The change in the undead was immediate and it was visible and it was the specific, disorganized quality of things that have been operating through a connection and have had that connection severed without warning or preparation.
Leylin saw it as he turned from the central engagement and moved back across the glacier toward the corridor — the undead forces that had been pressing with the specific, coordinated, Frostmourne-enhanced urgency of Arthas's full activation beginning to lose, in the seconds following Frostmourne's removal from the death knight's hand, the quality that the activation had given them.
Not all of them at once, and not completely — the Lich King's residual authority, weakened as it was, remained a real if compromised organizing force.
But the specific, direct enhancement that Arthas's connection to the blade had been providing was gone, and the loss of it was visible in the way that the undead forces' behavior changed at the edges first and then propagated inward through the formation, the driven, coordinated quality of Frostmourne-powered Scourge becoming the less driven, less coordinated quality of Scourge operating on the Lich King's weakened direct authority without the death knight's amplification.
Some stopped moving entirely, in the specific, directionless manner of undead that have lost the animating direction they were operating under and have not yet received a replacement direction sufficient to substitute for it.
Others continued but with the specific, reduced quality of things that were running on reserve rather than on the full, active supply they had been receiving.
The corridor's engagement would notice this. The unit would notice this. He did not need to tell them — the change in what was pressing against them would communicate itself through the change in the pressure. He moved toward the corridor. He found Alleria first.
She was where he would have placed her if he had been placing her — at the elevated position's edge, the position that gave the most comprehensive view of the corridor's engagement and its surrounding terrain, her bow at the ready but her attention currently on the broader battlefield rather than a specific target, which was what the current phase of the engagement required from the unit's most comprehensive tactical leader.
She saw him coming before he reached her, which was consistent with the quality of attention she applied to her observation positions — the ranger's awareness extending to the periphery without requiring the periphery to announce itself.
She came down from the elevation to meet him, and her expression in the meeting carried the specific, reading quality she brought to moments when someone had been where she had not been and was arriving with information that mattered.
"Arthas," he said, before she had completed the approach.
"Yes," she said.
"He's down. Frostmourne is no longer with him." He paused for the specific, brief pause that the information's significance deserved before he continued. "The undead are losing the enhancement it was providing. You'll have seen it already in what's happening at the corridor."
"I've seen it," she confirmed. "The pressure changed approximately two minutes ago. The formation lost the coordinated quality it had been maintaining." She looked at him with the comprehensive, reading attention of someone who has received partial information and is assessing what the partial information implies about the whole. "It's not over."
"No," he said. "It's not over. Arthas being down and Frostmourne being contained removes one significant variable from the engagement's current configuration. It doesn't address what was there before Arthas arrived, and it doesn't address what the Frozen Throne represents independently of the death knight's direct involvement." He looked northward, toward Icecrown Citadel's dark shape against the perpetual overcast. "I need to get to the throne."
Alleria received this with the quality she received things that she understood to be necessary and that she did not like. Not resistance — she was too experienced and too honest in her assessments of situations to resist necessary things because she did not like them.
But the specific, controlled quality of someone who has added a piece of information to what they are managing and is in the process of incorporating it. "Alone," she said.
"Alone," he confirmed. She looked at him for a moment with the full, evaluating attention of someone who is determining whether there is an argument to be made and who is finding, in the determination, that the argument that wants to be made is not the argument that the situation supports.
Then she looked at the corridor, at the engagement that was continuing with its changed but not absent pressure, at the unit she could see from her elevated read of the terrain — each element present, each element continuing to do what it had been doing, each element visibly affected by the loss of Frostmourne's empowerment in the reduced pressure they were now managing rather than the overwhelming pressure they had been managing before.
"The unit needs rest," she said. Not a question — a statement of what she was observing and what the observation implied for what came next.
"Yes," Leylin said. "The engagement's pressure has reduced to the point where the managed withdrawal is possible. Find position, consolidate what we have, rest. Whatever follows from the Frozen Throne's situation will need people who can function, and the unit has been going since we left Dragonblight."
"How long will you be?"
"I don't know," he said, which was honest and which he understood was not comfortable. "Not days. The Frozen Throne's situation is at a point — the Lich King's power is at a level — where what I need to do there is something that can be done in hours rather than something that requires the kind of sustained engagement the glacier has required." He paused. "When I'm done, I'll find you."
She accepted this with the specific, direct nod of someone who has made their peace with an arrangement they don't fully like and is proceeding with the peace rather than the not-liking.
"I'll get them moving," she said.
He found the rest of the unit through the rapid circuit that the corridor's changed pressure permitted — the undead still present but no longer the overwhelming, coordinated force that Frostmourne's activation had made them, the engagement now the kind of manageable that allowed movement through it rather than requiring complete attention to its every development.
He told each element what he had told Alleria — Arthas down, Frostmourne contained, the pressure reduced, the unit to find safe position and rest. He told it quickly, with the economy that the situation's remaining demands imposed on the time available for any individual communication.
Each element received it with the quality of their own specific character — Elna with the composed acknowledgment of someone who had been managing his portion of the engagement and was now redirecting that management toward the new objective; Liadrin with the brief, settling expression of someone receiving news that the Light had been doing its work and that the work's phase was changing; Halduron with the characteristic economy that he brought to all communications that contained significant information, the humor entirely absent in the specific way that absent humor in Halduron indicated the information's weight.
Tyr'ganal and Aminel he found together, as he almost always found them — working, in this case, the ongoing assessment of the engagement's changed magical signature, the readings that the unit's arcane element had been maintaining throughout now showing the specific, dramatic shift that Frostmourne's removal had produced in the local magical architecture.
"The necromantic energy has destabilized significantly," Aminel said, before he had conveyed the information that would have explained the reading. Her eyes found him with the specific, sharp attention of someone who had arrived at a conclusion through independent analysis and was confirming it against the source. "Arthas."
"Yes," Leylin said.
"And Frostmourne?"
He touched the satchel at his side briefly. Aminel's expression adjusted with the specific, rapid quality of someone receiving information that was not surprising and that nonetheless required a moment to be fully incorporated.
"Rest," he told them. "Both of you. Find the position Alleria is consolidating the unit toward and rest. The engagement's pressure is manageable without the full commitment we've been operating at."
Tyr'ganal nodded with the brief, professional economy that confirmed the instruction had been received.
He found Vashj at the corridor's flank, where the sea witch had been managing the naga elements through the engagement's changed phase with the specific, continued efficiency of someone who operated at a consistent standard regardless of the phase's specific demands.
Vashj always gave the impression of someone who had assessed the situation before it occurred and was therefore not surprised by it when it occurred, which made conveying information to her a different experience from conveying it to most.
She turned to face him as he approached with the knowing quality of someone who has been tracking the central engagement's development from the periphery and has already drawn most of the conclusions that his arrival was going to convey.
"Illidan," he said, without preamble, because Vashj did not benefit from preamble. "He's critically wounded. He's on the glacier near the central engagement's location, conscious, but — " He paused with the specific, honest precision of someone who has assessed a situation they are not qualified to assess medically but who has seen what the situation looks like and is conveying what the seeing produced. "He needs care that the glacier does not provide. The wound from Frostmourne is not an ordinary wound."
Vashj's expression carried the specific, controlled quality of someone receiving information about a person who is significant to their current circumstances and who is managing the received information with the calculation that the circumstances required. "You've secured the blade," she said.
"Yes."
"Then the wound will not compound." It was not a question — Vashj was drawing the conclusion that the information supported.
"Without Frostmourne continuing to act on what it has taken, his constitution and the Skull of Gul'dan's integrated power are sufficient for recovery given adequate environment." She paused, running the practical assessment of what adequate environment meant given their current location and available resources. "The naga have methods for this. There are places — the coastal reaches, where the underwater passages allow access to environments that the healing traditions my people developed in the deep require."
"Take him there," Leylin said. Vashj looked at him with the evaluating attention of someone who has received an instruction from a person who does not hold authority over her and is assessing the instruction on its merits rather than its source.
The assessment appeared to be favorable, because she nodded with the specific, brief quality that indicated a decision had been made rather than a suggestion entertained.
"And the blade," she said.
"Contained," Leylin said. "Secured. Not a variable in anything that comes next."
Something moved in Vashj's expression that was neither relief nor satisfaction but something that occupied the space between them — the specific, controlled response of someone who has been operating in proximity to Frostmourne's influence throughout this engagement and who finds its absence from the equation a change whose quality is real even if the expression of it is managed.
"I'll take him," she said. She turned and began directing the naga elements toward the glacier's central area with the immediate, flowing efficiency that characterized her command style — no wasted instruction, no redundant communication, the direction conveying itself in the specific, minimum necessary expression that the people receiving it required.
Leylin stood for a moment after both conversations had concluded, in the specific, brief interval between the completion of one set of obligations and the beginning of the next.
Around him, the engagement's reduced pressure continued — the undead still present, still animate, still the specific, dangerous material of the Scourge even without Frostmourne's direct empowerment, but manageable in the way that the unit was now capable of managing without his direct involvement.
The unit would rest. Vashj would take Illidan. Arthas was on the glacier without the blade that had been the central operational fact of his capability in this engagement.
And the Frozen Throne was ahead, in the direction the Lich King's residual presence had been pulling everything in this region since before any of them arrived.
He looked northward. The tall glacier in Northrend. The throne was located there, weakened by the rift and by the engagement's accumulated disruption of the Lich King's authority, but present — still present, still the specific, organizing fact of Northrend's magical architecture around which everything else had been organized.
Ner'zhul was there.
Leylin adjusted the satchel at his side — the specific, brief physical confirmation of what was in it, the containment working holding with the steady, maintained quality of a well-built thing doing what it was built to do.
He began walking north. The glacier received his footsteps with the indifferent quality of very old ice that had been receiving footsteps across an epoch of the world and had not developed, in all that time, any particular opinion about who was making them.
The glacier grew larger as he walked toward it. The engagement behind him continued its managed, reduced version, the sounds of it carrying across the cold air with the specific, diminished quality of something that was no longer the defining condition of the immediate situation.
He had told the unit he would find them when he was done. He walked toward being done.