Except... except he remembered the day they had changed the banners back, a month after the proper mourning period, the keep servants all up on ladders to roll up the dull black and air out the regular banners once more. He remembered the blue and gold, and the bright blue tabards of the guards who stood at attention, the uniform blue of belt and trim on boots and gloves.
Grey, now, unrelieved metal and dark leather, and a white lion on black that fluttered above the ranks of soldiers who stood at attention in neat rows upon the yard, beneath a steel grey sky. It was fitting, Shaw supposed; the color of war, the color their lives had become.
He tried not to think about the last time he had seen the color blue. Most of the time he succeeded.
Below, in the yard, one of the officers whistled sharply. As one the armored figures turned - about face, salute, present arms. The rasp and clash of steel, four score boot heels striking the flagstones in unison as they saluted as crisply as the finest Gnomeregan clockwork, was impressive. The training officers had outdone themselves this last round.
Shaw felt more than heard the vibration of another set of footsteps on the wooden stairs of the viewing platform. He turned from the railing, bowing on reflex. "Your Majesty."
At his feet, the shadow of the railing crawled across his boot. Shaw trained his eyes on the heavy wood of the board beneath his feet instead.
"Master Shaw." Anduin Wrynn had never grown to fill the space his father, Varian, had, but Shaw had watched over the years as the fragility of childhood turned into the solidity of a man who, if he lacked a few inches and breadth from his predecessor, was still a commanding presence that drew the eye automatically to him. The king joined Shaw on the platform, resting his hands lightly on the railing as he turned his gaze out over the assembled ranks in the yard.
Shaw could recall a golden haired boy with clear blue eyes, all the colors of a summer day. The king's hair was still the color of untarnished gold, glinting in the light where it fell around his face, but the eyes he turned out towards the yard were as white as snow - not the milky white of blindness, but a bright, luminous white, a holy light that seemed to shine from within.
Mathias Shaw could remember the clear blue eyes of a youth, but he tried not to. It only made the contrast, then and now, all the worse, and he was certain his liege knew it. The way Anduin inclined his head slightly, carefully not turning that eerily bright gaze devoid of iris or pupil upon him, was indication enough.
Shaw kept his own gaze on the bright glint of sunlight off metal, reflected over scores of helms and carefully polished breastplates and tried, very hard, not to think of colors - blue, gold, or otherwise - at all.
Anduin raised one hand in greeting and benediction and every eye in the yard was training on him as he drew in breath. "I see before me the future of our Alliance," he said, and Shaw fancied he could hear the creak of leather as every spine in the yard straightened one tiny bit more. The king's voice was neither loud nor sharp, but it carried clearly to the yard through, Shaw knew, a trick of the precise point Anduin was standing at, the surrounding walls that bracketed the training yard, and the masterful projection of a voice trained for oration.
"You have worked tirelessly for the right to stand where you are today," Anduin continued, and it was no rote or carefully written speech. It never was, and the genuine warmth and admiration in his voice drew them like moths to the light, desperate to warm their wings against his flame. "That work, your determination and sacrifice, is a shining light to all of us, and will be the spark for the fire that will carry you through the trials to come."
Unscripted, but Shaw had heard the variations of it before and knew the gist. It was a rallying cry, praise and flattery meant to give the men and women who stood in armor something to grasp onto, stir their blood and pride before sending them out to war. Anduin wove the words deftly, wholecloth created from nothing, painting a shining image of victory and success.
Not that it was unfounded. The Alliance - East Kingdoms and Kalimdor combined - had suffered no major defeat from the Burning Legion since the retaking of the Broken Shore. The demonic foothold upon Azeroth was not so easily ousted but they had made no greater gains beyond it and Azeroth stood firm, undefeated and united.
A handful of years since that first disastrous encounter that had cost them so many lives, not least of which the king's father, and yet season after season the Alliance military ranks swelled with bright, eager faces and proud shoulders to take up the burden of war. And who could blame them? They were the heroes of the age and Shaw knew the statistics as well as he knew the calendar date, knew how many of those shining faces in the courtyard below could expect to return, but it never deterred them. The glory of those who did return was too great and every victory brought them all one step closer. The fever of a righteous cause, one so much greater than the old endless fighting between Kalimdor and the East Kingdoms, drove them all to a fever pitch and kept the trainee rosters full.
"They have tried to strike us down," Anduin was saying, his clear voice bouncing back from the stones to vibrate with urgent passion in the air that had grown still. Shaw glanced up, once - the pennants were still dancing in the breeze, but none of it touched the yard, where the air pressed down with heavy solemnity. "They have tried and they have failed. They think to break us and that is their mistake - they do not realize our strength. For every loss we have suffered, every drop of blood spilled, we rise anew, and we will not bow. Not then, not now, not ever. The sword you pick up today is the sword of the brother, sister, mother or father that carried it before you. It is our future, and no amount of loss will tear it from our hands."
Bright whites and dark shadows, the high contrast of the sun at midday reflecting off scores of metal plate. Shaw tried to focus on that but Anduin's voice would not be pushed aside, the words a palpable thing that demanded attention. "Let grief become anger and rage. Let vengeance strengthen your sword arms."
There was no air in the yard to stir any of the banners, no air for breath. Shaw clenched his hands together in the small of his back, holding a parade rest posture despite how tight his lungs felt. Everyone else in the yard and on the platform, the generals and the soldiers, the training officers, one and all, were turned towards their king, their faces open and shining, bathed in the light that seemed to shine forth with every word.
He knew what was coming. Mathias Shaw had been there, at the start. Desperate to redeem himself for the losses they had already suffered and unwilling to let a known quality like the Prince's - now King's - tendency to slip his guards result in more loss. Guarding a Wrynn, he had once told his top SI:7 operatives, was like guarding a handful of water that slips through your fingers - the best you can do is mark where it flows and follow after. And follow he had, because he would have gladly thrown himself into the fel flames rather than let another king die only months after the first. He had followed like a hunting dog on the scent, and come just as easily to heel when Anduin had been delivered safely into the hands of King Greymane and the Prophet on the Broken Shore, in the shadow of the cliffs that had seen his father's last heroic stand.
"Your rage gives you strength." Anduin's voice rang out, deeper, stronger, the words weighted like Words of power. Shaw forced himself to keep watching and not turn away as the light grew in intensity. Pure and bright, it washed over those in the yard below them, and in its wake painted the shadows even darker.
He had watched that day as well, when his young king - conflicted, then, doubting and at a loss, grief and the weight of the desperate war they were waging bowing his shoulders - had stood over the last remains of his father. Had watched, his own chest tight, as Anduin had lifted his father's sword, Shalamayne cold and dark in his hands, and had felt the same thrill and triumphant spark he had seen reflected on the faces of Greymane and Velen when the Light had gathered at Anduin's touch, bringing the sword to life once more.
"Feel your rage." The shadow slipped over the soldiers in the front rank first, the ones who stood closest to the platform. It lifted up as the light faded, shifting and pulsing with a life all its own. Shaw couldn't swallow, his lungs aching, afraid that if he drew breath he would taste the acrid, fel tainted air of the Broken Shore once more.
His agents called him fearless, but every man has a limit and on that shore Mathias Shaw had found his. He didn't dare turn, kept his eyes straight forward, unwilling to look at his king. Once had been enough.
He had seen it, on the Shore, when Anduin had straightened, the light of Shalamayne bright in his hands. He had seen the look - terrible and foreign - in his young King's eyes, and the way he had resembled his father more than ever in the tight press of his lips and the clench of his jaw. He had been close enough to hear Anduin's quiet statement, the one that had come from a voice he had never heard before from the man he had watched grow from a boy. "No more."
Mathias Shaw had seen many things in his life. He knew the deep velvet pall of a Priest given over to shadow, and had braced himself for it because he knew, to precise measures, what their Prince had trained in and that for whatever else he might be Anduin Wrynn was still his father's son. He had been prepared for that first wash of shadow, the Wrynn temper that had been a fearsome rage in Varian turned into a cold, seething darkness in the man's son, given outlet through Words of power and anger.
Shaw had seen many things, but nothing, not even the reports of his best operatives who had witnessed the phenomena years before then, had prepared him for when shadows became Shadow.
It had begun at Anduin's feet, where he had plunged the blade of his father's sword into the scarred and stained ground. It had stretched in black tendrils that reached, twisting and writhing, painted from the white light of the blade that cast sharp edged shadows everywhere it touched. Those tendrils lifted, shadow given shape, form, and substance, and it had taken Shaw entirely too long to realize what he was seeing, caught as dumbfounded as the lords who stood nearby.
Until one of the writhing shadows had pulled itself entirely from the ground, an amorphous shape of nightmare defined only by what it was not, edged in traces and flickers of Light that had a sickly cool cast to it. Until it opened luminous eyes, phosphor rising from its first breath, and spread wide a monstrous jaw ringed in the drip of shadow formed fangs wrapped over a core of burning white.
Mathias Shaw had never stepped foot on the shores of Pandaria or seen the nightmare creatures called Sha, but the reports of the SI:7 operatives who had refused to ever be deployed there again had suddenly, horrifically, been given life right in front of him. He had, in the years since, retired more than a few of those same operatives when continued service became too much, but would not give himself the same luxury.
Below him, in the yard, the shadows cast by Anduin's light reached the furthest ranks, washing over each and every soul within the space. They stood still and silent, like marionettes poised and waiting for their master's command, every face turned upwards. Anduin raised one hand in benediction, bright and shining, light wrapped over black shadow form, his words dropping like spelled command into the quiet. "You fear nothing."
The shadows struck in a flash and took hold, filling open eyes, open mouths, saturating breath, and as one the gathered soldiers in the yard bellowed their rage back to their sovereign king, a shout of triumph and fervor that echoed deafeningly off the walls as they saluted, swords raised high. Again they shouted, and again, wordless sounds of inarticulate rage, a joyous, single minded bloodlust stoked to a fever pitch. A bloodlust that shone, glossy bright, from every jet black eye where shadows writhed over an incandescent hate.
The Illidari gave their lives into the defeat of the Legion, gave their very eyes, but even the most devout disciples of Illidan Stormrage couldn't match the sheer, unbridled rage that sustained the Alliance forces. Fearless and terrible on the field of battle, the soldiers of Stormwind fought with an unprecedented ferocity, every one of them imbued with the hate and anger of their king. Over the years they had held back, contained, and finally gained ground against the Burning Legion, one step at a time, every step bought in blood and lives and an endless stream of more ready to take the fallen places.
The blue of the Alliance banners had become the black stain of drying blood, gold fading into the brilliant white burning flame of anger, and Shaw had stood upon the Broken Shore and watched nightmare after nightmare tear itself loose from the ground beneath their feet. Had stood helpless as they crawled and writhed to his king, watching in horror at what he had been certain would be Anduin's last moments... only to bear witness, uncomprehending, as the quiet spoken diplomat, the cool and reasonable foil to his father's hot temper, had gathered the shadows to him, taking them in with open arms as they grew, and grew, and grew.
The Sha of Anger had, by all accounts, towered over the foothills of the Kun-Lai peaks before the demonic embodiment of rage had finally been banished. Shaw had watched from the ground where he had fallen as the shadows merged, melting into one another, piling higher and higher until the eldritch nightmare that raised its gigantic head had been the size of the cliffs, stretching taller than the sharp spires that formed the fel drenched Tomb of Sargeras. It had opened eyes - too many of them, shifting flickers of cold light in a void of head shape, spikes and tusks and spines emerging - and laughed.
The sound had twisted something in Shaw's gut, driven a splinter of fear into his heart that he could never forget. The sound had been nothing human, a nightmare horror that assaulted the ears even as it plucked and tugged at the mind, whispering sibilant hisses of anger and rage. It sparked fire in the blood and heart at the same time it chilled him to the core, mindless anger without meaning or point, destruction given form and will.
Anduin, the man who advocated peace and diplomacy overy bloodshed, had looked upon the horror without flinching. Had stood firm, wrapped in arcane shadow, the air around him crackling with a power that came only from the absence of Light, and his voice had shaped itself into Words that had no place in any tome that had ever passed through the halls of the Cathedral. "Cleanse them."
It had been their first great victory upon the Shore, Legion ships torn from the sky by monstrous claws, the shadows of the Dreadlords themselves ripping free with a will of their own and turning upon them in writhing, fanged horrors. Shaw had witnessed it, the spread of the shadow in his King's wake, tendrils boiling outward behind every step to touch the Legionfall defenders one after another. It had spread like a touch, a breath, engulfing human and ally alike and feeding rage and strength into weary arms, banishing fear for fury and a reckless, all consuming hate.
They had lost full score half their numbers that day, but the Legion had lost more. It was heralded as the victory of the High King and was still a rallying point for every season's new crop of recruits that came to take up arms. To fight. To die. To become the hands of the King's vengeance, and through him, to take their own.
No one spoke of the demon in their midst. No one marked the shift of the shadows that were never entirely still any more, never entirely just shadows. The King's sight, they whispered on the streets and in the tavern rooms of Stormwind, was given to the Light; not the fel sight the Illidari used, but pure holy Light, the better to tear through the veil of demonic illusion. The High King was a vessel of the Light, his touch that of a healer who could, with a word, breathe strength back into a body and lift any soul brave enough to grasp a weapon into the now legendary Light touched ranks of heroes.
No one spoke of how it took the bright shine of light to create shadows, or that the brighter the illumination the deeper the shadows were. No one spoke of how Lordaeron had been left to fall, though they were quick to mention how Silvermoon had been the first of the old Horde to offer an alliance and pledge fealty, a consolidation of the Eastern Kingdoms where the threat of the Legion had been rooted closest. They spoke of how the rest of Kalimdor had followed suit as the Legion turned their gaze westward, until the Alliance had become an Alliance in truth, a united Azeroth standing against the tide of the demons.
No one spoke of what price those allegiances and fealty had come from. That was part of Shaw's job, and he took a grim pleasure in a job well done, regardless of circumstance.
In the yard the officers were calling orders, the company of soldiers dispersing with disciplined order. At Shaw's side the King drew a breath, hands resting lightly on the same railing that Shaw's knuckles had gone white around. "A good group," Anduin said quietly. "They'll do well. The trainers should be commended."
"Your Majesty," Shaw replied, throat dry. It was rude not to turn; he made himself release the railing and did so, keeping his eyes trained on his king's sleeve and the fringe of his epaulets, refusing to look up.
Once had been enough. The gossip of the common folk claimed the King's eyes shone with a holy light. Without a frame of reference Shaw could see how the mistake was made - light was light, after all, and only a close comparison could differentiate the warm gold light of Holy fire to the cool, bluish white that made up the core of rage contained in the Sha.
As chilling at the light was, though, the shadow was worse. Shaw had seen it on the broken shore - ink black, blacker than moonless night, without pupil or shape, a tendril of Sha drenched shadow that had engulfed his liege's eyes, writhing and twisting, a void with slivers of that rage spawned light shining through. It was never entirely gone, a hint of shadow beneath Anduin's lowered lashes that only waited for a chance to burst free.
Mathias Shaw served his King with all of his soul, but he tried very hard to never meet the man's eyes, particularly after Words had been used. The nightmare of black on black shadows twisting within the sockets of Anduin's eyes was one of several night terrors Shaw would take to his grave.
"Ah." The exhale, soft and quiet, held a wealth of emotion Shaw couldn't immediately name and made him, involuntarily, glance up to see what had prompted it. Anduin had his eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, his brow creased slightly in a near universal image of pain.
"Your Majesty?" Shaw asked, alert. "Is something wrong?"
"No," Anduin replied. He reached with his free hand, pressing Shaw's shoulder in a brief touch, and his eyes, when he opened them, were nothing but cool, pale light. The relief of that, though, was short lived; a tendril of shadow slid like a snake across one orb and Anduin grimaced slightly, eyes narrowing reflexively until the black subsided and left his gaze wholly white once more. "My apologies, Master Shaw."
Shaw couldn't swallow, his throat too tight and dry. Anduin knew; knew, and because he was still Anduin Wrynn he had thought to suppress the shadow in him for no other reason than Mathias' comfort. It was a singular utterly Anduin thing to do, the boy and man that Shaw had known all his life, not the King he had become.
It was a small kindness and at the same time it made it a thousand times worse, a shiver wracking its way down Shaw's spine because he had been there, at his King's side, on that first day. He had been there, bloodied and shaking and empty inside when the battle had been won, when the towering nightmare had turned its glowing eyes once more on the figure of its summoner, jaws dripping fire.
Give in to your anger, the Sha had whispered, sibilant hisses that hooked into the mind and soul. Unleash your fury. Try to strike me down.
And Anduin Wrynn, his eyes black echoes of the Sha he faced, had taken one deep breath, then another. "No," he had said, and the word was its own Word of Power, the indomitable Wrynn will and fabled stubbornness pitted against an eldritch horror.
Shaw had watched, then, as Anduin forced the shadow back, contained it within himself, waging a silent war to control it on his own terms. It had been awe inspiring and terrifying, knowing what was leashed, barely, within the young man, locked solely behind the brilliance of a will made of mithril.
He watched now, his breath caught in his throat, as another black flicker curled up and under Anduin's eyelids. The King's mouth tightened briefly, thinning, and the shadow receded until his eyes were nothing but white light, the crease between his brow easing. His smile was a ghost of a thing, wan and faded, the echo of the rarely gifted bright smile Shaw could remember from a young Prince. "I'll expect the week reports before Council," Anduin said, only the lightest of question in his tone.
Shaw nodded, his voice a dry crack. "Of course, Your Majesty."
Anduin nodded, turning away, but it was several long moments after the man's footsteps had receded before Shaw could draw breath again, swallowing around the fear tight lump in his throat. Overhead, the banners snapped in the rising wind, sable black against a colorless pale sky.
