A/N: Thank you for the reviews! I pretty much had to break up this chapter, but some of Red Oak's points will be addressed in the next update.

And that's cool about the money, Sparkie. I don't think I've ever seen any of the UK's currency, myself.

…-…

No word from my world yet. It's been two weeks.

I can tell that Fizz, Maevlen, and Neesera all want to sit me down and have that, 'you may have to prepare for the worst' talk, but they don't need to.

Maybe my world is gone. If it is, I can't beat myself up over it, because I did try. And maybe, if I get better acquainted with this world, I'll think of another way back to mine. Or maybe someone else will think like me and make it here. If I can raise awareness of my world's dilemma, then people will be more receptive to random strange tongue speaking humans. I mean, for all I know, Greg is here, but he wasn't lucky enough to meet an awesome goblin with a translation spell. Or…maybe he or someone else is already working with the Horde while I work with the Alliance.

I sound a lot more collected than I am. I still have nightmares and I still miss my world, but there's nothing I can do right now. Aside from make myself into something that could fight the demons. There's a place called Outland, that was destroyed by the Legion, but apparently there's still demons there. Maybe I'll take the fight to them. Save the next world.

I'll figure something out.

Oh, and Brath is stressing out about the lack of communication—and he was not amused that I had Neesera keep him locked up for as long as I did. When we went to get him, he was in dragon form and kept hissing at us. Which, you know, should have been really scary, since he could easily tear me in half, but I don't know why but I just giggled at him. I mean, it was like he was trying to save his pride and show that, yes, he is a big scary dragon, and it just…made me laugh. And when I did that he looked so…disappointed. So he sulked for a bit after that.

:)

Anyway. I managed to get him alone for a bit and he explained his situation to me. I don't think he really cared that I knew per se, but it was more a way for him to look over what was happening again and see if he could figure out how to keep things in his favor. We haven't addressed that kiss since his fight with Fizz, by the way.

Apparently the black dragon flight was corrupted by the old gods, like Neesera said. But there's one pure one. And it's the one employing Nicolas. Well, Brath went to the pure black dragon and implored it to let him live, so that he could help save another world and possibly earn his redemption.

Brath is surprisingly unsettled by the fact that the other dragon agreed. Something about the way it looked at him, like it could see something happening that he couldn't.

Well, he's worried that if we don't find a way into my world soon, the other dragon will change its mind and Nicolas will come after him. When I asked if he was really that scared of Nicolas, he gave me this strange look. At first, he wouldn't say any more, but I finally got him to tell me what was bothering him. His father's dead.

Apparently he could feel the shift in power, like he could sense his dad's life fade out of existence. It's like a dragon thing.

When I realized how upset he was about his family basically getting slaughtered because some outside factor had made them all crazy, I hugged him and he got irritated that 'a lesser creature would take pity on him', though he did lean against me for a minute before jerking away and then making some stupid comment about making out, which reminded me I'm still mad at him for being such a jerk.

I hold grudges, okay?

Anyway, I guess he's feeling vulnerable now that the rest of his flight is actually gone. I guess in some ways, you could say that he's lost his world, too. Hence why he's so eager to get a message from mine.

And I'm eager, too, don't get me wrong. It's been really hard not to stick my head in where Maevlen's working—oh, he's only working on the images from the first window. Even though Fizz and I presented the vindicator captain or leader or whatever with the five dollars, and apparently they did make a new portal, none of us have been allowed to so much as see it. They did promise to let us know if they found life, though.

But…yeah. Neesera had a great idea and she made another scrapbot and had me write another message and Fizz make another spell and then we presented it to the vindicators as a way to get a message through, as though it were the first one that we'd made. To help 'prove' that we didn't destroy the first window.

They're still totally suspicious, but it's like they can't say anything now because if they do they'll look like jerks when we've gone so far out of our way to be helpful to them. Brath loves it and makes the rest of us feel horrible because of it.

Well, even though Brath suggested we sneak around and try to find our way to the second window, majority opinion is to not. We don't need to make actual enemies of the very people I'm hoping will someday be storming my world to save it.

But, back on what Brath was telling me…

Okay, so, I'm not some gossip monger, but…it was just the way he was acting about it, you know? I mean, he was really worried. So I kind of went to Neesera with this information while Brath was out depopulating the island's wildlife for dinner, to see if she could fill me in. And…wow.

So, apparently she hasn't always lived in the Exodar. No, I'm not talking about Argus or whatever. She used to travel Azeroth, right? But, she wouldn't say much and—even if she is like a foot and a half taller than me, older, and much better built—she's just so adorable that I couldn't press the subject. I think she has the most innocent smile I've ever seen. It makes you just want to hug her. I digress though.

Like I was saying, she was a traveler. Now, she was all sorts of quick to say she wasn't some hero, like Nicolas or his group—why are so many people quick to assert that they aren't heroes here?—but that she'd gone around helping out various peoples and the like. Including some red dragons in a place called the Badlands.

Remember Derres? So, I already knew this from my handy little book, but the red flight are in charge of keeping life safe and so they've been sort of the front runners against the black dragon flight. And I guess some other red dragon helped to purify a single black dragon egg, making it the only one free from the old gods' influence.

Now, at this point, I admit that I interrupted her and asked if we could just purify Brath. And she just stared at me for a minute and then asked, "You think he would sit still for that?"

Well, that eliminated any need to ask any more questions, because, no, I don't think he'd sit still through some purification process. And Neesera was quick to point out that the old gods would probably whisper to him and have him attack us if we tried.

So…that's out. And what's kind of scary is these old gods supposedly have ways of peering into minds. So, like, they may already know that I want to save Brath from them and could be poisoning him against me. Those are more Neesera's words than mine. I don't think there's any real poisoning to be had, because I don't think he's really, honestly fond of me.

Like, I'm just a means to his end.

Even so, to have them telling the already crazy, sociopathic dragon to kill me is gonna add new dimensions to my nightmares. But.

I'm so off topic.

Anyway, Neesera's really sad because the dragon she was helping was killed. And she'd never known what became of that egg, right? Well, she's convinced that the dragon Brath went to is the egg she helped save and I think that I unwittingly gave her some closure on that whole ordeal.

And what's more interesting is the fact that the dragon is actually letting Brath redeem himself. Because, he's 'tainted' right? So, it's not like it's something that can really be cured, so far as I can gather from Neesera's explanations. So Brath should have been killed when he arrived to visit the pure dragon.

Well, Neesera was interested in what I said, about how Brath thought the other dragon could see something going on. She had no clue what it could mean, but she did wonder aloud if something is happening to save Brath. Like, maybe the flight didn't need to get wiped out.

I'll be sad if that's the truth.

But, Brath came back about then and we had to drop the subject. He brought us roasted deer. Dragons are so…weird. Like, they're smarter than humans, right? But…some of the things Brath does just scream pet or whatever. Like, he basically trotted through the Exodar in dragon form—his tail swishing and tripping people who weren't paying attention and walked too close to him…we got a few complaints about him—with a deer in his mouth, so that he could bring it to us and then—I kid you not—dropped it on Neesera's front step like a cat might a mouse to show its owner what a good hunter it is. I admit, a deer is more impressive than a mouse. But…to see Brath sitting in front of the house, pretty much waiting for us to thank him for dinner…

Not us. Me. Neesera told him it looked like a very nice stag and he growled at her. Like, lowered his head and sort of eyed her like he might be frying her next.

And, since he was released for the damages he did to the inn, he's been staying in dragon form. Which means he sleeps outside of Neesera's house, curled up against one of the walls and growling at any and all guards and people in general who come too close to the house. Why he's pretending to be a guard dog is beyond me.

Well, I have to admit that studying Brath's oddities is a nice way to pass the time while I wait to hear from my world, but it's sort of maddening in its own way. Maybe that's the old gods at work. They're having him drive me crazy.

…I shouldn't joke about that.

Anyway…I don't really have a direction for myself, since all I can do is wait. And I felt bag just crashing on Neesera's floor permanently. I mean, she practically smothered me with blankets, so it's not like she's a bad hostess or anything, but I feel bad that I'm taking up so much of her floor with them. I tried to shove everything into a corner and she just giggled at me and said I looked like I was nesting.

Basically, I've had to find something to fill my time with. I mean I can only fold blankets and stare at Brath for so long before I get bored/frustrated.

I tried engineering, but…Neesera is so nice, right? Until she's training you with something. Then she just gets scary. Like, she smacked my hand when I kept messing up copper bolts and told me that I had to concentrate. I'm not saying that I'm gonna give up on something just because of a simple thwack, but after spending hours trying to make bolts, my fingers were numb and raw and I had made no progress.

Even so, it was Neesera who brought up that maybe engineering wasn't for me. She suggested I try some other skills. Mining takes way too much upper body strength. That was another of her ideas. She led me out onto the island and let me borrow her mining pick. Did you know you can break ore to the point that it's unusable? You can. I can.

Fizz is a tailor and an enchanter. I could regale you with tales of me trying to disenchant items, but I don't want to wallow in my ineptitudes. I think I've done that enough at this point. I'm a decent tailor, which was better than I'd done with pretty much everything else, but in the end I was no shining star. I guess I can toss out that idea of being a fashion designer.

Leather working creeped me out too much, since it was dead animal skins and stuff and don't even talk to me about skinning. Ew. Of course that was the one Brath wanted me to try. He even caught me some sort of deer, threatening when I refused to even try to skin it that he was just going to leave its corpse lying around, a life wasted. Some draenei took offense to his actions and skinned the deer to make use of it. I did not watch…

I think I tried pretty much everything and was horrified that fishing was going to be on the next day's agenda—eating fish is fine, but catching them, not so much…and it's hard to look forward to something when a dragon is hopping around and flapping its wings at the thought of 'learning' how to do it with you—when Maevlen took me out to pick flowers. Herbalism, I think they call it. I'm a pro now, when it comes to silverleaf. Earthroot still kicks my butt, though. It's a lot harder to tug a root out of the ground than you'd think. They always break in weird places for me. Maevlen, though? He could uproot a whole tree with a single tug, I swear.

He makes potions and stuff.

Oh, an interesting tidbit. While magic hates me, potions work really well. So if I get hurt, I just have to chug a couple healing potions. Well, technically, you're not supposed to drink too many at a time, because it can basically cause your cells to go haywire and regenerate weird. A.k.a. Azeroth's form of cancer. And since magic can't fix that for me, I have to be careful.

Imagine, I travel worlds, escape demons, fly on dragons, and get killed by cancer.

That would be so…anticlimactic. Almost as bad as falling down stairs and breaking my neck.

Anyway. I was super excited that I could pick silverleaf, at least—there's also peacebloom, but…okay. Silverleaf is this tiny leaf that you can get off this huge bush. You can get enough to fill your bags from like three of them. Peacebloom…you have to do way more traveling to stock up on.

So I'm like Exodar's source for silverleaf. Most people don't have the patience to sit at one bush and search for all the prime leaves and honestly, sometimes I don't get to when Brath sets the bushes on fire to 'test' my reflexes.

…I hate that dragon sometimes. Most of the time, really.

Anyway. I like the meticulous work. It keeps my mind preoccupied, while if I'm wandering around looking for daisies—that's basically what peacebloom is—I have time to wonder about my world and then I just get worried or depressed.

By the way, apparently the Exodar doesn't need all the leaves I bring in and I've been trying my hand at the auction house. I made like five gold. I thought that must be pretty good, but Fizz cried when I told him how much silverleaf I'd put up. I guess I should have charged more? Eh, he's agreed to handle my auctions, so long as I give him a cut of the earnings.

Sidetracked…anyway. In addition to becoming the queen of silverleaf, I've been training to be a rogue. Which is really hard because draenei can't be rogues—I guess because their hooves let people know they're coming—and pretty much no one's around to tell me what to do. Someone suggested I go to Darn-something-or-other and talk to some elves, but I don't want to miss any messages from my world. And Nicolas said he'd be back, right?

Not that I'm looking forward to seeing him. It's just…he'll train me with the harder stuff, so for now I can work on the basics. Which I assume are holding daggers and swinging them around without hurting myself.

It's a good thing that I can use healing potions.

Fizz showed me how to grip a dagger, though, so I'm getting better. And they have these training dummies that people can practice on. The guards let me have one. So that, you know, I don't lunge at one while one of their hunters is practicing his archery and get an arrow in my back.

I tried to practice sneaking around a few guards that have gotten used to seeing me, but…they were just humoring me, it turns out. I thought I was doing pretty good, but then this guy who's normally patrolling the island came in and started to ask what I was doing, but one of the other guards put a finger to his lips. He tried to play off his action when he saw that I saw him, but…yeah.

I am not a ninja.

I can sneak up on regular people, though. Not that I want to. I mean, why would I scare the woman who cooks at the inn? She's still kind of mad at me and Fizz and she'll never not be mad at Brath.

I felt kind of bad, by the way, freeloading off of the draenei. I mean, they gave me clothes and shelter and food. And in return, I brought them depression and Brath. But then, Maevlen just assured me that it's cool because I bring in so much plant life.

I am still skeptical.

However, I've decided. If I don't hear from my world in the next month, I'm going to stop waiting for the message. The only reason I'm gonna wait so long is in case the people who got it are having trouble finding a good source of power to fuel the portal back.

If I don't hear anything by then, I'll accept that my message did land in one of the dead regions of my world.

And I'll figure something else out.

In the meantime though, I guess it's time to start looking at carving out a place for myself here, in case I can't get home.