It took me far longer than it should have to realize I had died.

To be fair, my existence had consisted of seemingly floating in a dark, liquid-filled container while half-conscious for the past several days at least. For a time, I was assailed by memories: my eighth birthday, the first time I broke a bone, meeting my best friend, high school graduation, etcetera, etcetera.

I don't know precisely how long I was like this, but one day something changed. The final piece had been unlocked in my mind, and a new memory had greeted me.

Standing in formation with ninety other men, officers shouting orders, smoke from black powder billowing all around and obscuring vision. It wouldn't have looked out of place one hundred and fifty years ago, but to me, it was just a hobby. Suddenly, there was a brief parting in the smoke, and I could see our "enemy," a hundred other men loading their rifles.

Watching them use their ramrods to load made me uneasy, even as my own company was doing it. Ever since my first event, it'd been drilled into my head that this just wasn't done. Finally, they'd finished loading and aimed at us, the vast majority elevating their rifles so the muzzle was slightly above our heads. All of them except one. One guy who couldn't have been older than nineteen was aiming his rifle directly at me—his rifle, which still had the ramrod inside of the barrel.

To give our "enemy" some credit, the guys to his side realized and tried to grab him, but it was too late. I stared, in abject horror, as a thin piece of metal the size of a leg hurtled through the air directly at me, and instead of trying to move or do anything sensible, I froze.

Unfortunately, that would be the last thing I ever did as well. I guess the one thing I have to give the jittery little shit is this; he knew how to aim. The ramrod pierced my heart and killed me instantly.

Or at least it should have; that's what anyone with common sense, including myself, would believe.

Now, with this revelation, on top of how I was somehow not dead, one could say I went through a bit of a crisis. As much as someone completely floating in gunk can, anyhow.

More time went past, and the memories repeated, overlaid by my steadily growing anxiety and stress. I tried to open my mouth to talk, scream, or make noise, but I couldn't.

Eventually, I stopped trying altogether, stewing in the memories and wondering if this was just what it was like to be dead. It's not like I could ask anyone else, right? Still, I found it quite disturbing as a Christian, if not a particularly devout one, I believed in an afterlife.

Perhaps this was purgatory?

I chose to stop going down that line of thought soon after, fearing it would lead to dark places. The last thing I needed right now was a crisis of faith; it would be better to deal with it later.

Returning to the memories, they were all I had now, really; I found myself reliving my 18th birthday for the umpteenth time. My dad was handing me a long package, and using an old exacto knife, I opened it, revealing the neatly packaged antique rifle within. It was a Kar98k, a gun I'd wanted ever since I was nine; as I looked up to thank my dad, I noticed something wrong.

His face was gone. So was everyone else.

The floor of the room melted away, then the walls, then the ceiling, then the rest of the people.

Finally, it was just me, standing in a purple void with my hands still clutching the package, staring at my faceless dad as he started to disintegrate as well.

It was around then that the whispers started.

They were quiet most of the time. Lingering on the edges of my hearing, so faint that I couldn't make out what they were saying.

But they were constant. No matter what I tried to think of or what I tried to do with my limited options, they wouldn't go away.

The worst were the ones I could understand; they just didn't make sense.

You will follow him into the darkness.

The Earthwarder falls.

You will burn.

They've already forgotten you.

You are nothing.

Everyone lies.

Over and over and over again, it continued. For days, weeks, months, maybe longer.

It was the not knowing that was driving me mad; I was always a time-keeper. I hated not knowing what date it was; I hated the whispering and how I felt myself slipping away one piece at a time. I hated everything about my situation. I hated.

That may be what the whispers wanted. Perhaps they wanted me to hate. If they did, it was working.

My memories weren't even safe anymore; there was something wrong every time. Sometimes, small things, like a missing person or appendage; other times, the people in my memories would turn on me, spewing hateful things and mocking me.

Eventually, I started hating them, too.

At some point, I realized that some of my senses were returning to me. I couldn't exactly see yet, but I could feel and hear. Hear something other than the whispers, at least.

I could hear some sort of liquid flow and the occasional shuffle of something moving. I could feel myself occasionally brush up against some fleshly membrane and sometimes something hard, almost rock-like.

As more time passed, no new changes happened, except I started getting used to the whispers.

I did what I could to cling to my memories, even as they were used against me, even as I started hating my parents, my friends, and my colleagues. At the very least, they were mine. I knew them and knew deep down that whatever the whispers were, it was responsible for this.

My anger is what grounded me, what kept me somewhat stable - the ever-repeating thought that if I ever got out of the situation I was in, I was going to make whatever did this to me pay.

Another thing I did to retain myself was focus on things I enjoyed. I made sure to stay away from memories, but one thing the whispers never really affected was songs.

I must have mentally gone over the same fifty Civil War songs a thousand times, the same Sabaton albums a million, Billy Idol, Frank Sinatra, and every random song I'd listened to and half-memorized on Youtube, Spotify, or Soundcloud. It didn't help all too much; the whispers were always on the edge of my senses, but it dulled it a little and helped remind me I was still me.

As this routine continued, I started to notice more changes occurring. I could feel some of my extremities, and my senses were sharpening. Whether this was a good thing was something I found debatable. What parts of my body I could feel and even start to move felt wrong.

Something on my back twitched occasionally, and my arms and legs were deformed. When I could move my head and feel my elongated face bump against the case I was in, I realized something that drove me over the edge.

I wasn't human anymore.

With that one realization, everything started to slide into place, at least to me.

I wasn't in some weird chamber or god knows what else; I was in an egg.

This horrified me. It was something I'd had nightmares about before, waking up as something not human.

'No, god, please, this isn't possible.' I thought to myself, true despair swelling within me.

You are nothing.

Anger replaces despair at the sound of the whispers, and instinctually, I try to move a hand to my head to block out the sound.

Of course, this fails as my hand impacts the shell of the egg I was within.

'Wait a minute…'

I try to move again, and my body responds to me. I was in complete control; no more irregular twitches or mass surges of effort to an arm half an inch up.

They're all out to get you. Trust no-one.

With a great effort, I surge my tiny body forward, crashing into the shell of the egg and cracking it. Hope swells within me, and I surge forward again, breaking the egg further. A third time, I press forwards, a fourth, and then suddenly - light.

My head breaks through the shell of the egg and into the outside world; I'm initially blinded by the sudden bright light, a sharp contrast to the dark interior of the egg.

Closing my eyes, I wait several moments before reopening them, blinking several times to clear the blur from my vision. Then, I take in my surroundings.

I was within what seemed to be a rock split in two, and the landscape seemed quite dreary. The leaves of a tall tree blocked the sky above, but occasionally, drops of rain would slip past and land on my head, irritating me.

Glancing to my left and right, I see three other eggs, dark and with spikes protruding from them. Something in my mind tells me I've seen something like them before, but I ignore it.

You will die alone.

Growling, I shake my head and start forcing the rest of my body through the crack I'd made. It takes me several minutes, but I eventually get a black-scaled arm through, followed by another. Then, I push my body the rest of the way around and flop onto the rock's surface.

Then I realized that it wasn't an arm I'd pushed through. It was a black-scaled leg—one of four. What I'd initially thought was some deformity on my back turned out to be a pair of tiny wings.

I spotted a small pool of water that had formed within the rock my egg was in and pulled myself to it, a mixture of wonder and revulsion filling me at what I saw.

A black-scaled face with an elongated snout, an orange belly and wing membrane, and finally, two green eyes that made the centerpiece of what was my face.

I now realized what I was, even where I was, and it made me feel sick.

I was a Black Dragon in Azeroth, and given the whispers, I wasn't born in a period of hope for the Flight.

Despair began to fill me; the whispers were right. The Old Gods were right.

I was going to die alone.

I felt like I was going to cry, but due to my new biology, I was incapable of producing tears.

For hours, I lay there until the sun above sunk, and the land around me was covered in darkness. Suddenly, my attention was drawn by a faint cracking, something I barely heard over the everpresent whispers mocking my despair now. Curiosity overtakes me, and I flap my wings, flying over to the other eggs and hovering.

It takes me a second to realize I am flying, and when I do, I can't help the sudden rush of childlike glee that fills me. Who hasn't dreamt of flying at least once, after all?

My attention is drawn back to the eggs when more cracks split the air, and I can see them start to form. I wait with bated breath for several moments, and finally, I see a black head, visibly larger than mine, burst from the egg. The other whelp blinks a few times, tilting his head from side to side before locking eyes with me.

Feeling suddenly optimistic, I start working to try to help him out of his egg. I knew, eventually, dragons in Warcraft would gain the ability to speak, and I longed to have someone to talk to after so long, even if he was a killing machine doomed to eventual insanity and a likely deserved death.

The other eggs are starting to rumble and crack loudly, too, and when I finally help the first whelp out, he resumes staring at me before flappings its wings experimentally a few times and starting to hover as well.

Hesitantly, I get closer and reach out a forepaw to touch my new sibling? Brood mate? I wasn't sure of the correct term.

Just as I'm about to make contact, the other whelp suddenly snarls and lunges at me, teeth bared.

Shock fills me as he impacts me, sending me against the hard surface of the rock as pain lances through my body, my wing having twisted beneath me. As I struggle, the other whelp takes my neck between his teeth, pressing down slightly with its teeth.

Cruel laughter echoes in my head as the other whelp starts pressing down, a feral and unnatural hunger and hatred in his eyes. The worst part was that his teeth weren't sharp enough to puncture my scales, so all it was doing was strangling me. Weakly, I tried to push it off me, but in terms of development, I'd gotten the short end of the stick; my murderer was at least twice my size. I wasn't sure if I was just small or if he was just big, but either way, it didn't seem to matter.

'Maybe this is for the best…There's a lot of pain I won't have to live through if I just let go.' I think to myself, though part of me cries out against the cruelness of having my life stolen from me once again just after I'd regained it.

As darkness begins to fill my vision, I go completely limp, and suddenly it ends.

The pressure around my neck releases, and I take a deep gulp of air, my wild, bulging eyes flicking to my would-be killer, who was now just staring at me. Seemingly satisfied after I make no move to get up, the larger whelp leisurely flies to the highest point of the hollow rock and lands, laying on its stomach and watching the other eggs.

That should be you. The whispers say.

I watch the big whelp repeat what it'd done to me twice more with the other newly hatched, the first of which, a female I somehow know, instantly goes limp, and the other a male, who struggles viciously before finally giving up just as I thought he was about to die.

Now that I had more examples to compare myself with, I was about average in size. Slightly bigger than the final male, decently bigger than the female, and dwarfed by the big whelp, whom I immaturely awarded the title of 'Asshole the Almighty.'

The other whelps and I spent the next several hours stretching our limbs and wandering around, though never too far from the hatch site. The other two whelps seemed mildly more friendly than Asshole the Almighty, only growling at me if I got too close and otherwise keeping to themselves.

You are pathetic. The whispers remind me.

Several more hours passed, and by then, my stomach had begun to growl. Soon, the other whelps started to cry, even Asshole the Magnificent, who, while a massive prick, was still quite literally a small child, especially by dragon terms. I still hated him, though.

Eventually, all our attention was drawn by the approach of another black-scaled creature, walking on four legs but with two arms. It wore a robe upon its upright torso, and I faintly remember the term for it in Warcraft being Dragonkin.

A look of surprise crosses its muzzle as it spots us before it changes into a pleased grin that still manages to come across as malicious.

"An early hatch? The first hatch. And strong, too. The Broodmother will be pleased." it says in a scratchy voice, which I understand, much to my surprise. The other whelps and I each glance at each other, and I have a distinctly foreboding feeling about who the "brood mother" might be and what my future may hold.

You will die alone.


AN:

This is something that wouldn't leave my head; there was always something about the lore of the Black Dragonflight that greatly interested me; perhaps it's just the tragedy of it all. Though unfortunately, there are a lot of gapes in the timeline, and some things are quite vague, especially the activities of Onyxia and Nefarion up until the First and Second Wars. I'm not 100% sure about the direction I want to take things yet, though I expect things will get quite dark. Our SI here is not exactly a fighter, and knowledge about guns and tactics from the 1800s won't be of much use in his current situation. Maybe in the future, though.

Either way, glad I got this down, and hope ya'll enjoy. It was either this or a story about a Union Cavalry troop transported around the end of the Third War, though that one may still get produced as well, depending on how things go.

Also, future chapters should be between 4-6k words; this is just the prologue. I won't promise uploads times, because I am inconsistent, but new chapters will come when they get finished.

Also, my previous story will be on hiatus for the foreseeable future; writer's block is a bitch.

Crossposted from SB.