William King: Illidan

“I do not want to fight you,” he said.

Maiev cursed. It had been a long time since anyone had avoided one of her death strikes. It should not have been possible yet this foul monstrosity had done so. A mark of how potent he was.

Maiev studied the thing. He looked in some ways like Illidan, although less monstrous. He was tall, a whipcord-thin abomination that had once been a kaldorei. He had tattoos like his master. His skin was scaly. His eye sockets were empty except for the molten green light of fel magic. He lacked wings and hooves, but there was something undeniably demonic about him. He had once been an elf, but now he was something else, a dreadful hybrid of elf and demon, doubtless one of the army of horrors that Akama had spoken of.

Maiev aimed her blade at the monster. The demonically possessed elf leapt above the weapon. As she turned to strike at him again, he jumped to one side and once more eluded her.

“Stop. There is no need for this,” he said.

She heard the grating anger in his voice, though, and was not about to fall for his trickery. She advanced upon him, her blade held at the ready. “I will have your life, monster.”

The terrible weapon swept toward Vandel once more. He sprang over it, flipped himself clean over Maiev, and landed behind her. He had a clear shot with a spell at her back. He hesitated for a moment as she turned to face him.

“I am not your enemy,” he said. Her umbra crescent licked out again. Sparks flickered as he parried it. “We are on the same side, you and I.”

Maiev paused. Her cold laughter rang through the war-ravaged courtyard. “You serve Illidan. I mean to kill him. Of course we are not on the same side.”

“I am here to fight the Burning Legion, not other night elves.”

The point of the umbra crescent began to move from side to side, hypnotically. Vandel took a step back to give himself more room. “You have fallen for Illidan’s old lie,” Maiev said.

“It is not a lie. I have slaughtered demons by the hundred. I will slay more for as long as there is breath in me.”

“That will not be for much longer.” Maiev lunged, quick as a nightsaber. Vandel sprang clear and her blade passed through the spot where he had just stood. He fought down the urge to riposte. His demon urged him to attack. With an effort of will, he restrained himself.

“The Burning Legion seeks to destroy all who live. We need to stand united against it,” he said.

“You will be united with your demon master in death.” Maiev’s strike was like a thunderbolt. Vandel hurled himself backward but it caught his cheek, slicing it open. Blood ran down over his lips. It tingled on his tongue.

Vandel had had enough. He had tried reasoning with Maiev. He could try running but he doubted he would get far with his back to her. She was too strong and too fast. He needed to face her.

You need to kill her, said the demonic voice in the back of his mind. It is you or her. She will not let you live.

Vandel would have liked to deny it, but he knew the demon was speaking the truth, and that lent its argument force. He summoned fel energy and sent a bolt racing toward the night elf. She parried, dissipating it effortlessly. Vandel doubted anyone save Illidan or his highest lieutenants could have managed that feat. He realized that the objective here was not going to be killing Maiev. It was going to be staying alive in the face of her fury.

Maiev’s eyes narrowed. SO the demon’s true colors were revealed now. He had attempted to strike her down with his fel magic. For a moment she had almost believed the monster’s protestations. He had sounded sincere and had made no attempt to harm her, only to defend himself.

In the distance the summoning reached a crescendo. Her prey was going to escape. It was time to end this. She launched a ferocious physical attack on the altered elf. Her blade flashed almost too fast for the eyes to follow. Her assailant raised his blades to parry.

Vandel danced through a razor-edged whirlwind. It was all he could do to keep out of the way of Maiev’s strikes. There was no chance of launching an attack of his own. She was simply too fast and too strong.

Already his muscles ached from parrying the fury of her assault. It felt as if his arms were going to be torn from their sockets simply from the effort of blocking her attacks. He could barely maintain the grip on his blades.

He backpedaled away from her as fast as he could. He was not worried about tripping over anything. His spectral senses allowed him to perceive everything around him. They also told him that he was running out of time. The demon within him howled its protests. It did not want to escape. It wanted to fight and kill. He allowed its power to flow into him. From the pores of his skin, darkness flowed, armoring his body with shadow. His arms grew stronger. His movements grew faster. He matched Maiev blow for blow, turning her blade with one of his, lashing out with the other. Metal shrieked as his weapon clawed its way along the vambrace of her armor.

He struck again and again, driving the warden back first one step and then another until he had regained all the ground he had lost to her initial attack. Maiev slashed at him and he leapt above her blade, bringing his dagger down on her helmet and knocking her off balance. As she fell, he aimed a bolt of fel energy at her. It ravened into her chest. The demon urged him on. Kill her. Kill her.

Maiev tumbled to the ground. The impact of the Illidari’s blow had surprised her more than hurt her, but the burst of fel energy was painful even through her armor. The shadow-encased demon loomed above her, an aura of power playing around his hands.

Maiev drew on the light of Elune and used her power to blink, vanishing from where she lay.

Vandel watched the bolt of yellow-green energy crash down into the ground where Maiev had been but an instant before. He felt the displacement of air behind him and turned a moment too late to block her strike.

Her blade scythed in from the right and cut his arm. Pain blazed through it. Blood flowed. He hurled himself back and realized then that the attack had been a feint. Her blade crunched into his skull. He rolled away even as it made contact, but agony lanced through him. Darkness encroached on his field of vision.

The last thing he saw was Khariel. A disappointed look was on his little boy’s face. He was never going to be avenged now.

“Thus will your master fall, too,” he heard Maiev say. Then the darkness took him.

Akama entered the refectory. Racks made from the bones of monsters flanked the doorway. A massive altar stood upon a plinth at the rear of the room. The flickering light of eldritch energies sent shadows skittering across the floor of the desecrated space. His allies had already slaughtered most of the opposition within and now confronted the shade that Illidan had drawn from Akama’s own spirit. It looked like the Broken’s shadow, if his shadow had been granted form in three dimensions and evil life. It was perfect in its way, a miracle of dark magic, a testament to the evil genius of Illidan, its creator.

The massive form of the stolen part of his soul loomed over the adventurers from Azeroth. Sensing Akama’s presence, it moved toward him, tendrils of dark energy lashing out from it, smashing into him. His allies attacked it head-on, hammering at it with spells, charging in with their swords. He wrestled with the pain, kept himself on his feet. He gritted his teeth, even though he wanted to scream. He studied the weave of the magic attacking him. It led all the way back to the shade.

The adventurers from Azeroth had done everything Akama had asked. They had opened the way into the refectory. They had slain the renegade Ashtongue forces guarding the place and then, one by one, had killed the channelers casting the spell that held the shard of his dark soul. Now the thing was free and it was coming for him. It intended to kill him if it could, to take possession of his body and, through him, all of the Ashtongue.