Probing the substance with the dagger, the high elf had her answer. Myatis. Her people had used the magical coating to preserve sacred relics and rare living things like seeds. Someone had decided to use it for a more ingenious purpose; keeping these eggs from rotting.

But while the myatis coating was excellent for preservation, Vereesa understood now the constant battle between heat and cold in the chamber. It was not enough to preserve the eggs; sticking her finger into the coating, she determined that they were just the perfect temperature to guarantee the life within stayed absolutely viable.

And then Vereesa noticed just how many eggs had been arranged in such a perfect balance. Not a handful. Not dozens.

Hundreds. So many hundreds that she could only imagine that they had been gathered over centuries...

The high elf spun around. It had gone unnoticed by her at first because the myatis coating tended to make everything look gray, but not all the eggs were of the same type. It was not simply a matter of some difference in shape or even size, but also color and patterning.

By the Sunwell! These are notjust the eggs of a black dragon.... They are surely those of reds and others, too....

Vereesa could not believe what she beheld. When she and Rhonin had helped aid the queen of the red flight to escape from the Horde, there had been ample opportunity to see pieces of that flight's broken egg shells. Afterward, her husband, constantly seeking to keep himself educated in all magical matters, had shown her egg fragments from other flights, including those of the black. Certainly, eggs of Deathwing's kind dominated the chamber, but there were many akin to the red and those that looked like neither had to have been stolen from the blue flight and others.

"Centuries..." she whispered to herself. "Yes, it must have taken centuries..."

Then, something odd about the eggs made the ranger peer closer at a couple. They looked strangely swollen and there were tiny pustules all over the shells.

Whatever these eggs had once held, they no longer held the innocent young of dragons.

A shiver suddenly overtook her, a shiver that had nothing to do with the fierce, magical stalactites. She knew well Deathwing's desire for a new, more terrible dragonflight and how his children had carried that foul legacy on. But all the while Nefarian and Onyxia had been delving into their own plots concerning that flight's creation, someone else had been patiently and methodically collecting all these different eggs—no doubt often by deceit—for the time when it would be absolutely certain that the chances of successfully creating the monstrous dragons desired were almost perfect.

And with so many eggs, there would be more than enough of the abominations to sweep over every last bit of defiance Azeroth's natural creatures might muster.

The horrific images filling her head were suddenly swept away by the sound of movement from farther in the great chamber. Ax held ready, the ranger moved toward the direction from which she thought the brief sound originated.

But as she neared, ail Vereesa saw was yet another of the bubbling pools. This one was so vast that a sailing ship could have been set down in the middle of it, although from there it could not have gone very far. The high elf studied the edges of the pools, searching for anyone who might be near. Despite the constant bubbling, she was certain that it had not been that noise that she had mistaken for much more.

From the center of the pool burst forth a huge, monstrous head. The heat of the molten lava colored it a bright, burning orange. It opened its reptilian maw—

"Ve-Vereesa?" it rasped.

With a groan, the giant rolled toward her end of the pool. The ranger stumbled back as several tons of steaming dragon fell free of the lava and onto the ground before her. She continued to retreat, stunned by the massive girth of the beast. Rarely had she seen a dragon so huge save the queen of the red flight or Krasus in his true form of Korialstrasz—

Korialstrasz?

The steaming leviathan continued to collapse in her direction. The ranger turned and ran, realizing that the dragon was even larger than she had first calculated.

His shadow loomed over her. Vereesa knew that she was not running fast enough. She braced herself for the inevitable—

But Korialstrasz did not fall upon her. Indeed, the massive crash she expected did not happen, instead only a slight thud behind hermarking the end to the dragon's fall.

The high elf dared look back.

Steam still rising, Krasus the mage lay sprawled at the edge of the pool. His generally-pale complexion was, for a moment, bright red and his body was clearly burning an imprint into the stone floor. Curiously, his cowled robes were untouched... but then, they were a false image, the results of the dragon's conjurations and thus far more durable than any true garment.

Getting over her shock, she ran to his side. Fortunately, despite his still appearance, Krasus breathed.

However, she could not wake him. Not certain what else to do, Vereesa tested to see how warm his body was. While still far more than was normal, she could at least touch him without fear of burning.

Lifting the slumped figure as carefully as she could, the ranger pulled him over to one side, where the floor of the cavern rose up. There she set him in a sitting position and pondered what to do next.

Krasus saved her that trouble by at last opening his eyes.

"V-Vereesa of the high elves," he managed. "You were not one of those I expected—" The dragon mage went into a coughing fit. He looked older, more emaciated."—but it is good to see you, albeit not so good to see you here."

"I should have expected to find you, though," the ranger returned. "With so much evil at hand, who would come to see to its end but you?"

"You—you and Rhonin—have done more than your sh-share, young one." He waved off her protest. "Be-besides, that is neither here... neither here nor there." His eyes narrowed. "Do you know what is going on In Grim Batol?"

"Just enough to be confused, great one." As he winced from pain again, she eyed him in renewed concern. "Krasus...what ails you?"

"I have been to a place of a hellish kind I hope never to suffer again. I barely managed to escape, but in doing so nearly tore myself apart. I was cast back from limbo into the very mountain itself...the very rock of the mountain..."

He quickly described for her as best he could the awful moment when, escaping a magical trap, he was randomly thrust by its unleashed forces into a part of Grim Batol. His body and the foundation of the mount became part of the same. Only the dragon's incredible magic and powerful will kept him from becoming forever entombed.

"It was all that I could do to thrust myself into the nearest chamber. I burst through, still in my true form, and crawled without care from one cavern to the next. I needed heat to revive my body. Incredible heat. Yet, the only source that I could sense close enough to reach felt like so little. However, I had no choice. I went there, forcing the change to this body when the tunnels proved too narrow...."

He had not even paid any attention to what lay all around him, his suffering mind only knowing that, despite the heat seeming so little, there were pools of molten lava within sight. Dragons were not, by nature, generally found diving into lava and, had he stayed in much longer, he would have eventually burned to death. However, it said something for the critical state of his life that this was the only way that he could quickly recuperate. Aided by what magic he could muster, the incredible heat revived him far swifter than normal means could have.

"But the trick is to know when to escape the pool. I was originally so undone that I nearly overstayed. I had thrust up twice to call as secretly as I could to any who knew me as friend, for I knew that I would unfortunately need help yet. I expected another, either one of the dwarves or a draenei—"