Flinthammer Hall

The feel of the salt water soaking his beard finally woke Ringo up. He had passed out beneath a wooden boardwalk. Small red crabs crawled over his thick forearms.

“How much did I have last night? And wasn’t I in Stormwind? How did I end up in Booty Bay?”

Pulling himself up, he brushed the mud off his overalls, dislodging a now-dead fish that had somehow come to rest inside his clothes. Shading his eyes from the cruel sun with one hand, he grabbed a thick knot of vines with the other and pulled himself with a groan up onto the boardwalk of Booty Bay, ignoring the smirking goblin guards as he staggered towards the griffon master’s station.

Ringo sighted down the wooden barrel of the gun. Well, he thought it was wood. It felt like wood, but the barrel — carved in the shape of a long-snouted monster with lots of teeth — shouldn’t be able to stand up to gunfire like this one did, if it really was wood.

“Something wrong with the gun?” Beli asked. No one else had wanted to take it from the mare’s saddle sheath, much less try it out.

“No, not at all. It’s dead brilliant.” Ringo twirled the long rifle around one thick fingertip like a pistol. “I was just wondering, though …”

“Wondering what?”

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At last, the fire was crackling merrily. The dead tree had caught in the branches of another as it fell, which had kept the dead wood off the snow, and allowed the limbs to dry out nicely.

And with that, Ringo Flinthammer tromped through the snow to the corpse, while the great white owl watched patiently. Ringo took an axe from his belt and, gripping a dead limb distastefully, brought it down. The desiccated flesh gave off little smell as it parted, which in a way made it worse.

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“Another mouth to feed, as though we didn’t have a bear, another bear and an owl hanging around the hall, pooping and eating, eating and pooping.

“At least the murloc knows how to dance.”