Zin-Azshari, the destroyed capital of the elves.
Almost above the center of the water-filled, bottomless pit formed at the site of the detonated portal, a girl's figure hung motionless. Her once-luxurious white dress, now generously splattered with mud stains, was riddled with gashes through which sky-colored skin peeked. Her previously snow-white hair had grown "somewhat" dull, and now this dirty, matted mess on her head in no way resembled the intricate hairstyle—the result of an hour's labor by a personal hairdresser—that had previously fallen in silky waves past her shoulder blades.
Despite being nearly a kilometer deep, the young-looking elf experienced no difficulties related to that fact. The girl was surrounded by a three-meter-diameter purple glowing sphere that held back the water pressure, preventing the sea from crushing the individual who had dared to defy it. In the diadem adorning her high, aristocratic forehead, a large opal pulsed in time with the flickers of energy racing across the sphere.
However, this young-looking elf definitely had problems. And the water was not the most terrible misfortune—in the depths of the Great Sea, there dwelt many things that one could not even recall without a shudder of horror or disgust.
Around the protective sphere swirled a darkness full of menace, markedly different in its concentration of gloom from the natural darkness created by the mass of water. Periodically, tentacles formed from it and greedily ran along the purple surface in search of vulnerabilities, though without risking an attempt to crush the defense with raw force. From this living gloom, as cliché as it might sound, wafted primordial evil. Inside it, fish-like creatures glided impatiently, now approaching the sphere, now retreating from it... waiting for the moment when their mistress would join and lead the newly created race.
The literally cast-down Queen of the Night Elves, Azshara, had no time for the yearnings of her former subjects, who had been transformed under the influence of The Void into tailed, scaly caricatures of themselves. Perspiration appeared on her haggard face; her bloodless lips were pressed into a narrow, barely discernible line. One could see how quickly her eyes darted beneath lowered eyelids. It was obvious the girl was unconscious, but that only made her situation worse, for The Darkness is dangerous not only in its visible manifestations: its capacity for hidden influence on the minds of sentient beings sometimes exceeded any conceivable limit...
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A waking dream.
Azshara was sinking into the depths of the sea. Nearby, the bodies of her compatriots, whom she could not save, were drowning.
"Or perhaps you didn't want to?" an insinuating whisper flickered through her thoughts. "What do I care for these plebeians?"
"No!" the girl countered with unexpected fury. "Everything I did, I did for the good of the night elves!"
"Both the Kaldorei and the Quel'dorei?" the inner voice clarified with a hint of mockery.
"The study of magic spurred the development of all elves!"
"And how is the development of magic connected to opening a portal to the demonic plane?" the voice persisted. "Admit that I craved personal power and let demons into my home world for that reason alone..."
"How dare you?!" the elf screamed mentally, her features distorted with rage beyond recognition.
"Do I dare, or do you?"
"I am the Queen of the Night Elves—Azshara! I am the one who chooses the path my people will walk! And no one has the right to command me! Not that pathetic, narrow-minded little god Cenarius, nor the crazed Aspects, nor the goat Elune with her cloven-hoofed coven, nor Sargeras, who thinks he can buy me with crumbs from his table!.. Nor you, hiding in the dark and passing off your words as my thoughts! Show yourself, bastard!"
During the prolonged dialogue, she failed to notice the absent need for air.
"Since you want it so much..." the voice changed instantly, becoming coarse and filled with inner strength.
Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a giant, impenetrable shadow emerged in the water, surrounded by a halo of swirling black tentacles. And then, in the center, a huge fiery eye opened, which was orders of magnitude larger than the fragile body of the elven girl. The pupil stared at the frozen elf, who was caught off guard by the visible size of the entity before her. The monster was not just imposing—no, it overwhelmed with its size and power... or at least it tried to.
"Who are you?" the girl asked, pulling herself together.
"I am N'Zoth. I am the one who has been since the moment of the World's Creation," the stranger introduced himself with no less, if not more, aplomb than the elven queen had earlier.
"And what do you want... N'Zoth?" Azshara smirked; lately, it wasn't her first time communicating with powerful beings. What did she care for some overgrown squid who, despite his dimensions, was vastly inferior in his aura of power to the likes of the Aspects.
"It does not matter what I want; let us talk about what you want," the insinuating notes returned to the intonations.
"And what is it that I want?" the elf replied mockingly, playing along.
"Vengeance?" the huge mass of tentacles threw out a trial balloon.
"Against whom? Sargeras? Not funny..."
"Against those who betrayed their Queen, those who destroyed the foundation of your power—the Well of Eternity. For if it were intact, you would not be in this situation."
"Avenge myself on those blind fools who, by definition, cannot see past their own noses? Ignoramuses living in their closed-off little world, unaware that it is a tiny fragment of a vast Universe? Who do you take me for? To punish idiots—yes, but not to seek vengeance: I am not that petty."
"Perhaps you want to save your subjects?" The darkness cleared for a moment, allowing Azshara to see many bodies of elves drifting in the water.
Her heart faltered for a second, but she managed to maintain a haughty expression of self-assurance. However, the Old God caught even that moment of weakness:
"I will extend a helping hand, give power, help regain rule and immortality..."
"You?! Ha, don't make me laugh! What power are you talking about? Any dragon could knock you over with a spit. If the Source were behind me, you'd be in trouble, shrimp!"
The darkness, it seemed, took no offense at such treatment.
"What you see is but a weak projection, not even of myself, but of my shadow upon this reality. I was discorporated by the Titans, and for many thousands of years my Spirit slumbered in the depths of the sea, but My time approaches... Serve me! And when you free me, you shall behold power such as an elven queen never dreamed of."
"Serve... you?!" This proposal infuriated her. "I will take what I want myself: as you correctly noted, I am Queen Azshara!"
The girl tried to attack the monster, but darkness quickly thickened around her, bypassing all defenses, and her consciousness faded.
"And I am N'Zoth, and I know how to wait," was the last thing she heard.
The Old God, having caught a fat yellowtail in his nets, was in no hurry. The small fry thinks herself a black shark? Let her. He knew no concept of boredom; after all, like a spider casting his web everywhere, he had more than one point of interest in this mad little world called Azeroth. For it was he—N'Zoth—who had made it so! And to make Azeroth just a little bit crazier, he should continue his undertaking from a year ago. The darkness began to dissipate again to launch the "game" with the sleeping mind of the stubborn elf on a new cycle...
Azshara was sinking into the depths of the sea. Nearby, her compatriots, whom she could not save, were drowning.
"Did you lack the strength?" an insinuating whisper flickered through her thoughts. "So perhaps it is time to concern yourself with finding a new source for it? Azeroth does not live by Arcane magic alone..."
"What?.. Who are you?"
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The outskirts of the former night elf capital—Zin-Azshari.
A shimmering portal opened above the water's surface. A tall elf jumped out of the unstable spatial window and immediately cursed: before he could even land in the water, the image of a forest glade rippled and quietly collapsed. It became obvious that guests were not welcome here.
A barrier of purest blue, displacing the water, thickened around the former prisoner, powered by strength borrowed back from the old Source. Orienting himself in the area was not particularly difficult for Illidan. The gift received from Sargeras helped him see without trouble on the horizon a majestic pillar of multicolored energy, starting above the Maelstrom and piercing the heavens: energy flowed from the torn heart of Azeroth, partly dissolving into the surrounding space, returning to the womb of the world, and partly saturating the bottomless Twisting Nether surrounding the planet. Azeroth would be healing this wound, inflicted upon the parent by her foolish children, for a long time to come...
After observing the endless streams of energy for a while and fighting the urge to immediately set about subjugating this power, he lowered his head to return to more mundane things. Illidan did not have to peer into the depths of the sea for long: the mass of water was no hindrance to him, and he easily managed to discern in the poor energetic picture of the seawater a huge, blurred black object with protuberances of tentacles of the same color. His internal compass, oriented toward the source of the distress signals, pointed directly at the center of this sinister formation, which was destabilizing spatial magic while freely allowing mental messages through...
"Suspicious... Well, who would have doubted it! Only I miscalculated: these clearly aren't demons," the mage summarized during his inspection of the object. "And it looks like a trap in general."
The elf cast an evaluative glance at the presumed opponent once more and only then noticed, flickering here and there inside the coil of darkness, the sparks of the auras of living beings, somewhat similar to ordinary elven ones.
"Looks like it won't be easy," he muttered before plunging into the water.
What followed was a swift descent and the overcoming of a current which, despite the distance to the vortex that spawned it, was quite palpable. Fortunately, the diver's motive force was that same magic, rather than such an inconvenient tool as his own limbs. When the goal was within reach—about a hundred meters away—a small scrap of detached darkness darted toward him. Had Illidan possessed normal sight, he would have seen a relatively small dark-green fish with ruby eyes, covered in twitching appendages. Some ten thousand years from now, the descendants of this little monster would be called dark herring, and they would be hunted by the fishermen of Northrend, but that was a matter for the future; for now...
"Greetings, Illidan Stormrage. What brings you to my domain?" The clump of darkness proved capable of broadcasting the thoughts of the cloud that spawned it, and these thoughts were not as lightweight as those of ordinary sentients; on the contrary, they smacked of the experience of millennia lived and the crushing power of a being endowed with considerable capabilities.
In the elf's memory, the image of Sargeras flickered for a moment—one who created a similar, but more than a thousandfold superior pressure. However, even a villain of this level was someone the hero of the unfolding performance should fear.
The words themselves were filled with displeasure: a powerful being was unlikely to be used to hiding its emotions, though Illidan did not rule out the possibility of throwing dust in his eyes—something was stirring on the periphery of his consciousness, some kind of catch.
"Who are you?" Willy-nilly, the mage had to stop his advance: to provoke a conflict when a stranger was initiating contact and there was an opportunity to settle the matter peacefully was imprudent on his part, given his current state.
"I am N'Zoth, and this is my domain," informed the thing hanging in the sea like a chaotically blurred inkblot.
Illidan took the repetition of "domain" as an unkind hint that he was not welcome here, which, in turn, only convinced him of the correct choice of destination.
The queen's savior, unlike his brother, was sometimes too straightforward, preferring to solve all issues with force rather than mind games and a silver tongue. Not that he was entirely unable to weave verbal lace and intrigue—after all, what didn't one learn in Azshara's palace—but this time Illidan, as usual, cut straight to the point, seeing no sense in beating around the bush.
"I have come for Azshara, and either you give her up yourself, or..." he said aloud.
But he didn't have time to issue the ultimatum.
"You dare threaten me, an Ancient One?! I ruled this world when you were no more than dust on Freya's feet!"
"Appreciate the irony—the 'dust' is now standing before the 'ruler of the world,' threatening, demanding, while he is powerless to do anything. So who is the 'dust' here, and who is the master of the situation?"
"You are mistaken, elf. You were mistaken the moment you came here. Now I do not have to drag your carcass from under the Hyjal Source—you have kindly delivered it to me yourself. All that remains is to pry your worthless little soul from its shell: unlike your body, it does not interest me."
Suddenly, the darkness expanded with a jerk, filling the visible space. The messenger-fish vanished from sight, and the elf found himself inside a kingdom of gloom. But the mage remained calm: contrary to the words, no one was trying to reach him through the magical barrier. And turning off the lights was a cheap trick: there was too little magic in the darkness to cause harm, but enough to set up a not-too-strong anti-portal veil. He was far more interested in the words, which at once clarified all the obscurities of recent days: both the attempts to seize his body and their cessation along with the appearance of Azshara's call for help—it turned out this N'Zoth had simply changed tactics and started using live bait.
"So you are the one behind all these attacks? I suppose you don't have Azshara either."
"I have her," here he managed to surprise Illidan a little, who had already taken the call for a fake and had therefore resigned himself a second time to the death of the elven ruler. The darkness parted for a second, revealing before the savior the unconscious elf in the purple halo of a protective sphere. "And now you shall join her."
If Illidan had not once traded his sight for the ability to see flows of magic, it is quite possible that a blue sphere of protection with the unconscious body of the long-awaited visitor hanging inside would have been added to the god's collection. As it was, he was able to see how the dark energy spawned the thinnest filaments, which passed with unjustifiable ease through the universal protection without disturbing it and sped toward the head of the mage, who had not expected such a trick. On a wave of adrenaline, yielding to fear, he released a wave of raw power, scattering the appendages that had encroached on his life, and then he was seized by the famous rage of the brothers. Rage not from the treacherous attack, but from the fact that it had forced him to experience feelings of fear and helplessness so loathed by the sorcerer.
The space between his body and the film of protective spells became filled with the same raw mana, successfully repelling the god's second onslaught. To do this, he only had to loosen his control over the energy leaking from his internal source, and it poured out through the torn channels on its own. Without delay, Illidan began to form a ring of decay spell—the only way that came to mind that could, with a high degree of probability, deal with the threads of dark energy surrounding him, of which, as it turned out, this entire cloud of gloom consisted. He had been taught this trick by acquaintances from the Burning Legion. The construction of the spell, naturally, was based on Fel, which personified eternal Chaos, and his tattoos, applied by none other than the Fallen Titan himself, perfectly handled the task of converting energy from one type to another. After three attempts by tentacles to penetrate the defense and a dozen tridents flying out of the darkness, chaotic waves of poisonous-green Fel sped in all directions, obeying the will of the mage who had transformed the standard ring into a spherical explosion. Chaos did not tolerate order in any of its manifestations—whether light or dark—and so, in the darkness surrounding the mage's figure, rapidly increasing gaps began to spread.
A vicious hiss from the Ancient One, offended in his best feelings, echoed in his thoughts. The further the aggressive energy he had formed moved from the caster, scouring the water of anything and everything, the weaker the effect became, and not much time passed before the space began to fill with darkness again, but most importantly, Illidan had managed to see—Azshara remained in the same place where the one calling himself N'Zoth had displayed his prisoner. The mage came to the logical conclusion that although microscopic tentacles could penetrate barriers, which had apparently happened to Azshara, they were unable to move the queen or turn off her protection: the attack was clearly being undertaken on a mental level through the spiritual shell. This branch of magic was effectively a dark alternative to the school of Spirit, the foundation of which was based on Nature, and therefore Illidan, who had once been a student of the old goat, was already mentally considering what other measures could be applied against such threats and how he would bring the queen to consciousness.
No longer paying attention to the darkness, the elf, forcing his way with his shield, sped toward the elf girl.
"Delay him!" His mind intercepted the mental command, and with absolute certainty, he noted that it had been successfully delivered to the recipients. Simultaneously, there came a sensation of someone super-powerful approaching, someone who might be more than he could handle. It was as if until now N'Zoth had been present here only in small part, and now he was gathering all his strength into a single fist to deal with the intruder. And he had also said something before about a soul, and Illidan certainly had no desire to move from the category of theoretical interest to the category of a practical manual on the extraction of such a useful thing as a soul. That was why, sparing neither the strength poured into the defense nor his final crumbling energy channels, he carved a path through hundreds of snake-like bodies surrounding him, leaving only the shreds of enemies in his wake.
At one point, having reached the goal, the elf narrowly avoided a collision of active defenses, which could have led, in the worst-case scenario, to something unpleasant in the form of two elves being devoured by darkness.
One question remained, for which he had no sensible answer yet—how was he himself to break through the purple sphere? It had easily withstood the prolonged pressure of The Darkness, and there was no point even talking about the Fel sphere—it had turned out greatly weakened by the time it reached the desired point... As far as he knew, the opal in the royal diadem was not just a magical stone—a reservoir for a mage's energy—no, it was the concentrated power of the Source—the very one whose energy seethed in his body, and over the remains of which the Maelstrom vortex was now spinning, consisting mostly of that very energy rather than water.
To begin with, the blue film, obeying the mage's will, expanded and neatly enveloped the purple "amber" with the girl's figure frozen inside, effectively swallowing it. But, alas, the simple plan—to clear away the tentacles affecting the spiritual shell and try to return consciousness to the senseless elf—did not justify itself. The clumps of darkness on the surface of the protective film were easily destroyed, but there were still those that had already gotten inside the sphere, and apparently, even detached from the main body of the Ancient One, they continued to oppress Azshara's spirit. At the very least, a strike against the sphere led to no visible changes, although the high sorceress of the elves should have already reacted three times to an attempt to breach the defense.
The situation outside his expanded, and therefore weakened, barrier grew more complicated with every second. The darkness seethed, indignant at the thief for the stolen toy, and swelled with power coming from somewhere below. Time for scientific research on overcoming a friendly barrier was already catastrophically short. He could have sacrificed most of his mana and overpowered the teleportation block, but he would hardly have been able to form a large enough portal window in such conditions to drag the queen along with her sphere. Furthermore, the question arose of ensuring the safety of such a transition through a spatial puncture with active foreign protection: he would have broken through himself, but for an unconscious body, such games with space could end in death...
In short, many problems had formed. However, Illidan had the opportunity to solve them elegantly, and by his favorite method at that—namely, to strike harder: for he still had one more vial of Source water in his hands. Only one thing stopped the elf from drinking it immediately: two vials were too much even for him, and taking a second would finally put an end to him as a mage, if he even survived it.
"Well, what else is there to do?" he asked himself a rhetorical question. "Either I die now with a purpose, or I just die... though, there is still the option of just running away...
"And why on earth did I become a hero? And what about Tyrande Whisperwind, will I really just leave without making her happy?"
At the mention of his beloved's name, a painfully familiar face appeared before him, her lips moving silently as if saying he was too stubborn to retreat before anything... or anyone. This forced him to shake himself, and the mage immediately realized that the last thoughts were not his: the enemy had somehow managed to seep through the defense and impose a few jumbled but quite coherent sentences.
Since when had he started doubting his choice? His hand resolutely slid into his bag, feeling for the precious vial.
"And is it my choice? Perhaps it was imposed on me, and everything I see is no more than a well-played scene. Perhaps it's worth retreating and reflecting on this so as not to make mistakes?" a thought slid into Illidan's head, but he only brushed it aside.
"Sargeras caught me on that, you almost caught me, do you really think I'm so stupid that I'll fall into this trap a third time? It seems millennia haven't added to your intelligence."
The enchanted crystal was drained in one gulp, and the mage's insides were scorched with fire for the second time that day. Only unlike the first time, the flame had no intention of subsiding, spreading through his body with the speed of a forest fire and completely ignoring the remains of his energy system. Every cell of his body was saturated with the power of the Source, and uncontrolled mana, having filled his entire organism, began to burst beyond its limits, increasing the pace of its leakage with every second. The tattoos on Illidan's body glowed so brightly that the former elves still surrounding him scattered in all directions: their fish eyes were not adapted for such a thing. Even the darkness retreated for a moment from the borders of the protective barrier.
Time began its countdown, and the mage abandoned vain attempts to regain control over the rebellious power and concentrated all efforts on the task at hand. Into the purple defense, built on the basis of Arcane magic which took its origins from Order, crashed a Fel spear overflowing with power: when something needed to be destroyed, the choice of Chaos was the most obvious solution.
And what the forces of The Void had failed to do over months of slow siege, the antagonist of Order achieved. Magic immediately flowed into the breached gap, sweeping away the remains of the Ancient One's emanations, and Illidan's hand, sliding in after, snatched the diadem from her forehead. The purple sphere melted away, and the elf barely managed to catch the limp queen in his arms. From that moment, events began to race.
Azshara needed no additional help in the battle for her mind, and as soon as the sorceress's trained subconscious was freed from the need to maintain the defense, it immediately switched to fighting the dream induced by N'Zoth. Azshara's eyelids flickered and began to rise slowly, and Illidan dispelled the ready cleansing weave. No sooner had the young-looking elf woken up than the Old God was finally able to take the disrupter of his plans seriously.
The space was flooded with true Darkness, at the sight of which one could easily learn to distinguish between the shades of "black" and "impenetrably black." The stretched blue film of protection rippled and began to shrink under external pressure. And as the elf estimated, there was very little time left until its fall. While the power of the Source stood behind him, he could pour mana into the defense, but that would only delay a result that was quite obvious to Illidan, and so he decided not to waste time in vain. The mage closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to intercept control over as much of the energy as possible that was bursting from his source under the effect of the two vials he had drunk. The space before him began to crack. The bonds placed by N'Zoth on this area to prevent portal spells were being stretched and torn. The strength of the Old God, defeated in the war with the Titans and imprisoned outside this reality, and therefore markedly weakened, was clearly not enough to overcome the power of Azeroth itself, even if it was only a reflection of it—but a reflection of the times when the Well of Eternity was still at the peak of its power. Before the sorcerer appeared a small but continuously expanding window, behind the trembling and twitching rippled film of which the already familiar clearing near the cache could be seen.
When the mage opened his eyes, the transition frame stood before him, albeit working unstably, but nevertheless almost completely ready for its intended use. Only it had to be maintained and stabilized: without constant feeding by the mana of the Source and being held from destruction by his will, it would have collapsed long ago. And if one also remembered the need to feed the protective sphere at least a little... It meant only one thing—he would have to stay here after all...
"Illidan, you betrayed me," Azshara seemed not to notice the madness happening around them, nor the light emanating from her compatriot's body, and began the dialogue by stating grievances. "Twice!"
Her limply hanging hand flew up and, clutching her savior's throat, began to squeeze. The elf girl was not at all bothered by the burning touch of the Source, whose power was literally overflowing from her compatriot.
"Kha... I am just busy atoning for my guilt!" the traitor wheezed; the portal flickered, but the creator, though with difficulty, kept the spell under control.
Loosening her grip, the rescued prisoner looked around, thought for a moment, recalling the continuous cycle of her recruitment, and then, quickly grasping the situation, clarified:
"Why should we run away? Give me back my diadem, and we will deal with this divine fake!"
"No," the elf shook his head, gauging the window and preparing to hold the channel during the transfer. "My internal source will soon burn out, and I see that your diadem is almost discharged, and wherever N'Zoth draws his strength from, it clearly isn't becoming less—so we won't survive a battle of attrition. Farewell, my Queen. Take care of our people."
"Less pathos, 'hero,'" Azshara reluctantly removed her hand. "And know this, I can forgive much, but not a destroyed Source! You don't even imagine what you have done..."
"I created a new Source on the peak of Mount Hyjal, only this N'Zoth somehow got access to it," he warned in a rush, telling the main points, and immediately nodded toward the portal, "And there, in the cave, are a couple of vials with water from the old one... It's time!"
The ripples vanished for a second from the surface connecting the two points of space, and the sorceress, again angered by something and wanting to speak her mind, was immediately sent flying into the transition window, followed by the almost-forgotten diadem. The portal collapsed instantly. Illidan decided it was better to spend the last moments of his life fighting than to perish trying to cowardly escape through an unstable portal he definitely wouldn't be able to hold at the moment of transition. Besides, the former Demon Hunter had not lied to Azshara: his energy system was living its final minutes, having shrunk effectively to a single source. And when that burned out, Illidan's lot would be the simplest tricks like fireflies, available to young adepts who had only just stepped onto the path of studying magic.
As soon as the spatial spell ceased to exist, the Darkness unexpectedly retreated, replaced by simple darkness. The external pressure vanished next. In the doomed mage's head, a voice rang out:
"You creatures of flesh and blood are so predictable, even though you think yourselves the cleverest..."
Illidan expected a continuation, but the enemy was silent. A ghostly chance for salvation loomed before him; he only needed to get closer to the Maelstrom, scoop up some energy and...
The elf didn't bother "thinking through" what benefits awaited him after that "and," cutting off the foreign thought of "salvation" that had penetrated his head.
"And it seems to me that someone else here thinks himself the cleverest," he turned away from the stream of Power visible on the horizon, rising to the heavens and beckoning with its riot, and then, before the enemy could impose another "lucky" thought on him, he put all the mana under his control into a final strike. It didn't matter; when the effect of the Source water came to an end, he would turn into a pathetic excuse for a mage and would no longer be able to determine his own fate... Therefore, concern for his health at that moment was not considered by him. And what kind of concern can there be if a charge of Chaos began to form right around him? More precisely, Illidan himself became the center of a poisonous-green sphere.
If at this time someone endowed with magical sight had been observing the site of the rescue operation, they would have certainly seen how the black spot on the bottom of the sea was mostly burned away by a green wave that gushed in all directions, corroding everything in its path. Of course, a few seconds after the suicidal explosion staged by the rebellious pointy-ear, the gloom reclaimed its positions, but the trophy N'Zoth had so counted on had vanished without a trace...
The Old Gods were entities of the highest order of development compared to those in whose veins blood flowed, regardless of its color. But even they were not without flaws. Specifically, this representative of the divine fraternity possessed a rather vengeful disposition, and it was absolutely certain that he did not like the near-zero result of an intrigue spun several decades ago. Chasing two hares, he was left with nothing. And while there were still some options with Azshara, the creation of Sargeras was irretrievably lost... And that infuriated him considerably.
Yes, the soul of the wayward elf was of no use to N'Zoth; he hadn't lied about that... But who said that just because he didn't get the body, the meddlesome fellow should go into the embrace of that upstart Elune, or wherever they hurry to after death? No, N'Zoth had plenty of opportunity, and more importantly—the desire—to take revenge on Illidan Stormrage on the way to rebirth, the road to which was nothing more than a specific astral dimension. And his aforementioned opportunities had noticeably increased lately...
Long ago, N'Zoth managed to gain access to a tentacle of his dead brother—Y'Shaarj. Yes, he had perished irrevocably, but the flesh of a god is the flesh of a god. Y'Shaarj was the strongest of the four void lords and managed to sink "roots" very deep into the depths of Azeroth. So deep that when the Titans who came from outside killed the god, they did not dare to tear his limbs from the womb of the earth, fearing they would destroy the entire world. The servants of Order limited themselves to destroying the seven-headed carcass of Y'Shaarj, at the site of whose death the Well of Eternity was formed. It was to the latter that N'Zoth managed to connect thanks to his link with the dead flesh of the fallen Ancient. Through it, he gained the ability to influence events at least slightly. And the fact that now, instead of a "stagnant swamp," a whole Maelstrom of energy had arisen suited him more than well: now he didn't need to hide his actions so carefully from the minions of the Titans.
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