Author's Note: Itty bitty ficlet about Nozdormu giving in to becoming the Infinite Aspect. Not-quite-evil!Nozdormu. Slightly angsty emo dragon Nozdormu.
Out of Time
Death. Deathwing was calling himself the Aspect of Death, but he truly was not. Nozdormu, Bronze dragon Aspect and Master of Time, knew this well. To be an Aspect of something is to be the very incarnation of something. So as Kalecgos was the Aspect of Magic, he was the incarnation of all things arcane. As Alexstrasza was the Aspect of Life, she was the incarnation of all things living and growing...and as Nozdormu was the Aspect of Time, he was the incarnation of Time itself.
Effectively, he was the most powerful Aspect of them all. He saw all, knew all. Yes, knowing all...sometimes Nozdormu wished he did not know all. The "blessing" the Titans had bestowed upon him, mastery over Time, was also a curse, because they knew he was the most powerful, so they had to make a way to keep him in check, to keep him humble...
And so they did the worst thing they could have possibly done to someone who can see all and know all. They let him see his own death. When, where, and how. As the Master of Time, did the Titans truly think that this would humble him and not infuriate him? That he would not try and find a way to subvert this death? Oh, he saw his own death. It was bloody, brutal, and painful. The Aspect of Time had no desire to meet that fate.
In his all-knowing, he also saw an...alternate timeline where he succeeded in preventing his own death. A death that was lain out before he was even created. A death planned by the Titans all along. Nozdormu saw. He saw and he preferred the timeline where he did not die. It would not cause time itself to unravel as many of his flight thought any alterations to any timeline would. As the veritable GOD of Time, he knew more than any of his flight knew.
But...to achieve this success...to avoid his own death...many others would have to die. He would have to change so much of the past to avoid this horrific fate laid out for him by his creators. It was too much for one dragon alone, even an Aspect. He knew what he had to become. What he had to do.
He had to change his flight into the very antithesis of what they stood for. Instead of protecting the timeways from being changed, he had to change his flight into beings who would CHANGE the timeways. It was the only way to prevent his own passing, and his own flight's destruction. In a way, it WOULD end with his flight's destruction, but on an entirely different level.
The Bronze dragonflight would no longer exist. But...another flight, called by a different name would. His flight would be truly, completely, and utterly changed. After having been found lost in the timeways by an orc shaman, an orc shaman with a great destiny, he had returned to the Caverns to ponder over all he'd seen. He'd told Thrall that he wished to NOT become the creature he'd seen in his own future. But...that wasn't entirely true.
Nozdormu himself, not his future changed self, had sent Blackmoore to kill Thrall. Had let him escape his own timeway for the sole purpose of killing the orc. Nozdormu had failed at having Thrall erased from existence, so he would have to have him killed. In the grand scheme of things, all the changes Thrall made, his neutrality, his power...it would all lead up to the Horde and the Alliance eventually...well...becoming one. Allying together to defeat a great darkness. The Old Gods. The Old Gods would be the death of Nozdormu.
If Thrall were to die, that fight would never happen. The Old Gods would simply wipe out the mortals and the dragon Aspects would trap them once more. There would be no more mortal races on Azeroth, but it would be clean again. They could start over. Thrall and Malfurion were his greatest obstacles. Both were to eventually be the catalysts in which the horde and the alliance came together.
Druid and shaman uniting all the races against a foe greater than any other the world has ever faced, even Sargeras. In his time travels, Nozdormu had even seen the fate of that fallen Titan. Sargeras would fall. The Old Gods would not. They were greater than even the Titans. It took all the Titans to kill even one Old God, and all of them to simply imprison the others. And they'd broken somewhat free of their prisons. The prisons were tenuous, loose, unguarded...the Old Gods would reign once more on Azeroth if the horde and alliance did not come together and defeat them once and for all.
And yet, Nozdormu had seen that other timeline, the one where the Old Gods triumphed and the mortal races were destroyed, but the dragon Aspects trapped the Old Gods in their ancient prisons once again, Azeroth inhabited once again only by dragonlife. In that timeline, Nozdormu was not Nozdormu. His flight was not the Bronze flight.
They were changed and different. As was he. Alternate timeline Nozdormu had scales as black as Neltharion's, parts of his body shot through with silver sparked lightning marks, his hourglass eyes which reflected the sands of all time had turned silver-black as well. The sands in his silver-black hourglass eyes flowing backwards constantly instead of forward.
In the other timeline, the other flights saw him as a monstrosity. Yet they did not kill him. They knew the threat posed by the Old Gods, yet they did not know his hand in making sure the mortals did not survive, but he, Aspect of Time, did. In the alternate timeline, there was, oddly, a black aspect. Not Neltharion the Earth Warder, but another. Nozdormu had not checked to see who or what had taken the place of the fallen Earth Warder, but someone had and all the flights were united.
Even his own flight...the Infinite Dragonflight. Yes, that is what they were called in the future. In that timeway. They were united, and the union of all five flights turned out to be the undoing of the Old Gods and ended with their imprisonment.
Nozdormu raised his great, draconic head, gazing at the huge, golden hourglass in the center of the Caverns. Already some of the sands were turning from gold to black. Lesser dragons did not notice this, nor did they notice that some of the sands were starting to trickle backwards. The formerly...infinite...hourglass was slowly becoming filled at the top, no longer flowing forward. No longer flowing toward that awful future.
That awful future where he was out of time. Where he would die if he did not become what he knew he was meant to become. Nozdormu sighed. Monstrous though he would become, he would not suffer a horrific, pointless death. Nozdormu, former master of time, finally just accepted it. He was their master. He was the Aspect of Infinity. Immortality. There would be no more flowing of time. At least not for him.