Prologue

-Western Plaugelands, August-

The stench slammed his nostrils the moment the wagon crossed the Alterac Mountains into the Plaguelands.

The Plaguelands, Gerard thought, tying a handkerchief around his nose and mouth, had a distinct smell.

A scent not even the rotting corpse of a murloc left in the summer sun could equal.

It had sweetness at first, almost like peacebloom, fresh and inviting. It reminded him of the cabin his mother tended in Elywnn forest. Her bare feet peeking out from underneath the linen skirt. Crawling to her, the sunshine in her hair, and a small hum spilling from her lips, he would bump into her leg, letting the curtain of her skirt blanket him, and then he would touch her big toe. Admiring for a moment, the perfection of it, only to have it, as soon as has chubby fingers encircle it, have it come off into your hands.

Broken and dead.

That is how the Plaguelands seemed to Gerard. He could handle the smell of death and decomposition. He could handle the sickening sweetness. But there was a hidden faint perfume underneath the acrid air. It burned his throat and stung his eyes.

Tears.

The salt and pain permeated everything in these lands. Each breath he took brought the scent deeper into his lungs. He could taste it on his lips, striking his heart, making him cough and squint his eyes.

He hated it.

Yet, this trip wasn't for his benefit. It was business and Gerard the Guarantor, build a thirty-year old business keeping his word. Not once in all his time had he defaulted on a delivery. The brown, withered trees bent towards the dead earth. Screeching came from all side of him. He swore flashes of shadows scurried through the trees. Flicking back and forth like dark stars.

Don't think about it, Gerard. Just those ghosts and banshees, he told himself. Still, that didn't stop him from clinching a holy relic he had had blessed prior to starting the trip.

"Think of the money," his voice sounded like it belonged there, rusty and dull. His mind fluttered to the image of a package, now securely locked in his secret compartment. That small bundle would, as soon as he dropped it off outside of Tyr's Hand, make his slim wallet very fat.

Very fat indeed.

To insure that gluttony, Gerard forced himself to ignore the shifting shadows, the strange liquid oozing from the trees, the burned sky. Instead, his eyes remained glued on the weary brown road, the tried rocks trembling and tumbling under the heavy wheels of the wagon.

Which was why, he didn't see it.

Shooting out of the forest, it raced towards him until a decomposing hand gripped his neck



…and squeezed.