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“So, you see, the statue could be me, with this wee gun,” Ringo said, striking a pose, “Looking heroically off into the distance.”
“No,” Beli said simply, bouncing Bael on her hip and making faces at the giggling baby.
Grand Mason Marblesten made it a point to be looking anywhere but at the Flinthammers arguing in the middle of his Ironforge shop.
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The rotor was loud, but that was to be expected.
The engines got very hot, but that’s why it was an open design. Still, it probably wouldn’t be a lot of fun to fly in Tanaris or Silithus.
But here, above the Blade’s Edge Mountains, the wind moving through the gyrocopter was enough to keep it cool enough to operate comfortably.
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“Ease up on the cyclic!” Piko yelped. “You’re going to cut us to ribbons before we even get off the ground!”
“The what?” Widge yelled, over the roar of the gyrocopter engines.
“The stick! The stick!” Piko pointed from a safe distance away.
“Why didn’t you just say ‘the stick?'” Widge snapped in exasperation, releasing the joystick and letting the gyrocopter’s top rotor return to its default position.
The test flights outside Toshley’s Station had not been going well.
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Ringo came upstairs into the common room of the Wildhammer Stronghold inn. There were the usual sounds of the fires crackling in the fireplaces, tankards being filled and thumping back down on tables and the bar after being emptied, but there was also something else: the high-speed chatter of excited gnomes.
“After all these years, I can’t believe it!” Widge said, drumming his feet against a chair’s edge gleefully.
“Well, it makes sense,” Piko said, waving a piece of paper in one hand. “Legal or not, civilian aviators have been flying them for years. Just look at the Explorers Guild!”