Icecrown Glacier

[moonshadows]

            The winds of Icecrown Glacier caressed his skin with blunted claws, invisible fingers stroking his wings and ruffling his hair. The heat of demonic energy that burned within his blood kept him warm enough that the cold did not penetrate him, and he closed his eyes behind the cloth hiding them, pretending for a moment that he was only himself, in a place that no longer existed, and that the dreadful reality of his situation was only a figment of an over-active imagination. A daymare. The wind swirled almost playfully around him, and he smiled faintly. If he lived another ten thousand years, he would never tire of feeling the wind on his face.

            The snow creaked behind him, accompanied by a dry hissing rather than the swish of cloth. The sound stopped a respectful distance away, and he allowed his lips to twitch into a slight smirk before Vashj said, “All is in readiness, Lord Illidan.”

            “You are not bothered by the cold?” he asked with mild curiosity, and his lieutenant gave that odd, hissing chuckle.

“The ocean floor is far colder, my lord. Our sorceresses are well-trained in bringing geothermal vents to the surface, although our younger cousins need the warmth more than we.”

Ah, yes. The blood elves, led by young Kael, following him out of loyalty to their prince, who in turn has come here in search of vengeance.

“Why do you follow me, Vashj?”

“My lord?”

“Kael serves me out of a thirst for vengeance, but you and your people were Highborne, and never wronged by the undead. Why do you serve me? Why do your people follow you into this grim land?”

The naga is silent for a long moment.

“Because I remember your eyes.”

Taloned hands clenched tightly enough to draw blood, the wounds quickly healed by the same burning that kept him warm.

“Our queen’s eyes are gold, and we believed that she would lead us to a great destiny. Instead, she brought ruin to the world and cursed us with these monstrous forms. That was the grand destiny her eyes proclaimed. She had yours removed because she would not tolerate any challenge to her glory, and the Highborne sided with her, blinded by our lust for all the things she promised. But even without them, you defied her and rid our world of the demons.”

“And sundered it,” he interjected bitterly.

“Better a sundered world than a demon’s playground,” she hissed calmly. “When we heard your call, those of us who desired more than an aquatic mockery of our former glory and the games of mad power the queen plays came to the surface. We chose to follow you because we believe that the time of your destiny has not yet arrived, and we want to be a part of it. We follow you, Lord Illidan, because you triumphed over Azshara. We believe that you will triumph again, and the destiny of your eyes will bring what we desire – what you desire. The freedom to start over, to be more than we have become.”

The corpses of childhood dreams rise from their graves and choke him, and he is grateful that she cannot see his expression. “Let us hope that your faith is not misplaced,” he growls, the words thick with skepticism and clogged by the ghosts of other emotions he is not in the habit of feeling.

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He does not sleep, the reminder of his youth bringing a long-lost feeling of kinship with the night. The thought that he might need to rest before the final assault does not even occur to him; he has gone longer than this without sleep more times than he can remember, and some part of him that the world hasn’t managed to break yet yearns for the naïve comfort of his youthful belief that Elune would make everything right in the end. He stands on a ridge above the sprawling camp, bound eyes turned towards the White Lady, all his hopes and fears open to the Goddess he can no longer quite believe in.

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“We meet again, little human.”

‘Demon hunter.” The pale man’s lips quirked into something not quite a smile. “I see you found the Skull. My master congratulates you on your victory, but tell me – is your will still your own?”

The verbal dart hit its mark, but he had taken many worse blows over the centuries and instead of snarling, he smirked. “Is yours?”

Arthas snarled. “You will find we are no longer evenly matched, demon hunter.”

Illidan smiled coldly, the Warglaives of Azzinoth flaring green to match the glow of the runes on his chest and arms. “Are you sure about that?”

Ten thousand years of learned bravado utterly overwhelmed a psyche already weakened by the doubts that had led him to this moment, and with an incoherent cry of strangled rage Arthas launched himself at the half-demon.

Had the fight taken place anywhere else, Illidan would have triumphed easily. However, on the Lich King’s very doorstep, Arthas was slowly gaining the upper hand. Blinded by rage, he hadn’t noticed it yet – but the demon hunter knew it was only a matter of time. The deathknight’s armor was badly battered, the demon hunter’s skin untouched – but that was a misleading illusion. Demonic healing sealed the shallow slices Illidan suffered, and though rent in many places, Arthas’s armor had yet to fail in its purpose. The human’s stamina was fading although his magical energy, fed to him by his unholy master, was still strong. By contrast, Illidan as physically capable of fighting for hours more, but he was running out of energy with which to fuel his regeneration. As he had done so many times before, he opened his magical senses, blindly searching for a source of magic to draw from as he had once drunk from the Well of Eternity. Power flooded him, cold and bitter and tasting of rot, and he redoubled his efforts while Arthas’s strength flagged. More and more he drew in, raining blows on his opponent until finally the human fell to his knees.

Illidan paused to savor his triumph before striking the human’s head off, and in that moment the energy he’d consumed – the very essence of the Lich King, lent to his champion – turned against him. Pain such as he hadn’t felt since consuming the Skull of Gul’dan assaulted him, freezing and burning, seemingly intent on turning him inside-out cell by cell. He dropped to his hands and knees, stomach heaving, retching and spitting vile-smelling black fluid onto the churned and trampled slow, his body trying to expel the foul energy inside him. A sudden pain in his side turned out to be Arthas’s armored boot, kicking him onto his back. The deathknight gave him a bloodthirsty, feral grin as the glowing length of Frostmourne plunged down, through his abdomen, pinning the half-demon to the packed snow. Illidan screamed, feeling the magic of the sword pull at his life force, power bleeding out of him, leaving only bitter cold as the world went black.

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“Heat!” a cold voice protested. “He needs heat!”

“Fool,” a hissing voice answered, “the cold is the only thing keeping him alive.”

“Is this your betrayal at last, naga witch?”

“Foolish child, the chill slows his heart – and by necessity, his bleeding slow. I am buying him time for your priests to get here and save what remains of his life!”

“He’ll get frostbite!”

“Then he’ll be alive to be frostbitten. Now stop wasting time and summon your healers!”

The effort of speaking was almost beyond him, lips stiff and cold. He was so cold…chilled beyond shivering, and so tired… “Do as she says…Kael…” he breathed, every sound an exercise in stubborn will.

“Yes, Lord Illidan,” the blood elf ground out, clearly unhappy.

Darkness enveloped him again, waking the horrors that had kept him company when his Warden was not tormenting him. Once, a presence like a great pillar of flame prodded his mind and he cried out as the pieces were stirred with little regard for his battered sanity. Slowly, painfully, he gathered the tattered shreds of his psyche and began to piece them together again as he had done so many times before, forcing torn edges shut and creating mismatched order where there had been only chaos. Slowly, slowly, the void of bitter cold in his gut was replaced by faint warmth, and still he drifted, alone with the dark things that lived in his mind. Then, suddenly, the cold vanished and searing heat assaulted him, every nerve on fire as he returned to wakefulness in a blaze of pain. His vision swam with a riot of mad colors, hulking shapes pulsing with a network of sickly fel green surrounding him, and his blades were in his hands before he realized that they were not attacking him and forced his sight to reveal the physical world.

The hulking demon-infused shapes resolved into fearful-looking orcs, fel orcs, clutching the ruins of the litter they must have been carrying him on. Moments later, naga myrmidons and sin’dorei magisters came running up in alarm that calmed when they saw their lord standing on his own two hooves.

“Vashj,” he gasped, struggling for control in the face of the fiery pain that still swept through him. “…and Kael.”

“This way, Lord Illidan,” one of the naga hissed with a sinuous bow.

They led him to an ornate tent. He flung the flaps open as though tossing the corpses of his foes over his shoulders, all his rattled nerves channeled into a show of fury, and glared blindly at his lieutenants.

“You’re awake,” the slighter of the two said with a shade too much surprise for his lord’s taste.

“How do you feel, my lord?” Vashj asked almost eagerly.

“Well enough that I nearly slaughtered the fel orcs bearing me,” he answered dryly. “Now, where are we? How long has it been? What has transpired since…” the words dried up, choking him.

“You screamed, the obelisks crumbled, and the undead fell over,” Kael said bitterly. “There was no trace of Arthas, and you were almost too frozen to bleed. It’s a miracle you survived long enough for Vashj’s sirens to put you on ice…so to speak.”

“Kael’s priests have been working nonstop to heal you,” the naga said soothingly. “It’s been three weeks, and just this morning they announced that you were whole again and the spells keeping you in hibernation could be released.”

“Lord Illidan,” Kael’thas interjected, “we didn’t know what to do, so we returned here. We were on our way back to the Black Temple. Now that you’re awake…what are your orders?”

Cloth-covered eyes gazed through the tent fabric at invisible horizons. “We make this world our own, and fortify it for the day that Kil’jaeden comes looking for us.”