Chromie flew toward the internet café at full speed, equal parts confused and furious.
But the harder she flew, the more her confusion and fury grew.
She had lost track of how long she'd been flying — a distance that shouldn't have been long for a dragon, yet felt desperate — and somehow, no matter how fast she flew, she couldn't seem to reach the end of it.
The scenery around her kept falling away behind her, and Stormwind in the distance grew smaller and smaller, yet Gadgetzan at the horizon seemed as if it never got any closer.
"Cough, cough!"
Inside the internet café, Wayne erupted into a violent coughing fit.
What made Amy clap her hands over her mouth in horror was the mouthful of blood he sprayed across the table in front of him.
His face had gone deathly pale, his lips tinged faintly purple, his clothes and trousers soaked through with sweat as though he'd just been dragged out of a river.
Chen saw that things were going badly and quickly channeled his chi. Green energy gathered in his hands — first he blanketed Wayne in Soothing Mist, then maintained a steady flow of Enveloping Mist to channel chi into him continuously, providing what healing he could.
Amy asked anxiously: "How is he?"
Chen shook his head.
Though he was an exceptionally powerful Monk, his path of cultivation had focused primarily on Drunken Master and Windwalker — an integrated style of offense and defense — with most of his energy poured into the Drunken Master path. After all, he was a Pandaren who was never without a drink and had a deep love of good food.
The Mistweaver path of Monkhood — transforming chi into healing mist and restorative water to cure others of illness and injury — he had only studied superficially.
This had much to do with his personal history. One could hardly expect a Monk who had spent most of his life wandering alone and surviving the dangers of the wilds to focus heavily on healing others. His priorities had always been personal survival and techniques for defeating powerful enemies.
And so, while he managed to slow the rate of Wayne's deterioration for the time being, he could not fully heal him or pull him out of his critical condition.
"Of all the days to not have a single Priest around..."
Chen couldn't help but grumble.
Anita had gone with Maqubride to carry out a task Wayne had assigned them. Jesseta had been missing for some time. Among today's guests, there truly wasn't a Priest to be found.
Amy's eyes suddenly lit up: "Get Arator to help!"
Chen quickly stopped her: "We can't! Miller told us repeatedly — don't drag him into this world, and absolutely don't pull him into this situation!"
"Besides, he's a Retribution Paladin, and a young one at that. His cultivation isn't deep enough. Whatever healing power he has wouldn't be nearly enough..."
At that moment, Wayne struggled to speak: "Don't bother healing me... she's... coming..."
What had happened was this: that violent coughing fit and the blood it brought had caused him to involuntarily black out for a moment — and in that same instant, Chromie suddenly found that the internet café, which she had been flying toward without ever seeming to close the distance, was abruptly right in front of her.
Chromie landed, but did not shift back into her humanoid form. She saw Tess and Li Li standing guard at the entrance to the internet café.
The posture made it clear — they had been waiting for her.
"So this was all planned! Bring Wayne out, now!"
Chromie herself couldn't remember, across the long span of her years, the last time she — who wore a cheerful smile for everyone she met — had been this angry.
Tess took up a fighting stance: "You wicked dragon, you left and now you've come back breathing fire — what exactly are you trying to do?"
Chromie sensed the violently destabilizing timeline and knew she could not afford to waste even one more second here.
She began casting a time spell directly. Her eyes blazed with golden light, and then two hourglass-shaped sigils appeared above the heads of Tess and Li Li.
Li Li, seeing Chromie make a move, thrust out her palm immediately: "Chi Burst!"
The technique belonged to a Monk — one of Chen's favorite long-range attacks as well.
"What?!" Chromie faced the incoming chi wave, beat her wings, and rose into the air to dodge it — but was inwardly stunned.
Why did my time magic have no effect on them?!
Under normal circumstances, the spell she had just cast should have slowed the flow of time around these two to one-fifth its normal rate — meaning their speed should have been reduced to one-fifth of what it was.
"Slow!"
A woman's voice from inside the internet café recited the incantation. The wings Chromie was beating up and down immediately became sluggish.
Amy walked out, taking her place shoulder to shoulder with Li Li and Tess.
"Time Reverse!"
Her magic may have had no effect on these people, but casting it on herself still worked. Chromie reversed her own state back to the moment before she'd been hit, restoring her full speed.
"Magic really doesn't work too well on her — try this!" Tess called out.
Wayne had warned them beforehand: when fighting a Bronze Dragon, spells from Heroes of Might and Magic III might be treated as spells cast against a Gold Dragon, who was immune to levels 1–4, and would simply fail.
The moment Tess finished speaking, three throwing darts appeared in each of her hands.
She swung both arms in one motion, and all six darts flew toward Chromie in unison — fast and devastating.
Chromie scrambled to dodge, but hadn't expected the darts' damage to come not from piercing impact, but from exploding violently once they neared her body.
This was Ibuki's Kunai Ipponto from Street Fighter 5 — Tess's technique!
Sure enough, against moves from the Street Fighter universe, Chromie's Time Reverse could not rewind her body back to its pre-injury state.
Chromie had no desire to get bogged down fighting them. She prepared to fly above the internet café and tear straight through the roof with her claws to drag Wayne out.
But the three of them, having tasted success, had no intention of letting her go.
Amy quickly incanted in her mind:
"Nebula Chain!"
Two chains that seemed capable of extending infinitely shot from her hands and shackled Chromie's two hind legs. This was the technique of Andromeda Shun, the Bronze Saint!
But Chromie's strength was too great — Amy couldn't hold her.
"Diamond Star Fist!"
Tess immediately rushed to help. A single punch released a wave of freezing cold that locked Chromie's wings in ice. Unable to beat her wings, Chromie came crashing heavily to the ground!
Chromie was nearly out of her mind with rage.
She was in a state where she could not fulfill her duty, and very soon, her work would suffer a catastrophic failure — she would be forced to watch helplessly as this world's timeline underwent a shift nearly beyond her power to reverse, one that was all but irreversible.
For a Bronze Dragon, born with the Titans' charge to protect the timeline, this was the most profound humiliation imaginable.
"You brought this on yourselves!"
She slammed both wings against the ground with all her strength, shattering the ice that had encased them, then rapidly gathered energy and unleashed her breath weapon directly at the three of them.
Unlike a Black Dragon's fire breath, a Bronze Dragon's Time Breath directly steals years from its targets, accelerating their aging.
In an instant, the torrent of breath was nearly upon the three of them — when a flash of brilliant green blazed past, and the breath struck something like an invisible wall, scattering violently in all directions. The force blew chunks of brick from the café's walls, leaving them crumbling and barely standing.
"Uncle!" Li Li dropped the arms she'd thrown up instinctively in front of her face and cried out with delight.
Chen's left forearm was now clad in the Draco Cloth — the shield of the Dragon constellation, said to be the hardest among all 88 of the Gold Saints' armors — and it had blocked the blow.
"Rozan Rising Dragon Strike!"
Chen gave Chromie no time to catch her breath. He leaped forward, combining the Soaring Dragon kick he'd used once before against Onyxia with the Rozan Rising Dragon Strike into a single fused technique, flying toward Chromie with his foot aimed right at her.
But the last time he had used this against Onyxia, the Black Dragon had already been fighting for a long while and was heavily injured — and he had ambushed her mid-battle, catching her completely off guard.
The Chromie before him now was still in peak condition.
She activated Time Warp, applying its haste effect to herself.
As she accelerated, her four opponents naturally appeared to slow down around her.
Chen's flying kick played out in slow motion as Chromie sidestepped it with ease. His missed kick left him wide open, and Chromie's right wing caught him with a tremendous blow, sending him crashing to the ground.
"Her speed — how did she get so fast?!" Tess said, a trace of panic in her voice.
Chen rolled back onto his feet: "Then we meet speed with speed!"
"Pegasus Ryusei Ken!"
But even his rapid torrent of fist-shadows continued to play out like slow motion as Chromie — now stacking Time Warp on herself again and again, growing faster and faster — dodged every single one.
As Chromie bore down toward the café wall and was about to crash through to Wayne's side, Chen summoned every ounce of chi in his body and recalled the question Wayne had asked him the night before:
"Have you finished watching the first two arcs of Saint Seiya? If not, go finish them now, and remember the moves — what they look like, what they do."
Of all the moves in those first two arcs, the fastest was undoubtedly the one that appeared in the final two episodes: the Lightning Plasma of Leo Gold Saint Aiolia!
Chen's body blazed as though he were burning his Cosmo. A golden aura surged and expanded outward. He threw a single punch — and the air seemed to fill with countless golden streaks of light passing through and around Chromie's body from every direction.
Though she had grown much faster herself, the near-light-speed nature of this fist technique far exceeded even her expectations.
While each individual punch didn't hurt much, she could never know where the next one was coming from. Chromie had no choice but to cover her belly — unprotected by scales — with her wings, lowering her head and closing her eyes to guard her vital points.
At that moment, from within the internet café, Wayne's voice rang out — raw and hoarse, but fierce:
"Li Li! Right now!"
Li Li, who had been watching and waiting for just this moment, needed no further signal. She sprang forward through the flurry of Lightning Plasma strikes and extended a single finger. A blazing red beam pierced through Chromie's head — Chromie, whose defenses had been shattered by the barrage of fist-shadows, completely at a loss.
"Phoenix Phantom Fist!"
With her eyes shut, Chromie felt everything go quiet around her.
When she opened her eyes again, she found herself back in...
...
Stormwind Keep.
And Wayne was beside her.
"Watch," he said simply.
In the throne room, a man holding two stone tablets was shouting something at Lady Katrana Prestor in the Dragon Tongue — a language no one else could understand, but which Chromie knew well.
Under the power of this draconic incantation to dispel illusions, Katrana at last transformed before the eyes of all present, revealing her true form: Onyxia.
Daughter of Nefarian, the Black Dragon King — the former Earth Warden, and now child of Deathwing himself!
With her cover blown and her true form exposed, the Black Dragon Princess's first act was to rake her claws across the throat of the man who had revealed her.
Then the scene went dark. It brightened again, shifting to the Cathedral of Light.
A figure whose face could not be made out, wearing the robes of a Grand Archbishop, was kneeling before a shrine wreathed in violet flame, listening in silence. Behind him, a congregation bowed in worship, calling him the Twilight Father.
The image shifted again.
A great dragon whose scales were covered on the outside with plates of black armor soared up from a subterranean lair. In that moment, tidal waves surged, the earth cracked open, volcanoes erupted. Countless towns and villages were reduced to ash and ruin — like Helgen at the opening of Skyrim, but a hundred times worse.
At last the black dragon flew toward Stormwind, alighted upon the towers of its walls, and let out a roar that shook heaven and earth:
"I am... DEATHWING!"
The vision shifted once more.
An airship flew over a great harbor city, then dropped a red-violet sphere.
Seconds later, a world-ending explosion bloomed. A sphere of violet light swallowed the entire city — tens of thousands of living souls within — and in an instant reduced them all to flecks of magical ash. Not even dust remained.
What followed was an endless succession of disasters and wars, cutting from one to the next.
Chromie even witnessed the death of the High King of humanity — a blade driven through his chest from behind by a demon.
Until at last everything fell into darkness, leaving only Wayne and Chromie.
Wayne said: "Have you ever seen him?"
He snapped his fingers, and a dragon appeared — far larger and far older than Chromie's own draconic form.
Its belly and throat were white; its body a deep blue-black. An Infinite Dragon.
Chromie knew exactly who this was. It was the fate that Nozdormu, the Bronze Dragon Aspect, had seen for himself when he looked upon his own timeline's end: Murozond.
The leader of the Infinite Dragonflight, the Bronze dragons' greatest enemy — was Nozdormu himself.
Wayne spoke:
"If time is destined to be nothing but an unchanging fate — if everything is a script already written — then what meaning is there in every day this world fights for, in every act of resistance and defiance?"
"Those warriors who gave their lives against the catastrophes you just witnessed — catastrophes destined to happen — what exactly did they die for?"
Chromie stared at the vision of Murozond and said haltingly: "But... this is the mission of the Ancient Dragons. It always has been."
Wayne: "That is the mission the Titans gave you. Yet the Titans are not omniscient or omnipotent — Sargeras and the Burning Legion are proof enough of that."
Chromie: "But you must also know — Nozdormu warned us. If we ever try to alter the timeline according to our own wishes, we will fall and become Infinite Dragons. That would only make the world worse."
Wayne laughed openly: "So Nozdormu gave you that warning — and yet, after spending his entire life guarding the timeline from tampering, in faithful obedience to the Titans' will, he became an Infinite Dragon anyway. Doesn't that strike you as a contradiction in itself?"
Chromie was speechless. It truly was a profound contradiction — especially for a Bronze Dragon capable of seeing the future's end. To see clearly where your path leads, and to walk it nonetheless.
If becoming an Infinite Dragon was wrong, then what they were doing now was marching toward that very wrong ending. The timeline's final destination made that clear enough.
This was the deepest uncertainty in the hearts of all Bronze Dragons.
But it was like a thought-brand seared into them — they could not bring themselves to doubt the mission the Titans had assigned.
Wayne: "You act in accordance with the Titans' will. The Infinite Dragons act in accordance with the Old Gods' will."
"Yet one day not far from now, the Red Dragon Queen herself will stand with the other four Dragon Aspects and speak the words: 'The Age of Mortals has come.'"
"To save this world, the hope lies with those you call mere mortals — not with any one being who, from on high, imposes the direction of their own will upon it."
"Because for those mortals, this world is the only one. For those gods and cosmic powers, Azeroth is simply one world among countless others."
"Perhaps special — but still, in the end, insignificant."
Chromie sat with Wayne's words for a long moment before at last asking: "Where am I, exactly?"
Wayne's figure disappeared. Only his voice remained:
"You are within your own heart. The scenes you witnessed exist within your own heart. And the one you spoke with — that was your own heart as well."
Chromie opened her eyes again.
She was outside Windhelm, standing alone at the spot where she and Wayne had slain the dragon that had been resurrected there.
But Wayne and Delphine were both gone.
The dragon's bones — its soul already absorbed — still lay strewn across the ground, proof that the dragonslaying fight she and Wayne had shared truly had taken place.
The wind and snow beat against her face. The biting cold held her in a state of perfect clarity.
Chromie raised her right hand in disbelief, reached up, and removed the glasses still perched on her head — and realized she was sitting in the private booth.
"I... from that moment until now... I never left...?!"
"Everything that just happened — was it all something I saw in a... spiritual space?!"
"But I clearly took off my glasses, walked out of the internet café, and flew toward Stormwind..."
She immediately cast a time spell on herself, examining her own timeline to see what had actually occurred.
Sure enough — from the moment she and Wayne had re-entered the internet café together, when Wayne had tricked her into playing Skyrim by saying she would find the truth there, she had been sitting right here the entire time. She had never moved.
At that moment, Marlin walked in from outside.
"You were trapped in an illusion by his magic."
"I don't know how he managed it, but it was the most extraordinary spell I have ever seen."
"Yesterday he told us he would use a world preserved in his mind to trap you inside it. But he said it would consume an enormous amount of his mental energy — and his life force."
"We didn't understand what he meant. So he told us a story — about a monkey who, no matter how hard it flew, could never escape from a monk's palm."
"In any case, these are all things he asked this old man to tell you at this exact moment. He also asked me to tell you: there's no need to go to Stormwind anymore. The change he needed to make has already been made."
"I don't know what passed between you two just now, or what the world you were in looked like. But if you know any healing — you might want to go see him. He is in urgent need of treatment."
"It seems that in order to trap you, he came very close to spending his life."
Chromie got up and stepped out of the booth. She saw that the guests — those she recognized and those she didn't — had all gathered around Wayne's booth.
Arator, Chen, and Li Li were indeed all channeling healing spells into him, but the results seemed poor.
Amy had her arms around him. Tess was holding a cup and carefully trickling water into his mouth.
"What happened to this guy?"
Without waiting for Marlin to answer, Chromie strode quickly downstairs. Chen and the others saw her coming and could only sigh helplessly.
But Chromie had no means to heal Wayne.
Strictly speaking, Bronze Dragons did not use healing magic. Their method of healing was to reverse a person's own timeline back to the moment their body had been healthy — preserving their soul and memories intact while restoring physical wellness.
But clearly she had already tried this many times. Her time magic had no effect on Wayne whatsoever.
At that moment, several people came through the door. At the front was Saidan Dathrohan, practically shouting:
"Miller ! We did it! Miller , you absolute madman!"
Behind him was Andomath, equally ecstatic.
"Where is Miller?!"
Saidan saw a crowd gathered around something and his heart immediately sank.
The crowd parted to make way for him. He saw Wayne lying there critically wounded, and called out immediately: "Move aside! Let me through!"
Golden light — the energy of the Holy Light — gathered in his right palm, and his lips moved rapidly through an incantation.
A voice rang out, resonant and echoing, seeming to carry a depth of reverb that cut through everything. A beam of radiant light plunged into Wayne's body.
Quickly, the deathly pallor drained from Wayne's face, replaced by returning color. The purple faded from his lips, and his natural flush came back. But Saidan's knees buckled beneath him — he nearly sat down hard on the floor, and would have if Arator and Andomath hadn't caught him.
"Holy Healing?" Chen turned to Saidan. "That will drain every last drop of your mana in an instant."
Saidan didn't answer. He crouched down and took Wayne's hand: "This kid — never mind my mana. Even if it was my life for his, I'd do it."
At that, Wayne opened his eyes.
His life had returned and he was no longer in danger — but the immense drain on his mind still left him visibly dazed.
He spoke in fragments:
"Stormwind..."
"Mage Quarter... split the gold..."
"Make sure... everyone gets their share..."
"Don't forget... tanks and healers... get the bonus cut..."
The others exchanged glances, baffled by what he was saying.
Of course they didn't know: the Stormwind he had used to trap Chromie was the very same one — the Stormwind he had walked back and forth through countless times, between the bank and the auction house, turning in quests, being ported back through the summoning stone after raid nights, standing with his guild as they figured out who got what loot and divided up the gold.
The Stormwind he missed most of all.