' = Internal dialogue

¨= Normal speech

* = Sounds / Etc

-Chapter 66-

As Varian's sword almost reached Onyxia's ribs, the air around her shifted as a black dagger appeared in her hand. His sword fell to the ground without him noticing as he stared at her eyes, which gazed back at the king with an annoyed expression at the interruption. Just as she was going to stab him through the eye in one rapid motion with her tail, I dashed toward him. I picked him up by the scruff of his neck, then violently threw him backward, resulting in him flying down the hallway as he screamed in anger at being manhandled like a child.

"Gods, that fool is way too loud... too bad though, it was only a matter of time before I had full control over the capital... no matter, you, sir Medan, have made me very...very furious woman from your recent stunt..."

Onyxia then took a deep breath before she continued, "First you humiliate me in front of these... abominable creatures, then just a few weeks after I receive reports that you... have taken what is mine, emptied my lair, and even taken my young..."

Then her gaze intensified as she continued to speak, "My plans sabotaged one after the other as I have no other option than to reside in this sewer of a city, six days a week... what have I done to garner such animosity from the likes of you? Did you just arrive here one day, see little poor me, then decide just to be like... Oh, look at that beautiful lady. Why not screw her over every single way possible?!"

She finished, her left eye turning entirely yellow, and she questioned in a furious tone, "WHY!? WHAT IN THE BLAZES HAVE I EVER DONE TO YOU!?" The hall shook as if an earthquake had struck as paintings and trophies fell off their hinges, crashed into the floor, and shattered from the release of her magic into the hall.

I calmly waited for her to finish, and when she was done, I replied in a calm but eery tone, "Are you done yet...? You tell me after your brother placed a bounty on both me and Calia Menethil's heads, as you both realized a human with the name of Menethil was in the refuge of a nobody at that time, even now I do not see your reasoning of fearing her to the point of putting out a world-wide bounty after her head... then, after sending your draconic abominations into my city... do you honestly think me a fool? To believe you have no intent on causing me harm? No intent on destroying what I have built just because of your own shitty sense of self-preservation?"

She shifted uncomfortably when I pointed all these things out but tried to act like nothing as she met my intense gaze.

After realizing she would not reply, I continued, "You already feel the need to manipulate and attempt to destroy the races that have any semblance of intelligence under the guise of your own fear of them rising up against you."

Then, after a brief pause, I added, "Do you think of me as one of your puppets? Like Varian Wrynn, who only seemed to be able to think with his bottom half?"

"Dicking himself in dragon seems to be one of the highlights of his rule as king... no, manipulations seem to be your strong suit... now the question is..." I continued, then paused as the air started to tremble much more intensely than when she had had her little outburst.

Then I looked her right in the eye and smiled, "Do you have the ability to survive against what you have come to fear?" I said with an unnerving, even tone as I looked into her eyes turned into yellow slits as I spoke, each word making the hall heavier, magic going wild and turbulent as magical winds started going wild around us from the pure, concentrated magic I was emitting.

I continued as I spoke calmly, but my words resounded through the entire Keep, "To finally feel the consequence of your failed ploys, manipulations, and somehow having become so full of arrogance that you ended up... angering someone you should have not?" At my last word, she seemed to become aware of some of the power I held and the certainty of my statements.

Now, my eyes visibly radiated intensity, which I saw through the reflection in hers; there was fear in her eyes now, uncertainty. This situation was clearly not unfolding the way she had planned in her mind at all, which seemed to frighten her even more as the realization was slowly forming in her mind.

She had underestimated the dangers I represented, and as soon that tinge of doubt took form in her mind, it blared her internal warning signs into full throttle.

Wings sprouted on her back as primal instinct took hold of her; her transformation had begun, and in moments, she crashed into the ceiling of the Keep at high speeds with a single powerful flap of her wings; debris flew everywhere as she continued to transform, albeit slowly for some reason as I followed her with my gaze as she flew higher.

After turning my head to see further down the hall where an embedded Varian frantically tried to get out of a hole in a wall as he flailed about, Jaina, who held the soldiers in place. At the same time, she gutted the black knights as lances of ice raced around the room; I decided to simply follow the dragon as Jaina dealt with the situation unfolding inside the Keep.

So I shot toward the crumbling opening she left in her wake; as I flew past the hole in the ceiling, I noticed her transformation was relatively slow.

She gave me a glance as she pulled out a sphere-like crystal ball that fit her hand from underneath her robe and whispered something toward it, and for some reason, I couldn't hear what she said.

Her eyes lit up as she grinned broadly before eyeing something in the distance, then she turned back to me, and her arms lit aflame with a shadow-like fire that seemed to envelop her half-dragon, half-human body.

"Parlor tricks, no human or elf can hold such amount of magic as you do; alas, it seems that my stay here in Stormwind will be cut short. I will see you again, and when I do... I'll repay the favor of what you have done today." She said, somehow convinced of her own lie.

She then spread her arms and exclaimed, "But before that... let me teach you a lesson in humility, mortal!" She said as fire danced around her and circled around me in a circle-like shape, making getting out of the fire look impossible.

That is if normal dragon fire could actually do anything to me at this point.

As I shoved my hand into the wall of fire surrounding me, I barely felt the heat. Her attunement to fire was likely one or two tiers below mine. It wouldn't hurt much, but it would be an annoyance at best and a light burn at worst; without her noticing, I absorbed a slight amount of her flames and realized they were, in fact, much weaker than mine, specifically an entire Tier below.

Her half-transformed form dove toward me with a sharp claw in front of her with a manic grin on her face as if looking forward to impaling me with her hand. The reason I had yet to actually do some damage to her after impaling her leg was to see what she indeed had prepared for a potential fight with me, even knowing that her guards were most likely defeated by me alone... she still did not grasp the situation for some reason, which by now I guessed was her draconic pride.

I caught her sharp-clawed hand that was a small distance away from my torso and bent it backward slowly, which made the dragoness yelp in pain. At the same time, she clenched her other clawed hand, and the circle of fire around us started to rapidly close in from all sides.

As we both were enveloped by the flames, Onyxia cackled with glee until she realized something was wrong as she gazed through her fire, only to realize I was coated by a different colored purple flame with a white outline keeping hers at bay.

I continued to bend her wrist backward as she frantically tried to withdraw her hand; she suddenly blinked away, and the fire she conjured sizzled out in response, revealing the dark night where there was only light from the town underneath us.

Most citizens in the nearby districts seemed to have woken up due to the light show going on in the sky. Looking down, I could see many people pointing their hands toward us, specifically me, still coated by my own flames.

As Onyxia seemed to finally realize that I wasn't just all talk, her transformation began in earnest. Her form swelled as she shapeshifted rapidly toward her original form.

Purple leathery wings shot to the side and flapped about while her human face turned into a maw filled to the brim with white teeth as spines popped up from her forehead and all the way back to her tail. Yellow eyes eyed me menacingly as her maw opened, and grey smoke surrounded the entire sky where we fought.

As she did this, her form swelled even more, to the size of fifty meters in length and fifteen meters tall.

Right after she fired the smokescreen around us, she turned tail. She was prepared to flee for the skies above Stormwind, that was until I warped in front of her, disrupting her escape with a bored expression before slamming my fist directly into her snout, which stopped her like a brick wall to the face.

I reached forward with both of my hands as my revolver warped into being and aimed at her wing and fired several bullets at it.

As the projectiles impacted bone and tissue and went right through with close to no resistance, she let out an agonizing roar as she started losing altitude on her left side and started spiraling downward to the side, directly toward the large lake at the side of the Keep.

*SPLASH*

Onyxia crashed headfirst into the water as she screamed her draconic lungs out in agony. Her entire body disappeared under the water for a moment, seeing no active movement as a small wave crashed to the side of the lake; I activated my ability to see heat and noticed that her head was pointed upward as if waiting for me to come closer.

As I stood motionless around a hundred meters above the lake, I stared down as my eyes lit up with purple light. I kept my gaze directly at the dragon residing at the bottom, who seemed to be getting antsy.

Deciding to take action first against the dragoness that has caused so many people so much pain, I left the revolver in my bag as I willed it back in; controlling this was becoming easier with time.

My hands lit up with thrumming and violent purple lightning that crackled as it danced around me. I pointed both palms toward the lake but intentionally avoided pointing toward Onyxia directly as the lightning uncoiled itself from my arms and sprang like a spring toward the lake. Within mere moments, the entire lake shook and lit up with a white, causing the dragon hiding underneath to rush out of the lake with reckless abandon as thick vapor escaped her damaged body as her flesh sizzled.

Her entire body now had streaks of lightning marks deeply imprinted from head to tail as she again roared in agony. Her damaged scales seemed to crack under strain, only to fall off as blood spewed from the new wounds.

Before she knew what hit her, I warped in front of her face again. I slammed my clenched fist as hard as I possibly could into the left side of the snout, leaving a solid crater of cracked scales behind her face whipped to the side as dragon flesh and blood splattered into the lake.

Seemingly a bit put out of it, she managed to recover and seemingly tried to blink with her large form, which I stopped with my new ability to counter teleportation and the like around me.

This left her puzzled, which soon left her in panic before I yet again slammed my fist into the other side of her head; this time, she managed to avoid the worst of it as she leaned slightly away from the hit.

Onyxia used the momentum and tried to rush into the skies yet again, her wings slightly tattered but visibly healing the damage from the projectiles from before. She managed to get around two hundred meters into the sky before I caught up to her.

As I stood in the sky before her, she had one working eye that stared at me with unfathomable hatred and anger; all of a sudden, that disappeared as she groaned and seemingly started going back into her human visage form as she shrank in size.

Before me stood a naked female that would attract most eyes if it were not for the fact her left eye was hollow, and the majority of her flesh was seared with streaks of lightning throughout; her ribs were showing clearly as the healing of her wings and body seemed to tax her quite a bit.

She still had her tail, claws, legs, and eyes still partially transformed, leaving her looking like something crossbred between human and dragon.

"So I guess you are unwilling to let me retreat even at the cost of the ones below us... are you?" She asked with a sly smile, expecting me to lash out at her words.

"What makes you think you'll be able to hurt the ones below? Have you not experienced what it is to underestimate your opponent by now, lady Prestor?" I asked with a raised eyebrow at the idiocy the black dragoness was displaying.

This made her smirk disappear as she seemed to eye something behind me, and all of a sudden, I heard something fly through the air, like a missile. A small drake dashed past me and left something in the hands of the semi-transformed Onyxia, then turned to me and roared as it charged toward me with reckless abandon, which was brief as I swatted the drake out of the sky as blood splattered everywhere, then it fell toward the lake in pieces.

As I turned back to Onyxia, she held a vial and the crystal from before in her hand as she eyed me, hesitation clear in her eyes as her crystal sphere-like ball shattered into thin fragments while gazing at the vial in her other clawed hand.

She then closed her eyes, lifted the black vial to her mouth, and swallowed it down as a pained expression appeared on her face, making her clutch her sides as gray ooze spewed from her one remaining eye.

All of a sudden, she grasped her head with both of her currently transformed claws that seemed to balloon in size.

Veins bulged to reveal themselves on her transforming scaly legs that grew and grew as dark lines moved animately under her scales, where her wings had shot out of and started bleeding as her skin peeled itself off her back and was replaced by clear gray scales that throbbed with magic, I could almost feel her heartbeat from where I stood in the air as it thrummed violently, I watched her transformation happen with interest.

You could call it being too cocky, but I knew my limits and Onyxia... she was far from the levels of a weaker Malygos, or so I would have believed after what was happening with her right now.

Her magic boomed as dark vapor surrounded her body, almost like tendrils enveloping prey; she screamed with abandon as her bones popped out of place, her skin moved as if she had thousands of ants crawling around underneath, and all the while, she clawed at her own face as flesh and blood spewed from her new self-made wounds.

"He... lied?" "Why... would... he lie? Why... would... they... lie...?"

"...brother..! ... help... me...please! Brother... don't... go!" She continued to whine like a child. As if something was robbing her of her intelligence, albeit gradually.

After a moment, there was a deafening silence, and all that could be heard was her rapidly thumping heart that seemed to work like an engine.

Soon, her raspy voice could be heard whimpering as she finally stopped clawing at her face, "... h-HE LiiiIiiiED!" Started the shouts of maniacal spouts of anger and pure, unadulterated venom in her voice.

"...LIIIIIIIIED! LIIIIIED! LIIIIIIIED!" The voice of Onyxia grew more frantic as it started to stabilize into a somewhat normal voice, a harrowing voice, though much darker than it was when she was in human form.

After a full minute of silence, Onyxia's frantic movements stopped, and her head whipped toward my direction as she forced out the words with venom, "ItS... aLL yOUr fAuLT!" Then her eyes glazed over, and a primal roar escaped her darkened new form as a grey veil surrounded her new fifty-meter-tall body. She was around hundred and fifty long from head to tail; she had grown truly enormous within mere moments after she had lost what seemed to be the remaining sanity after drinking that black ooze.

I judged her new size to be around half the size of Deathwing in his prime, which made me realize that I might have underestimated the transformation, yet her magic levels were not even remotely close to what Malygos had, but that seemed to perhaps be the wrong way to measure power as I saw the muscles underneath swell to an insane degree as her entire wingspan spread to around one-hundred and seventy meters wide as gray embers followed in her wake.

The maw of the behemoth of a dragon that was once Onyxia but was now two times the size of Malygos raced toward me; rotten flesh smelled even from a distance. She started racing through the air.

The gray, smoky vapor followed her as she sailed through the sky with reckless abandon; her muscles tensed, and her wings even seemed to expand as she flapped her wings one more time and gained more momentum.

Even I felt threatened by the grey vapor around her body as I decided to get serious and stop underestimating this new creature that had no resemblance to the Onyxia only minutes ago.

My left arm lit up as bright white lines entwined around my hand up to the elbow. Then, a thick layer of flame appeared as if being released from the lines like some sort of ventilation system.

My right arm crackled with fierce purple lightning that buzzed around the limb menacingly as I met the new nightmare of a dragon head-on.

*BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM* *CRACK*

As we both collided, we both were sent tumbling backward in the air as the magic of different natures flew about around us; I crashed directly through one of the watchtowers toward the coast while she was sent toward the mountain.

The grey mist seemed to fight the lightning almost with ease. When it had first impacted the dragon, it felt weakened, almost as if the grey mist surrounding her had some sort of anti-magic properties.

I felt the impact through my bones. The force behind her newfound strength was concerning if I was no longer her focus. With that blow, she probably broke several fingers, my fist, and two ribs, though with my ice, these injuries repaired themselves as I recovered my mana. However... I absorbed the mana in the environment, which turned out to be a mistake the moment I felt my injuries heal.

A vision practically slammed into my mind as I saw a young dragon waltz after a raven black-haired older man who seemed familiar when I looked at him, 'Yes... him, that is right...' I thought as I watched in the third person for a moment before being drawn into a small black dragon whelpling attempting her first flight in the company of her brother and father, the latter who stood dozens of meters down at the ground while I... no Onyxia quivered in fear when she upon realizing how steep the jump was.

Neferian stood by in his chosen visage form and smiled, a young raven black-haired youth, regal beyond compare, while Deathwing stood at the bottom with a bored expression on his face as if hoping to get this over with and just as quick as the thought arrived, I felt a stone cold feeling inside my chest, which I recognized was sadness and the utmost fear of disappointing him.

So I did what they wanted of me and jumped as I felt the instinctive need to flap my wings, but nothing worked, leaving me defenseless. The last sight I saw was the hard ground before the vision faded, bringing me back to the battle.

Only seconds had passed, but I saw the shadow move through the cloud of magic in the sky as it dashed at me wildly, claws spread out in order to catch me as her maw widened as her jaw-bones croaked, which made the jaw open up unnaturally wide before an intense grey and black matter came out of it as the sky trembled before it shot toward me.

Without hesitation, I warped myself to the side. I followed the breath attack with my eyes as it impacted a distant mountain that simply vanished into nothingness in utter silence.

I eyed the changed dragoness and sighed; the vision was still in my head; her feelings and memories of a better time still bombarded me. I took a deep breath before steeling myself again as I activated my abilities in the same order back when I fought Malygos.

I felt the air around me tremble as my body filled with an ungodly amount of magic, my heart thumped violently inside my chest.

My vision changed drastically over a few seconds as I looked down on the abomination of a dragon that seemed to be charging up another breath attack, which I promptly ignored as my now cloudy body started emitting purple lightning that lit the sky up as lightning filled the sky, the trembling skies above seemed to want to join in as they darkened and bombarded me with theirs.

I then felt myself compress down to 20 meters, which was around 150 meters only moments ago.

Then, something I did not expect happened: my arms now had vein-like lines starting from my heart and extending all the way through my hands, legs, and eyes. My perception improved drastically when I saw the breath attack coming my way, but at a snail's pace.

My form was previously the same size as hers, but now I had to look up at the transformed dragoness. It differed drastically from how it was when I faced off against Malygos. Still, then again, that was in a VERY rich magic environment, constantly supplied with magic directly from the ley line.

Yet here... the amount of magic in the air was barely noticeable. Most of the magic came directly from me or Onyxia's large forms, which resulted in that vision from before, or at least that was what I assumed, as I stared into the now feral dragon that acted entirely on instinct as its intelligence was dampened or just gone, I had no idea.

I warped myself directly in front of her and gave her an unbelievably strong uppercut at her maw with all my might. This caused the grey matter to crash into the top part of her jaw and shoot off her head, blood sprayed everywhere. The dragon, acting on instinct, roared the best it could with a missing upper jaw and snout, which came out as a horrendous wet gurgle noise.

Within moments, the previous missing upper maw was covered by grey mist as it slowly took shape while the dragon flailed about wildly, and just as it repaired itself, the frenzied Onyxia rushed at me; her previous yellow eye had now turned entirely white, which mirrored her newly reconstructed one on the other side.

*ROOOOOOOOOAR*

Onyxia's now completely feral gaze looked at me with hatred as she spread her wings wide and hovered in the air without their use. I could see her inner chest cavity and wings throb with dark veins that seemed to increase in intensity as she faced my way with both her grey draconic arms pointing toward me.

I felt the air shift all of a sudden when dark grey matter slammed into my side, barely penetrating my new form. Considering that time was slowed down to a halt for me, this came as a surprise, one that I was entirely not prepared for, as the dark-grey matter reached toward myself, who was acting as a core for my current body.

Without a moment to lose, I warped out of its reach. I conjured scorching white flames around me as a shield in case of further attacks like the one before.

I rushed at Onyxia's prone body while it hung in the air.

My arm extended toward her, as I sent the flames in her direction, it shot at her faster than a bullet, but it was met by a barely visible barrier of grey. The barrier did not last more than a brief moment as the flame whipped itself around her left wing. I gave a mental pull, resulting in the feral dragon's new wail of agony as the wing was cleanly separated from her side. Her feral instincts seemed to be guiding her as she tried to reform it.

I wouldn't let her heal this time, as I sent another wave of fire at her already injured wing, sealing it shut as it layered itself in its place animatedly. I then warped past her barrier and punched my fist covered in white flames and lightning into her now vulnerable chest cavity with a wet squelch mixed with a disgusting sizzle of fire meeting flesh, then grasped the source of the violent thumping and pulled ruthlessly.

With yet another wet squelch, I ripped out her organ covered in dark grey matter, which kept thumping as if not bothering with the fact that it no longer had a body to supply.

I clenched my fist, making the heart explode into dark grey sludge as a wet gurgle brought me back to the dragon in front of me whose eyes now had turned back to yellow and gazed at me with fear and then whimpered, "nOoo... BrOther... DoNT... dONt... l-l-leave... I... I'm... sor-sorry... please...do-don't... go...I'm... Af-afraid...o-of th-the...d-dark... please...its...cold... bro...-ther... save.. m-me..." Were the last whimpering child-like words Onyxia ever spoke. The Broodmother of the Black Dragonflight had perished, and now her body started falling toward the center of Stormwind Trade District.

I caught her, of course, the lifeless corpse of so much pain and suffering now held by my hands, and started levitating slowly toward the lake where we had just fought. Many bewildered gazes eyed both of the enormous forms that drifted through the air as I brought her body with me toward the lake. The corpse bled profusely from its chest, which made red rain in a straight line from the center of the city all the way toward the lake.

As I arrived close to the edge, I put down her body. I undid my transformation, and behind me, I heard someone appear with quick steps. I turned around to see Jaina, more worried than I'd seen her before, as she ran over and embraced me while pulling me down to her level.

Truly a pleasurable experience, I may add, except for the fact that if I wanted to continue breathing, I should remove my face from her bosom, which I did after a little longer and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Everything alright on your front? Have any issues with the soldiers or the king after I and his concubine took off to the skies?" I asked with some mirth.

Jaina snorted before letting out a cute laugh as she looked at me, amused, and replied, "No, the king had his behind stuck in the wall for the entire time I had to pacify his soldiers; it took him long enough, though.

And after that, we all witnessed your fight in the sky; you had me worried, you know." I gave her a strained smile, then replied, "Yeah... there were complications. After our first skirmish, she drank some black liquid from a vial a drake brought her mid-fight.

After that, her intelligence seemed to drain away. Her sanity seemed to... deteriorate very quickly and was replaced by raw strength; I don't believe that was her intention when she drank that vial according to her reaction, though..." I added thoughtfully.

"That grey mist... was something I don't want to see again; it seemed to water down my magic, lessen the effectiveness of it; luckily, my physical ability is almost on par with my magic at this point..." I continued. This made Jaina frown and say, "Yes... I felt that all the way from the ground. What was that thing? Also, that breath attack of hers seemed... particularly dangerous..."

I pointed toward the northwestern mountains if I wasn't mistaken... that was the mountain range of Loch Modan, which made Jaina question it with a tilt of her head before her mouth gaped like a fish when she spotted what was missing.

Nodding at her reaction, I gently lifted her hood, grasped her lower jaw gently, and kissed her, then said, "So, what do you say we take a short vacation once the whole ordeal in our region has been dealt with?"

Her unfocused nod told me what I needed to know before I asked, "How was your first time wreaking havoc in a main city, by the way? Fun?"

She only smiled before shaking her head, taking her hood back down over her face, and replied, "It was enjoyable, as long as we try to avoid these situations unless it's called for... I'm fine with anything if I can stay by your side..."

Then she perked up out of nowhere after her declaration and continued, "Also! I leveled up nine times, and my attunement with air and arcane seemed to rise all the way to Tier III when you took down Onyxia. Is this normal? Leveling up, I mean... it just feels so... strange..." She added thoughtfully.

I then checked my notifications, as she mentioned, and toggled them all.

—

[Black Drakonid(Level 77-105) x136 Slain]

[Onyxia's Elite Guard(Level 86-126) x967 Slain]

[Onyxia, Broodmother of the Black Dragonflight (Level 215+? Bonus)Slain]

—

[Excess experience gained: 15 Levels]

[Excess total experience: 55 Levels]

—

-Attunements: Current Limit: IV(4)]

-Fire - 44% [Tier IV] Fire - 72% [Tier IV]

-Water - 35% [Tier IV] Water - 49% [Tier IV]

-Earth - 44% [Tier III] Earth - 97% [Tier III]

-Air - 98% [Tier III] Air - 12% [Tier IV]

-Arcane - 100% [Tier IV]

—

'Damn, I'm almost through the Tier cap, nice.' I thought as I replied to Jaina, "Yes... I believe it is, I agr-" Was my response before a crowd of soldiers and a regal-looking figure ran directly toward us.

"I CLAIM THE HEAD FOR THE WHAT THE DRAGON HAS DONE TOWARD ME AND MY PEOPLE!" The obnoxious yell of Varian Wrynn resonated through the area.

I stared at the human king briefly before shaking my head and replied in a no-nonsense tone while giving him a bored gaze, "No. Fuck off."

And that marked my first non-physical conflict with the King of Stormwind and would not be my last.

—

The night also came to be known as The Night of Dread, from the fact that the majority of the citizens in Stormwind observed the abomination facing against the deity above in the skies.

When all hope seemed lost, and the terrible monster seemed to want to destroy their homes, the deity of magic had come to save them... Or so citizens of Stormwind told their children for years to come.

Even while the king was trying to spread propaganda that it was his mages that defended the city, which was not well received after the church declared the truth, alongside his own circle of rogues letting this information leak without even the slightest of attempts at trying to stop it.

-Chapter 66 End-