William King - Illidan

Vandel refused to look away. He raised both daggers in a last, desperate attempt to parry. Kruul’s chest exploded, leaving only a gaping hole through which Vandel could see Illidan, warglaives in hand, lightning swirling around them, the backwash of his shattering bolt of energy. The doomguard toppled. Vandel rolled aside as the demon’s massive form smashed into the ground beside him. Once again Illidan had used a slow-building spell of awesome power to smite the highlord. Vandel and his companions had been a distraction.

“You killed him,” Vandel said.

Illidan’s smile was enigmatic. “Perhaps.”

All around he heard the sounds of battle. A score of demon hunters emerged to confront the demons, taking them in the flank as they had intended to do to the Azerothian forces.

Off guard, leaderless, and facing an unknown number of foes, the demons broke into small groups and were destroyed piecemeal.

Vandel pulled himself TO his feet. The demons of Kruul’s force were all dead. Still the hunger burned in him. He could kill a thousand of the Legion’s minions and it would never be enough. He could obliterate a world of them and still be barely started.

He recognized that impulse as the same one that drove the Legion itself, and at that moment he did not care. He just wanted to go on killing and killing.

His lips twisted into a snarl, and he made ready to seek out prey once more.

Illidan placed a hand on his shoulder. “No more. Now is not the time. We have work elsewhere.”

For a moment Vandel considered striking the lord of Outland, but he restrained himself, and slowly the thirst for vengeance sank back to something he could control. He exhaled, and it seemed part of the rage left him with his breath.

“We have saved the Alliance and the Horde here this day, and they will never know,” Vandel said at last.

“They do not need to know. It is enough that they are here.” Illidan’s smile showed the depth of his satisfaction. “They will keep the Burning Legion occupied while we engineer its defeat. The enemy of my enemy…”

The demon hunters pulled away from the battle, heading back up the slopes toward their initial vantage point. Vandel turned to gaze back at the conflict. More troops had marched through from the Azerothian side, a colossal wave of melee fighters and spellcasters. They fanned out to guard the flanks of their force, then began the work of clearing the stairs against their foes. The tide of battle had turned in their favor once more. It looked as if the forces of Azeroth had established a permanent foothold in Outland.

Illidan flexed his wings triumphantly. “Now we must seek the Throne of Kil’jaeden.”

Streams of molten green lava flowed down cliffs of shattered basalt. The air blazed with heat and fel magic. It tingled on Illidan’s skin, filled his lungs with every breath. He glanced around and noted that on every boulder, every ledge, every shard of rock that stabbed at the sky, a demon hunter stood guard.

They had driven off the Legion guards, but there was every chance the ritual he was about to perform would draw the attention of the demons’ commanders. While in his trance state, he would be vulnerable, unable to fight or flee. He was taking a terrible risk here, but it was one that needed to be endured. If one of his followers proved to be treacherous, or even overly ambitious, his life would end.

The Throne of Kil’jaeden. The name itself had power, setting up a resonance between the demon lord and this location. Huge magical energies flowed all around. Gul’dan had used the mountain as the site of the ritual that had bound the orc clans to the service of the Burning Legion before the First War. Gul’dan’s absorbed memories now told Illidan this was the place to cast his spell. Here lay a great flaw in the fabric of the universe that was connected to the lair of the Deceiver himself. This night the flow of energies from the Twisting Nether would be at its strongest in years.

He walked the edge of the great pattern he had inscribed in letters of fire on the black rock. He mouthed the words of the incantation, a constant, repetitive chanting, binding forces that he could hold in place with a mere fraction of his mind. All around monstrous energies coiled, waiting to be unleashed. It had taken weeks to forge this spell. It could only be cast at this exact location, at this exact hour, when all the signs were right.

He stared at the dark clouds in the blazing sky. A massive gout of lava spurted from the tortured depths of the earth, like demon blood pouring from a titanic wound.

He took out the disk he had claimed on Nathreza and focused all his powers of perception on it. The psychic stench of the demon lords of the Burning Legion still clung to it. When he inspected it closely with his strange vision, he could picture them: Sargeras, bleak, uncompromising, a fallen titan radiating misery and despair; Archimonde, a mad warlord consumed with fury and rage, Sargeras’s fist; Kil’jaeden, the schemer, so adept at corrupting so many.

Who was Illidan to set himself against the likes of that awful trio? He touched the Seal of Argus, running his claws over the indentations of the runes until the cool metal squeaked. It was odd that it could stay so cold even here amid all the fire and fury.

He passed around the edge of the sorcerous circle he had created, checking the wards, making sure that the energy flowed correctly through it, that he had made no mistakes. Now was not the time for errors.

He was wasting time and that was folly. If he waited too long, the window in which the spell could be cast would close. Another would not arise for moons. He should proceed. And yet he could not make himself take the final step just yet. Soon, if things went according to his plan, he would be gazing upon those with the power to destroy him completely, and he would face them alone. It had not been so sweet, this life, and yet he found that now that the hour was upon him, he was still reluctant to leave it.

He prowled the edge of the circle, probing it with tiny traces of magical energy. Ner’zhul’s fate was a warning. The shaman had turned against his demonic masters and paid the ultimate price for his betrayal. There were times when Illidan wondered whether he was going to do the same—whether this was just a game for the demon lords, one in which the odds were all stacked in their favor and they derived amusement from the insect struggles of those who opposed them.

He took a gulp of the air, catching the brimstone taint of the green lava. It was like breathing in the smoke from a great inferno. It made the lungs tingle and burn. Time was running out.

In an instant, before he could stop himself or regret the decision, he spoke the final words of the spell, unleashing the tidal wave of power. It tore his spirit from his body and sent it tumbling headlong into the Twisting Nether.

The way opened before him. He felt as if he were falling into the rune-covered disk, but he knew this was an illusion, a construct created by his mind to give him some sense of understanding what was going on here. Ultimately that was not possible for a brain born in natural reality, but his mind would do its best to provide him with a framework he could work with.

His spirit emerged into the Twisting Nether and gazed down on Argus. The world hovered on the brink between the Twisting Nether and the physical universe, saturated with the fel energies of the Burning Legion.

He tumbled headlong toward the surface of the world. Once it must have been beautiful, a place of crystalline mountains and shimmering seas. Now it was cold and cruel. A darkness brooded over the place, and a sense of corruption and loss.