World of Warcraft - [Dawn of the Aspects 05] - Dawn of the Aspects- Part V

by Richard A Knaak (epub)

  But then, there was nothing normal anymore about Galakrond.

  Thunder rose in the east, thunder with an oddly regular pattern.

  No, not thunder, Malygos finally deduced. Only the beating of very, very large wings.

  And as the rest of the five turned in that direction, the heavens there darkened.

  A Galakrond half again as huge as when they had previously seen him moved ponderously toward the five. He hacked and coughed every now and then, and each time he did, the aura faded slightly.

  Malygos took note of that as he rose from his perch. Not for a moment did he think that Galakrond would fall easy prey to them, if defeating him was at all possible. However, any potential weakness had to be exploited if there was any hope for the proto-dragons.

  Confident that the others knew their parts, Malygos flew without hesitation toward Galakrond.

  The behemoth ceased coughing. The aura returned. Galakrond stared at the puny figures approaching—and laughed. The mountains shook at the sound, which would have easily drowned out the smaller cries Malygos and his companions had uttered earlier.

  “Little morsels!” he bellowed almost congenially. “There you are!”

  The five defenders said nothing. They spread out as they approached.

  “My meals grow dry, so dry,” Galakrond continued merrily. “Nasty taste, but I am so hungry. . . .” The brutal eyes focused on Malygos. “I am alwaysss hungry.”

  He exhaled.

  The five had been waiting for just such a move. They immediately rose higher in the sky and also separated farther. The noxious mist unloosed by Galakrond spread far and wide, but in trying to keep all five in range, the misshapen behemoth instead came up short against each. Ysera came closest to being caught at the edge of the mist, but a hard push by the yellowish female saved her at the last second.

  Hiding his relief at her narrow escape, Malygos bore down on Galakrond from above. The icy-blue proto-dragon opened wide and attacked. The column of frost shot toward the gigantic Galakrond, who met the tiny assault with another mocking laugh.

  At that point, Alexstrasza shot in and grazed a long section of Galakrond’s torso with flame. Against the hard hide, the fire did little.

  Against the extra eyes, it did much more.

  They melted like butter. They dissolved like water. They blackened like wood. With expert aim, Alexstrasza destroyed every eye in a broad section of Galakrond’s left side before immediately soaring far out of sight.

  The monstrous proto-dragon roared, but this time in a tone that brought grim pleasure to Malygos and Kalec. Galakrond had experienced pain that he had not suffered even against Tyr.

  “I will devour you first!” he shouted at the vanishing Alexstrasza. “I will savor your life! I will make you one of mine, and then I will devour you again!”

  Malygos could not help shuddering as he continued with his part of the attack. All five faced the same potential fate: being turned into one of the not-living and then having even that existence serve as a bitter but still desired snack.

  No sooner had Galakrond turned to look after Alexstrasza than a column of sand coursed over the other side of his torso. Spread in much the same manner as Alexstrasza’s flames, Nozdormu’s assault also concentrated on whatever extra eyes had grown there. At such velocity, the sand cut like tiny claws, at the very least blinding by irritation but more often scoring and scratching orbs until no ability for returning sight remained.

  And as the fire-orange female had done, Nozdormu shot off in another direction.

  Tyr had made some use of the methods by which proto-dragons fought, but that use had been tempered by his non–proto-dragon mind. Malygos’s kind—meaning all families—preferred to hunt alone, but when there was the need to go after very large prey, proto-dragons became adept pack hunters. Packs kept their prey off-balance and fought as partners. Tyr had failed in the end because he had chosen to make himself the primary threat against Galakrond. The lack of equal coordination between Tyr and the five had been the reason for their failure then.

  Together, Malygos and Alexstrasza had sought to correct that mistake. They only hoped that they had not simply found another path to failure. There would be no third chance. They fought and won here, or they fought and perished here—and if Tyr was correct in one thing, after their destruction, there would be no hope for their world.

  Concern for more than where his next meal came from was not something Malygos would have ever believed possible for himself. He knew that the others had come to be like him; they feared not only for themselves but for everything. They were even willing to sacrifice their lives if it meant saving their world.

  Malygos had thus far been the only one of the three to remain dangerously near Galakrond. He now became the rapidly more infuriated monster’s center of attention once again.

  But Galakrond did not exhale, as Malygos had calculated he would. Instead, the leviathan reached down with both hind paws and ripped away parts of the nearest mountains. He did so with such speed that Malygos was only just banking away when the huge chunks of solid earth came hurtling after him.

  One missile passed Malygos barely a breath later. The icy-blue male gritted his teeth as he waited for the second to do the same.

  Unfortunately, it caught his left wing hard instead.

  The impact first spun Malygos around. The agony stirred up nearly forgotten pain from previous injuries, but that meant little compared with the short, rapid glimpses of Galakrond that the smaller proto-dragon caught while tumbling in the sky. Galakrond took up more and more of his view each time, and yet Malygos could not right himself any faster.

  Worse, he saw that not only were all four of Galakrond’s major paws filled with more dirt and rock, but those extra appendages that Malygos could make out were doing the same. The terrifying behemoth unleashed an immense barrage with only one obvious purpose, ensuring that Kalec’s host would not escape destruction.

  Despite the peril to Malygos, he wondered where Ysera was. She had been set to attack when next Malygos distracted their foe, and regardless of Malygos’s own fate, he had expected the others to carry on.

  But instead of Ysera, it was Neltharion who dived into the fray, ignoring the part of the plan he was supposed to undertake. He shrieked loudly as he neared Galakrond’s ear, more loudly, in fact, than Malygos could ever recall the charcoal-gray male roaring.

  The sonic attack literally shook Galakrond, so close had Neltharion dared to get. A storm of rock and earth rained down on the mountains as the misshapen beast involuntarily released his hold on nearly everything.

  Growing too confident, Neltharion remained to watch his assault a moment longer than sense indicated. For that, he received a hard blow as Galakrond’s wing swept forward.

  Malygos saw their plan collapsing faster than Tyr’s. He had thought that he and Alexstrasza understood their own kind better than the two-legged being had. Of course, Galakrond, for all his transformation, was also still a proto-dragon. In some ways having forgotten that, Malygos wondered if he and his companions had simply flown into certain doom.

  He started forward to help his rescuer, only to have Alexstrasza fly in before him. Like Ysera, apparently, she had abandoned their strike-and-retreat plan, but unlike her missing sister, the fire-orange female had not abandoned her comrades any more than Neltharion had.

  Coming from the side where she had blinded Galakrond by searing away his extra eyes, Alexstrasza raced toward the massive gullet. As she closed, she did what Malygos and Kalec thought looked like a choice of suicide. Alexstrasza briefly roared. It was enough to draw Galakrond’s eager attention. Anticipating devouring a tidy morsel, his jaws opened wider.

  Alexstrasza exhaled, clearly using every bit of breath she had. A huge plume of fire raked over the gargantuan proto-dragon’s inner mouth, an area as unprotected as the eyes.

  The
soft flesh near the gullet blackened. Galakrond reared back, all thought of devouring the female proto-dragon gone. Malygos watched, wide-eyed, astounded that their fearsome adversary still had such a tender area. He had thought the region within the maw might be vulnerable, but targeting that had been too much to ask of any of his comrades. What proto-dragon would willingly fly into Galakrond’s mouth?

  Alexstrasza, it seemed.

  Galakrond began to hack and cough. He violently shook his head. His pained roar resounded so loudly in the mountains that it threatened to deafen the others. Wings flapping, he pushed higher into the sky. The hacking and coughing continued as Galakrond swung his head to and fro in an attempt to ease the burning.

  Alexstrasza continued on to Neltharion, who remained aloft but still suffered visible disorientation. She reached out with her hind paws to take his shoulders and guide him to safety.

  Over the mountains, Galakrond’s cry came to an abrupt halt. The hacking and coughing faded a moment after. The malevolent eyes of the huge proto-dragon swept over the vicinity.

  Although it clearly aggravated his new injuries, Galakrond exhaled long and wide. At the same time, his gaze went beyond Malygos.

  A sense of foreboding stirred within Malygos, and he hurriedly looked over his shoulder.

  More than a dozen not-living converged from behind him, cutting off that path. Malygos understood then that Galakrond had also planned ahead—and with better success. The angle at which the not-living flew revealed that they had come from above the cloud cover. Having only found the destroyed corpse, Malygos had assumed that the rest had followed that one into oblivion. Instead, Galakrond had at least Malygos, Neltharion, and Alexstrasza trapped between the undead and the will-sapping mist.

  Nozdormu appeared on Galakrond’s other blinded side. He assailed the exhaling monster with one sand blast after another, obviously using himself up but as aware as Malygos of the dire circumstances.

  Without turning his head to the brown proto-dragon, Galakrond brought his tail up and, with perfect aim, struck Nozdormu hard.

  Stunned, Nozdormu collided with one peak. Chunks of rock flew free. They dropped in among the mountains, accompanied by the limp body of the brown male.

  And as the tail withdrew, an increasingly frantic Malygos saw that, like the rest of Galakrond’s macabre form, it had eyes. Eyes that more than made up for those lost to the smaller attackers.

  Galakrond continued his impossibly long exhalation. Malygos retreated backward as the cloying mist closed on him. Alexstrasza, still aiding the disoriented Neltharion, was easily caught up in the mist. She attempted to thrust Neltharion ahead of her, but although he tried to fly harder, it was not enough.

  A ragged hiss from behind Malygos was his only warning that he had nearly flown into the approaching undead. Kalec’s host spun to face the new threat, well aware that doing so also enabled the mist to cut the distance to its victim.

  A hungry pack of undead or a fog that would leave him easy prey for their even hungrier master. Malygos anxiously looked back and forth, trying to find some path to freedom. The mist blanketed everything above and below, and the animated corpses blocked all routes ahead. There was nowhere for the icy-blue male to fly.

  And as death encroached from all directions, Malygos and Kalec wondered what had happened to the one missing member of the failed venture.

  Where was Ysera?

  FOUR

  THE FIVE

  Jaina knelt between Kalec and the artifact, caught between the knowledge that she needed to work fast to save the blue dragon and the great desire to hold and comfort him if these were to be his last minutes no matter what she attempted. Kalec continued his grisly metamorphosis, the proto-dragon elements far more pronounced and the rate of his breathing so rapid that the archmage could not believe that his lungs had not already exploded.

  This can’t be what this device was meant for! Jaina insisted to herself. It makes no sense!

  She concentrated on the pulsating artifact. Her eyes widened as she noticed that what she had believed to be a single solid object actually had two components.

  “He found something,” Buniq had said. Buniq, who could vanish without a trace even when very near the archmage.

  But no sooner had she started to make some connection between the mysterious taunka and the discovery of the second part than Jaina felt as if someone watched her. The spellcaster quickly looked up beyond the artifact.

  There was no one there—or, rather, no one there now. Yet a peculiar thought ran through Jaina’s mind, the thought that she had seen someone. Not a dragon and not a human but something closer to the latter in shape. As she concentrated, the archmage imagined that it had been a cloaked and hooded figure a bit taller than even Kalec in his humanoid form.

  Jaina knew something of keepers, and while they were much taller—like giants, actually—she was certain that they had the power to make themselves be seen otherwise. Yet even if that was the case, if she had seen some keeper image, Jaina wondered why it had faded away so quickly.

  I didn’t imagine it. . . . It stood there. And it had not appeared until Jaina had begun to investigate the fact that there were two components to the artifact, not one.

  That also brought her back to Buniq, whom she increasingly considered something other than a taunka. It would not be difficult for a keeper to take on such an illusion, either.

  Certain that she had come upon the right track, Jaina investigated where the two pieces looked as if they were fused together. Had it not been for her expert eye, the archmage doubted that she would have noticed. Moreover, they were also blended together by spellwork.

  Spellwork . . . Jaina thought again of how she had first confronted the artifact. Perhaps her attack had been too broad for this part of the situation.

  Re-creating the symbol, she studied the bonds between the two components, then cast.

  The image draped over the smaller part and, thus, where it was sealed to the larger. As that took place, Jaina reinforced her personal spells yet again. She had no idea what might happen, but experience had taught her to expect the worst.

  Both parts flared white, blinding her. The archmage fell back, certain that the relic was about to either explode or strike hard against her.

  Instead, the bright illumination faded, and the smaller component turned half a circle.

  Blinking, Jaina tentatively reached for it.

  A stream of white energy struck her forehead. She jolted, but out of surprise, not pain.

  And suddenly, Jaina saw . . .

  • • •

  The world rippled.

  It did so in a manner Kalec had not experienced before. He felt as if one moment washed over another like waves in the sea. It was disconcerting, even more so because everything he viewed through Malygos’s eyes flowed on just like waves, too. The mist drew closer and closer, Galakrond behind it.

  And when Malygos glanced back at the undead, it was the same. As if made of water, they spilled toward him, an image that only served to make them even ghastlier.

  We are going to die, Kalec thought with both dread and wonder. He had not believed that Malygos could die, but his memories of his own time had grown so vague that Kalec wondered if they were memories at all or merely fancies.

  But that hardly mattered. All that mattered was that he and his host were about to perish in some gruesome manner.

  A mournful roar interrupted Kalec’s thoughts and drew Malygos’s notice. The icy-blue male turned to the sound.

  Something else had drawn Galakrond’s attention, a pitiful but still-fiery plume exhaled by a straining Alexstrasza. Behind her, Neltharion—once-powerful Neltharion—struggled just to stay aloft. It was immediately clear that Alexstrasza wanted Neltharion to fly off, but he fought to stay near, as if he could help.

  Galakrond sneered. Malygos forgotten for the mom
ent, the behemoth exhaled lightly at Alexstrasza, sending another gust of his foul mist over her. What fight the fire-orange female had managed to draw up faded. Worse, in her struggle to keep her wings flapping, Alexstrasza drifted toward their gigantic foe.

  Galakrond opened his mouth wide. He waited with amusement as Alexstrasza unwittingly continued toward the massive jaws.

  Malygos threw himself forward, choosing the mist over the undead. Kalec was glad for his choice, even as the mist began sapping both their wills, for at least the rippling ceased as soon as that happened. Whatever their fates, the five had shown themselves to be as loyal to one another as any true dragon. Each had tried to save one or more of the others, never shirking, never fearful of death—

  No . . . not five. Four . . .

  That thought faded with all others as the mist proved too great for Malygos. His charge had turned out to be as futile as Talonixa’s grand one. His wings slowed. It was all he could do to force them to move fast enough to keep him from falling to his death.

  Which meant that there was nothing he could do for either Neltharion or, more imminently, Alexstrasza.

  As Malygos and Kalec’s own struggle worsened, they saw that the fire-orange female registered her doom. She managed a few flaps that slowed her, but already the jaws began to close on her.

  Something dropped onto Galakrond near the side blinded by Alexstrasza’s earlier attack. It landed hard, and as it did, a great gust of sand swept over the gargantuan proto-dragon’s head, blanketing it.

  Kalec and his host vaguely made out a battered Nozdormu fighting for a hold as he exhaled again and again. Galakrond sought to shake Nozdormu off. The brown proto-dragon flopped back and forth but kept claws secured. Nozdormu looked very weak, and that he had somehow managed to return to attack Galakrond anew amazed Malygos and Kalec.

  But what appeared to be hope for Alexstrasza faded as Galakrond, clearly seeing Nozdormu as more of a nuisance, once more concentrated his focus on her. The respite had not been enough to allow her any true chance of escape. It didn’t even help that, in trying to rid himself of Nozdormu, the monstrous leviathan had forced away much of the mist. Having inhaled so much of it, Alexstrasza, like Malygos and Neltharion, could not recover in time.