(2023-05-10) A New Can of Wyrms

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Author:	Vond
Summary:	On her way back from visiting Wyrmrest Temple, Nunuzac finds Bran relaxing at Stars' Rest. She queries his knowledge of dragons and they wonder whether her previous encounters with these powerful Azerothians might have had an effect on today's predicaments. Nunuzac decides that the important thing is that it's not her fault.
Rating:	T for Teen

Arc: Nexus War

Toward the western end of Dragonblight, Stars' Rest is a far cry from the heavier fortifications of Wintergarde. It is less of a keep and more of a scattering of ancient columns that had been repurposed by recently arrived Sentinels that may very well be descendents of the original builders. They are being used as sparse cover for Sentinel tents - and more lately, Cobalt's - with some strategically placed glaive throwers aiming to protect the space in the absence of walls.

A sparkling moonwell provides most of the illumination that couldn't be attributed to the place's namesake twinkling above. From the direction of the eastern road bounds the wispy, translucent image of a sprightly racing canine, hopefully not a Horde interloper.

On the bench by the moonwell, a ginger-bearded dwarf is stretched out supine with his hands folded behind his head, gazing somewhat dreamily at the sky. His ankles are crossed as befits a man wearing a robe, and he is wearing two different boots.

The spectral beast, speeding full tilt, darts into the center of the camp and skids to a halt, spraying a bit of snow and pebbles. As soon as a Sentinel begins to warily turn to approach, the image solidifies into a thankfully friendly shaman.

"Bran!" Nunuzac in mixed warm weather leather and big red knitted hat balls her fists excitedly. "You arrive here! Bran is how? Bran is good?" She seems to exciteable to notice the view he is trying to enjoy.

Bran sits up at the sound of the excited voice, and his wild bright beard splits in a huge grin. "Lo there, Sparky! Bran's quite good, thanks fer askin'. What brings ye out this way?"

He swings his legs about on the bench so that his mismatched boots are swinging idly just above the snowy ground.

Nunuzac emphatically spreads her hands, her expression exhilerated with a touch of something else - worry? Maybe just breathlessness from her ghostly sprinting. "I go here from a big temple right now! I follow the road Cobalt squad takes a day ago." It has been several days. "I never see so many dragons, and I see a lot of dragons."

She helps herself to crouch at the bench, and pauses to stare a moment at the boots when she notices.

"Ach, ye saw Wyrmrest Temple then! I havena dared t'approach it meself yet — gatherin' a bit more information ferst. Because aye… that's a LOT o 'dragons. From wha' I gather, tha' temple's been standin' since before the Sunderin'. Which means it mighta been standin' when yer lot were still on Argus."

He leans his elbows on his knees, his merry turquoise eyes still aimed toward her face with obvious curiosity.

"This temple is maybe older than me?" Nunuzac blinks, then looks around at the ancient kaldorei pillars enclosing them. Perhaps them, as well. "I never see Argus. Bran, you know dragon history? You know much about the Old Gods and other things…

"Oh, and maybe this is good news, but we can visit for sure. There are some more Alliance inside it now, and the steward says Cobalt can come. The Alliance person, she seems looking for help. Yes, I will tell others soon!"

"Brelliant!" he exclaims, perhaps a shade too loudly, to judge by the cool stares of some of the Mean Girl Sentinels nearby.

He seems to catch those stares, and offers a sheepish smile. He turns back to Nunuzac, lowering his voice a notch.

"But aye, ye wanna know about dragons? I can tell ye everythin' that was ever written about 'em, just abou'. Was one o' the first subjects I got obsessed with as a boy."

Nunuzac looks a mixture of relieved and awed, leaning in with conspiratorial excitement. "Then you are who I am lucky to find! Eeeh, I am lucky to find you before that." She quickly assures. "But now more lucky. Did you ever go to Draenor? That is where I see dragons first, and they come from here." She points down at the ground. Probably not Stars' Rest, specifically, but, you know.

"Black dragons, fight with gronn for many years, dangerous. I run away from them, until we had to stop some problems. Then, after the land breaks up, we get netherful dragons."

"Aye." He matches her lean-in. "So, best I understand et, the black dragon aspect Neltharion, better known in recent millennia as 'Xaxas' or 'Deathwing' in the common tongue, sneaked a whole bunch of 'is eggs — er, I suppose 'is consorts' eggs, if we're bein' real accurate — through the Dark Portal, some twenty years ago now, an' jus'… left 'em there. That's where those nether ones came from."

Nunuzac lifts her head and looks out past the moonwell, in the direction of the Moonrest Gardens, with a frown of vague frustration forming on her face. "What I try to understand is why dragons fight each other now. What Cobalt does here, many problems caused by blue dragons. They catch mages. They make the land upset.

"Short ago on Draenor I met a blue dragon. We help her. She says she knows a friend of Cobalt, Captain Jocoza knows this friend. I thought… I thought we help."

"Ye met a blue dragon?" Bran's eyes light up. "One tha' wasna barkin mad? What was it named? Where'd ye meet it?"

Nunuzac peers back at Bran, her frown deepening with a bit of nervous shifting on the bench, first crossing then uncrossing her hooves. "Name is Tyri, and she says, you help me study the wild nether dragons. You help me take over being boss of the nether dragon brood so they stop being wild and fight everyone and everyone fight them back."

She gives a slightly pleading look. "She says trust me, Sid… Name starts with Sid. This person you know can speak for me, that I can do right here. That blue dragons know all of magic and can set them right. We find Tyri in the edge of the Netherstorm, looking for the wild dragons."

"Fascinatin'…" says Bran, eyes alight. "Perhaps there's some hope fer the blue flight after all, then. Far as I knew, they'd all gone mad. In fact, fer many years we thought they were all dead but their Aspect. Deathwing slaughtered em, meant t'leave Malygos the last of 'is kind. An' losin' his entire family all at once, well, it drove poor poor Maly 'round the bend. Fer the longest time he just holed up in his lil cave an' no one heard a theng about blue dragons one way or t'other. Only in recent years have we heard tell o' blue dragons besides him, an' they all seemed a bit… well… made in his image."

Bran illustratively loops a finger around his ear.

Nunuzac's frown grows more quizzical. "Nether dragon, made from black dragon, child of Deathwing. Tyri, blue dragon, child of Malygos. She says that name, when we talk, says we find this out for sure if we have the eggs. I did not know… the Deathwing she says also kill all her ancestors.

"This is not the only thing. Blue dragons are fighting at the Temple right now. I talk to everyone who will talk. I try to find out why. This blue dragon king, Malygos, stays by himself for many thousand years, why angry now?"

"That is quite a mystery indeed. Perhaps he's only just now built his brood up to a size where he feels he can do somethin'? For a long time he's been angry, I imagine, but even an Aspect canna do much if he's angry all alone. I dinna ken where all these new blue dragons came from if he had nae consort, but here they are, an' now he can go t'war I guess. Correct wha' he sees as the folly o' the mortal mages who, t'be fair, did blow up th'world that one time."

Nunuzac blinks. "Wait, this world?" She points down at the ground again, looking around curiously. It seems less blown up than her impression of what a blown up world looks like. "Draenei mages build things, not blow up! Except demons - " she trails off into a diminutive mumble, "and sometimes other things that fight at us…"

The shaman finds her normal volume again while blinking widely at Bran. "But the thing I hear, the thing other dragons say, is that nether dragons got to Malygos house. Coldarra." She wrings her hands a bit. "Maybe by Tyri. Then they are unhappy, fighting… and gone! This happens right before blue attacks Temple."

"I'd not heard tell o' that," Bran says, fascinated. "Hold up!"

He leeeeeans over and fumbles on the ground for his bag, which he now yanks up onto the bench beside him and rummages through. He finds his latest journal and pulls it out, opening to the next blank page and pulling a pen from his ink-stained pocket. He murmurs to himself in Dwarven as he writes, but among the words he murmurs can be heard Coldarra and Malygos.

"So we're thinkin' maybe the Nether dragons set this all off somehow?" He peers curiously at Nunu.

Nunuzac wrings her hands even more strenuously as they slowly ascend toward the underside of her chin, presumably the safest place to hide them. "This is what I try to find out!" she blurts, buzzy with a slightly exasperated energy that seems turned inward. "Is this because of Nunuzac?" She glances out toward the ruined gardens again, so recently filled with mages and dragonkin - and their remains.

"Wait!" She perks alert, tailtip curling upward. "Captain Jocoza helps Tyri too. If boss is there that makes it boss fault." She seems immediately convinced of this to the degree of looking chipper again.

"Aw, lass," Bran says, reaching over to thump her on the back in what he must assume is a comforting manner. "Even if this Tyri is somehow the cause of all this, that makes it her fault, not yers or Cap'n Sparkwire's. Ye were just tryin' t'help, aye? We canna be held responsible fer every crazy thing done by someone we do a good turn fer."

Nunuzac blinks a bit when thumped. She thumps back, returning the presumably friendly gesture, bomping her palm to Bran's spine, not too hard. "Yes, so wise." she assents, though possibly perfectly happy to go on with her day by assigning her encroaching sense of guilt as someone else's problem. "And even if I do help make dragon problem, that means even more I should help fix." That's how it works, right? If you personally cause a mess, that just means you're in the best position to know how to tidy it?

"Bran, you know anything more important about the dragons in this place here? When I go far on the road, I see bones and bones and bones. BIG."

"Well, legend always had it tha' dragons came to their big temple t'die. The legends I read, though, 't'was back when i was a lad, an' no one writin' it had ever seen this temple. The temple itself was a legend, an' I figured the stories were just t'explain why we so rarely saw dead dragons. They all flew off somewhere hidden an' mysterious. But maybe it's nae legend. Maybe they're like kodo tha' way, called t'one spot a' the end o' their lives. Can ye imagine if we did tha'? Every old dwarf hobblin t'one mountain t'die on top o' all their ancestors? I canna decide if that's movin' or gruesome."

Nunuzac lets her shoulders relax a bit at Bran's explanation, a mixture of relieved and thoughtful. "So not all is from die right now, some from long ago. Some did look very old but I was not sure. It is not too strange." She shrugs absently. "Maybe it is not a shock to look at the dead one the same way it is to us. And big enough to become important land site. Instead of scared, say oh, there is old guy, he is a hill now. Best new hill this year.

"Still, how mysterious, what is a story for a long time turns real again." Nunuzac hops onto her hooves and stretches. "I must tell others that Temple wants help. I think it is a night elf to speak to. Some of the elfs inside there are not really elf."

"Aye, dragons do tha' sometimes," Bran gives the draenei a warm smile, his bright blue eyes sparkling. "Good luck roundin' up a team. I'm due at another dig in the mornin, but ef ye find out anythin' good abou' the dragon situation, dinna ferget t'tell yer old pal Bran."