by Milton Garby
"Yeah," she said, hopping on to the dragon's back. Her shaking hands found the straps of the harness and began weaving them together to secure her. Once she was done, she announced, "Alright, I'm done. Just get me out of here."
"Right away." Derestrasz flapped his wings and hopped up, the sudden jolt making Sara grunt. The ruined Forge Camp fell away behind her, though Sara glanced behind her to see, in addition to the drake's swaying tail, the damage the dragons had done.
The black stone was cratered and cracked, caked with ice in places. The fel cannons were rubble, the portals and forges were disfigured lumps of blackish metal. As they left, the icy glacier of the Dragonblight already seemed to be closing in on the demonic wound.
Once it was out of sight, Sara resummoned her shadowy barrier, just in case, and enjoyed the flight. If the dragons held to their word - and they probably would since they were goody two shoes dragons - she could finally be on her way to Ulduar.
After around an hour, Derestrasz winged to the right and approached the border mountains. He squeezed through some tight canyons, and then arrived once again in the dragon camp. After a few circles to burn off his speed, the drake settled on the landing pad and Sara undid her harness. Once she was on the ground the red drake shapeshifted into a teenaged boy and led her to the leader tent. He motioned for her to stay outside and went in on his own. Sara took the opportunity to sit down and rest her legs, which ached after riding Derestrasz all the way back from the Dragonblight.
She... she actually did it. She had brought drakes and even an adult dragon back from the dead. They'd smashed a Forge Camp into scrap metal. They had actually struck a blow, however small, against the demons. Whatever unkind things she could say about the Dragonflights they certainly knew what they were doing. Maybe after finding whatever she was looking for in Ulduar she'd stay in Northrend to help them. The icy continent gave her a large amount of magic, and a resurrected drake was worth a lot more than a resurrected dwarf.
Eventually Derestrasz and the blue dragon from earlier, still disguised as an orc, came out and approached her. She stood and gave the orc a slight nod, to which he grinned in response. "It appears my faith in you was well placed, young one. With your aid a lot of our forces survived, and we can launch another attack soon. However a deal is a deal." He held up his left hand and, in a flash of arcane magic, summoned her bag to him and tossed it at her. She clumsily caught it and slung it over her back. "Derestrasz, take Sara here and fly her to Ulduar. Once done, come right back here for further assignment."
The red drake nodded. "Understood, Morigos." With a stretch and a shimmer, Derestrasz changed back to his true form. Sara wondered where the saddle had gone while he'd been transformed. "Whenever you are ready, miss Sara."
She popped one of her provisions - a flat, tasteless disk - into her mouth, grimaced at the flavor, and swallowed it. Then she swung herself onto the dragon's back and strapped herself in. "Let's go, sooner we get to Ulduar sooner I can find what I'm looking for and the sooner you can come back here."
Flap, flap. Derestrasz again took off, circled around the camp a few times to build up speed, and then shot out of the dragon camp. In minutes he'd cleared the mountains and she was, once again, high above the Crystalsong Forest. In the distance she could barely make out the floating island of Dalaran, and to her right was one of the crystalline trees she had seen from afar, reflecting the brilliant night time aurora. And far, far ahead to the north, the mountains of her destination.
Derestrasz wasn't going so fast as to make the wind deafening yet, so he took the moment to say, "You should get some sleep! It's a long flight to Ulduar and you've done a lot. Relax, our harnesses are designed deliberately to keep anyone from falling off."
Maybe he had a point. She wasn't particularly tired - magic student after all - but if she intended to go snooping around a Titan city, she needed to be as rested as possible. Careful to avoid his horns, Sara leaned forward to rest her head on the moving scales, and nodded off.
Sara
Getting slapped in the face by a blizzard was not a pleasant way to wake up.
She gasped and sat straight up. For a moment the buffets of snow and wind were forgotten because her back erupted into pain, but another gust of wind reminded her she was in Northrend in the middle of winter. She was still on Derestrasz's back, riding the red drake towards Ulduar. It took a moment to wipe the sleep out of her eyes, during which more snow battered into her face, but she could get a good look around.
Even with the dark, heavy clouds choking the sky it was painfully bright. What little light broke through the cloud cover reflected off what appeared to be mountains of brilliant, reflective steel, off the millions of snowflakes still in air, and directly into Sara's eyes.
She closed them and growled. She tried to shout at Derestrasz to do something, but any sound that came from her mouth was swallowed up by the blizzard. The drake flapped his wings, then tilted sideways as a gust slammed into them. She opened her mouth to scream but the noise stuck in her throat, and at any rate Derestrasz righted himself and flew towards the blurry outline of a mountain.
Another gust snapped him to the right, then to the left, but he kept flapping and soon, through the rushing white, Sara saw the dim outline of a cave. She understood his intentions, and readied herself for a rough landing.
Like a graceful bird of prey, the red drake flew into the open cave, tripped, and tumbled head over heels with Sara barely jumping off in time to avoid being flattened. She shook her head to clear off some of the snow that had gathered on her jacket, and glanced outside. She instantly regretted it as the snow glare almost blinded her, and slung off her pack to start looking for the dark glasses she'd brought explicitly for this reason.
"So," Derestrasz said once he'd righted himself. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," Sara said, suppressing a shiver. She was glad to be out of the blizzard, but underground? Not ideal. "Glad you knocked me out of the sky when you did, I don't think a hippogriff would last long in this weather. How long was I asleep?"
He nodded. "A few hours. It's almost noon now, and I had to take shelter here to avoid getting blown around. We're making progress though. We should get to Ulduar in about three days at this rate."
Three days. Sara had rations for a week, though she didn't know what the drake would eat in that time. "Three days huh? What're you going to eat?"
He shrugged. "When this blizzard lets up a bit I'm sure I can find something - wait. Do you hear that?"
They both went still, and the drake lifted his wings in preparation to fight. Sara took the pause to examine the cave. Outside the storm raged, and the opening was just large enough for a drake to fly through. The walls were all black stone sheared to smoothness, the ground was caked in ice, and after going back a short distance it curved around and down. The cause for Derestrasz's concern was evident, because if Sara listened over the rushing ice outside she heard something in the back of the cave slithering. Towards them.
That didn't matter. The ground seemed to ooze power into her, and she summoned brilliant, hungry green magic to her left hand.
Around the curve of the came a worm rushed up to meet them. Its body was thin and long, like tape. Mostly it was earthy brown, but blue spikes hung off the sides of the thin creature. A crest of white hair went down the middle of its back, and two pincers clicked around a chiseled mouth that could carve through stone. The eyeless worm spotted the two of them and, with a snakelike motion, charged them.
"Bad move!" she cackled, bringing her hand up to her body and then thrusting it out at the worm. A laser of viridian power shot from her hand and washed over the jormungar like a tidal wave, casting flickering shadows on the cave as it engulfed the beast. Before she could over-channel too much Sara ended the stream of magic. For a moment the worm stood, seemingly unharmed, but then it toppled to the side without a sound. When it crashed to the cavern floor, the shockwave sent the misty residue of Sara's magic billowing.
"Well," she said with a light giggle. It felt good to actually kill something for a change, not just banish it to the Nether. "That solves that. Go eat."
"You just killed it!" Derestrasz shouted. "I had it under control, I could soothe it and force it into hibernation! That was completely unnecessary, mortal!"
"Yeah well, it's dead now," she said, sitting and fishing through her bags for her ration pellets. "You should probably check for any corruption though, just to be safe. And aren't dragons carnivores?"
He huffed, but relaxed his wings so that they lay on his back. "Fine. Food is food." He padded over to the jormungar and began some magical ritual to purify it.
Sara didn't pay much attention, choosing instead to plop a pellet into her mouth. She grimaced, but chewed and swallowed it so she'd be nourished and hydrated for a few hours more. Once that was done she took out the black glasses and put them over her face, hooked around her ears so they wouldn't accidentally fall off. When they slid over her eyes the cave instantly blackened until she could hardly see the dragon fussing over his food. A glance towards the cavern exit revealed that they did their job perfectly.
Before, the little light that got through the blizzard reflected constantly in all directions, threatening to burn her eyes out of their sockets no matter where she looked. With the glasses however, Sara didn't even need to squint. The storm continued to rage outside, blustering back and forth and occasionally sending a blast of snow into the cave. Sheets of sleet blew back and forth in raging pillars, in waves, sometimes upwards as the wind bounced off the steep cliffs. She couldn't see far into the storm, but the raging chaos outside was more than enough to bring a smile to her face.
Of course, the air was still searing cold and even though her jacket protected most of her body, she was forced to keep changing which parts of her face were exposed to prevent frostbite. Even a magic shield didn't help much.
Even over the howling wind that petulantly ruffled her coat, she heard the dragon behind her start ripping meat from bone and chewing it. The noise was wet and slimy, like how his nature magic had felt on her skin, and she shuddered at the memory. So... holy magic and nature magic were things she had adverse reactions to. Good to know.
Derestrasz eventually finished eating the dragon-sized worm and padded over to her. He lay down on his belly and watched the storm with her. She turned to him. "Any idea how long this'll last? It's pretty and all but I'd like to get to Ulduar before the demons kill everyone."
"Not long, the storms up here are frequent but relatively short lived." He licked his snout clean of blood. "Should be any minute."
"Hmm," she grunted, leaning against the stone wall while trying to keep her face from being frostbitten. He was right though. The howling winds slowly weakened, and the downpour of snow thinned out. Sara was especially glad for her tinted glasses, as the clouds thinned and allowed more of the sunlight through.
Once the blizzard died down to an acceptable level, Derestrasz stood and shook his wings. Sara got on, strapped herself in, and with a running start the red drake took to the skies.
Before it had been cloudy and visibility was only a few yards in all directions. But with the storm dying down Sara got her first good look at the Storm Peaks.
They weren't actually mountains. They were cliffs. Enormous, steep cliffs worn into near vertical drops by thousands of years of slicing wind. They were like towers of ice all around her, reflecting the sunlight in a million different ways. Gray clouds formed a roof above them, which most of the 'mountains' disappeared into. If she looked over Derestrasz's side, Sara was greeted with a dizzying drop comparable to how high Dalaran floated above the ground. The Storm Peaks were monochrome, with white snow and rocks that came in varying shades of gray.
Even if the blizzard wasn't as intense it was still windy and still snowing. Flakes caught themselves on Sara's face until she brushed them off, and the wind sent occasional snowbanks racing through the canyons. Here and there Sara thought she saw a wendigo, or yeti. At one point she thought she saw a brilliant blue proto-drake dipping in and out of the cloud cover, but it was too dim to tell.
As Derestrasz flew north, battling the wind and weather, Sara craned her head around in all directions to take in the sights. The howling wind was eerie, but made no impression on Sara. Once she got an eyeful of the Storm Peaks, she turned her thoughts to Ulduar.
When the assault had been launched on Yogg-Saron, the Titan prison had been completely ransacked. That had been almost thirty years ago so the Watchers could have rebuilt, but at the same time Yogg-Saron had been building up the defenses specifically to keep people out. What could Sara expect, going into the city? Iron dwarves and iron vrykul patrols. Iron giants, some mechanical weapons. Her distraction gem certainly wouldn't work on them, which was why she'd brought a second blue crystal to make a distraction gem specifically tailored for iron soldiers.
There would be patrols. That meant she needed to get one of them by themselves - preferably an iron dwarf because the others were big and scary - and use that to enchant her gem. As for getting into the city...
... eh, she'd wing it. The weather cleared up around Ulduar so it couldn't be too difficult. The iron soldiers had to be able to get in and out, after all.
The two of them flew and flew and flew. Eventually, the perpetually overcast sky began to darken and the wind slowly started to pick up again. Sara felt the beginnings of exhaustion tugging at her eyelids, and Derestrasz must've also noticed it was getting to be night because the next cave they found, he dove into it.
"Alright, here we go," he said, gesturing at the cave with a wing. It was remarkably similar to the last one they'd taken shelter in. "You can get some rest, I'll take night watch. I needed to rest my wings anyway."
She undid her harness and landed. The rush of power was slightly stronger than before, but riding on a scaly dragon for nearly an entire day left her legs feeling like water and in no time, Sara was sitting on the snow. "You sure? I don't need you falling asleep in mid-air."
The red dragon brought the same wing across his chest as if offended. "I'm a dragon, I can go longer without needing sleep."
She rolled her eyes, but slung off her pack and began searching through it. "Oh, of course you can," she muttered. Sara took out another pellet, popped it into her mouth, and swallowed. "Well enjoy." Sara took a few minutes to find a tolerable position against the stone wall, then resummoned a shadowy barrier and wrapped it around herself. It wouldn't do much, but it would at least keep some of her body heat in.
Fortunately, not much happened. She fell to sleep and experienced vivid, nonsense dreams that she forgot within seconds of waking up. Sara jerked awake with an undignified snort, and brought her hands up to clear her eyes. Still the same cave. Same jacket. Same dragon looking outside. However, another blizzard had rolled in, just as strong as the previous one, breathing occasional puffs of snow into the cave.
Derestrasz, sitting on his haunches, looked over at her. "Good morning. I'm afraid we're not going to make much progress until this passes."
She shrugged. "Not much we can do. At the very least I won't get bored." Sara ate her meager breakfast and shifted to lean against the wall and stare at the roaring, shifting winds. She thought she could just... relax and let her mind go blank, but as the winds continued to howl with no sign of abating, the drake turned to her.
"So, you can resurrect the dead."
Sara wondered how hard it would be to mind control a dragon.
She turned to him and decided not to burn that bridge yet. "You already know I can. What about it?"
"I am a proud member of the Red Dragonflight; the ongoing existence of life is something we are keenly in tune with," he gloated, raising his wings to make himself look bigger. "I have witnessed two or three Light-based revivals in the past. Your ritual is very dissimilar to them."
She narrowed her eyes. "I think you should stop right there," she warned.
Derestrasz lifted a paw. "Understand
I'm not trying to judge you, I'm not. I'm just trying to make conversation. That's something mortals do right?" he said, trying to smile without showing off too many fangs.
Sara glowered at him. "Making conversation by prying into how my resurrection works, right?"
He sighed. "Listen miss. I am fifty seven years old." So in dragon years, fourteen. Sara was not in the mood to be lectured at by a fourteen year old. She turned her gaze back to the blizzard. "I fought in the Cataclysm and, again I'm not here to judge, but I know Old God magic when I see it - calm down!" he said, suddenly panicked when Sara pointed swirling violet magic at his face.
"What?" she snarled, standing on both feet and tensing.
"Calm down," he urged again. "I'm just worried about you. Old God magic is known for doing horrible things to those who wield it, and you seem a decent enough person given what magic you have. I don't want you to go down the road others who've used the magic have."
She huffed, extinguished her magic, and tossed her hair. "So you're here on some desperate attempt to keep poor little me from being corrupted are you? Forget it. I've had these powers a very long time and I've been the untouched all my life."
"You're bringing a body with Old God magic to Ulduar, the prison of Yogg-Saron. Something's bound to happen."
"So what?" she insisted. "I don't understand why you're so worried! I've had an iron grip on my powers since I discovered them! I've never ended up giving someone tentacle arms without wanting to, I've never made people start bleeding from their eyes by casting a shadow bolt at them, and it's certainly not been influencing me! So what if I go to Yogg-Saron? It'll probably just permanently supercharge my magic or something!"
"Do you have anyone you're fighting for in this war?" Derestrasz said suddenly.
"You don't even know how to change subjects properly," she pointed out.
"Do you?" he insisted.
Sara held his yellow gaze for a moment before huffing. "Yeah. My parents. They live in Elwynn. I forgot to write a letter to them while I was in Dalaran." She sat and bowed her head. "They probably think I'm dead now," she muttered. How could she have done that to them? At the earliest opportunity, she was writing a letter to them, no questions asked.