Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War

25

It took time—more time than Jaina wanted to spend. But she needed to be thorough. Antonidas had taught her that. If you rushed through the studying of spells or their execution, you risked results where nothing happened—at best—or at worst, disaster. “It’s every bit as dangerous as going into battle with a type of weapon you’ve never handled before,” he had said, cautioning her.

So she sat on one of the small hills on Fray Island and reread everything the stolen tome could tell her about the Focusing Iris. She thought about what Kalec had shown her of magic, how it was logical and precise, and about what the book claimed, that arcane energy was so similar to an element it might as well be one, for all magical intents and purposes. As she read, Jaina would absently reach out to stroke the surface of the Focusing Iris, cool even in the hot sun.

She had already performed some experiments with the item, and successfully; its new, smaller size was testament to that. She restored it to its proper size and began other tests. She slept little and ate only conjured food. After two days of reining in her impatience, heartened by her success here, Jaina finally felt she was ready. She watched with narrowed eyes as the Horde sent most of its vessels from Northwatch Hold. Jaina expected they were going to Orgrimmar. The thought gave her pleasure.

Yes, go home, she thought.

She turned to face the ocean. The salty breeze stirred her white hair. Jaina centered herself, placing her hands on the Focusing Iris. If she understood correctly how the thing worked, it was a conduit—and, in the right hands, a magnifier—of arcane energy. She felt it tingling coldly. Then suddenly, a slender crack ran along its surface. And like an eye, it started to open.

Jaina gasped but did not break contact. As long as she was directing the flow of magic, it would obey her. There was a searing flash, and a beam of light shot outward from the Focusing Iris to the ocean.

With one hand on the Iris still, Jaina lifted the other and made the familiar motions of a certain spell.

Before, this spell had created a single elemental. Now, so quickly, there were ten. Ten shimmering, imprisoned water elementals standing on the surface of the sea, their eyes glinting, what served for their arms encased in manacles.

Jaina laughed. Then she made more. And more still, until there was scarcely any unenchanted water to be seen. Ordinarily such work would be beyond her, and if it were not, she would be quivering with exhaustion by this point. Instead, she felt as strong as when she had begun. The Focusing Iris did all the work for her. No wonder the Horde had coveted it, and no wonder Kalec had been so worried when it had been stolen.

For a brief moment, Jaina’s concentration was elsewhere. The image of the blue dragon, beautiful to her in both his forms, appeared in her mind. She recalled his kindness, his laughter, how her heart had skipped a beat when he kissed her hand.

But it was only a moment. Grimly Jaina brought her attention back to the water elementals. There was no place for laughter and kindness in her world now. Not while a single orc yet breathed.

With little more than a thought and a twitch of her fingers, she reformed those few elementals that had begun to lose cohesion due to her inattention. Now to begin the binding.

She had no spell for such a thing. To the best of her knowledge, it did not exist. But the Focusing Iris appeared not to be limited by such trivialities. Jaina concentrated hard on her intention, weaving her fingers in ways that came naturally to her.

And the Focusing Iris—and the elementals—obeyed.

They began to fuse together, thousands of them, not quite losing their shapes, but adapting to become part of a single, greater form. Jaina smiled. Her heart racing as she beheld her success, she wove them together even more. What had once been thousands of individual elementals, dancing on the top of the ocean, was now a single wave.

A tidal wave.

Higher it grew, and broader. Moving her hand in an upward gesture, Jaina caused the wave to rise. In the vast wall of water, she could still see individual eyes and enchanted manacles on watery arms. But they would not separate. Not while she bid them to stay together.

She took her time. It was no small distance from here to the tidal wave’s ultimate destination. Jaina would need many elementals and would have to keep masterful control if she was to be successful. Finally, she was almost ready. A few more to gather up, another ten, perhaps twenty feet higher—

“Jaina!” said a voice, deep and rich and laced both with joy and pain.

The wave faltered as Jaina turned, keeping one hand still firmly on the Focusing Iris.

“Thrall!” Jaina shouted back. She deliberately did not use his “true name.” “What are you doing here?”

The pleasure on his face faded. “I am so glad you live, my old friend. But I was called here… to stop you.”

Old friend, he called her. That was what they were, wasn’t it? Friends who had worked side by side, to stop wars, to save lives, both Horde and Alliance.

But they could be friends no longer.

The Doomhammer remained strapped across his back as he strode toward her, his arms outstretched imploringly. “I had a vision—of a tsunami unleashed on Orgrimmar. A tsunami that had its origins here. And so I came, as the elements begged me to, to stop this from occurring. In all my dreams and fears, I never thought to find you alive—and behind this horrible disaster about to happen. Please, Jaina—release them. Let them go.”

“I can’t,” she said, and her voice cracked. “I have to do this, Thrall.”

“I have heard about what happened to Theramore,” Thrall said, still slowly approaching her. “I grieve with you at so many deaths in so brutal a fashion. But doing to Orgrimmar what the Horde did to Theramore—it won’t bring anyone back, Jaina. All it will do is take more innocent lives.”

“You grieve?” she snarled. “Theramore’s destruction I lay firmly at your feet, Thrall! You left Garrosh in charge of the Horde! I begged you to come back, to remove him from power. I knew he would do something terrible one day, and he has. Garrosh may have done this—but I blame you for giving him the power to do it!”

Thrall stopped dead in his tracks, shocked by her words.

“Then—blame me, Jaina. Ancestors know, I blame myself. But do not seek to buy vengeance for the fallen of Theramore by killing my people!”

“People?” Jaina echoed. “I can’t even call them that anymore. They’re not people. They’re monsters. And so are you! My father was right—it took an entire city of people slaughtered before I could see it. I was blind to what the orcs were, because of you. You tricked me into believing that there could be peace, that the orcs weren’t bloodthirsty animals. But you lied. This is war, Thrall, and war hurts. War is ugly. But you started it! Your Horde obliterated Theramore and is now blockading the Alliance cities in Kalimdor. Whole populations are being held hostage, are being attacked. Well, as we stand here, Varian is leading the fight to break that blockade. And when I’ve completed my task, I’ll help him. And then we’ll see who holds whom hostage! But first—I destroy the city named for Orgrim Doomhammer, in the land named for your father!”

“Jaina! No, please, don’t!”

With a smirk and a simple flick of her wrist, Jaina released the tidal wave.

A terrible sound, the cry of hundreds of enslaved elementals, shattered the air as the wave surged north.

“No!” cried Thrall. He shot out his arms desperately, pleading silently, Spirit of air, hold them still! Do not let them be used to slay so many innocents.

He reached in his pouch and touched the small carvings that represented the elements. Their essences manifested in glowing, pulsing images of these figurines. Such a totem appeared at his feet as air came willingly to his call, and the wind that suddenly sprang up wrapped itself around the writhing wave, attempting to restrain the tsunami.

Jaina growled and gestured. The elementals wailed in agony as they were forced to fight against the binding of the wind. Thrall grunted and found himself trembling with the strain. Jaina was a powerful mage, but she shouldn’t have been strong enough to stand against him—especially not when it was the will of the elements themselves to resist her. Thrall had never seen the Focusing Iris, but he knew what it looked like. It had directed powerful surge needles that pulled arcane magic from Azeroth’s ley lines to the Nexus; it had given life to a five-headed chromatic dragon. Now it was under the direction of a master mage.

Thrall sickly realized he had gotten things backward. The wonder lay not in the fact that Jaina was stronger than he was now. The wonder lay in the fact that he was able to resist her at all.

“Jaina,” he said, the words coming out through teeth clenched with his body’s strain, “your pain is justified. What was done was an atrocity. But the life breath of children should not be demanded for what Garrosh did!”

Her white head with the single gold lock turned to him. Her eerie eyes stared at him coldly. She splayed her fingers and shoved her hand forward. Thrall flew backward, slammed hard by something lavender-white and glowing. His world went gray for a second and he landed on his back on the sand, gasping for breath. His whole body shuddered, but he forced himself to rise and direct his energy toward holding back the tidal wave.

The attack had not been intended to loosen his hold over the elements. The attack had been meant to kill. Thrall could not bring himself to do that, not yet, not to Jaina, who had once been and might yet be a cherished friend. And thus he was handicapped in a way she was not.

Thrall asked the spirit of air for aid again. A gust of wind, raging at near-hurricane levels, blasted Jaina so fiercely that the mage stumbled backward, toppling to the sand. Her hand was torn from the Focusing Iris, and the whirling air snatched the words of command from her mouth.

Thrall used the precious seconds to direct his full attention to the towering wall of water. Spirit of water, struggle against this spell that enslaves you. Take my strength; use it to—

He heard and felt the heat behind him. Lamenting the need, he redirected his imploring from the spirits of water to a spirit of fire. Thrall whirled, his hands up to do what he could to protect himself from the massive fireball hurtling toward him. The Spirit of Fire was angry and tortured, and for a moment Thrall feared it would not hear him in time. Defensively he threw up three orbs of water that circled swiftly around him and granted him energy. Thrall could not help but close his eyes as he braced for the searing heat and pain. At the last second, the huge swirling ball seemed to fracture, flames going off in all directions. Only a very few struck the shaman, but those singed his robes and flesh painfully.

“I won’t let you stop me!” Jaina shouted. She was on her hands and knees, crawling toward the Focusing Iris. Before he could react and disperse the groaning, straining elementals that composed the tidal wave, the mage slammed one hand down on the artifact, strengthening her spell. With the other, she twisted her fingers commandingly. Thrall was stunned as the two remaining globes of water were yanked from their protective orbit around him. They grew larger, magical bonds appearing on suddenly sprouted “arms,” and then went to join their kindred—serving Jaina now. He realized that the artifact not only gave her own spells more power—it gave her power over his as well.

“Do you see, Thrall? Do you understand what you’re up against?”

“I see, Jaina!” Thrall shouted back. He reinforced his totems and focused on keeping the tidal wave from being released. If only his words could reach her… “I see that you are broken and grieving. Don’t let what Garrosh did to Theramore claim you as a victim too. I can help you!”

“Help me? Maybe you are helping Garrosh! How do I know that you aren’t working with him? Maybe this has been your plan all along!”

So shocked was Thrall by the accusation that his spell faltered. The enormous tower of churning water elementals surged forward several yards. Thrall barely regained control of it by devoting his whole will to the task.

A huge pillar of fire suddenly appeared, whirling furiously and churning up sand as it bore down on Thrall. This he knew he could not dissipate, and nearly all his energy was being spent in holding back the crashing wave.

The wave—

Spirits of water, let me walk upon you, and embrace me!

He turned and raced from the sand onto the surface of the water, running as swiftly as if upon dry land. The orc headed straight for the huge, towering wave, thinking to use Jaina’s own spells against her as she had used his against him. Just as he approached the quivering wall of water, he asked the element to hold him. He dropped like a stone into the ocean, and above his head, Jaina’s pillar of fire crashed into her own tidal wave.

The fire was quenched at once and the wave severely weakened. Thrall dove deep, away from the churning chaos on the surface, and swam strongly back toward the shore. As he emerged from the sea, he saw Jaina frantically trying to repair the wave, creating more elementals and forcing them to merge.

Asking for the favor of the Spirit of Life, Thrall summoned two spectral beings—spirit wolves, transparent and misty, but every bit as dangerous as the more corporeal kind. He had created such manifestations before, but now, with the willing aid of the Spirit of Life, the wolves were even stronger. With howls that shivered along the air, the ghostly creatures sprang for Jaina, diverting her attention from her grim task.

“You just delay the inevitable,” Jaina spat. She gestured, and suddenly lavender-white arcane energy exploded around her. With howls of pain, the spirit wolves returned to the plane from which Thrall had called them. “You can’t beat me. Not while I have the Focusing Iris. It—” Her anger abruptly turned to pain. “You can’t understand. You didn’t see it. You don’t know what it did—to Theramore, to me…”

Her torment was harder for Thrall to witness than her rage. She was an open wound, and she wanted to hurt those who had hurt her. More than that, she wanted to hurt everyone who had ever given her hope. Deep sympathy filled him but did not shake his resolve for an instant.

“You are right,” he said, causing her to look at him with a surprised expression. “I wasn’t there. But I can see what it has done to you. What Garrosh did to you. Fight Garrosh. I will not stop you. But do not make innocents—children, Jaina!—pay his blood price! You won’t just kill them; you will kill the future!”

“There’s no future for those who died in agony at Theramore,” Jaina shot back. “Why should the orcs have one when they don’t? When Kinndy doesn’t, or Tervosh, or all those good and decent people?” Then, almost to herself, she said, “Why should anyone have a future?”

And the wave broke free.

Thrall arched his back and flung his hands up in the air. His muscles screamed and his lungs labored for breath as he poured all his strength into holding back the tide.

It halted in mid-surge, quivering against the strain as Thrall himself did. Air and Water were in a conflict neither element truly wished as the tidal wave shivered. Thrall had no thought, no word, no gesture to spare for his own protection. He could feel the water struggling to break loose, feel the air fighting to hold it in place.

And he was entirely at the mercy of a woman who stood a few yards away—one he had once called “friend” but who now was striving to be death incarnate.

“Release the wind, Thrall!” Jaina shouted. One hand still on the Focusing Iris, she drew back the other. Arcane energy whirled about her, tossing her robes and white hair. “Or I will kill you where you stand, and you will still fail!”

“Do so!” gasped Thrall. “Slay me! Turn your back on everything that once gave you integrity and compassion! For I will not permit this wave to crash upon Orgrimmar as long as there is breath in my body!”

For an instant, it seemed to him that Jaina wavered in her determination. Then her face hardened.

“So be it,” she murmured, and gathered the energy in her hand.

A shadow fell over both of them, and before either realized what had happened, a huge reptilian form dropped down on the sand. He interposed his massive blue shape between the orc and the human and cried out, “Jaina! Don’t!”

Thrall could not believe it. Kalecgos—here! How had he found them? At once he answered his own question. The blue dragon had been searching for the Focusing Iris. The quest had come to an end—Kalecgos had found both it and its brutal mistress. Thrall now had an ally—and the orc continued to funnel all his energy into holding back the seething, straining tidal wave.

Jaina stumbled as Kalecgos landed in front of her. “Move aside, Kalec,” she snarled, trying to recover. “This is not your fight!”

He changed into his half-elven form, still interposing himself between her and Thrall. “But it is, you see,” he said. “The Focusing Iris is not yours. It belongs to the blue dragonflight. It was stolen, and something cowardly and horrifying was done with it. I cannot, I will not, let that happen again.”

“It’s not cowardly!” Jaina cried. “It’s justice! You went back to Theramore, Kalec. You saw what was left. You didn’t know them as I did, but Pained and Tervosh and K-Kinndy—they were your friends too! There was nothing left of her but sand, Kalec. Sand!”

Her voice broke on the word. He made no move to fight her, even though she still stood in an attack pose. Even though she still had her hand on the Focusing Iris.

“I too have lost those I love,” he said. “I understand at least a glimmering of your pain.” Kalec took a step toward her, stretching out a hand imploringly.

“Stop! Don’t you move!” Again arcane energy crackled about her. “You don’t know anything about what I feel!”

“Are you so very sure?” Kalec had halted but not retreated. “Tell me if this sounds familiar. The initial incomprehension. The guilt, and the second-guessing, and the numbness, because you can’t take it in all at once. You can only take it in a little bit at a time, like opening a dark lantern just a crack. The strange shock every single time as you realize, again and again and again, you will never see that beloved person anymore. And then the anger. The outrage. The desire to hurt the thing that hurt you. To kill the thing that killed them. But you know what, Jaina? It doesn’t work that way! If you drown Orgrimmar, Kinndy still won’t be waiting for you in Theramore. Tervosh won’t be out tending his herb garden. Pained won’t be sharpening her sword and glowering happily. None of them will come back.”

Jaina’s heart contracted in anguish. But she could not listen, because everything he said rang so sickly true. She could not agree, because then she would have to let go of the rage.

“They will have company,” she spat.

“Then you had best plan to join them,” Kalec said, continuing implacably, “because you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if you did this. Because, Jaina—all those things I described, I felt. I felt so deeply, so intensely, that I did not understand how my heart could bear to continue to beat. I know what it feels like. And… I also know that you can heal. It comes slowly, and in stages, but you can heal. Unless you’ve done something to yourself so that you’ll never recover. And believe me—if you loose this wave upon Orgrimmar, you will be as dead as the ones you claim to mourn.”

“I do mourn them!” Jaina shrieked. “I do! I can hardly breathe, Kalec. I can’t sleep. I just see their faces, just as I remember them, and then their bodies. The Horde must pay!”

“But not by your hand, Jaina, and not this way.” The voice came not from Kalecgos but from Thrall. Jaina turned stormy eyes upon him. “There is justice, and there is vengeance. You must see the difference between the two, or else you betray those who loved you.”

“Garrosh—”

“Garrosh is a thief and a coward and a butcher,” Thrall said calmly. “And you are doing precisely what he did—right down to using the same artifact that obliterated Theramore. Is that what you wish? Truly? To be remembered as that even by your own people?”

Jaina staggered back as if struck. No, he was an orc; he was just like the rest of them; her father had been right. Thrall was trying to confuse her. She shook her head wildly.

“I am doing what I know to be right!” she shouted.

“As did Arthas, when he slaughtered everyone in Stratholme,” Kalec said. Jaina stared, appalled and disbelieving. He continued as if he hadn’t noticed. “And he at least didn’t act with hate in his heart toward those he killed. Is this what your legacy is to be, Jaina Proudmoore? To be another Garrosh, another Arthas?”

Jaina’s legs buckled and she dropped to the sand, still keeping her hand on the Focusing Iris. Her mind was reeling, thick with fog and anguish.

Arthas—

I can’t watch you do this.

She had said that to him, after begging him to change his mind. Had ridden off with Uther, weeping at what Arthas had become. Slowly, as if her head weighed a thousand pounds, she turned to look at her hand on the Focusing Iris. So simple a thing, to have so much power and to have caused so much pain. She thought of its energy being used to animate a five-headed monstrosity, Chromatus. To funnel all arcane energy to the Nexus. To fuel a mana bomb that incinerated innocent young girls.

To wipe out Orgrimmar—

She thought of Arthas mocking Antonidas before Archimonde destroyed Dalaran. And the face of her old mentor, crafted of purple smoke: “This is not for idle hands, nor prying eyes. Information must not be lost. But it must not be used unwisely. Stay your hand, friend, or proceed—if you know the way.”

She had wanted justification so badly that she had seen his appearance as an invitation—even though she had been forced to break the magical seal. But it hadn’t been.

Proceed—if you know the way.

But she hadn’t known the way. She had been lost, blundering blindly. If anything, his brief appearance had been a warning, not a nod of approval. In her heart, Jaina knew what Antonidas’s reaction would be to what she was about to do. And the knowing was like a knife.

The hand on the Focusing Iris clenched into a fist.

Jaina slowly got to her feet and lifted her tear-stained face first toward Kalec, then toward Thrall.

“For what he has done, Garrosh can be nothing but my enemy—and the Horde as well, as long as he is their warchief. I have hundreds of elementals enslaved to me. And I will use them.”

Both Thrall and Kalec tensed.

Jaina swallowed hard, and the words crawled past the lump in her throat. “I will use them to aid the Alliance. To protect my people. I will not obliterate an entire city, for I am not Garrosh. I will not slaughter unarmed civilians, for I am not Arthas. I am my own master.”

With those words, the tidal wave fractured. It was no longer a towering wall of water but hundreds of individual water elementals. They bobbed on the waves, awaiting Jaina’s command.

“You have a right to wage war upon the Horde, Jaina,” Thrall said. “But the blood on your hands will now be those of warriors, not children. In time, your heart will be glad of this choice.”

“You do not know my heart anymore, Thrall,” she said. “I am no butcher—but I will no longer call for peace at any cost. The Horde you do not lead is dangerous and must be challenged at every turn—and defeated. Then, perhaps, there can be peace. But not before.”

Despite what she had said about her heart, she felt it ache at the sorrowful expression on his face. The lives lost at Theramore and Northwatch Hold were not the only casualties. This friendship of so many years, so cherished and championed by both of them, was another. It would be a long, long time—if ever—before she could call Thrall “friend” again. And she knew he knew it.

“The coming war will shake this world as the Cataclysm did, but in a different way,” Thrall said. “And I have pledged to heal the world. I return now to the Maelstrom. Lady Jaina, I would we had parted another way.”

“So do I,” Jaina said, and meant it. “But that wish changes nothing.”

Thrall bowed deeply. He summoned a ghost wolf and climbed atop its back. Shaman and mystic creature departed, the ocean as solid as ground for them. She and Kalecgos watched him depart in silence. Finally, Jaina turned to the blue dragon.

“And what will you do, Kalecgos of the blue dragonflight?” she asked quietly.

“I will bear Lady Jaina wherever she wishes to go,” he replied.

“I will find where the Alliance fleet is engaged in battle,” she said. “But first… I… I wish to see Orgrimmar.”