Son of Kael'thas
Epilogue:
Lady Vashj shut her whorling yellow eyes tight before coming out onto the roof to meet her master. She swallowed the bile that crept up her throat, made scaly green fists of her sharpened claws.
"I hate that man. Ssscyth'lerin!"
Her military second, Wave Commander Scyth'lerin slithered up alongside Vashj in the shadows. Two other male Naga consorts flashed their gold eyes in the dark and stretched jealous snarls. Their fat gold collars reflected the fiendish look.
"Yesss, my Queen?"
"I want you to speak to Illidan this time."
"Oh no! My Queen… but Kael'thas has run away and everyone knowsss it. The Demon Lord will eat me alive!"
"Coward!" Vashj raised an arm to slap her general but stopped. Her consorts didn't look like they had the courage either and beating absolutely everyone who'd accompanied her this far from Zangarmarsh would only make things worse. Terrified men couldn't protect their Queen. "I worked…" a vile sucking sound through her gills as she took a frustrated breath, "ssso very hard to leave the Black Temple. And this useless mad-man… Oh! Illidan, my Lord, my Sssavior! We heard the terrible news and came right away, how horrible for you to have lossst your dear brother, Kael'thas."
Illidan stood at the end of the terrace. He was taller than most of the jagged stones along the edge that curled up to the fel green night sky like a jungle of elekk tusks. A breeze came and played with his tattered demon wings, making them sway. Scyth'lerin blinked beside Lady Vashj and she hugged her arms. No, it was not a wind, but Illidan's latent power… neither of them had felt it. The full Demon Lord fairly pulsed with it. The strength was seeping from him.
"The last time we spoke of it, Kael'thas was not my brother, Vashj. You fully believed that I was mad. Also, I summoned you here. Do not pretend to care… your black, withered heart has always been sickeningly false." Illidan bowed his head. "Unlike Kael'thas, who could always play at compassion so well…"
Vashj whispered to Scyth'lerin, "Tell him. Now."
"The way he gazesss upon me, without even facing me…" the Naga man trembled.
"Vashj!"
She snatched Scyth'lerin's arm without expecting to.
"Why did your plan not work?"
"Plan?" a threatening growl from Illidan, "Oh yesss, the collar. Well, my Lord, I put it on him. The ressst was up to you—"
"I cannot sense Kael'thas any longer! Where can he have gone to that our Soul Link and the collar are completely distorted? Not to that demonic rune again in Tempest Keep; I checked there first. And the skull of his father, King Anasterian is missing from that room. And not to Kil'jaeden… Kael'thas could never…"
"Actually, my Lord," and Vashj sounded a bit bored with the idea, "Both you and I have excessive evidence to the contrary…"
"It was Faltheriel Darkweaver the entire time!" Illidan turned around then in a flare of black wings that snapped against rushing air. He clawed talons in the night sky and then gave into distress and fell on his knees. "Kil'jaeden never contacted Kael'thas. Ever. For three years, and perhaps even before then, it was that disgusting, insolent pervert who first gave Kael'thas the Void Reaver blueprints. And then, once Kael'thas had a taste of Burning Legion power, Faltheriel encouraged him still more through arcane and secret means… my spies discovered the truth before long, of course, and I thought that I could use that against him. Where is Faltheriel now? There was no body in the chamber I checked beneath Tempest Keep, though there was evidence of Bloodknights fighting. Dead or disappeared again into obscurity, we can only hope."
Vashj's upper lip flickered. She showed sharp teeth and slithered forward. "You… what? Did you… assist that foolish ex-Sunfury, ex-Scryer Faltheriel Darkweaver in what wasss obviously his latest plot to romance his Prince?!"
"A just punishment for a man who thought he could betray me. I wanted Kael'thas to be a victim of his own vile machinations."
Vashj shouted at Illidan. Scyth'lerin and her consorts sank back. "You… WHAT! Is that the true reassson why Kael'thas has gone? Fleeing a… We are in this triad together, ruling Outland, and you sssuccumbed to something so low and childish? Why did you not sssimply yank the collar I placed around his neck? Why did you not mind any of the instructions I gave you, about its use, the risssks of giving Kael'thas too much of a lead for so long… all because of your guilty conscience, over the last three years? WHY DID YOU NOT CONSULT ME!"
Illidan clawed the ground. "It should have worked, even with his insufferable Bloodknights at his side… Faltheriel is a Legion Ranger now, and incredibly powerful. The trap he'd set beneath Tempest Keep was enough to kill all of them, and leave Kael'thas with no other recourse but to summon me… if he does not feel it, Lady Vashj, then it is not true brotherhood. I can't make him forgive me, love me. I've learned this."
"Insolence! What have you come to, Illidan Stormrage, Lord of Outland? You cower before your warlock, and you are supposed to be beyond such… Do you know where Kael'thas has gone? To the Shatar, certainly! With their power over the Light and all our precious tactical secrets!"
"He can't, and I have men there, I would know…"
"… then to Azeroth!" she rubbed her palms together nervously, weaving long red-painted claws together and apart again and again, "… back to the Alliance!"
"They would never take him," Illidan mourned pathetically.
"Then to the Horde! No? Well then it is someone he can still trust… did you think you left him no one at all, Illidan? That Kael'thas would stay by your side, abandon all of his old contacts simply because you invited him here to Outland? Gave him power? Have you learned nothing about this man! Kael'thasss will seek out strength from every place he can find, like a fiend!"
"Like an addict!" Scyth'lerin chimed in and this time, Vashj really did hit him for interrupting.
"LIKE A BLOODMAGE! That is what he isss, the most powerful mage in existence. And he is loossse! And free of your collar, and angry at both of us…" she began to panic and slithered in precarious circles. "Illidan, you fool! You have damned the three of us. Kael'thas has found a sssupporter back in Azeroth. He has his armies in Silvermoon and some one else powerful… if they don't trust him then they hate you enough to help Kael'thasss come after usss, to be sure. It mussst be that Jaina Proudmoore!"
"… for your turning the elves against the Human Alliance all that long ago? No, not Lady Proudmoore. And she's convinced that she's too good for our pencil-necked friend."
"Then it is Tyrande."
Illidan stabbed up stone from the ground suddenly and pitched it at Vashj. She flared her scaly headdress and hissed. "It is sssomeone! It is sssomething! Kael'thas is not dead, but he is gone, lossst, free! And he's surely turned against us. This is your fault, Illidan!"
"Where are you going!"
Vashj was so terrified that she forgot make her clever excuse. Scyth'lerin rubbed his reddened jaw and managed quickly, "To… prepare the Queen's armies in the Underbog, of course. For the inevitable attack."
Illidan was on his hands and knees again, muttering. "Even you, my most loyal, twin of my ambition, abandon me in the end, Vashj… like Tyrande… and Malfurion… now Kael'thas…"
Lady Vashj and her men slipped into the shadows of the Black Temple once more, and descended stairs from the roof while Illidan wailed aloud, in so many demonic voices. It sounded like the entire place was possessed, or truly was consumed by something terrible after the Draenei had been driven out years ago by the Fel Orcs who were dominated by Illidan, and now the dwindling Illidari, at last…"
Scyth'lerin asked, "What is our strategy, my Queen? How many men shall I put at the gates to the Underbog?"
"None. We are leaving Outland, all thisss is finished." As they rushed through the long hallways of the temple and down, ever down… They noticed that the demon soldiers Illidan had were fewer now and more desperate looking than when Mavia was sent away some months ago…
"But our work for the Queen Azshara?!"
"Illidan is damned. We'll have made more in profitsss from our pumping operations and other industries if we leave now for the Maelstrom again, than if we remain under Illidan's command and sssuffer the wrath of Kael'thas Olvi'athon Sunstrider."
Scyth'lerin held the metal grate back for Vashj when they came to the flooded sewer system the Naga used to travel from one Illidari base to another.
"And especially for us… the collar, the death of Saturna Whiteblade, all of it, was your idea."
Vashj stood wringing her hands while her men watched. She looked up and around them at the ruined Black Temple, then shivered at the moaning of the full Demon Lord who drowned in his own debilitating madness. At first Illidan had seemed so powerful after the transformation, but now…
"We will not be here when Kael'thas and Illidan fight, for sssurely they will. It will be such a reckoning… a battle to end all other battles we have ever seen in the Maelstrom, or over the waves, and above even the earth…" she gave Scyth'lerin a desperate look. "Retreat."
"The way of the Wave Command is to eat or be eaten."
She grabbed the collar of his mail armor. "Have we time to gorge ourselves before the end comes? We are dead. The Naga are finished in this story of woe and revenge." She breathed rapidly. "I know of at least one person who would aid Kael'thas… Illidan is wrong about her. Long has she had a bone to pick with me… too long. I have not escaped her wrath or the wrath of her people for thousands of years for it all to come to this! Now, away!"
Lady Vashj slithered into the grimy slit until she was waist deep in muddy water then extended her arms overhead to dive. Scaly headdress flattened and she was smooth and serpentine again, writhing beneath the murk like a fish. Her two consorts followed, crashing into it in their masculine version the way crocodiles dive and then thrash about.
Scyth'lerin was last. "Farewell, Illidan." The howling soared then and the Wave Commander waited respectfully for it to ebb. "Perhapsss my Queen does not honor you… but you were once great, once beloved. And now that your mind betrays you, sssuch a tragedy. One brother, and now another…" then he let his hackles rise. "But if it is revenge for all your evil deedsss come to you at last… it is not the fault of the Naga that you could not prevent it from coming to your doorstep."
The triumvirate in Outland ended when Scyth'lerin at last withdrew into the dark water. The witch-woman had gone back beneath the waves, the elves to a place that even Illidan dreaded to imagine, and at last the Betrayer himself…
Illidan went deep into his mind, to a place where he had never raped Saturna Whiteblade, or murdered his brother, ruined countless other innocents in Outland. A realm where he did not deserve to die for his crimes, but instead, could indulge in power and vileness as he had always… In this fit of madness Illidan delved still deeper, into the Soul Link. Illidan did not know how long he dwelt there calling to his lost brother with no answer. Years, brooding alone on his throne after Lady Vashj departed? Or had it only been days?
Kael'thas? Do not do this thing to me, please. I always believed, dreamed of you…
Then it is time to wake up, you sonofabitch.
The End
Next in the series is MLFMP3: Return of Kael'thas. Thanks for reading!