Test of Time
Prologue
All was silent in the Emerald Dream as dusk invaded the jade sky, save for the haggard breathing and hissing of a creature struggling through her nightmares. Among ancient lands untouched by mortal hand, a large form shifted in her sleep, tossing and turning in the grass as her mind turned upon her and twisted her thoughts as she lay helpless. Scales the color of the entire Dream glinted in the bright moonlight as the seer Helyra, a daughter of She of the Dreaming, beheld a monstrous sight.
The green dragonflight was recognized for their tendency to envision – such were the lives of masters of slumber and the Emerald world, for the very environment they dwelled in was a reverie-mirror of Azeroth's prehistoric terrain. Eyes permanently closed, yet vision incomparably acute, the sleek, intelligent greens stalked the visions of the past and future, bringing enlightenment to all whose dreams they reached. Patient and serene, Ysera's brood looked over the mortal races with care and interest, rarely intervening – but intervening when necessary – with the petty situations on Azeroth. However, there was no one to prevent the horrors that Helyra had stumbled upon in her rest. She grimaced once again, taking in the vile picture in her mind…
A reptilian face, scales black as gleaming ebony greeted the dragoness as she dreamt, accented with deadly spines and curved demon's horns that could easily impale the thickest armor. The behemoth had a large, sinewy frame that seemed to seethe with a power unparalleled by many of his breed, and his wings, tattered and rough, beat with the sheer intensity of a hurricane. Teeth abundant and sharp grinned maliciously at the devastation the leviathan had initiated – the devastation of fellow dragons, blue and red, green and bronze. Bodies of her kin lay at the feet of this monster, heads looking skyward in a cry of pain and fear induced by the beast's genocide. Nothing could be done to abate the fury that the creature unleashed upon the helpless beings at his mercy.
And behind this colossal fiend, enveloping and manipulating everything he did, was another draconic shadow, eyes – like his gruesome servant's – the color of a most powerful inferno, adamantium plates sealed painfully into his hide. He held a disk in a gnarled, clawed hand, so small as to almost disappear in the giant's palm. Though it was an ordinary golden saucer, it emanated an evil that could only be harnessed by one being.
Deathwing, the Destroyer, spoke.
"My minion, Valeon the Dark-Heart," he bellowed, his voice just as menacing as his overwhelming appearance. The dragon he addressed bowed submissively amongst the carnage he had wrought, and at this the former Earth-Warder looked pleased. He continued. "This is only a taste of the glory you will feel when the brood of Deathwing takes victorious to the skies! Go now, and slay those who dare defy the destiny of the black dragonflight!"