Son of the Black Flight

From EFWiki

Memories become death - yet overcome, with blood and flame

It has been long... long indeed since I have last penned a note to the members of the Flame. Burning hell we have endured, and weapons too, fighting our way in the depths of Blackrock. What has occurred? I feel the need to lay some small background for those who were not there, and to reveal what now lays ahead.

At the slaying of Ragnaros I suddenly felt light headed... my soul ripped from my body and all control lost. I passed out, but am told that I fought as if in vivid dreams, falling into the lava, screaming about dragonfire endlessly before being dragged to safety, my armour smouldering and burned. I ranted and raved for minutes before yelling out one, single, dread name.

My servants attended me, and I was brought to the healing ward in Ironforge. Yet no spell could help. At the same time, there was an angry cry from the direction of the Spire, as my grandfather Dorgan, driven mad by his connection to me being severed, and believing me dead, threw himself upon the nearest guards, not caring for his own fate.

Both of us stricken, both linked... but why?

Wisdom was, thank the Flame, granted to us in a most unexpected quarter. A shade of Elune herself appeared to us in our guild halls and guided us to renewal. Bringing my body, still thrashing in dreams, to that of my mortally wounded grandfather, she laid us together and then focused the healing magic of the Flame upon us both, repaing the soul bond that had been shattered by some other, potent force.

Asking questions of Dorgan afterward, it soon became clear what had transpired. Ever curious, he had investigated the dark rumours we had heard of a threat deep within the spire, and found a control orb of sorts. On touching the orb, having previously been in contact with the blood of the dragonkin Drakkisath, he found himself opening a vortex to a place within the spire filled with evil and mind control magic. Somehow, this evil found a way to disrupt or break his spirit link with me, and in doing so, poisioning my mind. Faced with this force... a force the spirits of Flames know only too well from the massacre of the elves by the dragonflight in ages past, my mind fled into memories, and hence, my madness. Such was the power of the dragonflight in the memories of the flames I carry with me that the sheer horrors of the information flowing through my emotions and my mind were inescapable. Such death... screaming children...

(the pen quivers at this point, the writing unsteady)

But that is in the past. Swiftly healed, and temporarily closing that rift, we regrouped our strength and realised that our work in this world was not yet complete. Ragnaros had been defeated, for the moment, but this return of the dragonflight as a world power, skulking in the shadows of the spire, could not be allowed. Reluctantly, we girded ourselves and resolved to find Nefarion, leader of the fell dragons, and slay him.

Weeks... months... passed. It seemed slow, painful progress through the opening battles, achieving only a few inches of ground each day. Yet was our work swift, for little more than a couple of months later we now stand with the forces of the lair smashed.

Save one.

Tomorrow, Nefarian, dark lord of the dragonflight, shall first meet in battle with the Flame. We will bleed, we will die, but we will burn harder with every death, hotter with every setback, until his scales are like puddles on the floor around our feet.

No Time Wasted

• Thalos clears off his scarred boots, drenched in dragon blood, and sits heavily behind his desk to write*

If I have seen one thing to be true of mortals, it is the power of their spirit. Never underestimate it. Our forms are fragile and weak, say our foes, easily crushable. But our spirit is indomitable, when we choose it so.

Tonight I saw a force of men and elves, and gnomes and dwarves, standing waiting for me as I arrived at the outpost in Searing Gorge. My mortal eyes saw simply fine steel, leather and cloth, but the eyes of Flame saw far more. As the shade of Elune and I gazed out over my army, a flickering haze shone around them in my eyes, flitting between one and the other, circling them and guarding them. This is no defect, no evil spell. It is a sign that the spirit, the inner will, is strong within them.

And I therefore knew we would do some damage this day. So it has proven true. Nefarian despatched... in our very first battle with him.

Yet, the battle must not replace the war. To those who fell so many times in miserable death to the guardians of the Spire's early reaches, I dedicate this time to you. This easy victory is yours - not just those who were there this night. You brought us to this place, and you too shall be remembered for it.

Hail one and all, and let nothing stand in our path. We rest... for a little while.

Thalos.