Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects

15

The blues were winning!

They were outnumbered, but they were unquestionably winning this battle. They had been heartened with the appearance of a new Aspect. The ritual had worked; the blessing of the titans had been humbly requested and granted; and the upwelling of joy and relief had given the dragons new energy and strength of will to fight to protect themselves.

This was not how it was supposed to happen!

Bleeding, part of him frozen, one wing damaged from the targeted attack by Kalecgos, Arygos maintained himself in flight with an effort. He felt weak, and frightened, and was accustomed to neither sensation.

How had things gone so terribly wrong?

All Arygos could think about—like any trapped animal, he thought with a mixture of panic and disgust—was safety. A den. A place to recover and rest and think. There was one such place, where he could be calm and shake this terror that seemed to clamp down on his brain like a dark fog.

He glanced about wildly for Kalecgos. There he was, huge and luminous and proud, radiant with all the power that he, Arygos, should have been chosen to embody. And atop his back, adding insult to injury, was Kalec’s beloved orc clinging like a burr, swinging his hammer and smashing the skulls of Arygos’s twilight dragons.

The Eye. He had to go to the Eye of Eternity, to think, to rally, to come up with some plan. It was the heart of the Nexus, his father’s place of refuge and retreat, and it called to him now in his moment of panic. Just the thought sent at least some manner of steadiness through him. Whimpering, as ill befit a dragon, he spread his wings and flew. He dove from the pinnacle of the Nexus, where the aerial battle was going so impossibly poorly, like a stone. He fell more than flew, at the last moment opening his wings and gliding into the entrance of the Nexus. Through its labyrinthine passages he bolted, his heart racing as panic dug its icy claws into his heart.

And there it was: a swirling, misty portal. On the other side was the Eye of Eternity. Arygos flew swiftly through it, emerging into the night sky of this small dimension complete unto itself. Once, there had been a blue and gray magical platform on which one could perch and rest while contemplating the mysteries that swirled past. Magic runes had danced, appearing and disappearing like softly flowing snowflakes. The black night sky, dotted with cold stars, had turned and twisted, and in one part a blue-white nebula had whirled.

Now there was no platform. It had been shattered into drifting pieces in the battle that had claimed his father’s life; one such still held the closed magical orb known as the Focusing Iris. Malygos had used his own blood to activate and control this orb, which had lain dormant for millennia. With the open Focusing Iris, Malygos had been able to direct powerful surge needles, using them to pull arcane magic from Azeroth’s ley lines and channeling that magic into the Nexus. And it had been the opening of the Focusing Iris a slender crack with a long-forgotten key that had lured Malygos to what had been his final battle.

Even though it reminded him of a grim moment in his life, this place was comforting and familiar, and Arygos felt himself relax. He perched atop one of the slowly moving pieces, folded his wings against his great body, and opened his jaw to take great, gulping breaths.

“Arygos?”

The dragon opened his eyes and unfurled his wings, instantly on the alert. Who had dared—?

“Blackmoore!” He breathed a sigh of relief. “I am glad to see you.”

“I wish I could say the same,” the human said, striding forward. He stood on another one of the platform pieces and peered up boldly at the hovering dragon. He lifted off his helm, and his long black hair spilled out. His blue eyes flickered over Arygos. “What has happened? I don’t know much about all this Aspect business, but … I’m guessing that it’s not you.”

Arygos winced. “No. They chose … Kalecgossss.” He hissed the name, deeply angry, deeply wronged. “That stupid orc—he turned the heart of the dragonflight away from me. From what was rightfully mine!”

Blackmoore frowned. “This is not good,” he muttered.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Angrily, Arygos slammed his tail on the piece of the platform, tilting it precariously. “It is all Thrall’s fault. If you had just killed him as you were supposed to—”

The human’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, and if you had become Aspect as you were supposed to, we would not be having this pleasant conversation.” His voice cracked like a whip. “But neither of us has what we want right now, so we had best put aside our anger and figure out how to get it.”

The human was correct. Arygos calmed himself. He needed to focus; it was why he had come here.

“Perhaps together we can accomplish both our goals,” Arygos said. “And please our Twilight Father and Deathwing at the same time.”

Blackmoore eyed him. “Go on.”

“We both want Thrall dead. And we both want me to become Aspect. Come with me back to the battle, King Blackmoore. Take your revenge. If you kill the orc, Kalec will see that not all works out as he wishes. And if Kalec falters, the faith of the rest of the flight will be shaken, the miserable wyrms. Then Kalecgos will be vulnerable, and I can destroy him.”

He grew more excited as he spoke, working it out, visualizing each step. “Once Kalecgos is slain, the blues, desperate for someone to guide them, will turn to me—and so I will gain the powers of the Aspect as I should have done in the first place! All will be as it should have been.”

“You know this for a fact?” challenged Blackmoore.

“No … not exactly. But whom else could the power possibly pass to? I was the only one who challenged Kalec. Surely they will turn to me when I reveal him for the weakling he is.”

Blackmoore stroked his goatee with a mailed hand, considering. “I don’t like the odds. I am but a human. Against one or even a few dragons, maybe—but an entire flight?”

“Trust me. Thrall will be completely undone when he sees you again,” urged Arygos. He did not like to beg, but he needed this human. “And when Thrall is dead, the blues will be stricken. There are still many twilight dragons in the air. We can do this if we are together on it!”

The human nodded. “Very well,” he said. “A risky plan, but what is life without risk, eh?” He grinned suddenly, white teeth flashing, the smile of a predator.

“Only a little risk,” said Arygos, “for such a great reward.” He was more relieved than he had anticipated. He knew the history of this human, knew his hatred for Thrall. Blackmoore wanted the orc dead. Just as Arygos wanted Kalec dead. Arygos flew toward the platform bearing the human, positioning himself next to and slightly below it so that Blackmoore could easily climb atop him.

They could do this. He knew they could. Then the obstacles would finally be cut down. He would be Aspect, as he had always yearned to be.

His heart lifted with each wing beat as he rounded toward the whirling portal. Below him, the pieces of the platform turned almost lazily. Arygos looked down in time to see one of them roll over, revealing the Focusing Iris directly below him.

The pain was sudden, shocking, and brutal: a white-hot needle piercing the base of his skull. As Blackmoore’s sword thrust down, down, Arygos clung to life long enough to see a drop of his red blood splash on the Focusing Iris, to watch it snap wide open. And as he hurtled downward, watching Blackmoore make a daring leap from his back to land on a slowly turning piece of platform, Arygos, son of Malygos, understood that he would die betrayed.

Holding the Doomhammer in one hand, Thrall lifted the other. Lightning crackled, zagging in a chain of scorching death between no fewer than four twilight dragons. The strike stunned them momentarily, blackening their sides and searing their leathery wings. They shrieked in pain, staying in their corporeal forms long enough for Thrall to again leap from Kalec’s back onto a twilight drake, lift the Doomhammer, and bring it smashing down on the drake’s skull. It was a glancing blow, though, and the drake had the wherewithal to turn incorporeal. Thrall abruptly started to fall. He glanced downward at the snow rushing up to meet him, but then suddenly he saw the broad, shining blue back of Kalecgos. Thrall landed hard, but safely.

Thrall was just about to lift his gaze to meet the next foe when the Nexus was suddenly rocked. Light seemed to explode from everywhere, and even the mighty Aspect wheeled and dove away from it, with Thrall clinging tightly to Kalec’s back.

“What happened?” Thrall shouted.

“An explosion of arcane magic!” Kalec shouted back. His long, sinuous neck was lowered as he stared down below at the Nexus, which was still spurting magical energies like dying fireworks. “I am not sure what—”

“The twilight dragons!” Thrall was looking around as Kalec was looking down. “They’re fleeing back to the temple!”

“Blues! To me!” Kalec cried, his voice sounding amplified and deeper and trembling through Thrall’s very sinews. “Our enemy is escaping—we have the advantage! Destroy them before they can reach their lord!”

If Thrall had thought Kalec was swift before, now he found himself barely able to breathe, so fast did the Dragon Aspect fly. The twilight dragons were giving their best to their frantic, abrupt escape. They were too busy fleeing to fight, all of them in their incorporeal forms. The blues responded with solely magical attacks. The air crackled and sparked with white arcane energy, shimmered with icy frost and the sudden squalls of an isolated blizzard. Several fell, but more escaped.

The blues followed, grimly determined.

Kirygosa stared, horrified, willing with all her heart that what she was watching would not succeed.

She’d felt her brother die, felt his life energy, the blood of a scion of Malygos, being harnessed and channeled in a way that was disturbingly familiar to her. The Twilight Father, no doubt thanks to information supplied to him by Deathwing, seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

Seconds after her brother’s death, a storm appeared in the skies above Wyrmrest Temple. Purple-black clouds swirled angrily, like a whirlpool, and then with a mighty crack that made Kirygosa cry out and clap her hands over her poor human ears, the skies opened.

Blinding white light shot both upward and downward, a lance that pierced the heavens beyond where the eye could follow and also struck deep into the earth. She recognized it as a surge needle, a tool composed of arcane energy, a tool of rich, flooding power. Once, Malygos had used such needles to draw arcane magic from the ley lines of Azeroth and transfer it to the Nexus.

Now that process was being reversed. This surge needle was drawing power from the Nexus.

And caught by that needle between heavens and earth was Chromatus.

The spike of almost inconceivable magical energy was now boring into the enormous, mottled, lifeless body of the monstrosity. Kirygosa shivered as she watched, wrapping her arms around herself, dimly aware of the needle marks and scars on her pale flesh. She knew sickly that she was part of the reason the ghastly display before her was occurring. They had used her for their experiments. But they had kept her alive for two reasons: her bloodline and her gender.

“You are lucky, my dear,” said the Twilight Father beside her. “Fortunate among dragons are you to witness this … and to have helped contribute.”

“It looks as if my brother contributed more,” Kiry said, angry that her voice sounded raw and broken. “So this is how the Twilight’s Hammer rewards service and fidelity. Arygos betrayed his whole flight—indeed, an entire race—to your cause, and you killed him!”

“I killed him because he failed, not because he served,” the Twilight Father said mildly. “And yes, this is how the Twilight’s Hammer rewards failure.”

“Deathwing did not seem altogether pleased with the sort of progress you were making,” Kirygosa snapped recklessly. “You might be next after my poor deluded broth—”

He jerked on the chain. Her words turned into an agonized whimper as the chain burned her throat. “I would choose my words with more care, little one.”

She had her breath back now, and for a despairing moment the death he threatened her with seemed sweeter than continuing to exist solely to be used as a tool to harm her own flight. She opened her mouth for a scathing retort when a wild, giddy roar from an excited crowd of cultists below made the words die in her throat.

Chromatus was moving.

It was subtle, hard to see, but one claw was opening and closing. The rest of him lay still as death. And then the mighty tail twitched, ever so slightly. A head—the black one—jerked.

The Twilight Father rushed to the side of the circular floor. “He lives! He lives! ”

He made fists of his gloved hands and raised them in the air. The crowds below increased their cheering.

The surge needle pulsed, its energy drilling into the now-animated corpse. With each moment that passed, it seemed to Kirygosa that the monster grew stronger. His other limbs began to twitch. One by one, each hideous head lifted. Like the tentacles of a great sea creature, they dipped and moved, gazed about, opened their jaws. Ten eyes were opened now, and their color displayed a uniformity the rest of him lacked. Every pair of eyes gleamed a brilliant, glowing purple. Alive, moving, speaking he might be, but Chromatus was hideously not whole. In some places, bones were visible. Scales had fallen off, showing skin that was healthy and skin that was decayed. Each of the heads seemed to have something amiss with it: a missing ear, an oozing eye …

“Chromatus!” cried the Twilight Father. “To me, my son whom I have birthed. Look to me!”

A red ear twitched. Green nostrils flared. The bronze head moved slowly on its neck. One by one, awkward, unused, each head followed, until all five of them regarded the Twilight Father.

“Our … father,” the bronze head said in a stately voice, though the words seemed to come awkwardly at first. The purple eyes of the blue head narrowed, then that gaze fell upon Kirygosa. Dark laughter rumbled through the blue head. When it spoke, its voice was oddly mellifluous, though the words came hesitantly.

“Fear not, little blue. Your brother lives—within me. We feel our kinship.” The other heads turned, mildly interested in what the blue head was saying. “You will serve too.”

“Never!” screamed Kirygosa, her mind almost unraveling at the horrors she had been forced to behold. “The blues will never serve you! Not with Kalecgos leading them!”

She expected a hard jerk on the chain and steeled herself for the sharp, bright pain. Instead, the Twilight Father laughed. “Do you not yet understand? And I thought the blues were intelligent!”

She didn’t want to hear. She didn’t want to understand. But she found her lips moving in the question: “Understand what?”

“What he was made for!”

Kirygosa forced herself to behold Chromatus. She saw a hideous chromatic dragon, more horrible than others because of his five heads, which—

“No,” she whispered, as comprehension struck her like a physical blow. “No. …”

“Now … now you see,” purred the Twilight Father, his voice gleeful. “Glorious, isn’t it, this coming doom in all its inevitability? It doesn’t matter if the blues now have an Aspect. It doesn’t matter if Ysera is awakened, or if Nozdormu is found, or even if the Life-Binder herself returns.” He pressed his lips to her ear and whispered, as if sharing the most intimate of secrets, “Chromatus lives … so that the Aspects will die.”

Kirygosa lost whatever grip she might have had on control. She launched herself at the Twilight Father, screaming and clawing and biting, her simple, human attack no match for his magic—or the power of the chain. She kept screaming a single, futile word, as if that could avert the coming catastrophe.

“No! … No! … No…!”

“Silence!” cried the Twilight Father, violently jerking on the silver chain. Kiry fell hard, convulsing in agony.

“Nay, nay,” continued the black head of Chromatus. This one’s voice was silky, sibilant, cold. Chromatus rose slowly, but his movements were starting to become more and more graceful as he discovered how to control his body. “Let the little blue prattle. It will be all the sweeter later. She will—”

The red head interrupted the black, turning toward the west. He shifted, still slightly uncomfortable with his body. “They come,” the head cried in a clear, strong voice. “I am not fully recovered! What have you done, Father?”

And Kirygosa started laughing. She heard it in her own ears, knew it to be hysterical, but it kept coming, bubbling out of her like a suddenly uncapped spring. She lifted a shaking finger, pointing at the twilight dragons flying full tilt toward the temple, with her own brave blue flight not far behind them.

“You miscalculated!” she cried. “The great Twilight Father, with all his wonderful plans! But your dragons turned tail too soon, and my flight comes to destroy them, your abomination, and you! What plan do you have now, O wise man?” The Twilight Father was so enraged he didn’t even bother using the chain. One gloved hand cracked her cheek hard, jerking her head to one side. Still, Kirygosa laughed, waving her arms.

“Kalecgos! Kalec!”

And there he was!

Her heart soared. His wisdom and compassion had prevailed. He flew, the Aspect of Magic, larger than any of the others, limned in a shining light with a small figure atop his back. All that power, after far, far too long, was being wielded not by a mad mind, nor by one bent on revenge or betrayal. Tears filled her eyes, and she sobbed with joy.

He would not fall, nor would any of the other Aspects. They were striking now, before Chromatus had reached his full devastating potential.

Below her, Chromatus threw back his heads and bellowed, all the voices—hissing, strong, melodic—blended into a terrifying symphony. Then the monster leaped into the sky. He faltered, but just for a moment; then his wing beats grew stronger, and he began his attack.

Kirygosa had had nightmares, particularly in the last several months when she had been held prisoner, tormented daily, locked into a human form and thinking that the only respite would come with death. Yes, she had had nightmares aplenty.

But nothing like the dreadful reality she beheld now.

He moved jerkily, like a puppet, a thing that ought never to have existed. Bigger than any of them, even the Aspect Kalecgos, Chromatus’s awkward movements somehow were faster, and his blunt strikes more deadly, than those of the living dragons who fought with and against him.

He brought to bear more than physical strength and agility. The white hue of arcane magic and the sickly purple of the twilights’ attacks were augmented by other colors—the scarlet of the red’s fire, the emerald poison cloud of the green—as Chromatus fought with the skills of all of the ancient dragonflights.

She could hear the bellows of triumph from the twilight dragons as they fought with renewed enthusiasm. They might have been turning tail a few moments ago, but now they were all deadly purpose and implacable intent.

Too, the simple sight of the obscenity was unsettling. It ought not to be, and yet here it was, breathing fire, using illusions, dealing death in an awkward manner that somehow was brutally and lethally efficient.

Several of Kirygosa’s flight were killed by Chromatus alone. Others, horrified by and fixated on the sight of the chromatic dragon, were careless of the twilight dragons still filling the air. Even as she watched, a blue tried to approach Chromatus from behind, only to have his neck broken with a single, almost careless strike of the monster’s powerful tail. The blue, dead instantly, fell to join his brethren. Anguished, Kirygosa turned away, hiding her face. A hard hand grasped her hands and jerked them away. She turned her tear-filled eyes up toward the Twilight Father, almost but not quite able to make out features beneath the dark cowl.

“Who is laughing now, little blue girl?” he cackled. “Your precious flight—he is barely animated, and look what he is doing! Look!”

He hauled her to the edge of the platform, one hand gripping her chin and the other like iron, binding her arms to her side. “Look!”

At least, Kirygosa thought, her heart breaking, he cannot force me to keep my eyes open.

Thrall could feel the sense of defeat ripple through the blue dragonflight. And he felt it along with them.

It was a dragon, but such a dragon as might have been conjured by a Forsaken’s worst nightmare. No fewer than five heads, each one seeming to be a different color, sprouted from massive shoulders. It seemed jerky, rotten, like Scourge stumbling to the attack. Yet it was alive, not undead. Alive, each of the monstrous heads attacking with such furor that an entire flight, with victory clenched in its claws, had become rattled and panicky.

“What is it?” he shouted to Kalec.

The Aspect did not reply at once; he was too busy fending off a pair of attacks. Then Kalec cried, “A chromatic dragon!”

Thrall recalled what Desharin had told him of such creatures—patchwork monstrosities, bits and pieces of the other five flights. Desharin had said they were all dead.

But this one certainly was alive enough.

Thrall stared for a second at the beast, trying to wrap his mind around what it was and what it was doing to the blue dragonflight—even to Kalecgos, the flight’s new Aspect. It was only an instant of inattention, of shock—but it was an instant too long.

The thing charged at them, five heads gaping. The stench of rotting flesh that emanated from him was almost overwhelming. Kalec dove out of his way. Thrall held on with all his strength. He thought he had made it safely until something slammed into his midsection, swatting at him as if he were no more than a flea riding on a wolf’s back, and he realized that although Kalec’s skillful flying had saved him from a direct attack from the many-headed chromatic dragon, it had not saved Thrall from the power of even this casual brush of the monster’s tail as he dove past.

So this is death at last, he thought, falling from the back of an Aspect to be crushed on jagged rocks.

He closed his eyes, clutching the Doomhammer to his heart, glad that he would die with a weapon in his hand. He wondered if he would even feel the impact that would shatter his spine or smash his skull.