Oh rats!

*Hissssssssssssssssssssssss*

Biara rolled her eyes and clutched the lab stool tighter in her hands, holding it over her head. She peered over the edge of the table she was standing on to get a look at the floor below. The stool was held high, ready to be brought down as a makeshift weapon. A loose lock of her hair fell over one of her eyes and she impatiently brushed it aside as she scanned the floor for signs of movement. Seeing nothing, she slowly rose to a standing position, feeling ridiculous to be standing on a table in the middle of her laboratory.

*Hisssssssssssssss!*

The rat jumped from seemingly nowhere, landing on her upper thigh and digging its claws into the fabric of her dress. It's red eyes glowed with an evil light as it tried to tear its way through the material and to the flesh beneath. Biara lost her grip on the stool and frantically began to beat on her clothing with her hands as the stool tumbled to the floor behind her.

"Ew ew ew ew ewwwwwwwwwwww!" she shouted. The creature was finally knocked loose by one of her windmilling hands and fell to the floor with a squeal of anger. Three more of the creatures circled it for a moment, sniffing it before glaring up at her. Each of the four rats had that same malevolent red glare in their  eyes, and they all looked hungry.

A pounding on the laboratory door brough Biara's gaze up. The rats on the floor became agitated, running in circles and hissing at each other. "Mistress Dayfire! Is everything alright?!" one of her apprentices shouted.

Biara sighed and rolled her eyes again; that was just what she needed, witnesses to this idiocy. "I'm perfectly fine! Please do not come in here!"

She waited until she heard the sound of her apprentice's boots on the stones signaling that the other elf was leaving before turning her attention back to the floor. Eight glowing eyes watched her hungrily, the undead rats desiring nothing more than to tear her limb from limb. She looked down at her dress and grimaced as she saw that the one had torn it immodestly along her thigh; just another irritation in an experiment that had gone horribly wrong.

It had started out innocent enough, she had simply wanted to experiment with necromancy to see if she would be able to help Lord Mortanus revive his dead rat. While the two had agreed to use her secret research project to accomplish the goal, necromancy was their fallback plan and the Magistrix had not practiced it in some time. What better way to experiment than to use a few dead lab rats and try to bring them back?

Looking at the hungry scourged rats on the floor, Biara began to realize that the experiment was in poor taste at best, and extremely dangerous at the worst. She couldn't allow anyone to see the creatures, and rather than coming back as undead servants they had been transformed into hungry scourge. They had to be destroyed unfortunately.

She squealed as a rat leapt from the floor, arcing towards her head. She dodged it, and the creature tumbled past her to land on a nearby table, shattering the alchemy equipment there. Biara sighed as she calculated the cost of the damages in the back of her mind; this had to be ended at once! Even as she thought this, a glimmer of blue light leaked from a nearby bookshelf, and the rats' eyes all took on the glow as they headed for it almost as if by command.

Almost as if by command....command, undead....the phylactery!

Scourge light flowed from the cabinet now where Biara had returned the phylactery. The Lichling within it had been silent after it was torn to shreds by Grungivaldi, but she knew in time it would regain its power. It looked like that process had already begun. The Magistrix watched in fascination as the blue light touched each of the four rats. Her fascination turned to dread as they began to bulge in size, becoming as large as the taller breeds of hunting dogs. The creatures hissed in unison, the sound now more like a menacing growl!

"Oh for the love of..." Biara began to mutter before the four creatures turned towards her and jumped. She screeched and flung herself from the table as their large bodies collided with it, turning it into a pile of splinters. She landed on the floor with a thud, the breath knocked from her body. This was getting ridiculous!

She rolled as a large body came down where she had been laying, one of the rats hissing and dripping undead ichor on the floor inches from her head. She shouted the word to a spell and Blinked across the room, banging her shins painfully on a table.

"FEL! That HURTS!" she growled. The rats regrouped at the other end of the room, growling back at her in turn. She muttered the words to a spell and suddenly there were four of her, her mirror images appearing from nothing.

"What in the nether is THAT?!"
"Oh what have you done now you stupid little wench?"
"I can't believe you'd think THAT dress was nice looking..."

Biara brought a hand up to rub at her temple, a headache coming on. "Shut the fel up and take care of those!"

Loud pounding began on the door as one of the guards in the hallway beyond responded to the loud sounds coming from the laboratory. "Lady Dayfire! Lady Dayfire are you alright?!"

Biara sighed and headed for the door as her Mirror Images began to shriek and hurl spells at the huge rats that were charging them from across the room. She stepped in the rat's drooled ichor and slipped, falling on the floor and getting undead muck on her clothing.

"Really?! REALLY?!" The agitated Magistrix picked herself off and attempted to brush the goo off, only staining the dress worse. Between the ichor and the hole that basically showed her undergarments, it was pretty much ruined at this point. She slipped through the door, closing it quickly behind her and smiling at the guard in the hallway.

The guard blinked and turned red when he realized he could see through the mistress's dress. "Uh...I...that is....Uh is everything...um...alright?"

Biara smiled sweetly and nodded. "Of course, why wouldn't everything be just fine? I am just running an experiment in my lab..."

A large blast echoed from behind the door followed by the heavy *crump* of falling stone. Biara's eyes widened slightly and her false smile was plastered further on her face. The guard looked at the door and then back at the mistress of the spire and nodded dumbly. "Um...alright. Well if you need anything...you uh, know to call on me Lady Dayfire."

Biara nodded absently, looking back to the door as the sounds of her own voice screaming could be heard along with another voice yelling something like "If you set it all on fire that should root them out of there!"

She turned back to the guard and smiled one last time. "Well, I'd best get back to my experiment..."

The guard nodded again and slowly backed away down the hallway. Biara waited until he was out of sight before slipping back into the lab. Several more loud *crump* sounds echoed down the hallway, followed by the sounds of female Sin'dorei arguing and then a shouted word of magic, dismissing the Mirror Images. Biara's tailor would end up charging her over three thousand gold to repair the dress.

He never asked her how a Lady ended up having a hole chewed through her garments. He really didn't want to know.