#patch 8.2

While it’s unclear precisely how long Queen Azshara ruled over the kaldorei empire, there is some evidence that suggests her reign may have lasted anywhere from under 1,000 years to 2,000 years before the War of the Ancients. Although outdated, one source claims that Eldre’Thalas, a city built during her reign at her behest, was founded in Feralas just 12,000 years ago [Page: Dire Maul, World of Warcraft Chronicle Volume I, pg. 95]. If this date holds up, then Azshara must have been queen for at least 2,000 years for the city to have been built when she was the ruler. The Highborne Astrolabe on display in Ironforge’s Hall of Explorers also dates back to 12,000 years ago, but there’s no evidence that it was constructed during Azshara’s rule [Object: Highborne Astrolabe].

After all that trouble retrieving her father's ship, there comes Azshara and...

She’d been tracking them for days. Those twisted, serpentine elves. Servants of Azshara... tragic though their story may be, The dragons heart had no room for sympathy. At least not as far as they were concerned...

The thunder roared loudly above her as she sailed into the heart of the typhoon, it’s wind pounding into her scales, and causing the leathery sails of her winged form ripple violently. The muscles in her shoulders felt like they were tearing apart with each passing second, the burning, ripping, piercing pain within them beginning to overpower her mind... but she had to persist. This storm, this typhoon... it wasn’t natural. She could feel it in the air. The malice, the hatred, it made her blood heat up, and put hot pressure within her chest. It was a sensation that fueled feelings of rage within her. Every muscle in her body twitched with boiling aggression, despite her exhaustion.

But no... she couldn’t let it get to her. Not yet.

The high pitched, crystalline squeal of the leylines pierced her ears as she neared the eye of the storm. She could feel their distress. Nay, her distress. A cold rippling chill ran down her spine, as the scales down her back skittered and hissed. Damn these Naga! Not only were they toppling the balance of magic, they were hurting Azeroth herself! The dragon snarled, riding the currents of the winds ever closer. The ritual... it had to be here.

CRASH, KRABOOOMMM!

A surge of lightning lashed out from the clouds, tearing into her shoulder and toppling her route through the clouds. The air, static, and hot. With a squealing roar, the dragoness snarled and struggled to regain her soar, lest she collapse into the waves miles below. With a hiss she looked back to assess the damage. Minor scorching, but nothing too substantial. It was just painful, and a bit tingly. Nothing close to what a real lightning strike should have been. It was magical lightning... Something her resistances as a blue were able to ward off.

Shit... that means they know I’m here.

With a chuff, the dragon snapped her serpentine neck back straight forward and roared. The naga below had unleashed a gauntlet of lightning and thunder to rebuke their adversary. Each bolt flashing brightly as they violently arced between the storm clouds. Random, and without direction.

Heh. Sorvegosa smirked at the thought. Area effect... means they don’t know where I am precisely... excellent. Lets see if I can turn this around...

Her renewed confidence invigorated her with new energy. With a single mighty beat of her wings, she began to maneuver evasively. The more she did, the more she realized that these bolts weren’t so random after all. There was a pattern.

Up left, down right, up right, straight... break. Up left, down right, up right, straight... DIVE!

And with that she curved her body and fell beneath the clouds, the rain picking up and pounding against her scales. But this didn’t matter. Closing her water lids, she began to speak. Her voice manifesting loud, and with authority. The skies were a dragon’s domain. They were her’s to command! The Naga and their arrogance, she will never let them forget this again...

“Strun ziz rune, bah quo!” Her roar echoed through the clouds. The flashes from the lightning above starting to fall in consistency. “Zin mul rieek, shel bala’dash an’na bathil...” The clouds started to gather around her, the static energies building up around her body. Soon, strings of plasmatic electricity started to arc between her scales, sending sharp, tingling sensations surging all throughout her body, down to the tip of her tail. The wind around her picked up as she dived, falling pointedly to the ground at a breakneck pace. The clouds before her parted, and revealed the islet below. A mid-ocean sand bar, with a single palm tree upon it, bowing before the mightiness of the storm. They were there... they had to be.

The keen eyes of an avian predator picked up the aquamarine tarps of a naga campsite... and a glowing blue aura emitting from it’s center. Within seconds, she was able to piece together it’s source. 

That has to be it. That has to be where they're conducting it.

She had a target, and now she roared with fury. Swiftly she opened up her wings and allowed the wind resistance to catch her, halting her decent drastically. “Anda’bash... Zipis.” 

At her final words, the skies opened up it’s gaping maw and unleashed it’s relentless fury upon the naga camp. Bolts of lightning raced towards it. Almost instantaneously, the little dots she knew to be naga screamed and fell, serpentine bodies writhing as the static tore through them, rendering it useless. Inoperable... Dead. Bit by bit, the darkness she felt here started to fade away. But only by a marginal amount... It’s real source was the ritual taking place in the center.

The light below, however, flickered. She had definitely caused some kind of disruption. Now it was time to hit them where it hur-

A burning agony tore through her back, nearing the shoulder of her right wing! The same wing that had been zapped by lightning earlier. And the same wing an arrowhead had been lodged into just a few weeks prior. With a constrained hiss, she clenched her talons so hard her claws nearly dug into her palms. Not good...

For a brief moment she glanced back, the joint was swollen, and throbbing. Blood had begun to seep from the scorch marks, and scales had already molted off. Her wing could not take much more of this abuse. She had to land, and soon. But while the adrenaline still surged through her body, there was most certainly something she could do to even the odds down below.

At a more controlled pace, she descended, gritting her razor-like teeth with every painful beat of her wings, even her jaw was beginning to hurt. But this pain only fueled her wrath. The rage she had come to feel earlier started to manifest in the dragoness’s innate power. A cold swell of orb-like cold expanded in her chest... and the rain surrounding her turned to snow. A blizzard was in the works now... oh how the naga were screwed.

She came in for a low swoop, her eyes catching sight of the survivors attempting to flee. Too many... In an instant, she had already calculated the line of her aerial strike. She couldn’t get all of those retreating, but she could get a satisfactory number of them, and a few of the priestess’s struggling desperately to maintain focus, and continue their nauseating ritual.

“Fo Krah Diin!” she bellowed, opening her gaping maw to unleash the frozen pressure building up within. With a squeal the magical frost ripped into the remaining naga. Millions of tiny, razor sharp shards of frost pierced the deepest parts of their serpentine skin, and swiftly froze the cloak of water they were covered in. Those who weren’t frozen in place were mangled beyond recognition, corpses splattering to the ground to leak large amounts of blood. Blood that, too, was already freezing over.

The priestesses that were affected where killed just as quickly as their consorts, the others just barely slithering out of the way to avoid it.

With her swoop complete, she could bare the pain in her wing no longer. She had to land. Now. Trying desperately to disguise her agonized squeal as a roar, she snarled at the azure skinned priestesses and made a wide turn to descend upon the camp below. They launched bolts of arcane energy at her, but such things only felt like a punch in the chest. Staggering slightly, her talons buried themselves into the sand below, the ground quaking beneath the strength of her authority, and power.

With a sweep of her mighty tail, the bold warriors behind her were launched from their positions, backs twisting in a manor no living vertebrate should. Tridents embedding themselves into the ground.

With a low growl, she approached them. It’s frequency so low the priestesses could feel the sound reverberating up their spines. She could smell it wafting off of them now. The salt in their sweat, the metallic scent in their hormones. She could hear their heartbeats begin to race, and she could see their slit, reptilian pupils dilate wide with terror.

“FOR QUEEN ASZHARA!” one priestess shouted, tearing a trident from the sand, for she knew magic was no longer an option. She charged at the dragoness, but her effort ultimately proved futile. The dragoness only moved forward. When the priestess foolishly neared close enough to her, she lifted a talon and crushed her with it, the middle claw sinking deep into the naga’s chest. “Sss- ssister... avenge... me...” she gargled out with her sputtering final breath. Such pitiful last words.

Where she expected resistance from the final priestess though, she only got a cold, piercing stare.

“You think you have won, Ley-Child!?” the priestess bolstered. “You witnesss only the beginning! Assszhara will rise to power, and the black empire will return! N’zoth is inevitable!”

“Your demoralizing words are lost on me, bitch!” the dragon hissed, speaking in fluent elven. The ancient Kaldorei tongue. She grew tired of these games. These words that always tried to instill doubt in the minds of others. She’d heard it far too many times. Yet in the past, every time she’d heard those words, those who stood against them prevailed.

The priestess’s posture faltered just slightly. “Thiss time... isss not like the rest.” she witch cackled, but the shakiness in her voice remained. “When the banshee queen partsss the sseasss of Nazjatar, Azshara’s reign will finally come, and she will rule as the true queen of Azeroth!”

The dragon’s eyes narrowed. “You will fail.” she spoke lowly.

The priestess hissed. “Your arrogance...” she lowered two of her hands to the ground, a pair of them evoking power, and drawing it up into the upper pair she had cupped in front of her face. Static electricity began to build up around them, clouds far above beginning to spiral. A large cast? Right in front of a blue? “WILL BE YOUR UNDOI-” No.

With a final roar, she opened up her maw and hastily lowered it down over the priestess. Not even a second after, she clapped her jaws shut. Her teeth sunk deeply into the writhing corpse. The priestess’s cold, oozing blood coated the insides of her mouth. It wasn’t long until each twitch of her muscles faded away, and her tail fell limp.

The dragoness lifted her head towards the sky's above, allowing her throat to open up, and swallow the naga whole. The storm was lifting, the clouds began to fade away. Beams of sunlight even began to creep through the ever-thinning veil up above.

Trembling, her muscles gave way, and she allowed herself to collapse to the ground. It had been a long flight, and this fight had sapped much mana from her soul. Her spirit felt weak, and her body trembled to feel even moreso. It was time to rest now. To recuperate. At the very least... she had food now.

But before she closed her eyes, she opened up her water lids to view the skies up above with greater vibrancy. The last thing she remembered before sleep whisked her away on the currents of dreams, were the sounds of seagulls returning to the ambiance surrounding her. The gentile cheering of the waves leaving her content, and the leylines restored.

She was going to have to wake up tomorrow, find a way to heal herself, and get back in the skies. She didn’t know if she was going to return form this venture alive either, but that was a future Sorvegosa’s problem. For now, she had to rest.

Authors note: That’s right. Emmy’s going to Nazjatar to nip at the Naga’s heels. Will that all go as “smoothly” as it has here? Well let me tell you this. She caught these ones unprepared, in a situation where their harpoon launchers were not a factor. Others escaped the carnage as well. Likely to tell their masters that they’d caught the attention of a blue dragon. Next time, she may not be so lucky. I’ve actually made a sequel-ish thing now. If you’d like to go look :D

 This is the post I leave you all with for now. Hopefully I will be able to make another soon, and start establishing some stakes. By then I should have a better Idea of what to expect in patch 8.2 anyways XD