Lady Varenna Sungale by *JRinaldi on deviantART

Varenna raised her shield and blocked both of Illithias’ slashes. “Il-Illithias! Stop!” Varenna shouted at her. Illlithias snarled in response and swung her axes again. Varenna blocked one axe with her shield. She parried the other, beat the haft of the axe hard enough for Illithias to drop her second axe. This didn’t stop her. She grabbed her remaining axe with both hands and swung with all of her might at Varenna. Varenna neither parried nor raised her shield. She took two quick steps backward out of the arc of the axe. It slammed into the ground, kicking up a great gout of snow. Still snarling, Illithias pulled back up on the axe with both hands.

“Stop! We have to go!” Varenna shouted. “Illithias! We’re leaving!”

Illithias pulled the axe half-out of the snow. She stopped snarling long enough only to spit out, “I’m staying.” She tugged once more before Bricu slammed his own axe onto the haft of her remaining axe.

“Get yer arse back t’the fuckin’ line long ear. Sunshine, get movin’.”

“Not till she moves, Sergeant.” Varenna replied.

Bricu stopped short of a response as Illithias leapt at him, fists swinging, screaming in Darnassian. He caught her by the wrist and held her gaze for a moment.

“The fuck yeh screamin’ ’bout?”

“LEAVE ME HERE!”

“Fuck this.” Bricu said. Then he slammed his forehead into the bridge of her nose. Twice. Illithias went limp, but Bricu held her up by her wrists.

“Sunshine?”

“Yes Sergeant.”

“Carry the fuckin’ tosser. I’ll grab her axes.”

“Yes sir.”

Varenna took Illithias on her shoulders, and carried her back to the rally point. Bricu scooped up her weapons and double timed it back. Varenna rushed past Threnn, Fingold and Annalea and set Illithias up against a rock.

“Sunshine, sit on her.”

“Sergeant?”

“Sit on her, I’m gettin’ rope.”

Bricu went to the makeshift medical tent and grabbed frostweave bandages. Varenna was kneeling on Illithias back when he returned, and although Illi had not stirred, Varenna still looked uncomfortable. He quickly tied her ankles together, then moved to her wrists. He motioned for Varenna to spin her over, which she did quickly. Then Bricu gently put a hand on her face and called upon the light to heal Illi’s broken nose. She awoke with a start, cursing in Darnassian.

“Oi, the fight’s over. We lost. Yer safe.”

“To the Nether with you, Bittertongue. You stole my chance at absolution.” Illithias snarled. She pulled against her bonds, but they held tight.

Bricu glared at her in response. Illithias didn’t seem to notice.

“I can join my family, leave this world doing right, not have to suffer through their deaths and my fall and…”

“Yeh fuckin’ stow this shite solider.” Bricu said. He didn’t raise his voice. “If yer life is so fuckin’ cheap an meaningless, then I’m buyin’ it.”

Illithias stopped struggling and looked up at Bricu. “You what?”

“I fuckin’. Own. Yeh. Yer too fuckin’ stupid t’see the worth that I do? Fine. I own it. Since yeh threw it away on shite move, I bought it on the fuckin’ cheap.”

“I am not going to be your property, your slave…”

“Slaves have value. Yeh only got potential. Yer an’ investment–since yer too fuckin’ broken t’be a person right now. An t’keep my investment safe…. Sunshine?”

“Yes sergeant?” Varenna whispered.

“Keep her in those bandages.”

“Yes sergeant.”

Illithias cursed again, but Bricu glowered at her. She fell silent after a few moments, but Bricu didn’t turn away. Bricu held Illithias’ gaze for as long as she could. When she broke, and lowered her head, Bricu continued to look at her.

“If she gets up,” Bricu said sternly, “knock her out.”

Illithias and Varenna

Illithias by *JRinaldi on deviantART

Varenna watched in horror as Illithias threw herself at yet another Ymirjar. Unlike its fallen comrade, this one was wielding a two handed axe. One that was taller, thicker and probably heavier than Illithias herself. While Varenna fought furiously, parrying and block the attacks of the scourge surrounding her, she kept her composure. She let the Light guide her arms, trusting in her faith and training to keep her safe while she made her way to help Illi. Illithias did not demonstrate any of the discipline required to survive. She threw herself at the Ymirjar’s axe, running under the blade as it slammed into the ground where she was. Illi swung her axes in a cross cut, slashing past metal, flesh and bone. The Ymirjar toppled backwards, but it did not fall. Illithias did not stop running either. She raced into another group of the Lich King’s Skeletons, running into their necromancer handler. The skeletons surrounded her, grabbing at her arms, her legs and her hair, trying to pull her down where they could use their sharpened fingers to flay the skin from bones. The Necromancer stood just out of reach of her axes, channeling his own energy into his charges. Behind them all, the Ymirjar regained his balance, bellowing his pain and fury.

Still surrounded by ghouls and geists, Varenna focused her attention on the Ymirjar. She called out to it, her voice enhanced by the Light, challenging it to face her.

“Little Girl, I will crack your bones and drink your marrow! I will paint my face with your blood!”

Varenna gripped her shield tighter and slammed it into blade of the axe. It dug deep into the metal of the shield, but the shield held tight to the axe. She took her sword and ran it through the Ymirjar’s skull. His taunting silenced, Varenna continued on to Illithias. She watched as Illithias hacked at the growing circle of skeletons. As one fell to her axes, another would form and continue to slash or pull at her. By the time Varenna had reached her, Illi was slowing from the countless cuts and the skeletons that still clung to her. When she was in an arms length of her, Varenna called upon the light again. Her body was engulfed by the Light, scattering the skeletons to the battlefield. Even their handler briefly shielded his eyes. Illithias quickly regained her footing and lurched towards Varenna. Her teeth bared, she growled at Varenna, before spining on her heel and launching herself, axes first, into the necromancer.

Bricu
There was no safe place anymore. The phrase Bricu and Threnn often quoted each other–especially when the began thinking about children–came back to terrorize them. The Line was shattered. There could be no safe, orderly retreat without some semblance of a line. They were flanked, and not by the gargoyles they had feared, but maddened giests that had nearly lept sheer cliff walls. The battlefield itself was awash in thick green clouds of smoke–Plague flungh down from catapults manned by the forsaken. Death was swirling down around them on all sides.

But they ran together. Bricu kept pace with his wife, even though he sorely wanted to stay behind and ensure no new giests could reach them. Threnn, winded but not exhausted, ran down the slope, ever mindful of any last minute escape plan that her husband would enact. One that would that would get her home safe, but as a widow. All she saw were those still trying to rally the line. Jolly, standing now on a mountain of scourge, and Linedan, touring over the field that he reaped with his axe. There was hope–but it was still yards away.

The sound of battle horns caught Bricu’s ear. They were not the horns used by the 7th legion, and the Vyrkul had no use for the instruments, given their own shrill war cries. The tones were not the same used by any units associated with the Horde. Someone else was charging the line. Bricu scanned the horizon for their standard, all while holding on to Threnn’s gauntleted hand. All around them, the battlefield broke down into chaos. Scourge rushed through the broken line, tearing into the any living they reached. With their attention focus to the battle that was before them, neither Bricu nor Threnn gave thought to the battle behind them.

The first giest landed on Bricu’s back, slamming him into the ground. Threnn wrenched her hand free, to keep from being pulled down. She spun on the snow and ice, slamming her shield on to the ground, her hip into the shield. The giest on Bricu’s back bent back his epulate and started to squeeze his neck. The giest pulled Bricu up by the neck and slammed his head into the frozen ground. Before he blacked out, Bricu heard the sound of the battlehorn and saw their standard. It was the Eye. Bricu’s stomach twisted into knots as his world went black.

Yva and Jack

Jak and Yva: Kicking ass and taking Names.

You are my creation. I took you, molded you, and changed you to prove my sovereignty. Life and death are mine to command, and so too are you, Jakob. I took the common dross that you were, made you strong and unbending, set high in my legions. Your blades sing the north wind; winter courses through you and dances at your whisper. You were reborn those months ago as a soldier of the great nothing – my gift to you, and your inheritance. You are my knight, and you will draw life from this world as one draws poison from a wound.

Open yourself to me and claim what is rightfully yours. End the weak and undeserving. End them now and prove your fealty to your liege lord.

For a moment, Jakob felt his head turning. He felt his impassive blue eyes skim over the Bittertongues – Bricu with his wild eyes, his fists clenched around his weapons, geists atop him, Threnn with her shield, protecting the unborn child growing inside of her – and he felt the lich’s loathing rising inside. They were low and weak and beneath Him, they were the discordant notes in the master’s grand symphony.

He drew his swords and stepped forward, ever the dutiful knight. This was his purpose, his function now. He was a soldier in his king’s war, the only war, destined to slaughter and maim for the greater tomorrow, and these insects would make proper offerings.

A rictus smile spread, his lips receding to a terrible smear of white teeth and spittle.

It’s so close, now, Jakob. So very close.

He hefted the swords, a comforting weight in his hands.

And then it all went wrong. The king’s voice broke, his hold on Jak’s mind shattering with an echoing scream of frustration. Sylvanas’s people, the Apothecarium, had interfered, their plague oozing over the cliff sides in a wash of green haze.

Jak staggered to a knee, bile rising in his throat. Realization at what he’d wanted to do, had almost done made him clamp his eyes shut. His stomach rolled, threatening to deposit his meager dinner onto the snows below.

Breathe. Breathe, damn you.

In through his nose, out through his mouth, over and over. The sounds around him, the disaster of Angrathar was all but forgotten as he tried to piece the remnants of his tattered soul together in the wake of Arthas’s hold.

Who am I?

Jakob Balthasar. No longer the Lich King’s puppet, but a living man, a freed man.

Where am I?

The camp. The Red and Black’s camp on the hillside. Far too close to whatever had fallen from the cliffs with enough power to wound the Bloody Prince.

But why are you here?

Guard duty. That was right, with a tinge of sardonic shame. Guarding the tent on the hill.

No, BUT WHY?

Her. He was here for Her.

Who is she?

Black hair, white skin, and lips as red as the river roses of his youth. She knew him. She loved him.

“Yva.”

He stood, having to dig his sword into the ground to gain leverage. Hundreds were running, horde and alliance alike, and the speck that had been the woman – his woman – was gone, lost to the swarm of panic.

Find her.

*****

Her.

Retreat, then, for the first time in her life. Retreat because when death came, that long sought after dream, that thing that whispered promises of peace and respite, she didn’t want it. Not now, not in front of Jakob where he’d see yet another piece of his life torn away. She owed him that much.

Death on her terms, then. Not Arthas’s. Not the Apothecariums. Hers.

Even in her despair she found the anger, the strength of will that had broken her away from Him in the first place. Brill, seven long years ago, she loosed the parasite that was lich and found her name. That tiny shred had been enough to rebuild an existence from the flickers of her memory. It took her years to piece it together, and as painful as it had been remembering how her mother had bled from her eyes and nose with a stomach swollen with plague, as terrible as it had been remembering how her father had used the shotgun on himself instead of succumbing to the same painful end – Yva’d forced herself to relive every moment so she could claim what little identity she had left.

It wouldn’t be for nothing.

Run.

And she would run, wanted to run, but her legs were as frozen to the snows as her victims had been. It was like a dream where you started to get away from the wicked nightmare at your tail, but you couldn’t move fast enough, no matter how hard you willed yourself. She was pushing against the current. Crawling then, across the battlefield of Northrend, over the bodies of fallen scourge and fallen soldiers. She turned her head, and through the wash of her tears she didn’t know were there, saw the flaps of the red tent on the hill. Garish she had called it before, but now, it was just the color it ought to be, a beacon of hope on the horizon.

She began the long ascent, her fingernails breaking as she pushed over armor and desecrated corpses and squishy blackened things that had fought in Arthas’s name. People – men, women – were retreating and screaming, running in every direction. Some brushed by her, some knocked her down as she forced herself towards the hill, but she was undeterred.

This is not how it ends. Not here. My terms. MY BLOODY FUCKING TERMS, MENETHIL.

A kaldorei soldier mistaking her for one more lost to the battle of Wrathgate stepped on her back in his escape. A lash of pain sizzled up her spine, and she arched her head back with a scream.

“Bloody HELL, you fucking idiot.” He didn’t stop to look at her, but then, given the circumstances, she didn’t expect him to. He was running for his life, as she ought to have been.

She breathed deep, nostrils twitching at the burn and rot and wrongness of the land, and collapsed forward, face to face with the charred visage of what may have been a geist before Genise had unleashed her fury. Its mouth was open in a soundless scream, its chest was caved in where something had run it through.

Or perhaps it does end here, and there is no justice in this world, and you will be forgotten just like this thing that was once a man.

Her “no” was an inaudible groan.

“Yva! Where – MOVE OUT OF MY FUCKING WAY – are you?”

Light and gods be merciful, thank you. Thank you.

*****

Them.

Above the clamor of battle, shouting somewhere to the west, was Jakob Balthasar. She was so happy to hear his voice she started weeping. She tried to make words come, but they just twisted around her tongue and ended up as gut wrenching sobs. She pushed herself up to her knees, her thumb squishing into the eye socket of the geist beneath her. It took at least a half a dozen tries before she could get Jak’s name out. She was so afraid he’d not hear her, but somehow, above the cacophony of dreams ending, he answered her, calling her name and cursing.

The curses were the loveliest thing she’d heard in hours.

“Yva! Where the fuck are you?”

His name was a strangled litany, but it was enough, he was coming closer and closer, hollering so loud his voice cracked like a boy half his age. And then he was there. In his fist was the mangled remains of something stupid enough to get in his way, and he tossed it aside, shoving past the frenzied masses until he was before her, crouching to her level. He tore his gauntlet off to streak his hand over her hair, as if the only way he could ensure she was whole and real was this one touch, possibly the most important touch they’d ever shared.

“Oh Jak. I-I . . .” Song and anger and panic jumbled inside of her throat, crushing anything else that wanted to be said.

Before he pulled her face to his chest, before he picked her up into his arms and carried her out of the throng, making for the incline as fast as the body strewn field would allow, she saw his eyes, saw the horrible emptiness and sorrow there, like a light had been ever dimmed inside of him. Whether it was fear or the grotesque horror of this day’s end, she couldn’t say, and she wasn’t sure she would ever truly know.

Some things were too personal to broach. If he wanted to tell her, he would, but she would not ask.

“Ohgodsohgodsohgods,” she suddenly sobbed into his neck, her arms twining around him like he was the last solid thing in her entire world. “Home, Jak. HOME. N-now.”

“Home,” he rasped in agreement, pushing through the frenzy, towards the red tent and the Riders and everything dear and familiar.

“Home.”