Raven Hill Cemetery lay just north of town. An abandoned road overgrown with weeds led straight to its closed iron gates.
The metalwork on the gates and fence was detailed and beautiful. This place must once have been busy. Jess could almost picture what it had looked like before the explosion at Karazhan.
Countless veterans and nobles who had died in earlier wars were buried here. Families of fallen heroes, and nobles and lords who only wanted to put on a show, would often arrive in fine carriages to pay their respects. The people of Raven Hill had made a living from those visitors and from caring for the dead. The cemetery had been their gold mine.
Of course, all that was gone after the great explosion, the spread of the darkness, and the appearance of one frightening rumor after another.
Jess moved close to the fence and peered inside. Rows of gravestones stood together, large and small, made in different shapes and styles. Here and there, a family tomb rose among them.
A small house stood on a hill at the far end. Perhaps it had once belonged to the cemetery keeper, or to the people who prepared bodies for burial.
Judging by how run-down it looked, nobody had been inside for a long time.
In the game, this place was home to the final target in a quest chain: Mor'Ladim, a skeleton warrior who could cast Holy Light spells and was terrifyingly strong.
In the early versions of the game, players leveling here were usually in their twenties and not yet level thirty. Mor'Ladim, a level-thirty-five elite, patrolled the area. Low-level players doing quests could easily draw his attention by accident.
Once he noticed them, he'd charge into the crowd and cut down one player after another with a couple of swings, leaving bodies everywhere in no time.
But Mor'Ladim also had a tragic story. He had once been a brave paladin who fought against the Scourge invasion more than ten years from now. When the war ended, he returned home to find his wife and two of his children dead. His last surviving daughter had disappeared.
After searching everywhere without finding her, he lost his mind beside his wife's grave and mistakenly killed several Night Watchmen who had tried to comfort him. When he realized what he'd done, he took his own life in grief and despair. He became a wandering figure of vengeance with no one left to take revenge on, making the already terrifying Raven Hill even worse.
He never knew that his daughter, Sarah Ladimore, had left Raven Hill for Grand Hamlet—later known as Darkshire—and joined Duskwood's volunteer defense force, the Night Watch. Father and daughter never saw each other again.
As Jess thought about the story, something suddenly felt wrong.
"Gred."
"Hmm?" The dwarf, who had been carefully studying the dirt and weeds, looked up. "Found some herbs?"
"No. Do you remember the name of that guard from last night?"
"Morgan something... Moor? Who can remember all you humans' weird names?"
"Morgan Ladimore," Jess said.
"Close enough."
Gred had no interest in the subject. He followed a muddy puddle farther away, leaving Jess alone, staring at the lonely house inside the cemetery.
Yes. That boy, who was about Jess's age, was the future Mor'Ladim.
Jess remembered the terrifying undead warrior as a man who'd already had three children and been dead for a long time. His wife had become a gravestone years earlier, and his only remaining daughter had grown into a lovely young woman.
Naturally, Jess had always imagined him as a middle-aged man. It had never occurred to him to connect that figure with an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old boy.
"Over here!" Gred suddenly shouted.
The call pulled Jess back to the present. He hurried over to the dwarf and stopped beside a pit surrounded by tree roots.
Gred stood on a thick root that stretched over the pit and held out an arm to stop Jess. "Don't go down there. See that? This is probably a resting spot for wolves or bears."
"A resting spot?" Jess asked, confused. "Isn't that just a den?"
"It's different," Gred said. "Wolf dens and bear dens are usually caves. Wolves like natural caves and rocky hollows. Some bears dig their own. Anyway, those are the places they live. But when they go hunting, they sometimes travel a long way. So they'll find somewhere sheltered or comfortable away from their dens to rest. Like a roadside inn."
He pointed into the pit. "See the wolf fur down there? I can even smell the stink of wolves from here. There's probably some droppings nearby, too. We'll set our trap here. We might not even need bait."
"Would wolves really rest this close to a cemetery?" Jess asked.
"That suggests the rumors you heard might be true," Gred said. "The wolves here probably do eat human flesh. They've made the cemetery their hunting ground. If our trap works, we'll have a much better chance of getting one of those so-called Evil Claws."
"Then let's set it," Jess said.
The dwarf grunted in agreement, swung the iron animal trap off his back, and slid into the pit. Once it was set, he covered it roughly with dirt, weeds, and animal fur.
"Won't the wolves smell you and stop using this spot?" Jess asked.
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"You've got the makings of a hunter, kid," Gred said. "Back in the Hinterlands, I'd cover myself in bear shit before doing this. But here, it should be fine. The wolves around here probably haven't smelled a dwarf before. If they catch a strange scent, they'll be suspicious for a while, at most. Once they see there's no danger, they'll relax. But if they smell a hunter who's always after them—one of you humans, say—they might abandon the place just like you said."
He climbed out of the pit and brushed dirt and filth from himself. "We can leave this alone now and look for herbs somewhere else. We'll come back tomorrow. Found anything?"
"No." Jess leaned on the handle of his logging axe against a piece of blue-gray stone jutting from the ground and caught his breath. "We're still too close to Raven Hill. The townspeople or travelers passing through could've picked all the herbs here. Most people who don't know what they're doing don't leave the roots, either. They just pull up the whole plant. After years of that, even places that used to have herbs wouldn't have any left. We should look somewhere more out of the way."
Gred glanced toward the cemetery fence, barely visible under the trees. "What about Grave Moss?"
Jess looked that way too. He realized that, deep down, he still didn't want to go inside the cemetery.
Finding signs of wolves nearby had only made the place feel stranger.
After all, even wolves looking for bones to chew would want fresh ones with meat on them, not the rotten bones of people buried years ago.
That meant there must be plenty of rotting flesh in the cemetery.
How could there still be meat worth eating in a cemetery so many years after the war?
There was only one explanation. There weren't just undead in there. There might be a lot of them—so many that the wolves of the forest had turned the place into a hunting ground.
The good news was that predators generally avoided attacking enemies that were too dangerous. Wolves liked eating rabbits, for example, but they'd think twice about going after a deer. Even deer could be dangerous to wolves.
Carnivores hunted for food, not because they wanted to fight everything they saw. They had to consider the chance of getting hurt.
For a wild animal, a serious injury often meant death. Even if it survived and the wound healed, it could make hunting much harder.
So if wolves had made the cemetery their hunting ground, whatever undead creatures were inside might not be very strong. At least they wouldn't be as terrifying as gnolls. No wild animal wanted to pick a fight with a gnoll.
"It's still morning," Gred said. "If we go in now, we've got at least six or seven hours before nightfall."
He had a point. Jess looked up at the sky, hidden by the branches. Once he'd grown used to how dark this forest was, he could tell there really was a difference between day and night in Duskwood.
Last night had been especially black. Without the lights that burned all night in town, he wouldn't have been able to see his hand in front of his face. Now, at least a little light that looked like sunlight could make its way through the layers of darkness beneath the trees, leaving spots of light on the gray-green grass.
Jess gave the axe in his hand a swing. "Let's go, then."
"Take it easy." Gred watched the blade move back and forth. "Don't forget what you said yesterday. We're here to gather herbs, not start fights. Unless we're in real danger... don't go looking for trouble."
"I remember," Jess said. "If even you can remember it that clearly, how could I forget?"
The dwarf laughed and set off toward the cemetery first.
Jess followed. Once they reached the fence again, they walked along it for a long time without reaching the end.
It really deserved to be called the largest cemetery in the Kingdom of Stormwind. It might even be the largest on the continent. At least Jess couldn't remember seeing anything this big in Lordaeron.
Gred was getting annoyed with all the walking. He grabbed the fence and shook it. Though it had been abandoned for years, the iron bars were still solid. Even he couldn't easily budge them.
"How are we supposed to get in?"
"If the wolves can get inside, we should be able to as well." Jess looked toward the base of the fence. "Watch the ground. Maybe they've dug a hole under it or something."
"Good point."
Gred nodded and kept walking. After another ten minutes or so, Jess spotted an unusual clump of plants growing at the base of the wall beneath the fence.
Long, closely packed stems spread outward. At their tips grew clusters of thin leaves that looked like coarse silver-white hairs. The clusters resembled little chrysanthemums packed together into a mound of silver, rippling gently in the breeze.
Was that... Silverleaf?
Almost everything Jess knew about Silverleaf came from the illustrated herb guides he'd read at the library. The crude, ancient game models, built from flat textures crossing over one another, were no use for identifying most herbs in the real world.
"Wait."
Jess called Gred back, pulled out his scroll, and found his rough drawing and notes on Silverleaf. The plant seemed to match.
"Is this Silverleaf?"
"Let me see."
Gred picked off a small sprig, rubbed it between his fingers, and smelled it. "Could well be. I knew a fellow who liked to dry Silverleaf and add it to bitter ale for the smell. Think it smelled like this."
"A pound of Silverleaf can sell for more than two silver coins." Jess took out his little knife. "How much do you think we've got here?"
"Hard to say." Gred turned the plant over. "But nowhere near a pound, that's for sure. It'll be a little lighter by the time we get it back to Stormwind and the dew dries off."
"Well, it's a start."
Jess crouched and was about to cut a stem when something moved in the grass. He jerked in fright, shouted a curse in his native language, pulled his hand back, and stepped away.
"What'd you say?" Gred, who'd been watching their surroundings, turned around. "What happened?"
Jess swallowed. "Something moved in there."
"You sure?" Gred came closer and slowly raised his sword, pointing it toward the Silverleaf.
He looked around but couldn't see anything unusual. He pursed his lips and gestured for Jess to take another look.
Jess nodded and carefully reached forward. His knife had only just pushed one leaf aside when the grass shook again!
Gred drove his sword straight into the patch. There was a sharp cracking sound, as if he'd hit something hard. Whatever was hiding in the grass began thrashing wildly. Gred jerked his sword upward and flung it into the air.
It was a severed arm!
The arm writhed like a huge insect. Gred's face went white, and he was so startled that he threw his sword away. When the arm flew off the blade and landed far away, he hurried to pick the sword back up.
He swore several times in Dwarven, then said, "Quick! Cut the Silverleaf! We're leaving!"
Jess immediately crouched and started cutting. After harvesting the whole clump, he noticed a hole in the wall behind it, just large enough for someone to crawl through.
"Gred, there's a hole right here!"
"You go first! I'll be right behind you!"
Gred kept his sword pointed at the arm, which was still rolling around on the ground. Jess glanced back at it. It looked like the tail a giant lizard had dropped.
The thought sent a chill through him. If the tail was here, where was the giant lizard?
The question flashed through his mind, but he made up his mind at once and crawled into the hole. Fortunately, he was thin enough to slip through without trouble. The dwarf, with his barrel-shaped body, had a much harder time. Jess had to dig away quite a bit of dirt with his axe before he could pull him through.
They stood up and leaned against the wall to catch their breath. Jess gave the dwarf a sideways look.
"Why were you so scared too?"
Gred looked annoyed. "A whole zombie doesn't scare me. But an arm wriggling around on its own? Who wouldn't get the creeps?"
"And look at you! Every little rustle makes you jump like a kitten. Embarrassing. Hah. But I never expected much from humans anyway."
With that, the dwarf took a deep breath and got to his feet. He glanced back outside the fence, then looked at the bag in Jess's hands.
"Well? How much do you think we've got?"
Jess lifted the bag. "Feels like the bag weighs more than the herbs."
"About what I expected."