Dawn of the Aspects: Part I

by Richard A. Knaak

  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 a
nd 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.