Monologue for two: Some Assembly Required

[Bloodscream]

The room was remarkably quiet. At a long table sat Bloodscream of The Grim. He was asleep.
On the table, an assortment of tools, most hand made by the orc sat in a jumbled pile. Among the tools stood a vidgnome, a small mechagnome outfitted with a full audio visual rig. It tended to follow Bloodscream around when he adventured, recording everything. At the moment it was recording the large green orc snoozing contently. He had failed to deactivate it before dozing off.

The room while quiet was packed to the bursting with equipment and machinery, again, most of it hand made by the orc. In the far corner sat his dimensional interdictor, humming quietly but firmly, blasting the area with synchronized nether-X particles, preventing the manipulation of the dimensional fabric.
Had Bloodscream been awake, he might have seen the small red light flashing on the devices stabilizer and perhaps he would have moved quickly to stop the crackcrank cascade from forming.
All he did however, was snort once and shoe some invisible fly from his face.
The interdictor began to shimmer with a white light. It seemed to dance a while along the manifold, then jumped to the amplification array and as if having done so to gather up momentum, hopped right off the array and arced into the dimensional astrogation systems.

The vidgnome notices something of interest was happening and turned its attention to the white light dancing in the workshops corner.

The astrogation array lit up, lights and crystals hummed hesitantly at first, then furiously.
The cascade arced again, this time it fired along the astrogation arrays main power cable and right into the dimensional ripper pad.

There was a flash of light, a sharp crisp popping sound and the cascade collapsed, tripping the interdictors sensors and forcing it immediately to shut down and send an alert to the main system.

The voice was female and designed to be soothing.
Bloodscream woke with a start when she spoke and fell backwards out of his chair, crashing onto the floor unceremoniously.
“Energy levels critical, containment failure, crackcrank cascade detected, emergency shutdown engaged.”
From the floor, taking a moment to sort out where he was and how he got there, Bloodscream spoke:
“What happened?” he asked the automated workshop assistant.
“I believe that was me.” Came the deep orcish voice from the corner of the lab.

Bloodscream jumped to his feet ready for a fight.
“Easy…” came the voice again. He could make out a large orcish form on the ripper’s pad.
“I didn’t come all this way to fight myself…” the voice added stepping forward into the broken light of the workshop.

Bloodscream stared at himself. He had heard of this before, dimensional replicants, an other him, from an alternate dimensional reality.

“Hold.” Bloodscream ordered himself.
He grabbed a tool from the table and pointed it at what appeared to be himself.
The intruder Blood spoke again.
“Check my Nether X readings, you’ll see that I am not from this world. Check the residual particles bonded to my matrix, you will see for yourself they match your own precisely but are resonating at a frequency three quantums higher.”

Bloodscream did just that and found he spoke the truth.

“How did you…” Bloodscream began, his mind racing with questions.
“No time.” The second Bloodscream interrupted.
“ Tell me, in this dimension, have the forsaken betrayed the Horde?”
Bloodscream raised an eyebrow.
“No but the idea is always gnawing at me, why?”
“It has destroyed my world.” Bloodscream told himself.
Bloodscream raised a second eyebrow.
“Why did you come here?” He asked himself, genuinely curious.
“Because it’s not too late to stop them but I can’t do it alone.”
“Where are the rest of your Grim?” Bloodscream asked the traveler.
“Gone. I am all that remains of the living Grim, I heard a report Mohan also still lives but I haven’t been able to reach him, presumably he dumped his stone.”
Bloodscream felt strange listening to an alternate worlds’ cataclysm.
“So what’s the plan?”
He reached up to his goggles and a thin beam of light fired out, split and formed a floating, rotating image of a device in the air over the table.
“This is the plan”
Bloodscream studied it a moment, it was unlike anything he had ever seen and yet seemed strangely familiar.
“What is that…” he asked as he tried to answer his own question.
“Chronotronic Parallax Emitter” Came the reply.
“This… this is a dimensional time machine!” Bloodscream suddenly exclaimed as everything clicked in his mind.
“Holy… look at that… of course, dual inverters with a synchronized chronotronic dispersion array… looped right into a Bosen bridge… so simple… so damn elegant.”
“Did we design this?” he asked still marveling at the devices design.
“We did.” Came the answer.
“…and now we’re going to build it…”

[Greebo]

(( those orcs are not to be trusted ))

[Bloodscream]

Bloodscream worked in silence, both of him.
They exchanged odd stares. Each with different conversations playing out in their heads.
“You wanna ask me stuff.” The visitor stated plainly.
“Yup…” confirmed Bloodscream.
“Standard stuff mostly… how did you solve the chronotronic dispersion enigma, how thick did the stabilizer walls have to be to contain the energy flux without dampening the nether X cohesion…you know… orc stuff.”
There was the briefest of pauses and they both burst out into deep menacing laughter.
The interloper wiped a tear from his eye.
“I haven’t laughed in… shit I haven’t laughed in weeks.” He admitted, still chuckling.
“So tell me about me…” Bloodscream asked.
“Probably a lot like you…” he answered with a grin.
“…and yet remarkably different, I see you favor large weapons.”
“Ya…you?”
“Shield jockey, have been for years, course I don’t go adventuring as much as I did before the kids…”
Bloodscream spat out the screw he was holding in his mouth, it had seemed a better alternative to swallowing it.
“What kids?!?” he asked somewhat taken aback as the screw fired off across the room.

The other Bloodscream looked suddenly very sad. He stared off into the wall.
“Doesn’t much matter now. They’re gone…and so is their mother…”
Bloodscream didn’t quite know what to say to himself.

“We’re married?” he asked hesitantly seeing the obvious distress the topic was causing him.
“We were… she was killed trying to get the kids to safety… she failed.”
“Can I ask her name?”
“Vilmah…” he said his gaze trailing off again.
He closed his eyes and spoke softly to no one in particular.
“I should have been there… I should have seen it coming… I could have saved her…”

Bloodscream slammed his fist into the table suddenly commanding his own attention.

“Oi! Dipshit… you ARE going to save her… and the kids… and the Grim…. It’s why you came at what I can only surmise was great peril to yourself.”

“So what did the Forsaken do anyways? How did they betray us?”
“Frackin R.A.S…” he began.
Bloodscream agreed. He had never had a great trust in the Forsaken or the Royal Apothecary Society.

“They gave up on trying to find a plague that would affect the Orcs, they just poisoned everything instead, turned the air to poison. They themselves were obviously unaffected.
The initial cover up was that an accident had occurred in Undercity and a virus released into the general populace. Two days was all it took for everything living within fifty miles of Undercity to be killed. Then the Valkyr started raising them and the forsakens numbers grew. Orc and Troll Forsaken…vilest things I’ve ever seen…”

The tauren were busy fighting a resurgence of scourge forces that somehow got into their lands… of course… they weren’t scourge, they were R.A.S and they hadn’t “gotten” into their lands, they had been summoned. It was a large scale offensive against their former allies…they say the lady of the dead was betrayed by her alchemists. She was murdered by warlocks during the initial offensive… and the head of the R.A.S became the new leader of the Forsaken, a vile creature named Greebo.

Bloodscream held up a finger to interrupt himself.

“Greebo is the head of the R.A.S and orchestrated the downfall of The Horde?”
Bloodscream nodded.
“…and you married Vilmah… and had kids…
Bloodscream nodded again.
“What about Mal?” he asked.
“Malstrom? Chief Malstrom of the Windtalker Clan?”
“Chief of the whothewhatnow?”
“Chief of the Windtalker clan… Malstrom retired years ago to lead his people, went home. Last I heard, a large strike force of Forsaken vanished trying to get to their island.”
Bloodscream held up his hand.
“Enough… this is just going to give me a headache… we build this… we program it properly and we go stop them…”
Bloodscream nodded, that sounded like his kind of plan.

“One last thing…” he asked sheepishly.
“How did The Grim fall?”
“The details are vague but essentially from what I’ve gathered, the R.A.S. laid a trap for the enforcer and Abric and his guards were captured… the confusion and the poison did the rest…before we could get organized, we were scattered and leaderless… most of the living Grim murdered by agents of the R.A.S. It appears Greebo did not want The Grim around to interfere with his plans…”
“Hmmm I would have thought Abric have masterminded the whole thing…”
Bloodscream gave himself a curious look.
“The Enforcer died for the Mandate, as did the others who were with him…but I know WHEN… and that’s where we’re headed, to save Abric and the others and end Greebo and the R.A.S. before they have a chance to execute their plan.”

“Sooooo… Abric needs us to save him from Greebo?” Bloodscream concluded.
Bloodscream nodded in the affirmative.

“Oi… you really ARE from another world…”

[Bloodscream]

It had been a few hours. Bloodscream started wondering how it was his guest had not seen his matrix destabilized and been sent home to his own dimension.
“What’s keeping you here.” He blurted as they worked.
The visiting Bloodscream held up his wrist exposing some wiring on the underside of his bracer.
“Matrix stabilizers in the twenty vale range, standard matrix degredation runs about sixty minutes, this can extend or contract that by a factor of four or five… roughly twenty four hours or so…or it can collapse your matrix in a few minutes if you’re in a rush to get home.”
Bloodscream whistled as he studied the wiring.
“Shmancy… we build that too?”
Bloodscream nodded.
The original Bloodscream craned his neck to the side.
“Why do I get the distinct feeling you’re smarter than I am?”
The other Bloodscream chuckled.
“Ya, and you’re better looking…”
They shared another chuckle.
“Well at least that part is convenient…” the other Bloodscream added.
“What’s that?” asked the first.
“You get my jokes…” he concluded with a grin.

It had been twelve hours, roughly the halfway mark by their calculations. The device was mostly built, they were into the fine detail now, calibrating the emitter to match the quantum signature of his visitor.
Calibrating the chronotronic array was going to be the hard part. Dimensional shifting within a single parallax field was tricky business. It was one thing to plot a dimensional incursion within the parameters of your own dimension, quite another to do so along a parallax field so as to end up in a different but related dimension. It was something engineering had never managed to do on purpose.

“Mind if I ask you a few myself?” the visitor said, breaking a two hour silence.
“Fairs fair I guess… shoot.” Bloodscream replied while he energized the crystals in the array.
“So… not married and no kids I guess uh?” the visitor asked.
“Nope… just me and The Grim… never thought of Vilmah that way…”
Bloodscream paused as if analyzing his own words.
“Maybe… maybe I did once… I dunno… seems like ancient history to me now…”

“The Grim are strong here?” he continued.
“We do ok. I suppose you’d be amused to know Greebo is one of us here…”
Bloodscream tightened his grip on the spanner and stared daggers at the mere mention of the name.
“Easy tiger… I mean, he’s a warlock… and a Forsaken… but a few years back something happened to him… he was unmade and then made again, calls himself Twice Made or Twice Born or Twice the fun still in the original smelly package now… I think maybe whatever stupid has him in your world died long ago in mine.”
A green light turned on overhead.

Bloodscream grinned to himself.
“We have parallax cohesion…this is just amazing…”

“Then we are ready.” The visitor declared.
“Not quite yet.” Bloodscream replied.

He was navigating through the menu on his goggles.
“I assume you guys isolated the hearth energy signature on the stones? Unlocked all manner of new uses for it?”
“Yes, why?”

Bloodscream winked. “No reason” he said casually as he grabbed the hearthstone and hooked up two wires from his goggles to it.

“You wanna just turn the interdictor off a sec?” he asked his visitor casually, knowing he would know precisely how to deactivate it.

The other Bloodscream moved to the interdictor and deactivated it with a few button presses.

Bloodscream smiled and grabbed the hearthstone with both hands and closed his eyes.

The air around Bloodscream started to shimmer as wave after wave of energy emanated from the stone in his hands.

“What are you doing?” the other Blooscream asked as the energy spread throughout the workshop.
“Something you said… I can’t do this alone… well… neither can I.”

The air in the workshop began to smell like a lightning strike, the hairs on Bloodscream’s arms raised up in anticipation.

“Don’t attack anyone… ok?” He asked his guest his eyes still closed.

“Don’t attack who?” he asked himself, still somewhat confused.

“You been alone for weeks now… you’ve stopped thinking like a Grim.” Bloodscream suggested with a smile as he opened his eyes to see multiple orbs of light coalescing in the room.

A few seconds later, those that had answered the call started appearing in the workshop: Mohan, Malstrom, Anaie, Coyotl, Kharzak, Eclypse, Krinathalasa, Frowne and Sangjai.

The Slayers appeared and took stock of where they were. Inside a workshop of some sort. Many had never been inside Bloodscream’s workshop, only Malstrom recognized the place immediately.

“Wirey Juju!” he exclaimed readying a frostshock.

Then he saw there were two Bloodscreams and froze in his tracks.

“Slayers…” Bloodscream began as he addressed the slightly confused Grim.

He had a fair amount of explaining to do and was running out of time to do it in.

[Bloodscream]

Thunderbluff was perfectly still.
The wind it seemed, far too heavy hearted, had gone.

High atop the mesas, only the remnants of death littered the ground.
They had fought long. They had resisted so much.
In the end, they had faltered and ultimately, been overrun.

Hours ago, the mesa had crawled with the shrieking distorded faces of the dead’s foot soldiers.
The Tauren had fortified the city as best they could but the location itself had always provided the greatest of defenses. The day the dead started raining down from the sky changed all that. To be certain the mighty Kao did not surrender easily. Their rage had flowed for weeks as the city lay under siege; the valley below a seething carpet of rotting flesh and shrieking spirits.

Now however, no horns sounded, no proud battlecries echoed, the ground did not shake with the thunder of hooves.

The mighty Tauren’s light had gone from this place.
All was quiet.

The Forsaken forces had withdrawn to the Barren Gates or at least, where the Barrens Gates had stood. The vast majority of the forces were mindless dead under the control of the R.A.S. necromancers. They were just waiting for their orders now, sitting fat on the field of battle, gorged on the flesh of their enemies. Only a few hunting parties remained out, tracking down the odd straggler.

In the rocky terrain of the Barrens a dead dog was tracking a scent.

It didn’t really have a nose at all one might have observed and yet, it behaved very much as a living dog would have, sniffing at the air, the ground; clearly following something. It’s short chain was held by a ghoul who walked at the head of a dozen of its brethren and a pair of abominations.

They had to be close, this Tauren was starting to run out of hillside.

The dog knew something his master did not. This Tauren was VERY close, its scent strong and powerful, soon it would taste its flesh.

They came around a rocky outcropping and there on the ground, covered in blood, lay a leather clad Tauren, unconscious, possibly dead.

The dog pulled relentlessly on his chain, wanting to taste the Taurens flesh.
His ghoul handler, unprepared for the sudden pull, jerked forward several steps until he could regain control of the dog.
The pack closed slowly around the fallen Tauren. They would share in his entrails and bring his head back to master.
The lead ghoul crouched and slowly fingered the blood soaked tabard the Tauren wore.

“Massssster….” It called to the Nether.

It felt Master’s presence, basked in the power his mere words carried.

“Report” it heard Master demand.

“Thissss dead cow… issss Grim… we have found… the one… called Mohan.”

“Excellent. Bring me his head, the rest is yours.”

“Yesssss…. Masssster.” It affirmed, licking it's jagged fangs in anticipation.

The ghouls started posturing for feeding rights, a few low hisses could be heard then one long low sustained hiss.

It took the ghouls a few moments to realize none of them were the ones hissing.
The lead ghoul turned the Tauren’s body over, his gaze still furiously scanning around with the others as they sought the source of the noise.

As the Tauren body rolled over limply, the head ghoul noticed that someone had tampered most deviously with this corpse. Master would want to know at once.

It might have then tried to report these new findings to Master, no one will ever truly know. The exploding Tauren corpse decapitated the lead ghoul, took the dogs front legs and sent shards of bone flying in every direction, stabbing flesh.

The noise was deafening and the chaos was real. Undead chaos involves less fear and panic and more standing around unknowing how to react.

The abominations had been the farthest away from the blast and were the least affected.
As the shards of bone said their peace, arrows cut greedily through the Barrens air, seeking revenge.

The ghouls were picking themselves up unaware that the blast had been but a prelude to attack.

Then one of the abominations fell over, three arrows in the top of its skull. The other followed shortly, a single shaft buried up to the fletching in the top of it's head.

The undead pack hissed and began shuffling towards the rocks. Several started climbing still uncertain as to the source of the arrows. They growled and hissed as talons dug into stone and they began to pull themselves up the rock face. Arrows rained down from above unerringly finding eye sockets, ear holes.

A shadow passed before the sun, movement up above on the rocks.

More arrows and still more ghouls delivered unto gravity.
In a matter of seconds, the dead had been put back to rest.

A lone Tauren waited a while on the rocks, looking, listening.
Satisfied the undead below were all destroyed, Mohan came down the rocks to reclaim his tabard.

He found it in a sad condition, it's thick leather had born the blast relatively well but it was soaked in gore and was perforated by a hundred small tears.
He grinned to himself as he snapped it, spraying gore along the ground in a thick line.
He threw it over his shoulders and crouched, placing his hand in one of the many pools of blood.

He moved to the rocks and there with his bloodied hand he left a message for his would be captors in his native Taurahe.

"Peace eludes you."

Today was going to be a long day and it had just begun.

[Bloodscream]

Angoroth, the creature known as Greebo, was plotting quietly beneath Undercity.

Angoroth’s vision blurred, it often did when he heard his masters song. The old ones were pleased but his work was not yet done. He lived still, always keeping at bay the shrill noise of madness that buzzed behind his eyes. If he did as was commanded, if he performed as they required, he hoped they would allow him to die and finally be free of the noise. He longed for his immortal soul to be free, to be allowed to swim with his masters, perhaps even be consumed by one and join them in forever.

So many wheels in motion, so many lies precariously balanced on the edge of being discovered. They were coming to it at last, all his work would come to fruition, weak flesh would be destroyed and replaced by the undying resilience of the Forsaken.

His cult had succeeded where so many others had failed.

The true power of a cult is in secrecy. In his many years he had seen so many wayward fools ruin any chance at success by revealing themselves too early. Angoroth’s followers would not follow that path. His agents were finally moving into place, it would not be long now. Today he would capture and kill the Grim’s leadership and tomorrow he would set in motion his plans. According to his calculations, within two weeks the bulk of this world would be his. Those that remained would be hunted and harassed to ensure they were unable to interfere with the final stages and once he succeeded in freeing the Old Gods once and for all, this entire puny world would shake before their might.

For now however, he needed to remain focused. He had gone to great lengths to motivate the Naga and escalate their raids on Horde territory. With Queen Sylvanas away trying to broker a peace, he was free to push the last few pawns into place.

Thrall had proved far easier to remove than anticipated, Greebos plan had worked perfectly. Releasing Deathwing had been a worthwhile endeavour. Now, with the eyes of Azeroth’s heros locked on the Firelands, he could make his last few moves in relative confidence.

The last item on his list before giving the final orders was The Grim.

He would capture Abric, eliminate his retinue and extract from him The Grims secrets. Once he knew the hearthstone communication channels they used he would corrupt all the Forsaken Grim in one fell swoop and add their might to his own. His agents would move to eliminate the living ones, those who left a corpse would be raised by his Valkyr.
He might one day let them have their free will back but to start they would remain in thrall to their makers. He thought perhaps he could make a good servant out of their Enforcer, good help was always so hard to find.

His masters song soon filled his perceptions once more.
They were so close now, when he closed his eyes, he could feel them.
So close, yet so far away.

This place… This sacred place.
Tirisfal.

He wondered which of his masters it was who slumbered beneath this hallowed ground.
He would know soon enough when he released it. Tighter and tighter now the threads were pulled, events closing in. The time inched closer, second by second and Greebo could feel each one like an eternity. Time itself it seems, was trying in vain to slow itself, kicking and screaming towards the inevitability of it’s own destruction.

There was always room for mistakes.
The Bronze Dragonflight's archives had hardly done anything to settle the matter.

His scholars had found multiple references to a great shift in the tapestry, a shift across time, that which is the demesne of the Bronze dragons. They could not decipher the truths or details of the text but one thing was certain, the name Grim appeared multiple times including in one section they had translated completely which warned of a scream across time, a scream of blood that would shatter the darkness and forever cast grim ripples across the world.

Prophecy, Angoroth knew too well, was inevitable yet remarkably malleable. If he eliminated The Grim, their deaths would be a part of his master plan and if the old Gods awoke, then certainly their blood would have heralded the coming end.

So precarious, so fragile, like all things.

Soon Abric would arrive and we would see just how loud the Forsaken could scream.
Extracting information from Abric would hardly be easy, Angoroth had summoned several demons specifically for that purpose. They were waiting beneath the earth of Undercity and their wait, would soon be over.

[Bloodscream]

((If you are rereading something and find it's different than you remember, you're not crazy, this is currently a living document, it's changing...growing... mutating! I added some stuff to Mohan's bit and am not overly happy with Angoroth's part which other than being way too short as is Mohans, isn't doing it for me... Mohan's thing works for me... but I need more it's just a damn shame I know so little about hunters as a class...this son of a bitch might turn into a novel on me if I don't watch out...))

[Anaie]

((I expected the dead Tauren that was "Mohan" to be him feigning death and he and his pet were about to layeth down the smacketh on that patrol!))

[Bloodscream]

((changed it again... when I realized he was coming down to get a tabard he'd just blown up... had to address that.))

[Thalevia]

((MOAR! Even though many of the Grim are dead in Greebowinsverse I want more))

[Mohan]

((It was a more explosive way to lay the smackdown! The exploding corpse is definitely a nice touch. Though it isn't something Mohan would do to a fellow tauren's corpse under normal circumstances, it's perfect in this scenario - he uses what he can find. And he would definitely think it's better than letting any necromancers raise dead tauren.

Also Blood, just let me know if you any specifics on hunter abilities you might want to use.))

[Cristok]

(( Love it much! Bring on the novel! ))

[Bloodscream]

Bloodscream finished laying out his plan.
The Slayers listened quietly, most still had many questions running through their heads.

It was Eclypse who spoke first as the other Bloodscream was fastening the matrix stabilizer to her wrist.

“Is this safe?” she asked.
“Perfectly” both Bloodscreams lied in synch.
“Quite so…” Kharzak chimed in, an engineer himself.

The troll shaman threw a sideways glance at Bloodscream, smirking ever so slightly.
He knew as well as any other engineer that safe meant “Satisfied Appropriate Fear Exists” which, in the parlance of the profession meant that while all attentions had been lent to the consideration, things sometimes, went horribly wrong.

Anaie, the Forsaken rogue and leader of the Slayers, kept switching her gaze from one Bloodscream to the other.

“This could become confusing.” She declared.

The original Bloodscream addressed her concerns.

“Ya I’ve thought of that…” he commented as he pulled his goggles off and stuffed a small device into his ear.

“Since I’ll just be a guest there, I figured I’d wear a full helm, save everyone some confusion."

Anaie nodded, pointing at the table where a variety of objects were temporarily standing in for far greater and more dangerous foes.

“Dis plan, is gunna be tight.” The rogue observed.

“It’ll be fine.” Bloodscream declared from behind a gargantuan helm.
“We get in, team one heads straight for the second floor, team two starts securing the stairs wells. They are not expecting an attack, least of all one launched from the armory.”

He raised the visor on the helm and looked at himself.

“We WILL arrive in the armory yes?”
Bloodscream nodded. “I took bearings of the armory last year during this other thing… not important now but yes the coordinates we have used should land us in the armory… provided we calculated the parallax shift coefficient properly and accounted for the nether-X interference and dimensional eddies.

Bloodscream stared at himself wishing he would shut up as the longer he rambled the more it made it seem that the plan was doomed to failure.

“Everyone strapped in?” he asked in regards to the stabilizers strapped to their wrists.

“Everyone but you.” The other Bloodscream noted, pointing to his wrist.

Bloodscream looked at his wrist and the lack of stabilizer on said wrist.
He was quite certain he had been the first stabilizer he strapped on.

“Just grab one from the shelf and let’s get a move on already.”

Bloodscream snorted at himself and headed off to get a stabilizer.

“I would point out the futility in rushing a chronotronic dimensional incursion, you’ll get there at the same time either way.”

Krinathalasa, the blood elf Blood Knight, could contain herself no longer and called out after Bloodscream.

“Perhaps Blood but I’m sure you don’t have calculations to make me endure the interesting aroma that always develops when the ten of us are in an enclosed space for too long so please… hurry.”

“Gnome?” Malstrom inquired shoving a partially chewed severed gnome leg under her nose.

[Malstrom]

Krinathalasa, the blood elf Blood Knight, could contain herself no longer and called out after Bloodscream.

“Perhaps Blood but I’m sure you don’t have calculations to make me endure the interesting aroma that always develops when the ten of us are in an enclosed space for too long so please… hurry.”

“Gnome?” Malstrom inquired shoving a partially chewed severed gnome leg under her nose.

There's your problem right there...gnome always makes me gassy.

[Bloodscream]

Death was so much more enjoyable than life.
As he watched his new recruits slowly shambling up the hill behind him, the necromancer could not help but feel conflicted. Why this world insisted on resisting the inevitable peace of undeath had always escaped him but then, he was dead.

He didn’t see what it was about these individuals that had caused High Apothecary Greebo such concern.
Frankly, this necromancer felt they were all far more Grim now than they had ever been.

Had he been one for mirthful observation he might have grinned at the thought that these shuffling husks had espoused the motto “Peace through annihilation” which surely, he felt was commendable; However it was only now, after having been annihilated that they had truly found the peace they so dearly sought.

He approached a clearing where two of the former Grim rogues were hunched over something.
He moved closer and saw a tabard of the Grim. His forsaken dogs had blue paste smeared all over their faces. He took a closer look and realized the tabard was smothered in the stuff and the Forsaken, had rubbed their faces all over it absorbing the scents.

He smeared some of the paste on his finger and examined it.

It had a vaguely floral smell to it, a hint of earthroot, Gromsblood and something he could not quite place. He gingerly picked up the tabard and placed it in a bag. He would examine it in greater details in his laboratory.

His immediate concern was why, what purpose did this serve? Was it a message?
He grabbed what had once been Inzema by the scruff of the neck and pulled his face close to his.

The paste didn’t seem to be having any form of effect on the creature.
Surely this had been left behind by the Tauren Mohan, still clinging to the delusion that somehow, one creature could enact a difference.

He could see no discoloration, no reaction whatsoever. Inzema’s tongue would occasional dart out and clean some of the paste from his mouth. A poison of some kind? The smell was not powerful enough to hinder tracking. Mohan was not known to be an alchemist of any kind so what purpose could this possibly serve?

He turned to see the others were now streaked with blue and the creature formerly known as Anaie was smearing the others with paste taken from her own face and hands.

“Stop!” He commanded.
The creature stopped and turned it’s dead gaze towards master.

“Why did you do that?” it asked the creature, knowing it’s will was stripped and it could not answer in any meaningful way.
“Sharing?” the creature offered hesitantly.

The necromancer was stunned. Had the creature answered? The paste… how could it…

“Tastes like flowers” Inzema offered as he leapt on the necromancer.

He did not scream, he did not run, he merely had his spine removed and gnawed on a while as the forsaken, one by one, slowly began to look around to find Anaie and Inzena, tearing a forsaken body to shreds.

There were over a dozen of them on the hill and once Mohan was quite certain the paste had done its job. He came out of his hiding place twenty yards away and waved tentatively.

Mohan stood looking at his brethren, now all Forsaken. His gaze lingered the longuest on Coyotl and Guduk, both Tauren.

“I’m sorry I allowed this to happen.” He said softly in Taurahe.
“I don’t feel any different.” Guduk offered in a weak attempt to make Mohan feel better.
Coyotl stared at his arm. He lowered it and snorted decisively.

“That which was done can be undone. How did we get here? I only remember feeling lost in a mist and wandering… for what felt like years, then a smell, a taste… I followed them both and they brought me here.”

Mohan nodded, producing a now half empty clay jar with trollish markings on it.

“There was a horrible wind storm last night…” Mohan explained.
“In the morning, I found this jar on the ground near my camp and there was a note tied to the thing.” Coyotl grabbed the jar and examined it.

“This is the symbol of the Windtalkers.” The druid asserted.
Mohan nodded.

“Chief Malstrom sends his greetings and says the spirit moon will soon be upon us, on the second night of the Blood Moon, the spirits of our ancestors will be listening. If we enact the ritual atop the spirit rise he believes we can awaken the warrior spirits of the Kao and take back our city. He gave me instruction on how to release you from your deadsleep and assures me that provided I bring enough gnome, he and his kin can restore us.”

Coyotl chuckled.

“It’s good to have friends…the Blood Moon starts tomorrow, this leaves us little time.”

Twenty Grims was a start.
“We free as many of the others as we can.” Mohan ordered. “There are two other groups of Grims being field tested in the Barrens today, with their numbers added to our own, I think we stand a good chance to take the Rise.”

He turned to see a large chest had apparently appeared out of thin air, it’s thick lid was open and tabards, armor and weapons were being distributed.

Anaie grinned. “What? I like to keep a chest or two in me pocket for rainy days?”
She was holding a small metallic rod lined with crystals and dials. When they were done arming themselves, she turned a dial on the rod and the chest vanished with a sucking sound.

Mohan shook his head. “Necromancers, Shamen, Warlocks… I can deal with but you engineers, you’re a dangerous lot aren’t you?”

It was Inzema who answered, pulling his goggles down onto his face.

“We have our momentssss…” he chuckled, licking the last of the blue paste off his chin.