The Wizard's Sanctum and the Worgen Investigation

The night was completely black. Jess walked through total darkness. The ground beneath his feet was wet, as though it had just rained, or as though he were walking through swamp mud.

He had no idea where he was. Stormwind's sewers? Or somewhere else...?

After walking for who knew how long, he had the vague feeling that someone was following him. But when he turned around, there was nothing but darkness. He couldn't see a thing.

Even if someone was there, he would never be able to spot them.

Jess felt trapped in some strange maze. There was only one way he knew to get out of a maze: keep one hand against the same wall and follow it.

With that thought, he reached toward the wall. His palm touched something cold and soft.

He looked closer. It was a face!

The entire wall was made of human heads. Countless faces were pressed together, staring out in pain. A chill shot through the back of Jess's head, and he jerked awake.

Sunlight was streaming through the small window. Fine dust hung in the air.

He hung his sweat-soaked bedding outside the window. It faced the canal, which sparkled in the morning sun. What a beautiful sight.

Oh, no. He was late.

Jess grabbed his shirt and pants, ran down the stairs, tossed his clothes onto the canal bank, and jumped straight into the water. He hadn't even washed his hair when the young men bathing nearby scrambled out like a flock of startled ducks.

The guards were coming to chase them off.

Jess hauled himself onto the bank, grabbed his clothes, and ran toward a wooden bridge over the canal, dressing as he went. Behind him, guards on the other side of the water were chasing bathers around like people catching chicks.

Bathing in Stormwind's newly rebuilt canals was actually forbidden. The king or some nobleman thought it spoiled the appearance of the new city.

From Jess's point of view, having a crowd of naked men twisting and splashing around beside a main street every morning did look a little indecent. And he certainly didn't want the canal outside his rented room to end up like the Ganges.

Still, bathing in the canal felt so much better than hauling water in a basin. He had no intention of giving it up.

The Stormwind guards seemed to have accepted the situation long ago. Even when they caught someone, they'd only give him a kick. Jess had never seen anyone actually arrested. At first they came to chase people away every two or three days. Now they might not show up for a week or two.

When he arrived at Marin's house, the mage wasn't there yet. Jess quickly cleaned the room, then borrowed Marin's quill and a sheet of parchment to write down the spell he'd heard the night before.

By the time he got home last night, he'd been confused and exhausted, and he'd forgotten the thing he was supposed to do. Luckily, even after a night's sleep and a nightmare, he still remembered what Gakin had said.

Fuaiket.

Jess decided to write down the sound of the incantation in English letters to help himself remember it. Chinese characters looked so much like some unknown magical runes that anyone seeing them would be even more suspicious.

He wrote while muttering the word twice to himself.

Gakin had picked up this spell from some unknown source. Jess suspected his pronunciation was nowhere near accurate.

These warlocks had no proper way to study dark incantations. The spells were based on distorted forms of demonic and other void languages. Their faulty pronunciations probably prevented them from using the spells at full strength.

Thinking back to last night, Gakin's spell had had only a limited effect on him, perhaps because of his Shadow Protection Potion. Yet Jess had managed to turn the same spell back on Gakin.

But he hadn't made any casting gestures or spent any magical power. How had he cast it?

He wondered when he'd be able to do it again.

While he was thinking, Marin came up behind him.

Jess jumped and turned. "Master! When did you get here? I didn't even hear the door!"

"Because you never closed it." Marin pointed to the note beneath Jess's hand. "What language is that?"

"It's..." Jess glanced at what he'd written and stumbled over his words. "Well, Latin."

"Latin?"

"A code a childhood friend invented. His name was Latin."

"Interesting." Marin asked, "And what does this word mean?"

"That's the problem. I don't know," Jess said. "Last night I dreamed that my friends were shouting it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember what it meant. I was resting here just now when it came back to me. I thought writing it down might help, and then you came in."

"How do you pronounce it?" Marin asked, touching the teapot.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Fuck," Jess said, pronouncing every sound clearly.

Marin nodded. "Then I'm afraid I can't help you, Mr. Seso. But I think this Mr. Latin had real potential to become a mage."

"He died." Jess gave a quiet sigh. "He disappeared in Silverpine Forest. Orcs might have killed him, or perhaps worgen took him. It still hurts to think about it."

"What a shame," Marin said. "That means we'll never know what 'fuck' means."

Jess tried not to laugh. He held his forehead and covered it with a couple of coughs.

But speaking of worgen, he and Gred hadn't seen a single one during their two days of adventure, even though Morgan Ladimore and so many people in Raven Hill were terrified of them.

Could that enormous silver wolf have been one?

No. The people of Raven Hill had lived through the orc invasion. Surely they knew what a worgen looked like.

Maybe he'd have a chance to see one if he went out at night.

Curiosity gnawed at him, but he wasn't stupid enough to risk his life just to satisfy it. Besides, Gred would never agree.

"Master Marin, did you know there are worgen in Duskwood?"

Marin dropped a lump of sugar into his tea. "You mean southern Elwynn, yes? I've heard that many people now call it Duskwood. I wonder what the locals think of that nickname. You're talking about the worgen stories around Raven Hill, aren't you?"

Jess was surprised. "You've heard about them too?"

"Of course," Marin said. "The Wizard's Sanctum is independent of Dalaran and the Kirin Tor, but we still carry on the spirit of the old Council of Tirisfal: protecting humanity from otherworldly monsters and studying signs of any outside influence or invasion on Azeroth. Over the last few years, we've spoken with many migrants from those two towns. They brought up the stories about worgen around Raven Hill, and quite a few demanded that we send someone to investigate."

"And what happened?"

"Nothing came of it," Marin said. "We sent three groups made up of mages and apprentices, including some of our best students. Their talent was no worse than that of the new generation of young mages who emerged in Dalaran after the war. Even so, they found nothing but a few reanimated dead. We suspect someone is using dark energy to study necromancy and secretly disturbing the graveyards around Raven Hill and Darkshire. But we never found proof of that, either."

"Did they search at night?" Jess asked.

Marin nodded. "Yes. Master Andromath even stressed that the refugees reported seeing them at night. But it made no difference. No so-called worgen appeared, not even after dark."

Jess found the whole thing increasingly puzzling. "If there aren't any worgen, why did townspeople who've never seen one decide those wounds were made by worgen? Why not orcs? If there was shadow energy left behind, couldn't an orc warlock have done that too?"

The old mage tossed several copper coins onto the table beside Jess. Jess picked one up.

"What's this supposed to mean? Has someone been paid to spread fear and rumors between Raven Hill and Grand Hamlet, to drive people away sooner and carry out some secret plan?"

"No," Marin said. "Go to the Blue Recluse and buy me a small crab cake. Then I'll tell you a few of our theories."

Jess sighed helplessly, scooped up the copper coins, stuffed them into his pocket, and went out.

The Blue Recluse was lively even in the morning. Groups of apprentices and mages gathered there, eating, drinking, and talking, like college students heading to the cafeteria between classes.

Jess spent two copper on a cup of black coffee. It was cheap and helped him wake up. He swallowed it in two gulps, shaking off the last of the bad feeling from his nightmare.

In Stormwind, tea was far more expensive than coffee. The tea Marin drank was Goldthorn, a medicinal herb that cost a great deal.

Coffee beans could help people stay alert, but they had little use in magical medicine. Many workers preferred alcohol, which gave them a stronger kick. So coffee drinkers tended to be students and office workers who didn't have much money.

Dalaran consumed more coffee than anywhere else on the continent. To keep themselves supplied, poor mages and alchemists there had developed countless strange kinds of magical fertilizer to increase coffee yields, driving its price absurdly low.

Most herbs, though, had developed over tens of thousands of years under the influence of Azeroth's natural magical energy. They couldn't be grown faster with a simple spell. And tea plants without special effects weren't considered real tea. The price stayed high.

Who would have thought that a drink he hadn't often been willing to buy in his previous life would become the cheap thing he drank because he was poor in this less developed world?

He put down his little cup and glanced toward the corner of the tavern out of habit. To his surprise, he saw Gred. For a moment, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.

"Gred?"

"Hm?" Gred looked up and saw him.

Jess sat beside him. "What are you doing in the Mage Quarter?"

"Waiting for you, of course. Why are you out so early?"

"I'm still on the clock. Just came here for a break."

Gred glanced around. "Must be nice being a mage. Even your workplace is beautiful. Fresh air, gardens everywhere. And the students are pretty, too."

Jess chuckled. "You must want something if you came looking for me."

Gred took a swallow of milk from the big mug in front of him. "Remember the Warriors' Guild?"

"I remember." Jess narrowed his eyes at the mug. "Since when do you drink milk?"

"No drinking on the job," Gred said seriously. "The guild has given me a job. An important one. Pays well, too. I didn't want to keep it all to myself, so naturally I thought of you."

Jess asked suspiciously, "Or is it something you can't handle alone?"

The dwarf laughed. "If I can't handle a job on my own, what difference would bringing you make?"

"Very impressive, Mr. Gryphon Rider." Jess poured a little milk from Gred's mug into his coffee. "Anyway, I'd better get back to my boss. He sent me out to buy him a snack."

"Hey, wait..." Gred stopped him. "All right, I'll tell you. This one's about wolves, maybe more than one. I really could use some backup. And you saved my life more than once in Duskwood. I was only joking just now. Don't take it seriously. You're the only person I can really trust to help me."

"Where are the wolves?" Jess asked.

"A farm southeast of Goldshire. Apparently some wolves have made a den there. They've tried trapping them several times, but it hasn't worked." The dwarf pulled out a badly crumpled piece of paper, smoothed it on the table, and said, "It's a bounty posted by the Stormwind guards. Probably the farmer asked them for help, and they're short on men."

Jess glanced at the notice. It listed only an address and the person asking for help. There was no reward amount.

"Where's the bounty?"

"Five silver," Gred said. "Not bad."

"I mean, where does it say that on the paper? If the city issued this bounty, shouldn't the amount be written right there?"

By now, he could tell there was something wrong with the notice.

Gred finally admitted, "The Warriors' Guild wrote it. They took the job, then offered it to members like us."

"So they're keeping a cut?"

"If I finish this job, I'll move up in rank and qualify for harder ones," Gred explained. "The guild decides what each member can handle based on rank and gives them jobs to match. I'm just a recruit now, for example, so I can't go help the guards in Redridge fight the gnoll tribes. But after I finish a few jobs and rank up, I can."

Jess nodded slowly. Then he asked, "Why not just go to Redridge yourself? I'm sure they'd be happy to take you into the guard."

Gred blinked. "But then I wouldn't gain any rank."

"That's a rank in the Warriors' Guild, not a military rank from the kingdom, right? It doesn't sound all that useful."

"You have a point." Gred rubbed his beard. "But I can't be bothered dealing with those humans myself. Let the guild talk to them. The money the guild takes is what I'm paying them to make the arrangements."

"When are you going?" Jess asked.

"This afternoon."

"Isn't that a bit sudden?"

"Jess, what if those wolves come back and trouble that family again because we waited another day?"