Chapter 3
A pair of wisps arrived early the next morning, before the camp's living units were awake. Phage Marrowice heard the faint chiming well before he saw the two glowing spheres come over the cliff edge and drift down over the haunted mine. They cast a blue glow over the rough black structure of the mine itself, clashing with the green one that emanated from most of the Undead buildings.
Phage stood under his tree and watched them approach. He did not require sleep, and the inside of his undersized and makeshift necropolis was particularly stuffy at night.
A ghoul paused in grooming itself with its tongue to observe the new arrivals. It turned to sidle over to Phage. He watched its jaws work as it looked up at him, trying to form words with its decayed vocal cords.
"Wazzat?" it managed finally.
"These are our new lumber harvesters," Phage said. "They are not to be harmed or interfered with in any way. Tell the others."
The ghoul made an affirmative noise and sat up momentarily on its back feet. Phage glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then quickly patted the ghoul on the head. It made a growling noise that could charitably be mistaken for a purr as it turned to pad off. It was hard to tell with ghouls, but Phage suspected all eight of them would be happy to have even that much less work to do in the heat.
One wisp made a faint chiming noise as it came to a graceful halt in front of Phage. No words were discernible, but he found that he understood.
"Yes, that's me."
The wisp made further sounds which communicated that Huntress Starwater would be watching the camp to make sure he kept his end of the bargain.
"I'm sure she will," Phage sighed. "Well, go ahead and… Do whatever it is that you do. You might want to stay towards the north end. The area right under the cliff edge is generally sheltered when we're attacked from that direction."
The sun had already risen fully. Phage calculated that the acolytes should be just about ready by now, given that they slept very little for humans. He glided over toward the haunted mine.
"Acolyte!"
"Yes, Master!" came a voice from inside, and a moment later a tall cultist moved quickly out of the low entrance.
"Ah, Mir'noj," Phage said, recalling that this acolyte, unlike Felwyn, had given up his original name in favor of one which he thought better reflected his allegiance. "We are shortly going to be under observation by one or more large blue owls. See that nothing happens to them, all right? The abominations are too slow to catch them anyway, especially in this heat, but I don't want them eaten by the ghouls."
"Blue…owls?" Mir'noj said.
"Yes, Acolyte. We seem to have made an informal agreement with some Night Elves. I do not particularly wish to offend them at this stage."
The Acolyte looked puzzled under his face paint, which clashed awkwardly with his tan. "But Lord Marrowice! Are they not our enemies, like all those who resist the might of the Scourge?"
Mir'noj might be a little zealous for his own good, Phage reflected. He had made it clear that he hoped to become a necromancer in good time, and he still seemed disappointed in Phage's denial of his repeated offers to summon a Temple of the Damned when their resources were not adequate to support one.
"Technically, yes," Phage said. "But let me explain something to you, Acolyte. At present our camp contains six acolytes, eight ghouls, two banshees, one necromancer, one shade, and until we find more corpses to make them from, two abominations. And the skeletons, of course, but except for Gray they keep falling apart. Do you know what will happen if we are attacked by even an exploratory force of Night Elves?"
"No, Master," Mir'noj said.
"We will be obliterated, Acolyte. Every single one of us will be destroyed, and we are too far from any other Undead force to hope for resurrection. And, of course, our mission will fail." Not that it already hasn't, he thought bleakly, but kept this to himself. "We have been fortunate in that this particular force of Night Elves is very small, and they are led by a Huntress. If we had a Priestess of the Moon to deal with, we would not under any circumstances be able to dissuade them from attacking us. At present we have a chance at least to delay an engagement until we can build a stronger fighting force."
If we can build a stronger fighting force, Phage thought, but again decided it would not be wise to say this to Mir'noj.
"Then this is all part of your greater plan," Mir'noj said in a tone of awed realization. "We will increase our strength, and then fall on the puling forces of the living like a hammer upon a nail!"
Or possibly vice versa. "I can see you have grasped the essentials, Acolyte," Phage said. "See that what I told you is done."
"Of course, Master!" Mir'noj enthused, and whirled to – run? It was hard to tell – back into the mine and tell the others.
The new wisps had better come up with enough lumber to summon a Temple soon, Phage thought as he listened to the excited echoes from inside the mine. Mir'noj was exactly the type to be planted on him as a spy for Icecrown.
Serve them right, Phage thought. There's no way he could possibly be sending reports, unless he managed to suborn my shade before he left for Northrend. That seemed unlikely. Shades generally did not socialize with the living, treasuring their Undead status to the point that they did not care to spend time with their former fellow acolytes.
He would dearly love to see Mir'noj sacrificed, but it would be a long time before he could expand the necropolis enough to procure a Sacrificial Pit.
Then again, the shade itself could be the spy. In that case he left too soon to find out about this Night Elf matter, and I have nothing to worry about, Phage told himself.
He was not entirely sure he believed it.