"Merviiiiiiis!" The shout, no, screech, pulled Mervis out of his reverie. He glanced up from the book, letting the screech play over and over again in his mind.
"Who do I know who has that voice..." He mumbled, closing the book and tossing it to his side. As he stood up he froze, realization flooding his mind. "S-Sylvanas." He groaned, immediately running forward and opening the door of his quarters. He raced down the corridor passing adventurers and guards and members of the Apothecary as he skidded on his shoes and slid around the corner only to bump straight into a familiar Dark Ranger-but not the one who had let loose a banshee wail for him. Both undead narrowed their eyes.
"Teresa."
"Necromancer Filth." Mervis would have quirked an eyebrow, but he'd lost that ability too. "The Dark Lady has called for you, probably to pull some corpse back to life for a few minutes. Maybe the demons will take away your ability to exist next. That'd be nice." Instead of receiving some comeback as she expected she got slapped across the face and before she could pull her bow out she had an angry undead man screaming at her in a language she didn't know. Then he stormed off. She put a hand to her face and frowned as he stomped towards the Apothecarium, shouting at people as he passed them. Necromancers were a feisty bunch, especially the Demonic Necromancers like him; Mervis might be one of the better of the group, but he was prone to violent outbursts and lapses in memory just like the rest of them. And, like the lot of them, he had a job to do, and he was the best in all of Undercity and Azeroth at it.
The guards at the entrance to Sylvanas chambers eyed him for a moment before stepping aside. As he entered he could see the Dark Lady herself pacing around on her elevated platform. She was looking away when he began walking up towards her. But he heard a sudden intake of air, a loud, loud intake of air that signified something very painful about to happen if he didn't stop it.
"I'm here!" He cried, waving his arms as he ran over to her. She snapped her jaw shut and turned to him, eyes leering into him like a hawk looking down at its next bit of food. A hiss escaped her nostrils and a gale flowed through the room out her nose, cartoonish and yet horrifying at the same time; Mervis dreaded the thought of the state his ears would be in if she'd managed to let out a banshee scream with him this close.
"Mervis." Her voice was still loud.
"At your service." She didn't acknowledge him speaking, only turning away from him and walking across the platform towards a dead body on the floor, Mervis following close behind with his hands wringing together. She usually said "Greetings, Necromancer." Or some high-class sounding stuff like that. But she didn't. She was either angry, or in a deathly serious mood, a non-intentional and very scary pun.
The body was mangled. Its head was missing, as were the legs and its left arm. The rib cage was spread wide and all the organs were slipping out. Mervis surveyed it for a moment, clamped a hand over his nostrils, and stepped forward to poke it with a bony finger and test the consistency of the intestinal tract.
"It'll be hard for me to work with such a small body, third wants flesh and it won't get much of it..." He muttered to himself in a nasally voice.
"You won't be resurrecting this body." His head snapped up and he turned to scowl at Sylvanas.
"What do you mean I 'won't be resurrecting this body'?! I come here and you don't even have anything for me to do, you ungrateful skank!" He shouted, shaking a fist. The Dark Lady didn't bat an eye.
"You'll be resurrecting what lays in the ribcage." Mervis would have blinked, but he just turned back to the body.
"What lays in the ribcage..." he murmured, holding his nose and pulling on a rib to reveal something he hadn't noticed. Frowning more than usual he shoved a hand in and wrenched out whatever it was. "A...cat?" Mervis asked in disbelief. Sure, there were only bits and pieces and the head was falling off, but a cat is a cat no matter if it's a deader than dead cat or a yowling and meowing live one. He turned back to Sylvanas and raised his cat-holding hand. "You pull me away from my novella, my Black Book and you want me to pull a eviscerated feline back to half-life so you can interrogate it?! How the nuts are you gonna-" He froze, cat swinging back and forth in his grip. "You learned to talk like a cat?"
"No." The Dark Lady said, expression as solid as ice. "The 'feline' has the scent of the person we need to find." Mervis just stared at the lump of flesh and bone in his hand.
"And you couldn't get one of the initiate Necromancers to take care of this? You don't need a demonic resurrection for a cat, it doesn't work like that! There is no spirit, nor mind!"
"Let me put it to you plainly, Necromancer Thinbones." Mervis cringed. He hated his last name. It reflected his own weakness too well, and Sylvanas only used it when she was either angry or disciplinary. "I want you to do this because I want you to do it." The temperature dropped a few degrees. "There is only so much patience a Ranger can have, living or no. You study other Necromancy than Daemonic; that is your specialty, but not your limited field. Surely you can do something so simple-or would you believe those initiates better than you?" With a wet squelching sound the lump fell to the floor. Mervis watched it fall, and then glared at Sylvanas.
"Don't insult me." He said, pulling a knife from his robes and splitting it across one of his palms before clapping them together over the cat. A dark purple circle appeared on the ground instantly, and within a few moments the cat was on its feet, meowing in gurgles and hisses, staring up at him with one eyeball falling out of its head. "You smell terrible, cat." It hissed. "You'll die when I want you to. You alright with that?"
Sylvanas watched the verbal exchange-Necromancer insulting and cat hacking gurgling noises out of its broken vocal chords.
"Don't look at me like that with those beady little eyes. I always hated cats, you know. You always seemed too damn curious for your own good." He pointed a finger at the cat, and it shook with tremors. "Curiosity killed you, and I pulled you back from death itself! So, suck on that, reality!" he shouted, sticking a middle finger up towards the ceiling. Mervis suddenly felt something against his leg and looked down. "What the fuck are you doing? Are you trying to shit on my shoes? I'll kill you if you do, I don't care what the dumb Dark Elf does to me." Sylvanas let her lips twitch downwards at that one, but she knew she had to keep up the mask.
"Thinbones." He glanced up from the cat currently rubbing its bare skull against his robes.
"Eh?"
"Let it sniff this." She held out a hand and Mervis reached out and took a small piece of cloth from it.
"Cat." Said cat stopped putting its face against his shoe and looked up at him. "Can you still smell? I mean, you smell pretty bad, so I think you'd have your nose clogged or something if you weren't dying from how bad you smelled." He dropped the cloth to the floor. "Clear out those nostrils and sniff, feline! Sniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiff!" he cried, taking a dramatic pose over the cat that now nibbled at the cloth.
"This is a letdown." Sylvanas muttered.
"Oh?" Mervis asked. "Then where's it going?" Sylvanas and Mervis both shot after the cat as it zoomed off the platform and down the hall. The Dark Lady had an easier time chasing it, but Mervis' legs weren't exactly stable for long running. "Why the hell is a cat acting like this? Aren't dogs supposed to do this stuff?" He called out from behind.
"Undead dogs are all feral. The cats become smarter. I'd thought a Necromancer of your rank would know that?"
"Don't insult me!" Mervis cried after her. "If I didn't have to follow you to decompose that cat after whatever it is it's doing, I'd walk away, right now!" He kept murmuring something but Sylvanas paid no attention, focused on the little undead fur ball skittering across the cobble sewer streets of Undercity. They shot into the Trade Quarter and up the stairs to the second, then third level. Mervis caught up with Sylvanas as the cat began to slow down, pittering its feet in a slow cat-trot as it approached a particular Forsaken.
"A cat?" Tawny mused, blinking yellow eyes as she looked down at the feline of unlife approaching her. Then she felt a cold, dark, and most unfriendly presence bear down on her. "L-Lady Windrunner?!" she shrieked, stepping backwards.
"Miss Grisette. The mushroom vendor..." Sylvanas stated. A faint, almost unnoticeable smile appeared on her face, one that both Tawny and Mervis noticed, however.
"Oh, the Ice Queen can move her lips upwards?" Mervis asked, rubbing his chin like a philosopher would. "I always speculated on whether it was possible-" A throwing knife imbedded itself in the wall, the stone wall, just three inches beside his head. "I'll be quiet now." Sylvanas turned back to Tawny, who was shaking with thoughts of what could possibly make the Dark Lady smile.
"You sell mushrooms." Sylvanas stated once again. "You wouldn't happen to know what kind of mushroom would cause a person to explode, would you?"
"I don't know what you're-"
"Miss Grisette, would you be so kind as to identify this mushroom?" She reached into her satchel and pulled out a mushroom with a faint ethereal glow around it. But Mervis noticed something else.
"Why's it got a stasis charm around it?"
"To keep it from exploding." Tawny whispered, stepping back once more. Sylvanas tossed the mushroom into the air and glared at Tawny as it flew upwards.
"I had one of my Rangers search your stock. They found this mushroom. Among other things. And upon testing with corpses we found that this mushroom caused the death of Eunice Burch. I didn't know you could convince a druid to willingly give away such destructive fungi. But, that is a mystery I'll leave for the truly dead to wonder about." The mushroom fell back into Sylvanas hand. "Tawnty Grisette, I sentence you to death, by exploding mushroom, for crimes against the Banshee Queen."
With a hard shove Tawny was on the floor, and the Queen of Forsaken straddled her chest, pulling her mouth open by her nose and shoving a mushroom into her throat. Clamping the jaws shut, Sylvanas motioned for Mervis to come over. "After she explodes I want you to resurrect her and we can question her for motive."
"I don't mean to sound like some scum asking for equal rights, but shouldn't we prove that she actually killed Eunice, and didn't just sell the mushroom?" Sylvanas tore her eyes away from the person struggling beneath her and stared at Mervis.
"Did you just have a lucid moment?"
"I don't remember. Is there a time when that mushroom blows up, or do you want your arms to go with the explosion?" The Dark Lady muttered a curse under her breath and bolted upwards, grabbed Mervis by the arm, swung another to pick up the cat, and ran as fast as she could. Tawny could only wish the mushroom tasted better when her body parts were strewn all over the hallway, her arm falling into the green sewage and her brains coating the back of Mervis robes. He, the cat, and Sylvanas were currently in one big pile on the floor, cat purring as it rubbed against Mavis' crooked nose and Sylvanas underneath them both, staring up at Mervis face as he hissed at the cat before him.
"Necromancer, if you don't get off me in the next two seconds, I'll-" He was already off. The cat, however, wasn't. It sat on her chest and let out a gurgled meow, then licked her chin. It took all of Sylvanas might not to let her expression change, but she was incredibly thrilled to have such a darling undead beast cuddle against her. "C-Cute!" She thought. But before it could further express affection Mervis snatched it up by the ears and turned it so it looked him in the eyes.
"Now, just to send you back where you came from-"
"No." Mervis turned to look at Sylvanas, twirling the cat's ears so it looked at her also.
"Eh?"
"You won't decompose that cat." Sylvanas stood up and stared into Mervis' eyes. "You won't." Mervis turned the cat back to face him, and then turned back at Sylvanas.
"Begging a pardon, Missus Darkness, but why?" He pinched his nose, as though realizing the stench for the first time. "It smells worse than Tawny Splattered-All-Over-The-Walls."
"Then you'd better get some nose plugs, because the cat is going to stay with you." The shocked, or as close to shock as Mervis could express, made Sylvanas lip twitch. She couldn't care for the little furball, not with all her duties. And she had just the lynchpin that would be able to force Mervis to do what she wanted.
"I'm not taking a stinking-"
"You don't have a familiar, do you?" Mervis mouth hung open for a moment as he tried to form words.
"I don't need-" he finally managed, but was cut off again.
"I hear everyone else spreading rumors that you're the only Necromancer without a familiar. Isn't that a bit odd? You're the odd one out, Thinbones." Mervis face contorted as much as it could-his jaw tightened and his nose wrinkled.
"Well…" He looked back at the cat. "I suppose I can make it do my laundry, or something." Sylvanas held back her whoop of joy for another occasion, but as she turned and started towards a guard to request aid in retrieving Tawny-All-Over-The-Walls he continued. "Why was a cat in the dead guy's ribcage, anyways?"
She turned back.
"I don't have an answer for that. Once again, a question for the truly dead to ponder."