'Home and Back Again' - 8

        It had been more or less an uneventful trip.  They two had left Mardanel and Kal’daka in charge of the guild’s affairs, and for the first time since its creation, taken a much-needed vacation.  
        They had certainly found more turmoil and war than they had expected to see on their pre-honeymoon, but later they rationalized that often what one expects and what the Goddess has in store for them are two entirely different things.  Elune had guided them to the furthest reaches of Outland, to witness strife of which they would have otherwise been ignorant.  Many lives had been touched by their presence in Terokkar and Nagrand and the marshlands and mountains of the broken realm, and in fact the two elves returned to Darnassus aglow with an enlightened view of the universe, prepared to make it a better place.

        For the moment, though, Berufeng’s thoughts were much narrower.  He found it quite difficult to focus his mind on the greater good of the realms and all its peoples, whilst he was so thoroughly soaked from ears to boots with the cold autumn rain of Teldrassil.  Elune certainly had a way of filling a man with joy, and then swiftly dousing him with a dreary downpour.
        A thought slipped through the waterlogged doors to his mind, and he paused to wonder about little Andi Baubletrinket and the tiny dragon whelp she watched over.  It troubled him that he had been so long in visiting the two of them, and so as he let the last of his garments fall to the floor and began drying himself with a crisp towel, he made a mental note to drop by before the sun set that evening.

                *                *                *                *                *

        “I don’t know what’s gotten into me…” he sighed, directing the words into a sling pouch hanging around his chest.  There was a somewhat self-resentful scowl upon his face.  “I told them I would stay at least several more days, and then you had to go and get sick…”  He grumbled down into the pouch, and dug his heels into the gryphon’s sides.  The Searing Gorge was whizzing by far below him as the great bird’s wings beat hard against the sky.  
        In time, they arrived at the little camp at the base of the great luminescent sheet that led to Hellfire Peninsula.  Berufeng offered the taxi gryphon a hunk of bread from his pouch, and the bird graciously devoured it before lifting off and soaring toward the nearby Nethergarde Keep.  Even this fifth or sixth time as he stepped through the Dark Portal, he felt the same yanking sensation on his innards he felt the very first time, as if the magic edifice were sucking him through the very earth.
        And as quickly as it began, the strange feeling was gone.  He had stumbled as he burst from the other side and onto the platform in the other realm, and he fell abruptly to his knees.  A few muttered curses and he rose again to his feet, dusting himself off.  However, as he patted the red dust from his britches, he felt the absence of something that had only moments ago been weighing down his shoulders…  With a gasp, he froze.  The whelp, Vandeen, was no longer nestled in the pouch around his chest!
        Before he could shriek, or even dart around to search for the missing dragonling, he felt the ground falling out from beneath his feet.  A great wind began whirling around him, and he looked upward to discover a strange sight—the claws of an enormous drake had latched onto his shoulders and lifted him high into the air.  Where it was taking him, he did not know… but he certainly hoped it was someplace hospitable.