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Illidan slipped through the dimensional rift, warglaives in hand, unsure of what awaited him on the other side. The Dark Portal that took him to Outland spat him into an inhospitable world, teeming with warped beasts and roaming inhabitants that flew into a rage at the sight of him. No such threat stood before him here. Illidan breathed out sharply, but he didn't relax his muscles as he took his first steps into the new plane.
A cold wind bit into Illidan's skin, bidding goosebumps to rise. It howled about him, carrying the familiar scent of decay, a faint staleness against what should have been fresh air. The dry stalks of grass, a green so pale that it appeared grey when swinging to the breeze, crunched beneath his bare feet. Miserable clouds swirled over the sky, permitting sunlight in small but extreme measures; the silver light that burned fierce around their edges signalled the sun's only ingress. A solitary structure loomed on the horizon, perhaps an ornate castle, but it was hard to tell from his vantage point.
Illidan gripped his warglaives tighter. His vast experience with corrupted magic told him instinctively that this land was not untouched by its influence. He started across the grassy plain, head swinging from side to side. The power of Gul'dan's skull dangling from his belt overrode the local trail of dark magic to a large degree, like a constant scream muffling a distant sobbing. Yet that sobbing only sounded muffled because of the distance; its strength was immense. A speck of flickering red on the horizon, no matter how small from his point of view, could still be a towering forest fire.
The Burning Legion? Illidan continued walking, straining his senses beyond the line that dashed the sky from the earth. No, it wasn't. He couldn't tell how he knew, but he did. Despite not originating from the Twisting Nether, it was not at all dissimilar. Necromantic energy was the closest and simplest to pick up on, but it ran deeper than that. A great darkness dwelled here, but what it was or what it swore allegiance to was unknown.
Illidan furrowed his brow as he kept moving forward. To a large extent, he had never lost his independence even after absorbing the Skull of Gul'dan. In every case that he had ever seen, including the dreadlords and even man'ari, when a being surrendered their will to the Burning Legion, it was lost for all time. Their only desire was to follow Sargeras's directive, and all memory of their previous lives drowned beneath the 'gift' of the Legion. Yet after his transformation, Illidan had never lost his freedom. Sure, he had worked with Kil'jaeden to assist the Burning Legion, but more often than not it was a goal of mutual benefit. Destroying the Lich King was one. Saving his own skin was another. And once that couldn't be guaranteed, Illidan barricaded himself in the Black Temple on Outland and rallied his own army to his side, in case the man'ari general returned to claim him. Perhaps he'd grown more impatient, faster to act, even crueller, but always Illidan.
He spared a glance at the skull at his side. The unadulterated power that oozed from it gave Illidan the ability to crush a dreadlord with relative ease, though it forever altered who he was. Right now, as he trudged through a thin veil of fog that settled over the grassy field, he was still a night elf. His torso was forever branded by the unholy tattoos of Sargeras, letting him tap into the bottomless magic of the Twisting Nether, and where his once amber eyes sat now burned with green orbs of fire, but he was free of the demonic taint that Gul'dan's essence had bestowed upon him. But of course, he was also absent the brilliant strength as well.
Here was a chance for Illidan to return to who he once was. Who Tyrande wanted him to be.
But did it matter, even in the first place? His independence clung stubbornly after the transformation; never had he become a slave to the Burning Legion. Yet had it affected him in a way he hadn't considered? Even if it had, it hadn't been overt. Nor did it apparently matter here anymore, since he didn't know where the hell he was anyway. If he was still on Azeroth, he had never seen these strange realms, nor would it make sense that his demonic traits had been torn from him.
When he pictured Malfurion's face as he returned from Felwood all those years ago, when he recalled how his pleas had been ignored right out of hand, it stoked an old but burning fire. The fire that made him submit to Sargeras before the Sundering thousands of years ago, the fire that ordered him to forge a different path than the one being forced upon him.
Yet as convinced as he was that he would feed on Gul'dan's power once more, his hand stilled above the rounded bone when he went to grasp it.
It wasn't going anywhere. He would do it later.
Further he travelled, until the portal fell beneath the horizon. A tall wooden fence, its posts sharpened at the top, rose up to his right. Two watch towers thrust above the jagged line, one at either corner of the barrier, with men in leather armour propped on the wood railing, staring out into the dreary fields. Humans. Worthless. He'd sooner barter with the Burning Legion than deal with those ineffectual, spongy creatures. His spectral sight had noticed something through the barricade though. Blotches of moving yellow. The humans had resorted to raising the dead. At least that was the sensible answer. If the undead had penetrated their perimeter, Illidan would expect to hear much more commotion from behind the wooden stockades.
Illidan bared his teeth. Stupid. Necromancy was a fool's errand. Even though Illidan had dealt with demons before, the concept of the living dead offended him on a visceral level. The stench of stilted skeletons, flesh sloughing off them as they rotted on their feet, churned his stomach. Their empty eye sockets offered a window into their soundless thoughts. Their lack of individuality and battle sense made them little more than fodder, sent in to choke the enemy lines rather than offer any decisive benefit. At least demons knew the value of self preservation.
He veered away from the settlement. Its existence had taught him two valuable things, at the least. Firstly, there was some sort of external unholy presence in this land, as his own powers had led him to suggest. There would be no need to erect such a looming palisade, nor dabble with animating corpses, if the cloud blotted landscape held no dire threat. Secondly, this power yearned for the humans that cowered behind their meagre defenses. More souls for their armies? Food?
Illidan was still a demon hunter. Anything with the scar of dark magic was his domain. It all sprouted from the same insidious root. If this land was infested with it, then he would root it out and banish it. And then he would install himself. It's not like the humans would stop him.
With the human settlement at his back, a fresh yellow trail floated in the air before him. It wound through a sparse collection of crooked trees, branches speckled with greying leaves, and out the other side, out of sight. Illidan followed the serpentine line at a brisk pace as the remaining necromantic energies dispersed. He charged through the trees, flicking pebbles into the air as he ran, the tough soles of his feet impervious to the rough terrain.
Through the other side of the copse, Illidan emerged. The sulphuric path left by the undead dissipated. Their march had been too long ago; the leftover energies had broken down. Irritating. Illidan sighed. At least the freaks had been close to the human settlement. Without anything else of value in this foggy field, it must've been the reason for their journey. If he camped nearby, there was a good chance they would return.
Illidan's sight tracked to the earth. Three bodies lied prone, resting face-down in red puddles. Their leather armour had been shredded in places, revealing bloodied scratches beneath. One still clenched a nicked sword in death. A film of residual yellow covered the corpses, no doubt the result of the shambling zombies that Illidan had been pursuing. Placing a warglaive on the ground, Illidan probed one of the dead men. The flesh had gone pallid and icy to his touch.
The night elf grabbed the man's arm and flopped him onto his back. His dull eyes rolled into the back of his head. A crimson bite mark ruined the skin around his neck and stained the protective clothing below. Several more incidental scratches and wounds ran up his arms and chest, though his leather armour hadn't been compromised like the others. The bite wound was the obvious culprit of his death.
Illidan grasped the man's face in both hands and stared at him. There had been cases in the past where he had learned a corpse's last thoughts by interrogating it with his telepathy, but those cases were few and far between. If the death had been recent, sometimes he could glean residual information from their quiet minds.
As he tried to pierce the dead man's last thoughts, the corpse's eyes rolled forward and gazed directly at Illidan.
The night elf tensed and backflipped off, snatching his warglaive in the process. Landing on both feet, weapons extended, Illidan bathed in his hatred as the bones of the lifeless bodies cracked, hauling themselves to their ungainly feet. Their jaws hung open, backs slouched, arms dangling from bowed shoulders. Their vacant stares sent a shiver through him.
Such creatures didn't feel pain or fear, two aspects of an opponent that Illidan revelled in exploiting. The undead's defeat relied upon disabling them by slashing off limbs or destroying the head. And that was no problem for a warrior as skilled as himself.
Illidan sprinted at the vile horrors, blades at his sides, ready to engage the men now turned into their very enemy. Since shedding his demonic form, his body moved swiftly, with more agility than he was accustomed to. An alien sensation, but one that instinctively felt right, and a few moments later he fell back into his old skin.
The undead shambled towards him, their movement stilted and awkward at first, but each step brought with it renewed vigour, as if they were learning how to use their bodies for the first time. In a sense, they were. Their long, blank expressions belied the ferocity that they would tear Illidan apart with if he was too clumsy.
The first zombie lurched at Illidan, reaching for his exposed torso. Illidan rolled to the side and carved through its waist, sending a spray of grey-red blood in a gory arc. Two hunks of dead-flesh slumped onto the ground, separated.
The next corpse clawed at the night elf, hobbling forward like it was about to lose its balance. Illidan moved to the back foot, raising his warglaives at the repeated evisceration attempts. Even though it was a man with ordinary cuticles a few hours ago, an undead man's hands could strip through skin and muscle like a butcher's cleaver. Illidan, unfortunately, knew this from experience.
The night elf backpedalled. The desperate flailing may have been bad technique, but the urgency and aggression present in each swipe negated that requirement. Skill didn't matter when a creature could disembowel with its bare hands and was only an arm's length away. The zombie threw caution to the wind, if indeed caution was a term it could comprehend, and barrelled forth faster. Illidan felt a short stab of panic in his gut, but it quickly vanished beneath a hammering fire of his hatred. Even if it was short lived, the former Lord of Outland didn't feel fear. Ever.
Illidan clenched his teeth and his rage ordered a solution. No more backing away from the problem! An idea rose from the itch at the back of his mind, and he snatched it unreservedly. The night elf balled his fists and stuck the blades forward as the zombie swiped at him again. The edge of the demon forged steel parted the hand from wrist in a clinically efficient movement, sending the severed part floating across the air before thudding to the ground. Unfazed by the loss of a hand, the possessed cadaver hurled another attack with his other limb, only to lose it at the elbow. It pushed forward, flapping its oozing stumps as if nothing was wrong. Illidan stepped into the zombie's lunge and swept upwards, its head slicing clean open from chin to scalp with a slick, wet slurp. It collapsed backwards, feet hinged beneath its back, grey matter spilling onto the grey ground.
How Illidan managed to miss any sound from behind he couldn't guess, but a pair of rotting arms caged around his neck, and a new weight pressed down on his spine. The night elf dropped his warglaives and hands went straight to the forearms tightening around his throat like a vice. He pulled, feeling the pallid skin tearing beneath his fingers, but the supernatural strength in the arms would not budge. Each breath became a labour, forced through a narrowing tube, wind wheezing in and out. Illidan's arms bulged with effort, muscles straining against an impossible force. Every moment weakened Illidan and seemed to strengthen the undead body clinging to him.
The world grew blurry. His breaths came in short, sharp gasps, lungs burning and screaming for air. The very grip he held on his body seeped away, the energy in his arms bleeding into an unseen drain. His legs wobbled and his knees gave way to the weight above. A gurgling hiss echoed close in his ear, far too intimate a place for a decaying corpse, but even that sound barely registered. Illidan looked up, fighting the lethargy soaking his body. The sunlight caught on the tip of one warglaive, the other end stabbed into the ground. One idea sauntered into his flagging mind, almost so quietly that Illidan didn't understand it.
One chance left. Illidan choked down a final burst of oxygen before the zombie's forearms shut it completely. Holding his breath, the night elf dug fingernails into the undead's yielding flesh, pumped his legs and roared as he flipped the body off his back, over his head and down towards the ground. Illidan collapsed, and tried to breathe.
He wheezed in thick, coughing and spluttering as his lungs ballooned in and out. Sense swiftly returned and Illidan pushed himself upright. The undead freak stared at him dispassionately, arms outreached for his violet flesh, the warglaive impaled through its diaphram. Grey-red blood coated the blade, running down in rivulets into the torn wound of the zombie's chest. Illidan growled, hands shaking, disbelieving that this mindless drone snuck up on him and almost choked the life out of him. Face scrunched, rage rushing like lava through his mind, the night elf seized the other warglaive and lashed out at the undead's throat. The gnashing head plopped to the ground. The reaching arms flopped and went limp.
Illidan snatched the head by its stringy hair. Even without a body, it glared at him, teeth bared and biting impotently. Just looking at the unholy abomination rose the bile in his throat. Illidan dragged the head on the ground as he approached a tree and swung it with all his might into the trunk. The head exploded in a mess of skull and brain fragments. A proper end for such a grotesque nightmare.
It shouldn't have been such a chore to have killed those undead. Only moments ago, at least it seemed like, he was fighting Maiev Shadowsong and her traitorous band of mercenaries. His power swelled in him, the demonic strength of the Burning Legion scorching the earth, inflicting agony on his enemies. Without it, a mere corpse had almost strangled him to death. He coiled his fingers about the Skull of Gul'dan once more, feeling the pulse of dark magic infused within, almost like a calming heart beat.
Something clamped around his ankle. Illidan snapped his attention to his foot. A crawling torso latched onto him, its eyes wide and milky white, teeth bared for a sample of night elven flesh. The legs some distance away lay still.
Illidan snarled and slammed the heel of his free foot into the zombie's skull. It shattered like greasy, wet glass beneath his heel.
He spat on the cleaved torso. "Come back from that, freak."
Illidan wiped the slimy remains of the undead's brain on the grey grass and stood still. The yellow corruption hung in the air like a fog. Were these bodies left in waiting, ready to ambush the next creature with a pulse to stumble by? Or had someone reanimated them when Illidan reached them, even right now watching him from the shadows?
Illidan focused. His spectral sight allowed him to see anything around him without direct line of sight. He pushed his senses out, but found nothing other than the trees and re-murdered humans.
The acrid fumes steaming from the festering corpses stung Illidan's nostrils. Holding his breath, he shoved the impaled body off his warglaive and pulled it free of the ground. The pale pink blood on the blade carried the pungent odour as well. A creek or river nearby would be ideal to cleanse the sticky fluid from his weapon.
Now that the adrenaline was winding down, Illidan breathed deeply. A peace suffused his chest, and his muscles loosened. The calm after a battle welcomed him like a warm blanket, but Illidan sharpened his eyes, surveying the field around him. He still found it hard to accept that there was no one behind the attack, that it was a random trap set to kill a random person.
"Those are interesting blades, my purple friend."
Heart skipping a beat, Illidan spun with his stained warglaive thrust before him, gripping the handle with both hands. He eyed the twin of the set, but it was out of reach. His gaze snapped back to the owner of the voice.
A figure in a black cloak stood before Illidan, the hood masking the face. A gold trim ran down the edges of the cloak, and two thin hands clasped the sides to the figure's chest. While it hid his appearance, as the voice had been unmistakably male, the hunched posture and thin silhouette promised a spindly or perhaps emaciated shape covered by the fabric.
"More interesting than you know," Illidan said, his voice low. "Would you like to test the edge against your skin?"
The man threw his head back and laughed, a cackling and high pitched sound that put Illidan in mind of a witch. The cowl fell back and revealed an elderly human male, balding, with thick tufts of white hair above the ears. He dropped his head back and grinned, displaying tiny yellowed teeth. His eyes gazed at him, wide and bloodshot, like a maniac.
"Now now, you wouldn't hurt a frail old man like me?" he said, smiling like he was anything but.
"What do you want?" Illidan shot back. "I've very little patience right now."
Those wild eyes twitched. "Never seen a man ... or whatever you are ... take on the undead with such ease. Quite impressive."
You obviously weren't paying attention, Ilildan thought, but he decided not to vocalise it. Instead, "how could you have seen it? No one was here."
A smile, perhaps genuine, perhaps not. "And how would you know? Checked behind every tree over there, did you? See me approaching on the horizon while you were neck deep in corpses?"
Illidan frowned. "I'm not about to justify myself to a wrinkled old buffoon, especially a human. I'll hear no more of your prattling."
"Wait!" the geriatric shouted, hand raised. The skin around his fingers was paper thin, exposing the smallest veins that snaked through them. "You ... are you hunting these ... demons?" He motioned to the dismembered bodies.
"What concern of it is yours?"
Sparse eyebrows slanted over his gaze. "I've ... lost many. Many to these ... necromancers." He spat. "Friends, family ... they're heartless. Nothing is sacred to them."
Illidan lowered his warglaive.
"If you are exterminating them, I can help. I know where one lives. It might even be the necromancer who pulled these puppets' strings." The wild and eccentric stare was gone. The skin around his eyes tightened and creased.
"And why come to me for help?" Illidan said. Distrust. Always.
The old man shrugged, his cloak bobbing. "Why? Did you see how you sliced and diced those undead? What can Darkshire do? Nothing! They can barely hold their own town together. Every time they send an excursion out, they only add to the undead numbers! That's why I don't live there, don't trust them. Not to mention that they use necromancy themselves. How can I feel safe in there? At least out here, I know I won't be eaten in my sleep by a supposed protector zombie!"
Something didn't add up. Illidan searched the area immediately after the battle, and no one was within twenty metres of him. Yet, if there was any corruption in this old fossil, his spectral sight couldn't detect it. The lingering yellow cloud hovered over the corpses only; not so much as a speck appeared on the cloaked man. However, if he really did know the location of a necromancer, that information was worth the company of the relic. From one necromancer, he could find out where the next was. Build a chain, pursue each link, and shatter each one until they were all gone.
Illidan retrieved his second warglaive and clicked his fingers. They dissolved into black puffs of smoke, returning to the pocket dimension he bound them to. While deadly implements, they were hardly practical to carry around.
"Here's the deal, human," Illidan said, studying the old man's face for any telling reactions. "You will lead me to this necromancer you speak of. You will tell me everything you know about them. Once we are close, you will leave and I will deal with them. Alone. Do I make myself clear?"
The old man smiled and pulled the cowl over his hairless scalp. "That sounds agreeable. Anything for revenge."
Illidan frowned at that. Anything for revenge... That's something he would say.
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