The Void shimmered, like glass splattered with water, and a vision came into sight. Slowly, with the usual meticulous patterns (or what passed for them in such a chaotic place) an image came into view. One of the sin’dorei, his long hair tucked into a neat tail, white as porcelain – features delicate, like many of his ignoble kin yet, broken. Cracks had formed in the lines of the blood elf’s face, thick ichor leaked with inexorable haste from the marks.
Va’zauht canted his head; he hadn’t seen this particular specimen before, not one that was of such keen interested to the Void’s enigmatic masters. Traces of their focus lingered, faint lines connecting the elf to the purple mass he could not perceive all around. He was stood in a manor, or the remains of one, arms outstretched. The vision twisted and warped, displaying more of the room as Va’zauht willed it.
Eons didn’t just teach you to tamper with cruel magic, it taught you mastery; mastery the Ethereal had long since achieved. Gilded claws affixed to the hem of his bandaged “hands” clicked together in a nervous tic. There was a second elf, there. But his essence felt... wrong, cold and dead. The Void had no use for risen corpses. Still, the scene that was playing out intrigued Va’zauht.
The white haired creature, for he was no elf in truth, was siphoning something from the dead man. Tendrils of arcane and fel energy connected the pair. A powerful spell, not one any mortal deserved to have – and certainly not one the Ethereal trusted in their hands.
As Va’zauht observed, the dead elf sagged and dropped to his knees. He was being drained of what little necromantic energy sustained him and in turn, the broken fiend’s wounds mended. Slowly, but surely, he was growing whole once more. The cracks faded and skin smoothed, the putrid substance dried and fell in great heaps from the sin’dorei.
“Xiun... Stop this,” Va’zauht heard the undead stammer through grit teeth, anyone could see that the beast was dying – again, “I didn’t come here... to, to...”
With a wave of one thin hand, the arcane energy ceased flowing; only fel magic remained in the corpse now, sustaining it, driving it forward and onto the cold floor.
Xiun, then. The white haired elf knew the thing he was draining. Interesting, but ultimately worthless knowledge. That the Void Lords were so fixated on this one elf seemed promising, but curiosity oft spurs the foolhardy and so, Va’zauht continued to watch.
Being without body had its advantages, as did being primarily composed of magic and a consciousness. The Ethereal had quickly learned how to recognize tears into the Void from within Reality itself. He wondered now, so long after his physical form had been stripped on K’aresh, what benefits a body might grant.
Xiun had finished his ritual, fel and arcane imbued his originally ruined form but now he stood strong, whole. Well, wholly tainted by the Void – not just imbued by it as Va’zauht was, a slave to it. The elf trusted his masters. Troubling. A servant of the Old Gods, perhaps?
Ah, but there. The dead one still stirred. Vestiges of unholy power clung to the sheathed axe on its back. A runeblade, then?
Va’zauht’s white haired mark had noticed it too, and strode towards the stricken body. It’d be a mercy, really. With what the Ethereal took to be the last of his energy, the corpse reached out and clung to the hem of Xiun’s robe. A plea for mercy that went unheard. Xiun stepped on the thing’s hand, then reached down and pushed the palm of his own onto the flat of the runeblade.
Va’zauht recoiled.
The Void had noticed something, now. The power emanating from the sin’dorei was beyond compare. Twilight beams flooded the Ethereal’s vision, blocking his view of the scene entirely. It wasn’t safe here anymore. The Void had turned its attention to them; he could feel the pure, unrelenting Hunger that it extruded.
Then, the feeling faded. The Void’s attention had been drawn away by – no, little time to consider it. Look to the now, Va’zauht brought his bandaged claws together, focusing on what he had seen.
Xiun wasn’t hard to find, his presence marked a singularity in the cosmic flow. Power, pure and intoxicating flowed from his very soul.
There.
Nothing was left of the undead. Xiun stood where he once lay, surrounded by a fine ash. The runeblade had gone, too, but Va’zauht sensed some glimmer of its former sentience within the sin’dorei.
It made some sort of sense. The elf was a servant of the Void and, more pressingly, of the Old Gods that still threatened the dying world of Azeroth. What need had the Void Lords to watch over one of their favoured sons, now that the planet itself bled and wept? Nobody would know, not until it were too late.
What benefits indeed. Va’zauht recognized the potential lurking just beneath the elf-thing’s skin, the dark veins that even now faded into normalcy. Potential and certain danger. Xiun might just as easily absorb the Ethereal into his personal nexus of strength – but there came the wonders of an eternity of wandering the branches of fate.
The Void granted glimpses at potentials, not common knowledge, but it gave some credence to the madmen that called themselves seers. Potentials, of which there were millions. Infinite futures that could come to light. In but a handful, Va’zauht felt himself successful in his plight: wearing the creature like a second skin, quelling its rage and removing a weapon from the Void’s arsenal on Azeroth without it ever knowing.
Fate, Va’zauht mused as Xiun paced the manor, was so easily shaped to the whims of one outside of it. Time and its ill-mannered custodians of the Bronze Dragonflight held little accord in the Void.
One by one, the Ethereal plucked at the strings of causality. Futures vanished and reshaped, fortunes were struck from existence or rewrote. Then, he felt a jolt – not electric, more potent. Violent. The Void’s inscrutable gaze passed over him as he worked then carried on. It had more pressing matters to attend to than one errant son.
It was to be a final masterpiece. Fate rearranged to just the right moment – before the blast that stripped the runeblade of its vampiric energy. A point of no return for Va’zauht, and for Xiun.
Gazing back into the mirror-surface of Void space, Va’zauht watched Xiun approach the corpse. The grasping hand, a palm to cold steel.
Now.
Va’zauht tore his way free of Void, pushing himself into Reality with all the arcane born strength he could muster. Xiun had yet to notice, stood scant paces away. Good. He was gathering power for the decisive blow.
Seconds passed like minutes and the Ethereal drifted his way towards the white-haired elf. From afar, he had been a beacon of hateful energy. Up close, it was like walking the surface of a miniature Sun.
Now or never. Va’zauht thrust his hand into Xiun’s back – through his back, freeing the bandages that bound his loose form together. Ghostly, arcane essence poured through the gaps just as Twilight filled the room. Twilight and a high pitched noise that shattered what glass remained in the ruined building.
Va’zauht recognized it as a scream. Then, the world went white.
