Ascending to the Storm
This was the day of his ascension and yet he couldn't help feel melancholic.
Kael'Thas looked to the sky above and tried to find comfort in such marvels. The heavens, who in this part of Outland more than anything were the very Nether, were pregnant with a great storm. The elven prince could not help but salivate at the idea of such power. He remembered all too well the times who had followed his decision to detonate the Sunwell. A decision he would defend to his dying breath, nobody knew exactly what the effects of the elves drinking from death-tainted magic would have been. He remembered the gnawing hunger setting in their bones, the realization that they were indeed dependent on the font of power. Some had destroyed what remained of the enchanted kingdom, draining the magic dioramas, breaking artifacts and heirloom to drink the mana contained therein. Some had fallen to the hunger, drunk too deep and were now only mouths with no thoughts above their great thirst. They were despised and hated and rightly so. After all they were what his people could become, all their great legacy devoured by their own hands while the remnants stalked the ruins of their former grandeur.
After times of famine like these, how not to be awed by the purity of the Netherstorm. On one hand the prince of blood knew he should be horrified by the devastation wrought upon this land. Was it even a land at all? It was located at the northern rim of the floating continent and it crumbled into the void, halfway to the Nether even now. Floating islands of stone were the norm and it seemed to break even further. On them nothing of substance grew and indeed to feed his people's bodies Kael had had to establish closed gardens in bubbles of reality. That was but one of the elements he planned to change with this ritual. After all the storm was a paradise for the hunger of his people, an even greater prize than bound daemons. It was a place where simply offering yourself to the elements meant to sate the thirst of magic. It was a place where an empire, greater even that what the elves had established near the Well of Eternity, was possible. Yet the prince had been forced to pause his projects. His servants could not help but to drink the enchanted spires of their new home and even the large quantities of mana channeled daily seemed sometimes not enough.
Hunger and Thirst were paramount and they had to be appeased. The burning need had led Kael and his forces to Illidan Stormrage and from the Betrayer they had learned many things. Yet it seemed their thirst was no ordinary thirst and couldn't be denied. Each time they fed it seemed to fill them less than the last time, as if a gnawing void had opened in the core of their essence. They had to feed more, to channel more magic in their bodies, to open the leys of the world and drink deep from the arcane energy. Some of Kael'Thas minions hunted the wastes and magical creatures for their mana-infused blood. Some had turned to the Ethereals and when the merchants could not provide, they ate them, feasting deeply on arcane bodies. The more altered cast themselves from the land until they broke the thin atmosphere and burned themselves in the Nether. Idiots who had yet the very good idea. The Nether was infinite and thus to feed on it directly would mean to never know hunger again.
This had been Illidan's pledge after all: "Come with me and you shall never go hungry again!"
Hunger had led the Sin'dorei to Illidan and then to Kil'Jaeden. Kael regretted nothing. The eredar lord had proposed the same deal he had made with the Betrayer. Striking one of the Legion's foes and being rewarded for it. In this case the target was the reward, the fiery lord had shown the prince not only what was hidden in the billowing clouds of the Netherstorm but had gladly provided the plans the Legion used to convert Naaru's technology to Manaforges. Yes the Sun-prince had been suspicious but after all even the mere possession of the storm of magic would advance his own projects. Thus he had left Shadowmoon and paid the Ethereals a small fee for transporting his forces to the gates of Tempest Keep. In the end one of the modules had slipped from his grasp but so great had been the carnage that Kil'Jaeden with a booming : "Pleased to make business with you, young prince", who was certainly mocking, showered the elves with vials of his burning blood, grimoires and artifacts and even proposed the services of some of his Nathrezim lieutenants. That Kael had refused.
Among the prizes was this ritual, the ritual of ascension to daemonhood, the means by which Kael'Thas and the Blood Elves would escape the confines of feeble flesh to become creatures of the Nether itself. There they would ride the winds of space-time and feed at their leisure until they were full and nothing could contest their might.
It was the best solution he had.
The ritual was deceptively simple. Indeed most of this came from the place. The Netherstorm freed the ritualists from many concerns. They were eleven who would become the first daemons and then grant to others this gift, each according to their power and potency. Eleven souls who just had to gather in a circle, clad in vestments and chant the appropriate spells. Their essence would access to immortality and great power. Then they could deal with the Legion as equals.
Perhaps Kael and his inner circle would have been more hesitant if they had possessed the knowledge necessary. For they saw that the runes emblazoned on their robes or held at the end of their staves were twisted reflections of Draenei script. Yet they were not so twisted that a Broken couldn't have translated the blasphemies they contained, each cursing the great archetypes of order and singing the praises of the great absence. They could have thought upon the significance of eleven, this number prime and uneven placed between the two sacred numbers of ten and twelve. Yet even if they knew that, they would surely had gone with it. The lure of power was a thirst deeper than even their need for magic, the desire of making their people great again, to rise them through the ashes of their failed alliances to their rightful place as masters of all they surveyed. This was the bait Kil'Jaeden had used and they had swallowed it without even feeling the bite of the hook or hearing the rolling of the line.
They began howling their prayers and singing their paeans to the great absence. The circle between them had been made of bone and consecrated gold and torches burned behind each of the ten ritualists while an open flame at the center was the protection of the Sun-prince. The colors of the Sin'dorei, the red and gold of the rising sun burning all opponents mingled with the emerald of fel energy being released. They sang and sang and sang, each calling down two of the great archetypes and blaspheming against them in the same breath. For there were many patterns in the great universe and daemons wished there were none for with patterns came the capacity of subverting them, of introducing paradoxes and from paradoxes the Abyss made entrances to the realm material.
Lightning coursed through them and the atmosphere broke bathing Tempest Keep in the energies of the Nether. Kael did not resist as the great winds tore him from his place and he fell into the sky. Freed from the shell of his flesh, his mind expanded into strange directions. He saw the universe as it were and how its nature was a joyous chaos who was different from the Great Abyss. For chaos was the natural state of the universe, bound only by physical laws and the struggle of everything against everything. Such was the state of Fel whose influence was to break down ordered thoughts. From order, artificial order forced upon the universe, from deviations to the Law of Suffering arose paradoxes and from these paradoxes came the Abyss in the world material. Thus, it was good to destroy life to avoid some worship what never was.
This the Sun-prince understood and another vision filled his mind. A being, greatest of those alive in the universe and master of reality. A giant of metal great as worlds put together and poseessed of power so great it confined to godhood. This being kneeled before the Abyss and his anti-realities, his dreams turned to nightmares and he accepted to become the Abyss' soul and messengers, breaking the egg of the universe and turning all to nothing.
To save a world, kill a nation. To save the universe, kill it. In the great storm the reasoning made much more sense than it should.
None of the creatures who ended the ritual were the ones who began it but Kael'Thas Sustrider was perhaps the most changed. His body was charred black as mirrored obsidian and this shadow was wreathed in true red and gold flame. Three faces looked upon the world and each had three eyes of emerald, two crying tears of fel energy falling on the floor, and one unblinking orb containing the power of destruction. Six arms of burnished brass adorned a torso where the royal clock and robes had become pure fire. Six wings of radiant light covered in many eyes beat languidly around him, two of them on his feet, and four on his back.
And as the Blood Elves saw what their prince had become they knelt before him, made obeisance, and hurried to drink the tears falling from his threefold face as three mouths sang praises to the Great Destroyer.