Shadowydreamer’s Scribbles
A Place where a Dreamer throws up stories.
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Enter The Gnome.
Normally I charge 1 cent per word for requests - but Thomas is cute and Mishke is fun to write .. so a freebie 
* * *
Mishke wandered into the tavern in Ironforge, thinking it looked pretty much like every other dwarven bar she’d been in. She missed Gnome bars with their servos and servers, their flickering mago-energy lights, their chairs that actually fit the behind properly.. She sighed and looked amongst the bearded and non-bearded faces. Really, dwarven women weren’t much better than their men!
Everyone seemed determined to forget there was a war on and find the bottom of their tankards quickly. A group, of what looked to be miners, was in the corner with their own keg. She sniffed, everyone had friends here, but her. Well, sure, she could go up to Tinkertown and drink with gnomes, but drinking wasn’t what she was here about anyway. Not that she’d mind a tankard of the frothy, nutty, dwarven ale, of course.. but only to be social.
Thinking of social, there was a dwarf sitting at the side of the bar by himself. Plate armour scarred, sword in a well worn scabbard, and a scowl on his face that would make an ogre think twice. That looked to be just about what she was looking for alright!
Dwarves had this funny thing about not sitting in chairs with their backs to the room. Maybe it had something to do with how often fights erupted, but it meant she could easily bounce through the smoky room to the bar and smile up at Mister Crankypants. “Hi there!” Mishke chirped, with a bob of cotton candy pink hair as she leaned her precious staff against the aged wood of the bar. She held out her hand, “I’m Mishke Goboom.”
The dwarf turned to look at her like moving was an effort unto itself. He looked down at her, he looked at her hand, then back up to her face, snorted an unimpressed and grumpy snort, and turned back to his beer.
Mishke wasn’t deterred. She’d been living with dwarves for almost three weeks now. They were *always* grumpy. You just had to manoeuvre past their grumpiness. So she grabbed her staff and hopped up on the stool beside the crabby grass before propping said staff up once more. “You look just like the kind of person I’m looking for!” Mishke continued, happily, as she absently traded some coin for a tankard of her own from the harried looking serving wench.
His Most Cantankerousness ignored her.
“You see, I left something very, very, very, very..” she paused and gave it thought and then added, “VERY important thing in my house. I thought that my house had been blown up with the rest of everything, but no, it’s still there according to the damage surveyal team, so I want to go get it. BUT the King is being most silly and won’t let me go!” she looked very indignant about it. “HE says I have to get an escort. Can you imagine that?” The dwarf didn’t look like he was trying to imagine anything. “I’m a perfectly good third circle magi, I’ve passed two of my trials with flying, if explosive, colours, and I’m more than able to take care of my zombified kin. But nooooo..” she sighed and took a mouthful of ale. “Damn that’s good.” The dwarf grunted an agreement without looking at her. She took that as a sign of encouragement, “So, I’m looking for a warrior of skill, talent and ability to put up with me for a week to be hired for a short little trip to Gnomergon.”
The Dwarf turned to look at her once more, raising an eyebrow before looking her up and down. “Good luck.” He muttered, his voice with a strange hollow-echo to it.
“Oh.” She breathed. He was one of THOSE. One of those who’d been corrupted from the holy light, who’d been forced to serve the Lich King himself, slay their own kin, turn on their families.. “COOL!” she added, eyes wide and sparkling with delight. She’d never actually gotten to meet a real live Death Knight before. Though, she didn’t think she could afford to hire one, they were pretty darn powerful and power was expensive.
The Dwarf rubbed the bridge of his nose with one of his meaty hands, looking like he was in pain. “It is not “cool,” no matter what you may have heard.” The echo sent delighted shivers down Mishke’s spine.
Mishke stopped swinging her legs to kneel on her stool. It was a fit of acrobatics that would confuse any who knew how she could trip over dust on the floor. She put a hand on the warrior’s shoulder, and then retracted it at his dangerous glower. “Look, sir, mister.. I can’t claim to understand all the stuff you’ve had to deal with. But I DO know what it’s like to lose hearth, home, and kin. I know what it’s like to find yourself adrift with nowhere to call home and wondering what you’ll do next and nothing feeling or fitting quite right. And I know what it’s like to want that piece of familiarity, that safety and HOME you once had.” She sighed and looked down at her knees. “That’s why I’ve got to go back, you see.”
The Dwarf sighed and finished of his ale. “I’m Arconius.”
“Nice to meet, ya!” Mishke said holding out her hand again.
He looked down at it and shook his head as he got off his stool, “Alright, let’s go.”
Mishke took her turn to sigh, “Well, we can work on the whole friendliness thing.” She hopped off her stool and grabbed her staff once more, “Wait, now?”
He turned, raising an eyebrow, “Do you have better things to be doing?”
“Er, no.. But, I don’t have my supplies or anything..” Mishke said not quite trotting to keep up with the taller dwarf’s stride as he left the tavern.
“You’re a mage, aren’t you?” he gruffed, not looking at her.
“Uh, duh!” Mishke exclaimed. Really, you’d think the big sparkly staff and the pretty blue robes would SORT of hint at that!
“So summon what you need when you need it.” Arconius told her as he shoved his way through the district’s crowds.
“Uhm..” Mishke said, trailing in his wake, “I’m not so good at the summoning stuff bit. I mean, you want something frozen, burnt, or basically blown up, I’m your girl.. but protected, created or fetched? I’m still kinda working on that..”
“Practice makes perfect.” He said to her, “I have everything *I* need.” He added, patting his sword.
Mishke told herself that he was a dwarf, and dwarves were a bit funny upstairs. She told herself he’d been corrupted by the worst evil she’d ever heard of before winning his freedom. That meant he’d be even funnier upstairs than the average dwarf. She’d just have to be patient with him. “Right. Practice.” She hoped he didn’t mind craters from exploding fruit..
* * *
He’d finally taken pity on her panting and stopped his march through the mountains and allowed her to set up camp. Well, mostly it was him building a lean-to after her tent was created the size of a handkerchief, and then him hunting when the soup she tried to summon landed in the snow because she’d not summoned a bowl first, and she didn’t even want to think about what a death knight looked like after he had apple explode over him and his armour. He’d not even let her summon some water. He’d said the snowy, ice covered waters were safer and told her to sit by the fire he’d built and not move.
She wasn’t quite sure how literal he’d meant the ‘not move’ but he’d sounded really, really, cranky when he said it, so she sat by the fire and picked bits of apple off her robes to eat. She’d TRIED to tell him, really she had! But he was like most men, only heard what he wanted to. Dwarven men seemed even worse about it than gnome men. Well, okay, most gnome men had their heads in some contraption when you tried talking to them, this dwarf just sort of looked through her like he wasn’t quite on the same plane of existence as her. Which was kind of creepy, actually.
She was just about to decide ‘don’t move’ didn’t include not going off into the bushes to do a bear impression when he returned with several lumps of meat. He started to give them to her and then saw her mystified expression. “You don’t cook, either, I take it?”
Mishke dug her foot in the snow and shrugged one shoulder, “Well, I can *overcook* just fine..”
She’d never actually heard the full recitation of the prayer of Brell before, but she was pretty sure she was hearing the first stanza as Arconius muttered it to himself, eyes closed, gauntleded fist strangling some very dead animal.
“Uhm.. but I can try anyway?” she asked quietly, hopefully.
“NO!” he not-quite-shouted, and then repeated, calmer, “No, It’s fine.” He shuddered with a clanking of armour. “I suspect it’s safer to cook it myself.”
“I’m good with dishes!” Mishke tried to assure him as she edged towards the woods. She really, really, did need to go potty.
“Watch out for wolves.” Arconius said, not looking up from his preparations. Which, really, was also quite creepy.
* * *
The death knight had stopped even bothering to sheath his sword. The leper gnomes weren’t terribly subtle or smart, but they did tend to wander in small packs. Mishke was still pretty sure she could have blown them all up with a few spells, but since Arconius seemed to be getting some much needed therapy in slaughtering her ex-kin, she was happy to leave him to it. She just burnt the bodies after he was done and wished their souls on to the great machine. Assuming they weren’t already there, that was up for debate in the magus’ guild.
It almost seemed like the little green men were getting more aggressive the further they got into the underground city. “They let you have your house this close to the court?” Arconius asked as he stopped to give her a breather.
“Oh sure.” Mishke replied. “My lab’s outside though. The commute sucked.”
One bushy eyebrow got raised, “Why am I not surprised?”
She was *pretty* sure that was one of the rhetorical questions the death knight seemed so awfully fond of, so she didn’t answer him. Even though she had a darn good answer and everything.
“What the dreth is THAT?” Arconius asked, pointing towards the center of the courtyard with his sword.
“Oh COOL, they DID finish it!” Mishke said with more enthusiasm than sense, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
“Finish WHAT?” Arconius growled, grabbing the front of her robe and pulling her towards him, his voice echoing through Mishke’s chest.
Mishke leaned forward and planted a friendly kiss on the dwarf’s lips, “I don’t think we have time for that, it’s probably seen us if we’ve seen it.”
He dropped her in surprise, eyes wide. Fingers touched lips and then he growled and turned away from her, eyeing the monstrosity of mechanics. “What IS it?”
“Oh, well, it’s from the chicken processor plant originally-” she had to raise her voice because the creation was lumbering towards them, she was fishing around in her pocket for a spark. She wasn’t really good at magic spells, especially in the mana-poor Gnomergon, but fire wouldn’t do much. Hey, maybe some ice underfoot.. No, she’d tried that with the dire wolves and Arc had gotten upset when he’d slipped and fallen on his butt.
“I don’t care what it’s from *originally!*” He yelled as he ducked a buzzsaw that tried to remove his head.
“Oh, well, anyway - when the war started, we converted most of the utility stuff into defenses. That’s the .. uhm.” She paused as she tried to think of a good name, “Chickenchopper 3000.”
“How do you turn it off?” He didn’t seem to be listening to the details.. *again*.
“Well, let’s see..” She chewed on her lip as she fired off several explosive bursts. The Chickenchopper didn’t seem to notice. “Y’know.. I have no idea! I never worked with chickens!” Mishke said after careful thought, “I assume you’d turn it off like anything else though.”
“WHICH IS?” Arconius snarled, slashing at the monstrosity.
“Oh, beat the shit out of it or blow it up.” Mishke said with seriousness as she tried an extra large iceball up the exhaust pipe.
Arconius turned to look at her, “Why am I not surprised at that, either?” he grumbled and then got knocked head over heels by the arm attached to said buzzblade. Well, the second arm, the bot had six after all.
Mishke fired off several fire bursts and ran to the dwarf’s side, but he was already back on his feet and charging the robot with a strange cold glow in his eyes. She wanted to help him, she really did, but he was swarming every which way as he seemed determined to chop right through the chickenater. He didn’t even to notice the dents and slices his armour was getting. Mishke hopped from foot to foot trying to decide what she could do besides pull out some pom-poms and cheerlead. The manic grin on Arconius’ face kind of told her he was having fun and she didn’t want to ruin his fun.
She was leaning on her staff admiring the growing pile of scrap metal when the death knight found the power core. She realized she probably should have warned him about it as he was sailing through the air from the resulting explosion. Mishke ran to where the dwarf lay, not quite twitching. He smelt of electrified blood. Mishke started patting him down, trying to find a source of injury to apply medical attention to. He was making the most awful noise.
She stopped her panicked pat down when she realized the dwarf was *laughing*. She stood over him, hands on hips to glare down at him. “You scared the fire out of me! What’s so funny?”
“That was fun,” Arconius said, rolling to his feet and patted her on the head, ignoring her resulting protest at her hair getting messed up with soot and dwarf blood.
“You’re a mess.” She observed.
He turned to look at her, eyebrow raised. “Did you, or did you not, say that one had to blow it up?”
“Well.. uhm,.. sure. But normally we’d employ dynamite.”
“Do you HAVE dynamite?” he asked in what she’d learnt was his ‘endlessly patient’ voice.
“NO! Because you didn’t let me pack!” Mishke said, hauling on his hand to get him to her house before more leper gnomes showed up. The explosion would send them scurrying for a while, but they’d come investigate soon enough.
* * *
Her house was much as she’d left it - a mess. It was clean enough, but scrolls and books were stacked up everywhere. It looked like her cupboards had been scavenged through. She ignored her belongings to scramble over the debris on the stairs to get upstairs to her loft. As she’d thought she would, she found what she’d been desperate for. Her pet rat.
“A RAT?” Arconius spluttered, “We came all this way for a RAT?”
“Not just any rat! Fuzzy McFluff!” Mishke said, petting the squeaking creature.
“Damn, you better be good in bed.” He growled.
“What?” Mishke said, for once startled into near-speechlessness.
He strode across the room and grabbed her around the waist, crushing her against his chest plate to plant a very enthusiastic kiss on, and in her, her mouth.
Untangling tongue, Mishke’s lavender eyes met the dark, “Wow.” She breathed.
“That’s for reminding me I’m alive.” He said, dropping her lightly to her feet. “C’mon, let’s get you and your rat out of here.” He looked over his shoulder at her, “I assure you, MY house is in a lot better condition!”