Illidan

by William King

  —

  VANDEL WAS GLAD TO be in the cover of the rocks. So far none of the demons had noticed him. He felt their malice rolling toward him, a fog of unleashed hatred and evil that somehow congealed out of the magic in the air.

  Join them, the demon voice whispered inside him. Join them and you will be rewarded as no soul in the history of the cosmos has been rewarded.

  He felt the temptation. The demon was telling the truth as it understood it. He touched the hilts of his rune-encrusted blades. It would be the simplest of actions to plunge them into Illidan’s back. Was he not the Betrayer? Had ever an elf in history been more deserving of death?

  Slay him, his demon whispered. Slay Illidan and achieve eternal glory. Slay the Betrayer and become a dark god.

  The sound of the thunderclap faded as the army of the nathrezim advanced. The great meteor hit the ground, shaking the earth, disgorging a gigantic blazing infernal. It pulled itself out of the impact crater and lumbered forward along with the rest of the dreadlords’ army.

  Vandel felt the temptation rise within him. If he slaughtered Illidan, he would be welcomed by his demonic kindred. He could put his mortality behind him forever, live untroubled by fear and regret. He could bury all traces of guilt about failing his family, all remorse, any semblance of kinship with these weak, frail creatures of flesh and blood.

  He could transcend what he was, join the Burning Legion, and become a conqueror, cleansing the universe of the foul disease of life. He could help bring creation crashing down so that a new universe could be born, one shaped in his image, by his desires.

  For a moment, he wavered. He listened to the voice of his inner demon and realized that it was his own. His soul had been tainted when he devoured the felhound. It had absorbed the demon’s evil and been twisted. There was really no other demon than himself.

  To give in to the voice of temptation would be to forswear his quest for vengeance and break faith with his dead wife and child.

  He did not want to kill Illidan. He wanted to kill the things that had made Illidan into what he was. He understood now as he never had before what the Betrayer stood for, because of what he stood against. For all his gigantic flaws, Illidan was the only being who really grasped what they fought, and he was prepared to do whatever it took to end the threat. He might well be mad. His schemes might well be doomed to failure. But he was better than the alternative.

  The demons of the Legion advanced toward the ridge. It was time to do battle with the real enemy.

  The army of the nathrezim moved upslope. A mortal force would have been slowed by the effort, but they seemed tireless. Felhounds loped ahead, infernals lumbered in their wake, scores of gigantic winged dreadlords bellowed orders to their followers.

  Now. The thunderous voice spoke within Vandel’s head, and it was Illidan’s. As one the demon hunters emerged from their cover and raced down toward their prey.

  For a moment, the Legion’s army slowed, as if unable to comprehend the fact that it was being attacked by this much smaller force of smaller beings. One or two of the dreadlords laughed again.

  With a roar like the ocean throwing itself against rocks, the two armies collided. The demons wanted to reach the portal and close it. The demon hunters wanted only to slay and slay and slay.

  A felhound leapt at Vandel. Sharklike teeth gaped. He invoked his power and sent a bolt of greenish-yellow energy into its maw. The demon’s head exploded. Chunks of flesh fell to the ground, charred and smoking. Resisting the temptation to feast, Vandel launched himself forward, daggers clearing their sheaths. He rolled between two monstrous mo’arg servitors, hamstrung them before they could bring their weapons to bear, flipped to his feet, and smashed his dagger through the eye socket of first one, then the other.

  A moment later, he confronted a dreadlord. The creature loomed over him, twice his height, broader than an ogre and even stronger. The dreadlord brought a massive spiked mace smashing into the ground as Vandel jumped aside. Rock splintered. Clouds of green dust rose glittering into the air.

  Vandel picked himself up. His foe buffeted him with a batlike wing. The force of the blow made his head ring, sent him hurtling back toward a massive boulder. He flipped himself over so that his feet made contact with the rock first, and then he sprang forward, bouncing away from the impact and rolling to a stand.

  The dreadlord turned with surprising quickness for a creature of his enormous bulk and lumbered toward him. Vandel raised his hand and sent a fel bolt slashing toward the demon. A wing curled around his opponent’s body. The bolt ripped through the appendage, leaving it hanging like a tattered cloak from the dreadlord’s side. The monster did not even seem to have slowed.

  From the periphery of his vision, Vandel saw Cyana dispatch another mo’arg servitor, then leap over the corpse to engage a felguard. A blaze of light from his right warned him, and he sprang into the air just as an imp’s firebolt passed beneath him. He twisted to avoid descending into the jet of flame and found himself looking up at the massive polished hoof of the wounded dreadlord.

  It stamped down, missing him. He lashed out with his dagger, catching his opponent behind the knee and drawing forth what might have been a grunt of pain or contempt. The creature smashed down with his mace and caught Vandel on the shoulder.

  When he had been mortal, the blow would have killed him, smashing broken ribs through heart and lung. He rolled with the impact, riding the force of the strike. As he did so, he repaid the imp who had blasted him, hitting the demon with a fel bolt that turned the cackling little monster into a pool of bubbling slime.

  Vandel sprang upward, embedding his left-hand dagger in the dreadlord’s breastplate, using it to pull himself up until he could drive his other weapon through the demon’s eye. The creature clutched at the socket, attempting to swat him, but Vandel had already drawn the blade clear and driven it through the other eye.

  He dropped to the ground and unleashed a flurry of blows on the blinded monster. Doubtless the demon could, given time, sense Vandel the way he sensed him, using magic, but for those few crucial instants the creature might as well have been blind. Vandel took advantage to stab his blades again and again into the dreadlord. The magic on the daggers cut his flesh, leaving rotting wounds that would not heal.

  Blades grated on bone, sawed through tendon, parted muscle with the sound of a butcher’s cleaver going into a steer’s carcass.

  The demon gave up trying to strike him and tried to lumber away, flapping his huge wings. Because of the earlier damage, he could only remain on the ground while Vandel carved him to pieces.

  Cruelty drove Vandel’s hand. Every blow that went home gave him sick satisfaction, and he knew the thing within him was feeding on the dreadlord’s death. At that moment he no longer cared. The demon’s desires were aligned with his own. It did not matter if he made it stronger. Right now he could use its strength, and right now, he knew that it took just as much satisfaction from the killing as he did.

  When finally he had reduced the dreadlord to a pile of skinned flesh, it occurred to him that he had wasted valuable time. There was more prey to be had, and he needed to claim his share.

  Needle sat nearby, astride the torso of a fallen felguard, casually punching his foot-long needles again and again into the demon’s open chest plate as if he were trying to stitch it together. Elarisiel chased a felhound around a rock before putting it out of its misery.

  Over by a huge boulder, a group of dreadlords made a last stand. They looked more bemused than afraid, as if they could not quite grasp what was happening around them. It was clear that the battle had not gone as they had expected.

  The demon hunters had gone through their army like a sharp scythe through wheat. Everywhere the corpses of demons sprawled. There were several elf bodies, too, but far fewer than Vandel would have expected, given the sizes of the respective forces.

  Illidan landed atop the rock behind the remaining dreadlords. Vandel wondered whether the lord of Outla
nd intended to take a hand in their destruction, but he simply stood there, watching.

  The demon hunters slowly rose from what they were doing and stared at their overlord and then at the dreadlords. The demons braced themselves as a tide of fighters surged forward and engulfed them.

  —

  ILLIDAN WATCHED HIS FORCES drag down the last of the nathrezim. His doubts had disappeared. The demon hunters had exceeded his expectations. Of course, they had possessed the advantage of surprise. The dreadlords had not expected to encounter such savage power so close to their home, and overconfidently had marched to meet them. Things would not always be so easy.

  Nonetheless, nothing could damp the sweet feeling of triumph. Every dreadlord who fell here would be one who no longer troubled the universe. In this place, at this time, they would die permanently. How long had it taken Illidan to realize that secret? How many times had he fruitlessly thought he had slain his enemies? His visions had shown him the answer. During his millennia-long imprisonment, he could do nothing with them, but now things had changed.

  He would make the lords of the Burning Legion suffer as they had made others suffer. He counted his own dead. Less than a score. At this point each was a loss he could barely afford, but soon there would be more demon hunters. The Legion had sown dragon’s teeth among his people. There was no shortage of those who sought vengeance against the demons. But that was a problem for another day. Now he had to get what he had come here for.

  Time was of the essence. The force they had encountered was the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction of what the Burning Legion could deploy. As soon as they realized what had happened, the masters of the city would summon aid. He needed to be gone from here before that occurred. No matter how powerful his individual fighters were, they could still be overcome by enough enemies.

  He gave the signal to advance.

  The demon hunters moved quickly through the nathrezim city. Great obsidian towers reflected the green light of fel magic all around them. Streets of shining black shimmered in their glow. More and more demons surrounded them, stragglers or those left behind by the army to hold important posts. The Illidari overwhelmed any they encountered, like hounds pulling down a rabbit. Not even the mightiest dreadlord was a match for so many.

  Illidan resisted the urge to join in the fray. Opening the portal had drained a good deal of his power; he was husbanding what was left in case any unexpected threat emerged.

  Ahead of him loomed the tallest tower, the great archive of the dreadlords. Within this building lay all the countless secrets the nathrezim had obtained during their service to Sargeras.

  Hulking felguard flanked an entrance that shimmered and vanished, closing off the tower to intruders. Tattooed fighters dragged the demons down, then stood before where the doorway once was, baffled. What had been an empty archway mere heartbeats before was now a wall of stone.

  “Blast it,” Illidan ordered. There was no doubt an easier way of opening the doorway, but he did not have time to uncover the magical key. The demon hunters raised their hands and sent fel flame licking toward the barrier. Hundreds of bolts smashed, scoured, and scratched the stone, but still it withstood the assault.

  “Concentrate on one area!” Illidan shouted, and all the bolts converged at the center of the stone, drilling through it until finally the rock splintered and collapsed into a heap of rubble.

  Illidan sprang over it and glimpsed a long ramp leading down into the depths below the tower. So far all was as he recalled from his memories of Gul’dan’s visions. He smiled to himself as a score of Illidari sprang over the stones and fanned out into the interior of the building, scouting the way ahead.

  “Down,” Illidan ordered them, and they took the ramp leading down. Strange lights moved in the floor, as if triggered by their steps. The air pulsed with sorcery, currents of energy woven into potent spells by the magic of the nathrezim. Power shimmered in the air and thrummed beneath his hooves. Complex engines of magic all around drew on the energy that permeated everything on this strange world.

  He was close now. So close.

  “Die, desecrator!” the mo’arg servitor shouted as he sprang forward to attack. The demon raised the barrel of his odd weapon. Magical flame sputtered.

  Illidan decapitated the squat, armored creature with a casual backhand stroke of his warglaive as he entered the central archive of the dreadlords. Over everything loomed glittering towers built of countless obsidian disks layered together like stacks of coins. Each one of those disks was a record. One of them was what he sought.

  He turned to the demon hunters who stood in the entrance of the huge chamber, waiting his command. “Do not enter. Hold this doorway, no matter what happens in the next five minutes.”

  They nodded acquiescence, and Illidan turned once more to face the stacks. He crossed his arms on his chest and wove a spell. Tendrils of magic flashed from his hands to the towers of stacked disks. As they connected, he caught flashes of imagery, splinters of knowledge.

  This was the monument of the dreadlords, the heart of their world. It recorded every triumph, every conquest, and every plot. Nathrezim schemed to have their names imprinted here. It was the living memory of their race.

  Here were records of innumerable campaigns fought on countless worlds. Here were the names of long-forgotten traitors who had betrayed their homes to the Legion and were in turn betrayed by the demons. Here was knowledge of every portal the Legion had ever passed through, the names and locations of every world it had ever burned.

  There was a system to it. It was organized almost chronologically, the oldest disks on the bottom of each stack. The stacks closest to the center were the oldest of these.

  Illidan sent tendrils of energy racing to the middle. What he wanted would be located very near the core. The images that flashed into his mind reeked of age. He was looking at things that were old even as demons reckoned time.

  A sense of urgency pushed at him. Somewhere in the distance, gates were opening. The nathrezim were responding to the invasion of their homeworld.

  He became aware of the sounds of fighting. They came from what seemed like a great distance, but he knew this was because of the spell linking him to the archive. His forces were engaged with enemy reinforcements flooding in from the city above. He prayed they could hold them until his work was completed. He needed to finish quickly, or this library would become a trap and his army would be overwhelmed by the massed strength of the nathrezim.

  He took a deep breath and slowed his pulse. It would not do to make a mistake here, so close to the culmination of everything he had planned for. He could not afford to fail.

  There—he found the first ward, a complex spell, almost undetectable. It had been set to warn of anyone tampering with these records and rewriting history. He was not concerned with any such subtlety. He just needed the specific record he was searching for, and then he would be gone. He smashed the spell aside and felt an immediate response as defensive runes flared to life. He sensed portals opening around him.

  An enormous felguard shimmered into being among the stacks. A pulse of magical energy, loud as thunder and clear as a bell to anyone with the senses to hear it, rang out. From the distance came multiple responses.

  The nathrezim would know exactly where he was now. He stepped forward as the felguard aimed a blow at him. His warglaive lashed out and cut the demon in half. More felguard materialized around him. Illidan cut them down, but more and more materialized with every heartbeat.

  He gazed around him with his spectral sight, looking for the pattern of the defenses, finding them inscribed around the base of each pillar of disks. Each was connected to one of three master sigils around the central pillar.

  He aimed one of his warglaives at the nearest and threw. His weapon whirled through the air and scoured the stone, breaking part of the spell. The blade bounced off the pillar and returned to his hand. The onrush of felguard slackened as the portals connected to the destroyed rune co
llapsed.

  Illidan sprang forward, moving around the pillar as the demons pursued him. Ahead lay another glowing sigil in the floor. He cut down two felguard, slid forward, powering himself with his wings, and defaced the rune with his blades, then moved toward the last of the master wards.

  The remaining felguard bunched around the third glowing sigil. He sprang into the air, gained height, and swooped down on them. His blades sang as he chopped through the demonic ranks, ducking their axe strokes, evading their attempts to grip him.

  He drove his blade right into the center of the runic pattern, disrupting it. A massive backwash of energy pushed him into the air. The demons howled their frustration, but the gateways through which they had come collapsed. Now he had to deal with only those who had already passed through. There would be no more reinforcements.

  Once more he dived amid the demons, scattering them with the force of his flying charge. His blades decapitated some and left others limbless. He came to rest beside the central pillar. He stood next to his goal for all these long centuries.

  Extending one hand, he invoked his spell of seeking once more. Images flooded his mind as tendrils of force touched the disks. One in particular, the Seal of Argus, drew him. Potent images overlaid it, the aura of beings he had encountered in the past and would never forget: Archimonde and Kil’jaeden, the two mightiest lieutenants of Sargeras, true master of the Burning Legion.

  Their psychic stench was so strong, it threatened to overwhelm even his prepared mind. He felt the brutal fury of Archimonde and the subtle, intricate mind of Kil’jaeden. Even though he knew they were not present, it was all he could do to keep from lashing out as if surrounded by deadly foes.