Post by Morec0
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Gilnean Moon (Part 13). ))
Vrem kicked open the bedroom door in front of him, and gun raised he entered the room. He scanned every corner of the moderately small guest room, turning around as needed to confirm he was in no danger of an ambush, to confirm what had been true for the past three rooms he had checked. It was empty, just like the manor grounds his squad and he had moved across to reach this place, just like the main hall they had entered into, just like every single part of the Greymane Manor.
He turned and exited the room, leaning over the railing to yell down to his commanding officer; “all second story left-wing rooms and clear, Squad Leader.”
“
Check again,” Corporal Merciless yelled up to him. “What about the other rooms?” she then yelled at the rest of the squad, tapping her metal stabbons on the floor as she waiting impatiantly for a reply.
“First floor rouight-wing clear,” Faldrun Jawtaker said, the undead dwarf stepping out with his shotgun held in a relaxed position at his front.
“First floor left-wing clear,” a Forsaken warrior named Gaben said as he stepped out of the room he had just finished checking.
“No one here either,” Morec said, jumping over the railing from the second floor right wing. “I think they knew we were coming. So, should we burn this place to the ground and move on?”
“No, High Executor Wroth wants to turn this location into a base of operations and staging area for further pushes into Gilneas. Where are Groups A and C?”
“Still checking the highest levels of the structure, Squad Leader,” Gaben reported.
“Then all of you go check the lower levels of the structure,” Corporal Merciless replied gruffly, “we’ll send a missive to the High Executor once we’re sure the entire structure is clear. Now move.”
The four Forsaken soldiers saluted and descended towards the basement level of the Greymane Manor. Vrem and Faldrun took point while Morec and Gaben defended the group from any possible ambush. At the bottom of a flight of stairs they found the basement door, and after counting down five seconds they broke through it. Vrem and Faldrun covered the entrance of the other two undead, readying to provide covering fire as needed. But it was not needed; this part of the Greymane Manor was just as abandoned as the rest.
“
Dayum,” Morec said, resting the oversized sword that was Armageddon on his shoulder, “these mothas musta skedaddled the moment they seen us coming… Hey, let’s burn this place to the ground anyway! Whaddayasay?...
No, you don't say?”
“Is there something wrong with your brain?” Gaben asked, giving Morec the most confused look his rotted facial muscles and personality allowed him.
“Don’t get him started,” Vrem replied, monotone as usual; much to his pleasure he had also cut Morec off before he had began talking, which saved them all a considerable earful of nonsense. The hunter and marksman’s dead-glowing eyes scanned over the room, noting the empty tables and torn or balled up scraps of parchment scattered around but still not seeing anyone that might have posed a threat to them. “Spread out. Make sure no one is here and gather anything that looks like usable information.”
The four undead split up, each going to search a different part of the basement. Vrem stayed in the center of the room, checking underneath the chemical-stained worktables and picking up whatever bits of writing paper he found to look over them. Each had the same things written on them; bits of different mathematical formulas that he could not make heads or tails of. Whatever words were on the paper were also written in the Gilnean Common dialect, which, while not unreadable, did not help to define what the mathematics on the parchment meant. But he figured that their superior officers could, and began to gather as many of them as he could.
“Take ah look at this,” Faldrun said, motioning the other members of his squad over. Vrem walked up and looked at what he saw; large metal cages, the insides covered from top to bottom with five-fingered claw marks. “Whot do ya think the livin’ were keepin’ in here?”
“Something
reeeal nasty, I bet,” Morec said, after whistling in surprise upon seeing the scarred inside of the cages. “More importantly; what do you think they did with whatever it was?... No, I don't think they ate it. More likely
it ate
them.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Vrem replied. “Whatever ‘it’ was it’s not here now and so it’s not our problem.” He turned around and looked over the room one last time, making sure there were no signs of hidden panels or doorways that anyone could be hiding in. He saw none. “There’s no one down here, we should report back to Corporal Merciless to tell her that.”
The other three undead agreed and all four made their way towards the stairs back up to the surface. As he was passing a table, though, he spotted out of the corner of his eye a pit of parchment he had missed, trapped under the leg of one of the tables. He knelt down and lifted up the table to pull it loose, looking at the parchment. It was maimed, only a fourth or so of what he assumed was a larger drawing. The words on the parchment were cut off, all that was legible was “ale er transformation.” He picture itself was of a muscular humanoid arm, covered with hair and sprouting claws out its fingertips.
He put the paper with the rest he had collected and made his way surface-ward.
Ivan watched with feelings of dismay and terror as the half dozen ships of the fifteen he had seen thus far on the newly-formed coast continued to unload more and more undead soldiers, war machines, and equipment for both. They seemed without end, like the stories of the armies of undead he had heard as a child; stories, he had learned growing up, that were far more real than anyone would have wanted.
Is that what these undead were? Were they that malicious “Scourge”, that chaotic bane of Azeroth that sought to consume all life? He had heard a few words thrown around during battles with them, spoken in the Lordaeron dialect; “Forsaken” “Banshee Queen”. Ivan did not know who or what these words referred to, and so could only guess as to their meaning. Were the Forsaken some kind of elite band of this “Scourge”? Was this “Banshee Queen” their leader? Their creator? He did not know.
“Prepare to send another update to King Greymane,” he said. “They’ve dispatched at least another hundred troops and thirty more siege weapons. And it looks like there are more ships on the horizon. They still are not advancing forward, and appear to be waiting for something… or someone.” Perhaps their “Banshee Queen”?
“Should the refugees retreat further inland, Lord Jeret?” the soldier taking down the letter to the king for him asked.
“No, they don’t look like they will begin to move anytime soon. Still, inform him that they should not get too comfortable where they are at.”
“Yes sir,” the soldier finished writing and moved away to hand the letter over to a messenger to deliver to the king.
Ivan slumped against the wall of the King’s Gate. He and the twenty-something troops under his command, he was too tired to remember the exact number, had been stationed here for about ever since the retreat from Greymane Manor to the hills overlooking the Hailwood Marshlands a week after their fateful return to the manor. Since the worgen outbreak that part of Gilneas had been extremely hazardous to travel through, but it seemed that what worgen that had once called that place their haunt had…
vanished. No sign of them to be found. No one was sure what to make of it, only that it was a blessing of the Light in these darks times.
And of the worgen; Krennan had continued his studies on Blaine for three days after they returned to the manor. On the fourth day he and Krista finally had been able to convince their younger brother and Krennan to change him back to a human; questions were being asked, Blaine’s absence from the people was being noticed. It had been far simpler than Krennan had even expected; just a dosage of his potion injected directly into the bloodstream and the transformation from worgen to human reversed itself, turning their brother back into his true human form.
But that had not settled the bad blood had that had been growing between all three of them. Krista was not talking to Blaine because of his choices, nor was she talking to Ivan because of his supporting of Blaine’s decision. Blaine was also taking his distance from his siblings, wanting to find more and more time to help Krennan’s research by devoting himself as a human – or worgen, as it usually was – test subject for the alchemist’s experiments.
But Ivan was not innocent of building walls between his family members either; he was spending more time with the Gilnean military than he ever had before, often forgoing even the rare times Blaine or Krista reached out to talk with him in favor of assisting Gilneas’ soldiers with whatever tasks they were working on; guard duty, loading and unloading equipment to ship from one end of the camp to the other, and of course plans for possible retaliation against the undead invaders. Even so, he found it difficult, even when he was amongst the remaining members of his own unit. He just found it difficult to talk to old friends without being reminded of Elizabeth… how she had been murder-.
He shook his head, holding a hand against it as it started to ache. What was that?
Murdered? Was that what he had been about to start thinking? That made no sense. She… she was put down-
liberated!
Saved from the worgen curse, that was all. Yes there had been a better way; yes they could have saved her but… But they hadn’t and there was no point in dwelling on what might have been; no point in dwelling on the past. There was work to do to safeguard the Gilnean people here in the present and in the future, and that work required his attention, not grudges or sorrow that might have existed. Doing that would just cloud his judgment and get him killed.
That was what had happened to Lord Bowie. In the earthquake that caused the coastline of Gilneas to move in a few miles Alexander’s manor home had also been destroyed. This had sent the Gilnean Lord into a half-sorrowful half-enraged state. He blamed the worgen for what was going on, for the earthquake and even for the undead. After their retreat from Greymane Manor and setting up camp next to Hailwood he had begun going on fruitless worgen hunts, moving further and further northward in his search and disappearing for longer and longer periods of time.
Eventually he failed to come back at all, and all that any search parties found of him was a bloodstained rifle. It was a cautionary tale at its worst; one involving someone he had known personally, even if not always gotten along with. Hopefully he was resting peacefully in the Light.
“Sir… Sir!” A Gilnean soldier shook Ivan’s shoulder roughly, waking the Gilnean out of his half-sleeping state. “Sir, you’ve been manning the watch yourself for two days now nonstop, you really ought to get some rest.”
“I’m fine, soldier.” On cue he yawned, belittling whatever strength his argument had to nothing.
“Milord, I must insist. It will be safer for everyone if you get some rest.”
Ivan could not object this time, as he had now slipped into an utterly dreamless state of sleep. Two soldiers picked him up and moved him into his tent while a third took watch. He lifted the spyglass to his eye and swallowed hard and loud as he looked upon the sheer numbers of undead. Light preserve Gilneas…