Neltharion stumbled to his paws. He twisted his neck around and looked up. “Galakrond?”
“Gone,” Malygos replied. “For now . . .”
“So powerful,” Ysera muttered as she stepped closer. “So powerful! What can we do?”
Her sister did not hesitate. “Fight . . . or die.”
Neltharion, his breath recovered, snorted. “Hmmph! Probably die.” But immediately, he added, “Better to die fighting, though.”
“Better to die fighting, yes,” Malygos agreed, eyeing Alexstrasza most of all. “Better to live after, though.”
“Better, yes,” she echoed.
But just how they could do that was a tremendous question. First and foremost, they had to find another place to hide while they considered how to combat what appeared invincible.
Follow the ridge.
While the thought had eased into Malygos’s mind with such subtlety that the proto-dragon did not realize it was not his own, Kalec knew that it had come from elsewhere. He could not identify its source; it did not sound like Tyr, who surely would have identified himself. And if it was another keeper, why would the speaker not say so? Curiously, it reminded Kalec of something, but just what escaped him.
And in truth, he had to admit, it mattered not. Kalec still had no part in this endless vision except as an imprisoned observer. While he railed at that, it was the only existence he knew . . . or, at least, remembered at the moment.
But I have another life! Kalec suddenly insisted to himself. The—the Nexus and—and—
There was a name the blue dragon wanted—no, needed—to recall. Not his own. He had remembered it only a short time ago. A female name. One Kalec should have known well—and one that more often had been part of his thoughts before these visions had overtaken him.
That realization at last stirred some of those forgotten memories. Ja—Jalya? Jay—Jaina? Jaina!
His most immediate recollections returned full-blown. Jaina was possibly trying to enter the Nexus, and if she was, she was in grave danger.
I have to save her! I have to—
The vision abruptly faded. The darkness that Kalec had so often cried out against he now welcomed wholeheartedly, if only it would bring him back to the Nexus.
Something hard lay against him, or, rather, he lay against a hard surface. Despite being unable to see it, Kalec had to assume that it was the floor of the chamber, and that further encouraged him. He tried to summon enough strength to move some part of his body.
Ka—
He knew that voice, but he wondered again whose it was. Jaina. It was Jaina. He had already forgotten. How can this be? How can I keep forgetting?
The artifact. Kalec now discovered he had forgotten the accursed relic!
Kalec?
Jaina’s voice came clearer but fainter. She repeated his name, but this time, he could barely hear her.
In desperation, Kalec tried to reach out. To his surprise, he felt his nails—claws?—scrape the floor. The act sent shivers through his nerves, but he welcomed that discomfort for the slight sense of reality it gave him. He focused on that and on Jaina, trying to create a more powerful anchor by combining both.
Kalec! Listen to me!
Her voice came stronger again. Simultaneously, the blue dragon managed to scrape the floor a second time. Sensation began to return to his body. He felt the blood flowing through his limbs and torso. What sounded like breathing—whether his own or hers, he could not say—echoed in his ears.
Jaina! Jaina! Kalec cursed his mouth, which still did not function. He had to let her know that he could hear her—
A distant roar drowned out Jaina’s voice just as she repeated his name.
The roar shook Kalec, not only because of its suddenness but also because he knew it not as a dragon’s but as a proto-dragon’s.
Jaina! Jai— Kalec hesitated. Did he have the name right? And whose name was it, anyway? A female’s, certainly, but the only females he was familiar with were Alexstrasza and her sister Ysera. Had he tried to call one of them?
The darkness faded . . . and he and Malygos, as it had always been, flew together.
But this time, Kalec knew that things had changed. He could not say how, though. He still existed as some hidden part of Malygos, ever there observing. Kalec didn’t know how that had begun; he only knew that he was and would always be linked to his proto-dragon host.
And forgotten completely, at least for now and perhaps always, was a future where a frightened female voice continued to call his name in vain.
• • •
Jaina collapsed. Her plan had failed. She had made an ambitious attempt to bind herself to the link between the artifact and Kalec so she could, by matching the pulsations, reach out better to the unconscious dragon. In this manner, the archmage had intended to draw him to her and, thus, back to reality.
But the artifact had proved to have the greater hold on him. For a few moments, Jaina had almost succeeded. However, the bond she had forged had been cut without warning. The relic had corrected for her intrusion, just as it had for a time corrected for her attempts to invade the Nexus in the first place.
And yet . . .
Jaina pushed herself up from the floor, also using that moment to study Kalec. His breathing perfectly coincided with the artifact’s pulsations. His body had contorted more, becoming less humanoid but not quite that of a dragon. There were traits growing on him, especially his torso, that did not remind her of any of those she had seen among the various dragonflights, yet they were still vaguely familiar. She had seen them before.
Some other creature—what was it? Jaina Proudmoore had studied virtually every major beast during her training. Members of the Kirin Tor had to know the flora and fauna of Azeroth for a variety of reasons, many of them dealing with survival. This one she had definitely seen—
A proto-dragon?
It did not seem possible. While she was aware that Kalec could assume more than one form, Jaina had no idea why he would take on that of something akin to a dragon but not nearly so powerful. Still, when she took a closer look, more proto-dragon traits became apparent. Worse, one of Kalec’s arms was clearly shorter than it should have been, another change that added to his similarity to the beasts.
Kalec suddenly let out a loud roar, not quite like that of a dragon. As he did, he altered further. His feet became more ponderous, as the hind limbs of proto-dragons were when compared with their forelimbs.
And at the same time, the artifact’s pulsations grew more rapid. The relic’s aura intensified, and it enveloped Kalec, too.
Jaina reached for him, only to nearly singe her fingertips. There had been no trace of heat from the aura before, but now it burned like fire. Kalec’s shifting continued unchecked. His body darkened.
The archmage shielded herself and tried a second time to get to Kalec, only to retreat from even stronger heat. Gasping, Jaina saw also that Kalec’s breathing quickened more, ever matching the increase in the artifact’s pulsations.
This can’t go on long! It can’t! Jaina understood all too well that there would come a point where his body could not withstand this mad metamorphosis. A creature of magic he might be, but he still had mortal limitations.
Kalec, although he was a dragon, would literally burn out, and thus far, Jaina had no idea how to save him.
THREE
FIVE AGAINST THE IMPOSSIBLE
Malygos and Kalec followed the ridge just as the voice in the proto-dragon’s head had suggested, but if they expected something spectacular or startling at the end, they were both disappointed. Instead, the mountains opened up into a bowl-shaped valley that, for some reason, bothered Kalec. Malygos simply saw it as another destination, one that Galakrond perhaps would not search or already had searched and abandoned.
A stream flowed through the area. The five proto-drago
ns landed to drink. And think. Never in their lives had they had to think so much. Glancing at the others, Malygos wondered if they felt as worn out as he did.
He blinked. Far beyond the five, a rounded rock drifted where the water widened. Even proto-dragons knew that rocks did not drift, so Malygos fluttered up into the air and flew to the object.
Kalec’s host veered back the moment he recognized what it was that lay half-submerged. As Malygos had suspected, it was another proto-dragon body. However, as he finally dared to alight next to it in the stream, he noticed something peculiar.
A splash behind him announced Neltharion’s more enthusiastic arrival. Striding up to Malygos, the charcoal-gray male scrutinized the find.
“Dead. Galakrond. We should destroy before it rises.”
Malygos shook his head. “Already did. This was not-living that is again dead.”
The other proto-dragon let out a snort of disbelief. He prodded the corpse, which, having already been rotting before its second “death,” now easily began breaking apart in the water. “How can not-living be not-living again unless we destroy it?”
Kalec, ever paying attention, also wondered. His first inclination was that either another proto-dragon had managed to do as Neltharion suggested, or the undead had, for some reason, simply collapsed. Yet Kalec had seen no evidence of the second occurring, and his host was also disinclined to that answer.
Which only left the question of who had indeed destroyed this fiend. Another keeper?
Malygos leaned closer. His sharp sense of smell detected another scent, one that at first he assumed had to be there for a very logical reason. Then, as he eyed the decaying remains, something else about their condition registered. Before, they had looked dry. Now, they were barely holding together. When Malygos did a little prodding of his own, the part not yet touched by the flowing water simply crumbled to ash.
As that happened, the scent—or stench—Kalec’s host had smelled increased tenfold.
The source escaped Neltharion’s mouth before the other proto-dragon even knew why he spoke the name. “Galakrond!”
“No Galakrond!” Malygos interjected. In a more subdued voice, he added, “Not anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
Even Kalec was not sure of Malygos’s thoughts at that moment, for what little he could read from them did not make sense. Yet Malygos quickly verified those questionable thoughts. “Galakrond was here. Galakrond . . . devoured this not-living.”
Neltharion looked at him as if he were mad. The other three, just joining to see what fascinated the pair so much, had heard Malygos’s declaration.
“Galakrond ate this . . . this not-living?” Nozdormu asked in utter puzzlement. “Already ate it alive! Why eat it dead?”
“What’s left to eat, then?” asked Alexstrasza, sniffing at the corpse and wrinkling her nose. “Galakrond, yes. Not long ago.” The female’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Malygos is right.”
“But this was dead!” Neltharion insisted. “Long dead! No meat! No life!”
Indeed, there was only the growing odor of rot. However, Malygos smelled a wrongness in that rot, as if something else tied to it also escaped at the same time.
“This lived. This died,” he began, seeking to organize his words enough to make sure that everyone—himself included—understood the full extent. “Became not-living. Moves but is dead. Dead but moves.”
Kalec was naturally the first one to grasp what Malygos was leading up to. Even as a former Aspect of Magic, Kalec doubted that he would have come to what was the only possible conclusion before his young host had.
Of the other four proto-dragons, it was Ysera who comprehended quickest. “Not-living move. Something moves them. No blood. No life. But something.”
“ ‘Not-life’?” Neltharion muttered. “They have ‘not-life’?”
The proto-dragons had not lived long in a world full of undead, as Kalec abruptly recalled he had, but they had come to grasp an important point. Still, the animated corpses of Galakrond’s victims were not exactly like most of the beings the blue dragon gradually remembered having confronted. What drove these appeared merely to be as Malygos hinted, a force that was perhaps a by-product of Galakrond’s absorption of the living creatures’ life essence. It was almost a parody of that essence, which made calling it “not-life” very appropriate.
But to go from that step to Galakrond now absorbing this essence was disturbing. Why? Kalec asked himself, aware that he echoed Malygos in this regard. Why?
Again, it was Kalec’s host who discovered the possible reason. Malygos raised his head and looked off in the distance. Only Kalec knew that he listened for something in particular.
“No cries,” Malygos rasped. “No calls.”
“All fear Galakrond,” Alexstrasza pointed out. “All flee or hide . . . or die.”
“Galakrond still grows, still changes. Proto-dragons grow when they eat enough.” The icy-blue male used his wings to indicate the mountains. “Nothing else for Galakrond. Nothing big enough. Nothing simple . . . except not-living.”
Even though all five understood now, Kalec saw through Malygos that they nevertheless did not want to accept such facts. Galakrond devouring what animated the undead was to them like the behemoth moving far beyond cannibalism.
However, what bothered Kalec most was what this new and horrific feeding meant for Galakrond’s continuing metamorphosis. If absorbing the essence of his victims had turned him into such a misshapen monster, it followed that this would only twist him more.
The five proto-dragons took no heart in the possibility that the number of undead might eventually be eradicated by Galakrond’s hunger. They knew that the foremost focus of Galakrond’s existence remained seeking out living prey, especially them.
To Malygos, that gave him no choice. Still, once again, he tried to keep the rest from what appeared a doomed quest. Malygos looked to the other four. “Must face Galakrond. Now. Alone.”
“No.” Alexstrasza pushed herself into the middle of the group. “We are family. We fight together. Always.”
She did not mean family in the sense that they were simply loyal friends but, rather, as if the five of them were of a like color and appearance, born from the same kind of eggs. There was no deeper connection.
“Yes,” Neltharion agreed, with some indignation at Malygos’s initial suggestion. “We fight as family! We fight together!”
“But we are not family,” Ysera countered. “We fight differently. Not same.” She did not say it in denial of her sister’s words but with the tone that those differences were still important.
Malygos nodded, having considered that and also seeing it as their greatest strength. Perhaps their only hope, too.
“We fight differently,” he said. “We fight together. More. We use differences. Tyr showed some, but Tyr not proto-dragon. Not plan like proto-dragons. We must plan like proto-dragons.”
It made the only sense to Malygos, although Kalec was not quite so certain. Tyr, for all his might, for all his obvious wisdom, had led the five as if they fought like him. He had used their individual abilities, yes, but in terms of complementing his own. He had been fighting a proto-dragon—a huge proto-dragon—as if facing something like himself.
But Tyr had been correct in that their individual abilities could work in concert better than if they had all been of one true family. Five Malygoses would not have had a better chance. Five Neltharions would not have.
And Malygos also had to admit that not every combination of five different proto-dragons could have worked together as well as when Tyr had led them. He could only imagine what a group that included someone like Coros would have done against Galakrond.
We have not won, Malygos curtly reminded himself. More likely, we will lose everything.
But even more than for himself, Malygos remained concerne
d for his four companions. He had to make certain that he guided them as best as possible, and that meant using their different skills to their utmost.
I am only a proto-dragon! The thought jolted through Malygos with such force that Kalec also felt the flash of fear. Still, all Malygos had to do was look at Neltharion and the rest—who, in turn, waited for his word—to know that there was no retreating from his dominant role.
But there was another who seemed willing to help take much of the burden from him. He looked to Alexstrasza.
She already appeared to understand his concern. With a brief, solemn glance at Malygos, Alexstrasza immediately focused on Neltharion. “How do your kind fight? Tell us . . . show us.”
Neltharion bared his teeth in a reptilian grin. He spread his wings and began to display the fighting skills of his family—
The vision shifted, but while Kalec would have liked to know more about the abilities of the other four, he was not surprised about the change. In fact, for the first time, the blue dragon felt comfortable with the shift. He did not see that this might not be a good sign for him.
The scene before him could not be taking place all that long after the previous one. The five remained in the mountains, but now they perched atop part of a crooked peak, watching and waiting.
But the sky remained conspicuously devoid of a creature so vast he could hardly be hiding. There were also no signs of the undead, which disturbed the group’s leader.
“Where is Galakrond?” Malygos growled. “Where?” He stretched his wings restlessly before finally understanding what they had to do. “Must bring him to us! Must let him know about us!”
He let out a roar. As he expected, it echoed throughout the mountains. Yet to his ears, it did not sound nearly loud enough.
Before Malygos could suggest it, Alexstrasza raised her head and repeated his call. The other three imitated her, all five within seconds shouting as one.
The echoes of their combined cries resounded, even building as they rushed away from their source. As loud as they were, it would still have been impossible for most normal proto-dragons to hear them unless they were within two or three hours’ flight away.
World of Warcraft - [Dawn of the Aspects 05] - Dawn of the Aspects- Part V Page 3