Illidan

30

Maiev stood atop a mountain of demon corpses. Her breath thundered from her chest. The thrill of victory blazed within her heart. She had closed the portal and stopped the seemingly endless tide of demons. She only wished that there were more. She would have stacked their corpses as high as the walls and entered the temple that way instead of through the sewers as Akama had planned.

A huge surge of familiar energy pulsed deep within the temple.

No! She knew what that meant. She had felt its like before on the slopes of the Hand of Gul’dan. Somewhere within his fortress, Illidan was opening another portal, far greater than the one that Vagath had come through. Ominous energy filled the air as the rent in the fabric of reality widened. Perhaps the Betrayer was summoning some new demon from the depths of the Twisting Nether. Most likely he was planning on escape. She could not let that happen again. She needed to get inside the Black Temple now. She would end this thing today.

She used her power to blink swiftly across the battlefield and through the passageway into the sewers.

Illidan would not elude justice this time.

Vandel watched as the silver-armored figure completed the slaughter of an army of demons. He recognized her from the tales he had heard of the battle at the Hand of Gul’dan. Maiev Shadowsong was loose. That should not have been possible. She was bound in Warden’s Cage, guarded by demons, rings of terrible warding spells woven around her. Akama must have freed her.

Come to me now, my demon hunters.

The voice echoed within Vandel’s head. It was a summoning on a primal level. It vibrated through his tattoos and bored into his brain with a compulsion that was all but irresistible. Along with the summons came the knowledge of where he had to go, a place deep within the fortress, close to the council chamber.

He pulled himself away from the viewpoint in the wall and raced toward the distant stairwell.

All around him, he could see the signs of activity. Troops ran to defensive positions. Horns sounded and drums rumbled in the depths. These were warning signs. Somewhere the temple defenses had been breached.

He heard the sounds of combat in the distance. The demon urged him to race toward it, to take part in the killing, to reap souls.

Come to me now, my demon hunters.

Once again the command rang out. This time he felt it shivering through his very bones. Was this how a demon felt when it was summoned from the Twisting Nether? Drawn and compelled by forces it did not understand but struggled to resist?

Why was he even resisting? The voice was Illidan’s and it contained such urgency that Vandel almost wept. Somewhere deep within the temple, potent energies stirred. Vandel recognized them. A gate was being opened, but to where, he could not tell.

Did Illidan plan an escape? Or was the opening created by his enemies? Perhaps traitors within the fortress were summoning aid from elsewhere. Perhaps Illidan himself had opened the portal. The energies of this gate felt very much like those of the one that had led to Nathreza. Had Illidan finally opened the path to Argus? There was only one way Vandel was going to find out.

Somewhere in the darkness, he sensed other demon hunters moving, felt the presence of their inner demons. He cursed. It seemed that his curiosity about the attack had put him the farthest away from their master. He leapt as he reached the top of the stairs.

Come to me now, my demon hunters. The voice boomed within his skull like the tolling of a great bell; then its echoes slowly died away, leaving him feeling alone. The sense of a summoning deep within the temple intensified. The way to somewhere else lay open, but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would soon close and that any chance of him reaching the portal would be gone.

He took the stairs ten at a time, bounding down them with the agility of a panther, tumbling headlong, rolling to his feet, taking advantage of the force of gravity to increase his velocity. Urgency burned within his brain, compelled him to rush. It was not just fear. Not just the sense that the temple was on the verge of falling. It was an overwhelming feeling that if he failed to answer the summons, he would regret it forever, that somehow he would not achieve his destiny.

He raced on toward the training grounds. Outside the doorway, he heard the gigantic, angry roar of Supremus, as if the abyssal was engaged in combat with some mighty foe.

Dragons flashed by overhead. Spells erupted. Demons moved toward the Sanctuary of Shadows, as if they were preparing to block the path of powerful intruders. All was confusion.

Maiev emerged from the sewers into the aftermath of a terrible battle.

She stood in a huge courtyard. The corpse of a nether drake lay on the ground near her, its tail still twitching as if the great reptile had not yet realized it was dead. Akama and his allies had carved their way through Illidan’s defenses. Hundreds more corpses of Dragonmaw orcs and demons lay strewn across the ground. Potent magic had been unleashed here. Off to her right stood gigantic siege engines. Beyond them was a stairway fit for a titan. It led into the depths of the Black Temple.

Still she sensed the pulse of that great portal being opened. She glared around her, and her eyes caught sight of something startlingly strange. A demonic figure erupted from an archway in the wall on her left.

Vandel raced from the stairwell into the training courtyard. The air stank of death and unleashed magic. Dead dragons and demons lay everywhere. The corpses of fel orcs lay piled in small hills. What had once seemed an invincible force had been defeated. Only one living thing moved in the aftermath of the awesome violence, a silver-armored night elf with a curved blade. Her entire body was shrouded by powerful magical armor. It was Maiev Shadowsong. Somehow she had managed to get into the temple as swiftly as he had gotten down from the walls. There was magic at work here.

Maiev stared at him and raised her blade as if ready to attack.

Vandel froze. He did not wish to fight a fellow night elf. He wanted only to get past her and answer Illidan’s summons.

“Demon spawn, prepare to die,” Maiev said. Suddenly she was no longer where she had been. Vandel sensed a disturbance behind him and threw himself forward, rolling as a blade cleft the air where his head had been. He tumbled to his feet, facing Maiev.

“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.

He gazed at it with something like wonder. How many in their lives got to look upon everything that was evil in themselves? How many confronted all the darkness within?

To anyone else, it looked merely like his evil shadow. He saw that it was made up of every bit of wickedness that had ever been in him. Every mean and petty deed, from the smallest to the largest. Looking at it, he could see when he was a child coveting his brother’s toys. He saw himself gloating over the untimely death of a rival for the leadership of his people. He saw the shadow that lurked behind his every outward show of piety and goodness. He saw the vanity and the egoism and the lust and the greed for glory. He saw all his demons, all that had driven him to become what he was.

Illidan had freed him of that, in a way. He had taken part of his strength, too, for in that darkness had been many of the things that had driven him to master magic, forged him to become leader of his people. He had always thought of himself as humble, but looking on this monster, he saw that humility had been a mask he wore, all the better to fool those who had followed him.

He wanted to tell himself that these visions were part of the shade’s attack on him, that it was attempting to undermine his will, to drive him to his knees, to force the rest of his soul from his body so that it could take residence. He knew that such was not the case. This shadow was part of him. He needed to reclaim it, for it held a great part of his strength, and only when he had reintegrated it would he have the power to do what was needed.

The shade was weakening under the onslaught of its attackers, Akama’s allies from Azeroth.

Akama understood the spell now and unraveled it. He drew its energies into himself. The vortex he created brought the spirit home. It fell into him. For a moment, he shuddered in dark ecstasy; then he put the chains in place around his own evil, binding it to him, integrating it into his being. He felt strength return. He felt power and pride and ambition flow into him. He was once more truly Akama.

It was done. He took a deep breath and allowed the strength to surge back into his body. A crowd of Ashtongue entered the refectory and gazed up at him.

“Hail Akama!” they shouted.

The steady pulse of the portal-opening spell vanished.

Maiev sprang over her fallen foe. She had no more time to waste. Even now she might be too late. She needed to find Illidan before he fled forever. She rushed past the smoldering stone form of some gigantic dead infernal.

She raced into the enormous structure. Dead satyrs and other demons sprawled all around a massive hall. Ashtongue moved in groups. They stared at her. There was no menace in their gazes, but no warmth, either. They clearly knew who she was. She wondered whether they would dare attack her. There was only one way to find out.

She marched over to the nearest of them. “Where is Akama?” she demanded in her most commanding tone.

The Ashtongue looked at her. There was something different in his manner. In the past, the Broken had usually been obsequious. Even the ones guarding her would never meet her gaze. This one did, as did all his companions. They did not look at her as if they were afraid. They looked at her as if they were her equals.

“He is deeper within the temple. He seeks to put an end to the Betrayer.”

“Good,” she said. “I shall go and help him.”