Varian Wrynn: Blood of Our Fathers

Something had awakened King Varian Wrynn from a deep sleep. As he stood motionless in the gloom, the faint patter of a distant dripping sound echoed off the walls of Stormwind Keep. A feeling of dread washed over him, for it was a sound he’d heard before.

Varian moved cautiously to the door and pressed his ear against the burnished oak. Nothing. No movement. No footfalls. Then, as if from far away, the dull and muffled hum of a crowd cheering from somewhere outside the castle. Did I oversleep today’s ceremonies?

Again the strange dripping sound came, this time echoing off the icy floor, distinct and wet. Varian slowly opened the door and peered out into the hall. The corridor beyond was dark and quiet. Even the torches seemed to flicker with a cold light that died as quickly as it was born. For a man who allowed himself few emotions, Varian felt something stir inside himself now—something old, or young, or perhaps long forgotten. It was almost like a feeling of childlike… fear?

He shook off the notion immediately. He was Lo’Gosh, the Ghost Wolf. The gladiator warrior who struck fear in the hearts of his enemies and friends alike. Still, he could not shake the primal feeling of unease and danger that now pervaded his body. Stepping out into the hall, Varian noticed his guards were not at their usual stations. Is everyone preoccupied with Remembrance Day? Or is this something more sinister?

He crept carefully down the dim hall, entering the large and familiar throne room of Stormwind Keep, but now its towering walls seemed different—larger, more shadowed, and empty. From the distant stone ceiling, tarps hung like garish cobwebs, emblazoned with the golden face of a lion—the emblem denoting the pride and strength of the great nation of Stormwind.

In the gloom, Varian heard a muffled cry and then a sudden scuffle. His eyes darted to the floor, where a trail of blood clearly led to the center of the room. There in the murk, he could barely make out a frantic struggle between two figures. As his eyes adjusted, he could see one man on his knees, bloody and wounded, and standing over him was a harsh female shape looming in the blackness.

Varian knew that shape by heart, its distorted silhouette giving away the twisted nature of her body and soul. She was Garona Halforcen, part draenei, part orc—the assassin bred by the twisted mind of Gul’dan.

As Varian stood in stunned disbelief, fresh blood oozed along the edge of the half-orc’s blade, reaching the razor-sharp point, then dripping… falling… until it erupted in a rose petal of crimson on the marble floor. Memory rushed over Varian in a flood of recognition. The armor. The regal clothing. The man on the floor was his father, King Llane!

Garona looked at Varian with a hideous, tear-streaked smirk, then swiftly stabbed downward with her blade, the flash of steel cutting through the dark and burying itself deep into the kneeling king’s chest.

“No!” Varian screamed, lurching forward, clawing across the blood-soaked floor to reach his father. He grabbed the king’s wilted body and held it close as the half-orc’s face slowly faded into the dark.

“Father,” Varian pleaded, rocking him in his arms.

Llane’s mouth twitched up at him in pain, then parted with a stream of fresh blood. With a putrid hiss of air, the old king managed to form a few brittle words. “This is how it always ends… with Wrynn kings.”

With that, Llane’s eyes rolled back and his jaws gaped open into a hideous expression. From deep within his throat, a chitinous vibration arose. Varian wanted to tear his eyes away, but found he could not. In the shadow of his father’s yawning mouth, something moved, shimmering and wiggling up into the fading twilight.

Suddenly, maggots erupted from the dead king’s maw—thousands upon thousands of writhing worms obliterated Llane’s ashen face. Varian tried to pull away, but the maggots washed over him as well, chittering and consuming his body as he let out one final scream of agony.

Varian bolted upright in his chair, a terrible scream still fading in his ears. He found himself sitting at his map table in the private upper chambers of Stormwind Keep. Warm sunlight streamed into the room along with the roar of a cheering crowd from high windows. The Remembrance Day celebrations are under way.

In his hands, he held a tarnished silver locket, its keyed hinge securely fastened. Varian instinctively tried to open the trinket, as he had a thousand times before, but found it locked as always.

***

The door burst open, and the high commander of Stormwind Defense rushed in. General Marcus Jonathan’s face was a mask of alarm. “Is something wrong, Your Highness? We heard a scream.”

Varian quickly put the locket away and stood up. “Everything is fine, Marcus.” The king tried to straighten his armor and brush a clump of dark hair away from weary eyes. His fingers felt the deep lines of worry and lack of sleep over the last few months—a blur of weeks spent responding to the many emergencies in the aftermath of the dragon Deathwing’s sudden attack on the city and the world.

Both he and the general were in full dress splendor for the holiday, and General Jonathan, with his tall frame and sharp features, looked the part better than most.

“The Honor Ceremony will be in three hours, Your Highness,” Jonathan offered. “Is your speech ready?”

Varian looked to the blank parchment on the map table. “I am still working on it, Jonathan.” And I can’t seem to find the right words.

The high commander studied him, and Varian sought to quickly change the subject. “Has my son arrived yet?”

General Jonathan shook his head. “No one has seen Prince Anduin, Your Highness.”

Varian tried to hide his disappointment by looking out the keep’s windows to the courtyard below. It was a sea of people, with flags and streamers waving in the air, children dressed as their favorite heroes of old, and food and mead flowing with laughter. Remembrance Day was part memorial, part celebration, yet Varian himself could never find mirth in this event.

As he watched, the throng slowly moved toward the Valley of Heroes, heading for the statues of the great champions of humanity that lined the entrance to Stormwind City. The stage for the Honor Ceremony had been set up in the shadow of these impressive leaders, and today they would be acknowledged with respect and thanks for their great deeds.

Jonathan continued. “When you are ready, sire, the archbishop is waiting outside to brief you on the city’s repairs and our care for the wounded.”

“Yes. Yes, in a moment.” Varian waved him off. Jonathan bowed his head and quietly backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Varian shook the cobwebs from his mind and pulled out the delicate locket again, staring at the rumpled reflection of himself on its mirrored surface. The world has changed, but I must hold steady.

Varian glanced up at the portrait of King Llane over the fireplace. Today of all days, the leader of humanity, the king of Stormwind, the rock of the Alliance, must be at his very best. His father would expect nothing less.

***

Archbishop Benedictus stood adorned in his finest robes and trinkets, representing the pride of Stormwind’s culture for the great day at hand. Next to him stood a small and grimy man carrying a large bundle of wrinkled scrolls.

Benedictus looked up eagerly as Varian emerged from his private quarters. “Light bless you, King Varian.” He smiled as Varian descended the stairs.

“And you, Father,” Varian said. “You look dressed to meet your maker.”

Benedictus waved his staff in a well-rehearsed and solemn gesture. “In such times as these, we must all stand ready to join the Light at any moment.”

Vol’jin: The Judgment

The young troll crouched in the rain, staring ahead to where the path faltered in the face of the jungle’s dense undergrowth. The sunlight could not penetrate that foliage, nor could the breeze. That part of the island was called First Home, and nobody went there besides shadow hunters and fools.

Vol’jin was no shadow hunter.

He felt the water running in rivulets between his toes. It was a fierce rain, and each drop that hit his back pushed him toward First Home. Sometimes the shadow hunters returned, but the fools never did. Behind Vol’jin, another troll sheltered under a great palm leaf.

Zalazane was no shadow hunter either.

“We not ready,” Zalazane said, chewing noisily on hunks of kommu meat. “De judgment be for older trolls who already done mighty things. We be young nobodies.”

“I just young; you the nobody.” Vol’jin chuckled and stood up. “We got to. My papa, he stared into a fire for many hours last night, and now he actin’ like his doom be upon him. I think he saw a vision. Change comin’, and we got to be ready.”

“You think the loa goin’ to make you a shadow hunter?”

“They gonna judge me, for sure. Test me. I don’t know what dat mean, though.”

“They say the loa gonna take our minds,” Zalazane said grimly. “They gonna warp us and twist us around and make us see visions.”

“Many tests, I hear. If they find me worthy, I be a shadow hunter,” Vol’jin answered. “If they find me unworthy… nothing can save us.”

“Oh, they gonna be impressed with me.” Zalazane smiled knowingly.

“But they gonna laugh at you.” He stepped into the mud and ambled over to stand beside his friend. They looked at each other for a moment and broke into wide grins, tusks bared. Throughout their entire childhood in the Darkspear village, this had always been a sure sign that Vol’jin and Zalazane were about to do something particularly stupid.

With a mighty cry, they ran headlong into First Home. They crashed through grasping vines and roots. The place teemed with death both sudden and slow, but they were young, and they were sure they couldn’t really die.

But there were loa here. The ancient spirits of those who had transcended death could grant wondrous boons or inflict terrible punishments. Loa could give a troll second sight—or drive him mad so that he would pull out his own eyes. Their judgment was vicious, swift, and unpredictable.

Vol’jin and Zalazane ran for a time, and both began to wonder if the legends of First Home had been exaggerated. There did not seem to be any great threat. Two huge fronds blocked the path ahead. With a twitch, they slid to either side, exposing a large carnivorous plant: a nambu. Furry lips parted wide, waiting for them. Fibrous teeth writhed eagerly in the gaping maw, and Vol’jin could not stop in time. He threw himself to the left, grazing the side of the nambu.

Twisting, flailing, he skidded into something hard and scaly. He staggered back, dazed, shaking his head. That something turned, revealing that it was a very angry, very large raptor—by far the biggest Vol’jin had ever seen. He fell back farther, aware that the nambu was somewhere behind him. He could hear Zalazane making strange, muffled sounds, but Vol’jin had lost track of his friend.

The raptor darted its head down at Vol’jin, and he tumbled to his left. Immense jaws snapped shut where he’d just been standing. Ribbons of saliva flew from the creature’s mouth. The nambu reacted to the motion with lightning speed, locking its teeth onto the raptor, funneling poison into the beast’s torn flesh. Vol’jin had only a few heartbeats to take advantage of the distraction: he drew his glaive and stalked around the nambu, assessing. Zalazane was on the far side of the plant, thrashing in a nest of alchu bugs that had swarmed over him, biting and stinging. He would be no help for a time.

The raptor ripped the nambu from the ground, tearing roots and flinging the plant far away. The beast’s tiny, enraged eyes settled on Zalazane, attracted to the troll’s frantic motions.

Tyrande & Malfurion

She could have been asleep. The night elf’s features were perfectly relaxed except for her mouth, which frowned slightly as though her dreams were not pleasant ones. Her body was intact and largely unharmed, unlike many of the others they had seen in recent days. Tyrande Whisperwind knelt by the corpse to take a closer look. There was bloody kelp in the dead woman’s hair and she reeked of the sea and slow rot. Dead several days. She had probably been one of the first victims of the Cataclysm, swept away by the flood. No priestess of Elune could bring her back now.

“Tyrande!” The high priestess’s head snapped up as the voice of one of her closest confidants, Merende, rang through the air. Searching the shores along Rut’theran Village, she saw Merende comforting a younger priestess who sobbed into her white robes. Walking over, Tyrande began to understand why. The tangled body of a young night elf girl lay before them.

Her sister, Merende mouthed silently, indicating the grief-stricken priestess. Tyrande nodded and motioned for them to move away. When the area was clear, she turned her gaze to the corpse. She knew right away that there was no hope—the limbs were twisted at sickening angles and the wounds had been drained bloodless—but the night elves did not abandon their dead. The body would be cleansed, the injuries hidden, and the broken joints set right, before being committed back to the earth.

Tyrande crouched down and wiped the mud from the girl’s face, whispering soft prayers for the moon goddess to guide her spirit and comfort her sister’s grief. The grit slid away, revealing light violet skin and waves of dark blue hair. The almond-shaped eyes were still open, staring up into the clouded sky. It was a face much like one she had first seen many thousands of years ago. Tyrande shut her eyes against the oncoming tears.

Shandris… if only I could hear from you….

“How far were you able to travel, Morthis?” Malfurion Stormrage asked, handing the scout a mug of steaming hot cider. The other night elf gulped it down gratefully and suppressed a shiver. He was soaked to the skin after returning from his patrol, but comfort could wait until his findings were shared. The two druids took shelter in the uppermost room of the Cenarion Enclave.

“The winds were terrible. I could only reach Maestra’s Post, but they had received some reports from Astranaar and Feralas.” The scout settled himself on one of the wooden benches in the chamber, watching nervously as the branches of Darnassus’s trees swayed outside.

“Astranaar still stands?” Malfurion’s voice swelled with relief. He had been coordinating scouting patrols for days, but half of the druids couldn’t even reach the mainland despite their best efforts. They were starved for news, and many had feared the worst.

“Yes, it was spared along with Nijel’s Point, but the settlements along the coast have been less fortunate.”

Sylvanas Windrunner: Edge of Night

Sylvanas Windrunner drifts in a sea of comfort, physical sensations replaced by the purity of emotion. She can grasp bliss, see joy, hear peace. This is the afterlife, her destiny. The eternal sea in which she found herself after she fell defending Silvermoon. She belongs here. With each recollection, her memory of this place palls. The sound grows distant; the warmth, cooler. The vision takes on the pallor of a half-remembered dream. But with horrific clarity, the memory always ends the same: Sylvanas’s spirit is wrenched away. The pain is so intense it leaves her soul forever torn. The grinning face of Arthas Menethil, with his lopsided smile and dead eyes, leers at her as he pulls her back into the world. Violates her. His laughter—that hollow laugh—the memory of it makes her skin crawl!

“You son of a bitch!” Sylvanas hollered, kicking aside a shattered piece of the Lich King’s frozen armor. Her voice, empty and terrifying, cracked under the strain of her hatred. The sound echoed across the peaks of Icecrown, rolling through the valleys like the cloying mists that forever haunted this horrible place.

She had ventured here, alone, to his former seat of power. To the very top of Icecrown Citadel, where a frozen throne loomed on a plateau of white ice. Of course that egotistical little boy she knew would place himself here, sitting atop the world. But where was he now? Shattered. She could no longer feel his malevolence tugging at the edges of her consciousness. His broken armor lay in pieces on the white peak before his throne, surrounded with blackened cakes of frozen gore, the remains of those who had finally brought him to his knees.

Sylvanas regretted not being there to see him broken. She picked up a shattered gauntlet, from the very hand that had once gripped Frostmourne. He is finally dead. But why did she feel so hollow inside? Why did she still throb with rage? She hurled the armor from the peak, watching it disappear into the roiling mists.

She was not alone. Nine glimmering spirits encircled the pinnacle, their masked faces turned toward her, their ephemeral forms held aloft on graceful, insubstantial wings. They were the Val’kyr, warrior maidens of old, once enslaved to the will of Arthas. Why did they remain in this place? Sylvanas neither knew nor cared. They stayed out of her way, absolutely mute, immobile even as Sylvanas hollered and raged. Were they watching her? Judging? She ignored them and crunched through the snow to the very seat of Arthas’s power.

Someone else sat atop the throne.

Sylvanas at first thought it was Arthas’s corpse, planted mockingly in this place of honor and sealed in a block of ice, but the silhouette was all wrong. She approached the throne and wiped her hand across the surface of the ice, peering at the distorted figure within. Human, yes. She recognized the profile of an Alliance shoulderplate. But the body was very badly burned, the flesh split open like roasted meat. He wore Arthas’s crown—and his eyes—that flicker of consciousness…

They have replaced him. A new Lich King sat on the throne!

Again Sylvanas cried out, shock growing into explosive rage. She smashed the flat of her hand against the ice, then her fist. The ice cracked. The immobile face within split open behind a web of fractures. Her howls faded, disappearing hollowly into the mists that enveloped the peak. They replaced him. Does this mean there will always be a Lich King? Idiots. Naively presuming that their puppet king wouldn’t someday begin twisting the world to his own ends. Or worse: become a blunt weapon for something even more terrible.

It was a bitter blow. She had expected to venture here in triumph, not to discover another defeat. The victory was hollow. But she backed away from the throne, straightened up, and accepted that the cycle would go on. Arthas was dead. What did it matter if another corpse filled his vacant throne? Sylvanas Windrunner had her vengeance. The vision that had driven her and her people for years had finally been realized. And not a single fiber of her desiccated, animate corpse cared where the world went from here.

It was over now. A part of her was surprised she was even still around, without his lingering presence always tugging at the back of her mind. She backed away from the throne and slowly turned to survey the cold gray world all around her. Her thoughts returned to that place of bliss, her half-remembered glimpse of what lay beyond. Home. It was time.

Slowly, she crunched her way to the ragged edge of the icy platform. A thousand feet below, shrouded by the clouds, lay a forest of shattered saronite spikes she had scouted out earlier. The fall alone couldn’t kill her: her animate flesh was nigh indestructible. But the spikes, the hardened blood of an Old God, they not only would tear the body apart but would obliterate the soul as well. She longed for it. A return to peace. The work she had begun in the forests of Silvermoon was finally complete with the death of Arthas.