The runner who reached the Violet Citadel looked like someone who had been running for longer than comfort allowed and had arrived at the destination before they had finished processing what they were running to deliver.
The meeting had already been gone bad when the runner arrived, which was not a deviation from the meeting's general trajectory. It had been going badly ever since Thrall and Garrosh had walked into the room and found Varian already there, and it had continued going badly through Rhonin's appeal to collective reason.
Jaina's quieter, more personal attempt to reach the part of Varian that understood what refusing coordination meant in practical terms, and it had been approaching the inevitable endpoint of Varian deciding that the meeting had already produced everything it was going to produce and preparing to demonstrate this through departure.
The runner's message arrived at the exact moment midway the departure. An Argent Crusade scout report. Forwarded from the Icecrown camp through the coordination channels the Crusade maintained between their Northrend positions and Dalaran's intelligence apparatus.
Marked urgent in the spare language of military communication that was not in the habit of marking things urgent unless the things genuinely were. Rhonin read it first. Then he read it again.
Then he looked at Jaina across the room with the quality of someone who has just received information that they and one other person in the room are equipped to understand in full, and who is determining in the fraction of a second available for the determination whether the understanding is the kind that needs to be shared with everyone present or the kind that needs to be acted on immediately.
He chose immediately. Jaina saw his expression and was on her feet before he had finished reading the second time, crossing to him with the urgent pace of someone who has read the same conclusion in another person's face and is moving toward the information rather than waiting for it to come to her.
Rhonin held the message out. She read it in seconds. The Argent Crusade's scout report was not long — scout reports rarely were, precision being more useful than length in field intelligence.
A lone figure. Moving north through Icecrown's approaches. On foot. No apparent faction affiliation identifiable from the scout's observation distance.
Moving with unhurried deliberateness of someone who knew where they were going and had decided on the pace that getting there correctly required.
A mage. The scout had noted the magical signature — the quality of significant arcane capability present without being actively expressed, the ambient signature of someone carrying considerable power in the contained way of a person who had been doing exactly that for a long time.
Alone. Walking toward Icecrown Citadel. She handed the report back to Rhonin and moved toward the door.
Varian's voice came immediately. "Lady Proudmoore."
The formal use of her title was the version of her name he used when he was asserting something through the formality — not her name in conversation, but her name as a statement of expectation.
She had learned to distinguish between them across years of political interaction that had not always been comfortable.
She did not stop. She reached the door and opened it and looked back — not because he had commanded her to, but because what she needed to say deserved to be said to his face rather than thrown over her shoulder.
"There's someone walking toward Icecrown Citadel," she said. "Alone. On foot."
Varian stared at her. "That's not a reason —"
"It is when I know who it is," she said. And then, because the area contained people she owed more complete explanation to even if she did not owe it to all of them equally: "It's Leylin."
She said it and watched the name register differently across the room's various faces.
Rhonin already knew, which was why he was already moving behind her.
Brann's expression shifted with the immediate recognition of someone who had been in the fields of intelligence and exploration long enough to have assembled a picture of the name from multiple independent sources — not personal knowledge, but the accumulated weight of a reputation that preceded the person it belonged to.
"The mage from Quel'Thalas," he said. "The one who —"
"Yes," Jaina said, because the one who covered an enormous amount of territory and all of it was relevant and none of it was going to be quickly summarized in a doorway. "That one."
She turned back to the corridor and walked.
Varian followed. Not because he had decided to follow — or not only that.
Because the quality of Jaina Proudmoore leaving a meeting at pace, with the Archmage of Dalaran directly behind her and without the diplomatic courtesy she normally maintained when disagreeing with him, was a quality that his years of military experience had taught him to register as significant regardless of whether he understood the significance yet.
Garrosh was already moving — the Warsong commander's instinct for motion outpacing any deliberative process his intelligence might have applied to whether to follow, his long stride covering the ground.
Thrall moved with controlled urgency of someone who had a better developed sense of the situation than most of the other people currently in motion — had heard the name Leylin and had registered it with the quality of recognition that the name warranted in anyone who had been paying attention to the events of the Third War and its aftermath.
Brann Bronzebeard was the last through the door, and he was moving at a pace that suggested the dwarf explorer's characteristic assessment had produced a conclusion about whether this was something worth moving toward quickly, and the conclusion had been yes.
The corridor outside the meeting room had the quality of a space that had been designed for the unhurried movement of scholarly mages and that was now being used for something considerably more urgent than unhurried scholarly movement.
"Someone needs to explain what's happening," Varian said, to Jaina's back.
Not a request — the flat phrasing of someone who had decided that they were entitled to an explanation and was going to receive one through the simple persistence of stating the entitlement until it was honored.
Jaina answered without breaking pace, because the explaining and the moving were not mutually exclusive.
"Leylin has been in Northrend for five years," she said. "Monitoring the Lich King from Dragonblight. He established a settlement there, built relationships with the indigenous peoples, constructed a comprehensive intelligence network — the operational intelligence that the Argent Crusade and everyone else has been working from for most of this campaign came through him."
She paused for the half-second that navigating a corner required. "He's the reason we knew as much as we knew going into Icecrown. He's the reason the Crusade's planning was as good as it was. He's been watching Arthas since before the campaign began."
Varian processed this without visible reaction, which was the quality of someone processing information quickly because the processing required all available resources rather than having resources left over for external expression.
Garrosh, who was moving beside Thrall, directed a look at the Warchief with the specific quality of someone expecting additional information to be volunteered.
"You know this person," he said. It was not a question — he had heard Jaina's glance and its implication.
Thrall answered without looking away from the direction they were moving. "I know of him. He was at Hyjal."
He paused, and in the pause was the weighted quality of memory being consulted for what it was honest to say about a person rather than what was most conveniently summable. "He arrived from the rear during the battle, before the summit. Him and a small unit of elves. They changed the course of an engagement that had not been going in our favor."
Another pause, shorter. "He is not a person who arrives at places and leaves the place unchanged."
Garrosh received this with attentive quality of someone filing intelligence about a person they have not met and intend to assess directly when the opportunity presents itself.
They reached the communications room where the Argent Crusade's forwarded report had originated, and Jaina stopped at the operator's station and looked at the most current output of the relay network's Icecrown coverage.
The report had been updated since Rhonin first received it. The scout had maintained observation and had sent follow-up dispatches with the professional thoroughness of someone who understood that a developing situation warranted continuous reporting rather than a single summary.
The lone mage was still moving north. Still on foot. Still at the same, deliberate pace. Had apparently been approached by an Argent Crusade patrol that had been redirected to make contact and assess the situation. Had spoken with the patrol briefly — the patrol's account of the exchange was three lines long, which was a function of the patrol's apparent difficulty in summarizing what had been said in ways that fit military communication's standard formats.
Then continued walking. Towards the citadel. The patrol's final line of the dispatch read:
He seemed to know exactly where he was going and was not in any apparent distress. He asked us to inform the Highlord that he is coming, and that it is about time to end it.
Brann had been reading over Jaina's shoulder. "Five years," he said, with the appreciative quality of a man who had spent his own life in long, isolated expeditions in hostile territory and who understood exactly what five years in Northrend, deliberately, watching the Lich King, required of a person.
"And now he just walks in."
"He's been planning this for five years," Jaina said. "The walking in is not impulsive."
"What does he intend to do?" Varian asked. He had positioned himself to read the dispatch alongside the others, and his expression had shifted from the resistant to something more immediate and more genuine — the quality of a military commander encountering information about an operation and wanting to understand the operation.
"I don't know the specifics," Jaina said. And then, honestly: "He made a choice five years ago that put him in Northrend. He told me once that he intended to be present when the choice's consequences were resolved."
She looked at the most recent position marker in the scout's report. "I think this is him being present."
The room was quiet for a moment. Thrall was looking at the position within the map point as a person rather than as a coordinate.
He had fought alongside the forces that Leylin had supported at Hyjal. He had received the intelligence that Leylin's monitoring network had produced for five years.
He understood, in the direct, operational sense of someone who had used the outputs of another person's work extensively, exactly what those five years represented in terms of what had been given and what it had cost.
"He's going to need support," Thrall said. Not a question. A conclusion delivered as a starting point.
"He knows what he's walking into," Jaina said. "He's spent five years building the most comprehensive picture of Icecrown Citadel available. If he's walking toward it, he has either a plan or has decided to end everything once and for all."
"That's not reassuring," Garrosh said.
"It's not meant to be reassuring," Jaina said. "It's meant to be accurate."
She sent a message through the relay network to the Argent Crusade's Icecrown operations, addressed to Tirion Fordring, with the direct phrasing of someone who trusted the recipient to understand the weight of what was being sent.
Tirion. Leylin is walking toward the citadel. He has been informed. He is continuing anyway. I believe he intends to be conclude everything.
Everything the campaign has learned from his intelligence over five years needs to be in the minds of the people going into that citadel, and I can think of no better person to have it in their head than the person who built it.
He will reach the outer approaches within the day at his current pace. Whatever coordination the Crusade can extend in that direction, please extend it.
She sent it and turned to the assembled group in the communications room — the Kirin Tor's Archmage, the King of Stormwind, the Warchief of the Horde, the Warsong commander, and the world's greatest dwarven explorer, all of them standing in a communications room looking at a map of Icecrown with a single moving marker on it.
"He's going in," she said. "Five years of monitoring and he's decided it's time. Whatever else is happening between our factions, someone needs to make sure he doesn't go in alone when the citadel's assault reaches its final phase."
The room held the quality of people receiving a statement that was simultaneously about one person and about something considerably larger than one person.
Varian's expression had completed its transition from the meeting room's resistant quality to something that his face did not often produce in political contexts — the direct, unguarded attention of someone who has encountered something that his objections were not calibrated for.
A man walking alone toward Icecrown Citadel after five years of watching from a distance was not a political problem. It was not a factional problem. It was a human problem of the kind that his military experience had always understood more clearly than his political position allowed him to express.
He said nothing. But he did not leave. Outside, in Northrend's perpetual cold, at a pace that had not changed since the settlement's northern edge had become the citadel's southern approach, Leylin walked.
Arcturis moved alongside him, the spirit bear's enormous form settling into the rhythm of travel with the easy, unforced quality of something that had been doing this — ranging through Northrend, covering ground, maintaining presence in hostile territory — for five years alongside a person it had chosen and had not reconsidered choosing since.
He was not moving quickly. He was moving correctly, which was a different thing. The citadel was visible now without requiring the elevated positions.
It was simply there, ahead, filling the northern sky with the enormous weight of something that had been built by the organized application of dark power across years of continuous construction, and that now contained inside it the resolution of a decision he had made on a glacier before most of the current campaign's participants had arrived on this continent.
He had given the Helm to Arthas. He had stayed to watch what the giving produced. What it had produced was five years of bounded, containable Lich King and a world that had recovered sufficiently to mount the campaign that was now, finally, reaching the citadel's walls.