Work Text:
“Listen,” said Lidya, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear while grabbing a pile of parchment and throwing it into the hearth. The three warlocks had just been there, minutes before Ravandwyr had walked in, and their gift was weighting heavy in her pocket. She was still shaking from the shock, and she didn’t know if it had been the good or bad kind of shock, but she couldn’t dwell on it, not when time was against her.
“What is going on?”
“I don’t have a lot of time to explain, but I think the Horde and the Alliance aren’t our biggest problem anymore,” she said, tucking another strand. Her hair was getting too long, she needed to cut it but hadn’t found the time – probably wouldn’t in a while. She grabbed another pile of parchments to burn down, feeling her heart squeeze at it. She knew the words written on them by heart, but that didn’t mean that destroying knowledge like that didn’t hurt, and unfortunately she couldn’t take any chances.
These were dire times.
“Lidya,” said Ravandwyr, planting himself in front of her, looking as scared as that time he had come to her when Vargoth had disappeared.
Light, how she had wished to never have to see that look on his face again.
“Look, something really bad happened in Vol’dun,” she said, head still reeling from it. She had been too late, too focused on this stupid war between the factions, too focused on Azerite and pirates and petty skirmishes. It had been her mistake, and now she was going to have to pay the price. “Something… something I’ve never seen before, okay? I’m gonna have to go, for a while, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“You need to tell me.”
“I summoned you here because I couldn’t reach Vargoth. He’s in charge while I’m away,” she went on, side-stepping him to get to her right pauldron and put it back. She had only taken it off to patch up her shoulder as best as she could. She didn’t have more time – the teleportation spell would be tricky, and she hoped everyone would be too busy to question her being there of all places.
She had never been friends with trolls, ever, and especially not the Zandalari.
“Tell him I trust him, and if he really needs help, then he can always go to Karlain. If there’s someone who will be able to track down Khadgar, that’s him.”
“Lidya, what the fuck is happening?” he insisted, grabbing her by the arms and forcing her to meet his eyes, and just for a second she allowed herself to feel the fear taking hold of her body.
“There is a C’thraxxi on the loose, about to attack the Zandalari capital. I don’t have a lot of other details, but I gotta go and try to stop it.”
Ravandwyr stumbled back, pale as the dead, and just looked at her for a second, horrified and looking like he couldn’t breath.
She had reacted the same way when she had seen it all unfold.
“Tell Vargoth I count on him. I sent the crew away, they should be back in a week maximum. If I’m not here by then, Jes should know what to do and where to sail next.”
“You’re not dying and I’m not letting you go do this alone.”
“I won’t be alone,” she replied, grabbing another fistful of parchments and skimming through them, before putting them back down, “the Horde’s champions are already there or en route. I’ll be joining the Warlord, as protection. Just, what ever happens, extend the lock down from the Chamber of the Guardian to the entire city. I don’t care what the Kirin Tor wants or not, we need to keep Dalaran protected and ready for whatever may come, is that understood?”
Ravandwyr simply looked at her, but it was clear that he was looking right through her, and seeing something else, so she repeated her question, making sure that he agreed and understood it before she was giving him a nod and promptly teleporting away.
***
They held on for all of a week, before being defeated. A lot of people died, starting with a Loa. The seal was broken. Mythrax left unscathed and no one tried to go after it.
For a second, as Lidya sat down on the floor, a hand pressing against her bleeding side, she was overcome with despair and fear.
They couldn’t win. There was no way. Even if the Alliance and Horde got their shit together for one second to work together, they just could not defeat a creature like that.
Fucking titans , she thought, trying very very hard not to let the burning tears in her eyes fall out and roll down her cheeks – that would have been embarrassing for the new Guardian to just start crying in the middle of Dazar’alor, even if she wouldn’t have been the only one.
Someone sat down next to her, but she didn’t pay attention to them, eyes lost as she went through the fight again in her head, thinking about what could have been done differently, what they had learned about their enemy.
She had given everything, and it hadn’t been enough. So many had died, even more had been wounded.
For the first time since the beginning of this war, it really hit her that she was on her own. No Khadgar, no Draerin, no Varian and no Ilana to help her. Vargoth couldn’t get out into the field, not after everything that had happened with the Legion and the demon that had controlled him, and she couldn’t put Ravandwyr in such danger.
Out in the battlefield, no one had her back. The zandalari and other Horde members that had been in the city had fought with her, of course, but it was their city that was being attacked so it was expected, but Lidya wasn’t stupid. No matter what, she had to go after this Mythrax and get rid of it, and she knew for a fact that it wasn’t a fight she could win alone.
“I’m fucked,” she whispered.
“Aren’t we all?” asked the person sitting next to her, and she turned her head with surprise.
Lor’themar addressed her a slight smirk. It wasn’t humorous at all – it was too tired for that, but it made her feel better, to know that he was as exhausted as her.
“I didn’t know you had gotten a promotion,” he added when she simply looked at him.
She shrugged a shoulder. “It kind of fell on my lap.”
“Doesn’t it always, when it comes to you?”
She snorted at this, because he was right and if she thought too much about it she would start screaming and crying in rage.
“I didn’t believe it at first,” he added, his tone way softer and more serious as he looked down at his hands, “when Draerin told me. I thought that for sure it must be a joke. First getting arrested by your own people for a crime you obviously didn’t commit, and then Khadgar dumping this on you.” He frowned. “Draerin wouldn’t give any details, and you know how he is, there’s no person on any known planet who can tell him what to do, but still… I didn’t think he would leave you.”
Lidya tried to swallow through the lump in her throat, and found that she couldn’t. The tears in her eyes made her sight swim, and she gritted her teeth against them.
She would not cry because of some stupid old man. Not today.
“He didn’t want to share his reasons, but I don’t see any that would have made it okay.”
He had given Lidya a few reasons. Most of them not enough to leave her to fight against the Alliance, the Horde and now some old gods minions, but one…
One of them had been extremely personal, and she had known that it was a risk, when she had been in Suramar, all those weeks ago, searching for a spell to finally free Khadgar of what Medivh had done to him, but still… it was Khadgar’s choice to decide whether he would go ahead with it or not, and Lidya, while furious that she had, once again, to shoulder the responsibility of the world, also knew that she had brought it upon herself.
She had offered Khadgar a chance at a new life where no one could recognize him, and he had taken it.
“It’s not the first time Draerin and I go our separate way,” she said, wishing she sounded stronger, strong enough for her new title at least.
“No,” said Lor’themar, voice soft and pensive, “but it is the first time you do while he knows damn well that you’re on your own.”
Lidya frowned, wondering for a second how much the Regent Lord knew about her, and Draerin, and Outland.
She hadn’t made a secret of Balan and Anaar or anything that had happened, she just never talked about it, with anyone, ever, except Anaar on some rare occasion.
M aybe Lor’themar had overheard Draerin and her talking about it, maybe Draerin had told him, or maybe she had been so drunk that night of the Cataclysm that she had run her mouth like an idiot. It didn’t matter much anyway, because Balan was dead, she had no idea where Anaar was, and Draerin didn’t want anything to do with her for now.
She had to grit her teeth harder at this.
Too many people had been lost recently, and most of them weren’t even dead.
“Have you talked to Aethas recently?”
The question was so unexpected, that for a second Lidya didn’t even understand it.
“No, why?”
“You should. He’s a formidable and precious ally, and he knows better than anyone what it’s like to see his people’s blood spills.”
“So do you,” she said, which he responded to with a nod.
“True, but I am an old man now, with too many responsibilities.”
Lidya hummed at this, the cogs already turning in her mind.
She had guessed, of course, that Lor’themar wouldn’t be into his Warchief’s genocidal ideas, but for him to so blatantly point her in direction of help was unexpected.
He got up when it was clear that the chaos from the fight was starting to retreat and people were getting their ideas in order, and Lidya did the same, knowing that she couldn’t stay long in enemy territory.
Still, she took a second to smile gratefully at Lor’themar. “Swing by the Hall of the Guardian some day, we’ll have tea.”
“Why not,” he smiled back with a nod, “that would be a nice break from all this.”
She scoffed, and teleported away.
***
Altruis was the only crew member that accepted to follow her into Nazmir, and she understood why. The place was, at best, dreadful.
At worse… well, she didn’t want to know what was hiding in the water and making the hair at the back of her neck stand up like that. She hadn’t been to Dalaran since she had left in a hurry, and hadn’t heard from Ravandwyr, which reassured her a little. She didn’t have time to go back to the city and take care of her mages, but she trusted Ravandwyr to have passed the message on to Vargoth that he was in charge, and that the two of them would get to her if the situation really required it.
S till, there was an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she hoped that it was only caused by the danger lurking around the swamp and not something else.
Altruis had done some recon beforehand and Lidya had stayed just long enough in Dazar’alor to know that the place was crawling with blood troll who might or might not be cannibals. What was certain was that they liked to sacrifice people for a god of theirs.
It would have helped to get a troll’s honest opinion, but no one had been willing to speak to her and she didn’t know anyone close by who could tell her anything.
They had to do it the hard way, by going through the swamps and following the uneasy feeling in the pit of their stomachs.
They had a small boat that had to be ditched the second the water got too shallow, and while Lidya started on foot, Altruis gave her a small nod before taking flight. He wasn’t the most talkative person ever, but she knew he was grateful to be here and she was more than grateful that he was. Way, way more.
As she shimmered away from some sort of gigantic bug, she couldn’t help but thank the Light that at least she wasn’t alone here — especially when she barely had to think about it to imagine what sort of comment Ilana would make.
And before she even did that, someone was suddenly grabbing her by the waist and pressing a blade at her throat.
“Scream and I’ll open your throat,” was the dangerous whisper as she looked down at the arm around her waist. Five fingers, speaking common and judging by the height, it was a human.
She raised both hands, more to tell Altruis to stand down for now than any other reason.
“I don’t want any trouble,” she said, “my name’s Lidya and I’m just—“
“Lidya?!”
“Hum… yes?”
The blade disappeared and she was abruptly shoved around, only to come face to face with the last person she had expected to see here.
“Keeshan?” she asked, barely believing it, before they were hugging.
“By the Light,” he muttered against her shoulder, holding her just this side of too tight, “what are you doing here? I was told you went missing.”
“You know me more than that,” she replied as a happy smile pulled at her lips for the first time in a very long time. “I’m looking for the blood trolls, you?”
“I’m reckoning the perimeter for the Alliance.”
They finally let go of each other and Keeshan pushed down the bandana hiding the lower half of his face. He was covered in sweat, and looked even more dangerous than usual thanks to the grimace twisting his mouth.
“I’ve heard crazy rumors about you lately, and even crazier ones about this place. Is everything ok?”
No, was the honest truth. Everything was fucked, but it was her job to fix it, and the only reason she could do that without sobbing was because she kept as much of a normal face around everyone as possible.
“Things could be better,” she said, which was also true, and he grunted severely at that. “Look, I know damn well that the Alliance knows what happened to Dazar’alor recently, but I don’t know if they let you know.”
“I’m aware of that thing.”
She nodded. “I’m here to kill it.”
He didn’t say anything but words would have been useless next to everything that flashed in his eyes. Keeshan was a hot head and not afraid of anything as long as he had his team with him, but his team had been killed and reduced to one Marshall and Lidya.
She doubted Marshall Troteman was here, and she was a fugitive of the Alliance — worse, she had helped the Horde, technically. There was nothing Keeshan despised more than orcs and, by extension, the Horde.
“It’s not my place to judge,” he said after a moment, “but know that you can count on me to go after this abomination.”
And just like that, Lidya breathed out and felt some of the weight on her chest lift.
“Thank the Light for you,” she whispered, before hugging him again.
***
Lidya was just about to teleport to somewhere safe to sleep, having had no news of Altruis since he had first left her side, when she stumbled upon a very loud argument in orcish.
She wasn’t totally fluent, but the warlord was mostly using swearwords and those she knew.
She decided to step in when the warlord switched from O rcish to T halassian — Ravandwyr had explained to her that he was half elf, and also a part of his family, it was a long and strange story.
“Waoh,” she said, hands up and stepping out of the treeline, “what’s going on.”
Rohkan simply raised an eyebrow at her and crossed his arms. Lidya decided to take it as a good sign since he wasn’t attacking her outright.
“He’s stubborn,” replied Warlord Danar, this close to pouting.
The Battlelord, who had helped her after being fatally wounded in front of the Tomb of Sargeras, had gone with everyone to Argus, and she had last seen him in Vol’dun, but she knew that he wasn’t the only one, that there were other warriors fighting the war. She had met Warlord Danar once or twice before in Dalaran when he was with Ravandwyr, and that was enough for her to trust him, but times were dangerous and despite her instincts she forced herself to stay on her guard.
“What are you doing here?” asked Rokhan in perfect orcish.
Hers was way more shaky when she replied “I’m looking for the blood trolls.”
She didn’t really know the word for blood troll so she used the trollish word she had heard the zandalari use.
Rokhan grimaced at her accent, and she was thankful she wasn’t one to blush in shame.
“You shouldn’t stay here,” replied Danar in Thalassian instead, making her frown. “There are a lot of big players around, it’s not safe for a human.”
“I’m not here as a human, I’m here as the leader of the Tirisgarde.”
“Doesn't change anything. You should leave.”
“I’m here to kill whatever was the thing that marched on Dazar’alor.”
Danar scoffed at that and turned to face Rokhan and translate what she had just said.
The troll simply looked into her eyes with the air of seizing her. She didn’t know him at all, but she knew of him, and she trusted that he was a good leader. Level headed. Potentially someone who could see the good in killing an old god’s minion that was so powerful.
Rokhan asked her something, and she turned to Danar, not understanding.
The orc sighed heavily. “He wants to know what makes you think that the abomination and the blood trolls are linked.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “Why wouldn’t they be? I don’t know much about the trolls, but from what I’ve heard they seem like the perfect ally for our old god’s minion.”
He translated and Rokhan listened intently, seeming lost in his thoughts for a moment, before he announced in trollish: “she’s coming with us.”
Lidya usually didn’t really speak the language, but she understood when he gave a firm nod, turned around, and started walking away.
She gave a surprised look to Danar, before quickly following. It was good enough for her.
***
Lidya had to admit that she understood why Danar and Rokhan had been fighting once they finally explained their plans. She wasn’t as much of a stickler about death rites as an orc or a draenei, but somehow it felt wrong to make a deal with the Loa of death.
Danar was still serving as an interpreter for Rokhan and the other troll that they had joined who she thought might have been called Hanzabu. That guy was dressed in a long priest-like robe, was wearing about a thousand necklaces and bracelets made of bones that clung against each other every time he so much as breathed, and he smelled exactly the same as a tomb. It was a strange smell, but she didn’t know how else to describe it.
That guy looked creepy, if she was honest, but she had to be courageous.
“So you want me to go do some sort of ritual?” she asked, just to be sure.
Danar gave her one very firm nod.
“I’m not going,” he said, “because my father is a shaman and he would disown me if I went.”
He was speaking Thalassian but Rokhan still rolled his eyes, so he was either guessing what Danar was saying, or he knew more Thalassian than he let on.
“And I should go instead of the one troll here because…”
“Because Rokhan has to go find Hir’eek,” he replied, as if that explained anything. “I’m going to speak with Torga, and then we meet back at camp and go to get Krag’wa.”
“So we get the loas’ help, we go kill that thing you found, and then…”
“Then hopefully we find your abomination before it finds us.”
Lidya sighed, heavily, but it wasn’t like she had any choice in the matter. The Bwonsamdi priest was creepy, but maybe the Loa of Death wouldn’t be. And she had seen worse anyway.
And if she was honest, she just felt fearful because the last time she had seen loas had been in Zul’Drak and that was a memory she’d rather forget about.
“Alright let’s go,” she said, but Rokhan stopped her with a hand gesture, before walking away.
She raised an eyebrow at Danar who shrugged.
A few moments later Rokhan came back, handing her a very crude looking but extremely powerful charmed necklace. She could feel the spicy magic coming off of it from a meter away, but she took it when he raised his eyebrows expectantly, and the second her hand touched the necklace he spoke up.
“Now we can let Danar do his job instead of translating.”
She couldn’t help a small smile of surprise.
“Who enchanted this?” she asked, putting the necklace on. It fit right on her collarbones, and she couldn’t feel its magic anymore once it was in place, but when Rokhan spoke she still understood his Trollish.
“That’s a secret.”
She smiled back and thanked him. That was a great and powerful gift, and she knew what it meant. She was in need of powerful allies, and she was grateful he was willing to fight with her.
“I’ll go now,” she said, sending a look at Hanzabu who was looking more and more agitated.
“Good luck!” said Danar as she walked away.
***
Lidya had dealt with death before. She had fought it tooth and nails all over the world before going right to its doorstep in Icecrown. She had stared right into its blue eyes, and she had vanquished it.
That didn’t mean meeting the Loa of Death face to face was a particularly relaxing experience. In fact she was feeling extremely nervous as he looked her up and down with a very warm smile.
Warm wasn’t something she would have associated with him.
“Ah yes…” he said, his tone honey-sweet. “You’re the one.”
The one what, she had no idea.
“I wasn’t sure when I’d seen you again.”
This time his smile made her shiver. She had never seen him as far as she knew, and she was certain that being noticed by him wasn’t good news.
“Let’s make a deal,” he said, his smile growing bigger even though that didn’t seem quite possible. “I help you, and you help me in exchange, what do you say?”
“Help you how?”
He laughed. “You be a smart one. You help me get rid of a thorn in my side, and I help you when you inevitably die.”
The breath in her lungs got stuck for a second, because in his eyes she could read that he had one particular moment and place in mind, and she didn’t know what to think of it. Sure she wasn’t exactly expecting to kill that C’thraxxi easily, but she had somehow started to believe that she had a chance after speaking with the trolls trying to save Nazmir.
And now the actual Loa of death was looking at her like he knew her exact time of death.
She remembered very well what it had felt like the first time she had died, and she wasn’t eager to do it again.
“When do I die?”
“Later thanks to me.”
“What’s the thorn in your side?” she asked without missing a beat — unlike her heart that missed several before trying to beat straight out of her chest.
“Nothing you can’t deal with. I’ll be doing most of the work, I just be needing an assistant.”
Lidya’s throat was unnaturally dry.
“What does that have to do with the blood trolls?”
“Nothing.”
And that was when she turned to Hanzabu, only to find him frozen in place, still kneeling in front of the loa with his head down.
So this was just between Bwonsamdi and her then. Khadgar had never spoken about the role of the Guardian in anything other than very quick details, and she hadn’t found anything about loa or gods in the spellbook, but there was no way a loa wouldn’t know that she had more power than she knew what to do with. That meant the thorn had to be pretty big if he wanted her help and no one else’s.
That didn’t take away the little voice in the back of her head telling her that there was something else, some information that she didn’t have, but that Bwonsamdi did .
He raised an eyebrow, his smile still as big, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.
“I’m gonna regret it but that’s a future problem. I accept the deal.”
“So be it,” he said, raising both hands as a rush a magic smelling like incense and a rotting forest brushed against her skin, crystalized for all of a second, and then was gone as quickly as it had come.
“Now,” said the loa, and Hanzabu raised his head, “let’s do something about da blood trolls.”
***
It was a few days later that Lidya finally saw Altruis for the first time. She was in the middle of being told off for killing a loa — even though he had been working for G’hunn, which promised to be yet another strong enemy — when the demon hunter softly landed next to her.
“Speak demonic,” immediately instructed Lidya, just to be sure and because she wanted to test Rokhan’s charm a little.
“I found an Azerite rupture,” he said, the words guttural and giving her shivers, but she understood them.
“How bad is it?”
“Worse than anything we’ve seen so far. I scouted for a while and it’s a real battlefield over there. Everyone wants a share and they’re ready to kill everything.”
“Let’s deal with it then.”
The trolls tried to stop her from leaving, but Lidya simply sent a side look at Altruis and he was wrapping both arms around her waist, spreading his wings and taking off.
From up above the trees, Nazmir could have looked beautiful. Not peaceful or reassuring, but it wasn’t the worst place she had visited.
“Here,” he yelled over the sound of the wind, and Lidya looked down to see the swamp disappear to leave place to rocky ground, before it became the sandy desert of Vol’dun.
“Drop me somewhere on the mountain,” she instructed, pointing with her finger. She wanted to take a look before dropping down in the middle of the battle with a blizzard.
Altruis put her down gently, on a small outlook above the gigantic fissure. She shivered, feeling the raw power prickling at her skin. The Heart of Azeroth, hidden under her armor, started vibrating, and she pressed a hand against it, trying to make it stop. Magni had explained, that this was Azeroth’s blood, that she was a world soul, just like Argus had been, that she was slowly bleeding out.
She was pretty sure that the fissure she was looking at would have been a deadly wound on a human.
Sethraks and goblins were fighting down there, each other and a few elementals driven crazy by the power surging everywhere. She could see them, with their azerite bullets and bombs, fighting the serpent men who were sending thunder everywhere.
She couldn’t go alone, but she couldn’t leave them to it. Magni hadn’t said what would happen if all the Azerite in the world were taken to make weapons, but she was certain they would all die anyway.
“I should disarm their bombs,” said Altruis, who was still standing next to her.
She nodded, too lost in thought to watch him go.
There was a spell she had found in the Guardian’s spell book that would save her a ton of headaches, but she hadn’t managed to successfully cast it yet, and she doubted the middle of a deadly fight was a great place to train. Still, she tried one more time, just to be sure, using the arcane magic running through her and projecting it outward, into an arcane explosion, and just as the explosion was reaching its most powerful and most destructive stage, she held onto the arcane, trying to crystalize it around her in a protective bubble.
Parts of it held, the rest slipped between her metaphorical fingers and she grit her teeth when a few rocks started falling down on her as a result of the partial explosion.
Every day she cursed Khadgar for making it look so easy. Or Thalyssra. Or Draerin. Or everyone else. She was no elf and hadn’t been trained to become the Guardian, and those facts were catching up to her rapidly.
“Fuck it,” she decided, because she had done way worse, and teleported down to the fissure and the fighting.
The elf following her teleportations was still here, but she pretended she couldn’t see him, and threw herself on the ground the moment she arrived, Heart of Azeroth already in her hand as she pushed it directly into liquid azerite.
The necklace started pulsing at a rapid pace in her hand, as if it was drinking it down, but she was too busy keeping an eye out for anyone seeing her to care too much about that for now.
One tall goblin with two gigantic swords was fighting off two sethraks at the same time, which was pretty impressive, and she couldn’t look away in time not to see a decapitated snake head flow off of its body, fall down in a disgusting squelch, not too far from her, while the other sethrak was raising his two arms and making thunder rain down around them.
Lidya rolled away from a bolt, keeping the Heart in the azerite, knowing that this was taking too long. There had to be a way to make the process faster or this whole quest of getting as much of the azerite as possible into the necklace was doomed. She’d have to bring it up to Magni.
If I survive this storm , she thought, teleporting to the other side of the fissure before a new bolt could touch her.
There were elementals on this side, but it was easy enough to freeze them and go on with what she was doing.
She grew bored after a few minutes — up until she realized that her freezing spell, a very basic ice nova, was still holding despite the choking humid atmosphere that was making everything sweat bullets. That wasn’t supposed to happen, she had been trained enough to know that, so she looked over her shoulder, just to make sure that the ice was melting.
It wasn’t .
For a second she got scared.
The spell had been chucked without a thought, coming from her own power and not the Guardian’s, and there was no way it was holding so long, unless…
She sent a look at her hand holding onto the Heart. It wasn’t touching the azerite, but it was on the necklace. She knew the Horde, Alliance, Ashvane company and whoever else was using the azerite was transforming it to make weapons. They made bullets and bombs, or coated their blades with it. She had heard a few whispers about the azerite making people’s head clear, giving them strength when they touched it, but she hadn’t seen any military use of it this way yet.
And more importantly, she was pretty sure the necklace had reinforced her spell without using any precious drop of azerite in the process.
It piqued at her curiosity — one of a mage’s most important qualities — and she looked at the other side of the fissure, where the gargantuan goblin was still fighting more and more sethraks. Maybe he was holding onto some azerite, who knew.
She raised her free hand instead of asking herself questions, and the comet storm shot down from the sky instantly. Everyone started screaming and
scrambling for cover, but there was none, and a moment later everyone was dead or gone.
Lidya blinked at what she had just done. It would be of very bad taste to laugh after killing a few enemies, but she allowed herself a smile.
If she could use the azerite’s power without any repercussions on the azerite or the planet, then maybe she had a chance at this whole war against the entire world and old gods like creatures and their servants.
She’d still need a few more allies, but for the first time since she had arrived on the continent, she felt hope. Maybe she’d be able to survive.
She spent over two hours at the fissure, getting every last drop of azerite and killing anyone stupid enough to get close to her.
After a while, goblins and sethraks stopped coming.
***
After a quick stop with her pirate crew — they were in the middle of attacking a ship and she joined them because why not — Lidya left them and Altruis on their own with a promise of meeting in Freehold, and teleported to Silvermoon.
She had no idea where to look for Aethas, but Lor’themar had mentioned him and she was desperate enough to try anything.
There was a short list in her mind of people she could trust to go fight a C’thraxxi with who would also survive the fight. She’d bring Danar and Rokhan if they were willing, and Keeshan, and Aethas, and Altruis, and the Warlord. She’d reach out to her order then, take the best volunteers, and see how many people that was. Azerite power or not, she needed people with her, especially since she had lost her most precious allies one after the other.
She stopped herself before her thoughts went to Ilana, Varian, Khadgar or Draerin.
She hadn't lost all hope for her husband, but she had left no stone unturned so far, except maybe for Outland, but someone would have needed to teleport him there, and she hadn’t found anyone who could have.
He had simply vanished, and she couldn’t think about it while fighting the monsters she had come across in Nazmir.
Instead, she walked into her favorite inn in the sin’dorei capital, ordered a drink at the bar, and joined the auburn haired elf drinking by himself in the farthest corner or the bar.
“Took you long enough,” he said in Thalassian.
She was still wearing the charm, but this language was as familiar to her as her maternal common.
“Aethas,” she saluted, clicking her glass against his, before taking a sip. “I was slightly busy.”
“I heard.”
“What else did you hear?”
“I heard the dragons are with us.”
Lidya’s heart missed several beats, and just for a second she wondered if she hadn’t accidentally warped time around her. Everything stopped, the blood drained from her face, and she was left stupidly blinking at Aethas.
“Which dragons?” she asked, heart in her mouth.
“Blue, bronze and red. The rest haven’t been confirmed.”
Bronze and blue.
She had known, but this was the confirmation that cemented it for her. No one and nothing could track her teleportation spells like that, except for a blue dragon.
As for the Bronze, it was the craziest but only logical solution she had found about Varian. How else could he vanish from the face of Azeroth in just a moment? Under Shaw’s supervision?
Her hands started shaking in rage, her temperature rose drastically.
Aethas moved his chair back, just a hair, but she saw his reaction, took a deep breath to calm herself, but it didn’t help.
“I need you to repeat to me word for word what the dragons said,” she gritted between her teeth.
“They said they are with us and work to protect Azeroth and keep it alive.”
The drink in her cup started boiling.
“Kalec voted for the war,” she managed to articulate.
“Kalec isn’t the only blue dragon.”
“He’s supposed to be their leader.”
“He can’t lead them and pine for Jaina at the same time.”
That didn’t make her relax her shoulders or her jaw. Lidya started bouncing her heels against the floor instead.
“Aethas,” she said, and his face finally grew as serious as she felt. “You know exactly what it means. They took him.“
“That’s a pretty serious accusation.”
She had finally gotten the hang of not projecting her magic all over the place, but just in case Aethas couldn’t tell that she was the Guardian now — which she doubted considering his magical abilities — she let it all out, watching the way he suddenly looked away, as if he was being blinded by the sun.
“Look at what I can do, and listen very carefully: a blue dragon is trailing all of my teleportation, and I know for a fact Varian Wrynn was stabbed during a teleportation. How many different people could be able to do this?”
“That’s impossible,” he whispered, turning back to look at her but still squinting.
She got her magic back under control, not letting anything show that she was any different than before, and Aethas cleared his throat, rearranged his chair, took a sip of his drink.
Lidya’s was still bubbling with her fury. It seemed like her fire had finally made a comeback — she had felt it getting hotter and hotter, ever since she had gotten back from Suramar, but this was the last straw.
“Give me your hand, and open your eyes.”
Aethas’ gaze was steady and determined as he grabbed her hand, and she teleported them to Krasus Landing in Dalaran, the elf still there in the middle of the spell.
“That’s impossible!” exclaimed Aethas the second they arrived, letting go of her hand to nervously comb through his hair, looking agitated.
“I found a spell that might help, but it needs some modification. I thought I could use your help.”
He nodded.
“Let’s do it, and then you can tell me about that creature Lor’themar told me about.”
Lidya nodded, smiling to herself when the elf started casting the teleportation spell to the chamber of the Guardian. It seemed like she had gained a powerful ally.