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Lifelong Promise	By : RotSeele Category: +S through Z > World of Warcraft Views: 5624 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft. I do not make any money from this story. Written for Parzival12 as a request.

Chapter List
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One
The first time he saw a dragon, he was barely a child, barely old enough to understand that the giant serpents that flew freely through the sky were dangerous. Oh, there was always that innate fear - after all, the dragons were so big and he was so small - but Korial had never believed that the dragons he saw would hurt him. The dragons he saw flew high in the sky, ignoring the small village below as they went about whatever business they had. Korial knew all the stories - after all, who in Azeroth didn’t know the stories about the dragons? - and perhaps it was that second-hand knowledge that made him love the dragons in his own way.
They were a variety of colors - red, blue, bronze, green (never black, why was that? There was at least one black dragon, wasn’t there?) - and Korial had always found them beautiful. He dreamed about them, about being one (a great red dragon) and flying with red dragons (always, it was red dragons), playing with them as if it was the most normal thing in the world. As if they were his family, his brothers and sisters, even his children. He knew the dreams were just that, but sometimes he woke up from them feeling a profound sense of loss. Sometimes they affected him so strongly that Korial woke up crying, and his mother had to come rock him back to sleep.
As he got older, the dreams began to fade, but his fascination for dragons was still there, and it seemed to grow even stronger. He found himself daydreaming about them sometimes, watching the sky instead of doing chores, hoping that, one day, he’d be able to see a dragon up close instead of watching them fly from so far below. Hindsight being what it was, Korial wondered if his dream to see one up close had been the catalyst for what had happened, for what had put him on his current path.
Korial opened his eyes and stared at the corpse of the blue dragon he’d just slain, its blood still steaming in the cold. He studied those glassy eyes dispassionately, his face unmoving. When Korial had just been sixteen years old, his village had become the victim of a dragon attack. No one knew why the two dragons - one red, one bronze - had started to fight, and no one ever would, but the battleground between the two behemoths had been Korial’s home. Their tails had destroyed buildings; their talons had dug furrows in the ground; their breaths of flame and sand had murdered people and animals alike. Many had fled the battle, but they didn’t make it far. Somehow the bronze broke away from th red, its scales rippling from bronze to black with edges of white, and it killed them with a mighty swipe of a talon. Korial’s parents had been some of that strange bronze dragon’s victims. Korial had survived only because he had been knocked unconscious and part of a thatch roof had fallen on top of him, obscuring him from the dragons’ view and somewhat protecting him.
When he’d woken, the dragons were gone, and he was alone. He’d always been told that revenge was a poison, one that would eat away at his soul until there was nothing left. But he had been young and traumatized, and he didn’t care about staining his soul black anymore. He swore, then and there, he would hunt down every dragon in Azeroth, and would end them. A part of him said it was to prevent tragedy like this from happening again, but he knew it was because he felt his fascination and love of the great serpents had been betrayed, and he hated them for taking away his life. Wounded in more than body, Korial had dragged himself from his ruined village and was eventually picked up by a band of traveling warriors.
And that was how he got to where he was now.
He had trained with them in the art of wielding a sword, of wearing heavy armor, and most of all, he had learned how to kill. Not just men and monsters, but dragons as well.
Korial reached for his broadsword, which was still lodged in the blue dragon’s neck. It took a little bit of work to free the blade, but at last it came out with a slurping sound. Korial shook the blade free of blood, then stepped back from the corpse as the rest of his group moved in for the harvest. He didn’t like watching the rest of his group tear apart the dragons like scavengers, and he wasn’t sure why. He could kill them without blinking - he always seemed to know where the weak point was, always knew what it would take to kill a dragon of any color, and he didn’t know why that was, either - but he didn’t like watching the scale and meat being peeled back from bone. It reminded him of a dream he used to have, of skeletal dragons flying above an icy tundra, eyes glowing bright blue.
The dragon-hunter trudged to a small knoll and stood with his back to the activity behind him. A breeze teased his black hair with its strange white streaks, and he raised his free hand to catch one of the locks. He studied for a while, trying to remember a time where he hadn’t had those white streaks in his hair, but unable to come up with one. He had locked away his childhood in the dark part of his heart, trying not to remember anything about his youth in an effort to remain on his bloody, black path without wavering.
A shadow passed over him, and he stiffened in recognition. He looked up at the sky immediately, eyes going wide at the sight of the red dragon passing above him. Even though the dragon was so high in the sky, she was so huge that there was no mistaking her for a bird. A tremor rushed through him; Korial’s breathing increased and a tightness formed in his chest. He chalked it up to excitement, to renew an ever scarcer hunt, and his eyes tracked the great red dragon through the sky as she flew toward a ring of distant mountains that separated the Wetlands from the Twilight Highlands. She didn’t look like the blue he had just killed. No, her horns were wider, thicker. She had jewelry adorning her claws and dangling from her chin. She was no mere dragon.
She is Alexstrasza, the Dragonqueen. said a voice from inside him, both his and not his. Korial shivered again, because there were so many feelings contained within those words, and he couldn’t tell if they were of hatred or of deep desire. One and the same, he decided. If he killed the Dragonqueen, then there would be no more dragons, right? Korial knew his chosen profession relied on a steady supply of dragons, and without them, he would find himself jobless and wandering, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about what would happen tomorrow.
Quickly he slung his broadsword across his back and secured it there, then rushed to grab his horse, mounting the animal and setting his heels to its flanks. The animal took off in a rush of hooves, thundering for the pass that would take him into the Twilight Highlands.
He never lost sight of her. A tiny part of him said that he was speeding into a trap. That Alexstrasza was leading him away from his allies in order to get revenge for the deaths of her fellow dragons. The other tiny part of him said Alexstrasza would never get revenge for anything done to her or her kind, and out of all the creatures in Azeroth, it was she who had the most reason to desire it. He ignored it all, standing somewhat in his saddle to get his bearings, then yanked on his horse’s reins to force the animal to ride toward a rise called the Vermilion Redoubt.
Once, long ago, it had been a bastion of the Red Dragonflight against the forces of the corrupt black dragon Deathwing. Adventurers from both the Alliance and the Horde had come here to aid the Red Dragonflight in beating back the forces of the mad dragon, staging missions from here across the Twilight Highlands. Now it was a mere shadow of itself, wild and green, having been left untouched by mortal hands for years. Korial reined in his horse to a mere walk, then a stop, and he dismounted. He patted the animal’s neck, and allowed the loyal animal to begin to graze on the lush grasses surrounding them. He reached for his sword, unsheathed it, and began to creep toward the heart of the Redoubt.
He moved quietly and carefully, noticing the signs of the great red dragon’s passing. Branches were bent here from the wind from powerful wings; leaves had been knocked off by the passing of the tail or a talon. He found where she had landed, found where she had passed through the trees, and then the trail of the dragon abruptly stopped.
Korial stared at the end of the dragon’s tracks, feeling confused as he studied the abrupt end of talons in the soft earth. He crouched beside one mark, touching it lightly with his fingertips. Where had she gone?
A dragon her size just couldn’t up and disappear could it? There were stories told, from a time long ago, where a dragon had taken on a smaller form in order to be with the woman he loved, but... that was just a story.
He jumped up suddenly and swung his broadsword behind him as fast and hard as he could. As his body spun and his eyes saw what was standing behind him, he managed to somehow stop the momentum of his blade just spare inches from the redheaded woman’s throat. She stared at him, her golden eyes showing no fear of nearly being decapitated. It was as if she had known he would stop the blade before he could harm her. Korial found himself captivated by her face. She had an unearthly beauty, with alabaster skin, red painted lips, crimson eye shadow, and bright red hair held back from her face by a crown of sorts. Horns rose from her hair like an adornment, and she wore little enough clothing that she was at least decent. Completing her ensemble was a diaphanous red cloak that fell to her ankles.
She raised her hand and gently touched his cheek. Korial tensed at the touch, his eyes going wide at the unfamiliar closeness. His sword fell suddenly from his grip and hit the ground hard enough to bury the blade halfway. Her ruby lips parted and she whispered, “Korialstrasz...?”
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Lifelong Promise