章二十二

Chapter 22

"Just a sense of confusion? All this for confusion?"

Kalecgos could barely gasp out the words, still winded from the magical backlash hurling him into the wall.

Malygos's speed was not helping.

The spirit had staggered after crossing the threshold, grasping his head in pain…only to be off like a ballista shot, charging down the corridor—leaving him in a decidedly un-merry chase.

"It was colored by confusion, but it was a cry of alarm!" Malygos bit out, tossing the words over his shoulder.

Kalecgos hurried to follow, heavyset frame bursting out into the open after the spirit…only to come up abruptly, his jaws slack at the space.

A brightly lit cavern spread out before him, the expansive space multiple dragon-heights tall— enormous in it splendor. Doorways lined the edges, hinting at deeper chambers hidden from view.

Bookshelves overflowed onto the ground, power pulsing from artifacts haphazardly stuffed in niches and shelves, all calling toward his powers as Aspect of Magic.

He could spend millennia plying the treasures in this place.

More came into view is he hustled fully into the room.

A thick, heavily-crafted harness lay crumpled in a corner, large enough to fit even the former aspect of magic. Its woven, enchanted adamantium was marked with empty attachment points; places where instruments could be tied and carried for fieldwork.

The same instruments laid strewn about the room, repurposed atop lab tables awash with glassware, magic bubbling away in experiments he could barely even identify.

It was a laboratory— the lair of a scientist.

A mad scientist.

Mad Malygos!

Senses snapped to alert, the ancient, whispered title wailing an alarm in his mind. It drew muscles and wings tight, unease piling into his frame. Books, equipment, half-written tomes lay scattered everywhere, the discordant chaos of an unraveled mind.

Malygos paid it no attention.

He flashed past Kalecgos's heavyset frame with urgent familiarity, forepaws digging into various piles with purpose.

He was running out of time…

Desperation haunted his movements, fading astral talons grasping and hurling aside artifacts that had taken him eons of research and careful craftwork to build.

They tracked loosened arcs through the air, shattering against tables and floor with shrieks of sundered magics and broken glass.

Kalecgos could only wince at the utter desecration— priceless, irreplaceable artifacts falling like rain, fragments scattering like crystal snow dispersed to the wind.

Broken shards in the chaos of the spirits' mad scramble.

His affronted thoughts were broken by an ancient tome smacking him full in the face, thick binding loosing an audible smack as it glanced off his blue-scaled snout.

The spirt dove back into the stacks without a word.

He picked up the tome in a paw, taken aback at the artistry of it— bindings neat and orderly, elegant magical decorations flowing over its surface, colors dancing and shifting with the natural ebb and flow of the ambient magic.

A work of magical art no mortal mage could even imagine, let alone accomplish.

It opened fluidly, his paws turning past pages filled with elegant, flowing calligraphy, runes sculpted as if by an artist wielding the greatest of tools.

A scientist's lab notebook—neat and organized, pages filled with hypothesis, experiments and theories he would never have imagined. Text flowed with effortless sprightly grace, a sense of mirth and joy woven through the words, making it hard to put down.

His eyes rose, looking over the tome toward its author, still frantically rooting through the haphazard piles and scraps of pages.

A sense of disquiet at what once had been…and what now was.

It gnawed at him…a subtle sense of the immense gulf between carrying the title of Aspect of Magic, and being the Aspect of Magic. For it was one thing to act in the role, and quite another to have the the knowledge and experience needed for the role.

He hadn't even known this lab existed before.

Kalecgos' disquiet went unnoticed, a gnawing worry shaking Malygos's frame.

Neltharion's distress call had grown quiet.

The sound of it, the doubt and terror behind it shattered through Malygos's awareness, all consuming.

His Neltharion was in danger.

He threw his weakened form into the search, frantically shifting through tomes he had written over eons, scanning titles and dates on the bindings with practiced ease before throwing them aside.

Kalecgos could read them too, dates marking the years after the Titans.

Yet never had he seen numbers so low…10 years, 100 years…

Older than any living blue dragon.

Including himself.

Uncomfortable, he looked away.

Malygos gasped as he came up with the needed tome, entire form shaking with relief as he tossed it toward Kalecgos.

It was utterly unlike the first—it's bindings haphazard, the text even more so. There was no sweeping calligraphy, runes simply burned into pages with charred strokes of magical fire, every free space filled with haphazard code.

Even the margins were stuffed full.

It seemed twisted and broken—the experiments bizarre, the conclusions nonsensical, the earlier tome's joyful, rational flow replaced by the dark, disjointed logic of despair.

Kalecgos stared at its broken binding, a date from a mere decade ago winking back.

It was the rantings of a madman.

He dropped the tome at the realization— evidence of a mind torn apart nearly burning his talons. Another glance around the lab showed the layers— ancient archives at the periphery of the cavern neat and organized, overtopped by increasing layers of chaotic and disjointed detritus.

An archeological expedition into madness; the bare evidence of an unraveled mind.

It made him want to leave.

To seal the lab and forget that it existed; to put the past behind them and focus on the future, as the flight needed.

How long had Malygos once been holed up here in his madness and Despair, raving across the broken pages?

"Neltharion needs our help"

He jumped as Malygos spoke into his ear, nearly missing the words as he suppressed the instinctive urge to breathe a spell at the speaker.

"You will send me to him."

Malygos' impatience nearly dripped from his words, astral form taut with tension as he curtly described the needed steps to send him to Pandaria.

A spell from the first tome, a stanza ripped from its center.

Code from the second tome.

Both woven together with one final ingredient.

It couldn't possibly work.

The spell's logic seemed demented; disharmonious pieces of code he could not imagine could possibly function together.

"No. It's unnecessary…dangerous…

Malygos' aura grew darker at his hesitation, determination burning in the blue's fading eyes.

"You will send me to help him." A simple assertion, a hint of ancient command entering his quiet, but firm voice. "I will be there to defend him against whatever he faces!"

His wizened face looked up, meeting Kalecgos's eyes stare for stare.

Kalecgos stood taller at it, meeting the former Aspect's glare.

"No."

"No?!" The thought was thunderous to Malygos' mind; unfathomable.

"Correct."

The words were bitten off, Kalecgos turning to leave.

Obstinate, foolhardy young…

A scream cut across his mind, the thought crumbling before it.

Neltharion's scream.

It didn't matter

None of it— the lab, being aspect, even magic itself…it was not what was important

"Wait…"

Neltharion was in danger.

It was the only thing that mattered.

It collapsed the dam; desperation he had been holding back leaking into his tone, voice rising to call out again.

"I seek your boon, Aspect of Magic"

The sudden formality caught Kalecgos by surprise, heavyset frame pausing, the blue dragon turning to look back at his official title.

It caught him up short.

Malygos' flickering, weakened spirit lay prostrate before him— forequarters lowered, chin pressed flat against the dirt-strewn ground at the center of the lab.

Malygos was bowing to him.

Bowing amidst the ruins of his life's work.

It blanked his mind.

Everything about it was wrong.

To see Malygos bowing to him, to anyone…

The Blue Aspect should not bow.

Yet Malygos was.

His wings shifted, uncomfortable.

"You…need not bow."

"Yet I must…for I beg the aid of the Blue Aspect; Aspect of Magic—you."

Kalecgos stared, gaping openly at the words he never imagined he'd hear Malygos say.

Yet…he had.

"I…cannot cast magic anymore, cannot get to him myself. But he needs me"

He looked up, eyes damp, voice quiet.

"I was not there to catch him when he fell the first time; did not come when he called— and our flights— all the flights— paid the price for it, just as Azeroth did."

A sigh

"But none paid more than he did."

"I deserved what came of that, but the rest of you did not. Least of all him."

Shaky limbs, his head flat against the ground.

"Let me prevent it from happening again."

The blue was suffering.

Kalecgos could see it— both the hope, and the fear that had been hidden beneath the former Aspect's pushiness.

He was fighting for something; for someone.

Or at least… he genuinely thought he was.

Kalecgos sighed, still doubtful this was more than some flight of fancy…

…but what was the harm of indulging him?

"Fine, I will help. Just…don't bow again."

The words left Malygos staggered with relief, mind already springing ahead to the next steps.

"There is one final piece needed."

Malygos made a beeline for a well-worn corner of the lab, an alcove magically crafted into the stone.

Kalecgos followed with his eyes.

Unlike the chaos in the rest of the lab, the alcove was neat and clean, clearly maintained…yet oriented in such a way hide it from the view of the rest of the room.

He stepped over, curious…

The alcove held a single item.

An inkwell.

Unlike the rest of the room's blue tones, the inkwell was a pure opalescent black, carrying an iridescent scale-like sheen. Motes of blue winked through the black ink, the magically charged ink shifting underneath a quill standing up from the well's cap— perfectly sized for a dragon's talons.

It was…oddly out of place amidst the maddened mess of the lab.

But clearly exquisitely crafted, and lovingly cared for.

He watched as Malygos lifted it in his paws, cradling it like the most precious of whelplings.

"Where did it come from?"

He caught the quiver that ran down Malygos's back as the former Aspect stared at the inkwell, the blue's eyes fixed on its opalescent shimmer and the history that lay behind it.

Out of sight, but not out of mind.

He only barely caught Malygos's answer.

"A gift from the oldest, and closest of…friends. One I cared for dearly." Malygos whispered, eyes not leaving the inkwell.

"A good friend indeed, to have given such a gift". Kalecgos replied. And he meant it— it was the perfect gift for one that loved to experiment, to explore, to write down what they learned so that all could share and enjoy.

He failed to catch Malygos' whisper.

"He is."

"Do you know where?"

The former aspect did not look up from his frenzied rune-crafting.

"No. But the spell will latch on to the resonance between Neltharion and I, and use it to pull me to him."

Kalecgos could barely follow the spirit's movement, quill a blur over the pages, amending and interlinking the pieces from each tome.

Yet…there was something there.

He couldn't quite follow the logic; motes of brilliance and strangeness that made him want to sit Malygos down for eons of magical discussions.

A sigh.

But they didn't have time.

Malygos confirmed it as he set down the quill, satisfied with the progress.

It was time for him to move on.

The finality made the former aspect look up to the new, a sadness at the fact he would not be around to teach or guide Kalecgos, as he knew the new Aspect needed.

The look drew a question on Kalecgos' snout.

"I have one final boon to request, Aspect."

"What?"

"Please take care of them all for me— our flight, or magic, our world. They will need their Aspect, for all that is to come."

Silence.

"You…won't be back?"

"No." The word was followed by a chuckle, Malygos holding up a fading, translucent foreleg with a wry look. "I seem to be missing more and more pieces."

There was no time to say all that needed to be said; to teach all that needed to be taught.

Only the most important lesson was left.

Malygos looked down to the Inkwell, the blue magic sparkling inside the iridescent black…

…and gently offered it to Kalecgos.

"Please take care of him for me, just as he and I once took care of each other. We were once inseparable, and from that connection our flights grew strong together." The blue's snout rose, eyes full of a final, desperate hope. "The blue and black aspects must be one again, just as they were before."

Kalecgos gaped, sputtering at what Malygos' last request might mean for him; the implications of the oath Malygos was requesting of him.

"But…but…"

He was met only with the tired lilac eyes of a blue dragon ancient beyond ancient, distant wisdom dancing behind their depths.

Wisdom he might never see again.

A last spark of hope in Malygos' eyes.

He…couldn't deny him that last hope.

His wings sagged, head hanging.

"Fine." His wings shuddered. "I accept your charge, and your oath"

A bright smile lit up Malygos' entire face, the hope within it making the spirit radiant in its glow.

"I'm sure you'll find a way"

He could only chuckle at Kalecgos' amusing fluster, a short shake of his snout at the young.

"It's time— charge the runes, and it will be done."

For all the buildup the spell was smooth.

Long shadows danced over the walls as Kalecgos poured power into the pages— first slowly, then with haste. Runes moved and flowed with the magic, the two tomes seeming to fight at first— oranges and greens, blues and purples, all incandescent with the Blue Aspect's magic

Outshining the rest of the lab

Outshining Malygos' dulled form.

Kalecgos grunted as it neared a trigger, the tomes flying up into the air on a growing magical wind, circling them as debris from the lab swirled around.

The tension snapped as he cast the spell.

Pages flared, light bending under lines of force as the spell grasped Malygos's form, and hurled him…elsewhere.

And with a pop it was quiet, loose papers pages drifting down like snow cast to the winds.

As if Malygos had never been there; had never existed.

He jumped as the two tomes burst into flame from the backlash, ashes spilling like tears from their edges.

He couldn't put them out.

It left him disquieted…had Malygos known it was a one-way trip?

A sigh.

Of course he had.

Malygos must have always known, given his condition.

He dropped them to the ground, troubled as he left the space, wall snapping back into place behind him.

He didn't look back.