Leylin stood at the junction of the three halls and looked at the assembled force with the comprehensive attention of someone conducting a rapid but thorough assessment.
What he saw was capable. What he also saw was mixed — different training traditions, different physiological states after the ascent, different relationships to the hostile environment of the Upper Spire that the varying force compositions produced.
Tirion's paladins and the Argent Crusade's veterans alongside Darion's death knights alongside Varian's Alliance elite alongside Thrall's Horde warriors alongside Rhonin's Kirin Tor mages alongside his own people, now present through the portals.
Not uncoordinated. But not the coordinated force that extended joint planning produced, either. He chose not to say this.
Not because it was not true — it was precisely true — but because there were things that were true and useful to say, and things that were true and not useful to say, and telling an assembled force of the most capable individuals the Northrend campaign had produced that they were insufficiently coordinated for what was ahead of them was in the second category.
What they had was what they had, and what they had needed to be directed rather than assessed critically in the junction of three halls under the Lich King's active pressure with the summit above them and time not on anyone's side.
He looked at Tirion. "Three halls," he said. "Each one opens the path to the summit. None of them are optional — they need to be cleared before the final ascent is possible."
He looked at each hall's entrance in turn, the monitoring network's close-range coverage building the immediate picture of what each approach contained. "The one on the left is the Plagueworks."
He paused to let the word do some of its own work. "The Plagueworks contains three specific threats in sequence. Festergut and Rotface — they are twins in the specific sense that they represent opposite expressions of the same plague modification process. Festergut inhales plague gas and becomes increasingly resistant and increasingly dangerous. Rotface exhales it and produces oozes that build into a large, mobile slime hazard if they are not managed properly."
He looked at Tirion directly. "The resistance management on Festergut requires timed response — if your forces cannot clear the exposure phases quickly, the resistance builds to something that your damage output cannot penetrate before the exposure phases produce casualties you cannot sustain."
He looked at Darion. "The Ebon Blade's capabilities against the plague mechanism are relevant here. Your people have been working with plague exposure since the beginning of the Northrend campaign."
Darion nodded. The professional acknowledgment of someone receiving operationally useful intelligence and filing it immediately.
"Professor Putricide is the third encounter," Leylin continued. "He is the intelligence behind both of them. He will produce alchemical slimes during the engagement that target specific individuals — the slimes must be managed through positioning rather than through simple damage output, because the slime's transition between its phases creates area effects that adjacent allies cannot sustain. Do not bunch together."
He said this with emphasis of something that was the most important tactical note rather than a general caution. "Whatever else Putricide does, if your forces are clustered when the slime transitions, you will lose people you cannot afford to lose." A brief pause. "Spread out, assign clear responsibilities for slime management before the engagement begins, and do not let anyone move toward a slime transition point without the specific awareness of what the transition will produce."
He stopped. This was the briefing the Plagueworks required — but the essential notes that distinguished successful engagements from unsuccessful ones.
Tirion was reading him with the evaluating attention of a man who had spent his life assessing the quality of information sources and who was completing that assessment in real time. The assessment arrived at a conclusion that was visible in the slight adjustment of the Highlord's bearing — the specific, subtle shift of someone who has decided to trust what they are hearing.
"We take the Plagueworks," Tirion said.
Not a question. Not a request for confirmation. The direct commitment of a commander who has received sufficient information and has made a decision.
Darion looked at him. "The Ebon Blade goes with you."
This was also not a question. The quality of it was the quality of a decision made on operational logic rather than deference — the death knights' capabilities against the plague mechanics were the capabilities the Plagueworks required, and Darion had assessed this in the seconds between Leylin's briefing and the moment of declaration.
Tirion looked at Darion with the mutual quality of two commanders who had been working alongside each other in the full knowledge that they did not entirely trust each other and that the distrust was not the relevant variable in the current moment.
"Together," Tirion said.
Varian had been listening with the focused quality of a soldier receiving tactical intelligence in preparation for deployment — not the evaluative, political attention he sometimes brought to joint discussions with the Horde's leadership, but the direct, operational attention of someone who was in a fight and needed to understand the fight.
He had also been watching Leylin with the quality of someone who had been revising their understanding of a person across the course of an ascent and who was not done revising.
"The Crimson Halls," he said, before Leylin had indicated which group was going where.
Leylin looked at him.
"You're assigning Jaina's group there," Varian said. "And mine is going with them, based on the force composition requirements." He did not explain the reasoning. It was visible in the way he had read the hall's ambient magical signature and the way his military assessment had mapped available force capabilities against what that signature suggested.
Leylin held this for a moment. "Yes," he said.
Varian did not look satisfied. He looked confirmed — which was a different thing, the quality of someone whose assessment had been verified rather than someone who had won something.
The Crimson Halls briefing was shorter than the Plagueworks briefing, because the force going there included the complementary capabilities that the Crimson Halls' specific threats required and the briefing's essential notes were consequently fewer.
"The Blood Prince Council first — three individuals operating as a coordinated unit. The specific complication is that the active power rotates between them and your damage output needs to track the rotation rather than focus on a single target."
He looked at Jaina and Rhonin. "The arcane capabilities in your group are well-suited for the rapid targeting adjustment the rotation requires. The melee forces need to understand that engaging the currently-inactive princes is significantly more dangerous than engaging the currently-active one — position accordingly."
He paused. "Blood-Queen Lana'thel is second." He said her name with the quality of someone for whom the name carried a particular weight — not the weight of personal connection, not the weight of grief, but the weight of specific knowledge about what the name had become and how.
"She will attempt to convert someone in your group. This is not avoidable — it is the encounter's organizing mechanic. What is manageable is ensuring that the conversion target is someone who can hold the converted state without compromising the group's core capability."
He looked at the group's composition. "The converted individual must bite another group member within the allotted time or they are lost permanently. Plan for this. Decide before the engagement begins who bites whom and in what sequence. The planning matters more than the reacting."
He stopped. Looked at Jaina. She was reading him with the quality she brought to all information that required processing — the immediate, comprehensive engagement of a mind that was not simply receiving what was said but integrating it with everything she already knew and building the forward model of what the integration produced.
"We'll manage it," she said. He believed her. This was one of the qualities that five years of correspondence and extended collaboration had built into his understanding of Jaina Proudmoore — she did not say she would manage things as a default reassurance.
When she said it, she had already done the internal accounting of what managing it required and had found the accounting solvent. The separation was practical and immediate, because practical and immediate was what the junction required.
Tirion organized the Plagueworks group with the efficient quality that decades of field command had built into how he moved through operational transitions — not the extended, ceremonial coordination of a force with unlimited preparation time, but the immediate, essential organization of people who knew their roles and needed only the assignment of direction to begin executing them.
The Argent Crusade's veterans fell into their formations with the practiced quality of soldiers whose training had made formation-finding automatic rather than deliberate.
Darion's death knights moved alongside with the Ebon Blade's characteristic, slightly-offset discipline — not the same formation as the Crusade, but compatible, the two organizations' different approaches to field organization finding the adjacent positions that allowed both to function without interference.
Saurfang looked at Leylin before moving toward the Plagueworks approach. The look was the flat quality of someone communicating something that they have determined cannot be more usefully expressed in words than in the quality of the look itself.
Leylin held it briefly. Whatever was communicated passed in both directions without requiring language, and Saurfang moved toward the Plagueworks hall with the High Overlord's ground-covering stride.
Garrosh went with him with the contained energy of someone who had been managing the Upper Spire's pressure through the application of forward momentum and was grateful for the permission to direct that momentum somewhere.
The Crimson Halls group organized itself around Jaina's natural center-of-gravity quality — the way that certain people, in mixed groups in situations of genuine urgency, became the point that the group oriented around without requiring explicit designation.
Varian was beside her, which was not where Varian typically stood relative to the Horde forces, but which was where the Crimson Halls' specific requirements placed him given the force composition and the tactical picture Leylin had provided.
Thrall was on the hall approach's right with the Horde warriors, which produced the slightly uncomfortable adjacency of the two leaders occupying the same approach with the full, post-Wrathgate weight of everything between them not resolved but temporarily set aside in the specific, pragmatic way that the citadel demanded things be set aside.
Alleria had gone to the Crimson Halls group without explicit direction, because the force composition assessment she had performed in the thirty seconds since the briefings concluded had produced the same conclusion Varian's had — the Crimson Halls' tracking and rotation requirements were the requirements that a ranger of her capability most efficiently addressed.
Vereesa beside her. This was also not discussed. Liadrin with Jaina, because the Blood-Queen's vampiric threat profile and the Crimson Halls' overall blood-magic saturation were the threat profile that the Light's presence most directly addressed, and Liadrin's developed connection to the Light had been demonstrated across the entire campaign as the most reliable expression of that address available.
Tyr'ganal looked at Leylin across the junction. "You should not go to the summit alone," he said. The quality of the statement was the quality of someone who had assessed the situation and had reached a conclusion and had decided to state the conclusion in the direct way that Tyr'ganal stated conclusions when he had determined that the directness was more useful than the diplomatic framing.
"I know the Frostwing Halls," Leylin said. "And what is beyond them. It's about time, I finish what I've started." He looked at Tyr'ganal's gaze with the quality of someone who is not dismissing the concern but who has already weighed it against the full accounting of everything the situation contains. "Stay with the group that needs you most. The Crimson Halls' arcane requirements are what you are best positioned to address."
Tyr'ganal held the gaze for a moment. Then: "When you reach the Frozen Throne," he said, "you know what we are here for."
"I know," Leylin said.
Aminel found him at the junction's edge as the groups were beginning their movements toward the respective halls — the Plagueworks group moving with the organized momentum of a force that had received its assignment and was executing it, the Crimson Halls group organizing itself around the specific, complementary composition that the briefing had suggested was optimal.
She stood beside him for a moment without speaking, which was its own form of communication between two people who had been working in close collaboration for long enough that the communication did not always require language.
"Everything you know about Sindragosa," she said finally. "We received it through the monitoring summaries. But we haven't been inside the Frostwing Halls."
Five years ago, there was only Saphiron. Sindragosa at that time wasn't resurrected as an undead wyrm yet.
"She is what the monitoring said she was," he said. "Larger. In the way that things are always larger when you are standing inside them rather than reading about them from outside." He paused. "The frost tomb mechanic is the most significant tactical risk. She will encase people. The people encased cannot be left — they need to be released before the buildup of frost energy reaches the point of irreversibility. Anyone who goes into that hall needs to understand that leaving someone encased is not an available decision."
"And beyond her," Aminel said.
"Beyond her is the Frozen Throne," he said. "And what sits on it."
She looked at him with the full, honest weight of someone who had been receiving his monitoring summaries for five years and who understood, through the accumulated reading, exactly what the monitoring had produced in terms of his own relationship to what sat on the Frozen Throne — the complicated weight of a decision made five years ago and the specific, complicated relationship to the thing that decision had preserved.
"Be careful," she said.
He looked at her. "That's not something you usually say."
"It's not something I usually need to say," she said. "You are usually doing something that does not require it."
He held this for a moment. "I will be careful," he said.
The groups separated. The Plagueworks approach swallowed Tirion and Darion and the combined Crusade and Ebon Blade force with the immediate quality of a hall accepting what was moving through it — the ambient sound of the approach changing to the biological-chemical quality of the Plagueworks' particular environmental character as the group moved into its range.
The Crimson Halls took Jaina's group with the blood-red ambient quality shifting from the Upper Spire's general saturation to the Crimson Halls' blood-magic concentration as they crossed the threshold.
The junction was quiet. Leylin looked at the Frostwing Halls' entrance. Arcturis pressed against his side with the warm presence that five years had made as familiar as anything he had known in this world, and he rested his hand briefly on the spirit bear's enormous, spirit-warm form.
"One more floor," he said. The Frostwing Halls waited ahead. Beyond them, the Frozen Throne. Beyond that, what needed to be finished.
He walked toward the entrance, Arcturis beside him, and the Upper Spire's cold received them with the ancient indifference of a place that had been waiting for this convergence and had no particular investment in how it concluded.