“Jaina?” Arthas’s voice followed her.

She closed her eyes, tears slipping from beneath closed lids. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again. “I’m so sorry.”

“Jaina?…Jaina!”

She had turned her back on him.

He couldn’t believe it. For a long moment he simply stared, dumbfounded, at her retreating figure. How could she abandon him like this? She knew him. She knew him better than anyone else in the world had known him, better maybe than he knew himself. She had always understood him. His mind suddenly went back to the night they had become lovers, bathed first in the orange glow of the wicker man’s fire, and later the cool blue of moonlight. He’d held her to him, pleading.

Don’t deny me, Jaina. Don’t ever deny me. Please.

I never would, Arthas. Never.

Oh yes, powerful words, whispered in a powerful moment, but now, now when it really counted, she had done exactly that—denied him and betrayed him. Dammit, she’d even agreed that if it were her, she’d want to be killed outright before the plague came and twisted her into a violation of everything good and true and natural. She’d left him, alone. If she’d stabbed him in the gut, he didn’t think he could hurt worse.

The thought came, brief and bright and sharp: Was she right?

No. No, she couldn’t be. Because if she was right, then he was about to become a mass murderer, and he knew that wasn’t who he was. He knew it.

He shook off the dazed horror, licking lips suddenly gone dry, and took a deep breath. Some of the men had departed with Uther. A lot of them. Too many, truth be told. Could he even take this city with this few?

“Sir, if I may,” Falric said, “I’m…well…I would rather be hacked into a thousand pieces than turn into one of them undead.”

There were murmurs of agreement and Arthas’s heart lifted. He grasped his hammer. “There is no pleasure in what we do here,” he said, “only grim necessity. Only the need to halt the plague, here and now, with the fewest casualties possible. Those within these walls are already dead. We know it, even if they do not, and we must kill them quickly and cleanly before the plague does it for us.” He looked at each of them in turn, these men who had not shirked their duty. “They must be slain, and their homes destroyed, lest the dwellings become shelter for those whom we are too late to save.” The men nodded their understanding, gripping their own weapons. “This is not a great and glorious battle. It is going to be ugly and painful, and I regret its necessity with my whole heart. But it is with my whole heart that I know we must do this.”

He lifted his hammer. “For the Light!” he cried, and in answer his men roared and lifted their weapons. He turned to the gate, took a deep breath, and charged in.

The ones that had risen were easy. They were the enemy; human no longer, but vile caricatures of what they had once been in life, and smashing their skulls or slicing their heads off was no more of a hardship than putting down a rabid beast. The others—

They looked up at the armed men, at their prince, in first confusion and then in terror. At first, most of them didn’t even reach for weapons; they knew the tabards, knew that the men who had come to kill them were supposed to be protecting them. They simply could not grasp why they were dying. Pain clenched Arthas’s heart at the first one he struck down—a youth, barely out of puberty, who gazed up at him with incomprehension in his brown eyes and got out the words, “My lord, why are—” before Arthas cried out, as much in anguish at what he was being forced to do as anything else, and caved the boy’s chest in with a hammer that he absently realized was no longer radiant with the Light. Perhaps the Light, too, grieved the dire necessity of its actions. A sob ripped through him and he bit it back, willed it back, and turned to the boy’s mother.

He thought it would get easier. It didn’t. It just got worse. Arthas refused to yield. The men looked to him for an example; if he wavered, they would too, and then Mal’Ganis would triumph. So he kept his helm on so they would not see his face, and himself lit the torches that burned down the buildings full of screaming people locked inside, and refused to let the horrible sights and sounds slow him.

It was a relief when some of the citizens of Stratholme began to fight back. Then the self-defense instinct kicked in. They still did not have a chance against professional soldiers and a trained paladin. But it mitigated that horrible sensation of—well, as Jaina had said, slaughtering them like farm animals.

“I’ve been waiting for you, young prince.”

The voice was deep and shivered in his mind as well as his ears, resonant and…there was no other word for it…evil. A dreadlord, Kel’Thuzad had said. A dark name for a dark being.

“I am Mal’Ganis.”

Something like joy shot through Arthas. He was vindicated. Mal’Ganis was here, he was behind the plague, and even as Arthas’s men, who also heard the voice, turned and sought the source, the doors of a house where villagers had been hiding was flung open and walking corpses hastened out, their bodies limned by a green, sickly glow.

“As you can see, your people are now mine. I will now turn this city household by household, until the flame of life has been snuffed out…forever.” Mal’Ganis laughed. The sound was unsettling, deep and raw and dark.

“I won’t allow it, Mal’Ganis!” Arthas cried. His heart swelled with the rightness of what he was doing. “Better that these people die by my hand than serve as your slaves in death!”

More laughter, and then the disturbing presence was gone as swiftly as it had come, and Arthas was busy battling for his very life as a throng of undead, three deep, charged him.

How long it took to slaughter every living—and dead—person in the city, Arthas would never be able to tell. But at last it was done. He was exhausted, shaking, nauseated by the smell of blood, smoke, and the sick, sweet scent of poisoned bread, hanging in the air even though the bakery itself was a burning building. Blood and ichor covered his once-bright armor. But he was not done. He waited for what he knew would come, and sure enough, a mere moment later, his enemy arrived, descending from the air to land on the roof of one of the few buildings still intact.

Arthas staggered. The creature was enormous. His skin was blue-gray, like animated stone. Horns curved forward and up from his bald skull, and two mighty wings like those of bats stretched out behind him like living shadows. His legs, encased in metal adorned with spikes and decorated with disturbing images of bones and skulls, curved backward and ended in hooves, and the very light of his glowing green eyes revealed sharp teeth bared in an arrogant sneer.

He stared up at the creature, rapt with horror, disbelief warring with the evidence before his eyes. He had heard tales; had seen pictures in old books, both in the library at home and in the Dalaran archives. But beholding this monstrous thing, towering over him, the sky behind him crimson and black with fire and smoke—

A dreadlord was a demon. A thing out of myth. It couldn’t be real—and yet it was here, standing before him in all its dreadful glory.

Dreadlord.

Fear threatened to overwhelm Arthas, and he knew if he let it it would cripple him. He would die at the hand of this monster—die without even a fight. And so with sheer will, he drowned out the mindless terror with another, better emotion. Hatred. Righteous fury. He thought of those who had fallen beneath his hammer, the living and the dead, the ravening ghouls and the terrified women and children who didn’t understand that he was trying to save their souls. Their faces bolstered him; they could not—would not—have died for nothing. Somehow Arthas found the courage to meet the demon stare for stare, clutching his hammer.