The pavement hit my knees hard as I tumbled out of the portal. I shouldn't have left that quickly. I should have waited for the priests to heal me more, but I didn't want to stay in Undercity any longer, lest I say something to Sylvanas that I would have regretted.

Part of me knew that she hadn't really been angry with me. But the fact that she had lashed out at me was enough for me to wish that I could have ripped her head from her shoulders. Just for a moment.

"Miss! Miss, are you all right?" A Dalaran wizard in deep purple robes ran to me, putting an arm around me.

I nodded, "Yes. Yes, I'm all right, thank you."

"You're bleeding, what's happened to you? Was there a battle?"

He helped me to the clinic, where I didn't say much. Krasus arrived, his face looking a little drawn.

"I heard about what happened in Undercity," he said. "Is everything okay?"

"No…" I shook my head. "I mean, yes, we got Undercity back but… no. Sylvanas threw me out. She has this idea that she's going to dump me." I quickly explained what had happened. My voice was hollow.

"She'll come to her senses," he said reassuringly.

"She always comes to her senses." I sighed, "It doesn't matter. I still have a job to do, if anybody wants me around. Otherwise, I'll storm Icecrown Citadel on my own."

The priest who was healing me slipped sideways, "You want to go to Icecrown on your own? You won't make it ten feet without getting killed."

"I don't care. I have nothing left to lose anymore."

"What about your soul? If Arthas catches you…"

"Then he'll get to finish the job he started ten years ago, won't he?"

"Hang on, okay?" Krasus told me. "You can't decide to run out of here, half-assed, and attack Icecrown Citadel on your own. You'll die, or worse."

"I can't ask anybody to come with me for this."

"Do you think that you're the only one who wants to see Arthas dead? Give it some thought, Faith."

"I know that I'm not the only one who lost a lot. By all means, the Forsaken and the Sin'dorei should be first in line to kill the butcher."

"So should everyone who's been fighting in this war. Would you deprive Varok Saurfang of the opportunity to get his son's body back? What about the soldier who lost his entire unit to the Scourge, but who managed to survive? He has the same rights as you to see Arthas dead. Practically everyone on Azeroth has been touched in some way by the Scourge. Seeing this war end is a goal shared by many, not just by your people." He held up a hand, "You made a promise to Sylvanas, and I respect that. You will be present when Arthas is killed, because you deserve as much. But you won't be alone in there. We won't allow you to commit suicide that way."

I looked down at my hands, not knowing what to say. I didn't want to wait. Everything was telling me to charge into the citadel, find Arthas, and kill him. But even though I knew he'd been injured at the Wrathgate, I wasn't exactly doing well either at that moment.

"Look. I'm going to introduce you to the members of the Ashen Verdict."

I looked up. I'd heard of them before, an unlikely alliance between the Argent Crusade and the Knights of the Ebon Blade.

"Lord Tirion Fordring is looking for people to join his cause."

"Which is?"

"Ultimately, they will be the ones who will be leading the assault against the Lich King."

I got to my feet, "Then I'm your girl."

Krasus smiled, "Not immediately, Faith. You really need to rest. You must be in a lot of pain after two battles in a row. I'm surprised that you were able to take a portal."

"It nearly ripped her apart," said the priest who was healing the injuries on my back.

"No, that one was Varimathras. His wing caught me." I thought for a minute, "Ah, damn. I left everything in Brill. My clothes, bags, everything."

"Oh, you know that's not a problem," said Krasus to me. "You're an active member of the Argent Crusade, and as such, you have good credit in Dalaran."

As it turned out, he was right about that. I had an account in Dalaran that was hefty enough to allow me to buy whatever I needed, although the Argent Crusade provided me with new armor before I'd left the clinic.

Rhonin and Vereesa heard that I was there, and immediately asked me to move into one of their rooms while I was in the city, not taking no for an answer. The twins were delighted to see me, and a routine formed where, every morning, they would watch me making pancakes, after which they would eat breakfast on my lap. It was like having a real family again, something I hadn't even known I'd been missing.

Two days after I'd left the clinic, fully healed but with instructions to take it easy for the next week, I saw Highlord Tirion Fordring, who was part of the Ashen Verdict now. He smiled a little when he saw me, giving me a brief hug.

"I'm happy that you were able to get away from the Wrathgate," he said as we sat down to have a cup of honeyed tea in one of the small shops around the city.

"I had help with that." I wondered if the guilt associated with that disaster would ever fade away.

He nodded. "Archmage Krasus mentioned that you would be ideal to take with us into the citadel. Do you think you can handle something like that? I have no idea how long it will take us to find Arthas, if we even manage to get that far."

"Not to blow my own horn or anything, but I think I've proven myself capable of handling whatever the Scourge throws at me."

"I suppose that's true," he told me with a humorless chuckle. "Especially if you've managed not to lose your mind after everything you've seen. And you were held in Naxxramas for a time, without breaking."

I didn't want to think about that.

"And I daresay that your black fire will be invaluable to us once we do get in there," he continued.

I took a gulp of hot tea, wincing and adding more honey to it, "So, when do you think this is going to happen?"

"Not for a while, I'm afraid. Now, don't look like that, I know that you'd love to go in there now. But I wonder whether you've ever gotten close to Icecrown Citadel? I mean close enough to see what's inside?"

"Not yet. But I can change that."

"You misunderstand me, Faith." He broke off a piece of bread he was eating and chewed it thoughtfully, "I'm wondering whether you realize how many members of the Scourge are within Icecrown Citadel. I know you've fought the Scourge in Lordaeron and Quel'Thalas, and I know you've fought them here in Northrend. You've been to several of the Scourge cities, so you've fought a lot of them at once. But the sheer numbers of them in the citadel, Faith…"

He shuddered. He was a strong man, who had been to hell and back again, I knew, and he actually shuddered at the prospect of what was inside the Lich King's domain.

"Vrykul," he began. "Nerubians. Frost wyrms. Constructs. Every imaginable monster that you hoped didn't exist, but actually do. They're in there, and all of them at once. You might find yourself in a roomful of spiders so foul that they'll make your torturers from Naxxramas look like kittens."

I wrapped my hands around my mug of tea, warming them, "I know it won't be pleasant."

"Pleasant… Faith. What's in there is worse than anything we have ever faced since the Scourge was unleashed on us."

"Really?" I asked. "Did you face the incorporeal remains of the person you loved the most as she killed someone in order to get to you?"

"No. We have all faced our share of horrors, and nothing we've done until now can prepare us for what we will see when we arrive inside the citadel."

"Look," I said. "The Scourge took away everything that I cared about. Everyone I loved. Since then, I haven't backed down once when it came to fighting them, and I'm not going to back down now. I know that we're facing thousands, if not tens of thousands of things in there. That doesn't scare me. All I ask is that if I die, you burn my body and send my ashes back to Undercity." I took my hands away from my mug, "Of course, I'm aware that it may be absolutely impossible to grant that wish."

"No kidding." He stared at me for a moment, "You certainly look determined, and the Light knows we could use your firepower."

"So, you'll agree to let me come?"

"Yes. We're based below Dalaran for now, in Crystalsong Forest, but we'll be moving to Icecrown soon. You may report there next week."

I gave a nod, "Thank you, Lord Fordring."

"We're about to be working very closely together, Faith. I think you may call me Tirion."

"All right, Tirion."

"Rest up, and see you next week."

Rest. That was what everyone was telling me to do, but it was difficult for me to sit still in Dalaran when I knew that war was happening all around us. Every day, I saw soldiers returning from the front, all of them scarred in more ways than one, and some being so traumatized that they had to be sent home, incapable of fighting anymore. Nobody thought less of them for that.

A couple of days before I was due to leave Dalaran, I ran into Varok Saurfang, who was buying a new axe. I froze when I saw him, and it took him some time to speak after he had seen me. I saw great pain in his eyes, and could only imagine what it felt like for him to know that what remained of his son was now in the service of the Scourge.

"Major Everstone," he said to me. "The warchief said you were here."

"High Overlord," I replied, taking a step towards him. There was nothing I could say. Nothing that could convey how sorry I was for what he was going through. Finally, I settled for putting a hand on his strong shoulder and squeezing, "He was a heroic warrior."

He looked directly at me, "Thank you." He swallowed, "You're going to be a part of the Ashen Verdict, I heard."

I nodded, "Yes."

"Good. I will be training with you. I need to get my son's body back."

"I will do everything I can to help you recover him. We will put him to rest and honor him as a true hero of his people."

"Kinder words have never been spoken. Thank you, Major."

I wanted to hug him, to comfort him somehow, but one didn't just go around hugging orcs. "If you need anything, know that you can always come to me."

He looked at me sadly, "He fought bravely?"

"He charged Arthas head-on. Nobody else, not even me, would have had the courage to do anything so bold. He knew what he was getting into, and he still did it. Bravery was in his blood, and nothing will ever be able to change that."

A tear ran down Varok's face, and this time, I did put an arm around him. A soldier who was browsing around looked at us awkwardly.

"Come on," I said. "We'll go to the tavern and have a drink in your son's memory. He deserves that."

Varok followed me to the closest tavern, named Light's Tusk, where he sat down at the bar with me. I ordered us two mugs of strong mead, which the bartender got us right away.

"It's on the house," he murmured, nodding at Varok respectfully.

"Thank you," I told him. I picked up my mug and lifted it, "To Dranosh Saurfang, a great hero who died bravely while fighting the Lich King. May the memory of his bravery grow stronger every day, so that we may aspire to be like him."

Varok said nothing, but began to drink his mead, for once showing a father's true loss. But around us, several warriors lifted their mugs as well, toasting to the fallen hero. I drank. The mead was smooth as it went down my throat. Sweet.

"I didn't know him well," I said softly. "I wish I had. But from what I saw, Varok, you can be very proud of the son you raised."

"I am," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "I will avenge him."

"And the rest of us will help you," I finished my drink, and we left the tavern a few moments later.

The day of my departure from Dalaran arrived. Kissing the twins goodbye and hugging Vereesa and Rhonin, I hoisted my new bag onto my shoulder and went out into the morning, joining the few soldiers who were waiting for me. Varok was there, looking more together than he had at the tavern, saluting me when he saw me.

Scanning the group of soldiers, I was surprised to see Rotvine, Tarr, and Carelia standing there, all in Undercity robes.

"Sylvanas sent you?" I asked Rotvine, who gave me a hug.

"Yes. She kept everyone else in Tirisfal Glades, because there's a lot to do in Undercity after what the Burning Legion did."

"I don't doubt that." I didn't bother asking how Sylvanas was doing, as I could tell by the look on his face that she hadn't forgiven me yet.

"She…" he looked away from me. "She tried to demote you, but Thrall wouldn't have it."

"All right. I suppose, though, that she's kicked me out of the Undercity's military."

Tarr made an uncomfortable sound in the back of his throat. "I heard her tell any Forsaken to kill you on sight if they saw you anywhere in Undercity."

"Oh, that's good. I'll know what to do if I want to commit suicide, then."

Tirion walked over to us, "Less talking, more walking everyone. You'll have plenty of time to catch up once we reach camp in Crystalsong Forest."

"Where is the camp exactly?" I asked him.

"Right on the border with Icecrown, so we will have some incursions."

It felt good to do something again. I think a lot of us felt that way, as having been in Dalaran, while it had been a breath of fresh air, had made us feel like old leftovers who were there as backup.

Although when we saw the state of the camp we had been given, we didn't feel much better.

The camp, half-buried in the snow, had the look of a place that had been deserted and left to the elements, which was probably exactly what had happened. Burned siege engine parts littered the ground and the nearby lake, dubbed the Decrepit Flow, had been cut off by what was known as the Ironwall Dam, separating the forest from Icecrown. Looking up at the dam, I saw members of the Scourge, mostly odd-looking constructs, patrolling and not paying the slightest bit of attention to us.

"Why do I have the feeling that we've been relegated to the back burners of the campaign?" I asked, using a spell to try and melt the snow around us.

"I suppose that it's because they don't think we can do anything to kill the Lich King," said Tirion. "But don't worry, we'll prove them wrong. And we can start by making this a fit place for us to live and train in. Get to work!"

We did. Those of us who could melted as much snow as possible and created a large central area where we could build a fire. The three hunters in our party went to catch us some lunch, returning with three large stags and a few smaller rabbits by the time we were ready to start cooking.

As we waited for lunch to be ready, we cleared more snow for the tents. There were fifteen of us so far, but we had been told that another ten people would be joining us shortly, so we had to be sure to have enough space for everyone.

"You really think that twenty five of us will be enough to kill the Lich King?" Tarr asked me as we set up one of the tents.

"I think we're going to need a much larger number of people to go into Icecrown, from what I've heard. Otherwise, all we'll be doing is adding to the Scourge's ranks. But I'm sure more people will join us later on."

We managed to get twenty tents set up in a large circle around where we had built the fire by the time night fell. It was a good thing too, because a snowstorm was brewing, and we needed the shelter. We could see Dalaran from where we were, floating miles above us, looking safe and inviting. In the growing darkness, I noticed members of the Scourge crawling along the dam, some of them going as far as to climb down onto our side of it.

"Should we kill them?" wondered one of the soldiers, a man who looked young enough but was probably in his thirties.

"You could, but you'd bring down hundreds of them upon us," Tirion told him.

"What about the water?"

"We have water," I said. "I wouldn't want to use the water in that lake anyway, as half of it is in Icecrown. Besides, if we need anything, we're close enough to Dalaran that I can make a portal for supplies."

"It'll be a lot worse," added Tirion, "when we have our outpost in Icecrown. You'll be wishing to be back here once we move there."

Little by little, everyone went into their tents. I took my watch when the time came, wrapping myself in thick fur blankets and putting a spell on myself and my fellow living companion to keep us from freezing. Rotvine was with us, but he didn't look worse from wear. As a matter of fact, he looked at home in the freezing weather.

He sat down next to me, "How have you been?"

"My lover wants me dead."

"She'll get over that. You know that you have nothing to blame yourself for. You made her stronger than she even knows. She's been a better ruler because of you."

"A better ruler," I said slowly. "Right. Because creating a Plague that foul makes her a better ruler."

"All right, so she miscalculated there. The warchief left a contingent of Kor'kron in Undercity to keep an eye on things."

Turned my head to look at him by the faint light of the fire that remained burning, "And I'm sure she blames me for that too."

"For what it's worth, I think that if anything were to really happen to you, she'd be devastated. You saw how she reacted when Varian injured you."

"She reacted by blaming me for distracting her again." I shook my head, "Sometimes, I wish I'd never fallen in love with her."

"She wouldn't have saved your life in Quel'Thalas if you both hadn't been in love."

"And she would be alive now."

"Maybe, maybe not. She would have probably died later."

"She threw the ring back at me, Rotvine. She threw it back like it was trash."

Rotvine made the softest sound he was capable of, squeezing my hand with his, "She loves you. She can try to deny it all she wants, but it's true. She's been impossible ever since you left. I mean it, people have been afraid to go to the throne room, so they're pretending that everything's fine when it isn't. We buried over a hundred people last week, those who weren't Forsaken."

I looked down at the ground, "Are you telling me I should have stayed to let her verbally abuse me some more?"

"No. Right now, she's angry because of everything that happened, and you made a convenient target. Instead of coming home to support her like she wanted you to, you came home to tell her that we had lost at the Wrathgate and that almost all of our forces in Northrend were decimated."

"I just don't know what to do anymore, Carrick. I don't know what I can do to make her happy, except bring her Arthas' bloody head on a platter, and I don't even know if I'll manage to do that."

"Honestly, what I think she really wants is for you to come home and to stay home with her. She wants you to show loyalty to her, and only to her. You've been here, helping the Alliance against the Scourge and working with the Kirin Tor and the Argent Crusade, and you haven't been with her."

I opened my mouth to scream, because that statement wasn't fair in any way, shape, or form, but Rotvine held up a bony hand.

"I'm just telling you what I think she's feeling."

"What, does she think I like being away from her all the time? That I want to put my life on the line every day, facing that?" I gestured towards the dam.

"You ran away as soon as you could last week."

"I didn't run away. I came back here to fulfill a promise."

"And when Arthas is dead, what are you going to?"

"Kill myself, probably," I whispered. "I don't know, I haven't thought that far ahead."

"Killing yourself would be a little dramatic, don't you think? And Sylvanas would never forgive you for it. She needs you, don't you get it?"

I shook my head and stood up, walking towards the dying fire and renewing the spell on it, adding more wood, "No. Because she runs hot and cold all the time. One day she loves me, and the next she throws me in prison and exiles me from Forsaken lands. I know it's in her nature now to be volatile, I get it, but you were killed and raised by the Scourge, and you're not like that. Neither are most of the Forsaken."

"She's different."

"Yeah, I tell myself that all the time, and I believe it, too, because I love her. Except that she's no different than anybody the Scourge killed and raised."

"But she is."

"How?" I asked, whirling back to face him.

"You're there. You're a constant reminder of everything she failed to do in life. She failed to ask you to marry her. She failed to protect you from the unbearable pain you're going through. She fails, even now, because she loses control and says things that she doesn't fully mean to say."

"And she's a constant reminder of everything I lost."

He looked at me, "This is going to hurt, and I'm sorry," he said. "We know. We know you lost her. We know she was – and is – the love of your life, and that you didn't manage to get her away from the Scourge. We know you've been through more than anybody should have. We know your heart is broken. We know, Faith. She knows. And you're holding onto that one part of your life instead of moving on and accepting it."

"You want me to accept what –."

"Yes," he said simply. "Accept it, and move on."

He got to his feet, taking my hand and pulling me back to sit at the mouth of my tent.

"You want to go to Icecrown Citadel to kill Arthas. Believe me, I know what that's like. I lost my parents to the Plague, and my wife died from the shock of seeing them that way. I loved my wife more than anybody in the world, and she was taken from me, seconds after my parents."

I looked at him. Not by a flicker of a muscle was he showing emotion, but I could tell that it pained him to talk about it. "I'm so sorry…"

A nod. "I died soon after that. After I broke free with Sylvanas and the others, I realized that I couldn't keep on thinking about that one moment that my life was destroyed. I had another chance at life, such as it was, and I couldn't waste it that way."

"Everything I do, I do for Sylvanas."

"Oh, I know, Faith, that's not what I'm saying." He pushed a lock of my hair away from my forehead, "You know what you need to do. Live for the good moments you had with her. Don't live while always reminding yourself that she was taken from you."

I didn't say anything, staring into the fire and not feeling any of its warmth. Live for the good moments. How could I do that when every time I thought of the good times I'd had with her, I was left with the memory of seeing her body thrown at me?

"Maybe… after I kill Arthas. If I can kill Arthas. I need closure."

"We all need closure. And there's no guarantee that we'll get closure once Arthas is dead. You might feel relieved, or happy for a moment. But I think that mostly, you'll feel sad."

"But maybe I'll move on too…"