Disclaimer: Still don't own Blizzard, but it would be lovely fun to work for them some day, wouldn't it?
Redemption: Chapter 1
*****
The ache in her ribs seemed like nothing next to the pain in her shoulder. She opened her eyes and studied her surroundings. Light filtered in through cracks in the walls. The air smelled strangely sweet. Or maybe it was the oversized cloak draped over her otherwise naked body. She had managed to escape. Had someone picked her up and healed her?
She found that her only memories were of biting, slicing, snarling pain. No savior. So maybe the fel orcs were saving her for some future use.
The scabs on her skin prickled. She had to escape.
Panting, she heaved herself from the straw and crawled her way along the wall, dropping the cloak on the floor. The doorway taunted her from across the room. Maybe the fel orcs thought she couldn't leave in her state. They wouldn't be far from the truth.
Her arms gave out and her shoulder hit the wood planks, hard. A sob escaped her lips and she trembled, hardly able to move. But still, she pulled her weak form forward, only to meet with the sheer drop at the end of the floorboards.
There was no need for a door. She was utterly trapped, the news hitting her with a blow to her already bruised gut, knocking the wind from her. She couldn't even cry.
Her shoulder began oozing, blood and some sickly, pungent yellowish fluid. She let it flow, strangely indifferent. What did an injury matter in the first place if she was to die anyway?
And then a dark shadow fell over her and she looked up, eyes widening in panic as she recognized the wings and the runic tattoos from stories braver adventurers told her in hushed, fearful whispers. This was much worse than fel orcs. Illidan Stormrage himself stood over her, casually holding the carcass of some unfortunate creature over his shoulder, blood spattered over his bare chest.
She hissed in fear, struggling backwards, reaching out to strike at his foot as he dropped the animal with a sickening thud and advanced on her, then finally curling up on herself and wondering once more what it would be like to die.
But he simply scooped her up into his arms, laying her on the straw, covering her body with the cloak once more. He brushed her hair from her face, muttering soft reassurances. She knew the words, but her pained head couldn't make sense of them. He frowned at her shoulder. He even tried healing it, persisting even through her pained whimper as the flesh slowly mended. And her fate began to sink in, she was completely under his power, she was completely trapped. She trembled, unable to control herself any more than she could control her future.
Illidan frowned once more. He expected her to try to run, but he expected her to wait until she was healthy enough to walk in the first place -- right now, she could barely crawl. She could barely move. And as he unhappily watched her tremble, he wished he could somehow calm her. His presence seemed far from comforting.
But even her small attempt at an escape exhausted her, and her eyes closed, body limp against the straw. Stroking her hair one last time, he set out to clean and prepare the meat, certain the young elf would need the protein to regenerate her lost blood.
*****
When she next awoke, she found Illidan crouched at her side with a bowl of some kind of meat stew. She turned away from it, but her stomach betrayed her hunter, growling fiercely. Illidan gently tilted her face towards his, concern etched in his features -- why did he even care in the first place? -- as he held a spoon of the tantalizing food before her mouth.
She still refused to eat. He sighed, patting her head softly, patronizingly. The bowl passed from his hands to hers as he turned and dropped out of the house. She stared at the stew. It certainly looked good. But what if he had poisoned it? She bit her lip. Would death really be such a bad thing?
Illidan returned to a sleeping elf and an empty bowl. The girl looked decidedly less pale, and while he was somewhat satisfied with this progress, he frowned at the work yet to be done.
He tucked her hair behind her ear and away from her shoulder. Now that she was clean and dry, he noticed the slight curl at the tips of the long, thick strands. And her face felt abnormally warm, prompting his worry that she had a fever.
The job of caretaker never afforded any rest, he mused, ambushing a drunk mage for a mana emerald. He drew on its power to feed both his addiction and his healing. But the lack of progress and the sticky ooze seeping through the scabbed flesh indicated some kind of fel infection.
He knew of only one way to cleanse it. He could remove it himself. He didn't know if he still could -- he had sworn off all forms of direct feeding, a decision made easier by the loss of his demonic cravings, but a situation like this had never occurred to his hypothetical thinking.
Perhaps he should just wait.
*****
The next morning, her shoulder glistened with the yellow fel ooze as sweat coated her entire body. She shook uncontrollably, eyes darting around, hazy and unfocused. Illidan tried explaining to her what he was about to do, but she seemed wholly incapable of understanding him.
So he simply pulled her to him, wiped the fel ooze from her skin, and bit down.
She moaned and cried and screamed as he drew the fel taint from her. This was agony and ecstasy and relief like she had never known, coursing through her body and out her shoulder to the man who used to be a night elf.
Once the taint was gone and he began to taste her natural energies, he pulled back, retching out the door as the demonic energy twisted his stomach. Staggering, he jumped from the room, choosing to exorcise this in private, leaving the young elf weak and weary on the bed. She collapsed on the straw, too tired to hold up her own body.
*****
It wasn't too hard for Illidan to find a feeble minion of the Burning Legion and kidnap it, forcing the demonic energy into the sinister creature, then snapping its neck.
He ran his tongue over his fangs. Her taste... it was unlike night elf or high elf or blood elf he had ever fed on. She was delicious. Strong and savory, not as sharp as a mage, but not as earthy as a druid. While he was still a demon, he would have held her and drained her for all she was worth, then shut her in a prison until she recovered only to drain her again.
But it might just be that her own powers seemed so refreshingly pure after the fel energies he had tapped for so long.
Either way, she roused within him a primal craving, a need for magic that until now had been effectively muffled by the fel orc warlocks. And he couldn't return home until that craving had been sated.
So he hunted.
*****
She really should have known he would do it, that she would end up being a plaything, a toy for him, of only a slightly different kind than she had been, briefly, for the blood elves.
But for all she knew, she might end up being that, too.
She pondered trying to heal herself. Would he try to break her? Maybe she should just leave her injuries the way they were. Less for him to damage. Less for her to endure before he finally killed her.
Except he had to have healed her himself. She couldn't figure out how. While he was a night elf, he had been something akin to a mage, and they had no command over the healing energies of the earth or the light or the elements.
Maybe his tapping method caused a sort of euphoric high in the victim, a sense of false hope that they might be alright before he crushed them -- and her head throbbed with the effort of maintaining that thought. Maybe he simply mixed a potion in with the stew he fed her.
Her stomach began to ache with hunger, and she began to hope, against all rational thought, that he would return soon, and with something to eat.
*****
He snuck up behind the oblivious draenei, reaching out and absorbing some of his victim's strength. The draenei sagged against the tree, scolding herself about the perils of overexertion, and Illidan slipped away, completely unnoticed, moving on to stalk his next prey.
*****
Her stomach cried, growled, so painfully empty! She trembled, pulling herself from the straw. She needed food, even if she had to injure herself further to get it.
The room spun as she crawled forward. Illidan had been gone for days, apparently having left her to die. Maybe he found something else to occupy his time, aware that in her current state, she was more work than she could possibly be worth.
Her entire body ached. She tried chewing on the straw, but her dry mouth could hardly produce enough saliva, and what pieces she managed to break apart slid down her throat about as smoothly as swallowing a jagged bit of glass.
And she completely lacked the strength to move.
So this was it. She wouldn't die an honorable death battling the Burning Legion, or of old age after many years of respectable service to the elements and the Light. No, she would die of hunger and dehydration in some abandoned arakkoa nest, the last action of her life being sapped by Illidan himself.
The world faded from view and all she knew was darkness -- then nothing.
