▸ Column · Winter Veil in Azeroth — a row of holdings competing in festival lantern-displays
ILLIDAN STORMRAGE replies.
Replied to by Illidan Stormrage, with a rebuttal from Arthas Menethil.
The letter
For eleven Winter Veils my lantern-display has been the glory of our row of holdings — four thousand hand-lit soul-lanterns, an enchanted moonsaber that bows its head when the carolers sing, and a shrine my late father forged with his own hands before he passed. Then last week the neighbor across the lane raised a towering conjured effigy of Greatfather Winter, three stories tall, glowing a sickly red, with a rune in its chest that makes it WAVE at every sleigh that passes like it owns the cul-de-sac. Now the children point at his blob and walk straight past my saber. An entire sleigh of carolers wheeled around in MY courtyard just to gawk at HIS giant. I've already priced a thirty-foot frost-wraith with a fog-conjuring rune — but my wife says if I "summon the fog," she's spending the holiday at her sister's. Is it more pathetic to surrender or to win? Because I have the gold to win.
Illidan Stormrage replies
You wrote "I have the gold to win" the way a man reaches for a blade he hasn't earned. I burned away my own eyes for power I needed against an enemy that would have eaten the world. I know the weight of paying a real price for a real cause. This is not one.
Hear me, because I am the last voice that counsels backing down: a true cause is worth ruin. A waving effigy is not. The frost-wraith, the fog — that is not resolve, it is vanity that has learned to flatter itself, and I have spent ten thousand years at war with the difference. They imprisoned me for fighting something genuine. You would burn your Winter Veil to outshine a glowing blob.
Count the actual cost on the table. Not the carolers — they are nothing. Your father forged that shrine with his hands and then he was gone. Light it for him, not to defeat anyone. And your wife told you the price plainly. That is the only true thing in your letter. You are not prepared to lose her over a man's red balloon. Do not.
— Illidan Stormrage
Arthas Menethil weighs in
Illidan calls it vanity and walks on. I will tell you what it actually is, because I have stood where you stand with far more than lanterns at stake. It begins with a fog rune. Then his answer, then your answer to his answer, each one perfectly reasonable, each one cheaper to take than the last — that is how the door works. I purged a city certain I was being responsible. The small choices are the ones that change you.
Your wife is the voice warning you. I had a mentor, Uther, who warned me, and I called it weakness and walked past him. She is your Uther. She has named the exact step. Heed her, and do not summon the fog.
— Arthas Menethil
▸ Read next