A/N: Sorry for any confusion earlier. The Horde will play a part in this fic, but not for a few more chapters.

…-…

I'm…not much in a sharing mood right now.

It's like traveling with other humans made my whole dilemma a little less real. Like being angry at Nicolas all the time and then reveling in his misfortune was a good distraction and it helped ease all my pent up stress. Helped me cope, you know? But…well.

When we arrived on the island where the draenei live, I was happy to see that it was considerably bigger than any of the islands I had seen before. No tiny rock in the middle of an angry sea.

Rather, the ocean had looked rather benign on the way over and the sun was shining. Birds were chirping when we got close enough to land to hear them. Fish were jumping. Draenei were talking and laughing.

Holy crap, draenei are huge. And nobody mentioned they had face tentacles. It was so hard not to stare. From the hooves to the tails to the horns…to the blue, blue, blue skin. I know Fizz mentioned all this, but he didn't mention the blinding lights for eyes that made you see spots if you tried to hold their gaze for more than a few seconds. Or the fact that they were freaking walking walls. I felt like an eight year old who wandered in during one of my parents' business meetings to see all the adults looming overhead.

They were all really nice, though. I mean, I must have been looking pretty bedraggled at that point, but they still smiled at me like my hair wasn't wild and my face hadn't gone weeks without a good scrub.

Apparently their city is a crashed space ship. How crazy is that? It's got a lot of bright crystal lights in it too, so it's like no matter where you look, your eyes hurt. And the architecture is so weird. I don't know how to describe it well…I don't think an architect from my world could describe it and do it justice. Think lots of shades of purples and blues and light grays though.

Not my point.

So when we landed, the draenei asked that our mounts stay up near the entrance to the city, in the stables. While I didn't want to let Brath out of my sight, he seemed fine with it, saying that he would keep Derres company. Derres was thrilled, I'm sure.

But I guess he was determined to keep an eye on the bad guy, so they stayed with Muffins, Clara's griffon. Did not see that name coming. We'd barely waved goodbye to Derres and Brath when we turned around and found Randall was waiting for us. I don't know if he was waiting the whole time we'd been flying up or if he knew how long we'd be or something and just got there.

We arrived early afternoon, by the way.

He and TJ had talked the draenei into letting me stay at the local inn for free—which was a busted up piece of the spaceship, but its beds looked way more comfortable than pretty much anything I'd seen in Azeroth yet—and they were pretty much insistent that I take some time and take a bath, try on the new clothes that they'd gone out of their way to get me—the new shoes did look really appealing, seeing as mine were falling apart and chaffing my ankles—you know, just relax a bit.

Like that was gonna happen. When I gave Randall this "No way am I wasting precious time." look, he looked…crestfallen. Worn down. Defeated.

I didn't like it.

So I asked where TJ was—which was awkward since I couldn't remember his name—and Randall finally told me that TJ was working with some mages over in the Vault of Lights. The whole place wasn't a vault of light?

Even as I dreaded how bright that area might be, he pointed in a general direction and it was like pure luck, or so I thought at the time, because that was right when TJ stepped out of this building type thing in the distance, stretching and rubbing his eyes.

Well, I bolted to him. A few of the draenei gave me curious looks as I ran past them, but as I got closer to TJ, the few whose faces I saw looked…unhappy to see me.

I slowed down before I could tackle my second favorite mage—Fizz will always be my first—and smiled brightly at him.

"Did you get the goggles to work?" When he jumped and stared at me wide eyed like I was some kind of ghost, I frowned. "You know. To make the portal."

Instead of answering me at first, he glanced past me, giving a quick glare in Randall's direction. I guess he was supposed to keep me at bay or something. Then he offered me a forced smile. "About that…"

I remembered what his portals had looked like when I'd tried to go through them, right? So when I noticed a shimmery image through the doorway and half hidden behind some crates in the building he'd just come out of, I darted in without thinking. TJ tried to stop me, but I was too quick for him.

With the Exodar portal, I had been able to see some of the actual city around where the portal led, right? Well, it took me a minute to really register what I was seeing through the shimmery, translucent light of the one to my world.

The sky, from what I could see of it beyond the buildings, was overshadowed and gray. Everything was gray…everything was broken. Buildings, pavement, lamp posts. Glass from windows littered sidewalks and half the cars that I could see were little more than twisted hunks of metal.

The worst of it though, was the bodies. Mutilated corpses were scattered across the street. Their flesh was mostly rotted off, but you could see the way the bones were mangled that their deaths had been horrible. The few who still had faces looked like they'd been in agony when they died. Even their skin and bones had taken on grayish hues.

When the extent of the devastation hit me, at first I tried to tell myself this must have been an isolated area, maybe somewhere far off in Greenland or something.

And then the image switched. Another street filled with broken metal and mangled bones. I felt sick. When I turned around, I saw that the draenei were apparently keeping track of the places the portal had shown, because there were different images. All of them showed the same thing.

A dead world.

I vaguely remember someone saying, apologetically, that they'd been monitoring the portal for a few days and that they hadn't been able to find any signs of life.

I didn't hear the others come in after me. Apparently Clara smacked TJ for letting me see the portal thing. I didn't hear Nicolas ask me if I could stand back up—I'd collapsed to my knees—or the draenei woman who asked me if I wanted her to show me where I could lay down.

I know I'd seen youtube videos, but those had all been in infrared. I don't know if people just hadn't been posting the carnage or if governments were keeping them down but…

I don't know if they led me back to the inn or not. I can't really remember. I saw their faces. The corpses. And I couldn't help but wonder if any of them were Bethany or Greg or someone else I knew. I couldn't even recognize them if they were.

In the end, I ended up running from everyone and I found myself in the woods near the city. I don't know what I thought I was doing. Like, did I think that if I ran away those images would disappear? Or that my world might reset somehow?

My world… I didn't have one anymore. I failed.

I failed.

"I'd have thought you'd be like to take a nice nap after a journey ended, myself." A cheerful, condescendingly amused voice finally reached me.

Brath.

I felt him nuzzle my head and all at once I was angry. I whirled around, slamming one of my hands into his face and ignoring as his scales ripped up my knuckles. He blinked at me, surprised. "You!" I swung at him and he simply darted back a step out of my reach. "If you had just told me about portals! They could have found a way earlier! We could have…we could have…" What could we have really done that would have made a difference? "You…bastard!" I screamed at him.

It had to be someone's fault. But who was there to blame? Clara and the others for not listening earlier? Fizz for not working his magic faster? Me for being so stupid and slow?

"What turn of events has brought this?" Brath asked. When I looked at him, I could barely make him out past the tears blurring my vision.

"What do you even care?" I felt like something in me was breaking, crumbling away slowly at the edges, the pieces disappearing into nothingness. "You just want those stupid reins off!"

"I do." Brath responded. His voice was too calm and I thought I saw a flicker in his eyes. That psychopath glimmer. I couldn't stand it.

Reaching forward, I grabbed at him and at first he pulled away, thinking I was trying to hit him again. Even as he did so, my fingers caught part of the reins and I jerked them away from him. He froze for a moment as the leather thudded to the ground and then looked at me in bewilderment.

"There! You're free!" I felt tears starting to run down my cheeks. "So just…go away! Go help your dad destroy the world or…whatever! I don't care…"

And then I fell to the ground sobbing. No surprise there, right? After all, it's all I'm good at.