The lead apothecary on duty stood next to Mitchell, a heavy frown in place. He pointed at the rotting sheep in the cage. "That animal is plagued."

"Yes, I can see that," Mitchell replied slowly.

The apothecary held up a small vial. "So why are you trying to plague it again?"

Glancing around for inspiration, Mitchell scratched the back of his head, making sure not to mess up his Mohawk. "Well...it's kind of complicated."

As Mitchell floundered, the apothecary held the vial up to what was left of his nose and sniffed it. "Is there liferoot in this?"

"Maybe?"

The apothecary's lips formed a thin line. "Are you trying to restore this creature to life?"

"What? No," Mitchell quickly denied the accusation. "That would be a waste of time and resources."

His superior was not buying it.

"Look." Mitchell slung an arm over the apothecary's shoulders and pulled him closer, despite the blatant look of disdain on his superior's face. "The humans are getting smarter about the plague, right?" Mitchell glanced at him, but began talking again as he saw the man was not in the mood for casual banter. "If we try to spread the plague with something like this sheep, they're gonna kill it before it gets close enough to do any damage. I'm working on a way to mimic life-like attributes. They won't see a dead sheep; they'll see a live one that somehow got out of its pen. They'll take it home and then BAM!" He released his superior and slapped his hands together. "The whole town's gone in a night."

Though the apothecary still seemed annoyed, his annoyed disposition had lessened. "Instead of trying to be brilliant, just work on making the plague's airborne and potent stages last longer, like everyone else."

Mitchell shrugged and nodded as the man stalked off, carrying his vial. He waited until the apothecary was out of sight of the experiments' cages before squatting down in front of the sheep again and pulling out a second small vial. He glanced over his shoulder one more time to make sure no one was watching before slowly pouring it on top of the sheep. "Help me out, yeah?" He whispered to the animal as he patted its head. "If we can get Margaret's heartbeat back, she'd be so happy."

Margaret and he had been in Orgrimmar, hanging out in the guild hall with a few others when the elves had come up as a topic of conversation. While Gregor was pleased that they hadn't caused nearly as much drama as people had feared they might—and that he'd heard was going on in a few other guilds—Margaret had made a joke about finally having eye candy. Ta'lim hadn't really been thinking and had muttered something about how he looked just fine and that if Margaret was too busy fawning over their little farstrider, she ought to be open about it, instead of trying to insinuate that all the ladies were happy to have Wren and Sethyl around.

Mitchell had never seen Margaret get so angry so quickly. She'd stalked off even as Ta'lim tried to apologize, who had in turn left because he felt annoyed that she had been so easily offended.

In truth, Mitchell had noticed her infatuation with Wren as well. However, it hadn't occurred to him that she felt trapped in her rotting body until he'd caught up to her in Undercity. He didn't like when she was upset and had followed her back, hoping to talk. Her usually cheerful demeanor was still in shambles, and she had slipped up and said, "What does he know? What good would it do me to love an elf...to love anyone when I'm like this?"

Even when Mitchell had tried to tell her that he thought she was perfect as she was—even the prettiest of things died eventually...and besides, she was pretty, to him—she had dismissed him and all but demanded he leave her alone.

He'd felt hopelessly helpless until it had occurred to him. The reason so many forsaken felt lost was because they were dead. All he had to do was find a way to revive her. If he could take life, surely he could give it back, right? After all, he was a damn good apothecary.

While he couldn't remember the days right before his attempted suicide—all he really knew was that a bastard death knight had manipulated him into making the plague worse than it had originally been—he had a vague notion that he'd tried to cure the plague before and had run with it, thinking that perhaps his subconscious might remember what to do.

The contents of his vial began to seep through the sheep's wool, and he drummed his fingers against one of the bars as he waited, patiently, to see the results.

~"~

Mitchell stalked through the halls of the Undercity quickly, trying and failing to look inconspicuous.

"You there, stop."

Freezing as the dreadguard ordered it, Mitchell turned slowly toward him. "Yes?"

The guard sauntered up, eyeing him for a moment before motioning to the sheep under Mitchell's arm. "What are you doing with that?"

"My friend and I got into a fight," Mitchell shifted his weight uncomfortably. "I admit, I did things I shouldn't have. I'd...like to leave him somewhere away from any flight masters and then flee so that it'll take him a while to exact his revenge."

The dreadguard inspected the sheep for another moment, pausing as its head twitched awkwardly to the side for a moment, and then crossed his arms. "Who is it?"

"Huh?"

"Your friend. I'd like to look them up in the registrar, to make sure he's prone to violence and that you had a good reason for friendly fire."

"Timmons Burlaste," Mitchell said with a frown. Timmons was the only person he knew who most would probably agree deserved any sort of ill treatment. The sheep struggled to free itself from his arm as he spoke the name.

It worked.

The guard didn't need to look up that damnable warlock; half of the Undercity knew Timmons for the prick that he could be. He nodded to Mitchell, already losing interest, wished him well, and headed back along his patrol route.

Mitchell made it to the sewer lines without any more trouble and walked half way up the pipes, ignoring the hungering looks from a few abominations as he passed them, before he felt confident that no one was following him. With a quick cast, he patted the sheep and stepped through his portal to Thunder Bluff.

The mage hated the tauren capital. Namely because he didn't like heights, but the suspicious glares from the inhabitants didn't help much. Ignoring their attention, he wandered through the town, shakily crossing four bridges as he kept taking wrong turns. He really needed to come here more often.

Finally, he found his way—well, he got directions from a tauren woman who noticed how lost he looked and was suspicious of the sheep he was carrying—to a small tent. As he approached, he heard two women arguing.

"...don't know why I came home? I came home because you were ill, and I didn't want anything horrible to happen to you!" It was Whisper.

"I'm an old woman! Being ill is a part of life."

"Well, excuse me for caring!"

"I care too, you know," the older tauren snapped. Mitchell wondered if he ought to come back later, as Whisper's mother continued, "but I think it's high time you stop pining over a dead steer and put your head back in reality! I want grandchildren!"

"I can't help who I love!"

Mitchell decided Whisper would not be the person to turn to for help and sighed as he redirected his attention to the rest of the city. Where did Cloudless live again?

~"~

The forsaken sat across from another tauren as Cloudless went about making them all some tea. Mitchell had forgotten about Cloudless' life mate. Didn't any of his do-gooder guild mates live alone? He wanted to keep his experiments under wraps, and the more people who knew, the more likely Margaret might catch wind of what he was trying to do. He didn't want her to be mad at him...or to get her hopes up if he couldn't succeed twice.

The sheep lay on the ground beside him, contentedly chewing a few stalks of grass and staring dumbly around the room. It didn't seem to remember that only a few short hours ago it had been a rotting mess. It still had an occasional, odd twitch to it, though Mitchell supposed it was just a nerve that hadn't healed properly or something.

Cloudless' lover, a reddish colored tauren named Skybow—Mitchell was pretty sure that the steer was a hunter or brave or something...the mage failed at tauren culture quizzes—eyed the forsaken with open suspicion. He didn't trust the rotting corpse in front of him one bit, and it bothered him that Cloudless had on more than one occasion relied on such a creature to save his life.

At length, the awkward silence was broken as his guild mate sat back down and poured them each a cup of tea, though a tauren's cup was more like a giant mug for Mitchell. "So then, why are you lugging a farm animal around? If it's Alliance, just toss it off the nearest cliff. I won't tell Gregor."

Mitchell patted the sheep, and it turned to eye him, as though expecting him to take away its meal. "Ah, no. Fluffy isn't polymorphed."

Both tauren stared at him for a long, quiet moment. Finally, Cloudless arched an eyebrow. "You're...carrying an actual sheep? From the Undercity to Thunder Bluff."

"Well, I did take a portal." Mitchell fiddled with the hem of his sleeve.

Skybow eyed him. "Why did you bring us a sheep?"

"I was hoping, maybe," Mitchell glanced at Fluffy and then his cup of tea, his bony fingers already pulling the hem out of his robe. "I mean, if you don't want to, just say so, but...well, could you keep him?"

Both tauren stared at him blankly. Finally, Cloudless frowned. "Why do you want us to keep it?"

"Well, I mean," Mitchell glanced toward Skybow and fidgeted. He frowned as he realized the string from his seam was tangled around one of his fingers. "Could I talk to Cloudless alone?"

"No," Skybow responded before Cloudless could answer. "If we're keeping the sheep then that means I'm keeping it too. I want to know what I'm dealing with."

"Well, you have to keep quiet about it," Mitchell glared at him. "I mean, you can't mention this to anyone. Not even each other. If someone asks, it's just a sheep, okay?"

"What are we keeping quiet about?" Cloudless asked, growing exasperated. The mage could be so paranoid at times.

Mitchell eyed the walls of the tent before leaning toward the others and motioning for them to lean in as well. As Cloudless did and Skybow reluctantly obliged, Mitchell patted Fluffy again. "I unplagued him."

Both tauren froze. However, Mitchell didn't seem to notice. He ran a boney hand down his face. "I can't keep him in the Undercity. Anything living there—that isn't Horde—ends up in the labs, and I want to make sure that he's okay. That he doesn't, you know, regress."

Skybow pointed a finger at the sheep accusingly. "That thing could turn back into a rotting corpse and spread the its taint here?!"

"No! No, no, no, no, no!" Mitchell waved his hands frantically as he tried to keep the tauren quiet. "I wouldn't bring you a blight bomb!" He didn't notice as both seemed disconcerted that such a thing existed. "I sterilized the plague before I restored him! In case, you know, he did regress. I wouldn't want the plague to mutate into something beyond control."

Cloudless eyed the sheep, trying to believe what Mitchell was saying. "So... you've found a way to reverse the plague. The one that wiped out Lordaeron."

"Sort of?" Mitchell's shoulders slumped forward. "I didn't think I'd get it right on my first try, you know, since there've been some people working on it for years without any breakthroughs...so I kind of just threw some stuff together. I figured I would make notes and be more meticulous as I went. Besides, I have to be careful. If any notes about restoring life were found by the other apothecaries..." He stared at his untouched tea. "I'll need to experiment more to see if I can restore more animals...and then I'll have to try to restore humans."

Cloudless considered what the mage was saying. He would have to possibly torture living creatures to assure himself that he could undo the plague. It seemed like the only instance of necessary cruelty that the druid could think of. He hesitated. "Why are you doing this?"

Mitchell stared down at his hands. "So that Margaret doesn't have to be lonely anymore."

~"~

Mitchell whistled as he sauntered into Whisper's Vials, waved to Liila in passing, and then headed down the side hall to check their guild stores. While he knew a good part of them had been used to help replenish some of the potions upstairs, he hoped that there would be an ample supply of liferoot on hand. That was probably the one herb they didn't keep in high volume in the apothecary labs, and it would look suspicious if he went out to buy a lot of it. Sometimes he considered learning how to be an herbalist, but when would he have time to gather herbs? He was already so busy with alchemy, tailoring, and guild and Society matters.

As he stopped in front of the shelves used to hold the different herbs and began to read through the labels—he sort of wanted to take the whole damn shelving unit, but figured he'd be too swamped with finding a cure for the plague to make the necessary cloaks and robes to even out what he'd taken—a hand landed on his shoulder, and he was rather roughly spun around to face Gregor.

The old warrior was livid. "You son of a bitch!"

Mitchell's eyes almost widened enough to be seen behind the straps over them. He hadn't seen Gregor like this since before they'd joined the Horde. "What did I do?"

"Your fellow apothecaries are applauding your idea to make plagued creatures look normal," Gregor hissed as he shoved Mitchell into the shelves of herbs. "They're saying they could probably take out the whole of Stormwind if they could get such a thing to work. Just send a few zombies in looking like dazed farmers, and the human population would be all but extinct in a few days. Some people are even wondering if Orgrimmar was a dry run for you, since no one seems to know how so many ghouls got here so quickly!"

Mitchell held up his hands and protested against the last comment. Though...he had said something along those lines to his superior, hadn't he? He didn't think the man would actually run with it. Not that it concerned him much. "Look, I'm not..." He stopped himself. It would be better for his reputation at the Society if Gregor stayed angry at him. If he was suddenly cool with Mitchell experimenting on people, it would be too suspicious. After all, Gregor refused to even step foot in the Undercity, because he knew that in general the forsaken held such a low regard for human life.

Mitchell narrowed his eyes. Had that been why the apothecaries had mentioned it to the warrior? They were testing just where Mitchell stood? He frowned at his guild leader. "You know I don't talk to you about my work for the Society."

Gregor jerked back his fist and punched the mage. As Mitchell stood hunched over and reeling from the blow, his guild leader leaned down to whisper into his ear. "If my children die because of you, I will make you regret every choice you've ever made."

With that, Gregor stormed off.

~"~

Though Mitchell was loathe to do it, he had gone back to the Undercity and 'resumed' his studies for the Society. In truth, he'd done all that he could to get in on the experiments following his plan. He couldn't very well go around saving Margaret if Gregor killed him.

As a result, he'd decided to sabotage every experiment until the others gave up. They were supposed to be working on boring things, anyway. This was probably just a fad that would die out in a few days with no luck.

Well, except that they were already making progress.

It took a great deal of work, but Mitchell managed to do it. He cut off his guild stone so that his guild mates would know to leave him be and dove into his 'work'. Only when the other apothecaries' enthusiasm had begun to wane, seeing that they couldn't get any combination of ingredients to cover all the symptoms of the plague—this one made their eyes turn gray and oozed, and that one made their eyes look normal, but the flesh still rotted—did Mitchell bother to turn his guild stone back on.

His stone had barely been on for an hour when he felt a chin rest on one of his boney shoulders. "How goes the plague?"

Mitchell at first worried that it had been one of his superiors, and the tips of his fingers had been burning with sparks for fire when he'd heard Margaret's voice. His magic dissipated, and he turned his head so that he could see his visitor. "Huh?"

She pointed a sickly finger toward the vials in front of him. "How goes your experiments?"

Staring down at the vials, he frowned and shrugged his free shoulder. "I had this stupid idea...well, brilliant really. In theory. In practice it's just not working out."

"Well, if anyone can figure it out, I'm sure you can," Margaret patted his shoulder and peered back at his work. She reached out as though to pick up one of the vials but seemed to think better of it and let her arm drop back to her side. The two stood in an awkward silence for a moment before she rocked on her feet. "So... I guess it's something a non apothecary probably can't help with, huh?"

Mitchell scratched the back of his head slowly. "Well, not really..." he paused as he considered if he ought to ask her to start stockpiling supplies for his personal experiments, but quickly decided against it. If she helped him, she'd want to know what she was doing it for, and that had the potential for ruining the surprise and possibly their relationship. What would she think of him if she found out he was trying to cure the plague? That he was delusional? Would she dismiss it as him being 'a kid'? He was twenty-one by now, dammit. Would she pity him and think him overly innocent?

Would she hate him for trying to bring her hope?

"Well," Margaret brushed her fingers over the fabric of her robe, frowning as she noticed that the hem near her belt was coming loose. "I suppose I should head out. Wouldn't want to be responsible for slowing down the Society's work, now would I?"

Before Mitchell could even offer to fix her robe, she waved to him and trotted off out of the labs. The young mage watched her go for a moment before turning back to look down at his latest batch of successfully failed work.

However, before he could move to toss it, he realized that he was being watched and slowly turned to see that every other apothecary was staring at him. He glanced around, a terror that they were on to him boiling in his stomach. At length one of the nearer ones arched a fetid eyebrow.

"Really?"

He felt another one sling an arm over his shoulders, and he looked toward him warily. The senior apothecary frowned down at him. "You do know you're dead, yes?"

When Mitchell gave him a 'no duh' look, the first man to speak cackled. "Yet you allow yourself such frivolities as love?"

"What?" Mitchell's expression blanked. "I'm not—"

"I pity you," the second man said, releasing his shoulders and patting Mitchell on the back. "You'll wake up to reality soon enough, though."

"You'd think he already would have...it's been four years..."

Mitchell ground his teeth slowly as he stared pointedly at his fizzing vials, trying to ignore the smug laughter and bitter, snide remarks of the others as they went back to work. He wasn't in love. No forsaken in their right mind would be stupid enough to think such an emotion stood a chance against death.

Though...if he could get a cure to work...

~"~

Mitchell had to concede that he was fighting a losing battle. He needed to be able to gather different plagued creatures to cure, and he was going to spend the next year at least trying to thwart any advances in the Society's mission. Further, the other apothecaries were going to notice that their experiments did substantially worse when he was around, and that wouldn't be good for him.

Thus, he did the only thing he could do.

He'd set a few highly flammable concoctions next to the Society's only fire mage and pissed him off. The resulting explosion was enough to close the lab down for a good, long while. Though a few of the apothecaries suggested moving their experiments to Tarren Mill, their supervisor had told them to stop with such foolishness, namely because Sylvanas was probably going to kill him for the new hole in the walkway leading to her throne room.

Content that, at least for now, he'd put a halt on the research, Mitchell swiped a few supplies he hoped would be written off as lost in the explosion and headed off to go about his own experiments.

~"~

Timmons sat on top of a wall in the Magic Quarter of Undercity, flipping through his spellbook absentmindedly as a few senior warlocks walked an initiate through what he was going to have to do to summon and subdue his very own succubus. The fool already had the hearts of good, honest men, and he was nodding with false bravado as his imp shivered near his feet.

Timmons marked his page and set his book in his lap. He loved watching the newer warlocks try to tame their pets. So many of them failed and met such miserable fates. He was fairly certain that if he were capable, he would get that warm fuzzy sensation in his chest every time one of them fell, screaming, to their targets.

However, even with the young warlock quickly succumbing to the succubus's thrall and having to be put down by his superiors, Timmons couldn't even crack a smile. He couldn't stop thinking about Haa'aji's warning to Sethyl.

Of course that worthless troll had waited to threaten Sethyl until Timmons was coming up to ask about Liila's ring. Haa'aji was always pulling this sort of shit. Timmons would want to speak to Liila about something like helping him get the reagents for his dreadsteed, and as soon as he started to ask, Haa'aji would be there, asking Liila to help him. Really, the only time Timmons ever got to spend any time with Liila without that moronic troll was when Haa'aji was out of town. He'd made the mistake of trying to put a hit out on someone once, just to get rid of the damnable rogue, and he'd come home—well, to his little nook in Undercity where he studied when he didn't feel like being bothered—to find Haa'aji waiting for him, smug and annoying as ever.

Besides, no one cared if Liila wanted to have a thing with some pitiful paladin. Just like no one really cared if she had a lover in Silithus or whatever other stories Haa'aji came up with. It's not like any of them were ever true. Liila was too messed up in the head to have a steady man, anyway. Months of torture did that to a person.

And to imply that Liila would want anything to do with a sin'dorei was foolish, really. She'd heard those tales of paladins storming through the Scourge infested lands to save their comrades in arms, and it had left her horribly bitter. How had they found the time and resources to save them and not her? Had she not been good enough to save?

While the guild had banned her from drinking, namely because she actually had a temper when drunk, Timmons enjoyed getting her alone and wasted. She became so animated when she ranted about how stupid the elves were or how she thought the light was cruel to have left so many to suffer or the dozens of other thoughts that she was normally too reserved to say when she was sober.

If only that wretched heart of hers would stop beating, she'd be the perfect woman.

A chill ran down Timmons' spine as the thought, originally merely a jest, made him feel uneasy. He killed creatures for fun, manipulated and blackmailed people to do things when he couldn't use force, and yet the thought of Liila undead, or simply dead for that matter...

Haa'aji would have a field day if he ever heard about such thoughts.

Timmons glared down at the next initiate, who was even more of a novice than the last one, just coming to learn to bind an imp to him. Such was his anger channeled that the young corpse below felt his gaze and looked up, blinking his glowing eyes at the dark figure leering down at him.

One of the elder warlocks noticed Timmons as well and frowned. "Mr. Burlaste. Would you kindly stop distracting the recruits—"

Before the man could finish his sentence, the novice interrupted, pointing a boney finger up toward the hooded warlock. "You're Timmons Burlaste?"

"The one and only," Timmons murmured, his frown already dipping deeper. Something about the way the young man had named him...it hadn't been accompanied by the appropriate fearful undertones. His mood worsened as, upon confirming the young undead's question, the novice smirked.

"I hear you're all talk."

While their superior could have easily countered with dozens of tales of how Timmons was an accomplished and loathsome creature, he instead chose to sit back and enjoy the show, imagining that, if he could see the upper half of the cocky bastard's face, Timmons' eye would be twitching in disbelief.

Slipping from his perch, Timmons sauntered up to his challenger, his robes rustling around him as though whispering warnings of the power hidden beneath his plain appearance. While the recruit seemed slightly unnerved to be standing in front of one of the world's crueler modern legends—at least as far as Undercity gossip went, anyway—he forced his smile to stay in place as he tried to look down his nose at the intimidating creature in front of him. Timmons was unmoved by the display.

"You think I am all talk?"

The novice's smile slipped. "I...well, what kind of mighty warlock gets sheeped, hmm?"

Timmons' head tilted to the side slowly as he appraised the meek sack of bones in front of him. "I suppose, in a sense, I am all talk, aren't I?" Even as the pitiful creature in front of him began to take a step back, not liking Timmons' tone, the warlock's lips slowly spread into a harsh smile. "Though...aren't all warlocks?"

With a word, the novice's robes were on fire, and he was screaming and flailing, trying desperately to extinguish the flames nipping at what was left of his nerves.

The senior warlock watched the trainee with a look of mild apathy, arms crossed. "We'll say the imp got the best of him, if anyone asks."

"Pity nothing better has crawled out of a grave lately," Timmons murmured as the recruit finally fell to the ground near a passing mage. The woman looked down at the smoldering mass of rotting flesh near her feet and then toward the other warlocks, all of whom merely shrugged and resumed their business. With a sigh, she threw a frost spell on the still flaming corpse, to make sure the fire wouldn't spread, and headed on her way.

"Indeed."

Just as Timmons turned to go check the auction houses, seeing as he'd been ordered to leave the newcomers be, he paused, his mind replaying his most recent conversation. "What's this about getting sheeped?"

The other warlock let out a rasping cackle. "Oh? You haven't heard?"

~"~

Mitchell was baffled. If it was this easy, why hadn't someone else figured out how to restore the forsaken to their former existences? Sure, after that first fluke, it had taken him nearly seventeen tries to get it right again, but the snake he'd just unplagued stared up at him as it flicked its tongue out several times.

So far as he could tell it was as healthy as any living snake. Mitchell poked it once, only to jerk his hand back when the creature snapped at him. He frowned and watched it slither away. He supposed he ought to keep it, to make sure there were no strange side effects, but that was what Fluffy was for, right? And Cloudless would send him a message if something weird started happening with Fluffy...

He stirred the bubbling cauldron of his work absentmindedly as he watched the creature disappear around the corner of a building. Considering proportions and the like, he figured that it would be enough to test on a few more animals and—if it still worked—give to a forsaken or two to try out.

It turned out that it needed a direct increase in the proportion of liferoot in correlation with the size of the patient. The length of time the creature had been plagued seemed to have a minor effect on its effectiveness, as well, hence Mitchell had gone out and located what he guessed to be some of the original creatures to have succumbed to the plague. There wasn't much left of them.

Upon trying it out on a mostly skeletal bat, Mitchell had realized that it was a bad, bad, bad idea. If he had given it to Margaret, she would have come back to life, sure, but with all her missing parts still missing. The sheep hadn't really lost anything yet, nor had the snake.

Mitchell had fiddled with the concoction until he was able to successfully merge it with a healing potion. His next attempt to revive a bear with half of his brain exposed proved quite successful, though he had to admit reservations to the thought of ever trying it out himself, as the experience of becoming one of the living seemed quite painful on the creature. The creature also exhibited hints that it at least had been plagued at some point, with oddly discolored patches of fur and a strange twitch on one side of its face, where its skin had fallen off. Mitchell couldn't help but wonder how much of the plague had actually been cured.

While he would have loved to study it, he had to put the bear down when it quickly succumbed to hunger and tried to eat him. He supposed it worked out well enough, though, as he got to dissect the bear to check for internal discrepancies with the healing to its flesh.

The autopsy had left him rather puzzled. While it looked like the bear had been cured, certain organs just seemed...off. The heart remained somewhat shriveled, the tendons seemed unusually durable, and many of the organs were discolored, though they showed the basic properties of life that he'd been hoping for.

He mapped out a few alterations on his concoction to try and kept his notes on his person, thinking that once he'd made some more progress, he'd take a break and go to Booty Bay to hide his research in a neutral bank.

Content that he was making progress, though it did disappoint him that it'd probably be a few months at least before he could get anywhere near a point of experimenting on forsaken, he began to bottle his concoction, thinking to keep what he had as a reference point, should something happen to his notes. He spent almost two days carefully hiding vials throughout the ruins of Lordaeron and packing more into crates to be shipped off to remote, hopefully safe, obscure parts of the world that no one would think to search, should his experiments come to light.

Just as he was about halfway through the cauldron, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He barely had time to see Timmons' angry sneer before he panicked and threw the potion in his hand in the warlock's face, thinking to flee while the forsaken tried to get the liquid out of his eyes.

Even as Mitchell realized what he'd done and his jaw dropped, Timmons arched an eyebrow. Slowly, the warlock wiped at his face, though he was somewhat puzzled to find that his hand came away dry, the liquid having already seeped into his skin. He pushed his confusion from his mind and stayed on task, his anger returning twice over.

"Tell me something."

Mitchell shifted his weight uncomfortably. Why wasn't anything happening? Should he be happy or disappointed that it seemed ineffective on humanoids? "Yes?"

"Why is there a rumor going around that a mage from the Royal Apothecary Society sheeped me?"

Mitchell cursed under his breath. Why were all of his lies coming back to bite him in the ass? He shrugged, trying to brush it off. "It was a joke, really."

"A joke." Timmons's frown deepened. "You've damaged my reputation for the sake of a joke? Do tell the punch line."

As Mitchell eyed the furious 'lock, it became obvious that he was about to get his ass handed to him. Flames danced along Timmons' fingertips, and Mitchell responded to imminent danger the way he always did.

He panicked.

It wasn't until he saw the black sheep at his feet, chewing angrily on his robes that he realized he'd made a second, possibly dumber mistake than the first. He bit his lip.

Well, the rumor was true now.

However, now he really did need to get rid of Timmons for a while... He cried out when the sheeped warlock tried to gnaw off one of his exposed toes. Even as he hopped away, with Timmons angrily charging at his knees—nothing a blink couldn't save him from, though each escape was just adding fuel to Timmons' disdain for the mage—he realized he had to act fast, before the spell wore off.

Mitchell dodged another sheep attack, flipped through his spell book, made a portal, caught his guild mate, and, while Timmons' kicked and snapped at Mitchell's hands, tossed the warlock to another part of the world. The portal vanished, and he sighed in relief, no longer able to hear the angry bleats of his guild mate.

And then he felt someone's chin on his shoulder and went rigid.

"I don't recognize that one," Margaret said, still hanging over him. "Where'd you send him?"

"Stromgarde."

Roberts let out a low whistle, stepping up on Mitchell's other side. "Didn't know there was a port for that old city."

Mitchell shrugged, though he was careful not to jostle Margaret. "I found an old tome when we were questing there, back in the day." He glanced at the mage beside him. "If you want, I can show you the spell."

With a smile, Margaret stepped away from him, turning to eye the cauldron. "I'm good. I don't foresee myself needing to go there any time soon."

Mitchell watched her, feeling uneasy for her to be so close to his work. After all, it wasn't perfected yet. He suddenly frowned as he realized his first forsaken test subject was now not only roaming the Arathi countryside, but also probably forming a rather hellish grudge against him. He shifted his weight uneasily. "I... thought you went back to Orgrimmar."

Margaret shrugged. "I was thinking about it, but Roberts noticed Timmons asking around for you, and we thought we'd play damage control if need be."

"I might need you to later," Mitchell tried to joke, though he already felt like the air was filling with curses the warlock was probably sending his way. Good thing mages could remove those.

Roberts was eyeing the cauldron as well. The death stalker walked half way around it. "I thought all experiments were on hold until the laboratory was fixed."

Mitchell leaned over his concoction, blocking it from their view with his body. "This is...secret. The others don't know about it."

Roberts arched an eyebrow and ran his fingers over his bald head slowly. "The Dark Lady doesn't like Society resources being wasted on recreational dabbling."

As Mitchell gave Roberts a pleading look, Margaret leaned over and hugged her fellow mage's shoulders. "Leave him be Roberts. He promises he won't do it again, right?"

Mitchell eyed her for a moment before nodding slowly. He could gather his own reagents. Perhaps he could work out of Orgrimmar...though Gore probably wouldn't trust his work, either. He'd find somewhere.

Roberts seemed skeptical. "What is it? That thing that masks death?"

"Not quite," Mitchell said, not wanting the death stalker to go to the Society with any rumors. Mitchell was never completely sure where Roberts' loyalties stood. Would he side with a guild mate over the Banshee Queen? It wasn't really something he wanted to find out. He looked around slowly before frowning. "It's just...I promise I won't waste any more Society resources on it. Please don't tell anyone." He straightened up slowly. "I promise you, if it's a success, I'll let you in on it. If not, it won't even be worth mentioning."

"Alright," Roberts nodded reluctantly as both mages gave him pitiful looks. "Just...don't steal from our Lady again."