Something Dreadful This Way Comes

In the last post , I mentioned the disturbances around Azeroth- unusual earthquakes, fires, droughts, storms. Also, some sort of massive shift in the power of the ley lines, which seems to have strengthened my spellcasting, and others. I was just falling asleep last night after giving some divination lessons in the Sanctuary. Some of the energies of the repeated spell-casting demonstrations must have remained latent within me, because just as I was about go under, I was had a vision of the Destroyer.

It was too terrible, and vivid, to write off as simply a dream. This could only be some kind of warning about Deathwing.

Naturally, as I was in Dalaran, I consulted with my Kirin Tor brothers and sisters. I spoke much with the archmage Rhonin, and the mage Krasus, whom I’d heard had dealt directly with the black dragonflight. Krasus himself being a red dragon, was particularly concerned about it. They told me much of the history of his evil, and we talked at length on the subject of what the meaning of the images could mean.

Deathwing used to be Neltharion, Aspect of Earth, until the whispers of the Old Gods drove him insane. It was when his body became overwhelmed by the power of the Demon Soul- the one that destroyed the first Well of Eternity- that it began to erupt with lava and fire, the essence of which he was formerly the steward of in Azeroth. So he had had goblin fashion metallic plates and hammered them in to his very bone to hold his body together. (They also told me that what I saw was confusing to them. They’d thought that the plates on his body had already been applied over 10,000 years ago in the time of the War of the Ancients, which incidentally, the two had been there for, by goblins. But those in the vision did not look like goblins. Who were they?) This is what I was seeing, they said. As they do so he slams into the walls of his cavern, oddly causing the earth to shake and break. And he finally makes the world break when he emerges to reign fire.

And they told me the stories of the twilight dragon flight in Grim Batol, which I’d already faced in the Ruby Sanctum. It was indeed a brazen attack and a massacre in that place. Halion, the Twilight Dragon in command that we defeated, called himself the Herald of the Deathwing.

And his words:

Pain. Agony. My hatred burns through the cavernous deeps. The world heaves with my torment. Its wretched kingdoms quake beneath my rage. But at last the whole of Azeroth will break, and all will burn beneath the shadow of my wings.

To me he seems...vengeful, full of spite. Unsurprising, but still...I do not quite understand where his hatred comes from. From what they told me, all of his pain and agony and torment physically are of his own doing. But then, he is corrupted by the Old Gods. Tormented by them in his mind, long before he inflicted this pain on himself, perhaps. I almost pity him. I can’t say that I know what that is like. And now he wants to take out his fate on the rest of us. I sense this time of peace after the Lich King’s fall will be over very soon.

Odd...in that way he is much like our newly old foe, Arthas, wanting the world to suffer because he did. Yet, in some way, I fear this more. Arthas wanted something in particular from us. He had a story to tell us. He wanted us to understand him, and wanted our pity, twisted though his methods and ruminations were. He asked the spirit of his father “Is it over?” just before he took his last breath. In moments of reflection, I sometimes believe that Arthas wanted to be defeated. From his words and his appearance, all I can tell is that Deathwing simply wishes to live up to his long-held title of Destroyer. And make no mistake- he has the power to do it.

All three of us, sitting here floating above the world, sensed the unmistakably ominous portents of recent events and my vision. All we were able to figure out was that none of this was good.