Thank you for downloading this Pocket Star Books eBook.

Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Pocket Star Books and Simon & Schuster.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

DON’T MISS THESE OTHER TALES IN THE

JAINA PROUDMOORE: TIDES OF WAR

by Christie Golden

WOLFHEART

by Richard A. Knaak

THRALL: TWILIGHT OF THE ASPECTS

by Christie Golden

THE SHATTERING: PRELUDE TO CATACLYSM

by Christie Golden

STORMRAGE

by Richard A. Knaak

ARTHAS: RISE OF THE LICH KING

by Christie Golden

NIGHT OF THE DRAGON

by Richard A. Knaak

BEYOND THE DARK PORTAL

by Aaron Rosenberg & Christie Golden

TIDES OF DARKNESS

by Aaron Rosenberg

RISE OF THE HORDE

by Christie Golden

CYCLE OF HATRED

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

WAR OF THE ANCIENTS: BOOK ONE—THE WELL OF ETERNITY

by Richard A. Knaak

WAR OF THE ANCIENTS: BOOK TWO—THE DEMON SOUL

by Richard A. Knaak

WAR OF THE ANCIENTS: BOOK THREE—THE SUNDERING

by Richard A. Knaak

DAY OF THE DRAGON

by Richard A. Knaak

LORD OF THE CLANS

by Christie Golden

THE LAST GUARDIAN

by Jeff Grubb

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Maps of Northrend

Part I

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Notes

Further Reading

The Battle Rages On

About the Author

PART I

ONE

WYRMREST

His vague shadow passed over the immense structure below as he circled to land. Even though he had been here before, the scope and age of the stone temple and its surroundings still struck him hard. The temple rose several levels high, with each level built for a race obviously towering over humans and orcs. The rows of grooved columns that lined the outside from the circular base to the rounded top stood like an army of sentinels surveying every desolate direction of the chilling Dragon Wastes. Long fangs of ice draped the ancient edifice, and vicious cracks ran through many of the columns and curved archways, but despite the ravages of time and several fierce conflicts that had engulfed it, Wyrmrest stood defiant, eternal.

It was, to him, a welcome contrast to the horrific and seemingly endless transformations plaguing the world of Azeroth.

The others would already be here. He peered at the distant shrines to each of the great dragonflights—bronze, emerald, azure, ruby, and obsidian—surrounding Wyrmrest. They were shrines without purpose now, the dragonflights in disarray or decimated. Even Wyrmrest, though it might stand ten millennia more, risked being nothing but a relic of a time and hope long past.

The great blue dragon sighed and began his descent. As he did, his gaze briefly shifted far beyond the temple and the shrines to the north, where unsettling mounds dotted the icy landscape. He quickly looked away. Each mound was the frost-encrusted corpse of a dragon; some of the mounds dated thousands upon thousands of years back. The Dragon Wastes were the graveyard of hundreds of his kind, whatever their color. It was a grim reminder that even the mightiest of creatures were not invulnerable.

The winged leviathan focused again on his destination. Wyrmrest seemed to swell before his eyes. By the time he neared one of the entrances at the base, the dragon was dwarfed by the temple. He alighted, and then, with one last glance around, stepped inside.

The interior did nothing to lessen the sense of enormity, the first chamber rising more than three times the dragon’s height. Torches that still stayed lit despite the millennia gave some weak illumination. Ancient carvings loomed over him, many of them of indistinct figures with some resemblance to humans or elves, and yet were clearly not. Whether these were meant to represent the titans, the godlike beings who had brought order to the chaos and reshaped Azeroth to its current form, or had been carved with some other intent, the dragon did not know. This place had been built long before his time, indeed, long before the time of dragons in general.

No one knew the reason for its construction, but long ago it had become the meeting place for the greatest of his kind, the Aspects—guardians of not only all dragons, but all Azeroth. Here, over the millennia, the five champions had assembled to coordinate the actions of the dragonflights. Here, during the Nexus War—in which the Aspect of Magic had led the blue dragonflight in an attempt to purge Azeroth of all mortal spellcasters who did not bow to his utter control—the leaders of the three other dragonflights had created the Wyrmrest Accord, an annual gathering in which they discussed what courses of action to take in regard to the oft-precarious future of the world. Here, after the War of the Ancients—when demons had invaded Azeroth and ancient Kalimdor had been sundered—four of them, Malygos at that time still very much included, had come to determine their next step to counter the treachery of one of their own. The last had become one of their predominant tasks, but even that long struggle paled against what had actually been their primary goal since the beginning: nothing less than preventing the Hour of Twilight, when all life on Azeroth would become extinct.

That extraordinary victory had at last been achieved . . . at the greatest of costs for the Aspects. Now, here, for the first time since this ancient edifice had been chosen as their meeting place, the four remaining former Aspects came not as the world’s champions, but simply as themselves.

The dragon descended into a gorge carved into the ice, arriving at the lowest, half-buried portion of the temple. He listened, but heard no voices rising from within. It was possible that he had arrived before the others after all. He considered departing the temple and finding a nearby place to wait until one of the others turned up—for even after reassurance from the others, he still felt that as the youngest it was not his place to be first among them in any manner—but finally proceeded.

But as the scaled behemoth entered the lower level, he finally heard one of the others. Nozdormu. Trust the bronze dragon to still be the timeliest of them, even now. . . .

What the other male said, the blue dragon could not make out. However, the reply of the one with whom Nozdormu spoke came clear.

“We shall wait until we are all here,” a soft yet commanding female voice answered. “Kalecgos deserves as much respect in that regard as any of us.”

Hearing his name, the blue dragon surged forward. Not only was he not first, he had clearly kept the others waiting.

“I am here!” the blue roared. He entered a wide, circular chamber, the center of which contained a raised marble platform reachable by steps at the northern and southern points of the compass. Each corner of the platform was also topped by a huge column.

Nozdormu turned his sharp gaze to the newcomer, the gargantuan bronze dragon flanked by two females equally imposing in size and majesty. The long, sleek emerald green dragon to the bronze’s right stared unblinking at the blue with rainbow-colored orbs; Ysera, once She of the Dreaming, she for millennia of the ever-closed eyes, now never shut them even for an instant. She nodded to Kalecgos, but did not speak.

At Nozdormu’s other side, a majestic crimson female took a few steps toward the blue. In size and girth, she outdid any of the three, but there was a gentleness about her that belied her fearsome appearance. A long crest stretched down from her back to her tail, and the blue dragon knew that if she stretched her wings, their expanse would be wide enough to obscure her two companions.

Three other dragons of slightly lesser size bowed their heads at his arrival. Each of the three stood positioned on the wide platform behind the former Aspect whose color they matched. These were among the most trusted, the most battle-tested of those who had served the champions. Kalecgos knew each well, from the swift and ready Chronormu—or Chromie, as she was referred to by those nearest her—to brave Merithra, daughter of Ysera. Of the three, though, he was probably most familiar with crimson Afrasastrasz, he who had once been commander of Wyrmrest’s defenses during the struggle against the Twilight’s Hammer, the fanatical cult that had tried to hasten the end of Azeroth.

The latter trio remained quiet and in the background. They were here to listen. Their presence reminded him once again that he, too, should have been accompanied.

The only problem was, there had no longer been anyone left in the Nexus to do that.

“There is no need to fear, Kalecgos,” the lead red dragon calmly responded to his outburst, her voice melodic, calming. “We knew that you would be along shortly. Nozdormu merely expressed concern for you—did you not, Nozdormu?”

“As you sssay,” the bronze replied vaguely. His voice bespoke age and wisdom even though, like the others, he appeared in the fullness of life.

“You are too kind.” The blue bowed his long, crested head toward the elder dragons, then, to the crimson female, added, “Kalec, if you please, Alexstrasza.”

Nozdormu snorted, but Alexstrasza nodded. “Kalec. Forgive me for forgetting your preferred—what do the younger races call it?—nickname. But I thought you only liked its use when in a humanoid form.”

“Of late I’ve come to prefer it at all times.” Kalec did not elaborate.

“Perhaps we should all have nicknames,” Ysera interjected without a hint of sarcasm. “After all, it is their world now. Indeed, I find I spend more time of late in a humanoid form than I do in this, my birth one. Perhaps that would be the best and quickest way to close our era. . . .”

Her blunt words silenced the other three. After a moment clearly uncomfortable to all of them, Alexstrasza moved to take up a position at the very center of the wide dais. The other three followed suit, Nozdormu moving to the southern edge, Ysera to the east, and Kalec to the north. The west—Neltharion’s place—had remained empty since his ancient betrayal.

The red dragon surveyed the others; then, gazing up for a moment, she declared, “Let this gathering of the Accord begin!”

Once, this pronouncement would have been accompanied by some magical spectacle, but such displays were a thing of the past. Fearsome these four behemoths might still be, but guardians of Azeroth they were not. They had sacrificed their roles as Aspects in order to vanquish once and for all the monstrous black dragon Deathwing. Deathwing . . . he who had once been their comrade, Neltharion, and who, in his evil madness, had nearly succeeded in bringing about the Hour of Twilight.

It had been a worthy sacrifice, but Kalec was well aware that in its wake, it had left all four forever altered.

Kalec surreptitiously studied the elder three. He had come only lately into the role of Aspect of Magic, grudgingly accepting both it and rule over the blue dragonflight after the downfall of his predecessor and lord, Malygos. Malygos, also called the Spell-Weaver, had grown tired of what he considered the misuse of arcane magic by the lesser races, and had finally declared that such power was to be entrusted only to dragons and their allies. The Nexus War had swept across Azeroth and had ended only when, with the aid of Alexstrasza and a handful of her drakes, a band of heroes had entered the heart of his domain—the Nexus itself—and had regretfully put an end to both Malygos and his monstrous crusade. Seeking a new leader, the blue dragons had turned to the member of their flight who, through events, had proven to be the one whom they could trust most to lead: Kalec.

The blue waited, but no one spoke. Even Alexstrasza seemed uninterested in continuing beyond calling the Accord to order. The Life-Binder appeared to be waiting for one of the others to take control, something that neither Ysera nor Nozdormu showed the slightest inclination of doing.

But others did. Growing more visibly impatient than even Kalec felt, Chromie broke the silence. “If I may be permitted, there is a matter of concern. The timeways appear to be in flux! It may have to do with when the Dragon Soul was seized—”

Nozdormu cut her off. “The timeways are no longer our concern! They are beyond my ability to control. From here on, the younger races and the younger races alone will deal with both them and whatever paths to the future they lead to.”

Chronormu obviously wanted to say more, but instead nodded. However, as she withdrew, Ysera’s daughter dared speak up. “Perhaps I speak out of turn also, but there have been rumors that the Nightmare stirs in the Rift of Aln. It may be seeking a new puppet, another Nightmare Lord that will help it again reach from the Emerald Dream into the waking world. . . .”

“We have discussed this,” Ysera pointedly reprimanded the other green. The former Aspect’s expression momentarily changed. “I think we did . . . yes! We did! The rift and the corruption still touching the Emerald Dream will be dealt with by the druids . . . yes, the druids! The night elf Naralex has already led an effort that has seen the Nightmare sealed off. The druids will guard against the Nightmare more ably than we can now.”

The speech was a far more focused, more concentrated one than those Kalec had heard from Ysera shortly after the green’s loss of her Aspect role and its powers. Then, Ysera had seemed absentminded and unable to articulate her thoughts well. Since that time, however, her mind had clearly made strides in regaining much of what it had lost.

Merithra looked deflated. “As you say, Mother.”

Once again, an uneasy silence reigned over the assembly. Afrasastrasz, wiser than the other two subordinates, looked disinclined to add his own voice. Kalec suddenly felt acutely aware of the lack of anyone at his own side.

It was as if time had stopped. No one even moved. Finally, well aware that it was his youth in part that stirred his impatience beyond his ability to command, Kalec blurted, “I would speak!”

With only the mildest visible curiosity, the other leviathans looked his way.

A sense of intimidation washed over Kalec, but he quickly recognized it as his own uncertainty, not any disdain on their part. His life, as tragic as much of it had been, was less than nothing compared to the combined suffering of these venerable beings. That he had been considered an equal even for a time still daunted him.

“Well?” Ysera finally responded. “If you wish to speak, then you should speak. Simple enough.”

Kalec was a little taken aback by her directness. Ysera had been the Dreamer. Now she saw nothing but waste in dreaming or even hesitating. “The contents of the Nexus—”

“Is that all it is about?” She looked even less interested than before. “The concerns of any one dragonflight are its alone. You know that. Does your subject concern the rest of us in any way?”

“Not directly—”

“ ‘Not directly.’ Then, it doesn’t, which means that discussion is at an end. Indeed, there doesn’t seem to be any relevant discussion thus far.” Turning to Alexstrasza, Ysera grumbled, “I told you, didn’t I? I certainly remember wanting to! Yes . . . I did! I told you I thought it was a mistake even bothering to gather here, my sister—”

“We have always met at this cycle of the twin moons. It would have been disrespectful not to.”

Nozdormu snorted again. “Disssrespectful to whom? Elune? The Mother Moon has her night elvesss to worship her. Disssrespectful to the titans or their servants, the keepers? We do not even know if the titansss exist anymore! It is certainly not disssrespectful to us. I agree with Ysera. This was a missstake. There is no point to the Accord anymore. If this gathering has any purpossse to it, it should be to finally put the Accord to rest and let each of us move on with our own problemsss.”

Kalec was stunned by the unexpected course of the brief conversation. He waited breathlessly for Alexstrasza to calm the other two down, but the Life-Binder did not argue. Indeed, Alexstrasza seemed to mull over Nozdormu’s suggestion as if it had tremendous merit.

The blue dragon abandoned his position, moving toward the center and in front of Alexstrasza as he faced the bronze. “But the Accord is not merely about us! It’s become the backbone of all draconic interaction over the millennia! The Accord kept order among our flights, prevented catastrophe more than once! We knew that if we were united, there would always be hope—”

“ ‘United,’ ” Ysera cut in. “Yes, we have been very united over the millennia, have we not? Neltharion . . . Malygos . . .” She looked as if she intended to say more, but with an apologetic glance at Nozdormu, she quieted.

“Do not leave me out,” the bronze grimly added. He stretched his wings. “Call him Murozond, lord of the infinite dragonflight, if you like, but that accursed dragon was my far future self and so I am to blame for his evils just as Neltharion was to blame for what he later did as Deathwing. . . .”

Alexstrasza inserted herself at their center again. “Nay, Nozdormu! No one here finds fault with you for what you have not done! You fought alongside others against Murozond and altered that future forever! Had there been even the remotest blame on your part, it was erased with Murozond’s undoing!”

Kalec and Ysera dipped their heads in agreement. The bronze’s tail slowly slid back and forth, a sign of his gratitude for such words. Then his mood darkened again.

“Yes . . . I fought my future self . . . when I had the power to fight. Now, I—we—are as any other dragon. The time of the Aspects is past and I say thus that the time of the Wyrmrest Accord is also.”

Again, Kalec noted no disagreement from the sisters. “But the three of you are the combined wisdom of our kind! The Aspects have always—”

Ysera thrust her snout into his face. “We . . . are not . . . Aspects.”

“But the three of you are still—”

“We understand your concern, Kalec,” Alexstrasza said with such clear pity that Kalec winced. “But our time is done and Azeroth must look to other defenders.”

As she finished, Nozdormu strode past them toward one of the exits. Ysera followed suit.

Kalec could not believe what he was seeing. “Where are you going?”

The bronze leviathan looked over his shoulder. “Home. We are done here. We should not have even bothered to have this gathering.”

“He is correct on the last score,” the Life-Binder agreed reluctantly—and only then did Kalec realize that he had been thinking of all of them in terms of titles they themselves clearly no longer acknowledged. They were, in their own eyes, simply three dragons among many now.

“Alexstrasza! Surely you at least—”

It was as if his mother stared down at him. The pity had been replaced by care. “Azeroth will survive without us. You—you who were thrust only so recently into all this—you will survive without us.” Alexstrasza looked to the departing bronze. “Nozdormu! A moment! We will meet once more, in a month! If we are to dissolve the Accord, we shall do so with proper respect!”

He paused, then glanced back. “You are correct. It does deserve the proper burial. Agreed. One month from this day.”

The gargantuan red focused on her sister. “Ysera?”

“I agree. It makes perfect sense.”

Alexstrasza faced Kalec. So shocked that he was unable to speak, he vehemently shook his head.

“Three to one,” the female red murmured. “So . . . it is decided.”

Nozdormu had not even waited for her declaration, the bronze and his lieutenant already moving on. Ysera and her daughter were close behind.

Alexstrasza watched them for a moment, then turned and, with a grace incredible even for a dragon, slipped out behind Nozdormu and her sister. Afrasastrasz hesitated only long enough to give the blue a sympathetic expression before following her.

Kalec had no choice but to follow or be left alone. Yet, despite his youth and swiftness, by the time he reached the outside, the others were already in the midst of going their separate ways.

“Please reconsider!” he roared, his plea echoing throughout the wastes. Kalec’s mind was awhirl. He had actually come here with troubles of his own that he had hoped to discuss with one or more of the elder dragons, and instead he found himself trying desperately just to keep the once seemingly eternal Accord together.

Nozdormu spread his wings to their full span and took to the sky without so much as a last glance at the younger dragon. He was already a small dot when Ysera deigned to speak one final time.

“In truth, we considered . . . yes . . . yes, we did . . . all this long ago. We just needed one of us to speak of it.” The emerald behemoth leapt up into the air. “It was only chance that it happened here, barely after you arrived. I apologize for that, young Kalec.”

And then, there remained only Alexstrasza and him.

“Fare you well, Kalec. I’m sorry that you came all this way for only a few empty moments . . . and such a turn of events as you certainly did not expect or deserve to be confronted by.”

With that, the great red took off, leaving a speechless Kalec to watch as the three vanished among the dark clouds enshrouding not only the wastes, but nearly all of the bleak continent of Northrend.

What happened here? the blue asked himself over and over. What just happened here?

For a brief time, Kalec had thought that things might be taking a turn for the better when he had agreed to stay in Dalaran and, as the mage Khadgar suggested, join the Kirin Tor. But soon, Kalec had seen the distrust in the eyes of the other magi. He was a blue dragon; that was all that mattered to them. In the end, he had made excuses to Jaina, citing the need to oversee the Nexus’s crumbling defensive spells and gather its substantial and powerful collection of artifacts together.

Kalec had actually looked forward to this gathering, hoping for some encouragement on several fronts. His own dragonflight had all but fallen apart. With the debacle concerning the Focusing Iris and its theft, he had felt that he had failed in every regard as a leader and that had led to the mass exodus of the other blue dragons. The Nexus had become a place of emptiness, and at times, Kalec had found himself without the inclination to truly fight the departures.

And now, the ones to whom he had desperately sought to turn had themselves turned from the world.

A further irony was that despite wanting to come here, Kalec had considered not making the journey. He had been ashamed at his failure to find the Focusing Iris and the dreadful events that had come to pass because of that, especially the destruction of Jaina’s own realm of Theramore. Kalec had at first not wanted to admit his humiliations to those who had considered him their equal despite the incredible difference in age and experience. Yet, in the end, Kalec had chosen to come . . . only to find himself in this new debacle.

A chill ran down his spine that had nothing to do with the elements. The blue dragon looked back at Wyrmrest Temple, once a place of legend to him. Now, he suspected that he was staring at it, if not for the last time, then likely the next to last. Without the Accord, there was only one reason to come to this stark land . . . and that was to die.

But for all his misery, Kalec was not yet ready for death. His youth might be a key factor in his failures, but it also urged him on, even if he had no idea what to do next.

The wind picked up, its rush through the temple creating a surreal howl that finally stirred the blue to begin his own departure. With a beat of his wings, he rose high. Once airborne, the urge to be far from Wyrmrest magnified. Kalec focused on the direction home and increased his pace.

But just as he left Wyrmrest behind, something nagged at his senses. Although no longer an Aspect, Kalec was still a blue dragon and thus more attuned to arcane magic in all its varied forms. The trace was so unique that despite his mood, Kalec sought out its source.

But a first glance at the landscape below failed to give the dragon any clue as to where it lay. Concentrating, Kalec managed to better pinpoint the general area. The catastrophe in the temple momentarily forgotten, the blue descended for a closer look.

His path took him over the remains of more than one dragon. Despite the preservative qualities of the constant cold weather, the wind and other elements eventually wore away all recognizable traces of the dead. Even those already reduced to bone would someday not even be recognizable for the massive, proud beasts that they had once been. After what had happened in the temple, the finality of the scene below struck him anew, but he continued down despite misgivings.

And then at last he sensed from where exactly the magical emanations originated. Kalec veered in that direction—and came to a jarring halt in the air. So stunned was he by what he beheld that it was all he could do to remember to keep flapping his wings.

It was perhaps its gargantuan size that had permitted the skeleton to remain nearly intact even after so very long. Yet, almost as arresting as its incredible dimensions was the angle at which it lay. Nearly all the other frozen remains scattered through the vast, isolated region lay as if those dragons had simply gone to sleep. Indeed, most had done just so, landing and, with the aid and comfort of others of their kind, breathing their last with relatively little suffering.

Not so, this mammoth creature. This leviathan had died violently.

And so, in the bloody process, had many, many others.

The cracked muzzle of the skull revealed part of a huge maw that could have engulfed Kalec. The lower jaw was nowhere to be seen. The neck area twisted in an awkward manner that revealed just how devastating the collision with the ground had been. The torso, too, lay violently twisted, the spine arched at an impossible angle. The half-buried ribs formed a winding tunnel that rivaled the great chambers of the temple in height.

Within that macabre passage, Kalec pinpointed the location of the mysterious emanations. The dragon shuddered, feeling a sense of dread. Then, steeling himself, the blue leviathan dived in among the gigantic frosty bones.

Dived in among the bones of the Father of Dragons . . . Galakrond.

TWO

AMONG THE DEAD

Kalec landed within the ribs with some lingering trepidation. Even though he knew it was only his imagination, there was the constant feeling that the bones might now stir, that Galakrond would rise and engulf him. Even the howling of the wind through the bones seemed to take on a supernatural life, as if the spirits of all the dead dragons here tried to warn him of his folly.

But Kalec still remained more driven by his curiosity. Besides, he had nothing to return to at the moment except more troubles.

The blue had to crouch as he neared the location he sought, so deep had Galakrond’s corpse sunk into the harsh soil. That added a claustrophobic touch to an already uneasy situation, but still Kalec was undeterred. He had never sensed a magical trace such as this and found it most curious that it should happen near a place that he had visited more than once.

At first, it occurred to him that perhaps someone had recently set it into place; after all, the rotting servants of the undead Scourge had spent much time excavating the skeleton, their leader hoping to animate the bones and create a monstrous frost wyrm. However, they had been driven away before they could dig too deep and from what Kalec sensed, what he sought was buried very, very far down. With that in mind, the blue could not help but think that whatever drew him here had lain undisturbed for a long, long time—likely since these remains had fallen here.

The dragon concentrated, then exhaled. A purple sphere formed in the air, then drifted gently to the spot. As it touched the soil, a slight mist arose. Under Kalec’s guidance, the magical globe melted away thousands upon thousands of years of frost and ice, then slowly burrowed into the ground beneath.

But barely had Kalec’s spell pushed below the surface than the sphere faded. Despite the blue’s best efforts to keep the spell intact, the globe finally dissipated far short of its goal.

Peering in frustration at the shallow hole, Kalec stretched his forepaws wide. Arcane bands of energy draped over the hole, scratching away the ground. As if guided by invisible hands, the bands continued to scrape away at the spot as Kalec watched. The blue dragon’s eyes finally narrowed in satisfaction as the hole grew deeper and deeper—

Images flashed through his mind.

A yellowish proto-dragon arguing with an orange one.

A charcoal-gray proto-dragon laughing harshly.

A robed and hooded figure—a humanoid figure with one arm visible.

A white proto-dragon shrieking as it shriveled to a skeleton.

Another dragon, faint hints of green remaining, flying toward Kalec. Dry skin hung limply on rotting bone, and the eyes of the oncoming creature were milky white and without life . . . and yet still it charged forward, ready to strike.

With a roar, Kalec stumbled back. He crashed into the rib cage, which, sealed in place by layer upon layer of ice, not only held against the blue’s weight, but left the dragon momentarily stunned by the collision.

What—what just happened? Kalec shook his head, then eyed the hole. At some point, the second spell had also faded, but for the moment, Kalec cared only about the visions. They had been so lifelike that he had felt as if he had been there participating in the brief scenes. Yet, none of the images made any sense, especially the last, exceedingly ominous two.

Shaking his head again, the blue investigated the hole. More than ever, he could sense the source of the emanations very near. He only had to dig a little deeper.

Rather than risk a third spell, Kalec hunched over and began tearing at the dirt and frost with his claws. Digging still required great effort, but he made respectable progress. The emanations grew stronger, yet no more visions assailed him.

A soft, lavender aura rose from the hole. Kalec immediately hesitated. When nothing else happened, he cautiously dug around the edges.

At first, he was rewarded only with more dirt, but as Kalec shifted his attention to the center, his claws finally came into contact with something other than earth.

With a delicate touch his reptilian form belied, the dragon brought forth a small octagonal object made from some metal that Kalec could not identify. It reminded him of gold, but if he held it a different way, it looked as if it were simple iron. Tilted in another direction, it took on the brilliant white appearance of rare palladium.

And all the while, the lavender aura surrounded it . . . yet also seemed separate, as if it were clouds over a tiny, oddly shaped world.

Fascinated, Kalec sought to probe the mysterious artifact. The moment he tried, though, the aura faded. The blue quickly ceased his probing, but the aura did not return. Indeed, now the emanations had also ceased.

The dragon growled. He almost put the tiny artifact down, but finally clutched it tight. Backing up, Kalec located a spot where the gap between ribs was wide enough for him to exit. As he stepped out in the open, the gnawing feeling that he was being watched overtook him. Kalec looked to his right.

The empty eye sockets of the Father of Dragons met his gaze.

Kalec let out a grim laugh at his momentary paranoia. He glanced down at the artifact one more time in order to make certain his grip was good, then took to the heavens. As the blue left the desolation below, he found himself breathing much easier. Kalec grunted and turned his attention to the Nexus. There, he thought he might be able to find out more about the object he carried. The blues had gathered much arcane knowledge during Malygos’s millennia as Aspect of Magic, and even though Kalec himself no longer bore that title, the knowledge was still his for the studying.

That there were other, more pressing matters, such as the dissolution of the blue dragonflight itself, had never left his thoughts. The artifact gave him a perfect excuse not to think about his latest failures, just as fulfilling the dangerous role of Aspect had once let him now and then try to forget Anveena.

The blue dragon grimaced, then shook away such thoughts. Kalec arced. Wyrmrest Temple briefly came into view below. The blue hissed. Like the thing in his paw, it was a relic of the past, but unlike the artifact, for Kalec, the temple held no more interest. It was as dead a thing to him as the bones from which he had just departed.

And as dead as the future he had once thought awaited him as an Aspect.

•   •   •

The Nexus was more than merely the realm of the Spell-Weaver and the blue dragonflight. It was a place of immense magical power, a gathering of forces from all Azeroth. Although its physical appearance was that of an icy, timeworn fortress, the Nexus was actually a formation riddled with tunnels and caves, and had once been protected by an extensive and intricate series of wards that permitted only the blue dragons safe entrance. However, with the wards fading, Kalec’s excuse for returning had more merit to it than even he had originally thought.

Some distance away, two blue dragons soared through the air. Both headed south, whether intending to ever return, Kalec did not know. He tried not to think about their departure as he neared. Although Kalec had been late to the gathering at Wyrmrest, his tardiness had not been due to having to fly any greater distance than Alexstrasza and the rest. The Nexus was actually based on the frozen island of Coldarra—situated near the northwest edge of the Borean Tundra, which itself was a part of Northrend, the very same continent containing the Dragon Wastes. In truth, the journey had been a relatively short one. Kalec had been last to the Accord for reasons that he believed would have shocked even the legendary three.

But all thought of either her or the Accord faded as Kalec entered the protective perimeter of the Nexus. He felt a gentle tingle as he passed through the invisible network of spells. For now they still held, but they were already even weaker than when he had left for the gathering.

Kalec entered through the passage that led into his sanctum. Again and again, he sensed the brief, almost negligible touch of active spells. How much longer they would last, he could not say. Not too long, though.

There was a sound from ahead. Another male suddenly crossed his path. Kalec, not expecting anyone in the Nexus, came to an abrupt halt.

“Hail, Spell-Weaver,” the older dragon intoned, at the same time bowing his head. It said something for the size of the passages that both not only could face each other with ease, but would be able to pass by when necessary.

Shaking his head, Kalec replied, “That title is no longer mine, Jaracgos.”

“As you wish. I am glad that you returned when you did. I would have felt extremely guilty otherwise.”

Kalec tried to head off what he knew was coming. “Jaracgos, you don’t—”

“Please, I must speak.” Although older, the other blue was smaller than Kalec. “I have loyally followed the Spell-Weaver my entire existence, be the one with that title Malygos or you. I have entered fierce battle, pursued dangerous quests, and never shirked in any other duty. . . .”

“I know that. You were one of those I always admired. You never sought glory for yourself. It is something I have tried to emulate.”

The elder dragon cleared his throat, a sound that echoed through the rocky passage. He looked down. “You only make this harder. Kalec, I have had notions I have long wished to pursue, interests in the arcane I never had the chance to study. To do so, I must travel far—”

“You need not feel guilty for telling me this, Jaracgos,” Kalec interjected softly. “I respect your choice and thank you for coming to me rather than simply departing without a word. To be honest, I thought when you’d left earlier, you were never coming back.”

The other dragon dipped his head in respect. “I will return on occasion.”

“Thank you. Safe journey.”

With another dip of his head, the second behemoth moved on. Kalec watched him for a moment, then continued on in silence toward his sanctum. He had his doubts as to whether Jaracgos would ever return. After all, Kalec had encouraged his fellow blue dragons to do as they desired, even if it meant forever following a path that took them farther and farther from the Nexus—

Do not argue, Neltharion! a hissing voice roared in Kalec’s mind.

I do not argue! I fight!

A stunning wave of vertigo overtook Kalec as the mysterious voices continued to argue. Images began to join them. A young, yellowish dragon with some resemblance to one he knew now. A high peak that reminded him of one to the east, only sharper, less polished by time.

Through the barrage of mixing voices and flashing images he heard a female blue calling to him. Her voice was distant, indistinct, while the others grew stronger, more vivid.

A dragon roared . . . and just as Kalec lost sense, he realized it was he.

•   •   •

Hunting had been good. The icy sea teemed with large creatures full of tasty meat and blubber. Some of his kind preferred to hunt the grazers—and they, too, could provide a welcome feast—but for the time being Malygos enjoyed seeking the shapes only half-seen in the depths and planning for the very moment when they drew near the surface. He liked a mental challenge, more so than most of the other proto-dragons. Malygos took special pride in that; it meant to him that he was far more clever.

The blue-and-white proto-dragon marked one last prey. He spread his wings, which were decorated with icy flakes. More than most, his particular kind was well-adapted to this region. Other “families” occasionally ventured up here, but the majority tended to stay in the warmer climes.

Yet, today was to be one of those rare visitations. The shadow rushed over Malygos, soaring ahead at a speed he would have been hard-pressed to match. Kalec peered up in the sky in search of the other—

Kalec. My name is Kalec, a part of Malygos suddenly thought with shock. What—what is happening?

He wanted to turn and race back to the Nexus, but his body did not obey. Instead, it rose higher into the sky, seeking the mysterious proto-dragon whose shadow had passed by. It was not unheard of for members of one kind to attack another. Dominance was always important among proto-dragons.

How do I know that? Kalec demanded helplessly. Where am I?

Kalec could recall nothing after his agonized roar. He had apparently been unconscious. After that, he had no explanation as to why he would be here, flying over the water and seeing things through the eyes of Malygos. Kalec did not even understand how he knew that the body was that of his predecessor or how he also recognized that this was a very young Malygos from an era before there existed true dragons, much less the Great Aspects.

Kalec/Malygos rose into the clouds. The proto-dragon sniffed the air, enabling Kalec to detect the presence of that other creature. It seemed that the blue could experience everything here, but had no choice as to movement or speech. It was as if he were a ghost sharing Malygos’s form, even though the truth was more complicated. This young Malygos was the spirit . . . as was the entire world surrounding them, Kalec suspected.

Suddenly, a fire-orange shape darted by, distracting both Malygos and Kalec. A female proto-dragon hesitated a short distance from the blue-and-white male.

“No battle!” she roared. “I mean no harm!”

Several new things shocked Kalec. First, what little he knew of proto-dragons had led him to believe that they were incapable of speech. He had assumed them the primitive, animalistic ancestors of his kind and nothing more.

But somewhere along the way, some had crossed a threshold. . . .

The female anxiously waited for a response. Kalec recalled a glimpse of a fire-orange proto-dragon in one of the earlier visions and suspected this was the same one. In addition, he again found something familiar about her.

“No battle,” Malygos agreed, much to her relief, and to Kalec’s as well. Kalec realized that he was not surprised that Malygos also could speak, but only because the blue dragon had seen within the male, known his thoughts.

This was not the Malygos he knew, but even this less sophisticated version was swift of thought. Malygos searched the heavens for other orange figures and, finding none, took a more dominant spot above the female. She, in turn, did not show any unease at his decision, whether a sign of good judgment or naïveté, Kalec did not yet know.

“I am alone,” she added. “Looking for another. A male of my kind. Clutch brother.”

Clutch brother. Kalec knew that term. Dragons from the same clutch of eggs were considered the closest of siblings. Kalec had been one of four, but was now the only survivor. He assumed that proto-dragons had larger clutches and thus more chances of survival for the young, but evidently familial bonds still existed, at least for some like this female.

Malygos did not hesitate. “No others of yours.”

The female looked disappointed. “I have nowhere else to look.”

Kalec sensed Malygos’s train of thought. She not being one of Malygos’s breed, the male had no interest in the female, but he enjoyed proving his cunning. Besides, since he was neither hungry nor tired at the moment, the activity suited him. “There are other places. He hunts?”

She thought for a moment. “He likes to find new places.”

This appealed to Malygos, who enjoyed such an activity himself. “If he is not here, he must be south. There is a trail?”

“I know where he was. I do not know where he went.”

“Show me.”

But as the female veered around and Malygos started to follow, Kalec’s world leapt forward in such a jarring manner that at first he lost all sense. As his mind settled again, he saw that the pair now flew over a rocky but warmer landscape.

“This is where?” Malygos finally asked. “Clutch brother was here?”

“Yes.”

Once more, Kalec was taken by the conversational ability of the proto-dragon, but before he could pursue the question, a third, charcoal-gray proto-dragon flew into view from the west. The gray creature spotted the pair and immediately darted toward them.

Malygos let out a low growl. Kalec, who had been expecting another simple meeting, realized that the two proto-dragons were about to do battle.

“No fighting!” the female called. “No enemies!”

“A waste!” snarled Malygos as he surged to meet the newcomer. “He is a stupid one! Not smart!”

The gray suddenly opened wide his maw. A thunderous sound escaped. Kalec suffered along with Malygos as the shockwave struck like a hammer, sending his host spiraling backward.

Without hesitation, the gray eagerly pursued. Unlike the first two proto-dragons, this one was as Malygos had indicated and akin to those with which Kalec was familiar—an unthinking beast.

Malygos managed to right himself just in time. He exhaled in turn, and a chilling frost enveloped the oncoming gray. The attacking proto-dragon spun, his wings and head frozen, then dropped below Malygos.

Malygos dove after, which proved a mistake. The gray shook off the effects of his foe’s blast and, still spinning, accidentally caught Malygos directly across the chest with his tail.

Kalec wanted to gasp along with his host as the air was shoved from Malygos’s lungs. The icy-blue proto-dragon fought to keep aloft as he nearly blacked out. Kalec uselessly urged him on, but also felt consciousness slipping away.

Then, a burst of flame caught the gray in the face. The gray roared in pain, the fire having struck close to his eyes. He shook his head, blinded.

Recovering, Malygos unleashed another cold blast just as a second plume of fire also struck. Under the double onslaught, the gray retreated. He continued to roar, in both agony and frustration, as he fled the pair.

Malygos gazed up at the female, allowing Kalec to do the same. She looked both relieved and confused.

“He was scared. I did not want to fight. He gave no choice.”

“ ‘Scared’?” Malygos snorted, and Kalec puzzled over her explanation. He shared his host’s low opinion of their attacker. “Hmmph! Very stupid beast! Not smart, like me! Not smart like Malygos!”

“You are smart, Malygos,” she agreed. “Smarter than me.”

Although Malygos accepted her words as fact, Kalec suspected that the fire-orange proto-dragon was smarter than she had thus far revealed.

“I am smart,” repeated Malygos, taking pride in the compliment. “I will find your clutch brother, Alexstrasza.”

Alexstrasza! Kalec observed the young female through his host’s eyes, finally recognizing traits in the smoother, slimmer face. Yes, this was Alexstrasza, but a much younger one he would never have believed could be the Life-Binder. The pair had apparently told each other their names sometime in that lost period between the two parts of the maddening vision.

Curiously, Alexstrasza only nodded disinterestedly. She continued to eye the direction in which their brief adversary had fled. “So scared. He attacked us because he was scared. Why was he scared?”

Not having noticed that himself, Malygos simply shrugged. Again, Kalec shared his predecessor’s disinterest. He only wanted to escape this madness. He wondered what was happening to his body.

Another attack of vertigo overwhelmed him. Kalec floated in darkness for a moment, then once again returned not to the Nexus, but rather to some other vision seen through young Malygos.

They were in what to Kalec’s judgment was some other part of the same jagged landscape. The sky was as overcast as that over Northrend.

A mournful howl rose from his—Malygos’s—side.

Malygos seemed to know what it entailed, for despite Kalec’s desire, his host did not immediately turn toward the cry. Only when the howl continued unabated did he finally look.

And there Kalec at last beheld Alexstrasza, her snout pointed to the sky, her cry one of terrible loss. Had he a body of his own, Kalec knew that he would have felt a chill up and down his spine, so terrible was the sound.

Alexstrasza’s wings draped the ground like a shroud. Her body rocked back and forth and her tail scraped the rocky soil over and over.

As Malygos had promised, he had found her clutch brother . . . or what remained of him. Kalec now wished that his host would turn away, but Malygos eyed the corpse with growing interest as he tried to make sense of the death.

Alexstrasza’s sibling had perished violently—not a surprise in this world—but he had not simply been slain in some duel with another proto-dragon. No breath weapon with which Kalec was familiar or that even Malygos recognized would have left the corpse in such a horribly desiccated state. The fire-orange male was nothing more than a shriveled mass of skin and bone.

And what was worse, the contorted visage gave every indication that Alexstrasza’s brother had suffered throughout the entire monstrous process.

Alexstrasza continued to mourn. Malygos, however, suddenly shivered. A sense of unease filled Kalec’s host, though it was clear to Kalec that Malygos did not understand why the feeling now overwhelmed him.

A vast shadow blanketed the area. It vanished as swiftly as it had appeared. Malygos rose into the air, spinning so that he could quickly see in every direction, but all that was visible was the thick cloud cover.

No. There was something high above, just discernible to Kalec for a moment. He tried to urge Malygos to look in that direction.

His host finally did. At the same moment, whatever lurked above briefly darted through the bottom of the cloud cover.

But before Kalec could focus, his surroundings became a chaotic maelstrom of unintelligible voices, roars, and momentary images so brief that he could make sense of none of them.

And then . . . the blackness engulfed him once more.

THREE

FATHER OF DRAGONS

Kalec? Kalec?

Her voice was the first thing to pierce the darkness and it drew him back to waking. He mumbled what should have been her name, although even to his ears the sounds made no sense. The former Aspect opened his eyes, expecting both to be still lying in the tunnel and to have her leaning over him. Which of those would shame him more, he could not say.

But when he peered around, it was to find himself alone . . . and no longer lying in the passage. Somehow, he had come to be transported to the gigantic cavern that was his sanctum. More perplexing, he even lay in his favored sleeping spot.

But the question of how Kalec had gotten here was a minor one to the blue. What was more important was what had happened after he had blacked out. How long he had been lost within, Kalec did not know, but he did have a very good idea as to the source of the startling visions.

Uncurling stiff digits, the dragon beheld the seemingly insignificant artifact. A curse escaped him at sight of it and he almost threw it against one of the cavern walls. Thinking better of it, the dragon instead turned toward a shadowy part of his sanctum.

Kalec drew forth a bit of that shadow. From within, there emerged a large cubic shape that expanded before his eyes, growing immense enough to contain a night elf. Had Kalec desired it larger, he could have expanded it with only a thought. The arcane prisons had been created for a variety of tasks, including what the second half of their name indicated. This was but one of many secreted in the Nexus, and Kalec had chosen it because it was emptier than most.

Blue energy crackling all around it, the massive cube floated slightly above the ground. To an onlooker, it resembled a large box seemingly made of wood and stone and lined at each edge by a bronze, metallic border. Rich blue seals ran across the center of each of the four sides from the top to the bottom, and a dark border ran across the middle, as if the top and bottom were separate halves kept together only by the seals and border.

At the former Aspect’s unspoken command, the seals fell away and the metallic border faded. Now acting like a lid, the upper half tipped open. Not all arcane prisons functioned in this manner; this one, being designed specifically for storage, could also open in several other ways, depending on what Kalec needed of it.

Thrusting his paw inside, the dragon deposited the artifact. There, it not only would be safe from other eyes, but would no longer be able to taint his thoughts.

Resealing, the arcane prison vanished again. Exhaling in relief, Kalec recalled the voice that had brought him back from the blackness. This was not the first time that she had reached out to him since his departure from Dalaran. After their last meeting, she had no doubt assumed that he would contact her again, but he had found so many reasons not to, including his certainty that even she blamed him in part for not finding the Iris.

They could not continue this charade, Kalec decided not for the first time. There was no path ahead that the two of them could travel together—

And yet, once again, her voice touched him. Kalec . . . Kalec . . . speak to me. . . . He wanted to ignore her, but his will had been too weakened by the visions. Besides, Kalec told himself, as an archmage—perhaps the greatest one not with the blood of a dragon coursing through her veins—she might know something of the magic that would create a thing like what he had found. Jaina was, after all, the one who had helped him sense the Focusing Iris when his own efforts had failed. From that hunt alone, he considered her in many ways far more cunning, more adaptable than he . . . and that made him all the more shamed by his own failures.

When she called to him again, Kalec finally answered. I am here, Jaina.

As he replied, two things also happened. The least of those was a gap that opened in the air before him, a gap in the center of which formed the large circular image of a walled chamber he knew was hundreds of miles away. In that image, a feminine figure began to take shape.

But even before that took place, Kalec himself went through a transformation. He shrank, becoming only a fraction of his original size. The dragon stood on his hind legs, which reversed at the knees and became like those of a man even as the forelegs became matching arms. Kalec’s wings and tail shriveled, finally vanishing. His snout receded into his face, which lost its scale and deep blue tint, at last refining into a pale but handsome young face worthy of any of the elven races.

The most obvious hints remaining of his true self were his long blue-black hair and the hunter’s garments he now wore, which were also of a dark blue and black. Kalec straightened, in many ways more comfortable as he was now than when a dragon. In this form, he had learned what it was like to truly live, to truly understand happiness . . . and pain. Indeed, often there were moments when he wished that he had been born as the humanoid creature he pretended to be here.

As he finished transforming, the figure in the image also became fully distinct. However, unlike Kalec, the woman before him was exactly what she appeared to be. Human. Beautiful. So very powerful.

And still so young for all she had been forced to experience. Kalec could see how recent events had done even more to harden her, although she tried to pretend that she had not changed. Jaina Proudmoore had not asked to become leader of the Council of Six—the council of wizards ruling the realm of Dalaran—but she had been the one to whom the other powers had turned after the sacrifice of her predecessor, Rhonin. Jaina, the daughter of the late, legendary—and some would also say infamous—grand admiral Daelin Proudmoore, had also had to balance her duties on the council with governing the island kingdom of Theramore.

All that would have been too much for many creatures—dragons included—but in addition, Jaina had had to deal with both her part in her father’s death and her failure to save Theramore from eventual destruction at the brutish hands of the Horde.

We are two of a kind, Kalec thought as he beheld her.

He kept his expression neutral as she focused on him. In contrast, Jaina smiled gratefully, as if Kalec had granted her a special favor in finally responding. That only made him feel worse.

“I was beginning to worry about you.” Her voice was rich and melodious—at least to Kalec—but tinged with past pains and regrets.

He marveled that she had the wherewithal to continue as she did, despite her grief for all those slain in Theramore and her remorse over what she had planned to do against Orgrimmar with the stolen Focusing Iris. Of course, that was also why he both admired and felt a bond with her. “I appreciate your concern, Jaina, but I am fine.”

“Are you?” She leaned closer, almost seeming able to touch him. Her gaze bored into Kalec, who felt as if the mage could read into what passed for a dragon’s soul. “You aren’t sleeping enough. I can see that. You’re driving yourself too much. All this work can wait a little longer—”

“It has to be done,” he blurted out too quickly.

He was as surprised as she looked by the obvious bitterness tingeing his words. Jaina recovered almost immediately, compassion replacing the surprise. The compassion only made Kalec more abashed.

“How are you?” he asked in a deliberate change of subject. “How fares the Kirin Tor?”

Despite understanding just what he was doing, she allowed the change. “We still struggle to keep things together, but we’re doing it. You know as well as I do how things have turned upside down since your last visit. I’ve been forced to make some changes I don’t like, but they’re necessary.”

When Jaina did not elaborate on those changes, Kalec did not press. He wanted very much to help her, but what could he, who could do nothing for himself, do for her?

Perhaps it is time to end this, the dragon decided. Perhaps we can do nothing for one another—

An image of the young Alexstrasza burned through his mind.

Kalec could neither suppress a gasp nor keep his body from shivering. Unfortunately, Jaina noted both.

“Kalec! Are you ill—”

A dragon’s roar—or, more likely, a proto-dragon’s—drowned out whatever else she said. Still, the blue managed to put on a veneer of strength before the mage. “As you said, I’ve not gotten enough rest. My apologies for frightening you.”

He tried very hard to sound indifferent, hoping that she would believe that he was well. Kalec was not certain if his thinking was clear, but he had to hope it was, for other sounds and images were already assailing him.

Jaina remained where she was. Her expression was unreadable. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

The image of another proto-dragon corpse took his attention. There was something even more unsettling about this one, but the image vanished before Kalec could make sense of just what it was that bothered him. The sounds, especially the voices, grew maddening.

“Yes!” he called too loudly. “Forgive me! I’ve a council to convene!”

No longer caring if his excuses made sense, Kalec dismissed the vision of the mage. Jaina faded away just as she looked ready to say something. The former Aspect stumbled to the center of his sanctum, already reeling from the onslaught of voices and jumbled images. He was grateful that neither Jaina nor any of his dragonflight could see him staggering.

Kalec fell to his knees. He managed to plant a hand against the smooth rock floor, a hand partially scaled and with long, wicked nails. Unable to focus, Kalec contorted as his body sought some balance between his true form and the humanoid one he had put on for Jaina’s sake. His mouth and nose stretched forward and his legs shrieked with pain as his knees shifted back and forth. It was one thing to simply change from one shape to another, but to keep shifting between them took a toll that he had never suffered before.

It was finally too much. Kalec fell forward—

And once again soared through the air as some part of the young Malygos.

Time had shifted again. Alexstrasza no longer accompanied Malygos, but there were other proto-dragons in the sky, proto-dragons of at least six different colors. Despite their differences, they appeared disinclined to fight one another, although Kalec suspected that could always change.

Malygos radiated agitation, which in turn overtook Kalec. What bothered Malygos was not clear to Kalec. The proto-dragon had buried his thoughts deep this time, even seeming not to want to deal with them himself.

Part of the reason for so many different proto-dragons in the same region became obvious as a vast herd of huge beasts—some sort of brown, hairy caribou—raced along the low, grassy hills below. Two proto-dragons had already dived down and snatched up ready meals, but a smaller, yellowish female failed to judge her dive and almost collided with the ground.

As she pulled up, she was joined by none other than Alexstrasza, who had just snatched up another of the grazers. Unlike the other hunters, the fire-orange female had quickly bitten through the neck where the animal’s great vein was located, killing it instantly. Kalec could sense Malygos’s amusement at such a tactic; most proto-dragons preferred their prey alive and fresh until the last moment. Alexstrasza, though, appeared to almost feel guilty about having to hunt at all.

She tried to offer the meal to the smaller female—who clearly needed nourishment—but the yellowish proto-dragon instead snapped angrily at her. Rather than grow furious herself, Alexstrasza continued to patiently attend to her companion.

Even now, she takes care of the helpless, Kalec thought with admiration, thinking of Alexstrasza as the Aspect of Life. Here, so very young, she still revealed far more concern for others than most.

Malygos lost interest for the moment in the two females, forcing Kalec’s perspective to shift to watching other hunters. The proto-dragon took mild interest in a coarse brown male’s technique. The other male would hover over the running herd, then, seemingly prescient, dive toward it just as it made a sharp turn designed to put the winged predators off their mark. Not so the brown male. In fact, he seemed to know at just what angle and what speed the grazers would turn. Where more than one other hunter ended up only with mounds of torn dirt and grass, he plucked up two tasty morsels in rapid succession.

Malygos admired the other’s cleverness and timing, then lost interest as two of the hunters who had failed to snag their quarry now hissed and spat at one another. No words passed between them. Like the gray male Kalec and his host had encountered previously, these proto-dragons were little better than the savage cats or wolves roaming other parts of the world. Malygos watched their angry fight with contempt, while Kalec again wondered why some proto-dragons had progressed toward sentience while others had not.

A few other proto-dragons in the midst of devouring their meals also watched, some with clear intelligence, others like beasts wary that the fighters might try next to steal their food. One blue-green male sneered at the pair, then glared at Malygos when he realized Kalec’s host was watching him.

Coros. The name came to mind as if Kalec knew the other male himself. Malygos obviously did, and the enmity between them was clear. Coros hissed at his rival, then thrust his muzzle into his fresh kill. The blue-green male ripped free a hefty portion of bloody meat, then chewed it while staring at Malygos as if it had been torn from the latter’s throat.

Kalec sensed Malygos considering fighting Coros, but the dangerous train of thought was interrupted by the alighting of the small, yellowish female near him. She snorted in frustration as Alexstrasza, still gripping the carcass, landed next to her and across from Kalec’s host.

“My brother . . .” began the smaller proto-dragon hesitantly. “My sister says you found him.”

It startled both Malygos and Kalec that this was Alexstrasza’s sibling. Their colors were different, though her yellow tint was also not like that of the two other families Kalec knew existed thanks to Malygos. The only similarity between the females was their smooth, nearly glass-like skin, so different from the typical rough hide of most proto-dragons.

“We were three in the clutch. Three to survive. Now, only two.”

Malygos dipped his head in understanding. For proto-dragons a surviving clutch of only three eggs meant ill tidings for the family. Indeed, in many a healthy proto-dragon family, a sickly offspring such as the yellow female would have been slain at hatching.

She seemed to be waiting for some more elaborate response from Malygos. He finally said, “Your clutch brother. His death was strange.”

It was certainly not how Kalec would have replied if he were in Malygos’s place, but Alexstrasza’s sister seemed pleased. “Yes! He died strangely! How did he die?”

“I do not know.”

The smaller female leaned closer. “There was another—”

“No, Ysera!” interrupted Alexstrasza sharply. “We agreed that—”

Whatever she said next was lost to Kalec, who took advantage of Malygos’s view to stare in amazement at yet another of the Great Aspects. Having known the Ysera of recent times—Ysera the Awakened—he could not imagine how this weaker creature could have become one of the most powerful forces in all Azeroth.

Snapping and hissing brought Kalec’s attention back to what Malygos was experiencing. Alexstrasza and Ysera, their necks bent back, maneuvered as if seeking to fight one another. Each displayed her sharp teeth and claws to her utmost, even Ysera proving capable of an incredibly menacing showing. Several times both heads darted in, but then pulled back once more.

Kalec knew such confrontations from his own kind and could generally recognize what was real and what was simply normal display, but with the sisters it was hard to tell. The jaws of both Ysera and Alexstrasza snapped dangerously close to the other’s throat and the claws scraped against hides more than once.

And then . . . a sound louder than thunder stilled not only the sisters, but every proto-dragon in the vicinity.

The sound erupted again, shaking the rocky ridges upon which Malygos and many of the other hunters perched. Several of the proto-dragons were cowed, and Kalec felt even Malygos fight not to prostrate himself.

Only then did Kalec realize that the incredible noise was a gigantic roar.

A vast region of the overcast sky broke away, descending with astonishing swiftness. The velocity caused the clouds to quickly scatter, revealing a sight that truly could daunt not only a proto-dragon, but even the most powerful of Kalec’s own kind.

This was supposed to be a proto-dragon, but so immense was its size that not even a dragon could be chosen for an adequate comparison. Kalec could think of no creature save one that could be used . . . and that would have meant comparing Galakrond to himself.

Even though Kalec had never seen the gigantic Galakrond in the flesh, the remote possibility that he would not have recognized this titanic being had been eliminated by Galakrond’s name racing over and over through Malygos’s mind. In addition, through his host’s brief glimpse away from the Father of Dragons to the other proto-dragons, Kalec saw that not one of the hunters remained in the sky. Galakrond now commanded the world above, and there was no proto-dragon foolish enough to challenge that rule.

He swooped down, passing over the entire region in a matter of seconds. In Galakrond’s wake there came a vicious wind that even tore several proto-dragons from their roosts and sent more than one meal toppling to the ground far below. Galakrond’s roar was no less ground-shaking miles away, forcing Malygos and the sisters to grip their perches tighter.

For such a colossal creature, Galakrond turned with remarkable agility. Once more, he passed over the now-panicking herd, but this time with intent. Galakrond seized up two caribou in each of his much larger hind paws and scooped up another whole in his gargantuan maw, then rose up. The grazer in his mouth vanished down his gullet and a moment later so did both of those in his left hind paw. By the time Galakrond leveled, all five of his catches were well on their way down to his stomach.

But five was not enough. Galakrond veered back and lunged toward the scattering prey. This time, however, he suddenly pulled back. Confused at first, Kalec watched as the bending of the vast wings during the halt created a windstorm that sent dozens of beasts rolling uncontrollably.

Before several of the caribou could rise to their feet, Galakrond plucked them up. With at least eight claimed that Kalec could see, the Father of Dragons soared back into the clouds.

It was not until several seconds after Galakrond’s departure that the first proto-dragons dared move. There was no renewal of the hunt; not only were the caribou scattered so far and wide that pursuit would have required too much effort, but most of the proto-dragons were still too shaken up by Galakrond’s startling manifestation. Some took to the sky themselves and fled for calmer climes. Others remained subdued.

The Father of Dragons . . . Kalec could still not believe the stunning image. To witness Galakrond alive was something he could never have imagined.

The blue knew little of Galakrond save that he had been one of the largest beings to roam Azeroth and that he had represented the shift from proto-dragon to true dragon. It was not that Galakrond had actually fathered all true dragons—that was a myth somehow spread millennia ago—but that after him had come the five Aspects and their respective dragonflights. Proto-dragons had all but vanished after that.

There were other legends concerning Galakrond, but, in truth, Kalec understood that only his three counterparts knew the truth. He had never thought to ask them about the Father of Dragons, but now wished that he had.

Yet, Kalec’s momentary awe soon gave way again to his anger and frustration—and growing concern—over his being trapped in these ancient visions. Each one seemed more and more lifelike, as if his own time were the fantasy and this scene now were the true present.

Not for the first time, he tried to will himself back, but nothing changed. He continued to be an insignificant, unnoticed phantasm trapped within Malygos. Not even Alexstrasza or Ysera—both of whom in the future would have abilities that should make them sense his presence—so much as glanced in curiosity at the male beside them.

I will be free! Kalec abruptly roared, though his roar went unheard by any save himself. Bereft of a throat—or a body—he felt like nothing but a memory remembered by no one.

Laughter filled his—or rather, Malygos’s—ears. Kalec at first thought that someone mocked him, but instead, the laughter was aimed at the other proto-dragons by a charcoal-gray male a bit larger than most, who actually sneered at the others.

“Little hatchlings!” he bellowed. “Afraid of the sky! Afraid of the ground! Galakrond laughs at you for being afraid, and I, Neltharion, do, too!”

Some of the proto-dragons hissed at the gray male, but no one challenged him. By their glances, they knew him to be strong and able to back up his taunt. Even those proto-dragons who clearly had little more intelligence than their prey appeared to know better than to fight—

Neltharion? The name finally penetrated. Kalec sought in vain to seize control of Malygos’s body as the newcomer, still laughing, flew off. Where Galakrond had been a startling, unsettling thing of legend, this gray male represented a danger to the future of all life on Azeroth. If there was a creature more evil than Neltharion, Kalec could not think of one.

Of course, by the blue’s time, the gray male would be better known by his more apt title . . . Deathwing.

FOUR

UNLIKELY ALLIES

Azeroth had suffered many terrible times and menaces, the demons of the Burning Legion and the Sundering but two of the most devastating. Yet, to the dragons, to many inhabitants of the world, there had been no greater peril than the mad Aspect. From the War of the Ancients ten thousand years ago to recent times, he who had once been the Earth-Warder had sought the destruction of all things.

Deathwing was gone now and at tremendous sacrifice, but Kalec, still able to watch Neltharion flying into the clouds through Malygos’s gaze, wondered how Azeroth would have fared if Deathwing had never been.

Follow him! he urged Malygos, to no avail. Follow him and end the horror before it begins!

His host did nothing. Malygos lost interest not only in Neltharion, but also in all else going on around him. Without a word to Alexstrasza or Ysera, he leapt into the air and headed to the north. A few proto-dragons nearby hissed at Malygos as he passed, but the icy-blue male ignored them. He had eaten his fill and only wanted to curl up in his remote cavern for a long, pleasant nap while he digested his meal. That Kalec had no desire to do the same was, as usual, lost upon the proto-dragon.

But suddenly something hard collided with Malygos from behind. He rolled in the sky, then began to plummet. As he struggled to regain control, both he and Kalec caught a glimpse of the cause of their troubles.

Coros and another male of the same hue dived down to attack. Malygos managed to slow his descent, but could still not right himself. Coros and his comrade hissed eagerly as they neared.

Malygos opened his mouth. A shower of icicles shot forth. Coros evaded them, but the other proto-dragon did not entirely avoid being struck. The icicles slashed through one wing.

But once more Malygos was hit from behind as a third foe entered the fray. Kalec, helplessly watching, guessed that Coros had set up this attack before Galakrond’s appearance. From Malygos’s jumbled thoughts, Kalec picked up bits of a long rivalry over territory, prey, and who was more cunning. At the moment, it seemed that Coros had the advantage in the last.

Coros exhaled, and what appeared to be a web of smoke enveloped Malygos. The icy-blue male fought for breath as the smoke sealed off his nostrils and mouth.

Despite his wounds, the first of Coros’s companions reentered the struggle. With an eager expression, the proto-dragon opened wide as he sought Malygos’s throat.

Thunder roiled . . . or rather a sound like thunder. Malygos’s wounded attacker dropped as if hit by a thousand dwarven hammers.

A hearty laugh followed the jarring sound. Kalec saw a gray blur cross Malygos’s path, then collide with Coros.

“You want a fight? Fight me!” cried Neltharion as he grappled with Malygos’s rival.

This was a foe that Coros could not have counted on, but he did not back down. He opened wide . . . and Neltharion slammed the blue-green’s jaw up, closing the mouth at a critical moment.

Coros jerked away from his opponent. The blue-green male clawed at his mouth, ripping away scale and skin until he managed to open it again. Neltharion’s act had managed to turn the other proto-dragon’s breath weapon against him in a manner that both Malygos and Kalec admired.

However, the gray’s amusement at his success left him open to the third of the attackers. The remaining blue-green landed atop Neltharion, wrapping his hind paws around the gray’s throat. At the same time, he sought to bite through one of Neltharion’s wings.

But in the next second the gray’s foe was torn free of his prey by Malygos, who had finally had the opportunity to recover. Malygos ripped at the other proto-dragon’s wings and neck, scoring two strong strikes. Blood splattered his muzzle as he tore into his target.

A wildly flapping wing hit Malygos hard in the face. It startled him enough to make him loosen his grip. His adversary used that moment to pull free. Rather than turn to fight, the wounded leviathan retreated as swiftly as he could.

Another of the attackers soared past Malygos. Only belatedly did Kalec and his host note that fleeing figure as Coros. Of the final member of the treacherous trio, there was no sign.

“Too short! Cowards! Come! Fight again!” Neltharion roared after the two diminishing figures.

Despite their clear victory, Malygos radiated no interest in wreaking further damage on his old rival. He watched silently as the gray continued to berate the losers until they were out of sight.

Finally losing interest, Neltharion spun to face Malygos. “You fight good! Not as good as Galakrond, not as good as me, but good!”

Malygos nodded. “You fight very good. Malygos thanks you.”

The attempt at gratitude received a hearty laugh. “No! Thank you! It was a good fight!”

Malygos did not shrink from a battle but, unlike Neltharion, did not savor it. Within, Kalec remained torn between being relieved that Neltharion had come to their aid and feeling anxious that the future Deathwing hovered before them.

“A good fight, yes,” the icy-blue proto-dragon finally agreed.

“We are brothers in blood,” Neltharion continued, shifting closer. “Both smarter than the others, too!”

The other proto-dragon did not disagree. For all his bluster, Neltharion was clever. Malygos’s interest turned to another astonishing subject stirred up by a chance mention from the gray. “Galakrond. He never hunts here. Why now? You know?”

“Ha! Galakrond hunts where Galakrond wishes!” Yet, after saying that, Neltharion paused. After visible consideration, he added, “More food. Yes, more food here.”

“More food,” Malygos agreed. A horrifying thought occurred to the proto-dragon. “Our food!”

Neltharion understood immediately. “Our food . . . not good.”

“No. Not—” Something on one of the nearby hills to Malygos’s right caught the proto-dragon’s attention. Malygos immediately glanced that way, enabling Kalec to also look.

“They come back?” the gray eagerly asked, referring to Coros and the other two.

“No.” Malygos remained distracted by whatever he had noticed, but his thoughts remained murky to Kalec. Malygos suddenly arced toward those hills, a curious Neltharion accompanying him. They arrived but scant seconds later, whereupon Malygos began to survey the vicinity.

“Nothing here,” Neltharion concluded long before his companion was satisfied. “No enemy to fight. Shame.”

“No enemy,” Malygos reluctantly agreed. “I—”

Again, the future Aspect noticed something at the edge of his vision. This time, he reacted even more quickly.

“Something?” the gray asked with rising interest.

Malygos squinted. Kalec saw nothing through his host, but felt Malygos tense as if he did.

So powerful a sensitivity . . .

The words were not Kalec’s. Nor were they Malygos’s thoughts.

Despite being well aware by now that he had no true voice, Kalec could not hold back a gasp of discovery. To him, part of the landscape moved, a ripple little bigger than a tall human. It moved only a short distance to the side and did so slowly, almost as if seeing what would happen. To the eyes of most, it would have been unnoticeable, and Neltharion was evidence of that. He snorted and peered elsewhere while he patiently waited for Malygos to finish.

Look there! Look there! Kalec demanded fruitlessly, yet it became clear to him that Malygos did not quite see what he did. Malygos finally gave up, turning back to Neltharion—

In that one instant, Kalec—not his host—saw what watched.

And, as he did, the world spun madly. Kalec became lost in a black maelstrom. He had nothing upon which to grab hold, either physically or mentally. The blue sank into a dark, endless hole—

Only to wake up on the floor of his sanctum, his body—his still-contorted, part-dragon, half-elven body—awash in sweat.

Groaning, Kalec dragged himself toward a nearby wall. As he approached, a small, shimmering fountain of silver water rose from thin air. It directed itself toward the slowly transforming dragon, who opened his stretching muzzle wide and swallowed the cool, refreshing contents. As the magical liquid coursed through him, Kalec’s mind began to reorganize itself.

His first thought was not about what he had seen in that last moment, but about the true bane of his existence. Managing to rise, the blue dragon returned to the secret place where he had put the artifact.

Not at all to his surprise, it glowed as he had first noticed in the wastes. The glow faded immediately, but Kalec was not fooled. The artifact was active and had probably been active from the moment that he had sensed its existence.

Kalec no longer cared for what purpose it had been designed. He wanted nothing more than to either destroy it or cast it far, far away.

Well aware of the potential for disaster when dealing with any magical object, Kalec chose the latter course. He pictured a place obscure to most and used a spell to send the accursed artifact there.

An immense wave of relief overcame him. Kalec slumped back, grateful for the peace of the moment.

Without meaning to, his attention returned to the essence of the visions. Malygos, Alexstrasza, Ysera, and Neltharion. Four of those who would change Azeroth forever as its guiding Aspects. Kalec assumed that somewhere in those visions, a young Nozdormu had also appeared. The analytical part of Kalec wondered what the visions meant; the emotional part wanted nothing to do with them. Each vision burned deeper into the blue’s mind. Kalec feared that if they had progressed, the visions would have eventually stolen his mind.

He returned to the magical fountain, a creation of his own that now proved highly beneficial. At last satiated, Kalec forced the visions from his thoughts. He had more important, more immediate, concerns—

A thing of horror rose before him, a cadaverous dragon with sunken white eyes and shriveled flesh. Rotting tongue dangling to the side, it lunged for Kalec—

And vanished.

Kalec shivered. His heart beat wildly. The stench of decay still lingered in his nostrils, even though it slowly dawned on him that what he had seen had not actually stood before him but rather had been a product of his imagination. It took much to unnerve one of his kind even for a moment, but this horrific sight had certainly done so. Kalec could still not shake the sense that he had smelled the apparition, although that was impossible. . . .

As Kalec’s calm returned, his first thought involved the artifact, but it was hundreds and hundreds of miles away. Kalec could not believe that it could affect him from so far. Still, the more he recalled glimpses of the macabre illusion, the more details that hinted of the artifact’s connection came to light. This had been no dragon, but a proto-dragon whose size had been shaped by Kalec’s own mind . . . and the blue had not even thought about proto-dragons until finding the accursed thing under Galakrond’s frozen bones.

Galakrond . . .

Voices arose all around Kalec, but he knew immediately that they came from within, not without.

This thing is dead! This thing cannot fight!

Kalec roared, his cry echoing through his sanctum. The roar did nothing to drown out the ever-increasing voices. The dragon desperately spun around, his tail crashing against a wall with such force that it cracked the rock.

“I will not listen! I will not succumb!”

So many dead . . .

We cannot fight . . .

It must be done, no matter the sacrifice.

The last voice cut through the rest. With it came another manifestation in Kalec’s mind, one so real that yet again he thought it stood before him.

The hooded, robed figure.

The phantasm vanished back into the darkness within. Kalec remained utterly still, afraid that if he even moved, the entire madness would begin again. When it did not, he took a long breath and thought hard. He could think of only one recourse.

He would have to seek out Alexstrasza again.

•   •   •

For most, the task of finding her, the one who had once been the Life-Binder, would have proved daunting. Alexstrasza stayed in no place for very long, perhaps because if she did, she might dwell too long on what had been lost. Kalec understood that she had come to grips with the fact that the dragons as a race were no longer viable, that the last eggs had hatched and from here there would only be fewer and fewer dragons as time and circumstance took their toll.

Yet, perhaps through some lingering link from their roles as Aspects or simply because he understood her more than he realized, Kalec located her after only a few false trails. He flew low over the forested land, finally transforming to his humanoid form a good distance from his goal. He did the last not because he sought to surprise her, but rather so as not to frighten the inhabitants of the human village he had seen in the distance.

The giggles of children reached him before he found her. Kalec saw the four youngsters playing among the trees just beyond the village’s boundaries. The game of hide-and-seek seemed to be a fluid one, for the seeker appeared to change from one moment to the next.

A man’s voice called the children back into the village. There was always the danger of wolves or other threats, although this land appeared fairly peaceful in comparison to many in the changed world. Moreover, considering the two figures now nearby, the children and their village were, for a short time, safe from almost anything.

“They seem very happy,” Kalec commented.

A part of the tree to his left separated. The facade of bark faded, revealing a beautiful, fiery-tressed woman dressed in form-fitting gold and crimson armor. She loomed over Kalec and appeared to be from some far more glorious and mysterious elven branch. A regal crimson cloak flowed behind her as she joined him.

“They are so young,” she murmured, her brilliant red eyes somber. “They have such vitality. I see why Korialstrasz enjoyed their particular kind so much.”

Kalec briefly bowed his head in memory of perhaps the most legendary of Alexstrasza’s consorts even though his own relationship with Korialstrasz—who had also worked among the younger races as the mage Krasus—had been tempestuous at times, to say the least. They had come to an understanding well before the red male’s death, but Kalec felt some guilt about the past schism whenever Alexstrasza brought up her beloved mate.

“Humans hold much hope, but they do also hold much threat,” he could not help finally responding. “The Lich King was once human.”

“And many of those who fought him hardest were human, too.” She returned her gaze to the village. “Was there something you wanted?”

He suddenly felt so very young, almost as young as the children they had been watching. “I wanted . . . I wanted to ask some things of you when we gathered at Wyrmrest, but the gathering ended so quickly, so abruptly. . . .”

Alexstrasza looked back. “I am so very sorry. We did not treat you with the respect we should have. The moment just overtook the rest of us. It is not an excuse. We were remiss.”

“I am aware that you three share something I can barely fathom. I am still honored that I was chosen, even if for a short time.” Kalec exhaled sharply. “Alexstrasza. After the three of you left Wyrmrest, I found an artifact of an unsettling nature. I need your guidance—”

“ ‘Guidance’?” For the first time, she did not look pleased with his presence. “My advice will avail you little, Kalec. I would think that you, being a blue, would certainly be better at deciphering some artifact’s design and purpose than I. In fact—”

The children ran into sight again. Although they remained within the confines of the village, their playing was still visible enough to draw Alexstrasza’s attention. She clapped her hands together in delight as a small girl paused in her play to hug what was likely her slightly older brother.

Kalec started to talk, then noticed how strained her smile actually was. He envisioned all the lost lives, especially those young like these children, and how they had affected the former Aspect inside. Alexstrasza herself had suffered more than most. Not only had all her eggs been destroyed by Korialstrasz—in the act sacrificing himself—to prevent their corruption into monstrous twilight dragons, and her ability to lay more had been forever taken away, but in addition to all that she lived with the knowledge that the other dragonflights had also suffered so. She might have accepted her loss of power, but not this loss of her kind’s future. After all, she had been the Life-Binder.

Stepping back, Kalec left Alexstrasza to her viewing. He could not bring himself to pursue matters with her. In silence, he strode deeper into the forest, waiting only until he was far enough not to frighten the humans before transforming into his true form and flying off.

Twice now, his hopes of understanding and guidance from one of the elder dragons had ended in futility. Alexstrasza had even intentionally pulled away from him when he had mentioned the mysterious find. True, as a blue he was still more in tune with all facets of magic, but her experience might have proven invaluable.

She—they—have withdrawn from the world, he realized. They have accepted their loss of power, as have I, but now they no longer see themselves as part of Azeroth’s future. . . . Kalec could only imagine how Alexstrasza and the others, with so many millennia of burdens upon them, felt—

Dead! It is dead! It should not fight!

Another! Beware! Another—

Intense vertigo once again overtook Kalec. The blue dragon tumbled forward, dropping hard as he did. He crashed into several treetops before being able to right himself.

The voices receded. Kalec, exhausted by the struggle, landed hard, then blacked out.

He awoke what seemed barely a few seconds later. The voices had completely disappeared and no visions assailed him. Kalec rose gratefully, peering around as he tried to regain his bearings.

The dragon’s gleaming eyes widened in shock. He was no longer near the region where he had left Alexstrasza. The trees around him were more sparsely spread and a deep, twisting canyon stretched for miles to the north. This nameless location was far from any civilized area, either Alliance or Horde. Very likely few knew it to any degree, but of those few, Kalec suspected that he knew this region most of all.

Some force had transported Kalec far across Azeroth . . . and the blue dragon had to look no further than the accursed artifact, which suddenly lay only a few yards before him, once more ominously aglow.

FIVE

GALAKROND

The blue dragon exhaled furiously at the artifact, enveloping it in bitter frost. He brought down one heavy paw on the now-glistening relic. Where good steel—turned brittle by the magical chill—would have easily shattered, Kalec’s odd nemesis retained every aspect of its essence, leaving the dragon with a very pained appendage.

“You will not be my master!” the blue roared, not caring if anyone heard the echo of his voice. “Curse someone else, you fiendish toy!”

The octagonal relic glowed brighter yet. Expecting the worst, Kalec immediately pulled back.

Nothing happened. Kalec ran a paw over the piece, but still the artifact did nothing. Even then, the blue could not help feeling that with each passing second the mysterious object insinuated itself deeper and deeper into not only the dragon’s mind, but also any soul one of his kind might have.

Seizing up the relic, Kalec prepared to throw it deep into the valley. However, as he raised his arm, the limb ached terribly. Indeed, only now did the blue feel the stress and strain all over his body. Kalec felt as if he had flown halfway around the world—

Flown . . .

Testing his wings, Kalec found that they, too, moved with pain. The leviathan’s anger kindled anew. It had been his own magic and muscle that had dragged him all the way to this land. He could only imagine how he had made the journey. Had he flown unconscious all that time?

It does not matter! Kalec forcefully reminded himself. All that matters is to free myself from its foulness. . . .

But how he could do that remained a question unanswerable. Rather than cast the artifact away again, Kalec pressed it tight to his chest, then leapt into the air.

No sooner had he done so than Kalec abruptly veered north. As if by some miracle, he felt as if he suddenly knew how to divest himself of the monstrous relic. With great sweeps of his wings, the blue dragon headed to the very place from which he had dug out the artifact.

The frozen bones of Galakrond.

Fighting his exhaustion, Kalec continued his hard pace and managed to reach the Dragonblight as dark approached. The wastes and the dragon graveyard came into view soon after. Kalec spotted the outline of the temple, then adjusted his path accordingly.

Even in the gloom, the ancient behemoth’s skeleton was somehow visible where the remains of the hundreds of other dragons who had passed on during the many successive millennia were now no more than dark mounds. Kalec landed in silence, feeling suddenly as if he disturbed their rest. Still, now that he had come this far, the blue had no intention of turning back.

Recalling where he had dug up the relic, Kalec transformed, then created a faint golden globe to light his path. Now holding the artifact in the crook of his left arm, the false half elf closed on the towering skeleton. The wind tore through the graveyard and the icy ground crunched under his boots.

A long, lingering moan sent a chill of a different type down his spine. He paused, the floating globe moving by his will in the direction of the terrible cry. Seeing nothing, Kalec took a step toward the sound. After a moment, he finally realized that the moan was the wind blowing through the eye socket of the gargantuan creature’s skull.

A new shiver ran through Kalec as he recalled his vision of the living Galakrond. That such a being had lived, a proto-dragon that dwarfed dragons, filled him with awe. Galakrond was legend, but to see the legend living . . .

But then disturbing thoughts arose. Kalec wondered what place Galakrond had in this madness. The one vision appeared to have focused on him. Kalec vowed that once he had finished with the foul thing resting in his arm, he would still try to find out more from one of his former counterparts. The blue had little else to do anymore.

Seeing the area from a much lower perspective, Kalec noticed things that he had not before. In the glow, he noted footprints. It had never occurred to him that this sacred place had been visited by other creatures. Some of the prints were large, although not as large as those of dragons. The round, blunt shape indicated the presence of magnataur—huge, savage hunters whose lower half resembled the body of a woolly mammoth, while the upper torso was like some bestial version of a night elf or human with giant tusks.

Why the magnataur had been hunting in the wastes was a question that was not satisfactorily answered by the smaller, hooved tracks Kalec noted. At least two of the bison-like taunka had also been through the area, which was situated fairly far from their home territory. The taunka were also more civilized than magnataur and had a great respect for the dead, which made their being here more curious.

Something long and thin lay at the edge of the globe’s illumination. Directing the globe closer, Kalec saw that it was a magnataur spear. The tip, partially visible, was stained with blood, and the blue noticed that some of the ice close to the point was dark. The magnataur had brought down its prey, but there was no sign of the body. Kalec supposed that the beasts had taken away the unfortunate taunka’s corpse for food.

With disgust, Kalec turned back to the rib cage. He stepped up to the nearest of the high, arcing bones and, after a hesitation, stepped within the Father of Dragons.

The moment he did, Kalec sensed that he was not alone. He quickly sent the globe forward.

A thickly furred female taunka stood under the arch of another rib. She leaned on a primitive spear made of some long bone and tipped with a rock honed sharp.

“Hail to you, dragon,” the white, bison-headed hunter rumbled as she bowed. She was clad in simple leather garments which she had no doubt fashioned from her own kills. “I am Buniq. I did not mean any sacrilege here.”

That she had seen him transform despite the darkness did not surprise Kalec. In a land where it was often as dark as night even in the day, a good taunka hunter had to have fair night vision.

“I’ve no quarrel with you, Buniq,” the blue returned. He kept the artifact as well hidden by his arm as possible, even subtly shifting the glowing orb so that it slightly blinded the taunka.

She raised her other hand to shield her eyes. “Nor I with you. My kind do not come here often, but I was in search of a relic from this place to bring back and thus prove myself worthy of him who loves me.”

Kalec held his surprise at her reason for being here, but assumed she could not possibly be hunting what he carried. Growing impatient to finish burying the foul thing, he curtly replied, “I will not stop you from going on with your search, then.”

“This ground is as sacred to us as it is to you,” the taunka went on, as if not hearing him. “The magnataur, they care nothing about anything. They seek only to fill their stomachs.” Lowering her hand, Buniq took a step toward him. “But for as long as there have been taunka, we have respected the resting place of the great ones.”

“And I am pleased to hear that, but—”

She set the butt of the spear on the ground again . . . right next to the very hole to which Kalec was heading. “A world without dragons, that would be a strange place. Not so good. There would be no . . . harmony. The world is hard enough to survive. The world needs dragons.”

Kalec chose not to comment on the adverse effect Deathwing and Malygos had had on Azeroth. Instead, he sought some other way in which to hint to the overly talkative taunka that she should depart.

Suddenly, he noticed that Buniq was no longer standing before him.

Kalec spun . . . and discovered her near the rib by which he had just passed. The blue could not recall her walking past him, but Buniq, her back now to him, clearly must have. The sphere illuminated several of her steps in the chilling ground.

As if sensing him watching, she looked back. The taunka’s large brown eyes focused not on Kalec, but rather on the crook of his arm.

“Some things should not remain buried,” Buniq quietly commented. “Fare you well, great dragon.”

Somehow, Kalec’s hold on the relic slipped. Looking down, he seized it before it could fall free.

Straightening again, he demanded, “What do you mean by—”

But Buniq was nowhere in view. Directing the sphere toward where he had last seen her, Kalec could not even find any trace of the tracks he had seen a moment ago.

The blue stepped back. He refused to think that the taunka had been some figment of his imagination. What he suspected was that the foul artifact had once more toyed with him. Kalec focused on reburying the relic and leaving its madness behind. He started to set it back into the hole . . . then, in the light of the sphere, he noticed something where Buniq had momentarily set her spear.

A hand.

The blue swore. Despite where it lay, the hand was almost entirely intact. And though it was of similar appearance, the lost appendage was clearly larger than that of a human or a dwarf. It had a peculiar gray coloring that also unsettled Kalec. However, after a closer study, what he had thought flesh proved to be the remnants of a glove.

How he had missed the hand last time, Kalec discovered quickly. A chunk of frosty ground had covered it until Buniq’s spear had loosened the dirt. The blue glanced over his shoulder, almost certain that she would be standing there, but of the taunka there remained no sign.

Despite the grisly find, Kalec nearly dismissed it until he saw that there was something else caught in the palm. It was small, round, and at first appeared to be glass. However, when Kalec dared touch it, he felt an odd warmth.

The octagonal artifact began to glow blue. Blue, not lavender.

With an even stronger epithet, Kalec stumbled back. What this meant now he did not know. The relic fell from his arm, landing atop the gloved hand—

The world flashed blindingly bright.

“This is not true,” said a voice Kalec recognized as a young Ysera’s. “They are wrong. . . .”

“He is not very smart,” Malygos’s voice returned. “But smart enough. . . .”

Suddenly, Kalec could see again . . . and what he saw was another shriveled proto-dragon corpse. This one had once been ivory, but now looked dusty white. Like the previous one, the face was contorted, as if the death had been agonizing.

Malygos’s gaze swept past Ysera and a briefly viewed fire-orange figure that Kalec assumed was her sister to another location a little farther off. There, a second corpse lay sprawled. This one still retained some of the icy-blue coloring that marked it as one of Malygos’s own.

And apparently a proto-dragon Malygos knew. Various emotions played out, including those attached to memories of younger days. A name—Tarys—came to Kalec’s mind. As juveniles, Malygos and Tarys had hunted together while learning the proper tactics.

Kalec noticed that he felt his host’s emotions more clearly than ever. There was some change in the vision, some new vividness, as if Kalec were now even more a part of it than ever.

It was not a thought that, under the current circumstances, comforted him.

Malygos’s thoughts came as both words and images. There were tales being told, unthinkable tales. Malygos did not know what to make of them. Ysera thought them false, while Alexstrasza believed that they should at least be considered.

Galakrond had supposedly slain these and at least a dozen others.

The source of this discovery huddled next to Alexstrasza, somehow managing to look smaller than Ysera despite that not being the case. Purple in color, he looked half-dead himself.

“Swallowed them up! Swallowed them up!” he repeated over and over.

“These are not swallowed,” Ysera pointed out, still showing her disbelief. “Galakrond not like them?”

“Swallowed them up!”

Ysera scowled. The purple cowered more. Her tone reassuring, Alexstrasza murmured something in his ear. The scowl’s focus shifted to Ysera’s sister, but Alexstrasza pointedly ignored it.

From his host, Kalec understood that the sisters had come across this shell of a proto-dragon and, after listening to what Malygos secretly half-considered babbling from the purple, had gone in search of the icy-blue male. Malygos did not know exactly why they had decided to come to him save that he was very clever.

Trying to find a way to continue to be clever to them, he eyed the corpses. “More around?”

“More . . . yesss . . . more!” The purple male glanced nervously to the west, to where the land first rose to a high ridge, then dropped some distance. The party had come from the east and so had had only a glancing view of that direction. Malygos had been to the area before—the hunting for grazers was excellent here during the spring—and remembered only that there was a river below, knowledge that certainly was irrelevant to the moment.

Not sure what he expected to find, Malygos headed in that direction. Kalec was also curious and glad that his mind and that of the proto-dragon seemed so in sync. Kalec observed everything that passed his host’s gaze and suddenly noticed some marks in the dirt that looked as if a creature the size of Malygos had dragged itself toward the ridge.

His host did not see what he did, at least not at first. Only when he had just reached the top of the ridge did Malygos abruptly turn and eye the trail with interest. He leaned over the tracks, sniffing them. A peculiar stench—yet one not all that unfamiliar to either—filled his nostrils.

On the other side of the ridge, rocks clattered. Malygos whirled.

The dreadful vision that Kalec had experienced in the Nexus rose up over the ridge to attack his host. The rotting flesh, the sunken white eyes . . . even having seen the fiend before did not keep Kalec from wanting to pull back.

But Malygos threw himself toward the monstrosity, exhaling at the same time. His frosty breath enveloped the undead proto-dragon, freezing it.

But for only a second. Barely slowing, the shriveled corpse shook off the frost and continued its attack. The stench of decomposing meat sickened both Kalec and his host as they collided with the ghoulish creature.

Yellowed fangs sought Malygos’s throat. Claws tore at his chest. Up close, the undead proto-dragon’s countenance was even more awful, much of the skin having at some point been scorched. The scorched areas, more sensitive to decay, had crumbled inward in many places, giving Malygos and Kalec a view of the bloody, ruined interior of their foe’s head.

As Malygos inhaled for a second attempt, the undead startled him by doing just the opposite. A putrid green cloud covered Malygos’s head, filling his mouth and snout and burning into his eyes. Nausea overcame him and, as a result, also Kalec. To both, it felt as if their insides were putrefying. Malygos weakened, falling to his front knees.

A tremendous whooshing sound, followed by intense heat, jarred Kalec and his host to full consciousness again. Claws pulled Malygos back from the heat. His eyes cleared enough to give both a watery glimpse at what had happened.

Alexstrasza stood before their ghoulish foe, exhaling more fire on the undead proto-dragon. The creature burned well, but still did not fall. It converged on the fire-orange female.

“Let go!” Malygos commanded Ysera, who was the one who had pulled him to safety. She obeyed immediately. Although still reeling from the undead’s ghastly breath weapon, Malygos knew that he had to help Alexstrasza in turn.

Malygos exhaled forcefully. It made his head swim and even Kalec thought they were about to black out, but somehow Malygos retained his sense of mind as his chilling breath joined the female’s own strike.

More brittle now due to the flames, the undead proto-dragon cracked and crumbled with the additional and opposing force turned on it. A wing already fragmented broke off, followed by one forelimb. The fiend pressed forward, only to lose its tail and a hind paw.

The corpse collapsed, shattering as it hit the hard ground.

Alexstrasza looked in relief to Malygos, but Kalec’s host had already spun around in Ysera’s direction. Kalec at first thought Malygos had gone mad, but then sensed what concerned him.

Malygos fluttered up into the air just long enough to pass over Ysera. Of the cowering proto-dragon, there was no sign, and both Malygos and Kalec assumed that he had wisely fled. Still, he was not Malygos’s target . . . that was the first corpse upon which they had come.

A corpse that Kalec saw was beginning to move.

The icy-blue proto-dragon fell upon the stirring body. To Kalec’s dismay, his host sank his teeth deep into the corpse’s throat. Malygos ripped away flesh and bone with abandon even as the body tried to shake free.

With one last vicious tug, Malygos tore off the upper part of the neck. The head flailed, the jaws seeking the living proto-dragon’s own throat. Malygos twisted around, then released his hold.

The severed head spiraled through the air, then landed yards away. Its jaws clacked several times before the head finally lay still.

The body quieted a moment later. Malygos shook the foul-tasting bits out of his mouth and turned toward the remaining corpse.

But Alexstrasza and Ysera had already torn that one to shreds.

“It did not move,” Ysera said after also shaking rotting flesh free. “We did not want it to.”

Malygos nodded, but then saw a troubling expression on Alexstrasza’s face. She studied the landscape, then looked at the others.

“More dead, he said,” the fire-orange female reminded them. “Where are they?”

There came a plaintive cry from far away, one that made the unseen Kalec think of the cowering proto-dragon. Malygos instantly turned—

And Kalec found himself not only back in his own time, but once again a dragon. In addition, he was flying through the night sky, the artifact and the round, glassy fragment both clutched tight. The second piece lay attached to the top of the octagonal artifact, revealing that both had been one from the beginning and had merely been separated by time and circumstance . . . until now.

Yet, that did not bother the blue nearly as much as discovering his body acting on what he considered its own accord or as if another mind controlled it. Kalec halted, hovering over the dark landscape—some of the jagged mountains of Northrend on the edge of the Dragonblight, he belatedly noted—and trying to decide what he could do.

One desperate hope quickly came to mind. If I can’t bury it, maybe I can just let it—them—shatter!

Without hesitation, Kalec released his hold. The combined relics plummeted toward the hungry mountains.

A sense of foreboding suddenly filled the blue. He dived after the relics.

Far below, their illumination swelled—

Kalec roared in protest even as he felt himself lose connection with the waking world to which he had only just returned. He had one last glimpse of the sharp, rocky land racing up at him before plunging into the darkness within again.

For a single heartbeat, there was utter silence. Then, the voices rose from the darkness. They quickly grew from whispers to a manic cacophony that threatened to deafen the blue. The voices turned into frantic cries.

The world burst into focus again.

Shrieking proto-dragons darted through the cloudy sky. A thundering roar shook the warmer but still mountainous region Kalec now found himself—or rather, Malygos—in.

Something suddenly blotted out what light there was.

Malygos looked up—and both Kalec and he beheld the underside of a titanic proto-dragon that could be none other than Galakrond.

Kalec felt the fear that touched Malygos, but it was fear combined with a determination to live. Fear was no thing of shame, not when confronted by such a horrific threat. Malygos retained his focus, diving down toward a crevice just as Galakrond fell upon a silver-blue proto-dragon too panicked to choose one direction over another fast enough to evade the much swifter behemoth.

To Kalec’s horror, Galakrond swallowed the smaller proto-dragon whole.

Only then did Kalec notice something even more disconcerting about the Father of Dragons. Galakrond’s body seemed distended in odd places, especially his gullet.

What’s happened here? Why is he doing this? Kalec wondered.

But there was no chance to seek an answer through Malygos, for just then something collided with Kalec’s host. Unprepared, Malygos flapped wildly as he sought to regain control. Through his eyes, Kalec briefly noted Coros hovering near the area before Malygos’s spinning took the sneering proto-dragon from view. The blue-and-white proto-dragon’s fury infected Kalec as well, and as Malygos righted himself, Kalec looked forward to seeing his host deal with his rival.

Yet, before Malygos could act, a dread shadow enshrouded him. The proto-dragon looked up . . . directly into the vast gullet of Galakrond.

The jaws closed on Malygos.

Malygos . . . and Kalec.

NOTES

The story you’ve just read is based in part on characters, situations, and locations from Blizzard Entertainment’s computer game World of Warcraft, an online role-playing experience set in the award-winning Warcraft universe. In World of Warcraft, players create their own heroes and explore, adventure in, and quest across a vast world shared with thousands of other players. This rich and expansive game also allows them to interact with and fight against (or alongside) many of the powerful and intriguing characters featured in this serial novella.

Since launching in November 2004, World of Warcraft has become the world’s most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The latest expansion, Mists of Pandaria, takes players to a thrilling and never-before-seen corner of Azeroth: the mysterious continent of Pandaria. More information about Mists of Pandaria and previous expansions can be found on www.WorldofWarcraft.com.

FURTHER READING

If you’d like to read more about the characters, situations, and locations featured in this serial novella, the sources listed below offer additional information.

• Kalecgos—also known as Kalec—has been involved in many influential events in Azeroth’s recent history. His heroics are chronicled in World of Warcraft: Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War and World of Warcraft: Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects by Christie Golden; World of Warcraft: Night of the Dragon by Richard A. Knaak; Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy and World of Warcraft: Shadow Wing, volume 2, Nexus Point by Richard A. Knaak and Jae-Hwan Kim; and the short story “Charge of the Aspects” by Matt Burns (on www.WorldofWarcraft.com).

• Details of Jaina Proudmoore’s life, including her relationship with Kalecgos, are depicted in World of Warcraft: Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War, World of Warcraft: The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm, and World of Warcraft: Arthas: Rise of the Lich King by Christie Golden; the monthly World of Warcraft comic book by Walter and Louise Simonson, Ludo Lullabi, Jon Buran, Mike Bowden, Sandra Hope, and Tony Washington; World of Warcraft: Cycle of Hatred by Keith R. A. DeCandido; and Warcraft: Legends, volume 5, “Nightmares” by Richard A. Knaak and Rob Ten Pas.

• You can find more information about Alexstrasza, Ysera, Nozdormu, Malygos, and their respective dragonflights in Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects by Christie Golden; Warcraft: War of the Ancients Trilogy, Warcraft: Day of the Dragon, World of Warcraft: Night of the Dragon, and World of Warcraft: Stormrage by Richard A. Knaak; and the short story “Charge of the Aspects” by Matt Burns (on www.WorldofWarcraft.com).

• Deathwing nearly destroyed Azeroth during the great Cataclysm. His long history of betrayal and brutality is featured in Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects by Christie Golden; the Shadow Wing series by Richard A. Knaak and Jae-Hwan Kim; the War of the Ancients Trilogy, Night of the Dragon, and Day of the Dragon by Richard A. Knaak; World of Warcraft: Beyond the Dark Portal by Aaron Rosenberg and Christie Golden; and the short story “Charge of the Aspects” by Matt Burns (on www.WorldofWarcraft.com).

THE BATTLE RAGES ON

The Cataclysm changed Azeroth and its myriad peoples in many ways. Dawn of the Aspects depicts the uncertainty that now plagues the ancient dragons. But what lies ahead for the world’s other races?

In World of Warcraft’s fourth expansion, Mists of Pandaria, you can help shape this next chapter in Azeroth’s history. Become one of the first members of the Horde or the Alliance to explore the mysterious and exotic continent of Pandaria. Or take on the role of a noble pandaren (WoW’s latest playable race) and join the Horde or the Alliance, depending on which faction aligns more with your ideals. Regardless of the side you choose, your adventures will impact Azeroth in the years to come.

With the dragons forging new destinies for themselves, the task of safeguarding the world from evil has fallen to mortal hands—your hands. Will you rise to the challenge?

To discover the ever-expanding realm that has entertained millions around the globe, go to www.WorldofWarcraft.com and download the free trial version. Live the story.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard A. Knaak is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of nearly four dozen novels and two dozen shorter pieces, including the World of Warcraft books Wolfheart and Stormrage, The Legend of Huma for Dragonlance, and his own Dragonrealm series. He has also scripted numerous manga and written background material for games. His novels have been published worldwide.

In addition to Dawn of the Aspects, his most recent releases include Shade—the latest novel in Legends of the Dragonrealm. He is currently at work on other projects. More can be found out at his website: www.richardaknaak.com. Please also join him on Facebook and Twitter.

We hope you enjoyed reading this Pocket Star Books eBook.

Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Pocket Star Books and Simon & Schuster.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

Pocket Star Books
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.

All rights reserved. Warcraft, World of Warcraft, and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademark references herein are the properties of their respective owners.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Pocket Star Books ebook edition February 2013

POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com.

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

ISBN 978-1-4165-5069-3