Gazing out across the hills, King Anduin imagines himself in a place where frightened boys cower, cut before their bloom. He is observing some soon-forgotten battle, in a time shackled to the past and yet somehow also distant, surreal. These boys flitter about along the blood-soaked landscape until a vicious collision clips their wings. He sees his son on these hills, motionless and peaceful. Yet that last word feels like a lie, because he knows exactly how this would have felt. His own heir, stolen from him and who can he blame but himself? His heart stumbles to a chaotic tune, the melody of terror that his son surely experienced during his final moments on this earth. Peaceful? Nothing is serene about the brutality of death. Not this kind of death, in an unfamiliar territory with your brothers’ cries clogging your ears.

He remembers holding a baby, an angel who was inviolate. Now what is left of that child of God, except a rotting corpse and crows to pick at him? Anduin does not weep as he continues to stare out across the hills, awaiting the world-weary children of battle to limp back to their leader. He does not weep at the thought of Agnuar not being amongst these victims of his own recklessness. His eyes feel dry yet heavy, as if the sockets themselves have given up on carrying the weight of his inconceivable sorrow. Sometimes, not weeping is worse - unable to obtain that cathartic release from the guilt that plagues his mind and body. He does not weep, but stares out across those hills that begin to glare back with their enraged eyes. Alduin mutters his desperate prayers for absolution, but the pale-faced hills do not reply.