Arr’talan floated gently over the gap between his island and the cliffs, towing the two Talbuks above his head as one might tow a small boat through a lake. He placed the two close to the ground at the base of a hill and gently released the levitation spell. He then retreated to a position further up the hill and settled down to watch. He had not been seated for more than a minute when a herd of Talbuks came around the base of the hill. Their coats vairied from a dark blue, to the brightest white. Arr’talan watched as the lead Talbuk reached the slumbering newcomers and halted abruptly. The rest of the herd formed a ring around the two sleeping Talbuks with their heads and, more importantly their horns facing outwards. The lead Talbuk stood protectively over the waking pair. Arr’talan watched as they rose unsteadily and faced the lead Talbuk.

They touched noses and quickly were accepted into the herd. Arr’talan grinned as the growing herd gallop away, the two newest members in the center. He no longer had to make meat runs for the two cats on the island, there was a sizable herd on the island now. He was returning to the cave when he heard an animal scream in pain, then the cackle of manic laughter. If an ethereal could frown, then Arr’talan would be frowning now. Something was not right here. He walked to the edge of the island and there, just twenty feet below him, a strange pink colored figure. It was scrawny and bent slightly. A blood red robe draped loosely over its fragile frame. Arr’talan looked on as the thing called forth a cloud of green vapor and sent it flying across the plains towards a great lion. Arr’talan cried out in horror as the cloud enveloped the lion’s magestic head. He watched, frozen with disgust and pity as the lion writhed in pain. Finally he could take it no longer, with the figure below cackling madly, Arr’talan cast a spell which swept away the cloud and destroyed it. The thing grunted in pain and looked around to see who had destroyed his spell. It called out in a tongue Arr’talan had not heard for a long time,

“Where are you!?” The thing was speaking in the tongue of humans! Now Arr’talan recognized the thing, all humans he had seen before had had bulging muscles and a few with less muscles but with an affinity to the arcane spells he cast. Arr’talan guessed this was a corrupted version of those humans, now what had they called themselves, mages! That was it!

“Above you, mage.” Arr’talan called out over the side of the island. The human started, looking up to where Arr’talan stood. His eyes widened in shock as he saw the magical binding Arr’talan’s astral form into a humanoid one. He sneered upwards,

“Mage? You insult me demon! I am Hasek lightsbane! A mighty warlock!” Hasek all but yelled at Arr’talan. Arr’talan took a step back at being called a demon. He ignored it and returned,

” What are you doing here in Nagrand terrorizing the native creatures?”

“It amuses me to watch weak beings slaughtered by the simplist of my spells.” It was that phrase which broke Arr’talan’s patience, the part which most afronted the ethereal was the casual tone with witch the human said the sentence. With a roar, Arr’talan leapt off the island and landed on the ground with nothing to show for the twenty feet he had dropped. He fired a blast of energy towards the Warlock. Caught off-guard, the Warlock was hit squarely in the chest and was thrown backwards.

“How dare you?!” He seemed more angered by this attack than Arr’talan had been when the lion had been engulfed in the cloud. The warlock thrust his arms up in the air and shouted a word in a guttural tongue. There was an explosion of violet smoke and a towering, horned demon with grey skin and rusty, spiked armor carrying a huge double bladed axe marched out towards Arr’talan. Arr’talan threw sonic blasts so fast that his hands were a blur. The demon staggered backwards, ichor seeping out of dozens of deep cuts in it’s chest. Arr’talan turned just in time to see another cloud, this one red. He absently swept it away with the same spell he had used earlier to banish the green cloud. He cast a freezing spell on the warlock and opened the earth underneath the demon. As it fell, he closed up the earth, leaving the demon half embedded. Arr’talan calmly walked up to it, aimed and fired a single sonic blast, cleanly severing the demons head. He took his polearm and began to run towards the warlock. The Warlock’s head had come unfrozen and the human gaped as he saw Arr’talan charging towards him, polearm raised. The polearm entered the Warlock’s mounth and smoothly slid through the back of his head. Arr’talan stood, holding the polarm as blood sprayed over everything within three feet, coloring it a bright red which turned dark quickly. He ripped the polearm out of the wound, cleaned it on the warlock’s robe then rose up to the island and headed for the waterfall so he could wash the blood from his clothes.

He hardly altered his pace when he saw two more guards running towards him. He swung the polearm, neatly separating their heads from their shoulders. Charging on down the narrow gorge, Arr’talan didn’t see the Ethereum Life-Binders on the edges of the gorge high above him until the first bolt of energy cracked into one of the rocks strewn across the floor of the gorge. Arr’talan sped up as the bolts fell thicker and thicker around him. One ricocheted of a rock and slammed into his sholder, putting him off-balance and making him fall down to the floor. Arr’talan closed his eyes, waiting fo the pain to begin. But it didn’t. He slowly opened his eyes and looked up. a dome of light hung over him, bolts bouncing off it.

Arr’talan was very confused. He became even more so when he saw a Priest enter the dome. Arr’talan attempted to rise to face the coming threat. Still the Priest came closer. As Arr’talan began to cast, the Priest blurted out, “No stop, I’m coming to help you.” Arr’talan stopped casting and stared at the Priest in amazement. Help him?! “Please let me help you escape, I have to get out of here but I lack the strength to get past the gate guards. Here, let me heal your shoulder.” Arr’talan stiffened as the Priest lay his hands on Arr’talan’s damaged shoulder. “Now you take the left ridge and I’ll take the right,”Arr’talan told the Priest. “Ready? Lets go.” The shield fell away and Arr’talan launched a sonic blast up at the Life-Binders lining the top of the gorge, then turned as the side the priest was dealing with as it was engulfed in holy flame, completely incinerating the Life-Binders in an instant.

“Move!”Arr’talan yelled as Ethereum Slayers -the elite guards- poured around the corner behind them. The two escapees ran down the gorge towards the end. Arr’talan reached it first and skidded to a halt. The floor dropped away, replaced by a thousand feet of air. He looked behind him to see the Priest coming to a halt and behind him, the scores of Slayers flooding down the narrow chasm towards them. Arr’talan looked to the Priest and said, “we are going to have to jump.” Arr’talan cut off the Priests complaints saying, “trust me.” He held out his hand, the Priest taking it slowly and together they jumped out over the cliff just as the leading slayers reached them, a few even jumping out after the two flying etherals.

The Priest seemed to have entered shock and was mumbling random jibberish. “Priest!” Arr’talan yelled over the rushing wind, using a telepathic communication rather than a verbal one. He successfully pulled the priest out of his mumblings long enough to make him cast a bubble around them. The bubble appeared, glowing with holy energy, the Priest abruptly dropped back into his random mumblings. The Slayers up at the gorge watched as the two figures, surrounded by a golden bubble plummeted to the ground, with a few Slayers howling down next to them. The Bubble slammed into the ground, faintly shaking Arr’talan and rebounding as the Slayers splatted on the rocky floor, instantly turning into mushy redness. The Bubble bounced a couple more times then lay at rest on the ground, surrounded by a ring of redness.

Arr’talan sat for a few minuets waiting for the priest to come out of his ramblings. When the Priest had stopped rambling, Arr’talan spoke, “Are you okay?”

“Yes yes, perfectly fine thank you, I will now leave you to fulfill the duty The Light has just placed upon my shoulders.” Arr’talan started to respond when the priest rose and canceled the bubble. “Farewell Arr’talan!” With that the priest ambled off to a spot about thirty feet away and began to chant. A large golden griffin appeared and he climbed on, took off and flew off across the emptiness towards the distant outline of Hellfire Peninsular and the green glow of the Dark Portal. Arr’talan sighed and stood up, muttering under his breath something about the craziness of priests and began to walk away in the direction of the peaks of Blade’s edge then seemed to remember something. He whistled loudly and a netherdrake swooped in above him and landed a few feet away from him. Arr’talan approached slowly and mounted, connected his mind with the drake’s and sent telepathic commands concerning the journey ahead. With that done and the Drake already in motion, Arr’talan lent back in the saddle and fell asleep.

When he awoke, his eyes were assaulted with a barrage of color. The purple of Netherstorm was replaced by the greens and browns of Nagrand. Arr’talan dismissed the great netherdrake and went down into the valley in search of a suitable cave to call his new home. He came to the edge of a cliff and saw, floating twenty feet away, a huge flying island, consisting of a barren mountain and a cave entrance. Arr’talan reached inside his wrappings and pulled an amulet with the symbol of a set of wings embossed on both of its faces. Arr’talan chanted a few words, and found his lower body alight with golden magic. He took a few steps back and ran at the cliff edge. Just before the edge, he jumped, rising high, high in the air and then dropping down onto the island and canceling the spell.

He approached the cave entrance, polearm in hand and slowly entered. Two pairs of feline eyes stared at him and he stopped. When the cats didn’t move he summoned a globe of light and sent it into the cave. What he saw made his queries about why the cats hadn’t attacked. They were huge lions easily capable of tearing a man apart. However they were extremely thin, their ribs showing through a thin layer of fur covered skin. They must have been on the island when it was still connected to the land and where trapped when it separated. More out of the fact that he realized the tactical advantage of having these two guarding his home than he felt sorry for the great cats. Arr’talan went out onto the plains and killed two talbuks, cut up the meat and took it back to the two great cats. He placed the meat carefully in front of the two beasts and watched as they quickly ate it.

Arr’talan looked around, saw an appropriate sized rock lying just outside the cave and fired small sonic blasts, shaping it into a rough trough shape. He laid this in front of the cats and then took another rock, this one shaped into a deep bowl. He took this and went around his island, looking for a pool of water. He found a small waterfall on the opposite side of the island, filled up the bowl with water and took it back and poured it into the trough. It took two more trips to fill the trough with water. Arr’talan then went back to the waterfall and fired small, circular sonic blasts at the base of the waterfall, making a small round tunnel. He stopped when the guessed he was nearly through and returned to the cave. He then moved the trough to the back of the cave and fired a few more sonic blasts and water spurted out and flowed into the trough. then he made a hole up on one of the sides of the trough and dug a small channel leading out of the cave.

He made the meat runs several times a day and soon the two cats were up and wandering around the island. Now Arr’talan parallelized the talbuks and used a spell to carry them telepathically up to the island where he let them loose and the cats would hunt them down. He lived many years in peace without any attacks by either the Ethereum or the Void. However, recently there had been talk of the civilized races of a planet named Azeroth re-opening the Portal and sending adventurers through with their armies. Arr’talan had seen a few of these strange humanoids on some of his meat runs but they had not bothered him, he left them alone. Then came the day he saw the Warlock.