In the darkness under the world, Thalian Ironclaw sweated under the torment of the wardens that surrounded his prison. Their blind, yet unrelenting, gaze bound him as surely as any shackle of truesilver or Thorium might. He fidgeted and strained against the chains which bound him in a kneel, the position of a prayer for salvation, as he had before Illidan's liberation.

He'd sat for ten thousand years, the fel fire burning in his soul, before that upstart demon slayer, Illidan Stormrage, had been freed of his bonds and loosed upon the world. The night elves labeled all demon slayers as unholy and insane criminals for doing the needful to save their own people. They went to war and returned to the welcoming embrace of wardens and huntresses forcing them deep underground into the warren of prisons.

The Burning Legion had returned and at the first sight of them, Sylvanas Windrunner had freed the deadliest, most powerful and most radical Slayer, ever to walk the forests and then was surprised when he didn't return peacefully once his mission was nearly complete. The other few remaining Demon Slayers were clamped down upon as though they, themselves, had plotted with Illidan the Traitor for his escape and abandonment of their own people.

"A pox on you, Illidan," Thalian whispered in the darkness under the world, for the thousandth time this day. As he had for every day of the brief time since Illidan the Mad had escaped and doomed him to this painfully close scrutiny and unreasonably tight fetters. "When I break these bonds, I shall grind your bones between my teeth and devour your soul, slowly over the next ten thousand years."

The nearest warden chuckled quietly to himself and muttered, "Another mad demon-tainted fool escape? Not likely."

Thalian ground his teeth in the darkness and felt the fel-fire course a bit deeper into his soul, a blackened pit deep within a blackened pit within the depths of the world.




This had to be done because some of us out here were fans of Warcraft before it was an MMO and those of us who were, remember that Illidan was not completely alone in his imprisonment after the first war with the Burning Legion.