A/N – All right, so this, and not the previous chapter, is the penultimate chapter of Fall and Rebirth. I will post the last chapter as soon as I can!

Darkness surrounded us as we walked through the frozen halls of the citadel. Half a day had passed since we had slain what remained of Dranosh Saurfang, and we had encountered things best not thought about. Necromancers at every turn. A vampiric being who had damn near killed us all as we had taken some much-needed rest in an alcove.

I felt weak, sick. I had a feeling that my connection to Sylvanas was fading, or perhaps I was dying, I wasn't sure about that. Maybe the potion she had sent me was slowly killing me.

But I could sense that the others, even Rotvine and the death knights, were feeling the same way I was. Nine of us remained, as another one of the death knights, a dwarf who had named himself Deathammer, had seen true death. The fact that he had sacrificed himself to keep me alive weighed on me.

We weren't talking. The strain of killing fiend after fiend was getting to us, and we went about our business as efficiently as we could.

Sylvanas tried to soothe me. I could sense that she wished she were with me. Despite our fading connection, this feeling was very strong, sometimes bursting clearly through my body, almost rejuvenating me.

Be strong, my love, she said to me on numerous occasions.

I didn't know how much more I could take, though. Knowing that everything we were killing had once been a living creature was horrible. The extent of just what the Scourge had done to Azeroth kept crashing upon us, every time we looked upon the remains of our enemies.

Several times, we stumbled upon a living prisoner. I say "living", because they weren't undead, but there was little we could do for them in the state they were in. The only thing we managed was to give them peace in their final moments. I shed tears every time we were forced to end a prisoner's life.

We hadn't heard any fighting for over an hour. I didn't know whether that was because we were the last fighters left in the Citadel, or because we were now so far away from everyone else that their cries and the clash of their swords didn't reach us anymore.

"Through here, I think," said Arel in a low voice.

The corridor we had ventured in hadn't had many inhabitants, save for the last prisoner, a human female who had been so emaciated that she could have already been undead.

I looked towards where Arel was pointing. The corridor ended in a huge and empty chamber that was twice as big as the Undercity throne room. Like the room Cindera had died in, this one had a high vaulted ceiling, but what I saw when I looked up nearly paralyzed me with terror.

Since I had been held in Naxxramas, my fear of spiders had become extreme. Sylvanas had tried working with me so that I didn't completely fall apart when I saw one of the creatures, but I still had steady nightmares about them.

The ceiling was filled with cobwebs so thick it was difficult to see the engravings on the walls.

And hanging from these cobwebs were some of the biggest and most monstrous spiders I had ever seen.

I couldn't breathe as white waves of shock rolled over me. I couldn't even hear Sylvanas calling my name from across the world, telling me to calm down and get moving. Someone was squeezing my hand, Haldren I think, but I didn't feel that either.

"Welcome to the Lair of the Spider, little Faith," came Arthas' voice through the walls.

So, this had been his plan. To allow me to get this far into his domain, only to be frozen in horror as dozens of spiders dropped down from the webs, beginning to attack us.

It worked well. Or it would have, had my companions not reacted as quickly as they did. They kept me in the center of a tight circle, casting spells in every direction as I stood there, incapable of movement for several long minutes.

There was no exit. We were trapped.

"She's lost!" called one of the death knights, fighting a spider that was twice his size in height. His voice barely registered in my ears.

Rotvine used his staff to conjure a wall of arcane energy around us, which he projected outwards, "No. She's just scared, like the rest of us. Faith! For the love of Undercity, snap out of it!"

My vision blurred, turning grey, then black.

I was trapped in a nightmare where thousands of undead spiders jeered at me, stabbing me with acid-laden stingers, and wrapped me in webs that burned through my skin.

My name… I could hear my name.

Something cold trickled into my mouth, followed by the soothing sensation of being dipped in a warm stream.

"Come on, Faith, wake up."

I opened my eyes, blinking several times.

"There she is."

I tried sitting up, and felt someone supporting me from behind. "You gave us a bit of a scare, Major," said Highlord Tirion

Tirion… what?

"What happened?" I asked. Had my throat been lined in sand? I coughed once.

"You fainted," said Rotvine. He looked worse than I'd ever seen him, and I wondered for a moment what had happened to him, until I realized that he had been scared. Relief was spreading across his features, which was weird to see on a Forsaken.

"Fainted? I don't faint."

"You did, though. I had never realized that spiders terrified you that much."

I ran a shaking hand over my forehead. It felt clammy.

"It's only natural," said Tirion. "I think I'd be terrified of them too if I'd been held in Naxxramas for any length of time."

I shivered, "What… how long have I been out?"

"A couple of hours," said Haldren. "I dunno what we would've done had Tirion not shown up when he did."

"There were too many of them," said Carelia. "I think your black fire would have done the trick, but since you were out, we had to make do on our own."

Guilt swept over me, "I'm sorry…" I hadn't seen that many spiders at once since Sylvanas had gotten me out of that horrible place. And I hadn't fainted in a very long time.

"It's not your fault," said Tirion, kneeling and placing his hand on my shoulder. "You didn't lose anybody in that chamber, so no harm was done."

"I should have handled it better."

"Our responses surprise us sometime. I don't doubt that the strain of being in here has gotten to you. You might not have reacted that way had you encountered all of that after a full night's rest. But we're all exhausted."

Someone came into my field of vision, Highlord Mograine.

"We cannot linger long," he said. "Now that she's awake, we need to move."

"He's right. I'm okay." I tried to get to my feet, but several hands kept me down.

"Don't be silly, you can rest for another minute or two. We could all use it."

They handed me some water, along with some dried meat to chew on. "So, what's been going on?"

Tirion answered me, "Oh, well, once you guys went in, we realized we needed to coordinate assaults on other parts of Icecrown Citadel, or Arthas would have concentrated his forces directly on you."

"How many assaults?" I asked.

"Four coordinated ones, not including what the Horde and the Alliance decided to do up there. My team and I took out whatever was in the Crimson Hall, although one of them got away."

"The vampire?" asked Arel. "She found us."

Highlord Mograine nodded, "We took care of the Plagueworks, whatever was in there. A lot of constructs, and some Val'kyr too. It wasn't pretty."

"Nothing in here is pretty," said Carelia. "Everything is horrific. I wish I were home in Silvermoon, doing something stupid like watching flowers bloom."

"We all wish we were home," Tarr told her. "But we can't go home until we finish this. There won't be any home to go back to if we leave now."

"I hate to agree with that logic," I said. "But he's right. I'm not saying that we wouldn't stop the Scourge eventually, but we're here now." I struggled to my feet with Beverly's help. "We should go."

Rotvine caught my arm, "You still need to rest."

"A few minutes of rest won't make the kind of difference any of us need to get better, Carrick." I squeezed his bony shoulder and looked towards Tirion, "What have we got left?"

"Sindragosa's lair is close by. I figure we're going to run into a lot of undead dragons before we actually get to her."

Carelia's green eyes were wide, "How do we kill her?"

"Fight fire with fire. But she's big, we'll need to have a couple of groups to tackle her. How many of us are there?"

"We had to leave a few people back there just in case," said Tirion. "We have about thirty people ready to take on that dragon and her brood. It won't be easy."

"Of course it won't be easy, nobody said fighting the Scourge would be easy." I grabbed my bag, which had been lain next to me, and shouldered it. "Ready?"

"Yeah, we should get out of here. No sense in keeping them waiting."

We started walking, and I tried to reach out to Sylvanas, calling her quietly in my mind. But either the connection between us had been completely severed when I had fainted, or the potion had worn off, because I couldn't hear a thing.

We heard sounds coming from ahead of us. Enough sounds to allow us to guess that we were facing a large group of creatures.

Following the corridor we had been in to an open door, we stumbled out of the citadel again, arriving on a platform that was crawling with undead dragonkin, and two horrific undead dragons. Of Sindragosa, there was no sign yet.

We didn't have time to coordinate a plan of attack. I recognized that some of the dragonkins were spellcasters, and we had to hurry to subdue them. I used all of the fire spells in my arsenal, until the platform was a veritable rainbow of flames. Undead dragons fell in clumps as we worked.

After several minutes of this, a monstrous roar came from the sky.

Sindragosa.

"Hurry up and kill those two big ones," I said. "Quickly. If we have to fight them with her, we won't make it."

Everyone did as I asked, Tirion taking point on one of them, and Mograine taking care of the other one. It was messy, but we managed it, just as Sindragosa herself came down from the sky.

I could only imagine what she had been like when she had been alive before the Sundering. She was massive in size, and I started to think about just how we were going to kill her when she spoke.

"You fools!" she screamed, her voice sounding like a hundred crypt doors scraping against a dusty floor. "You think that you, you can kill my children?" She didn't give us a chance to reply, which was unfortunate, because I came up with a really good line. She exhaled a cloud of freezing fire, which, try as we might, we were unable to counter with our own fire.

The only thing we could do was get out of its way.

I ran, putting a magical barrier around myself as I ducked underneath her enormous bony wings. Tarr and Arel were right beside me, and together, we cast our spells, hitting her side and sprinting away as soon as our fire had caught on her bones.

It was the only way to attack her. She was too big, and had too many weapons for us to stay standing in one spot for too long.

Undead dragonlings came to her aid, and we struck those down quickly. Their loss seemed to enrage her, which gave us an advantage.

"Watch this, you monster!" I cried, pinning one of the creatures down and slowly torching it with tongues of flame. Its cries of pain bounced off the outer walls of the citadel, and Sindragosa turned to me.

As she did, columns of Light hit her body in several places. Immediately afterwards, I cast my black fire spell at her, while Rotvine sent a swirl of arcane energy towards one of her front paws, which collapsed under her weight.

"End it!" cried Mograine. "Now!"

I saw Beverly leap onto Sindragosa's wing, hacking at it with a long knife. Tarr targeted that same wing, hurling bursts of lava at it. I kept up my barrage of black fire, which swirled around her snout as Tirion swung his sword, Ashbringer, at her.

The combined assault brought the former blue dragon down, her shrieks, I was certain, heard all over Icecrown.

"Burn the bodies," said Mograine, looking at the carnage on the platform.

I glanced around, seeing dead dragonkin everywhere, in addition to Sindragosa. More of our forces had perished, and as I stepped towards one of the bodies, I gave a small gasp.

Carelia lay in a pool of her own blood, her eyes wide and blank. Her skull had been split open by what I assumed to have been Sindragosa's tail. She still felt warm, although she was cooling rapidly.

I knelt next to her, closing her eyes and arranging the clothes on her body. She had survived the Wrathgate only to die here, like this. Impulsively, I took a locket that hung around her neck and put it in my pocket. If I ever got back to Silvermoon, I would try to find her parents.

Rotvine set her on fire, and I looked away from the sight. I didn't want to see her burn.

I could feel Mograine watching me, gaging my reaction to seeing Carelia dead. "I wish I'd had more time to get to know her, you know?" I said to nobody in particular. "She seemed like a nice girl. She didn't deserve this."

"None of us deserve this. It's just the way things are, even if we want them to be different. This is war, and it's been going on for a long time. She knew what she was getting into when she came along, and she did her part."

"You can honor her memory, and everyone else's, by finishing what we started. Think of Sylvanas."

"Do not tell me to think of Sylvanas right now," I snapped at Tirion.

"But she's why you're here, isn't she? Aren't you here to avenge her death?"

I forced myself to take a deep breath, "Have you been to Quel'Thalas since it fell? Have you seen what these butchers have done to my people? I know why I'm here. And I will ask you to give me a moment to get used to the fact that I've just lost yet another friend to the Scourge."

They did. For several minutes, none of us said anything, listening only to the wind howling and to the flames decimating whatever remained on the platform. After a while, we started moving again.

We didn't really know how to get to the Frozen Throne, but some mysterious force guided us there. It got colder. Not one fiend attacked us as we walked slowly through the icy halls. I performed warming spells on us, but it didn't help much.

"We should rest here for a while," said Tirion suddenly. "Get some more strength before we move along."

"We can rest when we're dead," said Mograine.

"Speak for yourself, Highlord," countered Rotvine.

Stunned silence greeted his statement. A second later, we had all burst into laughter. It was the kind of hysterical laughter that's only appropriate in situations where nothing else could be said, and I felt tears running down my cheeks as I tried to stifle it. It felt good to laugh. I couldn't remember the last time I had done it, and even though we were all probably going to our deaths, I felt better afterwards.

"Only you, Highlord," I said, wiping my eyes with a last giggle. 'Rest when we're dead, that's a good one, especially here."

"Well… you know what I mean."

"I do."

I felt myself growing grim again, and noticed that every one of my companions' faces were doing the same, the traces of laughter fading away.

A frozen staircase spiraled upwards to what I knew to be Arthas' domain. The Frozen Throne.

Tirion climbed it first, followed by Mograine. I climbed after them, Rotvine and the others right behind me.

We emerged upon another large circular platform that was open to the elements. Inanimate skeletons were scattered here and there, blue with ice – some of Arthas' latest victims, I had no doubt. Arthas himself sat on a sculpted throne of ice and snow, located at the top of several icy stairs, above which was chained a lone burned-out figure.

"Bolvar…" breathed Tirion.

My eyes focused on the figure, and I took a step back in horror. His body had been completely altered by dragon fire. It was black, veined with orange as though he had been carved out of hardened lava. The fact that he was chained above Arthas' head told me that the Lich King had tried to torture him into subservience, but had failed.

"Yes… I thought he would make a nice decoration for my throne room," said Arthas, his voice reverberating through my very bones. "How do you like it?" He got up and slowly walked down the stairs, coming towards us. "So many of you have died to get here. Was it worth it? Do you think that I will not be able to get others to replace the ones you have killed?"

I glared at him, wanting to strike him, but experience told me to wait.

He turned towards me, "Ah, little Faith. So pretty, so brave. I should have killed you when I killed your lover. But you," he chuckled, "you will be a great addition to my people here. Because I will kill you now. I will save you for last, and then I will savor your very last breath. Frostmourne hungers for you."

My eyes focused upon the sword in his gauntleted hand. The sword that had taken her soul, along with countless other lives. The sword that had to be destroyed before Arthas could be killed.

Need I give my own life to avenge you, my love, I will gladly do so. I just pray that I live long enough to see him dead.

"You will pay for everything that you have done, Arthas," I said. My voice was quiet, but everyone heard me. "You might kill me, but you will die with me today."

Tirion and Mograine were inching closer to Arthas, their weapons raised. Suddenly, he turned towards them, "And what does the Ashen Verdict have for me today? Two pawns, who have so bravely led their companions to me? You do not have what it takes to defeat me, Tirion, even with your famous sword."

"Long have I waited for this day," said Tirion.

Arthas laughed, "Shall I lay down Frostmourne and throw myself at your mercy?"

"We will grant you a swift death, Arthas, which is more that can be said for the thousands you have tortured and slain!"

More laughter, "You will beg for mercy when I am done with you. And I shall show you none. Your screams will be a testament to my unlimited power."

"So be it." Tirion charged, Mograine at his heels, but the two of them suddenly froze in place, encased in two identical blocks of ice. Arthas had moved so fast that I hadn't even seen it happen.

But it didn't matter. The moment Tirion had charged, I had begun to cast my spell. I sent fire hurtling towards Arthas, but he deflected it easily, still laughing. Sidestepping a beam of Light, he stepped towards the person closest to him, Tarr, and struck at him.

Tarr fought, roaring, but his staff was split into two by Frostmourne as easily as though it had been a twig. The orc backed away once, and charged forward, casting as he did so.

"Tarr, don't!" I called.

It was over for him in one swift instant. Arthas' runeblade buried itself into Tarr's chest, and I saw blood spurting out of his mouth. He collapsed against the Lich King, who simply laid Frostmourne against him, absorbing his soul.

I gave a cry, raising my spellblade. Rotvine saw wat I was doing and placed himself in Arthas' line of sight, distracting him momentarily with a fire spell. My blade buried itself in the Lich King's right shoulder blade, just at the spot where his shoulder armor met the plate armor covering his arm. I felt ice forming over my fingers, and wrenched my blade out just as Arthas instinctively swatted at me. I hadn't seen the blow coming and went sprawling backwards.

The floor was icy, which made it easy for me to slip towards the edge of the platform. I was going fast, and had only a second to think about what to do before I tumbled right off into the void. Using all the strength I had, I stabbed my staff into the floor, slowing my movement.

"Faith!"

I slammed hard into something – a shard of rock that Arel had conjured forth somehow. I felt a couple of my ribs splintering at the impact, and gasped out in pain, the wind knocked out of me.

Arthas was walking towards me, Frostmourne raised.

"You have annoyed me for the last time, little Faith!" he called to me.

He swung his sword and I rolled away. The sound of the runeblade hitting the rock was that of an evil bell made of ice. The rock I had slammed into shattered under the force of the blow.

Two of Mograine's death knights leapt on Arthas. To my horror, I saw that Beverly was among them, but she managed to hang on as he shook them off, killing one of them and stunning the other.

"Bev! Let go, now!" I cried.

She did as I asked, and I sent a bolt of arcane energy at him, just as one of Haldren's Light-infused spells finally found its mark. Arthas stumbled back, but wasn't stunned long. He recovered almost immediately and called forth his Val'kyr, who swarmed us.

Ten of his winged monsters appeared out of nowhere, beginning to sweep in and out of the battle like beautiful buzzards, trying to pluck us from the platform. One of them made directly for me, while I saw another one reanimating Tarr's body where it lay. Making a split-second decision, I sent my black fire over to Tarr to make sure that he wasn't raised. This left me vulnerable to the Val'kyr's attack, and she grabbed me with her strong hands.

"Get – off of me, you hag!" I cried. My staff was still on the ground, but I clutched my blade, which I sank into her thigh. The Val'kyr screamed into my ear, and for several seconds, I could hear nothing else. She released me, and I fell in a heap, injuring my ribs again.

"Split… split up!" I cried, my breath coming in gasps. "Half on you on… the Val'kyr!"

Enough people heard me for my orders to be obeyed. I killed the Val'kyr who had grabbed me before struggling to my feet. I could barely breathe, but luckily for me, I was able to cast the majority of my spells without needing to say anything. I focused on that, magically shielding myself while I alternated between sending arcane energy at Arthas and using fire on him. He deflected most of my spells, along with the others that were being aimed at him.

But he was being hit, and I realized that he wouldn't be able to go on this way indefinitely. The problem was, neither would we.

Something akin to a warm caress covered me like a blanket. The Light. Haldren was healing whatever injuries I had sustained so far in the fight. A Val'kyr attacked him, but Beverly swiped her arm in an arc, catching it with the long knife she was wielding. I watched as she, together with Haldren, killed the creature and turned their attention to Arthas, who was busy fighting the two remaining death knights.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw members of the Argent Crusade attempting to destroy the blocks of ice encasing Tirion and Mograine, to absolutely no avail. I hoped they were still alive in there, but we couldn't count on them for now.

It was up to us.

I looked at Rotvine, raising my hand and signaling the number 3 to him. He saw me and nodded. Together, we moved to stand behind Arthas, and started to cast our spells, invoking fire, arcane, and frost magic together.

The invocation created a five-point star on the floor that glowed white, pink, and orange. Arthas began to move away from it, but Arel used a gust of wind to keep him in place.

Please let this work, I said to myself.

We released the spell, and I felt as though countless amounts of energy had been yanked out of me as something exploded around Arthas. I fell forward, landing on my knees, and saw Rotvine do the same. The lich King was lifted off his feet and was sent crashing onto the stairs that led to his throne, the sound like thunder in my ears.

At the same time, the two ice blocks that had trapped Tirion and Mograine cracked, releasing them.

Arel raced to me, putting an arm around me before I completely collapsed.

But Arthas, unbelievably, wasn't done yet. He stirred on the stairs, and painstakingly got to his feet. Around us, all of the Val'kyr had been killed, and I saw more than one body clad in the tabard of the Argent Crusade lying motionless on the frozen floor, snow already beginning to cover them.

"Burn… them…" I managed, gesturing at them.

Arel nodded and did just that, setting the bodies alight. Snow and ice whipped at our faces. A shard of ice cut my cheek, and I began to bleed, but I paid no attention to that.

The Lich King stared at me. Raising Frostmourne, he pointed it at me, and I screamed.

My world went white, then black. My veins felt as though they were flowing with liquid ice. I was burning and freezing, caught in an unimaginable vortex of conflicting sensations as images filled my mind. I saw the devastation of Lordaeron through Arthas' eyes. King Terenas Menethil's crown rolling on the floor, leaving a blood trail. Uther the Lightbringer slain. Sylvanas, the living Sylvanas, laying atop a wall, surveying the massive expanse of undead before the gates of Quel'Thalas. Her torture. Her death. Her rebirth into a creature of the Scourge.

I saw her die in a hundred different ways, each more horrible than the last. I could hear myself shrieking from far away. Arthas was laughing. The pain in my body was unbearable. The visions of Sylvanas clawing at my sanity.

"Faith. Come on, child, you need to snap out of this."

I opened my eyes, although they weren't my real eyes. More like the eyes in my mind. A figure stood in front of me, one that looked like an older version of his son. King Terenas. I tried to speak, but couldn't.

"I know it hurts. But you can do this. You know what to do to get out of Frostmourne's grip. If you don't do it, you will stay here forever, trapped, the same way I am."

Something else coalesced next to Terenas. Her figure was vague, maybe because her real body and part of her soul, whatever remained of it, was currently living, such as it was. Yet it was her, such as I remembered her.

"My love. You have been so brave until now, so brave. I am so proud of you. Don't let him win. Don't let him take you away from me, my darling. Fight him. Fight him with everything you have."

Sylvanas.

"I will always be with you. The part of me that is gone will never leave you, and the part of me that remains in the trappings of undeath will always love you. Remember that."

Love.

Sylvanas.

My body moved. Through the curtain of pain that wracked my body, I managed to curl my fingers around my staff, which was, somehow, next to me now. I swung it, and it connected with Frostmourne, not hard enough break it, but enough to move it away from me.

The pain didn't vanish, but it slowly receded from my body. I fell, sobbing, nearly landing on top of Arthas as I did so. Arel's corpse lay next to me, her eyes wide and unseeing. Next to her was a fresh undead corpse. Arthas must have summoned them while I'd been in limbo.

"Frostmourne," whispered Arthas, looking at his sword. He sounded more than a little stunned that I had broken out of its grip.

I extended my hand, and my spellblade flew into it, glowing violet and orange. "Sylvanas!" I screamed, raising it and striking Arthas' runeblade with very ounce of strength I had left in my body. At the same time, Tirion swung Ashbringer, and Mograine raised his own weapon, striking at Arthas' flank.

Frostmourne shattered. Screams emanated from it, and I could swear that I saw forms rising out of the shards, dozens of them, hundreds. Several of the forms lingered, staying next to Arthas. One of them looked at me. Sylvanas.

"Go on, Faith," she said. "Finish him off."

I blinked and looked at Tirion, who nodded wearily, "Go ahead. You wanted to do this."

I felt weak, too weak to do what they were asking of me. Dimly, I realized that my right arm was broken, and that my blade had cracked when it had hit Frostmourne. Bending down, I picked up the broken hilt of the accursed runeblade with my good arm and staggered to where Arthas was laying, barely breathing.

I took off his helmet, and Tirion peeled off part of his armor, revealing his chest, which was rising and falling quickly. "For the crimes that you have committed against the people of Azeroth, Arthas," said Tirion, "we sentence you to death. May this bring peace and justice to the world that you destroyed."

The form of King Terenas knelt next to Arthas' head, and Sylvanas' form stepped towards me. I didn't wait for them to speak, and plunged the broken blade directly into Arthas' heart.

"It is done," said Tirion. He sounded broken inside.

I didn't know what to think. My mind couldn't process what had happened. Arthas was dead. Finally, after ten years of pain and suffering, he was dead. In a daze, I heard King Terenas' voice stating that there must always be a Lich King to keep whatever remained of the Scourge in check. I saw Bolvar Fordragon, freed from his chains, say that he would take that burden, and did nothing when Tirion placed the Helm of Domination, the Lich King's helm, onto his head.

"Faith?" Tirion's hand was on my shoulder.

I looked at him, "Sylvanas… I have to get back to Sylvanas…"

"All right. Go see her, and return to Dalaran once that's done."

Rotvine, looking as stunned as I felt, helped me create a portal back to Undercity. Still unsure of what was going on, I stepped through it.