Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.

I'm really excited to be writing again. I've forgotten how it feels. If you're new, you'll want to check out my story Coup de What? to have an idea of what is going on here. And a quick note. This story will take place in several 'sections', which are just the fancy names I give for the parts of the story that are separated by big time-skips.

Chapter published 3/5/2012

Section 1:Rising Flames

One year, thirty-two days, twelve hours, thirteen minutes, and twelve seconds after the epilogue of Coup de What?

Amanthe

I jolted awake with the horrible, gut-sinking sensation of falling. My breath caught in my throat, and I looked around frantically, my eyes tracing over the near unseeable cavern walls, taking in every drip, every contour, and every chip. I placed my hand over my chest, taking deep, gulping breaths, trying to slow my heart-rate to a pace where it didn't feel like it was going to break my ribs. The last thing I had known, I laid on the mat of twigs and leaves which served as my bed and closed my eyes. Next thing I knew, I felt like someone had pitched me over a canyon. This wasn't exactly the first time it happened, though mostly it happened whenever I tried to take a nap. I'd be laying there, when suddenly I'd feel that pit in my stomach and jerk. And it wasn't just me either, it happened to lots of other people. It was perfectly normal.

But by the Light, it sucked.

I blinked eyes, and pulled myself to my feet, turning my neck to relieve the crick in it before stretching up my hands. Once I felt my spine pop a little, I relaxed my hands, letting them fall to my sides. I held up my left hand and mentally called for it to glow slightly, enough for me to see farther than a meter around me. I willed my stiff legs to move forward, carrying me out of the small cavern chamber where I slept. I needed only a very short time to reach the chamber where I held the last remnants of the stag meat I had, which, after cooking, I kept from rotting by occasionally washing it in the Light, since using my preferred shadow spells on it would be worse than just letting it spoil. I mentally chuckled. Selriona wouldn't have any problems with that, though.

I frowned when I saw how little remained of it. Just a few slabs of meat, cooked months ago, but kept unspoiled through the Light. I'd need to hunt today. I shrugged at the thought. Oh well. At least I could, thanks the my friend's training. Speaking of which...

'Good morning, Amanthe. Yrlo are you doing?' came Selriona's thought, along with a slight pressure above my ears. I didn't understand the entirety of the statement made in Draconic, one of the words sounding simply like gibberish to me, but I understood enough. I thought carefully, forming the Draconic words in my mind.

'I'm good, thank... you. What was that word after my name again? I don't remember.' I bit into the stag meat I had picked up, chewing it before swallowing.

'It means "how".' she said in Common.

'Oh yeah, thanks.' In addition to training me in the use of twilight flame, I had become semi-fluent with Draconic, which made understanding the conversations of the Twilight Flight easier when I entered Grim Batol to speak with Selriona. Telepathy over long-range was all well and good, but it couldn't replace face-to-face conversation.

I tore another chunk out of my stag and sat down, before thinking to Selriona in Common. 'You know, you never told me why exactly I need to learn Draconic. I mean, sure, if I'm going to be living here -'

Before I could finish the thought, I caught Selriona projecting silence to me. '... you just...' The unease in her voice resonated in my head. I'd never get used to that feeling of having someone else's thoughts in my head. It wasn't like I heard her voice all around me, it was like I was thinking in her voice, but it seemed more solid, more real. Exactly how it felt to her, too, I imagine. 'Amanthe, I'm not really comfortable talking about, about that. It's just...'

'What? It can't be THAT bad of a reason, can it?' Selriona's continued silence gave me the answer. I changed the subject, eager to relieve the tension floating between our link. 'So, um.' I switched to Draconic for the next sentence, practicing the language. 'How are you doing?'

She answered it with a little more enthusiasm, but I could tell my question of why she was teaching me a second language had depressed her. 'Oh, things are going very nicely. You know, same old same old.'

'I think I'm going to go hunt today. Just ran out of meat.' I told her, ripping another chunk out of the meat in my hands. I looked down at it. Almost gone. Huh.

'That's another thing. You should always keep a bit of a surplus. I mean, what if you don't succeed today?'

I stopped mid-chew, then slowly and carefully operated my mouth to chew as I 'spoke' to her. 'Oh... I should've thought of that sooner.'

'No, you don't say?' came Selriona's voice, laden with sarcasm. 'Well, I'll leave you to your thoughts. Unless there's anything you want to talk about? I'm out of ideas.' There actually was something, why she was teaching me Draconic, but whenever I asked that, she became miserable.

A yawn escaped my lips before I could stifle it. 'Nope, not really. Just going to go finish this, stretch, then hunt.' With that, I felt her stop using the link, the dull pressure above my ears fading. I finished my meal and groaned, stretching out my muscles, before wandering about my cave for the small spring of water I had found, heated to the point of near boiling inside the mountains. I found myself chuckling to myself as I walked towards my source of drinking water, the heat having killed anything that might make me sick. Here I was, 'roughing' it out in the wilderness. What would my family say if they saw me now?

The room that held my drinking water wasn't very big at all. The tunnel narrowed dramatically as I closed in, but I could still catch the little burble of water at the end, releasing steam into the air before it vanished back into the earth. I cupped my hands and extended them out, waiting until the hot water filled them, blew at it to cool it down, then carefully brought my face in to drink, being certain not to splash the water too much onto my skin. I repeated this several times. Slow, tedious, but it worked. I would wash myself later in the day.

Do not ask how I did so with that.

"Ah! Crap!" I yelled, jumping back as the water splashed onto my clothes, a smooth indigo color that Selriona had conjured for me. How she had done it, I didn't know exactly, and her answer revealed the function of her capacitor to me. She'd managed to use the energy in it to conjure it by feeding some other twilight spell into it. Regardless of how she'd done it, the shirt and pants were nice, and didn't impede my motion, so I could still hunt. I gripped my leg where the water had splashed, the heat from the near-scalding liquid not enough to make it undrinkable, but enough to be painful.

I finished drinking, and walked out to the front of my cave. I laughed again at that thought. I lived in a cave.

I sighed, taking in the scene of the place I lived, a little passage in between the mountain that hosted Grim Batol, and the one that held the Vermillion Redoubt. The sun spilled in through the valley, rays ricocheting off of little flecks of exposed mica and other gems unearthed by the battles that had taken place here, yellow light spilling through the gates far to the west like a flood. I grimaced at the idea of what came next. I knew it had to be done to mask my smell, but I'd never in my life enjoy covering myself in mud. I knelt, sighed, and got to work. Once that was done, I began walking, frowning as the dirt along my arms folded and cracked as my joints moved, eager to find the tracks of the stag that inhabited the area. It didn't take too long to do so; the valley laid in the middle of two mountains, and combined with the Wetlands close by, it was on the wet end of two rain-shadows.

In other words it rained. A lot.

This made finding the tracks of a herd quite easy, and I wasted no time in following them. Within an hour, I had found the rough location of the herd, and forced myself to slow down. One thing Selriona had taught me about in Stormwind was the 'bird alarm'. Birds in the area of the herd were ultra-sensitive to movement. It didn't take much to make them panic and warn other birds that something was there, and this chirping 'alarm' would also scare away my quarry. So I had to move really, really slowly. I covered myself in dirt again to mask my scent, and began slowly approaching, hiding among the boulders of the mountains until I could get a good look.

I crept forward at an agonizingly slow pace, but had to stay slow. I could barely make out a few birds flitting around, picking at the soil, probably at some worm or another, occasionally giving me glancing looks. They weren't my target, but of course, they didn't know that. Every time my hand touched the stone with the faintest of noises, each breath I took, I seemed to conjure forth a cacophony of noise. Tension welled in me as I slowly, but surely, made my way up the boulder and could see the herd. There were a couple of them below, grazing around, unaware of me in every way. I looked around and spotted one, which looked satisfactory. I smiled, and smote it with a blast of Light.

A yellow blast engulfed its head before it fell limply, the others scattering away, the half-dozen or so birds around taking off into the air as I suddenly became a threat. Within seconds they were out of my sight, but that didn't matter. I got what I had come for. I stood and jumped off the boulder I had blasted the stag from, weaving a levitation onto myself so that I could gently descend next to the body. The spell slowed down my rate of falling, but it didn't reduce the sensation. It felt like I fell quickly, but I wasn't. Which just made my skin crawl as I came to a gentle hover next to the stag, gently smoking where I had blasted it. With a mental command, I dropped onto the ground, the levitation spell gone.

I knelt next to it and looked it over, checking for injuries, signs of disease, and the like, things I couldn't make out from a distance. Once satisfied, I nodded and stood. "Alright. Great. I got lucky." Weaving a levitation spell onto the stag so I wouldn't have a nightmare carrying it back, I gently grasped one of its horns and began to lead it back to my cave-house. I hadn't taken five steps when I heard steps behind me. Like an idiot, I froze in place and turned around to see who it was.

It was three orcs, a tauren, and a blood elf.

My first instinct? OH GODS, RUN!

Almost all my life I'd been a member of the Alliance. Though I technically wasn't anymore, and was in the neutral Twilight Flight, old habits die hard. I froze in place as we locked gazes. The tauren occasionally let out a strangled noise as the gray box he held gave off a little spark of electricity. The orcs, two men and another who I couldn't make out under the heavy armor, had no weapons, but little wands in their hands that throbbed with an eerie blue and gray light. The blood elf wore golden colored plate armor and had a sword as tall as her behind her, the handle sticking up behind her red hair, the sight of which made my blood run cold. The tauren carrying the static box was the first to clear his throat. "Um... hello," came his words in Common, clearly not taking the chance to see if I knew Orcish, which I really don't.

It was at that moment that my mind switched to what I was wearing. The Twilight's Hammer, from what Selriona had told me, was still at large. They might think I was a cultist! Fear rooted itself in my mind. My limbs felt numb, and I couldn't find the strength in me to be self conscious of the fact that I was covered in mud, let alone do anything reasonable. I couldn't fight them off; I'd be destroyed. "Um... hi?" I squeaked out. With a titanic effort, I managed to move one foot back.

The tauren holding the box turned to the blood elf, standing a good head over her. "Um, Layalith, what's the call here?"

'Layalith' scowled at him. "We have to get this done as soon as possible. It is PRIORITY."

The orc covered in plate armor spoke up, a decidedly masculine voice made faint and hoarse by the armor over him. "She is still a member of the Alliance, should we not - ow!" He stopped talking as the flat end of Layalith's sword came crashing down on his head. "Okay, point taken. I understand." Another step back...

At that precise instant an arc of electricity came out of the box and shocked me. I tasted copper and a vibrating sensation rippled under my skin for an instant before it ended, my teeth clenched together as tightly as I could out of shear instinct. The tauren laughed nervously. "Um, whoops. Yeah, this thing is pretty unstable."

At this, Layalith's scowl deepened. "Are you done being chatty with her? Nil Sag'ma will have our heads if we don't return with these - " At this point she pressed her lips into a thin line, choosing her next words carefully. " - supplies back within the month! Do I need to remind you what he tends to do with those who are late?"

The tauren gently brought a hand to his stomach before tensing as another jolt of electricity surged through him. "Okay, but what about her? She's in the Alliance, so..."

Layalith shook her head. "Priorities are priorities. Now come on, I think I spotted some prey this way. What he wants with these, I don't know. Now come on you useless wastes of space!" she barked out. The tauren was shocked another time, and then the group turned away from me, walking off into the Twilight Highlands and vanishing out of my sight in minutes.

Once they were gone, I allowed myself a long sigh of relief. That... was too close. I had thought for certain I was going to die! Sure, some of the races in the Horde had also been in the Argent Dawn, but these were actual members of the Horde. And whether they had assumed me to be a cultist or not, it wouldn't have ended well. Thank the Light they obviously had better things to do. Shaking my head and returning to my own affairs, I began leading the stag I had just hunted back to my cave, the body slowly hovering up and down as the levitation spell struggled against gravity. I returned to the canyon in between the home of the Twilight Flight and the Vermillion Redoubt, and set it down at the mouth of my home. I didn't have to go far to get firewood, and by the time I got a fire going on the outside of my home to cook the stag and cleaned off the mud on my skin and clothing, it was just past noon.

I hummed to myself as I put out the fire with dirt. Cooking stag always took a few hours, and by the time it was done the sun was setting in the west, framed by the mountains on both side to channel the orange and red light throughout the area. Just as I was about to levitate the cooked meat and bring it into the cave, the whoosh of displaced air filled my ears. I turned around from my home to see a Twilight drake setting down on the ground a few meters from me, dark blue wings seemingly absorbing the light from the sun. The smallest of the three horns along his crest was missing. "Plutolion. What brings you here?"

He shook his head, the slight flap down his neck shaking side to side as he did. "The Prime Consort sent me to tell you that she wishes your presence in her chamber." He sniffed the air, as if something nearby smelled very good. Considering he was only a few wing-beats from a freshly cooked stag, I had an idea about what he smelled. Plutolion shook his head, recollecting his thoughts. "She wishes you to go to her as soon as possible."

I nodded my head, somewhat perplexed at why she hadn't simply contacted me through the link. "Um, all right, thanks. Is there anything else?"

He shook his head, before opening his jaws wide to yawn, razor sharp fangs making me take an unconscious step back before they vanished from my sight once again. "No, that's all. Well, I'm off to hunt." With another blast of wind, Plutolion took off into the air, circling in the sky before headed west towards the Wetlands. Of course, he wouldn't have trouble hunting in the dark.

'Why didn't you just contact me this way to tell me you wanted to speak with me face to face?' I thought to Selriona, once again leading the cooked stag into my home.

After a little bit of a silence, I got her response. 'Oooh yeaaah. I can do that. I kind of forgot I could do that.'

I rolled my eyes, then remembered she couldn't see me. She'd used it this morning. 'Yeah, it's a bit hard to get used to that. I still freak out sometimes when you talk to me like this without any warning.'

'I agree, it'll take some time to get used to this. Anything happen on your hunt?'

'Well, there were a couple of members of the Horde here. From what I gathered, they were hunting something. Must've been pretty important, since they decided not to waste time killing me.'

I detected a note of worry in Selriona's 'voice'. 'Oh no. Horde, this close?'

'Well, they looked pretty damn isolated. Nothing to worry about.'

A sigh came through the link as I placed the cooked meat into its chamber, before standing in one place. 'Okay, that's good. We don't have the resources to go around convincing the mortals to not kill us on sight. All we need to do is just stay hidden until we have the time.'

'So, what did you want to talk to me about?'

'Well, I'd rather I told you face to face. I mean, however useful this is...'

'Yeah, I get it,' I said, cutting her off. 'I'm on my way.' I turned around and headed out, squinting my eyes to see better with night upon me. By the time I reached the path below Grim Batol, night had well and truly descended on me. I carefully climbed, hand over hand, to get to the main entrance to Grim Batol. My shoes scuffed slightly on the smooth stone floors as I walked up to the intimidatingly large gateway, flanked on either side by a drakonid wielding a large spear, crackling with violet flames on the end, crossing it over with their partner's spear to bar entrance. Their eyes followed me carefully as I approached, before I opened my mouth.

"The Prime Consort has requested my presence." They stood still like statues, and I knew what this was. They stubbornly insisted on refusing to let me in unless I showed definitive proof. Whether they really didn't recognize me even after the multiple times I had come here, or they still held a grudge against us 'mortals', I don't know. I held up a hand and let twilight flame cover it, slimy and chilling on my skin, for a brief second, casting flickering shadows around me. They gave me a simultaneous nod, and unlocked their spears to allow me through. "Thank you," I said, walking under them.

Grim Batol was exactly as I remembered it. Light came from a pool of magma far below, which the central spire reached down to touch. The rampart around the spire was patrolled by the occasional group of dragonspawn, and a few late-night drakes flew through the empty spaces. Remembering the time, I yawned, before beginning the process of finding my way down to where Selriona was. I'd been in Grim Batol several times before, but I still got the same feeling of being out-of-place, of wrongness. A fair portion of the Twilight Flight, from what I'd seen, still harbored lingering ill will towards mortals from their time thinking we were evil. Granted, most would not be able to move past such ingrained thoughts quickly. But there wasn't exactly much I could do about it beyond, well, not being evil around them. Something I had very little trouble with.

The stairs down were in fairly good shape, considering all they'd been through. Still, they didn't make me feel any comfort. Cracks riddled the dwarf-sized staircase, and each step I took downward in the twilight flame-illuminated halls seemed like it could have been my last. It was a very long drop to the lava below. My levitation would not save me.

The staircase I took led me only about halfway down to where I needed to be, and after that it took several more minutes of wandering the seemingly endless corridors of Grim Batol to get anywhere, let alone my destination. I passed a room with a few sleeping dragonspawn in it, and at one point there was a drake asleep on the hallway, wings tucked onto his back and tail curled out from under them. His snoring was deafening. Thankfully, he wasn't in my path. I didn't want to imagine what would have happened if I had had to go over him, and accidentally stepped on his tail or wing membranes.

The path to Selriona's chamber was several dozen meters from the pool of molten rock that made of Grim Batol's ultimate 'floor', however it was still far, far closer to the magma than I would have liked. Sweltering heat radiated up from it, making me sweat and wipe my hand, the warm orange light that had replaced the twilight torches echoing along the walls and lulling me closer to sleep. The night was relatively young, but I yawned in spite of it, and fought off sleep. Selriona would never let me live it down if I collapsed out here. Of course, all the eggs were kept close to magma sources for heat. I had no idea how it worked, but apparently whelps in their eggs and for a while after hatching were warm-blooded, and 'switched' over to being cold-blooded after a few weeks. It vaguely reminded me of something my old school teacher had taught my class about salmon, how they switch from being salt-water fish to fresh-water and back.

But even if the whelplings in their eggs were warm-blooded, they still needed an external source of heat, which their cold-blooded parents were hard-pressed to provide. So eggs were kept near the magma pit, as were the whelplings once they hatched. I'd never actually been here before, but I'd heard the directions before. Selriona didn't spend all her time here; sometimes she went to go hunt for them, or take part in various activities that involved solidifying her Flight's position.

Turning around a few more bends, I came to a chamber that I knew from my telepathic conversations was where Selriona's brood resided, and her for a large part of time. A tall and proud doorway, the door having long ago vanished, rose before me, with two twilight flame torches on either side. The orange light from the magma pool didn't project here very well, but the heat did, and drowsiness seemed to ebb and flow from my pores.

Inside, the chamber expanded to a gargantuan size, the roof arcing far above my head, the walls stretching back. Just this chamber alone was the size of the Cathedral of Light, minus the spire. Leave it to the dwarves. What would they possibly have done with all this space?

The occupants of the chamber were very numerous. Several dozen deep-violet whelps fluttered about in groups, talking with each other in high-pitched Draconic, or sleeping on little mats of twigs and leaves. A few of them pitched fireballs across the room, aiming for seemingly invisible targets with limited success. Even fewer stopped what they were doing when I walked in to turn around and look at me. There were a few skeletons scattered about, which I recognized as being the bones of stags. In the middle of the chamber laid a gargantuan violet-scaled dragon, with wings folded closely against her back, the white wings lightly tinted with violet as opposed to the complete dark blue of drakes. Her horns, instead of protruding straight back like that of non-Twilight dragons, curved around to nearly fuse at a single point. The six razor-sharp tusks that I knew to be in the back of her jaws were currently retracted, leaving no indication of their presence, and her tail swayed lightly behind her. A bronze disk with arcane energy flowing along it hung by her neck with a bronze chain.

At my entrance, she raised her head, a smile tugging at her jaw. "Amanthe, you made it. You, um, look a bit, well..."

I yawned, placing my hand over my mouth as Selriona pulled up into a sitting position, wings still tight against her back. "Tired. I swear, this heat is like a glass of warm milk."

"Hmm," said Selriona, her two rear tusks extending with a 'shwing', showing thoughtfulness. "Well, let's try this." With that she reared back, retracted her tusks with another 'shwing', took a deep breath, and blew a narrow stream of ice cold air over me.

"Ah!"

"Awake?"

"I am now!" I said, rubbing my hands over my sides to get some warmth back into my body, which the nearby magma already began very well. "Light, how did you get it so cold?"

"You do not want to know. Really, you do not. So, anyway, there's something I wanted to talk to you about."

I rolled my eyes. "No, did you?"

She chuckled. "Yeah, well. We're pretty well established in Grim Batol now. Things are very well set up, our Sanctum and Shrine are under construction, so that means its time we actually started to carry out our charge. That's why I called you here. I need your help for it."

I smiled. This was part of the reason I was here. "So, exactly what does this entail?"

Selriona frowned. "Okay, don't freak out too much. So, you know about Nalestrasza, right?" I nodded. Selriona had told me about her Red counterpart that lived in her mind, who had the ability to manipulate her dreams and, to some extent, her senses. "Well, for the past few months she's been using shared dreams to set up a, ahem, false identity for you, in, um, don't freak out, Orgrimmar."

My heart skipped a beat. "Wait, what?"

"Well, Nalestrasza thinks it'd be a good idea for you to keep watch for corruption in Orgrimmar. Something about getting you used to being neutral in the Horde-Alliance conflict. I hate to agree with her on anything, but she's right."

I grimaced. "I suddenly hate Nalestrasza a lot more. But..." I groaned, the reality of my situation dawning on me. "She has a point. I do have to learn to be neutral. I'm going to have to deal with members of the Horde sooner or later."

"Amanthe, I'm hardly going to - " Selriona whipped her head around, and following her gaze I saw two whelps engaged in a struggle of some sort. "Farliona, get off your brother. He's not a horse," she said in Draconic. Farliona pouted, but took her claws off of the other whelpling, who twisted around, shrieked, and blasted her with a diminutive fireball. The spit of twilight energy sailed past Farliona, who didn't even have to dodge it. Her victim growled at her, and she just chuckled and began speaking with him quickly in Draconic, too quick for me to make out. They engaged in an angry conversation, and Selriona and I both turned back to each other.

"Aren't they going to hurt each other?"

"Not much, no, nothing I can't easily heal."

I raised an eyebrow at her apparent callousness. "You aren't worried about them?"

She rolled her eyes. "My clutch-mates had a lot worse while Valiona watched over us, and none of us died. Anyway, as I was saying. Amanthe, I'm hardly going to force you to do this."

I shook my head. "No, no. Like I said, I'll have to deal with the Horde sooner or later. May as well be sooner."

Selriona sighed. "I really hope you know what you're getting into. You're going to stay there for a few months, maybe a few years, keeping watch for anything that might signal corruption, arcane, Old God, Demonic, or otherwise. Death - Neltharion's been dead for less than two years. I wouldn't be surprised if the Twilight's Hammer was really, really pissed."

"And what happens if I find anything?"

"Tell me. Right away. Even if you aren't sure it is, better safe than sorry. If it looks minor, take care of it. If it looks like something wide-spread, keep tabs on it until we can get a better idea of what it's doing there. Anything that looks out of place, that seems unnatural, could possibly be a sign."

"All right, and how exactly am I not going to get slaughtered by the Horde?" A slight pressure bloomed in my chest, and I struggled to keep the yawn down. To no avail.

"Ah, I'm glad you asked," she said, smiling. Purple mist surrounded her sitting form, obscuring her from my sight. Her children stopped what they were doing to look at the light-show, a couple ooh-ing and aah-ing. When it stopped, the form she had gone under as 'Selria' stood before me. "Grim Batol is HUGE! Lots of things to find here. And I found this," she said, holding up a sphere. It was small enough for her to clench her hands around, violet with the engravings of wyverns and gryphons on it. "An orb of deception. You'll take this, I'll create a portal for you, and use the orb. I've modified it as per Nalestrasza's nagging instructions. You'll turn into a blood elf, and you should get an auto-translator, but the translator may not work one hundred percent of the time. Just keep it on you at all times."

I narrowed my eyes in suspicion at it. "How long would the illusion hold?" I asked. Those things didn't last longer than a few hours, and it took days before it would recharge.

"As long as you need it. Like I said, I've made some modifications."

"So I take this, pretend to be a citizen of the Horde, and keep an eye out for any funny business. Got it."

"That's pretty much the gist of it. Now, you might... want... to..." With that, I felt something come to a rest in my hair.

I froze at the sudden warmth, and sunk into a frown. "Do I want to know?"

"Ialion," she started in Draconic. "Why are you in her hair?"

To my surprise, the voice from above my head spoke in Common. "It sounds like an adventure! Can I go with her, Brood-mother? Please? I like her. She smells nice."

I WHAT?

I felt something tug on my hair sharply as a warm, scaly object slid down the side of my face. "Ow!" I turned to look at the hovering whelpling that had been gripping my hair moments before. Ialion looked at Selriona with big, round eyes.

"Ialion, this is very dangerous. You're only a few months old."

He whined. "Pleeease? She can keep me hidden. It sounds fun!"

"Ialion..." Selriona began. "If I let you go, I'll have to let all your sisters and brothers go too."

He shook his head, opening his mouth to show off a fanged grin. "No you don't!" His grin vanished and he settled back to the sad-puppy-is-hungry-face.

Selriona growled, looked at me, then back at her son. "Ialion..." Said Twilight whelp's eyes were getting bigger and rounder by the second. Letting out an exasperated growl, she turned back to me. "Amanthe, do you think you can keep him hidden?"

Ialion leaped at me, grabbing me with his tiny claws and wrapping his wings around my neck. He turned his head back to his mother. "Yay! Thank you! Don't worry, I'll be careful!"

Unsure of what to do, I gently patted the top of Ialion's head. "I think I can keep him hidden. I know a little trick that'll help me get him in." I yawned again, the warm, soothing heat of the nearby molten rock ebbing into my bones. Ialion got off of me and began flapping in the air. He let out a toothy yawn that was more akin to a shriek. He fluttered away and set down a little distance away on a small nest of twigs and leaves, curling up with his wings wrapped around him and going to sleep.

Selriona turned back to me after watching Ialion go to sleep with a small smile on her human form's face. "You sure you can keep him hidden? I mean, the mortal races as a whole aren't exactly too fond of the color violet right about now. If he got discovered, well... you'd have a lot of explaining to do. Any other Flight, and he'd be left alone. But as it stands, he'd be in a lot of trouble."

"Don't worry, I know exactly what to do. I have this little soothing spell to make people less suspicious, and I can hide him in my pack for going into Orgrimmar." Orgrimmar! my inner voice-of-reason screamed at me. You're going to the capital of the enemy! I shoved it down.

Selriona nodded to me. "Okay, good." With a flash of violet energy, she returned to her true form. "You might want to get some sleep. You look like all hells."

"I look how I feel, then," I said, suppressing another yawn. "I'll start preparing tomorrow. Sleep now."

She nodded. "All right. Here," she blew another river of icy air over me, shoving the exhaustion out of me. "That should help you get back to your cave. Unless you want to sleep here, of course."

I shook my head. "No, I can make it. Thanks for the offer, though." The irony wasn't lost on me. Only a few years ago, she was sleeping in my home. With that, I turned around and began walking back home. My first mission. I was going to do something to help Azeroth. Legitimately help it.

I couldn't wait.

Review, let me know what you think.