William King - Illidan

Illidan’s cold smile vanished. “Take a look around you. There are more than five hundred of you here. By the time this is over, there will be less than a hundred.”

He paused to let that sink in; then he laughed. “You all swore you were willing to give your lives to strike at the Burning Legion. You now have a chance to prove that. Who will be the first?”

At first there was no response. Everyone waited to see what the others would do. Now that the moment had come, no one wanted to break ranks and see what waited for them. Suspense and fear hung over the supplicants and paralyzed them.

Vandel took a deep breath and stepped forward. “I will have my vengeance or I will die. Whatever is needed, I will do.”

Illidan nodded. Vandel thought that the Betrayer had expected this of him, or perhaps he was just imagining things. “Very well,” he said. “Step into the summoning circle.”

Illidan gestured. Lines of fire etched a complex geometric pattern on the stone.

Vandel passed into a vast pentacle surrounded by glowing runes. They pulsed with a meaning that he felt he could grasp if only he was given another heartbeat to contemplate them—yet somehow the meaning never came. As he watched, the symbols blurred hypnotically. His skin tingled. His mouth felt dry. Motes of greenish-yellow light swirled around him.

Illidan spoke a word of power. Fel energy surged. The temperature dropped. The air shimmered and congealed, and a felhound materialized. Perhaps it was his imagination, but it bore a startling resemblance to the one that had killed his son, Khariel.

The felhound shrieked and bounded toward him, long tentacles bobbing. Jaws gaped wide, revealing teeth like a shark’s. Vandel drew his runic daggers and leapt to meet it, the similarity of the beast to his son’s killer stoking his rage ever higher. His blades stabbed forward at the tentacles. He writhed to one side to avoid the snapping jaws. His blades made contact, slicing the sensory stalks. The felhound twisted, still attempting to bury its fangs into his flesh.

His arm burned where the felhound’s jaws made contact. Razor teeth sliced his flesh. His thirst for vengeance had blinded him to the creature’s surprising speed. He sprang backward and away. Something tingled at his back, and he found that he could not exit the circle. Magic imprisoned him, as if the very air had solidified. He flipped himself forward, and the demon’s jaws snapped closed inches from his face. He smelled its brimstone breath even as he drove his blade up through the roof of its mouth, into the place where its brain ought to be.

The felhound tried to close its mouth, but the dagger was wedged between its jaws. The attempt merely drove the spell-wound point deeper into its skull. A gasping wheeze passed through the creature’s lips. It keeled over and lay there, tail lashing in a death spasm.

Vandel looked over at Illidan, filled with the first faint surge of triumph. What next? he wondered. Illidan stepped into the circle, unhampered by any restraining spells.

Illidan reached down and with one clawed hand pulled the felhound’s still-pulsing heart from within its chest. He presented it to Vandel.

“Eat it,” he said.

This was not what Vandel expected. Looking at the disgusting mass of foul meat, Vandel considered refusing. But only for a moment. Something in the Betrayer’s stance told him that defiance was not an option. He instead took the heart in both hands. The demon flesh was wet and sticky beneath his fingers. What might have been veins dripped greenish acidic ichor. His palms tingled and felt as if they were about to burn.

He glanced around and saw even through the shimmering air of the circle that all eyes were upon him. Everyone waited to see what he did. Vandel raised the meat to his lips. He reached out with his tongue. It tingled and burned just as his hands were doing. He suspected that the flesh was saturated with fel magic.

He bit into the moist meat and forced himself to chew. The flesh was tough, and he thought it squirmed as it came into contact with his lips. He swallowed and it seemed to expand in his throat as if the demon, even in death, was determined to choke him. He gagged and swallowed again, trying to force it down. It was like having a slug slither down his throat.

Illidan indicated the blood pooling around the corpse. “Drink it.”

Vandel bent down and, with both hands cupped, scooped up some blood. The tingling in his fingers increased. Nausea and dizziness made his head spin, but he managed to gulp down the foul liquid. It burned like rotgut alcohol from a goblin still. Vandel wondered if it would poison him. His stomach rebelled. He wanted to vomit. To his horror, he felt as if something was kicking within his belly. He imagined the demon flesh coiling in his gut, trying to break free, gnawing its way out.

Illidan chanted. Great spheres of greenish light orbited him, burning like shimmering emerald suns. They blazed with heat and magical power, and Vandel felt as if his skin would crack. Bolts of lightning leapt from orb to orb, forming a cage of crackling energy; then at a word from the Betrayer, the bolts speared into Vandel. He screamed in agony as the magic saturated his body.

His legs gave way and he collapsed onto the ground, clutching his head, rolling over and over like someone whose clothes were on fire, trying to beat out flames. The pain was intense, and he knew in that moment that the Betrayer was going to kill him. He looked up and saw Illidan standing over him, transformed. He no longer looked remotely like an elf. A dark aura crackled all around him, his form distorted and shimmering. Pure malevolence blazed in his eye sockets, visible even through the cloth covering them. Vandel felt as if he were falling forward into those pools of evil light, tumbling downward into an endless void.

Strange emotions filled him. Rage burned in his heart. He reached up toward Illidan, wanting to choke the life from him. His body would not respond. His senses blended. He heard the sizzle of the green light, saw the words that Illidan chanted as perfectly formed runes. Beneath him he felt the pulse of magic flowing through the stones of the Black Temple, and he became aware that out of the void within him, something was rising, something vast and powerful and evil that had come to devour his soul.

The world shimmered and vanished.

All around him the village blazed. The leaves of the ancient trees shriveled. The gabled log houses crackled and burned. The smell of scorched pine needles filled the air. Sap bubbled within the wood, popping in the heat.

He raced through the smoke-filled streets, shouting for his wife and child. In one hand he held his long hunting knife. Demons cavorted amid the ruins. Imps lobbed firebolts into blazing buildings. Massive infernals lumbered through the streets. Masked and armored mo’arg waddled along, spraying anything they saw with magical fire from their weapons. On the roof beam of the central long house, the towering winged figure of a dreadlord loomed.

Ahead Vandel saw his home, and for a brief moment, hope filled his heart. Khariel’s head thrust through the door. He seemed to be beckoning for his father.

It all seemed so real, as if the five miserable years he had spent wandering had evaporated and he had been given a second chance to save his son. And yet he knew that this was not the case. As in a nightmare, he knew what was going to happen next—and it did.

The little boy disappeared back into the house, his tiny fist the last thing to go. Vandel sprang over the threshold. Khariel lay there. His eyes were open, staring blankly at the ceiling. On his chest crouched a felhound, gnawing at his flesh. The tiny silver leaf the child had been so proud of still glittered on his throat.