Winston and the Eastern Kingdoms

"Nonsense. I played down a King, therefore you can't play a One to beat it," Jaeques told the kid we were playing a card game with yet again.

"That's what the rules state. Ten beats all face cards except the Ace, Jack beats that, Queen beats Jack, King beats Queen, and Ace beats all, except two, which beats the Ace," he said in defiance. "Tell him, Winston."

"Connor's right, Jaeques," I said for the third time since we started playing. Half an hour had passed since Weiß went down the elevator and not a single turned guard had returned.

Extremely bored, Sydonia let the guards that were still here take a break. Everyone just did what they wanted except leave the floor, which was a given. Cress and a few other people were allowed back into the rooms to sleep, given that it was only to sleep. Connor, the kid we were playing cards with, invited us to a card game with a friend, who stayed quiet except for a few words at a time.

Sydonia had disappeared off somewhere, leaving the rabble of us to entertain each other.

"Winston, it's your turn," Connor said, and I looked at the pile. The top card was a five, so I looked in my hand and put down a couple of eights.

Sydonia

Fourth floor…

I descended the stairs, walking quickly for these withered bones. Two of my guards waited for me on the landing below, looking around. When I stepped onto the landing, they turned and said there was nothing to report, and then ran down the next flight of steps.

Third floor…

A slight discomfort ebbed its way into my thoughts. I had not seen Jaeques place anti-turn seals on some of the people upstairs, but I could tell they were there. And one of them had been taken downstairs, but that did not worry me.

Second floor…

What worried me was the two I had put in charge, although were fully capable of doing some damage, could not work effectively together when faced with a bigger problem than a rat.

A smell that troubled me even more rose in a cloud that did not pass. It smelled like burning ash mixed with blood. I made sure my guards were sitting on the end of the stairs before stepping down onto the next landing myself.

First floor…

The two guards proceeded to hurry down the stairs, but I had no stamina left to do so myself. I turned into the hallway and found the elevator. Pressing the down button and entering the door when it arrived, I rode the it down the rest of the way.

When the doors opened to the ground floor, I was not amused to see that it was in ruins. Broken glass littered the floor and chucks of body parts were strung from one end of the room to the other; small fires raged over the spilled concoction; and the two people that I had put in charge, Cyon and Kleptica, were gone.

Walking around, I found that the meat belonged to both the abominations that the two brought with them and the last group of people we had sent down. the doors to the building had not been opened, so I could assume that whomever did this was a short distance away.

"Ma'am Sydonia!" a guard called to me from a side hallway. With a look of disgust at this mess, I hurried to the guards, and saw they had captured the brat and found Cyon and Kleptica. In pieces.

I looked the girl over, and found it was one of the people that Jaeques had been with when we found him. She was short, child-like in appearance. She had black hair in two very different ponytails, one being short and the other being very long. She wore a large eyepatch over her left eye with a disc-like device over the socket, which acted like a lens mixed with her eye, following the other.

She was slim and flat-bodied, wearing a long black dress that looked like a witch's robe. Black rubber-soled boots with fake fur insulation and had a bit of metal attached to the front. I guess all she needed was a weapon and she would be ready for battle.

"What is your name?" I asked the girl. She didn't speak, biting her lip to keep her from talking. I looked at the guards and motioned to put her in a restraining hold, and they obeyed. "What is your name, girl?" I repeated. She still did not speak. "Apply pressure," I ordered.

They pulled her arms back and pushed down on her back, however, the pain did not register on her face and did nothing to please me. Deciding to wait it out, I turned to the bits of the lesser Apothecaries and separated them out. I took out a soulstone and placed it on Cyon's pieced self, and chanted a recovery spell. The stone melted and the liquid seeped into his body, revitalizing it.

The segments connected with each other, and soon he was back together. A few moments later, a flicker of his eyes and a moan indicated he was back.

"My apologizes, ma'am," Cyon said, sitting up. I reached out to help him back up, and he staggered to his feet. "We didn't expect the turning potion to have no effect on this person, or at least a form of reverse effect."

"Couldn't you see the seal on her back?" I asked him. "Even you should know it by now."

"There wasn't a seal. Go ahead, check." He walked over to the girl, and turned her around. I placed my hand on her back, but there was no seal. What kind of trick was this?

"Get her to spill her name, then go up to the top floor. I'll meet you there," I said irritated. I walked back to the elevator, ignoring Kleptica's remains and an abomination that had snuck on, and rode it back to the floor Jaeques and the prisoners were on.

Jaeques

"And that was the last card," Connor said, winning the game. Winston put his cards in the pile and I gathered and began shuffling them. Cress leaned on his shoulder, watching us play cards.

The tune of the radio in one of the rooms was carried throughout the floor. The people lazed around doing whatever, playing games, reading books, staring blankly at the wall. The guards allowed people to enter the rooms to sleep or use the restroom. Someone had the window open to air the place out, since it was building up.

I dealt the cards again and had just put the cards down when the elevator beeped. Almost everyone flinched and looked at the opening doors. Sydonia walked out with an abomination in tow, which made everyone scramble away. The guards went back on duty, collecting people from the rooms and sitting them in a line. I handed the cards back to Connor and stood to meet her.

"Jaeques, I wish to talk to you in private," she told me. Then, to a guard, "Lead them to the portal floor and sit them to the side. Another apothecary will be there soon. If he's there before me, tell him to come down here, using the stairs mind you. Dismissed."

The guard turned to the one next to him and repeated her message, then they spread it to the other guards. Sydonia gestured me to enter one of the rooms, probably about what happened downstairs that required the need to use abominations.

Closing the door behind me, I sat myself in a chair next to a table with the book I borrowed earlier left on it. Sydonia sat down in the chair opposite of this one. I looked at the room, which was wide open like a war room, but the table was too long for just that. It might have been a committee room, for the amount of chairs.

"I would like to first tell you that although it is kind of you to save these people's lives, it is an act of treason. You realize that, don't you?" she pointed out.

"Yeah, I know it is, but we could use them for hostages," I countered weakly.

"I doubt the entire force will stop just because we haven't killed some of them and turned them."

"Not the our enemies, but this world. We could do some real damage if we wanted to," I said, trying to work myself out of a hole.

"True… and besides, Warchief Hellscream would have heard about this by now and would want us to continue this since we have such a grip." She shifted into a more relaxing sitting position, before continuing. "Now, I know you are well aware that one of the people that we found you with, the black-haired young girl mind you, had gone down with one of the turning groups, and we found that she's immune to the Zombiefication potion, but she doesn't have a seal…"

I found myself cornered. "I didn't put a seal on the young girl because she didn't need one, but it seems to have worked against me. So, I guess I need to tell you why she didn't need one," I said. Sydonia nodded.

"You either tell me now, or tell the Dark Lady Sylvanas or the Head of the Royal Apothecary Society later as you're receiving punishment," she said, showing her royal flush.

"Heh, great."

Winston

I watched as Jaeques was pulled aside in a conference room by Sydonia. The guards she had talked to spread the order and stood us up. "We have received orders from Miss Sydonia, from the far end of the room, you are to be guided up to the disembarking room, where she has instructed you to move and stay to the right side. You are to move in two lines, and anyone who steps out of line the guards are free to move them back into line in any fashion they deem necessary." He paused to look if Sydonia or Jaeques was exiting, then looked back. "Far side, proceed."

The end of the line began moving forward, and I found myself behind Cress and in front of Connor, neither looking as bad as the girl who lent Jaeques her book in the other line, not too far ahead. Soon, Cress began moving, and after a few steps I started to walk behind her.

The trip to the Disembarking room was an exhausting unorganized march three or four flights upward, and several people had fallen behind, creating a third line on the already crammed stairway. However, once we got to the room on the ninth floor we were greeted to even worse surprise.

There in the left corner, as the entire floor was converted into one giant floor with a pillar for structure, was a troll-like being dancing with naught but a loincloth in a magic circle. Was this thing a pet to one of the warlocks?

We were moved to the cornered like asked, but once everyone was there, we migrated back into our smaller circles. A removable wall was placed between the group and the troll to the request of several of the people in the group, and as if to tease them a succubus showed up at the last moment with only a skirt on and flirted with us before the wall obstructed our view, which the crowd then asked to have the wall removed. The guards ignored us.

The girl who had given Jaeques her book moved next to a wall outlet and plugged in her laptop from the bag she wore. Connor pulled out his phone and began messing with it. I reached for my own when I remembered it had died. Feeling left out, Cress leaned on my shoulder, and I put my arm around her.

"How long before Weiß comes back?" she asked. The floor's elevator sounded, and another undead dressed as a scientist with blue hair and, guess who, Weiß stepped out. Cress jumped up to meet her before the guards stopped her and pulled her back. Weiß looked at her with a saddened face and motioned to back away, her hand bloody and full of holes. Cress got teary eyed and moved back and sat next to me.

"BR*S?" the girl with the computer said suddenly, fixing her glasses. Weiß looked at her confused, then followed the undead scientist to the other side of the room. "Don't tell me," she said, typing quickly away on her laptop. She had brown hair and wore simple wire-framed glasses. She had on a plain orange shirt and white plaid skirt. The only accessory she wore was a red flaming skull with wide sunglasses in her hair.

Her backpack was a one-strap bag with a picture of a college student and a wide-eyed man in a plain white shirt and blue jeans. The caption had something along the lines of Dead Book. "Yeah, that right," she whispered, looking back at Weiß.

The scientist instructed the guards to put up more walls to stop attracting stares from the group, so the group instead stared at the guards putting up the walls.

The idle chatter started up some time later, and when the guards finally put them back down, we were greeted to a line of fully equipped orcs, an undead cavalier, and the two warlocks. The imp and succubus were still here, but the imp had stopped dancing and the succubus had put on a skimpy shirt, much to the dismay of the men in the crowd.

"This is everyone?" the cavalier asked Sydonia, and everyone was rushing to put away their possessions and stand up.

"I believe so. Jaeques? Are there any others?" she passed the question on to him, and he shook is head.

"So when are we going?" the succubus asked, then jumped onto Jaeques' back.

"Soon. Off, Syevere, " he said, tapping her on the shoulder. Syevere ignored him.

"Don't tell me that you're cheating on your wife Jaeques," the cavalier asked.

"Jaeques has a wife?" Sydonia asked, looking playfully at the cavalier, then at Jaeques. "Who is she?"

"A fine Blood Elf woman, from what I've heard," the cavalier said.

"Lady Ashlian of Eversong," Jaeques grumbled.

"Lady Ashlian? You don't mean Champion Ashlian of Eversong? Oh, boy. When she hears you're cheating on her, you'll be in a deep rut," Sydonia teased.

"Any who…" the troll interrupted.

"Right. Thank you, Dagnik," Sydonia said, taking a deep breath. "Your men on the other side?"

"Yes, awaiting your return, ma'am," the cavalier said.

"Do you have my staff?" she asked the cavalier, who promptly swung around and opened his rucksack, pulling out a staff nearly twice the length of the bag itself.

"Madame Sydonia, can I have a word with you about my lab?" the scientist asked, moving to Sydonia with Weiß. "As you know, this hume smashed my lab to bits. If I may request a replacement…"

"Absolutely not. If you want revenge on this girl, then slip poison or find a way to turn her, but if you want a new lab, then seek Faranell. I mean, Master Apothecarian Faranell, excuse me, but right now we have more important matters at hand. So if you'd excuse me, I have to activate the port. And as for the girl, did you get her name like I asked, Cyon?"

"Vaiss, I believe," he said. "But the language might spell it differently."

"For now, put her with the rest. We'll deal with her soon," she told them, and Weiß ran to Cress' side, and wedged in between the two of us. She shot me a dark look before turning back to Cress.

With an exchange of smiles, Cress took her wounded hand and kissed it, and must of cast a healing spell because the holes closed up and the other scars disappeared. Weiß wiped off her hand to check, and sure enough, they were gone. With a giggle, Weiß hugged Cress and snuggled with her.

The girl with glasses tried to sneak to Weiß' side, but Weiß turned around suddenly. Have I mentioned anything about her eyepatch yet? The disc fluctuated like a focus on a camera looking her over. "Otaku," she said before turning back to snuggle with Cress some more.

"Don't call me that," the girl said.

"What is your name?" I asked.

"Otaku," Weiß said before the girl could answer.

"My name is Kris-" she tried to say.

"Otaku!" Weiß interrupted.

"Weiß, don't interrupt the girl," Cress asked her, and Weiß quieted.

"Like I was saying, my name is Kristina Tryfon, and yes, I'm an otaku," Kris said. And before she could say more, Sydonia moved Dagnik out of the circle, and began chanting her spell. Before long, the wall which she was facing began to shimmer and disappear, being replaced with an image of a lone hill at night.

"Oh, Jaeques," Syevere said strangely. "This power is making me feel so…"

"Off if you are going to continue this inappropriate behavior," he said, again trying to remove her from his back. She looked at him and pouted, then, much to his annoyance, wrapped her legs around him.

"Okay, form up your lines," the cavalier said. We again stood in two lines, but this time with less strictness. My party grew slightly, with the additions of Kris and Weiß. The order of our party in line was worth noting because it was based on the order of appearance in this story, going Cress, Weiß, me (Winston), Connor, and Kris.

I wonder how the romance will play out.

"Follow me and do not delay," he said, tapping one of the orcs on its shoulder. It fell into an attack stance and the others followed suit. The cavalier jumped, still on his horse through the portal and onto the grass, causing the image to waver. The front of the line hesitated, and the orcs took a step toward the group. Not waiting, the second in lines pushed the two through the portal and jumped themselves. The orcs stopped coming at us, but didn't drop their stance. The lines continued the march, but I didn't feel any safer.

Suddenly, the orcs resumed marching toward us, even though we didn't stop, and the rest of the group picked up the pace. Once we were through, I could hear the orcs laughing.

I looked around as a breezed blew over my skin, robbing it of warmth. We were in a small town, built like it was located in the medieval era. At least before a zeppelin flew by over head.

Where were we?

Earlier in the story I had put a line that stated that one of my oc's had married the Lich King, I will fix that soon.