#iblys fallowsun

Few had even survived the Fall. He remembered the day well, his mother’s sister dragging herself to the estate with her two remaining children, her cloak in tatters. They had failed, she told them. All had failed, and death marched upon the High Kingdom. Runners were sent out, but none returned, and Kaldreth’s aunt passed away delirious and screaming, her wounds putrefying despite the medics’ best attempts. Her youngest, Dalyr, followed her a short while after. The shock of the Sunwell’s corruption, felt by all quel’dorei, caused the child to fall to the ground, trembling and pale. He never wailed or spoke or made a sound as the filth ate away at him from within. His light was snuffed out in the night, leaving behind nothing but a small, shrivelled husk.

Marnos and Valdria were both adults by then, or as close as made no difference. Kaldreth stuck with them, embittered even then by the monumental loss of life he was forced to witness. They joined their Prince together, fought the Scourge and the Legion together, and only parted ways when Kaldreth’s mind broke. During a particularly gruesome assault against a Legion stronghold, his father, Naelis Starmist, was cut off from the rest of their forces. Kaldreth fought viciously to reach him, only to be knocked aside by a barrage of Legion projectiles. He watched helplessly as his father was impaled by the weapons of the enemy, and in a moment of irrational, mindless grief, he drew upon the demonic magic surrounding him. Unprepared as he was, the influx of fel energy scarred him, body and soul.

He could not recall what happened next, only that he had been dragged far from the front lines and to the halls of the Black Temple, howling and raving all the while. There, under heavy supervision, he was taught control; not only of the magics he had unleashed, but of his mind as well. Eventually, he was allowed to join the Illidari and went through the ritual that would forever mark him as a demon hunter.

He never did learn what became of his cousins, whether they had defected or perished with their Prince. All he knew was they had been slain in one of the many conflicts between then and the most recent squabble between the Alliance and Horde, leaving only his mother Arenia to carry the Starmist name. After Sargeras’ imprisonment, he debated whether he should reveal himself to her, attempt to reconnect after all this time. Would she accept him? Would she even recognise her only child?

That choice was snatched away from him. A new conflict engulfed Azeroth almost immediately, and he lost her as well, to Windrunner’s damned war.

Some might say that had pushed him over the edge, and he found it hard to blame them. He began loudly advocating for the Illidari to step in and use their considerable might to pressure the Horde and Alliance into respecting their newfound peace in perpetuity. Some had listened. Many more shook their heads. Eventually, he was politely requested to leave the Fel Hammer and take care of his inheritance.

And now here he was, with the keys to the grounds in his pocket, heir to nothing but a broken house and bitter memories.

***

He ran his thumb over the third key. Neither of the first two would fit the lock to the mansion proper. He swore under his breath when this one too failed to open the door. Same with the fourth and fifth. Finally, with the sixth attempt, he heard a satisfying click.

Kaldreth flicked an ear. There had been another, smaller sound, nearly masked by that of the lock. And now, an ongoing whirring…

He slammed the door open with a swift jab and threw himself to the side, narrowly evading the blast of disruptive magic that scorched the entryway as it passed through exactly where he would have been standing had he been less careful. Fel power surged through him, toughening his skin, and he barrelled through the entrance to smash the contraption that had fired upon him. Some sort of portable Legion cannon, he thought, rigged to release at whoever opened that door. Upon second glance, he noticed some peculiar modifications. He rummaged through the machine’s insides and pulled out what should have been its fel power core. The crystal he found instead was smaller, a deep emerald hue rather than the bright, sickly green of Legion magic. Kaldreth growled deep in his throat. He could recognise the spellwork immediately. Him and his fellow Illidari had been forced to watch nothing but this for years, trapped in a nightmarish stasis and left to contend with only their inner demons. A Warden containment crystal. Whoever set this up must have known-

His enhanced senses screamed at him and in an instant, his warglaives were out. Something had appeared at the top of the stairwell. He could still perceive its trail. His nostrils flared as he caught the familiar scent of demon. He rushed after it, leaping at the last second to avoid triggering a tripwire. He landed atop some elaborate symbol and swiftly rolled aside, bracing for another trap to spring.

Nothing happened.

It took him a moment to recognise what he was looking at. It was not some mystical sigil as he had feared; it was a word, scrawled in Thalassian runes and inked in demonic blood. FAILURE. He glanced down the hallway and saw the walls had been similarly defaced. ABOMINATION. MURDERER. BETRAYER. DEMON.

Kaldreth stalked along the accusing scrawls, carefully rounding a corner. Here, the walls appeared to have been slashed wildly by some great beast, leaving deep gashes in the marble. The door to his parents’ old bedroom was ajar, with a full sentence seared into the pale wood in a blasphemous form of Eredun. COME AND SEE.

The stench of demonic flesh wafted from the room. He took a slow step forward. Then another. Suddenly, he pivoted, bringing his glaive around in a strike that should have split the creature attempting to sneak up on him.

Instead, his strike was parried by a short, wicked-looking blade. His would-be assailant was massive, clad in simple armour and with a tattered leather cloak wrapped around its broad shoulders. Demonic spikes tore through the material and accentuated its sheer bulk. Worst was the face, a skull-like rictus crowned with a pair of short horns and sporting long, razor-sharp teeth.

It’s a mask, he realised while they exchanged several swift blows. And those weapons, the tattoos-

“Who are you?” Kaldreth snarled at the other demon hunter. In response, he received a flurry of wild slashes. “Who are you?” he repeated, matching the barrage of attacks with his own. “WHO ARE YOU???”

His voice grew deeper midway through the inquiry. Dark energies danced along his muscles, wrapping him in shadows. His empty eye sockets blazed with fel. He launched himself forward, pushing the other combatant to the wall. In the fierce struggle he managed to hook both his opponent’s glaives with his own and launched both sets at the wall where they stuck. His hand shot out like a snake, grabbing the other demon hunter by the throat and slamming them against the wall where they remained suspended from their own back spikes. “WHO… ARE… YOU???” he screamed and tore off the metal mask.

The shadows retreated off his form. Kaldreth withdrew his hand like he’d been burned. “I… know you…” he muttered. He could hardly believe it. She had been a willowy, waifish thing once, a servant in the Starmist household and later his father’s personal retainer. The ritual that reforged her into a demon huntress had also leached all colour from her face and hair, turning her bright, copper-red locks to a silvery white. She flexed her muscles, struggling against the spikes holding her in place. “You… served us. Served my father. Your name… I can’t quite…” The hulking figure finally managed to dislodge herself, falling hard to her knees. Her back bled where two of the outgrowths had been torn from her flesh. “Iblys,” she spat. Kaldreth tilted his head. “No, that was not it.” He snapped his fingers. “Ah! Eryn-”

She lunged in a blur. He barely managed to restrain her as she kept snapping at his neck like a rabid lynx, again and again, her sharp teeth coming within inches of ripping out his artery. He held her by the throat with one hand and firmly squeezed her right wrist with the other. Only too late did he realise she had not employed her left arm in the attack. A streak of unbearable pain ran across his ribs and he screamed, his voice echoed by another. His assailant leapt off him and offered a mirthless, savage grin. In her left hand she held a set of wicked fanned knives, the same weapon that had torn his side and-

My tattoos.

She had struck with surgical precision, knowing exactly how to perfectly disrupt the arcane bindings keeping his inner demon in check. He could feel the creature awakening, writhing within him, clawing its way into the forefront of his… their… consciousness. “Now we see who you really are,” she said. “What… what have you done? Eryn’thala! TRAITOR!” His muscles rippled as the bound felguard vied for control over their shared vessel. A scrabbling, shuffling, sniffing noise grabbed his attention. Eryn’thala bared her teeth at him. “Oh, don’t mind that. The felhunter has been trained to track out-of-control filth.” Something heavy thudded against the door. Kaldreth’s head snapped around madly, finally focussing on the demon huntress who gave a hollow laugh. “I’m sure he’ll be respectful with your remains. Eventually.”

Demon hunter and demon both screamed simultaneously. Their body threw itself forward with reckless abandon, vaulting over their enemy, reaching for their warglaives…

She never bothered with finesse. The moment she felt Kaldreth’s weight upon her back, she slammed backwards against the wall, pinning the demon hunter between her demonic spikes. She felt them break as she turned. The desperate creature’s hand was just barely grazing the edge of his weapon, nearly there, nearly, nearly…

Iblys ran her fingers through her erstwhile lord’s hair and pulled roughly. He snarled, blood and spittle flying from between his clenched teeth. There was barely anything of the elf left in his features. “We made you who you are, ungrateful bitch!” he spat. Her face remained impassive. “You would have been dead without us! Maybe you should have been dead!”

She sighed and gripped him by the throat. “Still as much of an idiot as you ever were, Kaldreth. This? This isn’t personal.”

With one swift motion, she broke his neck.

***

He floated. For how long, he could not tell. Time, space, none of it meant anything in this place. There was only pain, the sheer, exquisite agony of his body reforming from the primordial matter of the Twisting Nether. Every sting and every searing moment he used to fuel his hatred, his unending thirst for vengeance against the one who had sent him here.

He could envision her face, as it had been, melting into what it had become. The weak, sickly child turned bitter, broken creature. It would be a mercy, relieving her of that burden. When he came back, he would show her that mercy, the mercy of cracking bones and gushing viscera, he could even imagine her voice as it screamed, screamed, screamed his name in her final moments…

Kaldreth. Ergranthar. Kaldreth. Ergranthar.

He would make her speak his names. He would-

No, this was not his imagination. He could hear her voice. Cold realisation struck as he felt first a tug, then a tormenting sensation of being dragged through the Nether, through every jagged, fragmented planetoid and every flaming core. It all paled before the pain of being torn from one plane to another, and once that agonising moment was over…

I have been here before.

His soul screamed in silence. The crystal! The thrice-damned containment crystal! He could not see anything outside its sheer, polished walls. She knew! Of course she did, she must have been captured with the other Illidari. She knew intimately the unbearable strain of pure stasis.

He suddenly felt something touch the crystal. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Five claws, arrayed around its edges. A gigantic face, outlined beyond the crystal’s surface. Her face.

She gave him an appraising look, communicated even through the veil she wore to hide her eyelessness. Say it, he thought, tell me why you did all this. He felt a strange sensation, as of infinite pressure slowly building up. A crack ran across the smooth surface. SAY IT! TELL ME WHY!

Without a word, Iblys shattered the containment crystal.

***

It was at best a fragment of a world, long lost to the Legion. Above it hung a small, pale yellow orb, barely warm enough to be called a sun. There were a few creatures still skulking about beneath the jagged, rocky surface, but they had long ago learned to leave Iblys and her abode alone.

A loud meow greeted her as she entered the Ashen Spire. Iblys turned her head and smiled with genuine warmth. “Jinx!” she called to the saber cub. It stared at her with huge, fel-green eyes. She picked it up and dusted off its coat, paying close attention to the bright, glowing markings. “Look, you have to keep yourself groomed, or the sigils will stop working. You daftie,” she chided. Jinx purred and pawed gently at her face, then leapt from her arms to nest between her back spikes.

The demon huntress clicked her claws and the braziers lit up with a pallid, sickly glow. She grunted, then peered at the feline cradled along her shoulders. “Well, we do still have an hour or two of sunlight left… and we don’t really have anything better to do, do we?” Jinx responded with a little mrow noise.