Thrall Twilight of the Aspects (7 page)

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.

T
hrall could not sleep. Aggra drowsed quietly beside him on their sleeping furs, but his mind would not be still. He lay on his back, staring up at the skins that covered the hut, and then finally rose, threw on some clothes and a cloak, and went outside.

He took a deep breath of the moist air and looked up at the night sky. The stars, at least, seemed to have some sort of peace about them, and the two moons—the White Lady and the Blue Child—were unaffected by Deathwing’s violent rebirth into Azeroth. For the moment, the elements were as stable as they ever could be here in the Maelstrom—due in no part at all to Thrall’s help, he knew, and he frowned to himself.

He began to walk, with no destination in mind. He simply wanted to move, in silence and solitude, and see if that calmed his thoughts enough so that he could finally sleep.

What had transpired during the spellcasting and afterward—both with the other members of the Ring and with Aggra in particular—had shaken him. He wondered if they were right. Was he truly helping here? He had given up everything to come—and
yet it seemed that not only did he have no aid to offer, but he was disruptive. He had stayed behind today, “resting,” while the others did workings all day. It was humiliating and painful. He growled low in his throat and picked up his pace.

He did not want to believe that Aggra was right—that he hid behind the mantle of leadership and was a “thrall” to duty. If that were so, then why could he not lose himself in the work here?

“What is wrong with me?” he muttered aloud, slamming one great green fist impotently into the palm of his other hand.

“That,” came a lilting feminine voice, “I do not know the answer to. Maybe I will, at some point.”

He turned, startled. A few feet away stood a tall but slender cloaked figure. The cloak, wrapped about her frame, revealed it to be a female, but her face was hidden in the shadow of the cloak’s cowl. Thrall did not recognize the voice and frowned slightly, wondering who this stranger might be.

“Maybe I will too,” he said. He inclined his head in greeting. “I am Thrall.”

“I know. I’ve come for you.” Her voice was musical, mesmerizing.

He blinked. “For me? Why? Who are you?”

“It’s … hard to explain,” she said, and cocked her head as if listening to something he couldn’t hear.

“It’s hard to explain your name?”

“Oh, that … no. It’s the other that is challenging. You see … I have a small task for you, Thrall.”

He found himself more amused than annoyed. “A task? Something for the Ring?”

“No, something for the villagers.”

“The villagers?”

“In Feralas. It is little more than a small camp called”—she
chuckled as if at a private joke—“Dreamer’s Rest. There is suffering there. Suffering of the land, and an old-growth grove that has seen many years, and the druids who live near it. The elements there are out of control, as they are in many parts of this poor wounded world, and they are going to destroy the village if something isn’t done. Only a shaman can talk to the elements and soothe them into harmony.”

Thrall’s amusement faded. He was beginning to suspect a joke. And he did not like it.

“Then let the shaman of the village do so,” he said, somewhat sharply.

“There are no shaman there. It is too small, and there are only druids,” the stranger said simply, as if that explained everything.

Thrall took a deep breath. What she was asking of him was trivial. It was the sort of thing novice shaman could handle. Why she had come to find him for such a task, he did not know and did not care.

“Surely there are others who can do that,” he said, reining in his irritation and trying to maintain courtesy. If this was some sort of bizarre test by the Earthen Ring, he did not want to explode with erratic anger, no matter how much this dithering female was annoying him.

She shook her head vigorously, walking toward him. “No,” she insisted, seemingly quite earnest. “
No
others. None like you.”

This was getting ridiculous. “Who are you, to set me to such a task?”

Her face was still in shadow, but the glow of radiant eyes illuminated a smile of haunting sweetness. Was this a night elf? “Perhaps this will clarify.”

Before he could retort, she had sprung into the air—high, higher than any true elf could go, the cloak falling from her as she spread
her arms wide, offering her face to the sky. Her body began to shift faster than the eye could follow, and where before he thought a night elf had been, now there was a huge dragon gazing down upon him, wings beating steadily as she lowered herself to land.

“I am Ysera … the Awakened.”

Thrall took a step backward, gasping. He knew the name Ysera. She had been the Dreamer, the guardian of the Emerald Dream. But now she dreamed no longer.

Much had changed with the recent Cataclysm, it would seem.

“Do this thing, Thrall,” Ysera said. Her voice was still pleasant, though deeper and more resonant in her dragon form.

He almost answered,
Yes, of course
. But his recent failures haunted him. What she was asking seemed trivial indeed, but considering who she was, he guessed that it had to be very important. And he was not sure he could be trusted with something important right now.

“Mighty Ysera … may I meditate on this?”

She looked disappointed. “I had hoped you would say yes.”

“It is … only a small camp, isn’t it?”

Her disappointment seemed to deepen. “Yes. It is a small camp, and a small task.”

Shame heated his cheeks. “Still, I would ask: Come again in the morning. I will have an answer for you.”

She sighed, a great, melancholy bellow, and her breath smelled of fresh grass and mist. Then Ysera the Awakened nodded, leaped upward, and vanished with a few beats of her wings.

Thrall sat down heavily.

He had just been asked by a Dragon Aspect to do something, and had told her to come back tomorrow. What was he thinking? And yet—

He placed his head in his hands and pressed hard on his temples.
Things that should be easy were difficult, too difficult. His head was not clear, and it seemed neither was his heart. He felt … lost and indecisive.

Thrall had largely kept to himself since the argument with Aggra last night. But now, as he sat alone with only the moons and the stars for company, he knew he needed to seek her out. Aggra had wisdom and insight, although recently he found that he often disliked what she had to say. And he was clearly in no position to make a decision without support, or else he would have been able to say yea or nay at once to the mighty Aspect.

Slowly he rose and walked back to the hut.

“Did the moons give you guidance?” Aggra asked softly in the darkness. He should have known better than to think that his movements, however quiet, would not have awakened her.

“No,” he said. “But … this shaman would like to ask something of you.” He expected a sarcastic response, but instead heard the furs rustle as she sat up.

“I am listening,” was all Aggra said.

He sat down next to her on their sleeping furs. Quietly he told her of the encounter, and she listened without interrupting, although her eyes widened at several points.

“This seems … almost insulting,” Thrall said at last. “This is a minor task. To remove me from here, where my help is sorely needed, to save a tiny village in Feralas …” Thrall shook his head. “I don’t know if this is a test, or a trap, or what. I don’t understand any of it.”

“You are sure it was Ysera?”

“It was a large green dragon,” Thrall snapped, then added more quietly, “and … I
felt
that it was she.”

“It doesn’t matter if it is a test or a trap. It doesn’t matter that this seems like a trivial task. If it is Ysera asking something of you, you should go, Thrall.”

“But my help here—”

Aggra covered his hand with her own. “Is not needed. Not now. You cannot do what you need to do in order to be of aid to us here. You saw that yesterday—we all did. You are no good to anyone here at this point. Not to the Earthen Ring, not to the Horde, not to me, and surely not to yourself.”

Thrall grimaced, but there was no scorn or anger in Aggra’s voice. Indeed, it was gentler than he could remember it being in some time, as was her hand on his.

“Go’el, beloved,” she continued, “go and do this thing. Go and obey the Aspect’s request, and do not concern yourself as to whether it is a large thing or a small. Go, and bring back what you learn.” She smiled a little, teasingly. “Did you learn nothing from your initiation?”

Thrall thought back to his initiation in Garadar, which seemed so long ago. He recalled the plain robes he had been asked to wear, how he was reminded that a shaman balanced pride with humbleness.

He was most assuredly
not
being humble in thinking of refusing the request of an Aspect.

Thrall took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out slowly.

“I will go,” he said.

The Twilight Father found himself a trifle disappointed at how quickly the reds, blues, and greens had fled. He’d expected that they’d put up more of a fight. Nonetheless, it made his task easier, and made him even more adored by the cultists, who obeyed his every command. Such was good, even if it lacked the sweetness that a more hard-fought victory would have provided.

He had watched, along with the girl, as the dragons had flown
away, sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs or in groups. Now the only dragons that remained were quite lifeless, save for the ones directly under his command.

He had sent his lieutenants ahead to summon his followers, and now they gathered at the foot of the promontory and shivered in the cold. Their faces were so diverse, belonging to orc and troll, human and night elf—indeed, many of the races of Azeroth—and yet had a deep similarity in their expression of rapt adoration.

“And so our long journey has come, if not to its end, at least to a place where we pause, gather our forces, and grow strong. Wyrmrest Temple was once a symbol of the unconquerable power of the unified dragonflights. It has been said it was made by the titans themselves, and the dragons regarded it as inviolable and sacred. Today, we saw them abandon it—including two of their Aspects. It is our home now, for as long as we choose to make it so. This ancient place of power, like all things, must fall!”

Cheers erupted from hundreds of throats. The Twilight Father raised his hands, accepting the wave of adoration that poured off of the crowd.

“It is fitting that part of this place is broken,” he continued when the delighted uproar had started to die down. “The end of things is always with us, even at our moment of triumph. Now … let us take what has fallen to us, that it may serve our cause.”

One of the great twilight dragons that had been hovering obediently came in for a landing. Like a subservient pet, she prostrated herself before him, pressing her pale purple belly to the cold stone so that he would have no difficulty in climbing atop her back. He stepped forward, and the chain binding the girl to him grew taut. He turned, mildly surprised.

The girl did not move at once, regarding the dragon with a mixture of loathing and pity.

“Now, now, my dear,” he said, his voice making a mockery of kind words, “you mustn’t hesitate. Although”—he smirked from beneath the cowl—“I daresay that this is not quite the homecoming you expected, eh?”

Kirygosa, daughter of Malygos, sister to Arygos, looked from the twilight dragon to the Twilight Father, her blue eyes narrowed in contempt, and kept her icy silence.

As they approached Wyrmrest Temple, Kirygosa noticed that something else was heading that way as well. Below her, an enormous sled, large enough to accommodate several dozen humans, moved across the landscape. The white snowfall elk that pulled it strained visibly at the task. Even as Kirygosa watched, one of them collapsed. The sled came to a halt. Four acolytes of the Twilight’s Hammer moved forward, unbuckled the pathetic creature, and replaced it with another elk. The exhausted animal half walked, half stumbled as they tugged on its reins, leading it away from its fellows. When it again collapsed in the snow, lifting its head imploringly, one of the acolytes gestured. Several orcs dismounted from their large black wolves. The beasts waited, obedient, eyes fixed upon their masters until the command was given. Then the great beasts sprang as one, falling upon the hapless elk with shocking speed. Smooth white snow was churned up beneath the elk’s struggles and suddenly blossomed with crimson, and the elk’s pathetic cries were drowned out beneath savage growling.