AZEROTH 4

The murky woods barely let the sunlight through the canopy. Here and there a squirrel ran through the branches. Wolves and spiders the size of wolves roamed around the forest floor.

One particular wolf felt a sharp and debilitating pain in its backside, before falling over dead. There was a figure standing over the wolf's corpse that wasn't there before.

Carl looked down at his knife for a moment, before carefully wiping it clean on the wolf's fur.

"So I know Ambush is a commonly used ability by Rogues to attack from behind. But I never really considered exactly where that attack would land on a four legged creature. Talk about a pain in the ass." Carl muttered to himself as he looted the wolf corpse of the last bit of meat that he needed for a gathering quest and then skinned the beast.

Over the past couple of days Carl had spent his time between questing in the Redridge Mountains, capturing the wild life to add to his farms, and play/training the young dragons. It had been a busy time, where he didn't bother sleeping at night. He didn't suffer any from lack of sleep, now that he had trained up his body to a decent level.

After skinning the wolf corpse Carl began running south east towards Darkshire, the small village and quest hub for the Alliance in the Duskwood. He was already level 28 from quests and killing various beasties, so he was a little higher level than normal for Darkshire. But the next zone he was going to was Stranglethorn Vale, which was south of Duskwood. And STV, in Carl's memories, was chock full of PvP battles.

So Carl wanted to finish all the quests he could in Duskwood first. He was considering going up north to the Hillsbrad foothills instead, if there was too much enemy activity in STV. He didn't really fear being killed by enemy players, since he felt he could escape easily enough by vanishing or simply flying straight up in the air where they couldn't follow. But he didn't want to get entangled in pointless activities when he was trying to level.

Carl arrived at the small village and entered the circle of houses that were situation at a three way crossroad. To the east was the Deadwind Pass, where the raid instance Karazhan was located. It was one of the first raids available for players at level 70 in the Burning Crusades expansion. And further east from that was the Swamp of Sorrows. There were only a few quests and a dungeon instance in the Swamp, but Carl wasn't ready to head over there anytime soon.

He wasn't going to the Sunken Temple dungeon instance until he was level 50.

The warmth from the fire crackling away in the wide fireplace hit Carl as soon as he entered the Inn. The inn was not one that he owned, but the quest giver worked in the kitchens of this inn.

"I've got your wolf flanks here, Chef." Carl directly stated as soon as he entered the kitchen.

"Good! Just put them on the chopping block, I'm making some kebabs tonight with the meat. Here's your reward." Chef Grual replied, handing over a recipe for Seasoned Wolf Kebabs and a handful of silver.

Carl immediately opened the scroll with the recipe and learned it. The recipe immediately disappeared from Carl's hands, while the recipe and instructions appeared in Carl's brain. Carl casually waved farewell to the chef, and made his way back outside.

Walking straight ahead, Carl entered a smithy where he repaired his equipment and sold the junk he had picked up. Although he was only getting some small amount of silver from looting his kills, and he already had plenty of gold, Carl continued his practice of looting everything. He didn't lack storage space, and every little silver was more wealth.

With his business in Darkshire taken care of for the moment, Carl ran over to the gryphon keeper and hired a flight over to Sentinel Hill in Westfall. It would be quicker to run east from there and cross the river into Duskwood for his next set of quests.

While flying on the back of the gryphon Carl once more thought about why he wasn't using his apparition or sling ring to teleport everywhere to make his questing faster. He never knew who might be watching at the destination, and it might attract unwanted attention. He was trying to stay incognito as a normal adventurer so as not to arouse the suspicion of the enemies who had staged the Raid on his Dragon Flight.

So he stuck to methods that normal adventurers had available. It wouldn't be too late to wait until he had developed his dragon flight into a powerful force that could protect themselves. Then he would find his enemies and throw away all the self imposed restrictions and demolish them.

Dismounting from the gryphon, Carl took a moment to really stretch out the kinks in his body. Relying on someone else to fly him places was really uncomfortable when he could do it himself so much quicker and smoother.

Carl arrived at the river that separated Duskwood and Westfall and immediately dove in. Controlling the water, he propelled himself across to the opposite shoreline with barely any effort. The sunny amber fields of Westfall was contrasted strongly by the deep greens and shadows of Duskwood.

After climbing out of the river, he checked over the mobs in the area, and charted a course that avoided most of the random monsters that he wasn't hunting. One of the things about the game that he had been annoyed by was having to run back and forth a lot. That annoyance was magnified by 10 when he wasn't just controlling a digital avatar but having to do the running around himself due to quests.

So while killing those random monsters would benefit him a small amount of magic / xp that would count for him getting stronger, it was more beneficial, time wise, to avoid them. Carl had been getting plenty of practice at that, so he was adroit in running through the forest while avoiding giant spiders.

Ducking down behind a tree at the edge of the Raven Hill Cemetary, Carl scouted out the lay of the land.

Carl raised an eyebrow at the number of zombies roaming around the cemetery. There were a lot more than he expected there to be. Looking at their levels, they were actually a few levels above his, in the early 30s.

'That's strange.' Carl thought. 'These ghouls are ten levels higher than the other monsters that roam around Duskwood. Is this the discrepancy between the game and real life?'

While Carl was looking at the undead, the smell of rotten flesh drifted into his nose. He wrinkled his nose at the foul smell, thinking of how many undead he was going to be fighting in the future in Northrend when it was time to fight the Lich King.

'Well, there's no real reason to delay.' Carl thought as he activated stealth. His movement speed when in stealth was slowed down, so running around permanently stealthed would take forever to get anywhere. But there was nothing better than suddenly appearing behind an enemy with a slash of his sword.

The first zombie Carl targeted looked particularly ragged, like it had been dragged through the shredder and only its ligaments were keeping it together. With one slash of his sword, the zombie's head was separated from his shoulders. The magically animated corpse paused for a moment mid step, before toppling over.

Carl kicked the body lying on the ground. While leveling he found he didn't have to touch the corpse with his hands, he could just kick them and with an application of will and he would loot drops from them.

Carl pocketed the silk cloth, fishing bait, and silver that dropped off the zombie, but ignored the tomb dust and zombie flesh. There was no way he would try cooking with zombie flesh, it was just useless.

When he heard a groaning / moaning headed his way, Carl paid more attention to the zombie that were attracted by his presence and attack on the zombie at his feet. Three nearby zombies were shamble running his way.

Pointing at one of the zombies with the knife in his left hand, Carl sent a fireball his way. Carl's fireball had ranked up several times from the Mage class trainer, and Carl had practiced putting more magic into each fireball.

A powerfully hot fireball exploded on the leftmost zombie, burning it to a crisp. Without missing a beat, Carl cast Exorcism on the middle zombie. The holy type magic was particularly effective against the undead, causing the middle zombie to fall apart. A pile of bones and rotten flesh that rapidly dissolved into nothing was all that was left.

The last zombie was now within sword range of Carl. He used Sinister Strike with Blue Orchid on the last zombie. The enhanced blow beheaded the final zombie mid swing. The body collapsed to the ground with a wheeze.

Carl kicked each of the corpses to loot them, and pocket the silk and silver, while ignoring the useless trash.

He glanced at the quest counter that showed he needed to kill 19 more Plague Spreader zombies. Only the first zombie he had killed had been the correct type of zombie, but there were so many other types here that he couldn't avoid fighting them.

Locking his eyes on the next target, Carl activated stealth mode and ghosted over to the next target. It died just as easily as any of the other zombies, so Carl continued the slaughter.

Carl had long noticed a huge pile of disturbed earth in the middle of the cemetery, so he was making his way over to it. He was pretty sure that there were tunnels dug into the ground where he would find more zombies to kill.

Arriving at the pile of dirt, Carl confirmed that it was a tunnel leading into the ground. It was a surprisingly large tunnel, more than large enough to fit his dragon form inside if he crawled and scraped his wings along the walls.

Carl made his way down the ramp, killing zombies as he went. Occasionally there would be an animated skeleton knight or mage along the way. After the first skeleton mage landed an ice bolt on him, Carl made sure to target them first. He found the few seconds of slow down effect particularly annoying, so he made sure they didn't land any more spells on him.

Occasionally there were too many skeletons and zombies around to kill all at once, so Carl used Counterspell to stop their spells and easily ran through their ranks, slashing left and right, occasionally popping off spells of his own, and dropping Consecration where zombies could run through the area of effect holy damage spell.

After some time of traveling through the dirt tunnels, Carl was surprised to find the tunnel turn into a well built stone tunnel. That was really strange, because he was sure that zombies wouldn't have built something like that. At least not unless something of intelligence were able to command and direct them to do so.

With his curiosity pricked, Carl continued to follow the tunnels, even though he had completed the quest.

The tunnel split came to a fork, one side going left, the other going right. Carl chose the left hand fork to explore first.

The tunnel continued for over a hundred yards, and Carl moved forward, killing zombies or skeletons every several feet.

The tunnel then turned into a large hall that had large stone tables set up in rows with alchemical test tubes and concoctions on top of the tables.

Carl still hadn't seen anything that could have directed the undead in the cemetery to construct what he had seen, but this laboratory was certainly a clue. Carl began looking around for any notes left behind.

After tossing the lab, Carl was disappointed to find out that there were no research notes or memoirs left behind to give him a clue as to who was behind this place, or what they had been hoping to accomplish.

Carl then made his way back down the tunnel, and took the other fork. This tunnel, while fortified with stone, was much larger than the other fork. It was the size of the original dirt tunnel that Carl had come in by. It was also had a downward slope and was traveling deeper into the ground.

Just ahead of him, Carl saw that the tunnel opened up into a large cavern. Carl entered the cavern in stealth in order to scout out the situation before he exposed himself.

A moment later, he was glad he had. He stood stunned, staring at the sight in front of him. If he hadn't been in stealth, he would have been a sitting duck.

The sight that had so stunned Carl was a huge ritual circle, that had obviously been used for some necromantic ritual. Inside the circle was the bloody remains of a Silver Dragon. Small scraps of dragon hide and the skeleton were all that remained of the poor dragon.

There were still a few zombies that were gnawing on the bones. Carl vision suddenly narrowed, seeing the continued desecration of the Dragon after their death infuriated him.

Carl didn't lose his reason though, and glided up behind those bastard walking corpses. With three swings of the sword, Carl ended the zombies unlife. The dozen of other undead in the area noticed Carl when he made his first attack and started swarming him.

It didn't do them any good. Carl was a whirlwind of blade and flame, burning and slashing the unlife out of the zombies.

With the zombies taken care of Carl pulled out a recorder and filmed the ritual setting. He would have to do some research into what his enemies were doing with his dragons. He also had the Yamato send some probes to scour the tunnels for any trace evidence. Just because there were no papers left behind didn't mean who ever set this up hadn't left behind traces of their presence.

He would find those traces and track them back to the source.

Carl laid a hand gently on the skull of the dragon in apology for their unjust and painful death and vowed to end their killer and their organization. Vengeance? Justice? In this particular case, wasn't it the same thing?

Up until this moment Carl hadn't been taking the world very seriously. Since there were so many game elements, it felt like there wasn't much urgency or need for Carl to be proactive. He "knew" the game plot and what would happen in the expansions, so he had been somewhat lax in his approach.

But now, he was slapped in the face with the tragic consequence of the Raid on his dragon flight. His enemy wouldn't be sitting still, and they were using and abusing his people.

So Carl needed to up his game.

Carl gathered the bones into his pocket dimension for burial later. There was no way he was leaving them behind in this filthy place.

While making his way out of the stinking tunnels, Carl communicated with the VI of the Yamato, detailing plans to start manufacturing stealth satellites they could send into orbit to start spying on every inch of Azeroth.

There would also be some probes sent through the Dark Portal to the Outlands to start gathering intel there. Eventually Carl would make his way there, so it was good to have all the intelligence he could before arriving there.

In the meantime, Carl would have to speed up his leveling. He pondered about how to do so in a reasonable manner without exposing his true nature to his enemies.

His enemies had plotted in the dark to attack his Silver Dragon Flight, while his dragons had been naively out in the open and unsuspecting of the disaster bearing down on them. Now it was his turn to strike from the shadows and overwhelm his enemies.

With a nasty grin on his face, Carl began running south to the next location. He had some Ogres to kill and a box to return to the owner.

XX

Over the wild jungles of Stranglethorn Vale flew a lone gryphon. Below, the raptor dinosaurs looked up when they heard the gryphon screech. They had no way to reach the high flying beast, so they ignored the beast as it overflew their territory, continuing their daily lives.

Carl had looked down when the gryphon he was riding screeched loudly, but didn't see anything in particular of interest that would have caught the gryphon's attention.

Soon enough the gryphon came in for a landing in the wooden dock city of Booty Bay. It was a neutral city of Goblins, both Alliance and Horde members were welcome to come and do business.

Once the gryphon landed on the high platform, Carl dismounted and looked out over the city. The whole city was built over the ocean water of the cove on harbor piers. It was multi level with ramps all over the place leading to other levels.

The city was doing a brisk business, as goblins, and the various races of the Horde and Alliance were milling around, doing business and accepting or completing quests.

Carl summoned his paladin charger mount and leapt off the platform, landing on the sturdy roof of one of the buildings. Guiding the mount to run forward and to the right, he kicked the horse at just the right time to leap to the next building. He urged the charger to continue on, and jump down to the walkway, barely avoiding landing on a Gnome that was passing by.

Ignoring the Gnome's curses, it wasn't like anyone would have noticed if he had trampled the little guy, Carl's mount galloped along the pier, curving around alongside the cliff it was built next to.

A few minutes later, Carl arrived just as the ship that regularly departed for Ratchet was pulling away from the dock. Leaping his charger across the gap, Carl safely landed and pulled back on the reins to bring his mount to a standstill.

Looking to his left, Carl saw an Orc and Troll adventurer also mounted on their wolf and raptor respectively. Carl gave them a lazy wave, which they returned with a raspberry and a yawn.

The two Horde players were a few levels below Carl, who had reached level 45 after questing in Stranglethorn Vale. They didn't look like they were going to be trying anything shady on the boat, so Carl sat back and ignored the two.

In the game, when the boat traversed the oceans between continents there was a loading screen and then the journey was shortened to a few seconds.

Here, though, there was no such convenience for Carl. But oddly enough, Carl noticed that the two Horde players suddenly went blank and still as statues shortly after the ship departed. They remained in that state until only a few moments before they docked at Ratchet in the Barrens zone.

'Seems like there's some timey-wimey remote connection jiggery pokery going on there so the "players" don't get bored.' Carl guessed at the nature of the two Horde character's odd behavior. Since it seemed that the avatar bodies were connected with game players elsewhere, it was the most reasonable explanation he could come up with.

For a moment Carl felt bad for the players, since they didn't get the full immersive feel and sensation of the World of Warcraft. But he soon threw those feelings away. There was no purpose for him to care about the players or their gaming experience. He had things to do.

As the boat slowed down to come alongside the dock at Ratchet, Carl didn't wait any longer. He spurred his mount and jumped the gap to the dock. His charger's hooves were pounding on the wooden dock as he galloped along, soon arriving at the flight master.

Dismounting he engaged the flight master in conversation. A few silver exchanged hands, and Carl was mounted on another gryphon flying south. Carl spent the time flying south looking over the lands of the continent of Kalimdor.

Carl had already seen the land he was flying over from his satellite feeds, but feeling the wind and smelling the air brought a different mood to the experience. The salty ocean breeze of the coast along the Barrens. The swampy humidity of Duswallow Marsh. And finally the dry desert heat of Tanaris.

It was all so interesting to see the world in real life.

The gryphon landed just outside the walled city of Gadgetzan.

The moment Carl landed, his danger sense went wild. He threw himself to the side, barely avoiding the Ambush of an Orc Rogue.

Carl immediately cast Frost Nova to freeze the Rogue in place. Carl gained a second to pull out the Blue Orchid and start attacking. The rogue flashed behind Carl with Shadow Step, but Carl was not surprised and blinked forward, away from the Backstab.

Carl immediately used his Hammer of Justice to stun the Rogue, and then went to town on the player character. He liked PvP and ganking people? Carl was going to make sure he got his fill of PvP.

Carl laid down consecration to do some area damage from the spell, began backstabbing the Rogue with Blue Orchid, and letting his poisons that he had previously applied to his sword / dagger combo that he dual wielded do damage.

A short time later, before the Rogue could even get out of the stun from Hammer of Justice, and Carl was staring at the corpse in satisfaction.

Laughing out loud at the short but intense battle, Carl mounted up and began riding west. He was enthused that he was able to kill a level 66 rogue at level 45. And he was even more happy that he was able to sense the incoming sneak attack and avoid it. Thank you perks that gave him spider sense!

In the midst of that moment of crisis, where he had actually unintentionally dodged the magic attack of the Ambush, Carl had come to a realization. If his enemy's mental focus and intention to strike him would cause the blow to land, no matter how he physically dodged, but he had somehow dodged the Ambush despite that, then the reverse must be true as well. So Carl had focused all his magic and intention to dodge the Backstab and he had been successful in deliberately avoiding the attack.

So he came to the conclusion that if his magic and will was greater than the enemy's, and was focused on dodging, then it would override the other side's intention and magical ability to strike.

Carl had focused his magic and all his mental resources on one idea: dodge.

And it had worked beautifully. His magic had been summoned by Carl's intent, and easily made the Rogue's magical attack miss. That allowed Carl to gain the advantage in the short battle.

While he was galloping west toward the instance dungeon of Zul'Farrak, Carl made a mental note to gather and study the PvP trinkets that allowed someone to get out of any movement inhibiting attacks, like a rogue's stun. He couldn't afford to be stun locked and die due to running into multiple rogues who got some lucky hits on him. If he could keep such a trinket on him at all times, or craft a better one, he could have a safety net to ensure his life.

Carl soon arrived at the glowing portal into the instance dungeon and rode directly inside. Zul'Farrak was a base for a group of Trolls that weren't part of the Horde.

In the sandstone walled base, Carl looked over the multiple groups of 3-4 trolls that milled around together. Carl spent a moment to renew his Paladin and Mage buffs, and reapplied his poisons on his weapons.

Carl had taken to using the Blue Orchid as a bastard sword, and used an offhand dagger. He had gotten the Blue quality Rare ranked Coldrage Dagger as a drop from the final boss of the Razorfen Downs instance. There was only a single enchantment on the dagger that occasionally cast a Frostbolt at the enemy when the dagger was used to attack.

Over the past several days Carl had mostly been focusing on leveling, but he had still spent some time in time dilation to practice his crafting skills. By this point, he was confident in being able to forge a better dagger than the one he had gotten from the dungeon, including adding much better permanent enchants to his stats.

But he was holding off on crafting an upgraded off hand weapon for the time being. In the Zul'Farrak instance dungeon were two Blue quality swords that dropped. Jang'thraze the Protector and Sang'thraze the Deflector. When these two one-handed swords were combined, it created the two-handed Purple Epic quality sword, Sul'thraze the Lasher.

Carl planned to run the dungeon until he got both those one-handed swords. Besides the fact that it would be the first Epic quality weapon he got when he combined them, which was valuable to study, Carl was interested in studying how the two Rare quality swords combined into an Epic quality one. He was interested in finding out if he could replicate the effect through crafting.

At the very least, it would increase his crafting knowledge. Once he figured out how to craft Epic weapons and armor, Carl would make sure to keep himself outfitted with the best he could craft.

While practicing his various professions, Carl had learned that the armor and weapons quality relied on the quality and purity of the materials used to craft them. The higher the quality of materials, the more magic and enchantment it could hold. The more magic it could stand to hold, the higher the quality.

So with those goals in mind, Carl set his eyes on the first group of Trolls that were chilling in a group. He snuck up on them in stealth, and opened with an Ambush that killed the first Troll. A Fire Blast took care of the second Troll.

One of the remaining two Trolls pulled out a sword and swung on Carl, but he marshaled his intent and dodged the attack both physically and magically. He needed to practice that particular skill more now that he had the idea down.

A slice with Blue Orchid saw the Troll dead, separated from his head. Carl cast Judgment of Light on the final Troll that was charging up a Shadow Bolt. The Paladin Judgment combined with additional damage from the Seal of Righteousness was enough to end the Troll's attempt to cast magic, and ended its life.

By this time the whole process of looting was second nature to Carl. His focus was already on the next group. So when he finished looting, he once more entered stealth and snuck up on the unfortunate Trolls.

Rinse and repeat.

XX

Carl was sitting in the corner of the Learning Hall of the Silver Dragon Flight. He was watching the six young dragons going over their arithmetic lessons, memorizing formula and doing practice problems.

There was a little smile on the corner of Carl's mouth as he watched over the young dragons learning earnestly. He had come back to the Flight just that morning to spend some time with his people and go over the reports his spy satellites were sending him.

Normally his spy satellites, once spread around the world, would have ferreted out all the needed information and sent it to him. There would be no more secrets hiding from him.

But there were complications here in the World of Warcraft. There was so much magic present in the world, which was especially dense in concentration in the bases of the various powerful factions, that the interference caused information gathering to be difficult.

At the very least Carl now had a list of locations of the various bases around Azeroth, due to the concentration of magic indicating that something was going on there. It was a very long list.

Carl sent out an order to the VIs to keep track of who entered and exited the various bases. At the very least he could discover who owned which base. Once Carl knew where the various bases of his three enemies were, he could then employ stealthed spy probes to enter the various bases to gather more information.

After seeing the fate of the unlucky dragon in the cemetery previously, Carl had felt a sense of urgency to save the rest of the captured dragons. He didn't even know if any of them were still alive. But he had to do what he could for his people / dragons.

Once he sent out the orders for the next round of intel gathering, Carl started designing new remote controlled bots with the Yamato VI. While Carl would like to personally be involved in every rescue of his dragons, he realized they were likely spread all over the world and he might not be able to be in so many places at once. So he was working on the assumption that he wouldn't able to be there personally to save each Dragon.

But now that he had the location recorded of the various bases, he could start deploying a sort of relay type teleport assist probe. When Carl knew where the Dragons were, he could send in the probe under stealth and it would teleport the Dragon outside the defenses of the base. Then the next probe or satellite would pick up the transmission and send the Dragon back to the Flight.

The infirmary was already being set up by Petes to handle the influx of injured Dragons that might not be in their right minds due to whatever was being done to them.

Carl had no idea what atrocities they had suffered. For all he knew they had brain washed his Dragons to be their loyal attack dogs. So he needed to be able to restrain them until they could be checked and ensure their minds were free of inimical influence.

"Lord Carl! It's time for lunch, are you joining us!" The sweet sing song voice of Joyce interrupted Carl's designing work.

Looking up, he saw the group of six young Dragons looking at him hopefully. Carl put away his data pad and stood up with vigor, raising one arm to dramatically point forward, causing the young Dragons to giggle at his exaggerated actions.

"Of course! It's time to slay a good meal and banish it to the bowels of my bowels!" Carl declared.

Once the young Dragons saw that Carl had put away his work and was joining them, they cheered and swarmed around him. Carl let the cheerful babble of young voices soothe the anger he had been nursing ever since he found the Silver Dragon remains in Duskwood.

Carl threw all the heavy concerns in the back of his mind as he joined the banter of his Dragons at their meal. Despite his heavy concerns, these young dragons reminded him about what he already had in his life. What he needed to protect.

XX

"My lord, what is all this?" Mortic asked from where he stood at the doorway.

Carl looked up from where he was testing the restraining field in one of the medical bays he had set up in one of the halls of the Flight Hold.

Mortic looked so hesitant to intrude and disrupt Carl's work, it made him faintly smile. Carl looked down at the healing bays he had installed in the hall and realized how odd it would look to someone who never ran into technology more advanced than the slapdash and dangerous Gnomish Engineering.

Gnomish Engineering was notorious for failing and blasting the user at least one or two times out of five uses. The small smile on Carl's face twitched at the idea that his technology should be compared to such…unstable, half arsed junk. Looks like he needed to speed up the education of his Dragons.

"Come in, Mortic. You won't disturb anything." Carl finally replied to the old Dragon's query. "These are healing bays. When I rescue any survivors of the Flight and bring them here, these will assess anything wrong with them, and begin the process of healing them."

Mortic's eyes widened in excitement at the matter of fact way that Carl said he was going to rescue their kin. Over the short time Mortic had known Carl, he had started to develop a huge trust in their new Leader. Mortic was also excited about the magical devices that Carl said could heal injuries.

"Let me know how I can help you, my lord." Mortic finally got out.

"Well, right now I'm testing the confinement field. No doubt some of them won't be in their right minds. So it would be helpful if you could assist me in testing the functions." Carl offered.

"Of course, my lord." Mortic seemed enthused to be able to do something.

Carl then showed the old dragon how to test the restraining field's functions. Using physical force, magic, even changing into their dragon form and using their flame breaths were all part of the testing function.

Mortic enthusiastically dove into the testing. Once Carl saw that the old Dragon had the hang of it, he continued on the other side.

After some time, all the restraining fields had been tested and confirmed to work properly. Carl and Mortic left the newly built medical bay and started back towards the dining facility.

"I've already gotten news of the survivors." Carl passed on to Mortic. "I'll be starting the operation tonight to rescue them. Send word to Goram that they should prepare food. Something light, since many of them have been starved for some time."

"Yes, my lord." Mortic could barely contain his excitement. After so many years, they were finally able do something more than just hide the pitiful remnants of their Flight away. He had spent so many years in fear that their enemy would come back and finish off the rest of them. But now, with the return of Lord Carl, everything was changing for the better.

"All right, I'll leave you here." Carl said when they were outside the dining hall. "I've got some last minute reports to go over before I start the rescue operation."

The old Dragon in Elf form bowed to Carl before silently entering the dining hall. Carl continued on to his chambers.

The inside was vastly different from what the empty and bare chambers it had previously been. The space of the room was expanded greatly, and a large energy production and computer control center had been installed in one half of the room.

Looking over the last reports of his spy probes, Carl saw that everything was in place and ready.

He had been getting reports trickling in over the past few days of the survivors. But in order to not beat the bush and scare the bird away, he had held off on acting on the intel he gathered until he was set to act and save all the Dragons at one time.

If he started saving his Dragons before he knew where all of them were, the enemy might have taken extreme measures. Either hiding the Dragons in more well defended locations, or just killing them to prevent their "prizes" from being captured.

But now that he had the location of all the Dragons that were still alive, as well as the locations of the Dragon's remains that didn't make it, he was ready to act.

Carl sent the order to the VIs to rescue his Dragons.

All over Azeroth, in the hidden bases of the Cult of the Damned, Silver Dragons were disappearing in a flash of white light. Left behind in the place of the Dragons were constructs that looked like Dragon corpses.

There was no way to keep such a big rescue operation quiet or hidden. But he could lessen the impact and alarm of the enemy if he left behind a body. That way they would just think that all the Dragons gave up and died together.

Of course it would raise questions and doubts that all the Dragons died on the same day. But it was better than letting the enemy know that someone had penetrated their defenses and taken away their captives. That would be the equivalent of poking an ant's nest. And he wasn't yet ready to poke that ants nest.

Carl stayed at the computer all night, monitoring the progress of the health check of the rescued Dragons, as well as keeping an eye on the reports from the enemy's bases.

In the morning, Carl saw that the leadership of the various enemy bases found out their captives had died over night. Carl monitored and tracked the means they had of communicating with their organization and each other.

The more information he gathered on the Cult of the Damned's organization and communications ability, the more pleased Carl was. It was all ammunition that would allow his forces to annihilate them.

Carl could have used his technology and production capability to completely decimate the Cult at this time. But he felt it was important to give that task to his Dragon Flight. Especially the Dragons who had been in captivity for over a decade, suffering at the hands of the Cult. It was important that they get the chance to vent their feelings and get some payback.

It would also set the tone for the organization. They needed to be able to protect themselves and be powerful enough to get stuff done. If not, they might as well simply hole up in their Flight Hold for the rest of their lives.

Carl would definitely make allowances though. If some of his Dragons were so broken that all they wanted was to live their lives in safety and craft weapons like they used to, he would grant them that right.

They had already suffered so much due to his picking of a Drawback, that he felt he owed them as their leader. If they needed protection, he would provide it. If they needed instruction on how to kick ass, he would be their man. Er, Dragon.

Finally, Carl was satisfied that the operation had gone smoothly.

Even though there was reports that some of the Cultists had seen the flash of light when the Dragons were teleported out, they had no idea what that flash was. None of them were hurt, and the bodies of the Dragons were still there. So ultimately the oddity of the flash of light and the dying dragons had no ready answers for them. As a result, they simply adjusted and continued their normal operations.

With that assurance that the rescue was complete, and that the enemy was still unaware of what they were doing, Carl left his command center and made his way to the infirmary. He had some Dragons to talk to after they were healed up a bit.