Christie Golden - Arthas - Rise of the Lich King

The pain was worse than it had ever been before.

Arthas crumpled to his knees. His vision went red. Again he saw the Lich King—Ner’zhul, he recalled Anub’arak had named him—trapped in the icy prison.

“Make haste!” the Lich King cried. “My enemies draw near! Our time is almost spent!”

“Are you well, death knight?”

Arthas blinked and found himself staring up into the face, if it could be called that, of Anub’arak. A long arachnid leg was extended toward him, offering him assistance. He hesitated, but was too weak to rise unaided. Steeling himself, he gripped it and rose. It was like a stick in his hand, dried and almost—mummified to the touch. He let go as soon as he could stand by himself.

“My powers are weakening, but I’ll be all right.” He took a steadying breath and glanced around. “Where is Kael’thas?”

“Gone.” The voice was cold as stone and laced with displeasure. “He used his magic to teleport away before we could rend him to pieces.”

The cowardly mage trick of teleportation again. If only Arthas’s necromancers were capable of such, the Lich King would not be in the danger he was in. Arthas recalled the other corpses and knew that such would indeed have been Kael’thas’s fate. “I hate to say it,” he said, “but the damned elf was right.” He turned to his intimidating ally. “Anub’arak—I had another vision—the Lich King is in immediate peril. They’re closing in on him—Illidan and Kael’thas. We’ll never reach the glacier in time!”

I’ve failed….

Anub’arak did not seem at all perturbed. “Overland, perhaps not,” agreed the mammoth creature. “It is a long and arduous voyage. But…there is another route we might take, death knight. The ancient, shattered kingdom of Azjol-Nerub lies deep below us. It was where I once ruled for many years. I know its corridors and hidden places well. Though it has fallen on dark times, it could provide us a direct shortcut to the glacier.”

Arthas looked up. As the raven flew, it was not that long a journey. But across the ice and the mountains that reared up before them…

“You’re certain we can reach the glacier through these tunnels?” he asked.

“Nothing is certain, death knight.” For a moment, it sounded like the nerubian was smirking. “The ruins will be perilous. But it’s worth the risk.”

Fallen on dark times. A curious phrase for an ancient, dead, spider-lord to use. Arthas wondered what that meant.

He supposed he was about to find out.

Anub’arak and his subjects set a brisk pace, heading due north. Arthas and his Scourge followers fell into step, and soon the ocean was left behind. The sun moved quickly across the dim sky, low on the horizon. The long night was coming. As they marched, Arthas sent some of his warriors to gather what tree limbs and sticks they could; they would burn through many a torch passing through this dangerous subterranean kingdom.

After several hours of excruciatingly slow progress—the undead could not truly feel the cold, but the wind and snow slowed them—Arthas knew that despite Anub’arak’s nearly wry words, one thing actually was certain. He never would have made it in time to save the Lich King—and thus himself—by heading overland. In the end, it was self-preservation that drove him so hard. The Lich King had found him, had made him into what he now was. Had granted him great power. Arthas knew and appreciated it, but his debt to the Lich King was nothing of loyalty. If this great being was slain, there was no doubt but that Arthas would be the next to die—and, as he had told Uther, he intended to live forever.

At last, they reached the gates. So covered with ice and snow were they that Arthas did not immediately recognize them as such, but Anub’arak halted, reared up, and spread wide two of his eight legs, indicating what lay ahead of them.

Curved stone, looking like sickles—or insect legs, Arthas thought—jutted upward, their tips bending toward one another to form a sort of symbolic tunnel. Ahead, he could make out the gates themselves. A giant spider was etched upon them. Arthas’s lip curled in disgust, but then he thought of the statues dotting Stormwind. Was this really so different? The entrance “tunnel” and the gates led into the heart of what seemed to be an iceberg. For a moment, just a moment, Arthas glanced at the silent, enormous figure of Anub’arak, thought about spiders and flies, and wondered if he was doing the right thing.

“Behold the entrance to a once-powerful and ancient place,” Anub’arak said. “I was lord here, and my word was obeyed without question. I was mighty and powerful, and I bowed to no one. But things change. I serve the Lich King now, and my place is defending him.”

Arthas thought briefly of his outrage at the plague, of his burning need for vengeance…of the look in his father’s eyes as Frostmourne drank his soul.

“Things do change,” he said quietly. “But there’s no time to reminisce.” He turned to his strange new ally and smiled coldly. “Let us descend.”

Arthas did not know how long they spent beneath the frozen surface of Northrend, in the ancient and deadly nerubian kingdom. He only knew two things as he trudged out into the light, blinking like a bat forced out into the sun. One was that he hoped he was in time to defend the Lich King. The other was that he was grateful, bone-deep, to be out of that place.

It had been clear that the nerubian kingdom had once been beautiful. Arthas was not sure what he had expected, but it had not been the haunting, vivid colors of blue and purple, nor the intricate geometric shapes that denoted different rooms and corridors. These still retained their beauty, but were like a preserved rose; something that while still lovely, was nonetheless dead. A strange smell wafted through the place as they walked. Arthas could not place it, nor even categorize it. It was acrid and stale at once, but not unpleasant, not to one used to the company of the decaying dead.

It was likely in the end a shorter route, as Anub’arak had promised, but every step had been bought with blood. Soon after they had entered, they had come under attack.

They scuttled out from the darkness, a dozen or more spider-beings chittering angrily as they descended. Anub’arak and his soldiers met them head-on. Arthas had hesitated for a fraction of a second, then joined in, ordering his troops to do the same. The vast caverns were filled with the shrieking and chittering of the nerubians, the guttural groans of the undead, and the agonized cries of the living necromancers as the nerubians attacked with gobbets of poison. Thick, sticky webbing trapped several of the fiercer corpses, holding them helpless until snapping mandibles lopped off heads or stiletto-sharp legs impaled and eviscerated them.

Anub’arak was a nightmare incarnate. He uttered a dreadful, hollow sound in his guttural native language, and fell upon his former subjects with devastating consequences. His legs, each working separately, grabbed and impaled his hapless victims. Vicious pincers sheared off limbs. And the whole time, the stale air was filled with cries that made Arthas, inured to such things as he was, shiver and swallow hard.

The skirmish was violent and costly, but the nerubians eventually retreated to the shadows that had birthed them. Several of their number were left behind, eight legs squirming violently before the hapless arachnids curled up on themselves and died.

“What the hell was that all about?” Arthas had asked, panting and whirling on Anub’arak. “These nerubians are your kin. Why are they hostile to us?”

“Many of us who fell during the War of the Spider were brought back to serve the Lich King,” Anub’arak had replied. “These warriors, however,” and he waved a foreleg at one of the bodies, “never died. Foolishly, they still fight to liberate Nerub from the Scourge.”