There was a spire close by, between the Elrendar and Silvermoon. Somehow, she felt certain Arthas would find a way to cross and continue his march. Continue to wound the land with the purplish-black scar. The spire would be a good place to mount a defense. The ramps were narrow, preventing the crush of undead that had been so disastrous previously, and there were several stories to the building, all open to the air. She and her archers could do a great deal of damage before they were—
Sylvanas Windrunner, Ranger-General of Silvermoon, took a calming breath, dashed water on her heated face, drank a deep draft of the soothing liquid, and rose to prepare the uninjured and walking wounded for what would no doubt be their final battle.
They were almost too late.
Even as the rangers marched on the spire that would be their bastion, the air, once so sweet and fresh, was tainted with the sickly odor of putrefaction. Overhead, mounted archers hovered on their dragonhawks. The great creatures, golden and scarlet, stretched their serpentine heads against the reins unhappily. They, too, scented death, and it disturbed them. Never had the beautiful beasts been pressed into such a ghastly service. One of the riders signaled Sylvanas, and she signaled back.
“The undead have been sighted,” she told her troops calmly. They nodded. “Positions. Hurry.”
Like a well-oiled gnomish machine, they obeyed. The dragonhawk riders surged south, toward the approaching enemy. A unit of archers and hand-to-hand fighters hurried forward as well, the first line of defense. Her finest archers raced up the curving ramps of the spire. The rest spread out at the base of the structure.
They did not have long to wait.
If she had harbored any faint hope that somehow the numbers of the enemy might have suffered from the delay, it was dashed like fine crystal falling to a stone floor. She could glimpse the hideous vanguard now: rotting undead, followed by skeletons and the huge abominations whose three arms each carried massive weapons. Above them flew the stonelike creatures wheeling like buzzards.
They are breaking through….
How strange the mind was, Sylvanas thought with a trace of macabre humor. Now, as the hour of her death doubtless approached, an ancient song played in her head; one she and her siblings had loved to sing, when the world was right and they were all together, Alleria, Vereesa, and their youngest brother, Lirath, at twilight when soft lavender shadows spread their gentle cloaks and the sweet scent of the ocean and flowers wafted across the land.
Anar’alah, anar’alah belore, quel’dorei, shindu fallah na…. By the light, by the light of the sun, high elves, our enemies are breaking through….
Without her realizing it at first, her hand fluttered upward to close on the necklace she wore about her slender throat. It had been a gift, from her oldest sister, Alleria; delivered not by Alleria herself, but in her stead by one of her lieutenants, Verana. Alleria was gone, vanished through the Dark Portal in an attempt to stop the Horde from visiting their atrocities again on Azeroth and on other worlds as well.
She had never returned. She had melted down a necklace given to her by their parents, and made individual necklaces out of the three stones for each of the Windrunner sisters. Sylvanas’s was a sapphire. She knew the inscription by heart: To Sylvanas. Love always, Alleria.
She waited, grasping the necklace, feeling the connection with her dead sister it always provided, then slowly forced her hand away. Sylvanas took a deep breath and shouted, “Attack! For Quel’Thalas!”
There would be no stopping them. In truth, she did not expect to stop them. From the expressions on the grim, bloodied faces around her, Sylvanas realized her rangers knew this as well as she. Sweat dewed her face. Her muscles screamed with exhaustion, and still Sylvanas Windrunner fought. She fired, nocking and releasing and nocking again so swiftly that her hands were almost a blur. When the swarm of corpses and monsters came too close for arrows, she flung her bow away and seized her short sword and dagger. She whirled and turned and stabbed, crying out incoherently as she battled.
Another one fell, its head toppling from its shoulders to be trampled, bursting open like a melon beneath the feet of one of its own. Two more monstrocities surged forward to take its place. Still Sylvanas fought like one of the savage lynxes of Eversong Woods, channeling her pain and outrage into violence. She would take as many with her as she could before she fell.
They are breaking through….
They pressed in, close, the reek of decay almost overwhelming her. Too many of them now. Sylvanas did not slow. She would fight until they had utterly destroyed her, until—
The press of corpses suddenly was gone. They stepped back and stood still. Gasping for breath, Sylvanas looked down the hill.
He was there, waiting on his undead steed. The wind played with his long white hair as he regarded her intently. She straightened, wiping blood and sweat from her face. A paladin, he had been once. Her sister had loved one such as him. Suddenly Sylvanas was fiercely glad that Alleria was dead, could not see this, could not see what a former champion of the Light was doing to everything the Windrunners loved and cherished.
Arthas lifted the glowing runeblade in a formal gesture. “I salute your bravery, elf, but the chase is over.” Oddly, he sounded like he meant the compliment.
Sylvanas swallowed; her mouth was dry as bone. She tightened her grip on her weapons. “Then I’ll make my stand here, butcher. Anar’alah belore.”
His gray lips twitched. “As you will, Ranger-General.”
He did not even bother to dismount. Instead the skeletal steed whinnied and galloped straight toward her. Arthas gripped the reins with his left hand, his right drawing back the massive sword. Sylvanas sobbed, once. No cry of fear or regret came from those lips. Only a short, harsh sob of impotent anger, of hatred, of righteous fury that she was not able to stop them, not even when she had given all she could, not even with her life’s blood.
Alleria, sister, I come.
She met the deadly blade head-on, striking it with her own weapons, which shattered upon impact. And then the runeblade had pierced her. Cold, so cold it was, slicing through her as if it was made of ice itself.
Arthas leaned in to her, his gaze locked with hers. Sylvanas coughed, fine droplets of blood spattering his bone-pale face. Was it her imagination, or was there a hint of regret on his still-fine features?
He tugged back his weapon and she fell, blood gushing out of her. Sylvanas shivered on the cold stone floor, the movement causing agony to rip through her. One hand fluttered, foolishly, to the gaping wound in her abdomen, as if her hands could close on it and stop the flood.
“Finish it,” she whispered. “I deserve…a clean death.”
His voice floated to her from somewhere as her eyes closed. “After all you’ve put me through, woman, the last thing I’ll give you is the peace of death.”
Fear spiked in her for a heartbeat, then faded as everything else was beginning to. He would raise her, as one of those grotesque shambling things?
“No,” she murmured, her voice sounding as if it came from a long way off. “You wouldn’t…dare….”
And then it went away. It all went away. The coldness, the stench, the searing pain. It was soft and warm and dark and calm and comforting, and Sylvanas permitted herself to sink into the welcoming darkness. At last she could rest, could lay down the arms she had borne for so long in service to her people.
And then—
Agony shot through her, agony such as she had never known, and Sylvanas suddenly knew that no physical pain she had ever endured could hold a pale candle to this torment. This was an agony of the spirit, of her soul leaving her lifeless form and being trapped. Of a…ripping, tearing, yanking back from that warm sanctuary of silence and stillness. The violence of the act added to the exquisite torment, and Sylvanas felt a scream welling up, forcing its way from deep inside, past lips that somehow she knew were no longer physical, a deep keening wail of a suffering that was not hers alone, that froze blood and stopped hearts.