Chapter 9
Phage Marrowice and Felwyn Smallfinger walked into the Undead camp as the sun began to set. The sky was the color of bronze over the varied browns of the Barrens.
That is to say, Felwyn walked. Phage slid along beside her, occasionally glancing at her from the corner of one…socket. Viri Starwater had kept her bargain. The acolyte seemed completely healed, her new, pink skin forming oddly contrasting patches with the leathery tan of the old.
Something certainly occupied the socket where her eye had been burnt out. Phage was not sure it was an eye.
"Acolyte Felwyn," he said as they passed between the two guard ziggurats. The possessed dragon swooped low overhead, and Gray clattered a greeting and steered the beast away. "Can you see?"
"I can see on the left side, Lord," Felwyn said. "The other side is…different." She turned her face slightly toward him, showing the shining blue surface of whatever-it-was. It gleamed like glass in the waning light, smooth and vaguely translucent. Something red seemed to lurk at the back, as if a spark of dragon fire still lingered there.
Different, Phage thought. Not blind.
The other acolytes converged on them as they moved toward the necropolis. Phage stopped in front of the entrance as Felwyn went to greet her fellows, accepting a new robe that Serwyn Stickbreaker had produced from somewhere. She shed the rags of the old one and put on the new, ignoring Jory and Varen as they quickly looked away. It was a little large for her, hanging loose on her thin frame.
Phage listened to the relief in their voices as they chattered away, all five hunched together like a small flock of crows. A couple of ghouls paused in their work to come over and see what was happening. Phage scratched one behind where its ears presumably should be. In the middle distance, an abomination lumbered past, now sporting a small and rather burnt dragon leg protruding from its left shoulder.
"I am pleased to see you have returned well, Lord Marrowice," said a voice beside Phage's left elbow.
The voice was male and slightly hollow, and only one creature in camp besides Phage could move that quietly. He turned without surprise to see the shade hovering next to him, transparent under the setting sun.
"What are the Night Elves doing since we left?" he asked.
"Packing up camp, Milord. The Ancients are uprooted. They seem prepared to leave the moon wells behind. A lioness without a rider goes with them."
"Very well." Exactly the kind of defiant, futile gesture someone like Viri would make. Her mount can't go where she's going.
The shade lingered.
"Was there something else?" Phage asked after a moment.
"My comrade has returned from Northrend," the nameless specter said. He might have been reluctant. It was hard to tell with shades.
"Where is he?" Phage asked. His heart, or whatever occupied that space, sank.
"Here, Lord," said an indistinguishable voice from Phage's other side. "I come with ill news."
Phage, who began to wonder if there was any other kind, greeted this remark without surprise.
"Speak, Shade," he said.
"We have been disavowed, My Lord. The Crypt Lord I spoke to said that the Throne considers us, and our mission, a complete failure. Any of our party who return to Northrend are to be rendered for spare parts."
"Do they know about the Night Elves?" Phage asked.
"I do not think so, My Lord. You gave me no orders to tell them, and in any case, I did not know."
Phage threw back his skull and laughed. The sound was terrible, and the acolytes fell silent and turned to look at him fearfully.
They disavowed me without even knowing what I've done. I wonder what would have happened if they'd known?
Phage shook himself slightly. "Acolytes, were you aware of the news this shade brings?"
"I waited for your return, Lord," the shade said, as five puzzled humans shook their heads.
"I see. Gather the camp. Even the outlying sentries. I believe we've slaughtered enough local wildlife to be safe for a few minutes, at least."
A few moments later he hovered in front of five acolytes, seven ghouls, one banshee, two shades, one necromancer, and two abominations, newly embellished with dragon parts. Three skeleton archers stood at the back and chattered their teeth. The possessed dragon perched on the summit of the necropolis, wings folded carefully around the ancient skeleton on her back.
"I will be brief," Phage said. "The shade has returned from Northrend. The Lich King no longer has use for us, here or anywhere else. If we return to the Scourge, we will be destroyed.
"For myself, I will stay here. This is the closest I have had to a home since my rebirth. It's a harsh place, but at least the Scourge probably will not find me here. Each of you is now free to do as he, she, or it wishes. Acolytes, it is possible you may be able to pass for ordinary humans, if you now wish to do so."
"I can't," Felwyn said. Her voice already seemed different then before, stronger and yet more remote. "Not any more. But I would stay anyway. I am bound to my Lord. I will serve you as long as I live, and as long as I exist after that."
"So will I," Jory said.
"So will we all," Serwyn said. "If we wished to be ordinary humans, we would never have chosen to become acolytes." The others nodded their agreement.
"There is no safer place in all this mad wilderness than this camp," Ner'zirhud said in his quavering voice. "I will stay."
"I have known a lesser pain under your rule, Lord," the banshee said. "Perhaps I will find a resting place, as my sister has done."
"Sssstay," Gray said, from his place on the roof.
Phage looked at the abominations. They looked back from various rheumy eyes with no sign of comprehension. Right. Why did I even ask? "You two can probably go back to patrolling now," he said.
"We done waiting!" one announced, and they turned and walked away with the rolling gait resultant from their uneven limbs.
The ghouls stood in a tight cluster, muttering in their growling voices. One edged forward. Its jaws worked for a few seconds, and finally produced:
"Work nnnow?"
"Yes, fine," Phage said. The ghouls scattered. "Acolytes. You are resolved to stay?"
"Yes, Lord," Jory said, when no one seemed about to say anything else.
"Then whichever one of you can summon fastest, start a new Temple of the Damned. We should have enough lumber by now, and there's certainly no shortage of stone."
"Yes, Lord Marrowice!" Variel Slowburn detached from the group and glided off toward a clear space next to the gold mine.
"Now…" Phage mused. "Ner'zirhud, what did you do with Mir'noj?"
"I am afraid your spell killed him, Milord," the necromancer said. "I have the body in the graveyard."
"Feed it to the ghouls, and use the bones for anything you wish. But I do not want him resurrected. He will not have that which he most desired. You are dismissed."
"Yes, Lord!" The necromancer scuttled away.
"As for the rest of you," he looked over the four remaining acolytes. "Which of you would like to train as a necromancer?"
Four hands instantly rose.
"I see. Yes. I suppose I will have to…" He trailed off as he realized an argument seemed to have started. The acolytes whispered fiercely to one another for a few seconds, and then Felwyn Smallfinger stepped resolutely forward.
"I will make the best necromancer, Milord," she said.
"I appreciate your resolve, Acolyte, but you are aware that necromancers have not traditionally been female?"
"I know, Milord," Felwyn said, without taking her eyes from his face. The light in her brown eye was figurative. The light in the other one was not."But the traditions of the Scourge will not serve us, now. And I am the best at learning new spells."
"It's true," Varen spoke up. "She'd do better than Jory or I would."
"Then in that case, Felwyn, your training will begin as soon as the new Temple is complete. Don't tell Ner'zirhud without me there. I want to see his face when he hears it.
"Nothing has been easy for us here. I see no reason why that should change. But your resolve warms me, to the extent that is possible, and I look forward to a long and profitable stay here in the Barrens. Tomorrow you will begin the expansion of our necropolis. For tonight, you are dismissed."
Phage glided over to look at the new Temple, which already began to take a spectral shape. A moment later he realized he had forgotten something.
"Shades?" Phage said.
"We are here, Milord," said a familiar voice. Phage looked around him, but saw nothing in the deepening darkness.
"You are, of course, free to go, if you wish," he said.
"We do not wish to leave, Milord," a shade said. "There is no place for a shade in the wilderness alone. And we would like to stay together. Perhaps one day you will see fit to produce another of our kind, and we will have another companion."
"I hope so," Phage Marrowice said. "But for now, I have some work for you."
"We shall be your eyes, Lord!"
"Very good. Here is what you will do."
He had not forgotten Viri Starwater. He knew her mood, and strongly suspected he knew what would happen to her after a few days of wandering in the wilderness in a fey cast of mind.
I cannot hope that I am wrong. She has lived a long life, and one which I suspect was in many ways worse than my short one.
Perhaps I will be able to persuade her that death need not be the end.