Night of the Dragon

from Sinestra's spellwork and whatever truly kept him so weak in the mount.

But he could not just wait here until the black dragon freed him for her diabolical spells. Krasus was no ordinary prisoner; he was well aware of the history of chrysalun chambers, for were they not the work of dragons, after all?

Initially, the chambers had been designed for varied purposes depending on which dragonflight had created them, but first and foremost they had all been intended to trap creatures and beings of magical threat... demons, mad spellcasters, elementals, and the like. Those specifically created by the black flight had been intended for use against wild energies and the like that threatened the very earth itself.

Yet, that had changed forever after a newly-insane Neltharion, furious at his loss of the Demon Soul over the Well of Eternity, had sometime afterward altered those created by his flight for the foul purpose of trapping his imagined enemies. The other flights had quickly moved to locate the chambers and, in addition to those of the Earth-Warder, had supposedly forever sealed them away where they could not be found.

But over the centuries, a few had made their way back into the world... and perhaps this one had never even been uncovered before.

Krasus grew frustrated. Perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps his knowledge of the history of the foul boxes was not something that would serve him after all—

The dragon mage hesitated. Or would it? One particular point suddenly struck him. Chrysalun chambers required much effort, which was why there were thankfully so few. Even some of those had not been entirely stable. They had had faults...

It was a desperate hope, but the only hope he currently had. Krasus focused his mind and reached out.

But at first, all he sensed was his oppressive imprisonment. Krasus shuddered and briefly the hope that Sinestra would need him quickly for her experiment flashed through his mind. He immediately rejected the notion, but wondered, if he failed to escape, how long it would be before he prayed for it again.

Once more, Krasus concentrated. For the most part, it was his own magical essence he sensed, but gradually, he noticed another.

It was not of Azeroth in origin.

Hopes raised, Krasus fixed on it. There was something familiar about it. something that reminded him of—

Yes, that was it. This was, of course, the very chamber in which the nether dragon had surely been contained.

Whether or not that bettered his chances, the dragon mage could not say. The nether dragon's energies were like nothing that the creator of this hellish prison could have imagined.

Krasus probed deeper into the design. There were odd variations that could only be the work of the original caster, perhaps Neltharion or even his consort. Krasus grew less confident that there would be any advantage after all. Whoever had created this particular artifact had been eager to experiment.

But still Krasus had to try. He inspected the magic foundation of the box, seeking some disruption from the nether dragon's incarceration that might have created a flaw. That flaw would be his best chance of escape. He needed to—

The dragon mage frowned suddenly. There was another variation in the spell matrix of the chrysalun chamber. It had not been forged by the same hand that had created all else. However, It made no sense... unless it had been caused by the nether dragon.

Krasus inspected it further.

His prison suddenly shifted, throwing him about. The darkness turned to gray, then black again. Krasus was sent spinning—

He reacted instinctively, his body contorting and his arms and legs stretching and bending at angles not conforming to his elven shape. Claws burst from his fingers. Scales covered his skin as his nose and mouth stretched forward into a long, sharp muzzle. Wings sprouted from his back as his robes faded to nothing.

Beating his massive wings. Korialstrasz slowed, then halted his flight. The red leviathan roared from the painful effort.

As he regained his equilibrium, Korialstrasz tried to make sense of what had happened. His simple probing of the area in question had turned his entire prison on its head.

Clearly, the nether dragon had come much closer to freedom than he had imagined. Unfortunately for the creature, he had nothad the cunning or knowledge to benefit from his very uniqueness.

But now Korialstrasz's hopes heightened. There was great risk, but risk was better than either eternity or awaiting his captor's summons. Sinestra would surely be well prepared for him when she opened the chamber again. It behooved the red to make his escape, if he could.

With much more delicacy, Korialstrasz surveyed the weakened area again, observing carefully how it weakened the overall matrix. It did not surprise him to quickly discover that the odd energies of a nether dragon could affect the matrix almost like a virus in a mortal body. The two forces were enough alike that now the essence of the former captive had restructured the original spellwork into a pattern never conceived by the chrysalun chamber's creator.

And where the spell matrix had been most affected, there the red dragon found what he felt was the weak link, the point where he needed to concentrate his efforts.

With the eye of one who had studied the workings of magic perhaps second only to the greatest of the blue dragons, Korialstrasz slowly picked his way through the aberration. He finally found the thread that he felt would, if removed carefully, cause the rest to become undone and, theoretically, open the way for him.

Already feeling claustrophobic, Korialstrasz began gingerly severing the link. Immediately he felt the entire chamber quiver. The darkness became slightly grayer again. The red dragon grew more bold in his work. Freedom was close—

The aberration completely disintegrated, not at all what he had wanted. The matrix became frayed, with the frayed area spreading. Korialstrasz quickly sought to rebuld it, but the damage was already more than he could overcome. The strain on the rest of the spellwork keeping the chamber intact increased a thousandfold.

The chamber collapsed, the grayness pressing in on the red dragon from all sides. Korialstrasz screamed, his prison's abrupt destruction unleashing new and terrible forces that threatened to rip him apart. Korialstrasz was caught in a maelstrom that grew to horrendous proportions. Try as he might, the dragon could donothing to keep from spinning toward it.

That this was all taking place in a container not even large enough on the outside to seemingly hold much more than an apple did in no manner assuage Korialstrasz. For him, it was as if Azeroth had been destroyed and the universe were about to join it. He had wanted to be free of the chrysalun chamber and he had gotten his wish...perhaps much to his eternal regret.

The great wings beat again and again, the strain of fighting against such powerful primal forces quickly bringing Korialstrasz to the point of exhausted panting. The eye of the maelstrom loomed before him, a swirling mass of gray, black, and crimson.

As he neared the eye, invisible forces pressed down ever harder on the dragon. His bones felt as if ready to crush to powder, his flesh as if about to be squeezed to pulp. In all his long existence, he had never known such unendurable agony.

At that point, the dragon decided that there was but one thing he could do. It offered the potential for even greater suffering and a much worse death, but also the slightest of hopes.

Concentrating as best he could, Korialstrasz focused all his magic on protecting himself. The effort strained him more, and he nearly blacked out. Yet, in the end his spells held.

The red leviathan studied the maelstrom, seeking the exact center. It had to be exact. Anything else was certain suicide.

Beating his wings as hard as he could, Korialstrasz no longer fought against the maelstrom's pull, but rather embraced it. He soared forth, speeding into its maw and praying that whatever happened, it would happen swiftly.

And as he entered it, Korialstrasz screamed again...and again... and again—