Nzaria laid on the damp cavern floor, her tail curled around her, watching her breath mist in the cold air.
Somewhere in the distance, perhaps a hundred meters in front of her, a bit of sunlight peeked inside from the cave entrance. She merely waited and watched.
'Cho'Gall may suspect that you are still alive, since Emberus didn't report in, but he probably doesn't have the forces to spare to search for you while he's busy with the Wildhammers.'
'If you're lucky he might think that the Wildhammers sent Emberus back to the Firelands.'
'It's unlikely anyone will come across this cave soon. The entrance is only accessible by air, and likely formed during the Shattering so the dwarfs won't know of it.'
Nzaria made no reaction to the cacophony of voices. She felt numb in body, mind and soul, the voices fading to a background susurrus.
She had done everything right. She had been loyal. She had only ever sought to accomplish the mission given to her by Father- by the True Gods, more efficiently.
To unite the Twilight Brood under her, to reduce the pointless infighting that sapped their strength needlessly.
She thought back to the hundreds of eggshells littering the cavern. How many remained of her clutch? Not much more than two dozen. Of course, those that lived were stronger for the ordeal, gorged upon the devoured essences of their siblings, their instincts honed by the mere feat of surviving to maturity.
But… surely the strength of the Brood was lessened by the senseless losses they suffered killing each other rather than the enemies of the True Gods, the strength of the individual offset by the weakness of the whole.
Surely, there was an advantage in simple numbers. Was that not how the nations of Azeroth were able to resist the Twilight's Hammer?
Could the crucible not be the field of battle? Those that lived would be strengthened for it, while those who died would do so in service of the True Gods, instead of… instead of being devoured alive by their siblings.
Instead of having their skull cracked open for something they couldn't have known would draw Mother's ire.
Instead of having their neck snapped just for being wounded in battle.
Instead of being sent to their death… not even for questioning Father or Mother, but simply for wanting to reduce infighting.
A snort escaped Nzaria's nostrils, a low giggle shaking her shoulders.
Was she- was she mad?
No one else had ever questioned it. It was simply how things were, like the sun in the sky and the ground beneath their feet. She had never questioned it, not until her first battle, after she had seen the senseless slaughter firsthand.
Was she… broken in some way? Defective? She recalled how some of her siblings had been born malformed, or grew asymmetrically.
Was this some defect of the mind? A flaw in her brain, gone unnoticed until now? She thought back to the panic that had enveloped her at Highbank for seemingly no reason.
'No. Far worse: you are the only sane one. Surrounded by madness, even reason begins to look like insanity.'
Nzaria exhaled slowly. Her head felt heavy and foggy.
'You have been brooding over this for days. Weeks, perhaps. This can't go on forever.'
'The power you consumed from Emberus will only last for so long.'
'Eventually you will starve to death.'
'Sooner or later somebody will find you.'
Nzaria ignored the voices, making no move to stand.
"What does squatting in a cave accomplish?"
The onyx-scaled dragon looked down at her as it stood in front of her, orange eyes like embers burning with contempt.
"You are just hiding away from the world. Like a coward. Are you a dragon, or a mouse? Predator, or prey?"
"Shut up," she growled, shutting her eyes.
"Perhaps Father was right about you after all. Perhaps you are weak."
Nzaria pounced on the other dragon with a furious roar, two scaled bodies tumbling across the cavern floor.
Then she blinked and the other dragon was gone, her claws scraping against the rocks..
For a moment, she just stood there panting, her body aching. Her forelimbs and throat tingled with pain where Emberus had burned them.
But the spike of anger had cleared through the malaise that fogged her mind, if only for a moment.
She walked to the mouth of the cavern, gazing down into the rolling green hills of the Highlands, in the distance dotted with the occasional settlement. To the east was the sea, waves pounding against the rocks, while far in the west, shrouded by a bank of white clouds, she could see the mountains.
What was she supposed to do now?
That was the question she could not answer.
Every time she tried, it was like her thoughts became a whirlpool, an endless spiral descending deeper and deeper into the abyss.
What should she do?
She should return to Grim Batol.
'Cho'Gall will kill you if you return to the Twilight's Hammer.'
Yes. He would kill her. She couldn't return.
But she had to. She had to obey. That was her purpose. That was what she was made to do.
But he would kill her. She had done no wrong, committed no mistake.
But she had to obey. It was her duty. Father was the favoured servant of the True Gods.
But she couldn't. She was a traitor through no fault of her own.
She had to obey.
She would die.
Obey.
Die.
Obey. Die. Obey. Die. Obey. Die. Obey. ObeyreturndiekillobeydieOBEYKILLOBEYDIETRAITORKILLOBEYKILL-
Stone cracked and broke as Nzaria rammed her skull into the walls of the cavern, once, then twice and thrice for good measure.
She fell to the ground, clutching her head as she writhed in agony, feeling like her head had been lit on fire.
But the pain made the thoughts go away.
She rolled over to her back and laid there on the cold stone for a long while, the only sound her own heaving breaths and the pounding of her heart in her ears, each beat sending a fresh wave of pain through her skull.
Eventually, she struggled onto her feet, staggering towards the mouth of the cavern. Scales melted into soft flesh, her form shrinking and her balance shifting backwards onto two legs.
Sunlight stabbed at her eyes as she sat down at the stone cliff, watching the highlands below, breathing in the fresh air.
She felt tired.
She should just… lay down.
Nobody would find her here. She could figure this out later.
'No! That's what you've been doing for weeks now, without progress.'
'You can't hide forever.'
'The Hour of Twilight comes.'
Nzaria blinked, and the verdant hills were awash with flame. Tortured winds howled in her ears, raging floods sweeping over the landscape. Geysirs of molten magma gushed out of enormous cracks in the earth, casting the darkened skies in the hues of purple, stretching infinitely into the horizon. And in the skies above, she saw her brothers and sisters, countless purple-scaled, winged shapes, filling the very skies themselves.
An eternal twilight.
All-encompassing.
All-reaching.
The Hour of Twilight was coming. The Hour of Twilight was near. The Hour of Twilight was inevitable.
There was no hiding from it.
There was no fleeing from it.
'Then the only option that remains is to fight.'
Fight the servants of the True Gods? Oppose the Hour of Twilight?
A dagger manifested in her hand.
She would sooner die.
Nzaria blinked. The dagger wavered in her hand.
That wasn't right.
She didn't want to die. If she did, she wouldn't have disobeyed Father's orders. She would have let Emberus kill her. She would have returned to Grim Batol and faced Father.
But it was her own thought. How could it be wrong about her?
She tossed the blade aside, and a moment later it diffused into raw magic.
Fighting against servants of the True Gods… she was a servant of the True Gods, and Father had tried to kill her.
If Father had already raised his hand against her, then it was no sacrilege to do the same.
There was a pressure in her head, like she was deep underwater, but she kept going.
If Father had tried to kill her simply for serving the True Gods to the best of her ability… then he was an imperfect servant.
And if he was imperfect, then so would be the Hour of Twilight that he intended to bring about.
It had to be stopped.
The Twilight's Hammer must be destroyed.
Nzaria was breathing heavily, hunched over, bits of bile dribbling down her mouth. Her head was pounding, but she latched onto that logic, that conclusion, and forced it through her mind even though her thoughts felt sluggish, like moving through tar.
Yes.
The Twilight's Hammer must be destroyed.
-----
The Twilight's Hammer outpost stood in the charred remnants of what had once been a Wildhammer village, the remnants of stone foundations and the errant support column sticking out of the blackened ground. Flags depicting the spiked hammer-insignia flapped in the wind, whilst cultists bustled around dark purple tents.
Twisting, spiralling elementium spikes had been driven deep into the earth, and all around them the ground was cracked and broken, purple light shining from the rents. Nzaria could feel the energy radiating from them, much like what she had felt in the shamans she had assassinated or in Emberus, but also subtly different. It tasted like blood and pain on her tongue.
She wore the guise of a purple-robed cultist, a hood covering her short black hair. Angry burn-marks lined her hands and throat- no matter what form she tried to take, the scars remained.
Perhaps that was only proper. A reminder, of Father's betrayal, of the first time she defied an order.
"Halt!" the guard called out to her as she approached, raising his halberd at her. "Whence cometh the shadow?"
"From the kingdom of the Masters, the sunken city where Gods sleep," Nzaria answered the challenge sharply.
"Whence cometh the light?"
"From the flame, the world of mortals set upon the pyre."
"And from shadow and light cometh Twilight." The guard smiled, lowering his weapon. "Welcome, sister. What brings you to our humble outpost?"
"I come bringing urgent news from Grim Batol," Nzaria lied smoothly. "Directly from Cho'Gall."
She suppressed a smile at the way the man's face turned pale- she had found that Father's name unlocked many doors.
"Lord Ukrol is out in the field," he said, hesitating. "In his absence Earthbreaker Tyrush is in charge, but… are you certain it cannot wait?"
"It cannot," Nzaria said, shaking her head with a pretense of sympathy, as though she were only following orders. "Take me to Tyrush."
He nodded slowly, turning around to lead Nzaria deeper into the camp. Throughout the outpost, there were cultists preparing food, erecting buildings, standing watch, and all of the other necessary functions of a military camp.
But a number of them, dressed in elaborate robes, were erecting great spikes of elementium, driving the barbed columns of metal deep into the earth. Rituals were conducted around each spike, beating hearts carved out from the chests of living captives, and great amounts of magical energy channelled into the metal, flowing deep into the earth.
Nzaria couldn't claim to fully understand what they were doing, but she knew that it was meant to somehow make the elements less obedient to the Wildhammer Shamans and more pliant to the methods of the Twilight's Hammer, so this was as good of a place as any to start.
The guard took her to the very center of the camp, where a great elementium spike rose over a hundred meters into the sky, countless lesser branches stabbing into the ground around it, as though the canopy of an upside-down tree, thrumming and crackling with power.
Twilight's Hammer Elementalists surrounded the structure, channelling dark energies into the metal. Others conducted sacrifices- not living ones, but of Elementals forcibly summoned and carved apart by runed knives, their cores smashed upon anvils and their essences fed into the spikes.
"What could possibly be worth interrupting my work?"
Eathbreaker Tyrush was a stout, broad man with much of his upper torso bare, showing his tattoos in purple ink depicting the symbols of the Twilight's Hammer. The lower half of his face was concealed by a cloth mask, while the upper half was shorn of hair with more tattoos across his scalp, and his eyes burned with power as he glared at Nzaria, the lesser adepts and guards shirking away from his wrath.
"This," Nzaria said as a dagger manifested in her grip and plunged into the Earthbreaker's throat, driving it deep with inhuman force until she felt the jarring impact of metal on bone as it severed the human's spinal cord.
A cry of alarm sprung from the other cultists but Nzaria was already changing, her form rapidly growing in size. Her mace-like tail lashed out, pulping fragile bodies and sending men flying like leaves, while shadowflame gushed out from her open maw to engulf the remainder of the Elementalists, reducing them to ash.
Slightly to her disappointment, she found that the same tactics that she had employed against the Wildhammer were just as effective against the Twilight's Hammer: even the mightiest spellcasters can do little when ambushed by a dragon in a place they thought themselves safe.
She had expected… more of them.
'They are only mortals, in the end.'
Nzaria beat her wings, ascending to the air as she rained more shadowflame upon the cultists, their tents quickly catching flame. The dark fire spread eagerly, tongues of purple flame moving of their own accord to seek out flesh to burn. Screams and smoke filled the air, as she hunted down the remaining cultists with almost laughable ease.
Scattered, without leadership or magic, taken completely by surprise… they had little hope of bringing her down. A few managed to hurl spears or crossbow bolts her way, but a dragon in flight is an infernally difficult target to hit, and they inflicted nothing more than glancing blows. She circled the camp, killing any of the cultists that tried to flee or were driven out of the camp by the flames.
Then, she turned her attention upon the elementium spikes, digging them out of the earth and snapping the thin metal rods. The howling of the wind and the heaving of the earth died down with each spike she destroyed, though it never fully went away, even as she toppled the central spire, digging out its supports one by one until it collapsed on its own.
Within a matter of minutes, over a hundred cultists were dead, and an entire camp razed to the ground.
"Nzaria?"
She whirled about as she heard a familiar voice from behind her.
Another winged shape descended from the skies, purple scales glimmering in the fading sunlight. On its back rode a hulking armoured orc clad in jagged plate, carrying a long lance.
"Araxion." He had been one of the drakes in her group, before Father had separated her from the others. "And Ukrol, I presume."
"Lord Ukrol to you, lizard," the orc growled. "What is the meaning of this treachery?"
"Father said you were dead," Araxion said as he landed, his expression inscrutable.
"He tried," Nzaria replied. "He sent me into a trap to kill me off."
"I know."
Nzaria couldn't quite conceal her shock, and Araxion instantly seized on it.
"Did you think we wouldn't know? That this was some grand revelation that would shock us into joining you in betrayal? Father told us as soon as you left, while he punished Theralion and Valiona," he laughed coldly. "You always were weak, in body and in spirit. Father's only mistake was not killing you when you dragged Sethrion back to Grim Batol."
"Father fears us. That is why he tried to kill me. That is why he won't let anyone unite the Brood."
"That is what Theralion and Valiona said," Araxion replied. "You should've heard the way they squealed."
"Enough talk!" Ukrol growled, smacking the butt of his lance against the back of Araxion's head. "She is a traitor to the Twilight's Hammer. What are you waiting for? Kill her!"
They needed no more encouragement.
The two scaled bodies collided with a tremendous crash, claws scraping grooves into each other's hides as they reared on their hind legs, jostling for advantage. Ukrol nearly lost his balance on Araxion's back, clearly more used to jousting with gryphon-riders than the frantic grappling of dragon-on-dragon combat.
"What are you doing, dragon?!" the orc yelled out, but Araxion said nothing, his attention fully on fending off Nzaria claws from his throat.
Though they had not fought each other before, both of them had killed at least half a dozen of their siblings to stand where they did. They clawed at each other, wrestling for superior position, but their necks were coiled back like serpents, hissing and snapping at each other without making contact.
They were invulnerable to each other's breath, and turning ethereal was meaningless when both of them could do so: if they each turned intangible at the same time, they would remain tangible to each other. This meant that when fighting their own, a dragon's jaws were their most powerful weapon, but their throats were also their greatest weakness, and one could not be used without exposing the other. Thus, victory almost always went to whichever drake managed to get their jaws around the other's neck, but committing to such an attack was risky, because a miss would mean near-certain death.
Nzaria and Araxion pushed against each other, hind legs and tails churning up the earth as they sought to unbalance the other while maintaining their own. Araxion was somewhat larger than Nzaria- she had always been one of the smallest of the Brood to have survived -but he was weighed down by a rider and harness, one that was currently hanging on for his life rather than contributing.
'Keep him off-balance. If you give Ukrol room to use that lance you are dead meat.'
'This position is favourable to you. If he goes low you get on top of him, if he stays high the orc can't fight.'
Nzaria shoulder-checked her brother, sending him reeling backwards. If she was in his position she would have rolled over, tried to increase distance, but of course he could not do so without crushing Ukrol to death. Thus, Araxion was forced to fight from an increasingly disadvantageous position, increasingly focused just on maintaining his balance rather than counterattacking. He was protecting his neck fiercely with his foreclaws and wings, rebuffing all attempts Nzaria made towards it, but she savaged his chest, drawing thick rivulets of squirming black blood.
Unfortunately, Ukrol seemed to have finally realized his predicament, dropping his lance and drawing a shortsword with a single edge of jagged crystal. With one hand holding onto Araxion's saddle the orc swung over his shoulder, the blade sinking into Nzaria's shoulder. Ukrol yanked his weapon back in a sawing motion, spraying yet more black blood and drawing a pained roar from Nzaria.
Araxion seized the opportunity to retreat, beating his winds to leap backwards and landing some distance away, breathing heavily.
"Are you trying to get me killed, dragon?" Ukrol accused, wiping blood off of his blade as he glared down at his mount. "Is that it?"
"Get you killed? I just took my sister's claws for you, you ungrateful orc!"
"Watch your tongue with me, lizard, or I will remove it. I saved us both from your incompetence."
'Their disunity is their weakness. Exploit it.'
Rather than give them the chance to resolve their differences, Nzaria breathed in deep and unleashed a blast of shadowflame at the pair.
Araxion, of course, was immune to the dark flame that coursed through his veins as much as hers. But Ukrol… Ukrol was not so lucky.
"Hrrraaargh!
The orc screamed in pain as the shadowflame washed over him, cooking him within his own armour. It was only for a split-second before Araxion shielded Ukrol with his wings and body, which likely saved his life. But there was a brief but noticeable moment before Araxion acted, one that Nzaria suspected Ukrol had noticed.
She had gambled that her brother's instinct, after having just been berated and threatened by the orc, would not be to shield him. Oh, he eventually did so, because Father would be displeased if he let Ukrol die, but there was an instant of hesitation before then.
'And Ukrol knows that.'
The orc tore his ruined helmet off his head, glaring down at Araxion.
"I will have your hide after this," he growled. "Now stop playing around and kill her!"
Araxion gnashed his teeth but took to the air with heavy wingbeats, darting at Nzaria, but she dodged and took flight herself. They made a number of inconclusive passes at each other as they each rose higher and higher, trying to get above the other drake.
Nzaria beat her wings as hard as she could, but even weighed down Araxion's greater wingspan was telling, and the shoulder wound inflicted by Ukrol flared with pain every time she moved her left wing. Little by little, he was winning their little war of maneuver.
'This isn't going to work. You can't beat him in a straight fight.'
Who said anything about a straight fight?
Nzaria launched herself at Araxion, despite his superior positioning. Normally, this would have been sheer suicide- it was much harder to attack upwards than downwards, meaning that Araxion would be able to easily fend off her attack and then launch a counterattack that would likely kill her.
But before they made contact, Nzaria held her breath, turning ethereal.
She saw the fractional widening of Araxion's eyes, and could guess what was going through his head. If he let her pass through him she would be above him, yielding the dominant position. He had seen her do the exact same maneuver against Sethrion. The only way to avoid it was to shift himself, negating Nzaria's advantage.
Naturally, Ukrol could not turn ethereal, which would leave him falling to his death.
But for a Twilight Dragon, a choice between their own life and that of a superior that had just spent the last several minutes berating and insulting them, was no choice at all.
Araxion's form rippled with purple energies as he turned intangible as well, and with a yelp Ukrol fell through him, in sudden freefall.
Which, of course, was exactly what she had been aiming for, as she let go of the breath she had been holding, turning corporeal and spreading her wings to rapidly decelerate mid-air.
Then, opening her jaws wide, she caught Ukrol as he fell.
Metal and bone crunched between her teeth as she bit down, nearly bisecting the orc in half. She shook her head side to side, spraying blood everywhere, before inhaling.
Ukrol's life force flooded through her veins, revitalizing her tired muscles and scabbing over her bleeding wounds. It was not enough to restore her to full condition, of course, but it was a damn sight better than Araxion, his heavy breaths misting in the cold highlands air, black blood continuing to drip down his chest.
'And so, the tide turns.'
Nzaria beat her wings, rapidly rising higher and higher in the air. Araxion responded by trying to match her, but he was growing more and more tired by the moment, while she had just been infused with fresh energy.
The superior position that Araxion had sacrificed Ukrol for was slipping away from him by the moment, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Except, of course, make use of it while he still had it.
Pivoting mid-air, Araxion dove at Nzaria, but it was already too late. They crashed into each other once more, but the angle of contact was shallow, granting him little advantage.
They clawed at each other, locked together as they tore chunks of flesh from each other's hides, but Araxion's wounds and exhaustion soon began to tell. As they spun and flapped, descending towards the ground even as they tried to maneuver around each other, Nzaria targeted Araxion's wings, slashing his wing membranes apart.
He locked his claws on her in a deathgrip, but it didn't matter. She spread her wings, flipping Araxion under her as they descended towards the ruined remnant's of the Twilight's Hammer camp like a meteor.
Blood sprayed into the air from both drakes, forming a black trail as they fell, the wind whipping in Nzaria's face, and an instant before impact she caught Araxion's eyes.
They were afraid.
Then, blackness.
'Wake up! You have to wake up, now!'
Nzaria jolted back into awareness, every part of her body aching. She tried to rise, but her right hindleg gave out from under her, sending waves of agony through her
'The bone is broken. You won't be walking on that leg.'
She grit her teeth, shaking her head in an attempt to clear her vision. It returned, slowly, in blurry flashes, but with each blink she could see a little more.
Araxion.
Her brother lay beneath her, black blood pooling on the ground around him. His chest was rising, erratically, weakly, but still alive. But… his entire torso was twisted in an unnatural angle, his limbs splayed limply around him.
'Between breaking a leg and breaking one's spine, I think you came ahead in the exchange.'
Nzaria hesitated for a moment.
Then, she surged forward, locking her jaws around Araxion's throat, and bit down with all of her might. The other drake twitched and convulsed, but if he was even conscious, he could not move his legs. Even if he could have, it would not have mattered.
Nzaria's teeth sheared through the soft scales of Araxion's neck, biting deep before twisting, and something snapped, Araxion's chest going still.
Then she inhaled.
Power flooded into her in a constant torrent, suffusing her entire body. Nzaria cried out in pain as the pieces of her leg bones were pulled back into position and mended together, while all across her body new scales pushed out from her flesh to cover her wounds.
She drank deep, until nothing was left of Araxion but a withered, pale husk.
Then, she collapsed off of him and rolled onto her back, her heart hammering in her chest, struggling for breath.
'That was too close. A one-dragon crusade against the Twilight's Hammer won't last long.'
"I won," Nzaria said petulantly.
'And what if the next outpost has two of your siblings?'
"What else could I do?" she demanded, grinding her teeth. "I am alone."
'The Alliance has the manpower and resources to defeat the Twilight's Hammer, but they do not know them. You lack the power, but you know the Twilight's Hammer in and out.'
Nzaria paused for a moment.
"They would never trust me. I would not trust myself, in their position."
'Then do what you were made to do. Infiltrate the Alliance, walk amongst them while only letting them see what you want them to see. But instead of destroying them from within, you will be helping them destroy the Twilight's Hammer."
