Christie Golden - Arthas - Rise of the Lich King

The mountains themselves came to life, taking giant strides, crushing everything luckless enough to cross their paths. With each mammoth footfall, the world seemed to tremble and shake.

Frostmourne. This at least he knew, and intimately. The sword whirled end over end, as if Arthas has tossed it into the air. A second sword rose to meet it—long, inelegant but powerful, with the symbol of a skull embedded in its fearsome blade. A name—“Ashbringer,” a sword and yet more than a sword, as was Frostmourne. The two clashed—

Arthas blinked and shook his head. The visions, tumbled, chaotic, heartening, and disturbing—were gone.

The orc chuckled, the painted skull on his face stretching with the gesture. He had once been named Ner’zhul, had once had the gift of true visioning. Arthas did not doubt that all he had seen, though imperfectly understood, would indeed come to pass.

“So much more,” the orc repeated, “but only if you continue to walk this path fully.”

Slowly, the death knight turned his white head to the boy. The ill child met him with a gaze that was astonishingly clear, and for a moment, Arthas felt something inside him stir. Despite everything—the boy would not die.

And that meant…

The boy smiled a little, and some of the sickness dissipated as Arthas struggled for words. “You…are me. You are both…me. But you…” His voice was soft, tinged with wonder and disbelief. “You are the little flame that burns inside me still, that resists the ice. You are the last vestiges of humanity—of compassion, of my ability to love, to grieve…to care. You are my love for Jaina, my love for my father…for all the things that made me what I once was. Somehow Frostmourne didn’t take it all. I tried to turn away from you…and I couldn’t. I—can’t.”

The boy’s sea-green eyes brightened and he gave his other self a tremulous smile. His color improved, and before Arthas’s eyes, some of the pustules on his skin disappeared.

“You understand, now. Despite all, Arthas, you have not abandoned me.” Tears of hope stood in those eyes and his voice, though stronger now than it had been, quavered with emotion. “There must be a reason. Arthas Menethil…much harm have you done, but there is goodness in you yet. If there was none…I would not exist, not even in your dreams.”

He slipped off the chair and slowly walked toward the death knight. Arthas stood as he approached. For a moment, they regarded each other, the child and the man he had become.

The boy extended his arms, as if he were a living, breathing child asking to be picked up and held by a loving father. “It doesn’t have to be too late,” he said quietly.

“No,” Arthas said quietly, staring raptly at the boy. “It doesn’t.”

He touched the curve of the boy’s cheek, slipped a hand beneath the small chin and tilted up the shining face. He smiled into his own eyes.

“But it is.”

Frostmourne descended. The boy cried out, his shocked, betrayed, anguished cry—that of the wind raging outside—and for a moment Arthas saw him standing there, the blade buried in his chest almost as big as he was, and felt one final tremor of remorse as he met his own eyes.

Then the boy was gone. All that remained of him was the bitter keening of the wind scouring the tormented land.

It felt…marvelous. It was only with the boy’s passing that Arthas truly realized how dreadful a burden this last struggling scrap of humanity had been. He felt light, powerful, purged. Scoured clean, as Azeroth would soon be. All his weakness, his softness, everything that had ever made him hesitate or second-guess himself—it was all gone, now.

There was only Arthas, Frostmourne, all but singing at having claimed the final piece of Arthas’s soul, and the orc, whose skull-face was split with triumphant laughter.

“Yes!” the orc exhilarated, laughing almost maniacally. “I knew you would make this choice. For so long you have wrestled with the last dregs of goodness, of humanity in you, but no longer. The boy held you back, and now you are free.” He now got to his feet, his body still that of an old orc, but moving with the ease and fluidity of the young.

“We are one, Arthas. Together, we are the Lich King. No more Ner’zhul, no more Arthas—only this one glorious being. With my knowledge, we can—”

His eyes bulged as the sword impaled him.

Arthas stepped forward, plunging the glittering, hungering Frostmourne ever deeper into the dream-being that had once been Ner’zhul, then the Lich King, and was soon to be nothing, nothing at all. He slipped his other arm around the body, pressing his lips so close to the green ear that the gesture was almost intimate, as intimate as the act of taking a life always was and always would be.

“No,” Arthas whispered. “No we. No one tells me what to do. I’ve got everything I need from you—now the power is mine and mine alone. Now there is only I. I am the Lich King. And I am ready.”

The orc shuddered in his arms, stunned by the betrayal, and vanished.

The teacup shattered as it fell from Jaina’s suddenly nerveless hands. She gasped, momentarily unable to breathe, the cold of the damp, gray day knifing through her. Aegwynn was there, her gnarled hands closing on Jaina’s.

“Aegwynn—I—what happened?” Her voice was thick, anguished, and tears suddenly filled her eyes as if she was grieving terribly for the loss of…something….

“It’s not your imagination,” Aegwynn said grimly. “I felt it, too. As for what—well, I’m sure we’ll find out.”

Sylvanas started as if the mammoth demon in front of her had struck her. Which, of course, he would never dare do. Varimathras narrowed his glowing eyes.

“My lady? What is it?”

Him.

It was always him.

Sylvanas’s gloved hands clenched and unclenched. “Something has happened. Something to do with the Lich King. I—felt it.” There was no longer a link between them, at least not one in which she was under his control. But perhaps something lingered. Something that warned her.

“We need to step up our plans,” she told Varimathras. “I believe that time has suddenly become a precious commodity.”

For so long, he had felt nothing. He had stayed on the throne, immobile, waiting, dreaming. The ice had come to cover him as he sat still as stone, but not a prison, no, a second skin.

He had not known then what he was waiting for, but now he did. He had taken the final steps on a journey begun so long ago, begun the day that darkness had first brushed his world in the form of a weeping, young Stormwind prince mourning his father. The path had led across Azeroth, to Northrend, to this Frozen Throne and open sky. To the searching of his deepest self, and the choices to murder both the innocent that held him back and the parts of himself that had shaped him.

Arthas, the Lich King, alone in his glory and power, slowly opened his eyes. Ice cracked from them at the gesture and fell in small shards, like frozen tears. A smile formed beneath the ornate helm that covered his white hair and pale skin, and more ice fell from his awakening, slowly shifting form, fragments of an icy chrysalis that was no longer needed. He was awake.

“It’s begun.”

Award-winning author Christie Golden has written over thirty novels and several short stories in the fields of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

Golden launched the TSR Ravenloft line in 1991 with her first novel, the highly successful Vampire of the Mists, which introduced elven vampire Jander Sunstar. To the best of her knowledge, she is the creator of the elven vampire archetype in fantasy fiction.

She is the author of several original fantasy novels, including On Fire’s Wings, In Stone’s Clasp, and Under Sea’s Shadow (currently available only as an e-book) the first three in her multi-book fantasy series “The Final Dance” from LUNA Books. In Stone’s Clasp won the Colorado Author’s League Award for Best Genre Novel of 2005, the second of Golden’s novels to win the award.