As the sun set over Orgrimmar and the scorching day turned into thick, sweltering night, the taverns of the city filled with adventurers of the Horde, seeking a brief reprieve from their journeys. In one such tavern, filled with loud song and shouts, the sounds of various containers carrying various liquids being rapidly emptied, a small group, no more than three, was celebrating.
One was a troll, turquoise-skinned and with a shock of blue hair. He had the countenance of a shaman and the huge mace to show for it. The next was a blood elf woman, a mage, judging by her extravagantly colourful robes. And finally, an orc warrior in old chipped armor and a ferocious expression of happiness.
"Drink up, mon, da next round be on me," the troll said, just before taking a large swig of his beer. He then belched and added, "Be nobody sayin' Jan'ree don' know how ta treat his friends."
"Treat his friends to cheap swill, you mean," the orc laughed. However, his half-empty tankard seemed to contradict his words.
Only the blood elf mage seemed not to partake in her companions' good cheer, as she hadn't even touched her drink.
"What's wrong, Zidorah? Aren't you thirsty?" the orc asked, gesturing towards the gigantic tankard in front of her.
"I will drink when I please it," she replied, raising her chin haughtily. Her Orcish was lilted, when it should have been guttural, creating a jarring sort of accent, but her grammar was impeccable, hinting that she learned the language from books rather than by conversing with a native speaker.
"Don' tease da girl, Ogdor," the troll said, attempting to keep a straight face and failing.
The orc laughed heartily and turned his attention back to the troll. Zidorah furtively grabbed the tankard's handle and strained herself trying to lift it, but could barely budge it. She briefly leaned forward and considered sipping without lifting the large container, but she knew she'd end up with a faceful of froth and did not think her dignity could survive such circumstances.
"I think I've said this before," Ogdor started, as he stared intently at the table, "but we should never have gone to that cursed place."
Jan'ree and Zidorah sighed audibly, indicating that this was not only something Ogdor had said before, but something he'd said often.
"Give it a rest, mon," Jan'ree retorted as he meticulously swished his drink. "We be back from Outland now, so what'chu complainin' about?"
"I am simply saying that we missed many a glorious battle while we were away," Ogdor continued, unperturbed.
"We had plenty of battles on Outland, isn't that enough?" Zidorah muttered.
"Yes, yes," Ogdor grumbled. "But still, Outland is a dying, broken world. The truly glorious battles-- the ones that matter-- happen here, on Azeroth!"
"Ya be sayin' dat all da time, mon." Jan'ree shook his head. "An' each time ya sed it on Outland, ya be gettin' us in trouble wit' da natives."
"I don't see why they should get so offended," the orc muttered. "One should not be so hostile to the truth."
"Trut' or not, mon, ya be insultin' deir homes. How'd'chu expect dem ta react? Ain't dat right, girl?... Girl?"
But Zidorah was not paying attention to this conversation, instead staring off to the side as if something had caught her attention.
"Ya not be eavesdroppin' now, are ya, girl?" Jan'ree asked ruefully, mostly because she was ignoring him.
"Shh!"
"Oh no ya di'n't jus' shush me!" Jan'ree slammed his fist on the table; he did not seem as angry as he was incredulous, but the table still shook under the troll's considerable strength and a few other patrons still looked his way for a few brief moments before returning to their drinks. "Da girl di'n't just shush me!" he added, turning to Ogdor.
"I think she did, actually," Ogdor replied, lifting his drink to his lips to hide his smile.
"Will you two be quiet?" Zidorah hissed, clearly annoyed.
Jan'ree and Ogdor shared a confused look before they both turned to see what had caught Zidorah's interest.
The blood elf seemed clearly absorbed by the conversation two orcs at a nearby table were having. By their armor, they were city guards, probably off-duty. Jan'ree and Ogdor strained to hear what had caught the female's interest.
"...won't be solved soon," the first guard was saying.
"Probably never, if you ask me," the second snorted. "Too many resources are being wasted on this. The disappearances have all nearly stopped, we should be focusing on other things. Like the Alliance," he added darkly.
"Feh. They might be the ones responsible for this. This 'Brittlecog' is apparently a gnomish name."
At that very moment, Zidorah was on her feet and approaching the two orcs' table. Her friends soon scurried after her, utterly confused as to her behaviour and curious beyond belief.
"Excuse me," she said, as the two guards turned their befuddled gazes on her. "You mentioned a gnome named Brittlecog?"
"What's it to you?" one of the guards grumbled sourly.
"Ah, yes, well, you see..." She paused and took a deep breath. "I once knew a Revv Brittlecog in Dalaran. Perhaps this is the same person you are discussing?"
---
"I don' like dis one bit, mon," Jan'ree whispered to Zidorah as they waited.
After approaching the guards with her information, it took stunningly little time for the three of them to be brought to the guard's superior and then to the superior's superior, moving up through the hierarchy with alarming urgency. Finally, they were invited into the office of some sort of investigator who, by the size of the furniture, was most likely tauren.
"We haven't done anything wrong," Zidorah said coldly. Her voice wavered only slightly with uncertainty.
"As far as we know," Ogdor grumbled. Jan'ree and Zidorah threw him unsettled looks, but anything they intended to say was cut short by the door opening and a massive tauren walking in. Hardly anyone could ignore a tauren in any given room.
"Ah..." The tauren smiled benignly as he gazed down at Zidorah. "You must be the Zidorah Duskweaver. And they are..." His eyes drifted to the other two.
"Ogdor Thundermaul, son of Tagor."
"Jan'ree of da Darkspear tribe."
"Of course." The tauren gestured towards a large bench for them to sit down. "And I am Ollan Rivermane. I am also an investigator in the case of the disappearances."
This statement was met with three equally blank looks.
"Of the spellcasters?" the tauren added. "Surely you know. Many mages and warlocks have been disappearing these past few months."
"Sorry, mon, we been in Outland fo' some time--"
Ogdor snorted and muttered something that sounded like "...big waste of time..." before Zidorah clicked her staff against the floor for silence.
"--so we been outta da loop."
"Ah. I see." The tauren frowned. "Well, then, I suppose I should explain. For the past few months, various mages and warlocks have gone missing," he said, ending in awkward silence.
"Ya, mon, we gathered," Jan'ree interjected glibly. "What be all dis wit' a gnome?"
"Of course, of course." Ollan cleared his throat. "During the course of investigating a recent disappearance, we managed to find a witness who overheard the victim stating she was going to meet with one 'Revv Brittlecog'. Apparently, what we didn't know was that various spellcasters had been disappearing from the Alliance as well, apparently in even greater number."
"That's all you managed to find out in... how many months of investigation was it?" Ogdor asked, raising an eyebrow.
Ollan looked distinctly uncomfortable.
"Yes, well... we were originally looking into some very promising leads and--"
"Ya blamed da Alliance, ya mean." Jan'ree sighed and shook his head.
"Well, y-yes," Ollan stuttered. "But at the time it seemed very likely--" He cut off abruptly and tried regaining his composure. "Still, even if they, as a whole, are not responsible, we know one of their numbers is--"
"No, he's not," Zidorah interrupted. "Master Brittlecog is dead."
"What?"
"What?"
"Wat?"
Three confused pairs of eyes found their way to the elf female.
"How can you possibly know that?" Ollan roared.
"Oh, yes, quite dead." Zidorah nodded. "Apparently, he never left Dalaran before it was destroyed by Archimonde. Absolutely refused to budge. The Scourge itself couldn't rout him out."
The confused looks turned into bewildered ones.
"Seriously, have you ever tried catching a gnome? They're tiny. They can squeeze out of just about anything."
"Alright-- but maybe he escaped Dalaran by some other means?" Ollan suggested.
Zidorah snorted at this suggestion.
"And not let anyone know? Trust me, that was not Master Brittlecog's nature."
"Then what was his nature?" the tauren insisted.
Zidorah considered it for a moment then replied:
"He was a jerk."
---
That night, Zidorah was well-aware that she should not have been making any life-altering decisions. She knew that she was young, barely at the beginning of her magical studies, that this was the first time she'd ever been anywhere alone, without servants of family members breathing down the back of her neck (but from a polite, inobtrusive distance) and the very, very first time she'd tasted alcohol.
She was fairly sure that when her cousin found out about this, he would be very disappointed and never leave her side again.
"Koltira will be so... so mad with me..." she muttered, trying hard not to slur. She did not want to sound drunk, even if she was.
"Who's that?" the human propping her upright asked.
"My cousin... who will be very, very mad with me," she replied.
They were walking. Probably in a straight line, though in her current state she couldn't really tell for sure.
"Is she pretty?" the human continued his questioning. He had an arm around her waist and even though she knew she would probably fall without his support, she still thought it was untoward of him.
"Yes, he is," Zidorah replied once she'd processed the question. "He is very, very pretty."
The human grunted unhappily, though Zidorah couldn't understand why. Would he have been happier to find out her cousin was ugly?
That was the last thing Zidorah remembered before waking up the next day around noon, face-down on some sort of ottoman. Her head not only felt like someone had separated it from her body, dug out everything in her skull, replaced it with straw and large rocks that did not quite fit and then sewed it back on her neck, but had also done a very poor job of it.
She lifted her head just in time to come face to face with a blue-eyed, balding gnome. The next few seconds were pure agony as the gnome turned around and yelled from the top of his tiny little lungs:
"Eric, you were right! I should have trusted your judgement!"
And that's how Zidorah found out that one side effect of being roughly knee-high to most other races was the development of a very loud voice that carried very far.
---
"Stop snickering! It was my first hangover! Now where was I?"
---
It was only later in the afternoon, after she was taken to a nice, dark room with padded floors that hushed every step and given some very strong tea that she found out she'd been hired without her knowledge or permission.
"What do you mean I'm Brittlecog's lab assistant? I don't even know him!"
"Sure ye do, lass," the dwarven woman explained calmly. "It's a great honour tah be Master Brittlecog's assistant. Why, students would rend each other tah pieces like wild beasts for th' opportunity!"
"But I never agreed to anything," she insisted.
"Eric said ye did."
"Who is this Eric?" she asked, gripping her teacup like a lifeline.
"He brought ye in last night. Drunk as a bachelor uncle on Winter's Veil, ye were," the dwarf said wistfully as she nodded.
"But-- but why did he bring me? I don't understand..." Zidorah whined. Her headache was making a forceful comeback.
"Oh, tch, funny thing, that. Master Brittlecog's been searching for a new assistant (he already has two, ye see), ever since he's extended the lab. Las' night, he was complainin' about not bein' able tah find another assistant with the proper credentials--" Here she made a facial expression that showed how little she thought of the credentials in question. "--so Eric bet the ol' man that he could find someone before noon, today."
"Credentials? What credentials? What credentials?!" Zidorah asked, desperately.
The dwarf snorted, swished her tea and told her.
---
"So?" Ogdor burst out. "What were these credentials?"
Zidorah seemed hesitant to reply.
"Ya can't stop da story like dat, girl," Jan'ree chimed.
"Yes, yes, that's right!" Ollan nodded, as well.
"Fine," Zidorah sighed and relented. "'Aesthetically pleasing, moderately smart.'"
"Wait-- aesthetically--?" Ogdor did a double take. "And these were the requirements for laboratory assistant?"
"Look, he was a brilliant Archmage of the Kirin Tor, alright?" Zidorah crossed her arms and stared murderously at the floor. "He always told people that he can do his own lab work, as long as the view was nice."
"And the view, we take it, was nice?" Ollan raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, sure. I think I even had a picture, once. It was me, the dwarven woman-- her name was Deidre Steelfist-- and a human, Rovana Callidian."
"And he chose his assistants judging solely by physical endowments?" Ollan asked, staring off in the distance as if the concept intrigued him greatly.
Ogdor and Jan'ree threw him exasperated looks.
"Ya, mon. Dat was da point of da story," the troll spoke slowly, as if dealing with a slightly dimwitted child. "Can we wrap dis up befo' dinnah?"
"Ah, yes, of course." The tauren cleared his throat and clasped his hands together, trying to appear professional. "Even though Brittlecog might be dead, we still must find out more about him and his work."
"Why?" Zidorah asked.
"Well, the point remains that his name was still mentioned by the victim of a crime," Ollan reasoned. "We must discover any connection there might be to him."
"Wait, 'we'?" Zidorah raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you the big, important investigator in this case?"
"Of course." He smiled widely. "And as the investigator, I can very well have you arrested for obstruction of justice if you don't cooperate."