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The looming, curved spikes of Acherus stretched above them. Anduin dug his fingers into the gryphon’s fur as gently as he could. Leaning forward, his hood flipped over his eyes just as he landed on the balcony, purposefully hiding his bright hair and eyes from view. He could see the feet of several soldiers already coming towards him. He braced himself to be attacked or grabbed.
“At ease, soldiers,” a high, masculine voice said in front of him. “Though he breaches Acherus, he means no harm. I will handle our…esteemed guest.”
After the soldiers had voiced their agreement and scattered, he lifted his head. The man’s skin was paler than his own, a rough, red goatee barely visible under his helmet. His voice had the metallic, bizarre tone differentiating the dead from the living, but the sword on his back laid heavy, and the air around him drew colder the closer Anduin went. It had the hair on his arm standing on end.
This man was powerful.
“Highlord,” Anduin said amicably as the other turned and began walking in an indeterminate (to him) direction without even a gesture or greeting. He trailed behind him, taking care with his steps to avoid anything that looked like it was even remotely suspicious. “One would think I was a stray you picked off of the street, rather than… an ‘esteemed guest’ arriving for a meeting you had agreed upon.”
“You are a stray,” Darion Mograine, Highlord of the Ebon Blade, mentioned off-handedly. “No one other than the dead roam here. Besides Khadgar, though considering he tends to arrive as only a head, I refuse to count him. You had requested subtlety. You will not find much of it here, unannounced status or not.”
“Khadgar-” Anduin stopped, and shook his head. He didn’t want to know. “I thank you for being so willing to meet on such short notice.”
Darion didn’t respond. Shifting, armor pieces clanging, he lifted a gloved hand to press against a notch in the dark walls of the necropolis. Bricks began pulling apart, interlocking with the surrounding area of the wall until an opening dimly lit by torches was revealed, path reaching forward before taking a sharp curve in the same gray-blue as was around them. Stepping to the side, Darion sharply nodded towards the entrance. As Anduin stepped forward, from the corner of his eye he saw the other gesture furiously at something out of his vision before following. “Curious onlookers?” He brought up as casually as he could, the narrow tunnel bringing up unease.
Darion, further preventing Anduin from reading him, only said, “Something like that. Keep moving until we reach the end of the hall.”
“Where are we?” He pressed, curious despite himself. “I haven’t been in many necropoli, but I can’t imagine the purpose of a hollow edge in the structure. To hold weapons?”
It was difficult to determine how he should treat the Highlord. On one hand, the stories Anduin had heard were of indescribable power, body emanating power like dropping into a frozen pond - the air itself around him crackling in forms of ice. He certainly lived up to expectations, but he didn’t expect the Highlord to be so… still. Even when moving, he traveled in stiff, heavy steps, arms placed firmly at his side. At times, he could see Darion’s head twitch towards the side, as if listening for something. He strained his ears, but all that he could hear was the whistling of wind hitting the parapet of the necropolis.
The Highlord, with his short stature even when standing tall, was also a head below Anduin himself - not to mention his voice. He thought for sure Darion had died well into his years, considering the rumours, but…
Darion finally glanced at him, interrupting his musings. “It is not something others besides the Ebon Blade would know about. It was built after the fall of the Lich King.” Before he could ask, the other stopped abruptly, pressing his hand into the wall once again. “It also provides enough privacy to have a discussion without anyone… listening in.”
He didn’t seem to be willing to offer more. Anduin stopped himself from shifting.
The wall had opened to a small room, surprisingly well-lit. There was a small table in the middle of the room surrounded by a few chairs. A desk rested against the wall on the opposite end, quill and papers scattered about.
“An office?”
“Of sorts. Private enough to hold company with the Prince of Stormwind.” There was an awkward pause as Anduin hesitated despite himself, and Darion amended, “King, now.” Bruskly, he continued, “My current focus is upon the demons that lay siege to the Broken Shore. If you’ve come hoping for the impossible-”
“I’m not asking you to raise my father,” Anduin said, coming to stand directly in front of him in the center of the room, brushing past the table. This close to him, he could see that he was just slightly taller than Darion. He made eye contact, and despite the chills running up his spine, held it. “Not that. Never that.”
Instead of being cowed, though Anduin didn’t expect it of him, Darion simply stared. “Then why?”
“What do you know of the Scarlet Onslaught?” He shrugged off his cloak in order to reach for the scrolls at his side. Darion stiffened, his gaze flickering towards the center of Acherus.
“That they are not the Knights’ problem.”
Anduin finished pulling the scrolls out, laying them flat upon the table, before glancing up. “Aren’t they?”
That got Darion’s attention. He strolled over to the table Anduin had bowed over, scanning the contents of the maps upon the table, before his eyes stopped at a map of the Broken Isles, in which several places had been circled in bright, vivid red. Outside, rain had begun to gather, droplets pelting the outer walls. There was so much noise being this high in the air, in a building open to the world. Even in the utmost center of Acherus, Anduin would bet there was a constant hum of rain bashing against the stone, barely covered by the clashing of metal against metal.
His mind was wandering again. He brought himself firmly to the present location and situation. Darion was still scanning the maps. “The Scarlet Onslaught should have perished in Northrend,” he said, frowning. “My Knights were to make sure of it themselves.”
“Well, they appear to be staging an attack amongst the Isles. The High Priest has recently taken in a heretic from their fortress. She shares dire information about the Onslaught’s potential next move - and the last people we need making landfall are the Crusade. Not only are they still running, they are quickly becoming a new threat to handle.”
“Light blind me,” Darion muttered. “One is enough. If they keep surviving like cockroaches, I’m going to be driven mad.”
Anduin squinted at his unusual ally. “Have you met Mariella?”
“No.” Darion lifted up one of the maps, smoothing out the corners. “I will recall some of the Knights from the Broken Shore in order to pull together a crew to travel to the northeast end of Stormheim. If they are to make camp on shore, that is where the majority of their forces will be stationed.”
Anduin startled as Darion suddenly rolled up the map he was holding, tucking it into his belt and straightening. His brain was moving so slowly that by the time Anduin scrambled to follow, Darion had already paused by the door, glancing back impatiently. “Where are we going?”
“Your job here is complete. You’ve asked for aid and you have it. Though we would not usually meddle in the affairs of the living, this is a… particular instance where I am the most capable man to deal with the Onslaught,” Darion said.
Huffing an exasperated laugh, Anduin fell into step behind him once again. “Certainly not one to waste time, are you?”
“As if you aren’t already in a race against time. I don’t believe I’ve seen you without the Spymaster and wolf on your heels.”
Anduin stiffened. Darion noticed. “So you did sneak over here.”
“I didn’t sneak,” he argued, despite doing exactly that. “I am simply… taking initiative.”
Darion laughed, then, dry but richer than Anduin expected. It seemed to surprise himself as much as it had him. He cleared his throat, tipping his head towards the rain that was falling into Acherus, and the gryphon flopped onto her side under the pillars of Acherus, warm and dry. “Your ride appears to have made herself comfortable. I suspect with that ‘disguise’, you will end up looking like your namesake, stray.”
Anduin huffed again. This man was infuriating - but something about the way this conversation has gone has shifted his perspective of the Highlord from terrifying beacon of power to… something akin to a feral cat. His manners were certainly atrocious - and Anduin suspected the man would rather fall again than to sit through any more idle chatter - but he would have to be sure to pen a few more letters towards the Highlord. “Let me know if you require any assistance with the battalion,” he said, nudging his gryphon into standing up. She stretched, tail flipping in the air, before allowing him to climb behind her shoulders.
Darion flashed him a grin, then, barely visible under the helmet. It was not a humble look in the slightest. “The Light itself could not kill me,” he said. “A few half-naked figures in Scarlet are nothing.”