Christie Golden: Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects

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.

Thrall 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.