The rotting city, the base of the Undead Scourge, stood empty. Even the whistling wind seemed loud in this desolation. All had come at the call of Atropos, and the scroll had spared none. Ner'zhul, silent in his frozen prison, waited for the coming confrontation in a concentrated, almost disconnected state of mind. His vast consciousness was spread thin, and he knew that if the creature came for him now, he would not be able to cast it out.
Still, not all was lost. The deck was still moving, and his hand had yet to be played. Let the Sentinel fall while he dealt with this other force.
Within half an hour, as night gave way to the twilight of the coming day, monstrous shadow suddenly filled empty space between the pair of spires that lay in front of the Throne. The Lich King watched in interest as it oriented itself and shifted into a recognizable, elemental shape. Indigo flames danced in it's head and bracers shone in pale, lunar splendor on thick, ropy appendages. Darchrow, full of hate, was now face to face with the Lord of Northrend himself.
Despite his stupidity and ignorance of what the Enigma was, he was correct in his observation. Darchrow was indeed full of hatred and destructive impulse. However, it was only the surface. Beneath it's simpler feelings, there was a sense of disorientation, a lack of foundation. He now realized he had miscalculated the effects of the assimilation process after all; he was beginning to feel for others around him.
It had begun upon absorbing that foolish Archdruid, which now seemed a hundred years ago in his fevered state of thinking. The memories had filled him up with something he had never known before, and Malfurion's personality seemed to cry out from within, repeatedly interfering with his original intentions time after time without fail. The overall effect had nearly unraveled him during Chud with the paladin. The human's mind, full of righteous expectation and a sense of order, had further contributed to this turmoil, and only now, at the threshold of the Scourge's seat of power was he coming to grips with it.
The void he once was commanded release. The sentient mind that had borne itself from the World Tree's upheaval demanded that the right thing be done. For the first time in his sentient existence, he was questioning himself. His original goal to destroy both the Sentinel and the Scourge, and then consume the chaotic energies of the resulting apocalypse, had burned away in the face of this confusion.
He would have his way with the meddling Ner'zhul, but what then? What had he been thinking when he had merged his own essence into the spirit of a human?
From within an opaque glacier, laughter boomed outwards. It settled over the Enigma like a cold mist, and he turned his thoughts away from himself to consider his next move.
"Creature from the Great Beyond, why have you come to a land that doesn't want you? More importantly, why are you here now?"
Thoughts, violet and shot with veins of pure black, met the cold merciless mind of Ner'zhul to answer.
"I am here for the purpose of retribution. You crossed me once before on my journey here; regrettably you escaped your punishment for your impunity. You won't get away this time."
"So, you do this simply for yourself? You are both selfish and insatiable; admirable qualities to one such as myself. Unfortunately, I will have to annihilate you due to the threat you pose, both to me and to my grand artilleries."
"Then I hope you enjoy your extinction."
Darchrow, eyes burning bright in ecstasy, began to grow and draw in the shadows of the night to his aphotic presence. The Lich King, gathering his will, began to throw blasts of psychic force into the growing mass of dark. These vibrating waves of force, shimmering as they moved, were simply drawn into the blacklight of Darchrow's expanding form, engulfed in a void that would soon reach critical mass. Dread, sudden and overwhelming, seized Ner'zhul in his surprise.
The lord of the Frozen Throne, who had brought Lordaeron and the Nerubian kingdoms to their knees, had finally overplayed his hand. Psionic exploitation simply could not fight nor control a vacuum.
Darchrow, who felt more like himself in what seemed like years, reveled and rose with the sense of power, now rising and coming through him. His bracers, now each the size of a ziggurat, had gone the red of dying suns.
Ner'zhul screamed in final, desperate knowledge that there was nothing he could do to stop this. He was helpless again, an old Orc chained to the wall of some burning Hell where demons whipped and tore at him without mercy.
Darchrow's eyes suddenly went white, and he was once again like before...before all of this had ever happened.
His essence spun out into a great black ring, a portal that opened up onto a world of no light, no air. His dispersion released the nightside of the universe onto a speck of blue that might have been the Frozen Throne, miles below in a crumbling city; bits of rock or sand that paled in the wake of Darchrow's release.
Ner'zul's mental screams were cut off abruptly as the tidal forces of Darchrow's body shattered the crystalline prison of his spirit. He and it were swallowed up into an abyss of no return, a rusty set of armor surrounded by a sea of glass, and then he was gone. Miles of forest, terrain, and wildlife from the surrounding forests were picked off their feet and sucked in within seconds; the necropolis and nerubian architecture of the Scourge's emptied base soon followed, foundations broken as thousands of tons of brick and mortar flew into the Enigma's gaping maw.
Thirty seconds later, the hole began to shrink rapidly. It shriveled like a blighted plant, miles of black suddenly imploding back into an elemental body. Clouds floating in the stratosphere found themselves descending in a rapid fashion, vertically spinning into a dying windstorm that was now only seven feet tall with flickering purple flames for eyes. His head had opened up in a comical ring-shaped opening, like a big O, and it sucked down the rest of the dispersed essence and then closed up.
Darchrow, now looking the same as when he had first appeared before Ner'zhul only ten minutes ago, now surveyed the dead, empty land around him with an indifferent gaze. His black hole had left no building or tree behind. Only a few melting ice chucks stood in defiance to his act, laying only a few feet to his immediate left. Everything else.....gone. Not even a tree or roof shingle.
Echoing through his mind, he heard the voice of Malfurion Stormrage, and it brought something he had never felt before. Peace.
"Thank you so much. You are forgiven for everything...."
Then there was nothing.
Turning away from a blighted, empty plateau, the Enigma floated over dead earth, down the slopes that led to the forests, now mostly bare, back toward the Sentinel's base.
It was time to finish what he started.