn't know what to do with herself. She would have felt best hanging around Jaina in the lab- maybe reading, or possibly looking at (but not touching) the weird and fascinating things on the shelves- but she didn't want to appear clingy.
Also Kel'Thuzad was in the lab too.
Kinndy excused herself to 'look around' and made for her new room, where she intended to hide. She could read there, review some notes, maybe journal a little, write a letter to her parents, decide where to store her clothes-
Instead, she crawled into bed and willed herself to sleep.
The following morning, Kinndy got up, did her morning routine, then sat on her bed and did nothing. Her anxiety from the day before was compounded with a new set of anxieties. It was enough to freeze her in place for nearly an hour.
Hunger finally drew her out. She made her way to the mess hall- getting only a little bit lost on the way- found some kind of stuffed pastry and an apple, and set off to find somewhere to eat and think.
This was her home now. The unfamiliarity would pass. She would become used to it and she would gain confidence.
But that was in the future and right now, Kinndy didn't even know where to go to be alone. She knew all the good places in Dalaran to pout, cry, think, and study. The Citadel must have places like that too.
After a lot of wandering, she found herself on a set of stairs that curved up the outside of the building. There was no banister but Kinndy wasn't afraid of heights. She sat on the edge and kicked her heels against the black stone, staring into the distance and munching her apple.
Icecrown didn't even seem real. The colours were so stark: white ice, black rock. The only variation was in the sky and Kinndy had never seen such a huge sky. It felt silly to think; the sky was the sky no matter where she was in the world, and yet it wasn't.
There was the Theramore sky: calm bright blue, towering with clouds, fringed with mist in the morning, pink sunrise reflected on sparkling water. And the Dalaran sky: above and below, interrupted by mountains to the north and hazy lumpy hills to the south, cluttered with towers, and the constant flitting shapes of aerial comings and goings.
So the Icecrown sky was different. It was blocked by the Citadel behind her, but it unfolded in endless pale blue in every other direction. There were jagged hills or maybe distant mountains like black lace along the horizon. And that was all. It was empty and the huge emptiness of it was oppressive.
"May I join you?"
The voice was gentle and Kinndy managed not to jump.
A night elf woman stood several steps below her. She was dressed in white with a veil over her eyes and a single antler on her headdress.
"Sure," said Kinndy.
The woman settled on the step below her and likewise dangled her legs over the edge.
"What a lovely day," said the elf. She leaned back on her hands and turned her face up to the sky.
"It is! I didn't expect it to be so nice here. I mean, I know it gets cold in the winter, but this is perfect weather."
"Where are you from?"
"Dalaran." After a beat, she added: "And Theramore. How about you?"
"From an old, quiet place. We call it Val'Sharah."
"I've never heard of Val'Sharah. But I haven't travelled very much. What are you doing in Icecrown?"
"I'm a tourist."
"Really? I mean- I don't mean that in a negative way, I just didn't know people would come here to see-" She gestured- "-this. There's not very much to see."
"True, but it has its charm. There is peace in the space here."
Kinndy kicked her feet and contemplated the horizon. "Yeah. You're right. It's like… there's nothing in the way. It is kinda peaceful." She turned to look at the woman. "My name's Kinndy. What's yours?"
"I am Ysadéan."
"What a pretty name! I love night elf names." She caught sight of two long strips of fabric draped down the front of her gown. Each had a repeating pattern: a white full moon, a series of waning crescents, a black new moon, a series of waxing crescents, on and on in sequence. "Are you a druid?"
"I am."
"I haven't met very many druids. I met a tauren druid once- she accidentally wandered close to Theramore and the guards caught her. Lady Jaina gave her a meal and let her go back into the marsh. What kind of druid are you?"
"I am a Druid of the Antler."
"That makes sense."
"You've heard of my order?"
"No, but you're wearing an antler."
Ysadéan touched it gently. "Yes… Her sister always drops first. This one; she is stubborn."
"Oh! You grow them! Cool. I didn't know female deer could grow antlers."
Ysadéan smiled again. "Some of us can. Why is it that you're here, Kinndy?"
"I'm Lady Jaina's apprentice. In magic. In arcane magic. Not in, y'know, her other stuff. Her other magic. I'm her arcane apprentice."
"Ah, how exciting! You must be very powerful."
"Well, I was. Or am, I guess. Relatively speaking, I was the most powerful student in Dalaran. But here it's different. There's Lady Jaina and her casting partner, and a whole lot of adventurers who are professionals and have been practising magic longer than I've been alive so it's a new experience. Humbling experience."
"Humility is a good quality in a student. It is… wise to recognize that there are things one doesn't know."
"I try to think of it that way. Like, I'm never going to understand a druid's magic. But you still use magic. Does that make sense?"
Ysadéan nodded. "Even among druids, each of us understands some magics better than others."
"So what kind of magic does an Antler Druid do?"
"Among the kal'dorei there is a song that tells of us. Would you like to hear it?"
"Yes, please!"
Ysadéan sat up, folded her legs beneath her, and steepled her fingers.
"Druids of the Fang and Claw, Druids of the Talon-
hunters all, fierce and wild, the ones our defense rests on.
Druids of the Balance, between the moon and sun,
Weave together night and day, and remind us we are one.
Druids of the Grove, as ancient as the land,
strong and kind, will mend their wounds so they may hunt again.
But we are of the Antler, of the hunted and the swift,
the colour of the moonlight, and silent as the mist.
We dwell in deepest wilderness, guards of paradise,
And though we flee, if brought to bay, fiercely we will fight."
Kinndy clapped enthusiastically. "That was wonderful!"
"You forgot a few lines."
Kinndy screeched and almost lost her balance on the edge. Ysadéan grabbed her belt to steady her. Kel'Thuzad crouched down between them.
"Children of the dead they are, fawns without a sire,
In willful darkness still they wear their Father's bright attire..."
He cocked his head at Ysadéan.
"And there's something about bones- wicked seeds in sacred ground- something about a new moon? Rising again, forbidden knowledge- exile. That's my favourite version. But you're much older than I, Malorne'adin, and if I can't remember it, surely you can't be expected to either."
Ysadéan smiled. "The rhyme does lose nuance when spoken in Common."
"Apparently it loses verses too." He stood up. "Come, Kinndy. Jaina wants to meet with you."
Kinndy jumped up to follow him, but turned to give Ysadéan an apologetic look and waved to her. "It was nice talking to you!"
"You as well, Kinndy."
She caught up with Kel'Thuzad and glared at him. "That was rude."
He waved a hand. "She already hates me."
"What did you do to her?!"
"Directly? Nothing. Indirectly… Summoned a big ol' demon lord that killed her patron god thousands of years ago."
Kinndy gasped. "Archimonde! Oh... Her god was Malorne the stag. That makes sense now."
"You know your history."
"Yeah. I read your biography before I came here."
He glanced down at her. "Biography?"
"It's in the History section at the Dalaran Library, filed under Traitors."
He laughed. "Wonderful. I'd love to read it."
Kinndy frowned at the floor, then eyed him thoughtfully. "If you stop sneaking up on me, I'll borrow it next time I'm there."
"I'm not 'sneaking up on you'. You lack situational awareness."
"All right, so I won't get it then."
"That won't improve your situational awareness. We'll have to work on that."
"We?"
He smiled. "Jaina has never taught an apprentice. I ran a school."
Jaina sat cross-legged on the floor in the lab when Kinndy and Kel'Thuzad arrived. There was a partially completed spell diagram drawn out in chalk before her, a stack of books at her side, a variety of writing implements, and a bag of rocks.
"Good morning."
"Good morning, Lady Jaina."
"Please, it's just Jaina from now on."
"Okay."
Jaina gestured to the diagram. "What do you think?"
Kinndy hesitated. Kel'Thuzad leaned down and stage-whispered, "I think it should be drawn in blood."
"Ew! No!"
"Why not?"
Kinndy narrowed her eyes. "Because it's some kind of compass spell and the iron in blood can influence the outcome." She paused. "And you just said that to be creepy."
"Good answer."
"Barring the material used to describe it," said Jaina, "what else can you tell about the spell?"
Kinndy stood beside Jaina. There was no 'good morning class, let's begin', no 'flip to chapter six', or 'let's review the homework from last week'. Kinndy's mind went blank.
"Um. Uh… Okay. It's- it's directional… It's based on a wayfinding spell but there's…" She pointed to the empty centre of a circle connected to the main, four-pointed diagram. "Something missing here. I don't know what that is. And this part here is, um, is basic conjuration but- wait, is this some kind of portal?"
Jaina nodded. "It's a Hearthstone spell."
"Wow." Kinndy understood the concept but had never seen the spellwork that went into creating a Hearthstone. Now the bag of small rocks made sense and she remembered Roxie's description of portal magic- the need to describe specifically each end of the portal.
"Then that means one part of the spell anchors it to a permanent destination and the other part is like… mobile?"
"Both ends are mobile." Kel'Thuzad knelt down on Kinndy's other side. Once again she felt dizzy between the two mages. "The destination is always the same but it moves in accordance with the planet."
"It does need some rather intense math during its construction though..."
Kinndy swallowed a whimper. "I'm terrible at math."
"I remember you had some trouble with Conjuration?"
Kinndy looked down at the beautiful diagram. "It's my worst subject."
"We'll leave it for now. But I want you to watch me finish this before we move on to other tasks."
Jaina scooted over to the empty circle and flipped open a book. Kinndy followed. The page showed a table of numbers and after a few minutes (wherein Kinndy's mind retreated to scream in a corner again), she realized the table charted distances. Beyond that, she had no idea what it was for.
Then Jaina began to narrate her actions. She used the table to chart the movement of a destination on Azeroth, building the predicted movement into the spell so that each time the Hearthstone was used, it automatically calculated where it was versus where the set destination was.
"Where does it Hearth to?"
"Here, at the Citadel. It's for you. Travelling in the winter is unpleasant and I know you'll want to visit your parents and friends in Dalaran regularly. I assume you have a Dalaran Hearthstone?"
"Uh... I did but I- I left it in Theramore."
"We'll make you one for Dalaran as well, then."
Jaina continued to explain what she was doing and Kinndy followed her as she scooted and crawled around the design, editing pieces here, changing something there, consulting her books, and making calculations on scrap paper with so many numbers and unfamiliar formulas Kinndy couldn't keep up.
"Just watching this gives me a headache," said Kel'Thuzad.
"Can you actually get a headache?"
"Metaphorically."
Jaina sat back and dusted the chalk off her hands. "There we go. Kinndy, would you do the honours?" She held out a porous white rock perfectly sized for Kinndy's palm. "Right there," she pointed.
Kinndy set the rock in place.
It seemed anti-climatic that Jaina sat cross-legged, with chalk smudges on her skirts, and activated the spell with just a tap of her finger. The lines of the diagram flared bright blue, brightened to white, and then lapsed back to chalk. The stone gave off a soft blue glow when Kinndy picked it up.
"It will get you through most magical shielding as well. If you're in Dalaran and something goes wrong, I want you to be able to get through the Council's defenses and return here safely."
Kel'Thuzad offered a hand to Jaina and pulled her to her feet.
Jaina turned to Kinndy. "Now it's your turn."
Kinndy had no idea what to expect from her first day of apprenticeship but when Jaina put her through tests in every major arcane subject before lunch, she was ready to drop from exhaustion. She wasn't about to let Jaina down, though.
"What are we doing this afternoon?"
"The afternoon is yours to do with as you wish."
"Okay. Can I help you with anything?"
Kel'Thuzad tossed her a book and Kinndy scrambled to catch it. "Go study. And practise your perception."
"And don't forget to rest! Your mind is sharpest when it's well-rested. You'll want to be sharp for tomorrow; we're going to start basic battle magic."
Kinndy couldn't silence a squeal of excitement. "Really? Oh my gosh! I've always wanted to learn how to, like- make fire! And build shields! And use enchanted weapons! And- Battle magic is taught by pairs of-" She swallowed. "Oh no."
Jaina chuckled. "Oh yes. You will be very well-trained."
Kinndy took a deep breath, let it out, and clutched the book to her chest. "Thank you very much for today's lesson. I'm going to… go lie down."
"You did really well, Kinndy." Jaina smiled.
Her words and her smile returned some of Kinndy's energy. This woman was proud of her. Tired or not, Kinndy skipped out of the lab.
It was evening in Dalaran and something wasn't right. Khadgar felt it; it was subtle, but it was wrong. He left the Violet Citadel and prowled the city, following his intuition. Up and down the cobblestones, greeting people he knew, he criss-crossed every street until the moon began to rise.
Then he found it: a modest house, no more or less interesting than any other on the street- timber frame, wooden shutters, an address in sparkly gold paint, the windows aglow with warm light. He paused and examined the feeling of wrongness without using active magic; he suspected any spell might alert whatever he sensed.
Instead, he knocked politely at the front door. It was only in the instant between knocking and the door opening that Khadgar recognized where he was.
"Arch-mage Khadgar! Oh my goodness!" The gnome woman shifted from cheerfully flustered to utter terror. "Has something happened to Kinndy?!"
"No, no! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you, ma'am. May I come in?"
"Oh! Yes! Of course, of course!"
Khadgar took two steps inside and found the source of that wrongness seated cross-legged in the Sparkshine's living room.
"Ah, Arch-mage! What an honour to meet you. My name is Kazimir Frostblood."
"He's an emissary from Lady Proudmoore-" said Mr. Sparkshine.
"Came to anchor a Hearthstone for Kinndy," finished Mrs. Sparkshine.
"How very kind of you, Mr. Frostblood. May I have a word with you outside, if you've concluded your business here?"
"It would be my pleasure. Have a pleasant evening, Mr and Mrs Sparkshine. I will bring Kinndy your well wishes."
Khadgar waited til the door was shut, then he grabbed the other man by the wrist and hauled him halfway down the road.
"How the hell did you get here, Kel'Thuzad?"
The lich's smile widened. "I wondered if you would find me." He put his hands on his hips and cast his gaze around the peaceful street. "Lovely city. Very modern architecture."
Khadgar pinched the bridge of his nose. "How?"
"Jaina made an Icecrown Hearthstone for Kinndy that included spellwork capable of breaching Dalaran's passive shields. Miss Sparkshine needed a new Dalaran Hearthstone and Jaina is otherwise engaged, so I brought it here to anchor it at her parent's house." He reached out and straightened Khadgar's collar. "Don't worry Arch-mage, they think I'm some Scourge errand boy."
"And?"
"And what?"
"And what other business do you have here?"
"Thought I might stop by the Violet Citadel, say 'hi' to some old friends. Maybe make a few new ones, if you take my meaning."
Khadgar folded his arms and looked Kel'Thuzad up and down. "I can take you."
The lich laughed. "Maybe on a good day, but it wouldn't stick. Come on, show me around. Last time I was in Dalaran it was a bit worse for wear."
"Please leave."
"Why? I'm not harming anyone."
"You're not welcome here."
"You're the only one who seems to think so."
"It's only a matter of time before someone less patient finds you."
"I fail to see why that would be a problem."
"As satisfying it would be to disintegrate you, I don't want innocent civilians caught in the crossfire." He narrowed his eyes. "Such as Kinndy's parents."
Kel'Thuzad raised his eyebrows. "Did you just- did you just threaten those kind people?"
"Leave."
"No."
They locked eyes. "There's nothing worse that I can do to you than what you've already done to yourself."
The stare turned serious. Kel'Thuzad's magic sharpened and rose like the hackles on a growling dog.
"You're not welcome here."
The lich's magic settled. "I never was. And you… I think you'll find that you're not welcome either."
