Flinthammer Hall

The air screamed as it passed through the demonic portals and the air stank with fel energy. Mountaineer Ringo Flinthammer put one hand to his nose and jerked it away in shock.

“My hand!” He stared in horror at his purple skin. “My voice!”

He whirled around, staring upward. The purple foliage, the greens so deep and rich that it hurt them to look at them — this wasn’t Loch Modan. This was … where was this?

He had been in Dragonblight, he thought, but it was a dead place now, far deader than even the frozen plains normally seemed. There had been the corpse of a great dragon draped over Wyrmrest Temple. But when was he there? How could he have been?

“Ringo!” A voice burst in on his reverie as the world jerked and shifted beneath his feet. He stared into the eyes of a night elf priestess, her gossamer white dress more of a nightgown than what a proper dwarf woman would wear out in public. “Ringo! Wake up!”

He opened his mouth to reply and spat as dirt and dust flew into it. He sat forward, coughing out a piece of plaster that had fallen from the roof of Flinthammer Hall.

“Beli?” Even in the darkness, his wife’s wide eyes shone with reflected moonlight. “Ah had th’ strangest dream …”

There was another thump, and this one bounced him from the bed onto the stone floor. Somewhere in the darkness, Frostmaw was whining — a pitiful sound to come from a bear of his size — and Bael was calling out for his parents in confusion, although not in pain or fear, praise Khaz’goroth.

Beli jerked open the curtains as she passed by the window on the way to retrieve their child. The room filled with orange light.

“‘s Deathwing,” she barked, “He’s done ano’er flyby o’er Thelsamar. Th’ town’s burnin’!”

Ringo jumped to his feet, doffing his nightshirt and grabbing for his mountaineer’s uniform.

“Someone should put an end ta that beastie once and fer all — and soon,” he snarled, jerking on his boots.

“Ah donnae reckon that’s possible,” Beli muttered, returning to the room with Bael in her arms.

“Nay, it is,” Ringo said. “Now. … How in blazes do Ah know that?”