William King: Illidan

Like the rings within a tree, Illidan thought. From where he stood he had a fine view clear across the center of the dead metropolis. The city once must have been built on multiple levels, and this had been one of them. Perhaps it had all been one huge building with many chambers and halls. Now whole floors had tumbled in, to lie on the ground below. It was perplexing. This place had been built for unknowable reasons to please the alien sensibilities of the draenei. He wanted to reach the very center of the city, but there was going to be no easy way of doing so.

He could fly down to the lower level of the central area, but the fel orcs could not go with him, nor could the bearers of the huge casket containing the soul siphon. He pulled his wings tight around him like a cloak against the wind. It felt like a mistake to come here. Nothing good could come of this.

One of the scouts returned. A grin of triumph spread across his face. “We have found a way into the crypts, Lord!”

Strange braziers flanked the archway, illuminating banners containing odd runes. A decomposed skeleton lay near. The air smelled of ancient incense and old bones. Everywhere hung the sick, sweet scents of putrefaction. The throat-tingling itch of corpse dust entered through Illidan’s nostrils.

As he crossed the threshold of the underground vault, things immediately felt different, as if Illidan had gone through a barrier into some other dimension. The stone braziers glowed a fel green, and ahead the shimmering, near-translucent figure of a draenei spirit stalked forward, empty eyes gazing into oblivion. It looked more sad than frightening, and yet there was something about it that was deeply unsettling. The fel orcs growled threateningly but made no move to attack.

What are these ghosts, really? the sorcerer in Illidan wondered. Were they the disembodied spirits of the dead left to wander the world? If so, why did they not remember things and act under their own free will as his spirit did when it moved through the Twisting Nether?

The ghost moved backward and forward in a predictable pattern, like some mad, broken thing. Perhaps it was diseased or crazed or had lost something. Perhaps the magic that had turned the mausoleum city into a place of the restless dead had caused this, too. Such speculation would have to wait. It was time to move on.

Illidan’s force pushed on deeper into a labyrinth of corridors and vaults. Auchindoun was vast and ancient, and the city below was many times larger than that which lay aboveground.

Cobwebs of spectral energy latticed the ceilings. More fel braziers illuminated piles of bones. They lay in great heaps, as if some insane collector had gathered them and tossed them into a jumble.

Here and there, shattered paving stones revealed pits in the rock beneath the crypts. In some, nuggets of raw adamantite gleamed. The only living things visible were the fist-sized spiders that scuttled from one shadow to another.

Illidan and his troops passed over strange bridges and by huge stone coffins. As they entered a massive chamber, lined by gigantic sarcophagi, Illidan sensed an eerie presence.

What had been only an empty archway contained a glowing form resembling that of a draenei. It radiated a cold, life-sucking force. Illidan unleashed a bolt of energy, and the thing disintegrated in the face of his power.

As if that were a signal, shimmering figures emerged from the shadows, suddenly just there. They fell upon the fel orcs and were cut to shimmers of ectoplasm by runic weapons and powerful spells.

A massive pile of bones sprang up as they passed, knitting themselves together into animated skeletons, their fleshless fingers clutching weapons that perhaps they had borne in life.

On ledges around the walls of the vault, robed draenei wove dark magic. Their power connected with unlife, but the ones tapping it were living. Their necromancy drew the dead to life. Illidan dispatched fel orcs to cut them down.

Slowly they fought their way into the center of the crypt. As they did so, the silvery, haunting call of horns rang out. It echoed away through the endless corridors. No doubt a warning was being spread. More defenders were being summoned.

Good, Illidan thought. All the more to feed to the soul siphon.

Illidan’s forces continued fighting. Tides of strange spirits roared over them. More and more of the fel orcs went down.

It was a pity. Illidan had not yet had time to set up the soul siphon and make their deaths count in the great scheme of things.

Here was the place he wanted, though, deep below the city, beneath its endless halls of interred corpses.

The fel orcs drew up in ranks around the palanquin containing the soul siphon. It lay in an elf-sized sarcophagus of brass, fel iron, and truesilver. Illidan sprang into the air, felt a chill wind surge beneath his wings, and landed atop the container. He spoke a word of power and the casket sprang open, revealing the soul siphon.

Power pulsed through the fel iron piping, channeled by the runes inscribed in the artifact’s side. He was proud of his sorcery. He had managed to re-create some of the magical effects of the ritual used to suck in the souls of the dead and the dying when he opened the portal to Nathreza. When activated, the siphon would sweep the restless spirits haunting Auchindoun into its vortex, disassemble them, and store their power. Three teardrop-like gems lay in the center of the device. Right now the gems were dull and black, but as the siphon filled, they would blaze. When all of them burned, he would have enough power to open the gateway to Argus.

He invoked the artifact’s might, creating a psychic link between himself and the device. He felt the presence of it in his mind, a yawning abyss, a thing thirsty for power, hungry to devour whatever it encountered. The siphon held a fierce, primitive sentience. The moment he made contact, it began vampirically to drain the life from him.

He wove spells of protection and then mastery, binding the entity to his will as he would a demon.

More robed draenei arrived, heading companies of walking skeletons. They directed their forces to attack. The fel orcs formed up around Illidan.

“Hold them for a few minutes, and triumph will be ours.”

The fel orcs closed ranks and raised their weapons. Wave after wave of the walking dead threw themselves forward. Individually they were no match for the fel orcs, but they came on in seemingly endless numbers. As they distracted the fel orcs, bolts of shadow magic flew from the necromancers.

Worst of all were the spirits. They slithered through unseen, their cold, spectral hands grasping fel orc bodies and sucking the life out of them, leaving chilled corpses to drop to the ground.

Illidan continued to wake the soul siphon to its full power. He forced himself to concentrate, knowing that he did not have much time. The fel orcs could not hold up under this pressure for long. Already a few of their corpses responded to sly necromantic sorcery and sprang up to attack their former comrades.

The siphon resisted him. Something about his surroundings aided it, lending power to that which fought against him. He gritted his teeth and howled the words of the spell. Skeletons disintegrated, particles of shadow flowing from them into the maw of the siphon. At first the fel orcs cheered, and then they were too busy fighting for their lives to notice that their spirits were also, upon death, consumed by the magical engine.

The tidal wave of oncoming ghosts was sucked in, like water gurgling into a sewer. The siphon exerted its tremendous power, its dark magical energy drawing souls to it like filings to a magnet.

The first of the gems on the siphon glowed bright as a demonic sun. A quick glance showed Illidan that almost half of his bodyguards were down. Without his magic to aid them, they were losing the battle. He wanted to join them but he could not; he needed to concentrate on the soul siphon lest it run out of control. If that happened, it might explode, killing them all.