Reunion

Part I

Calsh Trinketrun was finding himself more irritated at the goblins than ever before, despite the fact that their behavior wasn't any different than usual.

Certainly, he expected some ribbing; after all, he was a gnome spending a few weeks in the arid goblin town of Gadgetzan as he waited for one of his suppliers to meet up with him. The goblins were proud of their engineering feats, and he knew that those of his own race were as well; there was normally nothing wrong with a little friendly (and sometimes not-so-friendly) rivalry. If nothing else, the results were usually entertaining, with both races finding the most convoluted and useless devices to build to one-up their adversaries. Calsh didn't have any particular problem with the goblins; their obsessive focus on profits made a great deal of sense to him, and he often found it easier to deal with them on business matters than many other races, as long as he maintained a thick enough skin to not let their showmanship get to him.

Calsh was not an engineer — that was a profession better suited to one blessed with more cleverness than he — and for once, he was frustrated at the rivalry that he shouldn't have been a part of. News of his home city that had been spreading around the sun-baked settlement, and he desperately needed to verify how much of it, if any, was true.

At first, Calsh had assumed the bad news was just the goblins trying to get a laugh at his expense; after all, they were talking about Gnomeregan, bastion of the ingenuity that graced many of his people, and home of most of them. He knew that cities certainly weren't invulnerable, but the city had been fine when he'd last seen it nearly a year ago, and the only forces he could think of that were both powerful and hostile enough to take down his family's home were currently at the northern end of the continent he was on, while Khaz Modan was safely on the other side of the world. As the days passed, though, he couldn't shake the feeling that the goblins didn't seem as happy about this joke as others they'd tried. They were rivals, certainly, but Calsh had dealt with goblins plenty of times before and despite their taunting, most of them weren't bad. He doubted that they'd actually be joyous at the fall of the gnomish city.

Normally, such a feeling of unease would have been enough for him to return and check on his parents and siblings, but the cart he now spent most of his time next to had kept him in Gadgetzan. He needed his supplier to arrive so that he could purchase a few more goods from him, and with his newly-increased load make the long journey by land to Marshal's Refuge. Calsh was not one to abandon a job — one didn't earn trust and the increased money that came with it by doing that — and he wasn't convinced enough that the goblins weren't joking to drop everything and head home. Even so, his loaded cart had been taunting him over the last few days, and his supplier had not yet been seen.

And then, Balkrin had shown up in the goblin town.

Calsh had been sitting on the dusty ground, leaning against his cart and using the load's shadow to shelter himself from the brutal Tanaris sun, when the dwarf approached. He looked up at the approaching figure, his expression brightening as a familiar face came into view. He quickly stood up, bracing himself on the hard-packed sand against the strong pat on the back he knew was coming. It was not his supplier, but it was a dwarf he was always happy to see when their paths happened to cross. "Balkrin! I didn't know you were going to be coming through here!"

As Calsh had predicted, Balkrin did give him a rather rough pat; if he didn't know better, he would have suspected his friend was trying to knock him over each time they met. Calsh's trained stance kept him on his feet, though, and he was just left with a slight stinging sensation on his back.

"And I'm surprised to see ye here too, Calsh!" Balkrin returned. He paused, looked down at Calsh, and frowned. "Didn't ye hear the news? I thought ye had family in Gnomeregan."

And just as suddenly has his friend had arrived, Calsh had received confirmation that nearly everything he'd heard from the goblins over the past week was true. Confirmation was an ugly thing; he'd been beating himself up for being uncertain of the veracity of the local population's whisperings, but now that he had the word of a friend that he'd trust with his life, he felt his stomach sink.

"I'd just thought the goblins were trying to trick me," Calsh admitted, his sudden increase in uneasiness obviously showing on his face; he suspected he would have started sweating if it weren't for the profane temperatures that had already covered him with perspiration. "So it's actually true? Gnomeregan's seriously gone? What happened?"

"Calsh, it's bad. I've heard lots of rumors one way or the other, so I don't know how much of 'em are true and how much of 'em are fanciful, but the best I can piece together is that summat invaded your city, and your defenses backfired and ended up poisoning most of the city. I'm not certain of th' details, though."

"Poisoned most of the city? How many survived?"

The dwarf grimaced. "A lot of yeh gnomes evacuated to Ironforge, and that's a fact, I've seen the refugees wit' my own eyes. I hate to bear bad news, though, but there ain't as many evacuees there as should have come from your city. Ye might want to go see if ye can find your family in Ironforge — if they even made it out."

Calsh frowned. Balkrin was blunt with his assessment, but the gnome was glad to hear honesty, even if the honesty was unpleasant. He not only had family in Gnomeregan, but his family wasn't exactly in a situation where evacuation would be an easy task, and it churned his stomach to know that there was a real and reasonable chance that they may have all perished. There was no way around it; he now knew that he needed to go back to Khaz Modan, hoping that he'd find the four gnomes he cared about, and barring that, that he'd at least find out what happened to them.

His gaze returned to the cart behind him, and Balkrin followed it. "Ye need someone to take that the rest of the way for you?"

((Posted 26 February 2008))