Grudge Bearers

Having plundered most of what he could from the Brill cemetery, Barghash turned his sights further eastward on the continent, knowing that there was still plenty of work to be done. This time when he entered the portal one of his acolytes had opened at Brill and stepped into the other side, he didn't even experience the usual nausea associated with teleportation. He'd been using portals so much in such a brief amount of time that the mode of travel almost felt normal.

Stepping out into the Plaguelands, he felt a strong sense of familiarity surround him. The stale air, the dull maroon plant life, the perpetually dark skies...he was very familiar with the far eastern end of the region. So many memories rushed back to him that he didn't even notice when the acolyte and several of the Bone Collectors filed out behind him.

The portal closed behind them, leaving the necromancer tailed by several support units entirely unable to defend themselves. They were far from any roads or constructed dwellings, but they'd arrived right at the place Zulgha had marked on his map, so he knew he wasn't far from his first objective. She was even more familiar with the region than he was, and he began to march through the wilted wilderness without an exact sense of where his targeted location laid.

"I hope we aren't too far away!" one of the hunchbacked bone collectors said nervously, huddling so closely to its comrades that they almost fell down in a deformed little pile of tattered rags.

"It shouldn't be difficult to find," replied another. "They're supposed to be in a marked tomb, right?"

Barghash didn't answer, simply scanning the area for the sights and sounds as he tried to find the spot marked with an X. The Plaguelands were always eerily quiet - the undead were silent, and gave no outward indication of their presence. As a necromancer, of course, he would have known if there were any nearby, but the landscape still unsettled the civilians huddling behind him in a tightly-formed mob. Even though they themselves were also undead, they were sentient, and quite terrified of the remnants of the Cult of the Damned.

A few more minutes passed as they murmurs nervously, though the significance of their surroundings was lost on them. Barghash, on the other hand, was busy measuring their exact steps. He couldn't actually read dwarven runes; however, he recognized most writing systems of Azeroth, and the stones lining the path through the twisted trees were clearly the lamentations of those who'd lost. Rather than regretting what he was about to do, Barghash felt a greater sense of purpose. Few dwarves were strangers to war, whether with outsiders or other dwarves, and the more runestones he saw, the nearer he drew to calling forth long lost heroes of their people who would serve a greater purpose than any they had in life.

After a few minutes more of walking in the dying woods, he knew they'd arrived when the elevation dropped.

The broken foundation surrounding depression in the ground signified a dwarf barrow that had long since lost its roof, the only cause being attempts to take over by the Scourge years ago. The size was modest and compact, though knowing a bit about the construction of dwarven graves, he expected there to be quite a few bodies therein.

"Are we there yet?" the acolyte asked as they descended into the well-designed stone pit of graves.

"Yes!" Barghash answered a little more loudly than he'd intended, though the others were so nervous in the setting that they didn't even notice the accidental harshness.

Down in the barrow, the floor plan was far different from many human grave sites. Instead of using the walls for rows of coffins inserted into the earth, the walls were decorated with looted treasure chests, ceremonial weaponry, and belongings from lives long since past. The graves were all laid out on the floor, similar to how those of the Silver Hand Haunters had been, and the necromancer immediately smiled.

"Z was right...their gryphons were buried with them," he said contentedly.

All around them were large gravestones containing what appeared to be biodata about the inhabitants of the graves. Unlike the human cavalry, the dwarven air force didn't appear to match specific people with specific mounts; the dwarves were simply buried in rows while the gryphons were interred in a separate alcove. Their numbers didn't exactly match, either, though that could also have been the work of grave robbers or the Scourge.

Barghash tallied up the bodies. "Twenty three, twenty four...twenty five...twenty six, twenty seven dwarves and twenty nine gryphons," he spoke without realizing it.

"That means we can have twenty seven gryphon riders!" one of the Bone Collectors beamed.

"No, it most certainly does not," the necromancer replied. He didn't raise his voice, but his companions became nervous at his reaction regardless. "That's a terrible number for a formation, whether aerial or ground based. We'll send twenty five gryphon riders back to Tirisfal, leave two with the mayor of Brill as a gift, and use the remaining two gryphons for our own purposes-"

"Oy! Just what in the blazes are the likes of you doing here!"

The acolyte and hunchbacks immediately cowered behind Barghash at the sound of strangers yelling at them, shivering even more when the flapping of wings was heard. The necromancer turned around to find two living gryphon riders landing in the grave pit with them, their hammers casually hanging from their belts. The old dwarves looked down on the deathly group condescendingly, and even the gryphons pranced slowly as if judging the group.

One of the two dwarves put his fists on his hips. "This is a sacred place, you scallywag," he lectured as the two dangerous beast riders approached. "How dare you set foot-"

Without giving them any chance to react, Barghash flicked his fingers, igniting the rings embedded into his silver gauntlet. A quick raise dead spell with no cast time set off, causing a few discarded body parts and partially mutilated corpses to come to undeath. Though they wouldn't last long and had limited mobility, the arms, hands, heads, and half-bodies leapt on the two riders, pinching or biting the legs and wings of the gryphons and snaring them in place. The two gryphons screeched as more dismembered hands grabbed the hands of the two dwarves, and despite the danger posed by the gryphons' beaks, Barghash strode up to the beast's while they were distracted and cut their necks open with his scimitar.

"What unholy blasphemy is this?" the second dwarf yelled angrily as he tried to wiggle his own hands free of the dismembered hands that had crawled over to grab him.

The distraction succeeded, and by the time the dwarves noticed the necromancer casting a more powerful raise dead spell, the riders and gryphons had already begun to rise all around them.

Barghash shook his head at the two intruders as their former comrades stood menacingly around them. "It seems that the mayor of Brill will be receiving four riders as a gift instead of two..."