Plague

"An' finish it up with a fireball to the face for uh. Eight damage."

"Ain't eight, it's seven. You only got the one one card with spell damage."

"Well. Don't really matter if it's seven'r eight, yer dead either way."

Slamming his cards down on the board, Dale Brachen waved a hand at his opponent's side, "And folks tell me I'm crazy when I tell 'em that mage's're overpowered."

Horace Varner held his tongue on that particular matter for a moment. He had heard this particular complaint before. Not that it mattered if it was mages or rogues or warriors. His opponent was a sore loser, and there really wasn't anything that the humble man from Lakeshire could really do about it. Especially if he wanted to keep playing. It hadn't taken long for Dale to drive off every other Hearthstone player in their little camp out in the Swamp of Sorrows, so if he wanted to keep at it, he only really had one option.

A very whiny option.

"Jus' need to put some more thought into yer deck's all. Yeh've seen mine a buncha times, just need some, ah. Preventory measures is all," he said, calmly picking up his cards from the board.

Dale just huffed, throwing his hands up, "Well forgive me if I don't spend my entire wage on this stuff Horace. These are what I got, so this is what I'm gonna play with. It'll work next time. Openin' hand was awful."

"Right," Horace said silently, glancing around for a new subject, only to find their small encampment empty, "Everybody else already run off to bed? Seems a bit early."

"I dunno, most of 'em probably just took an early night," Dale said, quickly switching topics, prepping himself for what he wanted to complain about now, "Deaders should be out on patrol so you won't see none a them."

"You know they don't like it when you call 'em that," Horace muttered, mostly to himself, shuffling through his cards, "An' it ain't worth causin' no trouble with 'em."

The other man waved a hand dismissively at the idea. "They ain't around here," he said, first in a whisper, but then louder, once he confirmed for himself that the death knights that had been assigned to their patrol were far out of sight. "'Sides," he said, now with a more cocky attitude, "I'll call 'em what I want. Like they're gonna do nothin' about it. Ain't like you can hurt their feelings. They ain't got none."

"They don't like it when you say that, neither," Horace said, even quieter this time, knowing that whatever he said was little more than a subject for Dale to speak the opposite of, "You wanna play again?"

"Nope," Dale said casually, propping his feet up on the table. Horace sighed, inching the board away from him so that it could be put away.

"Well alright then," Horace said, scooping the board up under his arms and standing from their makeshift table, which was little more than a barrel with a flat piece of wood slapped on top of it, "Think I'm going to get some early shut eye too then. Might be that the Captain's gonna surprise us with early mornin' drills or something."

Dale just nodded, keeping his feet propped up as he watched Horace make his way to the overly large tent that served as the camp's barracks. Not long after, his eyelids started to grow heavy, though he couldn't be bothered to drag himself all the way to his bunk. The chair, he proposed to himself, was about as comfortable as his bunk anyway. He didn't open them again until the sun had risen again.

Or at the very least, it certainly seemed that the sun had risen high in the sky. Except he knew, blinking his eyes trying to drag himself up from the depths of sleep, that there was no way in hell that the Captain would have ever allowed him to sleep for so long. Especially sitting so blatantly in the middle of camp. A few more blinks revealed to him that it was not in fact the sun that he was seeing, but a torch, being held a few inches from his face. He also noticed a few moments after this discovery that Horace's face was a mere few inches away from him, which proved to be startling enough for him to fall backwards, his chair slamming back against the ground.

It was stars that he saw now. Stars mixed in with Horace's concerned face. Within another few moments, he saw Horace offer him a hand, which he took. He was promptly hauled up, slowly tuning into Horace's constant panicked whispers. Little of what the man was saying was actually understandable. Just that Dale needed to follow him, because he wasn't going to believe what he saw, or something along those line. Why he hadn't gone and informed the Captain if it was so important was beyond him.

He was practically dragged to the front of the encampment, and pointed towards a moderately sized black lump in the middle of the road. Squinting at the thing he realized that it wasn't just some pile of dark rocks or an oversized bear, but one of the death knights assigned to the camp. Nor, as he previously believed about the potential bear, was he dead once more. Dale could still see the light blue flicker of his eyes, casting a pale glow on the road. His breathing picked up at that, and he looked back at Horace for an answer.

Horace just shook his head, and stammered, "He just. He just wandered back outta the woods. Talkin' mad an' lookin' like he. Like he had jus' turned into one of them lepers or somethin'. Then he threw chunks all over the ground an' keeled over."

Leaning down, he could see what looked to be the pox that had over the man's face. Inching back towards camp, Dale pointed at the death knight in disbelief, "He was throwin' up? They ain't supposed to do that. Hell they're supposed to make people do that." When Horace nodded grimly, he motioned him back into the camp, "Well don't touch 'im. Tell the Captain what happened, an' walk up the others. Jus'. Jus' don't do nothin' with 'im else."

Behind him he heard Horace skitter off, but he didn't pay him any mind. Instead Dale marched to both sides of the gate, pushing each door of it closed. Far was he from an expert on disease. But any sort of barrier and whatever had befallen the deader was a start in his book.