Despite the best efforts of the afternoon sun, the fog never completely burned away from the Veiled Stair. It was a quiet day at the Tavern in the Mists, although if Wrathion listened closely he could hear bids being shouted, fast and furious, at the Black Market Auction House across the way. For the moment, he was content to sit at his usual table and study the latest collection of mogu sigils delivered by one of the adventurers in his employ.

Most artifacts of similar age were hand-carved and thus each slightly different. Not so with the mogu's medallions. Underneath centuries of wear, they were identical, as if stamped from a machine. And, knowing what he did about the mogu and their origins, this made perfect sense.

The Black Prince squinted through a magnifying glass at one of the sigils found in the mantid empress' palace. It was curious that the mantid hoarded mogu talismans. Spoils of war, perhaps?

For the third time that day, he suddenly had the eerie, prickly feeling of being watched. He put down the magnifying glass and glanced around the tavern. There were only Tong, Left, Right and his other Blacktalon agents. There weren't even any adventurers passing through at the moment.

Wrathion frowned. Some measure of paranoia had been with him since before he even hatched. Multiple kidnapping and assassination attempts tended to do that to a dragon. Since arriving in Pandaria he had felt much more secure, however. The rest of the black dragonflight had been purged, and he had done his best to ingratiate himself to the other powers of the world. Still, that didn't mean he was without enemies...

This line of thought wasn't doing anything to quell the headache that had been throbbing deep in his skull all day. He sighed and returned to his studies, reassured by the sight of Blacktalon agents silently guarding every inch of the tavern.

He had just returned his concentration to mogu manufacturing techniques when sound of a scuffle reached him from somewhere outside. Considering the types who sometimes frequented the Black Market Auction House, not to mention the hostile saurok further up the mountain, this wasn't all that unusual. Yet several of the voices were familiar...

Wrathion stood up and went to the back door of the tavern to investigate. Sure enough, three of his agents were struggling to subdue a female blood elf. She was defending herself with flashes of golden light and bursts of flame. It took only a moment for Wrathion to remember where he had encountered that variety of magic before. A whiff of her scent on the breeze confirmed it: this was a red dragon.

His heart leapt into his throat and he took a step back before regaining his poise. If this red was powerful enough to defeat his guards she would have done so by now. As it was, she was clearly running out of steam. One of the Blacktalons who actually was a blood elf blocked her spellcasting, and a human and worgen were able to get close enough to pounce on her. They were almost certainly unaware of her true form, but to Wrathion's surprise she did not shapeshift in an attempt to escape. Instead she seemed to simply give up, slumping as dead weight in their grasp.

Curiosity tempered his fear as he watched them bind her limbs and carry her toward the tavern. Wrathion stepped aside as they brought her inside and dropped her none-too-gently at his feet.

"Well, well," he said, looking down at the limp form on the floor. "What do we have here?"

The worgen Blacktalon agent spoke up. "We found her sneaking around outside, watching the tavern with a spyglass from up the mountainside."

"Just when I thought they had actually given up," he muttered to himself, studying her with a critical eye.

Visually, she appeared to be a pretty sindorei barely old enough to be considered an adult. Her apple-red hair was bound up in twin boartails and her ears were pierced by several gold loops and bangles. Her dress of red silk trimmed with gold offered nothing in the way of real armor. Yet as the Black Prince gazed down at her, there was no mistaking her as a mere elf. His senses were never wrong.

The intruder regained her wits and awkwardly attempted to sit up despite the ropes around her wrists and ankles. When she opened her eyes, he noticed they were a luminous gold instead of the green or blue elves usually had. "I mean you no harm," she said in Common without a trace of an elven accent. "I was just...curious."

"The doors are open to any weary traveler who passes through," Wrathion said calmly. "No one would have stopped you from walking in and ordering a drink, if you chose."

"I...don't trust you," she said reluctantly.

"No, I don't suppose you would, considering...what you are." He spoke the last bit in draconic, and she blanched at the realization that he recognized her true species. "I had thought the erstwhile Life Binder was through trying to meddle with my life. I thought I had made my independence quite clear." His eyes flared a brighter red.

She shrank back from the implied threat, shaking her head. "I'm here on my own. No one sent me."

"Oh? Why?" He folded his arms on his chest and glared down at her suspiciously.

"I..." She dropped her gaze to the floor. "My mother died to ensure you would live. I wanted to see what her sacrifice bought."

"Your mother...?" Wrathion's expression shifted from anger to astonishment. "You are Rheastrasza's daughter?"

She nodded. "My name is Cybelastrasza."

To their credit, the gathered Blacktalon agents made no sound, but they were clearly surprised that she was actually a dragon.

She smiled hopefully as if expecting him to welcome her with open arms.

Wrathion exhaled slowly, recalling his earliest memories. "Your mother imprisoned my mother, stole her eggs and subjected them to twisted, often fatal, experiments. And, when she had outlived her usefulness, she had her killed. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't have my servants throw you down the Path of a Hundred Steps."

Cybela looked bewildered by his reaction. "She was trying to save your flight!" She managed to stand, stumbling as her bound wrists threw her off balance. "She wanted to free you from the Old Gods' corruption! You ungrateful little-"

One of the Blacktalons grabbed her roughly by the back of her dress and yanked her away from the Black Prince.

"I cannot deny the fact that I owe my very existence to Rheastrasza," Wrathion said airily. "I will even admit that she meant well. Certainly laying down her own life to protect her work-"

"To protect you!" Cybela interjected.

"Yes, me." He smirked, laying a hand on the chest of his regal outfit. "Her sacrifice was admirable, even if her methods were most certainly not. I'm quite sure my mother never volunteered for her sickening experiments. Be that as it may, the rest of the red dragonflight was even less benevolent. First, they tried to hold me prisoner. When I finally had my freedom, they tried to kidnap me. After that failed, they returned and tried to kill me."

From the look on Cybela's face, this was new information to her. "What? Why?"

"Why?" he scoffed. "Because I refused to play their games. They wanted me as their captive, to be raised in accordance with their plans for the future of dragonkind. That was, to put it mildly, unacceptable." The volume of his voice increased in his vehemence. "I am my own dragon, and I wish to be left alone. A wish, I might add, that I will enforce by any means necessary."

She looked close to tears. "I don't mean you any harm. Truly! I just had to see you. To see what my mother gave up her life for. To see what was more important than my siblings and me."

"Well, now you have seen me, so you can go back to the rest of your flight and remind them to stay away. Or else."

Cybela shrank before his eyes, crimson wings sprouting from her back, mouth stretching into a snout, ears twisting into horns, silk turning to scales, until she hovered there in her true form: a small red whelp.

Wrathion's eyes widened. "You're no older than I am!" That certainly explained why she wasn't better able to defend herself from capture. If anything, he was impressed that it took three Blacktalon agents to subdue her. The act of shapeshifting had freed her from the ropes, but she made no immediate move to attack or flee.

"Yes, I am. By about a month."

He found himself momentarily speechless, the implications of the timing unfurling in his mind.

"I was from her last clutch. The stress and chaos of what was going on in the Badlands meant that only a few of us hatched. I'm the only survivor now."

"Your father...?"

"Fell defending the Vermillion Redoubt from the Twilight's Hammer," she said with a bitter scowl.

Wrathion forced back a swell of compassion that he could not afford. "How fortunate that you still have the rest of your flight to take care of you," he said coldly.

She snorted. "They aren't interested in what happens to me. They're scattered, aimless..."

He raised an eyebrow. "Scattered and aimless, perhaps, but alive. Return to your kind and be grateful for the chance to rebuild."

"Grateful?" she sputtered, voice rising an octave. "My entire family is dead!"

His careful control of his temper wavered, and he drew himself up to his mortal form's full height. "When you are the only survivor of your entire dragonflight, we'll talk. If you don't leave me alone, I'll start working to make sure that happens. In the meantime, be gone."

"Why you-" She darted at him with her tiny, needle-sharp teeth bared, but both Left and Right blocked her path immediately. Surrounded by Blacktalon agents, all she could do was to dart upward out of their reach and head for the door.

On her way out, she blasted a mouthful of flame at the bamboo lintel. Tong cried out in alarm and grabbed a bucket to douse the flames before they spread.

To hide his shaking knees, Wrathion plopped back down at the table. The carefully-sorted piles of mogu sigils suddenly held no interest for him, and he simply sat and stared into his tea cup until the next adventurer came along.

Wrathion often watched the sun set from Mason's Folly, the terrace overlooking the Jade Forest. However, with a hostile red dragon around-even if she was only a whelp-he did not feel safe being out in the open. He could have brought his bodyguards, of course, but that would defeat the purpose of having contemplative time alone. Besides, his headache had only intensified as the evening wore on.

He barely touched the rice dish that Tong served for supper. A dip in the steam bath behind the tavern might have soothed his nerves, but even that seemed like too much effort. Instead he retired early to his room upstairs. Once the door was shut and extra guards were posted outside, he took off his turban and set it on the futon. He ran a hand through his matted black hair and then removed his gloves, too.

The book of Pandaren folk tales he had been reading the night before still sat on the table by the window, and he flopped down in a chair to pick up where he left off. After reading the same paragraph three times without absorbing any of it, however, he put his head down on the table with a frustrated sigh.

He had done everything he could to pretend that the visit from Rheastrasza's daughter hadn't affected him. Now, in the privacy of his room, he was forced to admit to himself that the encounter had shaken him to the core.

He could not remember his real mother's voice, but he did recall Rhea's, coming to him through the eggshell. "Grow nice and strong, little one," she had cooed. "Azeroth needs you. So many bad things have happened to the dragonflights, but you're the start of something better. Great things are ahead of you." He had taken those words to heart and done his best to live up to expectations. Azeroth did need him, more than its mortal inhabitants realized.

Wrathion lifted his head off the table and glanced at his book once more. Reading was one of his favorite pastimes, but tonight the words were unable to drown out his own thoughts, and his headache made it difficult to focus on the print. He used a ribbon bookmark to save his place and rubbed his eyes. If only his head would stop throbbing!

He stood up and looked out the window at the mountain slope outside. The moons cast a ghostly glow over the fog. Somewhere in the direction of the stables, a yak grunted. Otherwise it was perfectly silent.

Wrathion shifted into his natural form and perched on the windowsill, sniffing the cool night air. As a black dragon, he had a natural affinity for the earth, and being here among some of Azeroth's highest mountain peaks made him feel especially connected to the planet. Furthermore, the Pandaren mindset of optimism and contemplation agreed with him. The tavern was the first place since Ravenholdt Manor that felt like home.

Yet he was alone, as he always had been and always would be. He could either despair in his status as the last black dragon, or he could own the title and make it a badge of pride. Most days the latter came naturally to him. After all, it was on his orders that the last members of his flight had met their violent demise. From time to time, however, the true magnitude of his isolation would creep up on him, and he indulged in the luxury of self-pity.

The chill in the air made him wrap his wings around himself for warmth. He should be snuggled up beside his mother and siblings in a nice, toasty cave somewhere. A mother would comfort him when he was upset, and tend to him when he was feeling poorly.

Like now. His head pulsed with pain, and as he turned from the window the room appeared to keep moving even after he came to a halt. He spread his wings for balance and hopped down to the table just below the window. The dizziness continued, and he closed his eyes.

He had attributed his headache to stress, or perhaps the eye strain of looking at tiny mogu carvings. Yet the room spinning around him made his stomach slosh uneasily, and he began to wonder if perhaps he had caught some kind of illness.

Bed. He just needed sleep. He regained his balance long enough to flap over to the futon and dive into the pile of pillows there.

The moonlight was painfully bright even with his eyes closed. Wrathion looked around for a solution, too sick to get up and close the drapes. His turban sat near the head of the bed, and he crawled under the tangle of fabric. It was dark and warm, and if he used his imagination he could pretend it was a cave...the kind of cave where his mother would have watched over him.

He curled into a ball and was soon sleeping.

Left and Right exchanged concerned glances when the Black Prince emerged from his room the next morning. His usual haughty posture had devolved into a slouch, as if he didn't have the energy to hold himself upright. The glow in his red eyes had dimmed slightly, and he seemed to be having trouble keeping them open all the way.

True to their rigorous training, neither bodyguard spoke until the prince initiated contact, but he did not comment on his haggard appearance. "Any sign of our red intruder overnight?" he asked.

Both women shook their heads.

"Stay on high alert. I doubt we've seen the last of her." Wrathion started down the hallway, and Left and Right followed as always. As he neared the stairs, however, he began to stagger sideways, and only Left's quick reflexes kept him from crashing into the wall.

"Are you all right, Your Majesty?" the orc finally asked.

"Yes," he snapped, swatting her hands away as she tried to steady him further. "I'm just...tired."

The bodyguards' normally stern expressions darkened further with worry, and they shadowed him even more closely than usual as he descended the stairs.

Tong saw him coming and bowed with a warm smile. "Good morning, Black Prince. I have a fine selection for breakfast today. Mushan sausage fresh from the Valley, golden apples from the Vale, and porridge with-"

"Just tea, thank you," he interrupted, continuing on to his usual table.

A mixture of confusion and offense flickered across the Pandaren's face before his pleasant demeanor returned. "As you wish."

Wrathion sat down heavily on the bench, closing his eyes. The thought of eating anything made his already sour stomach even queasier. It was all the fault of this stupid headache. He had expected it to be gone after a good night's sleep, but he found himself just as unwell this morning. He opened his eyes and called, "Tong?"

The innkeeper stuck his head out of the kitchen. "Yes, Your Majesty?"

"I trust you know of some local remedy for a splitting headache?"

"Of course." The Pandaren nodded with fresh understanding and ducked back into the kitchen.

While he brewed whatever concoction was supposed to help, Wrathion tried to continue with his usual routine. One of his Blacktalon agents presented him with a few envelopes that had arrived overnight, and he took them without comment. He squinted, forcing his bleary eyes to read the latest report from his agent in the Jade Forest. It appeared the sha infestation there was contained for the moment, and druids from the Cenarion Circle had arrived to see if it was possible to restore any life to the blighted areas.

There was more in the report, but the letters seemed to waver on the page, as if he was viewing them underwater. The effort of trying to focus made hot pain pound across his forehead, and he winced. This would not do at all.

Tong arrived with a steaming cup of tea. "Here. These herbs should ease what ails you."

"Thank you," he said, taking a sip. When he first arrived at the Tavern in the Mists, the innkeeper was alarmed at the way he drank scalding hot beverages without blowing to cool them, but by now he was used to the dragon's odd ways.

The tea had a taste unlike any Wrathion had encountered before, but it was not unpleasant. He tried again to make sense of the report in front of him, but the letters were no more cooperative than before. He scowled. Ridiculous. He had been able to read since the day he hatched. It had never been a problem before.

He folded up the letter and set it aside. Perhaps when he'd been awake longer he would have better results.

He glanced at the sun angle on the wooden floorboards. He had slept in later than usual. So why was he still so tired? Even lifting the tea cup to his mouth seemed to require an unpleasantly large amount of energy.

Wrathion was so busy taking stock of how awful he felt, and being irrationally angry at his body as a result, that he did not notice anyone entering the tavern. The first indication that anything unusual was happening was the sudden movement of the Blacktalons flanking the door. He looked up and blinked several times to bring the scene into focus.

The Blacktalon guards, a night elf and a human, had their blades drawn and crossed in front of an elf in the doorway, blocking her entry. The intruder wore the same crimson-and-gold dress as the day before, and her bright-red hair was still done up in twin tails. She was not visibly armed, and her expression was neutral.

Only then did Wrathion's hazy senses finally recognize the aura of a red dragon. "I thought I told you to leave here and never return!"

"I'm sorry we got off to a bad start yesterday. I don't want us to be enemies," Cybelastrasza said. "My mother's goal with you was to restore the black dragonflight to the way it used to be in the beginning, and the red and black flights were close allies, long ago. I think she would want us to be on good terms."

"It doesn't matter what she would want. She's dead."

Cybela sputtered in outrage. "How dare you-"

Wrathion rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying very hard to hide how much pain he was in. "Normally I would see you dead for daring to confront me a second time. Considering your age, I'll be lenient." He gestured to the guards at the door. "Break one of her legs and send her away. If she shows her face within a league of me after today, kill her."

But Cybela wasn't about to give them the opportunity. Faster than even the Blacktalons could react, she shifted back into a whelp, breathed a rush of flames at the guards blocking her path, and rocketed off into the foggy sky.

Wrathion got to his feet, hanging onto the table to steady himself as his dizziness intensified. "I can't work with all these distractions. I'm returning to my private chamber. Left, bring the mail and my tea. I won't be receiving any visitors today." His tone was flippant but his gait unsteady as he hurried to the stairs and out of sight.

Wrathion stayed in bed the rest of that day, hoping if he slept long enough he would feel better when he woke up again. Every time he awoke, however, he found that his head was still throbbing with pain, the room was still spinning, and his stomach still churned.

Tong sent a tray of food to his room at supper time. His instinct was to refuse, but Right gently convinced him to try some of the noodles with steamed vegetables. He picked at it for a few minutes, only eating a couple mouthfuls before sending it away.

Within a half hour Right rushed back into the room at the sound of him retching into the chamber pot. "Oh, my prince," she said, shaking her head in pity. "Is there anything I can do?"

He waved her back, not wanting an audience for this undignified moment.

Nonetheless, she sat down beside him and rubbed his back while he finished emptying his stomach, then tucked him back into bed.

"What's...wrong with me?" he gasped, shaking all over.

Right shrugged apologetically. "I don't know, Your Majesty. I'm just glad you didn't do it in my bed this time." When he didn't respond, she added, "You know, when you got seasick in my bunk on board the ship-"

"I remember," he snapped. "But that had an identifiable cause. Lots of people get seasick." He grimaced and closed his eyes for a moment. "But this... I don't know what's going on, and I hate not knowing." He managed to sound more annoyed than frightened, but she knew him well enough by now to sense the truth.

"Do you want me to find a healer?"

"No. Word of my...weakness will not spread beyond this room, understood?"

She nodded.

"And, Right? The room isn't really moving, is it?"

"No, sir. Everything is quite stationary."

He closed his eyes tightly. "Not to me."

She clicked her tongue in sympathy. "Can I get you anything?"

Stay with me, he wanted to say. I'm sick. I'm scared. I don't want to be alone. But of course he had to be alone. He was the Black Prince, the last of his kind. No matter how much he wanted someone to sit at his bedside and comfort him, he could not have one of his bodyguards coddling him like a child. Finally, he said, "Just give me a towel, in case...that...happens again."

She nodded and found one in the cupboard. He took it from her and clutched it under his chin. "Thank you," he murmured.

"Try to get some sleep, Your Majesty. If it's just some stomach bug you might feel better tomorrow." Right looked as if she wanted to lean down and pat him, or hug him, or make some other comforting gesture, but she bowed instead. "If you need anything, one of us will be just outside." She closed the door behind her with as little noise as possible, mindful of his headache.

Wrathion tried his best to relax. He dozed off and on but kept waking up due to the tight pain in his head. Night fell, and the darkness of the room was a relief to his sore eyes. Every time he moved he felt a surge of nausea, so he tried to stay perfectly still. Even then, it felt like the room was rotating. Why, oh why, was he so sick?

Looking back on it, he hadn't had much energy for the last month or so, but he had blamed it on the stress of everything going on with the war in Pandaria. His appetite had been low, which he blamed on the exotic dishes. He had chalked up the headaches to eye strain or more stress.

Now, as he laid alone in the dark, feeling his head pound with every beat of his heart, he was suddenly afraid that something serious, even fatal, was wrong with him. If only Fahrad were here. He might know what the matter was. Or at least he could sit with him, telling him stories to keep his mind off how atrocious he felt.

If he was dying, what would become of Azeroth? The Burning Legion was coming. All his carefully-laid plans for the defense of the planet would fall apart if he wasn't there to coordinate them.

He squeezed his eyes even more tightly shut. That wouldn't happen. He had to get better. This was probably some draconic flu that all whelps went through. He just didn't have anyone around to tell him so.

He slowly raised one hand to rub his forehead, but even the touch of his own fingers hurt.

Wrathion had never been ill before. Sure, he had overindulged in rich foods and regretted it later, and there was that time when the unexpected sight of a severed dragon paw made him sick. And, as Right had so helpfully reminded him, he had been seasick on the journey to Pandaria. But each of those incidents had an easily-identifiable cause, and were fairly brief in duration.

This... This was something different. He didn't know what caused it, and he didn't know when or if it would end. It was that fear, even more than the physical discomfort, that kept him awake that night.