"I didn't do this. It was Ysera. Her tail."

Had Virigosa not been so dazed, she might've taken the opportunity to kill the twilight right then and there. Of course it was Ysera's tail. However, she had not yet recovered from the shock of the crash, and this drake had just shattered one of her most basic assumptions about the Twilight Dragonflight. She sat back, her jaw slightly parted, her tail motionless on the ground.

"You can talk?" Virigosa asked.

The twilight dragon seemed taken aback. "Uhm...yes." He stammered.

Virigosa once again recalled the morning that Alexstrasza had arrived at Hyjal, and the drake that she had slain. She was not afraid, somehow. This twilight dragon was just as scared as she was- no, even more scared. He wouldn't try to start a fight with Virigosa unless he was exceptionally foolish.

"Do you have a name, then?" she asked, her head tilted.

"Yes, of course," he answered, giving Virigosa the strangest look. "It's Araxion. I'm Araxion."

"Oh," she said. "I just thought..."

Virigosa trailed off, looking over the drake's dark form. He was not trying to fight her, so why wasn't she taking advantage of the opportunity? He was a twilight drake, her sworn enemy, standing foolishly like a lamb ready for the slaughter. Yet he did not seem like the monster Virigosa had always imagined. He could talk. He had a name. Did they think and dream and love as all other dragons did? How many had Virigosa slaughtered, thinking them little more than beasts?

At least with the Red Dragonflight, I knew that they were just like me.

"And you?" Araxion interrupted her train of thought. "What's your name?"

"Virigosa," she answered, automatically.

She almost immediately began to regret it, because Araxion flinched, recoiling backward, staring at her as though she were some sort of freak. "That's nice... you know, a nice name." He was stammering again. "That looked like a hard fall. Are you alright?"

The strangest warm feeling flooded through Virigosa when he asked that, a sort of joy. He is twilight, not to be trusted. "I think my leg and tail might be broken," Virigosa said.

"Not that bad, then," Araxion said, nodding in Virigosa's directions. "I think we're trapped in here. Look."

Cautiously, Virigosa turned her head for a moment. The only source of light, apart from her runes and Araxion's eyes, was creeping into the cave through a rocks, stacked on top of each other all the way to the cave roof. They looked like they had just fallen, not yet set in their positions.

"I don't know how either of us survived that," Araxion said. "You look like you had it worse than me, though."

"Slowfall," Virigosa said. "All blue dragons are taught it as whelps. Probably saved my life. Dragons don't usually fall unless we're too weak to fly, much less cast spells- you must know that- so it doesn't usually do any good. This time, it did."

"Must've saved me too, then," the twilight said. "We were fighting, we had to have been right next to each other."

"We're both lucky," Virigosa said. "You're smaller than me, too. Maybe that helped."

Briefly, Virigosa wondered if maybe she and Araxion could've been friends, had they been born on the same side. Almost immediately, she regretted the thought. It could very well be a trick, she noted. Why else would a twilight want to talk to a blue drake? But at the same time, she somehow wanted Araxion to be genuine. She almost wished that she could be friends with this twilight drake she had just met, who most certainly did not seem like a monster.

Not a monster doesn't mean not an enemy, she reminded herself.

"Why are you even talking to me?" Virigosa asked, a clear accusation to her voice. "Only minutes ago, we'd have killed each other, so why are you talking to me now?"

Araxion was quiet for a few moments, clearly debating with himself. "I've done something like this before. I met one of our spies. A blue drake," he admitted, and then he went on, the words spilling from his mouth. "He knew you."

Virigosa's blood ran cold, and her feet felt frozen to the ground. "A blue drake?" she demanded. "Who knows me?"

"His name is Eyrigos," Araxion blurted out, his tail twitching back and forth nervously. "He, well... He wanted to talk more than anything. And he told me about you, about the Nexus War."

"Eyrigos?" Virigosa echoed, her voice harsh. She would've lunged forward, pinning Araxion beneath her claws, if it weren't for her injured hind leg. "Eyrigos is a traitor? Eyrigos?"

"He says he'd rather see the world burn than see mortals continue to misuse magic." The words kept spilling from Araxion's mouth. "And... I know a drake. A friend of mine. You killed a close friend of hers, and she has a grudge against the Blue Dragonflight now. That's the only reason I attacked you. Because she saw blue and she wanted blood. She didn't even think it was going to be you."

What are the odds? That was Virigosa's only coherent thought, her mind racing. Eyrigos, of all people. During the Nexus War, he had been one of the most dedicated to the cause, one of the strongest believers in Malygos's goals and the means to acheive them. How could he possibly be a traitor?

"I've said too much," Araxion said, lowering his head.

Virigosa shook her head. "I will deal with him, I'll deal with Eyrigos."

"No, you don't get it," Araxion curled his tail tightly around his feet. "I shouldn't have said that. You're not twilight."

"I understand perfectly," Virigosa said coldly. "Araxion, you are most kind. I appreciate what you've done for me."

If this was a trick, Araxion had certainly been the wrong dragon to pick. His spilling of twilight secrets seemed incredibly genuine, and Virigosa had every intention to act on the information that he provided.

Araxion looked clearly distressed, and for a moment, just a moment, Virigosa felt a pang of sympathy. She turned to the blocked cave entrance, preparing to take a step towards it, then turned around again to face Araxion. "What's it like?" she asked.

"What?" Araxion tilted his head.

"Being twilight," she said. "A twilight drake."

Araxion hesitated a moment, then shook his head. "I don't know anything else," he said. "I've never been anything but twilight. But I wouldn't have it any other way. The other flights just seem... I don't know. Sad. Pitiful."

"Really..." Virigosa's voice was hardly more than a murmur, and she lowered her head for just a moment. "Do you ever regret killing others? Do you ever feel bad about it? Guilty?

Araxion turned his head to the side, and Virigosa got the sense that he was feeling quite vulnerable. "I don't know, why are you asking me?" His voice was a bit sharp now, defensive. "Do you?"

Now it was Virigosa's turn to look away, before raising her head high and fluffing out her wings just a bit. "No," she said. "Of course not."

It was quiet in the cave, the silence broken only by breathing and by Araxion's claws scratching anxiously against the cave floor. Outside, the sounds of battle were already fading, and Ysera's great wingbeats had disappeared into the distance.

"We should go." Virigosa walked towards the fallen stones, and pushed at one with a front foreleg. She exhaled deeply, and looked back to the twilight. "Would you help me? I can't steady myself enough to push it with my leg."

"Yes," Araxion said. He moved to help, and the rocks fell down the cliff fairly quickly. "Will you be punished for leaving with me?" he asked.

Virigosa shook her head. "I have no commander and no aspect," she said.

He nodded, and pushed off from the side of the cave. "Farewell," he said, and then he was gone.

Virigosa waited in the cave for a moment, then she took off, too, back to Nordrassil.