Thrall Twilight of the Aspects Read online

  Alexstrasza flew through the sanctum, concentrating on releasing her apprehension and instead letting her heart be filled with the restorative beauty of the place. Dragon eggs were nestled everywhere—in little hollows, beneath the red trees, in special nests near towering boulders. Keeping watch over the entrance to the sanctum, on both sides of the portal, were the wardens of the chamber: extremely powerful drakonid whose job was to protect the innocent whelps drowsing still in their shells. The future was here, and guarded lovingly, and her heart was glad. Because it was the future that was about to be built, beginning in this moment, with the meeting of four of the dragonflights.

  The black flight, once so solid and stable and true, like the good earth it was to protect and be part of, had followed its mad patriarch, Deathwing, and permitted evil to enter its members’ hearts. Black dragons no longer feigned interest in the other flights; not even the slyly smiling Nalice remained at the temple. Alexstrasza doubted that she would ever again behold a gathering of her kind and see red, blue, green, bronze, and black. The thought saddened her, but it was an old pain, one she was accustomed to bearing, and she did not let it dim her hopes for a positive outcome of the meeting.

  Quickly she flew through the portal that kept the Ruby Sanctum safe and let her wings bear her upward to the top of Wyrmrest Temple, sacred to the dragonflights for millennia. Elegant, slim lines reached skyward, ice-coated arches and spires embracing but never enclosing the space. The temple climbed upward for several levels, each one smaller than the last. The Northrend sky arched above, a muted blue-gray with a few wispy white clouds. Below, the white snow was almost painful to behold, so pristine was it.

  At the pinnacle of the temple was a circular floor inlaid with floral and geometric designs. Several yards above the floor hovered a beautiful, shimmering orb in shifting shades of blue and white. It served no real purpose save one very important one: it was a symbol of the unity of the Wyrmrest Accord itself.

  Beneath the Orb of Unity, Alexstrasza saw dozens of reptilian forms milling about. Several of her own flight were already in attendance, as were some blues and not a few greens. The blacks, of course, would not be here—and if they were, blood would be shed—but Alexstrasza was dismayed, if not surprised, to see no bronze dragons were present, not even the cheerful but powerful Chromie.

  Their Aspect, Nozdormu the Timeless One, had not been seen for some time. The timeways had come under attack by a mysterious group calling itself the infinite dragonflight, whose motives were unclear but were focused on destroying the true timeway. Alexstrasza supposed that Nozdormu and the others of his flight had more than enough to deal with.

  As she approached for a landing, sharp, angry voices reached her ears.

  “An Aspect!” a voice was shouting. Alexstrasza knew that voice. It belonged to Arygos, a vigorous, outspoken member of the blue flight and child of Malygos and his favored consort, Saragosa. Arygos had openly sided with his father during the Nexus War, staunchly and unquestioningly supporting him. It would seem he was still his father’s advocate even now.

  “The red flight and a group of magi—non-dragons!—decided they should slay an Aspect. One of only five—four if we do not count Deathwing the Destroyer. How could you turn on your own? Who will be targeted next—gentle Ysera? Stoic Nozdormu? If there is anyone to be held accountable, it should be Alexstrasza. The so-called Life-Binder seems to have no compunctions about dealing death when it suits her.”

  Several heads had looked up as Arygos spoke, watching and saying nothing as the aforementioned Life-Binder approached. Alexstrasza landed gracefully near the younger dragon and said calmly, “My charge is to protect the sanctity of life. Malygos’s decision and subsequent actions imperiled life. I grieve for your father, Arygos. The decision was a painful one. But what he was doing was harming far too many, and could have unraveled this world.”

  Arygos took a quick step backward, then narrowed his eyes and lifted his great blue head.

  “Upon reflection, with the information we now have, I still cannot say my father’s motives for the war were necessarily wrong. The usage—or should I say improper and overusage—of magic was indeed of great concern. If you disagreed with his actions, and perhaps they were ill considered, surely there could have been other ways to have confronted Malygos!”

  “You said it yourself—he was an Aspect,” Alexstrasza continued. “And one who did not even still have the excuse of insanity to mitigate what he did. If you were so concerned with his safety, Arygos, then you should have helped us in finding those methods of restraining him.”

  “Life-Binder,” came a voice, young and masculine and as calm as Arygos’s was agitated. Another blue stepped forward, inclining his head respectfully but not subserviently. “Arygos did only what he believed was right at the time, as did many members of the blue flight. I am certain he is as eager as anyone else to move forward in rebuilding his own flight and accepting the responsibilities we all must,” said Kalecgos.

  Alexstrasza was pleased Kalecgos was here. This was the young blue her mate was so fond of, the one he said could speak sense. Which, she mused, he was already doing.

  “I can speak for myself,” growled Arygos, giving Kalecgos an irritated look.

  Many of the blues felt that they were being persecuted and hounded by the other flights. In Alexstrasza’s opinion, Arygos was even more elitist than most of his flight. She suspected this had to do with the young blue’s personal history—one that had entailed reliance on other flights. Not for the first time, Alexstrasza lamented the loss of Arygos’s clutch sister Kirygosa. Her mate had been killed, and she had gone missing before the war ended. The unhappy but realistic conclusion was that the young blue, pregnant with her first eggs, had fallen in battle. And because she had always dared to stand up to Arygos, and had sided with those few blues who had turned against Malygos, there was an extra layer of tragedy in that it was likely she had been slain by a member of her own flight.

  “I do see that my late father’s plan had negative consequences,” Arygos continued, with obvious reluctance.

  “We are still feeling those consequences,” said Afrasastrasz, who had long been a particularly outspoken supporter of Alexstrasza. “The very world is. This is something that was directly caused by the decisions of the blue dragonflight’s Aspect, whom you and others here supported. You need to do more than admit to being misguided, young Arygos. You need to make it right.”

  Arygos’s eyes narrowed. “‘Make it right’? Will you make it right, Afrasastrasz? Or you, Alexstrasza? You took my father from me. You left an entire flight without its Aspect. Will you bring him back?” His voice and entire body radiated anger and affront and a sincere, deep pain.

  “Arygos!” snapped Kalec. “Malygos was not mad when he chose this course of action. He could have turned from it at any point and did not.”

  “I took no joy in the killing, Arygos,” Alexstrasza said. “My heart still aches with the loss. We have all lost so much—all the flights, all the Aspects. Surely now is the time for healing, to turn toward one another instead of away.”

  “Yes,” came a quiet voice that nonetheless carried, ending the argument immediately. “We should turn toward each other, and soon. The Hour of Twilight is coming, and we must be ready.”

  The voice was soft and lilting, and the green dragon who spoke stepped forward almost shyly. The other dragons drew back a few steps to allow her room to pass. She did not move with the strong, purposeful stride of most of her kind, but with almost dancing steps. Her eyes, which had been closed for aeons, were now wide open, rainbow hued, and she kept turning her head as if ready to behold something new each moment.

  “What is this Hour of Twilight of which you speak, Ysera?” Alexstrasza asked of her sister. After millennia spent in the Emerald Dream, Ysera had awakened. Alexstrasza and many others were not sure how much of her had come back from that altered state; Ysera still seemed unanchored to this world, drifting and detached. Even her own
flight, whose members, like their Aspect, dwelt nearly constantly in the Emerald Dream and were also guardians of nature, seemed unsure as to how to react to her. Ysera’s integration into the waking world was uneven, to say the least.

  “Is it something you saw in the Dream?” pressed Alexstrasza.

  “I saw everything in the Dream,” Ysera replied simply.

  “That might be quite true, but it is unhelpful,” said Arygos, seizing upon the distraction the Aspect of the green dragonflight had provided him. “You are no longer the Dreamer, Ysera, though you are surely an Aspect. Perhaps if you saw everything in the Dream, you saw also things that do not exist.”

  “Oh, that is very true,” Ysera agreed readily.

  Inwardly Alexstrasza winced. Not even she quite knew what to make of Ysera the Awakened. She was sane, yes—but was clearly having a difficult time putting together the pieces of the staggering multitude of things she had witnessed in any kind of coherent fashion. She would be of little help today.

  “It would indeed be a good thing if we could work together—even before this Hour of Twilight.” Alexstrasza regarded Kalec and Arygos. “The blues must determine how to select a new Aspect, and make restitution. You must show us that we can trust you again. Surely you see that.”

  “We must?” echoed Arygos. “Why ‘must’ we, Alexstrasza? Who are you to determine what the blue flight must and must not do? To judge us so? You make no similar offer of restitution. Yet it is because of you that we need to find a new Aspect. What do you plan to do to show that you are to be trusted by us?”

  Her eyes widened slightly at the insult, but Arygos plowed on. “How do we know you will not kill me? If I am chosen as Aspect, that is,” he added hastily. “And your mate, Krasus, as he likes to go by—he is no friend to the blues. He has spoken out against us repeatedly. I cannot help but notice that he is not present at this meeting. Perhaps you didn’t wish him to be here, either?”

  “Korialstrasz saved your life, Arygos,” Kalecgos reminded him. “When your father was so lost in his insanity that he abandoned you.”

  It was a very sore point for Arygos, and few were bold enough to remind him of it. The clutch of eggs that had contained both Arygos and Kirygosa had indeed been abandoned during Malygos’s madness. It was Korialstrasz who had discovered that untended clutch, as well as many others, and taken it to Nozdormu to be cared for. Later, the clutches had been given to the red dragonflight. It was a glowing example of cooperation among three separate flights with a common cause: care of the unhatched, helpless whelps, be they red, blue, green, or bronze when they emerged from the shell.

  “And even though he and I have certainly had our personal disagreements, that has not stood in the way of my learning to respect him. I have consistently found him to be reasonable and wise,” Kalec continued as Arygos’s eyes narrowed. “He has said nothing against our flight’s behavior that I myself have not said.”

  “Really? And what does that then make you, Kalecgos?” Arygos retorted.

  “Enough!” snapped Alexstrasza. She had not expected this meeting to go particularly smoothly, but she had hoped for better than this bickering. “Surely the flights have enough enemies out there that we should not waste precious time fighting among ourselves! Deathwing is back, more powerful than ever—and he has ripped Azeroth nearly to bits in the process. Now he has allies beyond his own flight: the Twilight’s Hammer cult. Whatever the Hour of Twilight may be of which Ysera speaks, the twilight dragons are certainly an immediate threat. The Ruby Sanctum is still reeling from their previous assault. If we do not find out some way to put aside the petty differences and—”

  “You murdered my father! How dare you call that petty?!”

  Alexstrasza was slow to anger, but now she marched on the younger dragon and declared, “I say: enough! We must all move forward. The past is the past. We are in danger now. Did you not hear me? Do you not understand? Deathwing has returned!”

  She was nearly nose to nose with Arygos now, her ears flat against her skull. “Our world has never been more fragile! Mighty beings are we dragons, indeed, but even we should be afraid of what will happen. We live in this world, Arygos. We must protect it, heal it, or even the dragons—including your blues!—will be destroyed. We must find—”

  Other heads lifted on sinuous necks, turned skyward. And then Alexstrasza, too, heard and saw them.

  Dragons.

  For a brief moment, Alexstrasza dared hope that it was the bronze dragonflight. But an instant later she saw their coloration, and realized with horror what flight it truly was.

  “The twilight dragons,” she breathed.

  They were coming for Wyrmrest Temple itself.

  THREE

  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.