"Puny mortals! I have had many names throughout history, all of them spoken with dread: Neltharion, Xaxas, and many more. Yet you shall know me best as Deathwing, for so I am! I am the bane of life, the darkness within history, the lord of death, the master of destruction. And I tell you now, and so it is true, that this world is mine.”
"Never!" Gruul replied, snarling, and launched himself at Deathwing. The giant gronn slammed into the colossal dragon's chest with an impact that cracked the cliffs around them and sent rock cascading down from the fractured peaks. It drove most of the Alliance forces from their feet and even the ogres to their knees. Other dragons had appeared along the valley walls, watching their father intently, and they were forced back a step as well. But when the dust had cleared, Gruul was shaking his head and Deathwing stood unmarred and unmoved.
"Is that the best the oh so mightн Gruul can do?" Deathwing sneered, lowering his head so that his bony forehead ridge brushed up against Gruul's own thick brow. "Is that all you have?" He lifted one forуclaw, the other still closed and curled up to his breast, and held it over Gruul's head as if he were preparing to squash an insect. It was like a signal. The dragons shrieked a battle cry, sprang from their perches, and flew with lethal grace toward the humans, ogres, and gronn lining the walls of the valley. The ogres seemed to be paralyzed, staring, slack-jawed, at the winged doom.
"Sons of Lothar! Attack!"
Turalyon's voice was clear and strong, and carried much farther than it should have. He lifted his hammer, his eyes bright, and charged forward to meet the drakes. The hammer glowed as it struck the first drake square in the skull. The beast dropped like a stone.
"For Quel’Thalas!" Alleria and her rangers began firing. Battle cries rose from the Alliance soldiers, elf and human alike, and it was joined by the carsplitting roar of the ogres and gronn as they roused themselves from their terror. The dragons swooped down, heady with excitement and pride in their father, spewing magma or clamping their jaws on their enemy. The ogres and gronn seemed to remember that they had fought drakes before, and again began to pluck the creatures from the very air and rip off their wings. One ogre slammed his flapping victim so hard into the wall of the valley that a whole chunk of it crumbled, sliding slowly down in a mass of broken stone and dust, burying in its path those too slow to escape.
Khadgar kept his eyes on the battle between Deathwing and Gruul. The gronn was brave to even go up against the black dragon, but he would lose soon. The mage suspected the only reason he hadn't lost before now was because Deathwing was toying with him, tormenting the creature he believed had slain his precious, obscene offspring before dispatching him.
And when he was done with Gruul…
They had to get that skull from him. Had to.
Khadgar raised his staff high, and muttered words of power. The resulting lightning strike scared his eyes, blinding him for an instant and leaving afterimages when he blinked. The massive bolt struck Deathwing square in the chest and actually succeeded in jolting the dragon back a few feet. Lightning skittered along the metal spinal plating like water droplets on a hot skillet, but Khadgar realized that the dragon was unharmed.
"Well struck, little mage," Deathwing acknowledged, though his long mouth curved up in a cold smile. "But I mastered such magics millennia before your race first learned of them — you will have to try much harder than that if you wish to breach my skin!"
Gruul hurled himself into the fray once more, rousing reluctant admiration from Khadgar as the mage frantically considered what to do. Deathwing turned his attention to the gronn, weathering its awesome blows easily and batting him aside with a quick flip of his wings.
Khadgar stared at the dragon, a sickening feeling spreading through him even as the mage attacked again. He watched with horror as Deathwing shrugged off a spell that should have turned his very bones to ice. Deathwing was right. Khadgar realized he'd been an arrogant fool. There was no way to pierce that armored hide.
Armored…
Khadgar's eyes narrowed. Deathwing shone in the red sunlight, gleaming like dark brass or pools of blood, and Khadgar studied him.
Metal plating…
With gaps and fissures underneath it that glowed magma-red…
And it all clicked. His ice spell hadn't worked because it couldn't hope to compete with the heat Deathwing's entire body generated. The black dragon was virtually made of lava! And those plates along his spine — which Khadgar now saw were red-hot along the edges and at the joints — were holding him together.
Lightning didn't work. Fire and ice were useless. His most powerful magics, and they didn't touch the dragon. But what about one of his weakest? What about one of the first spells they taught in Dalaran, a parlor trick every apprentice could perform at will?
Hope, painful and yet intoxicating, rose inside him.
It could work — maybe. It was the last card he could play, and so play it he would. Play it he had to. But he would need to get closer. Steeling himself, Khadgar squared his shoulders and pushed forward, brushing past where Turalyon and Alleria were battling a black dragon alongside two ogres. And walked, alone, toward Deathwing.
Fortunately, Gruul was keeping Deathwing busy, and neither of the massive creatures noticed the old-seeming man who crept toward them until he was only ten paces from Deathwing's head. Gruul was struggling to escape the heavy, taloned foot Deathwing had pinned him with, and the dragon was leaning in, his long jaws opening to bite, when Khadgar raised his hands and cast his spell.
Sensing the magic, Deathwing glanced around and, spying Khadgar, laughed at him. "More wizardry?" the dragon mocked, eyes slitted like those of an amused cat. "How entertaining. Have you not realized yet that your mightiest spells cannot harm me?" But then the words of Khadgar's incantation registered, and the dragon's eyes flew wide with alarm. "What are you — pathetic wretch, I will silence you!" He turned and, ignoring Gruul utterly, bore down with terrible purpose on Khadgar.
The sight was so horrifying Khadgar almost forgot to complete the spell. Shaking his head, he rallied, and spoke the command words in a voice that shook.
A loud creaking rose from the dragon before him. Deathwing screamed again, writhing in pain, as the metal plates covering his body began to shift, bending away from him. Joints snapped and several plates fell away completely — where that happened, magma erupted as if from a volcano, gushing out and spilling onto the valley floor. The armor really had been holding Deathwing together, and as Khadgar's spell removed it, the dragon began to lose cohesion.
"No!" Deathwing, if such a thing were possible, looked utterly taken aback. He craned his neck to look at the damage, at the crunched, warped metal, the seeping magma, then turned glowing eyes on Khadgar. "You may have won this battle, I give you that. But hear this, and hear it well, I have seen you, mage."
Khadgar gulped, unable to tear his gaze away.
"I have burned your face into my memory," Deathwing continued, his voice reverberating along Khadgar's bones. "I will haunt your dreams and your waking moments alike. Rest assured, I will come for you, and when at last I do, you will beg me for your death as the only respite from your terror."
His mighty wings unfurled again, his claws spasming open to release both Gruul and the skull, and Deathwing took to the air, his wings beating hard as he fled the mountains. Khadgar's legs, which had been shaking, finally collapsed and he sat on the ground for a long moment, gasping and acutely aware that he'd just been terribly, terribly lucky.