Heart of Ice

Pain greeted her when she regained consciousness. Followed by the sounds of crying. She opened her eyes and saw a floor, some stairs and remembered where she was. Next was the feeling of utter emptiness. It was overwhelming and she let out a sob as she curled up into a fetal position. She was faintly aware that her young companion was in a similar state nearby.



What had happened? This wasn't just shock, something was definitely wrong. She took several deep breaths to regain some control over herself and then stood up shakily. The Ranger looked up at her, tears staining his young face.



“Do you feel it too?” he asked quietly.



“Yes,” she nodded, “I feel it too.”



She held out a hand to him which he took after a moment's hesitation. Quietly, they made their way up the stairs to the first level of the house they were in. It was eerily quiet. Did undead make noise? Would the streets be empty? Or like Stratholme? Crawling with undead.



Carefully, she opened the door to the basement and looked outside. Not a soul was near, so she crept out into the main room of the house to look at the window.



The city was completely destroyed. Bodies were scattered all over. But there was no undead to be seen.



They made their way outside and through the streets, seeing not a soul, living or otherwise. Surely, she thought, someone made it out. She began heading towards the gates to the north to see if she could find anyone, her companion following her numbly.



There were a few survivors here who looked to be in a similar state of bewilderment and despair. Several were in a group fussing over what looked like a soldier. Her heart leaped at the thought that it may be her husband and she rushed over. One of the others looked up and saw her come over.



“A priestess is here! Perhaps he can be saved!”



She came over to the wounded elf and her heart sank. He had the regalia of a Ranger, but his hair was darker and shorter than Keron's. He looked horribly burnt and had clearly been in the water. Some people babbling around her said they found him bobbing by in a half sunk boat and they had pulled him out.



She closed her eyes and held her hands over him, moving quickly into the trance to channel the Light and heal him of his wounds.



Nothing happened.



She opened her eyes and looked at her hands confused. Others were also looking at her curiously. Lyeald took several deep breaths and tried again. Still nothing. Panic began to rise in her, and she fought to keep it down, but the crowd around her was murmuring around her. She looked around and saw several of them were trying to summon their own magics. A cry rose out as one elf discovered she could not tap the Arcane anymore.



Lyeald turned her attention back to the soldier, frantically trying to recall an unmagical method to save him, but knew it was hopeless. He seemed to understand too and just stared up at the sky before speaking.



“Sunwell...Arthas used it to raise a lich,” he coughed up blood and then continued, “its...gone...Sylvanus and rangers....gone too... “ he gave another haggard cough before closing his eyes and dying.



The elves all started talking in panicked tones. What are we going to do? Where are the Scourge now? Our city is gone, our people have been eradicated, are we all that's left? How can we rebuild without our magic?



Lyeald knelt next to the dead soldier silently, staring out ahead. Then suddenly she was running, her feet pounding on beneath her until she reached the shore and then she turned sharply and kept on running. She didn't know where she was going or why, she just ran, kicking up sand behind her, startling the Murloc villages on the edge of the water, and just kept on going until finally her skirt tripped her up and she planted face first into the beach.



For several minutes she lay there, shaking with uncontrollable sobs. She rolled onto her back and looked up at the darkening sky as it all came crashing down around her. Keron was dead, her city destroyed, and while there was still a slim chance her parents and son had escaped, she knew deep down that they had been killed too. And now even the light had deserted her. She had been left alive as a cruel gesture while everyone she had ever loved had been ripped from her.



She sat up and absently began brushing sand off her when she looked down at her robes. The emblem of the light had been dirtied up, but was otherwise tattered. She stared at it for a long time, thinking of the comfort it had given her in the past, even today when she was in the basement before-



A sudden rage gripped her and she began tearing at it. With a wild howl she managed to rip it from her robes and tore at it like a mad beast, shrieking and crying, cursing it with all of her being. Darkness gathered round her and she suddenly became aware of it, the energy and like a hungry child tapped it. She remembered learning spells of the shadow when she was still training to be a priestess, and how use of it was often frowned upon. It was a power of destruction and chaos, not order and healing.



She summoned it around her, feeling the energy fill her up and in a final scream of unleashed rage released it all around her. It felt incredible, the rush of power that flowed through her, nothing the Light had ever given her had felt anything like it. She threw herself into it completely and rode it out like an orgasm of fury and destruction.



When she came down, she felt drained, but satisfied like never before. She opened her eyes and saw that the grass around her had been burnt away, along with several insects. Others were running from her in terror. As she looked out at the small amount of destruction she had wrought, and icy calm took her and she stood up, no longer shaking, no longer full of doubt and emptiness.



The Light had abandoned her, so she had no need of it anymore. She would use the Shadow and make it serve her needs. Rage still boiled inside of her and she would use it to reap destruction on the Scourge, the Legion and most importantly, on Arthas.





Now....



Arthas, the Lich King, one and the same, strode into the Cathedral. The cultists all bowed their heads in reverence to him, but Lyeald was too frozen to move. Her rage battled with her utter terror at being this close to the creature who had destroyed her city, yet wielded unbelievable power. He made his way straight to where his heart was glowing a sickly green and stopped just short of it. Then it seemed he noticed something. She felt Tirion tense next to her and she suddenly realized that they had been sensed.



“Uninvited guests! Did you think you'd go unnoticed inside my dominion?” The Lich King was

looking straight at them, and Lyeald felt all the warmth drain out of her completely. She swallowed hard and then saw that Fordring had stood up and removed his disguise. He was utterly without fear she thought, and could not help but admire it. She found herself standing up too, and her fear went to the back fo her mind. She felt it, but could face it.



“I must confess... you were not altogether unexpected. I hope you find your final resting place... to your liking,” he continued.



“You sound a little too confident. Especially considering the way our last encounter ended,” Fordring answered, his voice ringing clearly through the Cathedral.



The Lich King sneered, “Last time we met, you had the advantage of fighting on holy ground. You'll find that our situation has been... reversed.”



“That might be, but I don't need to stand on holy ground to run that disembodied heart of yours through with the Ashbringer.”



“I call your bluff,” Arthas answered with a sinister laugh, “You're a paladin after all. Your obsession with redemption goes beyond the inane. You surely wouldn't destroy humanity's only chance to redeem its most wayward son. You'd sooner die!”



Tirion looked thoughtful, perhaps even somewhat regretful as he looked at the former Prince.



“The heart... the last remaining vestige of your humanity. I had to stop it from being destroyed. I had to see for myself. And at last I'm sure,” He raised the Ashbringer, “only shadows from the past remain. There's nothing left to redeem!”

Before Lyeald could tell what was happening, he had leapt forward and brought his sword down on the heart. It shattered into a million pieces under the power of the holy weapon and was followed by a flash of light. When her vision cleared she saw that Tirion was lying on the ground and not moving. The Lich King had been thrown back and was on his knees.

“You...you will pay for that old man! Destroy them now!”

Lyeald and the other crusaders rushed to Tirion's side but were soon surrounded by cultists. Lyeald instinctively raised her hands and prepared to summon a hail of fire to take as many of them out as possible. There were far too many of them for her and three crusaders to take out, and she knew that she was going to die. She actually felt alright with that, mostly. Finally she understood her fatigue of the last few weeks.

It had been the sheer hopelessness of their cause. They fought, died and were risen again to fight for the enemy. It didn't matter how many Scourge she killed, they could always bolster their armies with the dead of the people who fought them. But here they had accomplished something, she didn't know its full affect, but she knew, deep down that they had won an important victory.



There was also Cer'Ango, who had somewhat melted her frozen heart. She knew now that she loved him and the only regret she had was that she would not see him again. It was because she had been unable to throw her heart away completely and she could now see where that led. Arthas had destroyed himself to become the Lich King, and she knew she could never go that far.



There was a sudden commotion at the entrance of the Cathedral. They looked and saw Koltira and a group of Death Knights were rushing in. They tore through the cultists as they made their way to Tirion's group. Lyeald couldn't believe it, they might actually live through this. Cultists scattered away as the Death Knights reached them. Koltira threw up his hands and a gate appeared before him. Lyeald helped Tirion to his feet with one of the other Crusaders and began to make her way towards it. She then saw that the Lich King had risen but was being held off by the Death Knights. A moment of doubt seized her, she wanted to finish him off, they should, but somehow she knew it was not time. The fires of vengeance didn't burn as brightly as they had before.



The moment passed and she stepped through the portal.