The Forgotten Suspect

To tell the truth, Jess didn't really want to go. He'd planned to spend the afternoon at the library, looking for books on the orc language so he could get a head start on deciphering that mysterious scroll.

This was something he'd have to do himself. There had been no news from Marin about the orc-language course. And even if there were, how long would it take to attend enough classes and learn enough words and grammar?

Besides, the teachers didn't know the whole language themselves. Progress would be slow.

Jess sighed. "I've got things to do this afternoon."

Gred looked unhappy. "When you asked me for help, I agreed right away."

Right away? Hadn't Jess needed to talk him into it and promise him thirty percent of the profits?

Of course, Jess knew how much Gred had done for him in Duskwood.

"All right. Wait until I get off work."

After agreeing, Jess bought a small crab cake. He pulled off a little bit of crabmeat to taste. It was strangely sweet and salty.

Crabmeat was cheap in the Kingdom of Stormwind. In Westfall, around Sentinel Hill, there were more crabs than anyone could eat.

The coastal crabs were everywhere. So many crabs were hauled into Stormwind Harbor that they were practically worthless.

When Jess worked on a harbor repair project, he'd often seen fishermen bring in giant sea crabs bigger than young calves. People would split them up and eat them raw right there on the docks.

Back in Marin's study, the mage took the cake, closed his eyes, and slowly savored a bite as though satisfying a powerful craving.

He swallowed, set the cake beside his teacup, and asked, "Why did you take so long?"

"There was a line," Jess said. "Lots of people buying snacks, Master. The Blue Recluse is really busy in the morning."

"It certainly is," Marin said. "Perhaps they should expand the place. Quite a few children discovered they had magical talent during the war, and we've taken on many new apprentices."

Jess cleared his throat and sat beside the desk. "By the way, Master, I'll need tomorrow morning off."

"All right."

"Just like that?"

"I'll deduct it from your pay."

"I... I'll try to make it in."

Marin gave him a sidelong glance, flipped through his book, and continued. "Now, about what we were discussing earlier—the worgen around Raven Hill. We've considered several explanations. One is that someone mistook a particularly large ghoul for a worgen. Another is that orc assassins are hiding in the area. Many orcs use weapons enchanted by warlocks, and people they kill show severe signs of shadow corruption. There's also a third possibility we hadn't considered before: that gnoll leader."

"The gnoll leader?" Jess asked. "You mean the huge gnoll who attacked the grain wagon I was escorting?"

"I think it's quite possible. Gnoll tribes have begun invading Elwynn Forest. If they can move north, why not south?"

A giant gnoll really was one of the creatures most likely to be mistaken for a worgen. But parts of the explanation still didn't fit.

"Stormwind only discovered the giant gnoll recently," Jess said. "People started leaving Raven Hill years ago."

Marin closed the book he'd been reading, leaned back, and looked at him. "You can't rule out the possibility that Raven Hill residents mistook a gnoll for a worgen simply because Stormwind's guards didn't notice one until recently. The townspeople may have been attacked by a giant gnoll before the guards encountered it."

Marin had a point. But Jess remembered speaking with Morgan, who believed the people of Raven Hill could tell the difference between an attack by a ghoul and an attack by a worgen.

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People in Elwynn had been fighting gnolls for centuries. If anything, they should know gnoll attacks better than most.

Besides, gnolls nearly always attacked in groups and caused a huge mess. Would a gnoll chieftain really lurk alone near a settlement, attacking isolated travelers? It didn't fit the nature of gnolls at all, much less Hogger's personality.

If Jess trusted the townspeople, only one answer seemed left: orcs were causing trouble.

But could there be another possibility? Was there something else people might mistake for a worgen?

"I think the gnoll explanation is a stretch," Jess said.

"There's another possibility," Marin replied. "Perhaps the dark energy has simply made southern Elwynn unfit for humans to live in. Moving away would be the natural thing to do. But many people don't want to admit they're leaving because the sky has gone dark. Instead, they blame the supposed worgen so they can justify leaving to their friends and neighbors. Frankly, I wish everyone in southern Elwynn would face reality and move elsewhere as soon as possible. If anything changes at the Dark Portal, that region will be on the front line again. Perhaps officially changing its name to Duskwood one day would convince those stubborn locals to leave sooner."

Jess wasn't convinced. He thought back to his conversation with Morgan. "I'm not saying that couldn't be part of it. But there really were people killed. Didn't the Wizard's Sanctum mages examine the bodies of people supposedly killed by worgen when they went to Raven Hill?"

"That's one of the biggest problems." Marin took another small bite of cake and washed it down with tea. "The people there couldn't produce a single body killed by a worgen. They all claimed the bodies were infected by a worgen curse and disappeared the next day. Our mages never happened to be there at the right time, and without any physical evidence, they had to return empty-handed."

Disappearing bodies. Shadow energy. Jess traced circles on the desk with one finger. He felt as if he were close to remembering something important, but it wouldn't quite come to him.

Bodies... shadow... a monster taller than an ordinary man, walking like a worgen.

Wait. There was one kind of creature he'd forgotten, and it roughly fit that description.

The death knights created by Gul'dan.

Marin had mentioned death knights earlier, while discussing the disappearance of the red dragon queen and the black dragons helping the orcs during the war. He'd used the recent battle in Alterac Valley as an example. In that battle, an orc army had ridden black dragons into the valley and crushed the Alliance defenders.

The commander of that orc army, Teron Gorefiend, was the first death knight in the world.

Unlike the death knights serving the Lich King that most players knew, Gul'dan's first death knights were, in a way, even more truly dead.

Many of the Lich King's death knights were fallen mortals who carried runeblades, commanded necromantic power, and raised the dead to fight. But they hadn't necessarily died themselves.

Death wasn't a requirement for them.

Gul'dan's death knights, on the other hand, really were reanimated corpses. He took the dark souls of orc warlocks loyal to him and placed them in the bodies of the bravest dead human knights, bringing those bodies back to life.

Dark magic combined with the bodies of mighty warriors produced something far greater than the sum of its parts: a group of terrifying killing machines.

During the Orc Wars, these death knights had played a major role in Gul'dan's conquest of the human lands north of Khaz Modan. They'd also become a nightmare for countless survivors.

If the Knights of the Silver Hand hadn't fought desperately with the power of the Holy Light and stopped the death knight army in Hillsbrad Foothills, they might have reached Lordaeron's capital. The disaster of the Scourge might have come twenty years early.

Because these death knights were inhabited by orc souls, they thought and behaved entirely like orcs. The original human souls were gone. Only bodies with their old muscle memory remained to carry different souls.

So even though they had human bodies, they walked and fought like orcs: hunched over, taking heavy steps, and using savage fighting techniques and magic.

Dark power had also made their borrowed human bodies grow abnormally tall. They towered over ordinary people like giants with rotting skin. Even their mounts needed to be resurrected beasts enlarged through dark magic. Ordinary warhorses and worgs couldn't possibly carry such heavily armored warriors.

Death knights had spent the war fighting north of Khaz Modan. There were few of them terrorizing the south, in the Kingdom of Stormwind, because the Horde had already conquered the area. It didn't need its most fearsome warriors leading charges there, enslaving humans, or keeping order.

As a result, many people in Stormwind had never seen a death knight. By the time human rule returned, the Horde had been defeated and most orcs had fled through the Dark Portal. Those people had missed their chance to witness the death knights' terrible strength.

After the war, there was even less reason to learn about them. Only a few veterans and refugees from the north still told stories about those black reapers.

Stolen bodies. Shadow attacks. Tall, hunched figures like worgen. Appearances only at night...

Jess could no longer push the possibility of a death knight out of his mind.

The theory had flaws, of course. Gul'dan's death knights were officers or elite vanguards in the Horde. Why would one appear alone in a place like Raven Hill, attacking ordinary people who saw it?

Then Jess remembered the scroll he'd hidden at home.

An orc warlock who'd appeared in Duskwood. A death knight who might have appeared near Raven Hill...

Everything seemed to be pointing in the same direction.

He couldn't wait. He wanted to find some way to translate every word on that scroll immediately.

But he'd promised to help Gred clear wolves out of someone's farm that afternoon.

Anxious, Jess drummed his fingers across the desk, one after another, until Marin said, "Your shift doesn't end for another ten minutes, Mr. Seso. Be patient."