Flinthammer Hall

“Oh, that’s just great!” Beli Flinthammer snarled, her voice echoing off the pale stone of the Netherlight Temple. “When you want something, it’s all ‘Come pay attention to Tinkles! The bloody windchime wants you to hear all about Illidan’s first pimple!’ But when someone has a question, you just clam up, don’t you?”

She was getting stares, she knew — she could hear comments from the priestesses behind her in Darnassian and Draenei — but she didn’t care, not even enough to turn around and tell them what they could do with their snickers.

“Do you know what I was doing with my life before those discs were discovered in Uldaman and dwarves learned where we came from? I was studying to be a mage! Everyone said that was no fit thing for a Bronzebeard dwarf to be then — I had to fight every single day! But the day we heard about the Titans, we realized that we had a purpose in this world. I walked right out of the Hall of Mysteries and became a priest in the Hall of Explorers instead.

“But now, but now …”

Beli raised her staff as if to strike the silent heart of the naaru Xe’ra. She thought better of it, then raised the staff again before lowering it once more. Behind her, Beli heard other priestesses let go their held breaths.

“But if they’ve been dead, all along, before we even heard of them, what have we been doing, all this time? Who has been answering my prayers? The Light? Elune?” Beli spat on the floor. “If I am not a priestess of the Titans, what am I? ANSWER ME!”

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It took a while for Frostmaw to recognize the smell.

Everything was so vivid here, more intense, moreso than anywhere he’d ever been. As a cub, growing up in the snows of Dun Morogh, scents carried a long way, as there were few competing smells on the wind.

But here, the air was full of birdsong and animal cries, and more distantly, the sounds of things strange and unnatural, the kind of half-remembered nightmare that would haunt him in the early spring after long sleeps. The colors were so intense that Frostmaw sometimes had to shut his eyes to give them a rest — who knew there was so much green in the whole world? And the air was full of smells, layered one atop another, plants, animals, water, earth, again and again and — blood. Bear blood, a lot of it.

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Ringo Flinthammer stomped his feet, trying to return some feeling to his toes. He was born and raised in Dun Morogh, but the winds high in the Storm Peaks were something else entirely.

“Ah’m not sayin’ it weren’t amazin’ ta see him, Keeper Mimiron, but would it have killed him ta have said ‘Ah remember ye — in the mountains?'”

“Herald of the Titans,” Mimiron said, turning his head slightly, “Even here, atop the Temple of Storms, Keeper Thorim has met many, many people over the course of his immortal life. You should not take it as a slight …”

“Nay, nay, jus’ makin’ a joke,” Ringo said. He looked down at the rifle in his hands, which seemed to vibrate with internal energy. The gun’s twitches seemed to coincide with the bolts of electricity crackling around the blue-furred wolf whom Frostmaw was sniffing at dubiously.

“Anyway, ye reckon Ah’m the right one to carry this unique weapon o’ the Titans?”

“Well, you’re the bearer of this weapon of the Titans,” Mimiron said.

“There’s more than one?”

“There are 24.”

“Twenty-four guns?”

“Models of guns,” Mimiron said, turning his head toward Ringo.

Behind him, what Ringo took to be more vrykul participating in the Drakkensryd turned out to be elves, humans, tauren, orcs and others dismounting from proto-drake mounts and approaching the keeper.

“I’m not stupid, herald. I’m not going to entrust the fate of the entire world to just one Earthen.”

“Mah son, a terrible darkness ha’ returned to our world. As before, it seeks to anni –”

“Are you seriously composing a letter to your kid while we’re ass-deep in demons?” Widge Gearloose snapped, turning back around. Even his mechanostrider seemed annoyed, its headlamps cutting through the greenish gloom of the Broken Shore.

“He already left Bael a note,” Beli Flinthammer said, pulling out a spyglass and peering down the path. “Ringo’s just rewriting it in his head.”

“Hasn’t the boy got enough letters from ye?” Baelan Grimaxe muttered. “Ye sent him a letter before ye went into Icecrown Citadel. And then one during Operation: Gnomeregan.”

“And from the Jade Forest, Lion’s Landing, the Isle of Thunder, the Siege of Orgrimmar, Lunarfall Garrison …”

“Ah donnae want the boy to wonder what happened tae me or how Ah felt about him if somethin’ ever does happen!” Mountaineer Ringo Flinthammer roared, waving an arm, causing Beer Run to rear up and Frostmaw to snarl in sympathy.

Everyone settled down and Beli patted Ringo’s thigh with one hand.

“Well, I can respect that,” Widge said quietly, pointing his mechanostrider down the hill and starting off with a whir of machinery. “I left a letter for my cats.”

“You have cats?” Beli asked.

“I have a life outside of continually trying to save the world with you two!”

“I left a letter for my axes,” Baelan muttered to Ringo. “They like being read to — the vibrations keep the edges sharp.”

Ringo thought about this, nodding.

“Come on, idjits,” Beli interrupted, spurring Sam the Ram forward with her toes, “we’ve got demons to kill.”

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Ringo Flinthammer reloaded, then sighted along the barrel of his gun, forged in the fires of Ulduar. The presence of the Titans, no matter how minor, was a comfort in this place.

He raised his gun and prepared to dispatch another Legion commander …

The shot went wide.

“Ah’m not shirkin’ nothin’, ye bastard! Just shut yer pie hole and let me do what Ah do, before Ah remember Ah ken put a bullet through yer head instead!”

Ringo was uncomfortable here in Tarren Mill. Before the Cataclysm, Ringo and Beli had been only known it as the source of Forsaken assaults on Southshore. The time they’d spent in Tarren Mill had not been peaceful. The burning stench of fel only partially concealed the sweet smell of rot that followed the Forsaken everywhere.

Frostmaw pulled a flying demon to the ground, and Ringo fired two rounds into its head.

“Seriously, does no one remember who Helcular was? The butcher of Southshore? He was a monster even when the bastard was human! We should be killin’ him, and his bloody abominations, along with the Legion!”

“Khaz’goroth on a cracker! Someone make that idjit shut him up, or Ah’ll do it fer him!”

“Beli! Back me up here! What are ye doin’, woman? And what are ye wearin‘?”

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