Thrall - Christie Golden [16]
She had to get away from here. Away from the dragons who were so quick to believe the worst of one who had always been the best of them. Not just the blues, or the greens, but her own flight, who should know better—
Should she know better? What if it was true?
No. No, she could not, would not, bear even the whisper of such in her heart, or she would betray one who had ever been most worthy of trust.
Torastrasza, Ysera, and Kalecgos flew beside her. They said something that she couldn’t understand, and Alexstrasza whirled in mid-flight and began attacking them.
Startled, they veered away. She did not pursue. She had no wish to kill. She wanted them only to leave her alone, so she could escape from this place, this awful place that was now the site of unspeakable, almost unimaginable horror. She could never look upon the temple again without reliving this moment, and now—it was unbearable.
Everything was unbearable.
In her brokenness, Alexstrasza clung to one thing and one thing only: the hope that if she could fly far enough, fast enough, she could out-fly the memory.
Alexstrasza’s attack was fueled by anger and fear, not a serious attempt to kill, and Ysera, Torastrasza, and Kalec dodged it easily. Ysera felt her own pain—many of the eggs destroyed in the explosion had belonged to her own flight, if not her own body—but she knew it was nothing compared to what her sister was experiencing.
Alexstrasza had lost mate, children, and hope, all in one terrible blow.
Ysera flew back to the temple sadly, her heart heavy, her mind—as ever, it now seemed—gnawing on pieces and bits of puzzles and enigmas.
The dragons were leaving in droves. Heartsick, furious, no one, it seemed, wished to linger here, amid what had once been so precious.
The Wyrmrest Accord had been shattered, as surely as the symbol of it had been, and the temple was meaningless now.
Ysera, though, did not flee. She flew slowly around the temple, peering at it almost in an impartial manner, then landed, shifted to night elf form, and walked around the structure on two feet. Corpses were everywhere: red and blue and green and twilight. The incongruous vitality and life energy of the magic Korialstrasz had used to destroy the sanctums were now seeping to the surface. Living plants broke the crust of the white snow.
Ysera shook her head sadly. Such vigorous life, to have dealt such death. She bent to caress a long green leaf, then continued her aimless ambling.
Her eyes were open, but she did not pay attention to what she saw with them. She had tried her best to communicate to the other dragons her incomplete vision. It was almost impossible to do so: the only way for anyone else to truly understand would be if they, too, had been asleep and dreaming for tens of thousands of years, and had only now awoken and were trying to make sense of it all. Ysera knew she wasn’t mad, felt that the others knew this as well, but she had a certain empathy for insanity now.
The Hour of Twilight. She’d spoken of it at the meeting, tried to warn the others of it, but the warning had gotten lost; a little bright fragment of … something … had been briskly swept away like a broken bit of pottery beneath an industrious broom. It was—
She gnawed her lower lip, thinking.
It was the greatest challenge the dragonflights would face, but she did not know against whom they would be fighting. It might come soon … or aeons from now. Could it have something to do with the return of Deathwing? Surely it had to … did it not? This breaking of the world was one of the worst things that had ever happened to Azeroth.
How could she persuade others of the direness of the situation when she herself could not articulate it? She uttered a little noise of annoyance and frustration.
One thing she knew for certain. There were many pieces missing from this puzzle, but there was one core piece that was necessary before any of the others could fall into place. It was a very strange piece, an unlikely one at best,