Nowhere to Run
“You have failed me, little star.”
“Mama?” Vyra stood at the base of Aldrassil. The great tree, once bursting with life, was now black and dead, its branches bare, cracked and bleeding. Along the spiraled walkway lay the homes of the night elves she had once called neighbors, their roofs collapsed, the wooden walls now rotting away into thick piles of sludge. Streams of black water flowed off the spiral, falling into pools below. The bodies of her people covered the path, bloated, no signs of being slain by a weapon.
This isn’t right. Vyra looked up. Elune shone bright red in a pitch black starless sky. The ground should have been drowned in darkness, yet there was a cold light touching upon everything. Where is the blue child? “What happened to our home?” She asked. “Where are you?” Vyra stepped over the remains of an elf who clutched something covered in her arms, but she dared not pull down the blanket to see. Something cold and implacable shivered down her spine.
Velysa Starglaive appeared on the path above, shining bright in her sentinel armor of violet and silver. Her cerulean hair was braided for war, the same way she had styled it before leaving for Northrend. Vyra remembered that day well. On the outside she had saluted her mother and wished her well on her mission. But on the inside she screamed for her not to go. Velysa had kissed her on the forehead and said, “I will perform my duties as a Sentinel should. And I pray to Elune that I may return to you both unharmed.” She had kissed Vyra’s father farewell after those words and departed for the ship to Stormwind.
“I thought you were dead.” Vyra tried to run to her, but one of the skeletons twitched and jerked to life, seizing her ankles. She tried to kick free, reaching out with trembling hands, “Mama, I’m scared, what’s happening?”
“I warned you, child.” Velysa’s voice grew colder. “You led your sisters to slaughter and look at the results.”
“No,” Vyra said, shaking her head. “I didn’t mean to do any of this–”
“Maleyn and Nadyea trusted you. And you killed them!” Velysa descended the path toward her. Blood streamed out the corners of her eyes, running down her face like veins.
“No, it…it was the demons. We were ambushed. I tried to fight them, but they were too strong.”
Velysa stopped in front of her, frowning, blood now dribbling from her mouth. “How could I have ever loved a failure like you. Excuses are all you have ever given me…you need to be punished. Yes, a punishment. I was too easy on you, I see that clearly now.” Something was off with her mother’s voice. A deep tone crawled beneath it, as if someone else was speaking alongside her.
Vyra sank to her knees, heart racing. But that was impossible. How could her heart beat? She died in Suramar, felled by the doomguard’s blade after she watched her own sentinels die. The Deathlord of the Ebon Blade offered her the chance to rise again and she took it. “All I have ever done is what you asked of me. I gave up every dream I had for you.”
“Do not think to blame your failures on me, child. I raised you to be a warrior, as my mother raised me and hers before. It is our sacred duty and honor to protect the Kaldorei.”
The hostility was too much. Vyra’s fury took root, raising her voice. “I gave my life for our people. Is that not enough for you?”
“You were supposed to stay dead, little star. Instead you spat in Elune’s face and rejected her grace. How could you become one of those abominations? It seems I must teach you this lesson, yet again!” Velysa raised her hand to strike.
Vyra closed her eyes, awaiting the blow. Again, something wasn’t right. Her mother was always strict, but had never struck her before. When she opened her eyes, Velysa was frozen in place, her arm halted mid-swing. “Mama?” All around the corpses began to convulse.
Her mother’s eyes suddenly came alight, her expression softening, as if awaking from some nightmare. “Vyra? Is it really you?”
At that moment the skeleton lost its grip on Vyra’s leg. She pulled herself free and stomped its skull. The bone caved in with a splitting crack. “Yes, it’s me,” she took her mother’s hand. “Please tell me what’s happening here. How did everyone drown?”
“There’s no more time, he’s coming for us. We must run.” Vyra’s skin prickled across her neck and shoulders. She nodded, grabbing her mother’s hand and together they fled. For so long Vyra had begged Elune to bring her mother back. Now, she had another chance. Velysa lived again. This time she was at her mother’s side and they could fight together against whatever enemy awaited them.
The ruins of Aldrassil fell away as the forests of Shadowglen closed around them, but it was not the forest Vyra remembered. The air grew cold, colder than she had ever felt before. Frost crawled across her arms, their breaths spraying into mist as the wind howled. Deep within the gusts someone laughed. They passed the decaying bodies of nightsabers and owls. Moonwells laid shattered along the path, spilling out crimson, thick and bubbling.
“Who is after us?” Vyra asked, tightening her grip on her mother’s hand. “Tell me.” There was a fear in Velysa’s eyes. In all her life she had never seen her mother scared of anything.
“Keep running,” Velysa screamed. As they burst into a clearing choked with wilted flowers, hands of bone tore through the earth, clamping around her legs and dragging her down.
Vyra spun back without thinking and dove, grasping her mother’s hands once more. She pulled with all the strength she had, until the muscles in her arms burned like fire. “I won’t lose you again, Mama,” she sobbed. “I won’t. You have to fight…please."
“Run, child, it’s no use,” her mother cried out. “He is here.” Bone fingers tore at her armor, shredding the leather to ribbons. A hand clamped down over her mouth, smothering her cries for mercy.
Vyra pulled at them, breaking the bone fingers off one by one, but something unseen slammed into her chest. The impact knocked her back hard to the damp ground. For a moment she thought it was just water pooling between her fingers until she raised her hands to see them dripping with blood.
Velysa screamed one last time before hands of flesh burst forth from her chest. Vyra watched, frozen, as a pale man with flowing white hair, adorned in black armor, crawled out of her mother upside down, like some twisted creature on four legs. He scuttled around, sniffing the air until his dead eyes found her. His limbs contorted as bones cracked and shifted beneath the skin. When he finally stood upright, he adjusted his shoulder guards, picking the bits of gore off as if they were lint on a garment.
“Your poor mother fought so bravely in Icecrown,” he said. “She believed that she wouldn’t fall before me, but death is like a rushing river, endless and without mercy. You can struggle against its pull, beg the Light to save you…but in the end it drowns us all…everything.” He reached down into what remained of Velysa’s body and drew forth a sword, slow and steady. The blade was long, silver and black metal that seemed to sap the light from around it. Its edge was razor sharp. Runes burned cold blue along the center, pulsing as if the blade were alive. At the hilt, a horned skull entwined around the crossguard, its eyes glowing with the same ghostly hue. “She was right about one thing,” he said, lifting his gaze to Vyra. “You need to be punished.”
Vyra ran.
The forest twisted into a dark hallway of black stone, veined with blood-stained bones. Her heart threatened to tear from her chest as she pressed her legs further. But the faster she ran, the narrower and shorter the hallway became. Though he only walked, each time she dared to look back, the death knight would be closer than before.
“Where are you going, my little star? There is nowhere to run.” His words echoed in the dark, whispering softly into her ears.
“I know who you are,” Vyra yelled. She didn’t recognize him by his face, but she knew that sword well enough. The hallway grew narrower to the point where she could barely outstretch her arms. The trickle of water resounded, as she looked down, water as black as night rushed from beneath the cracks in the walls, churning and bubbling. She screamed, trying to run, but the waters surged higher, dragging her back toward him. A bare wall now loomed ahead where there wasn’t one before. There must be another way out. Please…
Vyra fought against the torrent until her legs burned and tired. She hit the end, digging her nails into the stone until her fingertips cracked and bled. The waters gurgled up to her waist and when she turned, Arthas stood before her, raising Frostmourne. “I told you there is nowhere to run, Vyra.” He reached out, brushing the tears from her face with cold, scarred fingers. “I tried to run too, but all light had abandoned me.”
“This isn’t real.” Vyra pounded her fists against the wall, but they would not relent. “You’re dead!”
“It matters not, little star. I’m a part of you now and I always will be.” The flesh melted from his face, oozing sickly green streams down over his armor, dripping into the water. Blue flames ignited within the eye sockets of his skull. His voice turned to crackling ice. “We’re all damned here.” He plunged Frostmourne through her. Pain, sharp and cruel, lanced through her chest. She screamed until there was nothing left of her. Nothing, but the darkness, the howling of the rushing river and the echoes of the Lich King’s final warning. “There is nowhere to run.”
Somewhere a seagull cried. Vyra opened her eyes to the faint warmth of sunlight. A gust of wind enveloped her as she reached out, feeling nothing but open air before her. She glanced down, confused, to find the railing of the Ebon Hold’s flight terrace beneath her feet, the gaping maw of Azeroth’s ocean welcoming her below.
She fell back horrified, landing hard on the balcony floor. The jolt forced her to bite the tip of her tongue. “Just a nightmare,” she whispered. Dawn bled through the sky in shades of pink giving way to a soft blue with only a few wisps of clouds drifting eastward. Beautiful, she thought, until Grimwing’s decaying head of matted hair appeared over her. “Ride?” the ghoul asked in a gargled voice.
“No, no ride.” Vyra stood up and wiped the dust from her robes. One of the skeletal gryphons screeched from its perch and ruffled their bone wings. Another gryphon followed suit, then another until a chorus of icy shrieks filled the air. Vyra placed a hand over her chest. “It was just the nightmare.” Highlord Mograine had warned her that she would soon experience the first nightmare from the death knight’s curse. The endless hunger writhed within like needles stabbing her insides. She would need to fight again, sooner rather than later. Vyra understood maybe now more than ever the consequences of her choice. The hunger knew her weaknesses, her trauma, and would use them to torture her forever or until her final death came.
Grimwing cocked his head to the side, staring at her with those beady white eyes. “Ride?” He asked once more.
“No thank you, my friend.” Vyra turned to walk away, but instead she glanced back at the flight master. “There is nowhere to run, is there?”
The ghoul’s cracked lips stretched into a smile of rotten and missing teeth. “Ride?”