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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Nish deals with some of the fallout of her choice to abandon her contracts in Kalimdor, including a goblin ex, and meets an intriguing dwarven savior. 3800~ words. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
There was something oddly comforting about a goblin town – you could depend upon it being the worst kind of shithole town you could imagine, built in a terrible location except that the land came cheap, with shoddy materials that meant every building you saw was essentially a death trap waiting to spring, and that everything you might ever want would be for sale by someone for the eye gouging price you'd pay because you just had to have it.
Nish stirred her lemonade idly with a straw, making the ice – they'd tried to charge her three gold (per! cube!); she'd conjured her own water and froze it herself, smiling sweetly – chime pleasantly against the glass and pouted. The heat of the Barrens beat down relentlessly on the third rate, brown tiled roof of the second worst dive tavern of Ratchet, where Nish sat at the counter, wearing a scrap of red cloth held over her chest with nine tiny white leather straps, and light, multi-pleated white cotton pants that when she stopped moving showed how sheer they really were, and how little else she was wearing.
She conjured another weak puff of cold air around her face, moving the pink strands around off her neck for at least the moment before they fell back against her neck to cling to the skin like small, wet, pink leeches. She'd been forced to leave off the glitter eyeshadow, because it still wasn't a sweat proof formula (she was working on it). It was not comforting to know that she was likely still glinting a little in the light from the ever present sheen of sweat that covered her.
It had been an entire week of non-stop effort. She had tracked down every low level goblin with a verbal contract that she could reliably find, and one way or another settled the perceived debt. It had eaten into her savings, depleting them to almost where she had been four years ago, but it was done at least. No one would come after her now, or track down and harass the Company to get to her.
Cobalt Company. It hadn't seemed like such a bad idea at the time; sign up, put some bodies in between her and the goblins, and if needed, cut and run. But then she'd gone and met some of the bodies and got attached to some of just the most adorable people, and it had been like an itch that wouldn't go away.
So, here she was, back in the armpit of Azeroth, sweating in a bar that had probably not been cleaned since Warchief Thrall was a baby orc in some baby orc place, waiting to finalize the last agreement of the most dangerous contract she'd had, in a heat wave of a place that didn't ever seem to have a cold wave, while she drank lemonade that was advertised as being "made with real lemons" without an "exclusively" addendum, suggesting at least some of the rest of the ingredients were not "real lemons." Goblin advertising at its finest. She saluted the sign with the picture of the "lemonade" with her glass before taking another sip, refusing to analyze the taste.
"Q?"
Ah, there he was. It was a shame the goblin man was such a bastard, because for a goblin Virex was a gorgeous specimen, all well formed features, a fit and lithe body, and fine fingered hands. He'd been a disappointment in bed, unfortunately, as many handsome men could be, but he considered their one liaison to have been so successful that he supposed that Nish was merely playing hard to get, and would succumb to his charms once more at any moment. It made him both ridiculously easy to manipulate, and utterly tiresome to deal with.
"Hey there, handsome," Nish replied, turning her fake smile on him. He returned it with his own sharp toothed smarmy grin, but, as always, seemed to take hers as genuine, convinced that she could never not find him compelling. "I was just thinking how it was like, so boring without you here. I'm so glad you made it and now the fun can start." She pictured him exploding in a shower of bombs that looked like lemons and let herself giggle fetchingly.
"Of course, baby, that's what I'm here for," Virex said, sliding onto the chair next to Nish, deliberately brushing his hand up against her ass as he did, with not even terribly plausible deniability, and Nish fluttered her lashes at him a little, hiding the eye roll she wanted to do instead. "I know you got the goods, baby, but do you have what I'm here for, too?"
"Oh my gossshhh," Nish said, fixing a sweet smile on her face and using the opportunity to recross her legs to put extra distance between them. "Of course I do! You didn't think I'd make you come all the way here just to disappoint you. You know I'm always good for…" She deliberately paused, leaning in a little to flash some skin, and dropping her voice to a purr. "The final touch." She leaned back, and used the moment where his eyes were on her scant cleavage to take the reinforced pouch of gold out of her bright pink bag. Never show a goblin where you usually kept your money.
"Oh, I remember," he said, smirking in a way Nish thought he likely imagined women found attractive. He reached for the bag, and Nish clamped down hard on the leather strap.
"Tsk, tsk." Nish formed her lips into a little pout. "Show me the contract first, boo. I let go only after the ink dries, you know that."
Virex's smile grew to a sharp grin, but he reached behind him, unlatching a thin gold and truesilver metal tube that was likely worth more than the clothes Nish was wearing combined – and the leather was real great white kodo leather — and popped the seal to release a contract written on dark, expensive ink on fine milled paper. A scent of a deep, amber noted musky cologne wafted in the air and Nish felt her stomach clench reflexively at it. Rizztek. A rush of adrenaline hit her veins and she covered it by tossing a little bit of her hair around. The effect was diminished from the sweat heavy weight of the strands, but it likely covered the nervousness enough to fool someone of Virex’s caliber.
Nish read the contract in a glance, and felt her pulse jump higher. “Oh, come onnnnn, Virex.” Her voice pitched into almost a whine to hide the anxiety. She knew Rizztek would mess with the wording – she had known it was coming, and yet it still caught her by surprise the way the would-be Merchant Prince could be so cut-throat mercantile. He’d twisted the wording into what was known in some circles as a “death clause” that took the meaning of “best efforts” into an extreme sense with a few choice phrases here and there. She’d had it as “reasonable endeavors” before, which meant, of course, that she’d set the terms of what was reasonable. He’d stomped all over it with his pure red dragonscale boots, and ground the mithril heel hard into the language.
Nish forced a smile, biting her lip a little to draw attention away from her expressive eyes. “Virex. Smoochie boo, you know I can’t sign this.”
Virex only shrugged, a cruel, calculating look pinching his features into something ugly. “Oh, baby, you know I’d love to help you out, but what can I do? I can’t go against the boss. Not for just anyone.” He reached out a hand and caught her chin with his fingers, squeezing just a little too hard. “But, hey, you know I take care of my own. Maybe if I had a personal stake in this, I could see about some of those words that’s got you sweating, baby.”
She tossed her head out of his grip, and brushed a hand over her forehead. “I’m sweating because it’s hot, oh my gosh, Virex.” Great Arclight Spanner in the stars, she wished that were true. Getting him to sign off on the changes with the authority she wasn’t even sure he really had… “Besides, since when can you alter contracts on your sign, boo? Last I heard you were still too far down that ladder, smoochie.” Nish fluttered her lashes a little, cooing her words. Virex’s lips thinned, and his nostrils flared out. As she thought. He didn’t even have the ability to alter the clause. Her options were to sign, and either succeed in the job or die in the attempt, or walk away and try to ignore the target on her back until she managed to find someone in Rizztek’s organization who would deal with her while he slowly closed in on her, forcing her to be more and more desperate – or he went straight for Cobalt Company. Her stomach churned acid at the thought. Virex had been her best option, and he’d brought her nothing but trash.
“I’ve made good deals, babe. You’ve been gone a while,” he said with a sneer. It was a good try. Nothing untrue, all misdirection, nothing addressing her actual words. Nish looked up at the ceiling, pretending to consider it, putting a finger on her chin and tilting her head back and forth. She pouted a little, and then slowly shook her head.
She was trapped.
Unless she took it straight to Rizztek himself, and that was almost a suicide mission, but at least it was only a possibility instead of near-guaranteed, and that meant the numbers fell on side of Rizztek.
Nuts and bolts did she hate math sometimes.
How in the name of Trogg Hell she was supposed to actually get to see Rizztek…she looked at Virex, trying to picture how she could get that to work for her. Nothing sprang to mind. Virex was a dead end.
“Sorry, boo, but this isn’t good enough for me.” She said it with clear implication that she meant more than the contract. “So, I guess it’s no deal!” With a feigned casual shrug, she moved the pouch of gold back towards her bag. Virex struck out a hand, and put his on top of hers, stopping the motion.
"Not gonna happen, baby." Uncomfortably sharp nails pricked against her skin, and Virex's eyes went that cold, chilled look of hard metal coins in his skull. Her stomach fluttered in fear and she couldn't help the small cringe away from the look in his eyes. "I'm here to make you sign. One way or another."
"I'm not signing anything of yours," she retorted, her voice higher than usual. "Get your hand off my money, and off me, Virex."
He leaned forward close enough for his breath to catch on the sweat of her brow. "Or what? You can't do nothing here, baby. Neutral territory, remember? Goblin territory." His mouth went wide in a grin, and two nails pierced her skin.
"Ow! What the fuck, Virex!" Nish didn't let go of the money bag, but she looked over at her hand in almost shock. She was bleeding slightly. Her eyes shot back at the goblin man who had just signed his death contract with her, written in her own blood.
Virex opened his mouth to say more, but there was a flash of metal that cut between them so fast that for a half second, Nish thought it had been a stray shaft of sunlight. The truth was immediately apparent, however, as the bright silver dagger came to rest against Virex's skin.
"Now, then." Nish followed the line of the dagger up to the arm of a dark skinned dwarven man. Her eyes caught on his beard, a dark black with what had to be at least twenty silver metal pieces in it. "I believe tha' th' lass here said tae git yer hand off af her. Ye can do tha', lad, or I can take yer hand off jus' direct. Whate'er ye prefer."
Well.
Even if he didn't end up cutting off Virex's hand, Nish was definitely going to be seeing if he'd like to cut off her shirt, white kodo leather be damned.
Virex began to sputter something but broke off on a sharp gasp as the dagger moved ever so slightly down, breaking the skin.
"I'm sorreh. Didnae quite catch tha' one, lad. Mus' be I cannae hear s'well s'long as I still see tha' hand o' yers interferin' with tha lass here." The dwarf's voice took on a deeper edge to his baritone, almost vibrating down the length of the knife to Virex's arm to Nish's skin.
There was a tense moment where it seemed that both Virex and Nish considered jumping on the dwarf, albeit for entirely different reasons.
The dwarven man's dark eyes glittered like dangerous onyx in the light of the tavern, but for all that, he might have been carved from solid stone itself; he was utterly still, his hand not wavering even a fraction of an inch as he held it perfectly steady on Virex. He simply waited.
Virex blew a hard snort out of his nose and with a slow nod, unclenched his hand from Nish's own, the little half moons where his nails had bitten through the skin welling sluggishly with blood.
“Oh my gosh.” Nish pouted, and put a hand over the wound, glaring at the goblin man, a hint of fire in her eyes. “I swear, Virex, I see you again, I’m leaving just a smoking pile of slime where you stood. And then I’m blowing a crater where that slime is.”
Whatever witty rejoinder the goblin might have said was interrupted by another knife. “An’ back away nice an’ slow there, lad. An’ jus’ keep walkin’, aye?”
Nish waited until Virex’s eyes darted over to the dwarven man to tuck her money back in her bag, and then snatched it close to herself, standing in a smooth motion, angling it so that the man with the very sharp knives was between her and the goblin with the very sharp teeth and nails. Virex looked at her, his face contorted in a disgusted sneer, but Nish held his gaze and held up a hand, kissing it and blowing it at him—along with a bunch of tiny sparks that blew close enough to his nose that he would have felt a bit of heat.
“Toodles,” Nish said, fluttering her lashes a little at the goblin. Between her fire and the dwarven man’s knifes, Virex weighed the odds as being far too expensive for him, backing away with his arms held up, and leaving the bar in a way that strongly suggested he was evaluating cost to benefit ratios of taking out a hit on the dwarf who had interrupted.
“Well, now. Tha’ was a mite unpleasant,” the dwarf said, turning and sheathing his knives so quickly Nish barely caught the motion. Up close she could see a few fine lines on his face, maybe not quite so young as she’d thought at first. Mid-100s, maybe. “Ye all righ’ there, lass? Saw tha’ he drew blood. Ye be needin’ a bandage or somewha’?”
“Oh. Actually.” She looked down at her hand and wrinkled her nose. “Probably need a priest and maybe a paladin. Healing and taking off whatever plague thing he has on his gross little hands.”
“Ach, no, cannae be s’bad, I dinnae think. Let me see. Get ye patched up.” He held out a hand encased in a black leather glove. There were a few slightly worn places on the palms, where the material had gone softer and a little grayer, but not yet shiny with use. Nish put her hand in his, noting the size difference, and looking up at him with a curved lip smile, leaning in towards him. “Oh, now, lass, tha’s no’ s’bad. I can get ye somethin’ fer tha pain if it’s bad, but this is nothin’ some soap an’ water an’ a good bandage willnae see ta.”
"Ooo, I do appreciate a man who knows his way around tying…" She paused and inhaled deeply, using the motion to get a little closer. "Bandages," she finished sweetly, looking up through her lashes at him. He returned the look with a slight half smile, and nodded. "I'm Cognitia Fizzthingle. My friends call me Nish." She let her voice go breathy. "My boyfriends, they can call me anything they want. You… well, let's just say, after that, if you wanted to find out what you wanted to call me, I'd be very, very interested in what you'd come up with."
"Torcaill Undermountain," he said. After a moment he moved their hands up and down in a facsimile of a handshake. "I dinnae think I could come ap wit' somewhat bettah than 'Nish' fer ye, lass. Ne'er had much with nicknames an' wouldnae want tae trouble ye." Nish blinked a little. "Now, if ye come with me, I've got me packs outside with Steven."
"Oh, uh. Sure," she said. Torcaill released her hand, and walked out of the bar with the kind of footwork that told Nish he was probably either a thief or an assassin, or both. He didn't check to see if she was following, but she suspected he knew regardless.
Steven turned out to be a ram that had seen its best days probably somewhere around the Second War and might actually have been a scientific anomaly of age, or the first undocumented case of demonic possession of a ram – he was ancient, with horns that looped over and over in a spiral out from his head. He stood with the uncaring flat thousand yard stare of an animal that had seen things and had remained unimpressed. Torcaill patted the ram amicably, saying something in Dwarvish in a low tone as he reached into the bag that was strapped to the animal.
"Ah, there we be, righ' where I left ya," he said to the bandages and turned to Nish with an encouraging smile. "If I ha' ye guessed arigh', yer a mage, aye? Mind conjuring ap some water an' we can get ye all squared away?"
"I am. I can conjure all sorts of things," she replied with a little smile. She put a little extra into the conjuring, moving her hands in a slightly suggestive way as she held Torcaill's gaze. He returned the look with a faint, mild smile.
"Tha' sounds righ' useful."
"Oh, it is. Very, very useful." The conjured water came in a pink flask, and Nish knew that it would taste faintly metallic to most people who weren't gnomes. Her eyes arrested on his hands, however, as he drew off his gloves, revealing skin slightly paler than the rest of him, with a deep red, long healed burn scar on the back of the left.
Torcaill handled the wound in a manner that made it obvious he frequently tended to puncture wounds, and Nish watched closely, blocking out the brief pain by staring harder at his dark eyes catching the bits of late afternoon sun. The heat had caused a light sweat to break out on his forehead, but he seemed unconcerned by the temperature even in his dark clothing.
"Now, there y'are. All set, an' should be no lastin' harm done ta ye." With the last of the bandage finished, he pulled his gloves back on, a faint, polite smile on his face.
"Thank you," she purred, batting her lashes at him. "You are so good with your hands. Gentle and quick, and you definitely know what you're doing with them." She gave him a sweet smile and toyed with the edge of her shirt.
"Oh, aye," he said, bobbing his head slightly. "I do a lot o' work wha' tha' need a fair bandage, an' best done righ' quick, most o' tha time."
"Right, yeah, like, of course." Nish glanced at the ram, who continued staring off placidly into either the middle distance or the wild, untamed aether of the fabric of the universe that only the eldrich elder beasts can see. One of those. "I just mean, you could probably do a lot of things with those…skills." This time she let her finger trail along her thigh, tapping it gently on the edge of the one of the pleats, slowly blinking her eyes at him, and then, for good measure, she licked her lips. Torcaill nodded.
"Well, I've mostly got jobs around usin' them, aye, an' if ye've need o' a pair o' hands an' some daggers, ye jus' whistle an' I'd be happy ta lend ye tha use o' them." He patted his actual daggers, and smiled at Nish. While she stood there wondering if there was any indication that there was any innuendo there at all on his part, he gave her a thumbs up and swung himself up onto the ram. "I'm stayin' in tha inn, up by tha' hill o'er yonder," he said, pointing to the hill in question. "It was ah treat meeting ye, Nish. Good luck."
The pink haired gnome watched the dwarven rogue depart with a sigh and shake of her head. You couldn't win all of them. Sometimes, you just weren't their type, and you had to just let it go. Still. You could at least appreciate the view.
An entire day shot. Nish pushed her hair back and tried to ignore how wet her scalp was with sweat. The job was clearly impossible—stealing that blueprint from the Horde outpost in the Barrens would be suicide for a lone gnome mage. The Hordies had bought it from Rizztek's number one rival, one that the would-be Merchant Prince was closest to in wealth. If he could undermine the other goblin, he'd have that edge to possibly gather enough power to make his way into the upper echelons of goblin society. He just needed one more thing.
Several months ago, that one more thing had been Q.
She had promised to design him an explosive device that could be set with a timer that would detonate with the same amount of power as the best on the market with up to a 21.8% cost reduction in materials, making it cheaper to produce than his rivals. And Nish had intended to do that. She had been pretty sure the math held out, with those new compounds she'd been working on.
But then.
Nish rubbed a hand over her forehead. It was fine. Whatever. Thinking about Gnomeregan was just a bummer and, anyway, at least Tad wasn't dead. Joanie still was, but. At least Rissy had gotten out. No point in just lingering on that stuff.
Maybe just one drink at the inn's bar and then she'd go hang out in bed and think of other, better things.