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| - Eggbowl swung his leg over the side of his mechanostrider and dropped to the ground with a grunt. It had been a long journey. It was over a year ago he had discovered the smuggling ring, devoted to bringing in untaxed gems and textiles from Kalimdor. A crew of elves and humans had been operating jointly, and had been using powerful spells of obfuscation over their shenanigans. They combined these with clever strategies to bring the goods straight from Darkshore rural producers straight to Stormwind, bypassing the King's lawful taxation on the way. One such ingenious way was the construction of three special skiffs with foot-thick false bottoms: not enough to notice, but enough to store a dozen rugs or countless rubies. Eggbowl was not authorized to go undercover on the case; it had merely been one of many routine rumors which he had been checking up on while on patrol in the city. He was a trusted guard in the Crimson Hounds Brigade, to be sure, but not of sufficient rank to take such an important duty upon himself. However, the choice had been taken from him when he entered the Cork and Bucket and begun asking questions. In a short time, the nervous innkeeper had betrayed the smugglers, almost without persuasion. They apparently had been listening in, because their boots clattered noisily and a door thumped upstairs. Eggbowl, keen to prove himself, chose not to call in other Hounds to aid him. He could handle some smuggling louts, after all... he had patrolled Westfall by himself many a time when he was less seasoned. His hand glowing with the restrained heat of a fireball ("My curtains! MY CURTAINS!"), Eggbowl had advanced up the stairs cautiously... ...just in time to see a dangling pair of feet ascend a ladder outside of the window. A goblin smuggling dirigible, piloted by an actual Booty Bay goblin... in Stormwind! Not a common sight. Well, not living ones, anyway. Before the dirigible could escape with its felonious crew, Eggbowl sprang out of the window, heedless of his own safety. Not that a feather fall couldn't have been arranged, after all. He shouted, "Halt in the King's name!" as he clutched at the bottom rung of the ladder. And without further ado, they completely ignored him. The dirigible jerked unsteadily as it puffed away from the inn and rose into the air. The inferior goblin engineering was based on combustion, and the incendiary fuel used by the machine was clearly the unrefined gunk sold out of Booty Bay to the foolish green ones. It made for a bumpy ride. The goblin piloting it was out of Eggbowl's range of view, but the Hound could hear his nasal shouting. The two smugglers climbed the ladder as best they could. Eggbowl, whose gifts did not include great physical prowess, was forced to simply hold to the bottom rung like a tauren with a bale of hay. "You're not halting in the King's name! Why aren't you halting?! Halt!" Eggbowl wailed, swinging wildly in empty air as the dirigible raised above even the height of the castle's towers and puffed away from the city. And how many times had he scoffed at the physical fitness requirements of the Brigade? "When would I ever need to do a pull-up on duty?" he had once laughed. Hmph. The mage's problems were swiftly compounded, however. The fireball had never been released, and was instead held smoldering around his hand, which was now holding onto a twisted-fibre rope ladder. The fire met the rope, and they hit it off. Fire invited the rope back to its place for a nightcap. The rope and fire become extremely close. Eggbowl heard the smugglers, who despite their red bandannas were clearly night elves, jabbering at each other in their bizarre language in amusement, and then, agitation, as the flames rose up the ladder rather than simply parting it. The mage yelped and swatted at his section, unwilling to let go and let them go free. His thick cloth gloves helped with their fire-resistance weave, but not enough to save the mage's singing eyebrows. The elves began hacking at the ladder with their belt knives, but they weren't quick enough. In a moment the flames were licking at the dry wooden sides of the dirigible's carry-boat, and they too began to burn. The goblin was screaming, the elves were screaming, and Eggbowl had just realized he didn't have any feathers, the necessary reagant for Feather Fall. He expressed his concern by screaming. With a cantankerous explosion, the engine which had been propelling the smoking dirigible caught fire and the fuel within ignited instantly. What had been a relatively slow, if very elevated, voyage across the sky of Elwynn Forest had become a hellacious rocket-trip. A flaming dirigible carrying three smoldering passengers trailed thick black smoke as it spiraled insanely, dangling a blackening rope ladder with a frantic gnome on the end. At the insane pace they were traveling, it was little wonder that the steep cliffs which bordered the Burning Steppes rose in front of them just before the last of the fuel was spent. The dirigible took a rapid turn to the right with the last thunderous crack of exploding goblin fuel, and Eggbowl, at the end of the long ladder, let go of it in despair at the sound. Like a whip being cracked, the sudden shift in momentum slung the gnome forward. Tumbling through the air, wailing, his yellow-and-crimson tabard blackened and whipping in the wind, Eggbowl sailed just over the mountains, and into the Burning Steppes. At the apex of his journey, he began to arc down towards the red-lit hell-lands below. To his great fortune, however, there was a mountain there. He alighted gently on the very tip of a rocky peak which pierced straight to the sky. Like an naru on the point of a pin, he wavered back and forth, swinging his arms. The enormous mountain beneath him was hot, even through his boots, and it was higher than any other in sight. It was made of... black rock... So. What was a gnome to do? He was balanced on the point of Blackrock Spire. Far, far below, he could see the fabled winding trail which led to the entrance to the mountain. Inside, it was rumored that dark dwarves, dragons, and possibly even worse (villainous anthropomorphic pastries) dwelt. A sulfurous stink was everywhere, and there was no path down the sheer, steaming surface of the mountain. Like a cat with no legs in the top of a tree covered in butter (that was a STRANGE weekend), Eggbowl was stuck. Oh. That's right. He was a mage. Eggbowl began to prepare to teleport himself away from his hellish spire, whose slippery peak was markedly difficult to remain perched upon. It took only a few moments, and then the power began to accumulate in his palms, ready to whisk him away back to Stormwind. At the same time, deep within the hollowed mountain below, a brash paladin attuned himself to the portal which would lead to the Molten Core, in preparation to sally forth next week. As he touched the powerful energy source which would shield him forever in a protective sheath and maintain his mortal spirit when he sought to pass into Ragnaros' realm, it gave a brief flash. It was not a big flash, nor was it big magic. But it was potent magic, nonetheless, and Eggbowl had the misfortune to be standing on the tip of the peak of Blackrock Spire, many miles directly upward. One of the most important laws of magic is that of transference: "as above, so below" goes the common magical wisdom. Eggbowl was above. The paladin's attunement was below. So it was that when Eggbowl's magics made a sizzling portal which swept him away in the customary fashion, it was not the familiar grey stone of Stormwind that he saw when the power faded from his eyes. Instead, he saw charred, gutted rock. It was as silent as the grave, and smelt of charnal power. He was in the Molten Core, elemental domain of Ragnaros the Fire-lord. In an interesting sidenote, the same brash paladin who unwittingly interfered in Eggbowl's spell would attempt to enter and raid his way into the Core to help fight off some of the creatures within, at the command of his guildmistress. But rather than finding himself in the expected spot, where a week earlier he had accidentally helped send the Hound, the paladin discovered that he was standing on a soggy marsh next to a ragged shack, and the only sound he could make was a wet gurgle. He would go on to be the only murloc paladin in history. But a week previous, Eggbowl was not so fortunate (or perhaps was more fortunate). He had gone from bad to worse. In fact, things had become almost inconceivably worse. The last time things had been this bad, he had been trying to sneak past a family of sleeping jungle trolls in Stranglethorn, but had slipped and fallen amidst them. He had in fact landed on top of the mother of the group, and because she had been feeling amorous and her husband had been feeling vigorous, in the ensuing tangle he had ended up losing a shoe. Regardless, no use dwelling on that now. He had found the shoe and pulled it out and cleaned it off, and he would solve this problem just as handily (if less stickily). The mage was uncertain how he had gotten here. Something must be wrong with his teleportation spell. Perhaps even with all of them. That wasn't the way out, unless he wanted to try again and end up sitting in Stratholme. Nor would the swirling portal behind him admit him back through to the world that he knew. He wasn't attuned, and had only arrived here through a magical accident. In fact, the same magical accident's residue was keeping him alive, although it was growing more and more uncomfortable. There was only one thing for it. Eggbowl pulled from his robe his Gnomish World Enlarger, the most potent device ever made in Azeroth. It had the power to alter the entire world... perhaps all worlds, if the power was scaled up a bit. He had to go straight to the top of this place to get answers, and he knew how to do it. He adjusted a few settings with exquisite care, then turned it on. Instantly, the world all around him swelled and grew, doubling in size. Eggbowl seemed to grow smaller as everything else became even more titanic in scale than it had been before to his small frame. Only a few moments passed, and then came the bellowing cry which surpassed sound and thought and which shook Eggbowl to his core. "WHO DARES?!" roared Ragnaros the Fire-Lord. Without transition and with a level of power which was staggering to the gnomish mage, Eggbowl found himself in the innermost recess of the Molten Core, in front of a huge bubbling pool of magma. Hovering above it, looking even more enormous than Eggbowl imagined he might usually look, was what appeared to be a fire elemental. Albeit the largest fire elemental conceivable, so immense that Tinker Town would fit comfortably on his shoulder. Ragnaros' scrutiny was almost too much to bear, but Eggbowl managed to murmur, "I do." A tidal wave of hatred for all living things threatened to destroy Eggbowl's consciousness, as Ragnaros felt an astonishingly immense amount of insanity-laced rage that this mortal would dare to address him. The Fire-Lord answered with majestic and flaming power, "YOU HAVE ALTERED MY KINGDOM FOR PURPOSES UNKNOWN. IN EXCHANGE, YOUR SOUL WILL SMOLDER IN AGONY FOR ALL ETERNITY." "But if you do that," Eggbowl said, trembling. "Then how will you fit back into your wristbands?" He pointed at the titanic godmetal spiked wristbands, the only thing not enlarged, which sat in the corner. They were far too small for Ragnaros' enlarged wrists. "FOOL!" said Ragnaros, and his anger swamped Eggbowl's mind, overwhelmed his senses, and killed a small puppy in Theramore Isle. "VERY WELL THEN. I WILL RELEASE YOU. BUT IN EXCHANGE, YOUR WHOLE RACE WILL SUFFER. I WILL TAKE YOUR HOME FROM YOU WITH A DEADLY PLAGUE, AND WILL ALTER TIME ITSELF SO THAT IT WILL APPEAR TO HAVE ALWAYS BEEN SO!" Eggbowl rolled his eyes, lost consciousness as Ragnaros wracked him with spite, and crossed his arms. "I want to go back, or else I'm not reversing the machine. And no store carries spiked flaming wristbands in your size." Ragnaros did something beyond mortal ken which made Eggbowl a little queasy, then nodded his titanic flaming skull-head. Eggbowl turned off the machine, and again without transition, he was teleported out of the realm of fire. A yeti bayed at him. Oh. Great.
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