King of the Castle

[Illidan Stormrage]

A sharp, stinging pain jolted Illidan out of unconsciousness. He brought his hand down to tend to the pain, at the base of his neck, but something arrested the movement, metal jingling. Illidan groggily lifted his head and looked at his arm. It depended from a rusty chain, encased in an equally rusty cuff. Indeed, all of his limbs were restrained, leaving him to droop from the wall they were attached to.
 
He coughed, beckoning the wound to flare again. Light was scarce, and a coppery smell strangled the air. Tiny dust particles fell like rain all around him. The squeaking of a rat and its hard claws scraping stone were the only breaks in the silence.
 
A prison. Illidan hated prisons. He had already wasted ten thousand years inside of one already.
 
What happened? The night elf thought back. Count Dracula. He ... bit him, if he remembered correctly. Why the hell did he do that? How did that make him black out? And what was he planning to do now?
 
Illidan's stomach sank. Dracula didn't see into his mind somehow, did he? Did that bizarre bite draw out his plans? He had shoved the idea of revolution out of his mind before he walked under Dracula's roof, even declaring it a ridiculous and short-sighted fancy in hindsight. He still believed that. That couldn't be the reason. But then why was he shackled to a musty wall? Officers of an army only get that treatment when they're found guilty of treason.
 
Whatever the reason, it didn't bode well. Besides, his disinclination to while away his time in prison manifested in a hammering heart beat and a sweat at odds with the cold that suffused the walls. Illidan had to get out. Had to.
 
He punched his arms forward, the movement thwarted by his restraints. The panic saddled his thoughts and urged for freedom despite the slim chance, which only drove Illidan on. He grunted, breaths coming and leaving in sharp rasps, chains rattling, skin chaffing against the coarse manacles. He didn't care. Each strike into the air quietened the fear for a split second; if he kept pumping his arms, it would have no choice but to shut up.
 
Illidan pulled on the chains again, and a creak whispered in his ear. The metal plate clasping the chain was losing its adhesion to the brick wall. Another air punch cracked the brick, dust and fragments crumbling to the ground, peeling the plate at its corners. A few more strenuous thrusts and his arm would be free.
 
"Oh, you're awake now, are you? Thought you might sleep a little longer."
 
The voice came so suddenly that Illidan's skin prickled. A slender man in a black suit stalked towards him, his steps impossibly quiet. A sliver of white showed through the cloak that draped over his thin frame, and his gaunt face matched it. Slick, oiled hair looked more like a shaped helmet. An unassuming man in normal circumstances, but hanging chained from a dungeon wall was anything but.
 
Illidan snarled, the chains rattling. "Get me down from this! Now!"
 
"Easy there," the man said, everything about him cool and calm. "The more you struggle, the longer this will take."
 
Illidan lashed out with an open hand. It stopped prematurely, but more of the metal restraint ripped from the wall. "The more I struggle, the shorter your life will be."
 
"You're putting an awful lot of confidence in your abilities," the man said, eyes half lidded. "And not much in mine." He stepped forward and introduced his fist to Illidan's abdomen. The wind raced from his lungs, stomach instantly closed for business. The white hot fury fizzled, simmering on low heat as the night elf dealt with the throbbing repercussions of his smart mouth.
 
"I don't understand!" Illidan said, spitting out a wad of purple blood. "I pledged myself to Count Dracula. Why am I imprisoned here?" Gods, even using the word made him want to shatter his own teeth from clenching them so tighty.
 
The man titled his head, looking at Illidan as if he were an oddity, unsure what to make of him. "Do you feel hungry?"
 
Illidan lashed out, but his arms only drew the chains taut. Even the weakened metal plate failed to do anything but shudder, Illidan's strength momentarily subdued. The anger re-awoke, pressing against the edges of his skull, screaming at him for release. "If you're going to kill me, just do it!"
 
"No one's going to kill you," the man said, chuckling as if the suggestion was ludicrous.
 
"Enough!" Illidan rolled his tongue, collecting the blood on the insides of his cheeks. He focused on the heavy ache in his stomach, using it to channel the chaotic fel energies within him.  Born of pain and sacrifice, they rose swiftly to the surface, eager to fulfil the night elf's bidding. His wrists expanded until they ballooned against the shackles, his feet slimming into hooves. Green eyes glowed as curling horns broke the skin on his forehead and emerged outwards.
 
The cloaked man laughed. "You still have a lot of fight left in you. That doesn't bode well for you at all."
 
He stepped forward and slapped his palm over Illidan's face. A strange, tiring sensation seeped into his body, winding its way into his mind. The night elf fought it, but it crashed over him, smothering him like a tidal wave. The transformation reversed, everything compressing back into his natural state, the demonic energies subsiding.
 
"Why ..." Illidan managed before he drowned in the black deep behind his eyelids.
 
His heavy eyelids lifted. Illidan's skin rose goosebumps in defence of the chill that saturated the dungeon. Other than the absence of his torturer, the room was identical as it was before he slept. Again, without the guidance of the sun's march through the sky, he couldn't say at all how long he'd been out of it.
 
Thousands of tiny stings registered in his mind. Illidan drew a sharp breath through clenched teeth and examined his body. Thin cuts defiled the skin all over him, crusted with hardened violet blood, trails of it slinking down him. Those weren't there before.
 
"Hey!" Illidan shouted, his voice repeating down the unseen lengths of the dungeon. The coal that ignited his anger had cooled, perhaps in response to the blood that had been let from him. Again he yelled, but with less vigour, the weight of his loss pressing down on him. He raged against the weakened metal plate, but the pitiful response from his muscles only jiggled the links. He may have been making progress earlier, but fatigue had claimed that avenue of escape.
 
"Yes?"
 
The man sidestepped from the shadows, acting as if Illidan had simply ignored him. Illidan's thumping heart told a different story.
 
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Illidan said, head sagging against his chest, his voice lethargic.
 
The dungeon keeper sniffed the air in an exaggerated fashion. "Do you smell that?"
 
The man waited a moment, but Illidan didn't respond. His bony fingers clasped the night elf's cheeks and jerked his head up. The congeniality had vanished. "In case you were unclear, I wasn't making a suggestion. I was ordering you to sniff."
 
Fingernails poked into the soft flesh of his cheeks and forced eye contact. The deep cold in that man's eyes made the icy conditions of the dungeon feel like the comforting blaze of a hearth.
 
Illidan sighed, sniffing to satisfy the lunatic. He perked up. Something did smell good, though gods knew he couldn't identify it.
 
The man grinned, recognising the change in the night elf's countenance. "So you can smell it. How does it make you ... feel?"
 
"How do you want it to make me feel?" Illidan said, framing his lips into a frail grimace. If this formally dressed lunatic was goading him into something, his instincts said to ignore it. Then again, the night elf was the one chained to a wall, skin pulsing from a thousand cuts. Not exactly coming from a place of power.
 
"Sniff it again. Tell me."
 
The fingernails pried deeper into his skin. To avoid another wound, Illidan inhaled through his nostrils, flaring them so that the weird dungeon keeper would acknowledge it. The scent wired him , sending electricity through his flagging body. A renewed vigour laced his mind and muscles, as if the strength hadn't leaked away at all, but simply hidden until the opportune moment.
 
The man let go of Illidan's dirt-smudged face and took a step back. His smug smile told Illidan that he didn't want to know what he had caught the scent of. "Smells good, doesn't it?"
 
Illidan couldn't help it; his curiosity got the better of him. He sniffed again, enjoying the rush that charged through him while focusing on identifying the mystery aroma. Another whiff brought the terrible revelation to rise, sinking a rock in his stomach. His eyes widened, blood freezing in his veins. The jailer grinned, showcasing his pointed canine teeth.
 
"You've worked it out, haven't you Illidan?" he said, smiling all the while.
 
"It's ..." Illidan caged the word in clenched teeth, but it made its escape anyway. "Blood."
 
Blood. Count Dracula had somehow transferred a terrible curse into Illidan's already blighted soul; vampirism. Such parasitic methods weren't entirely alien to him; indeed, the night elf had drained both life and mana from his enemies in Azeroth countless times, fuelling himself on their stolen juices. But he had always done this through magical means, forcibly extracting them through the mastery of the fel and arcane. Never would he debase himself by puncturing their skin and sucking up their disgusting blood. Such unrefined barbarism was embraced by the undead, but by no means would it be him.
 
And yet, as he dangled from rusty chains, the scent suffused each breath. Whereas before he could inhale and remember the tiny cuts all over his skin, now all he could think about was that intoxicating bouquet riding the stale air. At first he could rebuke the enticing desire by picturing a pool of blood dripping from the mangled corpse of some lesser creature, but as time went on, the sadistic jailor rubbing his pallid hands together, the image gained traction in his mind. It went from revulsion to longing to craving.
 
Struggling against the will of the taint only emboldened it. It climbed into his brain, scraping at every corner resisting it, until it begrudgingly acquiesced. Gods knew how long he thrashed against the chains while the dungeon keeper watched with dark glee. Nothing makes time flow like molasses like battling an escalating urge and making it the centre of focus.
 
Eventually, as the cruel march of time stretched out, Illidan couldn't fight it any longer. He roared into the empty chamber, fighting against his shackles. The jailor watched with a sly smirk but said nothing.
 
"Get me out of these chains!" Illidan growled. There were no more thoughts about being proper, or being above the act of drinking blood. In fact, the thirst overrode his will entirely, screaming to be satisfied, a crazed animal in a night elf's flesh.
 
The cloaked man walked up to Illidan with infuriating slowness. That self-satisfied smirk still painted on his thin, grey lips, he stood before him, occupying Illidan's sight. "Why?"
 
Illidan lashed out with his teeth, trying to snag the bastard with a vicious bite. His teeth clicked together, catching nothing but air. "I have to get out!"
 
"Why?" the jailor demanded, his face hardening. "Why do you have to be free?"
 
A fleeting thought danced over Illidan's mind. He's trying to break you. He's forcing you to admit that you want blood. If you do that, he'll own you. Just like the Burning Legion did.
 
An icy hand strangled the burning urge for blood, cooling it enough for a rational discourse to take place. No. He couldn't let that happen again. Illidan couldn't be yoked again, not for any reason. His will was his greatest asset, and it never buckled even to the great demon commanders. Indeed, he had accepted assignments from them, most often to assuage them. But never had he held their interests at heart. And never would he.
 
The night elf yelled in the dungeon keeper's face as the selfish defiance of thousands of years leapt into the fray. Startled, he stumbled backwards, the surprise unmissable on his gaunt face.
 
"You ... you ... you won't!" Illidan slammed his arms forward, screaming as the tarnished shackles bit into the raw flesh around his wrists. The blood thirst wrestled for control, every breath through his nostrils bolstering its assault, burning his veins with the raw madness that addiction brings. And yet, the night elf collected that fury and repurposed it, imbibing it through his own will, his own desire for true freedom.
 
Fight fire with fire ...
 
"Enough of this grotesque display!" the jailer said. "Give in to the urge! Stop fighting it, you will not win!"
 
"I ... I will not?" Illidan repeated. He grimaced, welling up the terrible pride that wrought so much disaster to his life. "I? The great Illidan, will not do as he pleases?!"
 
Illidan barely heard the crack and shatter of brick behind him over the thunder of his pulse in his ears and his own maniacal screeching. His quaking arms shot forward, catapulting the metal plates once affixed to the wall. He dropped to hands and knees, the plates clanging on the icy floor. Jumping to his feet, the night elf scrambled forward, but plummeted back to the ground. He shot a glance over his shoulder, remembering the manacles about his ankles.
 
A solid explosion of pain connected with the side of his head, jumbling the next handful of thoughts. Illidan flopped on his side and swam groggily through the high pitch in his ears and the airiness flooding his skull. Hands splayed and he lifted his chest inches from the ground.
 
"Enough!" a voice cut through the disorder. "Even in a weakened state, you are entirely too spirited. Perhaps more time is needed, or I need to drain more blood from your veins. No matter how impudent you are, after a certain point even the strongest of wills-"
 
Illidan shut out the voice. He focused on his turmoil, both physical and spiritual. He fed on it, magnifying the fel magics washing through his defiled blood. He couldn't see it, but he knew that black smoke spilled from the pores of his skin, as it always did when he quickened the heightening of his sinister power.
 
A great jolt of freeing pain arched Illidan's back, and moments later, two new appendages obeyed him, flapping him to his feet. Speaking of which, they had fully formed into hard hooves. The shackles fastened to his ankles bulged and fractured, and with another sweep of his wings, shattered the corroded metal as he bounded forward. He flexed the corded muscle that heaped upon his arms, channelling the pain of the numerous stinging cuts into the dark well within. The exhilarating chaos of the Burning Legion's magics wore the negative effects of his injuries and made them his strength.
 
"You ... you dare disobey me?!" the jailer blustered. He thrust an open hand towards Illidan's gnarled countenance. "You will follow orders!"
 
The night elf demon snatched the vampire's wrist and squeezed. Illidan snarled as he watched the man drop to a knee. Another tense of his fingers would snap the brittle bone, he was sure.
 
"I follow no orders but my own," Illidan seethed, his voice an order of magnitude deeper in his demonic state. "I will spread Dracula's darkness to the corners of this forsaken realm, but it will be done on my terms. You will not herd me like livestock into your bloodied pen."
 
The vampire hissed, baring daggered teeth designed for piercing flesh. Little more than a frightened display when kneeling before an eleven foot monstrosity. "Count Dracula will hear of your insubordination."
 
"I get the feeling Dracula values initiative."
 
The jailor changed tactics. "If you really want to please the Count, breathe in. Deeply. Through your nose."
 
Oh no. Illidan had pushed the blood frenzy from his mind, but now in undeniable control of the situation, he had loosened the reins. Even without sniffing, it roared back into focus, beautifying the stench of copper lacing the dank air.
 
The night elf demon balled his fist. A snap echoed down the dilapidated prison, followed by a surprised whimper and a lot of heavy breathing. Illidan hauled the vampire off his feet, raising him to eye level by the broken limb. The cloaked man winced, eyes screwed shut. Illidan would be lying if he didn't find a certain satisfaction in drinking in his former jailer suffering at his hands.
 
"My body and soul may be polluted with chaos," Illidan said quietly, "but my mind is free. I will not bow to the vampire curse."
 
His new friend said nothing, perhaps finally understanding that the balance of power had shifted. Illidan considered slaughtering him, tearing his thin body into a messy pile of body parts, but reconsidered. If Count Dracula prized this man, there could be repercussions if he murdered him. Also, and perhaps more poignantly, the blood that would flow from his pulverised corpse could draw the thirst to a point where even his almighty determination would falter. It almost had already.
 
"Now!" Illidan shouted in the vampire's face, jostling his body. "I wish to do the will of Count Dracula. Tell me a way I can achieve this."
 
"Just drink the blood and all will -"
 
Illidan snarled and hurled the vampire against the wall like a limp sack. He cried out as his back slapped against it, bouncing him to the ground.
 
"Your ruse has failed, vampire!" Illidan shouted, his voice returning to him from all angles. He slammed a hoof on his former jailer's back and ground it in. "I grow weary of your unco-operative silence! What of Dracula's plans?"
 
"His ... plans?" the vampire moaned. Illidan paused a moment to give the beast a chance to consider. "If you want to impress him, show him this 'initiative' of yours ..."
 
"Spit it out!" Illidan shifted his full weight to the hoof pinning the vampire to the grimy floor.
 
"Argh! All right! Poenari Castle!"
 
Illidan lifted his foot and kicked his once-jailer in the ribs. Gods that was enjoyable. "More information."
 
The black cloaked vampire sat up, holding his side. "Poenari Castle was a bastion of defence when Diablo first invaded the Pale Moors. The humans and associated scum held for a time, but they crumbled against the onslaught eventually. It remains a strategic location should war ever break out again, especially close to the gate. It's empty right now, but I know Count Dracula wants it under his control."
 
Illidan considered this new information. Was the occupation of the abandoned castle to protect against unforeseen threats, or perhaps the return of an ungrateful commander of monsters hungry for his throne? "If it's empty, why should I waste my time claiming it?"
 
Despite his pain, the vampire managed a mirthless grin. "Do you think it will be easy, unfit for a demon such as yourself? If it was that simple, it wouldn't earn you the kudos of the Pale Moors ruler, now would it?"
 
Illidan breathed in and caught the delectable coppery scent again. He had to leave before the frenzy he ran from finally caught up to him. "How do I know I can trust you?"
 
"I only want the best for Count Dracula." Delivered without emotion.
 
"Which way?" If the vampire lied, Illidan would come back and finish his grisly work. His tone made sure the message was conveyed.
 
The injured jailer pointed towards the far wall. "That way. I can sense ... it from here."
 
The night elf demon's spectral sight fanned out in all directions, finding the closest distance to the outside world, sensing where the dungeon ended and the flat, pale plains began. He aimed an open hand at the wall and propelled a telekinetic shockwave, obliterating the aged brick. "I'll see myself out."

[Illidan Stormrage]

Gods, the Pale Moors breeze is cold.
 
Illidan marched over the empty plains, arms hugging his torso. The moon scuttled from cloud to cloud, bashfully lighting the night before hiding itself away again like a blushing maiden. A gentle wind with an icy edge ground against his violet skin, tossing his black hair and scattering goosebumps over his exposed torso.
 
Hours had rolled by since the night elf burst free of the underground dungeon. At first it seemed wise to glide to his destination, but fatigue weighed heavily on his muscles, and the wind rushed him head-on. Keeping the direction that the vampire had hastily pointed out, Illidan returned to the hard earth and reverted to his night elf form. Maintaining the demonic energies in his blood grew taxing over time, which was at odds with the transformation in Azeroth. Omni's abduction of him must have changed some of the rules around the accessibility of fel magic.
 
Nonetheless, the kaldorei trudged on. The journey had been uneventful so far, which was a double edged sword. The vampiric urge to sate his literal bloodlust scraped at him with hungry claws with each step. More commanding than hunger, more persistent that weariness, it yearned for that sweet coppery tang. With nothing and no one to distract him from its constant tug, Illidan found himself battling himself on two fronts.
 
And yet, the blood thirst didn't differ entirely from the demonic cry of the Burning Legion. While it struck him hard and fast when he re-absorbed the Skull of Gul'dan, the malicious whispers of the Twisting Nether never went silent. He partook of their great and terrible power and they had a spiritual link to him, loosing evil whispers to tear apart innocents and usher in the Legion's commanders to lead eldritch armies. The will of Illidan was ironclad, and if those soulless fiends couldn't break him, then neither would a simple thirst.
 
A crop of trees ahead seemed to call Illidan's name as the wind whistled through its olive-green leaves. Feet pounding, skin cold and sore from the tiny cuts and scrapes all over him, the night elf stumbled towards them. A few steps away from the nearest trunk, he fell to hands and knees, body drawn to the earth as if his muscles had hardened into stone. He finally reached them and threw his back against the brittle bark, head tilting towards his shoulder.
 
He had to rest. With everything that had happened to him in the last few hours, his body refused to cooperate until it had some down time. Even though his vampiric curse demanded blood, there was none nearby to be had, and if there was a rat or rabbit scurrying by, that assumed he had the willpower and strength to lift himself up again and capture the creature who owned it.
 
Yet just as his eyelids drooped over his fiery orbs, they snapped open. That vampire could be pursuing him. He looked back onto the shadowy horizon, expecting the creature of the night to emerge, his pale skin and shirt the only break in the black of his suit. But even if he did reveal himself now, Illidan had nothing left in the tank.
 
If only his Illidari were here. Proud blood and night elves, loyal naga, even the broken Draenei all once served him with devotion and respect. Even the Burning Legion's minions could be cowed into servitude, given the right motivation. Certain demons, like the Fel Guard, enjoyed the simple act of carving into living tissue. If they were pointed in the right direction, they didn't care who gave the orders, as long as their blades sank into flesh. The fiery rock golems, the Infernals, were even less intelligent. In some ways it made them harder to leash, but if there existed a force of nature with sentience, it was them.
 
 In fact, warlocks and the winged Doomguard often trained felbeasts like humans trained hounds, to the point where they followed an order without delay or resistance. Felhunters, those insidious creatures were called, were second-to-none when it came to the business of seeking and slurping the innards of a magic user.
 
Illidan raised his eyebrows. Hadn't Count Dracula taught him how to summon such creatures with this strange omnilium magic? A felhunter could stand guard while the night elf caught up on his shut eye.
 
Closing his eyes and fighting the temptation to nap, Illidan channelled that unusual power through his body and pictured the four legged, red-scaled demon. Two curved spikes jutted out from its shoulders, and its two black tentacles attached behind those, the hungry suckers on its ends responsible for many dried mage husks. He saw in his mind the long snout lined with flesh ripping teeth, and the absence of eyes that should've sat above it. Coarse black hair coated its underside and beneath its jaw, and a shaggy mane of it ran down the length of its back to the end of its tapered tail.
 
He couldn't say how long the process took, but when he opened his eyes, a felhunter stood before him, tentacles gnashing at the air. Illidan groaned as a new wave of exhaustion crashed over him. Apparently omnilium usage came with some caveats he wouldn't soon forget.
 
"You," Illidan said, voice weary. The felhunter snapped to attention. At least he had summoned one of the demon dogs familiar with orders. "Guard me. I'm taking a nap. If you see a vampire approach, you have my permission to drink it dry."
 
The felhunter gave no indication of comprehension, but it turned on the spot and trotted a few paces towards the horizon before slumping on its legs. Its tail swiped the weedy grass eagerly as it apparently carried out its duty.
 
"Good," Illidan said, eyelids already descending. "Guard me ..."
 
A warm light splashed over his face and Illidan returned to the world of the living. The sun peeked gingerly over the horizon, painting the sky in a blue so pale as to nearly be grey. Soon enough it would be entirely grey as the dreary spirit of the Pale Moors claimed it.
 
Illidan rose to his feet, sliding up the trunk of the tree for support. Most of his cuts and scrapes had vanished, though a handful of the nastier slices still marred his skin. His legs ached quietly with the memory of yesterday's journey, but they would carry him again. Stretching, he cracked bones locked in place by his awkward sleeping position and ran a hand through his ink-black hair. Overall, his body thanked him for the reprieve. Even the blood thirst appeared to have receded, though a drop of blood could bring it screaming back for all he knew. Still, he reminded himself, if he could rebuff the Burning Legion, he could ignore this, too.
 
The felhunter still crouched in the position that the night elf had left him, tail wriggling with the same enthusiasm.  Illidan dragged his hands over his naked torso, but found no new wounds. He snorted. If the felhunter had decided to consume him in the night, he wouldn't be awake to take stock of it now. Still, the summoned demon performed his task with the loyalty he was banking on. Surely at some point it would have caught the scent of the necromancy that banded the spirits to the walking undead and run off drooling, at least the kaldorei expected the demon to do as such. Perhaps not?
 
Illidan crouched by the felhunter. "So, no intruders then?"
 
The felhunter 'looked' up at him, though if he saw his master in any detail, it was a mystery. It panted and set its eyeless gaze back on the horizon.
 
Illidan stood, resisting the desire to stroke the mangy creature. As the sun elevated higher into the sky, its brilliant light cast the empty plains ahead in a serene beauty he hadn't witnessed in this cursed realm. Stripped of fog, despite its less than idyllic landscape, it radiated a certain charm, a subtle peace.  It was as if the trees were a bulwark against the gloom, a special marker that broke the spell of the Pale Moors. Perhaps it was a sign of what it once was, a taste of its former glory before the darkness smothered it.
 
Even as he watched, fog steamed from the ground, thinly at first. The sun put up a good fight, but in a few scant minutes the mist carpeted the fields and curled around his ankles. A few more minutes would see it thicken and swirl higher about his body. A shame what this affliction had done to these lands.
 
"Up!" Illidan commanded. The felhunter's legs extended, lifting it off the earth, and it traipsed to his side. The night elf gave the far horizon one last glance, still believing the white shroud would spit out the vampire, teeth bared. When nothing coalesced, he searched out his direction again and started walking. The felhunter plodded along beside.
 
As they travelled, Illidan gazed at his new pet. The felhunter had been called to this world through the mystery magic of omnilium, yet Illidan had only ever used the power of fel energies to do so. Did this make the creature a true felhunter, or perhaps some sort of perverse imitation? Nothing about it seemed counterfeit, but then Illidan hadn't known it for very long. He shrugged. Maybe it would become clear with time.
 
He had considered euthanising the beast, but a felhunter was hardly a challenge should it turn rogue. Besides, a vicious animal that could both sense and siphon magic would be an asset in a realm bedraggled with necromancer scum.
 
Plains rolled by as his feet ate away at the ground remaining. The fog thickened as the journey progressed, as if Illidan approached a yawning geyser belching the mist out never ending. While they had been infrequent, mires, forests and even a pond or two broke up the monotony of sparsely grassed fields. They had also been excellent milestones, varied enough to be useful for the return trip. The pervasiveness of the fog soon cloaked them from view, and any other landmark that he could use to guide his path. Luckily for him, his eyes were not restricted by the fundamentals of sight. His felhunter didn't stumble either, his toothy tentacles snapping at the air, turning like miniature periscopes above an ocean of fog.
 
Those ravenous tendril-mouths chomped rapidly and the felhunter charged ahead of its master.
 
"Hey!" Illidan shouted, sprinting after it.
 
"Who's there!?"
 
Illidan halted and crouched, then stood upright again when he realised the fog covered him from sight. He sent out his own magical vision, penetrating through the mist, and found the voice's owner. A man in a loose fitting robe, a goatee greying on his chin, bobbed his head and squinted as if it would make a difference.
 
Another in similar garb was at his side, slighter in build, voice feminine. "Show yourself!"
 
A jagged tree trunk propped up another body, a frayed rope binding them to it. Potentially dead, but Illidan wouldn't know until he got closer. His felhunter was nowhere to be sensed.
 
The night elf passed through the last threads of fog and into the small clearing. "Here I am."
 
The man recoiled, his opinion of Illidan clearly written on his face. "What ... what are you?"
 
The woman, grasping a poorly carved wooden staff, unveiled steely blue eyes at the visitor. "Not human. But wait ... can you feel that?"
 
Eyes fell upon Illidan and the man spoke, eyebrows meeting at angles. "Yes. The taint of dark magic. Those tattoos, even his eyes."
 
Illidan went to interject, but the woman overrode him. "Another who would defile a land already defiled! Why must you monsters feed on the weak and spread misery wherever you go?"
 
Illidan planned to give the two strangers a chance to explain themselves, but her words made it plain that judgement had already been passed. "And what will you do about it, filthy human vermin?"
 
The woman's eyes shone, lips pressed in a tight seal. Open, clawed fingers grappled with an unseen orb before her chest, as if she attempted to compress the very air in front of her and struggled to do so. In moments, a blue light flickered in the empty space, quickly expanding to fill the gap. The female mage drew her hands away from the invisible centre, giving the sparking ball of mana room to grow, and grow it did.
 
"We will scour the Moors clean of your influence!" she shouted, her tone at the precipice of sanity.
 
Illidan clicked his fingers and two warglaives ensconced his fists, lime green blades gleaming in the blue light of the magical conjuration. "So be it."
 
As the kaldorei readied for the spell, the woman's face went flat, mouth ajar, like she had just remembered something of life-saving significance. The man's eyes bulged, lips quivering, a stuttering moan leaving him. Illidan frowned but brandished his warglaives, ready for anything. As he watched, their skin deflated, sinking closer to the bone beneath, moment by moment. The blue collection of magical energy subsided as their desiccated bodies crumpled to the floor. Illidan had seen this before.
 
Behind them, the felhunter flailed its parasitic tentacles, the sucker mouths covered in scarlet.
 
"Hungry, I see," Illidan said. The delectable aroma of blood filtered through his nostrils, and his resolve came screaming to the fore. "Best we move on."
 
"Wait!"
 
Illidan rotated his blades toward the sound, but lowered them as his sight settled on the one responsible. A young man in the prime of his life struggled against the ropes that cinched him against the tree stump.
 
"Please, you've got to help me!" he said, grimacing as he shuffled his shoulders. "They were going to kill me, but now you've saved me!"
 
The felhunter stalked over to the bound man, its tendrils bowing to sniff. It instantly grew excitable, bouncing from side to side as if savouring the thought of a new meal.
 
"Please! Keep this thing off me!"
 
"Creature!" Illidan said, wishing he had thought of a name for the felhunter. "Heel!"
 
It looked at Illidan and whined.
 
"Do it!"
 
Reluctantly, the felhunter dragged its feet back to its master's side, snout down.
 
"What did those mages want with you?" Illidan said, examining the prisoner. Nothing stood out about his appearance. It seemed he was a simple farmhand, or perhaps a fool seeking glory by killing the undead and returning home with a trophy of his heroism.
 
"Isn't it obvious?" he said. "Just cut me loose."
 
Illidan approached with his warglaives and knelt down, setting the edge to the ropes. "No, tell me."
 
The bound man flexed his hand, and now that Illidan was close enough to see it, he fully understood why. Despite his youthful appearance, his hand looked as if it had been sawed off a decaying corpse and sewed on to him.
 
Illidan stood up, his gut clenching. "Necromancy ..."
 
Laughter. "What? Are you telling me someone with dirty blood like you is afraid of a little-"
 
Wwarglaive steel sank into the wood beside the man's cheek with a solid thump, missing it by inches. "What are you doing out here, and what did those mages want with you?"
 
The young necromancer's jovial attitude vanished. "All business I see. Believe it or not, there are some proactive members of the Omniverse that mourn the retreat of the armies that were once stationed here. The Pale Moors was once a much nicer place. All that's left of that force is Darkshire, and they've been completely abandoned by the larger factions."
 
"So?"
 
"So ... some people thought that it wasn't fair, so they've come from far and wide to help stem the flow of evil. Undo it, even, if they're especially naive. Mostly from Camelot, like those two, but all kinds."
 
Illidan gazed at the shrivelled corpses lifeless on the earth nearby, and swallowed down a firm lump that had risen in his throat. They were only here doing what he himself had originally planned, and they died for it.
 
"That explains them," the kaldorei said. "What about you? You're out in the middle of nowhere."
 
The felhunter sniffed around the ground, his nose leading him in random circles.
 
"I thought you could sense it too?" The necromancer gestured with his head in the direction Illidan was heading. "Can't you feel that? All that spiritual energy?"
 
Illidan scowled. His spectral sight once detected magical energy. Sometimes it appeared as trails of coloured smoke, others it sparkled like a constellation of stars within the practitioner's soul, though the hues always indicated the type of magic used. Sulphuric yellow meant necromancy, pale and dark greens for corrupt and demonic arts, blue often for the 'cleaner' magicks. But the Omniverse had robbed him of that, slowly but surely. He only had the vampire's vague direction to lean on. It was good to know that he wasn't heading into a trap, or that he had lost his way somewhere along the line. But if it was snaring the hungry eyes of others, even from a distance, perhaps Poenari Castle wasn't as abandoned as he was led to believe.
 
"What sort of spiritual energy?"
 
The necromancer smiled at Illidan, as if realising the night elf's deficiency. "I can't tell. There's enough to sense it from a way off, so it must be concentrated. Potent." He struggled with his binds. "And I'm going to find out. Now set me free."
 
The second lime green blade flashed in the veiled sunlight and bedded between the man's eyes, splitting his skull from forehead to top lip. Illidan heaved the weapon free with a sick slurp and flicked the blood that drenched his warglaive.
 
"There. You're free."
 
The felhunter halted and lifted its snout, its teeth filled tentacles waving back and forth. It turned back to its master, hopping to get his attention.
 
"You sense it, don't you?" Illidan said, casting a glance into the fog soaked horizon. He hauled his other warglaive out of the tree trunk, leaving the necromancer's face to hang in two different directions, and started walking towards the horizon, picking up speed as the sickly sweet stench of blood tempted him once more.

[Illidan Stormrage]

Illidan thought it was a mirage at first, a hallucination birthed by his hunger and blood thirst. Yet as he and his felhunter, whom he decided to name Archimonde, pushed further into the shadowed recesses of the Pale Moors, faint yellow motes twinkled around him. He sniffed and knew that his magical sight was returning; that stench that dangled in the air denoted the residual fuel of the risen undead that suffocated the land. Focusing omnilium to summon his felhunter may have been responsible, but then Illidan had never lost that aspect of his sight before, so it was only a guess.
 
Further in an amber ribbon twisted through the fog, brightening along its length as the kaldorei followed it. Archimonde seemed to notice it as well, snapping his mouth-tentacles and sticking closely to the floating trail. Yet as they persevered, the colour deepened until it was near tan, as if another magic polluted the core of the necromantic energy. If such magic could be further polluted.
 
"Maybe this castle won't be as cut and dry as I first thought," Illidan said aloud, if only to hear something other than the felhunter's raspy breathing.
 
He took some cruel glee in naming his demonic hound. Archimonde was once one of the Burning Legion's greatest generals and the one who spearheaded the invasion of Azeroth when Illidan was still young. That tentacle-faced bastard almost committed genocide, slaughtering the night elves in the thousands and razing their cities. Even after he was defeated, he still had the audacity to challenge their world again, but his second incursion only rewarded him with a painful death. It may have been at the hands of his blasted twin brother Malfurion, but it was death all the same.
 
Illidan knew that demons were intrinsically linked to the Twisting Nether, and that their spirits dwelt there again until they gathered sufficient strength to return to flesh and bone. He hoped against hope that Sargeras had seen fit to reincarnate Archimonde as a felhunter, since his failure was truly monumental. At the least, it besmirched the vaunted name of the man'ari, naming a common beast after him. If Illidan ever ran into him again, he'd be sure to bring it up.
 
The ribbon grew thicker and mistier, its edges blurring with the fog. Whatever left this track in its wake was not far off.
 
Archimonde dug its heels into the soil and lifted its eyeless head. Tentacles spun about, snapping as if a dozen flies buzzed about its body. Illidan almost tripped over it.
 
"What?" Illidan barked. "What is it now?"
 
Archimonde darted through the night elf's legs and growled at something behind them. Illidan sifted through the fog, his magical gaze penetrating as if it weren't there, and stretched it back. Dozens of creatures advanced on him, all varying in shapes and sizes. Some were easily recognisable; the shuffling humans with rotting skin and missing limbs represented the zombie outfit of the group. Others were more clandestine in their identity, though some of the well-garbed members likely wielded dark magic or drank blood. A single man led them through the mist, his strides steady and certain.
 
Illidan summoned his warglaives and bent his knees, ready for combat.
 
The leader coalesced from the fog, and with a swipe of his hand, parted it in a sudden gale of wind. Illidan clenched his jaw as he saw in its glory an army of twisted nightmares, everything ranging from skeleton swordsmen to reanimated corpses to snarling werewolves. The night elf mistook a number of decrepit old men, flesh paper-thin and sagging from necks and limbs, as more zombies, but the gleam in their eyes intimated an intelligence beyond a simple undead.
 
Necromancers.
 
At the head of the ghoulish company stood a gaunt man, impeccably dressed in black, a stainless white undershirt peeking through a gap in his cloak, skin as pale as the full moon.
 
The vampire.
 
"You've made it much further than I would have expected, Illidan," the vampire said in mock adulation. "When I saw you last, you could barely hold yourself up." He grinned that infuriating grin again, the one that taunted him in the cells beneath Dracula's Castle. "It looks like you've found a source of strength. Did you finally give in to the urge? Didn't you just love it?"
 
Illidan snarled and blasted air out of his nostrils. His spectral sight bore into the vampire, reading his skills and strengths like a book, much like they did before the Omniverse. He had to stall until he knew what he was dealing with. "I've fought thirsts beyond your vampiric taint, freak. I live with a greater thirst for death and mayhem every day. I won't be cowed by such rudimentary impulses."
 
"Oh really?" That twisted smirk deepened on grey, chapped lips. "Many have thought like you do. You've held out a while now, especially for a new ... initiate. And after being tempted with a bloody corpse in the dungeons, no less. But you will break, like they all do. The thirst will rake at your throat until all you can think about is blood. Give it time."
 
Command over dark magic, flight, some basic transmogrification spells, obvious boost of vitality from drinking blood ... Illidan was piecing this puzzle together. More time. "So if I'm so pathetic that I should've given into the thirst in less than a day, why mount an expedition party?"
 
"Oh don't be ridiculous," the vampire said, fingers resting on his hips. The bones of his sternum pressed against his white shirt, showing remarkably little to cushion ribs from skin. "Vampires grow much stronger after feeding. If you chose to stick to your petty defiance, I had to ensure that my own safety wasn't compromised."
 
"In other words, you were afraid of me." A spell that instantly puts the target into a deep slumber ... Illidan was aware of that little trick.
 
The vampire tutted. "Don't take prudence and risk management for cowardice, my simple Illidan. If Ronaldo doesn't have to dirty his hands, or even if he does, it makes sense to be prepared."
 
Shadowy ropes, used to restrain targets ... blasts of concentrated magic ... hands that can crack and refigure into vicious claws ... "You can dress up your words all you like. You have an army because you know you can't defeat me one-on-one." Gods, if only Illidan had his telepathy back. Could Ronaldo be goaded into a battle for honour, leaving the army on the sidelines?
 
Illidan noticed the smallest of twitches of Ronaldo's eyebrow, but otherwise his condescending demeanour didn't skip a beat. "Please. You will come back with me to be punished. Count Dracula will be informed of your insubordination, and he will determine how you will pay for fighting the gift he bestowed upon you. After that, you will be forced to mend your mistakes by drinking as much blood as I can funnel down your gullet. Now we can do it the easy way, or the-"
 
"Don't be absurd," Illidan bit back. "Dracula won't care either way what I've done, as long as it achieves results. If I didn't play along in your self-indulgent ritual, I doubt bothering him with that knowledge will make him sympathetic to your cauee. Besides, taking so many of his subjects to track me down, a loyal officer of the great Count Dracula, doing his will ... that wouldn't reflect well on you at all. Poor judgement skills."
 
Ronaldo smirked wider, his pointed fangs sliding over his bottom lip. "You are not as untouchable as you think. You are green, unproven. We know nothing of your intentions, of-"
 
"Count Dracula knows of my intentions. He drank of my blood. Who are you to question him?"
 
The vampire's lips pursed together in a flat line. Illidan's words had finally made an impact. "I am certainly not questioning him. I merely fear that-"
 
"Enough of this," Illidan said, straightening. "You will turn this army over to me. Immediately."
 
Ronaldo laughed, eyes wide. "I will hand you my army? Because you asked me to? Your blood thirst is bleeding into your brain, Illidan!"
 
"You overstepped your bounds," the night elf said, creeping forward. "When your abuse of power comes to light, it will not be received well. The only way to avoid the crushing death awaiting you is to assign this ... filth to my command. I will vouch for you, say that you arranged a force for my reclamation of Poenari Castle."
 
"And if I refuse?" Ronaldo said. "What if I attack you now, with this army, and bring back your mangled body to be tortured over and over again?"
 
Illidan slashed the air with his warglaives, the sound of hell-forged steel ringing in their ears. "Armies are only as strong as their leaders. When they fall, so does the will of their people. With no orders and no oversight, they will break apart, forget their discipline. I will slay you and take control of them by force, and those that resist will meet the same end as you!"
 
"Forget them!" Ronaldo shouted, eyes flared, fangs exposed. "I will rip you apart without their help! I will show you the terror of Count Dracula's kinsmen!"
 
"Then let them see the folly of following Ronaldo, and the glory of obeying the great Illidan!"
 
Ronaldo shrieked and lurched at Illidan with fingers outstretched. The bones lengthened, skin stretching with it, piercing the fingertips until sickle shaped claws topped them. Illidan raised his warglaives and the bone claws rang against the steel. Ronaldo pressed down on him with surprising strength considering his lean frame, snarling like a wild animal. Illidan struggled against the great weight forcing him down, arms shaking.
 
"Now now, let's make some sport of it!" Ronaldo said. "I wouldn't want all of that bluster to have been for nothing!"
 
Illidan channelled all of his strength into his arms and roared, surging forward. Ronaldo launched off the warglaives and backflipped through the air, landing gracefully on his feet.
 
"There!" he said, waving around his bone sickles. "That's more like it!"
 
Illidan sensed the trap. The vampire was taunting him, trying to infuriate him to the point that his technique grew sloppy. Yet he didn't care. Ronaldo was strong, but he had to be defeated. If not ... well, Illidan didn't want to think about that.
 
Dashing forward, Illidan swept a warglaive at Ronaldo's waist. Bone claws formed a protective cage over his stick frame and caught the attack. Illidan swung again and again, but the vampire matched his speed, meeting each blade with the solid bones curving from his fingers. Illidan lashed out again, luring the block, and swiftly struck with his other weapon. Even still, the feint failed. Ronaldo deflected the move and slashed at Illidan. The night elf hopped backwards, adrenaline thundering through his blood as the claw tips sailed so close to his exposed chest that the cool wind of the movement ran over his skin.
 
Ronaldo laughed, stalking towards Illidan. "Close one! I almost gutted you and we've barely started!"
 
Illidan grimaced. He wanted to rebut but it was true. The vampire moved adroitly, almost beyond reason. If not for the night elf's own finely tuned reflexes and flexibility, that slash could've been the coup de gras.
 
"What, no witty retort?"
 
Illidan was outclassed. Maybe the blood thirst had weakened him, and the lack of food and water wasn't helping either, but he wasn't at his prime. Coupled with Ronaldo's freakish power and skill, it spelled disaster for the night elf unless he could end the battle quickly.
 
"No choice, then," he said to himself. Black smoke steamed out of his pores, swirling around him. Illidan bit back on the pleasure that flooded through him, making his skin tingle as demonic magic soaked into his body.
 
"Oh, this old trick again?" Ronaldo said, increasing his pace. "It was impressive the first time-" he broke into a run, "-but now I know about it, you won't surprise me with it again!"
 
"You know nothing of me, vampire," Illidan seethed, his voice strangled by deep and feral tones. The nefarious smoke drowned out all light until he hung alone in darkness.
 
"Nothing, huh?" Ronaldo shouted, bringing his clawed hands together. Ebony suffused his ivory skin. "I know you won't survive this!"
 
The smoke parted in time for Illidan to see the vampire throw his hands forward and launch a bolt of greasy black magic directly at him. A beat of powerful wings hopped the night elf demon over the attack. It vanished into the fog, a deep rumbling following shortly after it.
 
"Don't get carried away," Illidan growled. "You've seen this form, but you haven't fought it."
 
Ronaldo opened his mouth to reply, but the night elf demon closed the distance between them in the space of a breath. Steel and bone sang as they collided over and over again. Illidan grimaced, his arms moving in a blur, searching for an opening in the vampire's form. Ronaldo kept pace with Illidan's speedier strikes, but judging by the frown on his face and the lack of gloating, he actually had to focus to deflect the night elf demon's attacks.
 
"You waste your time, vampire!" Illidan shouted. The presence of the Twisting Nether in his blood tore at him, raising the rage already rampant in his mind. "I will give you a final chance to surrender! I advise you take it!"
 
Ronaldo snarled. "The insolence! Count Dracula chose poorly when he drank of your blood! You aren't fit to do his bidding!"
 
That's exactly what Illidan expected him to say. "Archimonde! Now!"
 
Illidan's felhunter sprung from the mist, saliva trailing down his open mouth. His teethed tendrils shot forward like hungry snakes.
 
Ronaldo shifted his gaze and swung bone claws through the tentacles, slicing them free from the felhunter's body amidst a spray of purple blood. Archimonde howled and cowered, the remnants of his feeders writhing.
 
Illidan roared and warglaive steel cleaved through vampire flesh. Ronaldo's offending bone claws spun free of an anchor, as did the rest of the arm up to the elbow. The vampire shrieked as his dismembered limb plopped on the dry grass, falling to one knee and grasping the bloodied stump. In an instant, a reddened blade pressed against his throat.
 
"I warned you," Illidan seethed, eyes glowing green through his blindfold.
 
"You ... you are ... nothing ..." Ronaldo gasped through clenched teeth. "You ... will ..."
 
Illidan drove his knee into Ronaldo's face, jerking his head backward. The vampire collapsed on his back, blood streaming from his nose, eyes screwed closed. The strength left his scrawny body and he lay motionless save the fast rise and fall of his chest.
 
The night elf demon returned his warglaives to their storage dimension and approached Archimonde. The demon hound whimpered as he knelt by, his truncated tentacles drooping. Illidan scooped up the ends that had been separated from their base. The mouths still clicked, though much slower than they once did.
 
Illidan flared his wings and looked to the army. "Who of you know how to repair my hound? Speak!"
 
The eyes of dozens of horrors moved side to side until a ... necromancer ... stepped forward. Sulphuric light steamed from his body in Illidan's spectral sight. "I can fix your creature."
 
Illidan scowled, but held out the severed tendrils. If Archimonde could be repaired, it would be less taxing on the night elf demon than resummoning the beast from omnilium. "Then do it, and be quick about it."
 
The necromancer took what was offered to him and crouched by Archimonde. The demon hound scurried backwards, but Illidan seized its front paw and dragged it forward. It struggled against its master's grip, but knew better to fight at its full strength.
 
A yellow glow emanated from the necromancer's pallid hands, and it seeped into the tentacles. He took each one in turn and fastened the sawn edges together, ignoring the felhunter's whining. The light flared at the point of connection and faded immediately afterwards, sealing the two parts as one again.
 
Archimonde stood tall and its tendrils thrashed about as they once did, teeth chattering. Illidan looked to the necromancer. He would never thank one of their disgusting ilk, but his work earned him at least a reprieve from death.
 
"So what say you now?" Illidan said, stretching his wings to the ghoulish army. "Your 'leader' lies bloody and broken before you. His arrogance and pride have caused him to stray from Count Dracula's path. He will only lead you to your demise. Take up arms with me, and we shall earn the master's praise! Try to flee, and I will deal with you as I did this vampire! Who is with me?"
 
The ragtag mob of monsters were silent for a moment, turning to one another as if wordlessly discussing their options. Then, as one, they rose fists, paws and bony hands, releasing a battle cry intermingled with many distinct voices.
 
The necromancer bowed before the night elf demon. "We choose to follow you, Lord Illidan."
 
Illidan narrowed his eyes and breathed deep as he drank in the adulation. He was back in his element.

[Illidan Stormrage]

A new army with a renewed purpose marched behind their new commander.
 
Illidan strode in front of his new force, taking the vanguard. If he was following proper protocol, his position should be in the rear, but Illidan wanted to see this Poenari Castle first, before everyone else. He had suffered plenty and he hadn't even reached the blasted structure yet. Besides, the undulating crowd of monstrous terrors wasn't pleasant to look at, nor be downwind of. The stench from the undead alone was enough to curl his toes.
 
Archimonde pranced happily beside his master, as if reaffixing his tentacles had rejuvenated him. The likely explanation was the aromatic wake of magical energy that they chased through the fog. Illidan almost had to squint at it now, its yellowy-tan hue darkening in colour and brightening in luminosity. The felhunter's wormy mouths clacked over and over again, as if they were feeding directly on the magic trail. Illidan frowned at that thought. If residual magic condensed enough for a felhunter to consume it from the air, the actual source of it could be significant.
 
The necromancer who healed Archimonde hung back two strides from his new commander, hands joining behind his back, face dour and almost bored. Illidan learned that this foul sorcerer was Regis, apparently an understudy to the now squished Milton. That fact alone almost inspired the night elf to reduce Regis' height by a head, but his no-nonsense demeanour and his apparent good standing with the army of the damned helped him solidify an advisor role. When questioned, he spoke frankly and bluntly, avoiding any long-winded exposition. He displayed admirable intelligence as well, and thus Illidan begrudged him his life if he served loyally. So far there had been no question of that.
 
"You're going to fail!"
 
Illidan sighed audibly. "Clawfang, if you please."
 
A loud thwack resounded in the night elf's ears, and he smiled. "Another word, Ronaldo, and I'll give Clawfang permission to strike you with something other than the back of his furry hand."
 
A deep, gruff laughter chased Illidan's words from behind him. "That would be enjoyable."
 
For reasons unbeknownst to him, Illidan had decided to keep Ronaldo alive. Missing his left arm and quite a bit of blood that gushed out after it, the vampire wasn't much of a threat. Yet his pride could shrivel if he realised how futile it was to struggle against the night elf, and then he could prove a tactical asset. For the time being though, with his strength sapped and a blood thirst no doubt tickling the back of his throat, Ronaldo attacked with the only tool he had left in his arsenal - his voice. The army had been trudging through the Pale Moors for two days since the night elf usurped the leadership role, and for two days Ronaldo had taken every opportunity to berate and curse him.
 
On the first night that they made camp soon after the night elf demon and the vampire clashed, Ronaldo shouted and complained that he was thirsty. When Illidan ordered the blood drinker abstain from blood, his complaints turned to insults, some more vivid than the night elf was expecting. A particularly conservative werewolf took offense to Ronaldo's uncouth language and kneed him hard in the stomach, citing that the vampire would need air to complain and now it was all gone. Illidan laughed and promoted that werewolf to be Ronaldo's official guard.
 
Clawfang had not let Illidan down. He had doggedly watched the prisoner, back-handing him with his sinewy hand-paw when asked, though often the werewolf struck him once his sensibilities had been trampled on. When Ronaldo refused to march, Clawfang stabbed his pointed nails through the collar of the captive's suit and dragged him along, as he was doing now.
 
So far, while not the most elite of armies, Illidan conceded their worth. Most were simple minded but vicious and powerful, and those that could think for themselves remained loyal, perhaps recognising an opportunity to be noticed by Count Dracula. In any case, they would make great fodder for whatever awaited them through the shroud of creamy fog.
 
Illidan heard the flap of wings overhead and a moment later, Regis caught up to him. "Lord Illidan, the scouts report a large castle looming in the distance. We're perhaps an hour away."
 
"Excellent," Illidan said, facing forward. "I take it there aren't any other castles out in these miserable deadlands?"
 
"No, my lord. Certainly not as grandiose as the scouts have described. It can only be Poenari Castle."
 
"What of its defences?"
 
"From the air they see nothing. The castle gates are raised and the ramparts are empty. Outward appearances suggest that it's abandoned, but-"
 
"-there's likely more to it than we can see," Illidan finished the thought.
 
"No, it's perfectly safe! Just walk in the door and claim it!"
 
"Clawfang!"
 
Another meaty slap and a gruff bark of laughter followed his order.
 
Illidan indulged in a smirk, but it faded quickly. "Have the scouts keep watch. I don't want any surprises that could've been prevented. And have them report when we are closer."
 
Regis nodded, eyes half-lidded as if he were about to doze off. "Yes, my lord." He fell back several steps.
 
"Clawfang!" Illidan shouted over his shoulder.
 
"Yes, my lord."
 
"Bring the prisoner to me."
 
The werewolf did as was asked of him. He clutched Ronaldo by the throat and lifted him as they walked, tight enough to hold him but loose enough to stop from strangling him. His arm dangled from his side.
 
"Oh, you want to talk to me now?" Ronaldo said, a dried line of blood running from the corner of his lips. "Every other time you've had your pet backhand me."
 
"A punishment that will continue if you speak out of turn," Illidan said, again not affording the vampire his gaze. "Tell me what you know of the castle."
 
"You know what I know," Ronaldo said. "It's an empty castle."
 
"Clawfang-"
 
"All right!" the vampire roared. "There is a reason why the castle hasn't been occupied yet, but I don't know what that reason is! I swear!"
 
Illidan regarded Ronaldo for the first time with a sharp glare. "You've puffed yourself up like a peacock when we first met, saying how vital and high ranked you are. I find it hard to believe you know nothing of the nature of this castle." Illidan paused, letting his smouldering eyes glow beneath his blindfold. "But I'm sure you've heard something."
 
The vampire registered the threat and went silent for a moment. "I seem to recall a report ... one of the lesser vampires sent a reconnaissance team to inspect Poenari Castle shortly after Count Dracula established dominance in the Moors. Only two returned of a team of five. I don't remember what happened to the three that were lost, but suffice to say they weren't alive. One of the two surviving creatures went insane the next day and put down four of the castle guards before he was killed."
 
Not much information to go on. Perhaps an aggressive mage or psychic, maybe a gruesome scene so macabre that it drove even Count Dracula's minions to madness, or even an infestation of ghosts. The Omniverse had proven to be diverse and unpredictable even within the Pale Moors, so it could be anything.
 
Illidan gestured with a nod and Clawfang fell back, dragging Ronaldo with him. The vampire, to his credit, kept his stupid trap shut.
 
"So how's the thirst going?"
 
Son of a bitch. "Clawfang, inflict pain on the blood drinker through whichever means you find most amusing."
 
The werewolf guffawed and Ronaldo hissed in a breath at whatever new wound he was sporting.
 
Up until then, Illidan had managed to push the blood thirst from his mind. He could fight it, just as he did the demonic influence that was now a part of him, but unlike the Burning Legion's clarion calls, the vampire's taint seemed to draw strength from his other compulsion. Little by little as he had marched over the past two days, Illidan noticed that tickle in his throat intensify, and each day saw it grow bolder and more obnoxious. At this rate, he feared the thirst would take over his sense, much like Ronaldo had prophesised. How long he had until then, he wasn't sure, but he would struggle and battle it until there was nothing left of him.
 
The tan ribbon of magic that wended through the marshes widened as the fog thinned. Even in the gloom, the proud edges of Poenari Castle came into view. The rushing of a nearby river reached Illidan's ears, though he couldn't see the waters; it must run on the opposite side of the fortress. Grey clouds swirled about its highest spire in its centre. Cracks and fissures ran through the defensive walls of the castle, born no doubt from the final siege on the fortress, and occasionally wedged gaps provided easy ingress, their stone and mortar collapsed in a pile outside. The portcullis spikes hung above the entrance, flakes of orange rust dappling them. Parapets had crumbled, ramparts were blocked by fallen debris, and spider webs and dust clung in many places that had not succumbed to damage. All in all the castle stood, defiant to the years and abuse it had suffered through, though not unblemished for its resiliency.
 
Illidan came to a halt and raised his hand. Dozens of obedient feet stopped.
 
"Regis."
 
The necromancer appeared almost without a sound. "My lord."
 
"Tell the scouts to fly over the castle. If they see nothing, tell them to fly closer until we know why this castle is so suspiciously silent. I want them to see what the threat is, or be exposed to it."
 
"Yes, my lord."
 
The night elf folded his arms over his naked chest and waited. Archimonde sat by his feet, though he jostled and shook as if he fought an irresistible urge to charge heedlessly into the fortress. Soon enough, several man-sized bats winged into the air and soared with purpose towards Poenari Castle. They circled it high at first, furry fox-like faces scanning the courtyards. They flew closer to the ground, wheeling around the spires, and dove again. Illidan focused, patiently waiting for the trap to spring.
 
He didn't have to wait long. One of the bats flashed white for the briefest of moments, like a piece of shattered glass glinting in the sunlight, and its wings stiffened. The creature plummeted into the courtyard of the castle, its limp body vanishing behind the walls.
 
Illidan cursed. The distance was too great. Something had definitely happened, something of a magical nature, but his spectral sight didn't pick it up from his vantage point. At the very least, he knew Ronaldo's story wasn't a lie.
 
The next two bats fell in quick order. Ambiguous chatter mumbled from his army of the damned.
 
Regis folded his hands before his waist and peered dispassionately from beneath his black cowl. "What would you have your forces do, Lord Illidan?"
 
The night elf commander spun and faced his army. Some stood stoically, their thoughts cryptic. Others prepared themselves for whatever awaited them behind the walls, twirling weapons, gnashing teeth, summoning balls of magic. A small subsection with more than a hint of self preservation slinked deeper into the throng, hoping their lord would select someone else who was in better view for the suicidal task. The undead swayed on decaying legs, the concept of independent thought as dead and rotting as their flesh.
 
He could order them to charge, but he'd likely watch a repeat of the man-bats' demise except on a greater scale. Marching an army into certain death wouldn't improve his standing with Count Dracula either, and he'd be no closer to claiming the keep for his own.
 
"Regis, watch the troops," Illidan said, turning to face Poenari Castle. "I will find out what curse is afoot here, return, and issue my next orders accordingly."
 
"As you will, Lord Illidan."
 
Archimonde yelped and trotted after the night elf, but Illidan turned on his heel. "No. Wait with Regis. You will have your fill shortly."
 
The felhunter's cocked tendrils drooped and he slinked back to the necromancer.
 
Illidan crouched low and stepped quickly towards the ruined outer walls. His spectral sight was bombarded by shining magical residue blanketing the castle, so much so that he reined in his senses. Wispy tendrils of fog grew out of the ground like weeds, and they parted as Illidan dashed through them. His back slapped against the outer wall as he reached it and he peered through a rent in the brick.
 
An empty courtyard. Discarded swords and spears, scattered haphazardly over the yard, wore a deep rusted orange. Not much else of note. 

A flash of light caught his attention. He turned as a pulsing white figure skated over the misty ground, zigzagging towards him. The night elf leapt backwards as the spirit phased through the outer wall and screamed. Any plans of defence crumbled as the psychic shriek pierced Illidan's mind, forcing him to his knees. He gripped his ears uselessly as the excruciating noise echoed within his skull.
 
Illidan managed to look up, and the glowing phantom lunged.

[Illidan Stormrage]

I looked out over the ramparts, mesmerised by the white, choppy flow of Poe River. How the demons could hope to cross such a raging current, especially without a bridge, baffled me. Surely they'd get swept away? Why even bother attacking? Some could fly across, I surmised, but the expert eyes of the Kingdom's archers would stick them easily. As I rubbed my hand over the stone parapets, I couldn't help but wonder why King Aragorn and the other leaders had invested so much time and effort in constructing such a grand defence, when it seemed like it was overkill.
 
Footsteps alerted me to the presence of another. I turned to face another patrolling archer, bow strung over his shoulders, helmet hugged against his hip.
 
"Taking in the view, are we?" Rob said with a smirk.
 
"Not much else to do, is there? The raids that manage to get this far don't hold up well against us. Plus I don't think we've seen any of them for a whole week."
 
Rob tipped his head. "True. However-" He straightened up and put on a mock Aragorn voice, "it might be dull, but we're here to do a job. Vigilance is of the utmost importance."
 
I laughed into my hand. "Shh! Rob! Someone'll hear you!"
 
"Ah, so what?" Rob leaned against the crenellated wall. "The King and his head mages are up in the top tower, doing gods know what. It's just you and me up here."
 
"We can heeeear youuuuuu," came a voice from below. John Boy's, from the sound of it.
 
"Just watch the gates!" Rob hollered down to him. He refocused on me. "So, I don't suppose the lovely Katarina is busy tonight, is she?"
 
My eyes darted to the river as an excitement fluttered in my chest. "Well, I was having dinner with King Aragorn tonight, you know, as the guest of honour."
 
Rob nodded dramatically. "But of course."
 
"But those banquets are so big and boring, and I never know what to say to all of those important people..." My eyes met his and I smiled.
 
Rob went totally serious. "Really?! Well maybe you'd like to dine with one of the peasants tonight. You know, for a change of pace. Just so you can catch your breath. It has the added bonus of endearing the common rabble to you."
 
"Hmm..." I said, gaze upwards, finger on lips. "You make a good point. But don't the peasants roll around in their own filth? And only use one set of utensils?" I couldn't stop the impish grin from spreading over my face.
 
"Well, yes, there might be a slight culture shock," Rob said, pacing the rampart, hands at his back. "But really, once you try it, I promise you it's hard to stop. Oh, and you'd be eating with your hands. After the rolling around in filth bit."
 
I giggled. Such a sweet man. "Well, when you put it like that... but I'll have to find one of the peasants to dine with me." I cast a welcome gaze at him.
 
Rob's eyes widened, and he stretched his arms out. "Why, now that I think of it, I'm one of those dirty peasants! Convenient, huh? Perhaps I could be so bold as to eat with you tonight?"
 
I gathered my composure, but a brief "pfft" got through my lips. "Why yes, that will save me searching! And besides, I doubt there's a dirtier peasant around than yourself!"
 
Rob dropped the facade and laughed. "Wow, low blow!"
 
I joined him until John Boy's admonishment reached our ears. "Yes, John Boy, we'll beha-"
 
"Hey Kat," Rob said, tapping me on my shoulder. "What's that?"
 
I followed his line of sight to the horizon. A black mass, shrouded by the distance, marched toward the river. A few sprouts of yellowy orange dappled it. The dull thud of a drumbeat reached my ears, relentless and far away.
 
It couldn't be. There hadn't been a force that large out here before. And it couldn't be the Kingdom's armies running a drill; they're much too far away to be safely practising formations. So the only option was...
 
"Rob! Sound the bells!"
 
Rob darted down the rampart and around the corner. I leaned over the crenellated walls, my eyes scouring the bailey below. "John Boy! John Boy, are you down there?"
 
A nonchalant guard stepped into view, wearing a chainmail shirt but nothing else that would protect him in a battle. "What is it now, Kat?"
 
I made an exasperated face at him to reflect the building anxiety in my chest. "Are you kidding me?! Look outside! There's an army approaching the castle! Sound the alarms!"
 
"Sound the ..." he said quietly, until he spotted the vanguard in the far distance. "Oh, shit!" He pivoted on a heel and sprinted into the courtyard. "We're under attack! We're under attack! Prepare the defences!"
 
A moment later, the deep, loud clanging of the war bells warped the atmosphere from peaceful indifference to startled resolve. Soldiers scattered over the bailey, running for their equipment. Leather boots slapping stone steps preceded the approach of the other archers, bows in hand and arrows slack in the bowstrings. Officers yelled orders over the din of the warning bells, whipping their assigned units into formation for battle. The steady whine of catapult wheels also reached my ears. Did they really need artillery for this?
 
My heart thudded in my chest. My tongue scraped against the inside of my mouth, dry as sandpaper. The castle had never been in such an uproar before. Every force that they met in the Moors had been little more than scouting parties. The looming threat on the horizon, closing the miles swiftly, was new, different. Organised.
 
As I stood, I caught a glimpse of the top tower. A window had been flung open, and no one other than King Aragorn peered into the distance, his face etched with concentration. He stayed a moment longer, then dipped back inside, the window slamming closed behind him.
 
I snatched my longbow from the ground and tried to will some saliva into my mouth. This wasn't supposed to happen. This was an easy relief gig, to clamp down on the middling raids that those disgusting beasts conducted, to protect Darkshire. I wasn't prepared. I wasn't.
 
My breaths came and left quickly. I balanced myself on the wall as the world felt like it shook at its foundations, as if something were rattling its supports. I overbalanced and tipped over.
 
Instead of ploughing into hard stone, I landed into the still solid but softer arms of another. "Hey! Are you OK?"
 
Rob. My wits returned at once. "Rob! Yeah, just ... slipped over. That's all."
 
Rob lifted me back to my feet and brushed off non-existent dust on my shoulders. "Try to keep your footing. Kinda important when you're aiming arrows, right?"
 
He smiled. I smiled back, and found a well of strength spring up in me. My nerves still claimed my hands, but I closed my eyes, steadied my breathing, and nocked my first arrow.

"Hey!" Rob said. "We got this."
 
I exhaled sharply and nodded. "Yeah."
 
The army reached the far side of the river. My commander strolled the length of the ramparts behind me, hard eyes on the enemy.
 
"Archers! Fire at will!"
 
I released, and my arrow joined a chorus of pointed death raining down on the foe. The projectiles found their marks thanks to the densely packed formation, finding soft sites of ingress for the angled steel. Shields rose and arrows thwacked harmlessly into them, but the front lines only appeared armed with whatever nature, if that was the correct 'entity', had granted them. Dozens of malicious creatures collapsed with new wooden protrusions, and a cheer left the lips of the archers. I joined them, though in truth it had more to do with frustrated nerves than any sense of victory.
 
"Archers!" my commander yelled, drowning out the jubilant cry. "Ready aim!"
 
My fingers snatched another arrow from my quiver and notched it in my longbow. The entire line of my comrades copied the action, holding our strings taut for the order. I took offence with an ugly, long eared imp, who constantly stuck its middle finger in the air. It shouted something with its wretched lips, but the sound didn't carry over the roar of the Poe River. Whatever it was, I was glad I couldn't hear it. I set my sights for its pudgy yellow eyeballs; a miraculous shot if it landed, but I knew my arrow would spear through some fleshy part of the foul demon.
 
A hundred snapping strings heralded a new storm of arrows, but I was still clutching my bowstring. I quickly swept a glance over my fellow archers, thinking I must have blocked out my commander while fixating on the imp, but I was wrong. Everyone else grasped tight strings, looking from one another in confusion.
 
The realisation dropped a thick ball of hot lead in my gut. I knew what that sound was. I stared into the sky, and dozens of glinting silver flashes filled my vision. These weren't stars, unfortunately. They arced and surged downwards, their twisted iron arrowheads screaming towards the ramparts. I loosed my arrow in a hurry, unsure of whether I'd even come close to snagging that little imp bastard, and dove for the crenellations.
 
Something cold and sharp slipped into my neck, tearing flesh on its way. The chill of the iron melted beneath the fire of the pain that pulsed through me, running red and hot down my chest. A second thudded into my stomach, birthing the same agony only quicker, since the shock had vanished.
 
I collapsed against the rampart wall. My breaths came in quick gasps, like when I was nervous, but much worse. I wrapped fingers around the protrusion in my neck and thought about yanking it free; a slight shift of the arrow's position told me that was a terrible idea.
 
My eyes grew heavy and tired. A flaming ball of tar soared overhead from within the bailey, leaving a black trail of smoke in its wake. I heard my commander shout for another volley of arrows, but I wasn't holding my longbow. I patted the stone around me, but I couldn't find it. I just wanted to sleep.
 
Rob skidded to his knees in front of me. An arrow sprouted from his shoulder but he didn't seem fazed by it. "Kat! Kat! Are you all right? Kat!"
 
I smiled at him. The pain dampened until the hot sensation faded entirely. Everything felt cold. "Don't forget! I'm dining with the peasants this evening..."
 
"Kat!"
 
"My name isn't Kat, you insufferable human trash!"
 
Wait, I didn't say that. I felt Rob's hands go to mine just before the feeling left me completely, and ... ugh! What is going on? What is that other ...
 
I am not Kat! I am the great ... the great ... argh! Get out of my head! I AM THE GREAT ILLIDAN!
 
"Raaaargh!"
 
Illidan roared into the sky, balanced on his knees. A bright flash of light jumped from his body and coalesced into the form of a female ghost. The night elf snatched up his warglaives and growled at the apparition. "Don't possess me, you filthy spectre! I'll drain what's left of your soul and feed it to my felhunter!"
 
The spirit hissed and flew back into the dilapidated outer wall, slipping through worn stone like it wasn't there at all.
 
Illidan took a knee and breathed. It had been a long time since he had to endure such a ghastly vicarious experience like that. His bones felt cold and tingly from the phantom's departure, and would likely stay that way for a time. He spat, as if he could collect the disgust and expel it in a simple motion.
 
Once the night elf had enough time to cool his pricked pride, he stood and ran magical eyes over the castle. So it was haunted. He wondered if those man-bats were dreaming through the memories of another fallen human, or if they were simply dead. Illidan's great demonic power had definitely helped him seize control of his body again; perhaps those winged beasts weren't so lucky.
 
His first instinct was dead on the money. Sending his forces into Poenari Castle would spell disaster. He had to delve deeper into the fortress and find out why these spirits still walked the living plane, what bound them to the fortress. Unfortunately, he was the only one would likely resist the ghostly invasions. Now he knew what he was dealing with, the next wraith to override him would have a harder time maintaining control of him.
 
Illidan signalled for Regis and he scuttled over, a dreary, uninterested countenance greeting him. "Yes, Lord Illidan?"
 
"I'm going into the castle. The place is haunted. If you see me launch a green flare into the sky, that's the signal to charge. If I do that, make sure the army knows to take no prisoners. You and Clawfang will be tasked with locating me and getting me clear. Do you understand?"
 
Regis inclined his head. "Of course, Lord Illidan. We will hold formation until, or if, you call for us."
 
Illidan blinked. He didn't know what was worse; a capable necromancer, or the fact that he was growing on him. "See that you do."
 
The night elf drank from the Burning Legion's well within his scarred soul, and his full demonic power came to bear. With a flap of his thin, bat-like wings, Illidan hopped over the wall and into the bailey of Poenari Castle.

[Illidan Stormrage]

Illidan's hooves sunk into the gravel and ash in the castle bailey. His magic sight took in faint yellow streaks bleeding over the landscape, some pulsing while others melting away. The wind whistled over the inner wall, stirring discarded rags and fallen flags around him. The night elf demon's skin prickled at the magic thrumming through the old, abandoned stones. Nothing stirred but the loose items fiddled at by the breeze.
 
Where are the other spirits? Illidan stepped forward, pressing lightly on his hooves. The gravel shifted and cracked beneath him, but nothing rushed forward like the spectre had outside the walls. His spectral gaze never lied; sorcery draped over the empty castle, slinking through every crevice and crack. Illidan swallowed, setting his jaw. The rush of air through his lungs cancelled out the silence, but it shouldn't have. A haunted castle without ghosts raised more questions than answers.
 
Unimpeded by hostiles, Illidan strode through the bailey, passing taverns, forges and living quarters once bustling with humans and serving the needs of this King Aragorn now crumbling and bereft of purpose. Swords, axes and bows scattered over the path, but no sign of the soldiers who relinquished their arms in death. No dented plate mail, no steel helmets scarred by blood, no rusting chainmail arranged over rib cages. Had a battle even taken place here, or had the humans thrown down their weapons and retreated? Assuming that to be the case, there should be evidence of the slower or unluckier soldiers who couldn't outrun the onslaught.
 
A black lump of fur snagged the night elf demon's attention further down the path. As he approached it, its features coalesced from the gloom. The creature's back arched backwards, its clawed feet drawn tightly against its chest, wings spread over the ground. Its fox-like snout hung open, a grey tongue rolling out, its beady yellow eyes glassed over. Illidan kneeled by the man-bat and pressed fingers to its cold throat. Dead.
 
As he stood and removed his fingers, a blue, smoky thread wrapped about them. Illidan tugged back on it, yanking more eerie fog to steam from the dead man-bat's fur. The blue cloud shimmered and condensed, reforming until it resembled a humanoid shape. The thread about his fingers bloated and morphed into an ethereal hand gripping him. Its pale skull face housed blazing yellow balls of light in its eye sockets, and its bony jaw dropped open.
 
Illidan's pulse quickened. He knew what this phantom planned to do. A heat rose in his chest and green tattoos lit with a warm ambience as fel magic arose to his command.
 
The phantom tilted its head at the emerald light spilling from Illidan's skin and tightened its grasp. A stream of cold energy poured down Illidan's arm and splashed into his core, dousing the kiln that had ignited. The night elf demon resisted the dampening, stoking the magical energies within him, but the chill remained, spreading out like the roots of a tree. Still the eldritch light blazed from Illidan's arcane tattoos, as if the magic had not vanished. Was it still there, yet the phantom was somehow dividing him from his own fel energy?
 
The blue spirit's jaw dangled but no sound came out. It threw itself at Illidan, passing through his skin like it was gossamer, and winter crystallised inside him. The night elf demon's thoughts dwindled as the cold clutched icy fingers around his brain. He felt the thud of his knees diving into the gravel, and then
 
the firm leather of a gloved hand grabbing mine and hoisting me to my feet.
 
"You're a bit off today, huh?" John Boy said, dusting his hand on his waist.
 
"Yeah, I guess so," I said. A hot pain prickled below my temple. I pressed fingers against the skin to stop it, but rubbing only mitigated it to a degree.
 
"Didn't mean to crack you so hard," John Boy said, tossing his wooden sword to his free hand and back again. "You've been putting up a good defence lately."
 
 I bent over and collected my practice sword from the ground. Swords felt foreign and unwieldy in my hands; give me a bow and quiver any day. But I had to learn how to protect myself in close quarters. An arrow is no defence for a horde of screaming demons charging metres away from me.
 
"Kind of you to say so, but it doesn't feel any easier," I said, swiping the wooden stick through the empty air. "I don't know how you do it, but I'm not sure I'll be ready to use one of these for real any time soon." I rolled my shoulder and an ache protested the motion. "Arrow wound's still acting up too."
 
John Boy shook his head. "Nothing to it. Swing the steel, cut up demon flesh. Easy."
 
"Easy for you. You're in this army 'cause you know how to do that. I've always preferred picking off enemies from a distance."
 
"Yeah, sure. But you can't rely on that any more. The demons have become stronger, grouping, patrols are more frequent. The better you're trained, the better off everyone will be."
 
I stabbed the rounded nub of the stick into the gravel. John Boy was right, but he deftly avoided mentioning when the enemy developed into the greater threat. He always did. And every time he brought it up, it was all I could do to forget the day, up on the parapets, when they first attacked with their own archers. When I held onto Kat's hand as the crimson of her life flowed from her neck, her grip slipping away ...
 
"Hey!"
 
I snapped back to reality. "I'm here."
 
John Boy stared at me for a moment. "Maybe we should break there for the day."
 
I rolled my sore shoulder again. "Yeah."
 
John Boy took my wooden sword and gave me a final glance. "You can't let it eat you up, Rob. People die in war." I gazed back with hard eyes. "You're changing, Rob. You used to be a prankster, making the troop laugh ... I'm worried about you."
 
I turned. "I'm still alive. That's all that matters, right?"
 
Silence hung between us for a long moment, until it broke beneath the footsteps of John Boy heading away.
 
I walked off without looking over my shoulder.
 
I passed by strangers and comrades, all a little less jubilant than they were a month ago. The ambience in the air, while still jovial from the tavern, felt heavier in every other place in the castle. We all thought this was a sweet gig, hunting weak parties of goblins and bipedal beasts, gaining experience and the kudos of our commanders. Now we all knew what we were in for. On that day a month ago, it all clicked why King Aragorn and Camelot's mages assembled this mighty castle in short order, though I doubted the monarch and his advisers had expected the deluge of demonic monsters since then. We had still won that surprise skirmish, but the ever mounting raids and ferocity of the enemy had weathered our morale.
 
I pushed through the barracks door, slapping it against the wall, and ... decided to kill myself, since I was such a cowardly weakling. No ... that's not what I thought at all. I trudged down the hallway, ignoring the other soldiers milling about, heading straight for my quarters. I knew that ... being a human only compounded my folly, and my stupidity and insidiousness would never be cured. Instead, I would ... these thoughts are not my own, what is this? No, as I arrived at my quarters,
 
Illidan took a sharp breath inwards. A furious cold arrested his entire body, shaking as if hypothermia ravaged him. Blue vapour smoked from his violet skin. The spirit scraped at his mind, its grip finally loosened, but in charge of his faculties again, Illidan summoned his dark magicks to his aid. The pressure welled within him, but the swirling power cloaked from his senses again, swamped by an invisible layer.
 
The night elf demon tossed his head back and bared fangs as a penetrating, burning freeze drilled through his skull. The cold fog thickened from his pores, and soon his vision saw nothing but the mist all around. Illidan clenched his fists, nails piercing the skin of his palms, and
 
turned the handle. I stepped into my room and slammed the door behind me. I kicked off my boots and slumped onto my pallet. My eyes found the chipped boards above me and my thoughts drank deep of the brooding weight that suffused my lungs.
 
How could John Boy be so flippant about it all? He lost friends in that battle too, plus more since the raids had escalated. How could he just push it all out of his mind like none of it mattered? Maybe he's colder than me, or maybe it's a coping mechanism. I can't see how forgetting those we care about does anyone any good.
 
I yawned. I shuffled on my pallet, pinching my arrow wound. I hissed in a breath and flopped on my other side. My eyes fluttered, but I couldn't keep them open. I saw the back of my eyelids.
 
A loud bang shook my room. I jolted up. A soldier stood at my door, eyes wild. "Come on, we've been called up!"
 
I hopped out of bed, stuffing my feet into my boots, and charged out of the room. My regiment filed out of the barracks and started equipping themselves for battle. I pulled on my leather vest and slung a full quiver over my chest. I snatched up a bow as my eyes settled on John Boy.
 
"Hey!" I shouted as I jogged to him. "What's going on?"
 
John Boy adjusted the scabbard on his belt. "A battle. Outside. Not on the other side of the river. Behind us."
 
My eyes rose. "Behind the castle? They sneaked over the Poe River without us knowing?"
 
My friend shrugged. "It looks that way. But the force outside need reinforcements, and it's our job tonight." He slapped my shoulder. "Let's get ready to fight. You going to be all right?"
 
It was time for war. I took a stabilising breath and fired it out. "Let's do this."
 
We stormed out of the gates. Horses stampeded into the front lines, knights in plate mail leading the charge with swords and lances held high. John Boy and the other foot soldiers raced after them, roaring a battle cry. My fellow archers and I trailed them, stringing arrows to our bows.
 
The night bit with a deep chill, and I wondered how much of it was my own blood running cold at the thought of entering the fray with those hellspawn again. Ahead of me was all dust and screaming, blood and steel shining in the pale moonlight. I watched as John Boy descended into the melee, sword held high as he bellowed.
 
Our commander slapped his hand into the sky. As one, we stopped and knelt down, yanking back on the bowstrings.
 
"Ready aim!" he shouted. I took my time, singling out a long eared imp that sprinted towards the fray around where John Boy had ventured in. Its pudgy yellow eyeballs made fantastic targets.
 
"Fire!"
 
We released as one, and our symphony of feathered steel showered upon the advancing reinforcements of the enemy. To our great luck, they hadn't noticed us, and many of the twisted creatures intended to bolster their forces collapsed with new metal piercings throughout their bodies. A cheer went up.
 
"Ready aim!" shouted my commander. We complied, stringing new arrows and locating new targets. The enemy reinforcements had taken notice of us and retreated from the main battle, hoping to elude our range. I judged that some might make it clear, but many wouldn't.
 
"Fire!"
 
Again a horde of whizzing arrows descended from their high arcs and speared through the hellish army, though those equipped with shields collected the projectiles harmlessly. Any other reinforcements turned tail and fled, realising the battle had been lost.
 
I punched the air and bellowed in celebration with my comrades. This battle would turn out differently. The knights in the melee circled the last dark soldiers and slashed them to the cold earth, then pointed blades at the escaping legion of creatures. Cries of "push the advantage!" and "let's finish the bastards off!" reached my ears, and we scrambled after them.
 
The old horrors scampered towards the flowing Poe River. Too wide to leap, too wild to cross, they had only a few minutes left to live before the Kingdom's seasoned warriors splashed the river banks with their tainted blood.
 
I felt the adrenaline flood me. Everything was clearer; the slapping of plethora of soldiers' boots dashing over the fields, the coppery bite of blood and sweat mingling through my nostrils, the flashes of claws and blades vying for exposed flesh. I'd never felt so alive, so receptive to everything happening all around me. I finally understood what those old berserker warriors explained as battle frenzy; drowning in the ecstasy of war, of plunging death into your foe and watching their life drip from it as you wrench it free.
 
In that moment, I knew what I wanted. I threw down my bow and snatched a lost sword from the ground. My commander's shouts fell beneath the undulating beat of my heart and my feet as I surged towards the river bank, the heft of the blade taking on a natural and desirable quality in my hands.
 
I found John Boy. Splashes of red-black blood stained his armour, and deep scratch ran from his shoulder to his elbow, but he didn't seem bothered by it. I tried running to him, but the distance was too great, and too many jostling bodies blocked my way. Instead I turned my attention to the pinned monsters, ready to exact my pound of flesh.
 
I spotted that googly-eyed imp.
 
"For Kat!" I screamed, though I hadn't called upon the words.
 
I leaped forward, and my foot stuck fast. I looked down to see a black hand protruding from the ground grasping my ankle. An instinct overrode my arms and I hacked at the wrist, lopping off the hand. Its gnarled fingers slacked around me and fell as the stump pumped oozing black blood.
 
I refocused on the imp, until I noticed a network of thin fissures playing out over the ground like cobwebs. Demons, monsters, succubi, zombies and other evil terrors ripped open the soil and clambered out, others exploded as if the earth was water. They sprung up like weeds, infiltrating and surrounding the charging Kingdom forces.
 
The battle frenzy leaked from me as the clammy certainty of truth settled on me. We had overextended, and played directly into the enemy's ambush.
 
"No!" I shouted. This wasn't how it was going to end! I had to-
 
An immense pain blew through my chest. Three curved claws protruded from my torso. The fingers wiggled inside my flesh, creating new flashes of hell with each insignificant movement. The sword slipped from my limp hold, and I felt all the heat and strength draining out of me in a flood of red.
 
I struggled a gaze, spotting the yellow eyed imp stalking towards me, as I hung like a slaughtered pig from a butcher's hook ...
 
Illidan's own fingers pierced his chest, his breaths quick. Fel magic spurted from the tips, worming through his soul until they hooked onto the phantom riding shotgun in him. With a bracing yell, the night elf demon ripped his fingers free, tracing three lines of his own blood in the air while tearing a luminescent blue shape from his body.
 
The phantom found its ghoulish skeletal form once more and dove towards Illidan.
 
"Enough!" the demon hunter bellowed. Thrusting an open hand brimming with sickly green light, he snatched the spirit mid-dash in the air, holding it captive in a fuzzy emerald halo. The halo intensified, shining until the blue of the phantom shaded beneath the green, and Illidan snapped his fingers into a fist. The resulting action heralded an explosion, and fading blue sparks was all that remained of the phantom.
 
Illidan growled, pressing a hand against the wound on his chest. It was mostly superficial, but it still stung, especially since he had to delve into his spirit to exorcise the blasted ghost.
 
"You won't repel me!" Illidan shouted in the silent bailey. "If any more of you mopey apparitions attack, you'll end up like that sorry bastard!"

[Illidan Stormrage]

Shadows loomed long over the bailey as Illidan trudged on. Clouds skated over the sky, parting enough to see the grey sky darkening. Night was falling and he hadn't even entered the castle itself, having spent wasted hours suffering through empathetic visions. Those possessive spirits took agency of him and showed him their last moments in some sort of macabre attempt at pity, but the night elf demon had none for them.
 
People died in conflict all the time. Hundreds, probably thousands of his own kin met their grisly ends at the edges of the Burning Legion's swords and claws over ten thousand years ago, and the unholy army had ripped an untold number more souls from their mortal confines since then. The undead had likewise carved a swathe of decay and murder through human villages during the Third Invasion. Many of those who fell's only crime was defending themselves from sinister horrors from another dimension. At least those stationed in Poenari Castle were armed and trained in battle, whether effectively or not.
 
If you pick up a sword in order to kill, it shouldn't come as a surprise when you fall victim to the cold steel of another's weapon.
 
Illidan pushed the thought of Maiev Shadowsong from his mind and unfurled his leathery wings. A hefty thrust shot him forward, gliding close to the gravel, his destination the entryway to the castle.
 
He swooped and landed on his cloven feet before the doors. The only remaining portcullis gated off his path of ingress. Dull orange rust collected on the steel grid in irregular patches. Illidan gave the portcullis a hard wrap with his knuckles, and it shuddered in place, a great creak booming through the darkness beyond. Clicking his fingers, one of his warglaives appeared clutched in his hand as black smoke slithered into the sky. The night elf demon slashed at the metal gate, leaving a glistening silver line where his demon-forged steel had intersected it. He slashed several more times in sweeping arcs, sent his warglaive back to its holding dimension and kicked in the irregular shape he had carved with his sturdy hoof. The portcullis sections burst inwards. Illidan folded his wings against his back and ducked through the gap he had made.
 
Light dared not enter even the foyer of the castle, but Illidan's magic sight didn't need it to see. Amber suffused the air around him, settling on the walls and floor like thick sheets of gold dust. The unusual necromantic object that sustained these tortured phantoms must have been brimming with dark power. No individual thread seemed to be an obvious lead to its location; they all tangled around each other, massing in a brilliance of amber rather than a bright trail to follow to its originator. Concentrating, the night elf demon sent his spectral vision further, focusing on the edges of its perception, but nothing directed him in any particular direction. In any case, the castle being so laden with the abnormal magic led Illidan to believe the object was stored somewhere in the fortress. He just had to find out where.
 
The clacking of his hooves on the stone floor ricocheted off the large room as he headed for a staircase set in the left wall. A shimmer in the amber light caught his attention as his foot alighted on the first step. Illidan looked around, eyes tracing the high ceiling adorned with dusty spider webs. He sniffed and turned around, lifting his leg for the next step.
 
A red phantom exploded out of the stairwell, screeching inside Illidan's head. He instinctively leapt backwards, his wings slamming the ground to help with the movement.
 
"What is with you undead and popping out of objects?" Illidan snarled, his heart thumping. "Can't you just say hello like a normal adversary?"
 
The spirit hovered, chattering its teeth. A floating corpse, skin and bone exposed in equal measure, stared at him with hollow sockets. Its body, or representation thereof, went as far as the ribcage and the dangling spine. It was the largest of the ghosts Illidan had encountered so far.
 
It lunged, rotting fingers clawing for night elf flesh. Illidan pivoted on a hoof and dodged, watching the crimson half-body soar past and loop back around. Green energy collected around the night elf demon's hand, and he thrust it at the spirit.
 
His telekinetic magic seized the furious wraith, but a second later it slipped away. Frowning, Illidan recast the spell, but to the same effect. He tried a final time, and this time realised why. Something was nullifying his telekinesis as he made contact with the ghost. Illidan wanted to follow the remnants of the counter-spell, but the ruby phantom dived at him again.
 
It sailed wide of the mark a second time, dissolving into the floor. Illidan spun, his spectral sight fanning out in all directions, prepared for the sneak attack.
 
Red, decomposing hands jutted out from the stone floor and snatched Illidan's cloven hooves. Breath stilling in his chest, the night elf demon launched himself into the air, but the spirit's grip held fast. Before Illidan had another chance to defend himself, the apparition scampered up his body and burrowed into his chest.
 
He roared in fury, unable to rebuff the spiritual invasion. Emerald light suffused his fingers; if he could rip out one ghost, he could do it again. His vision blackened at the edges, and the flame that held the strength in his digits blew out. Illidan managed a single curse before he
 
charged at the hellish creature, sword raised. Rob dangled from blood-soaked claws, the last creepy vestiges of life twitching his limbs and neck, mouth drooling red. I dropped the blade with prejudice into the demon's horned skull, extracting some delight as the steel thumped and crunched wetly into its scalp. It went limp as soon as I ripped my weapon free, and Rob's body hit the dirt.
 
Panting and wiping splattered blood from my face, I rolled Rob over. "Rob! Rob! Are you still with me?"
 
Rob's glassy eyes met mine. I choked back a sob, but let the fresh rage bubble to the surface. I spun and bellowed a new war cry, one full of fury and sorrow in concert, and sprinted at the nearest enemy I could find. A short, bobble-eyed imp fell into my field of view, and it turned tail and ran when it saw me after its blood.
 
The chase was short-lived. After the grimy little thing tripped on a dead body, my blade cleaved it in two. I scanned the warzone, ready to tag my next victim, when a deep note rung over the carnage. The horn. They were signalling a retreat.
 
Why? I wasn't done! Evil creatures of all persuasions still breathed, and it was my duty to stop that! Yet that moment of reflection broke my battle lust as I took in the true surroundings. Dead bodies, mostly human, littered the river banks. Demons had fallen also, but there was a greater ratio standing than bleeding out, which was more than could have been said for us. I watched as soldiers and knights who were still mounted abandoned the conflict, galloping over their stiff companions. Some dark creatures gave chase, but after a few well placed arrows from the archers further back, they let their quarry scamper off home to lick their wounds.
 
I struggled between common sense and my own rage. Common sense won out, but rage still made me roar as I fled like a coward from what should've been a triumphant victory.
 
I slouched, elbow snug into my knee, holding my head up as a medic examined my other arm back at the castle. A nasty gash ran from the shoulder to the elbow, though thankfully in the midst of battle it hadn't bled much, nor had it distracted me while I carved up demons. The medic dabbed a rag with a liquid so pungent it burned my nostrils and slid it up and down the length of my wound. I hissed at the intense stinging that resulted but let the medic apply his trade. The last thing I needed was to lose an arm to an infection. How could I swing a sword then?
 
The medic had wrapped a clean cotton bandage around my limb, which had restricted my movement to a degree, but I still managed to clash wooden swords with it on. The tenderness of the wound lessened each day, until I misjudged my opponent's attack during a spar and copped a sparring sword against it. I swore something fierce and stormed away, clutching the pounding impact point.
 
I climbed onto the outer wall and stared out over the parapets to where the ambush had taken place. All of the soldiers who fell that day had been respectfully ferried back to the castle and their bodies added to the makeshift graveyard. The grotesque corpses of the monsters were left to fester after being thoroughly torched; we didn't know if any of them could be raised from the dead.
 
The next few days were a blur. I spoke to people, smacked wooden sticks during training, sat at the mess hall for meals, but most of it glossed over me. Nothing but superficial images and banter remained as memories.
 
I was flitting towards the sucking depression that had drawn in Rob before he died. That great blackness had claimed him before death had, and his true self perished when he let that darkness into him. For some reason, even though I had lost other friends since the demons had stepped up their incursions, Rob's departure had weighed me down more than any other.
 
No one outside of a few tight-lipped scouts knew for sure, but rumours abounded that the Black Gate had activated and the constant armies of darkness funnelled from it. I heard something about the Black Gate once, but couldn't remember much. In any case, I lent credence to the hearsay since one day, King Aragorn, Victor von Magnus and the great Dumbledore all packed up and shuffled out of Poenari Castle without saying a word to anyone. It was only the next day that we were all informed officially.
 
The attacks grew more frequent, more savage, over the coming weeks. Desperation kicked in more than once when I was out on the battlefield, but whatever inefficient gods watched over the castle deemed that I should live through the carnage. Instead of receiving reinforcements, they stopped altogether. We had our orders to hold the line, but I had the sinking feeling that ours was a lost cause, and we simply hadn't been told.
 
I stood guard like any other day, and the clouds went black. Demons crawled over the walls, teeming red and black flesh scouring for human bodies. No warning bells went out, no scouts caught sight of an advancing army, they just appeared. Caught off-guard, we had little hope of surviving, let alone holding the castle. Ghoulish creatures even dug themselves out of the ground, much like their ambush by the Poe River some weeks ago, and it was slaughter.
 
I slashed and hacked at the abominations as I went, but more spewed from the earth, more swooped from the sky, more clambered over the walls. Soldiers eating or off-duty fell the quickest, and then those who dared try to repel the belligerent monsters.
 
"The castle is lost!" a voice cried out over the murderous din. "Retreat! Re-arrgh!"
 
Another demon pounced at me and I gouged a bloody line through its chest. A horse whinnied and reared on hind legs, thrashing hooves into an unwary monsters. I sprinted for the startled mount, leaping on top and clenching the reins. The horse tried to buck me off, no doubt the terrible noise and stench of death freaking it out. I forced it on all fours and into a frantic gallop, aiming for the open gate of the outer wall.
 
As the horse's long strides drew me closer, a little yellow-eyed imp hurled itself from the crenellated wall and body-hugged my face. The force knocked me off the saddle and rolling onto the ground.
 
The black skinned imp regarded me curiously, then smirked wickedly, exposing its fangs. "This is Diablo's home now, bitch!"
 
It sunk its jagged teeth into my neck before I could pull it off. My breaths cut off as I choked on my own blood.
 
Illidan propped himself up on hands and knees, the wind knocked out of him. Sweat dripped from his nose and chin as a slimy substance oozed out of his back. For the first time, the spirit left his body willingly, though his visions had been the most profound, had rattled the night elf demon the most. Why?
 
Now ... you ... see? a wispy voice fluttered in Illidan's mind.
 
Illidan sucked in a breath and regained his footing. The crimson phantom watched him, head cocked as if examining a foreign object, spinal column swaying like a thin pendulum.
 
"I do not," Illidan said, flipping through reasons why the ghost had given him up. "But I deeply resent having to see those wretched scenes, having to suffer through those inane thoughts."
 
The amber in the air shimmered for a heart beat.
 
You ... were ... given ... a ... chance. You ... ignore ... it. You ... are ... now ... an intruder.
 
Illidan recognised the sharpness to the telepathic threat. Whatever experiment this haunted castle's denizens had been conducting on him had come to a close. The yellow magic lacing the room pulsed twice in quick succession.
 
"I did not come here to be ordered away by some remorseful echo!" Illidan said, baring his teeth. He reached for the spirit, green light tracing his hand. "You will crumble to dust like the last!"
 
The night elf demon hoped his spell would pierce the vigilance of the counter measures, but this time it disintegrated before it even took hold of his target. Illidan's skin prickled as a new wave of chill closed in around him.
 
Phantoms of all colours and shapes in various degrees of ruination spilled from the walls and the floor, slowly, menacingly. Moans and sobs bombarded him from all angles, all sickly and meek. The amber magic grew so thick Illidan thought it would condense, and the spirits themselves seemed to siphon the hue from the air and into themselves.
 
Your ... spirit ... will ... join ... us.
 
Illidan snarled. Warglaives wouldn't shred souls, and his spells were countered before they could even take form, at least inside the castle proper. He caught a glance of the dreary light drizzling through the squares of the portcullis gates. Magic seemed to function correctly out there.
 
Arching his wings, Illidan soared towards the portcullis. The crying and wailing of the ghosts shifted to unbearable shrieking. He afforded himself one glance over his shoulder, and saw a menagerie of phantoms sailing after him. Returning his focus forward, he pressed his legs together and arms against his torso. Aiming, he flapped hard once more and wrapped his wings about his chest. As a night elf demon missile, he rocketed through the rudimentary hole in the portcullis and into the bailey.
 
Hooves slid over gravel as he turned to face Poenari Castle. Even with his magic, Illidan faced a spectral army backed by an unseen force. If his sorcery would even obey his commands outside, he opposed overwhelming odds.
 
And yet, he was not without his own reinforcements.
 
A ball of emerald light spun between his hands. Illidan hurled it into the air like a green flare, and in short order, the earth rumbled with dozens of stampeding feet. The night elf demon's own forces of the damned marched on Poenari Castle.

[Illidan Stormrage]

Poenari Castle loomed over the bailey that had become the battlefield, clouds framing the amber light that suffocated the stones. It pulsed in rhythm with Illidan's drumming heart beat as spirits poured from its walls, creating an eerie display. Streaks of colour dashed over the scorched, desolate earth, each spectre glowing with its own hue. Amber light glistened off their ethereal bones and rotted flesh, alighting on them as if they drew strength from the monolithic structure behind them.
 
Illidan threw his warglaives down and cracked his gnarled knuckles. Steel, even forged from the demonic fires of the Twisting Nether, wouldn't cut ghosts. Magic, however, was a potent offense against them, and the night elf demon possessed that in spades.
 
The earth rumbled with the imminent approach of his army, but Illidan had put little faith in them. Some would be a boon to the effort, mostly the necromancers and warlocks who could rip and drain the spectral energy from the wraiths' forms, but many others would just be cannon fodder. Reanimated skeletons, werewolves and other horrors that only had physical means of attack would fall quickly. Illidan briefly considered abandoning the army entirely and searching for the source of the amber light and the haunting, but the spirits that ate up the distance between them wouldn't abate until they were put down.
 
Flaring his wings, the night elf demon boosted into the sky. A trail of spirits changed direction and raced after him, their psychic screams cloying. As the first of Illidan's forces charged over the inner wall and into the bailey, he witnessed them falling to the ground and grasping their ears. Others ignored the mental pressure and forged ahead; those would be the ones who would survive. Or at least put up a good fight before they were felled.
 
Illidan soared through the sky and led the pursuing ghosts towards the castle. As he approached, the amber light hardened, encasing the fortress in an almost opaque shell. A deep pressure entered Illidan's mind, as if it were questing for something. Illidan spun away from Poenari Castle and watched the amber light dim again. I'm going to find out the mystery behind this place.
 
Turning his attention to the spirits, Illidan flipped on his back and drew his open palms together. Green flames licked between the gaps of his fingers, and a moment later he cradled a crackling ball of felfire. There was definitely a reason Illidan used the corruptive magic of the Burning Legion, and felfire was one such example. Felfire burned hotter and inflicted more agony on a target than a regular fireball, or even a magically conjured one, and ate away at even spiritual essence. The pain from a felfire burn could last years, as Illidan's face knew all too well.
 
With a shout, the night elf demon hurled the demon ball of flames at his undead chasers and watched the front line disintegrate amidst a haze of blinding green fire. Other wraiths that flew straight into the expanding explosion shrieked as the flames, almost fizzling away without fuel to enliven them, caught upon their unholy energy and bloomed anew. Yet those flames sizzled and consumed their hosts and left nothing but smoke, and the next wave of spectres filled in the ranks of those destroyed.
 
Illidan hugged his wings to his body and plummeted from the skies, welling a new felfire bolt in his hands. He jettisoned it and a second emerald conflagration ravaged the skyline again, complete with the agonised screams of the undead dying again. Still the spirits clawed after him, their hunger or rage unquenched until the night elf lay dead at their feet.
 
The night elf demon lifted his wings and curled them, using them as thin-skinned parachutes as he alighted on the ground. Admittedly he had turned his attention from the battle while dealing with his pursuers, but the resulting scene before him was worse than he had imagined. Spirits dove in and out of his soldiers, freezing their bodies in macabre poses and zipping out, leaving their quarry to fall dead instantly, much like the man-bats that had scouted the castle earlier. He watched as a werewolf howled, slobber matting the fur around its jaw as it lashed out at the closest spirit, only for his claws to pass through unhindered. A moment later it collapsed in a tangled mess, its life stolen from it.
 
It was an unfortunately common theme. Though the warlocks and necromancers weaved dark magic and dissipated more than a few wraiths, there were simply too many of them and not enough spellcrafters in Illidan's attacking force. Once most of the melee horrors had been scattered, the warlocks and necromancers were next, killed while dealing with an overabundance of targets.
 
Illidan didn't come this far to be beaten back by a human haunting. Hell, any sort of undead infestation curled his toes, but to deal with the base spiritual resonance of those pink idiots was more than his pride would bear.
 
Green light flooded the night elf demon's tattoos, cascading over their lines like a glowing emerald river. The felfire of his eyes scalded his eyebrows as the cursed power of the Burning Legion consumed the blood in his veins. He slapped his palms together and curled his fingers, incanting the swirling maelstrom within to obey him. The sickly green light weakly emanated from his hands, and an instant later shone like a verdant inferno. His hooves sank into shattering earth as the magic contained in his hands exploded forth like a volcano discharging molten lava. Illidan bared gritted fangs as he directed the Fel Beam through the mass of spirits that tore into his forces and watched them melt as the fel energy passed over them.
 
Scores of spectres shrieked their last as they disintegrated, and Illidan laughed. Slightly at first, finding relief in their destruction, then full-bellied as more and more succumbed to his might. The heady thrill of fel magic pumped through him, seeking to both spread destruction and rein Illidan's mind. Such a thick helping of chaotic power from the Twisting Nether never went unnoticed by the demonic denizens of the realm, and soon the night elf demon felt their whispers and seductive promises in his ear as if they stood by his side.
 
Yes! Yes! Destroy! Sow chaos and ruin into the world! More! Slaughter them until there's nothing left!
 
This power is but a taste of what's waiting for you on the other side. Come, why don't you submit and drown yourself in the glory of Sargeras' gifts? It'll only cost you your free will, and it will feel oh so good. I promise ...
 
A chorus of voices dwelled within him, urging him to be devoured by the fel. Others grew furious as Illidan's veteran will stood unbending to their empty assurances of pleasure and power eternal. They swore revenge, and in the most graphic and violent of methods. Illidan laughed harder. He revelled in the raw strength of the Burning Legion, but found even greater joy in the fury of the demons that demanded control of his soul. Being responsible for a horde of human souls shattering into particles only made it taste all the more sweeter.
 
The light faded from the night elf demon's hands and he took a moment to appreciate his handiwork. A huge swathe had been cut through the spirits. Smoking gaps in their formations detailed where Illidan had taken the largest tolls. All paused for a moment, including his own sorcerers, staring at the steam rising from his violet fingers. It had been the first time Illidan had wielded some of his true power since being deposited in the Omniverse, and the reactions of his men, women and undead revealed how uncommon it was to see such a display.
 
Enough, Illidan. Stop marinating in your own ego and finish the job.
 
The fel energies burned in his bones. He knew he could summon that strength again, perhaps a third time if need be. Yet he didn't want to. That euphoria that overwhelmed his better judgement was too foreign to him. Having rarely drawn upon it in the Omniverse, or perhaps because of his shift through dimensions, the alluring call of the Burning Legion simply distracted him too much. He had to practice delving into that horrible, beautiful power, and even the thought of training himself in that launched a shiver down his spine.
 
Focus!
 
Illidan ignited the air between his palms and coaxed another felfire bolt into his possession. He tossed it into the ghostly throng and the battle resumed in earnest.
 
Still, even with his sizeable contribution to his forces, Illidan was still losing. Spirits oozed from the earth as if the castle were producing them on some kind of spectral production line. Obliterating a dozen of them in a blazing sphere of emerald flame meant nothing if they were replaced a minute later. At most, Illidan had stemmed the tide and bought them some time, but to do what? His forces had been cut down to almost one third of their original size. Bodies of mangled undead littered the bailey, some hanging over the crumbling inner wall limp and lifeless.
 
More power. It was the only solution that came to mind. If Illidan couldn't locate the progenitor of the haunting, he had to demolish Poenari Castle. Even as he realised it, he swore he noticed the amber sheen of the fortress glimmer in defiance.
 
While that defeated the purpose of his original campaign, it was better than dying. Or worse, becoming a spirit's puppet for all time. In any case, he could round up a new 'volunteer' force of Dracula's minions to help rebuild the castle.
 
His Fel Beam could slice through stone with ease, but to topple the entire structure would take time. More time than his forces had at their disposal. And each blast would weaken him further; if he didn't smash the source of the spirits upon the castle's collapse, then his offensive would fail. He would be too weak to defend himself.
 
The only option dawned on him as he fel-fried another gang of spectres. He had to ruin the fortress in one massive hit. To channel that much fel through his body at this juncture would be suicide, but he knew a way to bring that kind of insidious power to bear without funnelling it through his own soul.
 
Illidan leapt backwards, letting the remainder of his forces cop the brunt of the ghostly defence. Steeling himself, the night elf demon lifted a single balled hand into the air. A beacon of emerald light radiated from his fist, and a world of exhaustion blasted through his mind. While the destructive fel magic didn't directly conduct itself through him, this particular spell demanded a great deal of focus and stamina to cast.
 
Moments later, as the weight of the world settled upon his shoulders, a sizzling hole in the sky ruptured above the battlefield. Illidan growled as he forced the gap in space-time to stretch, revealing an inky blackness within, devoid of any light. Soon however, emerald light spilled from the portal, and despite the debilitating effects of the spell, Illidan managed a smirk; dozens of massive fel comets would soon rain down on Poenari Castle, smashing it into flaming rubble.
 
A new presence stiffened Illidan's spine, and the sensation coursed through his bones until he was completely rigid. His concentration lost, the green-rimmed portal closed swiftly until it vanished in a prick of light. Illidan fought against the imprisonment, certain that a spirit hadn't snuck into his skin while he was preoccupied. What was doing this to him?
 
The night elf demon prepared to spill out his senses, but a hoarse voice removed the need. "Funny how the tables can turn so suddenly, without warning, isn't it Illidan?"
 
Illidan roared through glued teeth. "Ronaldo! Unhand me at once!"
 
The one-armed vampire tutted. "Now now, you're not really in a position to bargain, are you?"
 
His entire skeleton felt as if all the bones that comprised it had fused together. A deep spell froze him in place, one he couldn't trace. How could he possibly muster the strength to disable him like this? "We're losing the battle, you fool!"
 
"We're losing?" Ronaldo said. "No. You're losing the battle. It was under your command that my forces marched on this forsaken castle. You will be the one explaining to Count Dracula why you threw perfectly good soldiers to their deaths."
 
"And you're ensuring the remainder of them are murdered for your selfish vendetta!" Even as Illidan grunted the words out through caged teeth, he recognised the irony.
 
"It's fine. There's plenty more where that came from." Ronaldo laughed again even as the spectres killed the remaining spell casters that hadn't broken rank and fled.
 
"How ... are you doing this to me?"
 
"Remember your vampirism? You may have ignored it, let it thirst, and even blocked it from your mind. But slowly, as you've neglected it, it has opened a new weakness in you. It craves blood, so I am satiating it with dark magic, which is a reasonable facsimile if you have the skill. And because of that, I have a free pass into your body, one which your filthy magic cannot guard against."
 
Illidan yelled. As much as he detested the concept, he felt a new strength rushing through his muscles, no doubt a result of that thirst being met. Yet even with the added vigour, there was nothing he could do to stop Ronaldo's spell.
 
The last of his warlocks dropped to the corpse-filled earth and the spectres focused on the commander who'd given them so much grief. Illidan watched helplessly as they screeched at him, each taking  a turn at diving through his skin and out the other side, and the pain
 
blurred my vision, but I grasped my blade and slashed forward, lopping off another demon head. I spun, skewering the next closest mongrel. I kicked my sword free, dark burgundy blood dripping from the steel, and
 
gripped the edge of the drawbridge, fingers weakening, my armour weighing me down. The rushing waters of the Poe River threatened to swallow me and drag me to its depths, and all I could do was
 
run. My spear, the tip severed from the end, transformed into a useless accessory. I hurled it at the demon nipping at my heels, but it slapped him without effect. I scrambled up a small rise, and my foot slid from beneath me, landing me in a muddy puddle. I smelt the fetid breath of the creature as it pounced on me and started
 
riding as hard as I could, pushing my mount to its limits. I grasped the outstretched hand and hoisted her onto the back of the saddle in one swift motion. The screaming followed us on the empty plains further than I would've liked, until I realised that a winged creature had been pursuing us all the while, the blood curdling din not a result of the lost battle. It fell on us from the sky, all black skin and taloned limbs. I heard her shriek as
 
 my hands worked quickly, fingers moving in time with my incantations. Blue light danced before me, a dull and shapeless blur, but moulded into a perfect oblong. Another joined me, and the solid colour of the centre punched out and revealed a landscape untouched by monsters and death. "Quickly!" I shouted, letting the other mages leap through the portal as I held its shimmering edges. I prepared to stretched the boundaries just long enough to let myself through, but then I heard the shattering of glass and
 
Illidan awoke on the ground, his head lolling groggily. He retched, but nothing came out. A shiver broke over his skin, drenching his forehead in sweat. His thoughts barely rose out of the muck that was his mind; little more than the foggy fatigue that settled upon him registered at all.
 
A pair of hands wrapped around one arm, and another set around the other, hauling him to his feet. The kaldorei struggled to raise his head, and took them both in.
 
"He's alive, isn't he?" Clawfang said, scratching at the fur behind his raised ears. "He didn't see too much too fast?"
 
Regis' half-lidded eyes ran over Illidan. "He seems all right. Although much worse for wear."
 
"Regis ... Clawfang ..." Illidan muttered through numb lips. He remembered what happened, but not how he was still alive. He should certainly be dead. "Get ... get me out ... of here."
 
A red light flashed in the werewolf's eyes, and a partially decomposed skull phased through his face. You ... were ... warned ...The ethereal head of Johnny Boy's ghost slipped back into Clawfang's body and forced him to bared his fangs.
 
"No ..." Illidan slurred. He rolled his head towards his head necromancer, or quite possibly his only necromancer now. "Regis ..."
 
A pure white face extended out of Regis', the face of a woman contorted in terror, eyes blank. You ... expelled ... me ... now ... you ... are ... mine ... Kat's spectre resumed control of the necromancer and together with the werewolf, started dragging the night elf towards Poenari Castle. Illidan's limbs went limp, dragging in the gravel of the bailey, bumping over the dead bodies of his army.
 
"Where ... where are you taking me?"
 
Ronaldo stepped in front of the night elf, coalescing from the shadows of the fortress, and grinned. "To meet the king of the castle."

[Illidan Stormrage]

Illidan clenched his teeth and ordered his eyelids to stay open as he was hauled into Poenari Castle. His head dangled from his neck, bobbing with the movements of his captors, his muscles reduced to firm jelly. Perhaps it was the expenditure of his fel magic, or the stampede of ghosts that overwhelmed his mind, or a mixture of both, but the kaldorei was in no state to resist. Every muscle ached and pulsed, and it felt as if concrete had settled and hardened in his limbs. That same weight pressed on his eyelids, but the night elf struggled, refusing to relinquish his consciousness. Whatever was coming next, he wanted to be awake for it.
 
An anger that subsequently dimmed beneath the folds of his exhaustion bloomed when he thought about how his own lieutenants were being manipulated like puppets. Clawfang, granted, was a creature born of a curse and lacking in specific supernatural power, other than the enhanced lupine qualities given by lycanthropy. Taking control of a werewolf, one that fell further to the side of instinct than intelligence, was not a worthy or fearful ability.
 
However, Regis' possession unnerved Illidan. While he had seen little of the necromancer's true skill in action, his spectral sight afforded him a glimpse of another's potential and he had been impressed at what he had found in Regis. To believe that Regis had succumbed to the wraiths through any means but arrogance was concerning. Maybe their numbers were simply too great for him to handle, or maybe Illidan's first impressions of the dark sorcerer were off the mark.
 
In any case, the night elf knew he was alone. He'd seen firsthand the devastation that the haunted castle had wrought on his forces. Many were unfortunately ill equipped to battle against spirits of air and sound and became easy pickings. Of those who could shred the ghosts' ethereal forms, there were not enough, or not seasoned in such chaotic confrontations. Perhaps some had scattered into the wispy fields before the bailey stood empty, but then Illidan would sooner constrict their hearts within their chests before he would accept cowardice to creep into the soldiers of his armies.
 
Illidan felt his shins slapping the blunt edges of stairs as he and his jailors ascended. Each stair smashed his ailing muscles as if they were bruised all over, but there was nothing the kaldorei could do to stop it. He breathed in sharply as a particularly jagged edge scraped his violet skin and coughed at the thick and stifling air. It wasn't like that at the ground level, was it? The night elf endured needles through his neck as he craned his head. The darkness signified that he had indeed been dragged into Poenari Castle, and the amber light lacing the walls confirmed it. Yet he could see that foul magic permeating the air, itching his lungs, strengthening as they trudged on and up the stairwell.
 
"Shut up back there," Illidan heard from deep within a cave. He caught the sight of that traitor Ronaldo leading the possessed lieutenants, his left arm ending at the elbow. I should have shortened that bastard by a head instead of a forearm.
 
"What ... is this all about ..." Illidan mumbled, unable to finish the question with an upward inflection.
 
"I think it's obvious," Ronaldo growled, waving his stumpy limb. "Luckily for me, it doesn't have to be permanent. But the indignity of the situation calls for revenge." He continued to speak as they climbed higher into the castle, finally reaching the top of the stairwell and passing under a large archway. The vampire didn't favour the night elf with even a contemptible gaze. "Killing you is all well and good, but I get the feeling you're a Prime, and if you are, you'll come back to life after a time and seek me out again. So I am going to imprison you in a place even Count Dracula won't find you, and spend the rest of my existence in this horrid dimension teasing and torturing the vampirism inside you until you finally shatter and become a wild beast. Before that, though, I'm going to ..." He straightened his spine and the next thought struck against the back of his teeth. " ... present you to the power that holds the haunting in check here."
 
That wasn't what you were going to say. Illidan's foggy mind could not muster the strength to follow that train of thought, to realise his true plan. And so he slumped fully, letting Clawfang and Regis carry his entire weight through the dust strewn corridors and crumbling staircases, pouring all of his energy into keeping his blazing eyeballs unsheathed.
 
Time passed, but the exact amount was beyond Illidan. Amber light had grown so strong that he could see it glinting through the cracks in the stone pathway beneath him. Some of its sheen even reflected off his purple skin, and the kaldorei demon hunter knew the source of the spirits' power was exceptionally close.
 
"Is this it?" he heard Ronaldo. "I'm getting tired of traipsing around this filthy castle."
 
Fake Clawfang growled. "How dare you call it filthy, you -"
 
Fake Regis stuffed a hand on the werewolf's furry chest. "Calm down. We will sort this out soon." He looked at the vampire. "Yes. Through this door."
 
Illidan had regained some of his lost strength during the journey, and while his muscles still pulsed with the beat of his heart, he could at least move again if he wasn't restrained. There was no way he would fight his way free, though.
 
The wooden door before them creaked open and the dull light of the Pale Moors greeted them. A small balcony looked out over the castle's bailey and the great misty fields beyond it. Clouds rolled ceaselessly onwards, uncaring of the dozens of dead bodies littering the ground beneath them.
 
A robed figure leaned against the balcony wall, a wooden staff clutched in his stained fingers, the staff's top imbedded with a spherical amber pearl emitting a faint glow. All of the amber strands of light flowed freely from the orb like streams of yellow water. The cowl twitched at the sound of the door and a gravelly voice extended towards them. "You have finally made it."
 
Not-Clawfang glared at Ronaldo. "Wait here." The vampire's mouth parted for a moment but closed again as Illidan was dragged forward and dumped at the mysterious figure's feet. The possessed lieutenants took a step back as their leader turned to address the night elf. Illidan struggled to his feet, unwilling to die on his knees, but made sure to do it slowly and painstakingly so as to avoid a hastening of his death. Even once standing, he swayed on unsteady legs, hunched over, grabbing the balcony wall to stay upright.
 
The cloaked figure was a few feet shorter than Illidan, but what respect his stature did not impart, the indescribable power the night elf sensed within him did. He wrapped hands - human hands - around the staff to support his frame; judging by the way his billowy robe flowed over him, the skeleton beneath lacked much substance. The darkness of the cowl hid his identity from the night elf, or would have if not for his magically imbued sight.
 
"You can see my face, can't you?" the figure croaked. "Those eyes, even hidden from the world by a strip of fabric, can see clearer than an eagle's."
 
Illidan forced an awkward nod. He could indeed make out the human's face; middle-aged, short black hair, but his body had been ravaged by whatever destructive magic he dabbled in. His skin was pockmarked and saggy, more white hair than black poked out of his skull, and deep bags underscored dreary and clouded eyes.
 
"Why am I here?" Illidan said. Despite his unfavourable position, he would rather die quickly than be subjected to an insane sorcerer's ramblings before it. "Your ghosts decimated my army, possessed my two officers, and turned my prisoner into a traitor. Why not just blast my head off and be done with it?"
 
"I want some answers," the sorcerer said. "I want to know why a force of Dracula's soldiers would suddenly invade an empty castle, when it has been left to sit destitute for years. I want to know why their commander had seemingly not thought through the attack and had not considered that a great bulk of his army could not rend spirit at all."
 
Illidan had no qualms with speaking the truth. "Count Dracula is my king, and I want to serve as a lord beneath his kingdom. But what is a lord without a domain to call his own? Thus I learned of this abandoned castle, and -"
 
"It is not abandoned!" the sorcerer yelled, his voice strained and carried out into the bailey.
 
" ... I see that now." Illidan did well to only crinkle his nose at the rude interruption.
 
The cowled magician ran his eyes over Illidan, and the amber pearl of his staff shone brightly for just a moment, and he smiled. "Yes. A devoted follower of Count Dracula. Just overzealous in his ambitions."
 
Illidan said nothing.
 
"What are you planning to do with him?" Ronaldo said, standing in the arch of the doorway. "When are you going to kill him?"
 
The sorcerer abruptly dropped to his hands and knees, his staff clattering on the stone floor, and wept. Illidan screwed up his face as his captor cried uncontrollably, his stick-thin frame declared through the robe that shaped about it. What on Azeroth was he crying for?
 
Johnny-Clawfang sniffed. "Please old friend, don't cry."
 
For the first time, Illidan saw expression on Regis' face, though he knew it belonged to the ghost living within him. "It's OK Corny, really."
 
The sorcerer, named Corny apparently, took in heaving breaths and pushed himself to his knees. Illidan started as he took his focus from the sorcerer noticed the balcony completely ringed by spirits. While most lacked the pliable skin needed to express sadness, the ghosts that could did.
 
This was getting absurd. Why hadn't Corny done anything yet? Why was he so unstable, roaring at Illidan one moment and collapsing in tears the next? Think, Illidan. There's more here than meets the eye.
 
Corny sniffed as he stood, supporting his pitiable weight on his staff. "I'm sorry, everyone. It's just ... we lost a lot of good souls today."
 
He identified with these ghoulish abominations? What in the Twisting Nether was going on here? The night elf suppressed his disgust and confusion, realising a way out could be presenting itself if he only said the right things.
 
"I'm ..." Illidan sighed, forcing himself onward, " ... sorry, Corny, is it?"
 
"Cornelius," the sorcerer corrected through sniffs. He used the baggy sleeve of his robe to wipe the tears streaked down his cheeks, knocking back the cowl that shadowed his face. "Cornelius White."
 
"Yes. Help me understand what's happening here. In any other situation, I would be dead by now." A flash of an ancient memory reared up in his mind; a room of perpetual darkness, with only the whispers of demons to break the silence. "Or sentenced and left forgotten to rot in a jail cell."
 
"Illidan," Cornelius said, though the night elf was astonishingly sure he hadn't imparted his name, "there is much you don't understand. Perhaps it is not a clear method of doing so, but there are few options." He gestured to the night elf's possessed officers. "Did Johnny Boy and Kat speak to you before the battle began?"
 
The demon hunter furrowed his brow. Don't react, think about what he's asking. "Yes. They asked me if ... I saw. If I ..." As Illidan dwelled on the words, and his thoughts moved from a jumbled mess and into clear lines, the words of the spirit took on a meaning, one that he had failed to see in the heat of the moment. "He asked if I understood."
 
Cornelius smiled with thin, dried lips. "Yes? If you understood what?"
 
Illidan channelled his empathy. He knew all of the ghosts that entered him had shown the night elf their dying moments, and the situations surrounding them. He tried to think of them as his own people, as though the kaldorei had been in a similar predicament. And then it struck him. His people had been in the same hopeless struggle before. Ten thousand years ago, with the first arrival of the Burning Legion, the night elves fought and clawed for survival against odds they didn't fully understand. Some were betrayed by the officers and leaders appointed to their roles specifically to keep the populace safe, and these humans had also been abandoned by their rulers. Illidan's choice to undermine the Burning Legion from within had been born from the inept leadership and wasteful decisions made by the kaldorei commanders.
 
The connection made Illidan feel ... oddly conflicted. Humans had never amounted to much in his world. Could his race and these spirits have endured the same ghastly catastrophe? Could there be a common understanding?
 
"Your people-"
 
"My friends," Cornelius White interjected.
 
Illidan fought the rising disquiet in his stomach. "Yes, your friends. They died protecting their friends and family, yet they battled against impossible odds. Your kings and your leaders scuttled away at the first sign of trouble, consigning these spirits to their fates long before demon claws rent their flesh. They were ... betrayed."
 
The haggard sorcerer grinned, revealing plaque encrusted teeth. "Yes! So you do understand, Illidan."
 
"What does any of this have to do with Illidan?" Ronaldo shouted.
 
Kat-Regis fired a furious gaze at the vampire. "Shut up!"
 
"But there's something you still don't get, isn't there?" Cornelius asked, ignorant of Ronaldo's outburst.
 
"I have lost people I cared about in war before." A half-truth; Illidan despaired that his race had dwindled against the onslaught of the Burning Legion, but the only loss he ever truly mourned was that of Tyrande. "And while I possess the talent, I have never resurrected their ghosts and moped about with them."
 
Cornelius frowned, his skin sagging so much it looked as if it would bunch together and melt off his skull. "Moping? Who said anything about moping?" He waved a bony hand at the ghosts that encircled them. "This is a tribute to all of the men and women who fell to Diablo's forces! They continue to exist because of me!"
 
It was a risk, but Illidan's gut told him to take it. "And to do what? Remind you of their loss? Lock them in perpetual misery, tethering them to a place that saw their final, bloody moments? What kind of existence is that?"
 
Cornelius bared teeth, and the amber pearl atop his staff shone. For a moment, Illidan thought he'd pushed the necromancer too far. Then his head drooped into his chest, and the pearl returned to its normal glow. "You ... you speak truth."
 
"Why, then?" Illidan said. "Why do this?"
 
The dark sorcerer sighed. "Illidan ... before Poenari Castle fell before Diablo and its belongings ravaged, I was a mage stationed here. I knew many of the soldiers here; in the early days, it was quiet, and there was plenty of time for socialising. In the beginning, it all seemed easy. We would protect Darkshire from the raids that happened periodically, and then we'd switch out with a new contingent."
 
"Only ... before that could happen, the raids occurred more frequently, more viciously. I fought, blasting apart demons with fire, healing wounds with my magic ... but our efforts were useless by the end." Anger suffused Cornelius' voice. "And as soon as the going got tough, King Aragorn and his precious advisors abandoned the castle without even declaring it to us. They just ... left."
 
White took a moment to collect himself, dabbing at his worn eyes with his sleeve. "They didn't send a single reinforcement after that. We were left here to slow the advancement of Diablo, to buy time for the elite minds of Camelot to think up of a solution. And all of these brave men and women died for no reason. Their spilt blood didn't give Camelot time to implement a plan to stop the demons, it didn't gain a single ounce of gratitude from the filthy maggots of Darkshire who still cling to their pathetic little town. Their sacrifices were never honoured or even remembered."
 
"And so I, being the last of the survivors here, hiding for weeks from the demons that scoured the castle for resources and fresh meat, decided that this injustice would not stand. I turned to the dark art of necromancy, the magic that we had always been taught was forbidden, and brought these noble souls back from the cold nothingness of death. I stay to preserve their legacy, so that those who wronged us will remember the wrath of the spurned."
 
The ghosts gave a collective cheer, in tones of humans, instead of the eerie groans and howls they emitted during the battle. Cornelius had been completely consumed by his sadness and anger, and the wraiths either believed the same as him, or his own emotions were affecting the products of his spells. As Illidan listened to their righteous fury, his blind gaze stretched out over the horizon, an idea hatched in his mind. There was a way he could clear the castle, satisfy Cornelius and his spectres and impress Count Dracula all at the same time.
 
"And yet, they don't remember you." All eyes fell on Illidan. Cornelius studied the night elf with a dagger stare, poised as if waiting to hear the next words before deciding his course of action. "All of you. I agree; your losses were appalling, and for naught. You deserve retribution for the betrayal hoisted on you all. But creeping around long-forgotten ruins will not grant you the satisfaction that you seek - nay, that you are owed."
 
"Then how shall we extract our vengeance?" White asked.
 
Time to close the trap. "They will never come to you. But you can go to them!"
 
"To Camelot?" Cornelius said. "Illidan, necromancy has brought these men and women back from the brink, but it has wasted me. I cannot travel, and I will be an easy target."
 
Illidan shook his head. "No, Camelot is not realistic right now." Illidan had no idea if he spoke the truth; he didn't know a thing about the land, but that hardly mattered. "I say this; appoint me as your commander, and I will take these spirits and attack Darkshire!"
 
Confusion reigned as the ghosts mumbled amongst themselves. Ronaldo grimaced but didn't say anything. Cornelius frowned and looked pointedly at the kaldorei. "Attack Darkshire?"
 
"Yes!" Illidan said. "Didn't you just say that your comrades-in-arms - your friends, died defending that place? Is it not the fault of Darkshire that they are dead, and that they haunt their final resting place? Is it not true that they never sent reinforcements to aid you?"
 
White's eyes darted about. "Well, that is technically true ... but they are our people. How could we turn on them?"
 
"Your people?" Illidan repeated. He found a great well of inspiration for his next rebuttal, having lived it himself. "How can you call them your people when they let you die?! Perhaps you share the same blood, the same heritage, but that is where it ends! If they were truly your people, this never would have happened! The people of Darkshire are directly responsible for your ends, and yet you defend them?"
 
"While your compassion is honourable, it is misplaced. Demons may have slaughtered you, but they never would have done so if your people truly cared for you! There is blood on the hands of Darkshire's populace; your blood. Why should they live? What right do they have to support the notion that their lives are worth more than yours?!"
 
The spirits of the dead murmured in soft agreement. Illidan could see his words grinding through the necromancer's mind. Years of inward-facing rage and despair were working to the demon hunter's advantage. "Yes ... yes. You're right. First we'll kill all those traitors in Darkshire, and then onto the Kingdom of Camelot!"
 
The spirits shouted for joy in unison.
 
"And yet," Cornelius interrupted the celebration, "why should you lead them to their vengeance? We annihilated your forces. You could lead these people to a similar demise."
 
Illidan shook his head. "Nonsense. I have learned from my experience. Your brave soldiers have taught me the value of caution, and the need for information before committing to battle. Besides, they're a human settlement. While they will have some supernatural defences, the majority of their number will be men wielding sharp blocks of steel. Just as your friends stomped my army, they will also stomp Darkshire's defences for the same reasons."
 
A wry smile crawled onto Cornelius' mouth, and Illidan knew he had him. "And of me? I must maintain their spirits or else they will fail."
 
"You will accompany us to Darkshire, where you will select as many of your friends to defend you as you wish." Perhaps this would turn out to be a lie, but Illidan promised it anyway. "And if things become too heated, I will personally see to your protection."
 
Ronaldo burst past Johnny-Clawfang and Kat-Regis. "You can't be seriously considering what he's saying, can you? He'll betray you the first chance he gets!"
 
Illidan glared at the vampire, cracking his knuckles. "Thus far, the only evidence of betrayal has been by you, vampire. You turned on your commander, believing I would be killed while you would be spared. I only offer these people the revenge they so richly deserve, and you would rob them of that?"
 
Cornelius stepped forward awkwardly, nodding. "He speaks truth. Betrayers have no place here." He pointed the amber pearl of his staff at Ronaldo, and it blazed with light. Ronaldo stood in blank horror as his body burned with the same hue, disintegrating into blackened pieces that slung into the air on the wind.
 
The necromancer grinned at the night elf. "Let's begin our preparations then, shall we?"