This Thing Don't Look So Tough

[Illidan Stormrage]

Illidan snarled at the forest children, wielding their primitive weapons fashioned from bone and bark. Their dirtied faces creased with what they thought were intimidating countenances. Stormrage breathed in deeply and pulsed light from his emerald tattoos that snaked his body, eliciting a handful of gasps from the young humans. If there weren’t so many serrated arrowheads pointing at them, this standstill would have been over by now.
 
“What is this nonsense?” the helmeted one bellowed. “What on earth are you children doing in the middle of the Moors?”
 
The little girl with the bright eyes stepped forward, ostensibly their leader. Illidan sensed the thin fog that wreathed them throb like a vein responding to a beating heart. A mumbled sound teased his long ears so subtly that he wasn’t sure he heard anything at all.
 
“Yeah, this is real motherfuckin’ strange,” the horned one noted. “Like, where the fuck are your parents?” He covered his mouth for a second. “Oops, should I be swearing around kids?”
 
“We’re not children,” the little girl said. “At least, we weren’t.”
 
Illidan growled. “Speak plainly. I’ve lost scouts to this cursed forest. I find it hard to believe you frail creatures could persevere here when my trained demon hunters could not.”
 
“Yes,” the goateed human said, scrutinising their captors with keen eyes. “How do you children survive in such a harsh landscape?”
 
The boughs of the trees jostled ever so slightly. A handful of leaves spun like shurikens as they fell lazily from the branches.
 
The little girl giggled, a childish and carefree sound that jarred against the tense situation they found themselves in. “We’re protected by the One. Nothing can harm us while it is watching out for us.”
 
“The One?” the white haired one said. “What are you talking about?”
 
“You’ll meet it soon enough,” she said, smiling. “It’s very interested in you all. It wants to protect you too, just like it protects all of us. We are all safe here.”
 
“What is it protecting you from?” the goateed one said.
 
The girl shrugged. “Everything. All the bad things outside the forest. It’s not safe out there, but as long as we stay with the trees, nothing can hurt us.”
 
“Enough with your vague allusions,” Illidan said. “If you children are here, then where are my lost scouting parties? Or did this One ‘protect’ you from them as well?”
 
“No silly,” the girl said. “The One protects them as well. Look. Don’t you see them?”
 
Illidan frowned and cast his gaze over the lines of child soldiers encircling them. All he saw were pink skinned human children, their grubby faces lined with soil like war paint, their tiny hands gripping makeshift bows and bone daggers, their hair messy and festooned with twigs. One shuffled on his feet, and Illidan stopped on him. The child’s thin blonde hair flowed down his back, his eyes covered by a strip of cloth. What Stormrage initially mistook for vines or long blades of grass hanging over his chest and arms were actually tattoos.
 
The night elf demon arched his brow. “A blood elf demon hunter. Turned... into a child.”
 
The young warrior said nothing.
 
“The One brings us all back to being children and looks after us,” the girl said, spreading her arms wide to the group. “And it will do it for you as well.”
 
“It will do no such thing,” the helmeted one said.
 
“You’re already in its forest. You have no choice.”
 
The whispers that played at the edge of Illidan’s hearing intensified. The mist thickened and thudded in time with his pulse. His head fogged and he stumbled backwards, his balance slipping out of his control. The night elf demon dropped to one knee and bowed his head, trying to rein in the heavy swaying. He looked up to see his associates fighting their own internal wars, battling to stay upright but inevitably falling to the ground.
 
A cold sensation crawled over Illidan’s skin like a swarm of spiders, little tingly legs tapping ceaselessly into his pores. He dug fingers into the dirt and clenched his jaw, groaning as the tingling penetrated his body and jabbed into his mind. He collapsed onto hands and knees, his entire body growing heavy and tired.
 
“You... you won’t take me,” Illidan managed to fumble through numbing lips. “I... am the great... Illidan...”
 
“Yes, the great Illidan Stormrage,” the girl cooed. “Now go to sleep. Everything will be all right when you wake up. It promises. Can’t you hear it?”
 
The whispers grew to undecipherable shouts. Illidan’s eyes shut and his body thudded onto the forest ground.