Illidan (21 page)

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 Outland 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.

I
LLIDAN 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.

“D
ie, 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 collapsed.

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.

With a mighty heave of his muscles, he tore the disk from the tower. The stack tottered but did not fall. He spoke the words of another spell, and the disk floated in the air behind him, slowly orbiting his form, the runes on its surface glowing with sinister greenish-yellow light.

A grim smile twisted Illidan's lips. He would give the nathrezim something to remember him by. He drew on all his strength and scoured the tower of records with one of the Warglaives of Azzinoth. The smell of ozone and brimstone filled the air as sparks of magical energy discharged.

Rising into the air, Illidan defaced the pillars, damaging the weaving of spells, smashing the records of which the dreadlords were so proud. Demonic glee pulsed through his mind at the thought of their fury. Part of him mourned the loss of so much knowledge. Part of him believed that no record of the dreadlords should be allowed to remain. They deserved no monument.

From the entrance came the sounds of fighting as his demon hunters sought to keep their resurgent enemy at bay. He swooped down into the combat, landed on the back of one dreadlord, and parted the demon's head from his shoulders with a single blow.

“To me, my soldiers!” he shouted. “It is time to leave this foul place. We have gotten what we came for.”

T
HEY BATTLED THEIR WAY
back to the portal. All around, Illidan sensed the opening of more gateways as the hosts of the Burning Legion poured reinforcements in. It seemed they had not yet realized what was happening, and were responding piecemeal. Sometime soon a leader would take charge, and then things would become difficult. They needed to leave this world before that happened.

Vandel slashed at a demonic mo'arg servitor as the creature aimed a blast of flame from some engine he wore on his back. Companies of imps poured fire down on them from on high. They occupied the ridgelines.

“Varedis, take a company and clear those ridges,” Illidan ordered.

The demon hunter nodded and gestured, and he and his forces bounded up the hillside, cartwheeling and somersaulting through the gouts of flame. The demons shrieked and gibbered foul insults in their tongue and then turned to flee.

Ahead loomed a pack of voidwalkers, floating over the battlefield, legless, armored, and gleaming black. They were tough but slow. “Go around them,” Illidan ordered. “Make your way to the portal.”

He paused to glance around. His force had taken casualties during the battle in the archive, and even now attrition stalked them. He saw Elarisiel go down and hacked his way to her side. Vandel was already there, helping her to her feet.

Illidan nodded his approval. He wanted no one left behind if possible. The wounded could be healed. Those too wounded to be moved he put out of their misery.

Ahead of them the portal to Outland blazed. There were signs of conflict there. The Legion's forces had moved to secure the gate, intending to cut off their retreat. In accordance with his orders, his own army on Outland had not moved through but remained in place to guard the way out.

“Form up into a wedge,” he ordered. “We are going to cut our way free.”

His demon hunters shouted their approval and charged. In battle they looked every bit as demonic as their foes—lithe tattooed forms marked by scars and mutations, some surrounded by integuments of shadow, some wielding fel magic as easily as any spawn of the Twisting Nether.

For a moment, the demons held. Then they were down and the portal was ahead of Illidan's forces. He ordered them through and then turned. In the distance, the glare of gigantic gateways opening filled the darkness. Over the ridges poured demonic fighter after demonic fighter. He looked at them and laughed.

Let them come.
He had found what he was looking for. They were too late to stop him.

He stepped through the portal. Already the demon hunters were racing clear of it to join the rest of his army on Outland. Illidan took one last look at the battleground in Nathreza, sensed none of his troops alive out there, and spoke the words of unbinding. The gateway unraveled in a furious discharge of energy, all the backblast directed into the nathrezim homeworld. It was his final gift to them, a surge of explosive energy that could tear apart a continent. He prayed that on the other side of the gate, the dreadlord commanders were assembled.

He had inflicted the greatest defeat that the Burning Legion had suffered in millennia, and he was pleased.

I
LLIDAN WATCHED THE LAST
remnants of the portal's energies collapse behind him. He looked at his army and wondered if there were any spies among it. Almost certainly it was the case. He considered the events of the day, and his mouth twisted into a wide grin.

Today had been the first unalloyed triumph he had experienced in many a long century. He had captured Maiev. He had invaded the realm of the dreadlords and acquired their most closely kept secret. He had destroyed the armies they had sent to protect their homeworld. If his calculations were correct, he had shattered Nathreza as Ner'zhul's magic had shattered Draenor.

He gazed upon the watchful, expectant faces of his troops. His magically amplified voice boomed out over the ranks of assembled fighters. “Today we have struck a blow against the Burning Legion the like of which has not been felt in ten thousand years. We have slaughtered dreadlords and ravaged their world. We have shown them that they are not immune to our vengeance. That they will be brought to justice and made to atone for their deeds.”

Approval rippled through the ranks of the demon hunters as the realization of what they had done settled into their minds. They had been concentrating only on fighting and survival. Now they began to feel their triumph in their bones. Smiles appeared on faces whose owners had never expected to smile again. For a moment demonic rage vanished, to be replaced with something almost like calm.

“We have slain thousands and lured their armies into a trap that killed a hundred times that number, and we have this!” He brandished the disk he had taken from the archives, held it aloft with both hands so that it caught the light and sparkled. The demon hunters and the sorcerers present could all see the power it contained. The sensitive among them could catch a faint whiff of the auras permeating it, even at the distance they stood from him.