Fic: This tumbling storm [2/2]

[reikah]

Title: This tumbling storm [2/2]
Fandom: Tsubasa/WoW
Author: reikah
Pairing: Kuro/Fai/Yuui
Rating: light R? IDEK.
Word Count: 17,337
Notes: In which I take hard'n'fast liberties with the events of the Cataclysm intro event, lols. I recommend watching this trailer to get a visual of the big bad too!

← part 1

He was in his bakery after hours when the earth bucked and heaved, so violently he was flung off his feet. Without thinking he threw up a wall of ice, and in good time, because the ceiling beams were splintering as the floor kept quaking and pitching and the roof finally cracked and fell only to be deflected harmlessly from the ice shield over his head. Furniture and masonry rained down around him, his belongings scattering themselves as his home fell apart, and as the walls toppled he looked up into a sky that was the red of fire and of blood.

"Spellweaver, no," Yuui mouthed, horrified.

Distantly he could hear piercing screams, the cracking of further buildings falling. The shaking earth still hadn't settled, but he tried to climb to his feet three times, only to be knocked down each time by another vicious tremor. The mage tower down the street from him was waving side to side like a palm tree, the stone spiral walkway ringing it that had weathered years of apprentice mages and their boisterous antics collapsing and crumpling away as the earthquake ripped the city to shreds.

It took him a few seconds to notice after the first shocks stopped, and then the sound of collapsing buildings in the background faded. There was a strange magic seeping over the city, pouring over the crevices between the smoking ruins of buildings, and he raised his head and sniffed.

Elemental magic.

Something was really badly wrong here.

"Yuui-san! Yuui-san!" Sakura was haring down the road toward him, Syaoran hot on her heels; they were streaked with dust and dirt but seemed otherwise uninjured. "Oh, thank the Light!" She skidded to her knees in a motion that was guaranteed to sting later and threw her arms around his shoulders, and he embraced her back.

"You're both okay?" he asked, checking, and Syaoran nodded.

"Master Mallin sent us out to help before the aftershocks hit," he said, grimly. "We're setting up evacuation portals, sending people to safety. There's bad magic here."

"We came to find you," Sakura said anxiously. "Now you're here we can -"

"I'm staying," said Yuui, groping for his cane.

"Yuui-san, it's very dangerous," Syaoran said, raising his head. Storm clouds were rolling in over the harbor, and they didn't feel natural. He dropped into a wary position, raising his wizard's staff. "Sakura, careful! The mist -"

Mist was rising up from the ground, and Yuui set a hand on Sakura's shoulder and forced her behind him as it coalesced into a vaguely humanoid shape. A water elemental, set and bound here for one reason only, by a hostile force. "Yuui-san!" Sakura said, grimly, "You have to flee! It's dangerous here!"

"And you two are just apprentices," Yuui said. "First years at that. No."

The water elemental turned toward them ponderously, although how Yuui could sense its direction always confused him. It wasn't like it had eyes. Formed of swirling water, it towered above the three of them, and reeked of power.

Yuui brought his hands together and sucked in a slow breath, and then unleashed a roiling wave of arcane energy from the palm of his hand; the missiles slammed into the elemental and sloughed chunks out of its 'body,' sending sprays of water flying against the wall behind it. It reeled, and he finished it off with a directed cone of ice that froze its very core, shattering and littering the area with solid chunks of elemental. There would be others though, of that he was confident. "Sakura!" he ordered. "Set up that evacuation portal. Syaoran, we have to find civilian survivors."

"Yuui, you're... a mage?" Sakura said, staring at the shards of elemental, and Yuui nodded and flashed her a quick smile.

"Have been for some time," he said, "But now really isn't the time. Portal please, Sakura, there are people trapped under the masonry."

"Oh!" Her lips moved as she began the incantation, and the portal grew between her palms; she anchored it neatly between the ruins of Yuui's walls, using a physical locus to hold it as smart mages were trained to do. Syaoran gripped her wrist firmly.

"We'll be back soon," he said, his eyes on her face. "Keep it open."

"I'll wait for you," she whispered, and Yuui caught a glimpse of the way they were looking at each and turned away to grant them some privacy.

"Come on," he said, and Syaoran fell into step behind him without looking back.

It was exhausting work. Storm elementals had arrived too, following on the heels of the thunder clouds, and it felt like for every one Yuui killed there were two more, and they all put up one hell of a fight. Syaoran darted into the remains of buildings while he took on the monsters, shouting at the survivors to run for freedom if they could and helping them carry out others who couldn't; they were in miserable shape, and many were bleeding or dazed.

"I was making lunch," one woman said, blood sheeting down her face from a head wound while she grabbed at Syaoran's hand. "I was making lunch and then the wall came in..."

"You're going to be fine," Syaoran said, his eyes blazing seriously. "I'll take you to the bakery, there'll be a portal waiting there to get you to safety. Healers will be on the other side, okay?"

"Light bless you," she said, and Yuui covered their retreat back to the portal with flashing magic that burned and froze. The elementals seemed more intent on property damage than civilians, and Yuui supposed whoever had set them upon Stormwind wished it destroyed for good. The horde, perhaps? He doubted it, for while the horde venerated shamanism this kind of destruction was not their style. They favored open combat above sneaky assaults, or at least, the orcs did. And he couldn't see Warchief Thrall abusing his gift in this manner.

Once he was satisfied they'd saved all they could they grabbed Sakura and moved onto the next district, which happened to be the park, and from there to the Cathedral district where the Archbishop himself was leading the rescue efforts, and this time Syaoran held the evacuation portal open while Sakura hunted the trapped citizens. The elementals died easily, but then again Yuui was no ordinary dragon; and the damage they were doing to the city's infrastructure could not be underestimated. Yuui's bad feeling hadn't gone away, however, and in fact it was just getting worse; the aftershocks kicked in while he was fending several of the slave elementals under the shadow of the cathedral.

By the time the last elemental had been driven from the city Yuui's chest was heaving with the effort of breathing. He hadn't used magic like that for decades, and he was drenched from head to toe from holding them off. Syaoran was squatting on the ground next to him, his brown bangs plastered to his face; he thumbed them miserably out of the way as he heaved in air. Sakura was leaning against him, looking similarly weak, and Yuui dropped a hand to their heads in gratitude as he tried to recover. The sky was still blood red, but the attacks had slowed.

"I have never been this tired," Syaoran mumbled, and Sakura made a small noise of agreement. Yuui glanced down at his adopted humans and grinned wearily.

"You did well," he said, and turned at the crunch of approaching boots; Jaina was making her way toward him, climbing awkwardly over the wreckage. "You look exhausted," he said, and she pulled a rueful face.

"That was some impressive magic, Mr. Flowright," she said, and he grimaced. He'd seen her at work, across the canals that separated the districts. "King Wrynn wants to speak with you and the Archbishop in the trade district."

Yuui raised his head, sniffing at the air. There was still something... wrong... like the world was about to change... his stomach was still tight with tension, and he decided to go with it. "Sakura, Syaoran, get yourselves out of the city," he said. "See if you can find a senior mage and have him open a portal to somewhere not... here. I recommend Dalaran."

Jaina paused. "You don't think this is over?"

"I think this was just the prelude," Yuui offered, and she nodded. With a weary groan the kids helped each other stand up, and after a minor whispered discussion they opened one last portal and went through it; Yuui watched until the last light of their portal winked out, and then followed Jaina as fast as his leg would take him. The archbishop declined, insisting he was needed in the cathedral to treat the wounded, and neither of them argued with him; Yuui had lost his stick and without it walking was an effort. Jaina noticed, and without comment she passed him her staff. He took it gratefully.

"It's strange," Jaina said, after a pause, "To see a dragon so thoroughly outcast from his society due to a missing leg. Forgive me if I am being insensitive, but is it not possible to travel on three?"

"We have six limbs," he reminded her as they clumped over the bridge leading to the trade district. A night elven adventurer sitting astride a huge saber cat came barreling past them, but neither he nor the Lady Proudmoore flinched. "I am missing my leg in this shape because it's the closest human analogy to my wing in my true form."

She nodded, and looked up at the sky. "That colour troubles me," she said. "The elemental invasion, the resurgence of this 'twilight cult,' even the black dragons have been more active of late. And that earthquake..."

"It wasn't natural," he said, and she hummed agreement.

"The shaman of the Earthen Ring sent a delegation here," she said, and paused. "They are very worried by something. Did you know Thrall resigned his post?"

"The horde's Warchief?" Yuui asked, surprised, and she nodded tersely.

"He decided to be a shaman before a leader. I received the news this morning, and I was here to notify the King when the earthquake happened. If... whatever this is, if Thrall felt the danger was so great it required his personal intervention that cannot be good."

A rainbow-colored swirl of arcane energy formed in the air before her, and puzzled she reached out and pinched it between her thumb and forefinger, closing her eyes as it sank into her skin. Yuui said nothing, recognizing a magical message when it was being delivered, and a few seconds later her eyes flew open and she gasped.

"That was one of my subordinates in Theramore," she said. "Something dreadful has happened to the Barrens - the land itself has fissured, I must speak to the King..."

Yuui nodded and pushed himself faster. They were almost there, at any rate. Some of the bridges spanning the canals had collapsed, but the one between the Cathedral district and the trade district was still intact, and when they rounded the corner he found himself wincing at the extent of the damage. Shops he had frequented lay in splinters, their owners missing; half the roof of the bank had collapsed, and the auction house was little more than smoldering splinters. A young draenei mage was channeling an ice storm on it, presumably to put out the fire; she inclined her head at Jaina when she approached.

"Your ladyship," she said.

"Did everyone get out in time?" Jaina inquired, biting her bottom lip, and the draenei made the diagonal head-jerk accompanied with a downwards flick of her tail that was her species' equivalent of a nod.

"Someone had smuggled a core hound in here and it panicked. The fire should be out soon. The King is near the Valley of Heroes with the shaman of the Earthen Ring."

Jaina inclined her head in gratitude and continued, and Yuui was swept into her wake. The weapon smith’s shop was mostly intact, but several bodies had been laid out in front of it with cloaks covering them. Some of the corpses were very small, and he couldn't see whether they were gnomes or children. A priestess dressed in exquisite armor was kneeling on the ground in front of an upturned tree, her hands cupping the face of an unconscious dwarf and her skin glowing as she worked her healing magics.

King Wrynn was a big man, filled with an almost... feral kind of energy. He was with a draenei woman at the gate that lead to the long Valley that marked Stormwind's entrance; over his head, Deathwing's son Nefarion's decaying skull swung gently from the chains that held it up, and Yuui shuddered discretely. Time and some very persistent scavengers had picked most of the ebon hide off the grisly war-trophy, and the head could have belonged to almost any dragon.

The draenei was the one who noticed them; she inclined her head briefly at Jaina rather than the bow an ordinary member of the alliance would have offered her. As a member of the Earthen Ring she was outside the usual etiquette boundaries, and she knew it. "Greetings, Lady Proudmoore," she said in a velvety voice. "Who is your companion?"

"This is Yuigos," Jaina said, and Yuui bowed his head to both the shaman and the human King.

The King snorted. "The blue dragon you insisted I needed to tolerate? What use is he? Are the blues shaman, now?"

Yuui shook his head and tightened his grip on Jaina's staff. His leg was sore and he was very tired, but the tightness of his stomach and the building pressure in his skull refused to release him. "I am a magician and a scholar, King Wrynn, like most of the blue flight," he said, as politely as he could. "I have been fending off the elementals in your city to keep my friends safe."

"Several of your kind were friends with mages, before they started kidnapping and coercing them into working for them," Wrynn snarled, and Yuui sighed. Wrynn's hatred of dragons in disguise was understandable, given what Nefarion's sister Onyxia had gotten up to before she had been discovered.

"This is not the time, if you will pardon me for saying so," the shaman interjected. "Greetings Yuigos, I am Earthcaller Nalaa."

She held out her long, four-fingered hand, and Yuui extended his own and shook it. Thus introduced, she continued briskly. "This earthquake was not natural. It was caused, as far as we shaman can tell, by a violent upheaval in the planes between worlds. In short, though a weak spot in this dimension, the plane of Earth briefly touched the mortal plane. We believe something passed over while they were in such close proximity to each other."

"Something? What thing?" Jaina asked, frowning, and the Earthcaller shrugged.

"We don't know," she said. "Something powerful. We don't think it was the Stonemother herself, but it was something very strong indeed, with a powerful affinity for Earth magics. It is likely that all the earthquakes we have been suffering recently were a result of this thing, whatever it is, struggling to get free."

Yuui felt that tension knotting up his stomach freeze, and his spine stiffened slowly. "Earthcaller," he said, very slowly and very carefully, annunciating each word with care, "Your people have been on our world of Azeroth for less than five years, is that so?"

She tilted her head curiously, her face tendrils waving and her tail swishing impatiently, and scraped a hoof along the ground. "Yes," she said, and with a bit of bite in her voice added, "I assure you I am no stranger to the control and manipulation of elemental magics during periods of stress. During Draenor's final days, I and my fellow shaman spent a great deal of time attempting to keep the earth itself knitted together. I can assure you these disruptions are not on the same scale as that."

Yuui shook his head, his heart pounding against his ribs, and looked up at the red sky, black clouds scudding across the horizon. Was it just fear creating the faint scent of burning? "No, not that. How much time have you spent around my kin?"

"Dragons? Not much. Our interests rarely coincide."

He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes, and behind them he saw his flight spread out wingtip to wingtip, felt the shockwave of the lance of fire. He had been clipped by the blow, nothing more, and yet it had been sufficient to melt the flesh of his wing, sending him plummeting from the sky, and if Fai hadn't caught him he didn't know what would have happened. "You know that there are five colors, I assume," he said. "My kind, whose dominion is that of magic; the greens, who oversee the druidic spells of nature; the reds who are in charge of life, and the bronzes who watch over time and protect it from meddling?"

She nodded impatiently, but Jaina was the one who added, "And the black dragon flight. We remember, Yuigos, you do not have to lecture us just because we are mortal."

Yuui turned and glanced up at the sky. "I'm sorry," he said, absently. "You're right, I'm being condescending, it's just... the black dragons used to be in charge of the earth itself, Lady Proudmoore, and their aspect was known as the Earthwarder."

She got it. He heard her shocked, stifled gasp, and King Wrynn grunted a little. The Earthcaller's tail twisted in the manner he knew meant 'I don't understand,' in her kind's body language. "He's talking about Deathwing the destroyer," Wrynn said, and turned, signaling one of the knights working in the valley, who rode up. "General!"

"My liege?"

"Take the seventh legion to the civilians outside the gate and get them under cover. In the mines of Elwyn if you have to. Now!"

"Sir," the knight said dubiously, but saluted. Wrynn turned to Jaina, scowling.

"I'm notifying the mages in the other cities," she said, her fingers working; reels of purple light spewed from their tips, curling into fantastical shapes before fading away. "And my friends in the neutral cities, I - oh!"

A scarlet sphere had formed in front of her, blinking violently. She cupped it in her palms, her lips parting. "It's from - it's from Fizzlewixx, one of the mages I know in Ironforge, I -"

"He's coming," said Yuui, because he could smell it on the air. Old magics and iron and fire, and the scent of the earth after the rain. He shrugged off his jacket and let it drop, limping over to one of the great statues that decorated the Valley of Honor, and climbed awkwardly onto its pedestal to try and see over the wall; Wrynn watched him with narrowed eyes. "He's coming from the north, I -"

"The dam, he broke the dam," Jaina said, the scarlet light in her palms sputtering in and out. "He's headed south through Blackrock near as they can tell, we don't -"

Wrynn drew his sword, the steel ringing as he slid them free of the scabbards, and leapt up onto the pedestal next to Yuui. "Fine," he said, ferociously. "If this is how I end, so be it, as long as my citizens are safe. They're just outside the gate."

Yuui nodded wearily and expended a little bit of his own magic. It sparkled and fizzed from his fingers, and if Arygos was watching then fuck him, Yuui had no time for these games. The Betrayer approaches, he wrote. Help.

He sent it to Wyrmrest, a scarlet ribbon that flew North unerringly over the wall, and said, "I'll distract him."

"You?" Wrynn demanded. "One dragon? I remember it took all four Aspects to chase him away during the second war, what can you do?"

"What I have to," Yuui said, and closed his eyes. "Stand back." He didn't check whether or not they obeyed, concentrating on coaxing out an old magic he hadn't touched for many, many long years, a magic that called to a shape he hadn't assumed for ten millennia.

His clothes changed with him, of course; they were formed out of magic just for that reason. His prosthetic was a physical thing carved of wood and rod and leather, and the straps snapped as his leg grew, and when it finished forming all that remained of the faithful device was a flattened heap of wood and bent metal support rods. Yuui would have felt worse about that, if he had thought he would survive this. He stretched all four legs out and his tail, and unfurled one long flawless wing of such delicate make it almost appeared translucent, only to keel to the side involuntarily at the lack of counter-balance. The stub of his other wing was black and cracked, the membrane burned clear away in a temperature so hot the remaining scraps of bone had melted into strange shapes. Yuui folded his wing to his back and snaked his head around to nose at the broken little remnant sadly; it was uglier than the stump of his leg was in his other shape.

"By the Light," Jaina said, sounding shocked. As well she might. He was the probably the first crippled dragon she'd seen. "Yuigos, how... how can you distract him with that... with that?"

"You emptied out the barracks, right?" he said. "If I can just get him to the park - I can reach the harbor, I bet he can't swim as well as I can."

He didn't believe that - or rather, he did, but he didn't think he'd make it to the park. Wrynn scowled at him but nodded, and he knew the man had arrived at roughly the same conclusion he had.

"You're not -" he started to say, and that was when Jaina hissed and pointed, and they all raised their heads to see, far away and very high up, the fire bloom with the black v in the centre, seemingly tiny but really so far away. Yuui's claws spasmed against the stone, his wing and ruff flaring in instinctive reaction to danger. Make yourself bigger, scare them off.

Oh, my wing.

"Get going," he said, and paused and then added, for politeness' sake, "Your majesty. Your citizens need you."

The King frowned but jerked his head and turned away, yanking his cloak around him, and Jaina swallowed and called, "Yuigos?"

"Just Yuui," he said, eyes fixed on that approaching v that was growing by the second, the dread scarlet flames that followed in its wake like carrion crows...

"If you want to distract him, I recommend that," and when he glanced at her she was pointing past him to the dangling dragonhead, swinging in the fiery breeze by its chains under the archway. Yuui lowered the edge of his wing, cocking his head to one side. Nefarion's jaws were parted, and most of his tongue lolled out between them; his hide might be gone but his horns were his father's...

"Thank you," he said quietly, and she bit her lip and nodded at him before heading after Varian, toward the people in the forest depending on them.

He flipped his sole wing tightly to his back and carefully made his way over the archway beneath which Nefarion's head was suspended; his claws severed the chains easily, and he gathered several of them up in his jaws, letting the disgusting prize hang from his mouth. Maybe the sight of his prized son's severed skull would enrage Deathwing enough to let Jaina and Varian round up as many citizens as they could and get them out.

Deathwing flew in low and dangerous from the sea, coming within feet of crashing into the cathedral before giving one mighty flap of his wings and rising into the air, crashing onto the towers like a meteor. His feet burned, melting stone into indentations on the towers, and he reared back and drew in one great colossal breath, expending it in a mighty roar that shattered stone and sent debris whipping into the air. Yuui watched him do it quietly, and then dropped Nefarion's head onto the ground before the Destroyer with a jangle of chains.

"This trash belonged to you, I think," he said, allowing disgust to seep through his voice, and Neltharion's burning eyes crossed as he tried to focus on the small object down the length of his massive maw. His lower jaw was gone - destroyed in the explosion that had nearly wiped out Yuui's kin, or simply rotted like the massive dragon's body had - and something, some lackey or minion, had sculpted him a new one out of a sheet of viciously sharp angular metal.

"You dare," the destroyer breathed, in a deep voice brassy and rumbling and dripping with threat, and Yuui raised a paw and batted Nefarion's decapitated head towards his father. Most of him wanted to run and hide; his scales were tingling like they were trying to drop off, and his instincts desperately urged him to try to buy his life by flattening himself to the ground to show he submitted. He supposed that would make evasion easier. Neltharion climbed off the gate, and he was even bigger than Yuui remembered, ten times Yuui's own size; he spread his massive wings, their undersides aglow with the fires of his own body.

I'm going to die, Yuui thought, winching his one wing in close. I'm going to die here.

Well, that was to be expected. He should have died ten thousand years ago when Neltharion first turned. He shouldn't be here now; Fai had saved him and he had been living on borrowed time, and if he could just keep this monster distracted, if he could just buy time, that would be an adequate repayment for his extra years.

"I remember you," Neltharion boomed, angling his head to rake Yuui over with one blazing, insane eye. "One of Malygos' twin whelps. How dare you confront me? You are impure!"

"Because someone had to," Yuui said. "Because I'm what you're worth."

Neltharion let out an explosive snarl at this and reared his head back, and Yuui shifted his weight onto his back legs. Now, he thought, while he monologues his madness, and when Neltharion's jaws parted he reared back and spat a concentrated blast of ice right into Deathwing's face. He took off so fast his claws scored marks in the stone cobbles of the Valley's walkway, and he ducked under one of the twisted aspect's wings and shot right past him, booking it as best he could. Behind him Deathwing shrieked in fury so loudly stone cracked.

He skidded through the tunnels of the gate house and pounded into the empty trade district as a concentrated blast of fire battered the stone behind him, scorching it cherry-red; the same fire he'd lost his wing to, only this time it was aimed directly at him and not his father. When Deathwing leaped back on top of the wall to find him again he heard the masonry crunch, and concentrated all his energy on bolting for safety. The park was on the other side of the stockades from here, if he could just -

"You think you can hide from me?" Deathwing roared. "You think you can run from me? I will teach you the meaning of suffering!"

Yuui leaped cleanly over the smashed ruins of the pawnshop and hauled himself on top of the curtain wall that ringed the trade district. His claws scrabbled desperately for contact, but he made it and cleared the canal to the mage district in a single leap, right as Deathwing smashed through the wall behind him.

The cobblestones of the mage district that had been his home for so many years were slicker and smoother than the others in the city, and he skidded ungracefully on them as he tried to turn; he lost his footing and crashed right through a trader's cart, sending bits of wood flying. He righted himself quickly, and then felt a fresh wave of terror pound through him at the noise like sailcloth unfurling; Deathwing was taking to the air. Taking his chances, he called upon the magic in his blood, and dredged up the last of his resources to blink between planes, materializing again twenty yards ahead as a blast of hyper charged fire rendered the spot where he had been into nothing but slag.

There was another canal between the mage district and the park, and that was where his 'blink' spell dumped him, with his back half wedged in the canal and his front legs splayed out across the sidewalk that ran along it on the park side. Desperately Yuui hauled himself up and thanked the Light and Malygos that the park was a newer district, and that instead of a stone curtain wall it was ringed by wooden houses. He sent a blast of arcane energy ahead of him that shattered a hole in the homes just wide enough for him to squeeze through.

The grass of the park grounds was much better under his claws than the slippery stone and brick elsewhere had been, and he put his head down, bulling his way desperately north-west toward the sea. Behind him Deathwing landed so hard the world shook, and he lost his footing at the impact, knocked sideways into a black of houses; wood splintered and glass shattered as he took out their walls.

"Pathetic," Deathwing sneered. "One crippled blue dragon thinks he can flee from me? There is no place on this earth that you would be safe, little fool. I know all the secret places of the earth!"

Yuui struggled to stand, dimly aware that one blast from Deathwing's breath and he would end here. His desperate flailing just succeeded in sending his back leg smashing through another wooden wall, and he couldn't draw it out. Trapped, he thought, trapped, I -

The corrupted aspect snorted. "Behold," he said, and the world exploded, violent shaking knocking the breath out of Yuui; the ground beneath him slanted - an earthquake, a localized one, the walls around him were shattering and the ground was tilting and bricks and wood flew everywhere, he desperately tucked his only wing against him to try and keep it safe and -

Water, everywhere. He instinctively blinked his second eyelids across and shook his head, glancing around. The harbor, he was in the harbor, Deathwing had destroyed the park and knocked him free... his paws hit the muddy bottom and he pushed upward, shooting for the surface, and when he reached it spread his wing out to serve as a flotation device. Deathwing was hovering awkwardly in place over the ruins of the park, which were black and twisted and shattered. Where grass had been now there was a scorched crater. As if sensing the movement in the water, the dragon turned and looked at him, and Yuui sucked in a breath and folded his wing, diving back under.

The water rippled around him and he flicked his wing, angling it try and help propel him onward as he struck out toward the deeper sea, and he was aware of the shadow falling over him as the aspect of death flew low over the water. He rolled onto his back to glare up out at the surface. Deathwing was hovering over the water, and it was hard to tell with the refraction but Yuui thought he looked even angrier than he had before. Water's not so easy for you when you're made of magma, he thought, stretching his tail out to try and get some more surface area to propel himself forward. Deathwing's eyes narrowed and he drew in a breath; fire ignited at the back of his throat, and Yuui sent out a last desperate pulse of magic, calling upon the water itself, and cocooned himself in the block of ice right as Neltharion's fiery breath thundered forth.

It seemed to go on forever. He lost sight of the bigger dragon as the water began to boil, great roiling clouds of steam howling upward, and frantically tried to draw in coldness from further away to help his ice block hold as he felt the outer layers begin to melt. When he thought it was over - when the frenetic bubbling had slowed and the great fiery breath ceased - he dared suck in a breath only to realize Deathwing was doing the same.

I can't hold it, he thought, and beneath the shield closed both sets of his eyelids in frustration. I can't hold it. I'm sorry, Fai.

It was hard to write a spell with the aspect of death doing his level best to charbroil you alive, but Yuui scribbled out the barest lines of a messenger spell in glowing blue there, under the water. After thinking about it for a half-second, he addressed it to Kurogane. Don't let Fai do anything ridiculous, he wrote. It felt trite and too short, but his reserves had been drained before he began, and despite the ice the water was warming, and he had held out for as long as he could. Pathetic crippled dragon, indeed. The great dark shadow of Deathwing's wings blotted out the sun, and he stared up at his killer, willing up the courage to drop the ice block and surface for a quick death rather than boil slowly under the water.

Just before he did it, however, he became aware that there was something... wrong with Deathwing's silhouette above the waves. He seemed to have sprouted a smaller pair of wings from his shoulders, and that... that wasn't...

He never knew quite what happened. There was a flicker-flash of blue light that shorted out the hellish red of Deathwing's fire, and then the fire stopped and didn't resume; he blinked away the after images and saw the former aspect twist his head, blurred as he was through the steam.

And then Deathwing turned away.

He turned away, his great wings beating slowly through the air, his head twisting on its neck as he followed something out of Yuui's line of sight; and then he moved, no longer hovering over the water but chasing something else. Just in time, too; Yuui's ice block winked out, and he opened his jaws in a silent scream under the waves as the heat of the water hit him. It was worse than being in a cook pot; the boiling, scalding water got in under his scales and stayed there, and he had to get out, and he thrashed wildly screwing his eyes shut to keep them safe -

Something seized hold of him roughly and sunk into his shoulder, claws stabbing into flesh as they yanked him harshly along, and as he began to black out he could only hope it was friendly.

He couldn't have been out long, because when he opened his eyes, Deathwing was still hovering over the simmering waters of the harbor. The difference was, he was in combat with another dragon than Yuui, and one more familiar to Yuui than his own reflection.

Fai had always been a graceful flyer, and in this he was no exception. He spun and twisted through the air, spirally high and then folding his wings to whistle out from the sky and pelt Deathwing with a concentrated bomb of arcane energy before rocketing right past him. Yuui jerked his head up and winced as his body screamed at him.

"Would you hold still for five fucking minutes," said a gruff voice next to him, and he rolled one eye sideward to see Kurogane in his true shape, a thin band of black around his scarlet-scaled throat, as the red dragon lowered his head and breathed out a blast of healing flames. Yuui yelped; it felt like his scales were being seared off to reveal new ones underneath. It was healing, but it wasn't painless or pleasant.

"Fai," he said, and his claws twitched reflexively in - dirt? He had been towed to the beach?

"Yeah, I'll go help that scrawny idiot if you'll give me three titan-damned seconds," Kurogane snapped. "Shut up and hold still. I'm pretty fucking mad at you."

Yuui huffed out a slow breath, but couldn't tear his eyes away from the scene in front of him. Fai ducked and dived, dodged and danced, and for all Deathwing's size and power he couldn't land a hit on Fai. Fai wasn't doing much damage to him - his hide was too thick for that - but he was sure pissing Neltharion off.

"What were you thinking?" Kurogane demanded, and Yuui thudded his head onto the dirt of the beach and let his eyes droop half-way closed. "You some kind of idiot?"

"So you've often told me," Yuui said, and Kurogane growled low and thunderous. "Please go help Fai, Kurogane, I can't - I'm fine."

"Yeah, and you're going to get it in the neck later," Kurogane said, and climbed to his paws, stretching his wings out. Kurogane was one of the biggest dragons Yuui knew, almost twice his size and almost as big as Deathwing himself. "Your brother is going to murder you."

Yuui said nothing, and after a second Kurogane hunched down and then leapt into the air, his wings flashing as he beat them, and he cannonballed into Deathwing with none of Fai's acrobatics or subtlety, claws digging in and teeth flashing as he tried to pry off some of the metal plates hammered all over Deathwing's body. The larger dragon roared and thrashed, but Kurogane was stubborn and Fai was still sending flashing, blinding bolts of magic at Deathwing's face and eyes.

Neltharion was too powerful for the two of them to hope to defeat straight-up, but with a combined assault, Yuui could see that they were getting to him. Kurogane tore vicious rents in his flesh and Yuui winced, hoping that the lava Deathwing was seemingly composed of didn't burn the red dragon's claws; if it did, Kurogane gave no sign. Fai hit a wing particularly hard, and the older dragon seemed to have had it.

"Enough!" he roared, snapping at Kurogane and missing as he dodged. Fai soared down at him in a steep dive, and this time instead of going for a minor pulse of arcane energy he hit Deathwing hard from behind, landing at the base of the larger dragon's neck with all the force he could muster. On a smaller dragon it would have been a killing blow; as it was, Deathwing shrieked and shook himself wildly, managing to shake Kurogane free. "Enough! I will not indulge your pitiful struggles any longer!" he snarled.

"Yeah, I would run away if I were you," Kurogane growled, righting himself midair with strokes of his powerful wings. Fai back winged violently and began circuits again, looping Deathwing and picking up speed as he did so. "Wyrmrest was notified. The others are coming for you, Betrayer. Alex and Ysera and the others. You gonna stick around?"

Deathwing glared at him, his wings stroking fire into the air, and then he arched his neck. "I would," he snarled, spite and malice riding in his voice, "I would stay and exact vengeance upon those who called themselves my sisters, but my masters forbid it! The hour of twilight will fall, whelps, and when it does I shall have your broken bodies as toys!"

"Yeah yeah," Kurogane said. "Heard it before."

Neltharion narrowed his eyes and closed his jaws, and then grinned, cruelly. "Before I leave," he said, in a silky voice, "A parting gift."

Underneath Yuui's claws the ground began to quiver, and he stood up slowly, alarmed. With a roar Kurogane lunged at Deathwing, who simply twisted out of the way; a shimmer in the air marked a portal which he vanished though. Fai tackled Kurogane midair before he could vanish through it, and the two of them tumbled together through the sky, a flashing ball of scarlet and blue. Yuui stepped carefully away from the water's edge, casting a glance around the landscape; and suddenly there was a noise and a bronze dragon was hovering perfectly neatly over the harbor where Deathwing had been just moments before, a cowled humanoid sitting atop her back. Fai and Kurogane disengaged shortly before they hit the water's surface, and Fai flew to Yuui's side, crouching over him protectively, while Kurogane flew up toward the bronze dragon. She greeted him with a happy little bugle.

"Hi," she said, cheerfully. "This is a mess, isn't it? Or was it? I never remember when I am. Oh! This is the incoming tidal wave, right? How fun!"

She glided into the docks, and the man on her back leaped off as soon as she touched down, pulling his cowl off. Yuui's nostrils flared as he got a good whiff of orc over the scents of four different dragons and of burning. He had never personally seen the... former Warchief of the horde, but Thrall was recognizable anywhere. He's not here as a member of the horde, he reminded himself. He's here as a shaman.

The King wasn't going to like this.

"Chronormu," said the bronze dragon to Kurogane happily as he followed her in to land. "Chromie for short. Nozdormu sent me from the future. Or is that 'will send me'? Of course, from my perspective it's in the past along my own timeline, so this is something that has happened, is happening, and will happen!"

"Great," Kurogane said, with a sigh. Yuui sympathized; talking to the bronze dragon flight was confusing on a good day. Thrall ignored his audience and walked to the edge of the receding water, pulling a small totem from his belt as he did so; he threw it down and held his hands out, palms-out as though trying to push the impeding tidal wave down.

"Nozdormu said to tell you that this is cheating, but it was a cheat that was going to happen all along, so it's okay within the timestream," Chromie continued earnestly, as Thrall begun to mutter under his breath. "Having Stormwind get wiped off the map just now would mess up too many things that still need to happen, so I brought along someone to make sure it doesn't happen! Personally I wanted to tell you that you will do great. Have done great. Either way!"

"Spirits of Earth and Water," Thrall murmured, shamanistic magic swirling around him, so strong Yuui could feel tingles down his spine, "Heed my call..."

"Are you alright?" Fai asked, nudging at his shoulder, and Yuui huffed out quietly.

"I hurt," he said, simply, "But yes. I'll be alright, I think."

"Good," said Fai. "I'd hate for you to be ill when I murder you."

Yuui chuckled softly. "Kurogane said you were going to do that."

Fai snaked his head down and butted it hard against his shoulder. "For good reason," he admonished. "Yuui, what were you thinking?"

Yuui hesitated, and then said, in a small voice, "I wanted to protect the people. I... I like this place, Fai. Nobody cares about my leg."

"Your wing, you mean," Fai replied, sounding confused. "Yuui, I don't care about that, neither does Kuro-scarlet -"

"Would you knock it off with those fucking nicknames in front of... of people?" Kurogane snapped, landing heavily on Yuui's other side and gesturing at Chromie with a paw, and Fai snorted.

"Kuro-red, Kuro-rose, Kuro-pink-when-he-blushes -"

Kurogane snapped at him, but Fai danced away, his tongue lolling in a dragon-grin. "Idiot, stop getting side-tracked," he growled, and turned cool red eyes on Yuui. "Didn't you have something else you wanted to say?"

Yuui closed his eyes and nodded. His mates were large and solid on either side, and he hurt, and he let himself list slightly toward Fai. He should change back to human, he knew, to keep the sight of his damaged wing from them, but he was so tired... "I'm glad you came for me," he said, his tongue tangled in his mouth. "I thought I was going to die."

Fai nudged him, uncharacteristically serious. "I would never leave you to that fate," he said, fiercely. "Yuui, I'm sorry I didn't get here sooner. I was afraid... You took a serious risk."

"It worked, though," Kurogane pointed out. "Kudos, kid."

"Kuro-silly, you're the youngest of all three of us by nearly seven thousand years," Fai replied teasingly, and Kurogane showed him his teeth.

"I'm also apparently the least crazy," he said, and Yuui huffed out a bark of laughter.

Fai tucked his feet underneath himself, settling down on the harbor bank next to Yuui, and spread his wing, covering Yuui like a blanket. "It's okay now, though," he said. "You're alive. We'll get you back to Wyrmrest, and you can relax -"

"No," Yuui said, half-asleep.

Fai paused. "No?" he repeated, uncertainly.

"I'm staying here," Yuui said. "This is my home, Fai. I lost my bakery, I'll... I'll have to oversee its reconstruction. And I need to find my humans and make sure they're okay, and see to the rebuilding..."

"Yuui..." Fai breathed, and with a grunt Kurogane settled on Yuui's other side, his long tail curling around and gently tangling itself together with Yuui's. The huge red dragon was a source of warm, and Yuui let his head loll towards him; Kurogane nudged at his shoulder.

"You're practically dead on your feet," he said. "Tell you what, I'll ask Tomoyo to get her elf... self down here and see to you while you rest.’Cause you are going to be resting."

"Kuro-silly, you can't-"

"He chose, idiot," Kurogane replied flatly. "Don't you want him to be happy? Isn't that what you've been worrying about as long as I've known you?"

Fai scowled. "Yes, I... Well, yes..."

"You were worried about me?" Yuui repeated, lifting his head from his paws. "You were worrying about me being happy?"

Fai blinked his blue eyes at him, surprised. "Yuui," he said, as though it were the most patently obvious thing in the world, "You are the most important person I have. Did... didn't you know that?"

Yuui couldn't answer that, his jaws working as he attempted to force out words, and Kurogane snorted and rolled his eyes, flopping his head down on the dirt so hard he made the water nearest them ripple. "Idiots, I'm surrounded by idiots," he said, under his breath, and Yuui and Fai both glared at him. He rolled his eye toward them and groaned. "Identical idiots," he said, and Fai hmphed and Yuui felt his jaws stretching in a grin.

"Thank you," he said, and he could hardly speak for the lump on his long throat. "Thank you both. For everything. You make me happy."

Fai nudged him gently, and Kurogane Tched and bumped his side with a wing, and Yuui realized that his happiness made them happy in turn. Both of them. His mates.

He wasn't second best, and he wasn't unimportant, because he realized that as he loved Fai and Kurogane - equally, but separately - so they too loved him.

It was kind of like flying again.

Yuui was putting out a pan of croissants when the young woman strode into the bakery, her hands on her hips as she cast a thoughtful glance around its interior. Her long black hair fell in natural curls around her face, and she had a hard look to her eyes.

"Can I help you?" he asked politely.

"Maybe," she said, the Gilnean brogue thick on her tongue. It was still taking Yuui some time to get used to it; since the Gilnean wall had collapsed and the former King Greymane had taken up residence in the palace there were many more of them around, and not all of them carried the curse of the worgen transformation. "I'm looking for a Flowright?"

"That's me," Yuui said. "What are you after?"

"I'm looking to buy thirty-eight rocket launchers, sixty-five tons of heavy-to-medium grade explosives, and an arcanite hair trigger," she said, unrolling some schematics from her belt, and Yuui lifted his eyebrows. "And a fel iron toolbox."

"Ah," he said. "I think you want my twin. Next door over, Flowright engineering supplies."

"Bloody hell, that's confusing," she said, scowling. She glanced down at the schematics in her hand. "Wait, how can you live with all the explosions right next door to this place? Don't it ruin the ambiance?"

"Soundproofing," Yuui said, grinning. "What's your name?"

"Crowley," she said, holding out a confident hand. "Lorna, to me friends. I'm Gilnean but I haven't been bit by the worgen yet. You're a dragon, aren't you? I heard about you guys. Didn't you save this place from Deathwing back during the Shattering?"

Yuui shrugged as he shook it. "I didn't do much," he said. "My twin - that's the one who runs the engineering store - and our partner did most of the work."

"That would be the red?" she asked, and he nodded. "Huh, I heard about him, too. Where's he?"

Yuui smiled, waving his oven mitt through the steam wafting off the croissants. "I think he's in the Firelands right now, facing down Ragnaros himself," he said. "He should be back soon."

Kurogane had insisted on it, in fact, less out of concern for Yuui and more out of a half-serious worry Fai would blow himself up with his newfound love of explosives.

"So, three dragons, a baker, a tinkerer, and an adventurer, huh?" Lorna tilted her head quizzically. "Must be one hell of an odd partnership."

"It works," Yuui said, grinning. "Better than you'd think."

Well, except for the time Fai had brought honest to god dynamite into bed with him. Kurogane and he had almost gone through the roof - though not literally, the idiot had been smart enough to disarm part of the mechanism.

("I wanted to develop a new EZ-Thro brand," he'd said when Kurogane had almost pitched him out the window; "The old one is too complicated and doesn't pack a powerful enough punch.")

Lorna was smiling at him oddly. "I'll have to take your word for it," she said. "What's your name again? Are you a strasz, or a gos, or what?"

"Yuui," he said. He smiled, happy with that answer. "I'm just Yuui."

-fin

And an omake, courtesy of mikkeneko!

Yuui and Jaina leaned out of the way as an adventurer on a gigantic striped saber came rocketing past them, but at the last moment Yuui changed his mind and reached out to drag the passing night elf to a halt.

"You -- warrior!" he shouted above the tumult, making a guess based on the sheer number of spikes attached to the elf's plate armor. "Stormwind is under attack! A lot of people are trapped under collapsed buildings while the elementals swarm. The apprentice mages have evacuation portals ready. Go the mage district, kill any elementals you encounter and rescue as many civilians as you can!"

"Yes, sir!" the warrior said, saluting him smartly. Instead of riding off, however, he stood there looking at Yuui with an expectant expression. "How many?"

"How many what?"

"How many civilians do you want me to save?"

Yuui stared at the elf incredulously. "Are you blind, man?!" he exclaimed. "The city is coming down around our ears! The people of Stormwind have no defenses and they are going to die if you don't help them. Save as many as you can find!"

"Yes, but..." The adventurer's expression went perplexed. "How many is that?"

Yuui took a deep breath and reined in his temper, reminding himself that this sellsword had probably taken more blows to the head in his career than Yuui had made cupcakes. Before he could speak again, however, Lady Proudmoore cut in from the side. "Ten, sir warrior."

"Ten!" The confusion on the adventurer's face cleared up, and he saluted them smartly before wheeling his mount away. "Right you are, sir!"

"Just ten?" Yuui demanded, out of breath, as they galloped towards the cathedral.

"Don't worry," Jaina Proudmoore assured him. "When he comes back, I'll tell him it's repeatable."

♥ mikke \o/