Illidan

8

Vandel stood in the great courtyard in the ruins of Karabor along with all the others. Hundreds of supplicants lined the terraces. They had been waiting for weeks for Illidan to return. No one knew where he was. Not even his closest followers understood the Betrayer’s comings and goings.

Vandel felt a growing sense of impatience. There had been long days of training under the guidance of tattooed fighters of the same ilk as Elarisiel and Needle.

Golden-haired Varedis, arrogant and confident as a god, had lectured them on the nature of demons. Of him it was whispered he had infiltrated the Shadow Council and stolen its Book of Fel Names.

Soft-spoken Alandien had laid out the tactics of infiltration. She claimed to have been trained by Illidan himself.

Netharel, the oldest night elf among them, was the one who taught them about weapons. Despite being bowed with age, when he picked up a blade, he moved with the agility of youth.

They had practiced with weapons, sparred with their fellow recruits, and gotten to know one another a little better, but Vandel had made no progress toward his goal.

It sometimes seemed to him that he would have achieved far more in the way of vengeance by simply walking out the gate and attacking any one of the tens of thousands of the Burning Legion’s servants that swarmed through Outland. Of course, that would have led to a swift death, and he would have achieved nothing of any account. The Legion had limitless numbers of such soldiers.

Ravael stood beside him. They had stuck together since the night of Vandel’s arrival. Compared with some of those present, Ravael seemed normal. Over the past few weeks, Vandel had encountered most of the aspirants. All of them had stories to tell, and all of those were tales of horror. The majority of the recruits were blood elves sent by Prince Kael’thas to learn how to fight demons. There were far fewer kaldorei.

Among the night elves was Seladan, who had come all the way from Eversong Woods. His body had been burned by a dozen fist blows from an infernal. The whole right side of his face had been caved in around the jawline. A night elf so burned should not have been able to move without pain, but somehow he did, as lithe as when he had been a village guard.

Beautiful Isteth had lost all three of her children when the Burning Legion struck. She carried the burned corpse of her baby in a pouch against her chest. Vandel had pieced together her story from her ravings. There were nights when she could not stop screaming about the burning. One of the blood elves had tried to silence her forcibly. She had killed him with one blow of her knife.

Mavelith smiled and smiled and smiled. He found everything funny. It was disconcerting when he laughed at nothing, or at the distress of some companion. There was something in his eyes that suggested he took pleasure from the pain of others.

There was Cyana. She seemed almost normal except for her keenness to come to grips with the Legion. She never spoke of what the demons had done to her, but she gave the impression that she, too, thirsted for vengeance with all her being.

Ravael said not to trust the blood elves. They had been twisted by their addiction to arcane magic. Vandel did not care. He did not pay any attention to the prejudices his own people had acquired since the Burning Legion’s invasion. He had been too caught up in his own hate-driven quest.

He knew one thing, though. All the elves here had reasons to hate the Burning Legion that went far beyond those of most who had suffered because of the demons. They were like him, and he felt an odd sense of companionship with them all.

It was clear that he and his comrades were not the first to walk this path. There were others, who kept mostly to themselves or were sometimes seen practicing. They were a breed apart—marked by their tattoos and their scars and strange mutations.

Not all of them seemed blind, but all of them had altered eyes. It marked them as being part of a separate, elite group. The servants and soldiers around the Black Temple treated them with fear and exaggerated respect. The aspirants looked upon them with a mixture of awe and envy. They had something all of the supplicants wanted—poise and power and confidence. Mystery cloaked them. It hinted that they possessed other, unseen powers. Rumor had it that these tattooed soldiers had already slain demons.

There were times when Vandel sensed the presence of the Burning Legion. He told himself it was because the Black Temple housed Illidan’s bound servants, but sometimes he had the skin-crawling feeling of being watched by demons, and he would turn to see Needle or Elarisiel looking at him. The tattooed fighters with their strange vision made him deeply uneasy. It had been a long, long time since anything had caused him such disquiet. There were other tales among the aspirants—that Illidan himself had become part demon, that their tutors emulated him in all things, and that in order to slay demons, you had to become like them.

The Black Temple itself was a profoundly disturbing place. It had been transformed from a shrine into something else by the presence of Magtheridon. Illidan’s people, the so-called Illidari, had done nothing to change the atmosphere. For one who called himself a demon hunter, Illidan counted an enormous number of demons among his followers. Even amid the ruins of Karabor, gigantic batwinged doomguard stalked, polluting the stones with their hooves. Vandel had heard the bellowing of monsters echo from the Black Temple. Stories of succubi and satyrs abounded among the aspirants.

Vandel was so deep in reverie that he did not notice the first time Ravael shook his shoulder. He turned to look when he became aware of the shaking, and his gaze followed his companion’s pointing finger. Illidan stooped like a hawk, dropping from the darkening sky into the courtyard, as if they were his prey.

Vandel stood his ground as the Betrayer landed in front of him, arresting his descent with a flap of his huge leathery wings. His sightless eyes seemed focused on the distance, but his taloned fingers pointed straight at the crowd.

A mocking smile twisted the Betrayer’s lips. “And now we begin.”

Begin what? Vandel wondered. So far it had all been weapons training and listening to his disturbed companions. Did this mean Illidan was finally ready to share his dark knowledge? Were they finally going to learn how to kill demons, rather than simply spar with one another and listen to endless lectures from Varedis and his ilk?

Illidan’s cold smile vanished. “Take a look around you. There are more than five hundred of you here. By the time this is over, there will be less than a hundred.”

He paused to let that sink in; then he laughed. “You all swore you were willing to give your lives to strike at the Burning Legion. You now have a chance to prove that. Who will be the first?”

At first there was no response. Everyone waited to see what the others would do. Now that the moment had come, no one wanted to break ranks and see what waited for them. Suspense and fear hung over the supplicants and paralyzed them.

Vandel took a deep breath and stepped forward. “I will have my vengeance or I will die. Whatever is needed, I will do.”

Illidan nodded. Vandel thought that the Betrayer had expected this of him, or perhaps he was just imagining things. “Very well,” he said. “Step into the summoning circle.”

Illidan gestured. Lines of fire etched a complex geometric pattern on the stone.

Vandel passed into a vast pentacle surrounded by glowing runes. They pulsed with a meaning that he felt he could grasp if only he was given another heartbeat to contemplate them—yet somehow the meaning never came. As he watched, the symbols blurred hypnotically. His skin tingled. His mouth felt dry. Motes of greenish-yellow light swirled around him.

Illidan spoke a word of power. Fel energy surged. The temperature dropped. The air shimmered and congealed, and a felhound materialized. Perhaps it was his imagination, but it bore a startling resemblance to the one that had killed his son, Khariel.

The felhound shrieked and bounded toward him, long tentacles bobbing. Jaws gaped wide, revealing teeth like a shark’s. Vandel drew his runic daggers and leapt to meet it, the similarity of the beast to his son’s killer stoking his rage ever higher. His blades stabbed forward at the tentacles. He writhed to one side to avoid the snapping jaws. His blades made contact, slicing the sensory stalks. The felhound twisted, still attempting to bury its fangs into his flesh.

His arm burned where the felhound’s jaws made contact. Razor teeth sliced his flesh. His thirst for vengeance had blinded him to the creature’s surprising speed. He sprang backward and away. Something tingled at his back, and he found that he could not exit the circle. Magic imprisoned him, as if the very air had solidified. He flipped himself forward, and the demon’s jaws snapped closed inches from his face. He smelled its brimstone breath even as he drove his blade up through the roof of its mouth, into the place where its brain ought to be.

The felhound tried to close its mouth, but the dagger was wedged between its jaws. The attempt merely drove the spell-wound point deeper into its skull. A gasping wheeze passed through the creature’s lips. It keeled over and lay there, tail lashing in a death spasm.

Vandel looked over at Illidan, filled with the first faint surge of triumph. What next? he wondered. Illidan stepped into the circle, unhampered by any restraining spells.

Illidan reached down and with one clawed hand pulled the felhound’s still-pulsing heart from within its chest. He presented it to Vandel.

“Eat it,” he said.

This was not what Vandel expected. Looking at the disgusting mass of foul meat, Vandel considered refusing. But only for a moment. Something in the Betrayer’s stance told him that defiance was not an option. He instead took the heart in both hands. The demon flesh was wet and sticky beneath his fingers. What might have been veins dripped greenish acidic ichor. His palms tingled and felt as if they were about to burn.

He glanced around and saw even through the shimmering air of the circle that all eyes were upon him. Everyone waited to see what he did. Vandel raised the meat to his lips. He reached out with his tongue. It tingled and burned just as his hands were doing. He suspected that the flesh was saturated with fel magic.

He bit into the moist meat and forced himself to chew. The flesh was tough, and he thought it squirmed as it came into contact with his lips. He swallowed and it seemed to expand in his throat as if the demon, even in death, was determined to choke him. He gagged and swallowed again, trying to force it down. It was like having a slug slither down his throat.

Illidan indicated the blood pooling around the corpse. “Drink it.”

Vandel bent down and, with both hands cupped, scooped up some blood. The tingling in his fingers increased. Nausea and dizziness made his head spin, but he managed to gulp down the foul liquid. It burned like rotgut alcohol from a goblin still. Vandel wondered if it would poison him. His stomach rebelled. He wanted to vomit. To his horror, he felt as if something was kicking within his belly. He imagined the demon flesh coiling in his gut, trying to break free, gnawing its way out.

Illidan chanted. Great spheres of greenish light orbited him, burning like shimmering emerald suns. They blazed with heat and magical power, and Vandel felt as if his skin would crack. Bolts of lightning leapt from orb to orb, forming a cage of crackling energy; then at a word from the Betrayer, the bolts speared into Vandel. He screamed in agony as the magic saturated his body.

His legs gave way and he collapsed onto the ground, clutching his head, rolling over and over like someone whose clothes were on fire, trying to beat out flames. The pain was intense, and he knew in that moment that the Betrayer was going to kill him. He looked up and saw Illidan standing over him, transformed. He no longer looked remotely like an elf. A dark aura crackled all around him, his form distorted and shimmering. Pure malevolence blazed in his eye sockets, visible even through the cloth covering them. Vandel felt as if he were falling forward into those pools of evil light, tumbling downward into an endless void.

Strange emotions filled him. Rage burned in his heart. He reached up toward Illidan, wanting to choke the life from him. His body would not respond. His senses blended. He heard the sizzle of the green light, saw the words that Illidan chanted as perfectly formed runes. Beneath him he felt the pulse of magic flowing through the stones of the Black Temple, and he became aware that out of the void within him, something was rising, something vast and powerful and evil that had come to devour his soul.

The world shimmered and vanished.