A/N (from 11/07/2019):

The second part to the Bolvar and Sylvanas couplet collection, starting right where the cinematic leaves off and Virus ends.

This was never meant to be an introspection on the flaws in the Horde's Warchief system. Rather, it was meant to be a look at what Sylvanas could have chosen to do had she not destroyed the Helm of Domination. Many times people have stated that she's no different than Arthas now as she was back then, although the only difference between the two of them, as it was stated at the beginning of the Silverpine Forest questline in Cataclysm, was that Sylvanas served the Horde. However, with the reveal from developer interviews during BlizzCon 2019 revealing that she had been collaborating with the Jailer following the aftermath of Edge of Night and worked with Varian on the Broken Shore as a means of securing the Warchief mantle for herself (which may have involved the Jailer being the driving, outside force that made the felguard poison Vol'jin, a wound that most likely prevented regeneration and killed him when it normally wouldn't), this casts the question Garrosh asked her in a much more somber light.

On the other hand, this also makes the argument Giramar and Galadin have in Three Sisters feel very black and white. Or, at least, it appears so on the surface. It's difficult for me to gauge if it's possible to determine the greyness of black and white morality where Sylvanas is concerned, truth be told. In fact, I believe if I were to bring it up now, and perhaps in a year or two's time, it may be impossible to play devil's advocate with pro-Sylvanas and anti-Sylvanas fans as to whether or not her actions are even worth be called "the ends justifying the means" at all. As much as I like to draw parallels between Sylvanas and Illidan, she's linked more strongly (intentionally so) with Arthas, and discussions about Sylvanas are very...heated (Kerrigan parallels notwithstanding, but I can't comment on that, as I've never played StarCraft and know only little fragments of the lore from Heroes of the Storm). It's almost not worth the hassle, when I think about it.

But I think it's way too early for I or anyone to make assumptions or draw conclusions as to what this will all culminate to. I'm not expecting Shadowlands until the middle of next year, so that's more than enough time for me to sit on my laurels, watch, wait, and listen. Listen, as I always do.

(As it stands right now, this fic serves as an epilogue to Virus, but since it's been hinted that the Light and the Void are going to be dealt with in the future I may start this little series up again when it's warranted, or if Shadowlands has important developments that must be addressed.)

She walks away from the usurper, chained on the floor and gasping for breath, the Helm of Domination lying broken at his feet.

You could have had it all, she tells herself. All those bodies. All that power. The entire world, just waiting to be unearthed. Waiting to wake up, arise, and be free.

All for me—me, and no one else.

She pictures it now: her hood thrown back to place the crown over her head and letting the souls of the dead, the trapped, and the damned ring in her ears, calling for escape, hungering for flesh, lamenting their fate of spending their eternity untouched, unknown, numb to the cold and knowing only the dirge the wind sang in th ose long, lonely stretches of the night. Imagines the jolt that would go through each and every one of them as her mien reached forth and touched them, and spread, spread, past the Gates that had never been repaired from the Argent Crusade's combined assaults, beyond the steps of Angrathar that is still desecrated and the stench of blight and ozone lingered in the air, and out, out, into the rest of Northrend. Over the seas her call would fly, miles upon miles upon miles between Nazjatar and Mechagon Island and broken Thal'dranath and Kul Tiras and Zandalar , but they would hear her nonetheless; not even the graves of the cold, dark tides below would ignore her. Then it would set upon the rest of the world, Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms of Azeroth and Pandaria, and there the old bones would stir and the flesh that had just lost its warmth would be renewed wi th stilted, mechanical vigor, and there they would march, march, ever march to the north, slaughtering anyone that stands in their way, until earth met water and light dies the deeper they go into the trenches. It would be the biggest, greatest army Azeroth would ever see, would ever come to know and will ever come to know.

They would be her first defense. There would be no last defense. They would be her shield, her wall of spears. Loyal and undying, rising again and again and again—persistent, merciless, unwavering, to the end of time and ever after. Any one person brave enough to storm through their ranks and make way for her would not be shot with an arrow or quartered with her blades. Every day, of every hour of every minute of every second, the body deteriorates—skin, muscle, bone, cells. A simple gesture of the hand, a calling to the deepest places across the prison of this false reality, and all the life in a single person can be undone. Flesh would melt, hair would fall off in clumps, sinew and ligaments would untangle like a ball of yarn. Bone would break, shatter, crumble, and when the wind blew in nothing but the soul would remain, and there are uses for souls, still. T here is energy yet to be extricated from it in machines, science, magic. The body is a wonderful weapon, when tooled for the right purposes.

No one could ever touch you.

No one would ever challenge you.

Wouldn't it be grand?

All you had to do was put it on, and you would become a queen eternal. Their nightmare realized.

She scowls.

She already knows what she is. The Alliance, for all their gallivanting of being righteous and making a show of rising above the sins of their past, see her for the person she is now and not the young, starry-eyed fool of the past; on that, she can agree with them. After everything she has done, who would blame them for feeling that way? They had the excuse to flaunt their might and thirst for justice.

But the Horde...the Horde is blind—painfully so. They were aware of her involvement with creating the Blight, the experiments done on the living, the raising of the dead against their will. They themselves had been involved with her war—their war that they had so readily jumped to join and push back against the Alliance for all the troubles they had caused them in Stormheim, the lack of justice that came with the loss of the lantern, and the horrors that would be unleashed on them if the King and his men got their hands on the azerite first, pooling in the Wound Sargeras inflicted on the world.

Saurfang had no problem cutting down the night elves in their homes as the war machine rolled through Ashenvale and Darkshore. In fact, he seemed to quite enjoy himself. He did not need a demon offering its own blood to drive him to heights of frenzy or give him the nudge to send assassins after Sentinels to soften them up for him. If the reports from Draenor were anything to by, then he did not need Mannoroth or Gul'dan to entice him with promises of power and honor—it was in him all along.

Baine was no different. One did not have to commit violence to show what colors he wore and bled for. Always for the Alliance and their King, never for the people that were led by him and looked to him Thrall stayed in Draenor to raise his family and Vol'jin died from the felguard's poison in Grommash Hold. Her faithful loyalist brought up not so long a curious thing Lor'themar had said, when she had received word from Nathanos that Azshara had been true to her word and allowed the Honorbound to survive the fall into Naz'jatar, that almost made her laugh: Baine represented the best of the Horde. Surrounded by what felt to him to be serpents in the grass and shadows at every corner, Baine seemed a beacon of good and noble and honorable of the Horde that Thrall had built from the ashes of the Old Horde's demise and Vol'jin tried – and failed – to uphold.

Nazgrim, thickheaded as he was, had the right idea when he remained at Garrosh's side during the Siege of Orgrimmar. He maintained his pledge to the Blood Oath until the very end, regardless as to whether or not he agreed with Hellscream's policies. But he is dead, and so far as she is concerned Garrosh is rotting away on a wide, open plain in the alternate Nagrand.

None of that mattered anymore.

None of that matters now. Honor, loyalty—they are one and the same, no different than justice and vengeance. They could bleat about it as much as they liked, until their lungs gave out and their throats went hoarse.

In death, nothing else exists.

Only freedom.

Freedom from life. Freedom from pain. Freedom from hope.

Once upon a time, long ago, Garrosh posed upon her a question that went in one ear and out the other the moment the words left his lips. It was a question that must have been on Thrall's mind, and Vol'jin's, and Baine's, and Lor'themar's, and so many others when they watched her, heard her, saw her. Perhaps they were afraid of the answer they would receive, or maybe they were waiting for someone, anyone, to be the first among them to step forward and speak the question that bothered them ever since Cairne managed to convince Thrall to permit the Forsaken into the Horde and grant them sanctuary from an Alliance reeling from the massacre Arthas visited upon his father and the Kingdom of Lordaeron and hunting the undead she had broken from the Lich King's hold. Forsaken, she recalls with a bitter frown, that continue to stubbornly hold onto a past that made them weak.

So Garrosh asked, and hears his voice ask now: What difference is there now between you and the Lich King?

Sylvanas tilts her head back and regards the spires of the Tower of the Damned dangling above her. The broken carapace of the sky that hid the veil between life and death. The ancient, colossal weight of the Jailer's gaze upon her, waiting on her return.

"Nothing," she declares. "Nothing at all."