Archive of Our Own ^beta

There is a myth – or a legend, really, Anduin has never quite understood the difference – that speaks of the great dragon of the south. He’s never been sure if it’s the ‘fire and brimstone’ dragon or the ‘wise and gentle’ dragon, and at this point, it’s probably too late to ask.

He says that because he is currently standing in what is supposed to be their lair.

Maybe we should start this a little earlier.

Ten years earlier.

Yes, that sounds about right.

“Remember, darling heart,” Anduin’s aunt tells him as he opens the door of their cottage, “be wise.”

Anduin turns, and smiles, nodding. His aunt is the cleverest woman in the world, to his ten-year-old eyes, and he does his best to emulate her. What Jaina says is always right.

He shuts the door behind him.

Anduin lives with his aunt in a small village called Theramore. They live on the very outskirts, where the plain meets the forest, because Jaina says that there are magics around the area that make it very special. Anduin knows this to be true, because Jaina is very clever and very powerful.

Anduin doesn’t know what happened to his parents, or why he doesn’t live with them. He has asked, but Jaina never answers. He has learnt to stop asking.

He walks down the little path towards the town itself.

Theramore is small, and homely. The villagers are friendly and Anduin likes them. He doesn’t have many friends, apart from Wyll the bookstore owner, but that’s alright. For some reason the other children don’t like him. They say things about Jaina – that she’s mad, that she’s a witch, that she kidnapped Anduin and that they are both evil. Anduin is mature enough to realise that they’re just making rumours, and young enough to be hurt by them.

It’s situated on a slight hill, surrounded by the Deepening Fen. To the west lies the Wyrmbog, where hunters never travel, and to the north, the Moor. Anduin’s home is on the east side. He has never learnt the name of the forest. It’s often simply called ‘the Forest’ because Theramorans are nothing if not pragmatic.

The first few roves come into view, and Anduin smiles. His satchel is heavy on his back, filled with books he needs to return to Wyll.

He decides to take a short cut.

He follows the silver stream, down through the gully and around the outside of the village. It’s quiet, only the sound of his footsteps on moss, although he can hear people in town. He loves the feeling of secrecy and privacy.

He’s not sure what the brook is called. He knows it as Kinndy’s Creek, because that’s what Jaina calls it, but he’s noticed that no one else does. He asked Wyll, once, because Wyll knows almost as much as Jaina, but Wyll simply shrugged.

Kinndy’s Creek bubbles softly, the sounds of pebbles clacking against the flow ringing in the silence. The trees overhead shade the area. Anduin picks his steps carefully, knowing that the stones and puddles in the earth can be treacherous. There’s a fallen tree on the other side, one that provides a handy bridge, and the moss folds under his feet as he steps lightly across. The bank of the stream is stony, and he feels the cold water through his boots.

A stray branch catches him in the side, and he stumbles, nearly tripping over a log that he doesn’t remember being there. He staggers and rights himself, but the books fall from his satchel.

He sighs, and turns to pick them up.

Just as he kneels down, he sees a brown skinned hand. Startled, but curious, he follows it.

The hand leads to an arm.

The arm leads to a body.

And the body leads to a child.

He topples back, falling with a thud, and sits up. Why is there a child here? Are they hurt?

“Who – who are you?” he asks.

The other child groans, and rolls over. “Wrathion.”

“Bless you.”

The child wheezes, a strange sound that sounds like smoke puffing from a chimney. “It’s my name.”

Anduin crawls forward. “Are you alright?”

Wrathion murmurs something, then falls silent.

Anduin takes a moment to investigate.

Wrathion seems to be foreign, because Anduin doesn’t recognise him, and he isn’t dressed properly. He has a strange cloth around his head, and his clothes are made from scales. Anduin gently shakes his shoulder, but his hand comes away red.

He doesn’t know what to do.

But his aunt told him to be wise, so he does his best.

He finds an arrow lying just a way off, and realises that someone must have tried to shoot Wrathion. They hit the target, but Wrathion is still breathing, and there is still hope.

Anduin abandons his books, and tries to help Wrathion up.

It’s hard, because Wrathion is heavier than he looks and Anduin is very small. But he manages to get Wrathion’s arm around his shoulders, and they begin to stumble back towards Anduin’s home.

It feels like forever.

Anduin prays, underneath his breath, to as many deities as he can think of.

The trees almost seem to part for him, and the moss is not as slippery as he remembers it to be. The stream flows, a guiding path back to his cottage. Wrathion drifts. Anduin doesn’t know how to help him, but he will get him to safety. Aunt Jaina can fix anything.

A faint mist descends.

Anduin walks faster.

There is an eerie cry, from somewhere behind him, and he glances over his shoulder. The gully is darkened. Shrouded. It almost feels as though it is a vortex, trying to swallow him, draw him closer, bring him in. The only sounds are his footfalls, the crackle of leaves under his boots, and Wrathion’s wheezing breaths. If he weren’t already worried, he would be now.

He stumbles, and pauses at the base of the short hill up to the main path. He turns. It’s almost as though there is someone behind him, watching him, from inside the grey shroud of the mist. The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

A sharp caw echoes through the silence, and Anduin is startled into movement as a raven flies out of the fog.

He scrambles up the hill and hauls Wrathion along with him. He can see the cottage, with its runestones in the garden and faint smoke coming from the chimney.

He hurriedly opens the gate, and just as he is shutting it, he glances back.

He doesn’t know if the glow he sees is real or imagined.

“Jaina!” he cries, as he pushes the door open. “I found someone! They’re hurt!”

Jaina comes in from her study, and her eyes widen. Her hair is tied up messily in a bun, and her shirt is stained with soot. “Put them on the table.”

Anduin tries, but he can’t lift Wrathion, so Jaina quickly helps him.

“I think a hunter shot him by accident,” Anduin says seriously, wringing his hands and watching Wrathion nervously. “There was an arrow just nearby.”

“Or it was on purpose.” Jaina grimaces, and sets to work.

Anduin doesn’t believe that his aunt is a witch. He believes that she is very clever and that she knows everything, because she’s always reading and she doesn’t let him into her study because he might damage the books. That’s why he goes to the bookstore so often. He wants to be as wise as Jaina, which means he needs to start reading everything.

Jaina tends the wound, her movements sure and swift, and soon the bleeding is staunched and Wrathion’s shoulder is well bandaged. Anduin helps, as much as he is able, passing Jaina bottles and poultices and herbs. 

“There,” she says, finally. She sits back and brushes a lone strand of gold out of her eyes. “He should be fine when he wakes. I want you to stay with him.”

Anduin nods earnestly.

“You were very smart.” Jaina kisses him on the crown of his head and smiles at him. “You did the right thing.”

He nods, again, and settles down to wait.

Their house is small. The front room has their table (now with Wrathion on it), a kitchen to the side, and two chairs in front of the fireplace. There are three doors: one to Anduin’s room, one to Jaina’s room, and one to Jaina’s study.

Anduin quickly darts into his room, and grabs a book.

He gets to chapter four before Wrathion wakes.

“Where am I?”

“You’re on our table,” Anduin says. He puts his book down and stands, coming to help Wrathion sit up.

Wrathion looks around, taking in the house, the dark wood, the dust, the books. His eyes are a strange copper colour, and his nose is long and slightly hooked. Anduin steps back, and watches him.

“You…” Wrathion pauses, and looks at Anduin. “Brought me here?”

“My aunt fixed you,” he explains. “You got hit by an arrow.”

Wrathion pokes at his shoulder curiously, then winces in pain. He doesn’t cry. Anduin knows he might have.

“Where are you from?” Anduin asks.

“Nowhere.”

“Who’s your family?”

“No one.”

“That doesn’t sound right.”

Wrathion shrugs then flinches as the movement tugs at his shoulder. Anduin pats him gently and helps him down off the table.

They wobble over to the chairs, and Anduin sits him down. He calls for Jaina.

She comes out from her study as quickly as she always seems to. She ruffles his hair as she kneels in front of Wrathion, and speaks to him seriously. It’s one thing Anduin has always noticed about his aunt – she doesn’t seem to talk to children like they’re children, not the way other adults do.

“Can you tell me what happened?” she asks, and Wrathion shrugs, again.

“I was walking and then it hurt,” is all he deigns to say, and Jaina leaves it. The furrow in her brow says she wants to ask more, but Anduin realises that it would be pointless to prod Wrathion for more.

“You can stay with us until you’re healed, then,” she decides, standing.

And that is how Anduin meets his best friend.

Anduin still remembers what Wrathion was like, in those first few weeks. He was skittish, and very foreign, particularly to such a quiet and insular town as Theramore. He and Wrathion shared a room. Each night, without fail, Anduin would be woken to find Wrathion perched on the window sill, legs dangling out, eyes trained on the forest. Anduin couldn’t follow his gaze. Wrathion saw something that he didn’t, traced a path he couldn’t understand, trapped in nightmares that lasted through the day. Anduin tried to help, Jaina tried to help, but Wrathion stubbornly refused.

Yet he stayed.

And Anduin is still grateful for that.

Anduin has an uncle.

His name is Bolvar.

Jaina has explained before that she and Bolvar are not related, but Anduin has known Bolvar for as long as he can remember, so he is an uncle. That’s simply how he classifies his family, since he doesn’t have a proper one.

Bolvar is the head of the Night Watch. Anduin doesn’t know much about the Night Watch, not at the age of eleven, but he does know that they are strong and brave and fierce defenders. He’s seen them train, on days when he’s bored of his books and eager to run around.

“Be brave,” Bolvar says with a full laugh, clapping a large hand on Anduin’s shoulder as he shows him how to wield a wooden sword. “If you see an opportunity, go for it. Don’t hesitate.”

Wrathion is perched on a fence just nearby, watching with fascination as a woman slices apart a training dummy with a pair of daggers. His eyes follow her movements quickly and raptly, much like the way Jaina reads. Not even when Anduin drops the sword while trying to swing does he look over.

Bolvar is patient and good tempered, and Anduin knows that he’s the bravest man in the village, possibly the world. He calls over a few of the other guards and they show Anduin the ropes, grinning at his failures and cheering at his successes. They are few. Anduin is not good with swords.

He manages to get through five minutes without dropping the sword, and Bolvar grins widely. “Well done!”

“He’s no good.”

Anduin blinks, and he and Bolvar look over their shoulders in identical movements towards where Wrathion is sitting. Wrathion has his hands buried in the hem of his red shirt, and his boots propped on a slat in the fence, but his gaze is stronger than his voice.

“He’s learning,” Bolvar says. “Do you want to try?”

Wrathion shakes his head, and slips down from the fence. He walks solidly, Anduin has noticed, like he wants to be noticed, like he wants to be confident. Anduin doesn’t; Anduin is tall and made of elbows and knees and tries very hard to make himself smaller, less awkward.

“I want to try those,” Wrathion says, pointing to the knives. “And he should try that.”

His finger moves to an abandoned bow in one corner, lying next to a quiver full of half-fletched arrows.

“What makes you say that?”

Bolvar sounds curious, not judgemental.

“Steady hands,” Wrathion replies.

Anduin can’t argue with that, but he shakes his head when Bolvar raises his eyebrows at him in question. He wants to see Wrathion practice first.

Wrathion doesn’t pick it up quickly. His movements are sure, and he’s a quick study, but he repeats mistakes often. He’s stubborn. He doesn’t like it when one of the younger recruits, Sergeant Kushoto, corrects him. But Anduin still watches in amazement as Wrathion begins to get the hang of the moves, the weight of the knives, the way his body twists and his feet dance.

Anduin has never found sparring pretty. It can be fun, and it is often tedious, but never pretty.

But Wrathion looks like a dancer.

“How did you do that?” Anduin asks as they walk home.

Wrathion shrugs, and a tentative grin appears. “Natural talent.”

“That’d be a first,” he says dryly, spoiling it with a grin, and Wrathion laughs. It’s becoming obvious that Wrathion is something of a prodigy, with a number of seemingly random talents. Mathematics, games, running – Anduin adds sparring to the list.

In the manner of children, they have become accustomed to each other. Anduin doesn’t mind having someone sharing his home, his books, his space. He doesn’t know if he likes Wrathion, just yet, because they don’t know each other very well, but he likes his company. That’s enough for an eleven year old.

Wrathion pushes the gate open, swinging on it and jumping off. Anduin follows behind, on the ground; he’s learning that he has to be the responsible one, or else they’ll end up lying in Kinndy’s Creek again.

He lies awake that night, staring at the ceiling. Wrathion gets up at midnight, as he always does, and wanders over to the windowsill. He stares out. Anduin can see the moonlight framing his body and the way the wind tousles his hair.

His bravery fails him, and he rolls over.

The next morning, Wrathion is sitting at the table as if nothing even happened, and Anduin sits next to him. Wrathion has his boots up.

“You know Auntie Jaina doesn’t like it when you do that,” Anduin says reproachfully, and Wrathion grins, sharp and wicked.

“I know,” he says. “That’s why I’m doing it.”

That is probably the most defining sentence he could have uttered.

One night, a few weeks after Wrathion turns thirteen, Anduin wakes to the sound of Wrathion crying. He sits up immediately, and reaches out, words of comfort on his lips, but Wrathion darts past him and out of the room.

Anduin follows, concerned and the slightest bit frightened.

Wrathion knocks on Jaina’s door, harried and still shaking. She opens a minute later. Her hair is wild, her robe hanging off one shoulder, but the minute she sees Wrathion’s face, understanding crosses hers.

“Anduin, I want you to go change Wrathion’s sheets, please,” she says, and gives him a serious look. She turns to Wrathion. “I can help. Come in.”

Wrathion slips under her arm and into her room, and she shuts the door, leaving Anduin to stand there. He doesn’t understand.

He does as she bids, though, because Jaina is smarter than him and she knows what she’s talking about.

He searches in the cupboard for the spare linen blanket and sheet, and piles them into his arms. The door is still open, thankfully.

It’s only when he sees the red on the sheets that he realises, and he feels a faint pain in his chest in sympathy. He knows what they mean, and his heart aches for Wrathion.

Yet, in the morning, Wrathion seems to be incredibly happy. Anduin rubs his eyes and looks to Jaina, whose eyes flick to Wrathion’s wrist. He’s wearing a new bracelet, a simple woven thing with a feather charm attached to it.

Anduin smiles.

It seems Jaina can fix everything.

By the time Anduin is sixteen, the idea that Wrathion might not have been a part of his life is completely foreign.

Their names aren’t spoken in tandem, and they are two distinct people, but it’s widely accepted that they work as a pair. Wrathion has developed something of a narcissistic complex, and Anduin is no longer privy to the workings of his mind. Which he’s okay with, surprisingly. Wrathion doesn’t need his input on everything. In fact, he’s made it quite clear in several instances that Anduin is quite unnecessary.

“Not that you aren’t appreciated,” Wrathion says with a smirk, because he seems to enjoy smirking. Maybe he thinks it makes him look more mature and grown up. “It’s just you have a tendency to pry.”

Anduin can’t argue with that. He gets it from Jaina.

“Where’s Wrathion?” Jaina asks one evening. It’s dinnertime, and while Jaina isn’t a fantastic cook – Anduin thinks Bolvar is better, but he’s never going to admit it to Jaina – she makes very nice potatoes. Anduin likes potatoes.

Anduin looks up from where he has his nose buried in a book of legends. “I don’t know.”

Jaina pinches the bridge of her nose. “I swear, if he’s at the inn again…”

“You know he doesn’t actually drink,” he says, turning a page. “He just pretends to because he thinks it makes him look better.”

Jaina sighs, folds her arms, and glares at the potatoes. “I believe you. Go find him, will you?”

Anduin sighs, and does, because that is his job.

“Don’t do anything stupid!” Jaina calls as he shuts the door, and he shouts an affirmative of some sort. It doesn’t really matter what he says, he’s always taken Jaina’s advice.

He passes Bolvar in the main square.

“Is – ”

Bolvar nods.

Anduin sighs, and says sarcastically, “Wonderful.”

He peeks his head into the inn, then slips through the door. Wrathion is in the centre, sitting on the bar, holding court with several travellers. He’s talking – he’s always talking – and the travellers occasionally interrupt, to correct him, to add to his story, to tell their own.

Anduin wanders up, and Wrathion spots him, then calls him over.

“This is Anduin,” he says, resting his elbow on the crown of Anduin’s head. He probably likes being taller for once. “He’s my conscience. What’s the matter this time?”

“You’re late.”

“I suppose I am.” Wrathion smiles charmingly at the adventurers, and bows his head as a few express their dismay. “I’m sorry, but family calls. Tomorrow night! I’m eager to hear more.”

He slides from the bar, serpentine, and throws an arm around Anduin’s waist. The bartender herself opens the door for them, smiling at Wrathion and giving Anduin a pitying look.

As he said. Everyone knows about Wrathion and Anduin.

“Did you know,” Wrathion says, grandiosely, “that there are lands that are still explored? To the south, through the Wyrmbog. How fascinating!”

“You’re being pretentious again.”

“We should go.”

“That’s a terrible idea.”

Wrathion shakes his head. “Not now, obviously. You’re far too unreliable with that bow of yours. But in a year, in two – we could go exploring and adventuring with the greatest of them!”

Wrathion, in case it hasn’t become obvious, doesn’t believe in going for the low hanging apples. He would shoot for the stars if he thought he could reach. He can’t. He’s only five foot six.

Besides, Anduin thinks dryly, the stars would probably move out of reach just to spite him, and then he would come tumbling down, paying for his supreme arrogance. There are stories like that. He’s read them, pictured Wrathion in them, because Wrathion is clearly Hero material. Anduin doesn’t think he’s particularly heroic – well, alright, he does – but Wrathion has a certain charisma to him that makes it hard to imagine him in anything other than a starring role.

He’s also bound to take a fall, one of these days, and it will be Anduin’s job to pick him up again, because that’s what Anduin does.

“Is it potatoes?”

“Yes.”

Wrathion sighs. “Some day it won’t be. Some day it will be spices and seasons and all the foods in the world.”

Anduin knocks over a runestone as he opens the gate. It topples, quietly, and he’s too entangled in Wrathion’s grip to bend down and straighten it. “I half believe you when you talk like that.”

“You should,” he replies, with the certainty that comes from youth and inexperience. “I’m always right.”

Jaina doesn’t seem to believe so, as she scolds him thoroughly and then angrily shoves half a plate of potatoes at him. They have rosemary sprinkled on top.

“I’m sorry,” Wrathion says. Anduin can tell he doesn’t mean it.

Jaina, the smartest woman in the world, can also tell. But she doesn’t say anything, simply sighs and rubs her brow. “There is tea in the pot. Help yourself. I’ll be in my study.”

Anduin curls up in an armchair and balances his plate on his knees, a book in hand. Wrathion sits in his chair, the large one with the red cushion, and watches him.

“I don’t like myths,” he says with distaste. “I’d much rather read about real history. At least that’s useful.”

Anduin shrugs. “I like them. I like the stories. I like the endings.”

“But they’re always sad.”

“That depends. Some are happy.”

Wrathion scowls and prods at a potato. It seems to shrink under his glare. “If someone’s going to bother inventing a myth, then they should at least make it worth the read.”

Anduin puts his book down. He knows when Wrathion’s going to monopolise his attention, and he’s not going to get any reading done tonight. “Alright. That’s fair.”

Wrathion blinks.

“Right.” He rallies from the unexpected agreement. “Of course.”

There’s the sound of something falling, and Jaina swearing, and a faint smoke comes from beneath the door to the study. Anduin picks up his book again.

This legend is about a dragon. ‘The Great Black of the South’, the book calls her, which is quite a mouthful. She is the heir to the legacy of destruction left behind by the Deathwing, and spends years lurking in her lair. Eventually, she emerges and lays siege to a city, searching for gold. The hero searches out her lair and confronts her there, and there is a valiant battle, and he emerges victorious. The Great Black is never heard of again.

Anduin doesn’t really like the hero. He is afraid and in love, a deadly combination, and the story leads Anduin to believe that the hero sacrificed his partner to defeat the dragon. It’s a little vague. He can’t tell for certain, but from what he infers, the hero is a bit of a loser.

He thinks he likes the dragon more.

He’s always liked the stories with dragons.

Wrathion coughs, and Anduin looks up to realise that he’s now sharing his chair.

“I’m cold,” Wrathion says bluntly. “What’s this story about?”

Wrathion isn’t cold. Wrathion never gets cold, even when Anduin’s bundled head to toe and wrapped in a scarf taller than himself. Anduin can understand it. Wrathion is fuelled by an internal need to impress and be impressed, and therefore doesn’t need to worry himself over trivial things like snow and blizzards and bloody freezing winds.

Wrathion wants to hear the story and is too proud to ask.

So Anduin turns to the first page, clears his throat, and begins to read.

Anduin’s twentieth birthday is a quiet affair. He takes the day off work, leaving Wyll alone to deal with the bookstore, and spends the day at home. Bolvar bakes a cake. It’s not a very good cake, but it is sweet, and Anduin has always enjoyed sweet things.

Jaina gets him another book of myths and legends. These ones are all about dragons, because after twenty years, she has figured out his literary tastes.

Bolvar gets him a proper bow, all polished wood and taut string, and Anduin spends the evening shooting targets at the edge of the forest.

Wrathion gets him a locket.

“What’s supposed to go in it?” Anduin asks, peering at it curiously. It’s made of gold, real gold, and it has a swirling design in black on the front. It’s beautiful. But Anduin doesn’t understand what made Wrathion choose it.

Wrathion shrugs. “Whatever you like.”

Anduin’s brow furrows, and he continues to examine it for a moment, before he loops the chain around his neck and slips it under his shirt. Wrathion likes to appear mysterious. It will become evident in time.

He hopes, at least.

He’s always been curious.

“What are you going to do now?” Bolvar asks. “A bold quest? Noble deeds?”

He’s teasing, but Anduin’s eyes automatically skip to Wrathion. He grins. Wrathion is eating it up with a spoon.

“I was going to read my book.” Anduin pauses. “And then practice with my new bow.”

Wrathion drops his head onto the table and groans.

That does end up being what Anduin does, because Anduin is a simple person with simple pleasures, and also because it makes Wrathion pull the most incredible faces. Anduin, while mature, is not above being petty.

The tables are turned the next morning, when Anduin awakes to find Wrathion sitting on the end of his bed. He is a dead weight on Anduin’s leg.

“We’re going exploring,” he says, because the decision has already made and Wrathion is implacable.

Anduin sighs. “Of course we are.”

He pulls on comfortable boots and ties his hair up. His hair is at that awkward length where his bangs fall from the hair tie, and he tucks them behind his ears irritably.

Wrathion is waiting at the gate, adjusting one of the runestones.

Anduin is just approaching him when there’s a cough from behind him, and he freezes.

“Where are you two off to?” Jaina asks, and Anduin turns to see her standing with arms folded, her blonde streak hanging loose from her messy bun.

“We’re going to go do some errands,” Wrathion says.

“With your weapons.”

“They’re risky errands.”

Jaina raises an eyebrow. It’s very difficult to blatantly lie to Jaina Proudmoore. Wrathion has never learnt that lesson, because he thinks he is untouchable and infinitely believable. Or maybe he just doesn’t care. Wrathion doesn’t seem to care about all that much, really.

Anduin grins nervously, but Wrathion, in typical Wrathion fashion, swings an arm around him and begins to steer him out the gate. “We’ll see you for dinner!” he calls, and heads up into town.

Anduin almost believes that they’re just going to run some errands.

And then Wrathion decides to take the shortcut.

Kinndy’s Creek hasn’t changed. The moss is soft and the gully is quiet, even through Wrathion’s solid footsteps. The overhanging branches are now at the right height to become a nuisance, as they tease and play at Anduin’s hair, tangling in the strands.

Despite the faint sunlight Anduin can see through the foliage, the stream is surrounded in low light, enough that he would think it were cloudy if he didn’t know better. They follow its twining route, but rather than taking the little path that leads up into town, Wrathion continues on.

“Where are we going?” Anduin asks.

“On an adventure,” Wrathion says, as if that’s explanation enough, which for him it is. “Have you never come down this way?”

“I don’t like getting lost.”

Wrathion laughs, and continues on, stepping on stones and leaping over logs like he’s twelve all over again. Anduin follows at a more sedate pace, eyes open on lookout.

Kinndy’s Creek twists and turns, leading into what seems to be an actual river. Wrathion sends Anduin a smug look, and Anduin rolls his eyes, because he doesn’t really have a better response.

The river is still, slow flowing, serene. Anduin kneels to dip his hand in the water, and it’s ice cold, even colder than Kinndy’s Creek. The murky water gives no indication to the depth. He follows its course with his eyes, gazing down to where he can almost see a lake in the distance.

A lake?

“Wrathion, let’s head down that way,” he calls, and Wrathion looks over from where he’s waiting impatiently.

Wrathion narrows his eyes, squinting into the distance, and frowns. “That’s not on any maps.”

“You did say you wanted to go exploring.”

“I did indeed. Let’s go.”

They walk for what feels like hours. Wrathion occasionally points out interesting plants, or an oddity on the horizon. Anduin tells stories, but his mind isn’t on it. The lake is drawing closer, and he can see structures and the shapes of buildings.

“What is this place?”

It looks like docks, but they’re old, abandoned. The wood is rotting and creaky, and there are derelict corpses of ships sunk in their berths. The lake stretches on, mountains in the distance, trees lining the shore. It’s beautiful, but ancient.

Wrathion moves forward, looking around curiously. Anduin follows and stares, confused and awestruck. He has been living in Theramore for as long as he can remember, but this place is completely alien to him. He had no idea there was even a lake near the town, let alone abandoned docks.

He follows one pier out to the end, and kneels, staring into the water. It’s as murky as the river that flows into it, a deep black that he can see his reflection in, clear as day. As he looks up again, he thinks a faint mist has settled over the area. It’s hard to tell whether it’s real or his imagination.

“Wrathion?” he calls, standing and looking around. Wrathion is nowhere to be seen.

He moves forward, feeling for the quiver at his hip. He’s been practicing. If there is something here, something malevolent, he’ll deal with it.

He creeps across the boards, and peers into the dockhouse. It’s eerie, silent.

He pushes the door open wider. The wood groans beneath his feet, and he pauses, wondering how strong it is. If it can support his weight.

Another step. The wood holds steady.

A raven caws in the distance, and Anduin draws several arrows from his quiver, holding them loosely in one hand. Years ago, a foreign woman taught him to shoot in the style of the eastern archers. She had only visited for one summer, before moving on, caught up in a wanderlust and mission of her own. Anduin remembers her fondly. Valeera, her name was.

The inside of the dockhouse is dark and gloomy, cobwebs strung from wall to wall. The dust has been disturbed, a pair of footprints criss-crossing the floor.

“Wrathion?”

A raven’s caw is all the warning he gets before there’s a faint whispering noise, and he spins, arrow flying from his bow straight into the farthest corner.

Spinning and twining in the air, made of whispers and glow and the feel of magic, is a tiny arcane serpent.

They are rare, spoken of in the same heartbeats as will o’ the wisps and ghostly spectres. Anduin has read stories of them, tales of how they guide adventurers’ footsteps and lead trails off into the future. They are malevolent and benign, an anathema and benediction in one ethereal form, and always treated with a serious air of caution.

He stares, bow lowering, arrows clattering to the floor.

The serpent swirls in the air, making infinite patterns and ouroboroi. He wanders forward, his hand slowly coming to reach out, request permission.

It waits for him, then curls up his wrist to move along his arm. He smiles, unbidden, and lets the bow follow the arrows to the floor. Both hands encircle the serpent, echoing its patterns as it swims through the air and plays in the gaps.

It draws him forward, through the desolate dockhouse and out through the back, onto a long pier. He follows it, enraptured, and laughs as it comes to dance around his shoulders before pulling forward. It moves like a dream, wispy and impossible to grasp.

Come, he thinks he hears, follow me, play with me, dance with me, learn from me, I will take you there, I will show the way, guide you, bless you, come for you,

He almost steps forward.

“Anduin!”

A force barrels into him, and the wyrm disappears as his vision blurs. Suddenly, there is water everywhere, above his head around his arms blocking his movements stealing him down down down –

A hand grabs his.

He surfaces with a gasp, sputtering and taking heaving breaths. Wrathion is beside him, angry and scared, eyes wide and turban lost. His curly hair is flat and plastered to his head.

“What were you doing?!” he yells, treading water. “You imbecile, you moron, you reckless twit, what was that?”

Anduin gasps, trying to think, to shake himself out of his daze, but he can’t. His heartbeat is too quick, too thready, his hands shaking too much. Wrathion growls, a strange noise more animal than human, and drags him to the shore.

He coughs, then rolls over, dry heaving the imagined water from his lungs.

Wrathion is ranting again, pacing up and down the shore. Anduin lets him get it off his chest – Wrathion will be quite happy to wear himself down and peter out of his own accord.

He stares at the lake, and wonders.

“Are you even listening to me?”

He looks up. “You were talking about how much of an idiot I am and how I could have gotten hurt and that you would never forgive me.”

Wrathion huffs. “A lucky guess.”

Something cracks, and Wrathion droops, coming to crouch next to where Anduin is sitting. He shakes his head, running a hand through his hair and squeezing his eyes shut.

“You’re a fool.”

“I saw an arcane serpent.”

That effectively derails the conversation. Wrathion blinks.

“A mana wyrm?” He stares, then looks back to the pier. “You were following a mana wyrm?”

“That’s what I said.”

“But they’re myths.”

“You’re a sceptic. They’re very real. I think – ” Anduin hiccups, “I think I can attest to that.”

He turns to stare back at the horizon. The lake shimmers, a faint mirage made of mists, and he squints, wondering what’s causing it. What it’s hiding.

He struggles to his feet, and hauls Wrathion up. “I think I’ve had enough bold quests and noble deeds for today,” he says, and Wrathion agrees with a laugh.

They pick up Anduin’s abandoned bow and quiver, and make their way home.

Jaina is holed up in her study, yet again; she is doing that often as of late, without forewarning or explanation, and Anduin worries. He’s not sure what he worries about, but at this point he has it down to a fine art, and reason has yet to stop him.

He goes to Bolvar instead.

“Do you know anything about a lake near here?” he asks, hands encircled around a mug of tea. Bolvar, for reasons that Anduin has never figured out, has an uncharacteristic fondness for peacebloom tea. Anduin doesn’t complain.

Bolvar frowns thoughtfully. “No, I can’t say I do. There are stories, of course there are, but they’re just for children.”

Anduin falls silent.

“Is something the matter?”

He doesn’t really know how to answer.

“I’m just worried.”

Bolvar smiles, and opens his arms. Anduin rolls his eyes, but sets his tea down for a hug anyway. Bolvar is tactile, like Wrathion; Anduin picked up Jaina’s preference instead.

Still, Bolvar is warm and strong and even if he doesn’t know everything like Jaina does, he is brave. He knows how to weather storms.

They fit together on Bolvar’s armchair. Anduin is skinny, and Bolvar is burly, and they haven’t yet lost the childhood familiarity. Anduin’s pretty sure they will, someday, when Anduin’s grown up (because twenty is not grown up, it really isn’t) and Bolvar is old. It’s weird to think about. Will Bolvar’s hair or beard go first? He tries to imagine Bovlar without a beard, and it’s so alien that he temporarily stops thinking entirely in an effort to erase the image from his mind.

“I saw an arcane serpent,” he says quietly, staring down at his mug.

Bolvar stiffens. “Truly?”

“Yes. I nearly – ” fell into the lake and would have drowned, if Wrathion wasn’t there. “Never mind.”

“That’s…” Bolvar rubs his beard. “Interesting. That’s very interesting. Have you told your aunt about this yet?”

Anduin shakes his head. “She’s busy.”

Bolvar simply nods, accepting the fact for what it is, and sighs. “You know what the serpents mean.”

“Yes.”

“This may be a good omen.”

The inverse is just as true. Anduin takes a calming sip of tea.

Eventually, they run out of tea, and Anduin takes his leave. Bolvar claps him on the shoulder, making Anduin stumble, which causes Bolvar to laugh and ruffle his hair. Anduin elbows him in the side, but Bolvar is built like a brick shithouse and he barely even notices.

“Take care of yourself,” Bolvar says warmly as Anduin trips on the edge of a cobblestone. “Light knows Wrathion won’t.”

Anduin laughs, nervously and marvelling a little at the irony, and heads off.

When he glances over his shoulder, he notices Bolvar still standing there, wearing a thoughtful look as he watches Anduin go. He waves, and Bolvar waves back, before disappearing into his house.

He’s still worrying. He should probably stop.

Not that his mind ever pays attention to what he should do.

“You’re completely mad.”

“So you’ve been saying for the last twenty minutes.”

“No, I mean, you’re completely mad.”

Wrathion huffs, and keeps tugging at the mouldy rowboat. “Look, you say you saw a mana wyrm. It was taking you somewhere, wasn’t it? Isn’t that what all your story books say?”

“They’re legends, not stories, and – ”

“And, if it was trying to take you somewhere, then it must be important. Hence, the boat.”

It’s midnight. The moon is full, because the moon is always full at auspicious moments, and there’s a shimmering mist across Theramore, extending as far as the Moor, and across to the lake. Wrathion has somehow successfully dragged Anduin out of bed and down the river, leading him back to the docks.

They found a mostly intact rowboat in one of the sheds, and two paddles, and Wrathion is trying to tug it out onto the water. Anduin would be helping, except he’s not convinced it’s a good idea just yet.

They both know how to row, theoretically. Jaina’s father was a sailor, she says, and so she passed on a basic knowledge of the seas to them. Not that they’d ever need it, she said, but just in case. Just in case.

Jaina often tells him things ‘just in case’. “Knowledge is power,” she would say, “and I want you to always have knowledge at your fingertips.”

So Anduin listened, and Anduin learned. Now he’s not so sure if he’s applying that knowledge well.

“Stop thinking and help, would you?”

Anduin does, because Wrathion is getting impatient. They haul the boat out onto the opaque water, and Wrathion topples in with a wild grin. Anduin follows, more careful, feeling the icy water pressing in on his legs and through his boots. He shivers.

“Here,” Wrathion says, tossing him an oar. “Use those upper body muscles of yours.”

“Haha,” says Anduin, and obligingly starts rowing.

The lake is eerily still. Anduin thinks he can hear faint whispers on the edge of his hearing, a susurrus of dreams. The mist is still hanging over the water, like a veil over a darkened mirror. The Veiled Lake. That sounds right.

Then he sees it.

“Wrathion,” he says, reaching out with his free hand to grasp Wrathion’s forearm. “Look, over there! Can you see them?”

Wrathion peers into the distance, but shakes his head. “No? What do you see?”

A string of fairy lights, glowing and pulsing with Anduin’s heartbeat. They lead a trail, a clear path through the waters of the lake, and Anduin takes Wrathion’s oar and begins to steer them in the direction of the lights.

They pass within metres of one, and Anduin stares at it. A will o’ the wisps? No, it can’t be possible. But he can’t deny what his eyes are telling him.

He keeps rowing, even as a dark shape begins to take form in the distance.

“An island,” Wrathion murmurs, scooting just a bit nearer to Anduin to get a closer look. “Surely not. An unknown lake and an undiscovered island? That’s too much.”

“I suppose you won’t have to go to the Wyrmbog after all,” Anduin says lightly, and Wrathion quietens.

They wash up on a sandy beach. The will o’ the wisps that guided them wink out, with the faint sound of faraway laughter, and Anduin shivers. The chill on the air is different, somehow, but the cold has been replaced by fear.

“Are you afraid?” Wrathion asks.

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

Anduin squeezes his eyes shut, and follows Wrathion as he sets off to explore the darkened island. He will be brave, like Bolvar. If he has seen both arcane serpents and the will o’ the wisps, then something is very, very important. He needs to know what it is.

The island is dead quiet, and there are trees thick and full overhead. The light from the moon dims, and Wrathion produces a torch from somewhere. Anduin doesn’t ask. The flame sputters, but holds steady, and they walk forward up the roughshod path.

“What is this place?” Anduin asks.

“I think we’re going to find the answer to that,” Wrathion says, grim and serious, and Anduin feels for his bow on his back. It’s a comforting weight – as much as it didn’t help last time, he still finds with it a sense of security.

They keep moving on, until they reach a strange tower in the centre of the island. It’s on a low hill, and something creaks as Anduin steps forward; he looks down. There’s a grill embedded in the earth, and through it he can see a stone well. But there’s no water, and it’s low and rounder, smoother. He’s not sure what it is.

“Come on,” Wrathion says, “let’s inspect this strange tower.”

“What a good idea.”

He genuinely doesn’t know if he’s being sarcastic or not.

The door to the tower is shut, but Wrathion kicks the lock and it bursts in a cloud of rotten wood.

Anduin goes in first, holding the torch aloft.

It’s dark and musty, as is to be expected, but the walls are covered from floor to ceiling with weapons. It looks like an abandoned armoury, and Anduin almost can’t believe the sheer variety. There are swords and shields, axes, battlehammers, bows; weapons he’s only seen in stories and many he can’t even name, that he’s never even thought possible. It’s a study in the sheer creativity in how humans can kill each other.

He wants to leave, but he presses forward, because Bolvar told him to be brave, and knowledge is power.

There are stairs leading up and down. He looks to Wrathion, who points up. Anduin will go downstairs.

The spiral staircase is so dusty that it makes Anduin sneeze several times on the way down. The steps are solid stone, likely build decades ago. He feels like this might have been part of a castle, many years ago; maybe an outpost, or a watchtower. Maybe even the last part of a greater keep still standing.

He steps out into a basement, and realises abruptly what the strange grill he saw earlier was.

This is a gladiatorial arena.

There are stands all around the pit, seats cut into the stone. Rusting chains separate the arena from the onlookers, along with a six foot drop. It is dim, damp; there is water on the floor from rain and storms that has never drained.

He turns, and raises the torch to the top of the entrance. There’s still a signboard hanging there, ancient and rotted, but he thinks he can make out the name of the pit: Alcaz Arena.

He does a slow circuit of the arena, looking down and up and around, taking in the haunted atmosphere of the place. There are even still scoreboards hanging on one wall, names barely legible. Broll Bear–, Varian Wrynn, V– Sanguinar. He runs his fingers along one, and they come away brown.

The sound of chains clattering hits his ears.

He knows it isn’t Wrathion, this time, and it can’t be a supernatural entity because they cannot interact with the corporeal world. His bow is raised and arrows ready within a heartbeat.

There is someone in the shadows. Anduin can see them, a tall, hulking figure.

“Who are you?” he demands. His voice doesn’t even shake.

“What are you doing on this island?”

The voice is a deep baritone, strong despite the clear disuse, and there is something about it that seems familiar. Like Anduin should recognise it, should know it, because his instincts do even though his mind doesn’t.

“I could ask you the same thing.” He glances around. The stranger is alone, but so is he. Wrathion can’t intervene this time.

No matter. He can handle this.

The man takes a step forward, and Anduin looses the arrow, sending it hurtling into the shadows just centimetres away from the man’s head. The message is clear.

He has another arrow ready before the first one lands.

“Answer my question and I will answer yours.”

Anduin doesn’t see the harm in it. “My name is Anduin Proudmoore. Who are you? What is this place?”

The man stops in his tracks, straightening slightly. Anduin tries not to be intimidated by how tall he is.

“Anduin Proudmoore?” the stranger lets out a harsh breath. “A fine joke. Now tell me your real name.”

What?

“I… that is my real name.” Anduin clutches at his bow. “Why? Why do you…?”

The stranger steps out into the light of the torch, and Anduin’s heart stops.

He looks familiar.

Brown hair, spiky and done up into a ponytail. His jawline is straight and sharp as crystals, hauntingly similar to the face Anduin sees in the mirror, and he has a forked scar across one half of his face. His eyes are mismatched; one brown, one blue.

Anduin’s instincts scream recognition.

“You are not Anduin Proudmoore,” the stranger says. “Anduin Proudmoore doesn’t exist. Anyone bearing the name Anduin is long since dead.”

Anduin draws himself up, stubbornness rising. “That’s rubbish.”

The stranger blinks. “What?”

“I said, that’s rubbish. Obviously Anduin Proudmoore exists, because I’m him, and anyway, how would you know whether or not there’s anyone called Anduin in the world? Names aren’t unique. There are probably a hundred other Anduins out there.”

“There are not,” the man growls, “because it is a royal name, and only those of royal lineage may bear it.”

Now it’s Anduin’s turn at confusion. “What?”

The split second of hesitance is all the man needs. With a speed that Anduin isn’t expecting, the stranger shoots forward, knocking the bow and arrows from Anduin’s grip. He staggers back, desperate to put some distance between them, but the man grabs Anduin’s arm in a vice. Anduin has never met someone so strong.

“Who are you?” he demands, shaking Anduin. “No more lies!”

Anduin has never been so scared in his life, and he’s almost paralysed by the fear. But he remembers the feeling of Bolvar’s grip on his shoulder, and his patient instruction when he was training Anduin, and he breaths.

In a quick manoeuvre, Anduin is sliding from the stranger’s grip, nearly dislocating his shoulder in the process. He steps on the man’s toes and kicks him in his knees, and then runs for the exit.

Anduin can be fast when he wants to be, and he’s never wanted to be faster than in this moment.

“Wrathion!” he screams, pelting up the stairs and skidding into the armoury. “We have to leave, right now! Where are you?! Wrathion!”

There’s a thud, and he spots Wrathion just outside, rolling out of a fall. He sprints toward him and grabs his hand, hauling him up and into a run.

“What happened?” Wrathion yells.

“There’s a man here!” Anduin nearly throws Wrathion into the rowboat and pushes it off, wading into the water. A glance over his shoulder tells him that the man is gaining. “Start rowing!”

He pulls himself into the boat, tumbling backwards with a thud and a wheeze. But he’s not fast enough.

The man makes a grab for him, one last effort, and catches his leg by the ankle. Wrathion is still rowing, pushing them off and away, and Anduin bites back a scream as the pain catches up with him. He kicks out with his other leg, catching the man in the head, but it isn’t enough.

There’s a brief flash of pain, and then they’re free, the rowboat pulling away onto the lake and the man left standing there in the surf, staring at the leg he’s holding in one giant hand.

Anduin unclenches his teeth and heaves himself into a sitting position. The base of his left knee is killing him, and he hitches up his pant leg to inspect the stump. It’s scratched and bruised and burns like buggery, but it’s okay.

“I bet he wasn’t expecting that,” Wrathion says, laughing. His arrogance is back – how the fuck is his arrogance back already?

Anduin punches him in the leg, and sighs.

He’ll need a new prosthetic.

They draw up at the docks much later, after hesitant navigating and a few false stops. It’s much harder to find their way back without the will o’ the wisps guiding Anduin’s hand.

“We’re going back,” Anduin says, and this time it’s Wrathion who stares at him like he’s gone mad. “That man, he said – he said that Anduin Proudmoore didn’t exist. That Anduin was a royal name. I’m – I need to talk to him again.”

Wrathion runs a hand over his face and straightens his turban. A strand of black hair has bid its way out from beneath, curling around to cup the curve of his earlobe. The small gold stud twinkles in the moonlight. “I’m coming with you.”

“I’m glad.”

Wrathion loops Anduin’s arm over his shoulders, and they awkwardly begin the long trek back home. Wrathion supports most of Anduin’s weight. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like, not having balance, two limbs, the simple ability to walk.

There’s a story there, too, but Anduin doesn’t know what it is. Jaina has never told him. She simply says that he got into an accident when he was very young, and this was the result.

He wonders about it, but less as the years go by and it becomes unimportant. Now he’s starting to wonder if he should have pushed more for answers.

He’s starting to realise how Wrathion must feel, every day.

Not knowing where you came from is a terrible thing.

He trips on a log for the third time, and Wrathion sighs, and suddenly they’ve stopped.

“Alright.” Wrathion picks him up bodily and sets him on a handy rock. “Up.”

“What?”

Wrathion turns and gestures to his back. “This is going to take weeks. Sit on my shoulders.”

“I can’t – ”

“You’re six foot and you barely weigh nine stone.” He gestures again, this time more vehemently. “I can carry you. I’ve done it before and you know it. Stop being proud.”

Anduin blushes a fiery red, knowing that Wrathion has hit the nail on the head, and hops onto Wrathion’s shoulders awkwardly. But Wrathion is stocky and strong, and carries him easily.

“I didn’t – ”

“I know,” Wrathion interrupts again. “Whatever self-deprecating bullshit you’re about to say, I know, I live with you. We are friends, you and I. I’m not going to sit around idly while you make things harder for yourself.”

He falls silent, then says, “Besides. You would have done the same for me.”

Anduin supposes he would have.

The walk back is spent in silence.

Wrathion lets him down at the gate. One of the runestones in the front yard has a crack in it; they must have knocked it over when they were leaving. Anduin wonders whether he can fix it.

The door opens soundlessly, and he lets out a sigh of relief. He’d hate to wake Jaina this late, and get in further trouble.

“And where have you two been?”

Too late.

Wrathion steps forward, smile already in place, words bubbling in the air. But Jaina holds up a hand. “I don’t want to hear any lies from either of you, am I understood?”

Anduin takes a breath. “We went to Alcaz Island.”

He isn’t sure what he’s expecting. But it isn’t for Jaina to fall utterly silent, face paling until it matches her hair, lips parted.

“Auntie Jaina…?”

She steps back and drops into her chair, hands clutching at the armrests. Anduin leans forward, hovering uselessly, as if he can make a difference to the bombshell his words have dropped. Wrathion, too, seems concerned. His grip on Anduin’s hand tightens as he helps him forward.

“Sit,” she bids, and they do, dropping into their respective chairs. Jaina points a finger and the fire lights itself.

Anduin stares at the flames in astonishment.

“How did you find Alcaz Island?” she asks, strength returning to her voice. “I thought – how did you find it?”

“We followed the river that feeds into Kinndy’s Creek,” Anduin explains. “There was a port there, docks; we just took one of the rowboats and pushed off. And – ”

He hesitates.

“There were the will o’ the wisps. They showed the way.”

Jaina’s eyes widen again, and Wrathion adds, “And Anduin saw a mana wyrm at the docks the week before.”

“Of course,” she says faintly. “They – of course they would.”

Anduin and Wrathion share a hesitant glance, then Anduin speaks.

“Auntie Jaina, I need you to tell me the truth. What is Alcaz Island? Why am I seeing all of this? Who – ” His voice cracks, and he pushes on firmly. “Who am I?”

She is quiet for a long while.

“You know about the old royal family.” It’s a statement of fact. “They ruled for many, many years, longer than any other family in history. But all things come to an end.”

“There was a rebellion,” Anduin says. “The family was murdered. I know all of this.”

“You know some of it,” Jaina corrects. “Not enough. And, at the same time, too much.”

Wrathion snorts, but Anduin raises a hand. “So tell me.”

She steeples her fingers and stares at the fireplace. “I was once the High Sorcerer of Stormwind, the old capital city. This is years ago, long before you were born. There had recently been a war, and King Llane had been assassinated. His son Varian took the throne, alongside his wife Tiffin, and they ruled for years before Tiffin had a child.

“But there was a coup. One of the nobles, a lady called Katrana Prestor, turned many of the guilds against the royal family. There was fault on both sides, to be fair, but nothing that would naturally have resulted in an entire dynasty being ripped to pieces. Katrana did that all by herself.” Jaina’s voice is bitter, hard. “She was a dragon in disguise, taking a mortal form to deceive the court.”

“Dragons can do that?”

“They can indeed.” Jaina sighs, heavily, and rubs at her eyes. “Terrible things went down, Anduin. Unspeakable acts of evil.”

She tugs at her blond streak, still vibrant against the white of her hair. “This is the result of one such thing. My apprentice and I were racing to warn the royal family when there was an incredible arcane explosion, a detonation of pure energy. It – it destroyed everything. I only escaped because I was preparing a portal, and I leapt through the second before it went off. Kinndy… she was not so lucky.”

“Kinndy’s Creek,” Wrathion murmurs, and Jaina bows her head.

“Yes. I… that kind of trauma is not the sort that you can simply shrug away. It destroyed me. I arrived in the royal palace a different person. And if it weren’t for Tiffin…”

Jaina closes her eyes, and Anduin reaches out a hand feebly. She’s crying. Oh, Light, she’s crying.

“The assassins were closing in, she said. She gave her son to me, and made me swear that I would protect him. Varian had gone to see if he could solve the problem at a diplomatic meeting, but it was a trap by Katrana, and Tiffin knew that she would be next. There was nothing else she could do except trust in a grieving, emotionally unstable sorceress.”

She looks up, wiping a tear away. “I fled with the prince. I made it out to the city gates, but the guilds were rioting. Stones were being thrown everywhere. One hit the prince in the leg, completely crushed the lower half. Even with my skill, it couldn’t be saved.”

Her gaze traces down to where Anduin’s knee ends. Where his leg ends.

“His name is Anduin,” she says. “Anduin Llane Wrynn, named for his grandfather and the House of Wrynn. Prince of Stormwind.”

Anduin’s hand shakes as he reaches down to touch his amputated knee. It’s too much to take in, too much to digest. He’s not a prince, he’s just Anduin Proudmoore, the boy with the fairytales.

“Can I get his highness a glass of water?”

He’s jerked out of his shock by Wrathion’s teasing voice, and he smiles. It’s wobbly and half-hearted, but it’s a smile, and Wrathion returns it with a wink.

“Or perhaps Prince Anduin Wrynn would prefer wine.”

“Stop it,” Anduin says with a hiccup of laughter.

“If his most royal highness commands it.” Wrathion inclines his head deeply, and Anduin buries his face in his hands. An unnameable feeling rises in him, and when he draws his hands away, they’re stained with tears.

“You saved me,” he says to Jaina. “All this time, you’ve been protecting me.”

He wipes the back of his hand across his eyes.

“And Bolvar? Who is he?”

“He was the Highlord and Regent,” she says, smiling slightly. “He used to carry you around on his shoulders when you were very little, through the streets of Stormwind.”

Anduin is crying in earnest now. Jaina reaches out and grasps his hand.

“We have always loved you,” she says, her tone honest and blunt. “Always. Never doubt that. None of your life has been a lie, even if it wasn’t the whole truth.”

It’s all Anduin can do to nod, and clasp her hand back.

They tumble into bed together, that night. Anduin has his arms around Wrathion’s shoulders and he’s laughing, crying, a mess of confused and overwhelming emotions. Wrathion keeps needling him, teasing him, telling the most awful jokes, and Anduin has to use every ounce of self-restraint to even remember to breathe.

“You will, of course, have a dignified position for me when you retake the throne,” Wrathion says, that stupid air of grandiosity seeping back into his voice. “I think ‘Grand Overlord’ has a nice ring to it, what about you?”

“Grand Overlord of what?” Anduin bites back another laugh. “Stupid decisions? Piggy-back rides? Overweening vanity?”

Wrathion sniffs and reaches up to tug on his earring. “I am not vain.”

“Of course not. You’re the picture of modesty.”

They dissolve into bubbly laughter again, and Wrathion rolls over, knees bent and feet in the air. Anduin sighs, and throws an arm over his eyes.

“It would probably be a wise idea to go to sleep.”

“I don’t think I could even if I tried.”

“Don’t you have to go to work tomorrow?”

“Wyll won’t mind. Don’t you have to go do whatever it is that gets you your money tomorrow?”

Wrathion snorts. “Probably. I’m not sure I could summon the effort.”

Anduin hums. Silence reigns.

But Anduin can’t sleep. His mind won’t settle, won’t stop replaying events from today, or teasing glimpses at memories; a smell, a sound, a sight.

Then Wrathion slides his arm around his waist, and buries his nose in the back of Anduin’s neck, and suddenly his mind quietens. It’s no position to fall asleep in, and they’re both going to wake up sore, but if it gets him to sleep, then Anduin’s okay with it.

He smiles as his eyes slip shut.

Bolvar is training when Anduin swings by the barracks. He recognises the two women Bolvar is fighting; they’re the two guards that Wrathion always seems to be hanging around. Captain Kushoto and Sergeant Droite. Wrathion nicknamed them Left and Right, an inside joke Anduin wasn’t privy to, and so far it has stuck.

“Anduin,” Bolvar greets with a nod, dodging a particularly agile stab from Left. “One moment!”

The trio spar for a few more minutes, until Bolvar calls time, and Right drops to the floor. She’s panting heavily, hair a curly mess, and Left rolls her eyes before hauling her up.

“So,” Bolvar says, coming forward and wiping his brow, “what brings you here? Shouldn’t you be helping Wyll?”

He should be, but recently he’s been doing very little that he should, so he simply shrugs. “I need to talk to you about something.”

Bolvar gestures to the benches lining the side of the training ring, and they sit down, Anduin propping his crutches next to him. Bolvar stretches his legs out and Anduin does the same, and despite the fact that Anduin is, in fact, relatively tall, Bolvar still dwarfs him. Anduin isn’t certain that Bolvar isn’t half-giant or something of the like.

Anduin takes a breath, and tells him about the last night’s events, about what he had seen and what Jaina had told him. He talks about the strange man on the island, the will o’ the wisps that led the way, and the hasty retreat. (He leaves out the emotional breakdown. That seems just a tad too personal to share just yet.)

Bolvar listens, very quietly. The only indication that he’s even there is the faint sound of his breathing.

Eventually Anduin peters out, his voice beginning to get sore. 

“I just…” He searches for the words. “It’s been a lot.”

There’s a warm weight on his shoulder, and he looks up to see Bolvar watching him with fond eyes. “That was an incredibly brave thing to do. Stupid and foolhardy, yes, but brave. I’m proud of you.”

Anduin laughs, and pats Bolvar’s hand. “I need to know who that man on the island was.”

Bolvar rubs his chin thoughtfully. “Describe him to me. He may have been a guard, left at the outpost before the bridges burned. Alcaz was the farthest watchtower, after all. Stormwind was across the other side of the lake to it, before it was sacked.”

Anduin thinks. “He was taller than me, with spiky brown hair and brown skin. He had a deep voice, a bit gruff. He looked like he was a fighter. There was a terrible scar across his face.”

He kneads the skin on his arm where the stranger grabbed him.

“He was strong enough to rip my leg off when we escaped.”

Bolvar has gone strangely quiet again, and Anduin looks up at him. His brow is furrowed, his mouth twisted into a strange half-grimace, half-smile.

“Aye,” he murmurs, “I know who that is.”

He draws in a long, low breath.

“That is King Varian Wrynn.”

Anduin stares, half-conscious of his mouth dropping open. That’s – that’s who Jaina said his father was. Surely – that’s not – he doesn’t believe it –

“I don’t understand how it’s possible,” Bolvar says, speaking faster, “but that is almost certainly Varian; or a shade of him.”

Anduin knows about shades, because his legends sometimes reference them. They are the memories of people and things, trapped in one place, serving almost as ghostly spectres rather than a person anymore. But you can’t touch a shade. A shade can’t leave you on crutches.

His father is on that island.

He doesn’t like to think of Varian as his father, further than the obvious nature of it. He has no claim to the title. His parental figures are Jaina and Bolvar. They are the ones who raised him and taught him and looked after him and loved him. Not the wild man on the abandoned island.

“How is he alive?” Anduin asks. “Jaina said that my – my parents died.”

“I don’t know.” Bolvar’s frowning into the distance again, mind lost in the past. “I escorted him straight into Katrana’s trap, where she ambushed us with a group of pirates. The last I saw of him, he was being beaten down by an incredibly skilled fighter. He had an electrified whip, I remember; lightening harnessed to travel along the leather. Varian had been hit in the face with it.”

“You thought he was dead.”

“I did. You can’t survive against lightening.” Bolvar leans forward, elbows resting on his knees and expression pensive. “I was thrown overboard after that, left to drown in my armour. I almost did, except the straps that kept my breastplate on snapped, and I managed to swim to safety. To Theramore.”

“And you met Jaina.”

“And I met Jaina. She told me Tiffin was dead, I told her Varian was dead, and we both knew we had to look after you.” Bolvar looks sideways at him, and slings an arm over his shoulders, pulling him into a one-armed hug. Anduin follows the movement gladly, and laughs as Bolvar gives him a little shake.

They sit for a while, just thinking. Anduin can’t get his thoughts to align long enough to form a question or sentence, and instead simply tries to regain his sense of calm, of balance. He is the sensible one. (Excluding the times when he isn’t.)

“We need to go back.”

“I need to go back,” Anduin corrects. “Wrathion and I. We’ll go.”

Bolvar frowns, and Anduin puts on his most earnest look. “You’re biased. I’m not. To me, Varian Wrynn is just the man who stole my prosthetic and scared me a bit. I can talk to him.”

Bolvar hesitates, clearly torn, then relents. “You’re a tough kid, Anduin.”

“Yes,” Anduin agrees, somewhat surprised, “I suppose I am.”

He finds Wrathion sitting on their windowsill again, like when they were younger. He moves to stand next to him. Wrathion has his eyes trained on the horizon, a thoughtful look embedded in his eyes and the tilt of his head, and his fingers are toying with the fabric that makes up his turban. His hair is a mess.

“What’re you thinking about?”

Wrathion shrugs, smoothly, flowing like water. “The future. The past. Everything, in essence.”

Anduin accepts that as it is, and slips in to sit in the gap between Wrathion and the side of the window.

They stare at nothing for a while. Nothing stares back.

“Do your legends measure up to reality?” Wrathion asks, leaning back. Anduin leans forward.

“I don’t know.” Anduin laughs, suddenly self-conscious. “I never thought I’d be the prince.”

“Are you going to go and slay a dragon, now, do you think?”

“I don’t think there are any dragons left to slay anymore.” He sobers. “I don’t think I could even if I tried, though. Not even after what Jaina told me.”

Wrathion sighs. “You’ve always been soft.”

“And you’ve always been charming, but I guess we’ve both changed.”

They share a laugh between them, electric and gentle.

“How do you feel about all of this?” Anduin asks. He’s curious, and genuinely concerned. He doesn’t want to lose their easy comfort because suddenly he has a name and title.

“I think it’s grand.” He snorts. “It will make for a marvellous addition to my biography.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I thought I was completely mad.”

“I didn’t say they were mutually exclusive.”

Wrathion smiles, but it isn’t nice. It’s dark, and bitter, and Anduin suddenly feels afraid. “I suppose not. Maybe I am both.”

Anduin doesn’t know how to respond to that, so instead he reaches for Wrathion’s hand. Wrathion allows it, shifting to rest his weight on the side of the window, and resumes his gazing.

Anduin does some gazing of his own, and some thinking.

They decide to visit the island again, but not just yet. Anduin needs to get a new prosthetic made, and Wrathion claims that he has unfinished business he must wrap up before they go off to uncertain death.

“If it were certain death,” he says as Anduin follows him to the inn, “I wouldn’t be nearly so concerned. I could simply cash in a few insurance favours to the right name and have all my affairs sorted. It’s the uncertain death that puts a bit of a complication on things.”

“Personally, I’m not a fan of any death, but I’ll take your word for it.” Anduin nudges the door open with a crutch and smiles at the bartender. She takes one look at Wrathion and groans.

Anduin sits down in the spare chair by Wrathion’s table and takes out his book. Wrathion meets with adventurers often, because his ambitions are far reaching and if he cannot go exploring, then he will speak with those who can. Anduin has asked him before why he doesn’t simply pack his bags and go, but Wrathion never answers.

He tries not to think about it.

He has become used to sharing a bedroom with the idiot.

Occasionally he peeks over the pages, just to check on Wrathion’s dealings, but all he ever sees are runestones and shiny lumps of metal and at one point, a set of game tiles. He picks one up, curiously, but Wrathion neatly plucks it from his grasp without looking away from the most recent traveller. He tries not to be put out. He doesn’t succeed.

“Maybe we should visit the Wyrmbog, after this expedition,” Wrathion says after the last adventurer is dragged out by the innkeeper. “I do hear some fascinating stories about it.”

He doesn’t say ‘fascinating’ like it means ‘interesting’. He says it like it means ‘ominous’.

“If you want,” Anduin says, and puts his book back into a coat pocket. The myths can wait.

The Veiled Lake looks very different during the day. It is still murky, still swathed in mists, but it is no longer quite as forbidding and overwhelming as it was at midnight.

Anduin and Wrathion pull out their rowboat again, and Jaina and Bolvar see them off. Jaina casts a few enchantments on it, ones to prevent it from capsizing, from sinking, from dooming them to the watery depths. Anduin’s still getting used to the idea that all those witch rumours were true.

Except the evil ones. Those are definitively not.

“Don’t do anything foolish,” Jaina says.

“Be brave,” Bolvar says.

“We won’t,” Wrathion replies, and it isn’t clear who he’s addressing.

There are no will o’ the wisps to guide them across the lake, this time, but Anduin navigates with unerring accuracy. The island takes longer to take shape this time, he thinks, but it’s difficult to tell. It could simply be the way that the sun reflects on the mist and the difference in emotions.

They bump up against the shore with a groaning creak. The wood holds, thanks to Jaina’s enchantments, and Wrathion leaps out with a surprisingly wild grin. It seems he does enjoy the adrenalin rush as much as he has says he will. Anduin follows at a more sedate pace, because he is the responsible one and also he’s trying not to think. If he thinks he’ll start worrying and while Anduin is always worrying, he’d really rather not.

Alcaz Island is quiet. There are no birds, no insects, no noises other than the sound of their feet on the rocky soil and the waves lapping against the shore.

“He was in the arena,” Anduin whispers as they pass above the grill. He points down, and Wrathion crouches, inspecting it with curiousity.

“This is old metal,” he says. “I wonder how it has lasted so long?”

Anduin shrugs. The entire island is a confusing mess.

He meanders up to the tower again, and hesitantly pushes the door open. Whatever evidence there had once been of inhabitancy, or his and Wrathion’s impromptu visit, it’s long gone.

He waits for Wrathion and this time they descend the stairs together.

Wrathion coughs, loudly and theatrically, and nudges Anduin back into the shadows. “If the leg-thief from last week would like to show his face, I want to speak with him.”

There is silence, haunting and echoing, until a shadow on the east wall stirs. It unfolds, revealing the scarred man from yesterday.

“You again.”

Wrathion nods, and the sunlight from the grill above catches his earring, making it sparkle. “Indeed.”

“You need to leave.”

“Ah, that is where you are mistaken. I have some questions that need answering and I would greatly appreciate your co-operation.”

His voice is clear and calm, ever so charming, but the implied threat lingers in the air like a bad cheese. The man seems to acknowledge this, if not its authenticity, and steps forward so that half of his face is illuminated.

It’s all very dramatic.

“And if I don’t ‘co-operate’?”

Wrathion tilts his head, and there is something distinctly reptilian in the curve of his smile. “Then I will persuade you.”

The man makes a strange rumbling noise, and Anduin realises that it’s not boulders falling down a distant hill, but the man’s laugh.

Ah, yes, there is Anduin’s anxiety again. Long time, no see.

He decides to cut to the chase.

“Are you King Varian Wrynn?”

The laugh continues, but slows into a deep, throaty chuckle. “No. Not anymore.”

Anduin pushes on. “But you are Varian Wrynn.”

The man pauses, then nods. It’s a slow movement, a dip of the chin and slide of muscles, but his eyes remain where he thinks Anduin is. There is a regal tilt to it, a stubbornness, a sense of majesty, that makes Anduin truly begin to believe that perhaps it is possible that he was once a king.

He props himself up on the stone behind him.

“If you were once a king,” Wrathion says, “then why are you here, on an abandoned island, living in a gladiatorial pit?”

It’s a pertinent question.

Varian doesn’t answer, and Anduin looks around the room again. It looks different in the morning light. Clearly it was once populated, attended, used as entertainment, and he shudders at the thought. There’s something incredibly barbaric about watching people fight brutally as a sport. At least with sparring it’s exercise, practice, good-natured. Pit-fighting is something else entirely.

He looks back at Varian, a vague suspicion taking root and blooming. “You were kidnapped. Made into a gladiator.”

Taken hostage, prevented from returning to his kingdom. Bolvar was gone by that point and couldn’t have known, couldn’t have helped. It makes sense.

It is confirmed by Varian’s brisk agreement. “Ambushed on a diplomatic mission.”

“It was a trap.”

Varian nods, again. “I know that well by now.”

Anduin takes a breath and steps forward so that he is standing next to Wrathion. Wrathion gives him a quick glance, enough to share the protectiveness evident in his posture, and Anduin shakes his head. He’ll be fine. He doesn’t think Varian is murderous, simply emotionally compromised. Given the circumstances, Anduin can’t fault him for it.

“Bolvar is alive,” he starts with. “He was thrown overboard but he managed to survive. He’s living in Theramore.”

Varian’s shoulders sag, just slightly, and Anduin thinks he might see a smile beginning to edge at the corners of Varian’s mouth. “That’s… that’s good.”

“So is Jaina.”

Varian bows his head.

“And so am I.”

Wrathion places a hand on Anduin’s shoulder, and he stands firm. He needs to witness Varian’s reaction.

There is a period of silence, where Varian seems to struggle with an internal debate. His fists clench, and release, then clench again. His eyes are shadowed. Anduin can’t read his expression, but he wants to help him. He always wants to help.

“Anduin Proudmoore,” Varian says, a strange half-sigh. “Son of Jaina Proudmoore.”

“Yes,” Anduin agrees, because he is, even though Jaina is not his biological parent. She is his mother. The title of Auntie is simply a different word for it.

Varian reaches up, and wipes the heel of his hand across one eye. Is he crying? Anduin can’t tell. He takes comfort in Wrathion’s firm grip.

“My son.”

Anduin takes a breath.

“No. Not really.”

Varian nods, and does that rumble-laugh again. He abruptly sits, dropping to the stone seats and burying his head in his hands.

Wrathion moves forward and sits down a few feet away, and Anduin follows.

“How are you alive?” Varian asks, speaking into his hands. His shoulders shudder, just once.

“Jaina escaped Stormwind with me,” Anduin says. “I live in Theramore, across the lake.”

“With Bolvar, I see.”

“Yes.”

Anduin can’t identify the emotion that is ringing through Varian’s voice, and he isn’t sure he wants to. It sounds heavy and overwhelming – of course it’s heavy and overwhelming – and he doesn’t trust Varian enough to try and comfort him. He wants to, and on some instinctive level he does, but he thinks of their flight from the island last time and pauses.

He reaches out, tentatively.

Varian looks up and watches him, before returning the gesture. His hand is twice the size of Anduin’s, and dwarfs his in comparison, but his grip is gentle. Like holding a small child.

Perhaps, in Varian’s mind, he is.

There is five minutes of silence. Wrathion is a steady presence on his left, and Varian is staring at the floor to his right.

Anduin can’t bring himself to break it.

It’s awkward and uncomfortable, because Anduin can’t help further no matter how much he feels he has to. The sound of waves in the distance is soothing and grounding. Wrathion’s quiet breathing is something he latches on to, even as he draws away from Varian and removes his hand.

“Why are you still here?”

Varian laughs again. “I suppose you’re expecting a meaningful reason, but in all truths, I simply couldn’t fashion a boat. It is not a skill they teach you as a king.”

Anduin’s jaw drops, and Wrathion lets out a surprised snicker.

“Even I am not strong enough to swim across an entire lake,” he adds, “although I cannot say I never tried.”

Wrathion glances across at Anduin, who returns it curiously.

“The mana wyrm,” he says, and Anduin doesn’tgiggle. He doesn’t.

He rises, and Wrathion mimes tripping him. Wrathion does seem to be in a strange mood – a playful kind of antagonism, very at odds with the current tension in the atmosphere. Anduin’s glad for it. He does appreciate Wrathion’s company greatly, even in situations where he is making a thorough nuisance of himself.

Varian stands too, and Anduin realises with a little shock that they are almost of a height. In his intimidation he had seen Varian’s bulk as height, rather than mass.

A small part of him wishes that he had inherited that strength. But he ignores the nagging thoughts and looks up at the man who could have been his father.

“Come back with us,” he says. “Off the island. To Theramore.”

Varian watches him, weighing his options perhaps, or judging Anduin’s honesty. He isn’t sure. Varian’s expressions are unreadable and unfamiliar.

“Very well,” he acquiesces. “I will go with you. But I cannot promise more.”

Anduin smiles. “That’s all I ask.”

They make their way back to the shore. This time, it is Varian who takes control of both oars, and pushes them across the lake with incredible strength. It makes sense, Anduin supposes, because when you’re stuck on a deserted island there’s not a lot to do.

He wonders how Varian managed to live there for twenty years.

As they draw up to the docks, the figures of Jaina and Bolvar begin to take shape. Bolvar has his feet dangling over the edge of the pier, and Jaina has her hand on his shoulder.

Jaina straightens as the boat approaches. It must be hard to miss the imposing figure Varian cuts. She shakes Bolvar, who looks up and almost immediately leaps to his feet. He starts to move impatiently, pacing up and down the pier, always looking back as if to assure himself that he isn’t seeing ghosts.

Varian doesn’t speak.

Anduin hauls Wrathion out of the boat after him, as they draw up next to the pier. Jaina helps him up, her boots still wet from the surf, and steadies him with a comforting hand.

Varian waits until they are both out, and Bolvar extends a hand. There is a heartbeat pause, where Anduin genuinely wonders what Varian will do, before he clasps the proffered hand in a warrior’s grip and allows himself to be pulled up.

Bolvar wastes no time. He drags Varian into a full-bodied hug, and they both laugh joyously.

Jaina places her other hand on Wrathion’s shoulder, and draws both of them towards her. “I can’t believe this.”

Varian pulls back, and a smile cuts across his face, and Anduin can perhaps see the similarities in the mirror there. “Jaina. I – there aren’t words.”

Anduin twists his neck to see her expression, and she’s smiling too. Her eyes are bright. “You’re alive. You’re – I never thought – I…”

Her hand tightens infinitesimally around his shoulder.

Varian kneels, a sudden movement that looks like it has never been practiced, never been needed. “I don’t know how to thank you for what you’ve done for me, Jaina, but know that I am thankful. This debt – it cannot be repaid.”

Jaina laughs, tears finally breaking and trickling down her cheeks. “Varian, don’t be foolish. There has never been a debt. Anduin has saved me just as much as I have saved him.”

Her grip softens, and Anduin’s heart goes with it.

Varian is a quiet apparition from then on. He stays at the barracks, spending his time training with the Night Watch and attending their patrols. He is strong, stronger than any of them, stronger than Anduin believed possible. Not as tall as Bolvar, not as brave as Bolvar, but as Anduin watches him right a toppling cart in the marketplace one afternoon, he does believe that Varian is as strong as Bolvar.

“A curious individual,” Wrathion comments one day. They are sitting on the fence along the training yard of the guards. Anduin has his book of Myths With Dragons In Them across his knees, and Wrathion has his feet precariously balanced on the top of the fence beside him. He does have a strange sense of grace and balance. Anduin wouldn’t be surprised if he suddenly sprouted wings and flew.

“Yes,” Anduin agrees. “He’s… not what I expected.”

“Less pompous.”

“Less lordly.”

“Less ‘Do as I say, peasants.’”

“Less ‘For the good of the kingdom I shall smite thee!’”

Wrathion chuckles, and Anduin smiles down at his book. His annoying fringe falls in front of his eyes.

“He’s certainly giving Left and Right a run for their money,” Wrathion observes a few minutes later. Varian has chosen to use a sword, a great two-handed thing that’s nearly as tall as Wrathion. Left and Right are having trouble breaking past his defences. He’s fast for a big man.

“He fights well.”

He fights like a wolf.

They sit there for a long while. Wrathion eventually grows bored, as he is wont to do, and tugs on Anduin’s sleeve.

“Are you or are you not going to speak to him?”

Anduin shakes his head. “I’ve spoken enough.”

Wrathion snorts, rolling his eyes and dropping his feet from the fence. “Then come with me.”

He wanders off, and Anduin follows him with a bemused gaze, until he realises that he’s still sitting on the fence.

He glances down at his book, then back to Wrathion. The pages are soft in his grip, having been reread three times since his birthday, and as he runs his fingers down the binding he feels the leather crease. Wrathion isn’t watching him.

It’s a strange confidence, Anduin thinks as he slips from the fence. That Wrathion is so sure of his own worth and Anduin’s esteem that he knows Anduin will follow him. Anduin understands it, to an extent, but it is still a little odd.

He wonders what Wrathion is interested in now.

He follows him through Theramore, through alleyways and darkened corners, through the bright market square, through the arching gate with the vigilant guards and twining paintings. Wrathion never looks back, keeps his gaze ahead and his chin up. Anduin follows, book tucked in his coat and prosthetic clinking against the stone with each step. Perhaps that’s how Wrathion is sure he’s following.

They stop at a stone statue.

Anduin looks up at it, and his brow furrows.

“Yes, that was my initial reaction,” Wrathion says thoughtfully, his hands in his pockets and his posture loose. “I wondered, you know, when I saw him. He looks so different. But I came and investigated and it turns out that it is.”

There is a statue of Varian in the main square. He is larger than life – Anduin hadn’t thought that would be possible, yet here they are – with his hand on the pommel of a sword and a crown on his brow. He is wearing a thick cloak with fur trim, and his gaze is to the horizon.

He doesn’t look like Varian, not the Varian Anduin has met. He’s too different. Alcaz Island changed him too much.

“How does it feel, Anduin Wrynn? To know that your father is a king.”

There is something strange in Wrathion’s tone. Anduin can’t put a name to it, even as he tries. It’s fond, but it’s kind of bitter, a little sad. Wrathion isn’t looking at him.

“Please don’t call me that.”

His arms wrap around his stomach.

“It’s who you are. It’s your legacy.”

“It isn’t.”

Wrathion laughs, and Anduin recoils. “It is, Prince Wrynn. Just because it’s new and you don’t like it, doesn’t make it untrue.”

“Don’t call me that, either.”

Wrathion turns, and finally looks at him, and Anduin doesn’t like the look in his eyes. Something is broken in the copper depths. “You need to learn to accept it.”

“Why?”

“Because to do otherwise is weakness, your highness. Your bloodline is as much a part of you as your precious books.”

“I don’t understand why we’re talking about this now.”

Wrathion narrows his eyes, and Anduin watches him move closer with a strange fear. He has never been afraid of Wrathion. Afraid for him, yes, but not of him. Even when Wrathion is angry or distant or petty, Anduin isn’t afraid.

“Your father was a king. He came from a long line of royalty and there is a weight and importance to his name that is integral to his history. His history, by association, is your history. Who he is reflects on who you are, and the lessons you have learnt from other people will not change that.”

Wrathion places his hand on Anduin’s shoulder, and Anduin glances at it then back to his gaze. “It doesn’t matter how bright a sun you are, his shadow is still greater than you.”

Anduin can’t move, can’t evade the question further. Wrathion’s hold is light, a connection rather than a prison, and Anduin realises that his fear isn’t directed at Wrathion. It’s a fear of the truth that Wrathion is confronting him with, the truth Anduin isn’t strong enough to accept because he doesn’t like it and it isn’t him.

“I’m not the Prince of Stormwind.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I’m not!”

Wrathion spins him and points to the statue. “That is your father. He is the King of Stormwind. Therefore, you are a prince.”

“But I don’t want to be!”

“I don’t care!”

Anduin jerks back, and Wrathion stares at him, before his lip curls and he looks away. He seems equal parts furious and upset.

“I don’t care,” he repeats, calmer. “We don’t get to choose our parents. We are simply dealt that hand, and we have to deal with it.”

Anduin’s hands are shaking, but now it’s anger. It’s annoyance. It’s an alien desire to punch Wrathion in his face, before he says something that Anduin can’t ignore.

So instead, he takes a deep breath, and walks away.

“You are strong.”

Varian makes the observation calmly, and Anduin glances across at him as he lets his next arrow fly.

“Not really,” Anduin starts, but Varian shakes his head before he can continue.

“I was not talking about your archery.” He walks over, hands clasped behind his back. He takes long strides, Anduin has noticed, such that even Bolvar has trouble keeping up. “There are other ways to be strong.”

Anduin frowns, but doesn’t dispute it. It is, after all, true. Mostly.

He sets his bow down, along with the quiver and arrows. The arrows are embedded deeply in the target, and it takes him some time to pull them out, even though there are only three. There is latent strength in the bow. He draws upon it as he draws the string.

“What do you intend to do?”

“About what?”

“Everything.”

Anduin looks to him, and takes in his lined, scarred face and the myriad of split ends. “I don’t intend to do anything.”

Varian frowns. He frowns a lot, but the way that he does so reminds Anduin of himself. He’s not sure how he feels about that yet. “Inaction can be dangerous.”

“What do you want me to do? March up to the castle and slay the dragon?” Anduin shakes his head and smiles, ever so slightly. “No, that would be suicide. I’m happy here.”

Varian pats the seat of the bench next to him. Anduin sits, reluctantly, and leaves a gap.

Silence reigns. Anduin watches Varian, and Varian watches the forest. The faint sounds of Kinndy’s Creek can be heard over the eerie stillness. There is a small part of Anduin that wants to run into that forest and never comeback, to explore and investigate and satiate his curiousity. It sounds disturbingly like something Wrathion would do. This would normally stop him in his tracks, but Anduin’s curiousity has gotten them further than he had thought possible, so perhaps it isn’t such a bad idea.

“What is justice, to you?” Varian asks, suddenly.

Anduin thinks about this for a moment. “Mercy. Justice is mercy.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because justice without mercy is just vengeance.”

“And do all people deserve mercy?”

Anduin props his chin in the palm of his hand and thinks for a while. It’s hard to say, exactly. He has never been so angry at someone that he has thought to deny them mercy, to deny them compassion. But, he can’t deny that sometimes people don’t deserve mercy. Some crimes are too great. Forgiveness is not necessarily the best route.

“I don’t know,” he says slowly. “I think… I think we should aspire to it, but mercy is… difficult. It’s no constant thing. Sometimes mercy is justice, and I don’t think justice is always kind.”

“Does Katrana Prestor deserve mercy?”

Anduin freezes.

Varian pushes forward. “She destroyed a city, killed thousands of people. Stormwind was nothing but a war zone afterwards. Do the people she ruined deserve justice? Does she deserve compassion?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Why?”

“Because it isn’t my place to judge her.”

Varian abruptly smiles and places his hand on Anduin’s shoulder. The touch reminds him of Bolvar, a little; it has the same feeling behind it. “That is your strength, Anduin. Not your bow. Your heart. Remember that.”

Anduin watches him for a heartbeat, then nods. “I will.”

He wakes up screaming.

“Anduin?!”

There is flames and fire and blood and rubble. Red skies and terrified screaming. The smell of vanilla? He can hear burning, houses collapsing, someone crying. Two women arguing loudly. Phantom sensations in his amputated leg.

“Hey, hey, calm down, Anduin, shh!”

He opens his eyes to red fire, but it’s gone in an instant, replaced with Wrathion’s dark eyes. Wrathion has his hands on Anduin’s shoulders and he’s watching him with quickened breath.

“Where – ” He slams a hand to his mouth and feels horribly ill. “I’m going to – ”

Wrathion rolls off him and dashes out of the room, returning seconds later with a bucket. Anduin bends over it and heaves up what remains of his dinner. He’s cold and sweaty and shaking, and all he can feel is fire on his skin and the smell of vanilla.

There is a frantic knocking on the door and Wrathion disappears again. He is replaced by Jaina, dressed hastily in a robe and with the most incredible bed head.

“Anduin?” she asks worriedly, stroking his back comfortingly. He arches into it, then turns away as illness strikes again. “Darling heart, what’s wrong?”

“Nightmare,” he blurts, resting his head in his hands. “I’m sorry.”

Wrathion sits next to him and rubs his chin thoughtfully. Lately he’s been growing out a goatee, and Anduin doesn’t have the heart to tell him it looks ridiculous. “About?”

“I don’t know. Nothing. Doesn’t matter.”

Jaina fetches him a cup of water and he nods thankfully. His mouth tastes foul. He wants to go back to sleep, but the light through his eyelids stains them the same brilliant red as his dream.

“I need to go to Stormwind.”

Jaina recoils, and Wrathion laughs aloud. They both wear similar incredulous expressions.

“You are joking,” Wrathion says, chuckling. “Go to Stormwind. That place is nothing but rubble. Besides, who knows how long it would take to get there? Why not just explore the Wyrmbog? The same danger, much quicker.”

“Wrathion is right, except for the Wyrmbog part,” Jaina says. “That would be foolish. Both are foolish, actually. I could swear I raised you with some measure of sense.”

Anduin scowls at her, and she frowns back.

“I need to go. There’s something important there – don’t ask me how I know, because I just do, I can’t explain it. There’s, it’s something really important. Please, trust me on this.”

He presses his hand to his heart and tries to tell her with his eyes that he really believes this. He needs to do this. His conviction warms him from the inside.

She stares, and Wrathion lets out a tiny gasp. “Anduin, your eyes…”

He blinks, then glances across at the small looking glass resting against the wall.

His eyes are glowing golden.

He blinks, and the light remains, a faint radiance spilling out to warm the air above his cheeks. Jaina is laughing, and Wrathion is looking between them in amused confusion.

“This is new,” he says, lips tilting into a faint smirk, and Jaina reaches over to rub his head teasingly. “You’ve been holding out on us. Now we don’t need to use candles anymore.”

Anduin smiles inadvertently, blinking a few times in disbelief.

“Do you mind?” Wrathion asks, and raises a hand.

Anduin shakes his head, and Wrathion comes to rest his hand on Anduin’s cheek. His index finger follows the curve of Anduin’s lower lid, and Anduin can see the light highlight his joints. Wrathion’s thumb rests on the corner of his lip, shifting slightly with each movement. Wrathion’s eyes are focused on his own. It feels like he’s seeing straight through him.

“Fascinating,” Wrathion murmurs, eyes flicking to Jaina. “Magic, then?”

“Magic, of some kind,” she agrees with a nod. “I’m not familiar with it, but I have seen similar. Clerics used to be able to channel their deities like this.”

“I don’t believe in a deity.”

“I don’t think that matters so much.” Jaina and Wrathion share another glance, this one with the intelligence they both share concerning magic and its doings. It’s amusing, sometimes, watching them discuss spells and hexes and little tricks. Wrathion even carved a few runestones with her once, to replace the ones Anduin seems to keep breaking.

Wrathion’s hand remains, even as his attention turns elsewhere. Anduin is quietly glad for it. “I suppose we are going to Stormwind, then. Do you know the route?”

Anduin shakes his head. He doesn’t, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find a map. Head around the Veiled Lake and then keep going east.

“I have maps,” Jaina says, rising. She doesn’t leave the room; rather, she comes and sits between Anduin and Wrathion, placing an arm over their shoulders. She draws them to her side and hugs them tightly. Wrathion reacts much as a cat does, but upon Anduin’s light laughter, he relaxes and allows it. Anduin, for his part, rests his forehead on Jaina’s shoulder and smiles to himself.

“Don’t do anything too stupid.”

“We will.”

“Yes, I know, but allow me my illusions.”

They leave at dawn.

At least, when Anduin tells this story to his children many years later, he says that they leave at dawn. In actuality, Wrathion is rather rubbish at waking up early, and they end up leaving just after lunch at what should be closer to teatime.

It is, Anduin thinks, appropriate.

They head east. This time, they decide against following Kinndy’s Creek through the forest. Wrathion takes a compass that one of his adventurers gave him, possibly as a souvenir, possibly as a mocking gesture. Knowing Wrathion, it could well be either.

The Forest – once again, Theramorans are not a creative folk – is darker the further they venture in. It is lucky that Wrathion thought to bring a compass. Anduin can barely see the sun through the dense canopy, and if they tried to follow its directions, they’d be hopelessly lost in a heartbeat. Not to mention, heading anywhere other than one of the four co-ordinates would be pure guesswork.

As much as Wrathion is impulsive and tends to whimsy, he does not approve of guesswork. Anduin follows his instinct. He tries not to.

“What do you think we’ll find in Stormwind, then?” Wrathion asks. “Do you even know how far it is?”

“Farther than Alcaz.”

“Thank you for that stunning deduction.”

Anduin grins and prods Wrathion in the side, who sniffs and pretends that this is beneath him. “You asked. I think we’ll find ruin and rubble, as you so wisely pointed out.”

“Are you mocking me, Prince Wrynn?”

“Would I do that?”

Wrathion shrugs, and the movement ripples like water. “You are continually finding ways to surprise me. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Anduin can’t argue with that, so he lends the point to Wrathion.

“But, honestly, I don’t know what we’ll find.” He bats a stray branch away and tries not to laugh as it hits Wrathion in the face. “Closure, I suppose, but I think there’s more than that. I feel like it’s just something I have to do. Something important.”

“You and your feelings.”

“Me and my feelings,” Anduin agrees companionably, and laughs as Wrathion rolls his eyes. He does tend to hate it when Anduin agrees with him, because he knows that it’s mocking, and he knows that it’s only so that Wrathion can’t seize the opportunity to talk more.

Because Wrathion does talk, a lot, with a startling fondness for monologues. It makes it difficult to distinguish separate conversations, because they all kind of… blur.

To be honest, Anduin doesn’t actually remember much from the journey. He remembers the feelings and the blur of time, measured in laughs and trees and the slow shift from forest to plain. The sun crosses the sky, and the moon chases it eagerly.

He remembers watching Wrathion laugh, and attempt to set up a campfire. Sparks flying. But that could be one night, or many, spread and woven together like threads in the grand tapestry of Anduin’s memories. He remembers moss beneath his feet, or grass, or heath that crunches when he steps. Leaves brushing his skin as the branches catch on his quiver.

Trying to set up tents, and failing, time and time again. Trying to count stars, and getting confused as a few turn out to be fireflies. There’s a lingering sense of adventure that runs through him constantly, twisting every little facet of his memories into something wild and seamless.

There is a blur of water and coolness on his fingertips, then warmth on his face. The white of Wrathion’s teeth against a dark forest, and a choir of birds causing a racket in the early morning sunshine. He remembers the way that their packs grew heavier and lighter with the time and mood, but he couldn’t pinpoint when or where if he tried.

There is one image, however, that sticks with him. They are just at the edge of where the forest begins to thin, where there is still a brook winding through and moss enough to serve as a pillow. Wrathion is balancing along a log, walking and gesturing, eyes caught on some unknown horizon. The sun is behind him, casting him in chiaroscuro and turning his silhouette into a blinding halo. Anduin looks up, and Wrathion looks down, and then the moment falls through, and all that remains is the tapestry.

“That’s a very big wall.”

“Thank you for that astute observation.”

“Alright, no need to be feral.”

Wrathion sniffs and wanders forward. It is, as Anduin observes, a very big wall. It would be bigger, except it is mostly rubble and ruin now, the faintest hints of what could have been a guard tower hidden to one side. Behind it, Anduin can see the outlines of mountains, and smoke.

The rock is grey with age, but as Wrathion drags a gloved finger along, some of the grey scratches off to reveal pure white stone. It isn’t marble, but it may as well be, for all Anduin knows of it.

Wrathion leaps up, and proceeds to investigate, with a strange kind of inquisitive thoroughness that Anduin recognises from the way Jaina sometimes looks.

He does it to. Curious, that.

He gets out the map, and lets Wrathion have his fun. Anduin is curious, almost beyond belief, but he’s not entirely stupid. He doesn’t want to go the wrong way and end up utterly lost.

Although, the idea is getting more and more tempting by the second.

This must be Sentinel Hill, then. The outpost is large, and there are boards and bricks that might have once made up an abandoned town. It’s been thoroughly trampled, though; brought low by some huge force of nature. Or, Anduin thinks as he looks to the sky, a dragon.

“Which way is Stormwind?” Wrathion asks from his perch atop the rubble. Anduin squints into the distance, then points north-east.

“That way. This is a border outpost. I think the wall was once bigger.”

“Obviously.” Wrathion makes his way down, far jauntier than he has any right to be. “Come on. We’re wasting precious daylight. There’s nothing here but decades old stone.”

Anduin looks at the remains of the guard tower thoughtfully, then leads the way. Wrathion is right, but there’s more to it than that. This tower was once a mighty outpost, and there was once a town around it, with people who had stories of their own. The stone remains, and with it, that history.

There are stories everywhere, should one care to look for them. Anduin finds them. Wrathion, he suspects, deliberately does not.

The grass is dry, moors turning to overgrown patches of old farmland. They cross a trickled, dried up river, and follow an old trail; it had once been a road, Anduin thinks, but now it is old and cracked and nothing more than a hint of a pathway through the dawning forest. There are mountains to the north, tall peaks that block their view of where the ruins of Stormwind should be.

As they draw closer, the land becomes strangely contradictory. The trees are tall, and the branches thick, and the leaves green. Yet there are patches where fires ravage, where the forest has been burnt away. It leaves nothing but soot – Wrathion kneels beside one such patch, very early on, and runs the dirt through his fingers.

“Strange,” he says. “This is nothing like wildfire. This is precise. Targeted.”

They exchange a glance. They both know what manner of beast leaves such scorching marks.

It takes them five days to travel far enough to catch a glimpse of the city, and another three before they are making their way up to the front gates. Well – Anduin calls them gates, because he knows that at some point, that’s what they once were. Now they are nothing more than heaps of rubble, stone piled randomly in what could, theoretically, be called towers. The city sprawls out behind, dust absent from the air but looking no better for it.

But there are still people.

The scene is a battlefield. Anduin can’t tell who is fighting who, but there are red masked rogues sparring off against guards in mismatched armour. It’s chaotic, unpredictable; he shoves Wrathion to the side as a dagger careens past their heads, and reaches for his bow. It won’t be much use in such close quarters, but it’s a comfort to feel the familiar wood in his palm.

There is a woman in shining armour standing atop the rubble. She has fierce blond hair and light brown skin, like Anduin, but there is a sharpness to her movements and a command in her gaze that is distinctly different. Her gaze flits over them as they sidle their way through the throng.

“This is no place for children,” she says, and although the words are sharp, there is a vibrant kind of caring behind them. “Quickly, now.”

Anduin grabs Wrathion’s wrist and pulls, dragging him forward, just a little further.

She ushers them through, and then down and around, into a series of streets that are almost invisible in the ruins. There are boards and planks above them that look like they simply fell that way, but when Anduin reaches up to knock on one, it remains utterly firm and unyielding.

There are even embers dotting the cobblestones. Anduin, surprisingly, doesn’t feel afraid or anxious. He just feels the urge to examine everything, to run off and search out answers.

“In here,” she says, and Anduin turns to see something like a bunker buried deep. He ducks in, and blinks as his eyes adjust to the low light.

Wrathion, who never seems to have the same problem, strangely enough, folds his arms and regards the woman with cool indifference. “Who are you? We were given to understand that Stormwind City was abandoned.”

“That is what that bitch would have you believe,” says the commander, and she eyes them suspiciously. Her gaze rests on Anduin’s for a long while, and he wonders what she’s thinking. “She still sends her minions to do her bidding. She did not win last time, and although there is not much left, I will not let her take this, too.”

“Charming.” Wrathion straightens his turban. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“My name is Tiffin,” she replies. “Tiffin Ellerian Wrynn. I was once queen, years ago, when this place was more than dust and ashes.”

And Anduin’s world stops.

She meets his gaze again, and sees something in his eyes. A smile slowly dawns, but her eyes are sad. Gentle. Impossibly kind.

“It is nice to meet you again, Anduin.”

His eyes well up with tears, and she reaches out to brush her thumb across his cheek, before it falls back to her side. She doesn’t do more. She understands, Anduin thinks, that he is fragile and unprepared and mourns the lack of connection between them.

“Queen Tiffin,” he says, bowing slightly. When he straightens, she is no longer smiling, but there is still that same kindness in her eyes.

“And you are Anduin’s friend?”

Wrathion nods, and smiles, but unlike Tiffin’s smile it is distinctly reptilian in its charm. “Indeed. My name is Wrathion.”

Something flashes in Tiffin’s eyes, but it’s gone in a heartbeat, and Anduin is left wondering if he imagined it. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

She leads them over to a small table, where maps and plans and reports are spread out. A helmet rests on an abandoned chair, alongside an almighty greathammer, and Tiffin tosses them aside as if they are meaningless and weightless. Perhaps, to her, they are.

“What brings you here?” she asks, sitting down and gesturing for them to do the same. Anduin pulls up a chair, and presses his palms together beneath his chin.

“I needed to come,” he says simply.

She nods. “And what do you intend to do here?”

He pauses, because he doesn’t have a long and complex answer. Not anything detailed, or explanatory. Nothing but his feelings to justify what is, to anyone’s eyes, completely irrational behaviour.

But Anduin is beginning to learn that it is alright to follow his heart, just as much as his head.

“I want to help.”

Wrathion, now, leans forward. His vest shifts at the movement, and the oiled leather shines in the low lamp light. “We are also curious about Onyxia.”

Tiffin’s face darkens, and she mirror’s Wrathion’s movement. Her blue eyes shift to something ominous and stormy, like a sudden squall on the horizon. “She is still attacking, as you can see. She hides away in the Wyrmbog and sends her minions to do her dirty work.”

She eyes them with something akin to worry. “Where did you come from?”

“Theramore.” Anduin smiles, slightly. “Jaina lives there, and Bolvar, and Varian, more recently.”

Tiffin’s smile looks like a sunburst, and Anduin is surprised to see that her eyes glow like his do. As if Tiffin’s body can’t control the radiance of her soul. “I am glad. I am…”

She trails off, and brushes a hand across her eyes.

“I am very glad.”

Anduin stretches out a hand, and this time, he doesn’t fear a response. There is something trustworthy about Tiffin, no less intimidating but still comforting in her sincerity. Anduin has barely been in her presence for longer than half an hour, and yet he trusts her, in ways that he can’t ever see himself trusting Varian.

Tiffin smiles at him and takes it.

They talk, all three of them, for a very long time. Tiffin tells them about Stormwind, about the relief efforts, about the civilians that still need protection and the guards who endeavour to provide it. Anduin tells her of Theramore, of Jaina and Bolvar and Varian, and growing up there surrounded by love and freedom. Wrathion tells her how they travelled to Stormwind, of their adventures on Alcaz Island, and of his hopes for their future.

“Onyxia’s Lair is back the way you came,” she says, after they have adjourned for tea and are seated watching several children play in the remaining rubble. There are no smiths, no stonemasons left to rebuild, but the remaining citizens have taken it into their own hands, and the restored houses are simple but homely. “Should you wish to confront her, you will be returning home.”

Anduin nods. He has his heart set on this; he knows it’s what he wants. He wants an answer, he wants Onyxia to explain. More than that, he wants Stormwind to be able to rebuild without fear, because the children are laughing and playing, but the dust remains.

“I would accompany you, but these people need me.” Her gaze is fond as she watches the girl steal the boy’s toy monkey and run away. “I cannot abandon them.  If I were not able to return, I would have betrayed them, simply because I cared too much.”

“I understand,” Anduin says, because he does. Responsibility is an important thing, and while he is slowly beginning to let it go, his responsibilities are nowhere near Tiffin’s; or, even, what his could have been.

“Is there anyone you can send with us, then?” Wrathion asks. “It would be useful to have some extra hands in case of an emergency.”

Tiffin considers this for a while, eyes darting between the people who pass by. A guardsman with a worn prayer book, a mage with dark braids, a young girl with bobbles in her hair. “I will send one of my sergeants with you,” she decides. “And there is a medic who will be useful. But you must stay for a while. Rest.”

“We will,” Wrathion says, and there is suddenly a wicked gleam in his eye. “You wouldn’t happen to have any spices, would you?”

Wrathion, somewhat predictably, immediately disappears into the nearest inn and begins to amass a curious audience. Anduin, who himself is also curious but not stupid, prefers to gather his information a little more subtly.

But, because he’s still Anduin, and that does come with a small amount of mandatory idiocy, he allows Wrathion to drag him off through the ruins on his way to the inn.

“This is your city,” Wrathion says, “strictly speaking. I doubt there remains a crown, but the right to wear it is yours.”

“Are we really doing this again.”

“Yes.” He straightens his turban. The rubble crunches underfoot, and Anduin instinctively steers them off on a small detour. He doesn’t know his way around just yet, but he does know that if he goes in an arc, they’ll eventually come full circle. “Your denial, Prince Wrynn, is astonishing. It is matched only by your capacity for self-delusion.”

“Now you’re just being a jerk.”

“At least I am honest about it.”

Wrathion is so crooked he could walk through a corkscrew sideways, and both of them know it. They share a quiet snicker.

Wrathion pauses, then takes Anduin’s face in his hands, yanking him down so that they are on eye level. Anduin blinks in surprise, staring back with an odd mix of curiousity and apprehension. Wrathion suddenly seems intense, like there is something he is burning to do before time runs out – but they are not constrained by time, and Anduin can’t think of a single thing that could cause Wrathion to look at him with such seriousness.

Wrathion leans closer, and Anduin tilts his head.

“You are my conscience,” Wrathion says suddenly, drawing back and looking away. “Allow me to return the favour.”

Anduin stares at him, unsure of how to piece that together, then looks to the sky.

He thought he would find closure here, but closure is turning out to be an elusive beast. It is just out of reach, teasing and tantalising, and each time he tries to chase after it he feels that it moves farther and farther away from him.

The clouds have no answers for him, and he looks back at Wrathion. There is something in his gaze that makes Anduin feel oddly unsure, like Wrathion is thinking thoughts that go beyond what Anduin knows of him.

But Anduin knows almost everything about Wrathion.

“Later,” Anduin says, and for once he means it. He’s not sure how much later, but he knows that there will be a later, and Wrathion smiles as he understands.

“Good,” he says, and pushes open the door to the inn. “I will be here. Enjoy your melancholy, lonely walk while I sit here by the fire and listen to fascinating tales.”

Anduin laughs, and shoves Wrathion off into the inn, and sets off to find somewhere to sit and read his book.

He finds a nice little niche on top of a half built wall. It’s the border of what might have been a courtyard once, or perhaps a training ground. A few children are playing around the wide space, but it’s mostly quiet, and there are a few bushes and a lone tree that make the place seem a little less ruined and a little more hopeful.

Some while later, a voice interrupts his reading.

“So, who are you, then?”

Anduin looks up. There’s a woman standing in front of him. She’s wearing a green vest over a gold shirt. It should look utterly ridiculous, but somehow she pulls it off.

“I’m Anduin,” he says.

He doesn’t have time to say anything more.

“Oh!” The woman grins widely. “You’re Tiff’s son, then. You look just like her, isn’t that charming? Except the face shape, there’s something different there. I’m Daniyah, lovely to meet you. How are you liking Stormwind? Well, I say that, but there’s really not a lot left. How are you liking the ruins of Stormwind? I think the rubble adds a certain air to the place.”

“Daniyah.”

Anduin breathes, feeling as though he hasn’t for quite some time, and turns his head. There’s a guard standing there, arms folded, hip cocked as though tired of Daniyah’s chatter already. Anduin can’t exactly blame her, but then again, Daniyah is at least nice.

The guard takes off her helmet, revealing burnished red hair and bright hazel eyes. Her gaze is stern, but not harsh. “Apologies. Daniyah is excitable.”

“I’m charming,” she corrects, dancing over and swinging an arm around the guard’s waist. Anduin gets the impression that it’s because she can’t reach her shoulders. “Anduin, this is Rikke; Rikke, this is Anduin. Play nicely.”

“Sergeant Rikke Hearthfire,” Rikke says, saluting properly and then gently disentangling herself from Daniyah. “It’s an honour, your highness.”

“Please don’t call me that,” Anduin says, tucking his book away and standing. Wrathion is nowhere to be seen, for once, and he wonders if this is intentional or accidental. “Just Anduin is fine.”

Rikke blinks for half a moment, then rallies. She nods. “Alright then, yo – Anduin.”

Anduin looks between the two, and then speaks before Daniyah does. He gets the feeling she may turn out to be akin to Wrathion, in that silences must always be filled, and preferably with the sound of her voice. “Is there something I can help with?”

“Actually,” Rikke says, “we’re here to help you.”

“We’re your personal bodyguard!” Daniyah says proudly, bouncing on her toes. Her hairs poufs up even further. Anduin wonders how she does it. “Rikke can stab things well, and I can un-stab things. Well. Sort of.”

“That’s – ”

“Shh, it makes sense.”

Anduin, remarkably, does not fidget. He waits patiently until they finish bickering, then clears his throat, which causes Daniyah’s head to spin and Rikke to turn slightly pink in embarrassment.

“Tiffin sent you to help us?” he asks, and Daniyah nods rapidly. “Thank you, then. It’s very kind of you.”

“Well,” Daniyah says, “when Queen Tiffin asks you to do something out of the kindness of your heart, you kind of have to, otherwise she’ll give you this look and then you’ll feel guilt tripped even if you don’t actually feel guilty. It’s quite bizarre. Please tell me you don’t do that.”

“I… no. I don’t think so.”

“Then we’ll get along just splendidly.” She glances up, and apparently notices the time simply from the position of the sun. Anduin isn’t sure if it’s honest, or just for dramatics. “Oh, well, off I go. Have fun, you two! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

She waves, and runs off.

Rikke and Anduin exchange glances.

“I’m guessing that there isn’t much she wouldn’t do.”

“Only anything morally correct,” Rikke grits out, but there’s a fondness behind it. Anduin smiles.

“I do mean it. Thank you. You don’t have to.”

Rikke sighs and clasps her hands behind her back. Her posture is precision perfect, and there’s a tension there now that Daniyah’s gone. “You are a prince. It’s my duty.”

He understands that. He wishes he didn’t, but he does, and he can’t fault Rikke for it. It’s the same feeling, he imagines, as the one that drove him to come to the ruins of Stormwind in the first place. The one that had him seek out Alcaz Island. He doesn’t call it duty, but if that’s the word that Rikke ascribes to it, then he’s content to let her be.

They stand in silence, appraising one another. Anduin meets Rikke’s gaze, and she nods, and they share a brief moment of understanding before Rikke turns and gestures towards the main square.

“My patrol is this way. You can accompany me.”

Rikke gives him a thorough tour of the ruins. She describes to him the old city, the one she remembers in her distant memories; she was perhaps ten or twelve when it fell, she adds as an afterthought. He stows that away in his mind. Just in case.

There is one spot she avoids, where the earth is strangely charred past the weeds growing up through the soot. He asks her about it, but she doesn’t answer, simply shakes her head and continues on.

He thinks his favourite place is the old Cathedral Square. The cathedral is long since gone, but the rubble is clearer, this far from the main gates, and the space is an open courtyard. Trees and patches of grass are interspersed between clumps of cobblestones, and the pretty golden painted tiles from the roves look like coins thrown in a game.

Or, he thinks, glancing up at the sky, patches of sunlight.

“Do you miss it?” he asks. “The old Stormwind?”

Rikke shrugs. “Perhaps.”

And that is all he gets out of her.

Her patrol takes them past the inn where he lost Wrathion, and he says as much before ducking his head in. Wrathion is in a heated debate with a large man wielding a hammer bigger than Anduin’s head. His shield has a sun on it in gold.

He must be a paladin, Anduin thinks, and can’t quite squelch the immediate awe.

Rikke tugs on his collar, and he realises he is gaping, and he quickly yanks himself back outside and pretends nothing happened.

“Paladins aren’t incredible,” Rikke says, a weight to her voice that tells Anduin that she’s holding something back. “They’re just as likely to be idiots as anyone else is.”

He looks down, then up again.

“Is it true that they can channel magic?”

She glances at him. “To an extent.”

“That’s cool.” He fumbles a bit, feeling more like a child than he did when he was, you know, actually a child. “I always liked the paladins in legends.”

“Don’t let Daniyah hear you say that,” she replies, and he’s a little surprised to hear the dry humour hidden behind the poker face. “She despises paladins.”

“Why?”

“Too self-righteous.” She smirks. An inside joke? Whatever it is, he doesn’t get it. “She thinks they are incorrectly disciplined.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Ask her.”

He glances back at the tavern, and wonders. He doesn’t think he could ever be a paladin, but he can’t deny that there’s something about them that feels… right. But he isn’t a paladin, because that sense of rightness is hidden behind steel and shield and that is not Anduin. It has never been Anduin.

Strength comes in many forms.

Anduin takes tea with Tiffin, because Tiffin apparently enjoys a good joke and pops up beside him, arms full of tiffin containers and smile wide.

“I visit people,” she explains, smiling serenely as she butters a scone. She offers it to Anduin, and he smiles back and accepts it. “Sometimes there are families who need the food more than I, and they can sometimes be cut off by rubble shifts. It has been many years, but there are still times where the earth moves in ways we do not expect it.”

He doesn’t doubt it. He’s felt the stones move beneath his feet, and he hasn’t enjoyed it.

“Why do you stay here?”

Tiffin gestures around. “Where would you have me take them? They have homes here, familiarity. I only want what they want. I do not make decisions for them. It is not my place.”

He nods, and takes that in.

She offers him a cup of tea, and he takes it, too. He is generally indifferent to tea as a whole, but it’s very hard to say no to Tiffin. There’s something in the way she smiles and the understanding in her eyes that tells him that if he declined, she would understand, and somehow that’s harder than condemnation.

He wonders why that is. A sugar cube makes its way into his cup.

“Your friend,” she says, “Wrathion. I do not see him around very often.”

“He likes talking.” He pauses, then corrects, “He likes talking to an audience.”

Tiffin laughs, and props her chin on her hand. She surveys the area with unseeing eyes, then glances across at him, and smiles. “And you? Do you?”

He pauses.

“No.”

He pauses again.

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

She nods, understanding, and hums noncommittally.

He wonders what happened in Tiffin’s life that made her so unwaveringly kind, so staunch in her goodwill, before realising that he at least knows part of it. All threads of all stories come together, somehow, in some way, and he has no doubt that he is a minor character in the legends surrounding her.

Someday, he wants to be like her. But he wants to be like everyone, in small ways.

“Stay safe,” she advises him and Wrathion, on the eve of their departure. “Do not take the large roads. Use your size to your advantage. Be kind to those less fortunate.”

Rikke and Daniyah are arguing over horses. It has become something of a background noise to Anduin, as it’s really all the two women seem to do, but he’s not one to judge. He and Wrathion have begun to argue more and more over stupid things as of late.

“We will,” Anduin replies, just as Daniyah starts swearing in a language he doesn’t recognise (well, he recognises it as swearing, but swearing is universal) and Rikke begins to click her tongue impatiently. “Are they…”

“Yes,” replies Tiffin with the faintest hint of a laugh. “They are. Always.”

Wrathion groans and slams his head against the nearest wall.

“Your highness, please!”

“We are not!”

And then they round on each other again, and Anduin, Wrathion, and Tiffin exchange longsuffering looks.

Eventually, the decision re. horses or no horses is made, because Wrathion gives up and just starts walking. Anduin follows, skipping slightly, and waves back at Tiffin. She watches them go fondly, then laughs as Daniyah lets out a truly impressive shriek and sprints after them. Rikke is much more dignified, and simply runs a hand through her hair before rolling her eyes and following at a more sedate pace.

They fall into a rhythm. Daniyah and Rikke lead, often at quite a distance, so that they have plenty of space to bicker in peace. At least, 50% of it is bickering. 40% is Daniyah chattering away at increasingly high speeds, and 10% is Rikke tying Daniyah’s bandana around her mouth to shut her up. (Anduin may be exaggerating the statistics slightly, but no one knows any differently, anyway.)

Wrathion is less talkative, strangely. He often shoots wary glances at the mountains, and seems preoccupied with thoughts of his own. Anduin prompts him to share them, ever so often, but all he gets is a shake of a head and a vague dismissal.

Well. If that’s how Wrathion wants to play it, then Anduin will humour him. Wrathion always ends up telling him about things, anyway, or Anduin ends up guessing them. If you live with someone for ten years you tend to get to know them very well.

When it happens, no one expects it.

They are going by the north road, through the mountains and around the Forest. Wrathion appears to be getting more and more uncomfortable the further they travel, disappearing at night to perch on a crag and watch the sky. Anduin doesn’t follow, because he knows when Wrathion needs his peace, but he can’t stop from worrying about him.

“You know,” says Daniyah one afternoon, as they’re walking along a wide road on the side of the mountain, “I’ve never been this far from Stormwind in my entire life.”

Anduin looks up, smiling. “I’ve never travelled so far from Theramore, either.”

She gives him a little fist bump, and he returns it amicably.

“Same for you?” she asks Wrathion, who is broken out of his reverie and looks up.

“Yes,” he says, after a heartbeat of hesitation. “That is so.”

“Then the only one who’s travelled farther is Rikke Tikke Tavi.” Daniyah looks over her shoulder, and Anduin follows her gaze. Rikke is trailing behind them, eyes on the horizon and a thunderstorm of thoughts brewing between her brows. “She’s from Lordaeron, much farther north. Apparently there’s a kingdom up there – who’d have thought, right?”

She waits, then waves for Anduin to keep moving forward, and drops back to speak with Rikke.

Anduin falls into step with Wrathion, and eyes him curiously.

“What are you thinking about?”

Wrathion frowns, and his gaze falls on the horizon just as Rikke’s does. “Something is not right.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t say. There is something wrong, but I can’t figure out what it is.” Wrathion looks frustrated, a little dimple forming between his eyebrows. He exhales sharply. “But it will make itself known in time.”

Wrathion is not, generally, particularly patient. Anduin raises his eyebrows at the uncharacteristic statement, but allows Wrathion his moment. Perhaps they’re both changing.

The trail is a winding old thing, lined with bushes and with a steep drop on one side. Anduin can see what he thinks may be a bridge, far up ahead, if one can call several planks tied together with string a bridge. It’s barely a smudge though.

He kicks a stone off the side of the cliff face. It does rattling down, bouncing off rocks and getting tangled in shrubs before finally disappearing into the faint mist below. It’s intimidating, to think that they are so high that there’s mist below them, but Anduin also feels powerful. The sun is warmer, here, and he resists the urge to reach up and stretch his fingers towards it.

There’s the faintest hint of blue out of the corner of his eye, but when he looks, all he hears is an echo of laughter.

“Anduin,” says Wrathion, “there is something very wrong, and I don’t know what it is, but I want you to be on your guard.”

He nods, grimly. He feels it too; the lingering paranoia, the sense that something is watching them. It’s hard to shake off.

“Darling, you’re so pale!” Daniyah appears again, quick as a flash, and tugs at his collar so that she can poke his cheeks. “What’s gotten into you lot today? You’re all acting bizarrely.”

Wrathion snorts. “We cannot all be as frivolous as you.”

She draws herself up to her full height. Unfortunately, even though Wrathion is far from tall, Daniyah still falls short by a solid two inches. “I’ll have you know it takes quite a lot of effort to care so little about everything.”

“Really.”

“No.” She winks. “But that’s what I tell the healers, because they have this terrible habit of calling me a sociopath or a narcissist until I give them something appropriate to chew on.”

“You are a healer.”

“And I’m a bloody rubbish one.” She slings her arms around Wrathion’s neck and Anduin’s waist. It’s comforting, if a little odd, and he appreciates the gesture. Even though Daniyah probably doesn’t mean it as anything more than her usual tactile preferences. “Although, they do say that food has healing properties – ”

“No.”

She laughs, and Anduin hears a soft snort from just to the side. He doesn’t look, but he’s willing to bet that if he did, he’d see Rikke smiling reluctantly.

Wrathion starts to slow, and Anduin looks down, frowning in confusion. “Something wrong?”

“That mountain.” Wrathion squints, then rubs his eyes, then squints again. “Is it supposed to be moving?”

“An avalanche?” Daniyah asks excitedly. “Ooh, I’ve never seen one of those. Perhaps we could go a little closer?”

Suddenly Rikke is in front of them, and she has a hand pressed to Daniyah’s collarbone, pushing her back. Anduin frowns further, and Wrathion hisses something beneath his breath.

“Rikke – ”

“Daniyah, turn around and take them back down the second off shoot.” Rikke’s shoulders are taut, tight, rigid and nervous. But there is an underlying strength to her stance that makes Anduin certain that whatever it is Rikke is worried about, she is going to crush it, and she is not going to leave enough left to be identified later. It’s morbid, but it’s true.

Daniyah’s hand shoots out to grasp Rikke’s wrist. “Rikke? What’s wrong? Tell me what’s going on, all of you.”

“Take them and go. Don’t look back.”

“Rik – ”

But Wrathion is already moving, and Anduin exchanges a brief nod with Rikke before hauling Daniyah along after him. She tugs, and she’s stronger than Anduin expected, but her heart isn’t in it. Her shoulders slump, then straighten, and suddenly she’s charging ahead with her back straight and her gaze ahead; as confident as she always is.

He wonders how many other people have underestimated Daniyah Sadik.

They are barely fifty paces ahead, however, when there is a rumbling noise. It shakes through the ground like an earthquake, rattling Anduin’s bones and causing Wrathion to stumble. And then there is a terrible, awful, mind searing roar, and for a second Anduin wonders if the world is ending.

He trembles unintentionally, unexpectedly, and then Wrathion’s hand is gripping his. He squeezes back, and searches for Daniyah.

Daniyah looked back.

She’s still as a statue, eyes wide and zeroed in on the horizon. Her entire body is trembling like a leaf, and she doesn’t look to be breathing. She’s utterly frozen.

Anduin looks back.

He wishes he hadn’t.

The mountain top unfurls, giant wings spreading, blocking the sun. A sinuous tail untwines, and with a clatter of boulders, the wings beat and shoot up into the sky.

It’s a dragon.

And as it turns to face them, purple scales lining glinting horns, Anduin has no doubt which dragon it is.

“Onyxia,” Wrathion breathes next to him, “she’s here.”

“Go!” yells Rikke, and her voice is infused with a sudden anger and hatred that sends Anduin reeling back. He turns, and grabs for Daniyah, but she isn’t moving.

“Leave her!” Wrathion snaps, hauling him forward. Anduin shakes his head but Wrathion is too fast, too strong, adrenalin lending power to his grip that has Anduin following regardless. “We are the priority here!”

Anduin’s heart screams at him to debate the words, but his head knows that Wrathion is right. Daniyah and Rikke were sent to guard them. Their lives are the ones at stake here, and while Anduin knows it’s wrong, he can’t deny that it’s their job.

It doesn’t stop him reaching out, though, until Wrathion tugs him around the bend and they rocket down the second trail.

Branches scrape at his arms as he runs, and his prosthetic feels clunky and unwieldy. His heart races. Wrathion is just behind him, bloody mindedness compensation for shorter legs.

He looks up. Onyxia is circling, and Anduin sees Rikke yelling something provocative. The scrub hides them from Onyxia’s line of sight, somewhat, but he can still see her, see the ebony wings. He can’t believe that she’s real, that this is the dragon that destroyed Stormwind.

She’s not very big. Perhaps twelve feet tall, twice that in length; Anduin was expecting a behemoth. But then again, he thinks as he bites back a cry, the flames pouring from her mouth more than make up for it.

“Look forward!” Wrathion snaps, and so does Anduin’s neck. He peers into the distance. There is a bridge, leading across a giant chasm. Across that lies denser shrubs; they can hide and be safe.

There’s a horrendous crash from behind them, almost like an earthquake, and he twists his head back. Onyxia is shaking herself out of the rubble, and Rikke is coming out of a surprisingly agile roll. One of Onyxia’s wings is bent at a funny angle; Rikke must have clipped it during the fall.

Then a flash of green, and Daniyah is there. From this distance, it’s difficult to tell if she is still afraid, but Anduin thinks she is. Daniyah never struck him as being a particularly brave soul, but if Bolvar taught him anything, it’s that bravery is just courage in the face of fear. Judging by the amount of fear Daniyah has, perhaps she’s the bravest of them all.

Rikke fights like a battering ram. She is solid and fast, and hammers away at Onyxia with single-minded focus. Her shield is wherever her sword isn’t, and her sword acts like an extension of her arm, precise and clever. Anduin keeps stealing glances behind him to watch her. (He wonders, in the idle part of his mind that isn’t drowned by his heartbeat, if she could take Bolvar and Varian. He suspects it would be a fine margin.)

Daniyah, on the other hand, fights like a dancer. She shimmers, oddly enough, as though there’s some sort of mist obscuring her. It’s hard to focus, hard to predict where she’s going, because she rolls and ducks and dodges so much that Anduin isn’t sure she’s even landing hits. It looks more like she’s channelling some inner song, moving her arms to a beat he can’t hear.

They are a decidedly strange combination, but there’s no denying they are capable; Onyxia isn’t moving further towards Anduin and Wrathion.

“Stop it,” Wrathion hisses, and Anduin is jerked out of his thoughts. Wrathion matches his pace, frown marring his brow, and he’s baring his teeth slightly. He refuses to look back. “Eyes ahead. We need to get away!”

He takes the words to heart, and runs faster.

There’s a sudden shout, then a scream, and Anduin can’t help it. He looks back.

Onyxia is advancing again, but not in the air. One wing hangs uselessly by her side, limp and hampering her movement, but she’s still bigger than all of them combined and certainly capable of reaching them before they reach the cliff.

He takes a shuddering breath, and turns his head forward. Just keep running. Just keep running. Just keep running.

There’s a terrible crunching noise, and Anduin runs harder, faster, legs eating up the distance. He can see the bridge just ahead, where the mountain drops abruptly into a steep cliff face. A fall from there would kill them both, just as surely as the dragon.

Wrathion stumbles, but yells at Anduin when he tries to pause and help him up. “Go, you idiot! Get to the bridge!”

He does. The wood is rickety and creaks with each step. The clack of his prosthetic is almost in time with his heartbeat. When he reaches the end, his shaking hands draw out his knife and start on the ropes. If he can just loosen them until Wrathion crosses, then he can completely cut them and leave Onyxia stranded on the other side.

But while Wrathion is running to catch up, he’s not going to make it. There’s too much distance. Onyxia is gaining on him.

“Faster!” Anduin screams, instinctively throwing a hand out. Sparks fly, and Wrathion speeds up suddenly, fuelled by some power Anduin doesn’t know how he’s channelling. There’s a warmth in his palm, running down his arm to his heart. It feels like the way sun feels when it rests on the back of his neck during a summer day in Theramore; familiar, warm, but foreign at the same time.

And then Onyxia opens her mouth, and roars, and the world stops.

Wrathion stumbles.

Onyxia lunges.

Then, with a flash of white teeth on dark skin, Wrathion twists and plunges his daggers into Onyxia’s temples, and hurls them both off the cliff together.

“WRATHION!!!”

And then silence.

And Anduin shatters.

“Anduin?”

It’s Daniyah and Rikke again, he knows it, and he pulls his cloak over his head to block them out.

A hand falls to rest awkwardly on his shoulder. Daniyah’s face pops into his vision; she’s crouching down, brow furrowed, eyes concerned but not insistent. Like she’s worried, but not that she overly cares.

The grip on his shoulder is different. It’s twitchy, like Rikke doesn’t quite know what to do, but firm. Grounding. There’s a weird kind of empathy there that makes him feel understood.

“You’re awfully pale,” says Daniyah. “Look, you’re almost the same shade as Rikke. Eat.”

She shoves a bowl of something at him, and he accepts it, movements automatic and programmed.

Something about the movement must show, and Rikke murmurs something to Daniyah in a low voice. Daniyah huffs, but moves off, and Anduin can hear her messing around with a campfire. (Possibly not a good idea, but if Rikke trusts her, then so does Anduin.

Rikke is oddly trustworthy. Anduin can’t explain it, but he knows that she’s sensible and straightforward, for the most part. There’s still something he isn’t quite comfortable with, when it comes to Daniyah.)

Rikke sits next to him, but she doesn’t say anything. She’s just there, a presence that reminds him that there is still life among the ruin.

“I can’t believe it.”

She shifts. “It happened.”

“I know, just…” His hand strays to the locket around his neck, and his expression crumples. Tears brim. “I didn’t…”

She wraps an arm around his shoulders, and he presses his forehead to his knees. “I had a brother, once. A long time ago.”

There’s a long moment of silence. Anduin knows what that tone of voice means, what that phrasing means, what the hanging sentence means. Whatever happened to Rikke’s brother, it wasn’t kind, and it ended with Rikke where Anduin is now.

His breath hitches.

“Bjarke.” She says the name fondly. “He was a twit.”

He laughs, accidentally, and then immediately feels wretched for it. He can’t laugh, he shouldn’t be laughing, not when he’s here and Wrathion is –

“A few years ago,” Rikke continues, “there was an attack on the Ruins of Stormwind. Another dragon, one who took advantage of the havoc Onyxia caused. Bjarke was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

That’s always what happens, isn’t it? That’s always how it ends. Accidents and wrongs and things that shouldn’t have happened. He bites his lip.

Rikke shifts. “I have a sister. Back in Stormwind. I’m going home to her.”

“Good.” The word is out of Anduin’s mouth before he can stop it, and then a few more follow, instinctively. “It’s good that – there’s someone.”

She nods, but stays quiet. Her hold becomes less awkward, but heavier. Sadder. Maybe that’s why Rikke is always busy and a little cranky. Anduin is a little ashamed that he didn’t realise so earlier, but it’s hard to recognise without the experience.

“Daniyah was engaged, once,” Rikke says a little while later. Anduin’s head rises, slowly, to look at where Daniyah is puttering around by the campfire. “Before I knew her. The girl went missing. Never seen again.”

Daniyah catches their looks, and waves cheerily, before hauling out a seemingly endless stream of spices from one of her bags. The sight unlocks something in Anduin, and suddenly the tears are falling, and he can’t seem to get them to stop.

Wrathion never did get his spices.

He buries his head in his hands and sobs, cold sinking through his core and making him want to vomit. He can’t understand it, can’t conceptualise it, can’t even imagine a future without Wrathion there next to him, telling tall tales and making snarky remarks. He cries, because he’s got nothing left but a locket, and he doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want a bloody locket. He just wants Wrathion.

There’s talking, and a hand swipes his hood off and replaces it with a faint weight. Then, when he straightens to inspect it, he ends up with an armful of blonde and grumbling in his ear.

“Get off him, Daniyah.”

“Nope.” She wraps her arms around him, and he lets his head droop to rest on her collarbone. She says something else, but he doesn’t catch it, just tries not to get tears and snot all over her nice shirt.

It’s a futile cause, but with Daniyah and Rikke either side of him, a quiet support, it’s not so bad. He’s lonely, but he’s not alone.

Doesn’t stop him from crying until he passes out, but even then, strong arms pick him up and cradle him with care. A hand brushes across his forehead, and he feels a strange cooling sensation, like mist descending.

And then he lets the cool, calm, clear darkness wash over him.

“I’m going to the Wyrmbog,” he says, one evening when Rikke and Daniyah are busy bickering and he’s prodding at his stew listlessly. The campfire is crackling, and the two tents are already set up, but he doesn’t want to sleep. He doesn’t want to see that cliff face, see Wrathion’s face, see dark wings in his mind. He doesn’t want it. Any of it.

Their heads whip round in unison. Rikke looks frustrated and tired. Daniyah looks mildly amused.

“No, you’re not,” Rikke says.

“You’re going to die, that’s what,” Daniyah says, and then winces as Rikke glares at her.

“I’m going.” Anduin puts down the bowl. He’s not hungry. It’s not going to get eaten, anyway. “On my own.”

Rikke, immediately and predictably, shakes her head. She folds her arms, brows furrowing and scowl forming like storm clouds on the horizon. “No.”

“I’m going.”

“No. Not a chance.”

He looks wearily up at her. “Rikke, I’m going. You can’t stop me.”

“Watch me.”

“Darling.” Daniyah puts a hand on Rikke’s, and Rikke wrenches hers away. Daniyah laughs a bit. “He’s not a child.”

Rikke gives her a flat stare, which Daniyah meets head on. Anduin feels like he’s being caught in the middle of a parental argument, and the peculiarity of the thought stirs a smile.

“Seconds ago you were against this,” Rikke says sharply.

“No,” Daniyah replies, “I just said he was going to die. Which, frankly, he is, but it’s his choice. Let him alone. If he wants to do this, then we can’t control him, Rikke.”

That seems to strike a chord somewhere, and Rikke looks away, lips thinning as she frowns. Anduin watches her nervously. Rikke is not easily predicted, to him, because he can’t read her and she doesn’t broadcast her every movement the way Wrathion and Daniyah seem to.

He isn’t going to lie; the surge of relief is palpable when Rikke’s shoulders slump. She stands, not looking at either of them, and strides off into her tent.

Daniyah’s eyes follow her, before flicking back to Anduin.

“I know what it’s like,” is all she says, before she, too, stands and follows Rikke.

Anduin is left staring at the dying embers of the campfire, stew cold beside him, and wonders at what point his life became such a mess.

He reaches up and turns the locket over in his hands.

Well. He knows the answer to that one.

He hears Rikke and Daniyah talking in low voices all the way up until he falls asleep. They seem to be discussing something, and he wonders if Rikke really is alright with him just up and leaving.

It won’t stop him, of course, because it’s something he needs to do. But it will make it harder.

The next morning, Rikke is quiet, but Daniyah is radiant. She chatters to him all the way through breakfast, so much that he doesn’t realise he’s actually eaten two omelettes and, between them, half a loaf of bread and cheese. Daniyah’s hands are stained red with sumac, except for a shimmer of gold on her left hand that glints in contrast.

“I’ll give you one of my bags,” she says, and tosses him a bundled bit of glittering fabric. He unfolds it, revealing a simple, hand-sewn purse. “Enchanted. It’ll hold whatever you can fit into it, which, by the way, is quite a lot.”

She holds up another one meaningfully, which has ‘Liquor Cabinet’ embroidered across it. Anduin smiles, and tucks the bag into a pocket.

“Got a map?” she asks, and Anduin nods. “Marvellous. Clothes? Food? Bottle of vodka?”

“Don’t give him a bottle of vodka.”

Daniyah laughs, but slips him a small one when Rikke goes to fetch something from their tent.

“Here,” Rikke says, and holds out a scroll. Anduin peers at it curiously, fingers itching to grab it, and he restrains himself and takes it slowly. It’s a rough calendar, it seems, plotting places and dates. “That’s where we’ll be. If you want us.”

She steps back, clearly uncomfortable, but Anduin smiles and wraps his arms around her in a hug. She freezes, apparently unsure what to do with the affection, and pats him on the head. He squeezes a little tighter.

“Alright, sweet thing, don’t suffocate her,” Daniyah says. For half a second, Anduin thinks he’s going to have to let go, when suddenly Daniyah squirms up next to them and wraps her arms around their waists. For someone who is a head shorter than the both of them, she is certainly strong, as she lifts them off the ground ever so slightly with the force of her hug. “Without me, that is.”

“You’re both terrible,” Rikke says, but doesn’t try to leave. Anduin grins, and enjoys the moment.

They see him off, Rikke looking concerned and Daniyah looking supremely satisfied. The last image he has of them is Rikke frowning down at Daniyah, who has an arm snuck around her waist and is waving madly at Anduin. Rikke sighs, then drops a kiss to the crown of Daniyah’s head, and nods a solemn farewell to Anduin.

It’s a nice image. He keeps it, tucked away in his mind as his locket is tucked away beneath his collar.

It’s best to keep those you love close, after all.

You never know when you might lose them.

The journey to the Wyrmbog is lonely. He has nothing but his personal belongings and his bow to keep him company, and the wind is hollow and lonesome. It whips past him, dulling as he descends down from the mountains. The Moor stretches out as far as he can see, but in the distance, he knows the spires of the mountain ridge strike up again.

He sees the silvery blue will o’ the wisps again. They call to him, singing quietly, but they don’t have the same allure as before. They are guides, just in case he loses his way. He nears one, and it hovers long enough to let him run a hand over it, before dissipating in a cloud of motes.

He has always felt small when venturing into the Moor, but now he doesn’t, oddly enough. He feels like his place is here, like he has a purpose; like he knows what he has to do. He feels older.

The wind howls at night, whistles at dawn and dusk, and plays with his hair as the light warms his face. He keeps his eyes to the sun, taking strength from its warmth and solidarity. The sun is a constant. It is always with him, always near, even if it’s hidden behind a cloud or obscured by mist. Even at night, he sees its reflection in the glow of the moon.

It makes him feel safe.

The stars shine above him at night, too. He likes the stars. He traces the constellations with his eyes, making new ones and pretending he can see Wrathion there; his turban, his smirk, the curve of his hand. The stars are quiet, non-judgemental. It feels like there is a silent support there, far above his head, where the stars watch and smile and love from afar.

He feels like they have some kind of power that they aren’t telling him about. A domain over home and sanctuary; he has never felt so calm as he does when he stares at the stars.

He reads his book of legends often. As he walks, before he sleeps, even sometimes when he stops for breaks in the middle of the day. The stories help him, and take his mind off what he knows is looming around the corner. If only less would involve dragons, and more would involve how to get over your best friend’s death.

He clutches at his locket as if it is a lifeline.

The Moor is wide and sparse, and the journey feels longer than it is. It’s weird, being left alone to his own thoughts for so long, not having anyone to distract him. Even the arcane serpents that sometimes flicker at the edges of his vision fail to disturb him for long, until he finally – finally – reaches the edge of the Moor, where the plains turn to marsh and the sun becomes murky through swamp gas.

Which brings us to this point in time.

Anduin is standing on the dark stone, his boots warm from the heat and his hair obstreperously disobeying his vain attempts to get it into a ponytail. The tunnel into the dragon’s lair is tight and dark, almost claustrophobic, and each step he takes makes him more and more nervous.

He keeps a hand on his quiver of arrows. Just in case.

As the air turns drier, less like the heaviness of the bog outside, his breathing speeds up. Tiffin told him that Katrana – Onyxia – has her lair here. Onyxia is responsible for the fall of Stormwind. She is powerful and strong, old and cunning. Anduin does not intend to fight her if he can help it, but the lessons of his life give him purpose.

Be wise. Jaina has impressed upon him the necessity for thought, for planning, for avoiding careless errors and thinking about a situation. He has scouted around the lair and ensured that there are no other dragons lying in wait. He has researched how to slay dragons, just in case his words fail him. And he has put a lot of thought into his words.

Be brave. Bolvar has taught him the value of bravery, of standing up for something, of believing in something with all his heart and making sure that he stands by it. He wants justice. He wants to complete the circle that Onyxia set in motion when she failed to kill him when he was a child. He wants to know why, and he is going to find out even if it kills him.

Be strong. Varian has shown him that there is strength in everything, in skill at arms, in clever thought, in believing in himself and learning to change. His strength comes from his belief, the sun at his fingertips and the force of his will. He has been strong and he can be strong again. He knows now that he is capable of it, that even if his strength is not enough he can make it enough.

Be kind. Tiffin has guided him towards the path of kindness, of generosity, of understanding people and recognising them as individuals with lives and motives. He knows Onyxia may be a dragon, but she is nonetheless a person. She has committed great crimes, and while they are unforgivable, she still deserves equal justice. He can empathise with her, and be the better for it.

Each step rings with the words of his teachers and his family and his role models.

The tunnel ends at a corner, and he peeks his head around. He can see a dark shape in the centre of a wide cavern, walls high and spiked, and floor dotted with magma.

The shape moves, and he sees dark wings spread. Once again, Onyxia doesn’t seem particularly large, and a brief flash of hope erupts in his chest.

He presses his back to the wall and steels himself. He must be brave. Courage in the face of fear; fear of failure, fear of loss, fear of death.

Onyxia has taken his leg and his best friend. He does not intend to let her take any more.

His hand comes up to touch the locket at his throat. The cool metal grounds him, and he closes his eyes briefly. Wrathion is with him. He can take strength from his spirit.

Anduin Proudmoore is not a killer. But Onyxia has taken so much from him that he doesn’t think he will have tears to shed if it does end up that way.

He prepares his bow and his arrows, and walks forward.

The dragon stirs, her neck twisting and twining. She seems to have heard his approach, but she does not turn, instead sending a brief jet of flame towards the ceiling. It curls, tips gold and heart blue, and Anduin clenches his jaw.

“Hello, Anduin Wrynn,” she says, and her voice is deep and rumbling. There is something strangely familiar about it, though. The way she turns over the syllables in his name. “I have been expecting you.”

He walks forward until he is as close to her as he dares go. She could cross the distance in a short leap, but that would give him enough time to at least get one arrow off, and his aim is good. His aim is very good.

“Hello,” he returns, and where his voice would have been quiet, it comes out strong.

She snorts, once, then turns. Her movements are serpentine and graceful, with a regal air to them that he can’t match. Yet, something tells him that she is holding back. Hiding something. A trump card?

Jaina has always made sure that he understands the value of patience, and so he waits, careful. His observations will carry him further.

They watch each other for a long time. Her gaze is fixed on his, but sometimes it drops to his bow, and to his neck. His locket, he imagines. The golden glint must catch her eye.

He looks at her wings, at her curling horns. At the red glow of her eyes. There is something terribly disconcerting about the scarlet hue, the way it hides her pupils and iris until it seems like her eyes are entirely made of fire. He can’t meet her gaze because there is nothing for him to look at.

“I always knew it would come to this,” she says, moving away. She begins to pad across the space, pacing back and forth. He follows, turning to keep her in his sights. “Ever since I laid eyes on you, I knew. You are the Prince of Stormwind, the prodigal son, the hero of a fine tale of bravery and courage. Of course you would wind up here.”

She begins to circle him. Her voice changes, slightly, deepening further. “Myths, legends, stories – they all end by slaying the dragon and returning home, triumphant. Tell me, young prince, would you be the hero in your story?”

“I am not trying to be a hero.”

“And that is precisely why you are.” She spits flame, and it ricochets off the wall to land in a pool of lava. He watches the magma bubble and burst, and shudders. “I, then, am the evil dragon. And where is your damsel in distress?”

Anduin doesn’t know any damsels in distress. The damsels he does know rescue themselves just as often as they are rescued by others.

“It matters little.” She settles down, once again, and watches him. Her eyes don’t blink. “You have never had any interest in damsels or anyone else. Perhaps this tale will not end in such a happy ending.”

She snorts.

“As if they ever do.”

Something nags at the back of his mind. A little voice, telling him to look further, observe more, put the pieces together. He remains quiet.

“Tell me, are you going to kill me?”

“I don’t want to kill you.”

“But I am a dragon. A great black dragon with a legacy of death and destruction. Why should you not want to kill me?”

“Because I want justice, and it isn’t mine to take. I want to talk.”

“Always with the talking,” she says, and Anduin isn’t sure how he knows but he’s sure she’s rolling her eyes. The glow shifts, somehow. Or maybe he’s imagining it. “You cannot solve all your problems with words.”

“No. But I can try.”

“There is no try.” She rises, and pads towards him. He raises the bow cautiously. “You either win, or you lose. Losing is unacceptable.”

“That’s no way to live.”

“I am not here to be lectured about morals. I have no need of a conscience. You do not need to act as one.”

He’s my conscience.

You are my conscience.

The bow clatters to the ground, and arrows fall like leaves in autumn. He stares, searching the red glow of the dragon’s eyes, looking for the chink.

Oh, skies above.

His voice trembles when he speaks. “Wrathion?”

The dragon turns, eyes watching him with cold disdain.

“You – that is you, you aren’t Onyxia – please, I’m right, I know I am.”

Wrathion – for the dragon is Wrathion, Anduin can see it in his words and his movements and his snorts – steps forward until he is looming over Anduin. He is not large, but this close, Anduin knows that he could be dead in seconds.

Anduin stares up at him, and reaches out a hand.

Then Wrathion snorts, a great heaving thing that spits embers over Anduin’s head, and whirls away.

“I may as well be Onyxia,” he snaps, wings beating suddenly and shooting him into the air. Anduin runs forward, prosthetic catching on a crack in the stone. “Her history is mine, her deeds are mine, her legacy is mine. I will ruin you, Anduin Wrynn, because you are a hero and I am a dragon and isn’t that how all your stories end?”

“Life isn’t a myth!”

“Yet legends come from life, do they not?” Wrathion spins, swooping over Anduin’s head, making him twist and turn to keep his gaze on him. “All the great tales were once real. They are history. Your history. Mine. My family destroyed yours.”

“You are not your family!”

“How can you know that?”

Wrathion lands with a jarring thud, and Anduin scrambles backwards to avoid being hit by a beautiful black wing. A speck of lava lands on his boot, and he kicks it off hurriedly.

“Who my family are reflects who I am,” he growls.

Anduin can’t imagine how he could hear Wrathion’s voice as anything other than his own, dragon or not – the intonation is the same. The words are the same. Wrathion is Wrathion, regardless of the form he takes, and Anduin can’t believe he could possibly have thought that he was Onyxia.

“That isn’t true, and you know it,” he says, desperately. “You’re not defined by anyone. You are a person and your choices are your own. Your family has no claim to you!”

“Don’t they? Then why am I here? Why are we here, in this cavern, fighting over facts? I am a dragon and you are a prince. This is always how it starts.”

“But it doesn’t have to end like this!”

“That would be impossible!”

“I don’t care!”

He runs forward until he’s right in front of Wrathion, face to face. The glow of Wrathion’s eyes is impenetrable and unforgiving.

“I don’t care that all the legends end like this,” he says fiercely. “I don’t care that you think you have to pay for the sins of your blood. I don’t care that there is a winner to every game. I don’t care! We are more than this! We are better than this!”

He has never felt so strongly about anything in his life. The conviction is so heady that he feels like he’s drunk, about to take a plunge off a cliff that he never intended to climb to. It’s going to explode from him in a flare of light, of emotion, and he’s just going to follow the course it sets. A tidal wave bringing him in to an unknown shore.

“I’m not leaving this cavern without you.” He grips Wrathion by the horns and forces him to meet his gaze. “I won’t. I would wait here a million years just to make sure you came with me.”

“You don’t have a million years! You’ve barely got seventy!”

“I don’t care! Why can’t you understand that? I don’t care, all I want is you!”

Wrathion stares at him, and opens his mouth to reply, but suddenly the floor beneath Anduin’s feet is trembling and shaking and he’s falling, Wrathion’s pulling away, there’s lava everywhere –

Light explodes around him, and he’s surrounded by a golden shield. He bounces, slightly, enough to make him giggle, and then he rights himself. He’s floating, and Wrathion is hovering in front of him, expression torn between fear and wonder.

Anduin can’t move, his focus entirely absorbed by keeping the sun shining within him, and so when Wrathion swoops past he lets himself fall.

The cavern is trembling, rocks falling from the ceiling and magma crawling through the cracks in the floor. The temperature is rising, and Anduin finds himself abruptly sweating. Wrathion hovers in the air, unsure where to turn, where to fly.

“Through the exit!”

Wrathion nods, and draws his wings in together, zipping through the falling rubble and towards the exit. The air warms as they descend. Anduin grips onto his horns tightly, getting ready to jump.

He leaps off as they exit the cavern, landing and rolling to ease the momentum. Wrathion hits the floor with a shudder, and the stone cracks further. A spark hits Anduin’s prosthetic and he jerks away, catching himself on Wrathion’s side.

They run, faster than they’ve ever run, and they have spent a lot of time running. Wrathion catches Anduin and drags him forward when he lags, and Anduin feels the sun inside him fuelling his sprint.

He stumbles as a plate of rock moves beneath him, his hand torn from Wrathion’s side. He shoves himself to his feet, but something in his prosthetic has caught, and he swears.

“Wrathion!” he yells. “Keep going!”

“No!” Wrathion runs back, leaping from plate to plate. “Take it off, I can carry you!”

His fingers feel like lead as he fumbles with his pant leg and the clasp of the stupid hunk of wood and metal. The temperature is rising, and he can literally see the air shimmer from the heat. He has never seen his leg as a weakness, but Light damn it, they are both going to get hurt because of this stupid, ridiculous thing –

It comes off with an anticlimactic ‘click’ and suddenly he’s rocketing backwards, ensnared by one of Wrathion’s talons. There is a moment where he can’t do anything except allow himself to be hauled away by the scruff of his neck like a recalcitrant kitten, before he regains his wits and swings himself over Wrathion’s back.

“There’s too much rubble,” Wrathion warns. “Can you do that shield again?”

Anduin focuses and calls upon the sun inside him, and brings golden sparks to his hands. He gestures broadly above their heads and forms a glittering shield like the last one. The stones bounce off it, as he moves it in time to counter other, more dangerous sprays of rock and lava.

“Keep going,” he says, smiling. “We’re almost there.”

And then they’re bursting through the open maw of the cave, shooting up and into the sky. Anduin lets the shield fall and twists to watch as the Wyrmbog explodes, the pressure becoming too much. Lava coats the edges of the mountain.

They soar for a long while, the marshland fading to rolling green moors. Eventually, Wrathion seems to tire, and they slowly descend until Wrathion alights at the peak of a hill covered in daisies.

Anduin slips off and onto the ground. He sits immediately, not fancying trying to balance on one leg for any length of time, and smiles as Wrathion shifts. His form becomes clouded with grey smoke, until it clears and the Wrathion that Anduin knows is standing in front of him.

He pats the grass next to him.

Wrathion sits, smelling of ash and fire, but Anduin smells the same, he’s sure.

They watch as far off in the distance, red and black mingle in the sky.

“That,” Anduin says, “is what I think of your legacy.”

Wrathion stares at him, eyes wide, before he tips his head back and laughs. It is rich, full-bellied, and it bursts from him like the lava burst from the Wyrmbog – unexpectedly and unrepentantly.

Anduin flops backwards, watching with a smile as Wrathion chuckles.

“You aren’t angry?”

Anduin shakes his head and stares up at the sky, heart clenching. His stomach feels cold. “Of course not. I – ”

He breaks off. His head feels heavy and his eyes are burning and his throat tightens, imperceptibly. There’s a pain, right where his heart is. He doesn’t know what this feeling is. He knows that it’s new, and that it has something to do with Wrathion, and that it can be set off by the littlest things. He doesn’t have a word for it.

“You what?” Wrathion asks, twisting.

The sunlight burns the edges of his curls into a bright auburn, and glints on the golden earring. His face is shadowed. Anduin can’t read his expression.

He doesn’t need to. He hears hope in Wrathion’s voice, and an underlying nervousness that shouldn’t be there. Wrathion shouldn’t be nervous around Anduin. It goes against everything he thinks he knows about the two of them.

The words don’t feel right on his tongue, not just yet.

“I care about you,” he says, “not about your blood.”

Wrathion’s nervousness disappears, and something in his shoulders loosens, but the warmth in his eyes is the most honest thing Anduin has ever seen.

“And I you.”

The journey to Theramore is spent talking. Wrathion talks about what happened after he and Onyxia fell, about transforming at the last second and evading her claws, about watching her hit the ground with aching finality. He tells Anduin about the glow of his eyes and the sharpness of his hails, about learning to shapeshift. He says, “I ran from the hatchery and I did not look back. My mother was dead. I was not like them, not really. So I ran, and I shifted, and lo and behold, a long lost prince found me.”

“And the arrow?” Anduin asks quietly.

Wrathion touches his shoulder. His smile has a strange, unnameable quality to it. “A hunter saw me, in my draconic form. He thought I was a bird or a crow, come to steal his crops. He shot me out from the sky.”

They talk about legacies, and about stories. They do not talk about lessons learned, because there simply isn’t a need. Anduin knows who he is. He knows who Wrathion is, he knows his own place in the world, and he knows that just because he is a prince, doesn’t mean that it is all he is. It is a part of him, something he needs to acknowledge, but he does not have to be defined by it.

He is defined by who he is, not what.

The thought makes him smile, and he slips his hand in Wrathion’s. Wrathion starts, jolted from his own reverie, and smiles back. His cheeks are a trifle darkened.

They don’t talk about Rikke and Daniyah. They don’t talk about Tiffin. They don’t talk about Varian, and Bolvar and Jaina.

That can be saved for later.

For now, they will walk through Theramore with their heads high and their backs straight, and know that whatever happens from here on out, they know who they are.

The world will simply have to deal with it.

The cottage is quiet. A spiral of smoke comes from the chimney, except it is a literal spiral and the smoke is blue. It seems Jaina is finished pretending she isn’t a sorceress.

Wrathion smiles at him and opens the gate, and Anduin smiles back. He steps through, careful of the runestones, and shifts the pack on his back.

The garden has been well tended. There is a new tree that Anduin doesn’t remember being there, tucked away in one corner, and Wrathion points out a fresh basket of apples waiting to be hauled inside. There is a burnt patch in the centre of the left side. Experiments, probably. It’s smoking slightly.

The sound of whistling comes from inside the house, and Anduin quietly pushes the door open. Jaina has her back to him. Trails of blue and purple magic flow at her direction, moving a broom and shelving books. She has been busy, it seems, and Anduin can smell mana residue in the air.

“Mother?”

Jaina starts, and whirls around. Her eyes widen in shock and delight, then overflow with tears. She crosses the room in a second and barrels into them both, drawing them into a teary, ecstatic hug.

Anduin falls into her eagerly, not ashamed to admit tears of his own, and Wrathion laughs. Jaina shakes her head, sniffling, and then runs a hand down both their cheeks.

“I don’t…” She laughs again, and wipes her eyes. “Oh, my darlings, my sons, I’m…”

Wrathion hugs her again, and she enfolds him in her arms. Anduin just watches, hand over his mouth, trying desperately not to cry more.

After they part, Jaina sways back, beaming at them.

“You two,” she says, folding her arms and trying to look stern (she fails miserably), “are going to be the death of me. Of all the stupid, foolish things – I got three separate missives telling me that you had disappeared, you were missing, you were dead; I didn’t know what to believe!”

“I’m sorry,” Anduin says, and she waves it away briskly.

“You’re here, that’s what matters.” She laughs. “And I wonder why I’ve gone grey so early.”

“You look beautiful,” Wrathion says obligingly, and she pats his cheek before hugging them both again.

They migrate to the chairs, but this time, Anduin sits in his own and Wrathion sprawls across him. Jaina laughs a little, and conjures a plate of biscuits out of thin air. Wrathion takes one, offers the plate to Anduin, and at Anduin’s decline, hoards them for himself.

Anduin is still getting over the whole ‘dragon’ thing, but he is beginning to believe it. He’s also beginning to wonder how he missed it.

“Tell me everything,” Jaina says, “and so help me if you spare a single detail I’m going to turn you both into stone and leave you out on the lawn.”

She would never, and they all know it. But it makes her feel better, so Anduin lets her have her moment.

It takes a long time. Bolvar stops by about an hour in, and they have a teary reunion as well, with lots of bravado and hand clapping and bear hugs. He takes Wrathion’s chair, which is much too small, but he seems content.

Anduin and Wrathion take turns speaking. They talk about leaving to Stormwind, they talk about finding Tiffin, they talk about searching for clues to find Onyxia. Wrathion tells them of how he fell from the cliff, of the mistaken identity, and Anduin tells them of the desperate race to the Wyrmbog. When they’re finished, it’s nearly midnight, and they’ve gone through Wrathion’s plate of biscuits, a stack of shortcake, half a dozen sandwiches, and a pot of stew.

“And then we came home,” Wrathion finishes. “I wanted to go north, but apparently family is important or some such rubbish. Anduin can be so sentimental at times.”

Anduin whacks him around the shoulder, and Wrathion sticks his tongue out at him.

Bolvar runs a hand down his face and rubs his beard. His smile threatens to split his face. “I’m so proud of both of you.”

“You’re making me blush,” Wrathion says dryly, but the true irony here is that he actually is blushing.

Bolvar laughs, a deep rumbling thing, and pats Wrathion on his turban and ruffles Anduin’s hair. “It was incredibly brave of both of you.”

Jaina stands. Bolvar catches Wrathion under his arm, dwarfing him completely, and Wrathion starts off on another of his long-winded, mostly bullshit, tales. Jaina puts an arm around Anduin’s waist. He smiles down at her, and she beams up at him, and everything is perfect.

Later that night, after Bolvar has left and Jaina has gone to bed, Anduin and Wrathion sneak out to the forest edge. The sky is dark, the stars radiant against the black background. It almost looks like a tapestry, made of midnight and starlight.

They draw patterns in between the dots of light. Anduin does so quite literally, leaving streaks of gold hanging in the air, until Wrathion spits flame and dissipates them.

“Who would have thought we’d end up here?” Anduin asks the sky, and while the sky doesn’t have an answer for him, Wrathion does.

“Well, I certainly predicted greatness. Wealth and spices, remember?”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“You love me for it.”

Anduin laughs. He can’t deny it.

There’s no rising tension. Nothing dramatic – although Anduin is certain that if Wrathion had his way, it would be, because Wrathion is a moth to a flame when it comes to drama – just a simple exchange of a glance.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Wrathion says. “I’m telling you this because every other time, we get interrupted, or you do something stupid, and I want to make sure that it’s not intentional.”

“Alright, then,” Anduin replies agreeably. “Have at it.”

Anduin rolls over, and Wrathion leans forward, and their eyes meet, as they are wont to do.

“Don’t – ”

Anduin dodges at the last second and laughs, as Wrathion overbalances and falls on his face. Wrathion’s arm shoots out, grabbing at Anduin’s shirt, but Anduin is too busy laughing to notice.

“You are incorrigible,” Wrathion says, but he’s still talking to the ground and it comes out as “Oo r ncrg’blllle.”

“Don’t speak to your conscience like that,” Anduin manages to get out, before Wrathion tugs him down and kisses the words from his lips.

Anduin buries his hands in Wrathion’s hair and returns the kiss with a smile.

You see, there are sometimes stories where there is a noble prince who slays an evil dragon.

But this is not one of those stories.

This is a story about a boy who set out with hope, and returned with the stars.