Netherbane: Returns, Part I

Malfias pulled his gaze away from the crimson star that hung distantly above Stormwind. It was late morning, and the sun was approaching its peak. Despite the brightness, the Argussian star was still clear against the cloudless sky, its brightness a side effect of the magics used to seal it. The demon turned his eyes to the cathedral in the next block in front of him. Its tall spire was easily visible from this rooftop. He then turned to the north and looked upon the castle of Stormwind Keep. Neither sight filled him with comfort.

“These are not my people,” he spoke aloud. 

“Nor mine,” came a female voice from behind him. “But stating that outright is the equivalent of saying that the sky and ocean are blue. It’s not exactly a surprise.”

“On many worlds, a blue sky would be a surprise. Same with a blue ocean,” Malfias grumbled at the void elf standing on the other side of the roof without turning around. She was leaning against the parapet, facing away. No one else was around them this high in the city. The only companions to the eredar and the ren’dorei up here were the cobalt rooftops of the Alliance’s capital, and they were expectedly silent.

“Maybe on worlds burned by the Legion, yes,” Telnara’s voice was laden with what the humans referred to as ‘snark’. “I assume everyone gets used to the vomit green seas and skies.”

“Did you follow me up here merely to be a pain, Telnara?” Malfias spat. “Or did you have something of value to contribute?”

“You’re the one who’s leaving, big guy,” she replied, turning around to face the large eredar’s broad back. It, along with most of his chest and arms, was exposed. While he wore ornate armor typical of a lord of demons, the armor always seemed to be more ceremonial than practical. Telnara was always one who appreciated practicality over ceremony. Her own robes were a plain brownish-grey, lined with a violet coloring that complimented her hair. While practical, she still bowed to certain aesthetic preferences. “I’m merely up here to say ‘goodbye’.”

Malfias turned around and looked at the much smaller void elf across the way. Months ago, she had summoned him to this world through a complete and utter fluke. Telnara had been searching for information about the conflict that was unfolding across the cosmos--most of which was unknown to the denizens of Azeroth--and had come across his name as a source of knowledge. The little elf had far more power than she realized, and Malfias found the pull of her summoning difficult to refuse. That he was also being hunted by entities that he only barely understood ensured that he needed the escape that she had accidentally offered. He took it.

“This upsets you?” The former demon lord questioned, raising an eyebrow. His eyes no longer glowed with the green of felfire, the demonic power having been drained from him by the entities that had given chase. “I would have assumed you were glad to be rid of my presence.”

“Look,” Telnara began, turning her gaze away from his. “You’re a pain to deal with, you’ve eaten more than your fair share of food from my kitchen, and things are still attracted to your presence. Things that I don’t want to understand, let alone deal with. I’m not going to say your presence was welcome.”

Malfias watched her as she continued. “But… I won’t say that it was unwelcome, either,” she said. “The whispers have been quiet with you around, and I don’t have to sacrifice those damnable worms to keep them away anymore. You’ve also provided a wealth of knowledge for my research. It… it will be a loss.”

“Touching.” The eredar smirked. “But my place is not by your side as some form of tool, void elf. There is still much left undone, and the weakening of your binding allows me to do it once again.”

“I told you that I didn’t know how the bond got that strong,” Telnara sighed, turning to look at Malfias again. “I didn’t design it to be as strong as it was.”

“Children should not play with weapons they do not understand.”

Telnara threw her arms into the air in exasperation, turning her back to the eredar and facing outward to the city again.

Malfias smiled and turned his attention back to the city as well. A part of him enjoyed giving this mortal grief. She had stumbled her way into a demon summoning and had caged his essence in a bond far more powerful than she had any right to wield. He had been both shocked and impressed. The past few months tied to her had been a frustrating exercise in trying to set himself free while also obeying the commands she did not realize she was giving. Verbal sparring was the only means of retaliation available to him, so he took it. Gladly.

Then, a mere handful of days ago, the bond between them had weakened. Malfias had no idea why. He was uncertain if one of his own efforts had a delayed pay off, or if it was some mistake Telnara had performed during her own ritual. It could also have been the mental upheaval shoved upon this world by the uprising of one of the void entities that slept within. N’Zoth’s awakening wreaked havoc upon all of Azeroth, both upon its surface and upon the minds and hearts of its inhabitants. It was possible that the infection of madness had also crawled its way into the rules of magic, too.

Whatever the reason, Malfias was once again able to leave Telnara’s side and freely step back out into the cosmos. He had to figure out the shape of the events as they had unfolded in his absence. Azeroth was but a small pocket of the rest of existence, and Malfias had set his priority eons ago. He needed to return. Were he being truthful with himself, he also wanted to see if he could visit the ruins of his homeworld in the aftermath of the Legion’s downfall.

He missed Argus. It had been millennia since he had seen it last with his own eyes, though. Having spent most of his eternal life guarding the spaces known simply as the ‘Outer Gates’, Malfias had not returned to his birth home in many lifetimes. He had only been able to gaze upon it through his astral projections, and through the eyes of those whose mind he visited when necessary. A part of him felt the loss accompanied by the fall of the Burning Legion--the infinite army to which he had pledged his service so long ago.

Their crusade against the titans--against all that had been shaped and reshaped countless times over--had gone well over the millennia. The fallen brother of the pantheon, Sargeras, had elevated the eredar to a position of grand power over the other demons, and that power had served his people well. They were lords of the Great Dark Beyond, laying waste to everything that opened itself to the corruption from the Void.

Malfias lamented the short-sightedness of the mortals that surrounded him now. The fragile youths scurrying through the streets below knew very little about what truly existed beyond the borders of reality. The true nightmares lurking beyond those boundaries understood this, and they preyed upon the naivete of the mortals, twisting and coercing them into opening gateways for their influence. Perhaps it was this influence that ultimately led to the Legion’s downfall.

The Army of the Light, along with a combined force of the Horde and Alliance of Azeroth, had descended upon Argus--homeworld to Sargeras’s Burning Legion--and cut out the heart of the Burning Crusade itself. Malfias had watched it through the eyes of his allies on the crumbling world, and he raged at his powerlessness to stop it. His duties to the Gates, however, were far more important.

Yet, he had still failed. The Outer Gates--all four of which he was aware--consumed the armies that guarded them. Their opening had heralded the elimination of huge swaths of the cosmos. Entire stellar systems made of countless worlds and suns ceased to exist. What was more, however, is that those closest to those worlds had even forgotten about their existence. It was as if the lost places had never been there, as if they had never even been created.

Malfias remembered, though. He had maintained meticulous star charts at his stronghold near the Eastern Gate, and had studied these charts every day during his campaign to keep the gates closed. It was futile, however, as the opening of one of the gates cascaded into the opening of all. The vast forces arrayed against the cosmic doorways vanished without even a moment to stand firm. Of the survivors, most had been stripped of their abilities to wield their powers, including Malfias himself. Where Malfias was once an eredar lord who commanded a horizon full of demonic defenders, now he was nothing more than a refugee stripped of most of his power. It had only been through working with Telnara that he had been able to regain control over the arcane once more.

That was, perhaps, the greatest insult. At the height of his duties, Malfias commanded abilities feared by all who knew him. The power to split his consciousness into fragments and tuck them into the minds of his prey had made him virtually omnipresent. The illusion of reality bent to him, allowing the eredar to easily sway his opponents to his will. He was the only reality that many of them knew. Now, however, now he was not even a fraction of that. The opening of the gates and the battles fought against Those Who Came Through had stripped him of his power. Like the now-forgotten worlds consumed by the encroaching Nothingness, Malfias’s strength was barely even a memory. With the fall of Argus, Malfias could not even find refuge on his homeworld.

He was mostly alone, he was mostly powerless, and all those he had encountered prior to this day were rejoicing at that fact.

The eredar refugee grimaced at the city around him. With his newfound freedom, however, it was time for him to stop hiding. It was time for him to return.

“As you mortals say,” Malfias cleared his throat, but did not turn to face Telnara, “good bye.”

Summoning a hovering disc beneath his hooves, Malfias rose into the sky above the Alliance city and faded as he flew into the horizon.

Telnara remained on the roof until sundown.