Scholomance

Scholomance stank worse than the rain outside. Rot permeated every stone corner and fear lurked behind each bookshelf. Miria was here to find the title deed to the place for Weldon Barov, but what he wanted with it was beyond her. In her estimation, a place so tainted with undeath and necromancy would never again be Caer Darrow.

 Naru walked beside her, snuffling and growling as she went, clearly displeased with their surroundings. She had been with Miria so long that some of the draenei's sensibilities had bled over to the bear – she hated everything about the scourge almost as much as Miria. Naru was especially sensitive to poison and taint after her experience in the caverns of Darkshore, held prisoner by demons with the intent of using her to spread their poison to the rest of the forest.

 "Keep that animal quiet unless you want the whole place on our heads," Necrothirst said, and Miria scowled. That she was here was bad enough, but did she have to be here with a death knight?

 Even as the thought crossed her mind, Necrothirst drew his sword. Two hulking skeleton guards stood on either side of the doorway, crossing their wicked black poleaxes to bar his path, but he walked casually toward them as if they were nothing. With one swing of his sword, they both fell cleaved in half, and the ghostly light disappeared from their vacant sockets. Miria stood rooted to her place with her bowstring half-drawn, staring at them in shock.

 "Well?" Necrothirst said. Under the shadow of his helm, she could see him smirking. "Are you coming, or will you go back?"

 "I already said I have a task to complete," Miria said waspishly, following him as he pushed open the wrought-iron gate that lead into Scholomance's first large chamber.

 Miria didn't know much about the place – her employer hadn't seen fit to speak of it, and from what little he had told her, she wasn't surprised. The keep itself used to be known as Caer Darrow, home of the human nobles Barov. To date all the family was dead save Weldon, her employer, and his brother Alexi – who was undead, so might as well not count. Weldon Barov had sent her here to find the property deeds to his family's holdings before Alexi could, saying that his abominable Forsaken brother should have none of it. 

When exactly the property had been invaded by necromancers, warlocks and scourge, Miria was uncertain. The room before them, however, was populated with all three. Translucent blue banshees with wild, floating hair glided over the stone floor. Humans, dwarves and gnomes in black and green robes stood around the room in small groups, demonstrating shadow and fel magics to each other out of moldy, leather-bound tomes. Throughout them paced the same kind of towering skeletons Necrothirst cut down at the entrance. Even the chandeliers demonstrated the transformation from noble hall to grotesque academy. Horned skulls decorated every corner and sconce, just as bones and rats littered the floor.

 Necrothirst and Miria stood on either side of the doorway, watching the occupants mill about. "I will go in first," Necrothirst said quietly. "Stay out of my way."

 While Miria still stood aghast at his rotten manners, he wasted no time charging through the doorway and down the left set of stairs, giving Miria a clear view as he drove his sword into a shadow priest's back and then wrenched it free to catch the warlock next to him before he could react.

 A moment of shocked silence reigned throughout the room, and then the boneguards and banshees collected from around the room and came at Necrothirst en masse. Cultists turned to flee – the single-mindedness of the scourge meant they would attack until they were all broken on the death knight's sword, but the actual people of the room seemed to have more sense.

 Miria shook the paralysis off herself and moved to the top of the stairs. Here she had a clear shot on all the scourge below, and set to work picking off banshees and skeletons from the back as Necrothirst cleaved through them from the front. While it took her three or four shots to disperse them into piles of cloth and bones, every swing of Necrothirst's blade reduced three or more to dust.

 He should be on the front lines of the war, not here. Why is he here?

 Finally, no more undead rose to challenge them, but in the meantime the warlocks had been busy in the farthest corner of the room. A small swarm of imps summoned from the twisting nether came hopping and cackling their way. "Incoming," Miria said calmly, drawing back her bowstring again.

 "Yes, I see them," Necrothirst said. He lifted his hand and for a second it was outlined in a green, bat-winged shape before a runed circle spread out on the floor underneath the mass of imps. Black, smoky tendrils rose from the circle and engulfed the imps. They rotted to pieces right before their eyes, and Miria swallowed. She'd never gone into battle next to a death knight before, but she knew they were practically necromancers themselves, wielding energies of death, decay and disease.

 Necrothirst didn't stop – he was already barreling toward the cultists in the corner of the room. Miria set herself to the task of sighting out those cultists who appeared to be summoning more demons and shooting them full of arrows. Naru jumped into the fray as well – one couldn't cast very well when several hundred pounds of brown bear headbutted one in the chest.

 In no time at all, the first room was clear of any living or undead enemy. The library was a likely room for the property deeds to be stored in, so she waved Necrothirst on. "I'll see what I can scavenge off the bodies, you go ahead. Clearly you don't need my help."

 "I said as much," Necrothirst said, but he didn't argue with her proposition. He moved into the next room, and a moment later Miria could hear more screaming and clashing of weapons. She only hoped he wouldn't get himself into anything over his head, because she certainly wouldn't be much help.

 "Come on, Naru, let's see what we can find," Miria said. The scourge dropped nothing but rotten bits of cloth and bones, but rifling through the pockets of the cultists' robes produced better prospects. She wasn't likely to find any weapons of use from casters, so she shoved their gear off to the side. They all carried at least some silver, which she took without remorse. Talismans and jewelry she discarded with the gear – one never knew what kind of filthy magic they'd been imbued with. No amount of searching turned up any of the property deed she'd been sent to recover, so she moved to scouring the room.

 Luck was with her, and she found the deed to the town of Southshore under a table in the corner. The paper was smudged with footprints and wax, but it was legible enough to still be legal, so she rolled it up and put it in her packs, moving into the next room. The sounds had died a long while ago, and indeed she found nothing but the evidence of slaughter. Well, at least he's leaving me all the silver, Miria thought, and set about her search again.

 She was just finishing up the third room full of bodies and almost knocked a candle over onto the deed to Tarren Mill when Naru snarled from her place next to Miria. At the same time, she heard the death knight's echoing voice shout, "Hunter! Where are you?!"

 The voice came through the open doorway just to her left, and Miria drew her bow, cautiously leaning around the corner. "Ah," she said. "Gotten yourself in a bit of trouble I see."

 "Nothing – I can't – handle," Necrothirst grunted at her, in the middle of fighting off a veritable swarm of skeletons. They didn't look like the bones of Azerothian creature – they looked like flayer skeletons, with their long scythe-arms. Still, Necrothirst was holding his own admirably considering that the largest one was twice as tall as he was.

 The problem, Miria saw, was the whelps. Tiny dragonlings flew back and forth across the room, their skin greened and festering with plague. As they passed over Necrothirst, they spat slime at him. It probably didn't hurt him much, but Miria was willing to bet it was annoying. She pulled back her bowstring and tracked one of them across the ceiling with her finger. To a skilled hunter, physical arrows were cumbersome and obsolete. Instead they fired arrow-shaped bursts of fire, poison, shadow and the arcane – Miria took great care in picking off the plagued whelps, lest they decide to focus their annoying attentions on her. It was easiest to catch them with an arrow as they swooped down to spit on the death knight.

 Despite all her care, before long she was noticed by the whelps. Naru growled and stood on her hind legs, making her at least three feet taller than Miria. To the draenei's surprise, the bear actually managed to bat a whelp out of the air and shake it to pieces as Miria backed out into the other room, jumping around like a grasshopper and shooting down plauged dragonlings.

 When she finished, she looked up to find Necrothirst watching her from the doorway. The smirk was back under the shadow of his helmet, but it didn't look quite so mocking this time – for good reason, she thought. He stood dripping disgusting green slime, and Miria didn't have even a splatter on her. "So," he said. "At least you are not entirely useless."

 "You have plague slime on your pauldrons," Miria said, ignoring the jibe. She had a feeling it was the closest thing to a compliment she was going to get out of him. "Did you find Frostwhisper?"

 Necrothirst tried to wipe the slime off his armor and only succeeded in smearing it all over his gauntlets. The smirk twisted into a disgusted sneer. "No, just skeletons. We move on."

 They passed through another roomful of cultists, which Necrothirst summarily slaughtered, and then passed into the lower levels of the keep. There were more undead here than cultists, rotting zombies leaving clouds of bright green plague when they died and shambling ghouls like the ones that attacked Miria outside in the courtyard. The hunter searched every table, corner and bookshelf but found no more property deeds. Perhaps the rest have been destroyed, she thought as she mechanically provided cover fire for Necrothirst – not that he needed it, but it kept her occupied.

 In the middle of a room covered in Cult of the Damned trappings, now littered with the bodies of Cult of the Damned followers, Necrothirst paused and pulled out his map. Every adventurer worth their salt invested in this sort of map – an enchanted scroll of parchment that changed based on one's location. Miria fondly remembered saving her coppers for years for such a thing, and her own map was tucked into the back of her belt. "Lost?"

 "According to intelligence reports, Frostwhisper should be in the Laboratory," he said, pointing to a room to the south and down the stairs of the one they stood in now. "However we saw that he isn't restricted to there, although he does appear to be bound to the island. That means his phylactery is somewhere in the keep. Knowing the type of man that generally becomes a lich, it's unlikely he would keep it in the same room."

 "Have you actually been looking for a phylactery? It looked like you were simply killing everything that moved."

 Necrothirst graced her with a blank expression. "It would be more prudent to go this way," he said, indicating the east exit. "This is where the premiere instructors are, the most powerful denizens of Scholomance besides Frostwhisper and the headmaster himself."

 "If I were an undead mage that relied on my phylactery for my immortality, I would want it in the hands of the most powerful person here," Miria said.

 "Then we go east. If we kill enough of the instructors, the headmaster should show himself." Necrothirst rolled up the map and put it away, moving through the eastern door without waiting for Miria to follow. By now she was used to it and wasn't far behind him as they descended a dank, twisting staircase and walked through an open portcullis into a large, two-story antechamber.

 "Stay behind me," Necrothirst warned – completely unnecessary, since Miria needed distance to line up her shots properly and wasn't in the habit of charging into battle like a warrior or, apparently, a death knight. 

And charge in he did, barreling straight through each of the rooms for the instructors themselves, ignoring the cultists, zombies, ghouls and skeletons that surrounded them. Some of the undead got back up after Necrothirst sent them crashing against a wall – Naru took care of those, shaking them like a dog might shake a bone. Miria would never admit it aloud, but despite how much Necrothirst's ease in battle unsettled her, it also impressed her. Nothing seemed to touch him, and he wielded his sword expertly.

 "How many rooms do we have to clear before he will show himself?" Miria asked as they walked down the stairs to the lower level. "At this rate he won't have any instructors remaining."

 "That sounds good to me," Necrothirst said with another vicious smirk, and didn't even pause before he entered the room in front of him. It appeared to be the Barov family crypt, and as Miria looked around she spotted a scroll of parchment on one of the tombs. She only had to wait until Necrothirst dispatched the room's occupants before she waded through the fetid green water to collect it, wrinkling her nose. It was a bit waterlogged, but the Barov family seal was clear – it was the deed to Caer Darrow, the keep itself.

 "I only need one more," Miria said – to the air, since Necrothirst had already moved on to the next room. "For the Naaru's sake," she muttered. "He's like a wild boar, don't you think?" Naru grunted – the bear's entire opinion of the man wrapped up in one nonverbal noise of disgust.

 She was about to exit the room when a flash of blue light split the air and an old, bearded man in Cult of the Damned robes appeared in the antechamber. Without even waiting for the man to speak, Necrothirst pointed at him, and the same chill that had sapped Miria's bones outside whispered through the air into the headmaster. Necrothirst crossed the room and had the man pinned against the wall with a blade at his throat before he could react.

 "Where is the lich's phylactery?" Necrothirst growled.

 "A Knight of the Ebon Blade," the headmaster rasped. "How quaint. What you will do to me is nothing compared to what Kel'thuzad would do if he discovered I betrayed one of his to your wretched order."

 "I doubt that," Necrothirst said, and the grin that came over his face now was positively evil. "I served the Lich King once, and learned all manner of creative tortures while I was there. If you do not speak here, I will remove you to Acherus, and you will speak, sooner or later."

 "Ah, ah," said another echoing voice, and Miria jerked her bow up to find Ras Frostwhisper at the end of it, floating at the base of the stairs. "Play nice with His Majesty's servants, death knight. I see you brought me the eredar – wonderful. Her species proves very resistant to the plague. I'm sure she will provide interesting diversions."

 Miria fired before she truly realized what she was doing, setting Frostwhisper's robes ablaze and following it up with a poisoned arrow. She jumped away from the spot where she once stood and began to run around the room, pausing only briefly to line up steady shots. Frostbolts followed her progress, splashing patches of ice across the dank stone.

 "Where is it!" she heard Necrothirst shout, and glanced out of the corner of her eye to find him shaking the headmaster like a rag doll, his sword drawing blood at the man's throat.

 "He's not going to tell you!" Miria shouted back. "And if you kill him, we'll never find out!"

 Necrothirst snarled and threw the old man away from him, sending him clattering into Frostwhisper at the base of the stairs. The lich screeched and vanished, leaving only the headmaster, who pointed at Necrothirst and began gabbling something in the demonic tongue. "Naru," Miria said, and the bear charged to him, bowling him over and interrupting the incantation. She put one heavy paw on the man's chest and growled.

 "I could kill you, or I could let the bear eat you," Necrothirst said casually. "Or you can tell me what I wish to know and be allowed to continue your academy in relative peace. Frostwhisper is your only true tie to the Lich King. If he were gone, the Ebon Blade would not bother you any longer."


 The headmaster wiped bear drool off his face, which was twisted in a look of scathing malice. "If I tell you, then you swear to leave this place?"

 "I swear it on my runeblade," Necrothirst said, hefting his sword. Miria twitched – from what she'd heard, a runeblade was like a death knight's life. He might as well have sworn an oath to the Light.

 The headmaster reached into his robes and pulled out a jar that glowed with dark magic. "The safest place he could think of to keep it was on my person," he said, and handed the object to Necrothirst.

 The death knight smirked. He turned and hurled the jar at a nearby wall and it shattered, provoking a hideous wail from the Laboratory two rooms away. "We don't have much time until he musters what is left of the undead in this place and comes for us," Necrothirst said. "Call your pet."

 "Naru," Miria said, and the bear lifted her shaggy paw off the warlock's chest, returning to Miria's side slowly and reluctantly.

 "Fools," the headmaster said, and started to push himself to his feet, but before he could elaborate on whatever made them fools, Necrothirst buried his sword in the man's chest, the smirk still on his face.

 "You are the fool," Necrothirst said to the corpse, wrenching his blade free, "for not specifying that I would leave you alive when I left this place."

 "That was underhanded trickery," Miria said.

 "I do not care about your approval. I have a task to complete."

 "As do I. I am still missing the deed to Brill – and there is but one room we haven't checked."

 "The Laboratory," Necrothirst said with a nod, and ascended the stairs.

 Waves of banshees were pouring from the south entrance. Necrothirst, true to form, ran through them all, down the stairs, and out of Miria's sight. She was left to pick off the banshees from behind one by one, clearing her own path. Inconsiderate undead oaf, she thought to herself, scowling. Her arms were tired, her fingers were sore, and she was running out of the energy to keep going. If he doesn't make quick work of Frostwhisper, I swear to the Light I'll-

 With a simultaneous eerie wail, the banshees suddenly evaporated into blue smoke, leaving their tattered wrappings behind. Miria cautiously picked her way down the stairs into the Laboratory to find Necrothirst standing over a pile of chain and scorched robe – all that was left of Frostwhisper. "You could have left me some of the fun," she said.

 "You're too slow," Necrothirst said. "Is that the deed you were looking for?"

 On one of the tables sat an open scroll of parchment with the Barov seal. Miria unfolded it to find that it was indeed the deed to Brill. "Yes, that's the last of them. Both of our tasks are complete."

 The two of them had cleared the keep of everything within, so making their way back to the entrance was simple. It seemed like forever since they'd descended the stairs, but as Miria shaded her eyes from the sun – too bright after the darkness of Scholomance – she found that it was only just setting. With luck, she could make Andorhal before nightfall.

 "Thank you for your assistance," she said to Necrothirst. He rolled his shoulders and tilted his head from side to side, and she made a face. Every movement he made was accompanied by the popping of bone. 

"You are not a terrible hunter," he said, which she supposed was a compliment. He cast a short spell and his mount appeared in a puff of smoke – not the Deathcharger that Miria expected, but an armored raptor, the kind trolls rode. It was red with green markings, and tilted its head at her like it was trying to evaluate how dangerous it would be to attempt to eat her. "If we meet again, you may accompany me." He trotted away on his raptor, leaving her standing with her mouth open in shock.

"Sweet Light above us, he has the manners of a goat," she said to herself. "Come on, Naru, let's get to an inn before the haunts come out."