“-. .-“

  It wasn’t even an hour before a runner showed up to tell me I was invited by the High Thane to ‘discuss the conclusion of our wager.’ It was unfortunate timing, I’d just gotten a sense of poignant significance arriving on gryphon back up in the Aviary in the distance. I’d also been feeling someone significant approaching by land too, for the past few days, and they weren’t far behind either now. The feeling was not only equally intense but also stretched much further into the future than the first.

  With the divination blackout being what it was, that I could feel this much was significant, never mind so clearly.

  But it wasn’t like I wanted to keep my august host waiting. The newcomers would just have to keep a while more.

  Unlike before, when the High Thane had kept all our interactions public, this time I was led to his private quarters at the very deepest core of Aerie Peak. Thankfully, the dwarves built their ceilings high in order to maximize air flow and cooling, so it didn’t feel any more claustrophobic than everywhere else in the mountain I’d been. Which was to say, not claustrophobic at all.

  Falstad Wildhammer was the only other dwarf there, and his normal grumpiness was weighed over by a sort of dread, not unlike I’d seen people express when someone they loved was about to do something they disagreed with. Or wished they could disagree with. Or something they’d already done that they wish they’d been there to vehemently oppose when there was still time.

  Kurdran Wildhammer was with his side to me, eyes fixed on the lava flowing down through the hearth, where firewood would be anywhere else.

  I was invited to sit. The chair was brand new and sized specifically for my height. My guide left.

  The door had barely shut behind me when the High Thane spoke.

  “If I don’t put our full might behind you at this point, my people will literally riot.”

  That… should have been very good to hear. “You sound like someone signing their own execution order, if I gave offense-“

  “Ha!” Kurdran barked a hollow laugh. “The grace of the elder races is as daunting as ever. No, if anyone gave offense it’s me.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “’It’s far too much trust you’re asking for’ remember when I said that? As if! You think the Explorer’s League is so packed with our most non-nonsense veterans just because? Even if we find our answers, there’s never any guarantee we’ll like them. So when the Makers themselves stroll right out of myth and promise to win our home back for us, how could we possibly stay out of it? Why would we even consider it? Only if they prove unworthy! Of our trust and our loyalty. Evil. Cruel. As the leader of my people, I had to find out somehow. I had to. It was my duty.”

  Oh.

  “Or mine,” Falstad grunted from his corner, looking defeated. “But what use am I, already disgraced? You had me dead to rights, Prophet, I saw the face of my Maker and fled, aye, like a coward. Who else can match my shame?”

  Oh… “Believe me when I say the both of you are severely overreacting.”

  “Don’t speak to me about overreacting!” Kurdran whirled on me angrily, his eyes glinting dreadfully in the lava light. “I saw the greatest turning point in my people’s history, and instead of bowing my head in welcome I presumed to test my Maker. I’m grateful that he defers to you on matters of mercy, oh how I am, but surely even that has its limits? When even your leeway runs out…” Kurdran clenched his teeth, then slowly breathed out. His anger drained out of him to leave only a dreadful resolve in its place. “Well. What will be will be. Whenever it suits you, feel free to tell the High One I’m ready whenever he is.”

  I pinched my nose.

  Then I got up, went over and– “THE DEVIL ARE YE-?!” – hauled Kurdran Wildhammer under my arm like a flour sack before he even knew what was happening – “YE SCUNNER, PUT ‘IM DOWN RIGHT BLOODY-UMF!” – grabbed Falstad mid-jump too because he didn’t lead with his hammer, overpowered their most outraged thrashing just because I could, and turned everything within my spirit’s range to the size of a gnat mid-way through jumping straight forward.

  Phaseshift had us streaking through the secret passage and out from underground before the two had even finished hollering.

  When I returned to my height of choice at the summit of Aerie Peak’s outmost ridge, our arrival startled Blindi out of some grim mood, and sent the latest, all-new dwarf that was bombarding him with questions chasing after his suddenly airborne hat.

  “Oooh – ye tadger-“ “Gunna – hurl‘n yer drawers I will-!“

  I sent the Light sweeping through my unwilling passengers, then gently set the two dwarves on the ground and left them behind before they tried to tear me another one. No use tempting fate lest I really start cooing and doting, at my height the dwarves barely reached my hip and had to look really far up to meet my eyes, they were to me like gnomes were to everyone else, it was adorable.

  “Odyn.” My use of the Titan’s real name was not missed by anyone. “Our host here seems to think you’ll do unspeakable things to him for his little white lie.”

  “Eh?” Odyn lowered his pipe from his mouth with completely honest incomprehension. “What lie?”

  “The one where he falsely claimed he and his weren’t going to help reclaim their own home, just to see if you got angry and revealed yourself to be an evil tyrant or the like.”

  Blindi jerked his head in total amazement, turning to look at the now frozen and stiffly standing dwarves. For a moment, he actually looked like he didn’t understand anything.

  Then his face whitened with a fury so true and heartfelt that nothing other than his bombastic cheer at Winterveil compared.

  The old man shoves his pipe at me, stomped over to the two in a rage, ignored the way both of them forced themselves not to flinch or defend themselves, and sank to one knee in front of them to grab them each by the shoulder.

  Tight.

  “Valor alongside beauty and probity!” Odyn vented at them, shaking them both. “The purpose of life is for everyone to individually decide for themselves, but that one is and always has been ours. Whatever contrary nonsense you dreamed up in your head, banish it right now!”

  Kurdran and Falstad knocked into each other for balance and stared at their creator with wide eyes and mouths ajar.

  Odyn let the two of them go and brought his clenched fists up in a bid to calm himself. When he had himself under better control, he laid his hands on the dwarves a bit more gently. When he looked at Kurdran this time, it was the first time since Winterveil that I couldn’t see the depression behind them. “I am sorry I didn’t notice before. I should have seen through it the moment it happened. If I had, I would have commended you for your noble bravery on the spot.”

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  The High Thane seemed all but overcome with emotion. “I – just did my duty.”

  “And you did it ably, but there was never a need. The fact you did not know better is a tragedy! It cannot be borne, I won’t allow it! You will tell me all about your people, and of yourself too, and together we’ll find the deepest nooks of this shame you all insist on burdening yourselves with, and pull it out at the roots!”

  “I – can get our poets-?“

  “No, brave one, I will hear it from you or not at all.” Odyn used the two to push himself back to his feet, but didn’t let go. “Kurdran the Brave, that’s what you’ll be known as from now on. Unlike your cousin here, for shame Wing Commander, running away from me like that, someone else might’ve taken offense.”

  “I wasn’t in my right mind,” Flastad grumbled, but let himself be nudged alongside his cousin back the way we’d come. Of how grudging he’d been about everything before, there was no trace.

  For whatever mad reason, the two dwarves still discreetly glanced back at me for reassurance before they stopped dragging their feet. I nodded confidently that it was alright. More than alright.

  I watched them leave.

  Then I turned to the last person remaining other than me, who I recognized as the significant arrival I’d sensed earlier, and who was most certainly a dwarf not of the Wildhammer kind. “I assume you had questions?”

  Brann Bronzebeard stared long after the departing trio, then looked up at me from under his wide-brimmed fedora with his mouth and beard stretched in a wide, wondering smile. “I think you just answered all of’em right mighty fine.”

  “All of them? I find that hard to believe.”

  “Well, maybe there’s one.”

  “Namely?”

  “The heck did yer ma feed ya to get so big? We get Kul Tirans sometimes, but even they’re not as big as you.”

  Wait till you see me when I’m not shrunk down. I was fairly confident by this point that, stature-wise, I was in for the full vrykul experience. No point in exposing my trump cards if I don’t have to, though. The Old Ones were always listening. “I’ll answer your question if you answer one of mine.”

  “Hit me.”

  “How long does someone need to be dead before it’s considered archeology instead of grave robbing?”

  “…As an archaeologist, I find this a very awkward question.”

  “Answer the question, grave robber.”

  “Och, when I said hit me I dinnae mean hit hit me! Next question.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  Brann Bronzebeard wasn’t lying when he said he didn’t have questions for me, or at least he didn’t have any left that he’d prepared ahead. He seemed fairly conscientious about not overimposing on people, when he could afford the effort and time. But he was more than amenable to answering my own questions, while I wandered vaguely in the direction of the other major significance of nebulous origin that had finally arrived too.

  I didn’t bother trying to be circumspect about what interested me, and Brann didn’t much hold back on his answers either. I learned that Magni was already king, that none of the Bronzebeard brothers had fathered children yet, and that Ironforge didn’t have gryphons of their own yet either. The dwarves back in Khaz Modan were currently fostering some of their children with the Wildhammers, in the hopes that some of them would become shamans, or at least psychically-awakened hunters – the Ironforge dwarves didn’t have either of their own right now, and neither dwarf clan had Light priests.

  There was the remote hope that some of the fosterlings would bond with gryphons while here, finally giving Khaz Modan a core population to raise their own, but they were trying not to get their hopes up.

  Conversely, the gnomes currently relied fully on fossil fuels for their various technologies and experiments. This fit my memories about oil platforms and tankers being strategic targets during the First and Second wars, in the future. It also made sense when you considered the trogg disaster – if they’d had more time to study atomic technology, the gnomes probably wouldn’t have gone through with Thermaplugg’s mad plan to flood the whole of Gnomeragan with nuclear fallout.

  Forget troggs mutating, the radiation itself would be practically impossible to scrub in any time frame shorter than at least a generation. The city was never going to be reclaimed like that.

  “Tell me true,” Brann told me after my own questions wound down. “Are you just here out of the goodness of your heart, or is this just one move in something bigger? It’s one thing to go around being a do-gooder, but when the Makers themselves come down from heaven at the behest of a man that just done finished blowing up a mannish capital city...”

  So that was getting around even beyond human borders, or he’d heard some of it on the way? I’ll have to inquire about the Wildhammers’ precise flight routes, assuming Brann didn’t deliberately make detours. As you do if you want to call yourself an explorer.

  “I won’t judge,” Brann promised, ignorant of my thoughts. “Just the little I’ve heard today about what you did here is enough to see you honored back home too. But if even the Makers are coming out of history’s deepest shadows to help you…”

  “Ideally I’ll be able to prevent what’s coming completely, but that’s still going to be a lot of hard and deadly work.” I considered telling him about Stormwind, but decided to wait and see how fast that news filtered up. It would be important knowledge for the future. “And I might still fail in the end. We’ll have to see.”

  “We sure will.”

  I wasn’t normally tolerant of people inviting themselves into my confidence, but for Brann Bronzebeard I was willing to make an exception. I’d wanted the Explorer’s League involved in any case. I wasn’t going to complain about skipping all the steps in between that and befriending one of the most important figures of the next century.

  A figure which, as I learned when I finally reached the lodgings of the only arrivals more recent than Brann himself, was not the only major figure of the next century I would be dealing with for the foreseeable future.

  “My sister missed you by half a day, oh Prophet.” Tall but not too tall, voluptuous curves that spoke of feminine wiles just as much as long nights stalking with knife and bow in hand, long pointed ears that perfectly complimented her face, eyes more gray than green or blue, waist-length blonde hair that flowed like water and was translucent in the light of the sun. “Dare I ask what’s so important here, that you would finally pause in your flight away from abandoned kin and country?”

  “Sylvanas Windrunner.” Even by elven standards, this was a beauty rare enough to excuse any amount of vanity. Presumption was an entirely different thing though. “I’m happy to say that your choice of wording is a strong indicator that any assumptions you might have made about me are wrong.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word for it,” said the Ranger-General of Silvermoon.

  Or future Ranger-General? I’d have to inquire after her mother at some point. “I might be persuaded to grant that forgiveness. It might take a while though, and you’ll have to put in quite some work.”

  “How fortuitous, then, that we’ll be traveling so far afield together.”

  That, at least, was true. Getting the Farstriders to at least observe the all-new mission I’d set for myself was why I’d sent my Knight-Commander to the Quel'Danil Lodge to begin with. “What do you know about dry ice?”

  “… I know only that you’re making an obvious attempt to distract me, and that it sounds impossible. But I’m sure you will prove me wrong. Some manner of arcane trick perhaps?”

  “How would you like to watch me make it?” And methanol, a fume hood, hopefully a supercritical drying chamber and flow-cascade type reactor. If I could get the dwarves to the point where they could do all the work instead, all the better not just for me, but them too. I might have to wait until Uldaman for the last two, though. “If not that, then a weapon or two that you will willingly reform your whole combat doctrine around.”

  “Now that is a claim I simply must witness with my own eyes.”

  I’ll certainly enjoy the face she’ll make with my own eyes. The fact no one invented the Instant Legolas when it would have been useful was one of mankind’s biggest forehead-slapping moments back on Earth, in my very humble opinion.

  Flechettes were even easier. Bag of holding plus infinite supply of them equals carpet bombing. The real breakthrough would depend on how big we could make the spatial bags, on the inside.

  Dare I hope to see Sylvanas Windrunner the Fair and Terrible hunched behind a loom like the most beautiful hag before we have to leave? She was certainly old enough for the part.

  “I don’t know what you just thought about, human, but I’m sure I don’t like it,” Sylvanas said as she subtly dismissed the other rangers standing by.

  “Believe me, milady, I don’t actually like to live dangerously,” even though at this point I’m used to it. “After you?”

  “But then who will show me the way?”

  “On second thought, you’re perfectly right. We’ll have to wait until you’ve been properly settled by our wonderful hosts before revisiting the matter. Have a wonderful day, miss.”

  I turned my back on her and walked off without another word.

  The way she gaped at my audacity was a memory I’d treasure for at least the next month or three.

  I’d long since meandered my way out of sight amidst the various above-ground cantonments that Aerie Peak was dotted with everywhere, when Brann finally caught up to me again.

  “You, my friend, are a madman.”

  A very happy madman who’d expected to have to do a lot of thankless work before getting all these ducks in a row. Never mind to see my designs already bolstered by the mighty force known as synchronicity.

  Onyxia, Synestra, Zakajz the Corruptor. Alterac, Lordaeron, Gilneas. Tyr’s Grave, Grim Batol, Blackrock Mountain by summer’s end if I had my way. Emerentius, Sylvanas, and soon enough Dagran Thaurissan.

  Go ahead and stew in your temporary victory, you slimy squids.

  For every one of anything of mine you take, I’ll take back three of yours.