Halford Wyrmbane sighed, shuffling through the maps scattered across the top of his desk. He should be able to focus, to plan his next steps. He didn't believe that this was going to be nearly as easy or quick as Fordragon did, so his strategy shouldn't change. All he needed to do right now was fold the Ebon Blade's surveys into his own, to take the time to study their intelligence and give himself space to digest it. It was a great deal of information, even if Sorrow was completely incompetent, getting his hands on this made reaching out to her worth it.

I can't.

How was he supposed to sit here and read this when Fordragon moved on the Wrathgate? He was where he was supposed to be, where he had planned to be. Every bit of his experience, his training, and yes, even his calling, told him that he was in the right place at the right time. That this could not be rushed, could not be circumvented. There was no short cut to victory here, only a disaster he seemed helpless to prevent.

"I promise that they will get me if things go wrong." Sorrow had sounded fairly convinced of that belief, and he'd seen the Ebon Blade get out of some pretty harsh situations where things had gone wrong. She judged this a disaster as much as he did, yet she had gone.

She is where she is supposed to be.

He growled, running his quill through his fingers. He wasn't a priest. He wasn't a mage. He was a paladin, a soldier, a commander, at home in the field, leading his people from the front. That was what he was here for, not these pointless maneuverings, chasing power, chasing glory. He'd thought better of Fordragon, now he wasn't convinced that the man was the best they had for this job. It would be easier if Halford felt he was being snubbed, that this was his pride, his arrogance, showing. Perhaps even that hubris and blindness that Sorrow had been willing to come close to admitting to him. It was an edge he was always aware of, too many of them had fallen and very few of them came back once they stumbled over it. And he'd just sent someone who possibly shouldn't even be here, to Fordragon, in what could be a gloriously tragic exercise in those failings...blindness and hubris. His only comfort seemed to lie in the fact that she believed she had an exit strategy in place...

There was an odd sensation, like a bubble bursting, and just a split second of the sound he had heard when Sorrow had opened a way to go speak to Mograine, before something pushed insistently against his knees. His first disjointed thought was that it was a dog, before a long, dark hand came up between his knees, a crumpled scrap of vellum clutched in it.

"You, you take." A voice hissed from the darkness under his desk. "Sssshe ssssends."

It took every dram of control that Halford possessed to hold himself back from instinctively consecrating the entire area. He had a geist crammed into the kneehole of his desk, sharing space with those knees...

"Thank...you?" He muttered, plucking the scrap from its grasp. It was gone a heartbeat later, a flash of darkness and then...nothing.

He smoothed it out on his desk, it was torn off of the corner of the twin of one of the maps in front of him, nothing until he turned it over. He'd seen Sorrow's reply to his, and at least four pieces of paper on his desk shared the same written hand... this was her writing, only made in great haste.

"Total rout. Survivors fleeing into the Dragonblight. Need immediate support to recover. Do NOT encroach close to gate. Plague dispersal and large scale fire at its base. Notify second theater commander of Fordragon's demise.

Sorrow."

He wasn't certain how long he stared at it, his brain trying to make sense out of her terse, brutal phrases. Total rout. Fordragon's demise. Plague.

Trap? While her description matched the rising dread in his soul, it seemed like an overblown report from someone who was little more than a stranger. If he responded to it with the force it begged for, it could go terribly wrong for him. With the current hazy command structure, he could easily overstep...if Fordragon wasn't dead...if Sorrow wasn't who she was made out to be...

He stood, scrap still in his hand, and strode out into the hallway, hitting his full stride as he made his way across the yard and up the hill towards Wintergarde's mage sanctum. While he wasn't a mage himself, he knew their value and was proud to have this sanctum here, with a full complement of mages in place. Vas would be able to tell him what he needed to know. He stepped inside, not surprised that Vas was just in front of the doorway waiting for him. That was usually how it was when things got...interesting. "I have word that things have gone terribly wrong at the Wrathgate. I need confirmation before I move." He held out the scrap and Vas took it, running it through his fingers without bothering to look at it. The mage turned away, moving towards a silver bowl filled with water. He gazed into it for a long, silent moment before closing his eyes and nodding.

"It is...true. Our presence is required. The Ebon Blade is already moving, but cautiously. They feel that they might complicate the situation further with their presence. We will start opening the portal now."

Now. He was not even going to wait for Halford to make the decision, to tell him to go. That told him all he needed to know. He served with the best and trusted them with enough rein to make a wide variety of command decisions under his auspices. "I will gather a relief force. Do we need to secure the site, militarily?" That would be touchier than sending a relief force, but if he had confirmation, he'd do it.

Vas sighed, the corners of his mouth tightening. "No. The shadowed one is correct. This is a relief mission."

Halford nodded, spinning to move back out into yard, barking orders as he went. He had a million questions, but now was not the time to ask them. And many of them would be answered once he made it to the area. He needed every spare gryphon, his priests, mages, paladins. His shouts stirred up a flurry of activity, but his people had done this before, drilled it into second nature. And now that he'd given the orders, he could go himself, get eyes on the situation. He'd take his gryphon riders, they would be the first needed, but if this wasn't what he was expecting, he would still have the opportunity to recall his people before they even made it there.

"Here." His aide pressed his gryphon's reins into his hand, moving past Halford with a purpose. All of the niceties were gone, they had their minds on the job.

"Form on me!" Halford shouted, hopping into the saddle and turning his gryphon. "Gryphon flight now." They'd follow him through, he just needed to see this... He charged the barely formed portal, emerging out into a clamorous chaos, just a handful of feet over from Sorrow's position. The overwhelming first noise was screaming, not the shouts of command, but panicked horror given voice, under-laid with the crackling roar of a massive fire that stretched from the edge of the canyon bowls all of the way to the front edge of the gate itself. He circled her tightly, hitting the ground beside the table she stood on. She had a geist at her feet, attached to the bottom edge of a dead faced young man's cloak.

"Sorrow." The whats would have to wait. Right now, he just had to know what was needed. "My gryphon flight is behind me. Which way did they flee?"

She pointed out towards the snowy wastes in front of her. "That way. They're too panicked to respond to my horn. I can't chase them all."

Of course she couldn't. He tore his gaze away from the conflagration, away from trying to make sense out of what seemed to be senseless. That was not a natural fire... The number of mages required to have started that, required to keep it going as it was, staggered his mind. Had Fordragon had that many? What had happened?

"Where is Fordragon?"

That brought what he knew was her face around to him. She was silent for a second before she pivoted, pointing unerringly into the deepest heart of the fire. "He was there." The young man with her made a sound halfway between a sob and laughter, but bit it back into stony silence. "When the forsaken plagued the gate. And then the dragons came."

Dragonfire. That explained at least part of it well enough for now.

"Are you...safe?" She seemed calm, but he'd seen plenty of doomed people just as coldly calm as she was.

"I am." She pivoted slightly as his gryphons arrived, waiting for him to give the orders to search the wastes. She seemed to take his arrival, their arrival, as permission to stand down, sitting on the edge of the table, her back firmly turned to the gate. The geist released its target, sidling closer to her and resting against her shin. If she noticed, she gave no sign.

He gave the orders, sending the flight off before he finally gained the nerve to walk to the edge of the bowl to survey the damage. Sorrow's table was positioned on the overlook, if this was where she had been, then she'd had a perfect view of it all. It was over. "All of them?" He finally asked. If Fordragon had been on the ground, there, in front of that gate, then every combat ready troop they had would have fought to be there with him.

"Yes. Ours. And the Horde." It was almost like she was simply commenting on the weather. How much hell have you been through?

He had no words for that. "Does Mograine require you to be here?" He'd prefer her to be elsewhere, especially when this began to attract more attention. She could write a nice, detailed report at Wintergarde, inconveniently remote. She was the person that Mograine had on the ground for this one, the person that he'd had on the ground. She was only attached to the Expedition, but that might not keep her away from the storm that was going to explode from this.

"No. Mograine knows everything that I know. Our lich saw what I saw, when I saw it. He does not need me to stay here."

Good, good. He glanced up, following the paths of his own gryphon riders, and more difficult to pick out against the turbulent gray skies, the ghostly profiles of the Ebon Blade's undead gryphons circling far above. She had done her job, getting the news to Mograine and him as soon as possible. "Go back, then. I'll speak to you when I return." They were going to have enough people on site to take care of what could be taken care of. He didn't like her steely, unyielding calm...he'd seen it before. She would hold it together until she reached a point where the shock would wear off and she'd have to digest what had happened, what she'd witnessed. Everyone else in the area was in mindless panic, she'd done what she'd needed to do by bringing help quickly.

"You don't need me here? I know what I look like, but I am a paladin..."

"Of course you are. I need you to return to Wintergarde and start writing your report. It will need to go out as soon as possible. Take him with you." If she really felt the urge to help, then that survivor she had pinned down should fill the need nicely. But he needed that report. And he wanted her out of here before people with pull knew that she'd been here, that she'd apparently witnessed the entire thing, and had held onto her calm through it. Everything that he understood told him that Sorrow was meant to remain in Northrend, for the offensive. He doubted if Mograine would be happy if she was pressured to report in Stormwind...sending her to Wintergarde right now helped circumvent that, for awhile at least. It would give Mograine time to address it. It would give her time to take a breath.

"If that's what you need from me."

"It is."

She nodded, sliding off of the table. "Come on, both of you." She ordered, moving towards the portal. The geist moved immediately, pulling insistently on the young man's cloak until he finally gave in and followed silently, his head bowed. Halford watched until they were through the portal before squaring his shoulders and turning to face the chaos.