Chapter Text
The emissary came.
My sprained ankle, earned when Lou had tackled me off my feet after I tried to run, was almost healed. Another few days and I’d be able to walk unassisted.
The emissary went.
The bruise dominating the left side of my face, earned when Lou had punched me with an armored fist after I tried to wrestle her off of me, was a horrible purple-and-red splotchy mess that ached whenever I opened my mouth. Thassarian said it was a miracle that she hadn’t broken my cheekbone.
The ships burned.
I was a model prisoner. No point trying to steal supplies or a weapon when there was an unfriendly soldier watching me 24/7. No point making a run for it when I could barely get myself to the latrines and back. I laid in my tent and I waited as the world moved around me. No stopping what was already in motion.
I am going to die.
As soon as the medic judged my ankle fit for traveling, Arthas would be leading an expedition to the Frostmourne cavern. I would accompany them, as their guide and as insurance against leading them astray. Nobody seemed to consider the possibility that I had only the vaguest idea of the destination, and nobody would believe me if I said so.
I am going to die.
Scouts had already been sent out to survey the wilds surrounding our base. Too few of them had come back, but enough to tell us that the undead, presumably Mal’ganis’ forces, were amassing to the northeast, though none had caught sight of the dreadlord himself. Arthas and his captains were already drawing up plans to launch an assault as soon as the Prince returned with his fancy new sword, courtesy of their captive traitor. I could guess what they were planning to do with me afterwards.
I am going to die.
“Callie?”
My gaze didn’t shift from the off-white, slanted canvas of my ceiling.
“We’re doing this again, huh? Well, the medic’s here to take another look at your ankle, if you can take the time out of your busy schedule to accommodate him.”
Yeah, I know. The silent treatment, very mature. But I didn’t have the emotional energy to start a fight over Lou’s stupid quips every time she poked her head past the door-flap of my tent. Pathetic of me to ever believe that two months of friendship could sway two decades of loyalty in the first place, though it wouldn’t matter soon enough. We’d probably get along just fine once we both became mind-controlled zombie minions.
“Alright, I’ll let him know that the blushing maiden eagerly awaits his arrival,” she continued. That one nearly got a rise out of me, but I refused to give her the satisfaction.
Lou kept watch while the medic, a scruffy-looking soldier of about forty who was missing his left ear and three fingers, inspected my ankle. As much as I wanted to believe that she was staying for my sake, I knew it was far more likely that she was here to protect the medic from the Dangerous Minion of Mal’ganis. I could barely even think the words with a straight face, but I’d stopped agonizing about whatever evidence had drawn them to that conclusion. It could have been anything. Maybe I’d made some accidental reference in an offhand comment back in Lordaeron that sounded really bad in retrospect. Maybe Muradin had seen my doppelganger in Mal’ganis’ army. Maybe it was just a paranoid hunch from an increasingly unhinged Prince, and I’d ruined my chances of dismissing it by confessing Frostmourne’s location instead of playing dumb. I was not the one with power here; the truth was whatever Arthas believed it to be.
After several painful prods around the tender areas of my ankle, the medic finally pronounced, “Good enough for the Prince’s purposes.” The words were directed at Lou instead of me.
Good enough. Not fully healed, but right in the sweet spot where I’d be able to keep up with difficulty but wouldn’t be able to run away.
“Hear that, Callie?” Lou remarked with a scar-warping smile. “One step closer to victory! Let’s grab the sword, kick Mal’ganis’ ass, and we’ll be back in Lordaeron before you know it.”
And how are you going to get home with no ships? I wanted to ask.
But I said nothing.
~
The next visitor to my tent was one of the soldiers on the guard shift. I didn’t know his name, and hadn’t bothered to learn it. He tossed a handful of jerky in through the flap, letting out a nasty chuckle when I failed to catch any of it, and told me that I had ten minutes to get ready to leave. How I was supposed to know when ten minutes had passed without a clock, he didn’t say.
There wasn’t much for me to do in terms of preparation. I pulled on all my extra hand-me-down layers and my oversized boots, ate my disappointingly small prisoner rations, then took a few minutes to lay on top of the musty sleeping bag, staring at the canvas and imagining that I was somewhere else. Only a few months ago, my idle fantasies were all about exciting adventures in other worlds; today’s daydream featured fresh pizza and a hot shower.
All too soon, it was time for the Frostmourne Expedition to begin.
I emerged from the cramped tent. It was probably midmorning, if I had to guess, though it was hard to tell with the sun hidden behind a thick layer of gray clouds. Outside of the relative shelter of my tent it was much colder, thanks to a biting wind from the east. Shivering, I pulled my ragged scarf over my nose and mouth for a little bit of extra warmth.
Our company numbered eight: Arthas, Muradin, Lou, myself, and four other soldiers of the First Legion. For a moment I was surprised to see Lou included in the group, until I realized that her presence actually made perfect sense. She knew me well enough to guess if I was lying or planning to bolt, and she’d proven herself sufficiently loyal to Arthas that she’d have no hesitation about snitching. At least here, in the presence of the Prince, she’d be channeling her slightly-more-serious Corporal Macy side.
We set out with little fanfare; it seemed that Arthas had already made his rousing speech before they’d grabbed me for the departure. A dozen soldiers moved aside the northern barricades, and suddenly I was taking my first steps outside the camp and into the untamed wilds of Northrend.
Like the southern fortifications, there was an open expanse stretching a few hundred feet beyond the barricades. Where the camp was bracketed by woods to the south, a steep hill obscured vision to the north, decorated with a scattering of trees. Beyond it, there could be anything.
I stood at the edge of the barricades, my eyes on the promise of the unknown, until someone shoved me roughly from behind.
With difficulty, I pushed myself up from the snow and struggled back to my feet, my ankle uncooperative, my knees freshly bruised, and my wrists cold and aching from when I’d used my hands to break the fall. When I was halfway up, Arthas turned around and gave me a look that was utterly devoid of sympathy.
“Well? We don’t have all day,” he snapped with a scowl.
I gave him a long look as I finally regained my footing, but he didn’t have anything else to say about the incident. No rebuke for the culprit, either.
And so we departed. Arthas and Muradin led at the front of the formation, myself in the middle, and the others scattered around us, guarding the flanks and the rear. Though I had more or less set the course, one soldier would always be ranging ahead of the rest of the group, guiding us around steep slopes and fallen trees. Even bruised and shivering and sore, at least I wasn’t weighed down like the rest of the group. Every other member of the party was armed and armored in full plate. Maybe Arthas or Muradin was lucky enough to have enchanted plate that weighed less than normal, but the common soldiery certainly wouldn’t. On top of that, each soldier was carrying a pack loaded with supplies, bearing the burden that should have been shouldered by the horses and pack mules that were left behind in Lordaeron. I was certain that the only reason I’d been spared was to deny me access to supplies if I tried to run.
The hours passed slowly as we traversed the foothills of the mountains to our west. We had slowly drifted towards the east, avoiding the steep, hilly region closer to the mountains, but the snow-blanketed, uneven ground was still wreaking havoc on my unhealed ankle. I didn’t dare speak up to alter our course; too far west and I’d suffer the hike even more, too far east and we might just drift towards Zul’drak, missing the Frostmourne Cavern entirely.
A little after midday, we stopped for a brief rest on top of an open hill that gave the soldiers a good vantage point of the surrounding wilderness, and I eagerly embraced the opportunity to fill my stomach and give my feet a break. The rations I received from a soldier (William something, I recalled, one of Thassarian’s friends) were larger than the portion I’d received back at the camp. Either William or someone else had taken pity on me and realized I would need more energy while on the move. When I offered him a small smile, he averted his gaze like I’d infect him with the Plague from a look alone.
While I devoured jerky like it was a five-star meal, the soldiers were taking their own break. Someone had caught a brace of snow hares, and they were enjoying the fresh meat and chatting quietly among themselves, while sparing the occasional glance in my direction. Off to the side, I could see Arthas and Muradin conferring apart from the main group.
For just a moment, it was as if the snow on the ground melted into grass, the half-bare trees regained their summer leaves, and the clouds parted to reveal a warm, clear blue sky. Dragonblight became Hearthglen became Dragonblight again, and nothing else changed. Stranger, traitor, pariah, prisoner; was there any difference?
I felt the first sting of unwanted tears at the corner of my eyes, and I rubbed them away with the edge of my sleeve before they could freeze to my face.
How long have I even been here?
I mentally tallied the days. It was tougher than I’d expected – too many days were indistinguishable from each other, first on the ship and then again after my failed escape. Without a calendar all I could do was guess, but I was pretty sure it was late September. Not even three months, then.
Two months ago, a little part of me still hoped that this was just a dream, despite all the evidence of my senses. It was easier to believe that I was dreaming than to accept the fact that I’d lost my family, my friends, and my entire world. Two months in Azeroth and I was right back where I started, completely and utterly alone.
Objectively speaking, Arthas deserved the lion’s share of the blame. Emotionally speaking, I couldn’t muster the energy to hate him. The truth was that I’d never really expected much from him to begin with. His tale had been written long before I ever arrived in Azeroth, and I didn’t have the power to rewrite it. Unfair as it might have been, the weight of my emotions fell on the ones who’d dared to give me hope: Lou, who was condemning both of us and didn’t even realize it, and Thassarian, who hadn’t spoken two words to me in the past two weeks.
But then Arthas was calling out break to an end, and as our company trudged back out into the snow, I shoved all my feelings back into the little box of things I cried about in the dead of night, and forced my attention onto the scenery instead.
Surprisingly, Dragonblight was full of life. Scattered all across the foothills were both elk and some sort of mountain goat, which were content to ignore us humans. Now and then I’d catch a glimpse of a snow hare in the bushes, or a bird of prey circling above. No wolves or bears so far, and I’d be happy to keep it that way. Same with the undead.
Unlike the open tundra that I knew laid to the west across the mountains, the foothills had their fair share of flora. There weren’t many evergreens in this part of Northrend – most trees were already shedding their leaves for the winter, even though it was only September – but these lone sentinels were gnarled and hardy. There was probably grass beneath the ice, based on the little gold clovers that poked out in areas where snow piled less thickly. Plenty of bushes grew above the height of the snowdrifts, some covered in berries, others in bright pink flowers that seemed so distinct from the rest of Northrend’s color palette that I was certain they were poisonous.
As far as distractions went, it could have been worse, but it was far from compelling. Minutes dragged into hours, and the scenery remained relatively unchanging. Meanwhile, the brief lunch break hadn’t been nearly enough rest for my ankle. Each step sent a sharp pain radiating down my left foot, and my gait had long since devolved into a limp that relied on my right leg to do most of the hard work. My boots still didn’t fit, and my right foot had already earned a good number of blisters from the morning alone. My feet each burned in their own separate way, and I wanted nothing more than to stop, but the slave drivers of the First Legion prodded me onwards every time my pace started to slow.
By now, I should’ve known to be careful what I wished for.
As the afternoon deepened, we had started encountering denser patches of foliage – not quite forests or woods, more like groves, but most were wide enough that it was simpler to just go through them rather than take the extra time to go around.
Nobody except maybe Arthas seemed at ease with the reduced visibility. Every time we passed through one, a part of me kept expecting something to lunge out at us from behind the trees, and the rest of the group was similarly on guard. Conversations faded to whispers, feet carefully avoided fallen leaves or loose twigs, and hands never strayed far from weapons until the trees were behind us.
It was maybe three o’clock when the encounter we were all expecting finally happened. One of the soldiers in the vanguard motioned for all of us to stop and be quiet, with a frantic finger raised to his lips.
Silence.
Footsteps froze mid-stride. Hands poised themselves around hilts. Eyes scanned the trees. I held my breath without even realizing it, listening for anything amiss in the sounds of the woods.
Shifting snow, the wrong cadence to be called footfalls.
Let it be wildlife, I began to pray, as a sickening feeling of dread began to pool in my gut. Please, please, no more undead.
Just when I thought my heart would explode from anticipation alone, four shapes crested the little hill to our left, quickly resolving themselves into the insectoid forms of Nerubians – the largest was the size of warhorse, while the other three were comparable to a medium-sized dog.
From a logical standpoint, Nerubians should have been far more terrifying than ghouls. From my own standpoint, I had no experience with the former and had been well-conditioned to fear the latter. It was like encountering an actual tarantula when you’ve only ever seen house spiders: there was still fear, of course, and revulsion, but also an overwhelming, morbid fascination. Common sense was screaming at me in all caps to run, to hide, to do something at all, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them.
The smaller ones had a spider’s silhouette, though they only had six limbs each. Crab-like limbs, spiked and disproportionately large, supported a small but well-protected body covered in reddish plates of chitinous armor. Hairs sprouted out like weeds in the narrow spaces between the overlapping plates. Eight compound eyes in the familiar blue of the undead watched us from above a pair of vicious mandibles.
The bigger one looked like someone had glued the front half of a praying mantis on top of a spider’s body. It had two scythed forelimbs, while another six legs supported a spider’s abdomen, low to the ground. It was huge, standing taller than a fully-armored Arthas. Unlike the smaller ones, which could just be oversized bugs, this one had the clear look of a warrior – or a weapon.
The big Nerubian tilted its head sideways as it looked down on us, like a cat trying to decide if it wanted to play with its food before eating it, and then all at once they attacked.
Have you ever tried to squish a spider, only for it to dash away faster than a spider has any right to move? Imagine that, but the spider is the size of a horse.
Adrenaline pushed my leaden body into motion without waiting for my brain to catch up, and I was landing roughly in the snow before I’d even registered the charge. Dazed from the fall, it took me a minute to find my bearings, but luckily the rest of the expedition was faster on the uptake, drawing their weapons and springing into battle.
The first time I’d ever come face-to-face with the undead, back in Stratholme, my instinctive response was to fight, for all the good it had done. The second time, back at the camp, I’d chosen flight.
Here, in a little clearing in Nowhere, Dragonblight, I was completely frozen as the battle played out before me. It was as if time and space had ceased to exist. Everything felt distant, detached, almost like I was watching myself through a screen. The Nerubians could harm me no more than their pixelated counterparts; the figures hacking at them were worlds away.
And then the illusion was shattered as a freshly-hewn arm from one of the soldiers landed a scant few feet in front from me. I clapped my hands over my mouth and choked down a scream, terrified of drawing attention to my little corner of the clearing, but I couldn’t choke down the bile that came after it, and promptly lost my lunch in the snow. Not trusting my legs to carry me as tremors wracked my body, I began to crawl away from the battle and towards the nearest bushes.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one.
One of the ‘little’ Nerubians was making its own departure from the battlefield. This one had barely survived an encounter with the business end of Arthas’ hammer: black ichor leaked from an enormous spiderweb of cracks on its thorax, and several legs were bent at awkward angles as it limped away from the combat. Our eyes met, and I expected it would do what any other wounded animal would do: recognize that I was not a threat, and scurry off to safety. But I had forgotten that this was not a bug with a bug’s intelligence, who would choose flight over death in an unwinnable situation. This was an undead construct, driven by a malevolent intelligence that wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice a few pawns in its quest to destroy the living. If it couldn’t take down any of the real warriors, then it would go for the easy pickings.
The Nerubian scuttled towards me, and I desperately cast about for anything I could use as a weapon. There! A rock, on the bigger side of what could fit in my hands. I scrambled through the snow on my hands and knees, my fingertips burning from the cold as I forced myself forwards.
Just as I wrapped my hands around the rock, pain erupted in my right calf like a dozen needles stabbing into me at once. This time, I couldn’t suppress my scream, though it came out more like a battlecry as I lurched around to swing the rock at the Nerubian whose teeth were buried in my leg.
One, two, three strikes to dislodge it – my makeshift weapon was too heavy to build momentum for a proper swing. Blood was seeping through my pant leg to soak into the snow, just as it was dripping from the Nerubian’s maw, leaving scarlet blooms across the carpet of white.
The bug had gotten my bad leg, because of course it did, and between the old injury and my new one I didn’t trust my left side to support me even if I could make it back to my feet.
The Nerubian gave me no opportunity to try. It lunged a second time, bypassing my legs to go straight for the throat. The force of it knocked me onto my back, chitinous limbs caged me in place, and I barely managed to lift my rock as a makeshift shield against the bite of its fangs. They scraped against the stone like nails on a chalkboard, forcing it down, down, down towards my face until my world narrowed to nothing but gray. My wrists strained against the force, but just as I thought that I wouldn’t last another second, the pressure vanished. I was unprepared for it, and pushed the stone upwards by another few inches before my brain caught up – which probably saved my life.
The stone shattered in my hands as the Nerubian attacked with a burst of unholy strength. Shards of stones rained down on my face, scraping my cheeks and narrowly missing my eyes. My shield was gone, but I managed to hold onto a small chunk of stone in each hand. As far as weapons went, I was pitifully unarmed.
The Nerubian was lunging again, and for an instant, I was prepared to just lay down and die.
What was the point of struggling? If my throat was ripped out, it would be quick, and it would be permanent. Better than most of the potential deaths that awaited me. Maybe I would wake up at home, in a warm bed, and all of this would have been nothing more than a bad dream. Nobody would really care if I died, anyway. Lou might be sad, and Arthas would fume for the rest of the expedition, but I didn’t matter. They would find Frostmourne without me. Mal’ganis would die without me. All of them would die without me. Everyone on this expedition was doomed; what did it matter if I died a little bit early?
I forced myself to move, more out of an obligation to try than any real hope of success. As the Nerubian opened its maw, I shoved one of my remaining chunks of rock into its mouth, taking a deep gouge in my left hand for the trouble as the creature bit down. The pain shocked me out of my stupor as gravel and broken teeth spilled out onto my lap.
Is this really how I want to die? Killed by low-level bugs because I couldn’t even bother to fight to the death?
Fuck that.
I was injured, and I was exhausted, but only enough to slow me down. None of the hits I’d taken were fatal, even though I was sure it could kill me with one good hit.
The Nerubian was still coming, but when I really looked, I realized that it was slowing down, too. It wasn’t clinging to life – it couldn’t be near death, because it was already dead – but it had started this battle injured, and I had gotten a few hits in myself, and surely there was a limit to how much damage an undead bug could take?
There had to be.
Its mouth was ruined, now, from biting down on stone, so it came after me with its claws instead of its fangs. I was almost weaponless, with only a sharp piece of rock to serve as a makeshift dagger. I couldn’t run, and I could barely fight – I’d have one last chance to attack with everything I had left, and if I died, then at least I’d die fighting.
With the last of my strength, I shoved the shard of rock upwards, just as the sharpened limb plunged down.