#Spiritwalker Ebonhorn

[feralrainbow]

Tbh, I think a majority of the players would choose Ebyssian, if given the option, and that's why Blizzard doesn't have him in the running.

[anduin-wrynns]

family photo time!

[voljins-lost-potential]

wrathion: the entire black dragonflight was defeated. it seems that i am... the last black dragon in existence

ebonhorn: hey lol

wrathion:

[kehideni]

dragonflight fans assemble

[yulon]

The Wrath of Sabellian (pt. 48)

Book Three: Trial of the Black King

“You’re certain it wasn’t something smaller?” Sabellian asked, peering at the group. Wrathion’s face was flush, his eyes white-rimmed, but his expression lay flat and stony, a cliff-face pushing off the ocean swell.

“It was a Faceless One,” the Black Prince said. “I’ve studied the Old God’s minions more than you know. The trunk, the size - and the tentacles! I know what I saw.  And  if you don’t believe me, the others saw it, too.”

Left nodded a crisp nod. “A Faceless One. Not as large as some others I’ve seen, but still a Faceless One. I would know such a cursed form anywhere.”

Rexxar looked at him and shrugged; it was doubtful he’d ever seen such scions of the Old Gods. It didn’t matter. Sabellian knew he had no real reason to disbelieve Wrathion, and if the boy himself had not seen one in the flesh before, something told him Left had in her travels as a Blacktalon Agent during the Cataclysm.

He cursed and turned away. He’d been tinkering with some of his remaining reagents - to calm the nerves and see if anything would make at least a  halfway  decent toxin - when the group had come flying into the Lair and delivered the grim news.

“How was she able to contact the Twilight Cult at all?” he wondered aloud as he looked over Blackrock. The throne room lay deserted; the only motion were the flickers of the lights of the oil lanterns hanging above Nefarian’s throne. The Blacktalons had notified them the others were asleep.

Sabellian looked at Wrathion. “Your Agents were  supposed  to keep an eye on her.”

The Black Prince huffed. “They  were . I can assure you, it was the first thing I asked Left to investigate. Those on Seldarria’s watch insisted no messages left her cave - or any  others , for that matter. There’s no logical explanation for how she managed to get the Cult’s attention.”

“Are any of your Agents turned?”

It was Left who answered, and with a snort to start off. “No. I would know.”

“You would  know ? Corruption is not so easy to -”

Left looked at him with unflinching sharpness. “I would know, dragon. I’m more than just some throwaway lackey-brute.”

“Jacob!” He swung around to face the drake, who jumped. “Did you see how they were able to contact the Cult? If there’s a breach in our security, we stand no chance.”

“Uhm -” Jacob’s eyes darted back and forth in a distant, searching glance. “No. No. Not that I remember! Which I would. And I don’t. She just said she was going to meet with them.”

Sabellian growled. Each time he thought they might have the upper hand, the others outplayed him. He should have seen this coming. The hexes Seldarria - or Furywing - had set up again in their caves had pushed out the Blacktalon spies, and though he had known they had been planning and scheming as he himself had so asked them to do - he had not expected them to be able to reach out for reinforcements. Such had been the benefits of this lonely mountain - but now!

“They’ll try to summon more,” Ebonhorn said. The tauren had said little when the group had arrived: only watched with quiet intensity, with his eyes distant and troubled. “It sounds as if Seldarria was testing their loyalty. Now that she knows they can give her what she wants, their alliance will bring doom to us all.”

Wrathion nodded, hand on his chin, a thoughtful frown on his face. “Yes. This was a test for the cultists - and I’m afraid they’ve passed it. And with the corruption on this mountain… the corruption we have  brought  to this mountain…”

“An ample summoning ground,” Sabellian finished. “Two days remain until their deadline. In those two days, they can summon an entire battalion of Old God scions - but I doubt they plan to wait until then to make their move.” The “deadline” was a hastily made thing, anyway.

A way to buy them all time.

It had bought a little.

“We should have them killed while we have the chance,” he finished. “It’s the only way.”

Surprise came bounding back to him, even from Wrathion. Sabellian sighed and crossed his arms.

“Fine.  Alright . Perhaps not. I only… Bah.” He scowled. “I’d hoped buying time would help us more than it helped them,” Sabellian said. “If they hadn’t been able to call for reinforcements, it may have worked out that way!” He began to pace, the electric energy running through him forcing him to move. “Do we have any leads on Azeroth’s little hints?”

Wrathion bit at his lower lip. “I haven’t had much time to think it over,” he admitted, but hurried on. “But with whatever remaining time we have left, I’m certain Ebonhorn and I can uncover it.”

“And what if it is another dead end? Another twisting road?” He stopped pacing and looked at Wrathion. “We must think of the worst possibilities.”

“He is right, my Prince,” Left muttered.

“What are you suggesting?”

“Whatever happens, the end is upon us,” Sabellian said. “We either purify this decrepit Flight with whatever great cure Azeroth may provide, or we must fight.”

“We’ll be wildly outnumbered if we fight.”

“Yes. No doubt we’ll die here,” he said. “Especially with the Cult and the… abominations. But I meant what I said: those who fail to meet my expectations will die. And I’ll take them all out before I fall.” One final blow against his once-masters. One final fight. It was all he could do, if Azeroth did not pull through for them.

If they failed here, his children in Outland were doomed, anyway. Whether he was dead or not mattered little.

One last great blow toward the darkness.

Wrathion gawked at him. “This is ridiculous. We could escape - now, if we need to - and regroup. There’s no reason to make this our grand last stand against the darkness, particularly if we cannot understand Azeroth! We pull back, we find out Azeroth’s true gambit, and we formulate something stronger than fighting to the death because we’re all far too proud to run.”

Sabellian shook his head. “This isn’t about pride, boy. Do you not feel it? The wave is cresting over our heads. Even if we flee, it is too late to halt its descent, and it will drown us all the same.”

“Sabellian is right,” Ebonhorn said. “If we allow the others to go forward with their plans, the shockwaves will doom us. Their destiny is our destiny. We are all connected now.”

“Yes. Because we’re the ones who brought them here,” Wrathion grumbled, but his face was thoughtful, albeit frustrated. He knew, even before he suggested running.  He knows this is it. He feels it. “ Fine. Then we stay, no matter the cost. You’re right. We’ll all die anyway, won’t we? If not here, then mortals will, if the Black Dragonflight is reborn again as Seldarria and Serinar wants it. Snuff us out for good.”

Sabellian smiled grimly. “A task you once celebrated.”

“Not when it includes killing me, too, Uncle,” he shot back glumly. He shook himself out. “Well! Let’s hope we can decode Azeroth’s visions. Let us hope for the best.”

“And prepare for the worst.”

Maybe the mortals would not think to check Outland, and his children would, at least, have some time before the planet crumbled.

A flicker of doubt hounded him.  Should I return to Outland?  But no. The outcome was the same.

Death.

He would rather strike the first blow against the darkness than hide and wait in Blade’s Edge, as he had for years.

He would rather mortals kill his children, would rather them die when Outland fell apart, than have their own kin kill them - for he had no doubt Seldarria or Serinar or Torque would hunt them down and force them to join or die.

I will at least spare them that, if I can take all of these worms out with me.

“Preparing will be simple enough,” Wrathion said. “We have allies, too - and not all of the dragons here are with Seldarria.” He smiled a bright smile, a wicked sort of smile. “Allow my Blacktalons to ask for their help. I have some ideas on who might be on our side.”

“No. Allow me to,” Sabellian said. “It would be better for me to approach them than a mortal. And you two need to work on these visions.”

“Wait.”

They looked at Ebonhorn.

“I have another idea. This place is corrupted. Blocked to her. If we are here, she cannot speak or show herself because of the great darkness we have gathered. But if we were to travel off the Mountain…”

“Then we could speak to her,” Wrathion said, lighting up.

“Yes.” He raised a hand to stall Sabellian’s coming retort. “I do not suggest we all go. We have no need for that, and we cannot run and let this mountain be fully claimed by the others. Allow me to go. I am not the best or fastest flyer, but I have the most experience with speaking to her, and I will know the best place to do so, without interruption.”

Sabellian and Wrathion glanced at one another. The idea was… a sound one. Very sound. Their expressions were both puzzled, and he wondered if Wrathion was thinking the same thing:  Why didn’t I think of that before?

“I can ask her more intensely about what the fragments meant,” Ebonhorn continued, taking their looks as unsurity. “And maybe get the full vision she could not send to Wrathion.”

“It’s the best chance we have,” Sabellian said slowly, crossing his arms over his chest. “Much better, I think, than you and the boy hastily hunched over charts and linking patterns.”

“I agree!” Wrathion chirped, face aglow. The boy was like a lightbulb, dark one moment then bright the next, flicked on and off with the right stimulus. A summer storm, then bright sun, and then the storm again. “Yes. Excellent. Can I send an Agent with you for protection? If the others see you leaving the mountain, they might think you’re going to get help, and I don’t think they’d let you get away with that.”

Ebonhorn hesitated. “No,” he said, surprising him. “I think it would be best if I went alone. Something tells me in my heart tells me I must do this alone.”

Wrathion opened his mouth, then closed it. He shifted his weight. “Are you certain? If someone follows you, you’ll be on your own. Can you handle someone by yourself?”

Ebonhorn smiled tiredly at him and gave his tail a flick. The bandage wrap where Samia’s attack had nearly sheared off the tuft looked black in the dawn. “Your concern is humbling, but I will be fine.”

“Go now, then,” Sabellian said. “We have no time to waste.”

  -------

“Ebonhorn! Wait. Wait a moment. Before you go.”

Ebonhorn turned. He’d packed the last of his supplies - he didn’t know how far he’d have to go, or rather, how hungry he’d get - and was moments from leaving the mountain, atop this lonely ledge facing the sun.

Sabellian had gone off to gather any allies. Wrathion had wished him luck. But here came the Black Prince, slowing from his trot to a stop before him.

“Wrathion?”

“I wanted to give you something,” he said, and extended his hand. But nothing was in it. “Give me your hand.”

Ebonhorn hesitated, but slowly extended his hand. Wrathion took it in his and turned it around so the palm lay up. He had to smile at the difference in size: Wrathion’s was maybe the size of one of his three fingers.

Wrathion lifted his other hand and pinched the soft flesh of the underside of his thumb.

“Ouch!”

He tried to tear his hand away, but Wrathion held him firm. “Hold on!” he said. “There. Perfect.” The Black Prince smeared the large bead of blood and, at last, let go.

“What are you doing?”

Wrathion brought his hands together and closed his eyes. A black and red aura began to seep between his fingers, around his hands. Little pops of light, colorless, flickered in the growing smoke.

And then it was gone.

Ebonhorn pricked his ears up. For magic to suddenly disappear! Once there, and then gone, as if sucked from existence.

Wrathion smiled slyly at him.

“A bloodgem,” he said. “I know, I know. They don’t work on the Mountain. But…” His smile widened, and he offered up his palm. Sitting atop it was a ruby, no bigger than a gold piece, carved into shining sides.

Warily, Ebonhorn plucked it up.  It’s cool to the touch , he thought, surprised.

“I will feel much better if you have this with you,” the Black Prince continued.

Ebonhorn smiled. He closed his fingers around the gem. He might not have known Wrathion for long, but he understood the vulnerability the young dragon showed him through the offer.

“Thank you,” he said, and set the gem in his satchel. “Hopefully, I will have little use for it, but thank you, all the same.

Wrathion smile flickered. “Excellent. I wish I could join you.”

“Your talents will be more valuable here.”

He sighed. “Yes, so I’m told. But enough of all that. Go on. We’re all counting on you, you know!” He backed away as Ebonhorn shifted into his true form. “Don’t go off and die!”

  ---

They only had so many allies here.

Sabellian stalked up the broken path leading from the throne room to the caves. A deep quiet suffused the plateau - even the ever-rumbling Mountain lay silent, though the lava still flowed and the wind whipped around his face. Azeroth herself might be holding her breath, and all on her surface held it with her.

The talk with Gravel and their allies had gone as expected: they were pledged to him and only him, as greatest of the old blood. He did not expect it to last too long if things got ugly, but they would last long enough. Whatever strength these dragonkin had to them was a strength limited as long as the corruption continued to seep into the Mountain. Even the purest of heart would begin to feel the sickness, and of that he had little doubt.  How would the little prince find this place?  His smile rose grim at the thought.

The same strength went for the others he had begun to seek out, too. He had afforded them some amount of walls, some amount of further resistance, through his words on the peak of Blackrock. Words which gave them some other things to hope for, to wonder about, than death, than destruction, than annihilation of the world and of themselves. He’d seen it in many of their looks. It wouldn’t shield them forever, but just a little bit of independence… it went far when it came to their terrible curse. It was like a pool of quicksand: you were still sinking into it, and you’d succumb eventually, but you had two ways of going about it. You could lean down and put all your weight into your thoughts of imminent death, and you would be swallowed at once. Or you could lean away, reach for the shore, and hope… wonder…

Even if you knew you were still sinking.

Ruby, Laharion, Jacob, Aloutte. He’d seen them wonder. To hope for something more than the life they’d been living in hiding, than the short life awaiting them if they leaned into the quicksand and spread a wildfire of destruction the Black Dragonflight was known for. A wildfire which would burn violently and quickly, and die almost at once. One last hurrah. And for what?

Yes, he’d seen them wonder.

Lean away, even as the quicksand continued to tug down at their waists.

Yes, it’d consume them eventually, but he had to use them before the inevitable.

And, if Ebonhorn succeeded, the inevitable wouldn’t happen.

He stopped in front of one of the more modestly sized caves and peered in. The entrance was a lopsided oval, awkward for a larger dragon like him to walk through without doing a hop and a slither around the bend, which was a nice defensive touch for a smaller dragon like Laharion.

The dragon surprised him by being in his human form, tying back his oil-black hair into a ponytail and looking at himself in a slab of obsidian, shiny enough to give a reflection. Sabellian hadn’t remembered seeing him in his mortal form before. It was a frighteningly tall one with large, rounded shoulders, though his face was thin and sharp, softened only by a beard dangling with various braids and trinkets. He looked like a sailor who’d just stepped off the gangplank.

“Vanity suits us dragons,” Sabellian said, and Laharion surprised him further by not startling. He finished tying his hair back, turned, and gave a curt, bouncing sort of bow with his knees.

“Aye, so it does! Forgive my grooming. Being with mortals for so long has rubbed off on me certain proclivities.”

Sabellian shimmied into the cave, feeling very much like a square trying to fit into a circular slot. “Are you done with that grooming? I’d like to speak to you.”

“Can’t much continue if ya’ need me, can I?” Laharion grinned, showing off three of his gold teeth. Smoke pooled around his feet and swept up and out and out and out until it dispersed and left him standing as his true form.

“What do I owe this visit?” he asked.

“I’m sure you can surmise.” Sabellian sat, but kept his neck at a high arch. “Seldarria and the others are making their move, and we must make ours.”

“Ours?”

“I haven’t heard much of anything about your involvement with them,” he said. “So I can only hope, for your sake, you’re considering what I said on the peak.”

Laharion smiled a brief smile. “It trickled my more self-preserving fancies,” he admitted. Slowly, he sat down, keeping his tail tucked closed to his claws, making himself look smaller. “I’m really no fool to think we have much chance with what the others plan… tempting as it may be to let loose for a while, if you understand me.” He tapped his claws on the ground. “But as you said, mortals will get us clean across the neck in no time. Seems a bit suicidal for us to try, if you ask me.”

Sabellian studied him. Like Ruby, Laharion had a clarity of mind which was… refreshing. “Have you heard of what they plan to do, then?”

“I heard -  some  things,” he muttered.

“Then you know what we may be up against.”

“Aye, suppose I do,” Laharion said, and hesitated. “What’s this you’re asking me to do, then?”

“You and I seem to want the same thing,” Sabellian explained. “All I ask is you stand with me if things grow - conflicted.”

“Ah, fight, you mean?” Laharion itched at the fins below his neck. “I could, though I thought you was just going to snap their necks and the like if you didn’t like what they, ah,  summoned up  for their showcasing.”

Sabellian shrugged. “So I will, if I must… and such a must seems inevitable, at this point.” If Ebonhorn fails. If it comes to it, no matter Azeroth’s wishes, they must die.

Samia was with them.

Would the time come where he had to kill her to open the way for her brothers and sisters? Or to simply put her out of her misery? Not only her, but Pyria - and if he truly was a fake, Vaxian?

“You jus’ might need some help with it, maybe,” Laharion joked.

“Something like that.”

The other dragon hesitated. His expression grew sober.

“You know… you an’ I both know a new age you’re talking about won’t last much longer than theirs,” he said. “Aye, I’ll join for the ride once it starts… but don’t think it’ll amount to something much different, in the end. Corpses will be corpses.” He sighed. “Didn’t particularly come here to die, but, so it goes. Knew my time was short, anywho.”

Sabellian frowned at him. Again, like Ruby, Laharion understood this moment of clarity, of the years of being ignored by the Old Gods, was only that: a moment. When had they begun to realize their thirst to blindly kill and obey had calmed? A curious thought. He wondered about Fahrad, Wrathion’s guardian.

“And yet you still wish to fight.”

Laharion winked at him. “Think I’m an adventurer at heart. Even a taste of something different and new and grand will sate my appetites.

“I can respect the thought,” Sabellian said, thinking of the quicksand again. It was almost strangely noble for Laharion to think of it in a new adventure, though one he thought he already knew the ending to. “Though I hope it doesn’t have to end as such.”

Laharion smiled again and shook out his wings in an easy, fluttering way. The jewels pierced in the webbings flashed and jingled. “Powers of the Earthwarders, isn’t it?”

They did tell the others , he thought, suddenly angry.  Ruby and Jacob.

“At least you said as much on the peak. Don’t know how turning to that is gonna do much, considering it got us here in the first place.”

Oh.  He relaxed.

“An’ you’re sure you’re not talking about making us servants again, ey?”

“We are already servants,” he said stiffly, and Laharion winced. “What I aim to do is free us from every bond.”

“Sounds just as impossible as it did on the peak,” Laharion said in an easy, carefree way. “But I like it, whatever it is. Count me on your side, Lieutenant. The others are all up to their ears in crazy anyway, and if it comes between picking crazy or picking the impossible… think I always choose the latter.”

Sabellian nodded and stood. “I can trust your word, I hope.”

“No one can trust anyone here,” Laharion said, still in the carefree way. “But I’ll give you what I got, as long as I got it.”

Sabellian paused. He’d been about to leave, and yet - “Laharion. You spent your days in hiding as a sailor. As a pirate, by the looks of it. Did you ever feel… compelled…”

Laharion looked at him. “Asking me if I’m evil? Some might say it, but those someones might be the people I robbed or skewered for some of their goods, you understand. Don’t know. I do what I do, an’ whether I do it because I really like doing it or I’m doing it because some tentacles are telling me to… I am who I am, as it were.”

“And if you were free? Do you fear what inside you might change?”

This time, Laharion didn’t speak for a long time. Then he cocked his head to the side and pulled idly at the cloth earring hanging from one of his horns. “I think I’d want to know what I could be like without all this,” he said. “I think otherwise the curiosity would kill me.”

“I would think otherwise you wouldn’t chance this,” Sabellian said, thoughtful. “The time will come, soon. And let us hope you aren’t killed for it.”

  ---

  Wrathion looked over their captive.

“Are you sure Sabellian is otherwise engaged?” he asked Left.

“Yes, my Prince,” she said. “But once again -”

“Don’t worry, Left,” he said, waving a hand. “There isn’t much he can do, is there? If he wants to talk to me, then he’ll talk to me.”

He’d made sure it would stay that way. Vaxian sat bound in his human form, his hands tied behind him and his feet and legs wrapped with chains. Two Blacktalons were trained on him with rifles on the sides of the cell. It was too bad they’d used all the Dragonsbane on  Serinar, but he’d feel worse about it if their prisoner was trying to escape.

As it was, Vaxian was the perfect captive, even when he’d been captured. No fighting back, no angry words - just a resigned look as he shifted down in his mortal guise and held out his hands for the manacles.

It made him wonder.

Because, clearly, this was nothing but a trick, and a good one, at that. He felt very annoyed with himself he had not seen it coming.

Then again, he hadn’t expected the Old Gods to get directly involved…

Wrathion brushed off his shoulders and walked into the cell.

A real cell it was, one carved into the innards of the Lair. Based on clues, it must’ve been a holding area for Nefarian’s own captives before he had use of them.

Wrathion was just terribly pleased the hooks hanging from the wall and ceiling were empty of bodies and their various parts, unlike those in the Descent.

The gate creaked closed behind him as he entered the cell. Vaxian looked up. He shifted his weight, and the chains on his legs rattled.

“I trust you’ve been treated well,” Wrathion greeted with a syrupy smile.

“Yes. More fairly than I thought I would be.”

“You must understand our…  misgivings .”

Vaxian gave him a drawn, tired look.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s not something I can believe either.”

Wrathion shrugged. “Nonetheless! You’re the one who called me here. What is it you want, then? I don’t think I’ll be open to letting you go, you realize.”

The dragon shook his head. “It has nothing to do with me,” he said. “You found the Twilight Cult, didn’t you?”

He didn’t see the harm in replying; after all, Seldarria herself had seen them. “Yes. How do you know that?”

Varian shifted his weight again, wincing. “It isn’t important. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you sooner. I knew of it, but…” He sighed, troubled. “It doesn't matter now. What matters now is this: I think they’re summoning more on the Mountain.”

More? Here?  Wrathion’s fixed smile began to fall. “That’s impossible. My Blacktalons have canvassed the entire ridge, and no Twilight has come slithering in.”

“You haven’t canvassed it completely, then, if you haven’t found them,” he said. “Ophelion spoke of something before I…” He shrugged vaguely at himself. “I believe he was the one setting out to do the work.”

Wrathion looked back at Left, who shook her head. He turned back to Vaxian. “He’s in the same place he’s been for the past day and a half,” he replied. “There’s hardly any way he can summon  Faceless  under the eyes of all of my Agents.”

Despite Seldarria being able to contact the Twilight under their watch.

And leaving.

… Despite that.

Vaxian stared at him. “You don’t think it’s strange he’s come out at all?”

Wrathion frowned.

“No,” he said, suddenly unsure and knowing he looked it. He schooled the expression and crossed his arms over his chest. “If you’re trying to gain my trust with false information, I can assure you -”

“Listen,” Vaxian said, his voice suddenly fervent and intense enough the guards nearby clenched their guns tighter, “I don’t care if you trust me; I hardly trust myself. You have enough Agents to know to check, don’t you?”

“Ah. Well.” Wrathion scratched at his jaw. “There is a bit of a problem with that… none of them can get inside. There’s a very bad hex on the entrance to ward away mortals. But! Ophelion has not come  out  of any of the entrances, and last I checked, he was some bizarre death-shaman, not a mage with portals.”

Vaxian leaned back against the wall. “That doesn’t make sense. I could have sworn…”

Something about the sincerity in his expression gave him pause. Wrathion squinted at him. “What made you think Ophelion was summoning more here?”

Vaxian sighed. “It was something he said… something about making sacrifices. How they needed to take you by surprise. I guess his plans must’ve changed.”

Wrathion snapped his fingers. “Jacob!” “What?”

Wrathion ignored him, turning to Left. “Go have someone get him. He was able to spy on them from the cave. All we need to do is ask him if Ophelion was there.”

Left nodded and hurried out of the cell. Wrathion glanced at Vaxian.

“For your own health,” he drawled, “this had better not be a waste of our time.”

  ---

  “What do you mean,  no ?”

Jacob stood outside the gates of the cell, plucking nervously at the buckles of his belt.

“He wasn’t there, is what I mean,” he mumbled, looking woefully out of place in his Stormwind uniform, as if he’d been picked up and randomly dropped here by some uncaring god. “I’d remember if he was. Spooks the soul right out of me. Have you seen how he looks at you?” He shuddered. “It’s like he’s picking you apart. I hate that. Nobody in Stormwind looks at you like that, and let me tell you, some of the Nobles are really mean. But not creepy-mean.”

Wrathion stared at him, opened-mouth. He snapped it closed with a  clack ! of his teeth.

“You didn’t think to  tell anyone? ”

Jacob blinked at him. “Why would I do that?”

“Because a dangerous dragon is  missing! ” Wrathion said, throwing his hands in the air. “How could you be so -  moronic !”

Jacob withered back and clutched one of his gauntlets. It was crushed and dented.

“It didn’t realize it was important,” he mumbled, eyes averted.

Wrathion slapped his hands down at his sides and let out a long hiss.

“Did they explain his  absence ?”

Jacob bit his lip. “I don’t, uh, I don’t think so,” he said.

“Which is it? Do you  know , or do you  not  know? You can’t  think  you  don’t know , it’s either one or the other!”

“I - uh -” Jacob’s eyes darted back and forth. “It wasn’t when Uncle Sabellian told me to spy on them, but before…” His eyes went distant. “Talking about sacrifice, and, uh, stuff with the Cult. Hm. And. Uhm. Necessary sacrifices.” He lit up. “Hey, that’s right! I remembered! It was Serinar and Torque. They were saying something about, uh, making preparations. I don’t think Seldarria was supposed to hear, because when she came by they stopped talking. I thought it was weird, because they always talked to her about what they were doing, and they always liked talking about sacrifices with her.”

Some of Wrathion’s anger lessened.

“Are you sure you didn’t just make that up?”

“Why would I make that up?”

Wrathion decided not to answer, instead pausing to take the moment to pause and think. And calm down, some.

Sacrifices, and something Seldarria wasn’t supposed to know?

He stroked his chin.

He had an idea just where Ophelion had scurried off to.

“Left,” Wrathion said, “Send for a full report on the Blacktalons in charge of watching Ophelion’s cave.” He turned to look at her. “And just where did Sabellian say Seldarria’s eggs were?”

----

  Laharion, Ruby, Jacob.

They’d been the obvious of allies, and all had agreed to the cause. The only one left was Alouette, but so far, he hadn’t been able to find her. On a fly, perhaps? A hunt?

Even if she is with us, it will not be enough . Certainly, out of the host of black dragons, they had the numbers.

So far.

It would not last. If they were reaching out to the Twilight Cult and summoning Faceless Ones, the tables would be turned with a wingbeat.

No doubt they already had.

He breathed a deep sigh as he made his way down from the cave trail and to the Lair’s entrance. A weight settled on his shoulders with each footstep - a weight which signalled what he already knew.

There were no doubts - the Faceless were multiplying in number.

He could not be sure how he knew this, and so confidently. The Agents Wrathion had sent to Redridge had yet to return with more news, but he  knew , all the same. It was the weight, the weight of his own corrupted blood. He knew in his heart what was coming. He felt it.

Sabellian shook out his wings as he made it to the throne room.  Numbers mean nothing , he thought.  Strategy wins more battles than numbers do.

No one was here, but he was unsurprised. Those first few naive days of gathering and wary camaraderie were gone now the die had been cast.

These walls will not stand up for much outward assault . He did not enjoy the idea of waking to find themselves surrounded by agents of the Old Gods.

Not to mention the close quarters of the Mountain. If fighting did break out -  hah! If! -  they would have to pull back at once.

He could do nothing but pace and prepare as he could. Their future balanced in Ebonhorn’s claws now, but maybe some of their lives could be spared by his own pre-planning, by his own hundreds of years of war knowledge… knowledge he had not summoned for too long, and for good reasons.

“Baron.”

Sabellian stopped, startled from his thoughts. Rexxar came walking toward him, Leokk perched on the side of the plateau.

“I did not notice you land,” Sabellian admitted. “Back from hunting?”

Rexxar gestured to his blood-stained hands, then said: “I don’t like this business.”

“I thought you enjoyed hunting,” he said snidely, and the Beastmaster glanced up at him through his wolf mask.

“You know that is not what I meant.”

Sabellian sat and slid his tail around his claws. “Mm. You would be one of many to dislike it - though it should please you to know I’ve secured the allies we had all hoped to have, including Laharion.”

Rexxar nodded.

“It’s that reason I wanted to speak with you.”

He’s leaving.  The great crestfall in his chest surprised him.  He has nothing in this fight. It’s only right he finally come to his honor-addled senses and be on his way.

“Oh?” was all he said.

The Beastmaster nodded again. “I may have some to add.”

More surprises. Sabellian raised his eyebrow crests. “Is that so? I don’t think the wolves of the Gorge would be much in the way of a fighting force.”

Rexxar ignored him. “The Eastern Kingdoms is more populated by the Alliance, but the Horde still remain a source of power here. There’s a sizeable outpost near the Swamp of Sorrows. If these dragons now reach out to allies, there is no reason for us not to.”

Us.  Sabellian frowned. “They are mortals. Why would they come here to fight?”

Rexxar fixed him with a bleak look.

“You are not the only ones who have suffered at the hands of the Old Gods,” he said. “If they know a corruptive force is making its way here, they will come to kill it.”

He wasn’t saying something. Rexxar was a blunt mortal, not one to hide things, and when he hid things, he didn’t hide them well at all.

A slow realization crept up his back, and he smiled.

Ah.

“And they’ll do whatever the Champion of the Horde wants, won’t they?”

Rexxar looked as bashful as a rugged, half-clothed Beastmaster could.

“They will fight,” he said, gruff.

Sabellian chuckled; considered. Horde soldiers? The numbers would be more welcome, but -

“They will know the Black Dragonflight lives again if they come,” he pointed out. “With how quick to judge mortals are, I do not think they'll care which one of our kin summoned them. A corruptive force they will come to kill, and all the rest of us, too.”

“The world will find out eventually,” Rexxar said. “And as you said, they will follow what I ask, and I will tell them not to engage those on our side. These ‘mortals’ are not so devious as you think.”

Sabellian sniffed. “If they’re anything like you, no, I suppose they aren’t,” he said. “Though I do believe you have a saying, don’t you? ‘Only beasts are above conceit?’”

Rexxar eyed him with some amount of disgruntlement.

“True,” Sabellian continued, “it’s true the world will find out. But I had hoped to do it under more… controlled means.” If Ebonhorn (and Azeroth) pulled through - and if the Dragonflight really was purified - he thought using Wrathion and the Spiritwalker, two trusted (mostly) dragons, to spread the word was the most careful choice.

Inviting Horde soldiers to fight in the most critical of turning points in their kin’s history wasn’t very cunning.

But if we must fight, and if we do lose, there will be nothing to tell the world, will there?

Nothing but our closing chapter.

He sighed and nodded.

“Very well. I won’t like another one of our number leaving, but I can’t deny the obvious in such strategy.”

“I’ll be swift. Leokk knows the importance of this, and I’ll send Spirit with an initial message to the fort.”

Sabellian bobbed his head. “Beware any followers.”

Rexxar snorted. “I’ve felt eyes on me for a full day. I’ll be watched, and I may be followed, but I’ll be prepared. I’ve dealt with worse in my travels.”

The hunter turned and headed toward the wyvern, who waited patiently at the edge of the plateau. Sabellian watched him mount up, and was struck by a sudden and alien sense of urgency. He called out.

“Rexxar?”

Rexxar turned in his seat to look at him.

“Hurry back... and do not die. I think I won’t like perishing without my friend by my side.” He paused, then rushed forward. “And it won’t be fair for all of us to die and you not to. You really are as entrenched in this as I am, unfortunately for you, you stupid orc. Why didn’t you leave when you had the chance?”

Rexxar chuckled.

“You know why I didn’t leave,” he said, then sobered. “I will return with aid.” He pulled back on the wyvern’s reins, then stopped. “I may be the Champion of the Horde, but… I am championing the spirit of this world. A world on our side. I have travelled on her shores, on her forests, her deserts and lakes, for so long, and I have seen many miracles.

We are far from death, Baron. The world beneath our feet - the air, the grass, the earth - is with us. And she believes in you, in the boy, in the shaman.

No, Baron Sablemane. Death will not meet us easily.”

---

Wrathion, for once in his life, hoped he was wrong about this.

After the fifth corrupted Dragonkin attacked them in the tunnels deep below Blackwing Lair, he had a feeling he wasn’t.

He glanced over the fallen body of the last of their attackers, one of the centaur sorcerers. It’d burst from a crevice in the wall and had nearly taken Left’s head.

The orc had instead taken hers, instead, and wiped the blood off her daggers.

“It shouldn’t be farther now,” she grumbled and sheathed her weapons.

“Yes. I could tell,” he said. It had not taken long for an oppressive - almost  sticky  - air to descend upon them, one reminiscent of the atmosphere which had come upon them as Seldarria and the Twilight Cult had summoned the Faceless One.

It did not bode well for them.

The shadows shimmered in front of him, and the eyes of two Agents, a worgen and a troll, grew hazy and flickering in the dark.

“It’s as you thought, my lord,” the worgen said. “Ophelion lurks in the hatching chamber. The place - it reeks of death.”

“Anything else of note?”

The two Agents looked at one another.

“There are summoning circles littered around the area,” the worgen continued, visibly disturbed. “And a number of cracked eggs.”

“ Cracked ? Are you sure they’re not hatched?” He had to ask, despite knowing the truth of it.

“Yes. And - we did not see it, but we think he has already been able to summon Faceless. Or ‘least something.”

Wrathion grimaced. “Ah?”

“I’ve been with you since the Cataclysm, sir, and have done lots of reconnaissance on the suckers. The Faceless have a kind of presence about them. One bigger than regular darkness.”

Yes - like what he felt now, hounding them in the tunnel.

It really was a shame he didn’t have any of his mortal champions to help him with this. Some of them had faced and fought the servants of the Old Gods.

Him - not quite.

Though I haven’t faced them on purpose. To be fair.

It was bothersome they had not seen the Faceless, however. Bothersome indeed. The one Seldarria had helped summon had been enormous, over ten feet tall. Were they lurking deeper in the Mountain, ready to crash through the ground when needed? Or were they crouched in the next hallway, shrouded in darkness so deep even his Blacktalons could not detect them?

He shook off his goosebumps. He liked to think of himself as being scared of not so many things, but the Old Gods and their servants - corruption made flesh -  those …

“Then we’ll be quiet about this, won’t we?” he said, and shifted down into his true form to use the smaller frame to his advantage. Not as much for watching eyes to find.

Their pace slowed to a crawl as they made their way to the cave. Left and the others had shimmered into invisibility, and he kept close to the sides, his purple-black scales blending neatly into the crags.

At last they made their way into the ancient and abandoned Dwarven outpost which had once been their camp before the inevitable. Wrathion cast an uneasy glance down at the ground level. Had they so briefly dined with Seldarria and the others down there, which felt a century ago? The image of the broodmother sifting through the baubles of garbage Kyrak had brought from the Lair hung weary in his mind.

It was soon replaced by the worgen cultist’s dripping maw as they stepped through the lava channel leading to Seldarria’s egg chamber.

He almost gagged when they made their way inside.

The scent of corruption was so thick it felt as if he walked into one of the Forsaken’s infamous plagues.

“Spirits,” Left mumbled under her breath, and the two other rogues’ breathing stuttered.

It took all his will to continue walking. It was true: by careful selection, he had never tried to seek out places tainted by the Old Ones. He had mortals who could risk that. But  this ! The smell from before, reeking as it was of heaviness and paranoia, had been a hint of this miasma. This made him choke, made his teeth ache, made the meat of his brain tremble with a deep and instinctual fear, which urged him to turn around, and run, run,  run!

Wrathion kept going, teeth clenched.

In the dark, one of the Agents struck out a hand for them to pause, and gestured around the bend.

Beyond lay a low hissing noise: the noise of casting magic.

Wrathion nodded up toward the wall. It wasn’t much, but there was a minute ledge maybe two of them could fit on.

Without waiting, he jumped up the footholds in the walls and onto the outcrop.

It was a well-chosen perch. Wrathion hunched down against the rock as he took in the scope of the cavern.

The cave was nominally sized, though the eggs in the center took up most of the space and forced it to appear smaller than it was. He stared at them, transfixed.

Look at them all!  Wrathion didn’t remember ever seeing another Black dragon egg beyond the shell of the one he’d hatched from. This was… a little dizzying.

Over to the far end stood Ophelion.

He was, for maybe the first time since arriving at the Mountain, in his mortal form: a tall, angular human free of any and all hair. Together with the long, flowing, starch-rigid robe he wore, it gave his already intense eyes a drawn and deep expression.; he had the look of an artist deep in their craft. But unlike an artist he did not move, and with the rigid way he stood, hands raised and frozen in the air, he seemed a victim of a basilisk’s stoney stare.

He would have thought just that if not for the tendrils of magic, rope-like and emanating a rich purple and red glow, coming off of the elder dragon.

They looked like snakes, coiling out from the bend of his elbows and spiralling around his arms. Together they reached out into the air with deep, hungry intent.

At his feet lay the shells of three eggs.

Two of the hatchlings were visible, curled in on themselves, their flesh shrunken to their bones. One had shiny, almost translucent, scales, something like the netherdrakes’.

Maybe she did end up using some of the nether energy , he thought with some distaste. But the dead thing looked nothing like a Twilight, so at least they had no worries of a clutch of those monsters hatching beneath their feet.

Not like any might hatch at all. As he watched, Ophelion closed his eyes and the rope-like energy bowed downward. It wrapped greedily around another egg and lifted it from the comfort of its siblings.

A flicker of movement beside him signalled Left’s arrival. She motioned toward the entrance: the others were standing ready.

He nodded distractedly.  Shush, shush, alright!

The tendrils lay coiled tight along the egg. It began to glow with the same fever-brilliance of the magic. For a flash lay the outline of the hatchling within, and then it was gone.

Ophelion’s lips began to move. Did he actually speak aloud? Wrathion strained to inch forward, to listen.

“Blood for blood,” the necromancer was saying. Over and over.  Blood for blood. Blood for blood. Blood for blood.

A pall greater even than the one they had walked into fell over him. But this did not make him want to flee.

Instead, Wrathion had never felt more certain of his imminent death than he did now.

The shadows of the cave yawned forward and deepened. The stank of corruption was a weight on his lungs and eyes. He grasped his talons along the ledge.  It’s only the nature of this abhorrent magic!

His heart thundered. He was going to  die here.

No, I won’t.

Runes he hadn’t noticed before began to glow beneath Ophelion’s feet. Not just runes - an entire magic circle, locked and laced with a myriad of ugly symbols not unlike those what had tattooed the Cultist’s arms.

Some, he recognized: symbols of death.

And symbols of summoning.

“ Iilth vwah, uhn'agth fhssh za .” The words were garbled and terrible, gruesome noises, and hearing them sent nausea and paranoia welling in his gut.

The room grew ever-darker until it was void of all light save for the light of the magic and the blood-red of the magic circle. Not just blood-red: glowing  blood.  The circle and runes were aglow with real, true blood, and only in their aching, evil light did he see more still, did he see Ophelion stand atop human skeletons.

They’re here. Titans, they’re here right now.

It felt as if the cave had come under the view of a magnifying glass, and every ounce of delighted, salivating focus peered through it. The presence of something else, something alien, some evil, shadowing the cavern was a taste in his mouth, and his head roared. He struggled not to pass out.

The egg glowed vibrantly - and cracked.

The whites slid out and were instantly vaporized. The hatchling followed, tumbling limp and dead, but all the same Ophelion’s magic caught it. Like a leech, it struck into its flesh and sucked it dry - until, like the others, it was a husk of dry skin and bone.

The tendrils dropped it, and the half-formed whelp fell to the floor, falling atop its dead siblings.

Hovering where the egg had once been was a ball of black energy. It did not glow, but instead sucked the light and life around it, a sphere of negativity.

Ophelion opened his eyes.

He splayed out his fingers.

The darkness burst, exploding outward.

Wrathion ducked his head as it step over him and collided with the walls of the cave.

Like a robe soaking up blood, the earth drank in the blackness.

And then it was gone.

And so was all the rest: the feeling of imminent death, the presence. Gone.

Wrathion struggled not to gasp for air, and he shuddered with the strain of it. Titans, he had not felt like that since… since the Vale had been corrupted, and the mantid call had resounded in his head. This had been worse, but the thread remained the same. He swallowed thickly and tried to steel himself.

Below, Ophelion lowered his arms. They shook. His face grew sunken. With a shaking sigh, he dusted off his sleeves. Was it a trick of the light, or had he imagined the glint of vapor Ophelion had breathed in?

Whatever it’d been, the necromancer looked restored.

He glanced at the amulet hanging low on the dragon’s chest. It glinted with the same dark, void energy of the blackness which had exploded over them moments before. Ebonhorn had told him of the soul gem, and how it allowed Ophelion to use the powers of a shaman because he had the soul of one trapped there.

Wrathion raised a brow at Left. Her face was tight.

She motioned them to leave.

It was the smart thing to do. They had come with the intent to find information, and they had certainly gotten it, hadn’t they?

We can turn Seldarria against them for this.  Muddying alliances - now that was something he could do. But watching Ophelion summoning his magic again, a feeling of dread came over him. It hardly mattered what they said to her. Seldarria cared for her clutch, that much was certain, but her will was no longer her own. She could be swayed to think by the sickness in her skull her eggs were a necessary sacrifice; after all, she had already been influenced to try to make them into abominations of the Twilight Flight. And they were eggs, and they had found more available mates. She could make more.

These excuses unfolded so easily in his mind. The Old Gods would whisper them even easier in her brain.

Ophelion turned to the eggs. Wrathion glanced them over, thoughts ablaze. For every egg was a Faceless One’s way here. He didn’t know for certain where the black energy had gone, and how it could reappear, but he knew it was how a Faceless could claw itself from the Mountain. It was the same magic the Cultists had used, just redirected. Nonetheless, it was one step closer to their doom - and if Ophelion managed to sacrifice all the eggs, they would have no chance.

The necromancer looked at the clutch and set his tendrils reaching.

Wrathion hunched down.

Then he lunged from the ledge.

Mid-leap, he transformed into his human guise, drew his daggers, and buried them into the meat of Ophelion’s upper shoulders.

They sunk all the way to the hilts.

The elder dragon shrieked.

Together they tumbled forward, the magic snapping out into nothingness, the blood runes smeared in their wake.

They landed hard, Ophelion on his stomach and Wrathion, hands still on the daggers and Ophelion’s hot blood spurting onto his palms, crouched on his back.

“Wretch!” the necromancer cried, and a blast of dark energy sent Wrathion flying.

He struck the wall with a gasp. His body tingled numbly, and he struggled to move. It was like being electrified, and he could only watch as Ophelion stood. The hilts of his daggers stuck out of his shoulders like broken wings, and blood seeped down the front of his robe until it looked like Furywing’s markings.

“You! You should not have interfered -”

A crossbow bolt caught him in the hip, and Ophelion stumbled back. He caught himself on one of the eggs. Left landed in front of Wrathion, teeth bared, crossbow held aloft. Beside her, the two other Agents shimmered into existence, sword and daggers drawn.

The numbness fell away, and Wrathion breathed out hard, hand on his chest.

“Killing children now, are we?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you have taken a few more steps to villainy before diving into such a cliche?”

Ophelion narrowed his eyes. He flexed his hand, then stopped. His eyes glittered in a dark, calculating way, and he understood just what Jacob had meant when he’d said Ophelion’s eyes spooked him.

“I do what I must,” he said.

Two daggers and a crossbow bolt all to the hilt, and he’s hardly staggered!

“I will allow you one gift, child: move aside, and leave this place.”

“Do you really think I’ll just allow you to summon abominations under our feet?”

Ophelion’s expression did not change. “Sabellian asked us to prepare our case. I intend to do so.”

“Thankfully, I am not Sabellian’s pet. My will is my own.”

He swept a bolt of magic at Ophelion, and it struck him in the chest. He winced, and for a moment, his facade of calm shifted into one of surprise as the binding magic - the very same he’d used on Fahrad - began to take hold.

“I have no need for your death,” Ophelion said in a calm, measured voice. His eyes were fixed on him, nonplussed. “But you should not have done that.”

Ophelion flicked a hand A spell c cast from his fingers and enveloped the human skeletons along the magic circle. Left let out a cry of warning as the one nearest to him lifted an arm with uncanny speed and grasped him along the ankle. Wrathion yelped. He kicked it off. His magic flickered out.

The skeletons rose, suffused with the terrible light. Scraps of clothing still hung from their frames, so disintegrated it was impossible to discern their colors.

The skeletons surged toward him. He dodged out of the way and cracked one over its skull with his elbow, but it twisted around, unperturbed, and sank its teeth into his arm. The other grabbed for his coat, and a lace of panic cut through his chest.

“This is  shadowflame! ”

The realization was so startling his fear vaporized, and in the moment he leaned back from the skeleton on his coat, a crossbow bolt crashed into its chest and set it flying. Its arm detached, dangling from the hem, and he snatched it off and tossed it aside with a clatter. The other skeleton he grabbed by the back of the neck and set aflame with an easy breath of magic, and it fell back. He was not pleased to see it’d left cuts in his new coat, the stupid thing.

“Nefarian was not the only one gifted with such talents,” Ophelion said. He had not moved. He just stood and watched, eyes vacant like a doll’s, even as the two other agents rushed him. He waved a hand, and they flew back into the walls as a gust of the black wind crashed into them.

“Hah! I should have known,” Wrathion said, heart hammering. The skeletons stalked toward him again - even the detached arm, grasping on the floor and dragging itself inch by inch.

Left readied another crossbow bolt. The two agents staggered to their feet.

Ophelion still had not moved.

He really doesn’t want me dead! How interesting.

It should have made him feel better. It was flattering. Was he so important?

But important for who?

“Though it really doesn’t matter,” Wrathion continued. “I don’t think I’ll let you keep this up, I’m afraid. Now, if you don’t mind, why don’t you skulk back upstairs and think of something else to do?”

“I think not.” He looked over at the two Agents preparing to attack him again. The troll stopped; her eyes clouded in darkness.

Like a doll dancing on strings, she jerked unnaturally and swung her sword at her comrade. The worgen yelped and danced away.

“Mortals are easy to manipulate,” Ophelion said, and looked at him. The two Agents scuffled with one another, the troll’s eyes blank. “Like corpses, they are easy to twist and bind into one’s intended use.”

Wrathion scowled. The troll punched the worgen away and charged toward him.

“I would ask you to reconsider your allegiances,” Ophelion said, “but I see you are entrenched in the words of the god child. It does not matter. You are only a child yourself.”

Beside him, Left shot one of the skeletons in the eye socket and turned to deliver a kick in the stomach of the troll.

“My Prince! Escape!”

He ignored her, and instead did just the opposite: dove toward Ophelion.

The elder dragon cocked his head and raised a hand. The coils of energy radiated from his arms.

At the last moment, he transformed into his whelp form. Ophelion sucked in a surprised breath. Wrathion grinned, landed on the dragon’s shoulder, and bit him deep in the wound. Blood soaked his mouth. Ophelion snarled in pain.

He twisted, letting go, and landed as a human - wrenching out the closest dagger in the turn. Blood flew, splattering against his face.

The bite was a good one, and the blood was a welcome sight - but he’d gotten what he’d wanted.

The amulet.

He shoved it in his pocket as Ophelion turned to him. A heavy, cold feeling settled there, like he held a piece of ice.

Turn it against him!

Wrathion jumped, and almost got skewered by one of the troll’s daggers. A voice, and not his own, in his head. He sucked in a fearful breath.

I’m not an Old God. The necklace, child!

Wrathion had half-a-moment to glance down at his pocket, where the necklace sat huddled. Bewilderment - but then!

Shaman?

Yes. Quick, before he knows I aid you, or he will destroy us both, no matter his master’s plans.

A surge of unfamiliar power - crackling, swirling power - rose up his arms, and on instinct, he struck them toward Ophelion.

Lightning crashed out of his palms, and the necromancer widened his eyes before he was blasted in the chest and thrown back against the wall.

“ Yes !” Wrathion cried, a grin stretching from ear to ear. “YES! Now THIS is fun!”

Ophelion snarled and looked at him, and for the first time, fury flickered over his composed face.

“How did you -?” He grasped for where the amulet once hung. Wrathion smiled, took the amulet from his pocket, and shook it in the air.

“I was trained by rogues, you know,” he said. “I do know something about stealing a thing or two!”

As Ophelion’s face twisted in anger, he slipped the amulet over his neck. A thrum of power rang through him, leaving his fingertips tingling.

“Burul, you fool!” he roared, and the dead whelps at the circle sprang up, turned, and lunged for him.

Their lifeless eyes ogled in their sockets. Wrathion danced back, and felt the ghost of air push against him. He fell to the ground in his whelp form just as the mind-controlled Agent swept toward him, and found himself face to face with the reanimated dragons.

They collided into him, and he went rolling back. Their half-developed teeth and claws dug into his scales. Their breath stank of yolk and death. One bit into his forearm while another scrabbled at his neck where the necklace hung.

Pain, light, searing beams of sun, a floating iron orb of machinery -  the memory flickered like a nightmare in his mind’s eye as the whelps swarmed him, and he cried out and kicked his back legs. They connected with the whelp at his foreleg and it went tumbling. The leg free, he swiped his claws against the other trying to get the necklace. He scored great slashes along its body, but it paid them no heed, its blank eyes fixed vaguely on the amulet.

A  shuff  of movement, and a hand grabbed the whelp by the scruff and threw it into the wall.

“Well done,” Wrathion breathed up at Left.

“We are not done yet,” she said, and turned to fire another bolt at Ophelion. Behind her scuffled the shadows of the two Agents, the worgen desperately fighting off his corrupted troll comrade from joining Ophelion’s fray.

The necromancer took the bolt to the chest, but only grunted. His eyes were trained on the amulet.

Wrathion skittered to the side as a bolt of shadowflame sailed at him. It burst against the ground, and looking back at the steaming scorch mark, he realized Ophelion aimed, now, to kill.

I could do with some more lightning, my dear shaman companion.

The amulet heated up against his neck. He shifted into his human form just as it burst energy back into his hand, but on its own accord, his hand swung toward the mind-controlled Blacktalon and sent a spiral of green magic toward her.

With a flash, the troll was gone, replaced by a bewildered croaking frog.

Oh. That works too, I suppose.

“My Prince?” Left asked, bewildered.

“I have a friend. Not to worry,” he said.  Now, what’s this about the amulet?

Focus your power into it. I will help you.

Ophelion stalked toward him. “I will give you a single chance to relinquish that. I will not miss again, child.”

“Awfully possessive, aren’t you?”

“Is he trying to help you?” he asked. “Do not mistake his aid for a good nature. All he wants to be is free. He will suck your soul dry in return for his own. Each spell he casts siphons your own energy!”

He’s lying.

Ophelion struck out his hand. “Give me the amulet. You don’t know what power you play with.”

Wrathion studied him.

He smiled.

“You know,” he said, “I do some gem work of my own, you know. Blood gems. I’m sure you know of them.” Wrathion put his hand over the gem of the amulet. It was cold in his hand, so cold it burned. “And I have always found the power to be to the maker and wielder’s. Oh, sure, some fel magics force the wielder to be weakened by what’s within, but this? This is  hardly  fel magic.” He tapped the necklace. “You can’t fool what I’ve been doing since hatching. So unfortunately - for you - I do know what power I play with.”

Ophelion’s face twitched.

The necklace began to hum. The dark energies surrounding it began to suck the light around it inward.

Wrathion smiled and smeared Ophelion’s blood, still caked in his hand from his first dagger strike, over the gem.

“NO!” the dragon roared. “FOOL!”

The cave moaned. The shadows darkened and lengthened. Faces of long tusks and tentacles reached out in dark wisps of energy.

Wrathion grit his teeth and poured his focus into the gem, summoning up the same power he used to make the blood gems. He found Ophelion’s life force within his grasp - and pulled it toward him, anchored into the amulet.

Resistance met him. Wrathion snarled. The cave seemed to be collapsing around them. A chattering of garbled noises lifted from the ground.

Then - a feeling of someone grabbing him from behind. It helped him pull back the great power that was Ophelion’s presence.  Burul.

Wrathion braced his feet and roared as the cave shook.

Tension - tension built in his shoulders and down his spine. It felt as if he was struggling against a hand pushing him down underwater where he was to be drowned. He struggled against it, his fingers bracing the surface, a gulp of fresh air -

And it was gone.

He stumbled forward with a gasp. He fell to his knees. His head rang.

The cave was still. Nothing was there: no summoned terrors, no reaching shadows.

And no Ophelion.

Wrathion blinked away the darkness in his eyes and grasped blindly for the amulet. It still hung from his neck.

It was still cold - but this chill was othewordly, a cold of places where the sun never reached. He snapped his hand away as if it had bitten him. He glanced down. The cursed thing emanated the deep negative glow of before, but it looked amplified somehow, deeper, richer.

Screaming resounded in his head. Enraged, terrible screaming.

Wrathion flailed for the chain, slipped it off his neck, and flung it off.

The screaming stopped. He panted.

Left skulked toward the pendant and nudged it with her foot. Slowly, she looked at him.

“I don’t think I’m fond of that thing, actually,” he said. “I think I’ve changed my mind.”

  ---

  The storm came upon him faster than he’d hoped.

Ebonhorn beat his wings against the spray of rain and wind. Thunder rolled beyond the mass of roiling clouds around him. It was difficult to discern anything than the grey of them; the ground might have well not existed at all.

He did not need to see to know where he was going, however, and such things were on his side.

Ebonhorn shook the rain collected on the cups of his antlers, only for more to pour in and weigh him down. He’d had to slide up his second eyelids hours ago, though they were usually used for seeing underneath lava and magma.

He did not use them often.

He caught an updraft and sailed high with it, thankful for the brief break on his wings. They’d grown stronger since he had set off from Highmountain, and some part of him cherished the dull ache in the muscles - muscles he had used little to fly in storms such as these, despite being ten-thousand years old. Flying in the rain, especially rain as demanding as this, had not been something he had sought after.

The updraft petered out into the buoyancy of the storm, and once again did he battle the winds and the water.

He’d taken off north after leaving the Mountain. He could not say why he’d taken the direction he had, only a feeling in his gut.

A feeling which had intensified as he’d left the searing landscape behind - and the mountain. Faith? Peace? Duty? It kept him aloft, kept him fighting in these winds, as the elements themselves sought to push him back. Ebonhorn flew with dogged determination, undeterred. If anything, the trials he faced were trials he welcomed. As a Spiritwalker, trials were needed things, used to test the worthy. Did Azeroth now test him, sending such forces of nature his way? Was it a random act of the elements? It mattered little. To him this was a trial all the same, and a trial he would pass.

He would not fail the others.

He would not fail Azeroth.

On and on he flew, and on and on the storm chased him.  It chases me like hounds on a fox , he thought as he glided on a gentler swell of wind he’d found. His thoughts drifted to Ophelion, wondering if he had summoned the storm. But such things were foolish. A storm like this could be summoned by no one but the wilds themselves.

Hours upon hours dragged by. It was only in the moments he found gentler paths did he obtain rest, and fitful bouts of it as well. Where there once was an ache to his wings was now a burn, and he feared with each new rise and fall of his wings, they would seize and he would plummet.

Earthmother, guide me.

Lightning flashed only yards before him, and the world lit up for one blessed, chanced moment. Below stretched fields of gentle green slopes and a lake with a far shore he could not see. What looked like dwarven buildings, squat and with domed iron roofs, huddled into the hillsides.

The buildings did not catch his attention. On the eastern side of the loch, a greater clump of hills gathered, and there he felt his heart pull.

He dove as another flash of lightning crashed nearby, and the thunder rattled his bones. As if knowing the flight was in its final stretch, the pain in his wings vanished, and Ebonhorn glided into the hills and landed amongst their shadows.

The rain still pounded down on him, but the relief of landing was as sweet as the taste of a fresh kill, and he wheezed and stumbled, caught himself, and breathed. He sent a silent blessing to Azeroth.

The task is not done.

He allowed himself a moment to breathe before he lifted his head and looked to where his heart had taken him. The hills rose around him, but none was as big as the mountains he’d left behind. Some game trails carved around the crags of the slopes, and at the top of one of the hills, eroded dwarven architecture glittered in the storm.

He frowned. No, it was not dwarven at all, and nothing but the remains of a wall sticking up from the flatness of the game trail. It was something more ancient, and he could not be sure as to how he knew that.

Knowing coincidences and curiosities did not exist in such matters,

Ebonhorn urged his wings to carry him one last time to the wall, and he landed on an outcrop of a meadowed knoll. Greeting him was what he had not been able to see in his lower vantage point: the maw of a cave, big enough for even his dragon form to fit through. Around it lay the crumbled remains of the wall, and, glancing it over, he knew at once what the architecture was from.

The Titans.

He was in the right place. He knew he was.

Ebonhorn swelled with a new-found strength and entered the cavern.

More Titan relics shined out from the darkness, and the sound of the storm grew muted behind him, a faraway thing. Ebonhorn picked his way slowly through the cave, feeling a sense of wonder and sacredness. The cave did not seem to be a cave at all, but instead a tunnel, the sides carved with sandstone and lined with eroded pillars. Much of it was destroyed; half of it had collapsed in what looked like millennia ago, and, peering more closely, he saw some of the carvings were half-finished. Perhaps it had caved in when they had built this place, and they had abandoned it for brighter avenues before it’d been finished.

The carvings held alien runes and scenes of giant beings with weapons held aloft. Others showed maps of Azeroth: old maps, when the planet was still only one continent before the Sundering. More still showed illustrations of the planet, but also of others, and he paused to look at them.

Entire worlds, living and breathing like ours,  he thought, and scraped the back of his talon along one.  Like the place Sabellian has lived for all of these years.

As he thought it, he had the sudden sense these worlds were different than such a world like Draenor, and again, he could not be sure as to how he knew. It was like a book in his mind was opening, a book he had never had to open before or knew he’d even had.

These are Titan worlds.

He looked at them for a moment longer. Worlds like Azeroth.

He continued onward.

The tunnel opened up until he found himself face-to-face with a door which was an appropriate size for his own dragon form, and would have dwarfed any mortal. Engraved in the slab of stone read a slew of alien runes, and he surprised himself by being able to read them:

SANCTUM OF THE SPEAKERS

ENTER ONLY THE TESTED, OR RISK YOUR DOOM.

Ebonhorn hesitated.

You do not have time to hesitate. They’re waiting for you.

Bracing himself, he pushed open the door with his face, and it groaned as it swung open.

He found himself in a large, circular room of polished sandstone. Rings of iron ran around the edges of the floor, growing smaller and smaller until they made a sort of bullseye at the center - and on that center stood a pedestal, raised and carved of a gold metal and etched with intricate designs.

Like the tunnel, the sides of the room were illustrated with murals, though these were built of stained glass. They showed much of the same as those before, save for one: a great mass of darkness with red eyes and a gaping mouth, half of the mosaic shattered by what he assumed to have been the shock from the cave-in of the rest of the tunnel.

It seems this was finished before the tunnel,  he thought as he stepped inside. The place was quiet, but not in the way of eeriness. Instead it was the quiet of sacred ground, of peace and gentleness. His own footfalls made little noise, and he kept his breathing low and soft. It exuded a sense of ancient wisdom, of welcome, of beauty.

“HALT.”

Ebonhorn froze. He was feet away from the pedestal, and a shape he assumed as being part of the illustration of the Titans loomed toward him.

It was a construct: a Maiden of stone and iron, wielding an open book in her hand and a mace in the other. Her face turned to him, her eyes seeing despite the carving of them minimal, with no pupils or iris or eyelid. She was as tall as he was, though sported cracks along her legs and chest.

“Who enters the Sanctum of the Speakers?”

Ebonhorn drew himself up. “Spiritwalker Ebonhorn.”

“Who enters the Sanctum of the Speakers?”

He paused, then frowned. “Ebyssian, son of Neltharion.”

The Maiden said nothing. Lines in her book began to light up with a whir of magic and electricity - maybe even machinery.

“Welcome, son of Neltharion,” she said, and the book powered down with a whirring hum. She stepped back. The book groaned closed. Knowing she was a construct made the illusion of her as part of the panel all the more impressive. Staring at her now, he saw the artist had used the shadow she cast as part of the mosaic, and her colors integrated with that of the Titans near her. “You may proceed.”

“Thank you,” he said, but she did not reply. He had never seen a construct before, only read things and heard stories. Were they like machines, or did they have souls, like Earthen and the metal Vrykul of old? Did she watch him now, or was her purpose done, and now she slept once more?

He cast an uneasy look around, wondering if any of the other panels held hidden secrets like that one had. He saw nothing, and knew there was nothing to be fearful about. This was a chamber of the Titans, and he was not an enemy, here.

Ebonhorn glanced at the pedestal. Even it was large enough to hold him.  What was this place used for?  he wondered as he carefully stepped atop it.  Was this place meant for us?

The moment the entirety of his weight pressed against the pedestal, the room lit up.

He gasped. Blue light shined from each line in the panels and the rings of iron. They streamed in with vibrancy, and as he watched, the light began to thrum and beat.

Beat like a heartbeat.

“I am here, Earthmother,” he breathed, closing his eyes. A presence thrummed in the room, growing stronger with each heartbeat. “Show me what to do.”

His eyes were still closed, and yet he still  saw  the world around him shift and change. A presence fell around him, enveloped him. A familiar presence, a welcoming energy, a soul he had known all his life - but stronger than he’d ever felt before. It was like Azeroth herself was wrapping her wings around him, the cosmic and unknowable force of her, her power, radiating against his scales and into his soul. Unbidden, tears fell from his eyes, and his love for her and all that lived atop her sprang forth like a well.

“Earthmother,” he whispered.

EBYSSIAN,  she replied, love in her voice. Love and a fierce pride. He sucked in a surprised breath. Though she spoke in the crash of waves and the call of birds, her words were words, and he knew them in his heart. It had never happened like this before, and the sacredness of this meeting was laid bare before him. He opened his eyes and found himself in a world of flickering visions and lights. Here was a quiet glade and a drinking Dreamrunner; here was a waterfall cascading down into a jungle; there was a field of endless dessert. And all around him lingered her otherworldly presence, not unlike the storm he’d escaped, insurmountable and inescapable.

“Where is it you led me?”

AN ANCIENT PLACE OF SPEAKING , she replied in words of rainfall.  WHERE ONCE, YOUR KIND SPOKE TO ME LONG AGO.

Ebonhorn nodded slowly. “It is connected so deeply to you. Never have I felt closer… and to speak to you so frankly…”

A RARE THING, BUT ONE WITH LIMITED TIME,  she replied hurriedly.  THE ENERGY TO SPEAK TO YOU SO WILL OVERWHELM YOU IF WE DELAY.

He nodded again, shaking himself out. “Yes. Please, Earthmother, show me what we must do. The others wait for me, and I fear we may already be too late.”

YOU WERE WISE TO COME,  she said.  I DID NOT THINK THE OLD ONES WOULD CONVERGE SO QUICKLY… I DID NOT HAVE TIME TO WARN YOU. I UNDERESTIMATED THEIR HUNGER. I HAD HOPED ONE OF YOU WOULD UNDERSTAND WHAT I SENT.

BUT NOW YOU ARE HERE. THERE IS NO MORE TIME FOR FRAGMENTS.

BRACE YOURSELF, AND SEE.

The scenes around him muddied and coalesced into a kaleidoscope of colors. Ebonhorn felt weightless, floating on an unseen path. A sense of urgency followed him, mixing with his own: Azeroth, too, felt the dwindling time they had left, and was reacting accordingly.

The scene stilled, and the colors solidified into forms and shapes. Before him zigzagged a valley of gorges and plateaus of sand-colored stone, peppered by hard-nosed shrubs and trees clinging stubbornly to life amongst the soilless landscape.

The sun was high and hot in the sky, a pinprick of white light, the heat so intense it looked more like a distant flare than a sphere. It played illusions on the stone, forcing it to flicker and dance as the heat radiated off of it, a plane of mirages.

He could not be certain where this place was, but something about it felt familiar, like a dream might.

Ebonhorn stood on one of the flatter areas of the valley. Accompanying him were an innumerable amount of black dragons.

He let out a low, quiet breath. Everywhere he looked, dragons peppered the landscape, congregating in a sort of loose circle. There were dragons as big as him - some even larger - and drakes, and even some whelps, herded along by their broodparents. And the colors! He had always thought the scope of their palette limited, but here were great ranges of colors both earthy and not. There were some like him and Sabellian, all rich and earthy. Others were purple like Onyxia and Jacob. Some, though, were dark colors he’d never thought a black dragon could sport, like dark, dark blue and an even darker maroon red. He even spotted a handful which had markings like Furywing.

These were our people.  The vastness of what he was looking at struck him like a gong upon his heart, and he took a step back, his head ringing. The feeling of belonging, of love, and most of all, a deep, terrible loss clung to him.  This was what we once were.

This is the look of the dead.

He swallowed hard. He’d seen many visions in his time as Spiritwalker, and had walked many trials, but nothing struck him more than this.  This is what we were supposed to be. What we once were.

There were  hundreds  of them, and they blanketed the valley in their flashing black scales. But, as he watched, a hush fell over them.

It occurred to him only then this must be a meeting, not some residence, and, watching the dragons more closely through a far more level-headed glance, he noticed an air of tension and worry among a number of them. Movement stilled, eyes were fixed. The whelps, too, grew quiet and calm, huddled along their broodparent’s claws.

“You have called, and we have answered,” rang a deep, booming voice, and walking into the crowd - parting before him like minnows in the wake of a shark - came Deathwing.

No, not Deathwing, Neltharion.

Ebonhorn had never seen him in such a form. He had only ever seen him as the warped and twisted iron creature of agony and hatred in the visions of Huln he gave to each of the descendants. This was a proud dragon, massive in size, scaled with deep brown-black armor and with a heavy-set jaw.

His father.

Despite the old tales of Neltharion’s mirth and good-natured competitive spirit, this dragon bore a deep semblance of irritation and ill humor. Cracks lay along his scales like valleys of their own, and he had a weathered, tired look about him. All the same he stood straight and high, and in his size towered about the others.

The others, he noticed, who were looking at him in a mix of emotions: some with adoration, some with awe.

Some with fear.

Some with loathing.

Wrathion said they treated him like a god; that he shouldered all their responsibilities.

When does this take place?

From the opposite end of the gathering came another dragon, this one a rich purple-brown. This one was smaller than some of the bigger ones here, but no less intimidating. She had a slope of mountainous shoulders and a thick-set tail. Her wings were enormous, bigger than he’d ever seen. She was a fighter, and an experienced one too. He knew it the first glimpse of her.

“Yes. The call is done,” she said in a loud, clear voice. She stopped, and the gathered dragons lay quiet. Hundreds of dragons, none speaking, all staring, some quietly pushing one another aside to get a better look, some smaller ones climbing on others backs to get a glimpse. It was so quiet the call of a hawk pierced the air and was heard as clear as a roar.

“I had thought I was the only one who could command such a call,” Neltharion said, and his voice drawled on with the obvious slight. “You overstep your boundaries, Iria.”

Iria kept still. “There will be no boundaries for me to overstep if the deed here is done,” she said.

If it had gone quieter in the valley, it would have. Perhaps he imagined it, but the earth itself seemed to still: no wind gusted, no idle rumbles from the stone surfaced. The hawk stopped its shrieking.

Azeroth watches.

Neltharion studied the dragon. “Think carefully upon your next words,” he said. “The whole of history lays on your claws, broodmother, and so does your life.”

She didn’t flinch. Her face was set, stilled with iron.

“Neltharion, chosen of the Titans, I, Iria, daughter of Redcharge and Gornra, challenge you to the title of Aspect,” she said. “I call upon the ancient rights. Submit to them, or die.”

That’s suicide.

Frenzied whispers and murmurs broke out among the throng of hundreds, and together they formed a wordless cacophony of noise, like wind amongst wheat. One of the dragons by Iria was nodding his head in encouragement, while another shied her head away, eyes low. He understood immediately most, if not all, had known this was to happen, and sides were already set.

A lace of fear for her struck through his chest. Suicide indeed. Though this was a vision and he did not truly exist here, he still felt the waves of power rolling off of Neltharion. Cosmic power, unthinkable in every aspect.

And, as a visitor from the future, he knew the outcome of what was to unfold here on this valley. Even so he could not help the fear for this dragon, this foolish one of his own kind, and it took every ounce of him to keep still and not speak out to her, to tell her to turn back, that she would die here. She would not be able to hear him, but speaking in visions was something Spiritwalkers were trained not to do.

Did not Wrathion speak of this? He recalled him telling of all the visions Azeroth had shown to him. Nothing like this, but… no, yes, he remembered how Neltharion had spoken to Malygos at Wyrmrest Temple.

Spoken to him about a challenger to his title.

Snow. Blue scales.

He grew still. Azeroth’s fragments… they were about  that  vision of Wrathion’s. The boy had said they seemed familiar, and now, Ebonhorn was seeing the full extent of what Azeroth wanted to show them.

This is how we can purify our kin? Earthmother, I don’t understand.

He did not think to say such things out loud, of course. She would show him in due time. It would come to pass.

Neltharion flexed his claws, and the earth underneath him rumbled.

“The rights are spoken,” he said, and something in his face flickered with the competitive spirit he had been known for, but in it felt something darker, a malicious spirit which gnawed at Ebonhorn’s gut. “There is no coming back.

I accept this challenge.”

The ground shook again, but this time, it was the entire valley, not just the stone beneath his father’s feet. A rush of power whisked over them like a wind. Something had shifted, had closed… but something else had opened. The world grew hyper-focused on the two, challenger and challenged, and the illusions cast by the heat swam around them to form a barrier between them and the hundreds of their kind.

Neltharion was the first to bow, and Iria followed, each sweeping so low their noses touched the ground. When his father rose his face, fury had overtaken his expression.

“Come, then: feel the might of the Titans!” he roared, and charged.

The earth quaked and cracked. Lava spit up with each of his massive footsteps. It was a sight to behold, all raw and terrible power. Many shied away despite the barrier.

But Iria did not delay or shy back.

She roared an earth-shattering roar and went to meet him, and great spikes of rock flew from the earth like spears and went flying in Neltharion’s direction.

Seconds before the two dragons crashed into on another, they froze.

Ebonhorn startled. Their faces were twisted back in anger and determination, and the dragons’ around them watched with frozen fear and hope and fury, whether at Neltharion or Iria.

SHE LOST,  came Azeroth’s voice.  AND THE DRAGONFLIGHT WAS DOOMED.

Ebonhorn shook his head, sorrow filling his chest. “She couldn’t have thought to win against such a challenger,” he said, looking at her face. “Why did this happen?”

ME,  she replied, her voice filled with sorrow.  DEATHWING GREW TOO BURDENED WITH RESPONSIBILITIES OF MY SAFEGUARDING. HE GREW ANGRY… AND BITTER… THE OTHERS FELT HIM CHANGING.

A chill shivered up his neck. “The Old Gods began to corrupt him around this time, didn’t they?”

I FELT HIM DRIFTING AWAY,  she replied in a small voice, and it occurred to him how young Azeroth was in comparison to the other Titans of legend - young as a child.  I CALLED TO HIM, BUT HE DID NOT ANSWER.

“And the others of my kind… they could not help him shoulder the responsibilities?”

NELTHARION TAUGHT THEM AS LONG AS HE WAS THERE, ALL WOULD BE DONE,  she said.  FIRST, IT WAS OUT OF LOVE FOR THEM… AS LONG AS HE WAS THERE, THEY WOULD NOT BE BURDENED WITH THE WEIGHT, AS HE WAS. BUT THE WEIGHT… THE WEIGHT GREW GREATER WITH EACH YEAR…

She did not have to say more. Wrathion had guessed as much in the visions she had shown him before: it was Neltharion’s own love for his kind which had made him start on the dark path. He had forgone all help, let them think him all-powerful, and when he needed help the most, they did not know how to help him. Wrathion had even mentioned how Neltharion’s thoughts of his kin had changed, from love to loathing, by shouldering all of the responsibility: by doing all of the work, he had effectively built himself up in his mind, forcing himself to think of them as lesser, almost as subjects.

Never good enough.

But was it bad to think of it in such a way? That it was his love which had doomed them?

No - no, he realized, it had not been love which had doomed them at all. His love could had saved them.

It had been his ego.

He had refused help. He had refused to shoulder off the burden when he realized it was too great for him alone. He had refused to, out of stubbornness and pride, and as such the weight had left him angry and bitter with his role.

And such bitterness had led to their destruction.

“Iria and some of these others… they knew of the Old Gods? Is that why she would risk everything?”

THEY KNEW SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE,  Azeroth replied.  THEY DID NOT KNOW OF THE OLD ONES, BUT HE HAD GROWN RECKLESS, UNCARING. VIOLENT.

“The hatching canyon,” he remembered, recalling the vision Wrathion had shared where Neltharion had almost destroyed eggs in his haste and irritation to fix another problem - and would have destroyed it on accident, too, if not for Sinestra… Ebonhorn’s own mother.

A sense of relief washed over him from her incorporeal form.

YES , she said.  ONE OF MANY INCIDENTS. OTHERS WERE NOT SO FORTUNATE.

Flickers of falling boulders, of Vrykul mortal screaming as they were crushed by fallen rubble, rushed over his vision. More fragments of great gaping wounds in the earth’s core raced after, and then the side of a mountain slipping into and blocking a river, which eventually dried up.

HE AIDED IN ONE PROBLEM, BUT CAUSED TWO MORE IN HIS WAKE…  she sighed, and the pain of her felt like his own pain, cutting into his heart.  HE DID NOT CARE. I DO NOT THINK HE UNDERSTOOD AT THE TIME THE OLD ONES WERE INFLUENCING HIM EVEN THEN. WHERE ONCE HE WOULD HAVE ASKED MY FORGIVENESS, NOW HE DELIGHTED IN THE PAIN HE CAUSED, BECAUSE OF THE PAIN I HAD CAUSED HIM FOR SO MANY YEARS.

“It was not your fault, Earthmother. He took the burden upon himself and himself alone… a burden which was not supposed to be a burden at all, but a wonderful gift.”

She said nothing for a moment, then said:  I ONLY HOPE IT DOES NOT HAPPEN AGAIN. WRATHION UNDERSTAND NOW, BUT HE IS SO LOYAL. SO LIKE HIM.

Ebonhorn opened his mouth to rush to Wrathion’s defense, but Azeroth continued.

MY GUILT DOES NOT MATTER NOW. THIS IS HOW YOU WILL BE SAVED.

He blinked and looked at the still frozen figures fixed in battle. “I don’t understand.”

THE ANCIENT CHALLENGE , she replied, fervently.  EACH DRAGONFLIGHT HAS A TRIAL.

Yes! Of course, he and the others had spoken as much, like how the Blue Dragonflight had theirs during the solstice, and how Kalecgos had become -

“One of us must become Aspect?” he said with a slight gasp.

YOU MUST CHALLENGE THE ASPECT.

Confusion coiled around him. This was the moment. This was why he had flown through the storm, had left the others to the Old Gods, but still he did not understand! “Deathwing is dead. There is no Aspect left.”

IN THE END, HE WAS NEVER THE ASPECT OF THE FLIGHT, EBYSSIAN , she said, and again her words were full of regret, of unending sadness.  THERE IS POWER IN THE BLOOD OF THE ASPECT. WHEN HE FELL… SO DID ALL THE OTHERS.

Realization swept over him as quick as the storm had, and it felt as if the rain had come again: icy rain, chilling his scales, his soul.

“I… I understand, Earthmother.” A pause. “But I must ask… ‘the cursed will open the way.’ They have only encouraged the corruption to manifest there. Why did you have them come?”

But as soon as he said it, he understood even more.

He understood everything.

Love and vindication and courage and retribution roiled over him, a storm on its own, casting away his own frozen fear and understanding. He felt a whisper of her great power, of her unending cosmic rays, and a warmth radiated in his chest, a powerful warmth even the worst of storms could not overtake.

YOU UNDERSTAND NOW,  she said.  I WILL BE WITH YOU, AND WAITING FOR MY CHANCE,  she said.  BUT REMEMBER… NO ONE MUST TAKE THIS BURDEN ON THEIR OWN. DO NOT MAKE NELTHARION’S MISTAKE.

ONLY TOGETHER ARE WE STRONG.

TOGETHER.

NOW GO.

THE OTHERS WAIT FOR YOU.

[favoritedragonprince]

I've discovered that I love both, Wrathion knowing about Sabellian and Ebyssian and Wrathion not having a dem clue that there are another two black dragons alive.

Can you imagine if he doesn't know?

"But I killed all of them wtf bro."

[picantenacho-blog]

Return of the dragon bros.

[spiritwalker-ebonhorn]

;’)

[soulkeepercoffee]

Spiritwalker Ebonhorn aka Ebyssian is a good boy and here is why

• the fact that he is still considered odd "even for spiritwalker standards" ( I believe that how it went) by most if not all Tauren in Highmoutain even though he's been living among them for like 10,000 years or so.

• though he is considered insufferable they still respect and listen to what he has to say because it would be foolish not to listen to someone who is so good at being a spiritwalker.

• And why wouldn't he be good at it? He was born during ( or after? I don't remember) the war of the ancients so he has lived with many of there ancestors along with the descendants of Huln etc. So he was there to see there stores first hand and all that.

• the fact that he stayed with the Highmountain tribe out of gratitude for Huln uncorrupting him and has been an advisor for his descendants ever since. ( that's some loyalty right there )

• he also most likely stayed with them because well it's not like he really had anywhere else to go. At the time he was the only uncorrupted black dragon known and I wouldn't want to be around my own flight if they where getting whispers from old gods.

• though he never reached out to his own flight ( I'm guessing to protect himself since I'm sure they would of tried to harm If not kill him for being uncorrupted idk ) he still cared about them. You can fish up his (spiritwalker ebonhorn that is) coin in dalaran and it will say "for all the brothers and sisters I've lost." THATS SOME SAD SHIT YO!

• the fact that since he had no contact with his own flight or with any other dragonflights means he was self taught to fly, hunt etc. (though I'm sure dragons are born with the knowledge to do those things but he was still alone doing them without really anyone to help) And he is problably strange compared to other dragons.

• THE FACT THAT HE IS UNCORRUPTED MEANS WRATHION ACTUALLY HAS A FAMILY MEMBER!!! LET ME SEE THEM INTERACT BLIZZARD!!!!

[ishnualah]

I rly need to stop having a crush on every lore character in this game

[katieskarlette]

Tag Index - Warcraft Dragons

[Miscellaneous]  [General Warcraft]  [Dragons]  [Non-Dragon Characters]

Warcraft Dragons

#rambling about dragons again -- Kind of a catch-all tag for Warcraft dragon discussion, from short jokes to longer meta posts

#draconic aging and #draconic breeding -- These tags cover discussion of and speculation on these aspects of dragon lore.

#there’s absolutely nothing wrong with RPing as a dragon -- The (unnecessarily long) tag says it all.

The Black Dragonflight

The Black Dragonflight – In general / misc.

Wrathion – The Black Prince is my favorite, so this is a huge tag full of discussion, screenshots, meta and general squeeing.  In addition to his main tag there are also:

Wrathion pictures -- Artwork featuring Wrathion

wrathywhelp -- Art or text focused on Wrathion as an adorable whelp

Aaron Phillips -- Wrathion's voice actor

BFF princes -- Posts focusing on Wrathion's friendship with Anduin

A boy and his whelp -- Anduin and dragon-form Wrathion

AWOL whelp -- Posts lamenting the scarcity of Wrathion between MoP and Dragonflight

Left and Right -- His faithful bodyguards

wrathidad -- Posts about the quest line with Wrathion and the time-lost whelps that was in Legion alpha but removed before launch

Game of Obsidian Thrones -- Posts about the Wrathion vs. Sabellian conflict in Dragonflight

Fahrad is another of my favorites, and in my headcanon he’s Wrathion’s biological father.  See also #number one dad Fahrad and #actual dad Fahrad.  (I have an alt named Fahradion who runs around Azeroth having #au fahrad adventures.)

Let’s not forget Wrathion’s mother, Nyxondra!  (See also the screenshots of #au nyxondra adventures.)

Or his Auntie Onyxia!  Her human guise is usually tagged as both Onyxia and Katrana Prestor.  (See also #au onyxia adventures.)

Everyone’s favorite draconic mad scientist, Nefarian, has his own tag.  (See also #au romathion adventures, the screenshot series featuring my uncorrupted version of him.  Oh, and I ship him with Rheastrasza.  I know it seems random, but read my fics.)

Obsidia – Another one of Deathwing’s daughters, who is sort of an original character and sort of canon.  Long story.

There is, of course, a tag for Deathwing, as well as a Neltharion tag for his pre-corruption self.  Ditto for Sintharia a.k.a. Sinestra.

The Ebonhorn tag should cover everything about the Highmountain Spiritwalker, while his dragon form is usually tagged as both Ebonhorn and Ebyssian.  (See also #au ebyssian adventures.)

Sabellian is back from Outland with a less tacky outfit, competing with his nephew for the Obsidian Throne.

The rest of the family:  Atramedes ~ Darkblaze ~ Emberstrife ~ Kalaran (a.k.a. Velarok) ~ Myzerian ~ Nalice ~ Sartharion ~ Searinox ~ Serinar ~ Teremus

Oh, and Zardeth is totally a black dragon and no one can convince me otherwise.

Wrath of Sabellian – Reblogs, commentary, and fanart related to the amazing, novel-length fanfic epic by Yulon about Sabellian and Wrathion.

The Blue Dragonflight

Blue Dragonflight (general/misc)

Malygos

Sindragosa

Kalecgos 

Senegos, Stellagosa, and Emmigosa

Tarecgosa

My original character Ceruleagosa

The Bronze Dragonflight

Bronze Dragonflight (general/misc)

Nozdormu

Soridormi

Chromie

Kairozdormu

The Infinite Dragonflight

Infinite Dragonflight (general/misc)

Murozond

The Green Dragonflight

Green Dragonflight (general/misc)

Ysera

Eranikus

Merithra

Nightmare Dragons

The Red Dragonflight

Red Dragonflight (general/misc)

Alexstrasza

Korialstrasz

Rheastrasza (see also my #AU Rheastrasza adventures)

Lillistrasza

Veritistrasz

My original character Cybelastrasza)

Other Dragonflights and Related Topics

The Chromatic Dragonflight (and my original character, Nith)

The Netherwing Dragonflight

The Twilight Dragonflight

Frost Wyrms  (see also Sindragosa)

Storm Dragons a.k.a. Thorignir

Void dragons

Elemental dragons

Protodragons and Galakrond

Primal Incarnates and Raszageth

Dracthyr

Cloud serpents (known in large numbers as a flock of rainbow noodles)

See also catchall tags like #multiple dragonflights, #many whelps, and the hypothetical violet dragonflight

[erazon]

dude spiritwalker Ebonhorn must be like, that one cousin who’s totally normal and just shows up to the family christmas dinner to watch the shitshow go down but then the rest of the year you never hear from him because he’s too busy being normal

[wowheadquarters]

Top 5 best dragons

For @naddle12. Not the strongest, the smartest or the prettiest. Simple the 5 best dragons there are.

5. Yarzilraku - And for that matter, every other Netherwing dragon. But Yarzil the Merc was brave, hidden within the enemy lines, looked like a goblin, and for the complete record, he saved our asses.

4. Chronormu - Damn cute. Easily to be read as trans or nonbinary which is really dope to have this thing without it being a Thing. Kind, bit tricksterish. Chronormu is a precious cinnamon roll who is strong enough to erase us from the historz and we must protect her and her two braid-buns.

3. Ebyssian - Everyone raise ‘em up for our favorite spiritwalker! No seriously, Ebonhorn is the sole reason I did the Highmountain storyline.

2. Wrathion - The fandom’s problematic bae, and also Anduin’s legal husband and dragon-scarf.

1. Nozdormu - A big thing here is that I like him a lot. His future is damn tragic, so he gets bonus points here. His elf form is damn hot (I’m still pretty sure he’d be hotter as a troll, but I work with what they gave me). Timeless. Also have you seen that skirt of his? Have you heard his pissed off quotes? Like, he is an ordered version of Chronormu who comes with not-annoying not-gnome voice.

Honorable mention: Sindragosa - Uh, excuse me, I think I¨m going to sob violently in the background now.

[yulon]

The Wrath of Sabellian (pt. 47)

Book Three: Trial of the Black King

Sabellian begins to doubt Azeroth’s promises, and newcomers prove to be more useful than everyone thought.

---

Sabellian stood on the cliff outside the private cave and stretched his back. It pop-pop-popped.

The sun was high, a disk of unpolished gold hiding beyond the smoke of Blackrock - a false sunset smoke, red and orange. The landscape was the same dark heat-glow; such bright colors did not fall easily on the cracked plates of earth and lava, and looking at it now it felt like the world had been split into a light-touched kingdom above and this deep blackness below, where only the haziest of light suffused.

“Father, forgive me,” Vaxian had said. Over, and over, and over again. His words rang in Sabellian’s mind as he stood there, looking at this once-kingdom, his wings tucked tight to his body and his claws laid flat and splayed along the rock.

It had taken some time to calm the usually stoic dragon, and, in silence, Sabellian had ushered into into one of the caves far from the others’: one of the lonlier ones, a quieter one so far it was almost on the other side of the Mountain.

“What do you remember, boy?” he asked, making his son sit. Vaxian’s eyes were round with fright, red-rimmed with sickness. He shuddered with every other breath.

“I remember everything,” he said. His voice quaked; the words pitched and buzzed like electricity, and he was eerily reminded of the nether. “They took us to the Vale and healed my wing. Then -” He closed his eyes. Shuddered. “Like suffocating.”

He studied Vaxian, watched his son take deep breaths.

“After the Vale… Serinar suggested we come here. I was unconscious for most of it. But I remember feeling like I was being watched. I knew Samia had been taken. I knew the others were worming into me.  I could feel them, Father. I could feel them crawling up my ankles and up into my legs. It grew worse when Seldarria pumped me full of the nether. Samia held me down. Then I could hardly wake up at all. But I could still… feel them…” Vaxian lifted a claw and held his chest. “When the Spiritwalker visited… it took all of my power to tell him to try to save him and the others. To save you. I heard what They were planning. What They whispered to me. I knew They were lies.”

“What did They tell you?”

Vaxian looked at him, and a flicker of electricity coursed through his eyes, a spark like a heartbeat. “They told me how They would rebuild our family… how They would protect us. But I knew better.”

The grimness coiled into his belly was a terrible thing to know: a terrible thing to realize N’Zoth had said the same to him, only what felt like hours ago, whispering promises of protection and deals and trades.

“And now you have woken up.”

“Hard to explain,” he murmured. “I was with the others, and they were speaking - and it felt wrong. Some of the things they were saying…” He creased his eyebrows. “When just a moment ago it was fine.” His gaze grew distant. “Then I knew.”

It was familiar. Sabellian nodded. “Like after we settled on Outland.”

“Yes… Like that…”

“And how do I know this isn’t some ploy?”

Vaxian shook his head. The skin weighed heavy under his eyes.

“I don’t know how I could convince you otherwise, Father. I just know how I feel. I understand this is hard to trust;  I would not trust it, myself.”

It was true: there wasn’t much Vaxian could say or do.

One, I will free.

He’d left Vaxian to calm down, and the boy had fallen asleep. His heavy breathing carried from the cave out to this lonely cliffside.

This must be a trick. The thought curled around his head, spinning around and around, a whirlpool. A ploy to get me pliable and trusting.

But of course it was. N’Zoth had said as much. This was a show of “good faith,” of the Old Gods’ promises coming true.

He looked back at the cave. It was dark, a black sheet of shadow.

It could be possible for Vaxian to be free. If it was N’Zoth’s curse in their veins; N’Zoth could lift it.

And had They? Had They really?

Vaxian could have killed him three times over by now. Sabellian’s back had been turned for a solid hour; the dragon could have bit him in the jugular as he’d ushered him to the cave; he’d been close enough to grab and choke.

None had happened, even though Sabellian had been waiting for them to happen. Even though he’d left such openings, just to see if Vaxian would take them.

But such things were too… simple. N’Zoth was the Corruptor. To have Vaxian try to kill him was too easy, and, if N’Zoth was telling the truth, not what They wanted.

What They wanted was to show how They were telling the truth.

What They wanted was what They couldn’t have: Wrathion and Ebonhorn.

Yet how stupid could he be, to believe this? How stupid could he be to have a dark measure of hope that Vaxian, sleeping peacefully behind him, was free because an evil thing had willed it? How stupid could he be to think N’Zoth would really let the others go, just for two?

How stupid could he be to wonder how N’Zoth could free Vaxian, and Azeroth remained silent?

It was overwhelming.

Azeroth hadn’t come back.

A trick. This is wrong.

He clawed at the ground.

A fool indeed, to think salvation lies in the enemy!

But there Vaxian was, sleeping behind him, proclaiming his purity.

If only they still had the Titan relic! The one which had made Wrathion, took Nasandria’s arm, had had ticked down Sabellian’s remaining sanity. They needed the latter. Otherwise, there was no way to know.

N’Zoth was watching him. Waiting.

Wrathion and Ebyssian in exchange for your family’s freedom.

Deep down, deep in his heart of hearts, the idea was a tantalizing one. One he might have made before without hesitation.

But now -

He flexed his paws and a rush of power swam into his body. The earth beneath his feet gave a shudder, the shudder of an animal when woken.

Sabellian held onto it, eyes closed and, with a rough sigh, let it go.

He felt caught between two chasms, unable to jump to one or another.

But one thing was certain - if he had no other choice, he might have to make this one.

“Baron.”

Sabellian looked down at the ridge. Leokk came bounding up, Rexxar on his back.

“Wrathion woke up. He needs to talk to you.”

The boy. I’d forgotten all about that.

He shuffled his wings and rose to his feet.

“Any reasons why?”

“No,” Rexxar said. “Left was of little words.”

Sabellian nodded. “Lead on.”

He waited for Rexxar to turn away and head down to the Mountain before he glanced back at the cave. He’d told Vaxian to stay put, and he hoped he would.

He knew at once he could tell no one about this. Just as he had told no one about N’Zoth.

Wrathion would want to interrogate him, or send him away, back into the jaws of the enemy. And if there was the slim chance Vaxian was free - Sabellian would not take such a risk to his son’s life. If the others found out he was no longer on their side…

Sabellian took flight and followed Rexxar’s retreating form.

As he descended, he noticed a pair of yellow eyes following him from one of the caves: Ruby.

He ignored it and headed into the Lair.

A host of Blacktalons awaited him, their eyes watching from the shadows. Some he saw clearly; others he had to squint and focus. There must have been a dozen, all guarding the entrance to Blackwing, a grim and deadly retinue.

Sabellian shifted into his human guise and moved through them, unhindered. Only in times like these did he remember Wrathion's far-reaching power: the very one N’Zoth so desperately wanted.

He walked past the mass of guards and into the deeper rooms. In the smaller, circular room - the one where Nefarian had locked away Chromaggus,  the two-headed, chimeric monstrosity - Wrathion and the others were waiting.

The prince paced around the back of the room, face scrunched in thought, one hand holding his chin. Ebonhorn stood frowning, and nearby, Left stood guard and Rexxar wiped down sweat from Leokk’s side.

“This is… ill news indeed,” Ebonhorn said.

“What is it this time?”

Ebonhorn and Wrathion looked toward him. Wathion stopped pacing.

“Where were you?”

“Watching,” Sabellian said dismissively. “What news, then?”

Wathion frowned. “I’m doing fine, thank you for asking.”

Sabellian stared at him.

The prince sighed. “Your brother is right. Very ill news.” His expression grew distant and thoughtful. “Azeroth. It was Azeroth who made me a bit… well. You saw.” He began to pace. “She was a bit frantic. She showed me some visions… told me to look…” He shook his head.

Azeroth? It should have been hope which coursed through him.

Instead, it was a deep and stiff dread.

“What visions? What did she show you?”

“Enough. Though I really don’t understand why she can’t talk to me like she talked to you! It’d make it all the more easier.” He waved his hand as if waving off the train of thought. “The visions. I’m afraid, the, ah, long and short of it, as they say, is that Azeroth has been blocked to us.”

The dread grew heavier. “I see.”

“It seems that the gathering of the cursed has made a sort of blockade. The more we invited, the harder it became for her to push through. Which is… unfortunate…”

Yes , he thought. And opened the way for N’Zoth and the others. N’Zoth Themself had told him as much in his own vision.

How had he not realized such a thing before? N’Zoth had twisted it to the belief Azeroth had abandoned them - but the truth was Azeroth was barred to them in the same way N’Zoth was upon them. At once he thought of the images of vines in a dense jungle, intertwined and tangled in one another to block the path. Azeroth had flashed the image to him multiple times, signaling how she could not reach him or his children - let alone anyone pursued by the corruption - because of the curse of the Old Gods: the vines blocking the way.

It had been one thing, to understand Azeroth’s plan had invited the Old Gods.

It was another thing entirely to know she had done so and also uninvited herself from the situation.

Willingly.

Betrayal.

Without thinking, his hand moved to hold his crane pendant.

“I just don’t understand,” Ebonhorn rumbled. “Did she not know such a thing would happen? She and the Old Gods have been at odds for ages upon ages. She must’ve known this would happen…”

“She told us the cursed will open the way, but they closed it,” Wrathion said, tapping his lips.

“Boy,” Sabellian said with a sigh. “They have opened the way: for the Old Gods.”

The room went cold and silent. All eyes turned to him.

“How do you mean?” Ebonhorn asked. “It’s true we have invited corruption into our midst, but that does not mean the Old Gods have more power here than they have before.”

“The Old Gods feed Themselves on that corruption, brother,” Sabellian said stiffly. “It’s why They seek to corrupt everything and everyone. Why cults are formed. What use is one corrupt mortal? Nothing. That’s why They urge a single soul to preach about Their teachings: so it can spread. So They can grow stronger.” He waved a hand around them, a large sweep. “This Mountain is cursed already, and inviting the others here has set this place to a more darker tone. What I said is true: the way is open not for Azeroth, but for our very enemies.”

N’Zoth’s insinuation came writhing back: Azeroth, unaware what she spoke was the words of her dark captors, unaware her plans were the will of the evils in her heart…

“Are you suggesting this was part of her plan?” Wrathion said, staring at him in disbelief.

“I suggest nothing, only tell you what I know. Of the three of us, I’m the only one who knows how the Old Gods work.”

Wrathion studied him. His face began to fall into a thoughtful, albeit troubled, frown. “I had worried as much when we invited these dragons here,” he said, “ if you remember my alarm about the whole affair.”

Yes, he remembered Wrathion clucking around and wringing his hands. Sabellian crossed his arms, shook his head.

“I hadn’t thought it would be enough for Them to -” He caught himself. To slip through my pendant. For Them to be so present They can talk to me. “For Them to block the way for her. As none of us did.”

Wrathion eyed him. “You're the one she spoke to. Are you certain Azeroth said nothing else?”

“No. Only how the group of dragons here will help save us.” He dropped the pendant, and it flopped back down to his chest.

Titans , he thought. Have we really just been taken for fools? Was this N’Zoth’s plan all along? The dread began to fuel into a deep anger, an ancient, lifelong anger which sparked in his knuckles.

“I knew it was foolish to put my faith in a god who’d already abandoned us,” Sabellian growled. “All of this for nothing. We invite vipers and have nothing to feed them.”

“ You were the one who insisted we go through with this,” Wrathion snapped at him. “ You were the one who actually and wholeheartedly believed her!”

“Because I had nothing else to believe!” Sabellian snarled. “Hope can blind!”

“What do you have to believe in now ?” Wrathion spat back at him. “We have a setback, nothing more! None of us thought this would be easy!”

“She purposefully blocked herself from us. She’s out of the equation! Does that not seem suspect ?”

Wrathion scowled, the fangs of his canines flashing in the dim light. “What? Do you honestly believe she’s in league with the Old Gods? Are you so pessimistic?”

Before he had a chance to reply, the boy continued. “She hasn’t left us entirely, anyway . Why else would she try to talk to me? Or give me help about where to look?

Sabellian narrowed his eyes. The visions.  He’d forgotten the boy had mentioned those. “And what help did she give you?”

“She couldn’t do much,” he said. “I did have to go catatonic before she could reach me, but she was able to show me glimpses. Hints of -”

“Hints?” Sabellian spat. “More games and puzzles? More things to waste our time on which the others plan and plot?”

“She couldn’t do much!” Wrathion repeated, scowling. “You weren’t there! You didn’t feel her!” “Why would she talk to you, then, if not Ebonhorn or me? She might have been able to speak, then! But she chose you! To waste more time!”

“You’re not implying you think Azeroth is trying to lead us to danger,” Ebonhorn said.

“I’m saying we only have three days before we are done here - whether that means death or desertion.” He uncrossed his arms over his chest and almost crossed them again, he was so pent up with energy. “And rather than telling us what to do next, she gives us more warnings and little hints for us to solve, scrambling as darkness closes in around us.”

“She gave you all that power,” Wrathion said. “She wouldn’t have done that if she was being controlled , as you’re suggesting.”

“Then tell me, boy, her little hints. How illuminating they must have been.”

Wrathion ground his teeth.

“Snow. Blue scales. Blood.” He paused. “And to remember… I think it’s something she showed us before.”

Disbelief flooded through him. “That’s all?”

“If I could just go over it a little longer -”

“So now our only hope is something you think she’s already show you? Nevermind Azeroth herself using her massive power to help! But what a pity, now that she can’t be here! ”

“She can’t just pop up from the ground -”

“Yes. Because the cursed closed the way for her. Something she neglected to share.”

Silence inched around them. Finally, Wrathion, his face a little flush, spoke.

“I didn’t speak to an Old God,” he said stiffly.

“No, maybe not,” Sabellian said. “But you can’t deny this is all They would have wanted.”

A flash of anger cracked over the boy’s face. “You’re the one who insisted we do this in the first place!” he said again, and his voice echoed and bounded along the walls. “Or are you choosing to forget how I was the one unsure about inviting an entire host of rogue dragons without plan?” He crossed the room, closed the distance between them, face fixed in an accusatory glare. “And if you’re going to be the pessimist, then I suppose I’ll have to be the optimist! You can do the worrying for the both of us. I know what I felt, and it wasn’t corruption. Go grump up there, go scare the others, go corral them, waste time, and I’ll try to figure this out. Get things done.”

She cannot save you.

Sabellian took a breath.

Shame filled his lungs like polluted air. He was not sure if it had been Wrathion reminding him, or perhaps the derision that it was to be the boy who would “get things done,” but something did stall his anger, and his mind grew calm and bleak.

N’Zoth was getting to him.

“My worries outrun my patience,” Sabellian said. “Forgive my… paranoia.”

Wrathion raised his eyebrows. Some of the anger left his face.

“There is nothing to forgive,” Ebonhorn said. “It’s dark news. Frustrating news… we’re on our own, and darkness grows closer.”

“I’ve always been on my own,” Wrathion said. “I’ll be fine.”

“I only wish she could have explained more,” Ebonhorn said quietly, his eyes creased in concern. “About just why she allowed this to happen. It’s impossible for her not to have realized it would have…”

The look on Wrathion’s face mirrored those thoughts.

Ebonhorn was right: she had to know this would happen.

So why?

Why bring them, when she would be blocked?

Azeroth had power beyond comprehension; he’d felt it, even in a vision.

Unless, of course, her thoughts were infected. Unless, of course, she was being controlled. All without her realizing anything was wrong.

Her heart is a crater, and we have filled it.

Titans! He’d just had those thoughts. Over and over they came, over and over like Vaxian’s sobbed apologies. He felt more trapped then ever.

Hope. Hope. He pushed the dread side, but felt it claw and stick to the edge of his mind, a flotsam.

Too many pieces - not enough to know for sure.

And Vaxian…

N’Zoth may have really freed him. And with Azeroth barred away, what could she do?

It came down, in the end, to Azeroth’s sanity.

“We must have some hope,” Ebonhorn rumbled.. “And there is no need to be alone, Wrathion. Can your Blacktalons infiltrate the others, and perhaps see what they might know?”

The prince shook his head. “No. Whatever charm or hex Seldarria had set in the Mountain before has been reestablished in the caves they’ve chosen. They can’t get past without being too confused and disoriented.” He looked at Sabellian. “But pretend all is well, uncle,” he said. “You continue bullying the guests, and meanwhile… I’ll sort his out. Clearly she wanted me to.”

Or it’s something to distract you with -

Enough.

He felt like he was chiding one of his children - and he might as well have! The back of his mind quaked like a frightened child, looking at every moving shadow and word like another new monster. N’Zoth had brought it to the forefront, yanked it forward.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Sabellian said.

“Oh, and, uncle,” Wrathion said, “you really should have warned us about your plan to kill the others.”

“I didn’t plan it,” he said dismissively. “But it had to be said.”

Wrathion made a sour face. “Let’s just hope it hasn’t stirred the pot any worse. Though I know it has.” He waved his hand toward the entrance. “Go ahead, go on. I have work to do.”

  ---

  After some time, Wrathion was alone. He’d sent Ebonhorn off to check on the other dragons, and though it was an actual request, he wanted to be alone.

Wrathion narrowed his eyes.

“My uncle is hiding something.”

Left looked at him.

“What?”

Wrathion shook his head.

“Something seemed off about him,” he said. “Jumpy. Nervous.”

“Mm.”

“Yes, Left, I agree.” He hummed and rubbed his goatee. “Something has him doubting all of a sudden. And it’s more than just what Azeroth had to say. Something shook his belief. His hope.”

And to think he believes Azeroth is in league with the Old Gods! The timing was unfortunate, and the points he’d made logical enough, but Wrathion wasn’t about to throw all his hope into the chasms of the mountain. Azeroth was too powerful to be swayed that easily.

“Trail him for me,” he said. “See what has him second-guessing.”

  ---

Sabellian dug his claws into the dirt and closed his eyes.

Silence. Stillness. The earth lay as sturdy and truthful as his own feet. The longer he stood there, the more the earth was like an extension of his palms. Out and out they stretched, spanning cracks and lava and boulders. With his eyes closed he felt like the earth itself, the great span of it laying still beyond him.

He bent his head and forced his thoughts further.

The cave. Think of the cave. The control. The rush of motive. Intent. The clear joining of his thoughts with the earth, as for one moment he became it and it became him.

If he moved on of his paws, would the earth shake a mile away, or lift with it? It felt as if it might, connected so.

Did Father feel this in every step?

The thought was a thunderclap, startling his concentration. His paws were only his paws again, and the dirt just dirt. He growled softly and flexed a claw.

This self-doubt would doom them all.

And so much of it!

I suppose that comes from speaking with N’Zoth and a World Soul!

He shook himself out and took a couple steps back. The dirt lay raked with streaks of disturbed tracks: other places where he’d paced. After checking on Vaxian - still sleeping - he’d come down here to try centering himself.

With the earth.

Laughable. A month ago, he would have balked at the idea - this stupid idea, laughable idea, what a fool -

Enough. Again and again his mind returned to the same circle. Did Father do this? Is Azeroth corrupt? Is N’Zoth pulling all the strings? Am I being played for a fool? I am a fool, to turn to the earth -

And on and on and on…

He was so used to being in control, and now all this, all these conflicting pieces…

He stopped at an undisturbed area and closed his eyes again. He sent his focused inching forward.

Clear. Clear. Only him. Nothing else. No Azeroth. No N’Zoth. Just him, alone, focusing along the heat and dirt.

His thoughts began to quiet.

Just him.

He breathed. Felt. The awareness of the earth began to curl back.

Breathe.

No thoughts of warring gods. No thoughts of trickery. No thoughts of being lost at sea, torn back and forth by two waves.

It had been hard, on Outland, but not as hard as this. He had known sureties on Outland: he had known the threat of the Gruul, the hatred of mortals, the fuel of revenge. He had known their sanctuary would one day be destroyed, and them along with it. He had known his children, which he had once seen as war dogs, were now his one reason for living. He had known his whole life had been a lie. He had known that they were alone.

And such things he had been able to plan around. Such things, he had been able to prepare for.

But this - this great and awesome thing he had stepped in, this clashing of powers - this was something else.

Too many moving pieces. Too many half-truths, half-lies, and promises - promises that should have been empty but were kept by the greatest enemy of his life.

I am not their puppet.

He pulled his focus inward, felt the thrum of the earth beneath his feet.

A puppet. Yes, that’s what he felt like. N’Zoth was using him to try to get to Wrathion and Ebonhorn, for the grand prize. Azeroth was using him to alleviate her guilt for failing his Father and all the others.

I am not a puppet.

Sabellian opened his eyes, and the surface of the world grew taut around him. It was like looking through a lens, one tinted with a golden glow, the surface vaguely fuzzy, heavenly.

He was not a piece for N’Zoth to set. Or even for Azeroth, for her to fuel the guilt in her heart.

I am myself.

I am here for what matters.

He thought of his children at home. He thought of the children he’d lost. He thought of the children here, the ones under the thrall and the others who were questionable.

Family was all he’d had when he’d regained sanity, there in that broken world, thirty years ago. Family was his sole purpose.

He was here for them.

Not for Azeroth. And certainly not for N’Zoth.

This power was for them.

This world would be theirs.

The ground hummed. He breathed out, felt the smoke curl from his nose.

Maybe there was something to this.

He closed his eyes and chuckled.

Meditating! His children would giggle at him for doing something like this, their wound-up Father digging into the earth and breathing and thinking.

But he felt better. There lay a lightness in his chest, a sureness, which he hadn’t felt in - too long to say, and even realizing that was a sudden understanding. Maybe not since they’d left Pandaria. Maybe not since speaking with the White Tiger.

I am not a puppet.

“You’re glowing!” The dream crashed around him. Sabellian jumped. The world fell dull and smokey, the crisp edges snapped back. He whirled his head around, nostrils flared, to find Jacob frozen in place near the lava pool. “I’m sorry,” he said, eyes wide like saucers. The drake dug his talons into the earth, but it was the only movement he saw: the boy was even stiller than the lava, which bubbled and churned in slow, easy movements. “I was only walking with Ruby and we saw you and I thought something was a little off -”

“Ruby?” Sabellian shifted his weight, pulled his claws close to stand high and straight. He glanced toward Jacob’s right, and there she came, slinking from behind the pile of boulders near the lava pools. Her wing dragged in the dirt and left a trail of disturbed earth.

How long were they watching me? His skin prickled with anger. “Our apologies,” Ruby said. “We were just walking by.” She nudged Jacob with her nose, but the drake remained frozen. Frowning, she looked back at him. The dimness in her right eye felt far more potent in the smoke here, her left glowing amid it while her right was hardly visible. “What were you doing?”

“Nothing you should worry yourself about,” he drawled, and shifted his body to face them. At last Jacob moved, snapping up to attention and smacking a paw on the dirt, as if he were saluting.

He eyed the drake. The thing was skinny, but had the makings of a Deathwing descendant: the wide shoulders, the thick-boned tail, the large paws. He looked too much like Onyxia for his tastes.

“You need to remember to act like a dragon, here, lad,” he said. “You’re no longer expected to act like a human guard.”

Jacob nodded absently. His fins bobbed up and down, up and down. “Yes, sir. I mean - yes. Should I still call you sir? I heard someone else call you sir.”

“Sir is fine,” Sabellian rumbled. “Don’t think too hard about it.” As if he would think hard at all.

Ruby looked at the ground by Sabellian’s feet. The grooves. Sabellian almost had half a mind to move and cover them with his paws, but doing so would be a childish thing, covering up a toy he wasn’t supposed to play with.

“I didn’t expect visitors,” Sabellian said. “You were walking all the way out here?”

Ruby smiled. Something about the expression felt forced or even vaguely sly. “You don’t need to worry. We weren't trying to spy on you.”

Sabellian grunted. “Even if you were, I assure you you wouldn’t find much, other than an old dragon alone with his thoughts.”

“Everyone is alone with their thoughts along the mountain,” she said. “It’s why we took a walk.”

“I gave them a lot to think about,” Sabellian said dryly.

“How’s Wrathion?”

“Well,” he said. “A headache.”

“A large headache.”

He snorted. “I’m afraid the boy has a host of afflictions. You get used to them coming and going.”

Jacob flexed his front paw. “I don’t know how he can already turn into a human. He’s not even my age! I couldn’t turn into a human until I was, hm, maybe five years old, and even then I was almost a drake and -”

“Was this in Dustwallow?” His alone time gone, Sabellian leaned in to the conversation. And it might just get them to know better. Such a thing might help his cause.

If only he was good at getting to… know people. Getting them to talk. There’d been a reason Onyxia and Nefarian had been chosen over him to meddle in mortal world, and him in the battle arena.

Jacob blinked at him. “Yes, sir. I hatched there with the rest of my - hmm.” He squinted. “Thirty-one siblings.”

Thirty-one! He’d forgotten how many eggs Onyxia could have at once.

And now, there remains only one.

“Until one day Mother had to go to Stormwind forever and she took me and some others. Then we went to Stormwind and ate some of the old guards so we could -”

“Dustwallow is a lonely place,” Ruby interrupted gently. “And was too swampy for my tastes. I don’t know how Onyxia and the others dealt with all of that grime and muck.”

“Oh I didn’t mind it at all,” Jacob said. “The mud was sticky but you could trap animals in it then eat them.”

Sabellian grunted softly. “Lonely is good for a broodmother. She raised hundreds of her whelps there, unencumbered. Until she gave herself away.”

Ruby glanced at him sidelong. “I know.”

“I really can’t believe your her brother. My uncle,” Jacob butt in. “She never said you glowed, though. She said you spat acid out of your teeth. And that it was unhygienic and how she was surprised you hadn’t choked on it. I always wondered how you did that, but not how you didn’t choke on it, I always wondered how you didn’t die. From the poison.” A pause. “The poison in your mouth.”

Sabellian blinked, taken aback. Onyxia told him that? “I… yes. I’ve ingested so much over the years, I’m immune to most poisons.”

Ruby glanced at the tracks in the ground again.

“What were you doing over here?”

“I told you it doesn’t concern you.”

“Most things here do concern me,”  Ruby said. “I want to believe what you said on the mountain, but if even you’re going to keep things from us…”

Right to it, this one.

He glanced between them.

“I wasn’t communing with any terrible gods,” he drawled. “If you were wondering such a thing.”

“Could you do that if you wanted?” Jacob asked.

“I doubt it. And I never would.”

Ruby stretched out her maimed wing. It didn’t reach the full span and shook as she lifted it.

“You understand what I’m saying, Sabellian, all gentle conversation aside.”

“Weren’t we just talking about him coughing up poison? Was that gentle?”

Sabellian eyed Jacob for a moment before his eyes slid back to Ruby. He understood well. But would explaining it alienate them from him or make them trust him?

Titans! How did my sister do this so easily? Or the boy, for that matter?

Ten-thousand years and he couldn’t do this one stupidly easy thing.

“I was meditating,” he said at last. “I’ve had a lot to think about.”

“I didn’t know meditating made you glow,” Jacob said. “Though, you know, the pandaren at the lake do it all the time, and sometimes they hover. Can you hover?”

“The glow was… unintentional,” Sabellian rumbled. “The earth tends to make me do so, at times, for reasons beyond my understanding or enjoyment.”

Ruby stared at him.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a dragon use the earth,” she said.

“Believe me,”  Sabellian said, “it’s a new process for me.”

“Like a shaman? They practice at the lake, too,” Jacob said.

“I’m afraid the only shaman here is Ebonhorn - Ebyssian - and whatever spirit Ophelion has trapped in his necklace.”

“So there might be some truth to the Earthwarders,” Ruby said, smiling briefly.

“Hardly,” Sabellian said, scowling. “But there’s nothing wrong with using every tool to my advantage.”

“ Every tool?”

Something about the way she said it made him wonder. He tilted his head.

“Some are better left alone.”

“Maybe so.” She sat and nodded toward the mountain peak. “I was surprised what you said. I think most of us were. I came expecting you to want what the others did.”

“And that’s not you want.”

“Not yet,” she said dismissively. “But you aren’t what I remembered.”

A coldness fell over him.

“I didn’t think we had met before.”

“I don’t think we ever really did, officially,” she said, not unkindly. “I was a striker in your battalion until my injury.” She twitched her wing. “During the Red Dragonshrine raid.”

Images of terrified Red whelps flagged his eyes. He blinked them away.

“Yes. I recall that being a more… violent assault.”

“Hmm,” was all Ruby said. Then: “So, no world domination, this time?”

“No. And hopefully the other fools will realize as much is certain death.”

“I don’t know if I trust you.”

Jacob glanced at her, bug-eyed.

“If you trusted me now after serving under me then, I would think you a fool.”

She nodded. Again she glanced at the gouges in the dirt, and again she glanced back at him.

“Might I ask you something?”

“Within reason.”

“How did you change so much, and so quickly? I recall a bloodthirsty lieutenant, bent on destroying everything in our way, clad in armor and hundreds of boiling poisons. Now you proclaim a gentler path, one without our… “cause…” and do earthly meditation.”

“Dragons change,” Sabellian said. “Though places help.”

“Outland has many places to hide,” Ruby said, looking at him intently. She understands. She knows what I say. “I considered going there, at times.” Then she nodded. “It’s a welcome surprise, then. I’ll have to wait and see if it sticks.”

“I suppose we all do.” He thought of his pendant. “Ruby, you did not have to come here. Why did you? What do you want here?”

She laughed airily. “I did have to come here. It’s hard to just deny Deathwing’s son, even if I am a world away.” She paused, her face growing thoughtful. “I guess a life would be welcome,” she said. “But not a life I’ll immediately throw away.”

“Then I doubt you’ll be helping the stubborn lunatics.”

“No. If I wanted a life of death, I would not be living in the Storm Peaks.” She lifted her maimed wing. “And a maimed dragon like me has little to do in war.”

“There is more to Black Dragons’ madness than war. There is manipulation.”

She smiled.

“Trust me,” she said. “If I wanted to do something, I’d have done it far before.”

“You’ll have to forgive me if I say I can’t trust you,” he replied. “Just as you can’t trust me. You can be here now, gathering information for the others, and may go back now to tell them of my new tool.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But that’s alright if you don’t trust me. I didn’t expect any different.”

“Wow,” Jacob said. “You two talk like the Nobles. Always going around and around and around one another.”

Sabellian snorted. “A good way for us to fit in with mortals, boy.”

“Oh. Right. Huh. That makes sense. Did we copy how the Nobles talk or did they copy how we talk? I think -”

“Jacob. How about you, lad? What do you want?” Ruby asked.

“Right now I think it’d be very cool to see my uncle do some earth things, or spit poison out of his teeth.”

“No. I mean here. We were called here, but what do you want? For your future?” Sabellian pressed.

“Oh.” A pause. “I don’t know, I usually don’t think that far. But I guess it’d be nice not to die, so maybe what my uncle wants. What you want.”

“Have the others asked you this, Jacob?” Ruby asked.

“No. I think they forgot about me, really, because I stand so still, and if it’s one thing I’m good at its being still and watching things, because I’m a guard - I told you that, right? They never let me guard the Wrynns, though, which is kind of -”

“Boy.” A sudden thought occurred to him. Wrathion had said his Agents couldn’t spy on the others because of the hex.

Titans, was this so easy?

“Would you like a job?”

Jacob’s eyes lit up. “I can do a job.”

Ruby frowned.

“Why don’t you keep an eye on the others for me?” he asked. “Help Ruby and I. It would be helpful to know what they’re planning.”

Would this idiot actually turn out useful? Everyone else apparently discredited him. If Jacob could just do what he did best…

“Oh, I can do that,” he said. “It’s what I’ve been doing anyway. I’m really good at it.”

“Now, boy, if they say something strange, you should come to me right away. Do you understand?”

He nodded.

“Do you know what I mean by strange?”

“Oh, sure I do,” he said. “If they talk about trying to kill you or asking about a cult or talking about sacrifices -”

“Is this something you’ve already heard?”

“Oh, sure, I heard a lot of things. A couple of times.”

Sabellian moved close, and quickly. “What did they say?”

“Uh -” His eyes went white along the edges. “I don’t remember all of it, I wasn’t listening so much, just what I said, I wasn’t on the job yet -”

“Enough. Fine.” Sabellian took a step back. Jacob stood frozen, his maw stretched tight. “My… apologies. Yes. Those… those sorts of things are strange. Listen for those. And if they say anymore, you remember, alright?”

“You got it, Uncle. Now I’m on the job, I’ll remember everything. I’ll just treat you like the King.”

“Whatever works best, then.”

Jacob bobbed his head up and down. “I’ll go right now. Oh! Sorry, Ruby, is that okay? I know we were on a walk -”

“It’s okay, kid. Just be careful.”

Jacob nodded, turned, and shot off into the air.

I remember when I was that fast. Sabellian watched as the drake angled his way to the mountain in a learned, knowing swoop. He already knew where they’ve set up.

“You shouldn’t use him like that.”

Sabellian looked down at Ruby.

“We all have jobs to do,” he said, and for a moment stood starkly reminded of Azeroth’s spheres, a splintering of responsibilities. He didn’t like that. “I am only pleased he can do something.”

“Just be mindful of him,” she said. “He’s one of the scrambled ones.”

“The what?”

“The corruption has eaten away at him and left him scattered,” she said. “I’m not surprised you don’t know. Royalty like you always saw the best, and not the most broken.”

Irritation swept over his scales like a shudder from the cold. “I’ve dealt with my fair share of dragons, girl, and know more than you ever have.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But maybe not what you didn’t want to see, back then. Just remember we’re here and want things like you do. Try not to use us as all of those ‘available tools.’” She glanced at the earth. “And you and the Prince could do to be a little more honest, too.”

---

  The sun was nearly down by the time Sabellian returned to his cave.

His body ached. After Ruby had left, he’d thrown himself into training - uncaring who saw. It would come out eventually he had turned to using Earthwarding powers, and he had no wish to slink to some hidden, dark place to play with rocks in shadows’ company.

At least it was becoming a little easier. Now he was beginning to think of these powers as a tool to protect and not an extension of Azeroth’s will, he was beginning to grasp it more naturally, with less inhibitions. The fueling of doubt and shame remained, a flicker of dark light in his heart, but turning back to a power he had spent ten-thousand years hating, fearing, and trying to destroy… those flickers would be hard to dislodge, if ever able.

He trudged up the path. He was so sore, he felt like his body was turning to stone.

He shook his wings out as he entered the cave. Not facing the sun, it was a dark and black inside. He shifted into his human guise and groaned as he rolled his shoulders back. The cave was large enough to hold both him and Vaxian, but he was sick of his dragon form. Standing in his smaller frame might help lodge out the worst kinks.

Two red eyes watched him from the back of the cave.

He stopped.

“Boy. What are you doing in here?” He paused and narrowed his eyes.  No gentle sounds of sleeping rumbled back at him. “Where is my son?”

“He’s safe,” Wrathion said. “And so are the rest of us - no thanks to you.”

Sabellian waved his hand, and fire lit the pits of rock etched into the wall. The cavern lit up the cave in red, flickering hues, washing over them both.

Wrathion sat on the edge of a boulder, arms crossed, eyes fixed on him. His face was dark and unreadable.

Vaxian wasn’t there.

“What’s the meaning of this?”

Wrathion jumped off his seat and opened his arms wide. His face was flat, a mask of all-business, though his eyes had a hardened, angry cast, a sheen of blood red.

“When were you going to share about your brand new discovery?”

Sabellian went still. Part of him had known the moment he’d realized Vaxian wasn’t there, but -

He knows, but how ? Yet the second he wondered was the moment he knew. Anger smoked in his chest.

“You were spying on me?”

“I knew something was wrong after talking to you,” Wrathion said. “Something you weren’t sharing. So I had you followed. And aren’t I glad I did!”

“How dare you, you insolent little -”

“Hah! How dare I! You’re the one who kept this from us!” He approached Sabellian.

Sabellian growled.

“What did you hear?”

“Oh - I heard nothing. The Blacktalons trailing you heard enough, though,” Wrathion drawled, his eyes fixed on him. “Though Vaxian himself explained the rest.”

“If you hurt him for such things -” “He gave it up willingly,” Wrathion interrupted. “How he has ‘seen sense,’ as he put it. How he realized he had grown corrupt… and how he realized he isn’t anymore. Out of the blue! And how you hid him here, telling no one.” His face darkened. “My, isn’t that quite the comeback? Who would ever believe this corrupt dragon would grow sane just in time to weasel over to our side? What a miracle!”

Sabellian flexed his hand into a fist. “I had not utterly believed it, boy ,” he snarled. “I am not as naive as you may think I am in these things. Your vehemence alone is why I told no one. I wanted to test him for myself - in company he was comfortable with, if he truly was free.”

Wrathion sneered. “The simple idea of you actually wanting to test his truthfulness is naive enough, uncle! How does this make sense to you? How does a corrupt dragon wake up with no catalyst?”

Of course it sounded foolish to Wrathion: he did not know N’Zoth’s promise. But now he knew about Vaxian, and there was no going back. Sabellian would look a desperate father either way.

Unless he told the truth.

But how could he?

“Vaxian had many openings to kill me,” Sabellian said. “But he took none of them. And if he was corrupt? Then it would be a good time to question him on how the others’ planned to use him.”

Wrathion shook his head, his expression one of disbelief. “I knew going into this your children would be a weak point for us, but I never expected you to lean into it so easily! Maybe you didn’t utterly trust him, but you kept him here. You hid him from us. And you had plenty of time to tell us. But you didn’t, did you? I wonder why that is!”

“I told you why I hid him. Or are you on one of your ranting and raving fits again, where you talk and only hear the sound of your own voice?”

Wrathion bristled. “The fact remains, you lied to us. Aren’t we supposed to be allies? When were you going to share this newest miracle?”

“When I thought the timing was right,” Sabellian said. “There’s more about this you don’t understand.”

“Then tell me,” Wrathion insisted. “We are allies now. Anything we hide from one another is another arrow in the Old Gods’ quiver.”

Sabellian flexed his hands until his knuckles popped.

He sighed.

“N’Zoth spoke to me,” he said. Wrathion’s face fell. “You don’t need to be afraid: it was not from any corruption. Not mine, at least.” He gestured out to the cave opening. “It didn’t surprise me when you told me what Azeroth told you… because They had already told me.”

Wrathion was silent. His stare was, for a bleak moment, vacant and unseeing. Then he began to work his jaw, and he opened his mouth, where it hung open before any words left it.

“And you didn’t - how couldn’t you -” Wrathion opened and closed his mouth, making click-clack noises with his teeth. “N’Zoth spoke to you? The N’Zoth? Surely a nightmare - a figment -”

“No. It was N’Zoth.” Sabellian looked down at his hand. The smell of bodies, the decaying grass, the distant, alien buildings…

“They wanted me to trust Them,” he said. “So I might reconsider my allegiance. Vaxian was Their… gift.” He set his lips in a thin line. He’d been gullible to think Wrathion and the others wouldn’t have thought his sudden doubt in Azeroth particular; he should have reined his emotions in. As usual.

Wrathion stepped back and shook his head. “This… Titans! Sabellian, you should have told us!” He shot him a look full of sudden anger and betrayal. “ This important, and you keep it to yourself?! ”

“Why should I have told you? So you could grow more distrustful of me and mine?”

The dragon scowled. “I distrust you far more now than I would have before,” he said. “What did They tell you?”

“What Azeroth told you,” he said. “Bringing the other dragons here has given Them a foothold. One where They can easily manifest.”

And They want you.

If there he was one thing he still had to keep, it was that.

“They were trying to convince me Azeroth would be of no help,” Sabellian continued. “And only They had the power to free my children.”

“You couldn’t possibly believe Them.”

“I don’t know what to believe,” he said. “I don’t trust Them. I’m not that blind. But Azeroth is blocked to us, and she was the one who we were counting on. How can she heal if she isn’t here? The cursed will open the way… but have only blocked it!”

“I told you. She gave us a way -”

“A way which might not allow her to come, even then.” He sighed. “I know only Vaxian is here and claims sanity. I don’t know how. N’Zoth is playing Their hand to counter Azeroth's, and we are chess pieces on the board.”

“You shouldn’t have kept this from us,” Wrathion bit out. “We should have known N’Zoth is not only here but intimately watching!” He rubbed the side of his face, and for the briefest of moments an intense flash of fear coursed over his face. He swallowed and rolled his shoulders back, and the fear was gone. His acting had improved immensely. “This… this changes things…”

He looked up and caught Sabellian’s eyes, and the look between them was a lock, two great wills grabbing at the other. It felt physical, as if someone could reach out and feel the rope held taut between their gaze.

“That’s all They said to you.”

“Yes,” Sabellian lied. “They wanted me to trust Them. Vaxian was the first gift. That was all.”

Wrathion studied him. “You aren’t considering -”

“No,” he said, voice a snap, stiff. “I know not to trust such promises, and I will never give myself over to the Old Gods.” But that’s not the deal, is it? He pushed such thoughts aside. “But Azeroth… boy, even They thanked me for what we did, bringing all the dragons here. You must see why I was so shaken when you told me what she had told you. ”

The Black Prince scoffed and looked away. The tautness between them fell like a cut line. “You said as much in the cave. But if N’Zoth Themself is here and watching… Deathwing’s corrupter here… ” He paused and shook his head. “No. No. I know what I felt, Sabellian. I know what I felt. ”

They would go around like circles if they continued, so Sabellian dropped it. He was sick of going around in circles. “Where is Vaxian now?”

Wrathion cut him with a dark look. “I’m not about to up and tell you. Not after this!” The dragon crossed his arms over his chest, tilted his head up. “I’m not going to let your weakness break this down from the inside out. Apparently N’Zoth knows well enough where to hit you first.”

“My weakness -”

“Listen, Uncle. I don’t have such ties to your children. They know how to wiggle in and hit you. For all of us, don’t seek him out.”

Sabellian ground his teeth, but no matter the anger in his belly, he could not find fault in the boy’s reasoning. Perhaps the others - the newcomers - didn’t know the great and exploitable weakness which was his children. They could not yet use them against him.

But N’Zoth knew. N’Zoth’s blood pumped through his heart. N’Zoth was the Corruptor, the Manipulator.

He wasn’t a fool. He could trust nothing.

Not even himself.

He nodded slowly.

“Maybe you’re right,” Sabellian said. “My children are a weak point. Keep him from me.”

Wrathion raised his eyebrows, and his shoulders relaxed.

“You do understand why, don’t you? Anything They can do to lead us astray -”

“I know, boy. And such things are tempting, no matter all the warning signs.”

Because he knew, deep down, he would trade Wrathion and Ebonhorn for the freedom of his children in a heartbeat if he had no other choice.

“Boy. Don’t take this to mean I will let this pass by.” He approached. “Do not spy on me again. I freed you from my grasp for a reason.”

Wrathion looked a t him evenly. “Then don’t keep secrets. I think that sounds fair.”

Sabellian snorted. “For now, boy. For now.”

  ---

  It was a sound sleep he was roused from, which made him all the angrier.

The hand on his shoulder grabbed him like a threat, and Sabellian woke at once, his hand crunching onto the offender’s before he took a breath.

“Ouch! Ouch!”

Sabellian’s eyes focused, and Jacob’s pained, panicked face grew into focus.

“You idiot! What are you doing?”

“Ouch, ouch, ouch!”

Sabellian sat up and let go of the drake’s hand. The boy’s gauntlet was crunched and dented. He yanked it back.

“Aw, man. This is the third gauntlet I’ve destroyed this year.”

“Jacob, how did you get in here?”

“Oh, through the front entrance, sir,” he said, and pointed with his mangled gauntlet toward the opening of the cave, dark and black in the night sky.

“I meant who let you in.”

Jacob cocked his head to the side. “Nobody. I let myself in.”

Sabellian glanced out at the entrance as he stood up. Blacktalons were supposed to be stationed out there to guard entry.

Did the boy dismiss them?

Wrathion had left in a cold wake after Vaxian’s discovery. But no - if anything, the boy would have posted more, to make sure he wasn’t up to anything else - even though he’d threatened the Prince from further spying.

Maybe they’d allowed Jacob in to watch and listen in case he had secrets to share.

Or they just hadn’t noticed him.

Sabellian rubbed his eyes. “Then what’s so important?”

“Well, I was doing what you asked, sir. You said to come at once if I heard something strange.”

His sleep and irritation vanished at once.

“Tell me.”

“Seldarria was talking about that Cult again. It was called the Twilight Cult. She was talking about going to meet some people from that one.”

That worm.

“Are you sure?”

“Oh absolutely sir. When I’m on the job I’m on the job. The Twilight Cult, made up of a lot of hungry mortals, they can bring a lot of power and knock you down, or make you swayed. That’s what she said, sir, in her own words.”

“Jacob, where are they going to meet?”

“Out at Redridge, sir.”

“When?”

“Oh, she already left.”

“ When ?”

“About half an hour ago.”

“Why didn’t you come get me sooner?”

He paused and bit his bottom lip. “I forgot where your cave was, sir, and there’s a lot of them, I got lost.”

He rumbled and moved past the drake. “I’ll fetch the boy’s lackeys - though they’ve probably already heard. Be prepared to tell them where to go, nephew. And don’t mess this up.”

  ---

They were on their way in twenty minutes.

It was nearly impossible to catch up with a full-grown dragon - especially one who had an almost hour head start.

Wrathion hoped, at least, they could arrive before the meeting began, or not miss too much.

One could only hope.

He bent down low on the gryphon, the wind shearing into his eyes and ruffling the black feathers on the mount’s neck. Flanking him rode Left and Rexxar on Leokk, and on the other side, another twin of Agents on an ebon gryphon like Wrathion’s.

The intimacy would hopefully be a plus, not a hindrance. But stealth was their specialty.

They would not get caught.

If they did - speed was something else they could do well, and the small numbers would allow them to escape, and quickly.

He banked the gryphon into a downward glide. They were approaching the band of mountains separating the Gorge from Redridge.

Though the gryphon had the camouflage to blend in with the night sky, they’d decided to stay low to the ground. They didn’t know if Seldarria and the others had posted Dragonkin guards along the mountains, and they would be looking up for flying dragons… not down.

Leokk took the lead as they passed through the Gorge and into Redridge. The blackened ground began to up into clay-red and the mountains around them grew rounder and smaller until even trees began to poke through and blossom green in the blackness.

The Twilight Cult. Wrathion gripped the reins tighter, the leather straps close enough to his face he could smell the oil. Seldarria and the others took Sabellian’s offer to the very reaches, didn’t they?

Left caught his eye and nodded. He nodded back. A small flick of the reins from Rexxar, and Leokk rocketed forward. The wyvern was the fastest, and they would do a quick scope of the place.

Jacob seemed harmless enough, but with the new knowledge with Azeroth and N’Zoth, they couldn't be too safe. The boy could be a talking piece for Seldarria or Serinar - or N’Zoth Themself - and lead them into a trap.

N’Zoth.

A deep weight had yet to leave him. Not since Sabellian. It felt childish of him - because they were only the most tenuous of allies - but he felt… betrayed. Something so important, so necessary, and he had kept it from them.

N’Zoth had spoken directly to him - had showed Their direct involvement - and Sabellian had said nothing.

Sure. He could understand Sabellian not wanting to say anything for fear they could think him insane like the rest. And true, maybe there was some suspicion.

Bur more, now, than he would have before.

At least he’d agreed to hide Vaxian. Wrathion had expected more anger - more of a fight - but thankfully the Blacktalons posted at the cave mouth hadn’t been needed.

Sabellian’s children were their greatest weakness. He’d known that going in - but if N’Zoth Themself…

N’Zoth Themself.

It was one thing, to speak to Azeroth. It was another to know N’Zoth was watching. Not just the amorphous idea of corruption.

The very source of it.

Here.

Watching. Meddling.

He swallowed down a shudder.

However much of him had accepted this next gambit as the highest danger - the last notch of the ladder - the thing which could change everything… nothing could really prepare him for the actuality of what loomed before them. A coming clash of a ten-thousand year old storm -

And the enemy had showed its face.

Now - now, seeing the darkness on the horizon, seeing is claws begin to grip onto any weakness…

Now it was truly real.

Wrathion and the others alighted near a large willow tree along the side of a hill. It wasn’t the highest crest, but they’d still be able to see anyone coming, and no one would see them stark on the horizon.

Anything?

As before, the bloodgems worked when off the Mountain, and as Wrathion sat up in the saddle, he reached out to Left in the darkness. Below, distant dots of farmland rolled around the hills and mountains, and crests of human towers and ancient fortifications from the time of the First War stood between them as sentinels. To the east, he could just make out lights from some hidden town - Lakeshire, surely. Though he couldn't see the buildings themselves, the mere suggestion of it pulled at him.

Did he miss mortals that much?

Maybe so. Or at least his Tavern. At least his champions. That life felt so far gone, relics like the distant towers. His plans with the Alliance and Horde, even moreso. He smiled to himself in the dark. What would Anduin Wrynn think if he found out he’d planned on backing the Horde?

Before all this Siege business, of course. Now the Alliance could dismantle and conquer the Horde and rise as the chosen warriors against the Legion -

But he was getting ahead of himself.

Azeroth had given him the role against Sargeras’s Burning Crusade, but they had other things to do, first.

They’re here , came Left’s voice. Where Jacob said they’d be.

Wrathion smiled. Excellent. As surprised as he’d been to learn of the “Stormwind Guard’s” new job, it had paid off, and quickly.

He nodded to the others, and they took off again.

There’s Dragonkin guards , Left said as they headed east. Take the southern curve along the mountains and stay as low as you can. They’re stationed on the higher ridges.

They passed the towers and headed around the shadowy crooks of farmland. A farmhouse’s lonely oil lantern lit their way in the dark for half-a-heartbeat before it vanished beyond the hills and it was only them and the moonlight again.

Hurry, my Prince. They’re starting.

Wrathion spurred the gryphon onward. The beast grunted; its wings peaked up. Thankfully the breed was bred for its silence. And being expensive, apparently, considering how much he’d had to dig down into his cofers for the things.

The meeting, Jacob had told them, was to take place at the abandoned town at the eastern edge of Redridge, in a forgotten place where no mortals came close.

There, Prince Wrathion , one of his Agents said, and motioned toward their right flank. What he’d taken for a circle of destroyed hills was actually a field of buildings, toppled and littered along a great circle of mountain. Along a strip of cliff, Left and Rexxar crouched in wait, using a natural curve of rock as cover from the town below.

Wrathion and the others spiralled down and landed nearby. He slipped off the gryphon and hurried to Left’s side. Rexxar was looking over the edge, back to them.

“Three from the Cult,” Left said, and together they joined Rexxar by the rock wall and peered over. “And Seldarria is alone, beyond her Dragonkin guards.”

The town was hardly an “abandoned town” at all, but a dilapidated ruin. The buildings lay in piles of rotting wood and brick. Some structures remained as only skeletons of the foundation, and the only thing standing was a long, stone building with a high steeple at its entrance.

In front of its ruined stairway stood Seldarria, her neck poised high and serpentine. In the darkness, her scales shown an inky velvet purple. Flanking her were two Dragonkin guards.

“ -travel quickly,” she was saying to the retinue standing before her.

Three, as Left had said. One stood in front of the rest. The mortal stood tall despite the hunch, and the cloak dragged long behind them. The others had similar clothes, but stood with less flash and grandeur.

“Out numbers span the Eastern Kingdoms, your Grace,” the lead cultist said. “We were ever at your disposal.”

Left had been able to use the charm, then: a common item which amplified sounds from afar. They sounded as if they were only feet away and not an entire field’s worth.

Seldarria smiled. “And how many are available to me and mind, Barthamus?”

The cloaked figure bowed his head.

“More than you may require,” he said. “If we may… your grace… the scope of your plan lays as a thin scope. How will this aid us?”

Seldarria laughed. It was a cackle, an amused wheeze. “Do you know where we stand, worgen?” She waved her claw at the ruins around them. “This… this is a legacy. A town which stood stalled than Lakeshire. And our army swept it off the face of this world. And here we stand, this place now our own, planning steps of darkness.”

“My dear, this has a wider scope than crushing traitors and the soft-hearted. When we retake control, our new age will begin anew, and I do assure you your masters will be very enthused of our work.”

Your masters, too . Wrathion pushed himself closer. This wasn’t good. Left caught his eye.

“I am pleased to hear it,” Barthamus said. “Any victory for the masters is one we shall readily aid.”

Seldarria moved closer, he tail dragging behind her. “Darkness for darkness, my new friend. Show me your end of our deal, then, or we have no business here.”

Again the figure bowed, but this time they turned and raised their arms wide. The other two joined him. Their arms stretched high, reaching toward the moon, their long sleeves falling and catching at their elbows. Tattoos inked along their exposed arms: alien, swirling symbols which made his skin crawl.

“I don’t like this,” Rexxar said. “It reminds me of the fel-users in Draenor.”

Despite the distance from them, a wave of something like a cold humidity swelled over his face. He wanted to pull back, but something stirred between the cultists.

Their hands and exposed arms grew a haze of black-purple.

Between them, the ground began to bubble. Bubble. The haze around them lowered, moved like a snake toward the dirt writhing in front of their feet, and as it touched, the ground began to rise.

But it was not ground at all. It was not dirt; not rock. What grew from this bubbling mass was fleshy, a mound of purple-black matter.

Unnatural. Wrong. Unnatural. Though it had no shape or form as it grew and grew higher and higher, Wrathion felt as if he looked into the structure of a nightmare. His mouth grew dry. His heart thundered. The sky blackened around them.

Seldarria’s eyes were fixed on the column of flesh, and her expression was hungry.

“Yes… yes ,” she hissed. “ Yes! ”

The form began to take shape as the glow around the cultists’ and their tattoos began to grow more vibrant. Two massive trunks extended from its sides, and two more from the bottom. The ones along the boxy torso grew long and sinuous: tentacles, thick like tree trunks. Claws grew from the elephant-like bottom legs. A hunch of a head extended from the shoulders, and from this grew long tendrils and in the center, two yellow, evil eyes.

The Faceless One stood an easy twelve feet tall, and as it extended its tentacled arms, the cultists stumbled back, drained.

"Gul'kafh an'qov N'Zoth," Barthamus said, and the worgen’s hood came down as he gazed to his summoned monster. His eyes were alight with the same terrible madness in Seldarria’s, and black ichor dripped from his grinning maw. “ Gul'kafh an'qov N'Zoth !”

“Ancestors help us,” Rexxar rumbled, and as Wrathion began to pull away, bile in his throat, Seldarria turned her head and, from a hundred feet away,  fixed her eyes on him and grinned a maddened grin.

[favoritedragonprince]

Sabellian, Ebyssian and Wrathion having their first family reunion.

Ebyssian (to the other two): Oh brother/niece I am so glad I finally found you, I know you may not trust me, but fear not! I'm just like you, free of my fathers corruption and alone in this vast world.

Wrathion: -not trusting at all-

Sabellian: I'm corrupted, I'm mean, fight me.

Shut up Sabellian you are a big softie. Also GIVE some love to my Tauren boy he is too pure for this world.

[picantenacho-blog]

Two cuties featuring a dead af Anduin.