Five days later.
Being an extremely active nature, during the past time spent in the dungeon, Illidan Stormrage had managed to rethink everything possible: his actions, the impact they had on specific persons and the world as a whole, how it all looked from various points of view, ranging from his closest associates to none other than Sargeras himself, who had given him magical sight... Oh, it was a thankless task—fantasizing about the motives for the actions of such odious personalities—it could make your head spin!
And the longer the elf reflected, the more he became convinced that, despite making many small blunders and using an at times overly blunt approach, in the main he had not been mistaken—without a Source of Magic, nothing good awaited his race: at best—a difficult-to-maintain stagnation, at worst—gradual degradation, for the progress of the elven people was based on the power of the Source.
As if deliberately timing the moment when the prisoner would sort out the main questions, his first visitor dropped by. A guard emerged from the shadows of the empty corridor and froze opposite the bars, looking at the imprisoned elf. The reflections of the magic waves running along the bars caught a dark green cloak thrown over her shoulders from the gloom, and not just that... Long light-brown hair peeking out from under an ornate mask covering the upper half of her face, delicate lips, soft contours of the chin, and characteristic curves on her chest—all this left no doubt as to the gender of the person who had tilted her head to the side. And though Illidan Stormrage saw none of this, the capabilities of his new vision were quite enough to distinguish a woman from a man.
Five days spent in solitude were clearly not enough for the prisoner to have time to miss living communication, so he was in no hurry to start a conversation with the silent elf. She, in turn, was also not burning with desire to establish contact with her charge. A few minutes of wordless scrutiny of the prisoner ended, and the girl, turning sharply, dissolved back into the darkness of the corridor, while Illidan Stormrage continued his mental investigations.
This almost identical scene was repeated day after day for a week: one of the actors of the "silent theater," namely the prisoner, remained the same throughout the "performance," while the female guards changed periodically. At the end of the specified period, Illidan Stormrage grew tired of beating a dead horse (no matter how you look at it, the Source is needed—what else is there to think about?). The Demon Hunter followed the advice of his former teacher and immersed himself in meditation: Source or no Source, but because of his vacillation between love for Tyrande Whisperwind, brotherly bonds, duty to the queen and the people, and the pull toward new knowledge and power, he was quite confused. And then there were those youngsters who had fallen under his heavy hand... He had never been known for a calm disposition, but here his brother was right—something in his actions was wrong, and exactly what—that was what he intended to find out!
Detaching from the outside world and plunging into the inner one was easy, for the environment was very conducive to it. Illidan Stormrage relaxed and lowered his head to his chest; the green fires under the blindfold began to fade slowly until they went out completely. Now, even if Maiev Shadowsong or someone else expressed a desire to communicate with the prisoner, their attempts would have remained fruitless.
A year later.
The time spent on the "post-mortem" was not wasted. Starting from the very top—with an analysis of his actions—he moved on to considering their underlying basis, that is, motives, both easily readable and lying on the surface, and internal ones, hidden deep in the subconscious of the elven sorcerer. And the more he compared his past, pre-war "Self" from about twenty years ago with the present one, the more differences he found, sometimes barely noticeable but very important and significant. It only remained to find the cause of these changes. Someone unfamiliar with elves might say: "A whole twenty years have passed, and it's quite natural that his way of thinking has changed more than once...", but for a representative of this race, characterized by low inertia in views on life, only a measly couple of decades had passed. And he couldn't blame all these oddities on the war.
Through comparison and taking into account several very logical assumptions, Illidan Stormrage came to the conclusion that his brains had gone haywire precisely after the memorable meeting with Sargeras. "That horned bastard! He did add some other little gift along with the sight and tattoos!"—and the longer he thought about it, the more confirmation he found for his guess. He had only a "little" left—to understand what the fallen Titan had done to him and how to get rid of it.
However, he failed to make progress on these issues. And not at all because Illidan Stormrage couldn't due to limited resources, but because he was interrupted...
------------------//------------------
One of the rooms of a typical student dorm, the end of the first class period.
"— ...
— ICC25 HC! Starting from Marrowgar, need rDruid/rShaman, Arcane, and Disc. GS from 6k PM me.
— ...
— RS25HC for the last boss, need a healer with straight shaved hands sticking out from anywhere but the ass. GS in PM!
— ..."
The eyes of the second-year student lying in a chair in front of the computer, with a practiced ease that testified to considerable experience, caught these messages in the rapidly updating global chat window. The offers that interested him, authored by well-known raid leaders, made him think: the gaming week had only just begun, and he didn't really want to trigger lockouts on such promising and important raids for him. What would he do for the remaining six days until the reset?
He had decided not to go to classes since the morning, so he had the whole day free, which made the offer look tempting... After all, shouldn't he eventually roll that cursed shield and trinket?! Although for that, they had to be dropped first...
"Should I go? And if so, where?" The guy wasn't given a chance to finish that thought. A "small" unforeseen circumstance—an explosion on the floor above, where the room of "self-taught alchemists" was located—put an end to the doubts of the truant sophomore, and a piece of the ceiling collapsing from above left these questions open forever...
In a tunnel with no branches, it's hard to get lost even if it were dark, and when a light burns in the distance, becoming brighter and brighter as you approach it, even the slightest fears of "missing your stop" vanished entirely. And just when it seemed that the exit was within arm's reach, changes appeared in the interior of the tunnel, which remained dark despite the proximity of the destination. Black tentacles emerging from the floor grabbed the hapless traveler and dragged him somewhere.
Before the soul could realize where it was and weep over the loss of the computer (belonging to a true nerd—it remembered the lost body last), someone's impersonal voice was heard: "Yes, you will do...", and it was pulled somewhere again...
------------------//------------------
A year and a little bit more had passed since the day of imprisonment... "Not exactly a round date," you might say, but troubles and problems don't follow a schedule, don't warn of their visits in advance, and certainly don't ask for permission—they just come. So it's no surprise that at the very moment when the meditating prisoner approached the origins of the mystery of his mental state, one of these unwelcome guests dropped by.
When an uninvited thought suddenly appears inside your head—it certainly makes you worry, but not as much as if it turned out to be not your own, but someone else's. And so such a mishap happened to the hero of the War of the Ancients—an unfamiliar voice mentally shouted something with delight in an unknown language, and in the next moment, Illidan Stormrage realized with great surprise that he was no longer the sole owner of his body, but was sharing it with some invalid (he couldn't bring himself to call the parasite, who felt like a very mediocre Mage, anything else), who was brazenly digging through his memory!
While the true owner of the elven body, having fallen out of meditation, remained in a daze and tried to comprehend how such a thing was possible and what he should do about it, the guest attempted to seize control of the body and, in general, behaved extremely rudely. An immediate reaction followed from Illidan Stormrage, and he showed the interloper that the demon hunter carries his second name—Stormrage—quite deservedly... No clash of wills or struggle as such occurred. A wave of rage rising from the depths of his consciousness washed over the elf, and before he could realize it, the foreign soul was thrown out of the body in the blink of an eye, where it successfully perished, burning up from defensive spells in the radiance of the aura—the external manifestation of the body's energy component surrounding the master of Arcane magic.
"Demons take me! What was that?!" But the only one who could have consulted him on this matter had already vanished into oblivion. "Curse it, I rushed! I should have 'talked' to that weakling," the Mage grimaced with annoyance after witnessing a tiny flash at the edge of his aura and the stasis charms enveloping it (the guest's little soul simply didn't have "enough" for more). Although Illidan Stormrage did not feel any danger, the sheer strangeness of the situation already forced him to think... Not long ago, his philosophizing would have lasted five minutes at most, but the paranoia that had sharpened recently did not allow him to simply brush off such a seemingly trivial matter. He no longer believed in accidents and coincidences—life had taught him better. Illidan Stormrage did not yet understand the meaning of this absurd attack, try as he might, but he felt in his gut that there was a catch. Moreover, he was troubled by the fact that the attack was carried out by an unknown method...
"Pff..." shaking his head, the elf smirked unkindly, and then couldn't help but let out a short laugh. "Whoever arranged this—it turned out amusing. Maybe they wanted to cheer me up? If so—let them keep it up, I don't mind!" he muttered before beginning to sink back into "hibernation."
If the one sitting locked away knew what this would all eventually turn into, he clearly would not have started throwing around such statements.
His whisper did not go unnoticed. Not even two minutes had passed before the figure of one of the female guards materialized near the awakened prisoner, but the war hero had enough time to transition back into "out of reach" status...
Two days later, another uninvited guest "dropped by," and the next attempt to seize Illidan Stormrage's guarded body happened in an utterly mundane fashion. At some point, the elf simply felt another presence again; meanwhile, he failed to understand exactly how the foreign soul got into him, bypassing Cenarius's spells and his own aura. On the other hand, he now had a source of information.
A few minutes later.
"Who sent you? Speak!" the Mage's grip of will tightened further, causing, as he hoped, unimaginable pain to the stranger's captured soul (scientifically, the astral shell).
"..." (translated into Elven, this would sound like "A-a-ah!").
"I didn't understand anything! Think 'harder'!" To stimulate the victim's thought process, the elf applied additional pressure.
"..." ("A-aaaaah!")
This time the scream turned out much more prolonged, but most importantly, just as Illidan Stormrage ordered—clearer, so much so that even he figured out what was what.
The Mage's onslaught instantly weakened, but it was already too late: the soul of the second guest suffered a fate no less deplorable than the previous adversary—unable to withstand the pressure exerted, it simply disintegrated, crumbling into many small sparks that, after a final dull glimmer, melted away in the riot of magic surrounding Illidan Stormrage.
"Got carried away," the "interrogator" stated. "I'll keep in mind for the future that they aren't just weak, but completely infirm."
And he had no doubt whatsoever that this future would certainly come...
------------------//------------------
Three weeks later.
The first pair was followed by another dozen, whose careful interrogation brought no tangible benefit. An image of the attackers stood before the Mage's inner eye. "Tfu! These long-eared morons are useless even if they do know something! They can't even properly maintain thought-speech; how am I supposed to interrogate this trash at all?! All that was left was to dig through the fragments of their memory, but these half-mages didn't bother to develop it, so all that remained of their entire lives were vague pictures and a more or less clear memory of the last minutes of life! And all that could be extracted from them were a few incomprehensible images and a couple of clues: a strange voice speaking after their death, and the fact that some of them clearly know me from somewhere..."
Illidan Stormrage was dissatisfied with the result of communicating with the interlopers, but he had to resign himself: there was no way to find out who was behind these attacks. "Hm... is it even necessary to continue engaging in this idiocy? It's already clear that nothing more can be obtained from them," he thought for a moment and immediately produced an answer: "Do I have nothing better to do than mess around with these worthless half-mages? (Indeed, there was plenty of 'work' to do in the cell). In the end, they don't know the main thing anyway, and the rest... I don't give a damn. Who needs the details of their lives? Certainly not me: I haven't gone mad from boredom yet..."
------------------//------------------
The next guest appeared outside the established (once every two days) schedule and turned out to be significantly stronger. Of course, he noticed the trend of the invaders strengthening, although this task turned out to be far from trivial: they were strengthening literally drop by drop! However, it wasn't for nothing that he had been examining them for almost a month with the meticulousness of a dedicated vivisector. But this time the enemy was on an entirely different level compared to the predecessors... The prisoner wasn't even surprised by the schedule violation, and the increased power of this representative of a race unknown to him did not prevent the elf from casually smearing the astral shell in a "thin layer" over his aura. Strength without skill is nothing, and the energy-pumped spiritual shell of some half-wit clearly did not possess the latter.
Quickly completing this "difficult" job, Illidan Stormrage tensed mentally: such a sharp strengthening of enemies was not to his liking. "If the first visitors looked exactly like various-sized ants under the foot of an ancient Kodo, the last one was already more like a small, but still a scarab. The difference isn't great... however, it could be noticed even with the naked eye. If it continues like this..." he estimated what kind of trouble this threatened and frowned for real—nothing good could be expected from this innovation. Although he considered himself an excellent Mage, he also knew that there would always be someone stronger.
Illidan Stormrage's fears were confirmed within a few hours: evidently, the unknown enemy grew tired of the elf's "struggles" and decided to force events, moving from slow probing of Illidan Stormrage's capabilities to faster and more intensive key-picking. The new messenger resembled a rabbit, and it was a very plump specimen equipped with fangs. In connection with such an approach, an obvious question arose—why wasn't a strong enemy sent to him immediately instead of these weaklings? But the captive did not bother solving riddles: in the course of the emerging bad trend of "ants" mutating into "toothed rabbits," he had other, more urgent matters.
Comparing the degree of strengthening of the recent send-offs and the frequency of their appearance did not take the Mage much time, and the result of the analysis did not please him. By the man's estimates, at this rate, no later than in two days, he faced a serious battle for his body with an opponent equal in strength, and if this time experience would be on his side, then an hour later... No, if he were free, not even a shadow of defeat would have flickered in his thoughts because of such trifles, but specifically here and now, being very constrained in means of defense... Illidan Stormrage with difficulty subdued the rage that gripped him—very little time remained, and he had to keep himself in check if he did not want to repeat the fate of the invaders who burned in his aura.
The thought—to call the Guard for help—he dismissed as absurd: by the time the news reached his Blood brother or Cenarius, they would have time to throw him out of his body ten times over. "I need to get out of here," the captive elf realized with crystal clarity. "And for that, I need..."
For the first time in his entire stay in the dungeon, he paid close attention to the spells active in the cell.
Cenarius—the creator of the dungeon—did not completely cut off the energy channel, narrowed to a tiny thread, that connected the Source and its creator. He acted more cleverly. The Source fed Illidan Stormrage, and Illidan Stormrage himself acted as a battery for the entire complex of charms that held him motionless, blocked his Magical Abilities, played the role of an alarm, and performed many other minor things like maintaining the prisoner's life support. And at the same time, the elf was not tortured by the so-called "magic thirst" at all. His magic reserve was half full and did not decrease, but did not increase either: apparently, the Teacher's calculation was based on this.
About two hours were spent studying this entire construction. Perhaps it would have taken more, but another uninvited guest appeared in his body. And again it happened earlier than expected, and the soul turned out to be stronger than the previous one. The "rabbit" was replaced by a mature "lion," but it wasn't the delay of a few seconds (previously, a moment was enough to deal with the interlopers) that caused a feeling of dull irritation: now he finally understood how the uninvited guests were breaking in! They were using the connection channel with the Source! His connection channel with his Source!
"Bastards! I swear, when I get my magic back, the next one who tries to use my Source will bitterly regret it! And will regret it for an entire eternity! I'll..." the elf suddenly caught himself. "First I need to leave this hospitable abode and preferably do it quickly, otherwise I'll be the one regretting it, even if not for such a long time..."
Five minutes later.
In recent years, Illidan Stormrage had gravitated toward various kinds of suicidal adventures: the meeting with Sargeras and the creation of the Source with practically no preparation were proof enough! And this time, the escape plan devised on the fly reeked of rare madness... and was exactly in his spirit. The idea, brilliant in its simplicity, solved all his problems upon implementation even in case of failure... after all, death is also a way out.
Blocking the connection with the Source. Just a couple of years ago, before the start of the War of the Ancients, for such a proposal, reeking of pure sacrilege, any Highborne would have immediately hammered those words down the author's throat along with a Fireball or something worse, because magic thirst is far from an empty sound, and it threatened not only unpleasant sensations... The less Mana a Mage has, the greater the load on the body and aura, and if it runs out completely and the Mage begins to spend life force during Spellcasting, then it's not far from receiving irreparable damage to the energy shell, which leads to the impossibility of further use of magic for a long period, if not forever, or even to a lethal outcome: fifty-fifty, depending on "luck." Being a Mage to the marrow of his bones, Illidan Stormrage found it difficult to determine which of these two consequences was worse, but for the same reason, he believed that among these equal chances, he would definitely squeeze out a possibility for a successful outcome from fate.
Pressed into narrow time frames, the prisoner did not weigh the probable risks for long and, applying considerable effort of will, shut off the energy channel coming to him from the Source. As soon as he did this, he immediately felt the outflow of Mana from his energy shell. Now he only had to wait for Cenarius's spells to empty his reserve, draining all the Mana from him. The charms of stasis and magic blocking would not last long without nourishment and would soon dissipate or at least weaken. Blocking the channel allowed him to get rid of the magical shackles and also closed the loophole for uninvited guests, which, in light of the current situation, became the main reason for such a rapid implementation of this dangerous plan.
After completing the first point, Illidan Stormrage immediately proceeded to carry out the second—he began to distribute energy throughout his body, "hiding" it wherever possible from the greedy "tendrils" of Cenarius's security system entangling his aura and pumping Mana out of it. The elf had to perform a small feat—to preserve the remnants of Mana until the moment when the stasis, deprived of nourishment, would weaken and could no longer hold him.
Forced Mana drainage is an unpleasant thing in itself, especially with a practically empty reserve, and the attempt to resist this process while simultaneously maintaining the blockage, which was given the highest priority, caused a mass of extremely painful sensations. He jerked, held in the air, and, clenching his teeth, tried to suppress the groans tearing from his throat, since attracting the Guard's attention ahead of time was not part of his intentions. However, the Mage overestimated his strength and simultaneously underestimated the Teacher's skill: after an hour of resistance, all his Mana reserves were cleaned out to zero, and the attempts to suck non-existent energy out of him caused much greater damage to the energy channels, and accordingly more palpable pain than he had anticipated... All his strength had to be thrown into keeping the channel closed. Muffled by distance, male screams began to spread through the dungeon.
Pain, the breach of secrecy, and even the complete loss of Mana were not as critical as the beginning destruction of the prisoner's body's energy component while the state of the stasis spell remained completely unchanged... But Illidan Stormrage no longer had any other choice but to go to the end.
***
Read the story months ahead of the public release — early chapters are available on my Patreon: patreon.com/Granulan