-5- Serum 146

With a slurping sound that could have been the hacking cough of a dragon, the frozen yeti began to move. The milky-white substance that covered its body melted away, dripping in pools to the floor and beginning to steam. By the time it had evaporated, the yeti opened its eyes. They glowed blood red like the strange creatures that had attacked the camp the previous night. Only this time their quarry was at least three times as tall, and twice as wide. The giant beast took a step forward, but it was choppy and uncertain like it was learning how to walk again. The Trolls remained docile as the yeti looked around, probably unsure of where he was. He looked at the corpse of Fredrus, but to the Trolls' relief it gave no immediate reaction. It turned to look at them quizzically, probably unsure as to what they were.

"What are we going to do, commander? If this thing is anything like the creatures last night, we've got quite a monster on our hands," said Hirojata.

Guro'jintal grunted. "We need to get to Fredrus' books and research. It's imperative we find out what's been going on down here."

Alojin turned to looked at Guro'jintal expectantly. "I don't know if this thing is going to stay friendly for long."

The old Troll looked at the yeti, and noticed it seemed more alert. No doubt it would be getting hungry, eventually. At that point, they would either have to be very far away, or it would have to be dead.

"Darkspear, take it down."

They let loose their bolts in quick succession. Most hit home with a few strays, and the yeti stumbled from the impact. Several had caught it on the chest, while a lucky shot had caught it just above the eye. It teetered for a moment, and then righted itself. The Trolls reloaded, but Guro'jintal was watching the beast the whole time as he slid the next bolt in with practiced ease. It looked as if its eyes were growing brighter.

With a gruesome lack of speed the yeti brought its hand up and closed its giant fingers around the shaft that was protruding from its skull. It yanked it free, and with the slightest sign of blood. Some of the bolts embedded in its chest fell out on their own, barely making it past the layer of fur that covered the giant yeti. It threw up its head and let out a bellow of rage that shook the room.

"S**t."

Guro'jintal would have seconded the curse, but the yeti had dropped its fiery eyes to glare at them, and charged with a speed its size betrayed. Everyone leapt aside, except for Biotal, who was a second too slow. The yeti's meaty hand swept past the Troll, lifting the smaller figure into the air and sending him sailing into a table of alchemy equipment. Meanwhile, the others aligned their crossbows.

"Careful on your placement. Anywhere from the neck up. Fire!" said Guro'jintal. His shot was true, as were several others. The beast staggered away with five bolts lodged in its skull, one narrowly missing its left eye. But then it reached up and began to pluck them away, and Guro'jintal felt a hint of worry shoot up his spine.

"Our crossbows are of no use! The damned beast is impervious!" said Hijawath.

The yeti roared and attempted to crush a pair of the Trolls with its hands, but they dodged aside. Biotal had recovered from his fall, spear in hand. It gave Guro'jintal an idea.

"Impervious to projectiles, perhaps. But forged steel?" He slung the crossbow to his back and withdrew his bone dagger. Sharpened to an edge envious of many a sword, the weapon could cut just as well as any conventional weapon. "Weapons free! Take this beast down!"

They circled the yeti and began their attack. First Hirojata, Alojin, and Biotal came upon its right flank while Hijawath arrived at its left. Their assault distracted the beast while Hijawath dug a hunting spear into its left thigh. The force of the blow pushed the spear completely through. As the yeti screamed, Hijawath attempted to retrieve his weapon, but the spear wouldn't budge. A backhand blow from the yeti sent the Troll spinning away, dazed. The other three Trolls retreated, and then Guro'jintal and a Troll named Vilzujin moved in while Afawata and Wotam attacked from the rear. Guro'jintal managed to deliver a deep gash in the yeti's forearm, but it was Afawata and Wotam who were able to take out chunks of the beast with their axes.

The beast flailed around, completely enraged by the pain and the power infused by Fredrus' concoction. It locked onto Vilzujin and charged bring its head down to skewer the Troll. But he was quick to dodge, and manage to escape with a nasty cut on his side. The monster didn't slow as he turned and charged at a trio of Trolls who had moved away, catching two with its flailing limbs and sending them sprawling. All tactic had been lost to the beast's rage, and now it was a matter of simply staying out of its way.

"How are we going to take this thing down?" said Hirojata. Guro'jintal glanced around, hoping to find an answer among the beakers and vials. He shook his head.

"I've got an idea," spoke up Biotal next to them. "I'll hold him still with my spear, one way or another. Meanwhile, someone get on top of the beast and finish him off."

Guro'jintal wasn't quite sure what the Troll had in mind, but it was the only plan they had at the moment. "Very well. Get into position, Biotal. I'll follow your lead."

They raced off in opposite directions. The other Trolls remained in close proximity to the yeti, prodding and poking to keep it occupied. Biotal and Hirojata took up a position at one end of the room, while Guro'jintal perched on a table at the opposite end. Hirojata got onto his hands and knees, his back horizontal and parallel with the floor. Spear in hand, Biotal nodded to Guro'jintal, who returned the gesture.

"Bring it over here!" shouted Biotal.

Hijawath rolled dangerously close to its legs, lashing out with his axe and cutting a gash in its calf. The giant moaned in agitation, grabbing at the slippery Troll as he darted away. It gave chase, right to Biotal and Hirojata. Biotal tensed his grip on the spear, and then broke into a sprint. A second later, and Guro'jintal was on the run as well. Biotal leapt into the air, using Hirojata's back as a platform. He was level with the yeti's glaring eyes as he closed, and for a moment he thought they creature was looking right at him. Then he drove his spear forward, right into the monster's slack, drooling mouth. There was a sick sound as the tip penetrated the back of the yeti's mouth, pushing clean through. His momentum was spent, so he held onto the spear and hung in the air two feet away from the yeti's menacing visage. Guro'jintal stopped his assault as he waited for the beast to fall, as was every other Troll in the room. It had fallen into dead silence as they waited for the inevitable.

But it never came. And then Guro'jintal knew it was already too late. He saw the beast bring its hands up, but then his focus was on the back of its ugly, horned head. He heard the sound of bone snapping, but ignored it. As he closed the final distance between he and the yeti, he knew he had made a mistake. And he knew the consequences. His vision began to darken as his eyes slowly clouded over with a layer of red mist. And then he was upon the yeti, bone dagger poised to strike.

---

But he had been too late. The lethal strike had nearly severed the yeti's head in a single blow, but instead left it hanging by a few strands of arteries and flesh. It toppled over, finally dead. But not before it had taken one of their own. Biotal fell to the floor like a rag doll, most of his bones broken from when the yeti had reached up and crushed the life out of him. As they had done with Yiwolta, the Trolls took a moment of silence for the fallen.

"...may our ancestors watch over you, Biotal. The glory of your death in battle resides in each of us, now."

After Guro'jintal finished the prayer, they beat their right fist on their chest twice, and bowed their heads in a final recognition of passing. Then they gathered themselves, and proceeded to the task at hand. They pushed Fredrus' corpse aside to look upon a scene that was both enthralling and revolting.

The desks were literally covered in parchment. Books and stacks of faded paper covered in writing lay everywhere, in little organization. Most of the material present was written in a language Guro'jintal couldn't understand, but there was a formula written in Common that appeared to be the procedure necessary for procuring Fredrus' invention. Stuck to the wall with pins were pictures, some sketchings while others were photographs. They were from past experiments, with small footnotes written in the corners of the photo. Another piece of paper caught his attention. There was a list of seven names, one of which had a check next to it. Fabrovus Marx. It sounded Human in nature.

Guro'jintal felt his stomach squirm as he glanced at one of the photographs depicting an experiment gone terribly wrong. Luckily, Alojin caught his attention with a box in hand.

"We found something you might want to take a look at," said the Troll.

Guro'jintal released the clasp on the box, and opened the lid. Inside were six long, big vials. It appeared as if a parchment was wrapped inside, so Guro'jintal gingerly popped the cork on one of the vials and gently tapped it to get the parchment to fall out. Wrapped in the parchment was a smaller vial filled with the red liquid of Fredrus' concoction. The old Troll suspected the worse, and as he read the parchment, the suspicion came to fruition.

My dear friend Eisigs,

My research is complete. Over the last few days I've been able to put the experiment into the testing stages, and after several days of fine tuning I've achieved the perfect solution. You need only to feed it to any living organism, and the reaction will be immediate. Then, just follow the instructions below that allow you to guide your subjects to your every whim. It's now my great pleasure to present Serum 146 to you. For the glory of the Lich King, Isaac!

-Fredrus Diaspin

He crumpled the parchment and tossed it onto the table. "He was planning to send this poison out to his colleagues."

Guro'jintal had an afterthought, and quickly counted the vials present. Six. He glanced back at the names on the wall, his eyes settling on Marx's name.

"It looks like he's already gotten to one of them," he added. "Help me search his lab. Find anything you can on a man named Fabrovus Marx. We can't let this Serum 146 fall into the Scourge's hands."

He began sifting through papers, his eyes drawn to the photographs of the horrific experiments. "I don't want to fathom the results."

---

In the quiet darkness of the Grizzly Hills, something was moving. A caravan of the Undead arrived on the outskirts of a small town. A figure descended from a meat wagon, clothed in flowing, black robes that glowed with an unholy aura. He scanned the darkness ahead, just able to make out the outline of the well. He smiled as he thought of how close he was to his prize. Tonight, the Scourge would be introduced to a new kind of warfare.

He approached the base of the well with a pair of necromancers and a few straggling ghouls. He looked into the darkness of the pit, then turned to one of the necromancers.

"Shall we descend, lord Eisigs?" inquired the necromancer.

Isaac nodded. They descended on a pair of ropes already in place, and began the descent into Fredrus' lair. Upon arriving in the lab, Eisigs began looking for the alchemist.

"Fredrus? Are you here, my friend? I have come as you insisted. Do you have something for me?" he said, walking up to the desks littered with papers.

He saw the vials first, shattered on the floor with the red liquid pooling in rotting floorboards. Then he saw Fredrus' corpse pinned to the wall by a number of arrow shafts. A sheet of paper was stuck to the alchemist's chest. Eisigs plucked it away, and began to read the message written in Common.

Glory to the righteous and those without masters. Whoever you may be, know that your allegiance has cost you your life. Death to the Lich King, and death to his puppets.

He let the parchment fall from his fingers, and watched it glide through the air until it landed in a pool of the red liquid and the serum began to seep into the paper.

Then there was a strange bubbling sound, and he turned to see an orange glow coming from a vial sitting on the desk. He turned to run, and when he saw the other vials glowing around the room, he knew it was too late.

---

An explosion rocked the surface. The death of Eisigs and the pair of necromancers temporarily stunned the remaining Undead automatons, until the remaining necromancers were able to regain control of the Scourge. But by then it was too late because they weren't prepared for what came next.

"That's the queue," said Kelar, looking down through the hatch at the Dwarves inside the steam tank. "Open fire!"

A trio of smaller explosions shook the ridge as the steam tanks fired their payload into the unsuspecting flank of the Scourge caravan. Nearly half of the enemy had been obliterated in a single salvo. It couldn't have been called a battle, or even a skirmish; as the necromancers struggled to command their remaining soldiers to focus on the ridge from where the Dwarves had fired upon them, Guro'jintal and the other Trolls were already advancing on the caravan's rear. They fell over the two remaining meat wagons like a black mist, silencing the necromancers' commands with a blade to their throats.

And then it was over. Fredrus' work had been destroyed, and fortune had blessed them with the chance to eliminate another of the Lich King's generals. Now they would have to hunt down Fabrovus Marx and erase the any trace that Serum 146 ever existed.

Kelar let out a sigh of relief as the steam tanks rumbled on in the darkness, finally free of fear from creatures that walked the night.

"So where are you gonna' be findin' this Marx fellow?" asked the Dwarf. Guro'jintal, sitting next to him atop the steam tank, let out a sigh of his own.

"To where it all started, I suppose."

"Where's that?"

"Dragonblight."