Vandel was glad TO be in the cover of the rocks. So far none of the demons had noticed him. He felt their malice rolling toward him, a fog of unleashed hatred and evil that somehow congealed out of the magic in the air.
Join them, the demon voice whispered inside him. Join them and you will be rewarded as no soul in the history of the cosmos has been rewarded.
He felt the temptation. The demon was telling the truth as it understood it. He touched the hilts of his rune-encrusted blades. It would be the simplest of actions to plunge them into Illidan’s back. Was he not the Betrayer? Had ever an elf in history been more deserving of death?
Slay him, his demon whispered. Slay Illidan and achieve eternal glory. Slay the Betrayer and become a dark god.
The sound of the thunderclap faded as the army of the nathrezim advanced. The great meteor hit the ground, shaking the earth, disgorging a gigantic blazing infernal. It pulled itself out of the impact crater and lumbered forward along with the rest of the dreadlords’ army.
Vandel felt the temptation rise within him. If he slaughtered Illidan, he would be welcomed by his demonic kindred. He could put his mortality behind him forever, live untroubled by fear and regret. He could bury all traces of guilt about failing his family, all remorse, any semblance of kinship with these weak, frail creatures of flesh and blood.
He could transcend what he was, join the Burning Legion, and become a conqueror, cleansing the universe of the foul disease of life. He could help bring creation crashing down so that a new universe could be born, one shaped in his image, by his desires.
For a moment, he wavered. He listened to the voice of his inner demon and realized that it was his own. His soul had been tainted when he devoured the felhound. It had absorbed the demon’s evil and been twisted. There was really no other demon than himself.
To give in to the voice of temptation would be to forswear his quest for vengeance and break faith with his dead wife and child.
He did not want to kill Illidan. He wanted to kill the things that had made Illidan into what he was. He understood now as he never had before what the Betrayer stood for, because of what he stood against. For all his gigantic flaws, Illidan was the only being who really grasped what they fought, and he was prepared to do whatever it took to end the threat. He might well be mad. His schemes might well be doomed to failure. But he was better than the alternative.
The demons of the Legion advanced toward the ridge. It was time to do battle with the real enemy.
The army of the nathrezim moved upslope. A mortal force would have been slowed by the effort, but they seemed tireless. Felhounds loped ahead, infernals lumbered in their wake, scores of gigantic winged dreadlords bellowed orders to their followers.
Now. The thunderous voice spoke within Vandel’s head, and it was Illidan’s. As one the demon hunters emerged from their cover and raced down toward their prey.
For a moment, the Legion’s army slowed, as if unable to comprehend the fact that it was being attacked by this much smaller force of smaller beings. One or two of the dreadlords laughed again.
With a roar like the ocean throwing itself against rocks, the two armies collided. The demons wanted to reach the portal and close it. The demon hunters wanted only to slay and slay and slay.
A felhound leapt at Vandel. Sharklike teeth gaped. He invoked his power and sent a bolt of greenish-yellow energy into its maw. The demon’s head exploded. Chunks of flesh fell to the ground, charred and smoking. Resisting the temptation to feast, Vandel launched himself forward, daggers clearing their sheaths. He rolled between two monstrous mo’arg servitors, hamstrung them before they could bring their weapons to bear, flipped to his feet, and smashed his dagger through the eye socket of first one, then the other.
A moment later, he confronted a dreadlord. The creature loomed over him, twice his height, broader than an ogre and even stronger. The dreadlord brought a massive spiked mace smashing into the ground as Vandel jumped aside. Rock splintered. Clouds of green dust rose glittering into the air.
Vandel picked himself up. His foe buffeted him with a batlike wing. The force of the blow made his head ring, sent him hurtling back toward a massive boulder. He flipped himself over so that his feet made contact with the rock first, and then he sprang forward, bouncing away from the impact and rolling to a stand.
The dreadlord turned with surprising quickness for a creature of his enormous bulk and lumbered toward him. Vandel raised his hand and sent a fel bolt slashing toward the demon. A wing curled around his opponent’s body. The bolt ripped through the appendage, leaving it hanging like a tattered cloak from the dreadlord’s side. The monster did not even seem to have slowed.
From the periphery of his vision, Vandel saw Cyana dispatch another mo’arg servitor, then leap over the corpse to engage a felguard. A blaze of light from his right warned him, and he sprang into the air just as an imp’s firebolt passed beneath him. He twisted to avoid descending into the jet of flame and found himself looking up at the massive polished hoof of the wounded dreadlord.
It stamped down, missing him. He lashed out with his dagger, catching his opponent behind the knee and drawing forth what might have been a grunt of pain or contempt. The creature smashed down with his mace and caught Vandel on the shoulder.
When he had been mortal, the blow would have killed him, smashing broken ribs through heart and lung. He rolled with the impact, riding the force of the strike. As he did so, he repaid the imp who had blasted him, hitting the demon with a fel bolt that turned the cackling little monster into a pool of bubbling slime.
Vandel sprang upward, embedding his left-hand dagger in the dreadlord’s breastplate, using it to pull himself up until he could drive his other weapon through the demon’s eye. The creature clutched at the socket, attempting to swat him, but Vandel had already drawn the blade clear and driven it through the other eye.
He dropped to the ground and unleashed a flurry of blows on the blinded monster. Doubtless the demon could, given time, sense Vandel the way he sensed him, using magic, but for those few crucial instants the creature might as well have been blind. Vandel took advantage to stab his blades again and again into the dreadlord. The magic on the daggers cut his flesh, leaving rotting wounds that would not heal.
Blades grated on bone, sawed through tendon, parted muscle with the sound of a butcher’s cleaver going into a steer’s carcass.
The demon gave up trying to strike him and tried to lumber away, flapping his huge wings. Because of the earlier damage, he could only remain on the ground while Vandel carved him to pieces.
Cruelty drove Vandel’s hand. Every blow that went home gave him sick satisfaction, and he knew the thing within him was feeding on the dreadlord’s death. At that moment he no longer cared. The demon’s desires were aligned with his own. It did not matter if he made it stronger. Right now he could use its strength, and right now, he knew that it took just as much satisfaction from the killing as he did.
When finally he had reduced the dreadlord to a pile of skinned flesh, it occurred to him that he had wasted valuable time. There was more prey to be had, and he needed to claim his share.
Needle sat nearby, astride the torso of a fallen felguard, casually punching his foot-long needles again and again into the demon’s open chest plate as if he were trying to stitch it together. Elarisiel chased a felhound around a rock before putting it out of its misery.