Now it was the color of moonlight.
She stood upon the edge of recollection, suddenly, desperately not wanting to know, and then toppled over that edge.
My home… my people…
Jaina unsteadily got to her feet, her body trembling violently. Those who had accompanied her were nowhere to be seen. She was alone… alone with what she now steeled herself to behold.
She turned around. The sky was torn apart. It was midmorning, but Jaina saw stars through the rents. Arcane anomalies winked in and out of existence. The colors, looking to her tear-filled eyes like open wounds and ugly bruises, danced mockingly above the ruins of what had once been a proud city.
A shadow fell upon her. Dazed, sick, she could not tear her eyes from the horror and cared not at all for what might be landing beside her. A voice shattered her trance.
“Jaina?”
It was a weary voice that held pain and concern and warmth, and she heard his boots crunching in the sand as he ran up to her.
She turned toward Kalec. Through tears standing in her eyes, she saw him clasping a hand to his side, though there was no blood. He was pale and looked exhausted but still found the strength to hurry toward her, limping slightly. As he drew closer, she saw his reaction to her changed appearance.
He reached for her just as her legs gave way, catching her and cradling her as she collapsed. Of their own accord her hands sought him, clutching him tightly as she buried her face in the crook of his neck. He held her just as fiercely, one hand on the back of her head and his cheek resting on her now-white hair. For a long, wordless moment, they clung to each other, and Jaina received the silent comfort.
“Gone,” she murmured, her voice raspy with pain and shock. “All gone. Everyone, everything—we fought so hard, so courageously, and we’d won, Kalec, we’d won…”
He held her even more tightly. He did not attempt to soothe her with words. There were no words of comfort to offer, and she was glad he knew it.
“My kingdom—all the generals… Stoutblow, Tiras’alan, Aubrey, Rhonin, oh sweet Light, Rhonin. Why did he do it, Kalec? Why did he save me? I’m the one who was responsible for this!”
Now Kalec did speak, drawing back to gaze at her intently. “No,” he said, his voice sharp with determination. “No, Jaina. This is not your fault. Don’t you dare blame yourself. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine—my flight’s, for allowing that cursed Focusing Iris to be stolen in the first place. That blast—you couldn’t have fought it. No one could. The mana bomb was powered by the Focusing Iris. I was farther away than most, and the force of it hurled me clear out to sea. There was nothing you could have done—nothing anyone could have done.”
One strong hand was wrapped around hers as they stood together. She clung to it as if it were a lifeline. And perhaps it was. Even so, she realized what she had to do.
“I have to go back,” she said thickly. “Someone… might still be alive. I might be able to do something.”
His blue eyes widened. “Jaina, no, please. It isn’t safe.”
“Safe?” The word exploded from her and she jerked in his arms, pulling back. “Safe? How can you talk to me of being safe, Kalec? That is—was—my kingdom. They were my people. I owe it to them to see if there is anything I can do!”
“Jaina,” Kalec said, stepping toward her imploringly, “that place is reeking with arcane energy. You managed to escape, but the blast is already—”
“Yes,” she snapped, the pain inside her heart far worse than the pain of her body. “What has it already done to me, Kalec?”
He hesitated, then spoke very calmly. “Your hair has been turned white. There is a single blond streak remaining. Your eyes are… glowing white as well.”
Jaina stared at him, sickened. If the blast had done so much that was already so obvious, what else might it have done to her that couldn’t be seen? Her hand went to her heart for a moment, pressing hard, as if she could somehow push the ravaging ache away.
Kalec continued. “I know you want to do something, to take some kind of action. But there are other things we can do. There’s no one left there, Jaina. All you’ll be doing is risking further harm to yourself. We can go back later, together, when it’s safer, and—”
“There’s no we, Kalec,” she said bitterly. The hurt that appeared on his beautiful face only made her heart ache more, but she welcomed the pain now. It was suffering, and only her own suffering could ease the agony of the fact that she alone, of all the souls who had been in Theramore to help her, had survived. It felt good, cleansing, in a hard and brutal way. “There’s only me, and my decisions, and my responsibility for those corpses back there. I’m going to see if there is anything at all I can do, any single life I might be able to save. And I’m going to do it alone. As I’ve always done. Don’t follow me.”
Swiftly she cast a teleportation spell. She heard him crying her name behind her and refused to shed the tears.
They hurt her more when she kept them inside.
Jaina had thought she was prepared for what she would see. She had been wrong. Nothing could prepare a sane mind for what the mana bomb had done to Theramore.
The first thing she noticed was the tower—or rather, where it had once been. Gone was the beautiful white stone building that had housed her extensive library and her cozy parlor. In its place was a smoking crater, horrifically reminiscent of the one that yet lingered in Hillsbrad Foothills. Except that gash in the earth had been made by a city departing for war, while this one had been made by Rhonin’s desperate attempt to avert disaster, an attempt that had been bought with his life.
She was surrounded by death, engulfed by it, overwhelmed by it. Death was in the line of listing buildings, not a single one of them intact. Death was in the feel of the earth beneath her feet, in the cacophonous and erratic sky above her. And most of all, death was in the bodies that lay where they had fallen.
Healers sprawled, the injured still in their arms. Riders and horses remained units in death, as in life. Soldiers had fallen with their weapons still sheathed, so sudden and inevitable had been the attack. The air crackled and sizzled and hummed around her, making her white hair float as Jaina, moving like a somnambulist, stepped carefully around the ruination of her life.
Jaina observed with a strange detachment the odd things that the mana bomb had strewn about. Over here was a hairbrush; over there, a severed hand. Near the edge of the crater fluttered leaves from a book. Automatically she reached to pick them up. One of them had been altered at so fundamental a level by the bomb that it crumbled to pieces as she touched it. By the armory, a soldier lay in a puddle of red blood… three paces away, another soldier floated at Jaina’s eye level, globules of frozen purple liquid drifting upward from a rent in his armor.
Her foot stepped on something soft and she jumped back quickly, peering down. It was a rat, its body glowing violet. A piece of perfectly normal cheese was still gripped in its mouth. Kalec’s warning that no one could have survived the blast echoed in her mind. Not even the rats, it would seem…
She shook her head. No. No, someone must have survived this… It couldn’t possibly have killed everyone, everything. She moved with grim determination, sorting through rubble where she could, pausing to listen, hoping to hear a voice crying for help over the buzzing and crackling of a broken sky. She found Pained, who had fallen over the body of an orc she had clearly slain. Jaina knelt beside the warrior, brushing the long dark blue hair back, and then gasped as the strands shattered like spun glass. Pained had died with her sword in her hand, the familiar grim expression on her face. She had died as she had lived, defending Jaina and Theramore.