Illidan

11

Vandel moaned and tried to sit up. His head spun. He stretched out his hands, trying to maintain his balance, but that just made things worse. He crashed back to the hard floor, smacking his head. His forehead felt wet beneath his questing fingers. He had cut himself again. Blood matted his hair from his previous attempts at rising.

He dry heaved. The demon meat in his stomach was fighting its way free. The thought sickened him, and yet it also made his mouth water.

All around, he could hear screams and groans and babbling. Sometimes he recognized the voices of his fellow aspirants. Sometimes, he thought it was all his imagination, that he was trapped in a private hell of his own making. The air stank of rotting flesh, gangrene, pus, and excrement.

At regular intervals, the hooves of Broken servants clattered on the stone floor as they cleaned the chambers and washed the sick. Twice they had swabbed him with sponges, and he had tried to force them away. All he wanted was to be left alone.

Glowworms of color writhed across his field of vision. At first they had given him hope that he might be starting to see again, but now he thought his mind was playing tricks on him, pretending to see things whenever he heard others near.

“Broken moon, demon moon, blood moon!” He knew that shouting voice from somewhere, but he was not sure from where. “Demons approach. A demon approaches.”

Leathery wings snapped. Displaced air swirled around his face.

“On your feet,” Illidan’s voice said. “You have rested long enough.”

It was the first time Vandel had heard the Betrayer’s voice since the ritual. He felt his lips tighten into a sneer. “What is the point? I cannot see.”

“I thought the same thing once. But now I can see to the end of the universe. It is closer than most think.”

Remembering the march of the Burning Legion through countless devastated worlds, Vandel understood the bitter humor of the Betrayer’s words. “I know.”

“Then you also know what we fight. And why.” There was an arrogant certainty in Illidan’s tone that Vandel resented. There was a challenge, too.

The demonic thing within him stirred, responding to Illidan’s presence with something like hunger. It lent Vandel strength and goaded him to speak. “How can you fight against what I saw? It is impossible.”

Impossible, impossible, impossible, whispered the voice in the back of his head. It still sounded like his own, only clotted with hatred. The felhound had grafted itself to his soul, and its spirit seemed able to use his mind and his memories now.

“Be quiet,” Vandel told it.

He heard the creak of wings as Illidan moved. The Betrayer ignored his words as if he sensed to whom Vandel was speaking. “We must fight. Countless worlds have fallen to the Legion, and ours will be next unless we stop it.”

Fragments of apocalyptic visions swirled through Vandel’s mind. He saw worlds burning and nations dying, and through it all he saw the Legion marching, its victory as inevitable as death. The thing at the back of his mind snickered. “Be quiet,” he repeated, but it ignored him.

“Stand up,” Illidan commanded, and there was no disobeying that voice. Even the thing in Vandel’s mind quailed. He lurched to his feet and stood there, swaying. His stomach heaved. The world spun once more. A clawed hand dug into his shoulder and held him upright. Writhing worms of light shimmered beside him, slithering away from the point of contact.

“I cannot see,” Vandel said.

“You can see everything.”

Vandel’s head spun faster. Lights flickered all around him.

He lashed out with his hand, seeking to strike at the lights. They moved away. Rage surged within him. The worms of light were everywhere, covering everything. They filled the space surrounding him. He heard a whimpering sound from a mass of sickly green, knew it was a feverish elf.

He twisted to where Illidan stood, and he saw a blaze of light. If he looked closely, it appeared to be a winged shape.

“You tricked me, Betrayer. You told me you would give me the power to fight demons, to avenge my family.” His anger was a bonfire as bright as Illidan’s aura. It gave him strength. Hatred tasted like bile in his mouth. He wanted to smash his fists into Illidan’s face and beat him till the bones broke. He wanted to drink his blood and eat his heart and be filled with the power that burned before him.

The dizziness was gone now. He had no trouble moving. He wished he had his blades.

“I have given you all that and more.” The blaze of Illidan’s aura moved. Vandel turned his head, tracking it, and he realized that he was also tracking the source of the voice. This did not make him less angry. Frustration built up in him. He wanted to rend and tear. He bit his lip until blood flowed. He was going to kill the Betrayer. He was going to supplant him.

He sprang forward. He heard a rustling sound. His fist smashed into something leathery but lined with bone. A wing. Illidan’s wing. A moment later it buffeted him from his feet. He hit the ground and rolled toward another swirling mass of light. He felt the contact of flesh when he reached it, heard a feverish voice groan.

No doubt about it—in some way, he was perceiving where things were.

He sniffed the air, smelled soiled bandages, unwashed flesh, and beneath that the tainted odor of demon, repulsing him and arousing his hunger at the same time. He wanted to feast upon it. He dived forward, jaws clamping on the sick elf’s arm. A powerful hand caught him by the neck and lifted him like an elf might lift a nightsaber cub.

Illidan said, “Enough. You must learn to control that which lies within you, or it will control you.”

Rage goaded Vandel to aim an elbow backward. Once again he felt himself cast across the room. Air rushed by. He sensed the cold presence of the wall before he hit it, and he let himself go limp. The impact hurt but not as much as it ought to. He rolled once again to his feet.

The Betrayer was keeping him from his prey. Vandel coiled his muscles to leap. Illidan’s aura became sharper, its greenish-yellow light blazing. Motes of it swirled in the air around him, shifting into new patterns as the Betrayer moved his fingers and arms. Vandel realized he was seeing fel magic being bound to Illidan’s will as he drew upon its power. A moment later a bolt of it leapt from Illidan’s finger and impacted on Vandel’s chest. Strength drained from his body like wine from an upended goblet. The dizziness returned, multiplied a thousandfold. He crashed into the stone at Illidan’s hooves, rage departing in proportion to his strength.

He felt like himself once more, but he understood now what he was seeing, what had happened to him. “The demon I devoured. It is still within me, is it not?”

“Yes,” said Illidan, “and it wants to be free.”

“How can I control it?”

“You take the first step along that road today. Walk with me.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you here? Why are you helping me?”

“Because you know who the true enemy is, and you have the potential to be a great hunter of demons. I saw that the day your village burned. I see it now. I will have need of fighters like you before the end.”

Still dizzy and weak, Vandel forced himself to his feet. His true foes were the innumerable forces of the Burning Legion, which even now prepared to strike at his homeworld.

He stood for a moment, calming his mind, listening for any internal voice that was not his own. He heard nothing, but he knew that didn’t mean anything. He did not doubt that the demon was still in there, waiting for the opportunity to break free once more.

He was aware now of the ebb and flow of energies all around. The lights were auras of living things, some bright, some filled with energy. The brightest of all came from the being who stood beside him.

“Is this how you see the world?” Vandel asked.

“It is one way. Your mind becomes accustomed to it eventually. It maps its new way of seeing onto its old way of understanding reality. There will come a time when you will be able to perceive the world as once you did. It is a much narrower way of seeing, but our minds crave familiarity.”

“You are saying you can shift from seeing the world like this to seeing it as if you had eyes?”

“Indeed, and many gradations between.”

He tried to imagine Illidan as he had previously seen him, and slowly a very rough image of the Betrayer stood before him, like a child’s illustration drawn in mud. Its mud mouth moved as Illidan spoke. “In a way it is like working magic. You get a feel for the flows of power. You get a sense of the souls of the living and the unliving.”

They walked toward a doorway. Vandel sensed its lack of density in the air and the solid matter around it. He was not sure how. He also sensed there were living things beyond it. There was power in them, too. They were waiting for something.

Illidan pushed him forward. He collided with something at about waist height. It felt like the edge of a table. “Lie down on it.”

“Why?” Vandel asked.

“You are about to receive your first tattoos.”

Vandel fumbled at the table with his hands, feeling the rough texture of the wood. It came to him then how much he had taken his sense of touch for granted, and how inaccurate it used to be. Now he could feel every grain of the wood, every knot, every splinter. He felt areas that were slightly rougher, as if the carpenter had been sloppy with his planing. It seemed like his various senses were now many times magnified.

He lay down on the board. Leather straps snapped into place around him. Momentary panic filled him as he was restrained. It increased as power blossomed in one of the nearby figures.

“You will learn to do these for yourself one day, but for now, you must accept them from others. Be still,” said Illidan. “This will hurt.”

The inker leaned forward, and something so hot it was cold, or perhaps so cold it was hot, touched Vandel’s flesh. He fought down the urge to scream. When the needle withdrew, he felt as if a dagger were being pulled from a wound and twisted.

No. No. No. The voice in his head gibbered in panic. The fear communicated itself to him.

This was a trap. Evil magic was being worked here.

The needle stabbed in once more. Pain blasted his body, worse than anything he had felt since he had pulled out his own eyes. He thrashed around, trying to free himself. The restraining bands drew tight. Hard hands pushed down on him.

The needle stabbed again and again, and every touch of its point sent blazing agony searing through him. With every stitch, strength leached out of him. The voice in his head grew weaker and weaker.

He was dying. This magic was going to kill him.

He snarled threats and whimpered pleas, but the pain went on and on and on, until he could struggle no more and could only lie there while the inker went about his work.

Eventually the straps were undone. He could barely rise from the table. His anger and his fear had subsided. For the first time in days, he truly felt like himself. He could barely see the glow of auras around him. His enhanced senses had returned to normal levels. It was as if he had been drugged and the potency had worn off.

“I am glad that is over,” Vandel said.

“The worst is just beginning,” Illidan replied.

The cell walls closed in all around Vandel. Down below in the courtyards, he could hear fighting and practicing. Were they like him, he wondered, a new intake of fools who had been seduced by Illidan’s promises of power?

It was a relief to be away from the sick house, to have his own chamber. He had been brought here immediately after gaining his first tattoos. It had taken him the whole day to recover from that. It was pleasant not to be surrounded by the auras of living things. The quiet was relaxing. He lay on his bed and touched his empty sockets.

His eyes were gone forever. In the absence of living things, it was easy to convince himself that he had hallucinated the whole experience of seeing auras. Perhaps it was a dream.

The feel of rough sheets beneath his fingers told him that it was not. He was blind. He had blinded himself so he wouldn’t see the terrible truth, that the whole universe was doomed, like his wife and child had been. There was nothing he or anyone else could do to stop the Burning Legion. Anyone who thought otherwise was as deluded as the Betrayer.

Such delusions were easy to have, sitting in a fortress like the Black Temple, surrounded by troops. The truth was that no one was safe. No place was safe. When the Burning Legion exerted its strength, the Black Temple would fall like a child’s sand castle kicked by a giant. All those fighters practicing arms outside would die when the dreadlords came to claim the Legion’s possession. Great Sargeras, the titan who would topple the universe, would ultimately triumph. He had been the first to see the truth.

Vandel stopped. Where had that come from? He had seen the fallen titan in his vision. That must be it. Some part of Illidan’s original vision had been transferred to him during the ritual. He knew that. But sometimes it felt as if Vandel wasn’t in control of his thoughts.

The tattoos bound the demon within him. It could not escape now. He traced the ink with his fingers, feeling the lines of power that scarred his body. His hand touched something else, something cold and hard.

At first he thought it was a piece of metal, but then he realized that it was set in his skin. He fumbled at his face and found it was there, too. He paused, chilled by the realization that his flesh had been transformed. He felt one hand with the other, and it slowly dawned on him what had happened. Every place on his skin that had been touched by demon blood had been altered. He had acquired scales of some sort.

This might just be the start of the process. He was certain that while he lay in the hospital, his skin had been normal. Perhaps this was only the first stage of the transformation. Perhaps he was turning into a demon.

It seemed entirely possible. After all, he had no idea what had really been done to him. Illidan might well be lying. He certainly would if it suited his purposes. The change had begun after the demon had been chained by the mystical tattoos. It must have. He had not been changed when he got up this morning. He was certain of that. Perhaps since the demon was unable to affect his mind, it was starting to affect his body.

He rubbed his fingers against his palms. He felt the fingertips of his left hand with those of his right. The nails were long and sharp and dense, like the claws of a hunting cat.

His gums hurt, and he fumbled at his mouth. Yes. His canines jutted out, large and sharp. He had acquired fangs.

Black depression settled on him. He had sought the power to fight demons. Instead he was being transformed into one. He was turning into the thing he hated. How long would it be before he was out there, killing other elves’ children? He had felt the unnatural rage the demon had given him. He understood its strength. Who was he to try to contain that?

Perhaps the best thing he could do was to kill himself before that happened. He sat up and reached out to the small table beside his bed. His rune-woven knife lay there, along with the charm he had made for Khariel. He picked that up and thought about his dead son. How would Khariel feel if he saw his father now? He would see only a monster, a creature on its way to becoming the thing that had murdered him.

He told himself he was not thinking clearly, that something was affecting his mind. Perhaps it was the aftereffects from the tattoo sorcery.

No. You are seeing clearly, for the first time in a long while. You are seeing yourself as you are. A hollow thing that has allowed itself to be changed into that which it hates, in search of a vengeance impossible to get. Illidan is mad. You are mad.

The truth of that thought was incontestable. He was insane, and had been for a very long time. He had always suspected it, and now all his suspicions were confirmed.

Hatred filled him, turned this time on himself. He took the knife, tested its blade on his thumb. It was still magically sharp. He took the point and inserted it under the edge of one of the scales. He pulled it free. It hurt, but the pain lent him energy. If he could cut out all the scales, he could stop the transformation, like a surgeon cutting out a patch of gangrene.

The thought drove him to cut again and again until he was covered in his own blood and patches of his skin lay on the floor. He felt weak and dizzy. It occurred to him that he was losing blood and that he might die here in this cell.

Something in his head laughed at that, and it came to him that the demon was not as trapped as he had believed, and certainly not as weak. It had just turned to a new form of attack, twisting his thoughts, toying with his emotions. It had tapped into all of his dark thoughts and self-hatred. It had access to all of his feelings and all of his shame. In a way, it was him.

He pulled himself upright, and the demon went silent as if it had realized its mistake. He reeled toward the door. Blood stuck to his bare feet and made them sticky. He prayed that the cell door was not locked as he threw his strength against it. The door opened and he fumbled his way out into the corridor, staggering from side to side so that he grazed the walls.

He heard someone shout, “Another one. Get Akama!”

Then he passed out.

Vandel woke to the awareness of power all around him. It was soothing. The areas he had cut felt numb. They tingled, but the sensation was almost pleasant. Someone stood over him. He smelled like a Broken. His aura blazed with magic.

“You are Akama?” Vandel’s voice was weak and his throat felt parched.

“Yes. You are Vandel.” It was not a question. “You clearly impressed Lord Illidan. He asked me to look after you personally.”

“You are a healer?”

“I am. I do what I can to help the sick and the wounded.”

“Which am I?”

“A bit of both, I would say, and something else as well. There is a taint in you that I mislike.”

“Whatever it is, I thank you for your help.”

“You are welcome, and you are also lucky the guards found you in time. You are the fifth of the new recruits to have attempted suicide in the past two days. You are the only one who has lived.”

“I did not attempt suicide.”

“What else would you call it? You hacked at your own flesh until you almost bled to death. You would have, if you had hit an artery. What has been done to you?”

There was a note below the natural curiosity in Akama’s voice that made Vandel wary. “You do not know?”

“I know only that Lord Illidan takes many of your people into that courtyard, and only a few come out, and those altered almost beyond recognition. If he is trying to create an army, he has chosen a funny way of doing so. Killing recruits rarely leads to a large force.”

“If you do not know what is going on, it would perhaps be better not to ask. Lord Illidan has his reasons, and if he wants you to know them, he will share them with you.”

Akama made a tut-tutting sound. “As you say. There is a good deal that goes on here in the temple that it is best not to be curious about.”

As if to echo this, a mighty bellow sounded from deep belowground. The stones seemed to vibrate in time to the roaring.

“Another monster bound in the temple’s defense,” said Akama.

Vandel ignored the Broken. A jolt of memory passed through him. Four others had killed themselves. He recalled Illidan’s words. It was possible that fewer than one in five of the recruits was going to survive the transformation. Vandel had thought the Betrayer had been talking only about the ritual, but it occurred to him now that he had also meant its aftermath.

He felt a sudden certainty that things were just beginning and that the worst still lay ahead.