Chapter Text
There can be no chosen one. Only we can save ourselves.
“Hey, demon hunter!”
Well, here you are again. This time, with a twist.
“Let me buy you a drink.”
“Oh, thank you, but I’m set.” You raise your mug as evidence.
“Nonsense,” the adventurer says, signaling the bartender to get you another round. “After all your lot did for Azeroth, it’s the least I can do.”
“Thanks,” you say with a forced smile.
“What happened to Illidan, anyway? I heard he stayed with the pantheon or something? Is that even possible? What’d he do that for??”
You wince slightly and cannot suppress a small sigh. “Yes, he stayed to ensure Sargeras’ sentence is carried out.”
“Damn right! That fucker deserves everything that’s coming to him. To Illidan’s justice!” He raises his glass in solidarity and you briefly match the action, smiling weakly before taking a massive gulp. Sometimes, despite everything, it feels like you are back at square one, still humoring ignorant young adventurers who fail to grasp the complexity of the situation. He turns back to his friends, and your scowl doesn’t escape the notice of the bartender, who shoots you a pitying glance before turning to help another customer. He is well aware of just how close you and Illidan were.
Where is Celaria? She was supposed to meet you half an hour ago. If you have to make small talk with many more overly grateful adventurers, you’re going to lose it.
Two beers later, she finally strides through the door and takes a seat at your side with a long sigh.
“I know, I know,” she says, signaling the bartender with a raised finger. “I couldn’t get away. This Teldrassil business.” She shakes her head and downs half her drink in one gulp. “Tyrande is on the warpath.”
You had hoped that, with the fall of the Legion, you might have been done watching your world burn, at least for a while. But you were wrong. Sylvanas Windrunner, Banshee Queen of the Forsaken and current Warchief of the Horde (who, in fairness, has endured more pain and hardship than anyone should have to in one lifetime—or undeath), finally snapped or something and torched the night elf stronghold. The action destroyed nearly everyone on the world tree at the time and made it utterly uninhabitable. It angers you somewhat that you, your master, and your felbound kin went through everything you did to save the world from the destruction of the Burning Legion only to have it burnt to ash by one of your own (more or less). If you had thought about it, though, you would not have expected that the inhabitants of Azeroth would respect your sacrifices enough to put their differences behind them indefinitely or forever halt their own self-destructive tendencies; it’s simply not in their nature. And you never did what you did for the accolades.
Celaria’s news about Tyrande is no surprise; you have experienced it yourself. With the Legion’s defeat, each of the Illidari began looking for something new to pour a life’s purpose worth of dedication and energy into. Many have returned to their long-dormant roots: your sin’dorei brethren to the Horde to assist their kin from Silvermoon, and kaldorei to the leaders of the Alliance, offering their aid. For you, it’s a tenuous agreement. Though you want to help your people, you feel very little loyalty to the night elven leadership. Tyrande and Malfurion still hold those positions; how could your loyalty to them be anything but fraught given their past relationship with the one who will always truly have your allegiance? Not to mention that the night elves as a whole disowned and shunned your master for the changes he underwent to defeat the Legion. Despite growing up so close to the great tree, “your people” are and always will be the Illidari more than the kaldorei now. In view of this, and the cosmic scale of the recently resolved war with the Legion, you find it difficult to muster the thirst for vengeance Tyrande would have you exhibit. You are not interested in petty faction conflicts nor her campaign for retribution against the Horde. You are determined to direct your efforts where they can do some real good.
Struggling with this persistent quandary, you’ve found yourself spending more and more time in the Alliance capital of Stormwind, where you can be of use to the kaldorei, but not quite so militarily. Refugees from Teldrassil now roam the city in need of food, clothing, support—in short, everything—and you offer what aid you can. You also feel some kinship with the dwarves, owing to your former hunting allies, and figure you might be able to help them as well by throwing your lot in with the Alliance more generally.
But the burning of Teldrassil is not the only thing refueling the old conflict between the Alliance and Horde. Though it was bound to reappear in the absence of the single, unifying threat the Legion presented, it has also been inflamed by the recent discovery of a new substance known as Azerite.
When the Vindicaar departed the Seat of the Pantheon, lost in the tumult of your emotions though you were, you observed along with the others that Sargeras had already arrived at Azeroth and, upon being summoned back to the Seat, thrust his gargantuan sword into your beloved planet in a last, desperate attempt to accomplish his mission.
Unfortunately, his final effort to destroy Azeroth, though unsuccessful (at least, so far), did wound the planet considerably, and her lifeblood has begun to seep up through the surface at myriad locations in a substance which has been dubbed “Azerite.” This novel material possesses remarkable magical properties and is fiercely sought after by both the Horde and Alliance, the competition further fueling the growing tensions between the factions.
Archmage Khadgar is understandably miffed by these developments. He had hoped that the collaboration achieved between the peoples of Azeroth, which felled the Legion, would be longer lasting. Unwilling to watch more unnecessary death and destruction ensue over this growing rift, he has retreated to the tower of Karazhan to pore over the ancient texts of his onetime mentor, Medivh, hoping to find a way to heal Azeroth’s critical injury.
You had a chance to speak with him before he departed, and you thanked him for gently prodding you toward Argus in your interactions on the Broken Shore, which you have since realized was the intent of his chattiness around Illidan’s dealings there. In his calculated yet kind way, he conspired to get you to Argus in time for the two of you to say goodbye and spend as much time together as possible. Since this conversation with him, you’ve also realized that his presence on the Shore at that time was likely not as needed for the stated purpose of purging the remaining demons as he implied, and he probably returned largely to aid the two of you (which you should have realized since it was an exact mirror of his previous claims that your presence was needed at numerous trivial demon camps while, unbeknownst to you, he worked to ensure Illidan's return). You are enormously grateful to him for these efforts and, truthfully, are beginning to regard him as something of a replacement for the father you lost too soon. His retreat to the tower is understandable, and you wish him well, but you sometimes wish he were closer; his presence would be a comfort as you continue to deal with your loss.
You wonder how things are for Illidan. You hope that his new role brings him the satisfaction he always anticipated. When you ponder this, you often find yourself automatically reaching out to him with your thoughts (though you know he is far beyond your reach now), and you are only partially ashamed to admit that you often carry on one-sided conversations with him.
It hurts, of course it does. You miss him all the time. But it’s not the same as when you lost him at the Black Temple. He left on his terms this time, vindicated and victorious. On the other hand, when he left you back then, you still had your purpose to drive you; the Legion still needed to be eradicated (though the task seemed rather hopeless without him). Not so these days. Without him or the Legion, you have felt a bit lost (yet again), not sure what your next step is.
You miss the certainty you had at the Black Temple. Those were days when right was right and wrong was wrong and you knew where you stood. Days full of pain, but full of purpose. You always had trouble unraveling your purpose from your relationship with him. You knew that defeating the Legion was the ultimate goal, but he was the embodiment of that; everything about him could be traced back to it, from the tips of his huge, curved horns to the bottoms of his cloven feet. Now that they are both gone, the struggle continues: who are you without your purpose? Who are you without him?
To answer this question, your mind naturally reaches back to the time before you met him—the time before the Legion attack—and tells you that you are still a hunter. Still your father’s daughter. Still a child of nature (warped though you may be now) and the journey and the endless, winding road. Still a wanderer, still unsettled (perhaps now more than ever). Which leads you to wonder: have you always been searching?
You thought briefly about looking up Hemet and going back to the hunt, but that’s not your world anymore—or at least, the hunt alone won’t provide you what you seek. Your life has been infused with a level of meaning you can’t relinquish so easily; “the thrill of the hunt” has nothing on saving the world. You must find a way to do your part.
But you have to agree with Khadgar that these faction wars feel rather trivial now. Your own vengeance has been sated, your purpose fulfilled. Rather than back Tyrande’s ravenous crusade, you prefer to serve someone whose outlook is more balanced, his vision clearer. Though so young, particularly in relation to the leaders of the elves, you feel that Anduin Wrynn, High King of the Alliance, has this balance. His natural affinity with the Light complements a compassion and sense of fairness you’ve seen in few of the other leaders of Azeroth. For all his strengths, Illidan certainly didn’t possess these traits in abundance, but he didn’t need to; your shared enemy was unquestionably and purely evil, and the ends generally did justify the means when it came to defeating it. Not so with your current, Azerothian nemesis. You don’t and shouldn’t aim to utterly wipe the Horde from the face of the planet (though there are those who would see it done). Navigating this war requires a different ethos. And you believe Anduin understands it.
He was thrust into leadership at an early age when his father fell to the Legion at the Battle of the Broken Shore. He is young and, in many ways, untested, yet in other ways, he possesses wisdom beyond his years. He is utterly devoted to the Light but not blinded by it; he embraces the best parts of it without becoming rigid in his beliefs or behavior. He is a genuinely kind-hearted soul, and you wish the best for him in his rule. You hope that these traits will not die in him as he faces the challenges he will inevitably face as king, although he has faced a great many already (including an attempted assassination by the Horde’s ruthless former warchief) and somehow maintained his faith.
Even prior to your transformation, you never would have imagined dedicating your services to a human boy king devoted to the Light, but here you are. You never would have imagined yourself a fighter, either, but you’ve lost count of the number of beings you’ve slain at this point (mainly demons, of course, but your fair share of others now as well). Unlikely as it seems, you gravitate toward young King Wrynn and offer your services. You are becoming unlikely friends, which Celaria remarks on often. It’s still odd to you to even have such conversations, but your whole life is odd to you and feels foreign.
This is not the life you prepared for; the two of you did not spend countless hours in training with your peers, killing all manner of demons, learning to master your fel magic, and preparing to die an early death in attempting to defeat the Burning Legion to then…survive. And go on to take orders from adolescent human royalty and fight…the Horde—essentially, different races of people who live in different cities. It all feels a bit...hollow. Inconsequential.
You and Celaria speak of it often, as you are on track to do tonight, over too many pints at the Legerdemain Lounge. There are many Illidari to be found in the bars these days: an army of unparalleled ferocity and no direction. As a group, you occupy the training grounds in the major cities more than any other class—and the brothels. You have so much rage to release and nowhere compelling to point it. It seethes within you all the time, buried beneath a layer of half-hearted efforts and failed attempts at significance.
---
A few hours and several pints later, your night ends the same way it has nearly every night since your victory—with you staring up at the stars, focusing on the bright red light where you know Illidan keeps his vigil over the fallen titan still, contemplating his “fate” (and your own).
When he annihilated Xe’ra, it was his final, unqualified renunciation of destiny and demonstration of his belief that we make our own. And given the outcome of all his efforts, he was right. He was still a hero, a savior. Still defeated the Legion, just his way. Even Velen admitted in the end that your “survival was never in fate’s hands.” It seems he has come around somewhat to Illidan’s way of thinking. You will never forget the expression on his face upon witnessing Sargeras’ return to the Seat—the face of a man who could finally rest after a thousand lifetimes of struggle.
You see the prophet occasionally; as one of Anduin’s most revered mentors in the Light, he visits Stormwind from time to time, and his presence comforts you. On his latest visit, he made a point of addressing some of your present concerns with you.
“My child,” he said, placing a hand on your shoulder, “not all who wander are lost.”
You found it hard to believe what he implied, wondering if he was merely telling you what you needed to hear, but you looked into his eyes and saw peace there—peace that flowed into you on beams of Light, warring with your fel energies until it tamped them down and you breathed a little easier.
Apparently, you thought, he has more faith in me than I have in myself. But then, he is a prophet; perhaps he knows something you don’t.