Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects

11

“It makes sense,” Krasus mused. “You are able to traverse the timeways. Though you must be very careful. It is easy to be trapped by illusions.”

“I can indeed traverse the timeways,” Thrall agreed. “But I’m not out of my timeway completely. I know because I’ve visited it at various points. Blackmoore is out of his own timeway completely. And that’s because he’s had help. It’s got to be the infinite dragonflight behind this; that’s the only explanation that makes any sense. That’s why the ancients were so troubled. Why their knowledge is flawed now.”

Krasus rubbed his temples. Thrall watched him keenly, only now fully aware of how much he wanted this red dragon mage to give him a solution.

“What would happen if he killed you, Thrall?” Taretha asked, directing the question to both of them.

“My best guess? Disaster,” said Krasus bluntly. “I find it impossible to believe that, in the true timeway, Thrall was meant to die at the hands of a Blackmoore from a completely different timeway. Thrall is a critical component of his timeway’s future. To eliminate him means far too much would unravel. Not only would our timeway fall apart, I believe that all timeways would.”

“And the other way around?” Taretha queried.

“Considering that this timeway is, frankly, something that should never have been—an illusion, as it were—it could potentially restore the balance.” Krasus lifted a hand. “I am not a bronze dragon; I urge you to remember that. I only speak of what sounds logical, based on the little I know.”

“I’ve got to get out of here,” Thrall growled. His hands clenched and unclenched. “I’ve got to find Nozdormu and stop this. But I don’t know how.”

He sat back down and put his head in his hands. He was utterly and completely at a loss. He was failing the dragonflights and Ysera, failing Aggra and the Earthen Ring, failing his world. When a small hand dropped on his shoulder and squeezed gently, he covered it with his own. He was failing Taretha, too: dear, ill-treated Taretha, who should not even be alive.

He thought of the glitter of scales, seducing him into trying another timeway, taking another chance. He had found an answer, at least; he knew who was hunting him. And that knowledge had shaken him more badly than he wanted to admit.

“Ysera’s worldview is … different from most,” Krasus said quietly. “Yet it has a truth to it deeper than waking knowledge has. I do not think she would have felt you so vital to these tasks, Thrall, if you were not able to assist her.”

Thrall was too disheartened to argue. Nothing was real. The glittering scales that lured him from timeway to timeway, an assassin who shouldn’t exist, some deep draconic mystery—his head was swimming, trying to keep track of it. Taretha’s hand on his shoulder wasn’t real, yet it was. What was dream? What was reality? What was—

And then suddenly, with the gentleness of breeze and the force of an explosion, Thrall understood.

He saw again the black bird Medivh speaking to him: This place is full of illusions. There is only one way you can find what you truly seek—only one way you can find yourself.

And Krasus’s words: Though you must be very careful. It is easy to be trapped by illusions. … This timeway is, frankly, something that should never have been … an illusion, as it were. …

The timeways were not full of illusions. This timeway was not an illusion.

It was time itself that was the illusion.

Historians and prophets made much of the past and future. There were tomes aplenty written about old battles, strategies, historical events, and how they had changed the world. And there were prophecies and predictions, hopes and wonderments and speculations about the next five hundred years, or the next five minutes.

But the only true reality was now.

Scholars would have debates raging over what he was wrestling with now, but in his mind it suddenly seemed so simple, so obvious. There was only ever one moment.

This one.

Every past moment was a memory. It was gone. Every future moment was a hope, or a fear. It had not yet manifested.

There was only now, this moment, and even it slipped away into the past, and the future moment became this moment.

It was so elegant, so peaceful and tranquil, and Thrall found himself letting go of so many things he could barely understand them all. They slid from his shoulders like a pack dropped to the earth. The obsession over past actions. The worry about future ones.

And still the need to plan, the need for regret—wisdom dictated that even in this moment such things were necessary. To understand the past was to be the best one could be in this moment. To anticipate the future could shape the next this moment.

But all that became so much easier—became light as a feather and magical and innocent—once he finally understood.

He was trapped in time, yes. In this seemingly endless path of revisiting his past—or, most recently, in glimpsing a possible future.

But all he needed to do was step out of the cycle by truly being in this moment. And Nozdormu—

Thrall blinked and trembled with the vastness of the understanding that broke upon him. Now he understood both how it was that he was so mired in these timeways that felt so personal, yet he saw Nozdormu in each one of them. Thrall had been trapped in a single moment—a vital moment of his own past. The mighty Timeless One was trapped in all moments of time.

But with his newfound ease, Thrall knew that he now could find the great leviathan.

Krasus was smiling at him. Thrall knew that the red dragon was dead in the real timeway, but that was not truth; that was not reality. This was. And Taretha, too, was real, and alive. He could almost feel her breath slipping into her lungs, hear each sweet heartbeat as if it were the only heartbeat ever to exist.

Which it was.

“You have figured it out,” Krasus said, a slight smile curving his lips.

“I have,” Thrall said. He turned to Taretha and smiled into her eyes. “I am glad to be with you.”

Not glad to have been. To be.

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them, he knew he was in a place completely and utterly out of time. He was floating, unanchored even by gravity, the darkness around him illuminated only by the soft glow of a truly infinite number of portals. And through each one, Thrall could glimpse the glitter of golden scales.

It was a startling, unsettling image, yet Thrall felt complete peace in his heart as he drifted in a nothingness surrounded by everything. His mind was calm and open, holding something that it should not be able to hold for more than a moment—but he knew a moment was all that was needed. All that was ever needed.

And then his body fell with a gentle thump onto the cradling embrace of soft sand, and he realized he was once again in the Caverns of Time. He opened his eyes and gazed upon the Timeless One.

But not only upon a single being, however magnificent. On each of those scales, those glittering things that had taken him on so amazing a journey, Thrall saw moments.

His moments.

All the great deeds of Thrall’s life were playing out on the scales of the Timeless One. There, he donned the armor of Orgrim Doomhammer. Here, he fought alongside Cairne Bloodhoof, protecting that great tauren’s village. Over there, he called the elements for the first time; over there, he stood alongside Grom Hellscream. Countless moments, moments that had made a hero, a legend. Moments that had truly changed his world.

“Do you sssee?”

The voice was a deep rumble, deeper than any Thrall had heard from a dragon before. It thrummed along his blood, sang in his soul.

“I—see,” he whispered.

“What … do you sssee?”

“The most important moments of my life,” Thrall said, his eyes darting from one to another. So much, he could hardly take it in. But the moment could hold it, and it did.

“The deedsss that changed the course of hissstory,” agreed Nozdormu. “I hold them all. All the great deedsss, of all beingsss who have lived. But that is not all there is.”

Thrall was enraptured by the scenes, dancing and beautiful, and felt himself yearning to be swept up in them. Gently, with compassion for his yearning, he nonetheless rooted himself on the sand, Thrall-in-the-now, regarding Nozdormu-in-the-now.

He turned his head to regard the dragon’s face. The wisdom in the gleaming, sun-colored eyes was almost unimaginably ancient, and yet oddly youthful. Powerful, beyond Thrall’s comprehension. Beautiful.

“There is more to a life than the great moments, the ones the world sssees,” Nozdormu continued. “You must sssee those for yourself.”

And Thrall did. The discovery of Taretha’s first enthusiastic note, and the glimpse of her waving to him when she was just a girl. The quiet evenings in camps after battles, drinking and laughing and telling stories around a fire. Running as a ghost wolf, working with the elements.

“This strong hand in mine,” he murmured, the memory of Aggra’s brown fingers clasping his.

“It is there that we are receptive, and learn. Where we take in. Glory, battle, great momentsss, are where we give to the world. But we cannot give without receiving. We cannot share what we do not have inside. It is this quiet, the pause between breathsss, that makes us what we truly are. Gives us ssstrength for all our journeys.”

Aggra.

The moments shimmered, ceased, and Thrall was looking at nothing more—or less—than the beautiful golden scales of the minder of time. He realized, too, that he and Nozdormu were not alone in the Caverns. They were surrounded by several silent but happy members of the bronze flight who had come to sit quietly beside them.

Nozdormu looked at each of them, including his son Anachronos, then back to Thrall. “I owe you a debt I do not think I can repay,” Nozdormu said. “You brought me back. I wasss everywhere, and nowhere at once. I had forgotten the Firssst Lessson. I, the Timelesss One.” He made a rumbling noise, part self-deprecating amusement, part annoyance. “One would think that, surrounded by the grainsss of the sssands of time, I would remember the small thingsss more.”

This strong hand in yours.

“I know why you have come,” Nozdormu continued. Thrall suddenly felt sheepish. “Or rather … all the reasons you have come, some of which are not necessarily ssso. Speak, my friend.”

Thrall did, starting with the visit from Ysera, and all that had occurred since then. Nozdormu’s nostrils flared and his great eyes narrowed at the description of the ancients.

“They, too, are keepersss of time, in their own way,” he said, but would not elaborate further.

Thrall continued, speaking of the mysterious assassin and his experience with the various manifestations of the timeways. “I learned that my pursuer was none other than possibly my greatest enemy,” he said quietly. “Aedelas Blackmoore—an Aedelas Blackmoore who was strong, and cunning, and determined.”

“And,” Nozdormu sighed, “an agent of the infinite dragonflight.”

“How do you—?”

Nozdormu held up a commanding forepaw. “In a moment. I have listened to your ssstory, and knowing what else I know … I have come to a very disturbing conclusion. A conclusion,” he said, addressing not just Thrall but the gathered bronzes, “that will be difficult to accept. But accept it we must. My children … everything is connected.”

The bronzes exchanged glances. “What do you mean, Father?” asked Anachronos. “We know that meddling in the timeways can have dire repercussions.”

“No, no, it isss far bigger than that … farther reaching … almost inconceivably so. And this connection concerns usss. The dragonsss. Good, at least, has come of my being trapped in each moment. I have been held captive by the illusion of time. And in that captivity, I bore witnesss. I have ssseen things germinate, gain strength, and manifest. And I tell you, it is no accident.” He took a deep breath and regarded them steadily.

“All the events that have occurred to harm the Aspectsss and their flights over the millennia—they are not coincidence, or simply random happenssstance. This altering of the timewaysss, the construction of a monster out of Blackmoore. The Emerald Nightmare, which harmed so many. The attack of the twilight dragonflight, the madness of Malygosss and even Neltharion—they are all intertwined. Perhaps even entirely orchestrated by the same dark handsss.”

For a moment, no one spoke. So many events—connected? Part of a far-reaching conspiracy so vast, it had taken aeons to manifest?

It was Thrall who broke the silence. “To what end?” he asked. Some of these incidents he hadn’t even known about. It was almost too huge for him to even comprehend.

“To destroy the Aspects and the flights forever. To eliminate all chance of order and stability.”

He turned to Thrall, bringing his great head down to the orc’s level. Sorrow was in those amazing eyes as he spoke.

“I had become lost in the timeways, Thrall. Trapped in every moment. Do you know why I was there in the first place?”

Thrall shook his head.

“I was there to try to understand how sssomething dark came to be. How to prevent that. You asked me how I knew that the infinite dragonflight was behind Blackmoore’sss creation and liberation.”

He hesitated, then looked away, unable to meet Thrall’s blue-eyed gaze.

“I know this because … I sssent him after you.”