Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects

3

It was not in the manner Alexstrasza would have wished, but it did seem that the sudden presence of the twilight dragonflight galvanized the other flights into unified action. Without another breath wasted in argument among themselves, they lifted into the skies, charging to attack the enemy, to protect this sacred temple from danger.

It was an incongruously beautiful violence. Dozens of powerful forms in hues of ruby and emerald and sapphire wheeled and turned in midair. Their foe was all the shades of day turning into night—purple, violet, indigo—and grace and brutality combined into a bloody battle.

As they clashed, a voice seemed to echo in their very ears.

“How kind of so many of you to gather together in a single place, that I might destroy more of you weak creatures so readily.”

Alexstrasza flew directly toward a cluster of three dragons, diving out of the way of their deadly breath, colored as purple as they were. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the blues hover for a moment, casting a spell and then folding his wings and diving straight down. She swerved quickly and avoided the sudden storm of what looked to be icicles. One of the twilights managed to turn herself incorporeal, but the other two were too slow. Seizing the opportunity, Alexstrasza darted upward to clamp her massive jaws into the sinuous throat of one of them. Caught in his corporeal form with insufficient strength to transform, the twilight dragon let out a strangled scream and frantically beat the air with his indigo wings, trying to tear away from her. His black claws raked at her belly. Her scales blunted the damage from the attack, but white-hot pain still rippled across her stomach. She bit deeper, and the pain stopped. She opened her jaws and released the limp body, not sparing it a second glance as it tumbled downward.

“Who are you?” she cried, her own voice amplified and carrying on the cold, clear air. “Show yourself, name yourself, or be known for the coward and braggart that you are!”

“Neither braggart nor coward I,” the voice came again. “I am known to my followers as the Twilight Father. They are my children, and I love them.”

A chill rippled through the great Life-Binder, though she did not know why. If the name was true, and he was the patriarch of these beings—

“Then come forth and protect your children, Twilight Father, or sit back and behold as we slaughter them one by one!”

Two of them dove at her from opposite directions. So intent was she on locating the source of the voice she almost did not sense them in time. With barely a tail’s breadth to spare, she folded her wings in and dropped like a stone, turning over as she did so. Directly above her the two twilight dragons shifted into their shadowy forms an instant before their collision, their two bodies passing harmlessly through one another.

Laughter, harsh and smug, enveloped her. “You are as a foolish little girl, for all that you are the great Life-Binder. It will be delightful to watch you crumble to pieces beneath what is to come.”

A roar shattered her ears, and Alexstrasza’s heart ached as one of her own fell in battle, great red wings still trying to bear him aloft although one of those wings had been ripped to ribbons. She dove toward her comrade’s killers, bellowing and screaming fire. One of them immediately shifted from solid flesh and threw himself out of the path of flames. The other, either braver or more foolish, turned and hurled sharp daggers of dark magic at Alexstrasza before opting to shift. The arrogance cost him his life. She opened her jaws and breathed a sheet of flame along the full length of his body before the transformation was entirely complete. More powerful than the breath of an ordinary red dragon, the fire seemed to almost melt the bruise-colored scales, making them curl up as the flesh beneath them was burned to the bone. One side of his body scorched beyond recognition, the dragon fell, half in and half out of physical existence, but wholly in agony.

Out of the corner of her eye, Alexstrasza saw her normally gentle sister, Ysera, also fighting fiercely. Her jaws were opening, exhaling air that could be as sweet as summer flowers but had now turned sickly green and toxic. Two twilight dragons recoiled, gasping for breath, their wing beats faltering and their attention diverted long enough for Ysera, claws extended and great mouth gaping, to cast a quick spell. They howled in terror and began to fight each other, each one convinced that his fellow was the enemy. In a few seconds they would do Ysera’s work for her.

Alexstrasza fended off another attack, diving and circling back over her foe to snap his neck with a mighty stroke of her powerful tail. As the lifeless body hurtled to the earth, she realized two things simultaneously.

First, there were two Aspects present, both in fine fighting form. There were far too few twilight dragons to realistically take them down, especially now that the elite drakonid who normally stood guard at the entrances to the sanctums had temporarily left their posts to join the fight. While they could not fly, any wounded twilight dragon who had the misfortune to land while merely injured was dispatched quickly. It was too easy.

And second, all the fighting was gathered in one spot.

Why?

A better tactic would have been to separate the various dragons, surround them, lure them away from any protective defenders, and utilize the architecture of the temple itself as a weapon. But the twilight dragons were clustered as thick as a colony of ants above the apex of the temple, right where they would make fine targets for Ysera and Alexstrasza.

Alexstrasza’s gut twisted as a nameless, almost crippling fear shot through her. Something was horribly wrong.

“Break away from the enemy!” she cried, her voice clear and strong and belying her terror. “Lead them from the temple and attack them one by one!”

The defending dragons heard, and immediately scattered in all directions. The twilight dragons stayed clustered in a tight huddle, only a few of them breaking what now to Alexstrasza’s eyes seemed almost like a formation to follow their prey.

And then she realized what it was. They had not come to attack. They had come to distract—

The explosion, both physical and metaphysical, was powerful enough to send Alexstrasza hurtling head over tail through the air, tumbling helplessly as a newly hatched whelp caught in a cyclone. She extended her wings and bellowed in sharp, surprised pain as they were almost ripped off, but managed to catch herself. Her entire body felt as if it had been pummeled by a living mountain, and for a long moment she could hear nothing.

But she could see. And as the pain ripped through her, she wished she could not.

Wyrmrest Temple still stood. Barely. Several of the glorious, graceful arches had been shattered, their remnants looking like melted ice. Red magical energy roiled upward from the base of the temple.

And at the base of the temple were—

“The sanctums!” someone cried. “Our children!”

Many of them broke and dove downward, and for a terrible instant that lasted an eternity Alexstrasza could not find her voice.

The Ruby Sanctum … the children … Korialstrasz …!

When she did finally find the ability to speak, she could not herself believe what she was saying.

“Hold fast!” she cried. “We cannot afford to lose anyone else! Drive off the enemy, my flight! Do not let them harm us further!”

More than her own red dragonflight rallied at her impassioned cry, funneling their rage and grief and terror at what they feared had just happened into their attacks. The twilight dragons seemed startled by the ferocity, and soon enough fled.

Alexstrasza did not give pursuit. She folded her wings and dove earthward, heart shaking her with its frightened pounding, deathly afraid at what she might find.

The Twilight Father stood on the top of one of the many mountains that jutted upward in the Dragonblight. He did not seem to feel the cold as the wind tugged at his hooded cloak, and kept the hood firmly in place with one hand. The other hand was closed tightly about a small silver chain, the links tiny and finely crafted. From the shadowy darkness of the cowl, his eyes, set deep in a craggy, gray-bearded face, peered out. He had been watching the battle with pleasure, issuing his booming taunts to rattle the Life-Binder with an almost childlike glee.

But the explosion that had so devastated the dragonflights had also surprised and dismayed him.

Beside the large, stockily built man stood a beautiful young woman. Long, blue-black hair whipped in a wind that brought a pink hue to her otherwise pale cheeks. The thin chain that the Twilight Father held in his gloved hand culminated in a circle about her slender throat, almost like an elegant necklace. She, too, seemed impervious to the cold, although her tears had frozen on her face. Now, though, she smiled, and the tears cracked and fell to the cold stone beneath them.

Slowly, the hooded figure turned toward the girl. “How did you manage to get word to them? How did you do it? Who helped you? ”

The girl’s smile widened. “Your followers are too loyal to help me. I did not get word to them. But it seems that someone is smarter than you … Twilight Father.” She spoke the title, not with the respect that the cultists did, but with a defiant contempt. “Your plan has failed.”

He took a step closer to her, then suddenly chuckled. “How stupid you are. There are always options. And a wise man always has more than one plan.”

Casually, he tightened his grip on the chain. The girl gasped, her hands flying to her throat as the chain twisted, flared white, and began to burn her. He smiled at the smell of burning flesh, then, just as casually, released her from the spell.

She did not fall to her knees, not quite, but her gasping and shivering were sufficient to mollify him.

They had indeed suffered a setback. A tremendous one. But what he had told his prisoner was true. A wise man always had more than one plan. And the Twilight Father was nothing if not wise.

He was far from defeated.

They were gone.

The sanctums—all of them. Gone, as if they had never been. Five miniature dimensions, sacred space to each flight—obliterated. And along with the sanctums were the unspeakably precious treasures they housed: their young. Thousands of lives had been snuffed out before they had even had a chance to breathe air or flex their wings.

Alexstrasza had accompanied the wardens; there was nothing left even to investigate. Somehow the twilight dragons had managed to cause each sanctum to implode, leaving nothing behind except traces of the energy used to destroy them. Discovering the how and even the why of this would be the work of another day, when heads were clearer and hearts were calmer. For now, the dragonflights were united indeed in their pain and loss.

There was no hope, and yet Alexstrasza had it. She reached out, with her heart, her Life-Binding magic, her depthless love, trying to find a trace of the one who had been first in her heart. Their bond was so great that even if he had been spirited away somehow, if he lived, she would sense him. She had always been able to before.

Korialstrasz?

Silence.

Beloved?

Nothing.

Gone with the sanctums, and the eggs, and the hope of the dragons’ future, was Korialstrasz.

Alexstrasza crouched, stunned and reeling, on the snowy earth. Torastrasza, majordomo to the Ruling Council of the Accord, stood beside her, trying to offer comfort for something so horrific, so huge, that no solace could possibly be found, not for a long time. If ever.

Tariolstrasz approached Torastrasza. “A word with you?”

Torastrasza nuzzled Alexstrasza gently. “I will be back in a moment,” she said.

Alexstrasza looked up at her with vacant eyes, briefly not comprehending Torastrasza’s words. Then she nodded. “Oh, yes … of course.”

My beloved, my heart, my life … why did I ask you to stay behind? Had you come with me, you might have survived. …

Angry voices were all around her, raised in rage and anguish, fear and fury. The only thing saving Alexstrasza from losing herself was merciful numbness, which was starting to wear off the longer this nightmare that could not possibly be real continued. She felt a gentle brush along her neck and turned to see Ysera looking at her with compassion in her rainbow-hued eyes. The green Dragon Aspect was silent, knowing there was nothing that could be said, and merely stretched out beside her sister, their sides touching.

“Life-Binder,” said Torastrasza’s voice after a time. Alexstrasza lifted her head with an effort and regarded the other dragon.

“Korialstrasz …” Torastrasza began, but she could not continue.

“I know,” Alexstrasza said. Her heart broke a little more at the admission of it, as if saying the words were helping it to become more real. “He … was there. In the sanctum. My love is gone.”

But oddly, Torastrasza was shaking her head. Sudden, irrational hope filled Alexstrasza. “He survived?”

“No, no, I—it seemed to be a suicide venture.”

She stared at Torastrasza as if the majordomo were speaking gibberish. “Your words make no sense!” she said, slamming her forepaw down.

“He was … he did this. What little is left bears his energetic mark. It is green and … and living.”

“You are saying my sister’s beloved consort destroyed the sanctums? Including the eggs and himself?” said Ysera, her voice still calm and detached.

“It—there is no other explanation.”

Alexstrasza stared at Torastrasza. “This is not possible,” she said, her voice harder than stone. “You know Korialstrasz. You know he is incapable of this.”

“Not if he was working with the Twilight’s Hammer!” Arygos’s voice was filled with fury. “This whole time he was urging you to slay my father. Attack the Nexus. And all along he was plotting the extermination of our entire race!”

Anger exploded like a roiling fireball in Alexstrasza’s blood. She leaped upward, her eyes on the blue dragon, and slowly advanced on him.

“While your father whimpered in his madness, Korialstrasz and I fought for Azeroth. We united with whatever allies we could find. We changed time itself; we risked death and worse for this world. Always he was beside me, his heart true and strong. He even loved you, Arygos, saving your life, and Kiry’s, and that of so many others. Time and again, he has saved our world, our race. And now, you stand here expecting us to believe that he would ally with Deathwing? With a cult that wishes only the end of everything?”

“Arygos,” urged Kalec, “there could be another explanation.”

There could be … there was … there must be—Alexstrasza knew it. And yet—

“The battle tactics employed by the twilight dragons were designed to keep us fighting in the air high above the temple,” Torastrasza continued, her voice as gentle as her words were ruthless. “It was a distraction, to keep us occupied … to lure out the Wyrmrest protectors so that—” Torastrasza broke off and looked down, unable to regard her adored Life-Binder as she spoke words that she had to know were ripping the Dragonqueen’s heart to pieces.

“Alexstrasza,” Kalec said gently, “tell us why Krasus chose not to come today. He surely … I am not certain, but you asked him to stay behind, did you not?” His voice was pleading.

She stared at Kalec, her heart breaking even further as she recalled the conversation—the last they would ever have.

Go without me, then, my heart. You are the Aspect. Yours is the voice they will listen to. I will only be as a small pebble wedged between the scales—an irritant and little more.

He was the one who had suggested he stay behind. “No,” she breathed, both in answer to Kalec’s question and in a desperate denial of what seemed now to be the truth—that Korialstrasz had indeed planned this.

Kalec looked at her in anguish. “I … even with the evidence—even with all it looks like—I cannot believe that Krasus would attempt genocide! This is not the Krasus I knew!”

“Perhaps madness does not confine itself to Aspects,” sneered Arygos.

Something snapped inside Alexstrasza.

She threw back her head and screamed her pain, a keening sound that shattered the air and quivered along the frozen ground. She sprang upward, wings beating in time with her racing heart, eyes fastened on the beautiful Orb of Unity.

She flew straight for it.

Alexstrasza lowered her head at the last possible second, like a ram charging at its enemy. Her massive horns impacted the delicate orb. With an incongruously bright tinkling sound, the Orb of Unity shattered into thousands of shining pieces that fell like sparkling rain upon the dragons below.

She had to get away from here. Away from the dragons who were so quick to believe the worst of one who had always been the best of them. Not just the blues, or the greens, but her own flight, who should know better—

Should she know better? What if it was true?

No. No, she could not, would not, bear even the whisper of such in her heart, or she would betray one who had ever been most worthy of trust.

Torastrasza, Ysera, and Kalecgos flew beside her. They said something that she couldn’t understand, and Alexstrasza whirled in mid-flight and began attacking them.

Startled, they veered away. She did not pursue. She had no wish to kill. She wanted them only to leave her alone, so she could escape from this place, this awful place that was now the site of unspeakable, almost unimaginable horror. She could never look upon the temple again without reliving this moment, and now—it was unbearable.

Everything was unbearable.

In her brokenness, Alexstrasza clung to one thing and one thing only: the hope that if she could fly far enough, fast enough, she could out-fly the memory.

Alexstrasza’s attack was fueled by anger and fear, not a serious attempt to kill, and Ysera, Torastrasza, and Kalec dodged it easily. Ysera felt her own pain—many of the eggs destroyed in the explosion had belonged to her own flight, if not her own body—but she knew it was nothing compared to what her sister was experiencing.

Alexstrasza had lost mate, children, and hope, all in one terrible blow.

Ysera flew back to the temple sadly, her heart heavy, her mind—as ever, it now seemed—gnawing on pieces and bits of puzzles and enigmas.

The dragons were leaving in droves. Heartsick, furious, no one, it seemed, wished to linger here, amid what had once been so precious.

The Wyrmrest Accord had been shattered, as surely as the symbol of it had been, and the temple was meaningless now.

Ysera, though, did not flee. She flew slowly around the temple, peering at it almost in an impartial manner, then landed, shifted to night elf form, and walked around the structure on two feet. Corpses were everywhere: red and blue and green and twilight. The incongruous vitality and life energy of the magic Korialstrasz had used to destroy the sanctums were now seeping to the surface. Living plants broke the crust of the white snow.

Ysera shook her head sadly. Such vigorous life, to have dealt such death. She bent to caress a long green leaf, then continued her aimless ambling.

Her eyes were open, but she did not pay attention to what she saw with them. She had tried her best to communicate to the other dragons her incomplete vision. It was almost impossible to do so: the only way for anyone else to truly understand would be if they, too, had been asleep and dreaming for tens of thousands of years, and had only now awoken and were trying to make sense of it all. Ysera knew she wasn’t mad, felt that the others knew this as well, but she had a certain empathy for insanity now.

The Hour of Twilight. She’d spoken of it at the meeting, tried to warn the others of it, but the warning had gotten lost; a little bright fragment of … something … had been briskly swept away like a broken bit of pottery beneath an industrious broom. It was—

She gnawed her lower lip, thinking.

It was the greatest challenge the dragonflights would face, but she did not know against whom they would be fighting. It might come soon … or aeons from now. Could it have something to do with the return of Deathwing? Surely it had to … did it not? This breaking of the world was one of the worst things that had ever happened to Azeroth.

How could she persuade others of the direness of the situation when she herself could not articulate it? She uttered a little noise of annoyance and frustration.

One thing she knew for certain. There were many pieces missing from this puzzle, but there was one core piece that was necessary before any of the others could fall into place. It was a very strange piece, an unlikely one at best, and she was uncertain as to how he would fit in. She only knew that he had to.

Ysera had seen him floating in and out of her dreaming. She had thought she understood his role in things, but now, peculiar as it seemed, something—some inner certainty that even she did not fully understand—was leading her to think she had not seen the full breadth of his contribution to Azeroth.

He was not a dragon. But he had the interests of the dragonflights in his heart—whether he knew it or not. He straddled worlds—but did not seek to rule or command or destroy them. He was unique.

She tilted her head, let the wind play with her long green hair. Perhaps that was why he fit in. Even the Aspects were not singular beings, although each had unique abilities. Not one but five there had been at the beginning, when the titans had come and shared their power for the good of Azeroth. Four there were now, but there would soon be five again, when the blues determined how to choose the one who would lead them.

But there was only one like this being.

There was only one Thrall.