It bounded forward to attack even as Kruul sent a bolt of dark energy hurtling toward Illidan. The lord of Outland leapt into the air and avoided it. It smashed into the rocks behind where he had stood. They turned to dust, as if they had suffered a million years of erosion in a moment.
Vandel found himself face-to-face with Kruul’s demonic pet. Its jaws gaped. Lava bubbled within them.
The infernals lumbered toward him. Vandel vaulted over the core hound. His feet briefly touched the hot metal of its armor. He propelled himself into the air before they had time to scorch. As he did so he sent his own bolt of fel energy blazing down into the demon. It struck one of the heads and elicited a brief scream. The thing’s skin darkened at the point of contact and began to putrefy.
From the slopes, a dozen demon hunters joined in, sending a fusillade of fel energy into the core hound’s skin, smashing into the infernals and sapping them of life.
Kruul swept his blade through the air and invoked his power. A hail of shadow energy lashed out. A volley of bolts hurtled at the demon hunters. Some fell wounded. Others slumped to the ground. Kruul seemed to visibly swell as he feasted on their deaths. Behind him the gigantic portal still blazed.
Vandel somersaulted at the top of his arc, pulled his blades clear of their sheaths, and dropped onto the demonic hound’s back. Pain flared where his skin touched the creature’s burning flesh. He aimed for a weak spot in the armor and drove his blades in. There was a satisfying crunch as points punched through scaled flesh. Molten ichor spurted, searing his skin. He vaulted clear of the beast and rolled to one side, narrowly avoiding the trampling feet of a gigantic infernal.
He dived between the demon’s legs, ignoring the scorching heat. His movements took him closer to Kruul. The doomguard paid him no mind. All his attention seemed focused on Illidan.
Magical energies swirled around the lord of Outland, gathering in a thunderhead of power as he invoked them. More demon hunters emerged from the hillside, moving to engage the infernals and the core hound. Some of them dared race forward to challenge Kruul himself.
Kruul flexed his wings and there came a sound like thunder. Those nearest the demon were thrown back. Their movements were slowed. For combatants who relied so much on mobility, this made them vulnerable. Kruul’s monstrous blade swept out and chopped an attacker in half. The demon hunter’s blood vanished as if the runes on the blade had absorbed it, and Kruul grew visibly stronger.
The demon inside Vandel stirred at the sight of all this death. It longed to feed as Kruul fed. Vandel channeled all his rage into another fel bolt and lashed out at Kruul. The magical energies splintered on whatever aura protected the demon lord. Kruul raised his blade, pointed it at Illidan, and sent another titanic bolt of shadowy energy blazing up at his opponent. Illidan deflected it with a counterspell.
A low growl from behind told Vandel that the core hound had returned to seek prey. He flipped himself around to face it. Half of one of its heads had been torn away. Molten ichor spilled from several wounds in its side.
Still the creature’s unnatural vitality kept it moving. It bounded toward him, mouths gaping, flames leaking around its teeth. He leapt to meet it. His blades snapped home, piercing each eye of one head, and then he jumped away to the creature’s blind side, scampering quickly to keep out of its line of sight. The creature turned. Its nostrils dilated as it sniffed the air, attempting to find him.
Enraged, Kruul smashed through the demon hunters. They did their best to leap clear, but his blade slew two more. Their strikes seemed to have no more effect on him than gnat bites.
The core hound put its noses to the ground and kept sniffing. It began to move in Vandel’s direction. He sent a bolt of fel energy lashing at it, and kept the beam playing on the creature, draining its life away. From the air above came a titanic surge of power as Illidan finally unleashed the spell he had been weaving. The enormous bolt of hellfire smashed into Kruul and sent him sprawling.
“No! That is not possible.” The highlord’s booming voice echoed across the battlefield. There was pain in it, and a massive gap in his armored chest piece where the bolt had struck home. Venomous smoke emerged from the gap, and wounded flesh pulsed within.
Kruul raised himself up and sprang toward the blazing portal. It closed behind him. Vandel stabbed the demon hound through the chest and left his blade buried in its heart. The infernal bodyguards collapsed into piles of rocks.
The Illidari gathered their wounded and their dead and prepared to depart the battlefield.
Illidan studied the remains of the carnage. Kruul had been strong, no doubt of that, and he had been cunning. This trap had been set with care, and only the fact that Kruul had misjudged Illidan’s strength had let him escape its jaws.
It was only a matter of time before a new invasion of Azeroth began. Perhaps that was to the good. It would distract the Legion while Illidan finalized his own designs. It troubled him that Kruul had mentioned his plan to seek out Argus. He should not have boasted about that before he was ready to strike. That had been a mistake. He had let the thrill of triumph overcome his reason when he had done that.
Additionally, he felt there was more going on here than met the eye. He was missing something, and the feeling of it gnawed at him.
It was time to go back to the Black Temple and complete the preparations as fast as he could. The hour was getting late, and he could not afford to have anything go wrong now.
22
Behind the bushes of the pleasure garden, Vandel hunched out of sight of the blood elves. They laughed and swigged ethermead from crystal beakers. One youth had a courtesan under each arm and kissed each in turn. Another flexed a small whip in imitation of the succubi in the Den of Mortal Delights below. A tall, beautiful sin’dorei girl played a seven-stringed lute and improvised verses about a fel orc chieftain and a doomguard that were not flattering to either of her subjects.
The Grand Promenade seemed a world away from the endless warfare taking place beyond the Black Temple. It was one reason why Vandel had taken to sneaking in here of an evening. The precincts of the inner temple were a complete contrast with the stern, martial aspect of the rest of the great fortress, created for Illidan’s blood elf followers for their own relaxation. The promenade had remained a refuge and a reward for those blood elves who had stayed loyal to Illidan even after Kael’thas’s disappearance.
The party of revelers sprawled on the manicured lawn. Silk-clad girls held tiny tidbits of devilfish at a finger’s length above the lips of the males.
The demon hunters had never been forbidden from entering the Black Temple. They had never been invited, either. They kept apart from the rest of the Illidari forces, as much from their blood elf kin as from the orcs and the Broken and the demons. No one visited them in the ruins of Karabor who could help it, and they mingled with none.
There were times when Vandel wanted to be apart even from his fellow demon hunters. He liked to hone his skills by slipping past the temple sentinels and entering the unholy precincts of the place itself.
He had climbed the great chains in the Sanctuary of Shadows and gazed in wonder on the huge statues that dominated the place. The satyr guardians had flinched away from him as if they sensed he hungered for their flesh.
He had scuttled through the gloomy orc-haunted precincts of Gorefiend’s Vigil and eluded the gaze of even the most alert of the Shadowmoon clan. He had inspected their magical forges, and witnessed their spellcasters animating the bones of the dead. He had looked down upon the vast training area where demons marshaled and the Dragonmaw orcs trained their dragons amid the hulls of gigantic war machines. He had clambered across the battlements and looked out across the plains toward Warden’s Cage, where Maiev Shadowsong was imprisoned. But the Grand Promenade was the place he liked the best.