William King - Illidan

The seal pulsed in his claws. It was no longer the real disk but a representation of it, built from the magical energies of his spell, and it drew him downward to what he sought. The tug was almost irresistible and yet he fought against it, studying the sky, noting the position of stars and constellations, fixing them in his mind. Desperately he sought familiar signs in the sky, knowing that he could use them to plot his position in the cosmos. He looked also for magical energy tides, the auroral currents flowing out of the Twisting Nether.

Was this really the place he sought? He orbited it swiftly, taking sightings, looking for signs, still fighting all the time the tug of the spell he had created. Once more he felt the cold, emotionless distance from his body. A prickling of paranoia tickled his sorcerously trained senses. For a moment, he thought he sensed a presence observing him. He glanced around but could find nothing.

A thought occurred to him. If he could sense Kil’jaeden through this link, was it not possible the demon lord could sense him? He had created his spell in such a way that it should be impossible for any sorcerer to detect him, but what did he truly know of the Deceiver’s capabilities?

No sense in worrying about it now. He was committed beyond any possibility of turning back. He let his spirit swoop down over the jagged crystalline mountains, saw the corruption that festered within them and caused them to crumble. He watched dust devils born of the powdered gems rise into the air and screech down canyons of serrated rock. Light shimmered and danced as it was refracted everywhere.

Ahead of him lay a city, looming over canyons of fractured crystal. Within it were many presences, all of them capable of blasting his soul.

Illidan felt a surge of energy as his soul crossed the borders of the city. It, too, must have been beautiful once, laid out according to complex geomantic rules. Its curved structures reminded him of the draenei buildings of Outland, only these were far more intricate and beautiful. Outland’s town halls were hovels compared with the fantastic structures he passed now. These were huge machines for focusing magic. Once, according to all he had been able to uncover, they had provided peace, harmony, and health to an entire world. Now they created a cloud of fear and despair visible to Illidan’s spectral sight.

At the center of the great city stood a mighty palace. Within lurked a massive, ominous presence surrounded by those only slightly less monstrous. It was to here that the disk drew Illidan.

His spirit zoomed through the streets with the velocity of thought. He tried to slow himself down, to get things under control, to stop himself from being reeled in too swiftly. He forced himself to halt by the walls of the palace.

He sensed another presence. Something lurked close by, studying him. He extended all his senses to the ultimate. There was something there, but he could not quite pin it down. It was as shielded as he was. A sentinel? Or something else? He forced himself to watch and wait, but nothing happened. Time to move.

He slipped through the crystal corridors, past runes that glowed with evil significance. It was as if the core of all the spells that had once spread light and harmony across the city and the world had been rewritten to create the opposite. When he studied the runes, feelings of rage and despair filled his mind. Even shielded as he was, the spells affected him, filling him with visions of conquest, a lust for domination and destruction, a rage to end all things. Here, written in runes of fire, was the creed of the Burning Legion.

He looked on the representation of the seal. This would be the anchor for the gateway between Outland and Argus. He invoked the final phase of the spell. The disk pulsed in his hand as it absorbed energies from all around, strengthening the connection it already had with this place. Once he was done, he would no longer need to open a portal from the Throne of Kil’jaeden. He could use the link forged here with the seal instead.

Dark energies began to permeate his astral form. A heaviness flowed through him. His spirit congealed, took on a glutinous physical quality born from the power all around him. He moved closer to the core of this dark labyrinth, feeling more and more the aura of the Deceiver. His movements slowed. His astral form floated lower and lower. For all his precautions, he had become trapped in the web of some terrible energy. The maze of spells surrounding him was binding its evil energies to his spirit.

The presence he had felt earlier returned. He twisted, trying to locate it, but could not. He cursed. It had caught him, and it now only seemed a matter of time before his severed spirit floated into the presence of the Deceiver and was enslaved or destroyed.

Desperately he fought against the spell. He sloughed off some of the magical plasm, regained something of the sense of weightlessness, but still he drifted into the vast throne room where Kil’jaeden sat surrounded by his court of demons. The eredar lord loomed gigantically, all red and burning. Vast batlike wings emerged from his back and seemed to reach to the ceiling. Huge amber lights blazed on his spiked shoulder guards. Fiery eyes dominated the face of a mutated draenei. An aura of awesome, thunderous power clung to him.

There was no doubt. Illidan had found his way to the palace of Kil’jaeden on the lost world of Argus. Unfortunately, the burning gaze turned toward where he was. A twisted smile passed over that monstrous face. Massive nostrils flared as if catching the psychic scent of prey.

Illidan felt the other watching presence again. It enwrapped him. He struggled against it but could not cast it off, even as Kil’jaeden’s eyes lay fully upon him.

The Deceiver’s gaze rested there, pregnant with the threat of destruction; then it passed on. Something had turned it away from Illidan, and it took him a moment to realize what. The presence that enshrouded him now pushed him out of the edge of the throne room. He had a sense of it just for an instant. It was a thing of Light, so bright as almost to be painful to behold. As he became aware of it, he heard a titanic roar of rage from within the throne room of Kil’jaeden, as if the eredar lord sensed it, too.

The shackles of ectoplasm that had bound him sloughed away.

Begone from this place. You cannot survive here. Not now. The voice spoke within his head and was gone. The spell of translocation snatched him back to the Throne of Kil’jaeden.

Illidan’s spirit crashed back into his physical form. He caught himself before he could fall, realized that he had been gone for only a heartbeat in this world even if it had felt like an eternity in the Twisting Nether. The Seal of Argus blazed crimson in his hands.

He had done it.

He had survived, and he had found out what he needed. He had confirmed the presence of Kil’jaeden upon Argus. He had found the beating heart of the Burning Legion. And he had found something else, a being who had aided him to escape when all seemed lost. He thought about the Light he had sensed within it and realized he did not trust the thing.

Kil’jaeden was not known as the Deceiver for nothing. Perhaps this was all part of some vast and elaborate trap.

Illidan stood at the head of the great map table in the council chamber of the Black Temple. His advisers came and went, along with messengers bearing the latest news. The blood elves of his council argued with Akama and with Vandel and the other leaders of the demon hunters.

Illidan rubbed his temples just below the horns. He had almost recovered the strength the spirit journey to Argus had cost him, and he could not let up yet. He needed to keep pressing on, to take advantage of what he had found out. He needed to face Kil’jaeden, and soon, before the Deceiver got wind of his plans and made ready for him. He was so deep in thought that it took him some time to realize that Lady Malande was speaking to him.