The Apprentice's Task- Part 1

"You want me to do WHAT?!" the forsaken growled, looking down at the requisition note in his hand in shock. His partially decayed, glowing yellow orbs scanned the contents of the paper again, as if defying it to tell him the same unlikely truth it had originally implied.

"You can read as well as I can Gregory," a second voice uttered. The forsaken named Gregory let the paper fall to his side as he eyed the other forsaken standing before him with a scowl.The rotted deathguard was a common sight at the Forsaken Front in Silverpine, and often carried missives to and from High Command and from various horde outposts.

"I've never heard of such a thing! This equipment is property of the Royal Apothecaries. It's not to be lent out to whoever has a sudden urge to fiddle with it, and it's CERTAINLY never to be sold!" Gregory shouted.

The deathguard grinned, the teeth missing from his jaw making the look more gruesome than it already was, not that Gregory noticed or cared much. "Apparently if you supply enough coin, anything is possible. Who knows what motivates the living to play with fire the way they do?"

The other forsaken grunted noncommittally as he reread the missive for the third time. "It's not what the living will play with, it's those pompous, self-serving blood elves! Why must they come through their precious translocation orb and prance out here thinking they own this place like its a part of their little forests."

The deathguard cleared his throat, the sound like a stone mausoleum door grinding shut. Gregory shook his head, ignoring the interruption and continuing his tirade. "They think they are so perfect don't they? 'Oh how pretty we are! Our flesh is untouched by plague, our forests are perfectly manicured sculptures!' What a laugh! Those little fey creatures are worthless to the horde, and I don't see why we should be supplying them with any aid, let alone some of our Blight spreading equipment and plague tanks."

Gregory's voice echoed off of the sides of the plague tanks sitting all around them in the equipment storage area, and he affectionately patted one as he spoke. The deathguard, rather than agreeing with him, looked somewhat surprised and alarmed, his diseased eyes locked on something behind the other forsaken. Gregory slowly turned to look at what had attracted his friend's attention, and would have inhaled sharply if he still had need to breathe.

Biara Dayfire stood feet from them, her eyes gazing at them with a look of utter malice. The air around them slowly became cold enough to disturb even the dead, and they quickly broke eye contact. Biara stepped towards them, the wards on her face glittering with deadly magic.

"I believe the instructions on the requisition are quite clear. You are to begin preparing the two plague tanks at once. They are to be empty of all Blight or Blight contamination. If you make a single mistake, I will teach you exactly how the dead can be made to feel pain as if their flesh was alive. Do you understand me?" Biara purred.

Gregory would have protested, but something in the Sin'dorei's look, something about the casual way her hand hovered near the wand at her belt, made him realize that his existence had no meaning to her. To argue, to protest would result in an instant violent attack; he'd seen enough mad animals in the woods of Silverpine to know this. He grunted his understanding and turned to begin preparation of the plague tanks. Biara studied the forsaken for a moment, satisfying herself that he was following her instructions before stepping away to go prepare a magical portal. The tanks would need to be moved to Orgrimmar to begin the first phases of her project.

As Biara walked away, Gregory turned to the deathguard who had moved over to assist him. The deathguard looked at him in bewilderment. "Who the fel was that?"

Gregory shook his head and looked back to the work at hand, shrugging, "Some sort of Ice Queen breather bitch I guess. Didn't seem like a lot of the other blood elves I've met though."

The deathguard nodded, helping Gregory slide one of hoses on the plague tank free. "She didn't. I think she would have attacked you, right then and there. And I haven't felt so cold since...well, since the Dark Lady first called my name, bringing me back."

Biara smirked as she walked, her long ears easily catching the words of the two forsaken. Her plague tanks would be prepared as per her precise instructions, or the Dark Lady could find herself a new forsaken engineer to operate the equipment along the forsaken front. It mattered little to her, what was important was the success of her project.

"Now Apprentice Gromkash, let's see exactly how useful you really are..."