Azure Gloaming

It was a confusing time. Everything had happened so fast. One moment, Garrosh Hellscream was on trial for crimes against all of Azeroth. The next, he was fleeing into an alternate past with the intentions of finding and leading the “true” Horde.

Now, the members of Undying Resolution were also on the other side of the Dark Portal. Here they sat, looking upon a world that was but was not the Outlands they had previously known and honestly expecting they would never be able to return home. Following Garrosh had gotten them here, but it would not get them back.

The Temple of Karabor, known better to those from Azeroth as the Black Temple in another time and place, glittered like gemstones in the eternal moonlight of the Shadowmoon Valley. It was a marvel of Draenei architecture, a small piece of their home on Argus, and it had become their home and their connection to the people of this world.

These Draenei.

Ireenia had hardly found the time to stop and step back and take it all in, and she suddenly realized she was awed by all of it.

As a young blue dragon, she had been born on and had only ever seen Azeroth. Draenor was completely alien – the creatures, the landscape, and especially the sky. The sky, especially this nighttime sky that formed a canopy over her head standing outside of Karabor, was breathtaking. It made the entire cosmos appear as if it were barely out of her reach, inches from her fingertips. Space and eternity so close yet so far.

Were she really a Draenei, and not just wearing the appearance of one, this strange planet would have once been her home. It was the place where the Burning Legion had caught up to the outcasts of the Eredar race, those who had denied Sargeras’. It was where the demons had corrupted and manipulated the Orcs into thinking the Draenei their enemy.

The Orcs who had nearly exterminated the Draenei.

Ireenia flinched as she thought of such things. How easily those killed by the Orcs could have included her own adoptive parents – Lazheward and Effraeti. Instead, they been part of the remaining Draenei to flee Draenor, crash landing on Azeroth in the sabotaged Exodar.

Then, eventually they went on to save her as an egg, and raised her as their own daughter.

As she thought of such things, and realized how homesick she was, Ireenia heard a pair of voices. With pain tightening her chest, the woman thought them to be Laz and Effy. With a grimace, she tried to dismiss the thought as a trick of her memories, but the voices rose again, and Ireenia still could have sworn they were the very voices she had grown so accustomed to from her earliest memories outside of the egg.

With a peek from the corner of her eye, Ireenia tried to catch a glimpse without being conspicuous.

Her eyes widening, the woman spun on her hooves, and took in the sight of her parents. Both stood there, talking amongst themselves, very real and very much the two people she loved more than any others.

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