"Get a move on!" I cried. "Do you think that the Scourge is going to wait for you to catch your breath and finish casting your spell?" I cried to Carelia, throwing ice spikes at her.

"I can't cast it any faster!" she screamed, dropping to the snowy ground and glaring at me. "And yelling at me isn't going to help!"

I crossed the distance between us, "If you can't take this training, Carelia, maybe you shouldn't be thinking about coming with us into the Citadel."

"That's completely unfair. I've earned my place on this team, same as you!"

"Then keep it, and work faster." I knelt in front of her, "I don't want to see you die in there, that's why I'm being this harsh towards you now. We are talking about thousands of things that could turn us into mindless undead. We need to be able to counter them quickly, or risk losing everything we are." I took her hand and pulled her to her feet, "And since you're one of our healers, we depend on you, you understand that, right? You wield the Light. We need you in there."

She looked at me and sighed, "I know you do, Faith. I'm just not used to these kinds of combat situations."

"But you are. You survived the Wrathgate, and you helped us take Undercity back. You know what it's like to be in an intense battle." I handed her some water and a strip of dried meat, "Here, have something to eat and drink, and we'll try again in five minutes."

I looked at the other pairs who were practicing together. We had been training for a month now, and we had a lot more people with us. The camp had grown impressively, most of the tents now being reinforced with wooden structures to protect whoever was within from the elements. We had set up a practice range around the Decrepit Flow, keeping up protective spells so that the Scourge on the Ironwall Dam wouldn't notice us, and had even set up a small store with goods and supplies from Dalaran.

Rotvine and Tarr were the pair closest to us, and were testing some pretty powerful spells on each other, having them meet in midair so that nobody would get hurt.

"Not bad, Tarr," I told him. "That lava burst will certainly be helpful in the Citadel."

"Thanks, Faith," he told me. "I just wish I didn't get so tired after casting it."

"Yeah, I tend to have the same problem after I cast my black fire. Try to alternate with other spells that don't tire you so much."

I went back to Carelia, who had finished her snack and was ready to begin again. This time, she was a little more focused when it came to blocking my spells, and was even able to repel a strong wave of arcane magic that I sent to her. She staggered a little, but her shield held. I didn't know how good her spellwork would be after a couple of days of fighting, but she showed some progress, which was encouraging.

I was spending my afternoon training with the few mages who were with us. There were only eight of us, and while I would have liked to have more, the ones we had, I had to admit, were good. With them, I had been able to find a way of combining fire, frost, and arcane magic into a devastating spell capable of blasting through just about anything. We couldn't use that spell often because it was draining, and it took at least two people to get the most effective result. We were able to use it on the day a huge construct from Icecrown somehow managed to find its way on our side of the dam.

Nothing much was left of it when we were done with it, except for a few bits of flesh scattered about for carrion birds to find.

"That's a good spell to use against Arthas," Tirion had said to me afterwards.

I had been sitting down, drinking as much water as possible, as for some reason, using that spell left me feeling completely dehydrated. "It would be if it didn't take everything out of us. Using this spell could seriously injure him, but it could also leave us open to attack."

He had nodded, "Maybe we could ask some of the Kirin Tor to come here and help you with it."

"If you think they can spare the time, sure. I'd be happy to try and talk to Krasus and Rhonin."

I had gone back to Dalaran for no more than a half hour and asked for Rhonin's advice. But he hadn't been able to give me much information. It was a dangerous thing we were doing, combining all three schools of magic into one spell, and being drained was part of the package. But the Kirin Tor did give us some roots and herbs to make a potion that would minimize draining as much as possible before we entered battle.

"How easy do you think it's going to be for us to brew a potion while we're inside the Citadel?" Rotvine asked me.

"While we're inside, I think it'll be damn near impossible. That's why I'm hoping to make enough potion now to last us until then."

"Will it keep? I know we're going to Icecrown next week, but we might not get inside the Citadel for much longer."

I nodded, "The Kirin Tor said it would be fine. In fact, the longer it has to rest, the better it is." I was stirring the potion in a small cauldron, watching as it turned a pearly shade of blue. It smelled refreshing enough, and I had a feeling that drinking it would be invigorating, or so I hoped. I had made enough so that each spellcaster would be able to carry three vials of it. I would be starting on my second batch of potion for everyone else the following day.

They all seemed to appreciate it, for after tasting a spoonful the potion, everyone indeed felt more refreshed and ready to work harder than before.

"It's a wonder we don't take this every day," said Tirion, stretching.

I laughed, "Well, it's a bit like wine, isn't it? Having one glass of it is fine, but drinking two bottles of it will make you quite sick. This potion will be harmful if it's taken more than three times a week, and by harmful, I mean that it can kill you. I've had to dilute the ingredients considerably, but they're still toxic in high quantities."

"But three vials of it is okay?"

"As long as we don't take them all at the same time, it should be fine," I answered. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and we would need to pace ourselves in the citadel. "How long do you think it'll take us to get to the Frozen Throne?"

"I don't know. Icecrown Citadel is massive, about as big as Stormwind City as I understand it, so it could take us weeks."

Weeks. That prospect wasn't enjoyable, and it was with heavy hearts that we left our camp, leaving twenty reserve soldiers there so that they could get additional training. With any luck, we wouldn't need to call on them, but one never knew.

Icecrown was just as I'd remembered it. A frozen waste filled with the most repugnant creatures imaginable. We were freezing the moment our transport crossed the border, looking down at the icy expanse covered in walking corpses. Frost wyrms lazily glided around, looking almost beautiful, which necessitated us being on our guard during the entire trip to the camp that we would be staying in for at least a month.

The camp, much to our horror, was just at the foot of Icecrown Citadel. Heavily fortified, we immediately saw hundreds of forces there, repelling an attack just as we arrived.

"Casters at the ready!" I cried.

Every spellcaster onboard joined me, spells already forming on their lips. For my part, I was cupping my black fire in my hands.

"Fire!" called Tirion.

We began to rain spells upon the Scourge attackers, who turned towards us. Too late. Our distraction allowed the forces on the ground to take the upper hand, and even as a necromancer began raising one of the fallen soldiers, we incinerated the corpses around it.

"Nice work," said Tirion as we jumped off the ship. I ran to the wall that surrounded the camp site, casting spells as I went. A gargoyle fell. Next to me, Rotvine brought down another one. An enormous abomination was trying to climb over the ramparts, while attempting to rip apart the few soldiers hacking away at it.

But the soldiers knew what they were doing. Before we'd managed to cast a spell to kill the thing, they had pulled it over the wall. It crashed with a sickening sound onto the floor below, where a dozen other soldiers were ready to finish it.

"I don't really feel needed," I told Rotvine.

"Oh, believe me, you're needed," said a dark voice that sent shivers down my spine in a bad way.

I turned around, my eyes widening in surprise. Seeing a death knight up close wasn't always a good thing to do, and although I was used to Sylvanas and the Forsaken, the sight of Highlord Darion Mograine wasn't entirely comforting.

"Highlord Mograine," I said quickly, bowing to him. "I wasn't aware that you were here."

"Oh, yes. I arrived three weeks ago, and we've been able to do good work here. Of course, we haven't been able to move from this spot, because we're constantly under attack."

"You're planning on moving where?" I asked him.

"In Icecrown Citadel, of course."

Of course. Because there wouldn't be as many attacks inside Arthas' fortress. Then again, we had to start somewhere, and that was as good a way as any to get his attention.

We were shown to our tents so that we could settle in, but we didn't have much time for that. Carelia and I would be sharing one of the tents with a grumpy female orc who, it was obvious, wanted to be anywhere but there, but who looked covetously at our bags. So before we left the tent, I put a spell on our belongings, so that she would get a surprise if she tried to touch them.

"I know about her," whispered Carelia to me as we left the tent to stand on the ramparts. "She was apparently sent to the front as punishment. She's a thief."

"War as punishment," I said slowly. "I've never known of an orc who sees combat as punishment, but I guess every lot has its bad apples. And don't worry about our stuff. If she does so much as try to open our bags, her hand will be severed."

"Severed?!" she cried.

"It's a little spell I learned in Outland. Some people have sticky fingers, so a group of us came up with this kind of spell so that nobody would bother stealing our things. It took three severed hands for thieves in the area to get the message. One of the Night Elves was furious, let me tell you."

Right at that moment, we heard a shriek of agony coming from our tent.

"Well, that didn't take long!" I exclaimed as several people ran towards the sound.

The sight inside was ghastly. My bag was covered in blood, and a disembodied green hand lay on top of it, its fingers magically glued to the buckle, which the orc had obviously attempted to undo.

"What in the name of the Light happened here?" cried Highlord Mograine, who was right behind me.

"I put a spell on our bags before I left the tent, Highlord. Anybody with the intention of stealing anything would find their hand severed as soon as they attempted to open one of them. Had she merely tried to move the bag, there wouldn't have been a problem."

"I didn' try to steal anythin'!" cried the orc, gasping in pain and cradling the stump where her right hand had been.

"My spell is not infallible, of course," I told Highlord Mograine. "But the bag would have faintly glowed white when the spell was activated. The intent is enough to cause harm. It would have gotten hot when she touched it, but opening it with the intent of stealing something is what caused the amputation."

Highlord Mograine reached for my bag. The moment his hand made contact with it, it glowed white.

"Now, just try to move it without thinking of taking anything inside."

He did so, and nothing at all happened.

"That's some spell, major!" he exclaimed. "You should sell it!"

"Sell it?" I started to smile. "No, but I did send word of it to other mages. As I understand it, every store in Dalaran now uses it."

He nodded, then turned towards the orc, who again repeated that she hadn't tried to do anything wrong.

"You saw how the spell worked with me, Turgra. And we all know why you've been sent to the front lines. As I understood from your commanding officer, it was either service or prison."

The orc, Turgra, looked away from him, but muttered again, "I didn' do anythin'."

"Enough. The evidence is right there in front of us." He looked at some other orcs, "Get her ready to go to Warsong Hold. We'll see what Garrosh does with you."

The two orcs, large bodyguards by the looks of them, came into the tent and grabbed her, none too gently, and began to drag her out.

"There's no need to be so violent," I told them, going over to Turgra and wrapping a bandage around the stump. "Make sure she gets medical attention too."

"She's a criminal."

"Yes, and we're not the Scourge or the Burning Legion."

Rotvine was next to me, "Do you have any idea what Sylvanas would do if anybody was caught trying to steal something of yours?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah, she'd give them leave to take anything they wanted," I replied shortly, picking up my bag and trying to clean the blood from it.

"We can get you a new bag if you'd like."

I shook my head, "Not during wartime, you can't. Anyways, it's just blood. I've been stained with a lot worse, this is nothing." I knew the blood wouldn't come out of the fabric, so after I washed the bag, I used a spell to turn it black so that it wouldn't show.

"That looks pretty cool," said Carelia to me.

I glanced down at the bag and nodded, "I guess. It's no big deal. I could change yours too if you'd like, but nothing extravagant, we don't want it to stand out too much."

I spent the rest of my day on the ramparts, bringing down any members of the Scourge who came within distance of us. Rotvine stood with me, relieving a soldier who had been there for three days almost nonstop.

"It's been bad here, you know. I know you've been training, and that you guys had a bad bit of it in Undercity, but we've been fighting the Scourge here every couple of hours. It's good to be away from this, even for a few hours."

"I believe you, soldier," I told him. "Go get some rest, you've deserved it."

He gladly took his leave from us, letting us stay there on our own, watching the horizon line.

It was a busy afternoon, and not altogether a pleasant one, although we remained perfectly safe. By the time our watch ended, fires dotted the landscape, melting snow and ice in a semicircle around the camp. We had done our jobs well for the day, and Tirion thanked us with a warm soup, which I gulped down standing up.

Camp life thus began in Icecrown. Every morning, Carelia and I got up, making our beds as neatly as possible before going to the shower tent and washing up. Our commanders insisted that we wash every day, lest we be infected by who knew what. We didn't mind, as washing daily was a luxury unheard of during wartime. Once that was done, I took my place on the ramparts for an hour, allowing the night shift to get a bite of breakfast before my turn came to eat.

Every week, I switched to the night shift, which was more eventful, because the Scourge was definitely more active when the skies darkened. Then again, I still couldn't really tell the difference between night and day in Icecrown, I doubted anybody but the Scourge could. One evening, we brought down three frost wyrms, which shocked people on both sides.

"They're afraid of us, look!" cried Highlord Mograine, clapping me on the shoulder. "They're retreating!"

It seemed as though he was right. The following day, we didn't sustain any attacks, and the camp leaders decided it was time to move.

"You're going to move the entire camp with the ramparts?" I asked, incredulous.

"We have to move fast here. The ramparts are held together by magic, look."

I watched as a couple of mages quickly got to work, pulling up the fortifications one by one, using a variety of spells.

"You'd better pack up your tent. I've sent scouts ahead to give us a suitable location, closer to the entrance to the citadel. We'll have a rear guard behind us to take over this spot once we leave."

I hurried, surprised by how quickly everyone moved. In less than fifteen minutes, we had all packed every single tent, along with all of our belongings. Only the stone buildings would remain for the next group of soldiers who would come there in our stead.

We got to our next camp site within an hour, without the Scourge bothering us. I was sure that they knew we had moved, and that an attack would be imminent, but we were hoping that us bringing down those undead dragons had been enough to scare them a little.

"I don't like just sitting here waiting for them to attack us," I told Tirion as we settled down.

"What do you propose?"

"That we send out a party to neutralize any threat nearby."

"That's what we're doing. It may not look like we've advanced very far, but we covered a lot of ground today. The entrance to Icecrown Citadel is just around that bend over there."

I nodded and glanced up to the walls of Arthas' domain. Giant skeletal horrors were patrolling over the walls, and I was sure that they knew we were there. If one of those things decided to jump, it would land on top of us and probably flatten us. "You do have a plan for those things, right?"

"You sound worried. I thought you were anxious to do this."

"I am worried. We've lost so many people during this campaign already that I wouldn't want to lose more in vain.

"Don't fret about it. We've got every base covered. We just need you to keep the camp safe, because if we lose it, we're going to be in trouble."

I wondered whether a surprise attack was imminent. We couldn't take the citadel by surprise, it was too large and far too defended, but…

"You have a plan to take the entrance," I said quietly.

He smiled at me, "We've been working on it for months, and we think it'll work. We'll lose a few people, I'm sure, but I think that we'll get where we want, and Arthas knows it."

Arthas did know it. He sent out wave after wave of attackers. First came the Nerubians, who managed to scale over the ramparts and scare me half to death during one of my shifts. I actually cried out Sylvanas' name for a split second before I regained my wits and struck the vile things down. After the Nerubians, we were treated to a stinking wave of rotting corpses, the smell of which we could barely disguise with spells. Constructs came after that, along with gargoyles, more wyrms, and, scariest of all, the Val'kyr.

The Val'kyr were winged undead female Vrykul, some of which had trained the Death Knights. I knew that they had the ability to raise the dead, and was therefore a little apprehensive as to what they were going to do.

"We have to bring them down by any means necessary!" I cried, pointing to them as they approached us.

"How?" cried a warrior, who had no ounce of magic within him. "Will fire work?"

"Anything!" I cried back.

The Val'kyr were upon us. Being made of undead light, they gave off an ethereal glow, and even as they were, I saw that they were beautiful creatures. Three of our warriors fell almost immediately, and Rotvine and I stared at each other in dismay.

"What do you think?" he asked me quickly.

"Arcane. Arcane magic might do it."

We cast. Beams of glimmering blue and violet light shimmered from my fingers, catching the creature's wing, which instantly exploded when Rotvine's spell hit it as well. Unable to hold itself up with just one wing, it fell to the ground, and I leapt on it, my spellblade held high. To my astonishment, I saw that the creature was semi-solid, vibrating in and out of corporeality as it fought.

"They're solid!" I cried, plunging my blade down into the creature's heart. What appeared to be white glowing blood spurted everywhere, and the Val'kyr uttered an unreal scream of pure and terrified agony as it dissolved into a glowing mist that immediately sank into the ground.

People began to follow my example, bringing the val'kyr down with a spell and using a blade to finish them off. Ordinary blades didn't work as well, and the creatures struggled, retaliating with blows that stunned anybody within their reach, until someone else killed them.

All in all, we killed about ten of them, before the others pulled back, going up to the citadel and disappearing there.

"Look," I told Highlord Mograine, "I think that Arthas expects that we will be there soon if he's bringing everyone up there." I could see gargoyles and all sorts of undead creatures making their way there.

He nodded grimly, "I think we're in for a bumpy ride."

"I'm in if you are, Highlord."

Emitting a sinister chuckle, he nodded to me, "Deal." He looked at me for a moment, his glowing undead eyes seeming to pierce through me, "I've been wondering, something. I seem to be missing quite a few number of death knights since the Wrathgate."

"Not many people, living or undead, survived that battle," I told him.

"You haven't seen any of the death knights who were there? I know at least ten of them were there, and they would be useful to have in there," he pointed to the fortress above us.

"The only death knight I saw at the Angrathar was Cindera, but that was before the battle. I don't remember seeing her during the fighting or afterwards. But to be fair, I didn't really pay attention to her." Part of me felt guilty about that. I was a major, it was my responsibility to account for all the soldiers who were under me. "I should have done, I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be. There was a lot going on. You lost a huge amount of people there, after which you had to race back to Undercity and reclaim that." He shrugged, "She's probably dead. Truly dead. And it's better that way."

Still. "I'll go look for her once we're done here. I may hate her, but I owe her that at least."

A/N - Ah, the val'kyr. Probably some of my favorite Scourged creatures, in Northrend. You'll forgive me if I've taken some liberties with them. I needed to, for later. :) Hope you enjoyed this chapter!