I woke, cold. Not a regular cold, not even the cold of Northrend, but a soaking, burning, agonizing cold. A dying sort of cold. I could feel a breeze, and if it were possible, it was even colder. The hands upon me were cold, and all I felt was a numbing deadness. I was naked, exposed, moved and touched by so many hands… I wanted to scream, to fight, but I could not. "I believe we have her." A voice, so dark, so cold, so…uncaring, spoke. The space I was in must be huge to swallow his words like that, and I could hear screaming beyond. Howling. The gibbering of the mindless undead at Hearthglen, all around me. "Finally. She did not come easily."
"Clarimonde. Welcome back." Arthas's voice and my eyes startled open. I was in a great cavern, green and shimmering… so much…. Ice. "Here." He closed my fingers around a hilt, not the sword I had wielded in the Order… I could feel a sluggish presence in this one that perked up when my hand was closed.
"Arthas…you look…." My very thoughts were disjointed and incoherent… "Terrible." He did, as well. I had never seen him look…so bad. His hair, once amber gold, was fine and white. His eyes truly glowed now, not just from the power of his soul, but from simple power. His skin had paled, grayed. He considered my words, and grinned, a wicked, yet compelling smile.
"Shush, little one. Listen to it." He rested my other hand, open, upon the blade's foible, "It awakens as you do."
Clarimonde, my hand. My companion. My mistress.
It thought. Only vastly enchanted blades thought…. Knew… were aware of themselves and those around them… and most of those were weapons of darkness.
"What is its name, Clair?"
"Dormarth." Where that came from, I was not certain, but it was so. It was mine, I was its. "Arthas, what have you done?" I had been dead. I….still was, yanked back from…
"Noooo… Clair. Do not go back there." He ground the words out, and I heard Uther call my name from very far away.
"But Uther calls me." I turned my head to the side, away from Arthas, and something moved beside me, something large, dark, and insect like… That which had brought me back from the dead. I was an abomination… my heart was stilled in my chest.
"Uther is dead, Clair."
"So am I." I had died leaning against his leg, on the cold ground above the bay. This wasn't like the time that Uther had pulled me back from death. Then I had lived again, flush with health and fertility. Now, I simply did not live. "Where am I?"
"You are at the top of Northrend, Clair. My citadel." He pulled to sit me upright. I was nude, but few around me were alive and aware enough to notice, and those didn't seem to care. Arthas would rule, but never be King of Lordaeron… "You are reborn. I brought you back…it was not easy. You had been dead a long time. Well and truly dead."
And Uther still was…well and truly dead. I felt his loss like a sudden stabbing pain. Words failed me, I merely sat there and trembled, my fingers closed around a sword that pondered and considered. "Too much, too soon." Arthas noted, motioning into the darkness. Another of the insect spider things moved from the shadows, and carefully placed a pile of fabric beside me. "Dress, Clarimonde. You will feel better then. We will eat. And things will be just fine."
Somehow, I doubted that. Uther's death made things not fine. The weight of others who had been there, where I'd come from, so many of the Order, dead. The only good thing was that I could not recall Baudoin's presence there. Uther, yes. Gavinrad, yes. So many. But not Baudoin. Not Tirion, or Turalyon. Some had escaped the….purge. What had happened? What had finally brought down Uther? I stood doll like as I was dressed in a gown of impossible finery, black embroidered with gems and precious metals…. Never had I even dreamed of such a thing…
