//------------------------------//
// Suramar: Invading the Aqueducts 
// Story: World of Warcraft: The Ties that Bind 
// by Blackdrag-rose 
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After their run in with Discord, and learning that he had absolutely no faith in their abilities to defend this world or defeat Sargeras, it took Lyra another two weeks to fully recover from her ordeal and return to how she had been before the attack on the Emerald Nightmare. Lyra was not pleased with having to be out of the fight for a month, which might have given Gul'dan the time he needed to do whatever he wanted with Lord Illidan's body, but Trixie calmed her down and said that if anything like that happened the Illidari would know about it. Since Lyndraxa, the current leader since Lyra was in the clinic, was sending her regular reports about their progress she knew that nothing terrible had happened, which meant that either their enemy was having a hard time completing his task or was simply waiting for an audience to arrive. Lyra didn't like the fact that Gul'dan might be waiting for an audience, because that meant he could easily do what he wanted and was waiting for her and the other heroes to arrive.

It was also during those two weeks that Lyra, while she was sleeping, saw flashes of Lord Illidan's life flash through her dreams, where at times she was reenacting parts of history as her mentor and learned of his sacrifices... something that was reported to be Xe'ra's doing, with some help from some of the other heroes. She learned that the Prime Naaru tasked the heroes of Azeroth with finding, retrieving, and ensuring the safety of Lord Illidan's soul, which involved keeping it safe inside Light's Heart, Xe'ra's core, until the right moment. Lyra knew that Xe'ra blamed the heroes of Azeroth for killing the child of prophecy, her mentor, and were forcing them to atone for their sins, but at the same time she wondered if it was possible for Lord Illidan to return to life... and decided that she would figure out the truth of the matter in time, just like everyone else would when they invaded the Nighthold.

Once Lyra was able to walk without Trixie's help, which was the first day of her third week in the clinic, she gathered her warglaives and headed back to the Fel Hammer, where she quickly retrained her senses to be what they had been before the Emerald Nightmare. Trixie was, of course, against the very idea of this happening and the other heroes that had helped Lyra along hated to see their hard work undone, but she proved them all wrong and only got stronger as she trained with the other Illidari for the next week. She understood that she had a weakness, just like everyone else, and she needed to conquer it before something like what happened with Xavius happened again, but she needed to uncover what that weakness was before she could conquer it... which she would do after they invaded the Nighthold.

At the same time Lyra and Trixie received news about the invasion of Suramar, as Thalyssra was happy to report that they had access to the main gate of the Nighthold, but that turned sour as she mentioned that they had activated one of Elisande's traps and froze a good portion of their forces in time. Apparently the only way to save them was to invade a lower section of the Nighthold, where security was barely present, and attack whoever or whatever was in control of the time control spell. Since they would already be inside the Nighthold at that point in time Thalyssra also noted that if their attack was successful they could pull their army back to a safe spot and let the heroes continue with their invasion, where they could rip through Elisande's defenses and her allies... before finding her and ending her reign, allowing them access to Gul'dan and the final Pillar of Creation.

Once Lyra was given the clean bill of health, by every hero that was a healer and some of the Illidari to be sure that she hadn't taken in more demonic energy and was starting to lose her mind, she, Trixie, and the other heroes flew out of Dalaran and headed back towards Shal'Aran... where they marched upon the war infected city that was Suramar City as they searched for Thalyssra, who was waiting for them in the Sanctum of Order. As she lead the group towards the entrance of the Aqueducts, while also being accompanied by her personal guards, Thalyssra explained that they would be the first outlanders to step foot in the Nighthold in a long time, while at the same time warning them that they might face heavy resistance later on. Lyra already knew that she and the others would face heavy resistance, because Xavius had an army at his command and she was sure that Elisande was the same way, which meant that they were going to have to slaughter her entire army, or the vast majority of them, in order to stop this madness.

Lyra sighed as she walked with the others, because it appeared that too many people were going to be lost in this war, between the Alliance, the Horde, the Emerald Nightmare, and the Legion, though she hoped that the commanders of the two factions at least celebrated the lost as they should be once this was all over.

When they reached the part of the Sanctum of Order that Thalyssra was taking them to, and walked down the stairs that were in front of them, the adventurers arrived at the entrance that would take them to the basement level of the Nighthold. Once all of them had the necessary supplies that they needed for this sort of venture, which they had done back in the Emerald Nightmare, the heroes walked into the magical portal and let it take them towards their destination, where they found a group of withered waiting for them. The aggressive withered appeared to be feeding on a couple of dead scorpions that happened to have several parts of their bodies made out of crystal, though while they were distracted the heroes charged forward and engaged the withered in battle. Several of the withered teleported behind them and attempted to attack them from behind, forcing some of the heroes to turn around and engage them, while at the same time Lyra took great pleasure in cutting them apart with her warglaives.

As some of the members of the withered started to fall the group of withered ahead of them, who had been ignoring them the entire time, turned towards them and joined their friends in the attack with the intent on killing them and devouring their various magical energies.

Once the withered were dead, and they were sure that none of them were getting back up, the group moved forward and headed down the stairs in front of them, where they found some crystalline scorpions moving about the area that they needed to pass through. Lyra noticed that some of them were red colored, some of them were blue colored, and one of them was green colored, though it appeared that the red one's had flaming chitin, the blue's loosed charges of magic at their targets, and the green's spat acid. She was sure that this was a result of the scorpions living and devouring the magicka in the air, but she disliked the idea of creature's gaining skills in such a manner and aided her friends in taking out the enemies that were in front of them. In fact killing the red and blue scorpions didn't do anything besides clearing the area of enemies, while killing the green ones dropped a pool of acid that they had to avoid as they moved forward when the last scorpion fell.

The chamber ahead of them, and the hallway ahead of that, were filled by more scorpions that really wanted them dead, to which the group carefully dealt with them and their various abilities... though once the enemies were dead, and they moved forward, they discovered a massive armed scorpion blocking their way, and seemed ready for battle.

As the battle started Lyra noticed something right off the back, as her attacks seemed to have little to no effect on Skorpyron, a name that came to mind all of a sudden and seemed to fit the monster in front of them, while at the same time more blue scorpions invaded the area to do battle with them as well. As such the mages and other ranged damage dealers focused on the smaller enemies for a few moments while they avoided the large chunks of crystal that Skorpyron threw at them. Another thing the massive scorpion did was loose magical blasts at specific targets, in an attempt to blow them all to pieces, while at the same time the group moved around and did their best to avoid the attacks that were coming at them, while trying to figure out the weakness of the scorpion.

For a moment Lyra wondered if it would be in her best interest to harness the combination powers inside of her, to a smaller extent to empower her warglaives and open gashes in Skorpyron's defenses, but she then decided to keep it in reserve for the eventual fight with Gul'dan.

After a few moments of fighting Skorpyron loosed a shockwave that knocked everyone backwards and shattered the crystals he had thrown into the ground, though at the same time it blew apart his own defenses, which was when the group of heroes unleashed their power and started using their more powerful attacks. During that moment Lyra and Lyndraxa transformed and crashed into their target, where they used the powers of their demonic forms to deal brutal attacks to Skorpyron's defenseless body. Lyra wished it could have lasted longer, but after a few moments Skorpyron regained his armor and continued his attack, repeating the same movements he had been doing so far, which involved summoning more scorpions to the fight while also throwing more crystals into the ground. Based on what Lyra knew about these boss level enemies, from her experience in the Emerald Nightmare, each boss repeated the same attack pattern three times in a row before they fell... and she suspected that Skorpyron would follow the same pattern.

A few more minutes passed before the group of heroes toppled the mighty Skorpyron and caused the remainder of his swarm to depart, fearing that they would die as well, though as they caught their breath Thalyssra and Khadgar came up the hallway they had walked through earlier and beckoned for the heroes to continue.

When the heroes walked up the hallway in front of them they encountered a trio of voidwalker like enemies, but these ones were made out of magicka and seemed to have different abilities, as one of them had the power to summon a shield behind it that made the group attack it from the front, which seemed odd to Lyra. The instant the enemies were taken care of they crossed the bridge in front of them and engaged the enemies that were waiting, where they discovered a more monstrous magicka creature that definitely wanted them dead. It took a few moments to actually take out the larger creature, but when they finally took out the larger enemy they walked to the other side of the bridge and engaged a slightly larger group of arcane enemies. Of course Lyra noticed that Trixie and the mages were fascinated by what they were seeing, since this wasn't something they saw everyday, before the group toppled the enemies in front of them and approached the large door that was in their path... where Thalyssra caught up with them and undid the seal on the door, allowing them to progress into the chamber in front of them.

A few seconds later Lyra noticed something alarming, as there was an even larger arcane creature, one vastly different to the ones they had fought so far, tending to a font of magic that rested in front of it... while at the same time potentially sustaining the time lock spell that they had learned about earlier, where Lyra determined that it had to be some sort of Chronomatic Anomaly, which Trixie agreed with. Sitting around the Chronomatic Anomaly were three groups of arcane creatures, to which the group of heroes decided to remove their enemies, all of them, before they engaged their main target... so they spent the next few minutes destroying the other foes before they stopped in front of the creature.

When the battle with the Chronomatic Anomaly started it simply started to punch anyone that was in front of it, which was the tanks of course, though not a few seconds later it started throwing balls of volatile energy at specific enemies, causing them to separate to avoid taking damage. A minute passed before the battle changed again, as a fragment of energy flew out of the Nightwell and formed another arcane creature, causing some of the heroes to diverge and attack it to prevent it from doing anything to them. Moments later two waves of blue energy balls, floating above the floor a tiny bit, surged out of the Nightwall and tried to hurt them, but the heroes were smart and avoided the attack by jumping into the gaps between the spheres... before turning their attention back to the Chronomatic Anomaly as they kept an eye on what it was doing, so they could stop whatever it was planning.

What happened next was something that the group should have seen coming and didn't prepare for accordingly, as the Chronomatic Anomaly slowed the passage of time for Lyra, Trixie, and the other heroes, forcing them to move much slower while they fought the creature and attempted to avoid the attacks it sent at them.

Lyra found this to be an interesting challenge, because she had never done something like this and knew that they could potentially be in trouble, but it was more interesting to focus her mind on making sure her attacks connected, avoiding the attacks coming at her, and making sure to attack another fragment of power that erupted from the Nightwell a few moments later. Trixie and the others seemed more concerned because of this development, which spoke volumes about their experience so far, but Lyra truly thought this was an interesting creature because she could follow it's movements without having to result to nearly killing herself in the process. One thing that Lyra noticed was that Trixie wasn't as affected by time being slowed down, which had to be because of either her nature as a blue dragon or the lingering essence of Discord's magic on them.

Some time later the Chronomatic Anomaly shifted time again, where this time it shifted in the group's favor as it moved faster than normal, though this time they unleashed a level of devastation that was unlike what they had done previously... which eventually brought ruin upon the Chronomatic Anomaly as they finished it off, and broke the time spell that their allies on the bridge above ground had been locked in.

Once the Chronomatic Anomaly was destroyed the group took a few moments to heal their wounds and make sure they were prepared for the last enemy of this part of the Nighthold, as Lyra knew that there had to be one more thanks to what she had seen in the Emerald Nightmare. A few moments later, when they were ready, they walked up the stairs in front of them and approached the next set of enemies that were waiting for them, which happened to be globs of sludge that had been given life by the Nightwell. Fortunately these enemies were easy to take care of, and when each one died they simply turned into a small puddle, allowing them to enter a rather large chamber where more of the sludge globs were located... though when the group took them all out they merged together to form a larger glob, which rained down pools of sludge on the ground while it moved around the area.

When the massive glob died, however, it contaminated the entire area around it, causing a four legged construct, which had been hiding in a corridor, to surge out of where it was hiding and started to tidy up the area... though that was before Trilliax engaged them and accused them of being filthy. At the same time Trilliax loosed arcane balls into the air and they fell towards the group, which left arcane pools around the area that didn't seem to annoy the construct, who seemed to be suffering from a split personality disorder, as he had two different voices that spoke from time to time. Trilliax also loosed other items into the area that were designed to harm the group, but they didn't stick around for long and caused his crystals to turn red ad he continued the fight... but the group held their ground and waited for he to do something different.

What that entailed was that at some point Trilliax moved to the middle of the room and slowly turned around in a complete circle, while at the same time loosing a beam of energy from the front and from behind as he tried to kill multiple enemies at the same time.

Fortunately no one was hurt and Trilliax claimed that the beating they were giving him was his 'punishment', though at the same time he fought back and tried to kill them anyway, where he fell into repeating the same attacks from earlier as the arcane pools increased in number and the poison spewing devices were quick to spring up once more. Trilliax also attempted to use mobile bombs against them, which the damage dealers dealt with before they could reach the group as a whole, though that only made him more pissed off. His anger seemed to be his downfall, as his pattern quickly became predictable and they were able to avoid his attacks without sustaining any damage in the process, which really disappointed Lyra as the fight wore on. Trilliax was slightly boring, his pattern was too predictable in regards to the other enemies they had fought so far, and when they finally toppled him, and chopped him into bits, she was slightly happy with the victory.

Lyra sighed as they entered an area that wasn't covered in pools of harmful energy, where the group settled down and took stock of their injuries, where they could rest before they invaded the next part of the Nighthold and fought whatever enemies were waiting for them... to which she set her sights on finding Gul'dan and ending this part of the Legion's attempts to take Azeroth for their foul master.