Thrall Twilight of the Aspects (23 page)

Thrall smiled. “Not all who become leaders crave the power that goes with it,” he said. “I did not. But I did burn to help my people. To free them. To find them a home where they could belong. To protect them so that our culture could flourish.”

Kalec looked at him speculatively. “By all accounts, you have done so. Even some members of the Alliance speak well of you. It could be said that they need you now more than ever, with the world in such a state. And yet here you are, as a humble shaman.”

“I had another calling,” Thrall said. “As you say … the world was in need, even more than my people. I went to help my world. And by a very, very strange twist of fate and events, I am helping my world by being here. In the company of blue dragons about to determine which one of them becomes an Aspect. It is a vast responsibility, Kalec, but from the little I have seen, I at least believe you to be the best choice. I only hope the rest of your flight agrees.”

“I would not do it if I did not have to,” said Kalec. “In a way, I am not sure what to hope for: an Aspect in name only, or an Aspect with all the powers that one ought to have. For me, it would be hard to surrender to being something so different. It is something I never imagined having to consider. Something no one ever did. It … is a great burden.”

Thrall watched Kalec carefully as he spoke, and he thought he understood.

Kalec was … afraid.

“You think it will change you, if it truly happens,” Thrall said, and the words were not a question.

Silently, Kalec nodded. “I am already, by the reckoning of most of those in this old world, a very powerful being. It is all I have ever known, and so it is easy to bear that responsibility. But … an Aspect?”

He looked off to the side for a moment, his gaze unfocused.
“Thrall … an Aspect is not just a dragon with extra powers. It is something else again. Something …” He floundered for words. “It will change me. It has to. But … two of the five of them went mad. Alexstrasza may be walking that line herself, and Nozdormu nearly lost himself forever in his own realm of time. What will becoming an Aspect do to me?”

He was right to be afraid. Thrall had faced something similar the day that Orgrim Doomhammer had fallen and named Thrall his successor. He had not asked for the weight of the mantle, but he had taken it on. He had become something more than himself, more than simply Thrall, son of Durotan and Draka. He had become warchief. And for years he had borne the responsibility. He had, as Aggra had said in her annoying and beloved, honest fashion, become a “thrall” to the Horde.

Kalec would never be able to lay aside the title of Aspect. And he would live much, much longer than a mere orc.

It would change him, and he would never be able to change back. He might be Kalecgos, the blue Dragon Aspect, but he would never again be just Kalec. What
would
it do to him?

“That is a very important question, my friend,” Thrall said quietly. “You
don’t
know what it will do to you. But there will always be things that even a dragon cannot anticipate. You can only act on what you
do
know. What your heart and your head and your gut tell you is right. The question of what will it do to you is not the one you need to ask. You have already asked the right question.”

“What will it do to my people if Arygos becomes Aspect?” Kalec said.

Thrall nodded. “See? You already know what to ask. And you do not know the answer to that question specifically, either. But you know enough so that you will choose to open yourself to the responsibility rather than subjecting them to Arygos’s rule.”

Kalec was silent. “Arygos makes much of his bloodline,” he said at last. “But what he doesn’t understand is our entire flight, our entire
race,
should be a family. Be united. Arygos’s way of thinking will no longer help us—if it ever did. And if the flight follows him, yes, they will be independent blues, separate unto themselves. But they will also be dead, or worse.” He smiled gently. “My head, heart, and gut tell me that.”

“Then your choice is already made.”

“I am still afraid. And I cannot shake the feeling that this makes me a coward.”

“No,” Thrall said. “It simply makes you wise.”

It was time.

Thrall pulled the heavy furred cloak more tightly around him. He was at the very uppermost of the levitating platforms of the Nexus, where he had a perfect view of the open sky. Some dragons in humanoid forms stood beside him, while others simply hovered in the air to wait. The night was bitterer than usual because it was so clear, the stars glittering against their ebony background. Thrall was glad of the clarity, although it meant for a colder experience. He wanted to be able to witness this remarkable, rare occurrence, although the blues assured him that the power of the event would not be mitigated if there was cloud cover.

They were already very close, the White Lady and the Blue Child, and soon the Embrace would happen. The blues were silent and still, which Thrall did not ever recall seeing before. For all their affinity with the cold, they struck him as a very vibrant, alive flight. The bronzes were more thoughtful in speaking and action; doubtless, on some level, the import of every word or deed on the timeway weighed upon them. The greens, too, seemed calmer,
after millennia spent dreaming. But the blues seemed as alive to him as the crackle and spark of the magic that was such an inherent part of them. Their wit was razor-sharp and swift; their moods mercurial; their movements quick and lively. To see them all either standing still or simply hovering, their eyes raptly fastened on the sky—it was unnerving.

Even Kalecgos was unusually somber. He, like all the others, was in his dragon form now. While Thrall had initially found him easier to approach and converse with when Kalec opted for his half-elven form, he had grown comfortable enough with the young blue so that Kalec was now simply Kalec to him, whatever form he chose to assume. Thrall stepped closer and put a reassuring hand on the mighty dragon’s lower foreleg, which was as high as he could reach. It was the equivalent of a squeeze on the shoulder, and Kalec glanced down at him, his eyes crinkling in a smile of appreciation before he again lifted his mighty blue head to regard the celestial phenomenon.

Thrall thought about what he was seeing, and the metaphor of it all. The Embrace. A mother’s love for her child. He thought about Malygos. From all he had observed and heard, before the madness had descended upon him, Malygos had been as cheerful and greathearted as Kalec. What Deathwing had done to him—to the blues, to all the dragonflights, to the very world … Thrall shook his head sadly at the grim fortune that made this event a dire necessity.

The Child was moving toward the Mother now. Thrall smiled a little, even as he shivered in the brutal yet clean cold. An embrace. A moment to pause and think about love, and magic, and how the two were not so very different.

It was too late to sway any individual’s opinion, to come up with a reasoned argument regarding why Arygos was dangerous and
Kalec was the better choice. All that could be said had been said. Each dragon was an individual. Each would choose as he or she would. Thrall thought about Nozdormu, and the nature of time, and how this decision had already been made. There was no point in hoping or fearing any longer.

There was only this moment. Standing in the cold, in the company of dragons, watching something beautiful and rare transpiring before his eyes. The moment would turn, and become another moment, and this moment would be the past and forever gone save in memory. But, for now, it
was
.

Slowly the Blue Child moved—and then there it was: after so long waiting and watching what had seemed so slow, it was happening. The larger white moon “held” the smaller. And Thrall felt a swelling of quiet joy and utter peace, and simply watched.

The icy, cold tranquillity of the moment was suddenly shattered as Arygos leaped upward into the sky. His powerful wings beat hard, keeping him hovering in position. He lifted his head and cried, “Let me lead my people! Give to me the blessing of the Aspect! I am my father’s son, and this should be mine!”

Beside Thrall, Kalec gasped. “No,” he whispered. “He will destroy us all. …”

Arygos’s bold move had certainly attracted attention. The dragons turned, almost startled by the outburst, to regard him instead of the event unfolding in the skies.

Heartened, Arygos continued to attempt to rally his flight. “Yes! I stand for what we truly are: the real masters of magic. The ones who should be directing the forces of the arcane! You know my skills: I am not an Aspect yet, but I am my father’s true son. I believe in what he fought for; I believe in the control of our own destinies! Of using arcane magic as the tool that it is for
our
ends,
our
benefit! For the blues! That is what magic is made for!”

The moons, the Mother and Child, did not care what was transpiring at the Nexus. They continued to glow softly, their blue-white radiance reflected back to them by the gleam of snow, the smooth surface of blue scales. It was beautiful, and haunting, and Thrall found his eyes held not by the shouting dragon, wings beating in the wind, but by the still quietude of the moment.

And slowly other heads turned as well. Turned away from Arygos and his promise of magic as a tool. Turned toward the breathtaking sight of celestial bodies in perfect alignment, in the wonder of their breaths freezing on the cold air.

And Thrall realized that in the choice between two ways of being—between Arygos and his invocation of the glory of the past and promise of the future, and simply beholding the Embrace—the blue dragonflight had chosen the stillness … the
magic
… of the moment.

Arygos kept shouting, bragging, begging. And yet the blues did not seem to want to listen. Like statues, which they looked like under the blue and white light of the two moons, they continued to focus their attention on the Embrace. They seemed … surprised by how beautiful it was.

Thrall thought that the combined blue-white radiance seemed to cast a magical illusion of its own on the still leviathans themselves. They seemed to glow with an exquisite illumination, and so compelling was that illusion that Thrall turned from observing the two moons to watching the dragons.

And then the light shifted. It seemed to diminish, passing from Arygos to the entirety of the assembled dragonflight. Even Thrall knew he was included in the generous radiance. And then, slowly, it faded from them as well.

It did not fade from Kalecgos.

And then Thrall understood.

This ritual was not an intellectual exercise. Nor was it about a vote among the blues for who they thought would be the best candidate. It was not about the “title” of Aspect, given to one who would use it as a tool only for himself and his flight.

The celestial phenomenon was called the Embrace. This was about the heart of the blue dragonflight, not its brain. The new Aspect could never be granted powers by thought alone. The titans had done what they
felt
was right. And so now, in this moment, had the blue dragonflight.

They had listened not just with their minds but with their hearts, when Thrall and Kalec had spoken. They had watched Thrall watch them, and noticed his reactions. It would seem they had heard him, about living in the moment, about the wonder with which they should regard their own lives, their own abilities, their own selves. Even more, when something truly beautiful and magical—with a strength that came only from its grace and rarity, and that offered no dominance or power—had come their way, they had turned toward it as a flower turns its face to the sun. And their hearts had been moved from fear to hope, from shutting out to letting in.

The glow around Kalecgos increased, even as the glow faded from the other dragons and then from the sky as the Blue Child moved out of its mother’s loving embrace.

Kalec’s breath was coming quickly, his eyes wide with wonder. Suddenly he leaped into the sky. Thrall lifted a hand to shield himself from the brilliance emanating from the newly born Aspect. Kalecgos was almost unbearable to look upon now, so bright was he, like a star—no, a sun—radiant and beautiful and terrible. His was now the ultimate mastery of arcane magic, given willingly, with hope and love and trust, by his flight, by the Mother and Child, by the echo of what the titans had willed, long ago.

And then suddenly, as his wings seemed to almost tear the sky as they beat, something unexpected happened.

Kalecgos laughed.

The joyous sound tumbled from him, bright and crystalline as the snow, light as a feather, pure as a mother’s love. It was not the sneering sound of a victor laughing in triumph. It was delight that could not be contained, something so strong and alive and truly
magical
that it must be shared.

Thrall realized that he, too, was laughing in delight. He could not tear his gaze from the figure of a blue-white dragon dancing in the night sky. Dragon laughter, bell-like and oddly sweet, rose around him. Thrall’s heart was unspeakably full, and as he looked around, feeling a kinship with the great dragons in this enchanted moment, he saw tears of joy glistening in their eyes as well. His heart felt light and settled at the same time, and he thought if he jumped up, he, too, might be able to fly.

“You
fools
!”

The fury and affront and shock in Arygos’s voice shattered the moment into a thousand pieces. “You stupid
fools
! You are the ones who have betrayed the flight, not I!”

Before Thrall had the wherewithal to even digest the words, Arygos threw back his head and let out a terrible cry. Thrall felt it buffet him almost physically. There was more than air and voice to the cry; there was magic to it as well, and it thrummed along Thrall’s blood and bones and brought him to his knees.