#eyyyyyy as a reminder WoS will be published the first of every month

[yulon]

The Wrath of Sabellian (pt. 41)

Book Three: Trial of the Black King

Things aren’t all as they seem in Blackrock.

The blast sent them reeling back.

Heat and the roar of the explosion smashed into him. Something hard hit his shoulder. He grunted, turning away with the pain. Noise crashed and smoldered around him.

The ringing in his ears swallowed the passage of time and movement. Dead? No, he was in too much pain for death.

Thud thud. Thud thud.

He opened his eyes.

The world hazed around him; smoke and ash gushed around the room, curled around his legs.

He’d landed hard on his back. With a groan, he forced himself to sit up. Pain thudded in his shoulder, but it was secondary - secondary to watching the supply nook. His vision began to stabilize, and with it, he watched the flames gush from the room. More flames and smaller explosions boomed inside as the heat set off more flammable reagents. Something like lightning flashed within, and a low, ominous groan, the crackle of breaking crates and flasks, emanated from the doorway like the sound from a monster’s open gullet.

“Why,” groaned a voice behind him, “does everything go wrong when you’re around?”

Sabellian glanced back. Wrathion was sitting up, cringing. Ash fell around them like snow. It coated the two of them - no, three, there was Left, struggling to her feet - already in a fine powder.

He stared at the boy. The room no longer rang, his eyes no longer shook - he remembered. Someone tugging on him.

“Boy. Why did you do that?”

Wrathion rubbed his head and looked over. A gash lay streaked on his temple. Blood matted his bangs. He blinked. “I’m no good with explosives. If you really think -”

“You just saved my life. Or from an unfortunate maiming.”

Wrathion blinked again, slowly.

He looked at the door, then at him, then back again.

“I certainly did, didn’t I?” He opened his mouth, closed it, and frowned. His brows furrowed. “Hm.”

An unfortunate answer. Sabellian grunted as he forced himself to stand. He brushed the ash from his robes. The snake heads along his shoulderpads guttered back to life with a hiss, and their fel-green orbs cast an ill glow on the flames. Heat crackled around them.

Left was already on her feet. Ever a hare, that one, always moving and fidgety. She helped Wrathion up. Beyond the gash the boy was relatively unharmed. And so was he. Except his shoulder. He glanced around. Ah - there. A piece of the stone archway, next to where he had landed. It must’ve blown back into him with the flames.

Lucky. Too lucky. As the flames roared, he noted the rest of the debris, littered around them. Shards of glass, larger rock, even some nails that had been blown out of the foundations. He shook his head.

Massively lucky.

“What’d you see?” Sabellian approached the alcove slowly. A foul, bitter smell rolled out from the smoke.

“Trip-wire,” Wrathion said. He joined him. The heat and dying flames reflected, opaque, in the red of his eyes. He pointed to the side. A small, almost imperceptible wire lay snapped near the entrance.

“You saw that,” Sabellian said, disbelieving.

“I trained with rogues. Of course I saw it.” He looked around, squinting. “But that’s the only trap. Hmm.”

“Who knew we would be down here?” Left asked. Her crossbow was loaded, and she looked at the corpse of Maloriak as if he had something to do with it.

Sabellian and Wrathion glanced at one another.

“Seldarria,” Sabellian rumbled.

He thought back to when he had asked her for the stores. She’d seemed distracted, impatient for him to leave.

“And there’s reagents for- ”

“Yes, yes, yes! Now go on.” And then she’d turned and hastily retreated back into her cavern.

If she had set up the trap, she hadn’t done that much to assure he would fall into it.

Was it a trap left over by Maloriak? By adventurers? Something in his gut told him no. He rumbled, rubbed a hand over his aching shoulder. A shelf gave way inside the supply closet and smashed in a heap of char and flame.

Only one way to find out.

He waved a hand over the alcove. A tracking spell swept from his fingers, light blue and airy but intent, a bloodhound stiff-nosed to the ground. The smoky tendrils coiled around the wire, the destroyed door frame, the pieces of rubble.

The feeling that pulsed back wasn’t the energy he expected. In fact the energy went beyond him. A trail of the light-blue mist hummed into existence before them. It snaked around Maloriak, through the room, and back into the core of the lair.

A power source. The one that had fueled the explosion.

“What?” Wrathion prompted.

“Come.” Sabellian moved past the whelp and his orc and made his way back into the lair. The trail hovered twinkling in the dark; it coiled around to another of the chambers, its contents hidden in the dark.

Sabellian’s shoes clicked hard and clipped on the stones. Every bit of him was on alert, open to attack. On edge before? No, he was on edge now, truly, eyes narrowed and hands twisting back and forth against his sides.

He’d almost just died. A trap set just for them. He knew it. This was no ancient thing left behind. The coincidence would be insurmountable.

But Seldarria? She had only just known they were going into the Depths. No conceivable notion surfaced that could explain how she could learn they were going and then bolt down to set the trap. They would have run into her, and she couldn’t move so fast.

Anger built in his belly.

Someone had tried to kill him. Again.

They paced up the small set of stairs leading up into the chamber. Left stopped, crossbrow raised.

“Wait,” she said. “I’ll scout it first.”

Sabellian grunted, but stopped. Left looked at Wrathion. The boy nodded, but only after a moment’s hesitation.

The orc disappeared. The smell of her distanced into the chamber.

“If someone wanted to kill us down here,” Wrathion drawled, “they’re going to be surprised to see us come back.”

“And if they were clever, they would act surprised to find someone tried to kill us.”

Wrathion studied the chamber. The trail continued to hover before them, motionless and glowing in the dark.

“Seldarria,” he said at last. “She seemed the most harmless of them all, didn’t she? A little bit… hm… airy.”

Sabellian grunted. “And?”

“Why would she want to kill us?”

Sabellian raised an eyebrow and looked down at him. “The same reason the dragonkin attacked us. We’re not wanted here.”

Wrathion’s expression didn’t change, but there was a shift in his eyes, a glitter of something. “The corruption?”

“Yes. The corruption. Why am I the one suggesting that, and not you?”

Wrathion said nothing. He shifted his weight from side to side.

“They didn’t attack us on sight like the dragonkin.”

“No, they didn’t.”

Wrathion turned to look at him. “So why did she attack us now?”

Sabellian rubbed his shoulder. The ache remained, a steady beat. No doubt for a while. “We’re alone, away from our allies. Away from my children. An easy execution without witnesses.” The orc had better hurry up. If he was in danger, his children were too. Rexxar as well. He crossed his arms over his chest and tapped his foot. Lead him away, kill him, kill his children. Cut out the “traitors,” as the dragonkin had called them.

But Seldarria had been caring for Vaxian.

Interesting.

Wrathion set his lips in a thin line and looked away. His eyes reflected his troubled thoughts.

“What are you thinking, boy?” Sabellian prodded. The whelp wasn’t rising to the corruption bait as easily as he usually did, all foaming at the mouth.

“Nothing,” Wrathion mumbled.

He glanced sidelong at the pit. Left appeared in a snap of smoke in front of them. Sabellian jerked back with a hiss.

“Sir. Come. Hurry.”

Wrathion raised his eyebrows. Sabellian didn’t like the look on her face - something like surprise and disbelief.

She turned and hurried up the stairs. The two followed.

The room was built in the same frame the other had been: all square and large and roomy. It smelled of forgotten rot and bone, a dreadful mix of damp and dry death that even he had to choke back a sudden gag. A large wall split the room in half, and doors bolted into the sides. It was a stable; a holding area; a prison.

His stomach churned. He could only imagine what had once been housed here. Kidnapped mortals, failed experiments, beasts that would be ripped apart and stitched together again. This place, too, was a supply nook - just not of herbs and reagents, but of flesh and blood.

Some of the doors’ locks were open. Left beckoned them toward the nearest one. The trail ended there, and as they approached, dissipated into the darkness. Its work was done.

“In here,” the orc said, and gestured with her crossbow. The door was large enough to allow an elekk to easily pass through.

“What’s in it?” Wrathion eyed it nervously.

“Open it,” she said.

Sabellian kicked open the door.

Despite the size of the door, it was a small room, the ceiling low, cramped. The smell of rot was strong here, but so was the smell of hopelessness, like a sour feeling in the back of his throat. Hopelessness and heaviness. Many had died in here.

But not quite its new inhabitants. Not yet.

Chained along the walls, tethered against hooks and sconces and spikes, languished nether-drakes.

The nether-drakes. Sabellian recognized some of them from hunting trips in Outland. These weren’t just random dragons, plucked from the Void. These were the ones who had vanished when Pyria had gotten hurt.

They looked up. Their eyes shined dull in the feeble light, hollow and sunken. The darkness of the place was like the Void itself, punctured only by the natural glow of the nether-drakes’ bodies. But even so their glow was as dull as their eyes: a dying candle.

“Sabellian?” croaked one of the closest.

“Finally,” wheezed another, this one purple. She was hooked up to a series of tubes and metal frames; needles lay positioned the pierce her at the edge of the tubes, inches away from her flesh. “Someone’s found -”

“What’s he doing here?” another said. His eyes flickered to Wrathion.

Sabellian strode forward. He counted seven drakes in total.

“Who did this?”

“How do we know you’re not with them, too?”

Sabellian glanced deeper inside. Another drake lay off to the side. He was so pale, of so little glow, that Sabellian had not noticed him in his first count. Was he dead? No, there was a breath, shuddering and anguished. He looked like a salamander, all jelly of flesh.

“Someone just tried to turn us to ash,” Sabellian said. Well, he had had Pyria worked up against finding the drakes. Here they were. Easy. Wouldn’t she be happy. “No doubt the same enemy who did… this to you.”

Wrathion slipped past him and started untying the nearest drake’s chain. She hissed. The boy did not respond.

Left joined him.

The drakes watched this suspiciously, and only then did they speak.

“The Dragonkin ambushed us,” one said: the one chained to the tubes, the purple one. “They dragged us down here.” Every word sounded a struggle. Sabellian started to help the others untie the drakes. The chains lay cold in his hands; he wondered as to their enchantment.

“What’ve they been doing down here?” Wrathion squinted at the dull dragon.

“Draining us,” wheezed another, a blue. “Taking our energy away in those tubes.”

“And I was supposed to be next,” the purple said. She gestured with a claw to the vials around her, the needles.

“Please help Ralfas first.”

“They took almost all of his nether -”

“Who is this they?” Sabellian demanded.

“I think her name was Seldarria,” said a yellow. “That strange-looking dragonkin called her that.”

Seldarria. Seldarria. He growled and glanced at Wrathion. He gave a small nod without looking back.

I’m going to kill her. And that little runt of a dragonkin.

They freed most of the drakes before they spoke again. Those freed stretched, groaned as their joints popped. Already some of their glow had returned.

The nether must have fueled the explosion. The lightning energy that had popped from inside… of course.

“Is Pyria alright?” the purple asked.

“She was left behind,” Sabellian said. “Apparently they didn’t need anything from her.”

“But she’s alright?”

“She’s fine.” Sabellian knelt down to inspect the drained drake. Ralfas. The netherdrake didn’t look up at him despite being conscious. He was like a corpse, half a moment from becoming undead. He’d never seen a nether-drake so… transparent. Even corpses had more glow. If he squinted, he could make out the dragon’s bones, his flesh was so see-through.

“What is she using this energy for?”

“I don’t know,” the purple said. She padded over to Ralfas and lay near him. She set one of her wings along his side. A hum grew from her. Sabellian took a step back as lightning-like energy arced from her body and nestled into Ralfas’s. She grew duller, he grew brighter. “Neltharaku used to tell us that some had kidnapped us for our energy before.”

“Yes, the Black Dragonflight did,” Wrathion interrupted. “For the Twilight Dragonflight.”

Sabellian rumbled. “She would need subjects for making more Twilight. If that’s what she’s doing at all.”

Why? Why? He’d sensed no energy thrumming in the chambers, and though he had never experienced a Twilight dragon, he knew they exuded chaotic, almost void-like energies. There had been nothing like that.

And make more Twilight? Laughable. What, were the Old Gods so desperate for some scraps they could do with one or two misshapen Twilights? How diabolical.

“We hardly know anything about her,” Wrathion added. “Left. Send some Agents to scour for some… reconnaissance on our new friend.”

“Should we report this to those in the cavern?” Left asked.

“No,” Sabellian interrupted. “We keep this as quiet as possible.”

“Our Agents can set up a perimeter,” Left argued. “If this dragon tries anything -”

“Then she is welcome to try it,” Sabellian snapped. “We are going to go back and get my children. Then we are leaving.”

“What about us?” said a nether-drake, one who hadn’t spoken until then.

“You’re free, aren’t you? You can go.”

Wrathion widened his eyes. “We’re leaving? Now? But - she - but someone just tried to kill us! They’re harvesting nether energy!”

“All the more reason to leave!”

“Oh, so someone tries to kill you now, and this time you let it go!”

“Yes, just as you are now the most amicable of friends with a black dragon you barely know!” His voice, unbidden, rose to a shout. It echoed off the walls. He growled and forced his temper down. “I came here to fetch my children. Do you think I care about what’s happening down here?”

“Seldarria’s lackeys did hurt Pyria,” mumbled the yellow.

“Yes. And make no mistake, boy. I will be killing her,” Sabellian growled. “Before we leave.” He gestured loosely to the nether-drakes. “Stay here for now. Join us at Nefarian’s old throne plateau tonight.”

He turned and strode out. Wrathion caught up with him.

“Surely you’re being dramatic.”

“I’ve never been less so.”

“I don’t know about that,” Wrathion mumbled. Sabellian eyed him sidelong. The ex-Prince drew himself up. “I don’t know what Seldarria is doing either. But whatever it is, she tried to kill us to keep it hidden. Surely that must’ve been why. It makes the most logical sense.”

“And?”

“And whatever it is, she knows neither of us might approve, hm? So clearly -”

“We are not going to waste time snooping around for some dangerous secret.”

“It could be another Twilight clutch! Some experiment she’s setting to unleash on the nearby human or dwarven settlements!”

Sabellian grunted. “That has nothing to do with me,” he said. “If Seldarria unleashes what it is she’s doing, then it is not my problem.”

Wrathion stopped.

“For once,” he snapped, “Can you be a little less selfish?”

Sabellian narrowed his eyes.

He stopped and slowly turned around to face the young dragon. Wrathion had drawn up to his full height, and held his hands as fists to his sides.

“Selfish?” Sabellian repeated. “I’m selfish for caring for my family?”

“At the sheer extent you do, yes!” Wrathion insisted. “I know you well enough by now that if - Titans forbid someone isn’t apart of your approved circle of selflessness, everything and everyone else may as well be hot air!” He pointed at the nether-drakes, none of which were trying to politely look away. “We just freed them from being sucked just shy of their souls, and all you can think to do is run away?”

Sabellian growled. He approached Wrathion. The boy didn’t move or flinch.

“My family,” he growled, “is all I have left, and all I will ever have. There is no reason for me to care about Seldarria, or them, or the mortals that might be in danger.” He parted his lips in a scowl. “And don’t try and act like you are some pinnacle of goodness, boy. I recall you killing nether-drakes.”

“At least I’m trying to be better!” Wrathion exploded. “I’m not the self-centered relic who already thinks his life is over! And at least I’m not taking out my helplessness on everyone else!” Sabellian snatched Wrathion by the collar and yanked him close.

“I. Live. For my children,” he hissed. “I live to protect them from -nonsense like this.” He jerked his head in the nether-drake’s direction. “My life isn’t over unless they die. Why should I try to be better when I know what I am and what I’m going to do? I am going back up, getting my three children, and getting them away. If it makes me selfish -” He jerked Wrathion closer. “I. Don’t. Care.”

He threw Wrathion away. The boy stumbled back, caught himself.

“Don’t worry, boy. I don’t expect you to understand. You don’t have a family. Of course you cling to Azeroth so dearly. At least one thing on this world tolerates you.”

Wrathion snarled. Fire flickered against his fingers, but he could launch no attack: the Celestial Vow forbid him.

“I’m trying to do my duty to this world,” the whelp snarled. “I’m trying to protect her. Which is why we should investigate this -”

“Oh, shut up,” Sabellian said. “You want to feel like you’re worth something? Worthy of the Titans’ grand and noble duty?” He pointed at the pit, where his dead siblings lay. “That’s your reward. Do you think Azeroth saved them? Or my Father? Or me? No. She failed us.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that -”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure she assured you that it would be safe from what befell our kin. Just like she protected us last time.” He snorted. “Did she say that we could be saved now? She did, didn’t she? She gave you hope, perhaps. Something for you to cling to. It’s why you hesitated about Seldarria’s corruption before. My, how a conversation with a god can’t change one’s convictions. How enlightened and good you are. Did that little blond rub off on you too much?”

Wrathion ground his teeth.

“I want to help. Forgive me for not wanting to be like the rest of you.”

“You’re just like the rest of us,” Sabellian growled. “You can try to change, you can try to hide it or pretend you’re different, but you’ll always be a black dragon.” He pushed Wrathion away. “Just like me. Selfish. And if I am terrible and wrong for being selfish for my family, then so be it.”

He turned and strode down the stairs. “Come. We’re leaving. And you had better follow.”

---

Sabellian found Seldarria where he’d seen her lounging every hour: in front of her cave, dozing idly, head on her paws.

As he approached, he transformed down into his human form. The shift of energy caught her attention. She opened one eye and looked at him.

Nothing changed in her expression. No surprise. No fear. Just the same lazy, smug look.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re back.”

She craned her back back and yawned.

“I need to speak with you.”

“Oh, dear? About what?”

Sabellian nodded into the cave. Seldarria paused. She flicked her tail.

“In private.”

The dragon tilted her head at him. For only a moment there lay some unease in her eyes, but she sighed and then it was gone.

“Oh, alright,” she breathed. “But do make it quick. I’m the one who needs to go hunting soon, and I do need my rest for it. I really should have never trusted Serinar with such a simple task. He probably got himself captured again, the useless dolt. At least he has a nice set of fins to look at. Very curvy. No offense, yours are just much too stiff.”

It took every inch of his willpower not to just shift into his true form again and rip her tongue out.

Smoke gushed over her form and shrank down with a languid flourish. A human stood in her place, tall, dark-skinned, and a little plump. She wore a gown-like robe that even he was a bit jealous of: black silk and jewel-tones trimmed along the hem and sleeves. Some ceremonial armor lay as if forgotten on her shoulders and chest: a silver cut, emblazoned with symbols he didn’t know the words for.

Mortals always said it was hard to match a dragon’s face to their mortal guises’. Sabellian never understood why. She still had the same wide-set eyes, the small nose, the lazy smugness to her expression.

Then again, most mortals were stupid.

“Shall we?” she said.

Sabellian swept past her, into the dark of the cave. Another trap could lay within; an ambush; a Faceless One, for all he knew.

But he was prepared this time.

He waited until they were out of earshot, and far away from the opening of the cave that no one could see them inside. He turned at once on his heel to face her. She startled back.

Too slow.

He grabbed her by the shoulder and squeezed. Hard.

She yelped. Before she could pull away, he backed her deeper into the cave and smashed her against the wall.

“Thought you could get rid of me?” he growled, teeth bared. “Thought you were going to be clever?”

Seldarria’s eyes darted back and forth. Anywhere but him.

“I don’t know what -”

He smacked her back against the wall.

“I am not in the mood to play this game,” he snarled, inches away from her face. “Why did you try to kill me?”

Seldarria locked eyes with him at last.

“You’re here to ruin everything,” she hissed. “You and that murderer!”

The paranoia which had lingered in her eyes the first time they had come to the antechamber returned, all flashing and rabid. Her pleasantries were gone; her manner less refined. All it’d taken was a small chisel to break open the outer layer, and not even with a hard hit. More like a tap.

Her answer, though… the stupidest and most obvious answer she could have given. He growled. “I told you before and I will tell you again: I’m here for my children. If you had listened, and stalled your hand, then maybe you would be alive to see another day.”

“No!” she shrieked. Her fear returned, and she struggled against his hold. “Don’t kill me! You can’t!”

“Do you think I’m going to send the message that anyone who tries to kill me and harm my children are allowed to live?”He tightened his hold on her.

“You can’t,” she insisted. Only then, up so close to her, did it become obvious that though she kept glancing back and forth, eyes white and wide like a scared animal, she favored looking deeper inside the cave.

He narrowed his eyes. He’d said he didn’t care, and he still didn’t. But something about her responses, her desperation and body language, felt… familiar.

“What’s back there?”

“Nothing,” she whispered. She went still.

He pulled her away from the  wall and started pushing her deeper in the cave.

She said nothing. There were times where she tensed, like she was about to try to push him off or maybe shift into her true form, but he responded by growling and she would still. Unlike the boy, this dragon knew how to pick fights, and this was not a wise one.

They turned around a quiet bend. Inside lay a cavern with wide, smooth sides and a great heat blowing from a gap in the ceiling.

Sabellian stopped.

Titans help him.

“Whose are these?”

In the center, nestled in cave moss, were eggs. A dozen, maybe, their spikes already grown and glinting like polished stone in the heat.

“Mine,” she whispered. “And my mate is dead.”

Sabellian glanced at them all. They were older eggs, fall along in the shell if they had as much scabbing as he could see.

“Please ease my worries, then, Seldarria: you can’t possibly be using the nether on these. On your own eggs.”

“You found them?”

“Answer the question.”

“They’re sick,” she said. “They should be moving more. I can’t feel them moving as much as I should be.”

Sabellian shook his head slowly and glanced down at her. Her wide-eyed stare had returned, but now it took a sheen of new desperation, a sort of unseeing paranoia.

“They don’t move much,” Sabellian said distantly, thrown off. “And somehow you think that the nether energy can help them.”

“The nether energy is strong,” she insisted. “The first infusion has already done so much.”

He looked up and narrowed his eyes at the eggs. No nether; no energy. On these eggs? No. Perhaps on others he couldn’t see.

“How on Azeroth did you think that would help?”

“I had a feeling when the Dragonkin captured them. I just knew.”

Sabellian looked at the clutch. He had a feeling of just how she’d gotten such an idea.

The room felt all the darker.

“If you kill me they’ll die,” she said. “Please -”

“Furywing was a broodmother. She can -”

“Furywing is an insect,” Seldarria hissed. Her voice was guttural, full of vitriol. “A mewling coward. She didn’t like this. Didn’t like how it made him shake. But she’ll see. Of course she will. She usually does, eventually, the poor thing. Always quivering like a leaf...”

“Him.” Seldarria went still. Sabellian dug his claws against her shoulders. “Who is him?”

“No one to concern -”

“Why were you healing Vaxian?” His claws popped against her robe, into her skin. Red tinged his vision.

The first infusion has already done so much.

She looked up at him.

“You don’t belong here.”

He tightened his hold on her. She glanced down at his throat - where Chi-ji’s pendant clasped tight around his neck.

She lunged for it.

Sabellian jerked away. Seldarria’s fingers closed around the amulet. His hand found her wrist.

The other dragon snarled. A flash of power erupted between them. Sabellian didn’t move, didn’t dare to.

She tried to pull it off with all her strength but he had her with all of his.

She wheezed. “You’re a coward,” she said. “The great lieutenant Sabellian, reduced to an ant. No wonder she speaks so lowly of you, oh, haha! No wonder indeed!”

He snarled. He snapped his hand back. Her wrist snapped with a crack. She shrieked.

Smoke began to envelop her form. The fool was going to crush her own eggs in this small space if she transformed.

He roared and threw her into the wall. She landed, grunting, shatter-marks signaling the power of the throw. Rocks fell from the ceiling. They crashed over her, pinned her to the floor.

“It’s too late, lieutenant,” she called to him as he turned and ran from  the tunnel. Vaxian. Samia. Pyria. “It’s too late!”

---

Ebonhorn looked the young dragon over.

Vaxian breathed in short, shallow breaths, and his face fell clammy and drawn.

It would have been far easier if he could shift the dragon into his true form. He still had to take a look at the dragon’s wing. It wouldn’t heal correctly if it didn’t transform soon.

He pulled back at the bandages stuck around his back. The wound underneath was ugly, a puncture wound struggling to heal. Crushed herbs lay stuffed along the flesh. Puss and purple flesh striated along the dark skin.

Ebonhorn sighed.

Ten thousand years old and he had so little training with the healing arts. He’d have to ask some of the shamans to relearn some of the basics.

“Looks pretty bad,” a voice said from the other side of the room. He glanced over and smiled tiredly. The other dragon, Pyria, was sitting up in bed and watching him.

“We’ll hope that the herbs your Father brings will cool the infection,” he said.

Pyria continued to stare at him.

“How are you a tauren?”

He flicked his ears.

“I was raised in Highmountain, among the Thunder Totem tauren,” he explained. “I couldn’t walk around as a human or dwarf.”

Pyria leaned forward. “What was Highmountain like?” Something in her eyes felt hungry, desperate.

He studied her for a moment before speaking. “Full of life,” he replied, smiling. He turned and pulled some fresh bandages from the shelving. “Fauna and flora of all kinds. The mountains are full of air and sun. Not as… grim as these black peaks.”

“Oh,” she said, wistful. “That sounds so nice.”

“Where does your family come from? Somewhere in Outland, Wrathion said? It must be strange, coming to a different world.”

“Yeah. Well, I was hatched here. In Azeroth. Most of us were, actually, except for the whelps. I don’t really remember this planet much. Only Samia and Vaxian and the rest of his clutchmates do.”

“Hm.” Ebonhorn reset Vaxian’s bandages.

“We live in Blade’s Edge Mountains now. It’s nice and hot and dry. Not a lot of lava or anything though. And definitely not a lot of flora and fauna. We eat raptor, like, every day. Sometimes arrokoa. Have you ever tried one? They’re so stringy.”

“I don’t know what an arrakoa is,” he confessed.

She raised her eyebrows. “Really? Wow. Huh.”

He waited for her to explain what they were, but she did not. Very well.

“Outland is more than your mountains, surely?”

“Oh. Yes. But Father doesn’t let us go anywhere. For our safety.”

He frowned. “Do you have so many enemies?”

“Not that I know of. Anymore, anyway. But those were in Blade’s Edge. If you asked me we should have moved out of the mountains and into Nagrand.”

“What were they in Blade’s Edge?”

“I don’t really want to talk about them,” she said. “But they killed a lot of my siblings.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s just why my dad is kinda of crazy.” She paused, frowned, and added: “That’s probably a bad choice of words.”

Ebonhorn snorted in amusement.

“Maybe so,” Ebonhorn said. “I’m sure you’ll be happy to go home.”

“I do miss it,” she said. “But it’s been nice to see Azeroth. I wish we could actually live here.”

He smiled at her before turning back to her brother.

It fell from his face. These poor dragons. No wonder Sabellian was so stiff, angry. It felt cruel for Azeroth to send him here among them when he could do so little.

But he had to remember what Wrathion had seen. What she had told him. There had to be hope. For what? Even now he wasn’t sure. Peace? Unity? Freedom? It seemed far-fetched, a dream he might have had as a whelp.

He supposed he should just trust whatever it was that the World Soul wanted or had planned. She’d never strayed him away when he’d asked for her aid to help Highmountain. Why would she now?

He finished wrapping up Vaxian’s shoulder wound. He didn’t move or wake - same as always. He only shook, mouth slightly agape, his lips sometimes move to form silent words.

“You like Wrathion, huh?”

“He is… enthusiastic.”

Pyria giggled. “Yeah. He’s a little funny, isn’t he?”

“A little… funny?” he repeated. “Hm… yes, I suppose.” He eyed her. Odd way of speaking about someone who had killed some of her siblings.

“I know, I know,” she said, and sighed. “It’s going to seem really crazy -er… weird, but it’s just really nice to meet other dragons,” she said. “Even murdery ones like him. I mean, I love my clutchmates, but it’d be nice to be with someone else besides the dragon I hatched with, you know? After a while you run out of things to talk about!”

Ebonhorn snorted.

“I agree. You are all the first dragons I’ve ever met.”

Pyria stared at him. “So who taught you how to fly? Or hunt? Or -”

Vaxian’s eyes flew open.

He gasped - a great, gulping gasping that seemed to be his very first breath, desperate and hungry.

He looked around wildly, blindly. His eyes sparked with a strange, lightning-like pulse.

“You’re alright,” Ebonhorn said. “You’re safe.”

Vaxian’s eyes found him. In that some breath, he clamped his hand around his wrist. Ebonhorn grunted in pain. The dragon was squeezing him with all his strength.

“You have to go,” Vaxian said. His voice was harsh, low from lack of use.

“I’m not here to harm you -”

“No.” Vaxian’s eyes were blind in their intensity. “You have to go. They’re going to come find you.”

Had this been any other patient, he would have dismissed it as rambling from fever.

But his gut felt like ice.

“Who?”

“Go!” Vaxian roared, and shook him by the wrist. “They’ve almost got me and they are going to get everyone else.” His eyes rolled in the back of his head. He gasped. “A thousand  eyes. They’re watching you.  They’ve got her too. She’ll kill you or turn you.”

“What’s going on?” Pyria asked, voice quaking.

Vaxian blinked. His eyes were back to normal.

“Run,” he said again. “Run! Tentacles reaching. Close. You have to go.”

Ebonhorn stood up.

“The others. Go! Get them! Run!”

“Your sister -”

“I’ll be fine,” Pyria said. “Just go. Find my dad. He’ll know what to do.”

She smiled at him, and her eyes flickered in fear.

“Pyria. You don’t have to do this -”

Vaxian grabbed him by the shoulders. His eyes stared, glazed with fever and blindness.

“Go!”

He turned -

And threw him through the archway.

Ebonhorn turned in the air. It shrieked around him. He looked up, saw Vaxian’s blind eyes looking down at him, saw him turn away, saw lightning and shadow pulse from his body-

He landed on his hooves; the rock shattered and cracked. A shock of pain rain up his legs.

When he looked up, a great slab of rock smashed up the archway, blocking the room from the outside.

---

Sabellian almost ran into Ebonhorn on his way out of Seldarria’s cave.

“Watch where you’re going!”

Ebonhorn took a step back. The tauren flickered with tension, alarm.

Sabellian narrowed his eyes. “What?”

Ebonhorn looked around. “Are you alone?”

“Yes. What is it?”

Ebonhorn took one last look around before fixing his eyes on him.

“My vision is coming true,” he rumbled. “We need to set up some defenses or leave before -”

Sabellian grabbed him by the tunic.

“What happened?”

“Vaxian woke. His fever is ravaging him. He said that we’re being watched. That we’re being looked for.”

It felt like the world around him began to turn red.

“I think he may have gone mad,” Ebonhorn said slowly, pain on his face. “Or he’s nearly there.”

Sabellian let go. He looked around blindly. His head swam, rang like he’d just suffered another explosion.

“What are you doing here?” Ebonhorn said, his voice distant to his ears. My son. Mad. Seldarria. I will make her suffer.

Her words in his ears.

It’s too late!

“Seldarria tried to kill the boy and I,” Sabellian said distractedly. “Move. I need to get my children and leave.”

He shoved past Ebonhorn. The tauren followed.

“Pyria? What about Pyria? How did you know about Vaxian?”

“I was healing him. Pyria - I don’t know. She -”

“You were healing him and you left?” Sabellian snarled, turned on him. “You left him there? You left Pyria with him?”

“The boy threw me from the room,” Ebonorn said, nostrils flared. “I would not have left -”

Sabellian cut him off with another snarl. He turned and hurried forward again.

“Where is Wrathion?” his brother asked.

“With his orc pet.”

“Seldarria. Where is she?”

“Back there,” he snapped, then jerked his head behind them. “Are you done asking questions?”

“One more. What are we going to do?”

“Get my children,” he rumbled. “And leave.”

“Vaxian -”

“I know what Vaxian is!” His roar echoed down the tunnels. He stopped, put his hands in his hair, closed his eyes. Fool. Fool. He should have known. Should have known they weren’t safe. He’d gone soft since Wrathion’s defeat. He should have known.

Slowly, he exhaled, dropped his hands, and opened his eyes. “I know what he is,” he hissed. “I will get him last. First, we find Samia.”

“What if she’s -”

“She is not,” he snapped. “She can’t be.”

Words, and desperate ones. Words were wind.

He saw Talsian before him, shuddering in pain and instantly, before he’d taken the drake’s neck in his jaws and snapped it.

Titans help him, he was not going to lose any more children.

He moved past the tauren again, his heart thudding in his ears. Not from anger, or rage - but from fear.

---

Wrathion slumped down against a boulder and breathed out hard.

“Oh, Left,” he groaned. “Why am I such a target for disaster?”

“I think it might be because you like the dramatics,” Left drawled. She was reloading her crossbow.

Wrathion looked up with a raised eyebrow. “What gave you a sense of humor?”

Left glanced down at him before looking back at her bow and snapping in some more ammunition.

“At this point, I think I have to have a good sense of humor to deal with all of this.”

Wrathion laughed. “I wish I could get one.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You did save Sabellian’s life. I thought that was you having a sense of humor.”

Wrathion wrinkled his nose. “I only did it on instinct.”

Left smiled. “Mhm.” Her smile dropped. “I don’t like this waiting around. I can still send out an alert. It’s not too late.”

Wrathion played with the tassels on his cloak. The cave was cold.

“I’m still thinking about it. Trust me,” he rumbled. A dragon had just tried to kill him. The same one who’d been draining nether-drakes for energy. Doing Titans knew what with it. And he probably wouldn’t find out before Sabellian dragged him away through the dark portal.

He sighed and leaned back against the boulder.

Just like the rest of us. Wrathion growled softly. Sabellian’s words kept circling in his head, and it didn’t help that he was sitting here and doing nothing - and so the words kept coming back, repeating, itching at his skull.

Truly a black dragon. He sighed, ran a hand through his hair, felt some of the dried blood in his bangs catch and crumble away from his fingers. All harsh words, set to poison and insult. But didn’t he want to be like his own kind?

No. Not like the kind Deathwing had corrupted with his blood. Not the overly cruel, manipulative, selfish …

But he’d been all those things before, without thinking. Some part of him wondered if that was really what Black Dragons were and always would be.

And yet… Azeroth. She trusted him. He closed his eyes, remembered the fierceness in her, the righteousness, the power. How she had embraced him; put her faith in him. She wanted to help with them. With his own kind. Somehow, someway. Would a World Soul want to save dragons like him when their evil was all they could ever be?

No. No, he didn’t think so.

“I don’t get him,” he sighed. “Something like this and he just wants to run away.”

“At least he seemed serious about killing her.”

“If he was so serious, he’d be back by now,” Wrathion mumbled. “He was awfully stringent on getting out of here as fast as he could.”

He drummed his fingers on his knees.

Left stood up straight. She looked over at the entrance; Wrathion followed her eyes.

Samia rounded into the cave.

She looked surprised to see them alone. She raised her eyebrows.

“Where is my father?”

“Visiting one of your friends,” Wrathion said.

Samia eyed him. Wrathion eyed her back.

“Which friend?”

“Seldarria.”

“What for?”

Wrathion and Left glanced at one another without moving their heads.

Should they tell her? Was it safe? Was she?

“Seldarria tried to kill us,” Wrathion said. “Through an explosion.”

Left stared at him. Wrathion didn’t take his eyes off Samia. He was taking a calculated risk. He knew how to take one.

Samia shot upright. Her eyes blazed.

“She what?”

“In the herb stores,” Wrathion went on. “An explosion.”

“Is my father okay?” Samia put her hand on the hilt of her sword and stalked into the room. “Did anyone get hurt?”

Wrathion pointed at the cut on his forehead.

“A rock hit me.”

“I don’t care about you,” she said with a huff.

“But you did say anyone.”

“Listen, is my Father okay, or not?”

“He’s fine. If he wasn’t I don’t think he’d be up to killing another dragon.”

Samia stared at him. Then she cursed, turned around, and began hurrying from the room.

“Wait!” Wrathion scrambled to his feet. “Where are you going?”

“To stop my Father from hurting himself!”

Wrathion caught up to her. The cave was nestled in one of the squatter, quieter tunnels leading from the antechamber; Left had chosen it especially for its seclusion. Safe from anyone who might be looking for them. If Seldarria had friends up here, like Kyrak, she might want to finish the job.

“Is Seldarria so dangerous?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead, steeled and unwavering. “But we can’t afford to let her be killed if she has any information.”

“So she seemed utterly normal before his.”

“Of course she did. I would’ve never  trusted Vaxian to her care if I thought otherwise.” She huffed, a scowl lifting her lips. “Unbelievable.”

Wrathion glanced at Left. The orc had silently followed when he’d gotten up to get to Samia.

How did she find us? Came the orc’s voice in his bloodgem. He paused, but did not anything show on his face.

“I don’t understand why you came here in the first place,” Wrathion pressed on. He began to slow. He didn’t like this.

Samia grunted. “My brother was sick and injured. I thought my father was dead. My sister was missing. I didn’t have a big choice.” She pushed through a curtain of cave moss. “Come on. Do you really think I wanted to go to my crazy uncle’s old mountain?”

“Could have been heavily suggested.”

Samia glanced at him.

“What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing.”

They turned around a bend in the cavern.

“This is the wrong way to the -”

Samia turned on her heel. She thrust her hand out.

A wall of rock shot from the floor, separating Left from Wrathion. It smashed into the ceiling - cutting them off in the dark.

Left cried out in surprise, anger, muffled beyond the stone. Wrathion whirled around. Samia fixed her eyes on him, eyes glowing in the dark.

I think I might be the beacon for disaster.

Samia flicked her hand toward him. He raised a hand to defend himself. Too slow.

Earth smashed into him. He flew back against the wall. The jagged edges and the force of the impact sent out his breath and his sense. Thud thud. He sucked in a breath. The earth melded into the wall, locking him in place.

“What are you doing?!” He writhed against the bonds. His hands - they were free. Wrathion clenched onto into a fist and called upon his magic to push her away.

But he couldn’t.

It felt like he’d forgotten the words to a spell. Wrathion tried everything - but no magic came jittering into his fingertips.

“I think someone forgot their vows in the Celestial Trial,” Samia said. “You can’t hurt me, remember?”

Wrathion felt a rush of anger, indignation, fear. He growled at her.

Then he’d just get out.

He flexed his hands. Sparks flew. The earth holding him grew shatter-marks.

A feeling gripped him with such force, such suddenness, he gasped. His concentration broke. Void. Wrongnness. It assaulted everything he was. He desperately tried to curl away from it, but could go nowhere. It was every dark feeling in the world, and for a moment he was on Mason’s Folly, oozing Sha energy again, feeling all the hopelessness of the world on his shoulders.

Azeroth, he thought, help!

It was a desperate plea, and one that fell deaf. Azeroth wasn’t here. For the first time, Wrathion was alone. Utterly, terribly alone.

The room grew blacker, darker than dark. And on all sides oozed the same wrongness, the same terrible sense that sent every part of him squirming.

“I wouldn’t try using your bloodgems, either,” Samia said. She hadn’t moved since binding him; the dragon stood studying him, head tilted.

“What do you think you’re - urgh!” The stones tightened around him, sucked the air from his lungs.

“Titans, I hate hearing you talk.” Samia flexed her hands, and her eyes glinted in the dark, flickering like a candle.

The wrongness was becoming overwhelming. Wrathion blinked back stars. It was like a fog, but one alive, one clawing into his mouth and nose and eyes.

“Where’s Serinar?”

“What?”

“Serinar,” she repeated, each syllable stressed, pressed mockingly from her mouth. “Where is he?”

“What is - going on here?” he said. “Sabellian -”

Samia smiled a cold, mean little smile. “Seldarria won’t manage much,” she said. “She’s a bit of a dolt. And if she does manage it, well, I guess that’s just less for me to do.”

He narrowed his eyes. His heart thundered in his ears.

“Oh, Samia, no,” he groaned. She couldn’t be -

“Where is Serinar?”

“What do you care?” He sent out his feelers beyond the earth - but nothing. He hit wall after wall. The more he reached out the smaller the room felt. A little black box, and he was trapped in the center, the walls pressed so close he could feel his quickening breath bounce back into face.

“Serinar was supposed to help me with something,” she said. “Imagine my surprise when you came down here without him.”

“He’s with my Agents. Probably still trying to recover from your father’s poisons.” His voice drawled, felt drugged.

“Tell your Agents to release him.”

Wrathion looked at her, incredulous. “Release Serinar?” He stopped. “Serinar didn’t have to convince you to come here at all, did he? The corruption overwhelmed you at the Vale.”

Samia’s face flickered with rage. For a flash he saw the shift of her eyes, all wrong like a badly tuned clock, subtle enough to be easily hidden but obvious enough to cast an uncanny pallor to her expression.

“I am not corrupt!” Her teeth flashed sharp in the dark. She rushed forward and grabbed him by the shoulder. “You know what I am? I’m my own. For the first time since Outland. My Father is a coward. Forcing us to stay in Blade’s Edge. Hiding like bugs under rocks from the Gronn. Shuffling us away from what we are. What we could be.” The earth trembled around them. Nausea roiled up his gut. Her words came quick and heated. “Never allowing us to explore our power, either over ourselves or the earth. But I’m not a coward.” She pushed her weight against him. He struggled to breathe. “I am a Black Dragon. I won’t allow my Father to deny me or my siblings that anymore. To pretend we aren’t what we are. To hide. To be forgotten and alone in a dying planet.”

The conviction in her voice -the anger, the sorrow, the frustration - felt so genuine, so real, that he knew at once this was truly her. Her thoughts, her feelings, that had festered deep inside, and what had become fuel for the corruption to gorge itself on. Here lay the feelings of the real Samia, but corrupted into the needs for those infesting her blood.

It chilled him more than he could say.

In Samia’s eyes he saw the madness as it was: not just garbled proclamations of murder and maliciousness, but a corruption of purpose and intent. A push into one’s most carnal futures, their most violent, chaotic roads to their wishes and wants.

It was no wonder They had so easily warped Neltharion. Earthwarder to the Destroyer.

The fabric pop-pop-popped as she dug her claws into it.

“So you’ll kill him? You’ll kill your father?” he barked a laugh. It trembled shaky, desperate from his lips. “You came here to save him, but here you are now, proclaiming to take his place. That doesn’t sound - oh, I don’t know, mad to you?”

She shook him hard. His head smacked against the wall. His head rang.

“I’m taking care of what my Father could not,” she hissed. Power rolled off of her. The same power from the earth, an ugly power, a dead power, unnatural. He almost gagged. “Like getting rid of you.”

“Your dear Father already took care of that.”

“No. He didn’t. He was apparently weak enough to keep you alive.”

She spoke with spite, with poison. The room writhed.

“Your brother isn’t ill at all, is he?” he wheezed. “You just said that to get us to stay here.”

Samia shrugged. “He’s sick enough. Just not with what I said with.”

Wrathion pulled at his bindings, but still: nothing.

“You were supposed to burn into a nice crisp in the stores,” Samia said. “Whatever. An easy fix.”

“Samia,” he said, slowly, flexing his hands out as much as his bonds would allow, in however feeble a gesture of peace it was. “I know what you’re thinking. I certainly don’t know what having a family is like, but I know what caring about something is. When you met with me and I told you he was dead - I know what I saw wasn’t relief -”

“Convictions change.”

“Listen to me!” Wrathion fought back his nausea. “Why would you suddenly want to kill your Father only after you went through an explosion of Void energy?”

Her eyes flickered. She frowned at him.

“Why don’t we just… calm down... and put me down from the wall -”

“And what? Let you go? Let you go off to snitch on me, set your dogs on a new scent?”

Damnit. The hardness, the conviction, had returned to her face, all fervor and flickering anger. “Tell your Agents to release Serinar.”

“Why would I ever do that, and why would you ever want that?”

“It’s not your import to know,” Samia said. She smiled. “And you’ll want to do that because of your orc in the other room.”

A pained cry flew muffled through the stone.

Wrathion stiffened. Left. Samia studied him.

“Don’t try to bluff,” she said. “I know she’s your closest Agent. She’s pretty well named, isn’t she? Always next to your Left. Didn’t there used to be a Right?”

Another cry of pain echoed from beyond the stone.

Wrathion bore his teeth in a snarl.

“Maybe it’d be best if we just got rid of your Left, too,” she said. “Fix up the symmetry.”

A fizzle popped: a bloodgem trying to project. But Samia had been right: the connection was broken.

“Just free Serinar. That’s all I ask,” she said. She nodded at the stone wall. “And I won’t crush her up into the walls.”

Wrathion locked his jaw. Locked his jaw so hard his head throbbed. The bloodgem-fizzle hissed again in his eyes. Left must’ve been trying to get to him. If he could hear her, then Left could hear Samia. And Wrathion knew what she wanted him to do.

Let her die.

“Samia. You just want to free Serinar so They can have another arrow in their quiver,” he said, knowing the tinge of desperation was in his voice and uncaring. “Think. If only for a moment -”

Samia’s face twisted into a scowl, inhuman, all wrong for a person’s lips to make.

“Last chance,” she said. She started to clench her hand into a fist - slowly, agonizingly slow. A wheeze from the other side. Then coughing. Then -

“Fine! Fine! I’ll let him go!”

Samia stilled her fingers but didn’t retract them.

“But I can’t contact my Agents outside without -”

Samia waved a hand. Wrathion gasped. Some of the pressure in the room released, and he could breathe again. “Try now. And speak aloud your instructions. Don’t play games with me, kid.”

Wrathion breathed in deep the smell of the earth, pure and damp and living. A chance: take the moment of clarity to try to free himself. The risk: Left’s death, and possibly his own. Titans, he couldn’t even attack her.

So Wrathion bit his tongue and did nothing.

He reached out with his mind’s eye, felt out all the pinpoints of energy. There was Left, of course, right by him, though he dared not even send her a whiff of speech lest Samia overhear. Others, far away, distant, faded stars in the darkness, those Agents beyond the Great Sea. Agents and Anduin Wrynn, lingering still in Pandaria. Had they begun to siege Orgrimmar? The thought felt alien to him now.

He blinked, and when his eyes opened, he was connected with the bloodgem of the Agent he had left in charge: a droll worgen named Yellow.

“Yes?” came her voice, ringing in his head.

“You still have Serinar?” Wrathion spoke this aloud, eyes fixed on Samia.

A pause.

“Yes. He’s tried to escape a good handful of times.” A sigh. “Very annoying.”

“Very good. Alright. Let him go.”

He tried to sound confident. He wasn’t so sure it’d worked. His chest spasmed painfully, his nerves crackled like fire. Samia didn’t move, didn’t blink, certainly didn’t relax her curled fingers. All it would take was for her to clench them together, and Left would die.

Once, he might think it a necessary sacrifice. Free an Agent, or free a corrupt dragon? But he couldn’t lose her now. Wouldn’t.

He’d already lost enough, and he was not about to lose the last thing to a friend he had down here.

“Sir?” came Yellow’s unsure reply.

“Get rid of him,” Wrathion said. “Take him to the lava gorge in front of the mountain and let him go. We don’t need him anymore.

“With all due respect, sir, I don’t think that’s the brightest idea. Did something happen down there? Are you alright?”

Samia raised an eyebrow at him. Wrathion’s throat grew dry, raspy. She could hear his Agents. He was sure of it. How?

“Fine,” she said. “I’m fine. Just let him go.”

“As you say, sir,” the worgen said, her unsureness like a smell upon her voice.

And she was gone, the connection severed, the choking, void depth of shadow consuming its place. Wrathion choked back bile. He almost fainted.

“Good making negotiations with you,” Samia said. “I guess we all find leverage, huh?” She relaxed her fist, and Wrathion relaxed in turn. Relaxed, but couldn’t breathe. The room wasn’t spinning as much as it was rotating slowly on its axis.

“Now what?” he wheezed. “Going to raze some human settlements to the ground now?”

She pat him on the cheek. Her hands were cold.

“You’re cute,” she said. “Hopefully, my father will come to his senses and step down so we don’t have to do anything rash. Maybe he can come back down for you. Probably not, though.”

Wrathion’s stomach fell, deep and sour to his ankles. “You’re leaving me down here?”

“I said I’d let your orc go. I didn’t say anything about you.”

His breath quickened. The thought of being left down here - in this void - in this dead space - “Wait! Wait. Surely I can help you? I wanted to kill Sabellian before, and -”

“Don’t lie,” she hissed. “Don’t try to weasel your way out of this. You think I’m going to give you some semblance of mercy? Please. You didn’t give my family much mercy.”

She waved a hand. The earth opened up behind her with a shudder and groan, the soil and rock writhing and trembling in the unnatural shift. The dark feeling gushed fiercer into the cavern. Wrathion struggled to keep conscious.

“Good luck,” she said. “Either you’ll starve to death or fall mad. I almost hope for the latter.”

And she smiled at him, turned, and left, earth closing up behind her and leaving her in the dark.

---

Sabellian quickened through the tunnels. The earth was dark, black around him like he was talking through a living shadow. The orbs around his snake spaulders cast flickering lights along the walls; itl bounced and hissed like disturbed water as he made his way through the maze of rock.

“Lightning in his eyes, you said?” he barked back toward Ebonhorn. The tauren was struggling to keep up.

“A kind of blue energy, yes.” The loose beads and bones on his headdress rattled.

Anger, hot and black, roiled deep in him. It’d been churning in his belly since Seldarria, and now it felt like he could summon a storm.

“Stupid of us to stay here,” Sabellian growled. “Stupid.”

“You’ll leave at once, then.”

“I’m certainly not going to linger, am I?” he growled. And there was the fear. It brimmed underneath the anger, stoking it like coals on a furnace. Fear not for himself - no, never for himself. Vaxian, Pyria, Samia. A fool he was, to linger for even a moment. With Wrathion he had played with a small match - this was playing with real fire now, a poison even he was not immune to. And he’d practically thrust his hand in the brazier.

Stupid.

“I fear for the others,” Ebonhorn said. Sabellian frowned. “Something must have triggered Seldarria -”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why they only just attacked now.”

“Because the Old Gods don’t want us here,” he said briskly. “They made that apparent enough when those brainless dragonkin tried to kill us.”

“But they could have killed us the moment we appeared,” Ebonhorn insisted. “Something changed.”

“Yes. They  received gentle thoughts of explosives and treachery.” And so will your children. His heart thundered like a rabbit’s.

“Furywing, Seldarria - we should try to help them too, should we not? If the corruption is -”

“Help them?” Sabellian repeated, incredulous. “One of them tried to kill me, and I wish the other was already dead.”

Ebonhorn frowned. “The corruption must have awakened in them after our arrival. Don’t we owe it to them to aid?”

The fool. This tauren and the boy were made for one another, merely by their willing ignorance. “Awakened in them? It was always there. They just didn’t strike until now, when we were open and trusting.” He snorted. “And they cannot be helped. Nothing can help them now.”

Ebonhorn said nothing. His face belied his troubled thoughts: all furrowed brows and glinting eyes.

“I may sound like the boy when I say this,” Sabellian continued, “but sometimes we can’t save them all. You can’t afford to be a bleeding heart. Choose those you really care about, or you’ll lose a lot more than you gain.”

The tauren glanced sidelong at him. “Has that gotten you far?”

“Farther than most.” He thought of Nefarian and Onyxia, rotting in the pit.

“What about you, then?”

Sabellian glanced at him, one eyebrow raised.

“What about me?”

“Your own corruption.”

Sabellian hesitated. Unbidden, his hand went to the pendant. It had grown hotter and hotter with each footstep.

“This was a gift from a mortal. Infused with some powerful charms, some powerful magic,” he explained, gruff. “Some sort of time-nonsense, some sort of Wild God-nonsense. It’s halted the corruption… for now. I fear it hasn’t much time left, especially in this dark place.”

Footsteps came echoing down the tunnel. The two brothers stopped. Energy tingled at his fingertips, and beside him, Ebonhorn gave off a wave of heat.

Shadows loomed around the corner: and there she was: Samia.

Sabellian relaxed. If only a little. The dragon was wild-eyed, dirt smeared over one of her cheeks, her hair peppered with gravel and dirt.

“Oh!” She came to a halt. “Father. Uncle.” She glanced at Ebonhorn. “I was looking for you.”

“What a coincidence,” Sabellian said. He looked her up and down. Relief, nausea, fear.

My daughter. My eldest.

“Why?” he pressed.

“I ran into Wrathion. Seldarria tried to kill you? With an explosion? And you found the nether-drakes?”

“Keep your voice down, girl!” Sabellian closed the distance between them. “He shouldn’t have spoken to you in the first place.”

“Oh?” She frowned at him. “Why?”

He ignored her. He pressed his hands on the side of her face and looked deep into it. He looked. Looked for shattered pieces, a stone out of place, flickering lights without shadow.

“Are you alright?”

“Father.” Samia pulled away, her face creased with nerves. She fixed her bangs. “I’m fine.”

Sabellian let his hands drop. He studied her face.

“Why are you asking about me, anyway? Are you alright? You were nearly incinerated!” She crossed her arms over her chest and bit her bottom lip. “I thought Seldarria was alright. Kind of a louse, lazy as an ass, but alright.”

And there it was.

Something in her eyes.

A flicker, a glint of light, light with no shadow.

“Vaxian. Who told you he was ill?”

Samia’s face fell. She looked at him, frown deepening. “What? No one had to. He grew ill on the flight over.”

“It was no regular infection,” Ebonhorn added. “Even if it did fool me at first.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Seldarria was infusing him with nether energy, girl. As a test subject for her eggs,” Sabellian said. An iciness grew in his belly, all sharp and stony. “The nether-drakes were captured not long before we arrived. Vaxian couldn’t have been ill before.”

Samia’s eyes darted between them. “The Dragonmaw broke his wing -”

“But you said he was ill,” Sabellian hissed. “You said he’d been ill since you arrived. With infection.” He took another step toward her. My daughter. My eldest. The pendant felt hot against his chest. He should have given it to her. Why hadn’t he given it to her? “Why did you tell me that? Why did you want us to delay another night?”

At last her eyes fell upon him, and in them lay the broken clock.

She lunged forward.

He fell back. Samia’s hands wrapped ‘round his throat - no, not his throat at all.

The pendant, the crane pendant Anduin Wrynn had gifted him, the one keeping him from madness, the one he should have given her -

His hands clutched her wrists. She fixed her broken eyes on him.

They knew. They knew about the pendant. With Seldarria, a fluke. With Samia -

How? How had They known?

“This thing’s clouding your mind, Father,” she said, and her voice was deep, dark, like a thousand voices speaking through one, his daughter, his eldest. “Let me help you.”

She pulled back, despite the pull of his own wrists on her, a strength she should not have been able to overcome, but she wasn’t her now, not anymore, and the chain of the pendant came snapping off.

Blackness exploded into his mind. He gasped, stumbled back, back against what? Space was meaningless. All was black. A flood of acid, bile, tar. He fell to his knees, sucked in ragged breaths.

No. No!

A foreign feeling rushed through him. Not light, not dark, but power, vaulting, righteous. It bled into the blackness, intertwining, suffocating.

It was like a storm, and he a small boat lost on its waves. He couldn’t - the pendant - Titans, They laughed at him, the terrible laughter echoing in his skull ---

---

Sabellian fell silently onto his back; he didn’t make a sound even as he hit the ground. The pendant hummed furiously. It’d gone flying from Samia’s grip, skidding off to the side where it’d stopped near the turn of the tunnel Samia had come through.

Ebonhorn stood frozen. The pendant - had she known? -

Samia smiled at him, all good-natured and shiny.

“Pretty rough, huh, Uncle? Honestly I didn’t think he’d fall. Or go unconscious.”

He glanced back at his brother. Sabellian took in shallow gasps, and his eyes darted back and forth underneath his quivering eyelids. He grew paler by each passing heartbeat, face drawn.

Samia took slow, clipped steps toward her Father. Ebonhorn stood in front of her.

“Whatever you plan to do, I’m afraid I’ll have to stop you.”

Her eyes darted over to him. Some of the humor left her face, some of the unnatural shininess.

“I really don’t think you want to do this,” she said. “Take a step back. This isn’t your business.”

He drew himself up to his full height. Samia was exceedingly short. Shorter than most humans he’d seen, though he hadn’t seen much. He could probably throw her if he really wanted. His shadow consumed her form, all hulk and body and broadness. He stamped his hoof. The clang rang down the tunnel, echoed down the recesses.

“He is my brother,” he rumbled. Smoke began to curl from his nose. How good it felt to release the truth of his form in such base ways, how good not to hide. If only it were better circumstances. If only he wasn’t facing down his corrupted niece, stopping her from doing An’she-knew-what to her Father. “It is my business.”

“Listen, Uncle,” she drawled. “We all know you’re not supposed to be here. You’re more out of touch than Wrathion, and we can at least let him slide for that because he’s - what - two? Three years old? But you’re as old as Father is, and you’re more of an outsider than the kid is. Look at you. You’re probably more mortal than dragon, too. How about you leave this alone? It’s not your place. You’re not one of us.” She jerked her head over to Sabellian. “And you just met him. You don’t have to get yourself hurt over it.”

Ebonhorn glared. The words twisted in his gut, coiled like a rope of needles in his belly.

“I am one of you,” he growled. “It is my place.” He glanced at the pendant. Sabellian hadn’t moved. He needed to get it back, before the corruption consumed him too. Then they would all be lost.

But he dared not come to blows with her. How could he? This was a talking puppet. The real Samia was in there somewhere, his niece, one of him. His family he’d never known. Anger gripped his neck, and his fire bubbled. Them.

If he could incapacitate her, hold her in rock -

Samia sneered. “You can keep thinking that. Leave.”

The two stared at one another.

Ebonhorn lunged for the pendant.

Samia lunged for him.

Rock smashed into his side. He skidded off, grunting, and crashed into the wall. His hoof cracked into the pendant. It went spinning off into the cave.

“Try me again, Uncle!”

He snorted smoke, thick and black. Slowly, he rose to his hooves.

“I will if I must,” he rumbled, turning to face her. “I am here on Azeroth’s wishes. And I will stay to help.”

A sureness built inside of him. It mingled with his fire, already burning bright. All his life he had advised. He had protected. He had cleansed and read signs and found the right paths. This was what he was here for. To help. Somehow, staring into her twisted face, he knew that this was not the head of the whale. She was the fin, a first sign above the water. Something was coming. Rising. And she was the start of it. Azeroth had sent him here. For this. For whatever was to come. He didn’t know, Wrathion didn’t know, but it was their future. All of their future.

Samia took a step forward. The future of the Flight, a future Azeroth had begun to guide them on. And he would guide the others.

As he always had.

“There’s no audience for you, Ebonhorn,” she hissed. “You don’t have to be so inspiring for mortals here.”

“Your Father will grow corrupted. Vaxian is too, if he has not already. Pyria. You will deny this. You surely don’t see yourself as mad, either. But you don’t have to go through with whatever you’ve planned. What you all have planned. Seldarria, and Serinar, perhaps. Rethink this path. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You won’t.”

She thrust her hands out to her sides. The earth sprang up, spikes of obsidian.

They came flying at him - whistling, screaming.

Ebonhorn snapped his hands out. A wall of stone flung up. The shards collided, exploded against the earth. The cavern shuddered.

More and more shards came screaming toward him, each one faster, sharp, then the last. He struggled to keep up - they drove him back, slowly, inevitably, each time they struck his barriers. He grunted with strain as they crashed again and again into the defensive wards.

She was strong. Stronger than he’d guessed. Stronger - but among shadow, terrible and black. Something about the earth she weaponized felt sickly, ill; the feeling panged through his barriers, echoed through his arms like a distant sound.

His hooves backed into the wall behind him. A quick glance back: Sabellian behind him, laying sprawled. His eyes were open now, but unseeing, blank.

Ebonhorn turned back to Samia. A black shadow emanated from her, choking the air. If they stayed here long, it would consume them all.

“You’re not giving me much choice,” he said. Samia snorted, her face twisted and broken, a dragon’s expressions on a human face.

Ebonhorn growled. He flexed his hands. The world around him came alive. Everywhere: he could see everywhere now. Each faultline, each crack in the wall; each soft patch of earth, each deposit of mineral and gem. Each air socket, each cave, the layout of the tunnels.

Above: soft earth, cradled along dried lava. Before them, the exit of the tunnel, spitting out into the main chamber. No great faultlines to his left or right. No chance of collapse, only expansion.

Samia raised her hand.

He lunged.

Growing, stretching, transforming. His horns - antlers, wide and painted - scraped against the ceiling. It gave way underneath their points, all the soft earth he’d seen, opening up and falling on top of him, giving room for his true form. The great bulk of his draconic body crushed through the rest of the cavern mid-lunge. He grabbed Samia, charged forward - and exploded into the main antechamber.

They went tumbling down the small incline. A surge of energy surrounded him: Samia changing mid-fall. He landed on her hard, dragon now with dragon, their two massive forms leaving a great crack in the stone below.

She roared and kicked her hind legs into his belly. He grunted; rolled off.

The ground groaned underneath him, and he crushed it back down before it could rise and impale him.

Samia had already gotten to her feet by the time he managed to turn around. She bared her teeth at him.

They stared at one another, uncle and niece, as the mountain growled and rumbled around them.

Some air pockets, some unopened caverns, peppered the antechamber: underground lava rivulets that had never pierced through the soil, and had dried up and left recesses. Trap her inside? But she would break out again, and come for him two-fold. He’d never fought another dragon, and he’d never thought he would fight one with the same powers over the earth as he had. His bloom hummed, sang with the adrenaline of battle.

Samia approached with a hiss, shoulders hunched, smoke curling not only from her mouth but from her body.

He couldn’t hurt her.

He glanced back at the tunnel. They needed to get away. They needed to escape her; regroup. And if Sabellian fell too…

Ebonhorn turned back to Samia.

“You have a lot of skill,” he said. “I wish I could be seeing it under better circumstances.”

Samia smiled. “And I’ll be able to teach all my siblings once I take over the brood. When I bring them here. To our home.”

She thundered forward. He met her in the middle, and crashed into her with enough force to make his lungs shake. Her paws swiped into his face. Blood pooled down into his eyes. He roared, bent his head, and smashed his antlers into her neck.

Samia shrieked. She tried to jerk away, to free herself from the pinning hold, but his horns were broad, built for this, built to crash and charge and pin; they were a yoke on her neck, fixing her in place.

He pushed forward, forward, forward. Samia stumbled back, shrieking in rage. She collided with the wall. The antechamber shook with an ominous grumble.

She rose onto her back legs and swiped with her front. Pain raked across his belly. He grunted. Deep, a deep tear.

“You’re alone here, outsider!”  Samia said. “You should have stayed home!”

Earth gurgled up. It snapped around his paws, holding him in place.

Then pain. Pain. It exploded at the end of his tail. He roared.

A spike of obsidian had pierced straight through his tail: pinning him as he had pinned her. Blood gushed.

A crackling appeared above his head - and there it hovered: a spike as tall as he was long, dangling above him, twisting serenely back and forth. It looked for all the world like one of the chimes hanging from the doorways of so many tauren homes.

He tried to push it away. But as soon as his mind touched that earth, bile rose in his throat. He pulled himself away.

“Uncle,” she hissed, and the spike fell.

A great form collided into him. He tumbled away. The shard cut through his side; his tail came free, the shard snapping from the root. Blood splattered red and hot.

“Furywing!” Samia’s voice shrilled, high above even the buzzing of pain in his head. He forced himself to stand. His attacker - no, savior - stood before him and Samia. The thin, whip of a dragon shook faintly. The red striations on her wings looked like dripping blood in the darkness.

“Tell Sabellian this is for Outland,” she called back to Ebonhorn. “I hope we are even now.”

Ebonhorn didn’t wait - he had learned about hesitating with Vaxian. He turned and ran back to the cavern. Behind him, Furywing and Samia came to blows. The scape of scale on scale, the great booms of paw smacking against flesh, reverberated through the chamber.

He thundered into the ruins of the tunnel. Mid-leap, he transformed back into his tauren guise - ignoring, as always, the rush of relief he felt as he donned the more familiar form. Now was not the time for such things.

The cavern shook. Shards of rock and dirt came falling onto his head. The place was full of dust and smoke.

He skidded to a stop. There stood Gravel. They held Sabellian in his arms. The dragon was still limp.

Ebonhorn flared his nostrils, raised his hands warily.

“Friend or foe?”

Gravel blinked owlishly at him. “I live to serve.”

The next scream was Furywing’s. No time. They had no time. The corruption was exploding, and would consume Furywing next, and soon, he had no doubts.

“Do you know a place to hide?”

“Yes.”

Ebonhorn nodded. He looked around for -

“The pendant?” Gravel drawled. They nodded to Sabellian. There it lay, sparkling on his chest, the chain wrapped around his neck. Someone had mended it to fit securely again.

“Who -”

“Furywing aided,” they said, monotone. “As one should. The strongest of blood is -”

“Good,” Ebonhorn said quickly. “Go to this hidden place. I will follow.”

Gravel bowed his head, turned, and headed deep into the cavern.

Ebonhorn followed - but cast one last look back, where Furywing slowly rose, belly scraping the floor.