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[PASSAGE] Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, Prologue and Epilogue
The world was blue and white and raging outside, but inside the Great Hall the air was warm and still. A fireplace tall enough for a man to stand in was filled with thick logs, the crackling of their burning the only noise. Over the ornately decorated mantel, carved with images of fantastical creatures, the giant antler of a shoveltusk was mounted. Carved dragon heads served as sconces, holding torches with flames burning bright. Heavy beams supported the feast hall that could have housed dozens, the warm orange hue of the fires chasing away the shadows to hide on the corners. The cold stone of the floor was softened and warmed by thick pelts of polar bears, shoveltusk, and other creatures.
A table, long and heavy and carved, occupied most of the space in the room. It could have hosted three dozen easily. Only three figures sat at the table now: a man, an orc, and a boy.
None of it was real, of course. The man who sat at the place of honor at the table, slightly elevated before the other two in a mammoth carved chair that was not quite a throne, understood this. He was dreaming; he had been dreaming for a long, long time. The hall, the shoveltusk trophies, the fire, the table -- the orc and the boy -- all were simply a part of his dreaming.
The orc, on his left, was elderly, but still powerful. The orange fire and torchlight flickered off the ghastly image he bore on his heavy-jawed face -- that of a skull, painted on. He had been a shaman, able to direct and wield vast powers, and even now, even just as a figment of the man's imagination, he was intimidating.
The boy was not. Once, he might have been a handsome child, with wide sea-green eyes, fair features, and golden hair. But once was not now.
The boy was sick.
He was thin, so emaciated that his bones seemed to threaten to slice through the skin. The once-bright eyes were dimmed and sunken, a thin film covering them. Pustules marked his skin, bursting and oozing forth a green fluid. Breathing seemed difficult and the child's chest hitched in little panting gasps. The man thought he could almost see the labored thumping of a heart that should have faltered long ago, but persisted in continuing to beat.
"He is still here," the orc said, stabbing a finger in the boy's direction.
"He will not last," the man said.
As if to confirm his words, the boy began to cough. Blood and mucus spattered the table in front of him, and he wiped a thin arm clad in rotting finery across his pale mouth. He drew breath to speak in a halting voice, the effort obviously taxing him.
"You have not--yet won him. And I will--prove it to you."
"You are as foolish as you are stubborn," the orc growled. "That battle was won long ago."
The man's hands tightened on the arms of his chair as he listened to both of them. This had been a recurring dream over the last few years; he found it now more tiresome than entertaining. "I grow weary of the struggle. Let us end this once and for all."
The orc leered at the boy, his skull-face grinning hideously. The boy coughed again, but did not quail from the orc's regard. Slowly, with dignity, he straightened, his milky eyes darting from the orc to the man.
"Yes," the orc said. "this serves nothing. Soon it will be time to awaken. Awaken, and move forward into this world once more." He turned to the man, eyes gleaming. "Walk again the path you have taken."
The skull seemed to detach itself from his face, hovering above it like another entity, and the room changed with its movement. The carved sconces that a moment before were simple wooden dragons undulated and rippled, coming to life, the torches in their mouths flaring and casting grotesque dancing shadows as they shook their heads. The wind screamed outside and the door to the hall slammed open. Snow whirled about the three figures. The man spread his arms and let the freezing wind wrap about him like a cloak. The orc laughed, the skull floating over his face issuing its own manic peals of mirth.
"Let me show you that your destiny lies with me, and you can only know true power through eliminating him."
The boy, fragile and slight, had been knocked out of his chair by the violent gusts of frigid air. Now he propped himself up with an effort, shaking, his breaths coming in small puffs as he struggled to climb back into his chair. He threw the man a look--of hope, fear, and odd determination.
"All is not lost," he whispered, and somehow, despite the orc and skull's laughter, despite the shrieking of the wind, the man heard him.
~*~*~*~*~
The blue and white world blurred in Arthas's dream vision. The cold, pure colors shifted, changed to the warm hues of wood and fire- and torchlight. He had done as he said he would; he had remembered his life, all that had gone before, had again walked the path that had taken him to the seat of the Frozen Throne, and this deep, deep dreaming state.
But the dream was not over, it would seem. He again sat at the head of the long, beautifully carved table that took up most of the illusionary Great Hall.
An the two who had such an interest in his dream were still there, watching him.
The orc on his left, elderly but still powerful, searched his face, and then began to smile, the gesture stretching the image of the white skull painted on his face. And on his right, the boy -- the emaciated, sickly boy -- looked even worse than Arthas remembered him looking when he had entered the dream of remembrance.
The boy licked cracked, pale lips and drew breath as if to speak, but it was the orc whose words shattered the stillness first.
"There is so much more," he promised.
Image crowded Arthas's mind, interweaving and lying atop one another into glimpses of the future and past entangled. An army of humans on horseback, carrying flags of Stormwind...fighting alongside, not against, a Horde raiding party mounted atop snarling wolves. They were allies, attacking the Scourge together. The scene shifted, changed. Now the humans and orcs were attacking one another--and the undead, some crying out orders and fighting with minds that were clearly their own--were standing shoulder to shoulder with the orcs, strange-looking bull-men, and trolls.
Quel'Thalas--undamaged? No, no, there was the scar he and his army had left--but the city was being rebuilt...
Faster now the images poured into his mind, dizzying, chaotic, disordered. It was impossible to tell the past from the future now. Another image, that of skeletal dragons raining destruction down on a city Arthas had never seen before--a hot, dry place crowded with orcs. And--yes, yes it was Stormwind itself that was now coming under attack from the undead dragons--
Nerubians--no, no, not nerubians, not Anub'arak's people, but kin to them, yes. A desert race, these were. Their servants were mammoth creatures with the heads of dogs, golems made of obsidian, who strode across the shining yellow stands.
A symbol appeared, one Arthas knew--the L of Lordaeron, impaled by a sword, but depicted in red, not blue. The symbol changed, became a red flame on a white background. The flame seemed to spark to a life of its own and engulfed the background, burning it away to reveal the silvery waters of a vast expanse of water...a sea...
...Something was roiling just beneath the ocean's surface. The hitherto-smooth surface began to churn wildly, seething, as if from a storm, although the day was clear. A horrible sound that Arthas only dimly recognized as laughter assaulted his ears, along with the screaming of a world wrenched from its proper place, hauled upward to face the light of day it had not seen in uncounted centuries...
Green--all was green, shadowy and nightmarish, grotesque images dancing at the corner of Arthas's mind only to dart away before they could be firmly grasped. There was a brief glimpse, gone now--antlers? A deer? A man? It was hard to tell. Hope hung about the figure, but there were forces bent on destroying it...
The mountains themselves came to life, taking great strides, crushing everything luckless enough to cross their paths. With each mammoth footfall, the world seemed to tremble and shake.
Frostmourne. This at least he knew, and intimately. The sword whirled end of end, as if Arthas had tossed it into the air. A second sword rose to meet it--long, inelegant, but powerful, with the symbol of a skull embedded in its fearsome blade. A name--"Ashbringer", a sword and yet more than a sword, as was Frostmourne. The two clashed--
Arthas blinked and shook his head. The visions, tumbled, chaotic, heartening and disturbing--were gone.
The orc chuckled, the painted skull on his face stretching with the gesture. He had once been named Ner'zhul, had once had the gift of true visioning. Arthas did not doubt that all he had seen, though imperfectly understood, would indeed come to pass.
"So much more," the orc repeated, "but only if you continue to walk this path fully."
Slowly, the death knight turned his white head to the boy. The ill child met him with a gaze that was astonishingly clear, and for a moment, Arthas felt something inside him stir. Despite everything--the boy would not die.
And that meant...
The boy smiled a little, and some of the sickness dissipated as Arthas struggled for words. "You...are me. You are both...me. But you..." His voice was soft, tinged with wonder and disbelief. "You are the little flame that burns inside me still, that resists the ice. You are the last vestiges of humanity--of compassion, of my ability to love, to grieve...to care. You are my love for Jaina, my love for my father...for all the things that made me what I once was. Somehow, Frostmourne didn't take it all. I tried to turn away from you...and I couldn't. I--can't."
The boy's sea-green eyes brightened and he gave his other self a tremulous smile. His color improved, and before Arthas's eyes, some of the pustules on his skin disappeared.
"You understand, now. Despite all, Arthas, you have not abandoned me." Tears of hope stood in those eyes and his voice, though stroner now than it had been, quavered with emotion. "There must be a reason. Arthas Menethil...much harm have you done, but there is goodness in you yet. If there was none...I would not exist, not even in your dreams."
He slipped off the chair and slowly walked toward the death knight. Arthas stood as he approached. For a moment, they regarded each other, the child and the man he had become.
The boy extended his arms, as if he were a living, breathing child asking to be picked up and held by a loving father. "It doesn't have to be too late," he said quietly.
"No," Arthas said quietly, staring raptly at the boy. "It doesn't."
He touched the curve of the boy's cheek, slipped a hand beneath the small chin and tilted up the shining face. He smiled into his own eyes.
"But it is."
Frostmourne descended. The boy cried out, his shocked, betrayed, anguished cry--that of the wind raging outside--and for a moment Arthas saw him standing there, the blade buried in his chest almost as big as he was, and felt one final tremor of remorse as he met his own eyes.
Then the boy was gone. All that remained of him was the bitter keening of the wind scouring the tormented land.
It felt...marvelous. It was only the boy's passing that Arthas truly realized how dreadful a burden this last struggling scrap of humanity had been. He felt light, powerful, purged. Scourged clean, as Azeroth would soon be. All his weakness, his softness, everything that had ever made him hesitate or second-guess himself--it was all gone, now.
There was only Arthas, Frostmourne, all but singing at having claimed the final piece of Arthas's soul, and the orc, whose skull-face was split with triumphant laughter.
"Yes!" the orc exhilarated, laughing almost maniacally. "I knew you would make this choice. For so long you have wrestled with the last dregs of goodness, of humanity in you, but no longer. The boy held you back, and now you are free." He now got to his feet, his body still that of an old orc, but moving with the ease and fluidity of the young.
"We are one, Arthas. Together, we are the Lich King. No more Ner'zhul, no more Arthas--only this one glorious being. With my knowledge, we can--"
His eyes bulged as the sword impaled him.
Arthas stepped forward, pluging the glittering, hungering Frostmourne ever deeper into the dream-being that had once been Ner'zhul, then the Lich King, and was soon to be nothing, nothing at all. He slipped his other arm around the body, pressing his lips so close to the green ear that the gesture was almost intimate, as intimate as the act of taking a life always was and always would be.
"No," Arthas whispered. "No we. No one tells me what to do. I've got everything I need from you--now the power is mine and mine alone. Now there is only I. I am the Lich King. And I am ready."
The orc shuddered in his arms, stunned by the betrayal, and vanished.
A table, long and heavy and carved, occupied most of the space in the room. It could have hosted three dozen easily. Only three figures sat at the table now: a man, an orc, and a boy.
None of it was real, of course. The man who sat at the place of honor at the table, slightly elevated before the other two in a mammoth carved chair that was not quite a throne, understood this. He was dreaming; he had been dreaming for a long, long time. The hall, the shoveltusk trophies, the fire, the table -- the orc and the boy -- all were simply a part of his dreaming.
The orc, on his left, was elderly, but still powerful. The orange fire and torchlight flickered off the ghastly image he bore on his heavy-jawed face -- that of a skull, painted on. He had been a shaman, able to direct and wield vast powers, and even now, even just as a figment of the man's imagination, he was intimidating.
The boy was not. Once, he might have been a handsome child, with wide sea-green eyes, fair features, and golden hair. But once was not now.
The boy was sick.
He was thin, so emaciated that his bones seemed to threaten to slice through the skin. The once-bright eyes were dimmed and sunken, a thin film covering them. Pustules marked his skin, bursting and oozing forth a green fluid. Breathing seemed difficult and the child's chest hitched in little panting gasps. The man thought he could almost see the labored thumping of a heart that should have faltered long ago, but persisted in continuing to beat.
"He is still here," the orc said, stabbing a finger in the boy's direction.
"He will not last," the man said.
As if to confirm his words, the boy began to cough. Blood and mucus spattered the table in front of him, and he wiped a thin arm clad in rotting finery across his pale mouth. He drew breath to speak in a halting voice, the effort obviously taxing him.
"You have not--yet won him. And I will--prove it to you."
"You are as foolish as you are stubborn," the orc growled. "That battle was won long ago."
The man's hands tightened on the arms of his chair as he listened to both of them. This had been a recurring dream over the last few years; he found it now more tiresome than entertaining. "I grow weary of the struggle. Let us end this once and for all."
The orc leered at the boy, his skull-face grinning hideously. The boy coughed again, but did not quail from the orc's regard. Slowly, with dignity, he straightened, his milky eyes darting from the orc to the man.
"Yes," the orc said. "this serves nothing. Soon it will be time to awaken. Awaken, and move forward into this world once more." He turned to the man, eyes gleaming. "Walk again the path you have taken."
The skull seemed to detach itself from his face, hovering above it like another entity, and the room changed with its movement. The carved sconces that a moment before were simple wooden dragons undulated and rippled, coming to life, the torches in their mouths flaring and casting grotesque dancing shadows as they shook their heads. The wind screamed outside and the door to the hall slammed open. Snow whirled about the three figures. The man spread his arms and let the freezing wind wrap about him like a cloak. The orc laughed, the skull floating over his face issuing its own manic peals of mirth.
"Let me show you that your destiny lies with me, and you can only know true power through eliminating him."
The boy, fragile and slight, had been knocked out of his chair by the violent gusts of frigid air. Now he propped himself up with an effort, shaking, his breaths coming in small puffs as he struggled to climb back into his chair. He threw the man a look--of hope, fear, and odd determination.
"All is not lost," he whispered, and somehow, despite the orc and skull's laughter, despite the shrieking of the wind, the man heard him.
The blue and white world blurred in Arthas's dream vision. The cold, pure colors shifted, changed to the warm hues of wood and fire- and torchlight. He had done as he said he would; he had remembered his life, all that had gone before, had again walked the path that had taken him to the seat of the Frozen Throne, and this deep, deep dreaming state.
But the dream was not over, it would seem. He again sat at the head of the long, beautifully carved table that took up most of the illusionary Great Hall.
An the two who had such an interest in his dream were still there, watching him.
The orc on his left, elderly but still powerful, searched his face, and then began to smile, the gesture stretching the image of the white skull painted on his face. And on his right, the boy -- the emaciated, sickly boy -- looked even worse than Arthas remembered him looking when he had entered the dream of remembrance.
The boy licked cracked, pale lips and drew breath as if to speak, but it was the orc whose words shattered the stillness first.
"There is so much more," he promised.
Image crowded Arthas's mind, interweaving and lying atop one another into glimpses of the future and past entangled. An army of humans on horseback, carrying flags of Stormwind...fighting alongside, not against, a Horde raiding party mounted atop snarling wolves. They were allies, attacking the Scourge together. The scene shifted, changed. Now the humans and orcs were attacking one another--and the undead, some crying out orders and fighting with minds that were clearly their own--were standing shoulder to shoulder with the orcs, strange-looking bull-men, and trolls.
Quel'Thalas--undamaged? No, no, there was the scar he and his army had left--but the city was being rebuilt...
Faster now the images poured into his mind, dizzying, chaotic, disordered. It was impossible to tell the past from the future now. Another image, that of skeletal dragons raining destruction down on a city Arthas had never seen before--a hot, dry place crowded with orcs. And--yes, yes it was Stormwind itself that was now coming under attack from the undead dragons--
Nerubians--no, no, not nerubians, not Anub'arak's people, but kin to them, yes. A desert race, these were. Their servants were mammoth creatures with the heads of dogs, golems made of obsidian, who strode across the shining yellow stands.
A symbol appeared, one Arthas knew--the L of Lordaeron, impaled by a sword, but depicted in red, not blue. The symbol changed, became a red flame on a white background. The flame seemed to spark to a life of its own and engulfed the background, burning it away to reveal the silvery waters of a vast expanse of water...a sea...
...Something was roiling just beneath the ocean's surface. The hitherto-smooth surface began to churn wildly, seething, as if from a storm, although the day was clear. A horrible sound that Arthas only dimly recognized as laughter assaulted his ears, along with the screaming of a world wrenched from its proper place, hauled upward to face the light of day it had not seen in uncounted centuries...
Green--all was green, shadowy and nightmarish, grotesque images dancing at the corner of Arthas's mind only to dart away before they could be firmly grasped. There was a brief glimpse, gone now--antlers? A deer? A man? It was hard to tell. Hope hung about the figure, but there were forces bent on destroying it...
The mountains themselves came to life, taking great strides, crushing everything luckless enough to cross their paths. With each mammoth footfall, the world seemed to tremble and shake.
Frostmourne. This at least he knew, and intimately. The sword whirled end of end, as if Arthas had tossed it into the air. A second sword rose to meet it--long, inelegant, but powerful, with the symbol of a skull embedded in its fearsome blade. A name--"Ashbringer", a sword and yet more than a sword, as was Frostmourne. The two clashed--
Arthas blinked and shook his head. The visions, tumbled, chaotic, heartening and disturbing--were gone.
The orc chuckled, the painted skull on his face stretching with the gesture. He had once been named Ner'zhul, had once had the gift of true visioning. Arthas did not doubt that all he had seen, though imperfectly understood, would indeed come to pass.
"So much more," the orc repeated, "but only if you continue to walk this path fully."
Slowly, the death knight turned his white head to the boy. The ill child met him with a gaze that was astonishingly clear, and for a moment, Arthas felt something inside him stir. Despite everything--the boy would not die.
And that meant...
The boy smiled a little, and some of the sickness dissipated as Arthas struggled for words. "You...are me. You are both...me. But you..." His voice was soft, tinged with wonder and disbelief. "You are the little flame that burns inside me still, that resists the ice. You are the last vestiges of humanity--of compassion, of my ability to love, to grieve...to care. You are my love for Jaina, my love for my father...for all the things that made me what I once was. Somehow, Frostmourne didn't take it all. I tried to turn away from you...and I couldn't. I--can't."
The boy's sea-green eyes brightened and he gave his other self a tremulous smile. His color improved, and before Arthas's eyes, some of the pustules on his skin disappeared.
"You understand, now. Despite all, Arthas, you have not abandoned me." Tears of hope stood in those eyes and his voice, though stroner now than it had been, quavered with emotion. "There must be a reason. Arthas Menethil...much harm have you done, but there is goodness in you yet. If there was none...I would not exist, not even in your dreams."
He slipped off the chair and slowly walked toward the death knight. Arthas stood as he approached. For a moment, they regarded each other, the child and the man he had become.
The boy extended his arms, as if he were a living, breathing child asking to be picked up and held by a loving father. "It doesn't have to be too late," he said quietly.
"No," Arthas said quietly, staring raptly at the boy. "It doesn't."
He touched the curve of the boy's cheek, slipped a hand beneath the small chin and tilted up the shining face. He smiled into his own eyes.
"But it is."
Frostmourne descended. The boy cried out, his shocked, betrayed, anguished cry--that of the wind raging outside--and for a moment Arthas saw him standing there, the blade buried in his chest almost as big as he was, and felt one final tremor of remorse as he met his own eyes.
Then the boy was gone. All that remained of him was the bitter keening of the wind scouring the tormented land.
It felt...marvelous. It was only the boy's passing that Arthas truly realized how dreadful a burden this last struggling scrap of humanity had been. He felt light, powerful, purged. Scourged clean, as Azeroth would soon be. All his weakness, his softness, everything that had ever made him hesitate or second-guess himself--it was all gone, now.
There was only Arthas, Frostmourne, all but singing at having claimed the final piece of Arthas's soul, and the orc, whose skull-face was split with triumphant laughter.
"Yes!" the orc exhilarated, laughing almost maniacally. "I knew you would make this choice. For so long you have wrestled with the last dregs of goodness, of humanity in you, but no longer. The boy held you back, and now you are free." He now got to his feet, his body still that of an old orc, but moving with the ease and fluidity of the young.
"We are one, Arthas. Together, we are the Lich King. No more Ner'zhul, no more Arthas--only this one glorious being. With my knowledge, we can--"
His eyes bulged as the sword impaled him.
Arthas stepped forward, pluging the glittering, hungering Frostmourne ever deeper into the dream-being that had once been Ner'zhul, then the Lich King, and was soon to be nothing, nothing at all. He slipped his other arm around the body, pressing his lips so close to the green ear that the gesture was almost intimate, as intimate as the act of taking a life always was and always would be.
"No," Arthas whispered. "No we. No one tells me what to do. I've got everything I need from you--now the power is mine and mine alone. Now there is only I. I am the Lich King. And I am ready."
The orc shuddered in his arms, stunned by the betrayal, and vanished.