William King - Illidan

He lay down on the board. Leather straps snapped into place around him. Momentary panic filled him as he was restrained. It increased as power blossomed in one of the nearby figures.

“You will learn to do these for yourself one day, but for now, you must accept them from others. Be still,” said Illidan. “This will hurt.”

The inker leaned forward, and something so hot it was cold, or perhaps so cold it was hot, touched Vandel’s flesh. He fought down the urge to scream. When the needle withdrew, he felt as if a dagger were being pulled from a wound and twisted.

No. No. No. The voice in his head gibbered in panic. The fear communicated itself to him.

This was a trap. Evil magic was being worked here.

The needle stabbed in once more. Pain blasted his body, worse than anything he had felt since he had pulled out his own eyes. He thrashed around, trying to free himself. The restraining bands drew tight. Hard hands pushed down on him.

The needle stabbed again and again, and every touch of its point sent blazing agony searing through him. With every stitch, strength leached out of him. The voice in his head grew weaker and weaker.

He was dying. This magic was going to kill him.

He snarled threats and whimpered pleas, but the pain went on and on and on, until he could struggle no more and could only lie there while the inker went about his work.

Eventually the straps were undone. He could barely rise from the table. His anger and his fear had subsided. For the first time in days, he truly felt like himself. He could barely see the glow of auras around him. His enhanced senses had returned to normal levels. It was as if he had been drugged and the potency had worn off.

“I am glad that is over,” Vandel said.

“The worst is just beginning,” Illidan replied.

The cell walls closed in all around Vandel. Down below in the courtyards, he could hear fighting and practicing. Were they like him, he wondered, a new intake of fools who had been seduced by Illidan’s promises of power?

It was a relief to be away from the sick house, to have his own chamber. He had been brought here immediately after gaining his first tattoos. It had taken him the whole day to recover from that. It was pleasant not to be surrounded by the auras of living things. The quiet was relaxing. He lay on his bed and touched his empty sockets.

His eyes were gone forever. In the absence of living things, it was easy to convince himself that he had hallucinated the whole experience of seeing auras. Perhaps it was a dream.

The feel of rough sheets beneath his fingers told him that it was not. He was blind. He had blinded himself so he wouldn’t see the terrible truth, that the whole universe was doomed, like his wife and child had been. There was nothing he or anyone else could do to stop the Burning Legion. Anyone who thought otherwise was as deluded as the Betrayer.

Such delusions were easy to have, sitting in a fortress like the Black Temple, surrounded by troops. The truth was that no one was safe. No place was safe. When the Burning Legion exerted its strength, the Black Temple would fall like a child’s sand castle kicked by a giant. All those fighters practicing arms outside would die when the dreadlords came to claim the Legion’s possession. Great Sargeras, the titan who would topple the universe, would ultimately triumph. He had been the first to see the truth.

Vandel stopped. Where had that come from? He had seen the fallen titan in his vision. That must be it. Some part of Illidan’s original vision had been transferred to him during the ritual. He knew that. But sometimes it felt as if Vandel wasn’t in control of his thoughts.

The tattoos bound the demon within him. It could not escape now. He traced the ink with his fingers, feeling the lines of power that scarred his body. His hand touched something else, something cold and hard.

At first he thought it was a piece of metal, but then he realized that it was set in his skin. He fumbled at his face and found it was there, too. He paused, chilled by the realization that his flesh had been transformed. He felt one hand with the other, and it slowly dawned on him what had happened. Every place on his skin that had been touched by demon blood had been altered. He had acquired scales of some sort.

This might just be the start of the process. He was certain that while he lay in the hospital, his skin had been normal. Perhaps this was only the first stage of the transformation. Perhaps he was turning into a demon.

It seemed entirely possible. After all, he had no idea what had really been done to him. Illidan might well be lying. He certainly would if it suited his purposes. The change had begun after the demon had been chained by the mystical tattoos. It must have. He had not been changed when he got up this morning. He was certain of that. Perhaps since the demon was unable to affect his mind, it was starting to affect his body.

He rubbed his fingers against his palms. He felt the fingertips of his left hand with those of his right. The nails were long and sharp and dense, like the claws of a hunting cat.

His gums hurt, and he fumbled at his mouth. Yes. His canines jutted out, large and sharp. He had acquired fangs.

Black depression settled on him. He had sought the power to fight demons. Instead he was being transformed into one. He was turning into the thing he hated. How long would it be before he was out there, killing other elves’ children? He had felt the unnatural rage the demon had given him. He understood its strength. Who was he to try to contain that?

Perhaps the best thing he could do was to kill himself before that happened. He sat up and reached out to the small table beside his bed. His rune-woven knife lay there, along with the charm he had made for Khariel. He picked that up and thought about his dead son. How would Khariel feel if he saw his father now? He would see only a monster, a creature on its way to becoming the thing that had murdered him.

He told himself he was not thinking clearly, that something was affecting his mind. Perhaps it was the aftereffects from the tattoo sorcery.

No. You are seeing clearly, for the first time in a long while. You are seeing yourself as you are. A hollow thing that has allowed itself to be changed into that which it hates, in search of a vengeance impossible to get. Illidan is mad. You are mad.

The truth of that thought was incontestable. He was insane, and had been for a very long time. He had always suspected it, and now all his suspicions were confirmed.

Hatred filled him, turned this time on himself. He took the knife, tested its blade on his thumb. It was still magically sharp. He took the point and inserted it under the edge of one of the scales. He pulled it free. It hurt, but the pain lent him energy. If he could cut out all the scales, he could stop the transformation, like a surgeon cutting out a patch of gangrene.

The thought drove him to cut again and again until he was covered in his own blood and patches of his skin lay on the floor. He felt weak and dizzy. It occurred to him that he was losing blood and that he might die here in this cell.

Something in his head laughed at that, and it came to him that the demon was not as trapped as he had believed, and certainly not as weak. It had just turned to a new form of attack, twisting his thoughts, toying with his emotions. It had tapped into all of his dark thoughts and self-hatred. It had access to all of his feelings and all of his shame. In a way, it was him.

He pulled himself upright, and the demon went silent as if it had realized its mistake. He reeled toward the door. Blood stuck to his bare feet and made them sticky. He prayed that the cell door was not locked as he threw his strength against it. The door opened and he fumbled his way out into the corridor, staggering from side to side so that he grazed the walls.