Thrall - Christie Golden [47]
“If I turned in a wild orc, I could live on what they paid me for more than a year. It’s … that is how my world is, Thrall. It’s how it’s always been. But …” Taretha frowned. “… I’ve always felt … well, it never felt right. Not just morally, but …” Her voice trailed off.
Thrall blinked. “So you have said.” It was an important insight, but he did not understand why she had chosen to repeat it now.
She frowned. “Said what?”
The air felt … different. Thrall got to his feet, and picked up Taretha’s gun. It was to Taretha’s everlasting credit that she did not panic, but instead was instantly on her feet and at his side, looking out into the surrounding woods for the threat. “Did you hear something?”
“You did, and you do.” Thrall was sitting beside her. “You may not have made a difference … yet. But that doesn’t mean you can’t—”
He stopped in mid-sentence. And then he understood.
“This timeway is wrong,” he said. “We both know that. And there’s something so wrong with it, so amiss, that it’s not even flowing correctly anymore. Things are … repeating. Things may even be unraveling.”
Taretha paled as he spoke. “You mean—you think—this world’s just going to end?”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Thrall said honestly. “But we need to figure out how to stop it, and how to get me out of this timeway. Or else everything—your world and mine, and who knows how many others—will be destroyed.”
She was frightened. She looked down at the fire, gnawing her lower lip, thinking.
“I need your help,” Thrall said softly.
She looked up at him, and smiled. “You have it. I want to make a difference … again.”
TEN
The world was silent.
There was not a cry of anger, or pain, or delight. Not the soft sound of a breath. Not the single beat of a pair of wings, or a heart. Not the nearly imperceptible sound of a blink, or a plant taking root.
No, not quite silent. The oceans moved, their waves curling upon the shore, then drawing back, although nothing now existed in their depths. The wind blew, rattling the eaves of dwellings that housed nothing, rippling grass that was turning yellow.
Ysera moved, the only living thing in this place, the unease stirring, becoming worry, becoming fear, becoming horror.
The Hour of Twilight had come.
Her paws fell on earth that had ceased to support life. Would not support life, ever again. No longer would a breath from her bring verdancy. She walked on each continent, desperately hoping that someplace, somewhere, had been spared.
Dead, all dead. No dragons, no humans or elves or orcs, no fish, no birds, no trees, no grass, no insects. With each bitter footfall, Ysera trod upon a mass grave.
How was she alive?
She shrank from the question, fearing the answer, and moved on.
Booty Bay, Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, Darkshire, Desolace—corpses were everywhere, rotting, uneaten by the carrion feeders as they, too, lay rotting where they had fallen. Ysera felt madness brush her at the enormity of it all and pushed it away ruthlessly.
Our temple …
She did not want to see, but had to see—
And there she was, standing at the base of the temple, her great, once-slumbering eyes now open wide.
There were wing beats here. And breath, and cries of hate-filled victory. The air thrummed with them, the twilight dragons, the last things left alive and utterly triumphant on a corpse of a world. At the foot of Wyrmrest Temple lay the bodies of the mighty Aspects: Alexstrasza, burned to death, her ribs charred and thrusting upward. A blue Aspect whose face she could not see, frozen solid in a spasm of agony. Nozdormu the Timeless One, locked firmly in time now, still as stone. And her own body, overgrown with what had once been green and living, but now even the vines that had wrapped around her throat to choke her were themselves dead. Each Aspect appeared to have been slain by his or her own unique powers.
But that was not what made her grow cold with terror.
Ysera the Awakened stared at a single, massive body. It was illuminated by the dim, somber light of the twilight