William King - Illidan

He threw the fragments back down onto the map. There was no time to get distracted now. He had a war to win. Doubts rose to torment him. What if he was wrong? What if he had miscalculated? His visions were not infallible. Perhaps there was another way and he had not seen it. Perhaps he was blind to a possibility that might win this war without all the sacrifices. He had searched and searched for one and had not found it, but that did not mean it was not there.

Betrayer. That was what they called him. That was how they would remember him. If they were lucky enough to survive and remember anything, it would be because he had saved them, and they would never know. That thought gave him a moment of dour pleasure.

He squared his shoulders, flexed his wings, and strode from the chamber without looking back. It was time to go to Auchindoun and face the spirits of the restless dead.

Akama stood beside Maiev’s cage. He had dismissed the guards. She had listened to the tale of Akama’s last encounter with Illidan, her face becoming ever paler. He was running an awful risk coming here at this time, but he needed to talk with someone who shared his burning hatred of Illidan.

Sick horror filled the Broken’s heart. The Betrayer planned yet another desecration of a draenei holy place. There was nothing he would not do. Not even the greatest cemetery of Akama’s people was safe from Illidan’s towering madness. Whatever happened, at whatever cost, Illidan must be stopped. Akama knew that now, felt it with every fiber of his being. Even if it meant risking his soul, it was time to begin his last desperate plan.

“He is mad,” Maiev said. “He has always been mad. But this is the most insane scheme I have ever heard of. Opening a way to Argus! Are you sure he does not mean to summon reinforcements from there to let him defeat the Alliance and the Horde?”

Akama shook his head. “You were not present. You did not hear him speak. He believes in what he says utterly. He plans on going ahead with this scheme. He no longer cares about anything else. For the past few weeks, he has neglected his realm and worked feverishly on this solitary goal, to create this gateway of his. He has woven spell after spell, created astromantic chart after astromantic chart. He has done nothing else, even as his empire crumbled.”

“Perhaps he plans on using the gateway to escape,” Maiev said. A note of worry appeared in her voice, as if she still seriously believed she had a chance of hunting down her prey unaided. “Perhaps he hopes to open a way to some refuge far from here. You should understand that. Your own people did the same.”

“Illidan is not the sort to flee. I believe he really and truthfully plans to seek out Kil’jaeden and fight him to the death.”

Maiev’s mocking laughter rang out. “He will lose. And all his efforts will go for naught. All your efforts will go for naught as well. Your precious temple will fall to the Alliance or the Horde. Free me. At least if the temple falls to the Alliance, I will be able to intercede for you and see that it is returned to your people.”

Akama looked at her and smiled. “There is no need for you to worry on that score. I have made my own plans. All you need do is be patient.”

“Is that why you have visited me so often, Broken one? Do you still think to use me in your schemes?”

“What if I do? What if I could release you from this place and set you on the path to vengeance?”

“You have made such promises before.”

“Ah, but the time was not right then. It is now.”

Akama walked away, enjoying the thoughtful silence as Maiev considered the implications of his words. In the distance the earth shook as the Hand of Gul’dan erupted. It had been doing that a lot of late. It was an evil omen.

Ash crunched beneath Illidan’s hooves as he landed outside the broken gates of Auchindoun. Over him the walls of the mausoleum city towered. They were gray like the surrounding wastes. In the distance, a huge carrion-eating bonelasher flapped across the sky. A decrepit clefthoof, its massive strength all but gone, staggered through the waste. The chill wind stirred the dust, sending sandy rivulets trickling.

The city looked as if it had once been a massive dome, like the helmet of some titan, but it had been smashed to fragments, scattered across the dry, dead land behind him.

He sensed the distant pulse of magic thrumming between the spirit towers that loomed over the Bone Wastes. What purpose did they serve? He was not quite certain, and that disturbed him. He had spent a long lifetime mastering magic, and there were still gaps in his knowledge.

Even the fel orcs of the Shadowmoon clan, normally the most fearless and aggressive of creatures, shifted uneasily. There was something about this dead place that penetrated even their rage-filled minds and caused a feeling like dread. That in itself was disturbing, for of all the orcish clans in his service, the Shadowmoon was the most accustomed to necromancy and dark sorcery. Their captain, Grimbak Shadowrage, grunted encouragement at them, and they settled down to await his commands.

Illidan’s mouth felt dry and his throat constricted. He tasted and smelled something odd, as if tiny particles of bone had infiltrated his nostrils and tickled his tongue. He felt as if bits of all the skeletons buried in the dust had found their way into the air. He ignored the sensation and studied the ruins.

Some dreadful disaster had struck the city. That much was clear. Huge gratings of tortured metal emerged from broken stonework, like ribs showing through the rotting flesh of a corpse.

According to Akama, this was a holy site where the bones of dead draenei had been interred. Something had gone wrong, though. There were many and conflicting rumors: that a dark ritual had unleashed the dead; that the orcs had tampered with something best left undisturbed and released forces of great evil; that the Burning Legion had tested some terrible weapon on the place, and the resulting evil energies had warped everything within it.

Illidan knew the truth. He had inherited it from Gul’dan’s memories when he consumed the power in his skull. The old schemer had dispatched a group of warlocks to the city in search of artifacts buried there. The survivors had told him that something had gone wrong and they had summoned a strange entity. It had shattered Auchindoun, smashing the great dome, scattering the remains of countless dead across a huge area of the desert.

Illidan gave the signal to advance. The fel orcs roared a challenge and marched under the shadow of the dead city’s gates. The heavy tread of their feet seemed like a desecration of the ancient quiet. In the shadows, old and hungry things watched and waited. It seemed as if a thousand eyes observed them unseen.

The dust crunched as they passed beneath a huge arch. It had piled up in drifts that made walking hard for the fel orcs, although he could move across the surface by keeping himself aloft with a simple beat of his wings.

The city had been built in concentric rings. Illidan’s forces had no sooner passed through the arch than they found themselves confronted by the shattered remains of another wall. Stairs rose ahead. To both right and left, what once must have been a huge street curved away. In the outer walls were many openings that told of ways into the tombs and mausoleums within.

Everything had a tumbledown, forlorn look. The wind moaned as it caressed his skin and bulged his wings.

He led the fel orcs up worn stairs and passed under all that was left of a triumphal arch. Once through it, they looked down from the top of a wall as wide as a road into another ring of ruins within.