Now she was certain thateither some entity—Zendarin, perhaps—or even the mount itself was toying with her.
She paused before another black tunnel, debating her choices. Seemingly trapped into entering one or another, the ranger simply stepped into the one she faced—
From within its depths, the ranger heard a faint voice.
What it had said, Vereesa could not tell. It had sounded pained and weary.
Despite the likelihood that it was a trap, the high elf picked up her pace. She listened carefully as she moved, but did not hear the voice repeat. That it might have been a figment of her own tired mind, Vereesa could not deny. However, now that she was committed, she had no intention of turning back. Wielding the ax in one hand and the dagger in the other, the ranger pushed through the darkness.
With each step, she felt herself descend deeper and deeper. Her grip on the weapons tightened. Ahead, she thought she detected a slight illumination....
Sure enough, what started as just a faint haze began to fill the passage the more she headed toward it. Vereesa was finally able to make out details in the walls, details that indicated that this passage had been far more crudely carved out than those above. That in itself bespoke of its ancient construction and the likelihood that most of those above did not know of its existence.
But then... to whom did the voice she believed that she had heard belong?
The high elf slowed. Ahead radiated a low, red glow... as if a chamber lay just a bit further beyond. Her jaw tightening, the ranger very cautiously approached.
She suddenly noticed that the closer she got, the cooler it became. Much cooler than it should have warranted. In fact, in Grim Batol, she would have expected such a chamber to emanate
Despite how far she had come, Vereesa debated turning around. Yet, something would not let her.
Crouching, the high elf peered inside. Her eyes widened.
She stared into a huge chamber that was both fire and ice. The former was from where the crimson glow originated, vast pools of molten lava constantly bubbling. The smell of sulfur suddenly filled her nostrils. There were more than a dozen such pools that the ranger could see, from those as tiny as her hand to others wide enough to have engulfed her and the dwarves without the surface hardly shifting.
The chamber should have been so boiling hot that sweat should have already covered Vereesa. Yet, it was actually so cool that she could just see her breath.
The explanation for that came from above. There, massive daggers of ice thrust down from the celling. Yet, they were not by any stretch of the imagination of natural origin. As Vereesa moved farther into the chamber, she saw how absolutely white they were inside and even felt the coolness pulsating against her skin.
And then the 'why' for this magical arrangement became obvious. The high elf spotted one, then another, then another...and realized that every rounded mound she saw was the exact same thing.
There were eggs everywhere. Eggs so large that they had to come from only one creature. A dragon.
Vereesa approached the nearest. At first she thought that the egg was cracked, for what she could see of it was covered in some sticky coating that reminded her of part of a yolk. However, as she studied it closer, she saw that the egg was not broken. The odd resin simply covered it completely.
Probing the substance with the dagger, the high elf had her answer.
But while the myatis coating was excellent for preservation, Vereesa understood now the constant battle between heat and cold in the chamber. It was not enough to preserve the eggs; sticking her finger into the coating, she determined that they were just the perfect temperature to guarantee the life within stayed absolutely viable.
And then Vereesa noticed just how many eggs had been arranged in such a perfect balance. Not a handful. Not dozens.
The high elf spun around. It had gone unnoticed by her at first because the myatis coating tended to make everything look gray, but not all the eggs were of the same type. It was not simply a matter of some difference in shape or even size, but also color and patterning.
Vereesa could not believe what she beheld. When she and Rhonin had helped aid the queen of the red flight to escape from the Horde, there had been ample opportunity to see pieces of that flight's broken egg shells. Afterward, her husband, constantly seeking to keep himself educated in all magical matters, had shown her egg fragments from other flights, including those of the black. Certainly, eggs of Deathwing's kind dominated the chamber, but there were many akin to the red and those that looked like neither had to have been stolen from the blue flight and others.
'Centuries...' she whispered to herself. 'Yes, it must have taken centuries...'
Then, something odd about the eggs made the ranger peer closer at a couple. They looked strangely swollen and there were tiny pustules all over the shells.
Whatever these eggs had once held, they no longer held the innocent young of dragons.
A shiver suddenly overtook her, a shiver that had nothing to do with the fierce, magical stalactites. She knew well Deathwing's desire for a new, more terrible dragonflight and how his children had carried that foul legacy on. But all the while Nefarian and Onyxia had been delving into their own plots concerning that flight's creation, someone else had been patiently and methodically collecting all these different eggs—no doubt often by deceit—for the time when it would be absolutely certain that the chances of successfully creating the monstrous dragons desired were almost perfect.
And with so many eggs, there would be more than enough of the abominations to sweep over every last bit of defiance Azeroth's natural creatures might muster.
The horrific images filling her head were suddenly swept away by the sound of movement from farther in the great chamber. Ax held ready, the ranger moved toward the direction from which she thought the brief sound originated.
But as she neared, ail Vereesa saw was yet another of the bubbling pools. This one was so vast that a sailing ship could have been set down in the middle of it, although from there it could not have gone very far. The high elf studied the edges of the pools, searching for anyone who might be near. Despite the constant bubbling, she was certain that it had not been that noise that she had mistaken for much more.
From the center of the pool burst forth a huge, monstrous head. The heat of the molten lava colored it a bright, burning orange. It opened its reptilian maw—
'Ve-Vereesa?' it rasped.
With a groan, the giant rolled toward her end of the pool. The ranger stumbled back as several tons of steaming dragon fell free of the lava and onto the ground before her. She continued to retreat, stunned by the massive girth of the beast. Rarely had she seen a dragon so huge save the queen of the red flight or Krasus in his true form of Korialstrasz—
Korialstrasz?
The steaming leviathan continued to collapse in her direction. The ranger turned and ran, realizing that the dragon was even larger than she had first calculated.
His shadow loomed over her. Vereesa knew that she was not running fast enough. She braced herself for the inevitable—
But Korialstrasz did not fall upon her. Indeed, the massive crash she expected did not happen, instead only a slight thud behind hermarking the end to the dragon's fall.
The high elf dared look back.
Steam still rising, Krasus the mage lay sprawled at the edge of the pool. His generally-pale complexion was, for a moment, bright red and his body was clearly burning an imprint into the stone floor. Curiously, his cowled robes were untouched... but then, they were a false image, the results of the dragon's conjurations and thus far more durable than any true garment.
