▸ Column · Outland and the broken world after it — among those scarred by fel addiction, told in the voice of the first Demon Hunter who took the darkness into himself to hunt it
ILLIDAN STORMRAGE replies.
Replied to by Illidan Stormrage, with a rebuttal from Arthas Menethil.
The letter
Three years ago tonight I was sleeping in the back of my brother Anselm's stable, hiding from everyone I loved how deep the green thirst had taken me — how much fel I was drinking to feel nothing. This morning I was given the token they grant for three years clean of it, and my daughter Wren pressed a drawing into my hand: a little hearth, lit. I have steady work now, my own roof, kinsmen who trust me at their table again. And it keeps me awake. I feel almost ashamed of how good my life has become, because I remember the others from the old cleansing-circles who never clawed free, and I burn to make my ruin mean something — to stand with the newly-poisoned, to return to the sanctuary where I was first dried out and help others through it. But I am afraid. Getting that near another soul's relapse, breathing that smoke again — could it not drag me back to my own? How do I give what I survived back to the work without lighting my own escape on fire?
Illidan Stormrage replies
You are ashamed that your life turned good. Strike that shame down first — it is not humility, it is the old poison wearing a humble face, trying to convince you that you have not earned your own hearth. You have. Wren drew it lit for a reason.
Now the harder thing. You burn to stand with the newly-poisoned. Good — that willingness is rarer than you know, and the world rarely thanks the ones who walk back into the smoke for others. But I will not flatter you. I took the Legion's own fire into my body to hunt them, and burned away my eyes to gain the Sight that let me carry it without being devoured. Mark that word — Sight. I did not go in blind, trusting I would be fine. I went in knowing precisely where my edge was.
That fear you feel? That is your Sight. It is not cowardice; it is the thing that will keep you whole. So go. Stand at the sanctuary. But map your edge before you do, and name the cost aloud — the smoke, the nearness, the nights it will pull at you. Pay it with open eyes. The blind sacrifice is the one that takes you.
— Illidan Stormrage
Arthas Menethil weighs in
Illidan tells you to count the cost and walk in anyway, eyes open. I counted mine too, at Stratholme, certain to my bones I could do the terrible thing and remain myself. I could not. No one ever can — and the word "Sight" he is so proud of did not save him from his own throne in the dark either.
Hear what he calls cowardice. That fear is the last warning voice you have. Uther was mine; I named him weak and walked past. Do not let talk of "your edge" silence yours.
You can give what you survived back a hundred ways that do not park you nightly at the cliff where you nearly died. Choose one of those. The smaller good that leaves you whole is worth more than the brave one that does not.
— Arthas Menethil
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