He sprang forward. He heard a rustling sound. His fist smashed into something leathery but lined with bone. A wing. Illidan’s wing. A moment later it buffeted him from his feet. He hit the ground and rolled toward another swirling mass of light. He felt the contact of flesh when he reached it, heard a feverish voice groan.
No doubt about it—in some way, he was perceiving where things were.
He sniffed the air, smelled soiled bandages, unwashed flesh, and beneath that the tainted odor of demon, repulsing him and arousing his hunger at the same time. He wanted to feast upon it. He dived forward, jaws clamping on the sick elf’s arm. A powerful hand caught him by the neck and lifted him like an elf might lift a nightsaber cub.
Illidan said, “Enough. You must learn to control that which lies within you, or it will control you.”
Rage goaded Vandel to aim an elbow backward. Once again he felt himself cast across the room. Air rushed by. He sensed the cold presence of the wall before he hit it, and he let himself go limp. The impact hurt but not as much as it ought to. He rolled once again to his feet.
The Betrayer was keeping him from his prey. Vandel coiled his muscles to leap. Illidan’s aura became sharper, its greenish-yellow light blazing. Motes of it swirled in the air around him, shifting into new patterns as the Betrayer moved his fingers and arms. Vandel realized he was seeing fel magic being bound to Illidan’s will as he drew upon its power. A moment later a bolt of it leapt from Illidan’s finger and impacted on Vandel’s chest. Strength drained from his body like wine from an upended goblet. The dizziness returned, multiplied a thousandfold. He crashed into the stone at Illidan’s hooves, rage departing in proportion to his strength.
He felt like himself once more, but he understood now what he was seeing, what had happened to him. “The demon I devoured. It is still within me, is it not?”
“Yes,” said Illidan, “and it wants to be free.”
“How can I control it?”
“You take the first step along that road today. Walk with me.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you here? Why are you helping me?”
“Because you know who the true enemy is, and you have the potential to be a great hunter of demons. I saw that the day your village burned. I see it now. I will have need of fighters like you before the end.”
Still dizzy and weak, Vandel forced himself to his feet. His true foes were the innumerable forces of the Burning Legion, which even now prepared to strike at his homeworld.
He stood for a moment, calming his mind, listening for any internal voice that was not his own. He heard nothing, but he knew that didn’t mean anything. He did not doubt that the demon was still in there, waiting for the opportunity to break free once more.
He was aware now of the ebb and flow of energies all around. The lights were auras of living things, some bright, some filled with energy. The brightest of all came from the being who stood beside him.
“Is this how you see the world?” Vandel asked.
“It is one way. Your mind becomes accustomed to it eventually. It maps its new way of seeing onto its old way of understanding reality. There will come a time when you will be able to perceive the world as once you did. It is a much narrower way of seeing, but our minds crave familiarity.”
“You are saying you can shift from seeing the world like this to seeing it as if you had eyes?”
“Indeed, and many gradations between.”
He tried to imagine Illidan as he had previously seen him, and slowly a very rough image of the Betrayer stood before him, like a child’s illustration drawn in mud. Its mud mouth moved as Illidan spoke. “In a way it is like working magic. You get a feel for the flows of power. You get a sense of the souls of the living and the unliving.”
They walked toward a doorway. Vandel sensed its lack of density in the air and the solid matter around it. He was not sure how. He also sensed there were living things beyond it. There was power in them, too. They were waiting for something.
Illidan pushed him forward. He collided with something at about waist height. It felt like the edge of a table. “Lie down on it.”
“Why?” Vandel asked.
“You are about to receive your first tattoos.”
Vandel fumbled at the table with his hands, feeling the rough texture of the wood. It came to him then how much he had taken his sense of touch for granted, and how inaccurate it used to be. Now he could feel every grain of the wood, every knot, every splinter. He felt areas that were slightly rougher, as if the carpenter had been sloppy with his planing. It seemed like his various senses were now many times magnified.
He lay down on the board. Leather straps snapped into place around him. Momentary panic filled him as he was restrained. It increased as power blossomed in one of the nearby figures.
“You will learn to do these for yourself one day, but for now, you must accept them from others. Be still,” said Illidan. “This will hurt.”
The inker leaned forward, and something so hot it was cold, or perhaps so cold it was hot, touched Vandel’s flesh. He fought down the urge to scream. When the needle withdrew, he felt as if a dagger were being pulled from a wound and twisted.
No. No. No. The voice in his head gibbered in panic. The fear communicated itself to him.
This was a trap. Evil magic was being worked here.
The needle stabbed in once more. Pain blasted his body, worse than anything he had felt since he had pulled out his own eyes. He thrashed around, trying to free himself. The restraining bands drew tight. Hard hands pushed down on him.
The needle stabbed again and again, and every touch of its point sent blazing agony searing through him. With every stitch, strength leached out of him. The voice in his head grew weaker and weaker.
He was dying. This magic was going to kill him.
He snarled threats and whimpered pleas, but the pain went on and on and on, until he could struggle no more and could only lie there while the inker went about his work.
Eventually the straps were undone. He could barely rise from the table. His anger and his fear had subsided. For the first time in days, he truly felt like himself. He could barely see the glow of auras around him. His enhanced senses had returned to normal levels. It was as if he had been drugged and the potency had worn off.
“I am glad that is over,” Vandel said.
“The worst is just beginning,” Illidan replied.
The cell walls closed in all around Vandel. Down below in the courtyards, he could hear fighting and practicing. Were they like him, he wondered, a new intake of fools who had been seduced by Illidan’s promises of power?
It was a relief to be away from the sick house, to have his own chamber. He had been brought here immediately after gaining his first tattoos. It had taken him the whole day to recover from that. It was pleasant not to be surrounded by the auras of living things. The quiet was relaxing. He lay on his bed and touched his empty sockets.
His eyes were gone forever. In the absence of living things, it was easy to convince himself that he had hallucinated the whole experience of seeing auras. Perhaps it was a dream.
The feel of rough sheets beneath his fingers told him that it was not. He was blind. He had blinded himself so he wouldn’t see the terrible truth, that the whole universe was doomed, like his wife and child had been. There was nothing he or anyone else could do to stop the Burning Legion. Anyone who thought otherwise was as deluded as the Betrayer.
Such delusions were easy to have, sitting in a fortress like the Black Temple, surrounded by troops. The truth was that no one was safe. No place was safe. When the Burning Legion exerted its strength, the Black Temple would fall like a child’s sand castle kicked by a giant. All those fighters practicing arms outside would die when the dreadlords came to claim the Legion’s possession. Great Sargeras, the titan who would topple the universe, would ultimately triumph. He had been the first to see the truth.