A/N: Gah, sorry this took so long. I'm posting this chapter along with the next two to finish the Briggs arc. After that, there's just two more chapters, which will probably be fairly short as well.

Thank you for reading and putting up with my inconsistent posting!

…-…

With any luck, they would be out of that damnable mountain within the next hour or so. While the thought of adventure still sent shivers down his spine, Briggs had to say he was more than ready to be done with this one.

He'd half wondered if—when they found him—they would learn that Samuel was really a dragon of some kind, as well. Everyone seemed to be sprouting wings around him, so to speak. It was curious though, how desperately both dragons tried to hide what they were. It had puzzled him, until he'd remembered Brathrion saying that his brother was on the lookout for a giant scaly lizard.

It certainly put things into perspective.

As the days had gone on—three of them, to be exact—he'd been forgetting that he was around dragons at all. With Samuel missing, they'd assumed that the dwarves had taken him and had followed their tracks to the notorious Blackrock Mountain. There, they'd certainly seemed mortal enough when their little trio had jumped a few guards near the entrance to the dwarven city in the bottom of the mountain. Rather than overwhelming their enemies with fire breath or tail swipes, it had been simple knocks to the head. That and a few fire bolts from Briggs, not that he was sure they'd done much.

Within five minutes of their interrogation, Brathrion had been cursing enough that Briggs was sure even the most weathered, drunken dwarven warrior would pale. Their prisoners certainly were. It turned out that Samuel had been taken to the Spire rather than the city. The dwarves had been none too happy to have their prisoner taken by dragonkin, either.

Even as Briggs and Anora had debated what to do with the dwarves, Brathrion had killed them—though it hadn't been until they'd relinquished their garb. Briggs had been mortified. While he hadn't any love for the Dark Iron, somehow it seemed wrong to kill them in their own home. And to steal their clothes.

Brathrion had insisted that they would need to blend in, however. Even as Anora reluctantly agreed that there were more pressing issues than a few dead dwarves, the black dragon had kicked the bodies into the bubbling lava below and Briggs had cringed, praying that the whole lot of them had indeed been dead before they hit that molten lake.

Through a bit of sorcery, they were able to tailor the gear to fit them and Brathrion had declared himself the leader of their little band, stating that they would avoid the dragonkin if at all possible and pretend to be a part of some cult while they were in the Spire. But only until they found a rune.

Honestly, the dragon had been hellbent on just staying in the dwarven city until they came across and killed a well-equipped mage there, but Briggs had hastily declared that the runes had to be created just so or they wouldn't work. A Blackrock rune would only ever be able to make a portal to the mountain, while an Ironforge rune would be able to take them to Ironforge.

It was a flat out lie, but neither dragon seemed versed enough with 'mortal' spellcasting to argue. Thus they'd headed up into the spire and spent another day and a half painstakingly slipping past patrols and doing their best to be noticed by as few people as possible.

The orcs simply dismissed them as cultists, as Brathrion had planned and it was in pure astonishment that Briggs now stood before the cell that Samuel had been thrown into. He was injured and some of the marks on the man—most of his armor was missing—implied that he'd been tortured.

For what?

Briggs reached into his pocket, feeling the portal rune he'd picked up from those guards as he closed his fingers around it. He'd been so careful when he'd found it nestled in the pockets of that robe, terrified that somehow Brathrion would know and he would demand to be sent away from this place, leaving them without another way to escape.

Anora's fingers shifted to claws and scales rippled up her arms as she gripped the bars to the cell and jerked them outward, allowing her room to slip in. As her skin returned to normal, she knelt beside the injured warrior and gave his hair a sympathetic pat. Casting a quick spell, Briggs realized why she'd always 'conserved her mana' through the less serious scrapes and bruises, and why she'd healed Brathrion in private. Rather than the light answering her call, the cell lit up with a soft green radiance. He'd seen druids cast similar spell sand it occurred to him that had she used her magic, it would have been obvious fairly quickly that she was no priest.

As soon as Samuel came to, he startled, jerking away from his savior. "S-stay back, beast!"

Briggs scurried awkwardly through the twisted bars, reaching out toward his traveling companion. "It's okay! Anora…strasss…"

"Anora was fine before and it's fine now."

"Anora is a friendly dragon."

Samuel's expression spoke volumes to how little he believed the gnome's words. However, when Briggs pointed out how Anora had healed the man not moments before, crimson colored the warrior's ears. "I should be grateful then," he mumbled. However, when he looked them over, he paused. "I don't suppose you know where they took my brother's sword?"

Briggs stared at him. "Is that how they caught you?" When the human nodded, Briggs' shoulders slumped. "I'm sorry. I don't know what happened to it."

Samuel stared down at the grungy floor for a moment before shrugging. "Can't keep anything forever…"

He sat there another moment before Anora softly urged them on. "We need to find the reins. And a portal rune."

Briggs felt guilty suddenly. He reached into his pocket to touch the portal rune again. It wasn't fair to Samuel that he should have to stay in this awful place. However, as he opened his mouth to tell them of their way home, Samuel rose to his feet. He spat on the ground, angry. "Get me a lump of metal if you have to and I'll fight. Fucking dragons…"

He paused to eye Anora and then Brathrion, but the former merely sighed, sympathy still playing on her face, while the latter spastically looked about the halls, waiting for someone to come and label them enemies.

They carefully made their way from the dungeons, though they'd barely gotten far when the clatter of guards' armor filled the halls. In seconds, they were surrounded by dragonkin. Brathrion let out a low hiss and then crouched toward the ground, fire already licking his fingertips. However, before he could cast a single spell, Anora slipped up behind him and slid a small clasp of silver over his ear. It was long and shaped in the form of a dragon, its wings arching away from his ear as the tail, head, and legs curled around the skin.

Runes slithered across his skin like snakes and he fell to his knees with a startled gasp. Anora ignored him, instead stepping away from him and wringing her hands as though whatever she'd just done weighed heavily on her heart. She turned toward one of the side halls. "I did as you asked. It's your turn."

Briggs had knelt beside Brathrion to try to remove the source of the man's pain, but a spear had thudded in between the two. The owner used the butt of the spear to toss Briggs back into Samuel and the human caught him before he could tumble into the ground. A few of the dragoons dragged Brathrion's limp body away from the others and disappeared down one of the halls with him. The remaining dragonkin watched the cornered trio with bemused expressions on their scaly features.

Looking back at Anora, Briggs frowned. The guards had parted and a man stood before the small group. His hair and skin and eyes reminded Briggs of Brathrion and he felt his heart sink. This had to be Brathrion's brother.

An orc had arrived with the dragon in human form. He wore engineer's goggles, but even with his eyes covered, Briggs could see a nervous sheen of sweat on him. The creature shifted uncomfortably as the dragon motioned to him. "This is the orc who figured out how to combine engineering and enchantments to make the reins function properly." Even as the orc stood a bit straighter, a spear's blade thrust out of his chest from behind. The orc stood there in stunned disbelief for a moment before the weapon diseappeared with a wet smack back through his flesh. He collapsed to the ground without a single utterance. As his body hit the floor, Anora shivered.

"What of his notes?"

"You really think I would let mortals keep such things?"

"Fine," she didn't sound overly sure, but she edged back toward Samuel and Briggs. "All that remains is the mortals' belongings and—"

"I think not." The man motioned for the guards to take them. "I appreciate you finding my brother for me."

Anora hissed, but even as her fingers extended into claws, Briggs sprung into action. He might not have been a master spell weaver, but he'd seen plans go south enough to know when a tactful retreat was in order. Whipping out his portal rune, the spell flew from his tongue. He gripped Samuel's hand. For a second, he considered leaving the dragons to their infighting, but then…Anora hadn't betrayed him.

She'd turned on Brathrion, so that the rest of them could get away, hadn't she?

Briggs reached for Anora's hand as he flung himself into the twisting nether. He thought he felt his fingers close around hers as his world was consumed with brilliant colors, but when they faded and he hit the stone floor of Ironforge, she was not with them.

Samuel's voice rang out, drawing him from his thoughts. "Close the portal before they come through!"

Even as the warrior shouted, one of the dragonkin appeared almost on top of Briggs. It barely managed a roar before the guards converged upon it. At the same time, the mage trainers' and a few higher leveled adventurers' chants drown out the clash of steel as each of them reacted with the same thought, to close off the portal before a proper invasion could commence.

Briggs stumbled to his feet, horrified. "Anora!"

He looked around the room, thinking that perhaps she had slipped through and made a run for it, even as Samuel had called the alarm. However, he quickly surmised that only two of them had made it back, when one of the guards thought to ask about the elven lass he'd left with. Baulking, he sunk to his knees.

No sooner had his guilt overwhelmed him, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Samuel knelt beside him. "I'm sorry we couldn't help her." Though his words were sincere, they lacked remorse. What he was really sorry for was that Briggs was torn up about it, not that they'd left the dragon behind at the mercy of her own kind.

Briggs wanted to scream and throw fire blasts at everything within range, but instead, he nodded, numb. "I'm sorry we lost your sword."

"At least we have our lives," Samuel forced a smile. "For what it's worth, you're the best damned mage I've ever run with."

Despite the human's kind intent, Briggs merely rose to his feet and shuffled down the halls, back to his home. No matter what anyone said, he couldn't help but remember the way Anora had sat in that inn, the way she'd been so determined and so nice. Even if she was a dragon, her loss weighted heavy on his heart.