I AM MY SCARS !

The enemy came into our world, their only desire to extinguish all life. They slaughtered our loved ones. They razed our homes, our cities, and our sacred places. You tried to stop them... and you failed. And so, you came to me, nothing remaining of you but rage and determination, and you learned that the things that once tormented you could give you power.

          “ Your predecessor left a lot to be desired. ”

          In the grand scheme of things, Kael'thas' betrayal is not one that Illidan dwells on. The two of them used each other to their own ends. Young Kael wanted to cure his people's mana addiction. Illidan had wished to unite Outland as a force against the Legion. His inevitable split from their tenuous alliance was not surprising.

          Luckily, Illidan is not his brother or Tyrande. He does not condemn an entire race for the actions of an individual. His arms folded across his chest.

          “ Your people have never been the ones to sit by idly while the Legion is at our door, ” he says. Then, “ Perhaps my belief in their skills was not misplaced. ”

          It's as close to a truce that Illidan will offer. His wings flare, the air blowing a rogue strand of hair over his shoulder. They'll need every available body, beliefs, alliances, and trust aside. He looks down upon Lor'themar, glowing eyes fever-bright behind his leather blindfold.

           The cut on his hand has deigned to close, at least. He flexes his clawed fingers to test the threshold of pain.

          His wings flutter at the clatter of boots across metal flooring before he catches himself. The tension in his shoulders releases, and he doesn't turn. He doesn't need to. The burned out hollows of his eyes can see as clearly as if he still possessed natural sight and the need to physically observe his surroundings.

           “ Whatever you have to say, just know that the Hig/h Exarch has already beaten you to every single conceivable thing, ” Illidan spits, his words dripping with venom. If there's one thing he cannot tolerate, it's blind zealotry to a clearly flawed power. “ I am sure he will not be the last, either. ”

          His attention shifts then, back to the true reason for being on Argus. The planet pulses with fel energies, the very heart of it all a corrupt, sleeping creature that Illidan can feel down in his very bones. Soon, they'll rend the Legion's very heart.

          Elisande and Gul'dan lie dead. But the Nighthold's twin looms as a terrible beacon on the horizon. Soon, they'll march on it.

          Illidan says, more to himself than Tyrande, “ Strange to think where we started is where we will see this finished. ”

          Or perhaps it isn't strange at all. The Burning Legion is drawn to fonts of power like terrible moths to a flame, and the Nightwell had been of the same make as the Well of Eternity. His ire rises once more as he thinks of the short, selective memory of his people. Of all people of Azeroth.

          “ It is time this ended. ”

          The Broken Shore is quiet, a lull in the battle that promises little relief before the fighting begins again. The Tomb of Sargeras looms in the distance, coloring the land with a sickly fel green. In the distance, Illidan can see his childhood home—Suramar is still as opulent as he remembers. Strange to think that where he started once is also where he began again.

          He turns to the Warchief, a strange title for an even stranger creature. Arthas once made many of the elves of Quel'Thalas his thralls, something he is intimately familiar with given his proximity and alliance to the traitor Kael'thas. To think someone he brought back from death would be one of his greatest allies is somewhat pleasing.

          It reminds him, vaguely, of using his own strength of will to master the fel. Something he can respect, use, and feel a twinge of smugness that Sylvanas carries on while Arthas rots in some unmarked grave.

          “ I trust your previous losses here won't demoralize your troops. ” It's a statement, not a question. There will be time to lick their wounds once the Legion is defeated. Until then, the threat is unrelenting. “ We'll need them all if we are to breach the defenses of the Tomb. ”

Needle laughs short and low as he relaxes back into his usual slouching posture. A hand reaches into the bag and pulls out the strongest still-beating heart of the lot. The rest are tossed to his Felsaber and Felstalker companions a short distance behind him.  “Finally today?” He giggles as he digs his claws into the walls of the heart. The blood gushes from a ventricle to join the cascade on his chest while the rest of it oozes from the atria and runs down his arm. He licks at a thick line of it moving from a knuckle to his wrist.  How many years had he spent wrecking demons? At least as long as he’d awoken from his coma post transformation. Before his senses even returned in full. Clinging to the walls of the Temple, head still reeling and unbalanced and aching from the heavy horns growing out of his skull, vision only tiny shimmers of life forces, ears full of the foul demon screaming in his mind loud enough to drown out his own thoughts. His earliest memory was coming up swinging and taking breaks only to teach others how to do the same.  Since then, hundreds of demons had fallen to him. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands more, he planned. If the Legion runs out of demons before then, he’ll be at least mildly disappointed. The thought makes him laugh louder and he chomps into the heart and tears out a chunk of it. He swallows it whole and purrs.  “This day.” He swallows another chunk and shivers as it still pulsates on its way down his throat. “They’re learning, Master.”

         The bitter, acrid scent of fel tainted blood hits his nose. Once, when he was still weak and new, his mouth would've salivated, his claws itching to tear into flesh to drink deep. Some small part of him, the demonic part that he restrains daily, hourly, minutely to keep from taking over all his senses. He is Illidan Stormrage, and he will not be ruled by any base urges.

         He's better than that.

         Illidan says, “ This day and all the ones before it, Needle. ”

         Since their freedom had been won from the Warden's prison, they have done nothing but grow more fearsome and powerful. As he had once believed, their forces added with Azeroth's own have proven sufficient in leading the charge against the Legion.

         Their victory is close. He can taste it in the back of his throat as clearly as the demon blood dripping down Needle's fingers.

                   “ I am doing this to save our people! ” Words boom from the previous high priestess. Everything she has done was for her people. People like Illidan and Malfurion may have seen her as a fool, but she was thinking of the safety of their people. 

                      We will protect the world tree, nothing will be harmed.

            She had wished the Stormrage brothers could see her vision, the dream that was implanted in her head. What the old gods offered her in return for her loyalty was more than enough for her. She craved her people’s safety. If anyone decided to stand in her way against her ideas, she would end them herself.

         Where Illidan had played at subservience to the Legion, Tyrande has immersed herself fully into the clutches of the Void. Though his blind eyes no longer see her the same way, she has always been a bright point of light in the darkness. Elune, the moon goddess who had forsaken him, guided her path.

         To see her in such a state makes him feel ill. It's something he hasn't had to contend with since absorbing the power the skull of Gul'dan had to offer.

      It is not the answer Tyrande is willing to accept. It is too simple for a situation that proves to be anything but that.

      There is no fury to stiffen her posture or set her jaw hard as stone, but there is a sharpness to her gaze that has always lingered. A scrutiny, an attempt to know the unknowable.

     “ Yet by your hand, Argus now shadows our home. Did you not think of what was to come after? ”

      That she asks at all means she does not find herself able to decide his intentions. Doubt sways, a pendulum’s pace.

     “ If we are to defeat the Legion only to find ourselves on a collision course with the world they conquered, what then? What measures have you taken to ensure this isn’t our fate? ”

         He has considered what will come after thousands of times. Millions. In his darkest moments, deeds so foul he can never clean them from his hands, he has thought about the world after him. He does not expect to survive this. He has never expected to survive this. But he can ensure Tyrande will. She can mend rifts, offer guidance, and be everything that Illidan has always lacked.

         His love for her rears it's head, a small thing burning with a blinding intensity in his chest. He wishes with a great desperation that he could bear witness to it.

            “I did not do it for myself but for our cause.”

   The corners of their mouth twitched.The presence of Illidan did not put them at ease as one might expect. This was the Illidan who had created something strong from them when they were nothing. The same Illidan who had spelled out the Illidari’s downfall with his own hubris. They were equal parts joy and bitterness. Both sides at war with one another. Sanity remained critical only narrowly beating out memory.

            “We may have changed the way we operate to appease new allies but we have not softened. Point the way and my Illidari shall cut the path for the rest of Azeroth to follow.”

         He knows, rationally, that the Illidari remain the same—gliding on silent, dark wings as they bring the Legion to its knees. What he has created has been effective, a turning point in an otherwise hopeless battle. To relent now would spell certain doom for Azeroth, as well as the other last remaining bastions of life in the universe.

“Lord!” He greets in his rough, gargling scratchy voice, thick with a giggle that brings green and black froth bubbling through his sharp teeth. He’s covered in blood and guts that were not his, but match the stains and smears on his skewers and stakes.  As if that weren’t enough of an indication of a successful adventure, he held out an offering, a gift for the Master: a sack dripping with blood and wriggling with a number of still-bleeding hearts, some warm and beating despite having been severed from the demons for a while yet. “Vengeance.” … or at least some vengeance, he supposes. It’s a start, at least.

         Needle, like most of the demon hunters that Illidan has cultivated, is an acquired taste. The knowledge that he offers warps and twists even the most stalwart, making them firsthand witnesses to the atrocities committed by the Burning Legion. That they come out of the experience changed is unsurprising.

         That Needle has decided to speak is an interesting turn. Not enough for the impassivity to fall from Illidan's face, however.