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| Details |
| Author: | Saaron |
| Summary: | Sandy asks his newer demons (Nheedom, Jhuuthun, Selvuzen) about their past. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
Sandy wakes up, early in the morning – or at least he thinks it’s early in the morning, it could also be very late at night. Not seeing the sun makes it harder to guess, surprisingly!
It seems like his two roommates are still asleep, so he attempts to go back to sleep again. After a few, long, two minutes of trying, he realizes that it’s useless, and decides that one particular conversation is long overdue. He grabs a few things and sneaks outside the room as stealthily as he can. He closes the door, puts on his shoes and a cloak in the hallway, his staff in one hand and his Box of Souls in the other.
Sandy, with his hood on his head, walks past guards and soldiers who are already awake – or, more likely, didn’t sleep at all – on his way outside Honor Hold. The ones who notice him don’t really seem to be asking any questions or show worry about the young man leaving like this. They’ve probably seen him walking with a demon earlier, or maybe they just guessed he is a warlock. It’s not like his armor when coming here wasn’t extremely obvious about it, with the demon skull shoulder pads, the scythe, and the dark purple robe. Maybe they even developed a new sense to spot people tainted by the Fel, after all this time here, who knows?
Once Sandy reaches the outside of the Hold, he uses his powers to sense where demons might be. He feels them all around. Sandy and his friends from the Company really are on their territory, uh?
Eventually, using these powers, he finds a way through the armies of demons and he starts sprinting. He runs through the charred lands, his lungs filled by the Fel-heavy air of the Outlands. Unlike others, the smells of this world don’t bother him as much. One of the pros of being a warlock!
On his way to the location he’d picked, he did end up having to safely banish them back to the Twisting Nether.
“Sorry!” he whispers as he casts his spell.
He reaches the edge of the world – or rather one of its edges. He looks down at the darkness below and says to himself:
“Okay, I guess it’s as good a place as any!”
He looks around, trying to sense the presence of potential demons lurking nearby, but nothing. This place seems relatively safe (as safe as standing near an endless abyss is, anyway)! He can clearly see the Honor Hold from where he stays, which means that anyone there can probably see him and what he’s doing, although in a miniature version of him. He didn’t feel like hiding any further. If anything bad happens, maybe someone could help from there. And what if something happens while he’s hiding?
“They’ll start to believe disappearing is a warlock thing if I do too!” he thinks to himself. “Also can you imagine if I disappear right before we find Hex? They’ll have to write that in the Company’s rules. ‘At least one warlock in the company should be missing at all times.’”
“Heh!” he chuckles out loud at that thought.
Sandy shakes his head, turns around, carefully drops his box to the floor, and grabs one of the Souls Shard in his hand. His eyes shine purple. His hand starts drawing sigils in the air and whispers in demonic come out of his mouth. The Soul Shard breaks, a low, muffled, despaired-fueled shriek comes out of it, and eventually, a breach to the Twisting Nether opens up. The Felhunter leaps out, growling and barking.
“Hey, Nheedom!”
The demon sniffs around, trying to find any trace of arcane magic. He eventually finds what he’s looking for as he turns to face the keep, drooling. He shakes, impatient to go attack any mage he could find in there.
Sandy sighs.
“Why did I summon you for this? It’s not like you’re going to answer any of my questions. You don't speak. I'm not even sure you listen to words!”
Sandy sits on his knees next to the Felhunter and starts petting the demon’s head. Nheedom seems to calm down, just a little bit, but his focus doesn’t stray away from the Hold. He needs to accomplish what he was bred for.
The Warlocks of Stormwind, when they said they’d found the perfect Felhunter for Sandy, said that it would be safer for him to make a pact with a Felhunter that didn’t go through all of its mage-killing training, especially if he was going to be working with a group like the Company.
That’s why they recommended he made a pact with Nheedom.
Soon after he was born, the Burning Legion started training the Felhunter. After months spent learning to detect magic, he was taught the basics of how to dispel it, how to feed off of it… And that’s when his name was discovered by warlocks. They gave that name to Sandy. Given what they’d told him, Sandy expected Nheedom to be a lot more gentle and calm. He shrugs. He can’t really imagine how it could have been worse, especially given that the Felhunter is already very aggressive, but Cress is also absolutely terrified of this type of demon, so it’s not like Sandy has a lot of opportunities to train him better.
Sandy pets his Felhunter for a few more seconds, but the demon doesn’t move an inch. It keeps looking at the Hold, growling. It’s barely as if he acknowledges the warlock’s presence. The beast was born and trained for one and only thing, and it is all it knows, and it will accomplish what he was born for, one way or another. No other thoughts filled its mind more than the idea of pleasing those who started training him and the one who was summoning him. Only then would he have accomplished his one and only task and could feel fulfilled… until the next time someone requested his help. To do that, Nheedom had to kill mages, or so he thought.
“Okay buddy, hope you enjoyed your Soul Shard! See you!”
Sandy gives Nheedom a few pats on the side of his belly, then dismisses him back into the Twisting Nether with a flick of his wrist.
“Next!” he says, trying to be enthusiastic.
Sandy goes back to his Box of Souls, his back to the giant hole in the ground. He grabs another Soul Shard and starts another ritual. This time, from the gap between worlds, a giant axe swings and its blade plants itself into the ground. An arm reaches out and pulls the rest of its huge body out of the portal thanks to the handle of the weapon.
Sandy waves at the Felguard, smiling.
“Hey, Jhuuthun!”
He nods silently.
“So, I did this with Kupjub, Grimnos, and Brynia but now that we’re here, in a world that basically belongs to you all, I realized I never did it for my more recent demons! I’d like to ask a few questions about your past.”
“Sandy asks Jhuuthun questions?” asks the Felguard, a bit confused by the situation
“That’s right!”
“… Jhuuthun has to answer? To talk?”
Sandy pauses, staring straight into the eyes of Jhuuthun. He thinks.
“Yea—I mean, you could do whatever you want. I want us to trust each other, here. I’m giving you your free will for this! I’m not using any magic to control you at all right now. You could even attack me!”
“Jhuuthun can attack Sandy?”
“… Yeah, you can attack me.”
Jhuuthun nods. The Felguard moves extremely fast for a creature of his size. He grabs his axe and rushes towards Sandy, raising the weapon above his own head. The warlock stares at the demon rushing towards him, his eyes wide in fear. He barely has the time to move out of the way that the blade of Jhuuthun’s axe plants itself into the ground, right where Sandy used to stand. The box to his right jumps into the air and the Soul Shards roll around onto the ground.
“What the heck, Jhuuthun?!”
The demon stares straight in front of him, into the infinite abyss just a few steps away. He doesn’t move, his hands on the axe’s handle. He starts sweating.
Sandy looks in the direction Jhuuthun’s looking at and sees nothing but the hole at the edge of this part of the world. He gasps, finally realizing what it is Jhuuthun is peering into.
“Oh right, heights!”
He takes the frozen in fear demon’s hand and helps him take a few steps back, patting him gently as he does. They leave the axe and the spilled souls right there.
“Come on, you’re okay, I’m here with you! Let’s take a few more steps back, just a liiittle bit!” He smiles at Jhuuthun as he feels the muscle in the demon’s arms relaxing. “See, you’re okay? You’ll get your axe back later!”
“Thank you Sandy! Jhuuthun fell off place just like this once. That was scary.”
“No problems,” he gives him some more gentle pats on the arm. “Now… Whytheheckdidyoutrytoattackme?!” he speaks quickly, in a voice a little higher-pitched than his usual tone.
Jhuuthun shakes his head.
“Sandy said Jhuuthun could attack! Jhuuthun thought it was an order!”
“I said ‘you can’, not ‘you should’! It’s because you can do something that you have to do it!”
“Jhuuthun misunderstood… Jhuuthun thought that is what Sandy wanted.”
Sandy opens his mouth to talk but is feeling absolutely too dumbfounded to even say a word. He frowns, scratching the side of his head.
“Why would you think I want you to… cut me in half with an axe?”
The demon shrugs. He drops to the floor, his legs crossed as if sulking.
“That’s what everyone always asks of Jhuuthun! Cut things with an axe!”
Sandy sits next to him, a hand way up high on his shoulder. He tilts his head nods softly as if to show he understands what the demon is going through.
“Jhuuthun worked for many summoners on many worlds! Helped make other worlds like this one here,” his arms rest on his knees, immobile. “Never a warlock asked Jhuuthun to ride on the Felsteed, or to carry around while the summoner takes a nap. Jhuuthun tries new things thanks to Sandy, and Jhuuthun likes trying new things!”
Sandy gets misty eyes, he places his right hand over his own heart, genuinely moved by what the demon is saying. Maybe he did it? Maybe he did turn a demon good! He’ll get to tell everyone they can become kind if given the love, care, and chance to! Maybe he’s right! This demon says he has helped destroy entire worlds, but today, today he wishes for something other than war and violence, and that’s all thanks to Sandy! He gives his friend the brightest of smiles.
“Aww, Jhuuthun, this is so nice of you to say!” he hugs the demon. “I’m so happy you don’t want to hurt me!”
“Oh no, Jhuuthun will probably kill Sandy one day.”
Sandy lets go of the hug and leans backward. That affirmation completely changed the expression on his face. From hopeful and moved to blank and expressionless. He learned that face from Colson.
The Felguard speaks without looking at him, he instead stares towards the portal, trying his best not to look at the huge portion of floating grounds around.
“Yes, Jhuuthun will because Jhuuthun is the oldest demon of Sandy. Juuthun is the leader of the group,” he smiles proudly at his own self-proclaimed title. “For the Legion and for the Master Sargeras!” he exclaims, his voice full of conviction.
The warlock pouts, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. That was not the answer he was hoping for. The Felguard turns to look at him.
“But for now, Jhuuthun is having fun with Sandy and will obey Sandy, keep Sandy alive. Jhuuthun wants to keep trying new things. Jhuuthun doesn’t want to hurt Sandy now! And Brynia says Sandy is better alive than dead!”
“Awww, I didn’t expect that. That’s kind of nice of he—”
“Brynia says that one day, Sandy will make a big mistake and hurt the Cobalt Company from the inside more than the Legion ever could from the outside.”
“Whoa, okay.”
Sandy joins his hands. Both stay there, silently sitting on the floor, and the only thing that can be heard around is the tapping of the warlock’s index fingers on his own knuckles.
“Well it was nice talking to you Jhuuthun,” he clears his throat awkwardly. “Do you want to go back to the Twisting Nether?”
The Felguard nods. Sandy forces a smile at him, then starts dismissing him, but stops.
“Hey, before you go… Do you know of any… Felguard, who could have been summoned and killed a people on his own, somewhere near Lordaeron, around… 20 years ago? He wasn’t summoned by an orc.”
Jhuuthun pauses and thinks, he cracks his neck by leaning his head backward and scratches at it with a lot of strength, seemingly focusing as best as he can.
“No. Jhuuthun doesn’t know.”
Sandy sighs. It’s both a sigh of relief that he’s not the Felguard that attacked that day and a sigh full of sadness as it doesn’t help him discover more about his past.
“Okay. See you, Jhuuthun!”
The demon disappears back into the Twisting Nether.
As Sandy starts the ritual to summon his latest new friend, he blushes, thinking about how embarrassing it is to summon him, in particular, away from everyone, in the morning (or at night, possibly, Sandy still isn’t sure), just to talk.
Selvuzen appears in front of Sandy, and bows to him.
“Greetings, Master Spellbond,” he says in his deep, husky voice.
“Hi, Selvuzen. Please, I already told you, you can drop the ‘master’ thing! I’m not a master of anything. I’m just… Sandy!”
The incubus smirks.
“Certainly, Sir Gausanders. Anything to please you.”
Sandy sighs at the ‘Sir’ and doesn’t really listen to what the demon says then. He just whispers:
“Well, that’s a start…” he smiles. Keeping a certain distance from the demon, he continues. “So, I summoned because I’d like to know more about your past! I’d like to know if you’ve ever been to Azeroth if you fought any of the people you saw with me yesterday… Stuff like that.”
Selvuzen knits his eyebrows into a frown and walks quickly towards his summoner.
“And do my blues eyes deceive me, or are yours blood-red tainted?” The incubus softly strokes Sandy’s cheek, which startles him for a second. “Am I mistaken to believe that you call upon me after similar interrogations and that it is not fatigue that plagues the pure white of your gaze, but the bitterness of disappointment?”
Sandy fights back the urge to tilt his head against the soft but sharp hand on his face.
“Uh, actually no! I mean kind of… well,” he chuckles nervously. “Actually I was moved! It didn’t last long, but uh… Those were good tears.”
“Excellent! Those are the only tears I wish to see shed by these magnificent eyes of a green that rivals the lush forests of Elwynn,” he says, stooping to get his face close to the warlock’s.
“Right,” Sandy answers, blushing. “A—anyway, as I’ve told Juuthun, to show that you can trust me and tell me the truth, I’m not going to be using my powers to control you. You’re free to do as you wish! You could even attack me if that’s what you want – but you really don’t have to!”
He’s not about to make the same mistake as with the Felguard. He needs to be a little clearer when talking with those demons from now on. Selvuzen starts circling around the warlock, a smirk on his face.
“I did feel you loosen the collar around my neck… regrettably,” now standing behind Sandy, he takes a deep inspiration before whispering that last word right next to his ear. “I can do… as I wish, is that what you said?”
“Yes,” Sandy blurts out in response. “I mean no! I mean… I have to ask you questions so that’d be nice if you… if you could, you know… answer?”
The way he speaks makes him almost sound uncertain as if he doubts his every word. He feels the arms of the incubus wrap themselves around his waist and shivers. He doesn’t move for an instant, enjoying the hug and the chin now resting on his shoulder.
“So, uh… wha— were you always a demon? You talked about Elwynn. Did you come from Azeroth?” he asks, finally taking a few steps forward, away from Selvuzen. The demon bites his lower lips and smiles as he watches the other man walk out of his grasp.
“I was once like you, Sir Gausanders. Not too long ago, in fact, I was human. An artist, living off of my words, his poems. One day – or should I say one night…” He dramatically looks off to the side, his hand wrapping around his own neck. “One night, during the Third War, the Legion came and made me their captive. I wasn’t a victim of the Legion itself, but more of fate and misfortune, who pulled on my strings and put me in the wrong place, at the wrong time…”
Sandy seems absorbed by what the incubus is saying. He can’t take his eyes off him, and carefully analyzes his every word.
“After hours of torture, exposing me to Fel energies in their purest form, making it spread through my veins… I was reborn as an incubus. A demon, with the Twisting Nether as my sole home, and soldiers bent on destroying all worlds for only company. Would you look at where I am, now? In the Outlands, facing the desolation brought by my own side of the war… With you.”
He frowns and sighs, his arms now crossed as if hugging himself.
But he isn’t telling the whole truth. In fact, Selvuzen rarely ever did tell the truth in his whole entire life. This is just is sad little sob story, portraying himself as a dark, mysterious, tortured poet, but still a romantic. That always got them.
He was indeed human up until the third war, that much is true. However, he wasn’t the nice, unfortunate artist he describes himself as. Selvuzen was a noble of a minor house of Lordaeron, known for his sulfurous personality, as well as his few illegitimate children left here and there. He isn’t totally wrong when he says he lived off his words. However they were not charming poems, but rather lies and manipulations that got him what he wanted from other people. This is why, when the situation became dire around Lordaeron, he was able to find an escape route. He avoided many perilous situations around the continent, and eventually, he found a ticket to try his luck on the other. When they sailed there, it was already too late, the Legion had reached Kalimdor before Selvuzen and the sailors did.
Sayaads were about to torture him – for information or just for pleasure, of that he is still uncertain – but they didn’t even have to. His willingness to betray the rest of the world for his life, the way he confidently lied, telling them he knew more than he did… they were convinced of his talents. He had the potential to be one of them, to join the ranks of the Legion amongst their race.
Soon after, he was transformed, reborn as an incubus, as he said, and his worse traits accentuated. He felt the need to hurt, to lie, to be the center of attention in all circumstances, to charm and manipulate those around him, in a completely different manner now. It wasn’t a necessity like it used to be, no. Now, it was a need.
Sandy is his first contract, and it’s almost too easy.
The warlock takes a few steps towards Selvuzen again and gently places his hand on the incubus’ arm.
“I’m… so sorry, Selvuzen. Don’t worry, I’m trying to find a way to free demons from the Legion!” He softly strokes the demon’s biceps with his thumb. “I’m going to find a way to revert you back to your original form!”
“My, Sir Gausanders, that would be quite the feat, there,” Selvuzen offers the other man a soft smile. “If you were to succeed – to free my soul from the green flames of Hell – I would be eternally grateful. I would find every single piece of this broken world and build it back up with my own hands, just to offer its marvels to the one who could release me from this curse.” He pauses. “To offer them… to you.”
Sandy and his incubus look into each other eye’s in silence, and the distance between their gaze shortens more and more. As the two’s lips get closer to each other, Selvuzen thinks: “Just as I thought. Too easy.”. However, right before they kiss, Sandy takes a few steps back and starts picking up his Box of Souls and his staff.
“I’m, uh…” Sandy wipes his forehead with his sleeve. “May—Maybe next time…”
“So, now he’s playing hard to get, uh?” thinks the incubus, a smile on his face.
“Things are getting interesting…”
“Th—thanks for answering my questions Selvuzen, I’ll see you… later!”
Sandy puts his hood back on his head, turns his back to the demon, and walks away, back to the keep. As Selvuzen fades from this world, his shoulders start shaking with amusement, which turns into a full-blown sinister laugh as he materializes back into the Twisting Nether.