The city was listing under her feet as she ran through the streets blasting Nerubians and dodging falling debris, cursing at herself the whole way.
Calline hadn’t had a second thought about her father coming along with the city on this venture. Dalaran had moved several times without incident, after all, and everything had seemed fine this time as well. Taking him from his home of the last 30 years would’ve been far harder on his slipping mind than a slightly different skyline outside the windows.
But things had gone wrong, somewhere, and she hadn’t stuck around to see what. She couldn’t even think too deeply about the bodies lining the streets, every one of them familiar, if not a close friend or a colleague…or a student. Calline could only shut her heart up tight and run, sparing the mana to blink forward, around tumbled carts and crumbled fountains and killing more and more spiders as she went.
Her spire was still standing, though her balcony was now surely in the sea below. Calline’s eyes narrowed as she slapped her hands together, sending herself in a blast of arcane up to the now-open wall of her bedroom, the security wards mostly broken. “MARIS?!” She called out immediately, grabbing a small wooden box from her bedside table and sprinting through the house. The polished marble floors were already strewn with dust and crumbled stone, a few dead Nerubians already spattering the stairs down into what once was a parlor.
“IN HIS ROOMS!” Calline heard her cousin shout back, and she altered her course accordingly, tucking the box into her robes. In apartments done up in all the faded finery the Firebrand estate in Quel’Thalas had once held, Lord Magus Jae’vin Firebrand was terrified in his great velvet chair, clutching tight to his live-in nurse Kira’s hand, Maris in front of them both with her bow drawn. The full-elf had her frostwolves guarding the doors as well, a wealth of Nerubian guts at their feet, but they shifted to let in Calline, who rushed to her father’s side.
“Papa,” She crouched, letting her tone lift to a girlish lilt. In his dementia-ridden mind, he most often thought her still a child or teen, and even in her singular focus and rattling nerves, she leaned into that for his benefit and comfort, “I’m here…”
“Calline,” He gasped out, “Girls I-I fear the scourge m-may be back…” Calline felt his words like a stab through the heart. Of course, that’s what this would feel like. She should have let Maris take him to her estate in Stranglethorn when she’d asked, the night before…
“It’ll all be okay,” Calline told him steadily, taking a necklace off from under her robes. The full-elf above her let out a short gasp, as she handed the glowing blue chunk of quartz on a gold chain to Kira, “I’m going to send you to Hasun. You know Hasun.” Her eyes darted to the human nurse, who nodded, swallowing hard.
“Big Draenei, yes, masterful elemental worker…” Jae’vin noted in his shaking voice, and Calline felt a little better. He was more in his Professor days today, which were nearer to the present. She nodded, tears she’d been holding onto threatening to spill.
“You and Kira here can tell him all about it,” She directed at the nurse, whose eyes had gone wide. “Contained portal spell, it can only take two, just tap the rune.”
“What about you two…?” Kira whispered, glancing between the cousins as Maris snarled, shooting a skittering monster as it crawled through a hallway window. Calline swallowed, squeezing her father’s arm.
“Give me a day and I can portal back, or Hasun can find me just fine via this,” She raised her free hand, where the rough ring containing a tiny elemental storm rested. Kira nodded, swallowing her own tears as Calline embraced Jae’vin tightly. “I love you, Papa.”
“Be in for dinner,” He whispered into her hair. “Don’t stay out with your friends too long.”
She held on until Kira tapped the stone, the two of them vanishing, her arms closing around empty air. Her lungs shook as she let out a breath, right before another tremor went through the building and she felt it tipping under their feet.
“We’ve gotta move!” Maris hissed, and Calline roused herself, nodding, shaking herself and rising.
“Let’s figure out what the fuck happened,” She breathed, turning to her cousin. Sharp green eyes met her half-elf blue, Calline’s irises changing shape to be slitted, reptilian, “You want a ride?” Maris blinked, and then a slow, wicked grin spread over her face.
“Only since I was 12,” She looked to her wolves, giving them a whistle before lifting a hand, summoning them into the ring on her own finger. Calline turned, running, leading the other woman back to her room just as the spire began to fall in earnest. She kept running, leaving Maris teetering on the edge of her missing balcony as she leapt into the air.
Her form shifted mid-air, from a bronze-skinned half-elf woman to a massive, bronze-scaled adult Dragon. As the tower fell Maris jumped as well, and Creviadormi caught her, the satchel at her side having morphed into her saddle.
“Worst and best day of my life,” Maris breathed, drawing her bow again as she stood up in the saddle, “Let’s fuck up theirs!”
Crevia let out a bellow, swooping into the chaos of the streets below, blasting arcane dragonfire onto the Nerubians swarming the plaza.
Later she would have the breakdown threatening, down on the shore, in a stone inn surrounded by the small handful of neighbors who’d survived all this, crying on her cousin’s shoulder.
But for now, she was a Dragon, and someone had invaded her fucking lair.
