They both died at Hyjal, saving the world.
The thought returned to her on the edge of sleep, as she struggled upward from confused dreams that verged on nightmares. It seemed strange, as if it were somehow a fated thing. No, that was a foolish thought. Half a generation died at Hyjal.
The machinery of world-saving runs on blood.
One ripped to pieces by gargoyles as he and his fellows struggled to hold a rocky pass against the Scourge. They came in waves. Endless and unfeeling as the sea. Just to the north of where he died is a lake – now, even as the fire elementals rage over Hyjal, the waters are clear. When he died they were muddled with blood, clogged with the bodies of the dead. The air had tasted of copper and rot that day, sneaking death into the lungs of still-living warriors, claiming them before they even fell.
The second brought down by swords clutched by dead fists, his blue-shining eyes widening as he tried to speak the healing spell and all that bubbled to his lips was blood. His voice, sword and shield and healing hands, was silenced by the steel in his throat. He fell. The dead marched over him, armored feet pressing cloth and hair and flesh into the bloody earth. He heard, from somewhere far away, Proudmoore’s voice, lifted above the sounds of battle, “Fall back! Fall back!”
One by one they lie down in the earth.
One discovered and pried from the mud’s grip. The frantic words chanted over him, the light curling around the hands of priests themselves still bleeding. Life returned amid a charnel house. One of the first. An experiment. Not done quite right. He rose, still wordless and bleached bone-pale, his face new-born amid the fields of the dead.
What did his eyes see, when he first woke?
The second left to rot beside the bodies of those who killed him, until his bones’ rest was disturbed years later. The necromancer’s grip pulled him from earth, from rest, from peace, from oblivion. There was not much left of him, hardly enough of his own flesh to force his spirit to return. The armor of a knight is heavy, and not just on the body. It takes a certain sort of soul to bear the weight.
Under the weight he rose up.
Two men. Now the world looks at them and calls one a beauty, one a beast.
The world is wrong, for they are beauties both, and both beasts.
One is a patchwork monster, a shambling creation of flesh and magic. She has seen him kill – it is methodical and tireless, the way a machine would murder. She has seen him angry, once. The heat of his rage seared her flesh and filled her lungs with ashes. He apologized afterward, though the anger had not been turned towards her, though he had not needed forgiveness. He was a pillar, a touchstone, a cave where she could creep and curl and hide from the troubles of the world.
The second is an ivory statue, poised and polished and perfectly presented. But when she went too near, when she dared to speak or touch, so saw that the statue was cracked, that every facet and plane of it was guarded by a sharp edge. He was as bright and gleaming as a blade – and his tongue as sharp. He promised nothing, save to guard himself before all others. He was mercurial in every sense of the word: quicksilver - shining and poisonous, mercenary – his services available for coin.
And where was I then? Between walls of stone. Offering aid and succor to their enemies. Supporting the force that killed them.
Sometimes she wondered about Time and Fate. Sometimes she thought about Bronze dragons and the tricks they play. Sometimes she wondered what the response would be if she knelt before metal wings and begged to save them. Idle thoughts. She would never ask the Bronze Flight for such a thing.
Dragons are like gods. They cannot be trusted and their gifts are never worth the price.
That, yes, but more than that. She was selfish, and to save them as they were – life and heart and beat and breath – would mean she would never have met them as they are. They have been broken, but she prefers broken people, broken things.
