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.”
Arthas glanced down at the dead nerubian. “Foolishly indeed,” he murmured, and lifted a hand. “In death, they only serve that which they struggled against in life.”
And so it was that when he finally emerged into the dim light of the overhead world, gulping in the cold, clean air, his army had swollen with new recruits, freshly dead and utterly his to command.
Arthas drew Invincible to a halt. He was trembling, badly, and wanted to simply sit and breathe fresh air for a few moments. The air quickly soured with the rotting stench of his own army. Anub’arak passed him, pausing to gaze at him implacably for a moment.
“No time to rest, death knight. The Lich King has need of us. We must serve.”
Arthas shot the crypt lord a quick glance. Something in the tone of the being’s voice spoke of the vaguest stirring of—was it resentment? Did Anub’arak serve only because he had to? Would he turn on the Lich King if he was able to do so—and more to the point, would he turn on Arthas?
The Lich King’s powers were weakening—and so were Arthas’s powers right along with him. If they got weak enough…
The death knight watched the retreating figure of the crypt lord, took a deep breath, and followed.
How long the trek through thick snow and scouring winds was, Arthas didn’t know. At one point he nearly lost consciousness while riding, so weak was he. He came to with a start, terrified at the lapse, forcing himself to hang on. He could not falter, not now.
They crested a hill, and Arthas at last saw the glacier in the middle of the valley—and the army that awaited him. His spirits lifted at the sight of so many assembled to fight for him and the Lich King. Anub’arak had left many of his warriors behind, and they were there, stoic and ready. Farther down, though, closer to the glacier, he saw other figures milling about. He was too far away to distinguish them, but he knew whom they must be. His gaze traveled upward, and his breath caught.
The Lich King was there, deep inside the glacier. Trapped in his prison, Arthas had seen him so in the visions. He listened with half an ear as one of the nerubians hastened up to Anub’arak and Arthas to brief them on the situation.
“You’ve arrived just in time. Illidan’s forces have taken up positions at the base of the glacier and—”
Arthas cried out as the worst pain he had yet tasted buffeted him. Again, his world turned the color of blood as agony racked his body. So close to the Lich King now, the torment he shared with that great entity was magnified a hundredfold.