Howling Fjord

Kyladriss cleaved through the center of the Vrykul without any regard for how deep she was getting into enemy lines. Few of them were directly challenging her now that they had seen her fight. Necrothirst did not blame them. Kyladriss killed as often with her wicked claws as she did her blade, mauling some Vrykul to death.

He stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the young knight Epyon, fending off the warriors who peeled away from the worgen’s assault. Necrothirst watched him with a critical eye as he dodged, parried, and slammed into the encroaching Vrykul with his axe.

“Make certain you do not ignore the importance of diseases in weakening your enemy,” he said, twisting Zin’Shalla around a Vrykul blade to strike its bearer in the heart.

“Right,” Epyon said, and a boiling circle of shadow swept out from his feet. Unholy and Frost Runes flickered over the curved blade of his axe as he sent the diseases of the Scourge into its blade, where they eagerly jumped to all enemies in the vicinity.

Necrothirst was vaguely aware that ballista were firing at his rear - they must have pushed the Vrykul back from the operators. “Your blade feeds on your enemy’s pain. Unleash it back to him.” Necrothirst’s sword glowed with the sickly blue glow of runic power, and he released it in a series of devastating strikes that temporarily cleared the space in front of him.

The other three death knights in their small squad let Necrothirst and Epyon take the brunt of the attacks. “You should train the boy at a time when we are not trying to catch up with that,” Tamasi said, pointing a slim one-handed runeblade at Kyladriss’s back in the thick of the fighting. She was a draenei, almost as tall as Necrothirst but willowy and quick on her feet. Frost runes streamed down her blades as she practically danced through the Vrykul nearest Necrothirst.

“Boy?!” Epyon protested, swinging his axe in a high arc above his head and bringing it down to cleave through a Vrykul warlock’s skull. He wrenched the axe free and swung it again.

“Compared to her you are so very young - that is the only reason she says such,” Saelessa said. Necrothirst’s teeth clenched involuntarily when she spoke. She was a night elf, and she spoke in the cultured tones of former Highborne. Either she fell prey to the Scourge very early after the Highborne migrated to the Eastern Kingdoms, or she was one of the very few who elected to give up the arcane arts as Malfurion ordered. He was glad she fought near Epyon and not at his shoulder.

“That’s not quite fair, she never calls me ‘girl’ and I’m younger than Eypon.” The voice of the last member of their company echoed up from Necrothirst’s knees, and he contained as sigh as he parried and forced a Vrykul back. Gnomes. Ridiculous creatures.

“You are not so young in death, Laiza,” Tamasi said. “Epyon is.”

“So I get treated like the rookie until I’m a few thousand years old? That’s ridiculous,” Epyon protested. Necrothirst watched up charge his axe with runic energy like he had a moment before and then expend it on the nearest unfortunate Vrykul.

“You are the rookie,” Laiza said - she sounded practically cheerful. It set Necrothirst’s teeth on edge. “Tamasi’s older than any of us are ever likely to get, just ignore her.”

Tamasi hissed something in Draenic and twirled her two runeblades overhand. “The worgen is still putting distance between us,” she said.

“Laiza, see if you can get to her - but do not try to stop her,” Necrothirst said.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Laiza said. She stabbed her runeblade, easily as tall as she was, toward the earth with an unholy rune chasing down its length. A rotted hand burst through the dirt as an old corpse climbed to life at Laiza’s bidding. The gnome and her ghoul slipped between the fighting Vrykul toward the swath of destruction Kyladriss had carved.

As they fought, Necrothirst kept an eye on the two women. When Tamasi and Saelessa fought they maintained a foot of space between their backs at all times, their blades charged with the deathly chill of frost runes. When one moved, the other moved in response, making sure they were each protected by the other. He had not had much time to evaluate the team while on their passage to Northrend, preferring to brood and monitor Kyladriss’s condition. Now, though, he was reluctantly impressed by the competence of the knights he commanded. Even Epyon, who was young in death and still learning, was more than capable. Tamasi and Saelessa fought like they’d been raised from death together, Laiza was small enough to run reconnaissance, and Kyladriss...

Kyladriss was effective, and that was her only redeeming quality.

They were running out of Vrykul to kill. Zin’Shalla hummed in bloody satisfaction in the back of Necrothirst’s mind, and the majority of their enemy lay dead or dying around them. Still Kyladriss fought, slaking her thirst for slaughter by advancing up the enemy embankment, getting dangerously close to what appeared to be the Vrykul’s village. No matter how bloodthirsty she was, there was no way she would survive charging into that many enemies.

Necrothirst could see Laiza’s silver head bobbing at knee level through the shrubbery and trees. She was hot on Kyladriss’s trail, but couldn’t do anything to the worgen if she wanted to keep her second lease on life.

“Tamasi, Saelessa, take care of the stragglers!” Necrothirst said, hefting Zin’Shalla in both hands. “After bringing her all the way to Northrend I am not going to lose her now.”

The two frost knights lifted their blades, sending a wave of bitter cold sweeping out from their feet. All Vrykul within striking distance were immediately encased in thick ice, freezing them in their tracks and giving Necrothirst the opportunity to charge past the front line, running hard for Kyladriss’s position.

She was crouched on the edge of the village now. A Vrykul warg sniffed the wind and bared its teeth, stalking toward her. Its handler said something in their harsh language and more Vrykul joined the procession, following the oversized wolf out of the village. Necrothirst’s boots splashed through the small stream as he pelted toward her. He could see every line in her body tensing as if she was getting ready to pounce. Laiza looked back to see Necrothirst coming and waved him on frantically, as if he did not realize that their time to contain Kyladriss before she leapt into the middle of the fray again was rapidly running out.

The warg was less than three feet away from Kyladriss when she broke cover, standing to her full height and throwing her head back in another eerie, echoing howl. The warg bared its teeth and snarled, beginning to circle her like it would an unruly member of its back. Its Vrykul handler knocked an arrow, and the others who had followed him stood in a loose semicircle, their weapons at the ready. They appeared to want to see what Kyladriss and the warg would do before they attacked.

Suddenly, another howl echoed through the cold northern air. Kyladriss abruptly stopped her snarling, jerking up to her full height again, her head snapping around and her ears swiveling forward to the source. Necrothirst slowed his steps and stopped next to Laiza, gripping his sword.

“I think she’s gonna-” Laiza began, but before the gnome finished her sentence, Kyladriss dropped to all fours and ran, moving at a swifter pace than Necrothirst had ever seen any knight travel on foot. The Vrykul cried out in surprise and made a half-hearted effort to chase after her, stopping short when they realized that they could not keep up.

“After her!” Necrothirst shouted, raising his hand to summon his riding raptor. He leaned low over the raptor’s back and snapped the reins, feeling the muscles beneath its scaly hide shift as it broke into a run, its clawed feet digging up small furrows of earth.

The unique, hollow-sounding hoofbeats of a Deathcharger fell steadily to Necrothirst’s right, and he looked to find Laiza on an improbably small undead pony, her ghoul leaping along beside her as she rode hard to Necrothirst’s flank. “She’s headed north!” the gnome shouted. “You think that was another worgen she heard?”

“I cannot think of another reason why she would turn away from a fight,” Necrothirst said. He looked back over his shoulder. The other three knights were not following. Good, Necrothirst thought. It seemed as if they had some semblance of military sense, and would go report to the commanders in Valgarde rather than follow Necrothirst and Laiza on a wild chase through the Northrend forests.

And a wild chase it was - Kyladriss seemed to sense that she was being followed, or perhaps she heard the Deathcharger behind her, because she wove through the tall evergreens like a swift black shadow. Necrothirst was forced to watch the bouncing glow of the runeblade strapped to her back as she pelted through the trees, up an embankment and through a river that felt freezing even to his deadened senses.

“Who decided that we had to babysit the crazy worgen?” Laiza grumbled. It was the first time Necrothirst had heard her say anything that didn’t sound appallingly cheery. “I know it was your idea to let her out of the box we had her all nice and contained in.”

“You must not have seen the amount of Vrykul we no longer have to deal with because of the ‘crazy worgen,’ as you put it.” Necrothirst neglected to mention the word Kyladriss had spoken to him in the hold. With the amount of influence a runeblade had on its bearer, he was not certain that argued for any semblance of sanity.

“Oh, she’s a killing machine all right, but if we have to do this every time we put her up then she’s going to be more trouble than she’s worth.” Laiza nudged her pony with her heels, jumping a fallen log. The Deathcharger landed lightly on the ground opposite - Laiza’s ghoul, on the other hand, ran into the log with enough force to separate its decomposing head from its body. The headless corpse groped in the air for a moment until Laiza sighed, gesturing sharply with her sword. The ghoul fell into lifeless pieces. “Useless bag of meat,” Laiza grumbled. They rode on.

The sun had just risen to high noon, beating down on the forest from above. Despite the hour, Necrothirst did not feel even the vaguest hint of warmth as his raptor ran through the trees, still hot on Kyladriss’s trail. The worgen’s ears twitched around to point backward, and then she juked left, swinging around a small copse of trees and then skittering up a snowbank.

“We must be reaching the border of the mountains!” Laiza shouted. “She’ll be in Grizzly Hills soon if we don’t stop her!”

“If you have not noticed, she is as fast as we are, and we are not gaining on her,” Necrothirst said, teeth clenched. His raptor shook its head violently, the feathers along its trappings rustling as its broad feet dug into the snow.

Another howl sounded, this time much closer to their position. Kyladriss’s determination to shake off her followers seemed to double in response - she left the worn hunting track she had been following entirely and scrabbled up nearby rocks.

Laiza pulled hard on her Deathcharger’s reins, provoking the animal into a rear. “I can’t follow her up those cliffs,” she said.

“Keep pace alongside, then!” Necrothirst snapped over his shoulder as he passed. Kyladriss scrambled over the rocks, snarling low in her throat as she went. The terrain slowed her pace, but Necrothirst’s raptor could not manage the icy rocks either. Now he merely attempted to keep her within his line of sight.

“Necrothirst!” Laiza shouted, but even as Necrothirst looked to see what she was shouting about, it was too late. A furry body slammed into him and his raptor, knocking him from the mount’s saddle and sending both of them tumbling through the snow, rocks grating against his pauldrons. Hot breath washed over his face and a powerful jaw clamped down on his sword arm.

Necrothirst kicked out with both feet, catching the worgen in the chest and sending it skidding back in the snow. It was a large, black creature, similar to Kyladriss, only its eyes glowed an evil red. Saliva dripped from its fangs as it climbed to its feet, spreading its razor-sharp claws.

But as Necrothirst raised his blade with a smirk, ready to go toe-to-toe with the creature and pay it back in kind for the teethmarks it left in his bracer, it suddenly dropped back to all fours and took off, leaving Necrothirst standing in the snow with his runeblade, his raptor struggling to its feet and shaking the snow off.

Laiza rode up seconds later, reigning in the Deathcharger. “She went over one of those cliffs and out of sight as soon as the other one hit you,” she said. “I think it was a distraction.”

Necrothirst gritted his teeth. His first instinct was to respond to that blatant statement of the obvious by removing the annoying gnome’s head from her annoying shoulders, but he doubted that Thassarian would send him a replacement if he lost his temper and slaughtered any of the knights under his command. Instead, he merely returned Zin’Shalla to its sheath and mounted his raptor again, turning it back the way they had come. “We will return to Valgarde and regroup,” he said.

“If we lose her now-”

“There will be no finding her now that she has gone to ground in the mountains,” Necrothirst snapped. “I do not relish the idea of scrabbling over icy rocks when there are more of those creatures about. The five of us together are a formidable group, but even I cannot take on a full pack of worgen and return to tell about it.”

Laiza scowled as Necrothirst nudged his raptor into a trot, staring at the last place she had seen Kyladriss, but after a moment she turned her Deathcharger after Necrothirst. The night elf ground his teeth together as they rode. Koltira was right - they never should have released Kyladriss from her captivity. Whereas before they had a somewhat useful tool for their enemy’s destruction, now they had let a rampaging beast loose in the forested hills of Northrend.

I should have listened to the damned sin’dorei.