When Kerelion arrived, everyone in the Hinterlands base could hear it.
"You what?" Kerelion had to be a few rooms away, but Araxion could still hear the outburst. "The half-breed took her? I will flay him and use his magic to feed Ultraxion, and do the same to you, if you're lucky."
Araxion could hear very heavy footsteps approaching, undoubtedly the black wyrm in his draconic form. It seemed like he was going elsewhere in the base, however, because the sound became fainter and fainter. Araxion instead took the time to give his quarters a more thorough look. It didn't have the same crumbled, dilapidated look of the rooms in the Bastion of Twilight, and the architecture didn't appear to be dwarven at all. Had he been familiar with the elves of the Eastern Kingdoms, Araxion would have recognized the walls and tiling as Quel'dorei work. From what he could tell, the base was underground, but it was difficult to identify where, as he had come to Hinterlands from within the twilight realm.
It was not long before Kerelion's footsteps came back, stopping for a long time just outside of Araxion's room. The black wyrm must have shifted into his human form just outside the door, because that was the form he entered in. As Araxion expected, he looked far less than pleased.
"I have news," Kerelion said.
"I heard," Araxion said dryly. "It doesn't seem like we've been winning much lately."
Kerelion nodded, clenching his fist. "It's the Twilight's Hammer, the mortals," he spat. "They're useful thralls, sometimes, but they're completely incompetent. Most of our recent operations have been planned by them, and that's why they failed. But I've been promised that that's going to change."
"That's good to hear," Araxion said.
"The mortals have done nothing but ruin our plans. They're the reason we failed to kill Alexstrasza in Hyjal, they're the reason we lost Hyjal, they're the reason the Red Dragonflight has been handing us our asses everywhere outside of the Twilight Highlands," Kerelion continued his rant with hardly a regard for Araxion. "But Deathwing has promised that he's going to be taking more control of the Twilight Dragonflight very, very soon. And things will change."
"And he's going to fix all of that," Araxion observed. "I only wonder why he waited so long. We've already lost Hyjal and most of our footholds in Kalimdor."
Kerelion paused, his expression unreadable for a moment. "You're going to be the Aspect of Twilight," he said. "I can tell you. We failed to acheive most of what we had planned for Mount Hyjal, but one of Deathwing's major goals was to steal eggs. The Green Dragonflight keeps a large number of its eggs in breeding grounds on Mount Hyjal. The eggs we managed to find have bolstered our ranks by a few thousand, and the Green Dragonflight believes that they're casualties rather than eggs that have turned. Deathwing isn't incompetent- he's just been biding his time for his forces to grow, and for the real war to begin."
Araxion wondered, briefly, how much other twilight dragons remembered from within the egg. He had been lain as a black dragon, within the Bastion of Twilight, and so he had never questioned the Twilight Dragonflight. But what was it like for dragons that had originally been red, blue, green, or bronze like Sariona? What did they remember from within the shell? How did the Twilight Dragonflight ensure the loyalty of their young after they had come from other flights?
Kerelion had said that one of the reasons they rarely turned drakes was because they were not loyal to the Twilight Dragonflight after they turned. Whelps could think within the egg, Araxion knew that much, so why didn't twilights turned as eggs have the same problem?
"I'm glad to hear that he's going to be taking charge soon," Araxion said. "From what I saw in Hyjal, we on the front lines were doing nothing wrong, it was our strategy that led to failure."
"But until then, we have to deal with the failures of the mortals in the Twilight's Hammer," Kerelion growled. "That's what I came to talk to you about. The drakes I sent, under the command of the Twilight's Hammer, failed to capture Virigosa."
That name... why... Then it all came back, Araxion's time on Mount Hyjal. Kasiona's death and Sariona's quest for vengeance, meeting Eyrigos and speaking to the blue about the Nexus War, and finally, meeting Virigosa in the flesh in that cave during one of the final battles on Mount Hyjal. They hadn't fought, neither she nor him had made a move to attack the other. In fact... they had talked.
Araxion realized that he had been silent for an uncomfortable amount of time. "Virigosa, she... uh... the blue..."
"Yes," Kerelion tilted his head, narrowing his eyes. "She's the drake that we were going to study so we can turn you into Ultraxion."
"Sorry," Araxion said hastily. "That name... That's the name of the drake who killed a friend of a friend. My friend, she..." He let himself trail off, knowing it was hopeless.
Kerelion stared at him for a long, awful moment, and Araxion could only guess what the look on his face meant. "I don't know who you've met out there, Araxion, and frankly, I don't care," the black wyrm said at last. "But twilight dragons don't have 'friends'. You're a servant to the Old Gods, and that's all that matters to you, to any twilight dragon. Whatever friendships you think you have, they're not real. The Masters are the only thing you care about."
Araxion knew that that was wrong. He cared about Sariona, even if she was difficult at times, even if sometimes she pretended that she didn't care about him. He wanted to protest and tell Kerelion about the friends he had, all the things they had said and done with each other, but he wasn't stupid. It was pointless arguing with the wyrm about a topic like this, he could tell.
"Yes, sir," Araxion said instead, nodding. "I understand."
"Good. Now that we've cleared that up," Kerelion said. "I'm going to see if there's another of Eszragos's drakes outside of Coldarra for us to capture. If not, we need to get this project started, and quickly. If I can't get a hold of another of Eszragos's drakes after a few weeks, we're going to move onto our other plan. In that case, we'll be bringing nether drakes here, and we'll have you absorb their essences. It should have roughly the same results as using spell foci, but it does mean we'll have to spend more resources. We can only breed so many nether drakes, while using Eszragos's method means that we'd be getting all that power directly from the ley lines."
"I see," Araxion said. "Whichever way you do it, I won't let you down."
"That's good." Kerelion made a move towards the door. "I'll leave you be, Araxion. When I have any news, I'll tell you."
What were they fighting for, anyways?
Araxion, sitting alone in his room, wondered why he had never thought about it before. He was going to be an Aspect. Deathwing had decided that. But what would be left for him after the Hour of Twilight? Araxion was not fighting for his dragonflight, for Sariona, for anyone he cared about. Kerelion had made that much clear. But then, what was left that was worth fighting for? It was almost like nobody had ever bothered to consider that. But there were thousands of twilight dragons in the world, one must have thought of it. Why had they never said anything?
Perhaps they were afraid. All twilight dragons were kept on a tight leash. That was why he would never say anything, after all. Araxion knew that his superiors, like Kerelion, wouldn't approve of this train of thought, or many other ideas he had entertained, but he didn't care anymore. There were no voices in his head listening to his thoughts, judging his each and every whim. His will was his own, and so he was satisfied to keep these small acts of defiance within his mind, where they were safe.