Fallen - the Sordid Tale of Fellen Demonhunter
Jan 28, 2018 21:44:51 GMT -5
Shari'Adune Forestsong likes this
Post by Feljäger on Jan 28, 2018 21:44:51 GMT -5
Part One: Twilight
Azeroth was a beautiful world.
Fellen Demonhunter, then named Faronis of Hyjal, was born into a beautiful world of verdant glades and pristine mountains. The world was whole but not without its dangers, yet in his early centuries there was little more than peace in his lands. There was little to remind his people of the wars that had raged between Keepers and their Titan-Forged. Gone were the stains of the Old Gods. His people were only a scant vestige removed from the Dark Trolls that roamed beneath the earth, and they lived a life of attunement to nature and of harmony with the living things that coexisted with them in their forests. Young Faronis grew up among the secluded tribes of Night Elves that made the evening their home and the forests around Hyjal their bastion.
His parents were of the later Dark Troll descendants that grew up along the Well of Eternity, they were some of the first Night Elves, and when his mother had become pregnant the pair moved back into the shadow of the holy mountain of Hyjal, as was the tradition within their tribe and many others. There they joined with other elves that had made the same pilgrimage, for similar reasons, and thus Faronis was born into that world of tranquility and love.
His early life was marked by trips back and forth between his forest home around Hyjal and the growing capital of Elun’dris. Though his parents followed older paths, mystical paths that revered nature and communed with the primal spirits that were the protectors and children of the Wild Gods, Faronis was drawn to the practices of sorcery and the arts of arcane magic craft that were developing along the shores of the Well. He admired the beauty of nature but also the beauty of the arcane and what that energy could be used to create. As the Highborne emerged from the populace, lead by the beauteous and magnificent Queen Azshara, Faronis Nightweaver followed their lead. His parents supported their only child as best they could, but as the society of the Highborne rose they took the harmony to be found around Hyjal more to their liking.
However Faronis began to see the beauty of his world fade. Shadows fell across what he once saw as luminous and perfect, for he was not to be one of the Quel’dorei, the Highborne, and thus he was forever to find only a place at the edge of the society he admired and thirsted to taste. His skills at sorcery were clumsy, by comparison, and his form was not as beautiful as those that became the Queen’s chosen. No matter how hard he tried his command of the arcane eluded his mastery. No matter how often he changed his hair, or clothing, or styles, his form was always more like his Dark Troll ancestors, and less like the winnowy elegance of the Quel’dorei that had become infused with the energy that washed from the fount of life, the Well of Eternity. He was also alone in the city along the shores of the Well, his parents having removed themselves to the tranquil glens under the holy mountain. So as he grew and trained he found himself increasingly moved into less prestigious positions within Elun’dris, now called Zin-Azshari, until he found himself removed even from that glamorous city. Assigned to assist the Quel’dorei in charge of cataloging plants on the expeditions the Queen sent about the land.
In time he was permanently assigned to the outpost at Then’Ralore and this was the final insult for Faronis. No longer could he train in the Academy of Zin-Azshari, for that city was now leagues distant. He was ordered into servitude to a botanist that he despised and a life reduced to holding samples and copying texts for reproduction in manuscripts that would go to the Academy of Zin-Azshari. He was an errand boy to a Quel’dorei mistress he loathed, a servant to a society he was estranged from, and a ghost of what he thought he would be as a young boy. One night he resolved to change this situation and thus he left, alone, to return to Zin-Azshari and utilize other skills he had picked up in his centuries to blend into the populace and become a shadow in the social order. A phantom of the night within the gleaming capital of the Night Elf Empire. A stalker that played many games, wore many faces, and fell deeper into his own world of darkness.
He no longer saw beauty in his world. He saw shadows that hid monsters. In corners that his people chose to ignore. In the lines of the faces of Kaldorei and Quel’dorei alike. All about him he saw evil and corruption, not of a demonic sort, his eyes were blinded to that real taint, but only of those monsters he was crafting for himself out of the clay of his rage and sense of injustice.
In due time Faronis saw his world crumble. Shadows clawed their way into reality to turn into living nightmares as demonic beings surged into the city and rampaged like fury given form against anything that looked like Faronis. He saw his monsters vanish like motes of smoke in a gale and were replaced by actual monsters. His self-righteous crusade to carve out evils from Zin-Azshari was instantly made to be foolish and irrelevant as the Burning Legion came to his world. As if destiny somehow smiled upon him Faronis was saved from certain death by an enigmatic figure, a warrior that used shadows as a weapon, a being unlike any Faronis had ever seen, a Kaldorei as he but of a wholly different cloth. Illidan Stormrage saved countless lives such as his in those days at the onset of the war and Faronis, as so many others like him, rallied swiftly to the call for resistance and revolution.
For a short while he attempted to locate his parents but found they had been slaughtered like so many other Kaldorei in Zin-Azshari. They were visiting the city as they often did, unaware of the evils that hid in that location. Totally ill prepared for the power and rage of a demon unleashed. Thus he was truly alone in the world, as there was no one else to care for him as his parents once had. There was no one he called friend and there was only one elf with whom he felt even a distant kinship with.
After Illidan became the leader of the Moon Guard it was only natural that Faronis joined that order. He had been practicing sorcery most of his life and was an open and ardent admirer of Illidan Stormrage. Faronis was one of many that would willingly transfer his arcane powers, which still had not manifested with the same potency as his peers, into Illidan directly thus allowing the magnificent Magus to command impressive powers of magic. He was one of the few Moon Guard survivors of the battle of Black Rook Hold, saved from certain death at the hands of Illidan himself by virtue of the fact he was wounded early in the battle and was therefore not present to be used as a living battery. Despite the horror of what had been done Faronis was one of the few that clearly understood why Illidan had taken such actions. His lasting regret was that he was not healthy enough to have served as a battery for his leader.
The War of Ancients raged. Neltharion betrayed all life and became the accursed Deathwing. Misery wracked the resistance and chilled every elf that witnessed that horrific act to the very core. Beauty had been shattered and innocence cast into the abyss. Those that fought in those battles emerged forever changed and he was no different.
When his savior, and trusted leader, Illidan vanished from the all sight Faronis discarded the vile name of his birth and took the name he would carry from then on. Fellen was born. A surname was considered unimportant as it held for him nothing of substance. He had witnessed the Burning Legion rape his world. He had lost the only two elves that he had ever felt any true affection toward. He had seen a mighty and respected Dragon Aspect rip himself asunder and cry out for the destruction of a world he was divinely appointed to protect. He had been abandoned by the only other elf he felt the slightest kinship to. His world was no longer beautiful. It was bleak and barren and filled with horrors. He would not insult this reality by pretending a surname was of any import, only a name by which another could directly refer to him as was needed, thus Fellen he became. However Fellen was not to be well known as he immediately faded into the background, vanishing into shadows and allowing others with more dynamic personalities to obscure his presence in history. He followed the Kaldorei that remained, assisting Jarod Shadowsong and the resistance, as he found a singular purpose in his new life and that was the complete eradication of all demons that drew Azerothian air. He was tracking a very cunning Sayaadi named Sez’sula when the Sundering broke like a planet sized bomb and caused his prey to scream in horror. He cut down the demoness, returning her to the Nether, and then watched as his world imploded.
He chased after others of his kind, escaping the devastation that killed many of his contemporaries, until he found the leadership congregating at Mount Hyjal. There he was present for the reappearance of Illidan and the discovery of the second Well of Eternity. He heard the Betrayer’s words and the meaning of them was clear to few others. The Burning Legion would be back. Illidan was changed, everyone could see that, he had learned secrets from his pact with Sargeras that no other elf would know, and no one seemed to accept this truth. All they saw was a careless disregard for the paranoia of Malfurion and those that took his path. A druidic path. Fellen was not a druid, he was a sorcerer, like his savior Illidan, and thus there was little question in the sorcerer’s mind whom had a clearer vision of what lay ahead.
Illidan was captured and imprisoned and with him went the last vestiges of the Night Elf culture from the heart of Fellen. Now all that Fellen saw were short sighted dupes content to wallow in their own fear. A divide cut the elf population apart, Quel’dorei leaving to follow Dath’Remar Sunstrider while most Kaldorei followed Malfurion Stormrage, while yet still other smaller cabals simply left both groups to strike out on their own, tired of cults of personality and seeking solitude in the shattered remains of Kalimdor.
Fellen made his own way in this age, the time called the Long Vigil. He moved about Kalimdor as he chose, never integrating into any culture again, never staying in any region for too long. He crossed paths with elves time and again as many of his kind continued their ways in near isolation. This was usually to the detriment of the elves he came across. Always he kept his keen ears alert to news of Illidan. The Burning Legion would return, Illidan had said so plainly, and Fellen trusted this portent with absolute certainty. Defeating the Legion at the end of the War of Ancients had cost the world dearly, and logic dictated that a foe so robust and bound to something as unfathomable as the Twisting Nether would not be destroyed by such an event. The next conflict was coming. Fellen felt certain that Illidan would rise again, freed of his shackles, to lead the elves of Kalimdor once again to victory over the demonic enemy.
Fellen waited for 10’000 years. In that time Fellen had found the city of Eldre’Thalas and the Quel’dorei Shen’dralar that lived therein, and their means of drawing energy off of an imprisoned demon named Immol’thar to sustain their immortality and beauty. But as with all things tainted by the fel the city seethed with corruption and a steady descent into depravity. Fellen sensed these things readily, for a monster of the darkness can smell its own kind and knew the stench of depravity as it tainted the air. He used a resident sorceress, a Quel’dorei named Tyandris Whisperblade, of the Shen’dralar to expand his own arcane knowledge as well as adapt to a means of drawing off of fel energies. He studied tomes of demonology and learned what he could from his secretive companion. When he left Eldre’Thalas he silenced Tyandris and made quite certain he never approached the hidden city, the doomed city, at any time in the ages to come.
The Second Invasion dawned and unlike many others, that neglected to study the arcane and the ley lines that pulsed and flowed like the arteries of a living being across Azeroth, Fellen knew there was Fel afoot. It disturbed the ley powers, disrupted the flow of natural magic, and upset the balance that elves of most kinds did their best to try and maintain. Fellen, however, did not seek balance in the same fashion. When the Horde came into their world, when the Black Gate ripped open to the song of the shredded souls of the dead, he felt the ripples in the depths of his soul. Illidan had called this as the future and though it had been one hundred centuries the prediction had come to pass. He searched Kalimdor for signs of this disturbance but found nothing. Only later did he learn that the gate to a new reality had been opened and on the other side of the world.
Eventually, ultimately, Fellen was drawn to Outland, and well before Illidan was freed. The source of the Second Invasion, the land of the Orc Horde, beaconed to him like a flame to a moth. A world infused with energies unlike any that marked ley pathways through Azeroth. The home of demons and their orc slaves. A world where Fellen could be free to act as he wished and with pathways through the Twisting Nether that a sorcerer of his caliber could detect and utilize, if only he could draw up enough metaphysical power.
With enough soul power.
His time in Eldra’Thalas had taught him many things and one of those spells was drawn from Fel sources but channeled by the arcane weave, a power that drew strength from the souls of the living and burned that essence into nothingness as it transmuted spirit into magical energy. It was most easily used on demons, but Fellen had become a clever student of spellcraft, and he found variant formulae and rituals that could be applied to other spiritual beings. For his purposes elves were often the best victims and thus began his most diabolical manipulation of others thus far.
In the end one hundred elves were fed to his arcane machinations and he crossed from Azeroth into the realm that was once Draenor, and was now the shattered plane called Outland. A world of noble Draenei, hardened Orcs, and a glorious assortment of other native species the likes of which were paramount examples of life forms he knew of on Azeroth. Life aplenty for his end goals. A stranger in a strange land that found acceptance within the Sin’dorei that eventually made their way into that land.
With them he expanded his arcane knowledge, as his lessons were elder to the majority of the shorter-lived Blood Elves and they ravenously devoured all he could teach them while they lay open their studies to his eyes. And study he did.
He looked out into the Great Dark Beyond and saw the Burning Legion staring back. He looked into the heart of his world and found the eyes of a thousand dark entities, long believed to be either extinct or imprisoned, alert and peering through him as if he was insignificant and meaningless. All across the cosmos, everywhere he looked, he found only insatiable hunger. It was as if life existed for no other purpose than to feed the desires of unfathomable beings that were born of powers a mortal being, even one that was ageless and potent in arcane magic, could not entirely conceive of. An endless army of demons, horrific Old Ones, and a plethora of creatures that were born of either the Fel or the Void.
He concluded what any being of Azeroth would have to at that point, that their efforts were ultimately useless unless they could find a means to defeat these forces. They could indulge in petty squabbles over racial divides, or land, or wealth, or power for the duration of their existence, but ultimately it would avail them naught. Sargeras didn’t care. The Old Ones didn’t care. Their world was not a prize, it was simply another victim. Another world to burn or consume. Fellen well understood that mentality, of seeking another victim, and how meaningless the individuals were in comparison to the hunger, and to need to complete the end game.
He needed a flicker of hope. All life on Azeroth, all live in the entire cosmos, needed a figure that could lead them to victory.
Illidan.
It had to be Illidan. Fellen was convinced at that point that the Master would come. He had to. The alternative was that all life on Azeroth would be eradicated or consumed. Fellen refused to believe in the latter scenario. He had seen what Illidan could do, what the Betrayer was willing to sacrifice to win, and that is exactly what Azeroth and the cosmos needed.
He had met Draenei, heard their stories, of how they fled the Burning Legion, and how they were a species on the run. They did not have the mettle that was needed to face the Destroyer, they were too concerned with survival. They were too lost in blind religious faith and succour to the Naaru to accept the reality of what would be needed. To defeat this most terrible of enemies one would have to become the enemy, and no living being knew the Burning Legion better than the Betrayer. No one else knew that to defeat Sargeras one had to be willing to sacrifice an entire species, perhaps all species, to save all others. That Azeroth may have to die to save the other worlds that spun out there in the unknown dark reaches of the Dark Beyond. Draenei did not have this within them, they were pitiful minions of the Light, that never could make the final play at the cost of an entire world. Kaldorei were more pitiful than the Draenei. Trolls, Dwarves, Gnomes, humans… none had the long vision.
Only Illidan.
And then he came. Fellen wasn’t the first to learn of this but he was among the earliest elves that came to his side when the Betrayer strode into Outland. He was not the first to take the blood of a demon and become what Illidan required, but he was within the first that cast away the shackles of an old life and became something new, something greater, an Illidari.
((to be continued...))
Azeroth was a beautiful world.
Fellen Demonhunter, then named Faronis of Hyjal, was born into a beautiful world of verdant glades and pristine mountains. The world was whole but not without its dangers, yet in his early centuries there was little more than peace in his lands. There was little to remind his people of the wars that had raged between Keepers and their Titan-Forged. Gone were the stains of the Old Gods. His people were only a scant vestige removed from the Dark Trolls that roamed beneath the earth, and they lived a life of attunement to nature and of harmony with the living things that coexisted with them in their forests. Young Faronis grew up among the secluded tribes of Night Elves that made the evening their home and the forests around Hyjal their bastion.
His parents were of the later Dark Troll descendants that grew up along the Well of Eternity, they were some of the first Night Elves, and when his mother had become pregnant the pair moved back into the shadow of the holy mountain of Hyjal, as was the tradition within their tribe and many others. There they joined with other elves that had made the same pilgrimage, for similar reasons, and thus Faronis was born into that world of tranquility and love.
His early life was marked by trips back and forth between his forest home around Hyjal and the growing capital of Elun’dris. Though his parents followed older paths, mystical paths that revered nature and communed with the primal spirits that were the protectors and children of the Wild Gods, Faronis was drawn to the practices of sorcery and the arts of arcane magic craft that were developing along the shores of the Well. He admired the beauty of nature but also the beauty of the arcane and what that energy could be used to create. As the Highborne emerged from the populace, lead by the beauteous and magnificent Queen Azshara, Faronis Nightweaver followed their lead. His parents supported their only child as best they could, but as the society of the Highborne rose they took the harmony to be found around Hyjal more to their liking.
However Faronis began to see the beauty of his world fade. Shadows fell across what he once saw as luminous and perfect, for he was not to be one of the Quel’dorei, the Highborne, and thus he was forever to find only a place at the edge of the society he admired and thirsted to taste. His skills at sorcery were clumsy, by comparison, and his form was not as beautiful as those that became the Queen’s chosen. No matter how hard he tried his command of the arcane eluded his mastery. No matter how often he changed his hair, or clothing, or styles, his form was always more like his Dark Troll ancestors, and less like the winnowy elegance of the Quel’dorei that had become infused with the energy that washed from the fount of life, the Well of Eternity. He was also alone in the city along the shores of the Well, his parents having removed themselves to the tranquil glens under the holy mountain. So as he grew and trained he found himself increasingly moved into less prestigious positions within Elun’dris, now called Zin-Azshari, until he found himself removed even from that glamorous city. Assigned to assist the Quel’dorei in charge of cataloging plants on the expeditions the Queen sent about the land.
In time he was permanently assigned to the outpost at Then’Ralore and this was the final insult for Faronis. No longer could he train in the Academy of Zin-Azshari, for that city was now leagues distant. He was ordered into servitude to a botanist that he despised and a life reduced to holding samples and copying texts for reproduction in manuscripts that would go to the Academy of Zin-Azshari. He was an errand boy to a Quel’dorei mistress he loathed, a servant to a society he was estranged from, and a ghost of what he thought he would be as a young boy. One night he resolved to change this situation and thus he left, alone, to return to Zin-Azshari and utilize other skills he had picked up in his centuries to blend into the populace and become a shadow in the social order. A phantom of the night within the gleaming capital of the Night Elf Empire. A stalker that played many games, wore many faces, and fell deeper into his own world of darkness.
He no longer saw beauty in his world. He saw shadows that hid monsters. In corners that his people chose to ignore. In the lines of the faces of Kaldorei and Quel’dorei alike. All about him he saw evil and corruption, not of a demonic sort, his eyes were blinded to that real taint, but only of those monsters he was crafting for himself out of the clay of his rage and sense of injustice.
In due time Faronis saw his world crumble. Shadows clawed their way into reality to turn into living nightmares as demonic beings surged into the city and rampaged like fury given form against anything that looked like Faronis. He saw his monsters vanish like motes of smoke in a gale and were replaced by actual monsters. His self-righteous crusade to carve out evils from Zin-Azshari was instantly made to be foolish and irrelevant as the Burning Legion came to his world. As if destiny somehow smiled upon him Faronis was saved from certain death by an enigmatic figure, a warrior that used shadows as a weapon, a being unlike any Faronis had ever seen, a Kaldorei as he but of a wholly different cloth. Illidan Stormrage saved countless lives such as his in those days at the onset of the war and Faronis, as so many others like him, rallied swiftly to the call for resistance and revolution.
For a short while he attempted to locate his parents but found they had been slaughtered like so many other Kaldorei in Zin-Azshari. They were visiting the city as they often did, unaware of the evils that hid in that location. Totally ill prepared for the power and rage of a demon unleashed. Thus he was truly alone in the world, as there was no one else to care for him as his parents once had. There was no one he called friend and there was only one elf with whom he felt even a distant kinship with.
After Illidan became the leader of the Moon Guard it was only natural that Faronis joined that order. He had been practicing sorcery most of his life and was an open and ardent admirer of Illidan Stormrage. Faronis was one of many that would willingly transfer his arcane powers, which still had not manifested with the same potency as his peers, into Illidan directly thus allowing the magnificent Magus to command impressive powers of magic. He was one of the few Moon Guard survivors of the battle of Black Rook Hold, saved from certain death at the hands of Illidan himself by virtue of the fact he was wounded early in the battle and was therefore not present to be used as a living battery. Despite the horror of what had been done Faronis was one of the few that clearly understood why Illidan had taken such actions. His lasting regret was that he was not healthy enough to have served as a battery for his leader.
The War of Ancients raged. Neltharion betrayed all life and became the accursed Deathwing. Misery wracked the resistance and chilled every elf that witnessed that horrific act to the very core. Beauty had been shattered and innocence cast into the abyss. Those that fought in those battles emerged forever changed and he was no different.
When his savior, and trusted leader, Illidan vanished from the all sight Faronis discarded the vile name of his birth and took the name he would carry from then on. Fellen was born. A surname was considered unimportant as it held for him nothing of substance. He had witnessed the Burning Legion rape his world. He had lost the only two elves that he had ever felt any true affection toward. He had seen a mighty and respected Dragon Aspect rip himself asunder and cry out for the destruction of a world he was divinely appointed to protect. He had been abandoned by the only other elf he felt the slightest kinship to. His world was no longer beautiful. It was bleak and barren and filled with horrors. He would not insult this reality by pretending a surname was of any import, only a name by which another could directly refer to him as was needed, thus Fellen he became. However Fellen was not to be well known as he immediately faded into the background, vanishing into shadows and allowing others with more dynamic personalities to obscure his presence in history. He followed the Kaldorei that remained, assisting Jarod Shadowsong and the resistance, as he found a singular purpose in his new life and that was the complete eradication of all demons that drew Azerothian air. He was tracking a very cunning Sayaadi named Sez’sula when the Sundering broke like a planet sized bomb and caused his prey to scream in horror. He cut down the demoness, returning her to the Nether, and then watched as his world imploded.
He chased after others of his kind, escaping the devastation that killed many of his contemporaries, until he found the leadership congregating at Mount Hyjal. There he was present for the reappearance of Illidan and the discovery of the second Well of Eternity. He heard the Betrayer’s words and the meaning of them was clear to few others. The Burning Legion would be back. Illidan was changed, everyone could see that, he had learned secrets from his pact with Sargeras that no other elf would know, and no one seemed to accept this truth. All they saw was a careless disregard for the paranoia of Malfurion and those that took his path. A druidic path. Fellen was not a druid, he was a sorcerer, like his savior Illidan, and thus there was little question in the sorcerer’s mind whom had a clearer vision of what lay ahead.
Illidan was captured and imprisoned and with him went the last vestiges of the Night Elf culture from the heart of Fellen. Now all that Fellen saw were short sighted dupes content to wallow in their own fear. A divide cut the elf population apart, Quel’dorei leaving to follow Dath’Remar Sunstrider while most Kaldorei followed Malfurion Stormrage, while yet still other smaller cabals simply left both groups to strike out on their own, tired of cults of personality and seeking solitude in the shattered remains of Kalimdor.
Fellen made his own way in this age, the time called the Long Vigil. He moved about Kalimdor as he chose, never integrating into any culture again, never staying in any region for too long. He crossed paths with elves time and again as many of his kind continued their ways in near isolation. This was usually to the detriment of the elves he came across. Always he kept his keen ears alert to news of Illidan. The Burning Legion would return, Illidan had said so plainly, and Fellen trusted this portent with absolute certainty. Defeating the Legion at the end of the War of Ancients had cost the world dearly, and logic dictated that a foe so robust and bound to something as unfathomable as the Twisting Nether would not be destroyed by such an event. The next conflict was coming. Fellen felt certain that Illidan would rise again, freed of his shackles, to lead the elves of Kalimdor once again to victory over the demonic enemy.
Fellen waited for 10’000 years. In that time Fellen had found the city of Eldre’Thalas and the Quel’dorei Shen’dralar that lived therein, and their means of drawing energy off of an imprisoned demon named Immol’thar to sustain their immortality and beauty. But as with all things tainted by the fel the city seethed with corruption and a steady descent into depravity. Fellen sensed these things readily, for a monster of the darkness can smell its own kind and knew the stench of depravity as it tainted the air. He used a resident sorceress, a Quel’dorei named Tyandris Whisperblade, of the Shen’dralar to expand his own arcane knowledge as well as adapt to a means of drawing off of fel energies. He studied tomes of demonology and learned what he could from his secretive companion. When he left Eldre’Thalas he silenced Tyandris and made quite certain he never approached the hidden city, the doomed city, at any time in the ages to come.
The Second Invasion dawned and unlike many others, that neglected to study the arcane and the ley lines that pulsed and flowed like the arteries of a living being across Azeroth, Fellen knew there was Fel afoot. It disturbed the ley powers, disrupted the flow of natural magic, and upset the balance that elves of most kinds did their best to try and maintain. Fellen, however, did not seek balance in the same fashion. When the Horde came into their world, when the Black Gate ripped open to the song of the shredded souls of the dead, he felt the ripples in the depths of his soul. Illidan had called this as the future and though it had been one hundred centuries the prediction had come to pass. He searched Kalimdor for signs of this disturbance but found nothing. Only later did he learn that the gate to a new reality had been opened and on the other side of the world.
Eventually, ultimately, Fellen was drawn to Outland, and well before Illidan was freed. The source of the Second Invasion, the land of the Orc Horde, beaconed to him like a flame to a moth. A world infused with energies unlike any that marked ley pathways through Azeroth. The home of demons and their orc slaves. A world where Fellen could be free to act as he wished and with pathways through the Twisting Nether that a sorcerer of his caliber could detect and utilize, if only he could draw up enough metaphysical power.
With enough soul power.
His time in Eldra’Thalas had taught him many things and one of those spells was drawn from Fel sources but channeled by the arcane weave, a power that drew strength from the souls of the living and burned that essence into nothingness as it transmuted spirit into magical energy. It was most easily used on demons, but Fellen had become a clever student of spellcraft, and he found variant formulae and rituals that could be applied to other spiritual beings. For his purposes elves were often the best victims and thus began his most diabolical manipulation of others thus far.
In the end one hundred elves were fed to his arcane machinations and he crossed from Azeroth into the realm that was once Draenor, and was now the shattered plane called Outland. A world of noble Draenei, hardened Orcs, and a glorious assortment of other native species the likes of which were paramount examples of life forms he knew of on Azeroth. Life aplenty for his end goals. A stranger in a strange land that found acceptance within the Sin’dorei that eventually made their way into that land.
With them he expanded his arcane knowledge, as his lessons were elder to the majority of the shorter-lived Blood Elves and they ravenously devoured all he could teach them while they lay open their studies to his eyes. And study he did.
He looked out into the Great Dark Beyond and saw the Burning Legion staring back. He looked into the heart of his world and found the eyes of a thousand dark entities, long believed to be either extinct or imprisoned, alert and peering through him as if he was insignificant and meaningless. All across the cosmos, everywhere he looked, he found only insatiable hunger. It was as if life existed for no other purpose than to feed the desires of unfathomable beings that were born of powers a mortal being, even one that was ageless and potent in arcane magic, could not entirely conceive of. An endless army of demons, horrific Old Ones, and a plethora of creatures that were born of either the Fel or the Void.
He concluded what any being of Azeroth would have to at that point, that their efforts were ultimately useless unless they could find a means to defeat these forces. They could indulge in petty squabbles over racial divides, or land, or wealth, or power for the duration of their existence, but ultimately it would avail them naught. Sargeras didn’t care. The Old Ones didn’t care. Their world was not a prize, it was simply another victim. Another world to burn or consume. Fellen well understood that mentality, of seeking another victim, and how meaningless the individuals were in comparison to the hunger, and to need to complete the end game.
He needed a flicker of hope. All life on Azeroth, all live in the entire cosmos, needed a figure that could lead them to victory.
Illidan.
It had to be Illidan. Fellen was convinced at that point that the Master would come. He had to. The alternative was that all life on Azeroth would be eradicated or consumed. Fellen refused to believe in the latter scenario. He had seen what Illidan could do, what the Betrayer was willing to sacrifice to win, and that is exactly what Azeroth and the cosmos needed.
He had met Draenei, heard their stories, of how they fled the Burning Legion, and how they were a species on the run. They did not have the mettle that was needed to face the Destroyer, they were too concerned with survival. They were too lost in blind religious faith and succour to the Naaru to accept the reality of what would be needed. To defeat this most terrible of enemies one would have to become the enemy, and no living being knew the Burning Legion better than the Betrayer. No one else knew that to defeat Sargeras one had to be willing to sacrifice an entire species, perhaps all species, to save all others. That Azeroth may have to die to save the other worlds that spun out there in the unknown dark reaches of the Dark Beyond. Draenei did not have this within them, they were pitiful minions of the Light, that never could make the final play at the cost of an entire world. Kaldorei were more pitiful than the Draenei. Trolls, Dwarves, Gnomes, humans… none had the long vision.
Only Illidan.
And then he came. Fellen wasn’t the first to learn of this but he was among the earliest elves that came to his side when the Betrayer strode into Outland. He was not the first to take the blood of a demon and become what Illidan required, but he was within the first that cast away the shackles of an old life and became something new, something greater, an Illidari.
((to be continued...))
Founded April 26, 2005