Death's Avenger 1# (Patreon)

WOOO!!! Alex Crate got this back to me, and I was able to get to it at 9 local.  Sorry guys, I would have tried to Grammarly it, but I am so damn nackered – next door neighbor has a new puppy that howls at the rain, and oh my god it is loud. Then had to be happy and sociable all day. 

I can’t program, and ain’t British.

Chapter 1#: Taking the High Road

The plan for Harry, Recca and Versera as they traveled south was to first head southwest, then, when they reached the Frostgang mountains, shift their course to go straight south for a time until they were nearly out of the mountains. Normally, Harry and his two companions could have just followed Kalimdor’s eastern shoreline. However, it was known among the Kaldorei that the Frostfang Mountains went straight into the ocean, and that area was home to a massive wyvern colony, allied with kobolds, harpies, and, according to rumor, even some beasts left over from the Burning Legion, although that was just rumor. Regardless, a large Sentinel fortress was located near the foot of the mountains, dedicated to keeping watch on the area.

This would also allow Versera to see more of the Frostfang Mountains. As a cartographer, she was very interested in the nature of the mountains, as they were only rudimentarily mapped out by the Unseen Path. Hence, among other reasons, Harry had several mapping tools for Versera in his yurt, stored in turn in its expanded pouch.

Harry, Recca and Versera formed a triangle as they flew southward, with the two harpies above and just slightly behind the green dragon’s head so that Versera could see both of them without needing to turn her head from side to side. Versera joked about this, saying, “This is a perfect example of why dragons are more evolutionarily advanced than harpies or kaldorei in our natural bodies. Our depth perception might not be the best at a distance, but we always see more of our surroundings than you can, and not just with our nonphysical senses.”

Indeed, thanks to the nature of their eyes and the placement of them on the sides of their heads, dragons could see much further to either side and above them than harpies, kaldorei or Harry. However, that didn’t mean they could see directly behind them or below their bodies.

This being the first time they’d tried to keep up with Versera in the air, Harry and Recca found they needed to push hard to keep up with the larger beast but were able to do so. For every single wingbeat Versera used, they had to use at least a dozen, and that was with the warm air current that came up off the dragon.

Harry had been somewhat surprised to discover that when they had left Danaveia. When he asked where it came from, Versera laughed, a sound like a strange mix of a loud horn and a bass instrument. “Hahaha, you have to recall that one of the things all Dragon Flights have in common is our fire breath.”

She released a short tongue of flame into the air, very carefully aiming in a different direction than her two companions and the forest below. The fire cut out quickly, yet even so, despite being at least three yards away, the heat of it slapped Harry in the face. He didn’t fear it, as being part phoenix at the moment, he had near-complete immunity to fire like that, yet it was impressive, and Recca had no such immunity. The warrior harpy flicked herself further away from the fire but remained close enough to hear Versera as she continued her explanation, the tongue of flame petering out quickly.

“We all, beyond red dragons anyway, have other types of breath as well, yet at base, that attack is the same across the board. Thus, we dragons have a lot of heat and gas boiling inside of us all the time. That makes us far, far hotter than any nonmagical creature. In flight, that heat comes out of our bodies rather than draining into the ground. This makes it easier to fly, something we all have noticed after a battle.”

“Ah, you mean after you’ve used up a lot of the built-up gases and so forth?” Harry guessed; an image of a hot air balloon coupled with a flamethrower appearing in his mind, which rapidly began to shrink as the flamethrower drained off the gas of the balloon. HAH. But definitely something I’m not going to comment on aloud. I’d wager there’s a lot more magic involved in the creation of dragon fire, anyway. There certainly was back in my old world.

“Well, that and the fact that after a battle, our internal magic has also been drained. Only Alexstraza and Malygos have such mastery of magic and their connection to the world around us that they can continually use magic without feeling exhausted after a few hours,” Versera admitted. “I’m no master magic user, for certain. Anyway, we always bring with us a certain amount of updraft via the hot air that you and Recca are taking advantage of.”

“And thank you very much for it,” Recca said, gliding for a few dozen yards before flapping her wings several times to remain where she was in position with the larger beast. “If not for that, we would both be quickly exhausted trying to keep up with you.” She laughed then, glancing over her shoulder. “Although, I have to wonder if it’s you or Harry that are attracting our fellow travelers.”

Those fellow travelers were nearly a dozen birds of all sorts that had flown up from the forest below. Ashenvale was home to a wide variety of avians, even more so than the Highmountain range, and Recca was interested in seeing the various hawks and smaller birds. There were no massive eagles like those that made their home in Highmountain with the Sky Horn tribe, but once more, it seemed that Harry’s presence had attracted more raptors than any other variety. They had come up in singles or small groups, but now flew all around them, letting loose with calls —some musical, some harsh, others wondering — as the more intelligent birds watched Versera warily.

Laughing along with Recca, Harry nodded towards an owl flying nearby, his eyes locked on Harry. I’d call you a barn owl, but there’re no barns around her, my friend. I’d also call you my large friend, considering your size, but my definition of that word has undergone some changes since I came to this world. “Hah, you might become exhausted, Recca, but I’ve got a few enchantments I’m just dying to try out to see if I can keep up with Versera on my own.”

Versera snorted at that, also taking in all the disparate birds around them. “If you think I create an updraft, you would be amazed what red dragons do, ahaha, and how many birds they always attract. It makes this amount seem small in comparison, although I would say Harry’s presence has certainly had an impact on the mix of birds we’re seeing. I remember at least two red dragons, a bonded pair, who figured out a way to enlarge the updraft they created while flying in order to attract more birds. They liked their twittering, likening it to music for some reason.”

“Eh… I suppose it would depend on the species,” Harry snorted, shaking his head, as several more raptors approached him, matching their wing beats to Harry for a few moments, watching him thoughtfully before moving away as they he left their territory. Another behind them came closer and stayed, joining the owl in warbling happily. He still tended to attract large birds like that wherever he went, although funnily enough, not nearly as much when he was in his half harpy form like this then when he was in his human form. None of them are trying to land on me, or come within touching distance, and there’s only a few dozen, not the hundred plus I’ve occasionally attracted before this.

“Red robins, maybe some other species can be said to make noises that are almost musical. But what about eagles, let alone seagulls or crows? Crows are smart to be sure, but no one’s ever said that their croaking is musical. Seagulls are even worse, especially when there’s a lot of them.”

“And there you run into the same problem that my acquaintances ran into,” Versera laughed once more, a deep bass sound that reverberated through the air despite sounding somehow feminine, scaring a lot of the birds off for a moment. “Apparently, they had to cross the ocean at one point and stopped using that enchantment within a few minutes of leaving the shoreline. As far as I know, they’ve never used it since, although that was several hundred years ago.”

That was more than an hour and a half ago, and as the sun finally began to rise, the three of them continued on. They wanted to get to and push through the mountain range separating the forest of Ashenvale from the rest of the continent in two days, hence their early start.

Harry hadn’t realized this at the time, but he and Tyrande had, during their crusade against the Frostmaul Giants, actually only been really operating in the lower and mid regions of those mountains. The mountain range spread north to south far deeper than he had known before seeing a map of the continent of Kalimdor that the Unseen Path had created a few hundred years after the final reverberations of the Sundering had passed.

Even now, the Unseen Path didn’t have a detailed map of the interior of Kalimdor, but at the time, one of their Cartographers had been able to at least travel through the range. He had then estimated the size of it, although Milifiana admitted the map wasn’t the best quality, unlike the numerous maps they had detailing Ashenvale or the coastline area of southern Kalimdor.

Nevertheless, the map revealed that the mountain ranges were actually significantly taller in certain areas. Versera, who had been in the area when those mountains had finished forming after the Cataclysm, had said that several of them actually rose so high in the air that even harpies, dragons and other hardy, albeit magically assisted flyers, could not breathe. So they would have to wind their way through the mountains rather than try to go over them at that point.

She also said something about the shape of the range changing even after that old map had been made. But we will see on that score. I’m no mapmaker myself, but the more information we bring back, the better, Harry reflected as he thought about that old map.

There was, however, another reason for wanting to get an early start, one that Recca brought up now as they continued to fly high over the emerald verdancy of Ashenvale below. “Harry, do you think we should slow down and try out these weapons you made for me for aerial combat? You said we would.”

Blinking, Versera’s leftmost eye twisted around to concentrate on Recca, only now realizing that she was wearing something different than the pouch of stones on her fore-talon. Instead, Recca was wearing a belt around her waist that connected to another piece of armor, which bulged slightly away from her thigh. There were apertures at both ends of the piece on her thigh, with the belt helping to distribute the weight of the armorr. On her other leg, she wore a knee guard.

It looked… well, if Versera was feeling generous, she would have said it looked odd. But Versera always preferred to be blunt, so, “That looks ridiculous. If that’s armor, it fails miserably. I know you harpies can wear armor. What is the point of just armoring your thigh?”

Recca cackled. “I said the same thing!”

“Hey! I will have you know that most prototypes of new inventions, or in this case, weapons, often look bizarre. I could’ve made that setup look a little better if that hadn’t been what, number fifty-five on my list of priorities over the past two decades?” Harry responded sarcastically. “If you don’t want to try them out, Recca, we can wait until I’ve figured out all the kinks on my own.”

“Hey!” Recca squawked. “I wasn’t complaining. It was Versera who pointed it out, not me. Besides, we haven’t had a chance to practice with these new weapons you gave me yet, and I really want to. Hah, if we meet any feral harpies, just imagining their face when I can hit them at range without magic of my own, HAHAHAHAH!”

She cackled then, an honest-to-goodness Evil Witch cackle, and Harry found himself grinning over his friend, shaking his head. “Combat junkie.”

“Hah! You say it as if you’re not also one, Harry, or do I need to remind you of that time when you and Tyre pulled an all-nighter sparring, all in the name of trying out his new weapons and a few of your new spells?” Recca retorted.

Harry looked away, whistling, a sight that caused both Versera and Recca to laugh.

As he looked away, Harry reflected that if anyone had told him that Recca would be the harpy he was closest with after they had first returned to Trueshot Lodge, Harry would’ve thought them a liar. But it was true. Unlike the twins, who made no bones about, and had always been far too upfront about wanting to be more than friends with him, Recca had only ever been semi-attracted to Harry. She didn’t push it like the younger pair, nor did she come over overly flirtatious like a few of the other harpies had occasionally over the years. Recca understood that their lack of arms and legs was a turnoff, even if he found the rest of the package attractive. Recca also wassn’t the kind to share, unlike the twins, and had not pursued him while Harry was dating Sylina.

More than that, she wasn’t much of a chatterbox as many of the other harpies were ever since Harry had used his Songbird spell on them. She was rather more inclined to introspection, quiet moments away from battle and discussions about fighting, than to anything else. When it came to combat, training, or pushing herself in any kind of physical manner, Recca always gave it her all.

In a way, she reminded Harry of Oliver Wood and how he had been about Quidditch, a comparison that came to him now as Recca looked at him expectantly, waggling her armored knee at him. A set of armor that had several tiny etchings marked out on them, all of which gleamed with their own light, not the reflected light of the sun as the rest of it did. She looked for all the world as eager as Oliver had ever been about trying out a new formation or plan, regardless of how muddy, battered and annoyed the rest of the team was.

Although, come to think of it, Recca doesn’t actually play Quidditch does she? Oliver’d be horrified by that choice, Harry reflected with a snort.

Harry had taught the harpies Quidditch about seven years ago, and it’d quickly become a favorite pastime among them all, albeit with some changed rules. Chasers and seekers and keepers had all been positions that came easy to harpies, although for some reason, none of them liked playing keeper. It was simply too defensive for their taste. Not even Irene, Recca’s mother, pointing out that defending the rings was good practice for defending their nests against enemy harpies or other aerial beasts was enough to interest them.

Beyond that issue, of course, was the concept of beaters. While every harpy liked the idea of smacking someone else with a ball – Cassandra’s Flock was civilized, but that didn’t mean they were all gentle – holding a bat or any kind of polearm was completely impossible for them. But with the help of the tauren from the Unseen Path, who all rather enjoyed watching the game, they had created specialized beater bats that resembled a large tennis racket at one end, coupled with a gauntlet designed for harpies at the other. It was finicky and tough to use, but it was still fun, and if Oliver could only see Viol, Cilla and Icsy flying in formation, he probably would’ve had conniptions or run himself ragged trying to think of strategies for them.

“Anyway, what exactly do you mean when you say you need to practice your new aerial combat style? “Versera asked, one of her eyes twitching in its socket to lock onto each of her companions.

“What’s aerial combat like among dragons?” Harry answered her question with a question of his own, honestly curious to see if maybe, because of their fire breath, the dragons had developed a similar mode of combat to the one he wanted to introduce the harpies to.

In a way, they had, although not to the extent Harry had hoped.

“There are four normal strategies dragons use during aerial combat. There’s the surprise attack. A sudden attack from an angle that your enemy doesn’t see you coming from can often turn the entire battle against your enemy. Normally, that means attacking from on high and behind, or below, where an attacker would have more room to maneuver, yet it’s the more dangerous approach. First, a defender could perhaps turn the tables on an attacker who has been seen and doesn’t realize it. In many such cases, both the attacker and the attacked get a chance to use their breath weapons. Flame, acid, or lightning-based breath attacks won’t normally be powerful enough to down a Dragon in one go, which means closing with fang and talon.”

Versera fell silent, her eyes flicking back forward, a shiver going through her body as her tail drooped as if she was remembering something unpleasant. “Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. Alexstrasza’s flame is so powerful that it can turn most smaller dragons into ash, although she’s so big that she would have a hard time trying to sneak up on someone. And I well remember Deathwing and a few others whose breath attacks were so incredibly deadly that…”

She shivered again, then her voice became more clinical as she pushed the bad memories away once more. “As I said, most of the time a breath attack isn’t enough. In that case, closing in from your initial angle of attack is the norm. Of course, coming from below means the defender can bring all four arms to bear, but even from directly behind and above, we dragons have long developed the skills necessary to make an attack difficult.”

Here, Versera flexed her tail, which whipped up and around almost like a scorpion tail for a second, before creating a whip crack noise in the air directly behind Harry, then Recca, showing both incredible dexterity and aim. “Following on this type of attack is the dive. Coming in from above and behind, an enemy dragon can get into what is known as a kill zone to us. If I was attacked as I am flying now by another dragon from on high, and he was able to get his claws into my wings, I would have a very, very tough time of surviving, let alone winning that kind of battle. Keeping an enemy from achieving that is a major part of dragon-on-dragon combat.”

“It’s the same for harpies in a way, although it wouldn’t be very easy to simply dive down on top of one of us,” Recca said. She smirked before flicking herself to the side, then down, then back up, before literally stopping in midair for a second, only to have to flap her wings hard to return to her previous position in Versera’s eyesight. “Even with someone using Fel magic or the tainted magic of the Old Gods would have a very tough time tagging us at range. Well, unless they could throw out spells rapidly enough to hit a wide area with them. Beyond that, such matriarchs would need to come close enough that they had no chance of missing.”

“Yes, well, we dragons can’t maneuver that well, dear,” Versera said dryly. “Although our scales are tough enough to throw off most spells and even most physical attacks from other species. If I ever ever fought such a matriarch, as you put it, I would simply ignore the attacks from the rest of her flock and tear them apart or set them on fire with impunity.” She twisted her head around and chopped her teeth at Recca. “So don’t be so enamored of your mobility, little sparrow.”

Recca huffed, but stayed silent as Versera turned forward again, continuing her explanation. “Really, most dragon-on-dragon battles, or battles between those of equal age and strength at least, end in the last ‘strategy’ which hardly should be dignified by that term in my opinion. We greens call it the ‘sprawl’ when two combatants are locked in a kind of midair dance, with one trying to catch up to the other or attack from behind, and the other trying to turn the tables on them in some fashion.”

Now it was Versera’s turn to huff. “The reds call it something else, the name escapes me, but they actually train, fight one another in mock sprawls, to learn how to move and predict their enemy’s attacks. I’ve never seen the point of that, isn’t flight and combat all about instinct at that point?”

Harry and Recca exchanged a glance, before shaking their heads in unison, disagreement writ large on their faces. Instinct could only help you so far. After that, you needed training and exercise to maximize your body's capabilities. Which doesn’t even consider whether or not such exercises help build up muscles and agility.

“And then finally, we come to hand-to-hand combat. Normally, if a fight gets to that point, and the two sides are still evenly matched, neither having taken debilitating wounds, the dragons will become locked together. Eventually, the two dragons will end up on the ground somewhere, still locked in mortal battle as their wings are injured. After a certain point even the magic within us, which does far more than our wings to let us fly, won’t be able to do enough. And let me tell you, hitting the ground at speed hurts!”

Versera sighed, a breath of hot air visible as a shimmer in front of her that an enterprising goshawk used to fling itself upwards and away. Versera didn’t notice, locked in a particularly nasty memory.

“In that kind of battle, reds and blacks have major advantages over blue, green and bronze flights. Reds tend to have the ability to regenerate from their injuries to a certain degree, while blacks are much bulkier and able to absorb more damage than the other flights, having taken something of the durability of the earth into their scales. We greens and the other flights have tricks and skills, but the one time I fought a black my own age one-on-one and could not get away, I lost badly. The black bastard had me dead to rights before one of my brothers came along and hit his face with a blast of acid.”

“Well, except for that bit about fighting on the ground, that’s pretty much the same thing with my folk. The only people among us who have long-range attacks are those who have found some source of Taint or called upon Fel magic to feed the emptiness within us left by Aviana’s death... or those so lost to barbarity that they use their own eggs as such. I always find it odd to think how similar the spells such matriarchs can use are, even if their origins are so very different. Even more, there’s little real difference between how a Fel corrupted or an Old God’s Tainted harpy acts. It makes me wonder sometimes about the connection between the two,” Recca mused before shaking her head.

She then laughed. “In comparison, the various gifts my flight has begun to develop since we pledged ourselves to Ohn’ahra and received her feather are very different.” The nature magic from Ohn’ahra’s feather had a profound effect on all of Cassandra’s flock, with all of them developing unique magic all their own, which the harpies had taken to calling Gifts. Only a few of those Gifts could be used in combat, but even so, Recca was certain they would come as a profound shock to anyone who attempted to fight them. Heh, even my Gift will surprise anyone trying to get close with me.

“Still, even with those Gifts, for most of the rest of us, it comes down to talon and wing smacks… and occasionally, some of my feral cousins even resort to biting. Which is both disgusting and disturbing since we don’t honestly have the jaws for it unless our bodies have mutated due to Fel magic saturation.” Recca shivered, her earlier good humor dissipating for a second as she, like Versera, remembered some past horror before her good humor came back with a vengeance, and she gestured with a jerk of her head toward Harry. “But then, as I said, Harry came along.”

“Yes, the expanding pouch that allowed you to drop boulders on your enemies,” Versera said, twisting her head around to look at them directly. “I watched you use them to good effect on the satyrs. Are those items you’re wearing now built along the same kind of principle, that is, the expansion of something and then dropping it on your foes? Boulders are all well and good, but I know of various concoctions the kaldorei have come up with that can explode or release gases of various types.”

“I suppose you could say this is an evolution of that, although not in the way of different ammunition. That's an interesting thought, and something we might explore in the future. But runes are way too difficult to create and then use on something that is going to be thrown away on one attack like Recca’s boulders,” Harry answered. “Any damage the array sustained while in use would force me to redo the whole thing.”

Harry zoomed sideways in the air, bringing him closer to Recca. From there, he flew directly above and behind her for a second, gesturing down at her equipment. “As for what I hope I achieved with Recca’s new gear, well, I wanted to give them a kind of stone hurling system that could match the range of dragon fire or similar spells. Unfortunately, I’ve had so many other demands on my time, Recca’s wearing the only prototype of that idea I’ve come up with so far, and it’s based off the same principle as the drop pouch.”

That was the name the harpies had come up with for the expanded pouches they could use to drop stones from their talons.

“It isn’t really a finished product yet, at least I don’t think it is. Ideally, I’d like to create something that could basically imitate a low-level spell, a cutting spell or a penetrating type spell that would shoot out in front of the harpy wherever the user is looking. But that’s really difficult to do with runes. You see, there’s not just the spell matrix you need to put into rune form, there’s the idea of calling on it multiple times, so a power source needs to be part of the total array, and then there’s the whole aiming aspect, which either has to be part of some kind of existing enchantment, perhaps based on…”

“Stop mumbling Harry,” Recca snorted, flipping herself to fly on her back for a moment, giving Harry a mock glare that shut him up for a second. Either that, or the sight of my tits bouncing. I’ve seen him look a time or two over the past few months even if he doesn’t like the rest of the package, Recca snickered internally.

Flicking herself back around, Recca addressed Versera. “Sorry, but that’s what I would call a pre-mumble from Harry. He then goes into more rune-specific information, rolling out the names of several dozen runes before explaining how they wouldn’t all interact in the way he wanted them to, going over old experiments and so forth. For anyone besides Harry, it’s impenetrable gobbledygook.”

“Er… Right,” Harry answered while Versera laughed cheerfully. “I’ll try to keep it simple for the laymen. The original drop pouch is only really useful against terrestrial targets, targets that are on the ground, I mean. If you’re trying to hit something in the air, something that’s mobile, you need your attack to go a lot faster than a stone dropping towards the ground. Which meant I needed to add more runic arrays to the weapon… although calling it a weapon is…”

Versera laughed, flapping her wings just a little harder, sending it up an updraft from the side of them that caught Harry, sending the much smaller Harry tumbling a little, while Recca, who had been maintaining her position appropriately ahead of Versera’s wings, wasn’t hit at all, the extra wind simply allowing her to glide forward on the updraft for a few moments. “I see what you mean, Recca. It sounds fascinating, Harry, but I am not a blue or a, what did the others call you? A rune warrior?”

“Yeah. It’s honestly a good name for what I’ve become, I suppose, if somewhat too on the nose,” Harry answered with a droll chuckle. “Anyway, what I did was create a new array that would create an attraction between one object and another in order to let a stone shot out of one of the two apertures on that thigh guard home in on an enemy to a certain degree. The stones still don’t come out very fast, and honestly, the attraction aspect is a pale imitation of simply shooting wherever you’re looking, but…”

This time, Harry stopped himself, and he shook his head as he looked over at Recca. “Well, anyway, I’m not happy with it, and really am not certain any portion of the prototype will work beyond the whole expelling stones thing. Still, you want to try them out now?”

Recca nodded eagerly, and after requesting that Versera slow down a little, the two of them worked their way up into the air above the green dragon. Once they had enough space to play with, Harry dove down, and Recca dove after him, while Versera watched from below with interest. Any stones that missed would be far too small for her to be bothered by.

“You need to come within at least a hundred meters of me!” Harry shouted, twisting his head almost entirely around to look at Recca above and behind him, a trick that his half-phoenix form could allow him to do that always reminded him of Hedwig. “Then, you will want to point the talon ring at me for a few seconds before tapping it on the side of the leg tube.”

“You’ve told me all that before, now, let’s see if I can actually do it midflight, Harry!” Recca shouted. “And you had better really try dodging, or else this really won’t teach us anything!”

Frankly, I doubt it will, but if I can gain access to the same ability to fling out attacks that Harry has with his magic, I would be unstoppable! And this way, at least Harry will have some further ideas on what to do in the future. And you better believe I will be on him every step of this journey to figure it out, Recca thought as she tried to close with Harry.

“Well, that and the fact that I don’t actually want to get hit,” Harry drawled, dodging to one side, then flapping upwards for a second before he did a corkscrew in midair, delighting in the feel of flying even as Recca overshot him twice in quick succession. Yes, flying had been hard on his arms at first, but now, with two decades worth of training to build up those muscles, it was second nature. And good Lord, it always feels amazing to fly like this. It isn’t quite as good as flying my Firebolt in a Quidditch game, but it’s far better than anything else. And even then, there’s a feeling of being the one who is flying that a Firebolt could never match.

Recca’s mobility was just as good as Harry’s, and she had far more experience in this kind of fight. She slowly began to close, experience winning over Harry’s flare while Versera watched, amused with the aerial display but wanting them to get on with it.

A few moments later, after Harry straightened out from a barrel roll, she got her wish. Recca had cut across his course and now came close enough. A second later, as a green light began to build along the talon ring, Recca flicked that leg up, tapping it against the upper thigh of her other leg, the talon ring tapping against the metal thigh guard. As Versera kept watching, she saw the green light in the talon ring transfer into the thigh piece before. From the top of the thigh guard came a stone, propelled forward of her position.

How that worked, Versera didn’t know, but the stone, about the size of two tauren fingers pressed together, shot out, the green magic from before covering the stone in turn. What did Harry say about causing an attraction between the target and the stone? Odd, and I think he really should not have cared so much about that aspect. I suppose even extremely smart people make mistakes sometimes.

Regardless of her thoughts on that score, Versera could see that there did indeed seem to be some kind of magnetic pull between the stone and Harry, as it did seem to follow him in flight as he juked away. However, Versera immediately noticed other problems. First, the projectile was traveling at a very slow speed. It couldn’t cross the bare twenty meters between the two combatants fast enough to tag Harry before he had shifted well away from his previous position. Second, even though the stone did follow him, it didn’t for very long. The magic drawing it to him faded, and the stone instantly lost its battle with gravity, falling toward Versera and plinking off the scales along her back before falling to the forest below.

Undaunted, Recca kept on, locking in on Harry now to the point he couldn’t get away. In a real dogfight, Recca knew, Harry would have already turned towards her and hit her with one of his combat spells. Worse for her, though, was the fact she needed to aim her leg at Harry, as well as the amount of time. “This is so damned awkward!” She finally shrieked, as Harry once more shifted away from where her talon was pointing in time for the green glow to start cutting out. “Harry, you were really hunting down the wrong rat when you thought about all this homing nonsense!”

“Yeah… sorry, Versera.” Harry hovered in place for a second turning back to face Recca, assuming that the spar was finished. “Don’t really know where that idea came from. I thought about this old spell I found in my old world once that homed in on a target, and thought that maybe firing a wide stream of stones that all home in on the enemy wouldDDOUCH!!”

That was as far as Harry got before he squawked as a stone slammed into his shoulder, sending him tumbling almost to the point where he lost control of his flight entirely. Recca followed him down, smirking all the while.

“Has anyone told you you can be a bitch, lately, Recca?” Harry grumbled.

Recca’s smirk turned into a grin at that. “I never said the spar was over, Harry. That’ll teach you to be more aware of your surroundings. And by the way, it’s more like fifty instead of a hundred meters. And I still had to aim my leg towards you, which is every kind of awkward when I’m trying to fly after you. When we fly my legs are behind me, so when I have to flip my legs forward, like I’m going in to claw at something, but then need to flip them back into flight formation a moment later.”

She grimaced a bit as she glanced down her body past her chest. “My waist muscles are hurting something fierce right now. I kind of wanted to spread the pain a bit.”

“Okay, so even if we continued with the homing concept, it wouldn’t be viable,” Harry grumbled, twitching his shoulder. “Although, I will admit, that hurt a little more than I expected.”

However, Versera, who by this point was hovering just below and behind both of them, shook her head, her head rising to the point it was level with them. “Harry, you have to understand that birds of all sorts have different types of bones than terrestrial animals. Even harpies, who are far denser and stronger than any bird of a similar size, could be without magic, and I presume your form, as well, would be susceptible to that.”

Harry snorted that, indicating he’d already known that he just hadn’t felt the reality of it for himself before. That caused Recca to laugh and Versera to shake her head from side to side, a motion which was quite impressive from a dragon, given the size of their necks. “Anyway, from my perspective there are a few issues with your, what did you call it, prototype?”

When Harry nodded, Versera went on. “The basic idea of homing in on something is interesting, and I have seen several spells that do that, but if a harpy can’t direct the spell, then you need to make up for it with volume. Fire out several stones instead of one. And, yes, Recca was right. Having the weapon on your legs is foolish.”

“Where did you come up with that idea anyway, Harry?” Recca asked.

“Remember the twins volunteering to help? I first made a kind of harness that would go over their shoulders, but both of them said it felt more natural on the thigh,” Harry explained with a shrug. “I asked you for your opinion at the time, and you told me you didn’t care, so…”

“UGH… damn it, now I remember that conversation and want to smack myself,” Recca grumbled. “As for the twins thinking having something on our shoulders like that would feel weird, that might be true, but it also doesn’t matter. We’ll need to train ourselves to ignore it.”

Harpy shoulders were vitally important for their wing movements, so Recca could understand why the idea of a harness or, worse, a breastplate that matched the thigh guard in size and went over the shoulders, would seem strange and even hamper their flight. But having the holes where the stones came out on the shoulders still felt a better option. “Or… and this feels weird to even think, put the hole in between our breasts? Ugh, it’s hard to explain what I mean.”

“Could I land on your back for a moment, Versera? I think we need some visuals to help us here,” Harry requested.

Versera nodded, and Harry alighted down on her back. A hasty sticking charm and a quick change back to his normal body followed. Harry then held up his hand and created an image of Recca in the air. “So, where exactly would you like the weapon to be?”

Recca flew around the image for a second then asked Harry to shift the image onto its chest in midair. “That’s the way we fly, after all.” The next moment, she pointed to a place right below her chest. “Could you make a harness or something to hold the runic weapon system here? Putting it out that far would let the harpy using it avoid hurting herself with the discharge.”

Harry scowled a little. “I could, but you’d still need some means to trigger it, and that comes back to the whole not having hands thing, hence why I thought moving it to the thigh was an okay idea if it felt comfortable.”

“What about… hmm… linking it to a monocle or something? Maybe glasses?” Versera murmured. She was no blue dragon, fascinated with all things magic, but she was inquisitive by nature, and this sounded fascinating. “Have them lock onto something like you were having Recca do with her talon claw.

“First of all, no, that’s way too small,” Harry answered instantly, shaking his head firmly. “That talon claw is about as small as I could get those runes, and even that took creating special tools and a lot of time and effort, and then it needed to send the image of the thing it was supposed to fire… oh, wait, if we take out the homing aspect and you’re just triggering… possible. But I would still need to send that to the weapon array… That kind of thing was my initial thought, to let them shoot out at a speed, which again I haven’t figured out, at something they are looking at, but to send it to the weapon array is still a tough ask.”

Working out that phrase took even Recca a moment, but when she did, “Maybe something like a rope or something, or a chain, since I remember you once said that rope and cloth didn’t take runes very well. Have it run through the interior of the half-plate up to my face and connect there to a, a…” she scowled shivering. “A helmet or something with a pair of glasses fitted into it?”

“That… could work… Hmmm…” Harry mused, looking up at the image, cancelling it, then redoing the image with Recca’s suggestion. Even as Recca held back a scowl at the idea of a helmet, it being a point of pride for harpies to always have their crests, their hair, showing, he continued to hum in thought. “I could do something like this, I think. But… the problem still is the issue of the speed of the attack. I really thought I was on to something there with the attraction aspect, but the speed aspect is extremely hard to figure out in terms of runes.”

“A lot of creating new magical spells is based on trial and error. I wouldn’t worry about it, Harry,” Versera said, her long neck snaking from one side to another again as she took in the image before twisting her head around to stare forward once more.

“Maybe instead of trying to figure out a way to give us a weapon like this, you can follow up on my mother’s suggestion and concentrate on giving us something to wear that acts like permanent enchanted armor,” Recca suggested.

“I could do both once I figure out a way to fit you with chest armor that doesn’t impede your wings,” Harry waved that off. “I’d put the toughness and hardening runes on the inside or maybe on the back, then use the chest side to create the weapons array. However, until I figure out the speed aspect, anything I do will be limited, both in range and impact. Sorry, Recca.”

“It’s fine, Harry. I figured there would be a lot of issues.” In all honesty, Recca was still extremely happy with the original weapons that Harry had come up with for her. Her claw weapons enchanted to cut through anything would make her a horror in close range, and the expanded pouch of stones that she could use to drop on the heads of enemies. It wasn’t as good as having a breath weapon or spells of her own, but Recca was happy with whatever she could get.

Nodding at that, Harry banished the image from above him, unstuck himself, and transformed back to his phoenix form. Launching himself off of Versera, he shifted back to where he had been flying in relation to Versera and Recca. The triangle of flyers continued on for a time, with Recca and Versera talking about fights they had been in, taunting one another about Versera’s lack of agility and Recca’s lack of durability as Harry stared ahead of himself, more in his Occlumentic realm than the real world, thinking about his project. It would take a considerable amount of time before he could even put down another prototype, let alone something in actual stone or steel, but working on the basic outline in his mind would help down the line.

Eventually though, he began to get frustrated, and shook his head, just as Versera commented on how she had seen one of her fellow greens tank a spell from a kaldorei magician who had joined the Burning Legion. Blinking, that reminded Harry of something he’d been wondering. “By the way, Versera, and stop me if this is a social no-no—”

“That does not bode well, ever,” Versera snickered.

“—but could I maybe have a scale or several to experiment on? Or a claw? I don’t know how fast they…” Harry broke off as Versera’s head whipped up and toward him so fast and so close that he nearly ran into her open maw head first.

“YESSSSS!” She hissed, her fury practically crackling off her in an aura of nature magic. “That isssss very much a ssssoical NO-NO!”

“Okay, fine,” Harry’s wings beat against his momentum, pulling him away and back as Versera stared at him for a moment before snorting and turning around while Recca just stared, her eyes wide. “I’m sorry, th, that’s why I asked if it was a problem.”

Versera kept on staring at him, her wings beating automatically and driving them forward even as she stared back at Harry. With a huff, she turned forward, ignoring Harry as she calmed down for a moment. “Let me guess, she snarked. “That’s something from your old world, I suppose?”

“Um, yes, but I’m now kind of worried to say more,” Harry stated, while in his pocket, Quetzal, who had been sleeping throughout the day only to be woken up by Versera’s snarl, began to snicker.

“Speak,” Versera growled.

“Um, well, you know about potions? How they need special ingredients and so forth? Well, in my world, that’s taken to an extreme.”

“You have dragons there, and use them for, for--” Versera allowed some smoke to appear from her mouth as her long neck twitched in preparation for turning around towards Harry once more.

“They aren’t like you!” Harry interrupted hastily. “They are cunning and every type of dragon in my world is an apex predator, but they aren’t intelligent. I can’t even speak to them in Parseltongue. They are beasts, and can’t use any magic of their own, just fire breath and flight, no matter how old they are or what breed.”

“Tell me more of them. I am still debating on seeing how your strange resurrection would look for myself, Harry,” Versera ordered.

Harry explained more about the dragons in his world, and after a while, Versera calmed down on that score, although she still promised to do something nasty to Harry in the future. After a bit, she became rather appalled. “Your dragons do not sound worthy of the name dragon, Harry. Yet I am… still not pleased with the idea of offering up my scales and claws to your experiments. You can take claws and scales from a dread dragon if you are the one who kills it. I would not even argue with eating such a dragon’s flesh. But that is as far as I will go.”

Harry nodded then agreed verbally, and Versera’s last vestige of anger faded away. “Tell me more about the monsters in your world. Are dragons the most dangerous among them even in that stunted, bestial, pathetic state?”

Feeling as if Versera was now more incensed at the use of the term dragon being used to describe the animals of that name from Harry’s home dimension, the young wizard agreed quickly. She had already heard about basilisks thanks to needing to explain Harry’s chimeric self, so Harry described the other quadruple X or five X monsters. Giants drew no interest from either him or Recca, thanks to there already being vrykul on Azeroth, while Thunderbirds sounded interesting to Recca. On the other hand, Nundu sounded fascinating.

“And you say they are resistant to heat, cold and spellfire of all sorts? To go along with speed, intelligence and gas breath strong enough to empty whole towns?” Versera hummed. “They sound fascinating. Do you have any idea how they taste?”

“Wh, no!” Harry answered with a laugh. “I might have been one of the most powerful wizards alive, and I was involved in one nundu hunt, but I certainly never ate nundu meat.”

“Hmmm… pity. I have to say, though if those are the worst of the monsters in your world, it sounds remarkably boring,” Versera shook her head.

“Ahaha, no. No, um, our bestiary might only have a few beasts that would register as a significant threat in this world, but back on earth most of the real monsters in my world wore human skin. That made dealing with them all the harder.” Shaking off his sudden maudlin thought, Harry went on. “Still, tell me about some of the monsters and beasts you’ve run into that don’t make their home in Ashenvale or on the Broken Isles.”

The conversation continued in that vein for a while, with Recca joining in only occasionally. It turned out that she had encountered a few of the same monsters that Versera had, particularly a kind of giant crab and another Tainted dog-type beast, which the Unseen Path called called Felstalkers. Cassandra’s family, which at the time had been allied with another far larger flock, had been forced into a life-or-death struggle against them prior to traveling to The Broken Isles. “We, that is, our family, didn’t lose anyone, but it was a close run thing. It is why Sazah decided to travel with us and bonded to Cilla. We were the largest organized group left after the clash with the Felstalkers. A few others survived, but not many. It was not a victory so much as we just lived through it.”

“Hmm… well, neither myself nor any of my flight ran into Tainted or Fel-touched on the new continent, although I do seem to recall a story about there being a species of giant spiders in Northrend that give the historian in me some concerns,” Versera mused. “There are a lot of troll tribes in the new continent, though, which did not please the Quel’thalasans when they started to spread out. I think they have since had several sharp, short wars with this or that tribe as the former High Elves try to spread out.”

“We saw carvings of the giant spiders in the Vrykul raiding camp we attacked to retrieve the Spear of the Ancients,” Harry agreed. “They looked ferocious. Although, I’ve never fought a troll.”

“They might be for those of you on the ground, but I daresay Recca and her sisters could fight such easily enough, and for myself, well, most of the time, most beasts know to stand clear of us because there are very few that have evolved the ability to not turn crispy and tasty with the application of fire,” Versera laughed, with the other two laughing in turn. “Only Fel beasts, Tainted, or particularly stupid monsters come near us. Such as that which are actual threats, well, those are few and far between. Drakelings, young dragons, need to be careful, but after your first thousand years other dragons become far more of a threat than any beast.”

“And of course, when it comes to dragons, the only Dragon Flight that makes war on the rest of you is the Black Dragon Flight, the corrupted Aspect of Earth,” Harry agreed, before pausing, staring at Versera for a moment. It was awfully hard to tell, but Versera looked a little nonplussed almost? Odd to think that her face is so expressive, what with it being mostly scaly and fanged, but I guess I’ve gotten used to figuring out Quetzal’s emotions in a similar manner. And ducking down and looking away, yes, that is embarrassment, I think. “What? Your Dragon Flights do get along, right?”

“Well, yes and no,” Versera muttered, indeed embarrassed at the need to explain something she personally saw as something of a character flaw in her whole race when compared to the kaldorei or even tauren. “Um, we Dragon Flights are at peace as groups or, as you both would probably put it, as clans. But that doesn’t mean it’s actually peaceful among us. Most dragons are solitary beings, with the exception being bonded mates or with whelps or drakes. And occasionally, conflict does arise both within the flight, and between dragons of different flights. I’ve been involved in several such. Most of the time, they are quick, loud things that occur when we meet one another without prior planning, more sound than substance yet even so...”

Versera sighed, and when she spoke, it was remarkable how much like Hermione she sounded when exasperated with Harry and Ron back in Hogwarts. “And most of the time, it’s been with a red dragon.”

“Why?” Recca asked, sounding quizzical. “They are the Aspect of Life, right?”

“Exactly. Boisterous, lively, loud life,” Versera groaned, an odd sound from a draconic throat. “Do not mistake me. I respect Alexstrasza and most of the senior reds for their wisdom, combat prowess and kindness, but, well, a lot of the younger set are simply wild and willful, always roughhousing with one another when young or going out looking for fights when older. And there are so many of them, too.”

Recca looked confused at that, and Versera turned her head so she could train both of her eyes on her. “We dragons are immortal, or at least, none of us have died of old age since the first true dragons rose to fight Galakrond. But we finish maturing after a thousand years, give or take two centuries. By that point, we all find something to concentrate our lives on. For Blues, it is magic, with a few of them delving into specialties. For Greens like me, we study nature and the world as a whole, or we change our forms to move among the tauren, kaldorei, or Quel’thalasans and learn about them. Heck, a few of us I know have wiled away a few centuries among the trolls on the new continent or the barbarous vrykul on Northrend.”

She sighed again, and when she spoke, her tone was now a mix of Hermione and Mrs. Weasley as she sneered at Fleur. “For the Reds, they are all enthusiastic about something physical. Exercises and sports, yes, we have those. Swimming, flying competitions, muscle training… and fucking.”

Recca spittaked so hard she nearly stopped in midair, plummeting toward the forest below for a few seconds before hastily flapping her wings as Harry began to laugh. Versera went on, turning away to look forward as if she hadn’t set Recca up for that, although she did slow down so Recca had an easier time keeping up. “They mate a lot. That means they are by far the largest dragon flight, although they are not nearly as organized as even we Greens are, let alone the blues.”

“If so, how have your reds not overrun the world yet?” Recca grumbled, not altogether pleased at the joke at her expense.

“Because despite fucking so often, even red dragons aren’t as fertile as the other races. If a red dragon bonded pair mates every day for eighty years, they might conceive once in that time. And then it would be another decade before the eggs are laid and hatch,” Versera answered with a shrug. “Admittedly, reds achieve their full growth well before the rest of us, but their minds don’t mature as quickly. So while there are hundreds more reds than there are the rest of our flights, it will take even the reds tens of thousands of years to rebuild the numbers we lost in Deathwing’s betrayal or the overall war against the Burning Legion.”

“So… there are what, only a few thousand dragons left of each flight?” Harry asked, frowning in shock. I know the Unseen Path didn’t think the dragons had regained their numbers following the creation of the Dragon Soul, but even so.

“I would say there are less than two thousand of us greens, for certain. The vast majority of us are on the new continent, with Ysera and five of her most senior children in Ashenvale, lending their might to the battle in the Emerald Dream,” Versera answered. “The blues, we have discussed before. The reds number at least five or six thousand scattered in small families or a few larger clans around the planet. I know for a fact several hundred of them also live among the kaldorei in Ashenvale, keeping to themselves for the most part or…” Here she shook her head, her tone fully turning into Mrs. Weasley at her censorious worse in dragon form. “Or living with kaldorei lovers. Ugh…”

Okay, there goes any idea I had of trying to flirt with her when Versera’s in her kaldorei form, Harry thought sardonically, wondering idly if that was seen as something taboo among the greens, if all dragons thought that way and the red partaking of such were seen as lecherous perverts, or if it was just Versera’s opinion on things. No way to tell, really. Still, it’s obvious her interest in other races only goes so far. Pity.

“What about the black dragons? The rest of you all tried to wipe them out, but me, the tauren of Highmountain and Tyrande, ran into one of them making trouble between the drogbar and the tauren.”

To say nothing of Ebonhorn, Harry thought with some amusement, although he figured that Ebonhorn was an exception to the typical Black Dragon Flight in every way that mattered.

“Hmmm… I don’t know. I would have wagered there were only a few dozen left, but who knows? The Black Dragon Flight are insanely good at hiding, finding places within the earth where magic or nose cannot detect them. Although they are also very good at hiding out as barely or entirely non-sentient races such as drogbar or kobolds. I know in the past some black dragon women have taken over harpy flights on a whim.”

At that Recca began snarling in fury, while Harry shook his head. “I really hope that we don’t meet with a group like that. That would seem the worst of several bad ideas all lumped together.”

“Hmmm… well, there have been a few scattered sightings, and I know for a fact there have been several low-key wars that have occurred when a family of reds or blacks run into one another over the past thousand years on Azeroth and in southern Kalimdor. Even twice in Northrend, although both of those flights tend to avoid the cold if they can help it. I, I think that I haven’t heard of any real conflict against the blacks for a few hundred years though.”

Versera shrugged, a full body motion that began with her neck and wound its way down her body. “We greens stay well out of such conflicts unless we literally stumble onto a black or are unlucky enough to be caught up in a red group’s response to a black dragon.”

Understanding that it would be much the same for the blues, if only for the fact that they just didn’t have the numbers to make such run-ins likely, Harry asked, “What about the Bronze Dragons? The Dragons whose job is to make certain no one messes with the timestream?”

Before interacting with the Unseen Path, Recca would have no idea what that term meant. Now she did and had idly wondered about what exactly protecting the timestream meant. Did it mean they kept other people from time traveling? That sounded good. The idea of, say, a group of satyrs or Old God Tainted harpies going back in time to do something, regardless of what, was a horrible one. But how? Or was it more keeping events going as foretold by some god of time? That would infuriate Recca if she was honest.

However, she would not be getting any answers to these questions today.

“The Bronze Flight? I…” Versera stopped, literally. Her wings ceased moving and she stopped in midair, her wings going stiff along with the rest of her, her eyes going even wider than normal as her jaw dropped open.

Harry and Recca both kept going for a few seconds before twisting around to look back at her. “What’s wrong?” Harry asked, watching as Versera slowly started to lose altitude. Yep, just like harpies, dragons seem to have a special relationship with the natural laws of the world. I can’t feel it, but there’s definitely magic involved here, no matter how much dragons might or might not have the properties of hot air balloons.

Realizing she was losing altitude, Versera flapped her wings and began to move again, shaking her head slowly from side to side, the sinuous motion almost reminding Harry of a cat’s tail for a second, the overdone motion a sign of shock in dragon kind. “Good grief! I haven’t thought of the Bronze Flight in… several thousand years at least. I had a friend among them, but I hadn’t even thought of Kraslarmi in that time. Well, this is kind of embarrassing.”

That fit ill with Versera and she pushed on brusquely. “I have no idea about the Bronze Flight’s numbers. All I can say is that I’ve never heard any conversations or discussions about what they’re up to, so who knows.”

She frowned a moment, then shrugged as Harry, who was still all too human mentally, struggled with the idea of simply waving aside the idea of not thinking of a friend for a thousand years or more. I’m honestly thankful that my method of immortality won’t let me forget the passage of time like that, he thought before asking, “Is that normal? For the bronze dragonfly to be out of touch for so long?”

“Outside of a few of their number, bronze dragons are among the most reclusive of my race, although now that I have remembered them, I will be asking any of my brethren I meet in the next few years about them. I might even head back to the eastern continent and pass on that question to the rest of my flight as a whole. Although…”

Here, Versera’s draconic features twitched, looking like a cross between a snarl and a grimace. Harry, though, with his experience with Quetzal and other snakes, felt that was something like a wince. “I would say that the Bronze Aspect, Nozdromu, isn’t someone I would want to be around for any length of time. Like kaldorei, there are all sorts among dragon kind.”

As if she was unwilling to see more on that subject, Versera shifted the conversation a bit. “Take, for example, this young red I once fought alongside. She had barely gotten her full growth by the time of the Deathwing’s betrayal and the massacre at Icecrown Glacier and was seemingly typical at first for the breed at that age; loud, brash, and highly combative. She still was a few hundred years later when I ran into her again, only this time, we were both in our night elf forms. And you will never guess why she wanted to become a night elf in the first place.”

That was a setup, but Recca obliged, asking the obligatory why, allowing Versera to continue. “She had apparently once seen an eating contest among tauren involving hot sauces and apparently wanted to find anything that could try and burn a dragon’s pallet. Admittedly, I think that’s far more respectable than the reason the majority of red dragons go among kaldorei, but even so.”

“Did she stand as much as you do among kaldorei? No offense, but…” Harry began, only for Versera to interrupt.

“None taken. I like my form. That’s all that matters. I’m certainly not going to listen to anyone else’s opinion on it. Why would I? That form is from my own imagination. It does not need to conform to what the kaldorei think is normal,” Versera said, shaking her head. “And as for young Torastrasza, no, she stood out just as much as me. For one thing, her form was about a head again taller than any normal night elf, man or woman. And for another, her hair was gold. Not golden colored, but actual spun tresses made of gold.”

Recca frowned while Harry blinked. “Wouldn’t that be extremely heavy?”

“It was, but when I tried to explain that her neck bothering her was because gold weighed a lot more than she thought it did, and that maybe she should change her form’s hair to match a normal kaldorei’s hair, she refused. My folk are prideful, regardless of what flight we belong to. Torastrasza took it as an insult and almost challenged me to a fight for it,” Versera chuckled, the sound subterranean coming from her large draconic chest. “Of course I refused. We were both in our kaldorei forms, and kaldorei do not wrestle in the middle of the streets over some perceived slight.”

“Plus, you would probably have gotten beaten up pretty badly, if both of you were in your night elf forms,” Recca guessed.

“I will neither confirm nor deny that statement,” Versera answered, shaking her head again. “But you cannot look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t know people that are that stubborn about the silliest of things. It is just that we dragons, well we are defined by our stubbornness in many ways, along with the interests we devote our immortal lifetimes to. Thus, small-scale fights are not unknown among us.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Recca and Harry said as one, before looking at one another and laughing. Versera instantly demanded a new story from both of them, and the flight towards the mountains continued.

Versera was a gregarious companion, something that Harry honestly would not have expected from a dragon. She was always telling jokes or demanding such, getting to know her two companions through stories. Recca was, with the excitement of trying out her new weapon behind her, more silent often than not, but she did not get in the way of the other two enjoying their discussions.

The trip to the Frostfang Mountain range took them two days, with the trio heading down into the forest every night, where Harry would let Quetzal out of his pouch to go hunt if he wanted or simply spend time in his normal body size. Somewhat surprising, Harry, they didn’t run into any of the other denizens of the forest. He had wondered if Shan’do Cenarius or one of his children would feel Harry’s return to Ashenvale and seek him out or if Versera’s presence would garner some interest. But apparently, it didn’t, or they had just been too far away. Regardless, the group reached the mountains without seeing another soul.

Scene break

The next morning, as the trio forged their way deeper and higher up into the mountains, the trio quickly began to find that the going was much harder. Not only was it colder up here, but the air was noticeably thinner. To Harry, this reminded him quite strongly of his time with the Skyhorn Tribe, and at first, he acclimated to it quickly. Recca didn’t, but a simple Bubblehead Charm helped.

While they were insanely capable flyers, harpies couldn’t ascend as high in the air as some aerial species. Thanks to their body shape, their respiratory systems were more like that of a kaldorei or human than a bird. Thus they could not live at such high heights without long periods of acclimatization. .

Versera didn’t have any problems with it, although she warned that, “My flame attack will not have nearly as much range up here, as there just isn’t as much air for it to burn. We will also soon begin to need to fly through the mountains rather than above them. Any higher than this, even I will start to feel it. And no, Harry, I do not want to use a Bubblehead Charm. My own magic would sustain me even at those heights, but it just wouldn’t be pleasant, and since we have no need to go that high, why should we?”

To that, Harry had no answer, or real desire to argue. They were still making good time, and Harry had to admit that even up here, the views were magnificent. If I ever, in my oddly elongated lifetime, ever get tired of views like this, then I will truly know that it is my time to pass on completely, he mused, taking in the view all around them.

Under a clear blue sky, The massive Frostfang Mountains rose ahead and to either side of the route the group was taking, seemingly presenting a wall of impassable rock in every direction dotted by striations of stone jutting out lined with snow, the wind passing through the mountain tossing up random clouds of sparkling snow dust. The white and gray of the mountains was broken up here and there, strangely enough, by small dots of green even this high up, so high that no kaldorei, tiger or even mountain goat could go.

Vibrant green too. For some reason the trees up here, which almost looked like pine, but not quite, were almost as green as Harry’s own eyes. Even stranger, these strangely bright green trees possessed equally startlingly bright red flowers. Harry wasn’t certain if the flowers themselves were part of the trees or some parasitic vine, but they certainly looked it from this angle.

There were also still raptors around them. Solitary creatures, red hawks, large owls who looked like no owl Harry had seen before, and a kind of eagle that, while smaller than the magnificent giant eagles of Highmountain, would come up to investigate. The females of the species were larger, while the males of the species all had very colored plumage in some places, either pinion feathers that were deep, ocean blue or bright orange which gleamed in the sun above. To a beast they would investigate Harry for a time, coming close to touch wingtips with him, before ascending, their cries harsh in the crisp air, but welcoming to Harry’s ears above them, using the thermal updraft Versera created before coming back down and doing it all again..

Occasionally as the day wore on, Harry even saw proof that life existed down on the ground even in this inhospitable place. When they passed over some of these small incredibly well-hidden valleys Harry could see what looked like large lizards which reminded him rather strongly of the giant snapping turtle monsters that he and Quetzal had run while exploring Ashenvale.

When he pointed them out around midday, Versera said they were basilisks. “They are not what you would call basilisk, and I doubt any are even as dangerous as most of Azeroth’s version of the breed since I doubt there is enough magic within the stone of these mountains to empower a basilisk’s normal ability to freeze people with their gaze. But they might have incredibly durable armor for all that.”

“How in the world do they live up here?” Harry questioned not having made a study of such monsters in his time at Trueshot Lodge. He usually concentrated his time in the library on what an Oathkeeper could access about the monsters the Burning Legion had left behind or known creations of the Old Gods.

“Basilisks are more defined by their basic shape and the ability to eat anything and survive than the power of their gazes or poison,” Versera explained. “There might not be anything up here to eat they can actually catch, but there’s a lot of stone.” The dragoness laughed, a loud noise that sent several of the avians around them flying away as it reverberated off the mountainsides all around them. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if several of those valleys were a good deal smaller at some point in the past. They probably got stuck up here during the upheavals following the Sundering and just never bothered leaving.”

Chuckling, Harry was tempted at that point to go down and investigate but figured that he could do that in the future at some point. Hmm… I wonder if basilisk scales and other things would be harvestable for potions or armor? I’ve never gone into potions, but I know some of the others at Trueshot Lodge have, and, well, if I had ever thought it was possible, the armor of the basilisk I killed under Hogwarts would have made magnificent body armor.

Yet he knew that his companions would be kind of bored with that kind of excursion, and he wasn’t certain what Versera would think about him taking samples or even suggesting it after the near disastrous discussion about such things in relation to dragons the day before. Best to err on the side of caution around the dragoness, old boy.

Still, Harry did make a note of it, slowing down and landing on Versera’s back to write it down in a little notebook that Milifiana had ordered him to take along for this portion of the journey. Harry was not the only one who knew how bad and outdated some of the maps the Unseen Path used for central Kalimdor were, and Milifiana wanted to change that. Hence why, among the rest of the supplies he and Recca carried were several mapping tools for Versera.

Mind you, I don’t know if I would find this view as pleasant to look at if I was trying to move through this territory on foot, Harry reflected as he put his notebook away and took to the sky again.

When he said that aloud a moment later and getting a laugh from Recca and Versera. “Hah! Everything is better from the sky, Harry,” Recca snickered, flapping hard for a second and then shifting under Harry, so close her chest, clad in a nice, formfitting blouse with heavy hooks on it that her talons could manipulate, nearly brushed across his face. “The fact that you don’t realize that yet, even with that half-phoenix form of yours, is a true tragedy!”

Harry only flushed a little at that even as Versera’s chuckles, or perhaps giggles, although using that term for a noise coming from a dragon was rather weird, abounded around them. Recca had flirted like that occasionally following their mock duel, although Harry knew she didn’t mean anything by it. She was just having fun, and Harry reckoned that Recca wouldn’t bother flirting with him if they ran into some other form of entertainment for the combat junky.

“The sky has its own attractions to be sure, but I still think having hands is far better than wings,” he teased back. “Or should I stop giving you neck rubs?”

Recca snorted at that, then fell away from Harry. Quickly righting herself, she glided sideways to fly below Versera’s head for a few seconds before catching the updraft around the dragon and winging her way back to where she had been moments before.

Versera, however, had shifted her attention to Harry. “What’s this about neck rubs? And would I need to be in my kaldorei form to get one myself?”

When it came to the fauna of the mountains though, Versera had no answer. “I’ve never lived among these mountains, and I’ve always been more fascinated with beasts and sentient beings more than plants,” she admitted. “I think the flowers possess some kind of contact and taste-based paralytic, but that’s all I can say, and even that’s just because they look like another flower I’ve seen on the new continent in the east. Draklings are notoriously hard to convince to not eat anything new they come across, and enough of those flowers can affect even a young dragon.”

That sounded downright fascinating to Harry, and this time, he didn’t stop himself from indulging in his curiosity. When they passed by another small bit of green and red, he darted down, using a mixture of cutting charms and levitation to remove a few of the petals before putting them into a small bottle that he had been given by Milifiana for just such things. I wonder what I can do with these? Or what the Cartographers can, anyway. I’m pants at potions. Still, if we need to capture someone or something in the future who has high magical resistance, maybe just hitting them with a flower will work. I doubt most people would feel an urge to dodge a flower, unlike Quetzal’s quills.

Riding the thermal updraft above Versera as they rounded another massive mountain, Harry was staring upward, wondering about how high that particular stone fang thrust into the upper atmosphere, when something in his peripheral vision caught his attention. Turning his gaze in that direction, he peered ahead and to the right of them to what he had first thought was a group of raptors in the distance. After a moment, he realized how far away the birds actually were and frowned. “Versera, you said you have better eyesight than most kaldorei. Is it just me, or are those birds that just came around the mountain ahead of us a little too large to be normal raptors? I didn’t know that there were giant eagles in the mountains here on Kalimdor.”

“I doubt it. The giant eagles are literally the children of Ohn’ahra and rarely, if ever, leave the mountain range where they were first hatched,” Versera said, turning her attention upwards and to the side from where she had just spotted a valley with a pair of basilisks in it. In her case, her interest did not come from what magical properties they might have but rather from how tasty they might be. Dragons rarely needed to eat more than one gigantic meal a week, being more sustained by their magic than anything physical. Yet they still liked to eat, and since traveling with Harry, Versera had found herself eager to taste new things.

When she looked along their route ahead of them, Versera instantly groaned. “Oh, blast and flaming cinders, those aren’t giant eagles, unfortunately. You’ll be able to tell differences when their little closer. Those are rocs.”

Harry frowned. Back in his old world, rocs were mythological giant birds, like the giant eagles, who had existed at one point but had eventually died out before the Wizarding World separated from the nonmagical. In this world, he would’ve thought that they were one and the same. He also hadn’t actually run into that word before, not when he was traveling with Tyrande or living with the tauren and not when he was researching in the library at Trueshot Lodge. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

Recca also looked confused. While she and the rest of their flight might have come from Kalimdor originally, they hadn’t come from the mountains.

“I suppose in looks they aren’t that much different than giant eagles, although you will see they are more brightly colored than the giant eagles are, and their heads and talons can be even larger or malformed. However, the biggest difference between rocs and their Highmountain cousins is that rocs are stupid,” Versera said bluntly.

That caused both Recca and Harry to laugh, but she shook her head from side to side, always keeping at least one eye on the approaching flock, something she could do far more easily than a human or harpy could even as she turned to address the pair of smaller flyers. “I’m serious. They are easily the stupidest birds in the world, despite the size of their brains. In fact, I’m certain it is their skulls alone that are that large, their brains just rattle around in there. As stupid as a roc is a dire insult among my race. For a reason.”

“Ouch, tell us how you really feel,” Recca said, shaking her head.

“I’m serious. Practically every other animal that flies gives dragons the respect we are due, but as you can see, these are coming straight at us. Not because they want to use the updraft I create like the rest of the raptors we’ve seen today. No, those rocs are coming to attack us.”

Here, Versera had twisted her head around to give her companions a rather deadpan stare. “Because rocs like eating lizards like those basilisks, and they see no difference between those wallowing creatures and dragons like me.”

Both Harry and Recca blinked at that for a moment, then began to laugh until Versera continued, her words causing them to become serious once more. “Worse, they occasionally work with wyverns, because they both eat the same thing, I.E. everything, and rocs are stupid enough to be herded against dragons, which in turn will allow what wyverns to close. That never ends well for the majority of them admittedly, but they still do it because wyverns are territorial and evil. They just like killing things and loathe the dragons as superior beings.”

Harry wondered if there was more to it than that. Where did wyverns originally come from, and how long have they been around? Could there be some ancient enmity between them and dragons?

After a few seconds contemplating that, Harry decided it didn’t really matter, as the rocs came within his own ability to make out detail. They were indeed larger than the giant eagles that he had become so used to during his time with the Sky Horn Tribe, and they looked, well, perhaps Versera’s words had already colored Harry’s perception of them, but they did look a little ‘off’ to him. Their wings weren’t nearly as well formed as a normal bird, and the rocs’ talons seemed a little too large for their size from this distance, as well as their beaks, looking almost like masks, covering back up and over the feathered flesh of their faces.

They certainly were colorful, like the male raptors Harry had been seeing occasionally throughout the day, only even more so. Instead of having a few tasteful feathers here and there marked out with color, the rocs were each in entirely different colors. Rust red, crystalline blue, even one that was bright yellow, while another had a strange, nearly zigzag pattern of blue and pink. In a way, they reminded him of harpies, whose plumage could come in any color under the sun.

Recca didn’t seem to see this connection, as she made a disgusted face, her shout of “How gaudy can you be? It’s like holding up a giant ‘kill me’ sign to the world,” reached Harry, causing him to cough to cover up a laugh as he had such thoughts more than once about Recca’s fellow harpies.

As they came, the rocs spread out. Harry counted at least fifteen of them, which he knew was also odd. Giant eagles in the wild tended to live in small family groups of two to five, normally a bonded pair and their younglings if that. The Skyhorn Tribe kept them together in a series of large, covered rookeries, of course, and the giant eagles were intelligent enough to get along with one another easily, but in nature, simply the need to feed themselves would force giant eagles into smaller bands or hunting as individuals.

These rocs, for all their size, were acting more like sparrows. Mind you, maybe that’s because of the size of their prey they’re trying to take on, rather than their normal hunting method.

“Let’s spread out, and Recca, keep an eye out behind and above us,” Harry said, floating down to Versera’s left side, keeping one eye below them as well. “Versera just said these rocs tend to work alongside wyverns occasionally, and I’ve already seen once that wyverns can be dangerous. Let’s not get taken by surprise.”

Unlike harpies and kaldorei, wyverns didn’t have the respiratory system of a lion, only the metabolism and eating habits of a rabid one. Their respiratory system was much more like birds, something Harry had learned at Trueshot Lodge after looking them up specifically due to having run into them before. They were also intelligent. They couldn’t seem to learn the kaldorei tongue, but they had their own and could communicate and plan ahead in a way that mere beasts, even pack animals, could ever match.

While Recca obeyed, flying higher into the air and away from the other two, Versera didn’t bother to communicate with either of them. Instead she breathed in then released a fireball straight towards the oncoming rocs. With a screech, the rocs twisted away from it, showing that whatever else could be said about their general level of intellect, they knew at least that fire was dangerous.

Yet they didn’t stop coming. Instead, they spread out still further, coming in towards the trio of travelers from a wider angle than previously, making certain that Versera’s dragon fire couldn’t get more than one of them at time.

As they closed, the rocs all shrieked their battle cries, their voices loud and discordant, reminding Harry strongly of harpies again without his Songbird spell to soften their voices. Versera downed two of them with precise lances of fire, and then Harry began to hit them with his attack spells, simple cutters and slicers, quick spells he had perfected launching with his eyes and wingtips.

Even as the rocs dodged his spells like they were trying to do Versera’s flame, Harry looked down at his chest, reaching forward to smack his chin into a breast pocket there. “Wake up, old snake. I might need your quills in a moment, Quetzal.”

“Of course, even high in the sky you need your snake companion to help you out. Such as the life of you weak little two legs,” Quetzal drawled, before poking his head out of the pocket where he had been staying. He had been quite nice and warm thanks to the most magnificent spell ever created, in his opinion: the heating charm. Now, he blinked, stared at the oncoming rocs as Harry was first forced into a dodge as a roc came too close, then shook his head, trying very hard not to see how high they were.

“Enlarge me until I can wind around your waist Harry, and for goodness’ sake, use a sticking charm on me, please! I am not going to be looking down anytime soon.”

With a wry laugh, Harry dodged to one side as another roc passed through where he had been a second ago, its claws out and grasping. It was still trying to bring itself to a halt in midair when Harry lashed out with a cutting spell that sliced it in half, sending the two halves plummeting to the mountainside below. “Will do, but first open up my chakram pouch.”

Suiting action to word Harry first used a sticking charm on Quetzal’s lower half, before enlarging him to where he could wrap the loose upper segment of his body around Harry’s waist once and then do as Harry asked. His chakram pouch, one of the three extremely expanded bags of holding Harry had, opened, and nine chakram floated Harry manipulating them all with a modified Leviosa spell, using his advanced Occlumency to basically create a mental sub-persona to control them. They began to spin like saw blades, whirling around him.

Another sticking charm held that portion in place followed by a cancellation of the spell on his other half. Soon that too was in position, with Quetzal wrapping around Harry’s waist like two thick ropes, covering him from waist to just below his wings. Another application of the sticking charm made certain he’d stay there, with his back, and the quills there, facing outward and all around.

With his companion in place, Harry finished his preparations just in time for the rocs to reach them. A Barkskin spell covered his body, then he flicked around into a shallow circle, launching out a cutting charm to one side, while Quetzal launched his own quills down into a roc that had attempted to take Harry from his other side. A third, coming in from above, was also discouraged, taking several needles to its face and neck, falling away quickly as it became paralyzed, while several others squawked and barely evaded the small spinning chakrams.

By that point, Recca had clawed the head off of one roc, and buried her claw talons deep into another one, yet she had been watching above and behind their loose formation which had really moved much since the rocs had gotten within talon range. Versera was simply hovering there; the dragoness’s wing beats slow and steady as she twisted in place. Fang and flame most of the time, although one roc, a particularly stupid example of the breed, closed from directly below, aiming for Versera’s nether regions, only to be slammed out of the air by Versera’s whiplike tail. The blow literally shattered the large bird with enough force to cause its bones to explode in its body.

But it was Recca who first saw the real danger coming. “Wyverns coming in from up high and behind in a wide arc!” She shouted, screeching as she pumped her wings hard trying to rise to meet the incoming threat. “At least forty of them!”

Forty became sixty a few seconds later, the additional twenty coming from behind where the rocs had initially been flying from. Now, the three travelers found themselves in a far more dangerous battle.

Harry dodged to one side, then dove, lining up a shot almost as if he was a jet fighter or dragon on an incoming wyvern lashing out with the spell directly ahead of himself, conjuring it into being with a twitch of his head and sight rather than any gesture from his wings, a move that he had perfected over the past decade. It had taken a long time, but it was well worth it. As were the chakram. Three other wyverns fell to them quickly, the chakrams embedding themselves into their faces or necks before the others nearby realized the small spinning discs were dangerous.

The wyvern front of him died, its head disappearing under a Reducto hit and he banked to one side, while Quetzal’s needles lashed out above and ahead of him in a wide cone which caught two wyverns who had been able to dodge Harry’s chakrams in the face, blinding and causing both of them to shriek out in agony. They lost control of their wings for a moment, falling towards the ground below, clawing at their eyes with the natural reaction of most animals when their faces or let alone their eyes were attacked in such a manner as the paralyzing agent of Quetzal’s quills acted on their bodies.

Harry then flipped himself up into another barrel roll, lashing out above and then again below as he came up behind another group of wyverns, while also attacking two wyverns that have been attempting to attack Versera with his chakram. “What was that you said about wyverns being mean-spirited? Is this normal for the breed? I’ve only fought them once before, there weren’t this many of them at the time, and they knew when they were biting off more than they could chew,” he shouted, needing to in order to be heard over the sound of the battle and the wind around them.

“I said mean-spirited and territorial. We must be in an area these wyverns have claimed. They aren’t fighting just to enjoy killing us, but to protect their blasted nests!” Versera shouted in turn. When she finished speaking, she let loose another torrent of flame. This time however, it wasn’t a single lance or fireball. Rather, it was an unending stream as she twisted her neck, burning to ash at least thirteen of the wyverns and the last two rocs in the battle.

Recca was having a far worse time of it than either of the others, being too far away at first for them to aid her. She also didn’t have nearly as much in the way of equipment as Harry, since he hadn’t really begun to think about equipment for Recca and her fellow harpies the last few years. She did however have her Gift, which allowed her to, in a word, blink slightly through space. If she concentrated, Recca could move herself either forward or back by a foot.

Better, Recca was by far the better flyer of the three in terms of agility and natural instincts. She wasn’t killing nearly as many of the wyverns as Harry or Versera, but thanks to her Gift, she wasn’t getting hit by any of their attacks either, and she was holding up at least ten of the creatures from coming down to attack the pair below, as her talon gauntlets were simply deadly.

One scorpion tail nearly nicked her, but she ducked out of the way, slashing back and removing the tail with her talons, with the ease of a hot knife through butter thanks to the metal talon gauntlets Harry had made for her. The next second, she flickered forward and launched her expanded stone down into the face of a wyvern below her who had stopped in midair, hovering there to line up a shot with his tail. Then she was forced to flicker backward to dodge several such attacks and a paw strike from two more, flicking in and around their attacks, cackling with delight.

In comparison to the dragon, however, neither Recca nor Harry garnered as much attention as Versera. The wyverns circled and attacked Versera from every direction, occasionally getting close enough to lash out with their tails or even claws and maws. However, the poison tipped barbs of their tails couldn’t penetrate her scales. Occasionally some of them hit the smaller, less durable scales along her stomach area, drawing grunts from Versera, but that was all.

Yet the wyverns seemed to expect this. After a few minutes, several shrieked in their language, and their tactics changed. Instead of trying to go for shots on her torso, the wyverns all began targeting Versera’s wings and face. Those that didn’t dove in and out, drawing her attention from the others.

For all that they were mean-spirited and aggressive to a fault, there was nothing wrong with a wyvern’s intelligence, unlike the flying morons that there were the rocs.

This quickly began to cause Versera some real trouble, but by that point, Harry had noticed what was going on and was now flying around her, playing defense as best he could rather than let himself be drawn away, his chakrams working overtime. Protegos appeared over Versera’s head, protecting her eyes, as well as her wings occasionally, blocking blows from the wyverns’ tails before disappearing. She was still hit more than a few times in her chest and along the bottom of her own tail when she used it to lash out, yet each lash in turn killed the wyvern she aimed for or knocked several of them away from her.

This aspect of the fight seemed to drag out for a time, but then, having killed off her own opponents, Recca started to drop boulders through the dogfight around her companions at intervals, keeping well away from her two companions, but smashing seven wyverns out of the sky one after another, then two of them in close succession as they drove as one towards rep is back.

The carnage of that particular strike continued downward, and with a wince, Recca shouted a warning. “Versera, veer right!”

Versera obeyed, flicking away from Harry for a second as she went almost onto one wingtip to avoid whatever was coming at her from behind, only to blink at the sight of a gore streaked rock and the tumbling bodies of wyverns. “Nice! I think you deserve a prize for getting two of them with the price of one stone!” she called out, even as Harry grunted, taking a strike to one of his legs from a wyvern’s foreleg, which opened up a series of gashes there.

That wyvern died a second later as Recca cawed a loud laugh at that, then yelped as several wyverns pushed up out of the main fight towards her once more. Bad idea idiots! With a harsh cry that almost made it sound as if the Songbird spell on her had failed, Recca dove down towards them in turn, releasing stones a bare second before she would’ve hit their tails range, then flicking forward into their formation, avoiding their tail attacks as they in turn tried to avoid the stones. The stones wouldn’t have really hurt them much, but the wyverns didn’t know that, and several had panicked after seeing the larger boulders crush their fellows and so dodged, smacking into one another.

As she passed through their loose formations, one of Recca’s claw tips raked down a wing, sending that wyvern to his death on the mountainside below before she had to wing to one side, kicking out at another, nearly tearing out its guts. At that point, she found herself being chased by the rest of the wyverns, with two of them trying to attack her from behind, and the others trying to box her in or attack from the sides. It became a contest of reaction time between the harpy and her attackers, with Recca’s Gift making the difference.

How long the battle continued, Harry didn’t know, but Versera Harry and Recca were all looking a little battered, by the time the wyverns finally realized that they weren’t winning this fight. A series of harsh calls rang out between them, and the wyverns broke away, trying to retreat en masse.

Yet this just opened them up for more spells from Harry and fireballs from Versera. Really, none of the trio were willing to look the other way and simply let them leave. Even Versera would have faced a lot of trouble, even possibly death at the hands of the massed assault without Harry around, and that was not something she was willing to forgive and forget. Recca and Harry weren’t quite fast enough on the wing to catch up with them before some of them escaped spell range, but she certainly was, and with great flaps of her massive wings, she shot after the last of the attackers, killing every last one of them with precise tongues of flame.

As Versera was making certain these particular wyverns had no chance to escape and replicate the ambush, Harry zoomed up towards Recca, who was flapping slowly and painfully in a circle, hitting her quickly with a lighting charm. Normally on a harpy, this wouldn’t have much effect, but as tired as Recca was, every little bit helped. She sighed as some of the pain in her wings lessened from the amount of exertion she just put them through. “Thanks Harry. Damn! That kind of extended fight really isn’t a harpy’s preference, and using my Gift so often really took it out of me. We prefer quick in and out raids or hit and run attacks, not drag down battles that go on for several turns of the glass.”

“Hah, woman you have it easy!” Quetzal growled out from around Harry’s waist. “I’m practically going into a torpor, and I’ve fired off all of my quills! All of them! Do you know how many weeks it’s going to take for me to regrow them all!?”

Glancing up at the sky, Harry only realized now that the fighting had been going on for far longer than he’d thought. When the wyverns had initially attacked, it had still been around mid day. But now, the sun was nearly down. “Wow. There must’ve been more than sixty wyverns, then,” he muttered, looking down at the blood-streaked mountains below and around them, but only seeing a few bodies stuck where they had landed. Most of the rest had just continued to tumble down, down below.

“More of them started to arrive in small groups a bit after the lot attacking Versera had changed tactics and before they started to try and push the two of you apart. I’d guess they were returning hunting parties, much like it would have been for my folk,” Recca mumbled, then blinked as Harry, using a levitation charm, pulled some beef jerky out of one of his pouches, flicking it up towards her head.

She lunged forward, biting down on the treat in delight, grinning cheerfully at him despite the amount of bruises she’d taken. “Thanks, Harry.”

Looking at a series of long claw slashes which had cut into her breast and shredded her shirt but hadn’t drawn much blood, Harry, still high from the battle, had a hard time keeping his eyes away from the twinkling nipple that revealed itself occasionally. “Note to self, seriously prioritize armor for the harpies rather than weapons for a bit,” he mumbled.

Finishing the jerky, Recca nodded, looking over his head towards the returning Versera, whose fanged face, even from this distance, Recca could see was set in a victorious grin. “That would be helpful, yes,” she replied dryly. “Certainly more helpful than your first prototype for an aerial weapon for us.”

“Ouch, but also accurate.” Looking towards the sun again, Harry quickly hit Quetzal with a shrinking charm, then loosened the sticking charm on him. This allowed the snake to climb up Harry’s body back into his pouch. Harry made out his mutters to himself about never wanting to feel such cold again, and how snakes had no business being so high up off the ground and rolled his eyes.

Recca’s snickering brought Harry’s attention back to her just as Versera reached talking range, or at least, talking range for a dragon. “That was a most annoying way to spend half the day,” she boomed. “Let us continue, I wish to be well away from here before we make camp. Wyverns smell, and there’s so many corpses down there, I just know that I will smell them if we linger even up here.”

Harry blinked at that as he could barely smell anything this high up, while Recca also looked a little amused, but shrugged her shoulders as best she could. “That’s fine, but my wings are killing me, and the rest of me isn’t much better.”

“Actually, why don’t you both hitch a ride on me,” Versera answered quickly. “I’ll keep going for a while, then when the sun is down, I will search us out a place for us to land.”

“A place around here for us to land? Would this place have to be a vertical surface? Because I certainly don’t see any of those around here,” Harry quipped even as he followed Recca around Versera’s head towards her body.

The two of them landed one after another on her back, with Recca being very careful to land on her rear, something no harpy would normally do, rather than with her claws, which still were contained within her rune enforced talon gauntlets. She had no desire whatsoever to see if Harry’s runes let her cut through dragon scale.

Harry landed beside her, and after a hasty sticking charm to both of them, shifted back into his normal body. With hands once more equipped, Harry pulled her talons off of her feet far faster than Recca would’ve been able to using one talon then the other. He even stowed them in her pouch for her, then, nearly slumping down, he shook his head before he summoned up a totem. He held it lengthwise in his grip, and all three of them felt the impact of his magic, regenerating their injuries and a bit of energy.

“A lack of hands is most annoying,” Harry muttered, shaking his head. “Sorry Recca, but I just don’t think I have it in me to be a harpy twenty-four seven.”

“I always think that it is a price we must pay for the ability to fly in the first place,” Recca admitted.

“I could point out once more that that could be seen as a sign that we dragons are evolutionarily superior to either of your races but instead, I will simply thank you for the healing totem, Harry. Those blasted wyverns put holes in my beautiful wings, and dented some of my equally precious scales.” Versera said, before pausing, then twisting around to glare down her back at Harry, her fangs showing in a decidedly not-smile. “And no, Harry, that does not mean you can have any of the scales they knocked off for your experiments.”

“The very idea hadn’t entered my mind,” Harry answered quickly, shaking his head.

It really hadn’t, since any of the scales would’ve been left behind the battlefield, and thanks to Versera’s wings, they were already at least a dozen leagues away from it. Instead of saying that however, Harry pointed past her towards the way that she was currently flying. “Look up and to your right. That might be our best bet for a place to stay.”

It was a small crag sticking out of the side of one of the mountains ahead of them, creating a tiny area, barely large enough for two wyverns to land on one after another if they were very careful. There was a nest there already, although unlike most nests, this one was made out of broken stone and scant few pieces of foliage, and in this case those were in the form of whole, if thin, tree trunks, smaller branches or leaves.

When they came close, the trio discovered that there was nothing within the strange looking nest, and considering the size of it, all of them deduced that it had probably been the property of one of the rocs. Thus it was with a certain amount of vindictiveness that Versera swept it off of the crag with her tail, allowing Harry and Recca to hop off her back onto it for a second. She then quickly shrunk, transforming into her strange, short kaldorei body. With her and Recca to one side, Harry quickly set up his yurt, then a ring of protective runes around the area.

That night, Harry cooked for them all, as had become the norm, before the trio headed to bed quickly. Even with the healing totem, there was nothing so much like getting a good night’s sleep to get your actual energy back.

The next day, Recca was the first one up. She was very much a morning person and loved to see the sunrise, especially in new and interesting places like this. However, in this, she was soon disappointed.

Sticking her head out the flaps of the yurt, Recca blinked at the site of fog and snow all around them, swirling and clumping up in places. Along the outer wall of the yurt, there was already enough snow to go up to where her feathers began on her legs. Pulling back, Recca shook her head, sending large snowflakes that had settled in her hair in that brief moment everywhere.

Looking over at the others as they started to stir from their bedrolls, she intoned, “Well, it seems as if our good luck with the weather has run out. It is snowing, fit to bury us outside.”

When he checked a moment later, Harry agreed with the sentiment. “Well, I don’t think we would be making much progress in that! Even with Versera’s updraft, vision would be a major issue.” Harry had spells that could easily let him see like owls in the darkness or let him see like a falcon for long-range, even if they did tend to make him concentrate a little too much for his preference of mind on small scurrying things.. Both he and Recca also had goggles given to them by the Unseen Path, although Recca hated using them. Yet visibility like this or like rain was much harder to deal with.

“If we had enough books to interest me, I might say we should spend the day here in your yurt Harry,” Versera said, chuckling quietly. “As you do not, and I am not the sort of dragon that will substitute sleep for something interesting to do, I suggest that you both simply stick yourselves to my backside again, and I will fly us up and out of this weather. You can beat storms like this by flying above them.”

Trying hard not to think about Versera’s current backside and various ways that phrase could be taken, Harry nodded, then quickly asked if either of the two women had any preferences for breakfast. He was not at all surprised that the response was simply “meat,” and he moved over to the supply wall and the small meat locker he had created for the interior of his yurt quickly, shaking his head internally as even that comment had his febrile imagination throwing up some images he didn’t really need right now.

Okay, so I am still having issues with my hormones these days when it comes to Versera. I’ve gotten used to my basilisk side’s response whenever she transforms into her dragon form in front of me, but it’s been a few years since Sylina, and I broke up, and I’m freaking horny despite renewing my Occlumentic Realm back outside of Danaveia. I’d honestly like to see if Versera and I could make a relationship work, but she hasn’t shown any sign of seeing me as a potential mate. Worse, she seemed as if the very idea was perverse. So I’d best keep these thoughts and all others like them under lock and key, Harry admitted ruefully.

Actually, Harry was a bit wrong there. Oh, Versera did think that reds taking lovers among the kaldorei was a bit bizarre. But at the same time, there was still, even now nearly a week after they had left Trueshot Lodge, something… alluring about Harry’s scent. Something powerful, dark and reptilian, his basilisk side making itself known to her magical scenes and her nose alike. She was in no way willing to act upon the instincts that smell tried to call out to, especially with a non-dragon, yet it was there.

Creating hashbrowns, sausage, and meat patties was quick and easy for Harry by this point, and all three of them greatly enjoyed the meal, as Versera and Recca always did while traveling with Harry. Even onboard the ship, Harry had taken over cooking some of the meals and had to deal with several offers of employment from the crew because of it.

Even Quetzal enjoyed the food, although when told of how cold it was outside along with the snow, he quickly retreated back into Harry’s chest pocket. “No! Absolutely not. I can move through the snow easily enough, but I refuse to do so without some tremendous reward for my efforts. You all can clear off the snow without me.”

“We actually don’t need your help for that,” Versera said dryly, shaking her head at the snake’s attitude. He still treated her with all the deference that intelligent snakes and reptiles treated dragons, but Quetzal’s manner when dealing with Harry was simply hilarious to her. “If there is one thing that no dragon ever needs to fear, it is the cold. I might not be a blue and thus actually comfortable in such weather, but it doesn’t bother me per se.”

After breakfast had been cleaned up, Harry and Versera pushed their way out of the yurt. The rest of the crag had been inundated by snow at this point, which lay several feet thick on the ‘ground’ of the crag and on the yurt to the point where it reached Harry’s chest.

As Harry carefully used heating charms on the exterior of the yurt to get rid of the snow on top of it, Versera opened her mouth, distending it in a way that, had Harry been looking at the time, might well have killed any interest in her night elf form he harbored. Her mouth opened and then opened wider still in an extremely bizarre and monstrous manner, almost looking like a kaldorei had suddenly grown the mouth of an anaconda.

The next moment, a tongue of flame blossomed out from her mouth, and Versera swept it from side to side, clearing the rest of the snow away from the crag and all around the yurt. At that point, she transformed, her talons digging into the stone above the crag, where Versera clung as Harry and Recca, who, thanks to her harpy nature, could easily handle the cold, finished taking down his yurt (a hard job for Recca given the whole no hands thing) and stowing it away in its special bag.

At that point, Harry transformed into his harpy form, the better to handle the cold himself without spell aid, and both of them moved over to climb aboard Versera’s back.

“That feels weird, is that what people mean when they say something tickles? Little pinprick sensation going up and down your body?” Versera warbled at one point as Recca made her way along the abdominal fins along her back.

“Remind me to hit you with a tickling charm at some point. I’d be very interested to see if it would even work on a dragon at all, and if so, what your reaction to honestly being tickled in this form would be. Or, come to think of it, your other form. I rather doubt that anyone has tried to tickle you regardless of your body shape, Versera.”

“Not for as long as I can remember, certainly,” Versera joked back, before asking if the two of them were secure. Sticking charms in place, they were, and she shoved off the side of the mountain, falling through the air for a few seconds before her wings had enough room to sweep out and down from her back. Then, she began to climb steadily, her wings beating mightily.

Despite that, it took a while until they finally began to leave the storm behind below them, bursting out of the clouds into a clear sky above at around midmorning.

Here, once more Recca had to resort to Harry’s bubblehead charm to breathe easier, while Versera was able to ignore it still, even though she hadn’t enjoyed the experience of flying through the snowstorm. “Thank goodness! I will admit that even my visibility was being markedly ruined by that storm,” she said conversationally as she leveled out, heading south again while Harry began to undo the sticking charms on himself and Recca.

“But you can also be seen, Versera,” a voice intoned from somewhere nearby, causing all three of them to twitch and Versera’s head to wildly flick from side to side and all around as she tried to stare in every direction at once. “And who exactly are you talking to?” the voice continued. “I don’t recall that being among your many bad habits.”

That was enough for Versera to recognize the voice, and after a growl, she shook her head.

“Rasela? I see that you perfected that invisibility spell of yours, now could you kindly cut it out? Or am I going to have to smoke you out?”

“Touchy, touchy,” a voice intoned, and Harry realized it was a female voice despite being of an even lower register than Versera’s dragon form.

A moment later, below and to the left of Versera, a patch of sky that had previously been empty was suddenly full of dragon. Thankfully this was a green dragon, although Harry had already figured it wasn’t a black given how annoyed rather than aggressive Versera had sounded when she replied to the voice.

That didn’t matter so much to his inner basilisk side, though. Much like whenever Versera turned into her normal body, Harry could feel the basilisk side of his being rear up, wishing to battle, to dominate this new dragon as it did Versera. Thankfully, by this point, the urge was so routine Harry could easily ignore it.

“Honestly, you’re the first of our kind I’ve been able to try that spell on and seeing how well it worked on you was quite nice,” the newcomer stated with a smirk in her tone you could have cut cheese with.

She was slightly larger than Versera and a bit thicker around the middle to boot. Rasela also had visible scars on her forearms and neck, whereas Versera had none.

“How in the world did you ever get into jump scares anyway? You’re older than me. Surely, you should’ve left such amusements beyond hind. Or when you grew up, did your maturity stop even as your ability with magic grew to match almost that of a blue?” Versera said.

For some reason, the dragon below them seemed to take affront to both portions of that statement, her eyes nearly flashing as she flapped her wings to rise up to face off against Versera. “I see time and age has not dulled your tongue as much as your senses… and your dignity as well, I see. Whoever heard of a dragon carting around two Harpies? Really, Versera, what have you been up to? I would’ve thought that joining that supersecret group of yours among the kaldorei would’ve made you more dignified, not less.”

“Why do I get the impression that I am seeing a meeting between either old adversaries or old friends, and the line between those two for dragons is very thin?” Harry quipped as he pushed off one side away from the other dragon, with Recca following him. His inner basilisk had been roused by the dragon’s disdain, but Harry was able to ignore it as he had before. It helped that the moment he started flying, the feeling disappeared. Harry wasn’t certain if that was because he was in his half-phoenix form at that point or because his basilisk side just didn’t like being so far above the ground, but Harry would take it regardless.

“They sound almost as irritated at one another as Icsy and Cilla can,” Recca agreed.

The new dragon blinked and stared at them. “Alright, I will admit at least these two harpies sound pleasant somehow, and… Is that a male harpy!?” Rasela nearly squawked. “I thought she was simply flatter than most harpies tended to be.”

Harry laughed at that, with Recca joining in and the strange dragon stared at them, then Versera. “How? Why? And why in the world did you allow them on your back? Also, are his wings on fire, or is that some kind of optical illusion? A harpy using magic?”

“How is the fact that this is Harry Potter. If you knew anything of his name or tale, that would probably be enough.” Versera snorted at Harry’s mock-affronted noise before concentrating entirely on the other blue dragon. “As you don’t, Harry is a chimeric hybrid, who can take the form of a human he calls himself, as well as this form. As to why I allowed them on my back, the storm below would’ve been difficult for either of them to deal with on their own. Yes, his wings do indeed seem to be on fire at certain points, something you could have seen clearly if your eyes hadn’t apparently been sacrificed for your magical prowess along with your manners.”

“I always knew that you were strange, Versera, but to not only enjoy turning into that strange, stunted form of yours as a night elf but to also hobnob with even lesser species? How droll,” the other dragon intoned.

Versera growled, and the two of them began to circle one another, moving like they were boxers in a ring.

Harry and Recca found themselves moving in tandem as well, away from the dragons. “You said something about their tones matching two of your flock,” Harry said slowly, backing away rapidly through the air.

“Yes. You can never quite tell if they’re about to fuck or fight, not until feathers actually begin flying anyway.” Recca answered.

The two of them looked at one another, and Harry gestured ahead and to one side. “Do you think we should put a few mountains between us just in case? I have no doubt Versera will find us easily enough if we leave her behind.”

“Yep,” Recca said, absolutely no hesitation in her voice. “I definitely think we should do that.”

Without another word, the two of them began winging away to one side and down, hoping to skirt directly above the storm front until they left it behind. “Come find us when you’re done catching up with your friend, Versera, we wouldn’t want to impose,” Harry shouted, using a spell to make his voice louder.

Despite that, neither dragon indicated they’d heard, as they continued to circle and trade barbs, their eyes narrowing dangerously.

OOOOOOO

Recca and Harry had put some mountain crags between them and the two arguing dragons when they began to hear the first sound of thunder behind them, well above where the snowstorm had been occurring. This was followed by a booming crash as the mountain behind and to one side of their current flight shook as if from a great impact.

“You know, I wasn’t certain I believed Versera when she said that dragons routinely got into spats with one another like that. Now I do,” Recca mused, shaking her head.

“That certainly was a bit of a personality change, wasn’t it? The moment that other dragon showed up, Versera became defensive and prickly,” Harry agreed. “Although, if those two are siblings, that just could be the way of it with sisters and brothers occasionally.”

“Maybe, but with dragons, given how strong and powerful they are, I would’ve thought that their society would lean towards formality to keep fighting to the death at a minimum,” Recca said with a shrug. “Instead, they both seemed almost eager for a reason to fight. That and the sudden shift threw me.”

Harry agreed with that but shrugged his shoulders and gestured them forward. “Come on, let’s keep going. If Versera doesn’t catch us up before the sun starts to set, I’ll send Tricksy and a Patronus to find her and lead her back to us, although I figured that she probably has some means of finding us in turn if she wants to.”

Recca agreed, neither of them having gotten the impression that the argument/fight was serious enough that either dragon was going to be willing to kill the other. Just prove which was stronger.

The two Oathkeepers flew alongside one another for a time, pushing through the mountains as they did, finally leaving behind the dark clouds and broiling winds below, which allowed them to descend to a more comfortable altitude. When they did, Harry canceled the Bubblehead charm on Recca, which he’d had to renew a few times throughout the day, and the two continued on their way until Recca began to notice a few signs around them.

Her eyes narrowed, and Recca pushed to one side, asking Harry to follow her for a moment as she skimmed along the side of a mountain face, staring down at a few marks on it.

“What is it?”

“Dried droppings,” Recca said, scowling and looking around. “It seems as if my folk have been around here.”

“Ah...” Harry murmured, the noise nearly inaudible to Recca, looking around him warily. “Do we fly higher, get above where you feel comfortable again so they can’t bother us?”

Recca looked at Harry as if he had grown a second head. The idea of simply avoiding conflict like that hadn’t even occurred to her, and she saw no point to it now. “No, why would we? If they bother us, we fight them until they realize we’re too tough for them to take on.”

Shaking his head with a chuckle, Harry shrugged his shoulders, indicating without words that when it came to other harpy flocks, Harry would go with whatever Recca wanted. It should have occurred to us that we might well run into other harpies, he reflected. Maybe we should have asked one of her other family members to come along with us, in the interest of diplomacy if nothing else.

Recca didn’t have a diplomatic bone in her body, so regardless of the intent of whatever harpy flock they might run into, feathers were definitely going to fly. Which is to say nothing about the reaction to me, Harry thought, frowning. Now, is my apparently being a male harpy going to cause them shock and confusion, or avarice?

Turned out to be all three, along with one other emotion that Harry really, really should have expected, although it could be said that avarice was in there, too.

A shout from one side drew the pair’s attention to a small hole that looked almost too small for a harpy to enter. But this proved to be an optical illusion as at the shout, three harpies came out, screeching in their language.

Listening, Harry winced, having forgotten how truly horrific harpy voices sounded. Although thankfully, he could still understand what they were saying, thankfully.

“Look, sisters, two more have come to join our flock, it seems. Or are they just trying to pass through?”

“They might’ve intended to pass through, but now they’ll be joining!” A second cackled.

“Too true. Matriarch Ashwing has ordered that all harpies who enter into our territory are to be brought to her!” The last speaker snickered. “Don’t worry, sisters. The magic of our Matriarch might seem odd and painful at first, but you’ll enjoy it soon enough.”

Harry would not have needed that last speaker to know that these three had been corrupted by access to Fel magic, the magic of the Burning Legion. Their eyes were gleaming with dark, putrid green, and their forelegs were covered in it as they flew through the air towards Harry and Recca. Their faces were wide and manic with glee and as they closed, Harry saw their teeth were even more pointed than a normal harpies.

“I doubt these three can actually use spells, but you can see for yourself…” Harry began, before Recca charged up towards the trio, screeching a war cry. Sighing, Harry went after her, as the three harpies ahead of them, cackling in delight, raced to meet Recca.

Their delight faded quickly when Recca dodged one strike from a foreleg, continuing on and then flipping herself to be feet upward toward the attacker, lashing out with a kick that sliced straight through the neck of the harpy in the lead. Twirling in midair, Recca, bigger and stronger than any of the trio, who were like parrots compared to a condor, brought her wing around to slam into the face of another, sending her staggering through the air. The strike was so strong it cost the target a few teeth, and caused her to lose altitude before getting her wings under control.

The next second, Recca had flipped herself in midair again to bring her claw up into the lower talon of the third enemy combatant. That blow should barely have done anything to either woman. Harpy talons were quite tough for a reason. But while the enemy’s claws skittered off of Recca’s hard bonelike foreleg, Recca’s talon gauntlets sliced into the other’s limb, removing it in a small geyser of blood which began to drip down towards the ground far below.

“ARGGH! W, what is she wearing!? Where would a harpy get something like that!?” That woman shouted in sheer shock, backing away rapidly. If a human had just lost a foot, they would’ve already begun to lose strength due to blood loss quickly, but it didn’t seem to bother the harpy all that much, and Harry noted that she actually wasn’t bleeding as much as a human would have either.

I wonder if that’s another evolutionary thing. Since they have to attack their prey feetfirst, bird talons and claws don’t have much blood vessels in them so that return strikes don’t cripple them? Regardless, Harry doubted it would apply to his own form. His legs, besides a certain added muscle in his thighs, were still human. Thankfully I don’t have to dive on my enemies feet first.

Several loud squawks and shrieks from nearby caused Harry to turn. Coming towards them from around the mountainside on Harry’s right, away from where Recca had been wreaking havoc on the first group, came still more. One of them flew a little higher than the others. Harry felt she was closer to Recca’s size than the rest, and her plumage was resplendent whereas the others had all had short ‘hair’. Her wings and feet were also glowing with Fel magic.

The size of her plumage and her wingspan were both signs of more maturity, which in harpy society, meant greater authority, normally and it certainly did here. “Kill the intruders if they will not willingly join the tribe of Ashwing!”

Recca finished off the opponent that she had battered with her wing then twisted to join Harry at the altitude he was flying at as they both moved to engage this new group. “Wait for my signal Harry, then let loose a few area of effect spells. After that, I’ll take point,” Recca ordered. Since interacting with the Unseen Path, Recca had begun to use some of their nomenclature, especially when it came to fighting.

Harry nodded, bowing to her greater experience when dealing with other harpies. A second later, as they closed and the enemy group leader began to toss out small Felfire bolts, Harry responded in kind with the Chain Lightning spell. A spell he had learned among the tauren, the lightning that flashed from his wingtips flew out, connecting with first one harpy, then another and another. Six of them fell practically fricasseed to splatter on the stones below like overripe fruit before the spell petered out.

The rest of the harpies recoiled in shock at the sudden loss just before Recca hit the first of them. Her first attack, having gained just a tiny bit of altitude in comparison to the majority, sliced her face with such force that her claw gauntlet carved through flesh and bone alike, sending her to join her already dead companions below.

Recovering quickly from the shock of Harry’s magic, The other harpies closed in, with their group leader staying back and hurling spells and orders. “We must capture that one! She has some strange magic, we must learn it for ourselves!”

A second later, one of them who was trying to attack Harry from below blinked, then seemed to freeze in midair, losing altitude quickly. This ironically saved her life from one of Harry’s cutting spells, and a second later, she shrieked, “Sisters! That is not an unfortunately flat youngster, it is a male!”

“Impossible!” Shouted more than one harsh voice just before a Reducto slammed into the girl who’d been talking, removing her head and shoulders. A second spell caught the group leader, removing her wing and sending her screaming to her death below.

By that point, Recca had already finished with several others. Now the final four, quite unlike the wyverns from the day before, were willing to retreat, shrieking and joining the one who had already lost a leg in pulling back, fleeing downwards and around the mountain.

“Should we go after them?” Harry asked, looking over at Recca. He was fine with letting them go, frankly. Overwhelming fights like this weren’t very interesting, and he’d had the fight with the wyverns the day before to test the utility of his new combat gear in air-to-air combat.

“Yes.” Harry blinked at that, and Recca shrugged, even as she began to race after the fleeing quartet, keeping them in sight with some difficulty as they moved around the various crags of the mountains. “For one thing, they are using Fel magic, and to get access to that… Well, you know what we would have to do, the rituals that would be required, the sacrifices.”

Harry nodded grimly. Fel magic was the equivalent of chaos magic in the RPG games that Hermione had gotten him into at some point mixed with soul magic. A practitioner needed to sacrifice a living thing, something that had a soul in order to siphon the power of their life force to gain access to Fel magic, use the blood of the demons of the Burning Legion, or to have access to, like satyrs and the Burning Legion, Fel magic naturally. Worse, according to the Unseen Path, the more innocent and young the soul sacrificed, the more magic the Fel user could gain access to.

Regardless of how you became able to use it, however, Fel Magic, like the Taint of the Old Gods, had a corrupting effect. It was far less powerful, and much less based on mutation of the body or the overall area, first affecting the soul then the body in turn, but it was there. The manic grins and cackling was a sign that the souls of the harpies they had been dealing with had already become tainted, along with the actual signs of Fel Magic on them all.

Despite his own antipathy to Fel Magic, though, Harry could sense that that wasn’t all Recca was worried about. That would be enough to avoid these harpies, not for the pair to go and seek a fight with them when they could just wait for Versera to catch up to them and bring in overwhelming force. Even Recca wasn’t that certain of her abilities. “And the other reason?”

“You don’t know the signs to look for Harry, but I do. The signs of harpies who have been hatched who have the other half of the equation come from another race rather than a second harpy,” Recca said, her lips peeling away from her teeth. “Before I met you and the rest of the Unseen Path, I would have been disgusted by such practices, but now, I am not only disgusted, I am enraged, and I mean to, if we can, put a stop to it quickly.”

At that, Harry nodded, understanding what she meant the moment it was pointed out to him. Harpies could reproduce on their own, the offspring becoming a perfect mix of the two harpies whose juices had mixed. They could also reproduce with the men of other races like the kaldorei or the tauren, and did so to a far greater proliferation. The offspring of such would partake in certain qualities: greater strength, greater dexterity and other things of that nature depending on the victim’s race. They weren’t superior to harpy-harpy offspring, but a flock of harpies that had already dived into the magic of the Burning Legion would probably prefer unwilling partners regardless, simply because then they had a ready source of life energy for other things.

After Harry sent out a Patronus for Versera, the two were off, attempting to keep the fleeing harpies in their sights, although Harry noticed that one of them had already broken off, ducking to one side and away, putting several dozen crags around them. He wondered for a moment if that one was fleeing to the flock’s true home, while the other four were trying to lead Harry and Recca off, before he decided against it. The four remaining harpies were still very obviously panicking. Panicking people didn’t think like that, and the other one might well have finally begun to succumb to blood loss and just been looking for someplace closer to hide out.

However, as fast as Harry and Recca were, the other harpies were just as fast, with fear giving them still further speed. The pair barely kept the fleeing harpies in sight before the area around them began to show still more sign of harpy presence. Far more in the way of a refuse had been left to scatter across the mountaintops, not just bird dung but bones, a few empty nests, and, hanging almost like a banner from the top of one crag, the skin of a tauren, stuck to the top of the crack with the tauren’s own horn being used as a nail.

A part of me is always surprised at how dexterous harpies can be with their wings and talons, able to pick such things up and use them so adroitly when they don’t have fingers or even hands. Another part of me, though, is now getting very angry, Harry reflected, preparing another even more wide-angle lightning spell.

The screeching cries of the four that Harry and Recca were still following went ahead of them, and staring over their heads, Harry saw several figures push up and away from scattered rock faces, followed by still more, then more as ahead of them, the mountains opened up into a valley. “Oh my, it looks as if we are going to be outnumbered again,” he said, keeping his tone dry as he followed Recca.

“Identify and kill the Matriarch as well as her two oldest daughters and the rest will scatter,” Recca stated firmly. “Not even if the entire group has access to Fel magic will they still have the heart for a fight if they see their strongest dashed on the rocks below.”

Harry nodded, and then the harpies were all around them, shrieking as the dove in. Many of them launched Felfire strikes, darts of green and black magic, shrieking all the while. “Kill the intruders! Kill them both!”

“No, don’t kill them, capture! That way, we don’t have to sacrifice the filthy two legs we already have at tonight’s ritual!” another cackled, their voices grating like nails on a chalkboard.

Harry filed that away just as one harpy came close enough to get a glimpse of his face and was able to dodge the resulting Rifela, which zoomed past her, clipping the wings of not one but several harpies in a row. Even as Harry summoned up Trixie to join the fun and pulled his chakram out of their pouch, that woman shrieked out, “Sisters! That one, it is just like Mudclaw said! It is a male, a male harpy!”

“Impossible!”

“ludicrous!”

“Such a thing isn’t possible!”

“You must be seeing things or partaking in the special mushrooms!”

Those were just a few of the responses to that, even as Harry’s elemental companion appeared and his chakram began to fly all around him, acting almost independent yet guided by his intent through the Leviosa spell. Nearby, Recca crashed into several of them, bulling two into one another, raking them and sending both down to the ground below before being forced to twist around and dodge several more strikes. While not quite as fast as a wyvern’s tale in terms of how fast they could strike, the harpies were much more maneuverable, and Recca couldn’t fly rings around them as she had the wyverns.

Despite that, however, her claws gave her a distinct advantage, and Harry was quick to call up a protective shield around her whenever it seemed as if she would take serious hits either from the enemy harpies’ legs and wings or the magic that far too many of them were throwing around.

After a few more moments of combat however, more than one of the harpies was shrieking about how Harry was a man. At that point, Harry saw something other than bloodlust or rage in the eyes of the harpies around them. He saw lust, a lot of it. Some of them were even shrieking ribald comments as they attacked.

“By The Great Titan, what it must be like to fly and fuck with a man rather than have to bring ourselves down to the level of the dirt walkers!”

“I wonder if he likes taking the lucky bitch from behind or the front? From behind would be easier to match their wingbeats.”

“I’d wager he’s got to have some kinky twists to his cock, to let him stay in place midair like some birds do,” a third cackled, even her laughter acting almost like an auditory assault. “I’m looking forward to that!”

“And he’s powerful and magical too,” a fourth squealed, just as horrid in voice and intent despite sounding markedly younger than the last voice that had risen over the cacophony. “Imagine what your chicks would be like! Heck, maybe, maybe you could even have boy harpies because of it!”

Yet even through the tumult caused by the revelation about Harry, another voice could be heard. It was slightly deeper, for older sounding than most of the harpies around Harry and Recca, full of authority and malice that could be felt through the still abominably sounding voice. “That one must be taken alive, daughters! I will have him for myself… it will be exceedingly interesting to see what a male of our own race is like in the nest.”

Through the tumult of the fight, another harpy, accompanied by a dozen more came, all of them aiming straight towards Harry.

The one who had spoken was the largest harpy in the flock by a wide margin, her wing size exceeding any harpy Harry had yet met. They were a dark, almost sickly looking green, those wings, while her plumage, wide, long and flowing behind and above her head, was the same ocher color as the group leader they’d already slain, matching several of the others, except that the Matriarch’s was marked in turn by small blotches of black.

Ashwing’s skin was also a dark red, reminding Harry of an image of a Native American he’d once seen and her eyes were sepulchral. They didn’t just gleam with Fel magic but gave off a coruscating green energy, almost like a fel magic version of lightning, so much so that Harry could feel himself flinch away slightly.

That was the first time he’d felt that kind of instant negative reaction, and he wondered why. Could it be my phoenix side reacting to it? I would have thought it would only react to something like necromancy, but I guess magic based off siphoning off soul magic would be much the same thing.

And then, Harry released a chain lightning spell into the middle of the harpy flock ahead of them. It went off with all the energy of a mortar round, tendrils of lightning flicking everywhere, catching more than a dozen of the enemy harpies in its grasp, sending them falling out of the sky. This opened up a lane to the leader, who squawked in outrage, right before a cutting spell slammed into her.

It turned out that using Fel magic had given her and a few of the other older harpies around them some enhanced durability to both normal attacks and magical ones. However, the strike still flung her backward through the air, causing her to almost lose control of her flight for a moment.

The next second, Recca dove down on the woman from above, having dodged through the attacks of five other harpies attempting to corral her. They went after her, but Harry hit two of them with Reducto spells, reducing them to so much meat and oval, while his spinning chakram kept the others away, allowing Recca to rake along the wing of the Matriarch as she passed. The Matriarch slammed a foot hard into Recca’s backside in turn as she recovered from the strike, sending Recca tumbling and opening her up to several more strikes from others, but Harry cast a shield around her as his chakram, and Tricksy sent still more harpies tumbling out of the air.

Harry dove after Recca, focusing on dodging instead of attacking for a second until the pair of them were side-by-side again, but in doing so, they allowed the majority of the remaining harpies to gain altitude on them, and now they all came down at once from a wide parabola above them. Talons, magical strikes, with the matriarch’s being much larger and more potent than the others, came down, dozens upon dozens of deadly Felfire bolts.

Harry was forced to shield again, but instead of creating a circular magical shield around himself and Recca, he conjured a wall of energy above them, upon which the attacks of the harpies slammed. This allowed the two of them to recover for a second and wing their way upwards to meet the harpies who had dived down toward them to use their talons. Harry sent his spinning chakram ahead of him, and Tricksy blasted through several of the harpies like a small bolt of plasma, glowing so hot she had turned white. I could wish that Tildocc is combative enough to join the fight, too, but he isn’t, alas.

Tildocc was the name of Harry’s second elemental, and he had… honestly kind of forgotten about him during the battle against the wyverns. However, while Tildocc was big, able to take on the image of a flying octopus-like creature, he wasn’t at all combative. He shared with Tricksy a joy of small pranks, but he enjoyed helping to build things, acting like a forge fire for Harry’s experiments.

Harry’s magical shield shattered, and two of his small chakrams smashed out of the sky by furious Felfire bolts that melted the chakram into slag. Then they were surrounded by harpies again, but with the pair staying close, the harpies couldn’t gain an advantage. While he couldn’t empower a shield like the wall he’d created a moment before quickly, Harry could conjure up weaker magical shields that were too strong for them to get through without a sustained barrage, while Recca and Harry both were deadly in close combat, Harry because of the spinning chakram around him, and his spells, and Recca because of her skill with her talon gauntlets.

The harpy’s basic tactics also worked against them. Trying to separate the pair and knock out Harry somewhat limited them, especially considering how limited their combat abilities already were in comparison to the wizard in the first place.

Despite that, sheer numbers meant it was touch and go for a few moments, and then, the Matriarch’s spells accidentally winged one of her own, opening up an avenue for a shot from Harry straight at her again. An overpowered Solar Flare spell, one of several that were anathema to Fel Users, lashed out from Harry’s wingtip towards the woman even as he dodged her attack, and a moment later, the matriarch’s head and left wing disappeared, killing her instantly.

“No! Matriarch Ashwing!” Several harpies shrieked. “They are too strong!”

A few of them began to flee, heading in every direction., “we must flee, these two, they are unstoppable!”

Six such were actually far more enterprising, though, and retreated in the same direction the main mass of harpies had come from, ahead of the group and down into the valley. “No, no, I refuse to leave our prizes here! We must take them with us, yes, yes!” One of them, larger than the others, shouted.

However, they were too loud, and Harry shouted, “Trixie, take out those six who are retreating towards their nests!” even as he was forced to dodge a strike from another magic user. This one was accompanied by several others, who hit his wings and chest. But his reinforced chain mail held, and a hasty regeneration spell from the Druid school of magic had him and the nearby Recca both healed from their injuries. Recca hadn’t taken many, Harry having, like Versera the day before, drawn a larger portion of the attention of their enemies, but she had still been hit a time or two.

At that site, still more of the harpies began to fly away. None of them joined the others in their dash towards the main nesting area in fear of Trixie, though, who at that point had already downed one of the six she had been sent after.

A magic user attempted to attack Harry from behind, but Harry dove first down, then halted in midair so suddenly that the woman overflew him, allowing Harry to cut her in half with a cutting spell. At the same time, his last spinning disk took another one in the face, and a third fell to and still another spinning chakram.

Soon, the last of the harpies still willing to fight was dead, Recca’s claws crushing the woman’s skull even as she had attempted to do the same to her. Flinging the body down, Recca righted herself in midair, flapping her wings and looking around them before gesturing to Harry to join her. “Come on, let’s make certain Tricksy was able to kill those five before they could flee with their prisoners.”

Harry nodded agreement, and the two of them flew on. “I wonder where Versera is. My Patronus should have reached her by now and even if it couldn’t lead her back here, we’re not that far away she should have had trouble finding us.”

“I think you underestimate how far we’ve gone, and how much the mountain is messing with noise, Harry. Depending on where you are, mountains can deaden or displace sound, making it seem as if it’s coming from an entirely different place. You’ll need to send Tricksy out with your Patronus to lead Versera back to us,” Recca answered with a shrug.

Ahead of them, Tricksy zipped back towards Harry, flying around him for a moment, then after Harry thanked the little spirit, she disappeared back into the fire elemental realm. The two continued down into the small valley ahead of them, although, to Harry’s mind, his idea of what constituted a normal size for a valley had changed after living with the tauren of Highmountain. Unlike that verdant expanse, which was so large it took days to travel from one end to another and even flyers couldn’t’ see one edge of it from the other, this one was a hardscrabble valley, with very few growing things, mostly bushes and a scattering of trees, all of which looked gnarled and ancient, half dead due to lack of soil. It was also small enough that, although he couldn’t make out many details in the dying light, Harry could see to the opposite side of it from this height.

He could also feel a certain… darkness to the place. Harry disliked putting it like that, but something fowl, or perhaps lots of things, had happened in this valley, coating his nature magic sense with a foulness when he looked at this valley through it. It isn’t anywhere near as potent as it was in the caves Tyrande and I found where the Frostmaul giants were spawning, but still, this feels almost as foul, if in a different way.

Among the crags and rocks were scattered dozens of harpy nests, enough to make Recca scowl. “From what we’ve already seen, at least half of the flock must have been away on hunting bands when we entered their territory. There’s at least enough nest here for a hundred or more of my kind. Hmm…”

She swooped over a few of the nests, then came back to Harry, shaking her head. “I don’t see any younglings either. Nor any eggs. Thankfully. Both would have--”

“Been problematic, yeah,” Harry agreed.

While the young born into a harpy clutch that had given themselves to Fel would undoubtedly be soul-corrupted to a certain degree, Harry wasn’t certain he could’ve brought himself to kill someone as young as, say, the twins had been when they first met for something they had no part in. Eggs were a different story, as the soul of the individual within wouldn’t have been corrupted at all, and that would’ve forced Harry and Recca to figure out what to do with them. Harpy young couldn’t hunt for themselves until they could fly, which took a few months, but their eggs were remarkably hardy, and would frequently hatch all on their own.

I wonder if the lack of children is caused by their use of Fel magic, or, or a byproduct of so many having access to it. The younger a sacrifice, the more soul energy you can consume, after all, Harry thought, shivering a little.

In the center of the valley was a butte which, while allowing for a dominating view of the valley, was tiny in comparison to the mountains around it. A cave sat at the top of the butte, with two more tauren skins nailed to the sides of the cave. In front of the cave was a large fire, guttering now for lack of care. This looked more like a communal area than any other place in the valley, and Harry supposed that if they were going to keep prisoners anywhere, a cave would make sense.

Putting out the fire with an Aquamenti, Harry landed to one side of the cave, then, poking his head around the edge of the entrance hesitantly he shouted “Hello, anyone in there?”

There was silence for a few moments, then a male voice shouted out, “As you sound like a man, we welcome whoever you are and if you are free, you would be so kind as to release us in turn, please! We really don’t want to be here when the harpies return.”

“That would be an awfully interesting trick considering the fact they’re dead,” Harry answered, an answer that drew at least a few voices to whoop in delight as he entered.

The cave was split in two, with more than half of it dominated by a pit. To one side of the pit was a rise set against the wall of the cave, lined with tauren fur along with several other animal furs making for a grisly kind of bed for whoever used it. Harry supposed it was the matriarch, but that really didn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that there were four tauren in the pit.

All of them were male, and there was scarce room for them to move around down there, although they weren’t chained or roped together. Harpies couldn’t work with metal, nor had they the means to create rope unless kobolds were nearby to trade with. That was all Harry could tell in the dark of the cave, as evening was fast coming on.

“What in the—" one of the tauren broke off as the others stared at the silhouette of Harry’s form, equally unable to make any detail in the dark of the cavern. For a moment, they all wondered if they had somehow been tricked to call out, that this was some kind of cruel jest by their captors.

But when Harry conjured a light into being above them, they gaped. “A male harpy! What in the universe!?”

“How is that possible?”

“If there are harpy men, then why!?” another nearly bellowed in outrage and remembered powerlessness, a thing no tauren would ever be at home with.

“May I just say that I’m happy that you all speak a tauren language I’d already learned? I was kind of afraid of that wouldn’t be the case as we went south,” Harry said with a snort before transforming to his normal body. “And I am not a male harpy, although they all thought so too.”

The tauren, who had not seen this before, all flinched a little, staring, as the change between half-phoenix to human wasn’t nearly as quick or easy looking as an experienced druid of the Fang or Claw changing into his animal form. A second later, Harry stood in his normal body, and began to levitate the tauren of the pit one after another. “Do you all live nearby? Is there a way out of this valley on foot? I doubt even the best rock climber I know would be very happy with the sheer rock walls I saw as my companion and I flew in.”

Once the last of the tauren was out of the pit and standing on their own, he pulled out a healing totem, a sight which caused their eyes to widen, not having put together the fact that that he could speak their tongue with this strange furless creature might have actually lived among their folk somewhere. He looked almost like what their legends said a night elf’s like, save that he had the wrong ears, and none of the tauren there had ever even heard of any other race with a similar appearance.

“First tell us who you are stranger, then maybe we can tell you more about us. Suffice to say we are not in a kindly frame of mind at present,” one of the tauren grunted. He stood a few inches taller than the others, although he looked a little younger than the rest too. One of the others had very white fur, and looked almost sickly, but he didn’t speak up, content to follow the young man’s lead.

“My name’s Harry, and I am a friend of the Highmountain Tribe,” Harrys said, holding out his hand to clasp forearms in the tauren manner. This calmed the tauren down, as one of them could easily have broken up Harry’s arm if they so wished with such an exchange.

The speaker held his hand out to clasped forearms with Harry, saying that they knew of the Highmountain Tribe through legend, but that was all. “Other tribes might know more, but even that is doubtful, and we don’t have much contact with more than two other tribes at all.”

Harry nodded, reflecting that, even though all tauren seems to revere the earth mother, Musha, and went on the Five Trials to prove their adulthood, as a group, they really didn’t travel all that often or far. “I see. That’s a shame, although understandable.” With that, he led the way out of the cave.

As he did, the oldest looking tauren spoke up, answering Harry’s earlier question. “No one knows, and no one has ever been able to find this place on foot, not even our best mountaineers, not even me.” He looked as if he had been whipped or clawed at several times and flinched when he saw Recca, standing to one side on her talon gauntlets and watching proceedings.

Two of the other tauren growled and made for her, hoping to get to her before she could take to wing, but Harry shook his head firmly. “She’s with me.”

“Wait, what? Are you…” The tauren looked at Harry as if he had grown a second head, or had suddenly become some kind of deviant creature, and Harry rolled his eyes.

“We’re not together like that,” Recca said before he could, her voice causing all four tauren to blink in shock. “However, as you can no doubt tell by my voice, I come from a flock that is quite a bit different than the one around here. If my presence makes you scared, I will take to the sky to watch and make certain that none of the hunting bands return while we’re still here.”

“Hunting bands?” One of the tauren growled, taking umbrage at the hint that they might be afraid of a single harpy, even if that would’ve made a lot of sense in Harry’s mind considering their captivity. “We should more worry about the main flock. I don’t know what happened, but all of them took off, even the Matriarch, and that Musha-forsaken harpy is dangerous.”

“She’s also dead along with the majority of the flock that was here and attacked us,” Harry said with a shake of his head. “Now, unless you’re willing to give us directions to someplace to drop you off, which would yes, entail actually carrying you in the air, I think we need to look around to see if this valley has an entrance you all can use without us. Worse, it’s getting on to night, and we might have to spend the night somewhere in this valley.”

The old tauren shook his head. “The harpy matriarch, Ashwing, she founded this place eight hundred years ago or so, before my time, before my father’s time. If there had been a way for us to find it, we would have. That’s what I thought to do for my Trail of Courage as many before had, and look where it got me.” The elderly tauren cackled for a moment, and Recca backed away slowly, her eyes wide as she reached the same conclusion Harry had, that his captivity with the harpies had damaged his brain as well as marking his body. “But when I return to the tribe, no one is going to argue the point that I survived all of my Rites in one go!”

The other tauren also looked a little uncomfortable but patted their fellow on his shoulders companionably before one of their stomachs began to rumble, causing the stomach’s owner to ask, “I don’t suppose you have something other than meat to eat, do you? The harpy knows to cook their meat before they toss it to us, but unless we were able to identify it, we didn’t want to chance eating it. And even the times that we were able to, it didn’t always go so well…”

The other tauren all looked a little embarrassed, with one of them actually flushing a little and looking away, giving Harry and Recca both an idea of what those particular meals might’ve been laced with. After all, if a captive was too scared of you to get it up, you have to resort to other means, Recca thought to herself, scowling a little and happier now that they had slaughtered so many of this flock.

“I could actually prepare you all a meal, but let’s do that down on the ground. Recca, start looking around the Valley for a way out, please?”

There was a rumble in the distance, and all of the tauren turned to look in that direction while Harry shook his head, calling after Recca, “See, I told you Versera was still close!”

“And I told you, noises in the mountains are confusing!” she shot back. “Besides, what if your Patronus just wasn’t even heard by the two arguers? What then, oh mighty wizard?”

Laughing at that, Harry turned back to the four confused tauren. “It looks as if our last companion is still locked in her argument with her old acquaintance.” He ignored their confusion for a moment to gesture towards the edge of the butte, his eyes locked on the older tauren in particular. “Do you want me to levitate you all down, or are you up to climbing?”

The tauren, even the old one, demanded the chance to climb down, and Harry allowed them to, following after a moment after the old one a touchdown. He might well have flown down himself, but he knew tauren culture disdained using magic for such mundane things.

He landed next to them, and the group headed away from the butte for a time until the sun finished going down through the mountains, plunging the valley into darkness beyond Harry’s conjured Lumos. At that point, they had reached one of the gnarled trees, and Harry quickly pulled out the parts to his yurt, the sight of which drew a smile from the tauren, with the old one almost breaking down and crying at many decades it had been since he had last seen a yurt. “It even has some of the paintings of our folk on it!”

“Heh, just wait until you see the inside,” Harry quipped.

By the time the evening meal was done, all four the tauren were happier than most of them had been in more than a decade. They had also gotten over the shock of how much larger inside the tent was, as well as the number of other things that Harry had stuffed it with. The magical toilet in particular drew many an admiring glance towards its corner nook. Before any of them could work up the courage to ask Harry if it was possible that he could somehow teach them how to create such wonders though, Recca stuck her head in.

The old tauren wasn’t the only one who flinched at the sudden intrusion, and Recca winced, before saying, “I wasn’t able to find any way that anyone able to climb like Fandral would be able to get out the of the valley, Harry, and there are no trails or anything else to follow afterward. You’d be climbing for days at least with no real flat ground to find and even sleeping on the sides of the mountain.”

Carrying a burden like a tauren, a harpy Recca’s size could make at least a hundred and fifty leagues a day. So long as the prey was unconscious or dead, anyway. Recca had no idea how a living, fighting animal would mess with that speed. Regardless of that, harpies didn’t need to rest like normal birds did at intervals so long as they weren’t burning too much energy otherwise. Harpy flocks routinely ranged out from a main clutch four to six days in every direction, and right now, Recca was afraid that meant the four tauren had literally no chance of getting home on their own, even if Harry and Recca supplied them with climbing supplies and food.

And I will stay out here, I think, until they get used to me. After what my Fel-using cousins did to them, I can’t begrudge them their fear, Recca thought, looking around the place. Ugh, although I will begrudge any time spent in this valley. I have no magic sense of my own, but there is something ugly about this place, something that goes beyond the mere physical.

The tauren all frowned at that, as they understood that the alternative was to let Harry and Recca fly them out. While they had all-too many memories proving that harpies were a lot stronger than they looked, especially in their ability to lift things, that selfsame experience made them extremely uncomfortable with the very idea.

“If you’re not comfortable being carried by Recca in her claws after I lighten your weight, I could do something else…” Harry said, with the right little smirk. “Although I doubt any of you will like it.”

“And you think any of us have liked anything that’s happened to us since we first were brought to this valley?” The spokesman asked, scowling and shaking his head. Normally the idea of anyone throwing around spells like Harry did, especially such odd ones, would have bothered any right thinking tauren, but given the dire straits the four former prisoners were in, none of them questioned it. “What is it?”

“I have a spell that can shrink you all. I could then carry you in my pouches like I do Quetzal, the snake that’s outside with Recca currently, or I could use another charm to stick you to my shoulders,” Harry said, shrugging said shoulders with a wry smirk. While a druid or shaman would have had a magical resistance that Harry would have had to overcome through sheer power, warriors wouldn’t have any of that.

Although that was beside the point. Height was a major thing among tauren, and threatening to shrink a tauren like this was a slur to their honor few could ignore.

All of them looked a little appalled but, faced with the alternative, agreed. “Good. In that case, let’s get out of this valley. Recca and I can fly at night as well as in the day with some more spellwork, and I don’t think any of us should stay here any longer than necessary.”

Soon, the yurt was packed away again while the tauren had gone around with torches, finding some discarded weapons scattered around their route from the butte. When they returned, Harry shrank all of them, one after another. Then, as the tauren muttered about this all being undignified and that being the size of mice was horrifically disturbing, Harry stuck them to his shoulders one after another before he transformed and flew up into the air.

They road his shoulders much like Harry and Recca had Versera’s back earlier that day, all of them gasping in delight at the sensation despite still more bad memories. Once Harry was certain the quartet was safe, Harry and Recca pushed on, heading southward and down through the mountains following a vague instruction from the tauren.

However, Harry had underestimated the danger of flying in the mountains at night. After a few close calls, Harry changed the spell he had cast on himself and Recca, and then, tired and annoyed, the pair began to look around for a place to set up for the night permanently. Hours later, this hadn’t yet happened, and neither had there been any sign of Versera, although occasionally behind them, Harry and Recca could still make out the sounds of impacts, lightning flashes and other things of that nature in the distance.

“I have to wonder how long draconic disagreements go on for before it becomes a real fight to the death,” Recca drawled, shaking her head as she flew a little higher than Harry, just within shouting range in order to have a slightly higher position to spot trouble coming from.

Harry laughed, while the tauren on his shoulders all looked at one another, with one of them tugging at Harry’s hair and shouting over the sound of the wind, “What is this about a draconic disagreement?”

“Our last companion ran into an old acquaintance of hers, and apparently they decided to air some of their disagreements,” Harry answered.

“You travel with a dragon?” The tauren shouted, shaking his head as the others looked at Harry’s face, wide-eyed.

To that, Harry simply nodded, and the four tauren all looked at one another again before the spokesman spoke up once more. “You are truly an odd one, Harry Potter!”

“I am quite literally one-of-a-kind, yes,” Harry laughed, shaking his head. While he still got sporadic moments of loneliness for another truly human face, those moments had become few and far between, yet there was no denying his uniqueness.

When they left the valley that night, the group was forced to make camp on the same kind of small escarpment that Harry Versera and Recca had found the night before. As the tauren set up his yurt for him, Harry sent off a Patronus along with Tricksy to find Versera before joining Recca in a sweep around the the time it was his turn to head into his yurt to sleep, with having declined Harry’s offer to make some for them, Tricksy had returned, but there was no sign of Versera. Harry took that to mean that even a second Patronus arriving, a spell creation that had no equal here on Azeroth, had not been enough to end the ongoing disagreement between the two blue dragons.

When dawn broke, The group was on its way once more, with Harry still being forced to carry the four tauren on his back. In this manner, they traveled through the mountains, with Versera still making no sign of rejoining them despite Harry sending off Tricksy and his Patronus every night. While Harry was a little worried and annoyed by that, Recca was fine with it, saying that, “Remember Harry, dragons are immortal. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they stopped fighting and then Versera and her acquaintance just started talking to one another and lost track of time, and are just ignoring Tricksy and your Patronus. Versera’s fast enough that she’ll be able to catch us up eventually if she wants to.”

While Harry and Recca could only travel as fast as the fittest harpies, it had been clear from the start that Versera could travel at least twice, perhaps more than three times, as fast. Even better, while Harry and Recca needed to be wary of flying at night, particularly in the mountains, Versera didn’t. Winds and dangerously deceptive distances didn’t matter at all to the dragoness.

“Maybe, but still,” Harry answered with a sigh. “I still am a little thrown off by how she just decided to ignore continuing our travels together in favor of throwing hands with that other green. I’ll say it again, it was entirely out of character, even if our mission isn’t exactly important or dangerous.”

To that, Recca had no reply other than to ask what that phrase meant, commenting dryly, “That sounds almost speciest, frankly. There are other ways to fight other than with your hands, I would think you’d have realized this by now, Harry.”

Thankfully for Harry’s sensibilities, Versera found them late the next evening. This caused many shouts of consternation from his burdens as the four tauren stared up at the sight of the green dragon coming down out of the clouds above them.

“I had begun to think that you and Recca word just having us on Harry, that was all an elaborate joke, but I see that would’ve been a mistake,” the tauren’s spokesman, the only one of the four who had given his name, which was Stor Orangehoof, stated.

The others still seemed leery of Recca, to the point that they didn’t want to get too friendly with Harry. Harry understood completely, and didn’t need to see the daily reminder of their scars to understand what they had gone through during captivity, so hadn’t really tried to make friends with them either.

“While I will cheerfully hold up my hand and admit that I enjoy a good prank now and then, that kind of elaborate scheme isn’t to my taste,” Harry snorted, and a moment later, Versera came level with them, squinting her massive eyes to stare at the little tauren on Harry’s shoulders.

The large green dragon didn’t look any worse for wear beyond a what might be a shallow bite mark on the scales of her right foreleg. Looking at her, Harry somehow, perhaps because of his basilisk side, which had sat up and begun to pay attention again when she appeared, got the impression of supreme smugness. That, and unconcern, as if what had happened between her and the green was so routine that it didn’t bear mentioning or commenting on now, even as Harry called her out on it mildly.

“Ah, well, Rasela is my sister, and we have always locked claws on some things. Never fear. We’re not reds. We don’t draw blood or scar one another permanently. I swear some reds look on that kind of thing like badges of honor,” Versera scoffed, waving away Harry’s worries. “Honestly, we’d still be arguing and fighting, but your continued use of that silvery messenger creation kept on interrupting. That enchantment is most fascinating. Could it have reached me if I was further away? How intelligent is your Patronus, and how durable?”

“Not so durable, not so intelligent, although it can follow simple commands easily. I… honestly don’t know how far a Patronus can travel,” Harry’s voice drifted into a nearly unheard mumble. “Huh. I do know it can’t go over large bodies of moving water. Lakes are fine. A wide, fast river or the ocean, no.” He shook his head then, almost glaring at Versera. “Should we be concerned about other interruptions like that in the future? This time, it was fine as the harpies we ran into weren’t a threat to Recca or me, but we would have missed you badly if there were more wyverns around.”

“Eh, not unless I run into some of my other siblings I don’t get along with. Meeting other dragons isn’t very likely, frankly, and if I do meet more in your company, my response will be based more on their flight than anything else,” Versera answered blithely, making Harry realize she really didn’t see any problem with being sidetracked like that.

I wonder if that’s a dragon thing or a Versera thing? I don’t think it’s a personal foible, though. Not with how readily Versera responded. I wonder how much of that is sheer arrogance, and how much of it is just a, a visceral, animal response that the dragons themselves don’t realize could be a problem?

Harry set that aside for now as Versera asked about his four passengers. He and Recca filled her in on the battle with the Fel-touched harpy flock. Even then, Versera didn’t seem embarrassed to have missed the fight or at all worried, not, Harry reflected, that she should have been. The harpies hadn’t had any real chance against Harry, let alone backed by Recca. Bringing in Versera would have been overkill, although Harry was still annoyed that Versera didn’t seem more worried about it.

“While I sympathize with what you four went through, do not expect me to offer my services in carting you around,” Versera said, a wry tilt of her head. “I do not know any of you from a cloud in the sky and do not have any desire to act the part of a beast of burden for strangers. Still, if any of you wish me to range around and look for other harpies to slay, I will do so gladly.”

Harry nodded equitably to that, while the four tauren also agreed with the sentiment, staring at Versera even more leery of her than they were of Recca. While ancient tales among their tribe still spoke of the War of the Ancients, dragons, like kaldorei and the Highmountain Tribe, had entered the territory of myth. To see one was just as shocking as Harry’s half-phoenix form had been.

“Er, thank you, Lady Dragon, but I think we’re good,” Stor, as usual, spoke for them all. “While being able to take our full size again as you carry us, imposing on such a, er, magnificent bea-ing,” he hastily changed what he was going to say, although not quite fast enough to stop Versera’s eyes from narrowing. “Would er, not be something any of us would be willing to do.”

“Good. Now, tell me more of the mountains around here,” Versera ordered. “My foolish older sister hadn’t bothered to really notice anything other than the fact a few valleys around her have her favorite flightless birds in them, but I need to know more.”

Late that evening, one of the tauren finally spotted something he recognized. A totem pole had been thrust into the side of a mountain face, and he instantly ordered Harry to head downwards from that. “There will be a way up to that totem pole that will connect to still more paths. Find us a flat place to put down or a chute heading down, and we can make our way back toward our tribe from there.”

“Still don’t trust us?” Harry asked rhetorically. “And I suppose you know that’s one of your totems and not another tribe’s?”

“We are the only tribe this deep in the Frostfang Mountains, Harry Potter. And as for trusting you, I could name you and Recca both friends, but I can only name you my friend,” Stor answered, hesitating to mention Recca there, but honesty, if not acceptance, compelled him to do so. “I’m not willing to put my tribe at risk. You and Versera both say that green dragons are no threat to good folk, but Recca and Lady Versera’s presence would--”

Harry flapped his wing, the closest he could get to waving a hand airily in this form. “I understand why you’re so suspicious of us, Stor. But are you sure that you can get home from wherever we put you down from here?”

“Positive,” the tauren stated firmly.

One of the others actually opened up so far as to explain as he pointed to the totem stabbed deep into the side of the cliff face. “That’s an outer perimeter marker. Do not expect us to tell you what direction it implies our tribe is, but there will be other markers, markers only we know.”

Stor smiled then, shaking his head although again Harry couldn’t see it as he decided to try and lessen the tension. “If you come back this way and find our valley, perhaps by then we will have put down the groundwork, and a strange being with the body of a kaldorei with stunted ears accompanied by a dragon and a harpy can be accepted rather than be a source of wariness and fear.”

Harry chuckled at that, but knew that it was probably not going to happen. These Frostfang tauren were not nearly as learned nor welcoming of strangers as the Highmountain Clan. Well beyond the Bloodtotem tribe, these four would fit right in with them. I know that a few of the tauren among the Unseen Path had dealings with local tribes, but this one certainly isn’t one of those, and even then, I was warned some tribes wouldn’t be as welcoming of strangers.

A moment later, Recca called out, having found a chute in the stone of the mountain leading further down directly below the totem. Up to that point, there had been a scant few handholds, but here, the going would be much easier.

Harry and his four passengers followed that further down while Recca and Versera flew in small circles above them, until Harry began to see metal handholds stabbed deep into the stone as it began to shift to a more vertical angle. These were followed by still more, and finally, a crack in the rock going down in a gentle slope, complete with still more handholds.

At that point, Stor asked Harry to set them down and regrow them back to their normal size. The fact that none of them wanted to be shrunk for a moment longer was implicit in his request and Harry chuckled even as he complied, setting the man down into the crack in the rock, and slowly enlarging him, then the others one after another, watching as they began to shift further down into the crack. Once all of them were their normal size, Harry handed over prepared packets of food.

Beyond that, he offered no help, knowing that the tauren preferred to be as self-sufficient as possible. Something they had proven before leaving the harpy’s valley by finding enough leather from the clothing of previous victims to make large pouches, and even weapons.

Those weapons were odd, short dirks, of a kind that Harry had never seen before, and looked almost childish in the tauren’s hands, even if they had been made to size. Yet he supposed they made sense as a secondary weapon in a land where you almost always needed to have a hand free to grab a handhold. The primary weapon all the tauren had apparently used before was a bow and arrow, but none could be found in the valley.

Stor held out his hand, clasping forearms with Harry as the others began to climb down the crack in the rock. “Thank you for your help, Harry Potter. We will never forget you, and I was telling the truth. If you do come back this way, I will make certain that the Mountainstrong Tribe welcomes you!”

“I might hold you to that,” Harry said, and as Stor turned away, shook his head. Although I won’t hold my breath waiting for it. Still, making new friends here wasn’t my goal heading south anyway. With that, he began winging his way upwards, rejoining his companions.

Rising up to join the others, Harry told them what they’d found, and then, using a compass for a moment as he stood on Versera’s back, pointed them southeast. They had been making their way almost straight westward on the directions of the tauren from the harpy’s valley which had pushed them deeper into the central area of the mountain range than any of them wanted.

The next two weeks passed uneventfully, as the group traveled by day and slept by night, with Harry’s runes to protect them in his yurt. They were attacked once during that time by a group of rocs, a flock larger than the first group they dealt with, yet with no wyverns to accompany or lead them into the fight, it was almost ludicrously easy to deal with the massive, stupid birds. Afterward, Versera and Recca both insisted on trying to see if the giant birds made for good eating. Alas for the two ladies, even with Harry’s culinary skills, however, the meat was only so-so, and that showed.

On the fifteenth day after they left the tauren behind, Harry was pleased to see that the mountain range finally began to recede. The mountains began to give way to hills, opening the horizon ahead. Near midday, they had started to leave the last of the real mountains behind them as, in the distance, Versera reported she could make out the gleam of the sun on some large body of water.

They continued in that direction for a time, wanting to push closer to the shoreline. With the mountains behind them, heading along the coastline would be the best way forward as that area was decently mapped for a bit, unlike where the Frostfang Mountains reached the ocean, and Harry knew his visions of the three volcanoes were in a place near the ocean.

Even more importantly, Harry’s supplies of meat and fish were becoming dangerously low. He still had vegetables and spices despite giving a large chunk of his supplies to the former captives yet between that and Versera joining him and Recca for nearly every meal, which he had not planned for upon leaving Danaveia.

When he remarked on this now, Versera was utterly unrepentant. “If you don’t want me to eat your food, don’t make it so tasty!”

As they came closer enough to make out details of the shoreline, which was quite rocky, Versera flapped her wings, rising further up into the air and then began to twist out towards the ocean. “I’m going to head and see if I can find any big fish for us. If you two can find a good place for us to camp, you can send Tricksy after me tonight or set up a fire. According to the latest information, the Unseen Path told us, there isn’t any tauren or anyone else living this near the hills on this side of the Frostfangs.”

Harry and Recca nodded, and as the last of the hills gave way to sparse grassland and craggy cliff faces leading down into the ocean, they shifted their attention southward, diving down lower towards the ground, watching out for trouble as well as a good place to stop. Eventually, Harry spotted one, a river leading down towards the ocean, the fading light of day reflecting off the water along the horizon ahead of them as it did the ocean to the east.

It looked to be a massive river, reminding Harry of both the maps the Unseen Path had shared with him and an image of the Mississippi he had seen back in his old world. More importantly, Harry had seen that river on the maps back in the library of Trueshot Lodge. The river didn’t have a name on that map. Harry thought that was odd, but according to Milifiana, the river hadn’t existed before the Sundering, and the Unseen Path had not mapped it out until several hundred years after the War of the Satyrs.

Nor had they mapped its entire length. What they had done was basically a week's worth of hiking inland following the river at that point. The tauren tribes the Unseen Path had dealings with were much further south. Much like the interior of the Frostfangs, this river and the area beyond a certain point was somewhat of an overlooked zone for the Unseen Path because they hadn’t met or seen even furbolgs living in this area.

Which means that if we were to follow it far enough, we might be the first sentient beings to see what’s there, Harry reflected, before shaking his head. “Let’s make camp when we get to that river,” he suggested, to which Recca agreed.

This choice was made easier by the time they reached the river because, at that point, more of the area around it became clear. There was an actual beach to one side, nicer than the ones Harry had seen when he and Fandral’s group had gone after the Spear of the Ancients. Here, the river wound up through a few small hills, several of which boasted actual trees.

“Huh, those weren’t on the map, were they?” Recca asked as the pair circled the area. “In fact, I think I remember that there wasn’t anything green here before.”

“No, but that was nearly five thousand years ago,” Harry drawled, and even Recca, who could look to at least a thousand more years of life, had to shake her head at that. “Things do tend to change over time, especially that long a period.”

Soon, the two of them were landing in among the trees. The small copse of trees was quite a nice looking area, if as wild as all the rest of the environment of Azeroth was to Harry’s slightly-still British sensibilities. Transforming back to his normal body, Harry quickly pulled Quetzal out of his pocket, setting him on the ground, where he enlarged Quetzal to half his normal size, which the snake enjoyed tremendously.

Even inside the yurt, Quetzal couldn’t grow to anywhere near his full length, so even being a half-size like this was a luxury after the past few weeks. “We really must have a talk about this mode of travel, Harry! While it is nice enough, it is certainly not energetic enough to be of any amusement to me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind in the future,” Harry said, before turning away without further reply and beginning to set up his yurt. “Why don’t you go hunting for something? I doubt this copse of trees has anything large enough to feed you all in one go, but you can probably find something small and squishy, either here or out in the grasslands.” There was no great forest here, the trees ending barely half an acre away from the river. “With your natural camouflage, they might not even see your lumbering self coming.”

Quetzal found that idea agreeable, and slithered away through the woods, while Recca stationed herself up in the trees, scanning the sky and the area beyond the copse of trees southward. Both she and Harry assumed that any threat would come from that direction, forgetting for a moment that a river like this was more than large enough to spout its own dangers. And that the ocean was near enough to also be a threat.

The universe decided to remind them of this fact a moment later as Harry finished lighting a fire. There were several sinuous swishing noises that drew both of their attention towards the river first, then the ocean. There, several snakes, around a dozen of them, had poked their heads out of the water and were making their way towards Harry and his yurt. All of them were large and dangerous looking as well as being so colorful it was clear they were poisonous. They were each of a size to make a fully grown anaconda jealous too.

Harry wasn’t concerned. They weren’t as large as Quetzal at his full size, let alone the basilisk Harry had killed under Hogwarts. And they were snakes.

Every snake there paused, blinking in surprise as Harry spoke in Parseltongue. “%Hello gentlemen and ladies, are we intruding in your territory? We would be willing to pay for the right to a night’s stay if so.%”

For a few seconds the snakes just stared, swaying in place, their tongues flicking out, their jaws dropping open, a sure sign of shock in snake-kind. After a moment though, they recovered, their eyes narrowing as they first looked at one another, and then Harry. They began to close again, creating a half circle as one of them asked, “%How is it that you speak our tongue%?”

“%Magic%,” Harry answered, noticing that the snakes were now spreading out through the trees, almost circling Harry, his yurt and Recca. This brought the snakes closer, and looking at their heads more closely, he saw they resembled more reptiles than anything else, with jaws made to bite rather than swallow whole. There was also no sign of the normal respect and near-fawning nature most snakes displayed when Harry used Parseltongue.

Thinking about it, Harry was actually quite pleased with that. He’d always wondered if there was some kind of subtle slave magic to his Parseltongue, but it seemed that wasn’t the case. Even if they are set to fight us, that’s nice to know. Still, he tried again. “%We mean no harm to your brood and will be gone with the morning. We are willing to help, and I have spells that can bring prey to you in lieu of payment.%”

“%Why would we let another hunt when we can hunt you? There is more than enough meat to go around.%” Another snake hissed before a shadow fell over them.

All of the snakes looked up, their eyes widening at the sight of the dragon above them, carrying a fish in her four arms almost as large as she was. “Well, now, I’m feeling rather annoyed. I wouldn’t have gone hunting if I had known meat would come to us.”

“%She’s with us%,” Harry supplied, still speaking Parseltongue. “%We are traveling together.%”

The snakes all stilled at that, glancing from Harry and then up to the dragon. At the same time, a few of them who had shifted around to attack Harry from behind twisted around as if they almost saw something out of the corner of their eye. When they looked in that direction, nothing was there, but it was definitely adding to the suddenly anxious feelings the dozen or so snakes were feeling.

One of the bigger snakes hissed out a response, a bit quicker to reply than the others. “%Perhaps there is room to renegotiate--%”

“%I think not,%” Quetzal said as he came out of hiding. The last two weeks allowed him to rebuild some of his quills from the fight against the wyverns, and now several of them lanced out as he flexed his back, before lunging forward. He caught a third snake in his jaws, shaking him and slamming his head down to the ground with enough force to shatter its skull.

At that, Versera dove, flame ahead of her to fry a few of the serpents easily.

The fight really wasn’t much of one, but it certainly filled up their stores with snake meat, which Versera and Quetzal were very happy about. “Meat is always good whatever the source, and I’m certain Harry, that you can make even snake seem edible,” Quetzal opined.

“Which will let the fish I caught for Harry’s own supplies,” Versera smiled.

“How is it that you’re eating snakes anyway? Isn’t that cannibalism?” Recca taunted Quetzal.

The giant Needlespine Shimmerback looked back at her askance, before swallowing the rest of the snake he’d been eating slowly. “Why ever would it be? You eat birds, don’t you? It’s the same thing.”

“No, it isn’t! No bird I’ve ever eaten was able to speak!”

“Nor would these have without Harry,” Quetzal answered, with the sinuous mood body movement that did for snakes as a droll shrug. “In fact, how would you know that they can’t speak anyway? Do you have magic that can tell you whether or not a bird's noises are an actual language or not?”

Recca spluttered at that while Versera, once more in her kaldorei form, began to laugh, and Harry, busy as he was trying to figure out which spices and recipes would go with snake meat in his repertoire, rolled his eyes. We’re a very dysfunctional group in many ways, but I don’t think I would have it any other way, he reflected as the sun continued to go down in the distance.

End Chapter

When I had first outlined this chapter, I had hoped to write out a scene with Tyrande showing off a bit, but then I realized that was the only reason I was writing that scene. The more important scenes with Tyrande will be when they reach Northrend, what they find there, and what they decide to do in the future rather than Tyrande and company dealing with the Murlocs. So, I will end this chapter here. The main focus of this chapter was to show a bit more of what they will discover going south, a bit more of the geography of Kalimdor as I have shifted things around (at this time, canon issues are coming up that will change it to be more in line with what is known after Kalimdor is ‘discovered’ by the orcs and humans) and more of Harry’s tricks as well as what he had hoped to plan out for Recca, as well as a bit of dragon society. I hope you all enjoyed it and are having an enjoyable month!