Who are these people? I asked Valen with my eyes. The gnome must've noticed it as she addressed my questioning look herself.
"Morgan Cherryspark, pleased to meet you," she said and gave a funny-looking bow that probably wouldn't have been as amusing if it was done by someone taller than my leg.
"I work for the same crew as Valen here, if you know what I mean," the gnome continued.
I gave a slight nod of understanding, but I couldn't come up with anything to say when Valen had already taken over for me.
"What are you doing here? I thought you had already decided that the world outside your luxury estate wasn't worth your time and retired to work on your inventions," he started. "And what's with the henchman?" he pointed out the big man standing behind Morgan's shoulder.
The gnome folded her arms across her chest, but the man next to her seemed to ignore the discussion completely.
"You're one to talk, after wandering off on 'personal business' into who knows where. But if you must know, this here is my co-operative and personal assistant, Mr. White," she pointed out the man behind herself. "As for what I'm doing here, I'm SI:7's contact with this department here. They've taken an interest in misuse of gnomish technology, as well as the routes by which it reaches the wrong hands," she continued and walked right past us to trade a word with the gnome behind the desk, then grab a pile of documents before heading back for the door.
"And you're the one they appointed to run that investigation? Fitting." Valen responded in a tone that would've taken more insight into the matter to fully be understood.
"Quite so. But I am curious as to what you are doing here. Something about your 'personal business' again?" she interrogated Valen, obvisouly not thinking very highly of his problems, however much she knew about them in the first place.
"Yes. And I'm actually quite close to resolving the matter, thanks to Cailea here," he responded and pointed me out.
Seemingly ignoring me for now, the gnome took a sarcastic tone: "Close indeed, I'm sure", she said in a manner that suggested it wasn't the first time she had heard him saying the same thing as she headed for the door again. Just before exiting the room, she turned around with a more understanding look on her face this time.
"If your quest has led you here, of all the places you could be in, it's got something to do with gnomish technology, right?" she asked from the door.
"Yes," I went ahead to say, not really sure if Valen would've wanted me to do that.
"Well then," the gnome put a welcoming smile on her face, "why don't you two come over to my home and tell me more?" she suggested, then turned her attention back to Valen. "You had better report to headquarters for a change, anyway. Wouldn't be surprised if they've already put your name into the 'missing in action' box by now."
I aimed another questioning look at Valen, as I didn't really have any idea what we were about to get into, and if it'd be a good idea at all. He responded with a whisper into my ear:
"You probably want to get out of Ironforge, right?" he made an informed guess based on how he had seen me reacting to underground places before. I nodded slightly in response.
"Might as well take this opportunity then. Morgan lives in Stormwind City, and as you might know, that's a town where you can actually see the sky, unlike here," he finished, then turned his attention back to the gnome. "Fine, we'll come. I'll do some more explaining on the way."
As we started moving again, I couldn't help but notice that the big man alongside the gnome had been nothing more than a silent observer through the exchange, and remained that way as we walked further into Tinker Town. His stagnant expression kept me guessing whether he was blissfuly ignorant of everything going on around him, or if the man was somehow so sensitive to everything that he didn't need to raise a finger or blink an eye to remain aware of the situation. What made me even more curious was the fact that he didn't seem to notice at all how I had randomly chosen to make him the focus of my attention as a part of my usual way of avoiding my claustrophobia, as we walked through a number of tiny hallways packed with all kinds of gnomish gadgets that I had no interest to examine.
Eventually we took a right through an odd doorway that seemed to be rotating in place for no apparent reason, and the noise and chatter of the gnomish district started to fade somewhere halfway through the next hall, until we finally emerged in a slightly larger room, where our steps and the rustle of our equipment as we moved around echoed.
I raised my eyes to see a strange metallic room with two long, narrow pits carved into the middle of the floor, complete with several metallic seats facing towards them, as if there was something for an audience to see. The two pits extended into tunnels that seemed to lead out of the side of the room, into a tunnel that curved out of sight after a few dozen metres. There was also a large metal beam running along the ceiling over both of the pits.
All of my companions took a seat and I followed, having no idea what was going to happen. It would have made no sense for us to walk into a dead end, so I figured that the two tunnels leading to the side must've had something to do with what the gnome had in mind. Eventually she noticed the confused expression on my face.
"I take it this is your first time around these parts. Fresh out of Kalimdor?" the gnome asked me out of the blue.
"Something like that," I danced around the question. Considering what had happened with the last person who had quite suddenly decied to accompany us, I didn't really feel like answering any questions, even if this 'Cherryspark' was someone Valen actually seemed to know.
"You seem nervous. Not really a fan of fine gnomish engineering, are you?" she immediately continued, much to my displeasure.
"It's not that..." I coughed up and glanced at Valen, hoping he would react and figure out that I was hoping for him to step in, "...I just prefer the outdoors. A lot," I finished my intentionally vague response, hoping that the gnome would chalk it up to my race and not dig deeper. I never got to find out if it did the trick, as a loud mechanical sound began echoing out of the tunnel to the side. Some kind of a machine was clearly approaching. Fast.
"I'm just asking, because anyone remotely interested in science is going to love this the first time they see it," I barely heard the gnome's voice through the increasingly loud mechanical noise that's source now came into full view.
A set of contraptions large enough to fit several people each, hung from the beam in the ceiling, slid into a straight row into the narrow pit before us.
For a moment there, I kept hoping it was just a show that Morgan set us up for, to display the intelligence of her kind, or something like that. But when the gnome instead got up and walked into one of the carriages, I knew exactly what was going to happen, and could immediately tell I wasn't going to like it.
"Let's go, kitten," Valen voice said from my right as I watched the tall human get on the machine as well.
"This thing...is going to go back into that tunnel, right?" I asked Valen in a low voice, half hoping to get a different response than the one that I got.
"And that tunnel is a shortcut to Stormwind, worth about three to four days' walk up top," he did his best to divert me from my fears and to make it sound like the best option.
Fighting off all of my instincts, which were telling me to stay put and go back, I got up from the bench and stepped on the tram with Valen, making sure to get a nice, secure grip of his hand along the way.
