The Songstealer was not in a good mood.
He had been headed to speak with one of the lackeys when he noticed the problem. The door to the storeroom was ajar. The single most important door he knew was open. In normal circumstances this might just have been a mild annoyance, but now that stupid ogre and the insolent pandaren were getting popular amongst the rabble this had the potential to be a disaster. If anyone outside of the Kabal gained access to the potions, Kazakus would be livid, and heads would roll. His included.
The Arakkoa approached the door cautiously. Best case scenario, some stupid Crystal runner had been bringing a package of reagents and forgot how a door worked on the way out. Worst case however likely involved his doom lying on the opposite side of the door. After a deep breath in, the Songstealer channelled his magic, allowing himself to Fade away. The door pushed open silently – not that it should have, the wards would have been engaged if the door had actually been closed – and the Arakkoa was able to enter as close to unnoticeably as possible.
It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust, but in the darkness the Songstealer found the room to be completely undisturbed. His ears picked up in the quiet, so far that the bubbles in the bottles became as audible as the beat of the heart within his chest. Then a sound burned through the silence, piercing his ears more than the screams of the prisoners Kazakus liked to keep for his "experiments".
Ribbit.
Something had snuck in through the door. That could so easily have been some gun-toting halfwit Goon or one of those smug Lotus Agents. But now his problem was simple.
A frog.
There was a frog in the potion storeroom.
Months of work sat in this room. Some of it fermenting it, others waiting to be delivered. None of it could be allowed to be damaged, but if that frog jumped even slightly at the wrong angle, far too much would be spilled onto the floor. Worse still, he thought, any combination of spillages could spell disaster – not just for the Songstealer, but for every other member of the Kabal, and half of the surrounding streets.
The Arakkoa moved carefully. If he could just get to the frog without being seen, then maybe he could grab it and throw it into the slurry river, or simply kill it. Or kill it and then throw it in the slurry river, he thought, the edges of his beak curving into the closest equivalent to a smile. It took him three steps to get alongside the row of shelves, and two more to move into position behind it. Raising his arms, the robe slid away from them, as his claws unfurled.
Within a blink his hands shot out, and clasped together just in time to feel the legs of the frog shoot through his fingers. The sound of bottles shaking on the next row of shelves brought the Songstealer out of his shock. The frog was about to knock over an entire shelf of potions.
Hurriedly, he ran around to the other side, ready to catch any potions that fell from the shelf, the frog all but forgotten. Two potions from the third shelf dropped, snatched out of the air by the clawed grasp of the Arakkoa. He lowered them to a nearby shelf as more teetered. High to the left something moved, and talons shot out to reach it. Another potion safely slipped into his claws. Then another. After several heart-stopping seconds, the shaking seemed to have stopped.
As he turned his back, to place the final potion on a shelf at the right height, a rustling caught his attention over to the right, quickly followed by a shattering sound. Alarmed, the Arrakoa turned to see what chaos he had missed.
On the floor lay the frog, in the remains of the potion, seemingly dead. And shiny, for some reason. The Songstealer reached out his hands, to find the remains of the frog dripping with a viscous golden liquid. Whatever this liquid was intended for, it seemed to be congealing quickly in his hands. He placed it on the table, and wiped the worst of the liquid from his talons.
With a wave of his hands, the bottle – and the spilled liquid from it – vanished from sight.
By the time he turned back again, the liquid had completely hardened. It was almost as if the frog were simply a statue. Tapping his talons on the head of the frog, the Songstealer wondered if it could still be resurrected. Channelling a little of his power, the Arakkoa attempted to return life to the dead frog. As he finished casting, he enclosed it within his talons. It began to move in his grasp.
If he could resurrect it, could he also control its mind, he wondered.
The Songstealer focused his power onto the mind of the frog, to breaking its will to become his own. Still only recently returned to life, the creature barely offered any resistance and the Songstealer took control with little effort. He opened his hands, and demanded it to move from one to the other. It moved as soon as the thought crossed his mind.
Well, now he had a credible threat to whichever idiot had left this door open in the first place.