<em>Meanwhile, on the moon of thessala, Protoss Space</em><br/>On a barren and desolate landscape, a single, tall figure walked tiredly across the sand, the sun beating down upon the landscape, causing the solitary warrior to be sillhoetted against the heat haze. The warrior, a protoss, girded in battered protoss armour, and swathed in the cloak of a dark templar, trudged across the open space, his weary eyes surveying all that he saw, and his double ended scythe strapped across his back, ready to be used at a moments notice....<br/><br/>Zanul had been walking for weeks now, since he had left the surviving zealots behind amidst the ancient ruins where they had held out for days. His mind was wandering, his body moving forward almost automatically, his feet carrying out one step after another in endless monotony. As he reminisced about his fallen comrades, something snapped him out of his reverie. He stopped, one handed slowly reaching towards his scythe, as he looked around, searching for danger. Then he saw, up ahead, a light. Squinting, and shielding his eyes from the sun with his other hand, his vision focused on the light. It was a pylon...a Pylon!. He widened his view, seeing that the pylon was atop a hill, with a narrow ravine surrounded by rough rocks and hills in between him and it. His eye's narrowed, and his body tensed, as he realised this could well be a trap. With his hand still ready to grasp his scythe, he dropped into a combat stance, and began to cautiously walk towards the ravine.....<br/><br/>As the Dark Templar entered the ravine, a pair of baleful red eyes appeared in the shadows of a cave upon the ravines wall. Inside this dark place, resided Netherizzon, a zerg defiler. Netherizzon had been forced to adapt to survive, having been cut off from his cerebrate. He saw the approaching protoss, and realised, that this could be his way to return to the bliss of the hive mind.....<br/><br/>As Zanul reached the half way of the ravine, he came up upon a bend in the course of this ravine, where it narrowed considerably. As he saw the narrowest point of the bend, he realised...he could not see further. This narrow point was completely enshrouded in a dark, reddish cloud of fog, obscuring his view ahead. He frowned, and continued into the cloud. As the dark templar entered this malign shroud, his vision was reduced to near blindness, his other senses sharpening to compensate. He tensed, his hand grasping his scythe and drawing it, as he saw a dark, serpentine shape whip through the fog suddenly. Slowing his pace even more, he advanced, activating the phase blades of his scythe, causing it to emmit glowing green scythe blades, which tinted the mist around him a sickly colour. Then, suddenly, a pair of glowing blue eyes appeared in front of him, and a voice rang out.<br/><br/>"I need your help Dark templar, and you need mine. I am Netherizzon, and I too am stuck on this world. Together, we can escape this wasteland, and you can be the salvation of your friends" the voiced said.<br/><br/>"You....you sound like.... a High Templar!" Zanul said, replying, hope filling his voice, despite the warning bells going off within his mind, his desperation was overriding the feeling of wrongness rising inside him.<br/><br/>"There is not time for further introductions dark one. My shuttle is cloaked near that pylon, yet a considerable number of zerg is between us and it, waiting for you at the end of the ravine. We must make the ultimate sacrafice if we are to get through to it, and save your friends. We must become one." Netherizzon replied, reaching with his mind for Zanul, weaving his dark, psionic tendrils into the exhausted Templars psyche.<br/><br/>Zanul's spirit was overcome with dread for a moment, as he sensed something was wrong, but a moment later...it was all okay, he was tired, exhausted, yet for some reason, he trusted this stranger. The situation was desperate, and as such, he knew he must go through with this. So he lowered all of his psychic defenses, reaching with his mind, spirit and soul to merge with that of the "High Templar" in front of him, as his body began to transform into dark energy. He would save his comrades. He would escape this world.