Lost In Nether - By Sotheby

As this is getting to be a bit long, here's a chapter synopsis:

Chapter One:

In which former schoolmaster turned undead auctioneer Sagitarius Sotheby receives a shipment of books from the Stormwind library via the shady channels of the Steamwheedle cartel.

Chapter Two:

In which Sotheby presents Sylvanas Windrunner with a book entitled "A History of Quel'Thalas", which appears to have been part of the shipment and specifically ordered for the Dark Lady. It is discovered that the book is a copy created by a Highborn scribe called Ylandris, who has scattered a large number of footnotes throughout the book, all dealing with one of Sylvanas' sisters (yet unnamed).

Chapter Three:

In which Sotheby endeavours to travel to Sin'dorei lands, somewhat clandestinely, and discovers that bat handlers have a strange sense of humour.

Chapter Four:

In which Varimathras tries to discover a bit more about Sylvanas' motivations and receives very little in the way of answers.

Chapter Five:

In which Sotheby arrives at Tranquillien and discovers that being inconspicous isn't quite as easy as it seems.

* * * * *

Chapter One – A Special Delivery

For a change, it was raining in the Tirisfal Glades. The heavy drops danced an irritating little tattoo on the top of Sagitarius Sotheby’s bald pate and the chill entered even his long-dead bones.

“Top of the evening to you, Mr. Zapetta.”

The green-skinned zeppelin master shuddered to life and tilted his head upwards.

”Master Sotheby! Yer spot on! Jus’ got a delivery for ya!”

The little creature shook the rain off the brim of its hat and ducked into the shelter at the top of the derelict zeppelin tower. A second later, the lopsided, long-eared head popped back into view and Zapetta reemerged, dragging a battered trunk behind him.

“This would be…?”, Sotheby said.

“Sir, yer whatchumacallit. Order. Special wun kind o’ fing. Ye catchin’ on?”

The goblin waggled his eyebrows conspiratorily, just in case one of the dozen or so passengers huddling out on the platform hadn’t caught on yet that something possibly shady was in the offing.

Sotheby lifted his drooping eyelids in some amusement, trying to keep a straight face.

“I gather you mean the one your associates in the Steamwheedle Cartel so kindly had put together for me in southern parts?”

Zapetta’s head started bobbing up and down in enthusiastic agreement.

“’S the wun! ‘S arrived, finally!”

Sotheby smiled and bent down to brush the remnants off travel dirt off the trunk top. His bony hand traced the outlines of an almost imperceptible etching in the centre, labelling the trunk “Property of the Royal Society of Librarians, City of Stormwind”.

“Most excellent. Payment was in advance, if memory serves?”

The head just kept on bobbing.

“Aye-aye! ‘S all done an’ good, sir! Need help carryin’, sir?”

Sotheby cast a pensive eye over the waiting passengers.

“I’ll be fine, Mr. Zapetta”, he said, patting the goblin’s shoulder.

“You, you and you.” – pointing at a couple of waiting Orcs and a rather bored-looking Tauren – “Grab the trunk and heave it over to the Undercity, it’ll be fifty coins of silver for each of your troubles!”

He turned around to the sound of feet – and a pair of hooves – clattering towards him, slowly shuffling off towards the stairs leading back to ground level.

“And be careful”, he muttered. “They may only be copies but they’ve cost me a bloody fortune…”

Chapter Two – Books From Boxes

“A History of Quel’Thalas, milady”, said Sotheby, bowing his head and extending the book. It wasn’t quite clear whether the reverence contained within the gesture was sparked by the presence of Undercity’s regent or simply an expression of Sotheby’s fanatical bibliophilia.

The luminous gaze of Ex-Ranger-General Sylvanas Windrunner, now dubbed Dark Lady of the Forsaken, fell down upon the proferred book. Following the delicately winding artwork on the book’s cover with her eyes she took it from him wordlessly, turning the book around as she pulled it close and raised it to eye level, studying its outside.

“This is a good copy.”

Sotheby nodded.

“It is. It was made by Ylandris Shadowtree, a Highborn who once dwelled as a scribe in old Lordaeron.”

Carefully, the regent lifted the tome’s sturdy leather cover to regard the author’s credentials and dedication upon the book’s first page.

“Ylandris. I saw him fall, I believe. When the end drew near he exchanged his pen for a sword and stood with us against the enemy. Quite brave, he was. But rather unused to a fight to the death.”

Sotheby smiled wanly.

“As was I”, he said.

Sylvanas chuckled.

“You were… - remind me again. A merchant?”

“A school teacher, milady. The odd cutting remark over an untidy desk or a student’s laziness aside, my first contact with mortal combat was the Scourge striking me down as they fell upon our little train of refugees trying to make our way to Elwynn.”

“You have adapted quite well, Sotheby.”

“Thank you, milady. I shall never be easy pickings again.”

The regent curled her lips into a hint of a smile and returned her attention to the book in her hands, leafing through the pages. She hesitated here and there, seeming to digest the information with an unnatural quickness before turning towards yet another chapter, another footnote.

“Ylandris has added his own commentary”, she said.

Sotheby leaned forward, trying to catch a glimpse of the writing. His skills in reading upside-down Elven handwriting were, unfortunately, rather limited.

“That would be most unusual.”

“Indeed. Especially considering the focus of Ylandris’ interest.”

“Which is?”

Sylvanas turned the book around, pointing Sotheby’s attention to a handwritten footnote at the bottom. At first glance, the chapter at hand seemed to deal with the Alliance’s expedition into Draenor during the Second War, a desperate measure one of the participants of which, coincidently, was –

“…your sister?”

Sotheby stared at the footnote, written in Ylandris' careful hand.

Sylvanas said nothing. The Dark Lady was gazing off into the middle distance, lost in thought.

* * * * *

Chapter Three - Bat Out Of Hell

“Have you ridden one of these before?”

“Of course”, said Sotheby in a voice rather laden with sarcasm. “In my breathing days as a schoolmaster, it was one of the three R’s: reading, ‘rythmetics and riding leathery flying things that have grown too big to fit into the belfry.”

The bat handler snorted a laugh and proceeded to attach Sotheby’s bags to a saddle propped up against a nearby wooden rack. The leathery flying things in question, meanwhile, hung overhead with their eyes closed sleepily, one of them awaiting its turn to carry its reluctant cargo away.

“It’s grinning at me”, said Sotheby.

“It’s not.”

“I swear it is. It’s plotting something. It will drop me off somewhere in the Plaguelands as a gift for its relatives still on the loose in the wilderness.”

Bat handler Garrett, still busying himself with the various pieces of luggage Sotheby deemed necessary to travel – a fair few –, chuckled.

“If you’re so mortally afraid of my little darlings here, why don’t you just use yon translocation thing out in the yard? Too little magic in the world for all those bags?”

“Very risible”, Sotheby replied, lowering his voice a few notches. “It would, however, be a bit too plainly visible should I arrive by magical means right in the centre of Silvermoon. I feel more comfortable, given the nature of my endeavour, to use the back door.”

The bat handler cocked an eyebrow.

“Eh, what’s this, Master Sotheby? Auctioneering’s grown too boring for you so you’re off playing spy games?”

Sotheby regarded him with a pained expression, waving his right hand in a see-saw motion.

“Nothing quite of the sort. I wouldn’t dream of consciously seeking out more excitement than the local auction house has to offer. Some situations do, however, present one with the inevitable.”

Garrett regarded him bemusedly for a few seconds before grabbing a long blackwood pole with which he deftly unshackled one of the bats hanging overhead, guided it down to ground level and saddled it up.

“Just don’t do anything foolish”, he said.

“I won’t do anything you wouldn’t be doing for your city and your people, Mister Garrett.”

“That’s not necessarily the same as not doing anything foolish, Master Sotheby. Just you be careful, right?”

“Right.”

Garrett nodded and motioned for Sotheby to ascend a little step ladder for easier access to the bat’s saddle. With a comically discomforted expression, the former school teacher turned Undead entrepreneur and now, apparently, her Ladyship’s personal eyes and ears, swung himself onto the creature’s hairy back.

“And this method of travel is perfectly safe, is it?”

“Naturally. Unless you count that one time mean old Harold got a little hungry in midair and –“

“Mr. Garrett!”

“Never you mind, just pulling your leg. Harold, on the other hand, got to pulling a little more than –”

“This is not funny, Mr. Garrett!”

The bat handler cackled and smacked the riding bat on the rump, causing it to strain against the ground and push itself off into the air.

“Safe travels! And don’t you go doing that again, Harold!”

”Mister Garreeeett!”

Sotheby’s alarmed cry could be heard echoing through the caverns of the Undercity quite a while after the bat had swung itself out of the old sewer entrance and off on course towards Tranquillien.

* * * * *

Chapter Four – The Lady Deigns To Speak

“You know something I don’t.”

She didn’t respond.

“Well?”

Nothing. More nothing. Still nothing. Then:

“It bespeaks your intelligence that you haven’t phrased that as a question.”

Varimathras snorted. She was, as always, delighted to play with his temper.

“Let me put it differently, then”, he said. “Why, of all people, do you send a nitpicking would-be librarian that runs what I would charitably call a cornershop and used to educate the sons of farmers in the art of scribbling three X’s if the tax inspector comes knocking, to investigate a matter that is – how shall I phrase it – most delicate to you?”

Silence was his only answer.

“Obviously, that was the wrong question again”, he mused.

An amused twinkle in her eyes. He suppressed the desire to sign his own death warrant in an attempt to tear her head off – something the Dreadlord had fantasized about doing, several times a day, ever since he had involuntarily entered her service.

“You obviously have been plotting ever since that Sin’dorei appeared with his wretched amulet.”

A slight inclination of her head was all he got.

“Yet you told him off.”

A ghost of a smile.

“Ah.”

Varimathras began pacing, ticking off points on his fingertips as he spoke.

“So, you tell him off because you do not want the Sin’dorei to know that it is still a matter of interest to you. You send the bookworm because it would be slightly conspicuous if you feign disinterest but suddenly unleash an army of Deathstalkers snooping around Quel’Thalas.”

He paused, staring at two raised fingers, then bent up a third.

“Additionally, that Sotheby will not use whatever information he gathers against you, simply because he’s a foolish, loyal sod and no two ways about it. Did I miss anything? Aside from your silence getting to be a tad exasperating?”

“Yes.”

“Mmmmh.”

The Nathrezim shook his head as if to chase away a gnat disturbing his musings. He frowned.

“You have something more than that amulet. You’ve got a lead, something more solid than an old memory.”

“Not yet.”

“But…?”

That twinkle in her eyes again. She wouldn't say more, he knew.

"Patience", he said, mimicking her.

A curt not.

"That will do."

Chapter Five – Tranquillien

The land that had followed the courses of history and seen trolls build an empire, Elves find shelter and humans come and go was dying. The Scourge had driven its poisoned spear deep into its heart and the Sin’dorei had left scorched earth where they couldn’t hold fast. It was bleeding out, fading away from a growing cancer that festered out of the place humans had dubbed Deatholme. The land had no names for places. It had only pain.

It was worse in the dead of night, when the festering wound running through its centre came crawling with Scourge, every skeletal footfall an outrage, every defiled tree another needle rammed into a nerve end. What had once been a peaceful woods had been twisted into a barren cemetery where the only thing that grew was corruption and the only thing that prospered was decay.

There was no shining beacon of hope, only a shelter from the storm huddled against the flank of Sungraze Peak: Tranquillien.

“Lovely”, said Sotheby, gazing at the assembly of ruins and semi-collapsed dugouts that constituted the recently retaken village.

He had been forced to abandoned Harold the bat at Light’s Hope Chapel and taken up – and paid a small fortune for – an escort of half a dozen Forsaken commissioned to the Argent Dawn to get him through the mountains and into what could charitably be called contested lands but truly was Scourge territory. They had been stalked by agents of Deatholme seemingly all the way, Sotheby’s nerves ruined by the thought of imminent attacks and the sounds that shattered the stillness of the night, but they had reached their goal almost unmolested.

“There is a bat route from Tranquillien to Silvermoon. You should be able to find your way from here on”, said Dawsey, one of the hired body guards. He was, Sotheby had seen, a dead eye with his bow, having shot off a Scourge’s skull during their first night’s camp at a distance of a good 60 yards when it had wandered into sight.

“Bats”, he said. “Splendid.”

Seeing off his escort to what might have been an inn once upon a time, he paid the ruin’s landlord for the privilege of depositing his luggage in relative safety and said his farewells to take a look around town.

It wasn’t a long look.

“It is not much but, thankfully, it’s not home either.”

Sotheby turned at the sound of a voice behind him and came face to face with another Forsaken, clad in the uniform of a Tranquillien defender. A chainmail clattered loosely around his ribcage and bony fingers held on to the hilt of a sword buried in a battered scabbard.

“As long as it’s safe”, said Sotheby.

“Wish it were.”

Sotheby eyed him warily.

“Don’t worry. Don’t stray too far from town and you’ll probably be fine”, was the best his chance encounter could do for him in the reassurance department before continuing his rounds.

Sotheby took the cue to head back to the ruined building that housed his luggage and a temporary bed and turn in for the night. He didn’t get far.

“A word with you, Sotheby.”

A few seconds later, he found himself in a tent that stood against a wall that was the sole remnant of the house that once had occupied this place, in the company of High Executor Mavren.

“Have a seat.”

Sotheby hunkered down on an untrustworthy looking chair that had seen better days and squinted against the light of a candle that stood in the centre of a beaten-up former dinner table separating him from Mavren.

“You’ll forgive me if I skip the pleasantries and ask you directly. What is your business here?”

Sotheby had been expecting something of the sort. He hadn’t expected the question to be posed by a fellow Forsaken, though.

“I have no business here. My business lies in Silvermoon City. I am merely making camp for the night in Tranquillien.”

Mavren frowned.

“Quite an unusual way to reach your goal when you could just have translocated from Undercity.”

Sotheby shrugged.

“I could have. I am, however, a man of trade. As such, I chose a different route.”

“Achieving what?”

“Very little. It was a scouting trip, if that’s what you want to call it.”

“Go on.”

“Following the experiences of the last couple of days, I don’t think it’s feasible to finance escorted transports through these lands and over to Light’s Hope without considerable losses. A shame, really. There’s quite a decent profit market in Silvermoon City.”

He could see Mavren wasn’t going to let him get away with that explanation quite so smoothly.

“Sounds plausible. Good. Maybe our allies will even buy it”, Mavren said. “I don’t.”

He stepped around the table and propped himself up with his back against it, looking down at Sotheby.

“A couple of weeks ago, I had a Sin’dorei ranger clutching an old trinket in the very chair you’re sitting on now and after a bit of a talk I sent him to the Undercity to report to the Dark Lady herself.”

Sotheby raised a scraggly eyebrow but held his tongue. The less he said now, the better.

“Apparently she wasn’t too pleased with his little gift, even though it was an old amulet of hers he had uncovered in the ruins of Windrunner Spire and it was engraved with a personal dedication of her sister Alleria. Yet she reacted quite brusquely.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Maybe you didn’t. You know something else though. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

“As I said –“

“And as I said: I don’t believe a word of it. I’ve got a few friends in Light’s Hope and the Undercity so I’ve made a few inquiries. You don’t take chances like those involved in a trip through the Plaguelands for profit.”

“A man can change”, Sotheby said, rather lamely.

“Not in my experience.”

They stared at each other.

“I’ll have an eye on you. Get out.”

A few minutes later, Sotheby laid himself to rest with uneasy thoughts of what he had gotten himself into.