Warcraft Fan Fiction ❯ Bloodstained Shadows - Chronicles of a Lost Soul ❯ Memories of the Twilight - Chapter 8 ( Chapter 24 )

Chapter 8:

 

 

Having obtained the ability to summon an infernal is something really special in this world as I found out pretty soon. I have admit all this rubbish about warlocks not even being able to summon a succubus or a felhunter was something I didn't believe for a long time because somehow it had been all so simple for me.

I quickly had made a name for myself inside the warlock guild, but now with the infernal by my side other caster guilds also started to notice me. I also rose to become a star follower of the Forgotten Shadow, although I hardly ever talked to any of the members of this organisation. Their virtues gave me a goal in my existence, something I wanted to achieve. Yet I had no interest in becoming friends with the whole cult. In Undercity even normal vendors started to know my name, fortunately they knew me as Ceberus and not as Hector.

The only thing they all didn't grasp was the fact that I didn't want to become famous like this. All I wanted was freedom.

I wanted to see how strong my new demon really was, so I decided to travel to the Hillsbrad Foothills and either take revenge on the murlocs at the coastline or watch the diversion my demon would cause if I sent it right into the Fields of Hillsbrad, the small farmer village at the feet of the Alterac Mountains.

After thinking about it on the flight to Tarren Mill I decided to go with the latter of the both.

I left Tarren Mill directly upon landing and within a safe distance I summoned the demon. The moment the infernal crashed into this world for the first time, I felt how its presence was feeding my strength. I just wished this feeling would last and not diminish when it returned to its realm.

The amount of energy I could summon to use for a spell increased dramatically, I was sure that in a state like this a single shadow bolt could even kill a felhunter like my own with a clean hit.

I started to make my way to the west to get to the village. The presence of the infernal also fed my lust for blood and made me leave the last bit of mercy for any human behind. I wanted to see them dying, to hear them wince in agony, to... A loud scream interrupted my thoughts.

I calmed down a bit and decided to have look where the scream came from.

I knew that there was a cave full of wendigos around there in the area, I had passed it several times.

A few of them were lying dead in front of their cave, that was when I started to wonder about what was happening there. I heard another scream from the inside of the cave, the person crying out couldn`t be too far from the entrance.

I hurried inside, the tall and clumsy infernal by my side. As I entered the cave, I could decide to go left or right, the left way leading down and the right way a bit up a slope. I took the way up to the right and found the person screaming sitting next to a brazier and surrounded by at least five of the wendigos.

Wendigos are tall creatures with a usually grey to brown fur and two large horns, they are similar to humanoids in their physique. The person who had screamed was a female bloodelf carrying a sword and a shield in a colour matching her black armour with red highlights. Later on I found out that this was the armour of the paladins of Silvermoon.

She was the reason for the dead creatures in front of the cave and due to the blood on her armour the normally rather peaceful wendigos started attacking her, dragging her into this cave. I decided to help her although I already had the feeling that this would get a bit messy.

At first I sent the infernal to attack the utmost left animal while I was aiming for the onestanding to her right with a shadow bolt.

The shadow bolt hit the creature in the side, it flew faster than the infernal was walking. My spell blasted a hole into the body of the wendigo twice the side of the creatures head. A little fountain covered the other wendigos in blood. They turned to me immediately, for I was a far greater threat than the bloodelf in their eyes.

Meanwhile my infernal had reached its target and it literally smashed the creature into the ground. The bones of the wendigo snapped like twigs..., like incredibly loud twigs. I used the time to try out almost every single spell I knew whether it became stronger too and if yes, how much.

The bloodelf looked at me from scared eyes. I must have been at least as fearsome for her as the wendigos were. My demon smashed wendigo after wendigo leaving no survivors. My pet even finished off the ones I wanted to killed with my curses too early. As it turned to the bloodelf and lifted its arm I ordered it to stop.

The giant of flames and stone froze in its movements and returned to my side immediately. The biggest downside of the infernal was that you could only keep it in this world for about five minutes. I would definitely have to find out how to make this duration longer. The infernal next to me stopped moving, then the green in flames in its carcass disappeared in an glimpse of an eye and the whole creature collapsed.

I approached the bloodelf in her black and red armour sitting shivering in between the mangled corpses of the wendigos.

As I stood directly in front of her, I offered her a hand to help her up. She was so scared by me. I tried to talk to her that I only wanted to help her, she must have thought that I also wanted to kill her. So I just went on talking, I told her my name and that I`m a citizen of Undercity and that I didn`t have any interest in killing her. Alright the part with the citizen of Undercity was a lie, but the rest was the truth.

I still didn`t want to be a member of the Horde or whatsoever. I didn`t want to get dragged into this fight with the so-called Alliance.

Slowly she calmed down, it was out of question that she didn`t trust me at all. At least now she got up to her feet, yet she didn`t even take my offer that I could help her up. I couldn`t see too much of her face due to the helmet she was wearing.

I asked whether we could now leave this cave, I gave up any hope that she would answer me so I started to talk to her as if I was making fun of the situation. With a still trembling voice she asked me to wait. Her voice was strong, yet very light and clear. I wouldn't know how I could describe it in a way that suited the sound of it.

She held a kind of rod into the flames, turning them into a light blue.

She asked me if I would accompany her on her way down into the cave. She quickly made use of the fact that I was stronger than her. I agreed to help her, although I don't know anymore why I did so. There was a second of those braziers somewhere on the bottom level of the cave. All in all it didn't take too long to find it. I summoned my felhunter to my side, he would be the demon that would make the least trouble and was the strongest, except for my infernal, too.

Getting passed the wendigos down there was rather easy. My felhunter killed them on his own without any problem.

The second brazier was in a smaller part of the cave with a little underground brook flowing through it. As the iron rod was held into it, the fire turned into a bright green, similar to the demonic flames of my infernal. On this day I started to wonder if I could create such flames on my own, little did I know at that time, that from these thoughts one of my strongest spells would originate.

We left the cave without hesitation, I was sure that the wendigo population would grow back to normal again soon enough. I did not intend on killing as much of them as I had done, but I did not hold back. I was just as merciless while opposing them, as I would be with other opponents.

Back to the surface the bloodelf turned to me. The black armour seemed to be made of pure onyx, at least that was the way it looked. It fit her body tightly, yet flexible enough to allow her to make quick movements while in combat. The blacksmiths of Silvermoon must have a high reputation among the elves.

She actually took her helmet off so I could see her face. It was rather thin but with strong outlines. She had long orange hair tied to a ponytail behind her head with a single strand in front of her magnificent green eyes. She had the typical long elven ears and eyebrows, but none of them narrowed her beauty.

I just loved her eyes, they were somehow hypnotizing.

She thanked me for saving her and my aid while finding the last of the braziers. She told me her name was Calystea and bid me farewell, she would have to address herself back to the task she was given in Tarren Mill. I wondered what she would have to do and for whom, but I didn`t ask. I wasn`t the curious kind of person at that time.

I don`t know if destiny wanted to tell me something but I met her several times by mere chance during the following weeks, even on the evening of the same day inside Undercity. I have to admit, it was not me who noticed her first, usually she was the one who found me by accident or whatsoever. On the other hand, sometimes it felt as if she was trying to find me, as if she was searching for me.

After some time we started to do things together, take assignments or whatsoever, even though my main interest was still finding a way how I could grow stronger. Kaal even made me an offer that if I was able to create a spell of my own he would give me a hint how to achieve something really rare, even for higher ranked warlocks. He wanted to test me whether I was really such a unique warlock or not. Of course this filled me with energy to get going. But the only thing I had in the back of my head were those green flames.

Calystea usually stayed in Silvermoon for the night, because she thought of the Undercity as, how she called it, creepy and disgusting. I, on the other hand loved, Undercity. It was not as obtrusively colourful as Silvermoon, not as crowded and noisy as Orgrimmar and not as... well... I just didn`t like Thunderbluff, no offence to the steaks living there. Although I have to admit I changed my opinion towards the tauren capital later on, after my first visit to it and the lands of Mulgore.

It was easy to get from Undercity to Silvermoon, some of the magicians of the bloodelves had installed a kind of teleporter in the upper courtyard of the ruins of Lordaeron.

At a later point, I don`t really know how this all started, we spent almost every waken hour together. I can clearly remember how Darnys reacted to her. During that time I started to favour my felhunter as a pet, although he was a bit arrogant, but he didn`t act as jealous as Darnys by only hearing the name Calystea.

I know that my succubus had a certain affection for me, but this was ridiculous. I hardly knew that elven woman and I had no interest in her anyway, at that time at least.

Darnys went rampage on creatures when I had her summoned and went on a assignment together with Caly, as I used to call her. Sometimes I could hardly hold my succubus back and she almost harmed me or Calystea. Darnys also often tried to start a brawl with her by trying to provoke her. Most of the times I dismissed my succubus the moment she started things like this. As I apologized to Caly she often said that this wouldn`t matter and that she understood a bit how Darnys felt. Was I the only one who thought of this all as over-exaggerated?

I learned a lot about bloodelves and their habits during the time I spent with Caly. Although I have to say the main thing I noticed more and more was that every bloodelf was some sort of diva or bitch, if you want to call it that way. She could be as stressful as my succubus if she wanted to.

We travelled a lot in the few weeks we spent together. We visited almost every area of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms we could reach easily; from Winterspring in the north of Kalimdor to the far south of the continent with the deserts of Silithus and Tanaris; and from the Ghostlands south of Silvermoon to Blackrock Mountain in the middle of the continent, to the luxuriant jungle of Stranglethorn in the far south.

Caly enjoyed my company almost as much as Darnys did, for whatever reason. Most of the time I only tried to make progress with the spell I had in mind. After a while I had developed an idea of what I wanted to create, but for that I had to be able to create demonic fire on my own. Therefore I usually spent some time in the evening in the small library of Undercity, hoping to find something that would help me.

But as time passed I almost lost track of my studies. I focussed completely on the time I had with her together. I don`t know how or why, but I fell in love with her.

With every day, every hour we spent with each other, I thought of her as more magnificent and beautiful than before. At some point I even wondered whether she put a spell on me or some thing of this sort.

These were the first `warm` feelings I had since the day I had died.

It felt strange, I even regretted it at that time, for I was a Forsaken slowly rotting away. An eternity awaiting me and she was a bloodelf, blood still running through her veins. Her beauty would perish with the ages although elves live rather long compared to other races.

But I always found a way to talk me into believing in it, to have faith in us. I was obsessed by the idea.

Wool-gathering..., all of it only illusions with no basis to them.

She betrayed me.

She may have spent a lot of time together with me, but we never got closer than a short hug or similar. She also only knew the name I had chosen for myself, Ceberus.

We always talked a lot, until deep into the night we just sat there in Tirisfal and gazed at the moon or we watched the sunset in Booty Bay in Stranglethorn.

One evening, as we sat on a hill in the glades of Tirisfal, near the mills of the Agamand family, she started talking about this other elf she had met and that she didn`t know how to talk to him about her feelings.

It felt as if she drove a hot iron nail right through my heart.

I don`t know why I had started to clinch to the thought of her and me so much, but this was the payment I had to make for thinking that way. The hope I had gathered turned to despair and to hatred.

The night she told me about the other elf, I did not sleep at all. While she was with me I did not show a single sign of the pain I felt inside. Surely she would have only made fun of me for having such ideas... an undead and a bloodelf... how ridiculous.

I bid her farewell as she told me she would have to get going to the her home in Silvermoon, for it was already far too late. The bell of the town hall of Brill stated that it was already past two o`clock.

I told her I would remain were I was for a while. She hugged me once as a good-bye and then left.

Everything in my mind was spinning as I saw her walk away, the last time I had felt this way was a long time ago when I was still alive.

I did not shed a single tear. I don`t know why, but I simply couldn`t. I only sat there and glazed at the moon for about another hour. In my head I went through everything that had happened during the last weeks since I had met her. I even wondered whether this was my fault or not. Anger rose in my mind, it slowly filled my heart with every minute. I didn`t want to see her ever again. I knew I couldn`t harm her, not even the other elf. I didn`t want to hurt her in any way, yet I was filled with rage as I got up to my feet and turned to the north.

All happened so fast, it were mere weeks. For a short amount of time my life somehow had a different taste to it . But now, within moments everything was shattered. Everything else I had done so far felt somehow meaningless too.

I entered the grounds of the farm up on the hill festered by lower minions of the Scourge, the roughly fifteen mills of the Agamands looking down on me.

I yelled out loud at the mills as if they were people laughing about my misery, hatred consuming my mind. “Stop mocking me!“

Something in me changed on that day. Something snapped inside me - to my surprise it made me stronger. Madness was reaching out for me, but I was already locked in the cold grip of hatred.

I threw some fire spells at a few of the mills setting them on fire. Again I yelled at them, “Are you still making fun of me?“

My hands were engulfed in flames, ready to burn down every single building on this hill. The skeletons and wraiths of the Scourge noticed me and started to attack me. None of them lasted longer than a single second, I barely needed to touch them with my flaming hands.

Another fire spell let another building go up in flames. The banshees inside it shrieked as the flames devoured them. I grew exhausted and fell to my knees. More and more warriors of the Scourge came rushing towards me, trying to protect their base of operations.

As they had reached me, I screamed out loud, looking up into the sky above me.

A nova of flames spread out from the point where I stood, gorging every undead in its range. The tip of the flames slowly turned green.

I closed my eyes, but I didn`t stop screaming. I gave in to the rage that flooded my mind, I opened up for despair.

The fire around my hands had turned green the moment I opened my eyes again. It hardly felt warm at all. Was this...? My thoughts came back together. Was this really the fire I wanted to create?

It looked just like the fire the imp in Felwood had created for me.

I threw it at a larger stone lying at the roadside. It worked! The fire was slowly eating its way through it.

I got to my feet again and chose another one of the mills as a test object for the spell of mine. I wondered if I would be able to combine this fire with a normal shadow bolt.

But... it worked successfully. A jet of green and purple flew at the mill, upon the hit the fire almost instantly spread to every inch of the outside of the building. The flames even jumped over to the barn standing close by.

It worked!

So hatred was the key to the secrets of the twisted nether!