“-. .-“

  “Pry loose the grudging grip of pain, cast off the veil of suffering flesh, let light and life go forth in triumph to repel the skulking shade of death!”

  The Light streamed forth as Mara Fordragon finished her incantation, passing from her hands into Sir Headsman Forlorn to reinvigorate his fading consciousness and reopen his caved-in throat.

  The man wheezed back to full awareness and pushed himself off the ground, wrenching his helmet off as he did so to take deep breaths of air.

  “I’m the last person entitled to say this,” said Sir Dagren Shadeslayer, our Exemplar of Sacrifice and winner of this particular duel. “But maybe save the sacrificial plays for when it counts?”

  “Lances next,” Headsman croaked, coughing to clear his throat as he climbed to his feet. “My thanks for your aid, milady. Next time it will not be necessary.”

  Mara Fordragon watched with obvious conflict on her face as the men moved on, from swords to mounted lances where both knights knew Forlorn had the advantage. She turned to me when I walked over. “When I said I wanted to learn more of the Light’s ways, this isn’t what I had in mind.”

  That just makes you sane. “The Light responds to need.”

  “And this is necessary? Deadly sparring?”

  “I’d like to say no, but the urgency they feel is real. We will need their best might soon, and for a very long time after that as well.” I eyed her wryly. “I fear you make them feel somewhat inadequate as well.”

  “Surely not, I’ve been training for years.”

  “So have they.”

  “Not in the Light!”

  “It’s not enough of an excuse to them. They haven’t had anyone normal to compare themselves to in that regard, until now. They’ll catch up well enough soon, though, where it counts.”

  “If only they believed it too,” sighed Mara.

  “Their doubts aren’t baseless. To be lethally wounded and not have the presence of mind to heal himself, Forlorn will be smarting for weeks over this.”

  Mara Fordragon turned her attention back to the jousting ring. “I might have to take up weapons myself, then they’ll definitely understand what it means to be behind.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  “Surely even they cannot be so stubborn?”

  That’s not what I meant. But I’d already influenced her enough, relative to martial pursuits. And to be fair, I didn’t know if she’d actually be all that exceptional with a weapon in hand. I only knew of her thanks to a statue in the Scarlet Monastery forty years from now, and she’d be far from the first to be depicted with a weapon in hand just because. Of course, the opposite could be true as well, and she might turn out to be really good.

  For a while, the two of us just stood by, ready to intervene in case someone suffered a serious injury again. It happened quite often these days, compared to a month ago. Or even just a week ago. The successful use of the Light for offense during the battle – without losing it for it – had broken a fairly big mental block in my men.

  But as they grew in their powers, the training spars of my Knights Exemplar had grown increasingly unrestrained as well. A superhuman physique and the certainty that all injuries would be healed had changed their training mindset considerably. Where before they trained with padded equipment and pulled their swings, now they practiced in every attire combination imaginable and only held back when aiming for the head.

  Many injuries occurred, not a few of them would have been disabling for days to weeks before, even months. Even permanently.

  I’d suspect Sir Headsman to be under some kind of curse, though, if I hadn’t checked for such things. Several times. He didn’t go more than three bouts without taking a serious hit to the neck. I had him under orders to never spar without a steel gorget now, but he’d managed to get his throat caved in anyway. It’s like destiny wanted to see him decapitated, it was surreal.

  Thankfully, he didn’t suffer any other fatal wounds that session, so I was able to go about the rest of my day without further worry.

  Mostly.

  “Same time today, milady?”

  “Naturally.” Mara looked at me. “I have an entire week to catch up on after all.”

  “A week of rest?” She’d spent much of the time I was gone fretting over me being out there all alone. She wasn’t the only one, but she was the only one who everyone else also knew had done so.

  She covered her mouth with the back of her hand. “Your jests are as dreadful as ever, my lord.”

  “Yet somehow you always smile at them.”

  “Only from second-hand sympathy.”

  “I am slain,” I said dryly, idly twining my fingers with hers. “I plan to try my hand at cooking tonight. Would you do me the honor to attend and judge the result?”

  Mara’s hand responded in kind even as her other one came up to flick an imaginary speck of dust off my sleeve. “I surely must. Though anyone else might not survive, the Light shall surely see me through the ordeal.”

  “Let’s hope it does the same for me when you return the favor.” I brough her hand to my lips before letting go and leaving. “And that you’ll call for help when that hope proves vain.”

  “Surely not, with your strength – wait… oh, you boor!”

  Mara Fordragon was as temperate, gracious and formidable as she was beautiful. Now, thanks to me, she was also a lot less uptight than she started out.

  I could probably do without needling her, but this was critical to my future. Even without the accelerated ageing on New Year’s, I was at the age where I needed to consider marriage prospects, and she ticked all the right boxes. That meant I needed to make sure that her more overt qualities didn’t come in trade for any character flaws on the inside. Grade eight plus women were considered a myth back on Earth for good reason, and she was definitely a ten so far. In other words, as rare as unicorns.

  Now that I was on a planet where unicorns were real?

  I’m beginning to believe.

  I looked around on the way downhill. Morgan’s Vigil was a buzz of activity as people rushed to build accommodations worthy of Stormwind diplomats. I’d left Alterac as a lone hunted man with just my spirits and dragon for company, but mere months later here I was again, moving kings and countries. We didn’t even have confirmation that a diplomatic party would be dispatched, but everyone took it as a given. Just because it was me asking.

  After the fight against Lucifron, Lord Harthal Morgan gave us the feast he promised but then left the very next day, taking some of his men south through Blackrock Pass intent on reaching Lakeshire. It was the closest human settlement with a horse-changing station, the farthest such station from Stormwind City itself.

  After what happened, the man was duty-bound to get a message to the capital, especially in light of my arrival – Alonsus had made me a pretty big deal in these parts, apparently.

  Taking advantage of the opportunity, I asked Harthal to convey a request of my own to the Crown, namely for Stormwind to provide arbitrage to the diplomatic meeting I hoped to set up between the three dwarf nations. Independent from me, Sylvanas chose to take all but one squad of her elves with her and accompany Morgan, citing the ancient debt between the Arathi Bloodline and the high elves as a reason to visit the kingdom.

  I generally made a point of not being too discreet about there being big and terrible things coming in the future. She had naturally picked up on that and was now taking her own steps to shore up relations between our races, which was good. Stormwind needed more than a token gesture from Quel’Thalas to survive the orc invasion, we all did, including the dwarves.

  Stormwind wouldn’t be an entirely neutral party here, what with their land claims in this area, but they were the closest thing to it when Ironforge, Aerie Peak and Shadowforge were still in a state of war.

  The War of the Three Hammers had concluded two hundred years ago, but while Ironforge and Aerie Peak jointly claimed victory – however bitter – no side had ever officially surrendered. Also, the Bronzebeards and Wildhammers had both refused to entertain the idea of suing for peace when the Dark Irons were the ones who started it. Since the latter didn’t sue for peace either, the war had gone from hot to cold but never ended.

  Lord Harthal vowed that I would be able to use Morgan’s Vigil as the place for those talks regardless of what the capital said. Which was good because the only other place in the region that could serve as a neutral ground was Blackchar Cave.

  Needless to say, the Dark Irons certainly wouldn’t see it that way. Or the other dwarves, for that matter. Also, that place was on the other side of the Burning Steppes, which were the size of a country unto themselves. No one looked forward to making that trip again so soon. Not while the Steppes remained hostile territory.

  That’s without the possibility of black dragons spilling out of Draco’dar, the depression at the far western edge of the Steppes where they denned. Thankfully, they’d used their geomancy to remove all land passes to it – even the ones I recalled from my prior life didn’t exist yet – so they were unlikely to venture out too far. Emerentius told me it was a nursery more than a military outpost.

  I personally worried it might be the lair of Nefarian, because he had to have been living somewhere before he took over Blackrock Spire. But I had enough things to worry about without poking that mystery too.

  That being said, I was determined to make the three-way council happen regardless of whether or not Stormwind hosted us. So I didn’t wait for their answer, and I didn’t give anyone else forewarning either. I just told Aedelas where I was going and left.

  I made my departure in public, so that everyone nearby saw me shrink and go with the wind. Everyone important was informed immediately, but none of them had a chance to crowd me with the nth reiteration of their misgivings about my mad hopes for impossible peace and cooperation.

  I didn’t walk up to the Blackrock Mountain gates with the intention to steal away with the Dark Iron’s most prominent ancestor spirit, but that’s how it turned out. I’d gone in prepared for much worse.

  Those senators though, ugh. Minds made entirely of strawmen and fallacies, and make-believe painted over circular logic that they tried to pass off as wisdom. If I had any less self-control I might have shoved them off the cliff. But I did have self-control, so I just stuffed them in my sac where I couldn’t hear them.

  The memory of them made me scowl even now, two weeks after I was rid of them. It made everyone get out of my way as I headed to my little meditation spot up on the wall. From there I had a direct line of sight to my tent, down in the knights’ camp at the foot of the slope. There, in the steppes proper, they – and I – could be best respond in case of additional hostilities.

  I was the strongest person here, it was just common sense to be the first line of defense. Many disagreed because I was also the most important person here, but I told them to shut it. I can come back from the dead, even though the first time I needed help. They can’t.

  No one had found a counter-argument to that one yet, though Harthal had come close. The man had side-stepped the argument entirely by offering me his small keep to reside in, even insisting on account that he’d be gone with his men anyway.

  I’d still declined. Back on Earth it always rankled me when I read about how a king or noble’s visit to someone of lower rank saw the host kicked out of their own bedroom, sometimes even out of their own home, even. Because it was insulting to house a social superior in lesser conditions than yours. Or even equal conditions to yours. And then that whole thing about the monarch being the actual owner of everything, and everyone else only holding lands ‘in trust’ or some nonsense.

  Complete bullshit, it was nothing but a public humiliation ritual and I wanted no part of it, not there and not here.

  Thankfully, though Harthal had meant to go the whole mile, it had been an offer made in good faith. It wasn’t institutional to do that here on Azeroth, or at least no dwarves, humans or elves did it. Not even under Aiden back home in Alterac.

  Reminiscing wasn’t the only reason I was here, though, and neither was the view. “How are you feeling?”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “As dead as ever,” was the dry answer of the very bodiless and transparent Franclorn F. Forgewright, the greatest architect the dwarves had ever produced. “But otherwise, better than I expected. Everyone has been courteous.” He looked up to the sky, where the Wildhammers were doing air drills so high up you could only see dots and dashes. Without supersensory spells like those Antonidas taught me, at least. “Even they have refrained, if only for your sake.”

  “I’m sure the fact that Ironforge has been lovingly taking care of your dam has nothing to do with it.” The Stonewrought Dam in Loch Modan was one of the most impressive wonders of the world, by any standards except maybe Titan ones. “It will take longer than I hoped to deliver on my promise, and we’ll need to do a side journey on the way to Grim Batol.”

  “It was inevitable,” the dwarf spirit grunted. “Miracles are not easy or cheap.”

  Well, not this one at least.

  Geirrvif had conveyed to Odyn my small request of a stormforged body for the dead dwarf. The answer she’d brought back was only mostly positive because completed bodies ran afoul of Helya’s barrier around Valholl. I’d have to detour back through Uldaman and finish putting it together myself. Reincarnating the spirit into it would take some doing too, a process that was half resurrection, half a technique not too dissimilar from the Lighforging I did on Emerentius.

  I was assured that it would be painless when the soul was cooperative, and Odyn would be there to guide me through it, when the parts were delivered.

  Thankfully, the Light could empower anything, so I’d at least managed to reinvigorate Forgewright enough to let him manifest visibly and interact with the living again.

  Since then, other than testing the waters with Mara Fordragon and upholding my responsibilities to my squire, much of my time was spent talking to this dwarf ghost about all manner of things.

  He was cagey on some topics, but not as much as I thought he would be. Interestingly, he was most forthcoming when I brought up subjects he considered confidential but which I’d already cracked independently.

  That was how I found out that the Dark Irons had invented – and currently used – the steam engine. It was a bittersweet discovery, and one that wasn’t helpful to me in the slightest.

  To hear Forgewright explain it, the Dark Iron steam engine had the same problems mine did. They just went ignored, usually, for two reasons. The majority of elementals knew better than to cross portals into the domain of the Firelord uninvited. And the few who didn’t know better (like babies) served as food for the fire elemental slaved to the engine to provide the heat. A fire elemental which only did that job because it was his punishment for slighting the Firelord somehow, or one of his underlings.

  The Dark Iron shamans only practiced their corrupted, domineering dark shamanism on the spirits and elementals other than fire. To presume to impose authority on the subjects of the Firelord himself was to court drawn-out, painful death.

  I wondered how long it would take for someone on our side to talk themselves into believing it was worth it to promote slavery and cannibalism, in exchange for this means of transport. I was never going to do it, but Dalaran? Or any of the other human kingdoms? That the elementals were the world’s enemies wasn’t exactly a secret, among the people who knew such things.

  That’s to say nothing of non-humans. The trolls would love to do things like this, though they’d probably use the methods to make wicker men and bone golems instead. And the goblins? I wouldn’t be surprised if enslaved elementals turned out to be cheaper than the walking disasters they’d pass for engine in their mecha walkers in the future.

  “I know it is distasteful,” the dwarf ghost told me, catching the dark look on my face. “All our ways are, now. That’s why I don’t want to discuss them.”

  “Not because of confidentiality?”

  “That too, but I’m not the one who decides what qualifies as information of strategic importance to the whole world. That is why you’re out walking the world, yes? Because something terrible is coming? My kin may have been beyond the reach of my voice, but I wasn’t above talking to the other spirits myself. Also, your squire wears his heart on his sleeve, though he believes otherwise. He’s a clever lad, I get a lot from his attempts at circumspection.”

  “Just stay out of our dreams.”

  “Unless I’m invited?”

  “Unless.”

  “I could teach even you a thing or three, you know.”

  I had no doubt. “Leave it for when you’ve got a body again, otherwise you might pass on from stress.”

  “Your mind is that bad?”

  “That much.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  I sat with the dwarf ghost for a while, our feet dangling over the battlements, until he got bored and wandered off. My eight spirits wanted to play with him on the wind and Forgewright didn’t seem to mind.

  I got up and jumped down, sliding down the rocky face of the mountain as a form of balance training. I almost didn’t have to use any levitation or wind manipulation now, compared to the first couple of days. It meant less cause to practice my arcane spells, but I had them fairly well mastered by now. It was a pitiful repertoire compared to everything else, all things considered, but some of them could at least scale indefinitely with practice.

  Most of the elemental arcane spells were superfluous when I had my spirits, but the magic missile type still had room for additional projectiles, and the forcefields could perhaps be layered, if only I could figure out how to split – or segment – my focus. The mindset to cast Arcane spells was completely different from Light casting, some might even call it inverted.

  It was no wonder, Arcane magic worked by breaking natural order, which was in direct opposition to my entire reason for coming to this world. If not for my ability to heal the Arcane itself now, which I did immediately after every Arcane spell I cast, pursuing wizardry would have gone directly against my Covenant with the Light. To the point where I would have had to choose between them.

  I wondered if that was how clerics strayed into shadow magic the first time.

  Finally finishing my descent, I used the Light to heal the arcane substrate of my clothes and shoes, thus repairing and cleaning them at the same time. I nodded in passing to the knights I passed – they all stood at attention and saluted – and finally reached my tent.

  No one was here, Aedelas was doing his drills in the ring.

  I sat down on my bed and turned inward. The Light was with me, but its shine refracted differently than before. Back in Alterac at the end of the Enhaloing, I’d been spent. The Light had been the only thing I could see, when I looked inward, and even that just barely.

  Now I saw a lot more, because I myself was a lot more. With the Light nourishing my spirit without the Aura of Vigor active, my spirit had grown quite potent in the months since. I thought it would take me a year to get back to where I was, but it ended up taking much less. Spiritual recovery worked on something of a bell curve rather than linear, it seemed.

  I was strong enough now that I’d finally bitten the bullet and done what Alonsus had done before me – applied staves to myself. More than the Helm of Awe that I’d limited myself to before, every stave I thought could be useful was now embedded in my skeleton.

  Veldismagn on my sternum for all-purpose protection, Gibu Auja on the small of my back for good luck, Angurgapi over my heart to prevent wounds from bleeding, blended with the runes for good health and for healing. Gapaldur and Ginfaxi on the soles of my feet, to call up and imbue into my subconscious what ancestral memories I had of combat skills and experience, since my own martial talent seemed to be middling.

  Holastafur on my palms to ‘open hills’, which in practice translated into a scaled-down version of the earthly awareness that Granodior had granted me. I could also push it to outright terrakinesis if I used Arcane magic through it instead of the Light, which would have been very useful when the spirit of the mountain tried to bury us during the battle. Thankfully, I’d successfully managed to intimidate it instead.

  Lásabrjótur on the back of my right hand, to ensure I always had freedom of movement and also let me open locks without a key, some runes had peculiar synergies. Vatnahlífir inside my lower jawbone to breathe underwater. Rosahringur on every bone, so I had additional defense in case my forcefield was bypassed like Fahrad did back then. Gegn Galdri also on every bone to protect from hostile magic (testing still pending, I might have to make it a tattoo, or put it on my armor).

  Vegvisir would protect me from hostile weather and environmental conditions more generally, but its deeper utility lay in letting me better communicate with the spirits of water and air. Perhaps even Hodir if he comes as a snowstorm again, this year.

  Skelkunarstafur was redundant since the Helm of Awe could already make my enemies afraid.

  Draumstafir… to dream of unfulfilled desires. I was iffy about this one, but I applied it to a brass plate I could put under my pillow for when I decided to try it. I’d have to do it before Grim Batol or the squids would use it against me.

  Finally, Lukkustafir… the stave supposedly made it so whoever carries it with them encounters no evil. But I’d talked to Alonsus, and what proved most important for him was that it exposed the source of evil when it failed to do its job against Sargeras and Medivh.

  Reluctantly, I decided to still leave this one out. I was out here deliberately looking for evil to correct, this one stave would hinder more than help with that.

  The staves were all shining with power within me, my spirit tied through them and shining with as much Light as I usually put in my passive forcefield. Each.

  If the Divine Shield worked by any means other than sacrifice, I’d have etched even that into my body. My very spirit was transmuted into prima materia for the Light to manifest fully, instead of being diffused or refracted by physical reality like for every other application. As a result, I had to ‘settle’ for all of this instead. And still my spirit continued to grow every moment of every day.

  It was kind of irritating not having anything to do with all this added power. Trying to bond with the local spirits would be a direct attack on Ragnaros. Wizardry would be the ideal thing to practice, but I didn’t exactly have much time to spare on coming up with applications from first principles.

  I was starting to resent being deprived of my arcane magic teacher. Again. Enough that I was almost ready to start punching rocks just to see if chi was really a thing.

  I came out of my meditation.

  There was a raven on my end table, watching me in the spirit world.

  “Has something happened?”

  “One of several things is about to,” Odyn said with an odd tone. “They will be quite confounding to you, but most amusing to me.”

  This was… the first time he played a joke on someone since Winterveil.

  “I feel cheated,” the bird groused. “What’s with that stupid smile? Where are the histrionics?”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just… I’m relieved.”

  “That I came all the way down here just to gloat about your impending headaches?”

  “That you’re doing it without any prodding, it means the depression finally broke.”

  “… This has suddenly lost all amusement value.” The raven burst into feathers that quickly vanished.

  “Geirrvif, I don’t suppose he’s finally gotten off that throne?”

  “He has.”

  “Good.”

  “All are in agreement on that.”

  My angel still preferred to stay aloof of the matters of the living, but whatever skepticism of me she still had after I lightforged a dragon had gone away after Winterveil.

  I sensed something approaching from above, then. Not too much higher than where the gryphon riders were doing their training, but much further away. Northwards. With Odyn back at it, Divination was increasingly useless as the next big milestone in my quest approached, there were too many moving parts to bother.

  But I could still sense when something was coming to affect me personally.

  This one was bad. Dark, cloying, and thick with the promise of suffering for thousands of people drawn out over years.

  I stepped out of my tent and looked up, ready to smite...

  I almost couldn’t believe who rode down from the sky amidst flares and forcefields that rebuffed the gryphon riders’ attempts to intercept him. Even when my spirits tried to throw scalding wind and fog in his way, they were sent flinching and reeling by some unholy power radiating like pus sprayed from a sore.

  Astride a half-dead looking horse that galloped on the wind without wings, Antonidas D’Ambrosio landed mere meters from where I stood and stumbled to a stop before anyone could put himself between him and me, save the two knights on guard duty.

  “Wayland…” Antonidas weakly threw something at me, a bag that flopped down to the dirt, seeping sick shadows and even sicker murk, green and reeking of rotting cadavers. “Purge that monstrosity right now!”

  Then horse and rider both toppled to the ground in a dead faint.

  “-. .-“

  The rider had come and brought the Apocalypse.

  Not the end of the world, the sword. An ancient blade crafted by the Nathrezim to spread plague, death and violence in its wake. It was one of the most powerful tools of destruction this world was ever going to see. If not for the vigilance of ancient humanity, Sargeras wouldn’t have needed to hide, and the Nathrezim wouldn’t have needed to send Frostmourne.

  Most stories about the Burning Legion were about the countless demons stampeding over worlds, but the nathrezim were more cunning than the rest. They knew that brute force wasn’t the only way to conquer an enemy. A lie could break an alliance, a drop of poison could cripple a giant, a disease could turn entire cities into graveyards.

  The blade called Apocalypse had accomplished all of those things. It held the power to spread plagues, incite wars, and turn ally against ally. On many worlds before it ended up here, this weapon had brought entire civilizations crashing down before the Legion's army even began their invasion. If not for the first Guardian of Tirisfal Alodi, and the exceptional willpower of the people on Azeroth, never mind their elite, this thing could’ve done the same thing here too.

  In the future I was here to stop, this sword would have been the most dangerous weapon of the Death Knights. In the past I couldn’t do anything to change, Apocalypse was the thing responsible for the death, famine, and pestilence that savaged Silverpine forest and Dalaran’s population, depopulated the verdant forest region that the Black Morass used to be, and ravaged the northern third of Stormwind up until just two decades before I was born.

  Long since sealed in Dalaran’s most secure vaults, the sword was brought back out when the current Guardian, Medivh’s mother Aegwynn, began to lose more than win against the Burning Legion. Since the Council of Tirisfal and Dalaran couldn’t work together with her anymore because she’d gone rogue, whatever her reasons, they began to unearth many of their long-sealed relics to aid in the fight instead.

  Unfortunately, when Apocalypse was given to a mage called Laith Shaol, it poisoned his mind and drove him to terrible deeds.

  It didn’t turn out worse only because Aegwynn hunted down and confronted him. But even she couldn’t defeat the blade, she would have died if she hadn’t turned her magic to free the man from the sword’s mental influence instead.

  Now that sword was here. Antonidas had almost died getting it to me, because the best arcane and holy warding Dalaran could procure had been insufficient. It came wrapped up in a holy shroud between two faultless different shells of shaped rock, and still corrupted the magic bag enough to spill its pestilence onto Antonidas and the horse he rode in on.

  Most ridiculous of all, this was the lesser of the stories that Antonidas had for me, when he was finally aware and coherent enough to talk again.

  Shunning, suspicions, public ostracism, house arrest in all but name, conspiring with criminals, hiding and researching in a secret Undercity lair, a kangoroo court just for him, a literal coup d’etat in Dalaran. Won by the bad guys, for however little time that lasted before Antonidas brought the whole thing down around their ears in a fit of pique.

  That fit concluded with him impaled on Apocalypse from front to back. He survived only because Nozdormu and I showed up to save his life from the future. Which I only accomplished by doing what Aegwynn did and freeing the man’s mind from the sword for the second time, never once touching the thing myself.

  Now, when Antonidas was finally here to tell me all about it, it took more skill and effort to heal him of all those diseases and curses than it took to resurrect the dead.

  If the Church at large didn’t already have my lore, if Cure Disease wasn't literally the first spell I created, I’d have to drop everything in order to deal with the Black Death.

  Odyn thought this would be funny? It didn’t sit right at all, he wasn’t the sort to laugh at real misfortune, at least not my misfortune and certainly not the world’s misfortune brought by a demon weapon, there must be something I was missing. Is something else going to happen? This isn’t enough?

  Amidst all that, I found out that the reason I failed to contact Richard was not because of distance, but because Dalaran had stolen his transmission stone back at some point since I left.

  As I sat by the rune-shielded firepit where I had the Apocalypse sword suspended in holy fire as a temporary containment measure, I was getting some serious last year’s Winterveil vibes.

  What’s going to happen here? What could possibly be coming my way that will be so entertaining as to make this look like a minor footnote in comparison?

  Antonidas had no answer for me, or for much else after he finished his haphazard story. Even with all my power he was in for a serious convalescence. The diseases were what they were, but the curses had sapped his spiritual power immensely.

  The answer didn’t come with the Dark Iron dwarves, when Emperor Dagran Thaurissan finally showed up with his retinue on the very last day of the two weeks’ notice I gave him.

  It didn’t come with the Stormwind contingent either, though they arrived earlier and I definitely believed they were it the moment I realized who was leading it.

  Anduin Lothar was here. To see me.

  Mortals plot and the gods laugh.

  here.