William King: Illidan

Illidan said, “Perhaps hiding here was not the most prudent decision. Still, the quest lies before us. Will you follow me into the cold heart of death itself?”

Lady Vashj coiled her serpent body beneath her and stretched her torso to its full height. “The naga are yours to command, Lord Illidan. Where you go, we follow.”

Prince Kael’thas looked dazed, as was only natural after having caught the full attention of a demon lord. He pulled himself together and said, “The blood elves are yours as well, master. We will drive the Scourge before us and shatter the Frozen Throne as you command.”

“We have some time yet,” Illidan said. “There are things that I must do before we go. We must be prepared.”

Maiev Shadowsong studied the parched land, shielding her eyes from the blaze of the huge Outland sun with one gauntleted hand. Her gaze shifted from the dusty road to the hillside. She caught the scuttling movement of one of their alien pursuers as it ducked out of sight behind a boulder on the slope above them.

“I see our insectoid friends are still following us,” Anyndra said.

Maiev glanced at her second-in-command. Like all night elves, Anyndra was tall and slender. The sweat-stained tabard of a Watcher clung to her. A red scarf held her green hair from her eyes. Anyndra would not have been Maiev’s first choice as a lieutenant, but she had to work with what she had. The thirty troops strung out along the road behind her were the only survivors of the ambush that had ripped Illidan from her grasp mere weeks before. Lady Vashj and Prince Kael’thas would answer for the deaths they had caused freeing the Betrayer.

“The ravagers will not give up,” Maiev said. “They are hungry.”

“I have heard they take captives to feed to their hatchlings,” Anyndra said. It did not surprise Maiev. Outland was a hideous place inhabited by monstrous creatures. Even her spell-woven armor could not entirely neutralize the heat. She wished she could wipe away the perspiration trickling down her brow, but her full-face helm prevented that. Instead she squinted at the ridge again. There were more of the scuttlers up there, a lot of them. Their movements reminded her of gigantic spiders.

In the distance she heard the blaring foghorn roar of a fel reaver, one of the titanic war machines that thundered across these parched wastes with earth-shaking strides. Two days ago the Watchers had barely managed to escape one. It had threatened to reduce them to a bloody pulp beneath its enormous demon-metal feet.

Maiev’s nightsaber let out a fierce roar as if responding to the challenge. The other riding cats echoed the sound. Upslope, a ravager scuttled into view to investigate the source of the noise.

“I could put an arrow through that ravager’s eye,” said Anyndra, producing an arrow with her distinctive green-and-red fletching. She was proud of her skill with a bow and liked to display it every chance she got.

Maiev gave her a tight-lipped smile. “Why bother? There are thousands more of the creatures.” She nudged her nightsaber into its long, loping stride. “Let them follow us if they wish. If they attack, we will teach them the folly of their ways. Otherwise, do not waste precious arrows.”

The troops fell into line behind her, surveying their surroundings warily. Maiev knew she was going to have to keep a close watch on them. Back on Azeroth, she would never have doubted their commitment to the hunt, but here things were different. A few of her soldiers had had a wild look in their eyes ever since they had passed through the magical portal in pursuit of Illidan.

She took in another breath of the dry air. She had been places on Azeroth that were just as parched, but something about Hellfire Peninsula made her feel thirstier than she had been even in the desert of Tanaris. At least there, she had known the ocean was near. So far they had found no evidence that this place had a sea. As far as she could tell, Outland floated in a great void. Water was scarce.

“He will not escape us, Warden,” said Anyndra.

Maiev shook her head, clearing it of her musings. She refocused on her lieutenant and the task at hand. “Of course he will not. I have not crossed the gap between worlds to let the Betrayer elude justice.”

“He has powerful allies here.” Anyndra’s voice was soft and held a hint of doubt. The other members of the company had fallen silent. They were listening to hear what Maiev had to say.

“No matter how powerful his allies are, he will not get away,” Maiev said. She decided to address her troops’ unspoken questions head-on. “We captured Illidan once. We will capture him again.”

Anyndra’s face froze into a mask. She glanced toward the ridge as if seeking to hide from her leader any doubts she might feel. The scuttling ravagers still kept pace with them. Maiev looked to the right. Scores of the insect-like beasts carpeted the other slope, flanking the road. If there were more ravagers ahead, Maiev and her people were riding into a trap. It would not be the first one they had fallen into here.

“He was not with Kael’thas or Lady Vashj when we first captured him,” Anyndra said. Clearly the way the two powerful sorcerers had rescued Illidan and slaughtered her fellow Watchers was on her mind.

Maiev said, “Prince Kael’thas is a treacherous renegade. Lady Vashj is a twisted abomination. If they get in our way, we will kill them.”

Maiev was not entirely sure how she would make good on that threat. She pushed that thought aside as a distraction. The blood elf prince and the naga matron were not important. Illidan was. She had not spent ten thousand years of her life making sure his evil was contained just so he could take the opportunity to work his wickedness now.

“You think this Broken sage will be able to help us against them? This Akama?” Anyndra asked.

“I do not know, Anyndra,” she said. “He may be of use to us. He may not. In the long run, it does not matter. We will triumph. We always have. We always will.”

Anyndra looked away. Maiev let the silence hold and gave her attention to their surroundings once more. The landscape of Outland had been torn apart by magic. It was a terrible warning of what dealing with those forces could unleash. She had seen its like before.

Although it had happened more than ten thousand years ago, Maiev remembered it as if it were yesterday. No, as if it had happened only hours ago…the day when she had first seen the Burning Legion. Her memories of that terrible time were as fresh as they had been when newly minted.

No one had understood what they faced back then, not really. They had thought the Legion was merely a temporary threat spawned by uncontrolled magic. They had thought Illidan was merely a misguided sorcerer. At least the others had. She had always known different.

The ozone scent in the Outland air brought back the memory of her first encounter with an infernal. She recalled the stench of the near-mindless thing as vividly as the night blossoms blooming amid the pavilions of Darnassus. It had seemed too big and too filled with magic to be opposed. The leaves shriveled as it passed, turned autumn-sere by the backwash of its blazing body. She called on the power of Elune, and the moon goddess destroyed the demon, shattering it into scorching fragments, leaving Maiev free to heal the seared flesh of its victims.

That had been only one of a thousand skirmishes. She had witnessed horrors during the War of the Ancients. Forests had burned and nations had died. It had taught her that there could be no compromise with those who sought power through the use of perverted magic. They needed to be stamped out, crushed, slain before they could unleash destruction upon the innocent, before they could corrupt all that was natural and good.