A Demon is Forever

[Archivist~Addie]

Author: Topiary
Faction: Alliance
Title: A Demon is Forever
Type: Adventure

Link: forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-realm-scarletcrusade&t=139057&p=1&tmp=1#post139057

The Extraordinarily Unlikely
but Nonetheless Entirely Verifiable
Misadventures of
Topiary Milliner St. John de Gewgaw

-----

It wasn't her real name, of course.

That would be silly.

Her real name was Jelly Wixilsprocket, a working class sort of name, and while it may have occasioned her to say "Yes, as in jam" more times in her life than she strictly cared to, at least it had never gotten her into any trouble. It was a poor tailor's name (poor, she pointed out, as in her shirts tended to come out with three arms, or no hole for the head, or were perfect in every respect except that they would only fit, for instance, a dormouse), a student's name, and come to that, everything had gone wrong because when she said "I'm a student" nobody had the good sense to skip asking "Oh, what do you study?"

And then she would tell them, and it would be such a disaster. As if a sophomore could reek of evil. As if a sophomore could reek of anything but sweat, very cheap food, and sleepless nights.

"'Ere, watch where yer goin' wi' thar!"
"Please step over here--"
"'At's mah valise, 'at is!"
"Mind the gnome--"
"--Did anybody see Binky on the way in?"
"Mind the gnome--"
"Where'd ye dafts make off wi' mah trunks?!"
"You've kicked over the gnome!"
"Just step this way, sir--"
"Has anybody seen Binky?"
"I 'AD 'em on mah GRYFFON, dun tell me 'ey dropped off over th' Wetlands!"
"Oh, by the Light, I didn't even see you, let me help you up--"
"Ow!"
"Sir, I'm sure your bags will be offloaded momentarily--"
"Excuse me, I'm looking for Binky--"
"'Ere now, whut's 'is 'ere gnome doin' tripped over mah bags? 'Ese are MAH bags! Get orf, ye lawn ornament--"
"Ow!"
"Oh, here, sir, we seem to have found your bags!"
"Mind the gnome!"

Jelly was jostled and pushed up the customs line, silent and numb, until she blinked dazedly into the knees of a brusque Ironforge customs official. He wore a pen and clipboard and impatient expression. He cast about, blinked, stepped back, and looked down at her accusingly, as if it were her fault he was six feet tall instead of some sensible size.

"Name?" he demanded.

Jelly looked slowly up at him and pushed aside her hair, matted with filth. She said the first thing that came to her mind, and it turned out she had quite a bit on her mind.

"Topiary. Milliner. St. John de...Gewgaw."

The customs worker stared at her blankly, then scrawled out her ticket which read "TOP[squiggle] M ST.J de G[squiggle]" and thrust it at her. She took it gingerly from his fingers and peered at her new signature.

"Any bags?" he prompted her.

She shook her head. She didn't have anything left.

"Right then. Gnome welcoming center, north-side-of-the-Forge-first-right. Welcome-to-Ironforge." He fired out each sentence as a unit and dredged up a smile from the bottom of his clerky soul.

"Thank you," she mumbled. She was shoved aside by a squalling family of dwarves and stumbled into the rail circumnavigating the molten heart of the city.

Ironforge. She had spent more than a year away. Away from...anywhere. She had gotten in the kind of trouble that you didn't get out of with a contrite expression and an offer to do some extra credit work on the side. Expulsion-style trouble. Paladin-style trouble, the worst kind. Those bloody-minded plate-clad dunderheads who spat on her and kicked her (although she would have to privately admit that nearly everyone kicked her, since she was so far from eye level) and called her vile names as she crossed Cathedral Square on her way from her apartment in the Dwarven District to her classes in the Mage Quarter and back, as if she had ever done anything to them, as if she wanted anything but what they wanted--peace and safety and security and the defeat of the Lich King and his undead armies and the return of Lordaeron to men! If she had had an affinity for the Light, she would have studied that, but she was born with the knack for fire and shadow, and growing up in Gnomeregan no one had ever tried to dissuade her from it...

And then the city was lost...

And she was thrust into a world filled with new prejudices...

Paladins.

And she had gone looking for one, hadn't she. Jelly, now Topiary, straightened the front of her threadbare and dingy robe and held her head up as high as she could, which, all things considered, wasn't actually very high at all, and blinked the fumes and sulfur of the Forge out of her stinging eyes. That idiot--who she hated--who she wouldn't raise a finger to save from death--had run off from his unit to join the Scarlet Crusade. And she had found him, hadn't she, and tried to reason with him even though that had never worked before. And he had taken her back into the Monastery, which she had been secretly hoping for all along, hadn't she, hadn't she, because she was afraid of what had happened to her demons, afraid at the decay of her pacts, and there the good Crusaders did what the mealy-mouthed do-nothings in Stormwind and Ironforge wouldn't, and performed on her an exorcism.

They had then spared her life. Repayment for an enmity that was almost friendship. She crawled out of the mud in the ditch behind the Monastery and dragged herself into the shelter of the woods in Tirisfal Glades, and there had passed out. And when she woke up, three days later, her demons were gone. Her pacts were gone.

It was a year before she risked the warlocks of the city might recognize her face. New name, new look, new past, new bearing. New demons. This time, she would be very careful. Her hunger for knowledge, hunger for power, would not outstrip her ability to control it. She swore this to herself as she paid a very circumspect tailor for a decent robe and a pair of shoes that still had the soles in them. Shadows still licked at her dreams and she knew that her theories were sound. She would be vindicated. It would require dedication, though, and caution.

And she would be very careful with paladins.



~POST 2~



Demonic pacts were funny old things.

For instance: from the point of view of the summoner, they were contracts one drew up in order to call upon the services of a particular evil-minded little bastard to fulfill a variety of arcane needs. However, from the point of the evil-minded little bastard in question, the contract was a puzzle; find the right troublesome clause to ram through the correct idly-placed loophole, and the evil-minded little bastard 'won,' by the standards of lighting your face on fire or cleaving you in half or devouring you in a noxious pool of shadow and misery or something like that.

Demonic pacts were broken all the time. You just don't hear too much about those warlocks because of what happens to them afterwards. Topiary's freshman year Personified Phase Fluctuation Channeling Theory professor had kept what he claimed were the remains of one of his less attentive students on his desk. He had lost control of his imp. What was left of him could have been used to fill the stocking of someone naughty for the Feast of Winter's Veil. A small stocking.

Pray to whatever random aberrations in the space-time continuum you hold dear that you don't get a smart one, her professor had said.

Topiary didn't believe in prayer. And she got a smart one. His name was Gakpep.

She remembered the first time the lights and smoke had faded, and the euphoria of summoning stopped singing in her blood, looking into that ugly little grey snout for the first time. He was like what you would get if a gnome and a rat fell desperately in love and could not longer restrain their passions. Small, shriveled, wicked little sharp teeth all in a row, delicate hands with slender claws that pierced flesh like a fork through cheese. He capered and crooned gently to her, head cocked, watching her watching him. They were very still for ten or fifteen minutes, examining one another.

"H-hello." Topiary's voice trembled. Her wide eyes reflected Gakpep's countenance back at himself.

The demon chittered delightedly and did a hand spring for her.

"You're...you're, um, my demon." She tried to steady herself. Her hands shook in the folds of her acolyte's robe.

Gakpep gargled a laugh and hopped from one foot to the other. Where he stood, the snow flickered with eldritch green flame, then melted away.

The forest was hushed except for the hiss of falling snow and from time to time the distant crack of tree branches. Topiary held the imp's eyes and said firmly, "You're my demon."

Gakpep curled his upper lip back from his teeth and hissed.

"Can you speak?"

A hiss like laughter.

"I know you can speak," the gnome insisted. "What's your...um...I mean, what is your, that is...name...?"

The imp took two light steps towards her. Topiary felt herself step back involuntarily. The little brute was nearly as tall as she was. He hiccupped a giggle and pranced closer until she could feel the licking of those strange green flames. She rubbed her arms and shivered.

Gakpep beckoned her to lean down. She swallowed and brought her ear down to that soft, crinkled muzzle. The imp's breath rasped hollowly. A second passed, and another.

She stumbled back with a squeal and her hand clamped over the side of her face when he lashed out and clawed her down the side of her right cheek. His claws carved out three parallel furrows in her skin that instantly cauterized, and she screamed again, in pain. The imp chortled wildly and cavorted in a circle, somersaulting and dancing with the flickering apparition of fire that trailed behind him. "Hhhhghakpep," he cackled. "Hhghhhakpep, hgaakpep!"

"You horrible little brute!" burst from Topiary's lips. Gakpep giggled over her. "You hurt me! You're not supposed to--how could you--don't ever--!" She advanced on him and struck at him with the back of her hand, but she was unused to physical violence, she pulled the blow, and Gakpep just pranced backwards out of range. He chittered more, grinning so those rows of needle teeth glinted in the light reflected from the snow.

Topiary rubbed her cheek and had no notion of how much worse it would get.



~POST 3~



It wasn't like that now, of course.

"I told you those other gnolls would hear the screams."

"Shut up," said Topiary.

"I said, didn't I? I said, 'No chance, boss, that one right there, see? He's gonna warn the others.'"

"Shut up."

"You need any help with those bandages?"

"Shut up."

"Well, excuse me for breathing, I'm sure."

"Shut up." She paused and looked up from raveling a strip of wool around her lower leg. She looked like she had been savaged by a brood of enormous badgers, because that was more or less the case. "You don't breathe."

Pipyal sniffed and handspringed to her other side. "'S not nice, pointing out other people's deficiencies."

"You're not a people, either."

"Are we almost done here?"

"Well, we might be, if I had enough gnoll paws to show that guy in the place, but somebody keeps eating them." She pinned down the end of the bandage and looked around. Flies swarmed around the pile of bodies that had crumpled at her feet. The insects alighted, nibbled at the dead flesh, fired away and then dropped in a gently smoking cinder a few yards distant. The corpses glistened.

Topiary tugged off her sandals and poured the pebbles out.

"'S just good fun, Tope, all in good fun. And I'm hungry."

She winced and pulled her shoes back on, then creaked to her feet. Her head didn't clear the top of the Westfall sawgrass. "You don't, um, even have to eat."

"I can if I want to, though."

"And your 'all in good fun' is going to get me killed, one day."

"That'd be a horror, boss!" Pipyal chipped cheerfully.

Her second pact she had composed with far greater care than the first. Pipyal had all the inherent menace and rebellious character as a wet kitten. Together they pushed their way through the grass, twin wakes opening and closing behind them with just her spire of green hair bobbing now and then above the surface.

"Think the town's more that way, boss."

"Shut up." Topiary checked her compass, then squinted up at the sun. "...Yes."

"Why're we goin' there, anyway?"

"We must attain fiduciary autonomy for the sake of our forthcoming voyage, Pip." Topiary nudged aside a lazy boar with her shoulder. It snorted at her.

"Oh," crooned Pipyal. "That's what I thought. I said to myself, We are going to attain fidshiary autononomy, I said."

"It means we need money, Pip."

"Oh," the imp said again. "We still doin' that ploughin of the ocean waves, like, style of fing?"

"Yes, Pip."

"I've been thinkin' about that, boss."

Topiary gave her demon a sidelong glance. "Yes, Pip?"

"And it's occurred to me, it has..."

She waited.

Pipyal pressed, "The horses, boss. They're gonna sink."

She blinked. The dull drone of insects elided into her thoughts.

"What?"

"The horses. You can't have a plough without the--"

Topiary sighed. "We're not really going to plough anything."

"But you said--"

The gnome retuned her brain to Radio Pipyal. "It means we're going to take a boat, on the ocean, and sail to somewhere, other than here."

"Well of course other than here, boss."

"Right."

"'Cause this here is Moonbrook, and there ain't no boats to take right here. Stands to reason."

"Pip, shut up."

The little demon fell back a pace, obliging.

Topiary and Pipyal crept around the side of the schoolhouse, ducking behind the outhouse when they were nearly seen by a bored and hungry-looking patrol, and stopping behind a hedge beside the miniature graveyard. Topiary rolled up her sleeves and unslung a diminutive shovel from the back of her packs.

She dug.

She dug.

She wiped the sweat out of her face, sat down, ate a sandwich, and played Five Hundred Questions with Pipyal, which was just like the usual game only she had expanded the maximum number of questions since the little demon had trouble with the rules and tended to ask about four hundred and eighty questions along the lines of "Is it a duck? Is it a cloud? Is it a, a, what'rethem, rubber boot, style o' fing? Is it a witch's left tooth? Is it a miniature novelty tea cozy?"

She dug.

"Is it a teaspoon of sour cream?"

"No."

"Is it a...a..." Pipyal bounced from his hind legs to his hands and back. "One a them pipe playin', minstral instruments?"

"No."

A rain of grit fell back on her head as she failed to extend the arc of her shovel.

"Is it a..." there was a long pause. "...Chest buried behind a gravestone with yer, uh, psychic fingerprints on it?"

"No."

"'Tis so."

Topiary blinked and looked down into the hole she had created. A corner of the chest nosed out of the dirt. "Oh," she blinked. "Um, I guess it is."

Pipyal chortled amiably. "I win, then, do I? Gimme a fish!"

"Get it out yourself." She bent and hauled the case up from the packed-in soil, her fingers scrabbling for purchase. It came loose in a spray of dirt that showered the front of her robes. She righted it in her lap, arms aching with exertion, and muttered a few words in Fel. The lid popped open.

Gold glimmered in a molten heap. She pushed it aside. The metal was cool and clinked as it ran between her fingers. Below it, a stack of papers. Her research. Everything was still there.

A broad, slow grin, and then she hitched the trunk over her head out of the hole, and hauled herself back up to the surface. She looked like she had spent three days in the Deadmines, and she didn't care. This had been too dangerous to take with her when she had gone away. But it was here. Nothing was lost but time. She could pick up again exactly where she had left off.

She stuffed the papers into the bottom of her pack, and Topiary and Pipyal ambled back towards Sentinel Hill.

[Archivist~Addie]

~POST 4~



Hot Barrens sand blew across her feet, and Topiary spat grit out from between her teeth and winced her eyes open. If you dunked her in a bathtub she would have created a beach. The lowlands had been grassy, tough turf and scrabble and rocks that made her skin her knees, but the upswept and grim face of Dreadmist Peak had softened and melted into sand. It trickled out of the back of her sandals when she walked and sighed out of her packs whenever she adjusted them on her shoulders.

She reached a door in a shack nestled in a slumping crevasse, the edifice half-buried into rock and the rest shrouded by the squat side of a sand dune. Her knees quaked. Her arms felt like dead sea bass slung across her shoulders. Every inch of her was bruised, scratched, sweaty and matted with sand, she was tired, and hungry, and she could not reach the knocker.

She kicked the door feebly. The heavy wood sucked in the sound and gave nothing back out. The knocker gleamed smugly in brass two feet above her head. Topiary kicked again, harder, and the sand skidded out from beneath her feet and she dropped to her rump with a stunned gasp.

She took a deep breath and shouted ancient and terrible words of power.

"Shoggred, I want you to open this, um, door right now, or I'll have your dear old mother reanimated and we know, er, I mean, we know what happens next!"

The door snapped open and a snowy head (wild shock of hair full of sand) poked out through the crack. The old man's eyes crinkled. "Who're you?"

"I'm--"

"Bugger off!" the door shut with a thud.

Topiary pulled herself laboriously back to her feet. The door opened again and she was treated with another narrow glare. "What'd you know about my mum, anyway?"

"I know where she's, um, buried, for one thing."

Shoggred's upper lip curled back and he hissed teeth that he must have mugged from the mouth of a horse. "'At's a lie!"

"I, um, I do! And I can have it done! I know, um, I know the sort of people who...do that sort of thing! Resurrections! And things!" She brushed off the seat and front of her robes, flinging sand in wide arcs around her.

"'S a 'orrible thing to threaten a man with, eh? Eh? 'Is mum? She's a witch, that one! I put'er into that grave an' she ain't comin' out of it!" He slammed the door again.

Topiary made the mistake of looking down at her feet. Sand trickled out of her hair and into her eyes and she spent the next minute and a half blinking spastically, tearing up, and working her way steadily through her collection of invectives.

The door opened a third time. "Who are you, anyhow?"

"I'm, um, I go by Topiary now--"

"Dun know any Topiaries!" he snarled and jerked back to knock the door shut again.

"ButIusedtobeJellyWixilsprocket," she finished in a rush.

The old man blinked rapidly at her, then smiled broadly with his enormous horsey mouth. "Ohhh, Miss Wixilsprocket! Come in! Why didn't I recognize you?"

Topiary grumbled to herself as she stalked into the dim half cave, half room where Shoggred made a close approximation to a home. "Because my skin is the color of sand and my clothes are the color of sand and my hair is the color of, um, sand, with sorts of bits of green in between, and also, you're almost blind."

"Blind, eh? Ol' Shoggred? Naugh! I got the eyes of a twenty-five year ol', me!" He pushed the door in behind her. The hinges crunched around sand.

"In a jar under the bed, huh?" Topiary collapsed on a mat (covered in sand) and dragged a pillow (full of sand) beneath her.

"Up above the pantry, if you must know," Shoggred replied testily. Topiary looked up at him wearily. His clothes were worn (from sand) and filthy (sand again), but she saw gleaming dull and shriveled fine silk, delicate embroidery, in places small pearls still stitched into the cuffs and waist and collar.

"'Eard you scarpered off, eh?" Shoggred looked her up and down, which did not take long, as she did not have very much up to look down from.

"I got in trouble," she sighed.

"'Eard you went runnin' off cavortin' with paladins, eh what? Scamperin' about doin' godly things--" he spat into the fire.

Topiary sighed again. Shoggred was one of the old school warlocks. "Just because a paladin wants something doesn't make it bad."

"Huh! Huh! Is 'at what they're teachin' you kids 'ese days! But you know what I mean, Miss Wixilsprocket, eh? Eh? Cavortin!"

"There was no cavorting," Topiary insisted. "I did not cavort."

"Hunh! Kids today!" He dropped onto the mat beside her all at once, like a puppet with its strings cut. "'At why you changed your name, then? And with the...the...green? You named yerself Topiary an gave yerself green hair?"

"It seemed fitting," she answered meekly. "But, er...yes."

"Hunh!" he repeated. "An' figgered it'd be fine to tell ol' Shoggred, I take it, since no one ever comes to visit him no more, or give him the news or nothin'?"

"Yes, something like that. I need your help, Shoggred." She winced and shifted on her pillow.

"Dun know why I should help yer kind, Miss Wixilsprocket, kinda student 'at goes cavortin' with--" he folded his arms and set his jaw and looked away, his mangy white hair prickling defiantly.

She heaved a deep sigh, then shifted onto her knees and did her best to look adorable through the sandscreen. "You're the only one I trust to tell who I really am, Shoggred!" If only because he was a lunatic hermit who no one would ever see or believe, she added to herself. "When the Darkmaster published his calculations, all of the top warlocks got a copy. You must have gotten one, too!"

"'S only 'cause of who me mum was," Shoggred muttered. "Send'em acolytes all the way up the side o' the mountain, oh yes, how d'ye do, Mr. Shoggred, an' here's some papers the Darkmaster's wrote, like, everyone important gets a copy, but it's jus' 'cause of who me mum was, I know..."

Topiary forged ahead. "When I was, um, as Jelly, I could look at the school copy, but I can't risk reenrolling now. I want to keep working on Unified Theory, Shoggred! I know how important the work is!"

He glanced at her sidelong. "Still on about UT, eh?" his ear pricked.

"But I need the tools. Darkmaster Gandling laid out the, half the underlying premise, with those, with the, the calculations! I have to see them!" Topiary's hands curled into fists, and her nails cut shallow crescents into her palms that smelled of blood.

Shoggred inhaled deeply. "There ain't too many as wanna bother wi' UT, anymore. Say it's too fringe. Radical, like. Dangerous."

"But we know better, don't we?" she coaxed him, inching forward on her knees. "It's, um, it's hope. For everybody."

Shoggred snorted in disgust and his whiskers rippled magnificently. "Hope, phah! Still talkin' about them goody-goody nothin's, eh there, Miss Wixilsprocket? 'Em paladins ain't worth spit, I'm tellin you--"

"Please, Shoggred."

"Augh, fine, 'omebody's gotta go on wi' the work. An' it ain't gonna be me. I'm busy up here, I am. Busy as anything." He lurched to his feet and staggered back into the cavern.

Busy hiding from your dead mother, Topiary thought.

He returned a minute later and shoved a sheath of expensive, printed papers at her. Her breath caught and she took them with reverence. Shoggred exhaled. She looked up at him.

"And the trust," she said.

He bristled. "Now see here--"

"You live on a mountain, you haven't even been down to a bank in years!" Topiary cried. "You're not going to do the research yourself! Your mother created that trust for research! She--"

"Dun bring my mum into this!" the old man's voice cracked.

Topiary forged on inexorably. "She might get angry with you if you just hoard all that money until you die--"

"Me mum's dead, d'ye hear, she ain't gonna touch me!"

"Then she'll get you on the other side!"

Shoggred gave a thready scream and stumbled back, his arms raised to shield his face. "Fine! Ye pint-sized witch, ye lawn ornament, ye huggy doll fer spittin-up children--"

Topiary slumped back on her heels and let out a shaky breath. "Thank you, Shoggred."

"--Ye 'orrible, rat-sized, good fer nothin' but puntin'--" he staggered back into his cell again.

It wasn't unethical, Topiary thought as she took the trust documents, bank seals, and letters of credit from the trembling old man and slid them gently into her packs along with the research of Darkmaster Gandling. Unified Theory was important. Developing weapons that could be used against the Lich King was important. One scared old man was a...a...well, he was just one scared old man. He wasn't important.

The trip down the mountain was done more hastily than the trip up had been. Cheered, invigorated, now, Topiary struck north, swerving orc patrols, and headed towards Ashenvale.



~POST 5~



It wasn't like that now, of course. But remember when it was like that then?

Topiary tried not to.

She was passed out drunk--or rather, Jelly Wixilsprocket was passed out drunk, inasmuch as it's worth making a distinction between the two--and Gakpep, with delicate fingers, unsnapped the latch of her backpack from the inside. The breath rasped out of his flute-like throat on a sweet trill as the flap fell open and dim light fell upon his shrunken, stygian face. He clambered free and pricked his ears to the sounds of laughing and nattering and quaffing and the crackle of the fire. He crept beneath tables and took shelter beneath a waitress's skirt as she swept across the floor and leapt free and clung to the underside of a chair when she stopped and ruffled her dress, thinking something had brushed against her heel--he sighed, a sound lost in the punctuated burble of the crowd. He slunk back to the floor and forward, towards the wide back wall of the bar.

Topiary kept Gakpep in her satchel. She would have preferred not to keep him at all, but her satchel made do. When she tried to dismiss him, he wouldn't always listen, and when he did, he sometimes turned up again without being called. This way, they could pretend that she was in control. Well, Topiary could pretend. Gakpep had no pretenses whatsoever.

A leash of burning words wrapped around his throat and choked him when he tried to run, and it bound him to the gnome as a chain binds a rotweiller to a post. But the leash was long, and it was weak, and Gakpep would rip that post out of the ground if that's what it took to be able to savage the leg of the postman and disfigure passing children.

He chittered softly to himself and hopped, shelf to shelf, up the wall of all the liquor in pretty bottles. Where he went he left footprints of phosphorous, hot, pungent, swirling, and gone. He noticed that conversation lulled and ceased behind him. He grinned. A row of sharp little teeth was reflected in a hundred bottles.

Voices started again.

"What the hell is that thing?"
"Oh, fel, where's Jelly?"
"Get down from there, you wretch!"
"'Ere, it's hangin offa me favorite whiskey--"
"Oh, it's cute!"
"Hellfire, Jelly's passed out!"
"Cute?"
"What's it doing?"
"Look at it's widdle finger-wingers--"
"Oh, somebody just knock it off with a broom, or something--"
"Jelly, hon, wake up, okay? Jelly?"
"Do you smell smoke?"

That last inquiry was followed by an uncomfortable silence. Gakpep giggled and crouched behind a barrel of something intoxicating, and nursed the flames he painted into its back in a demented smiley face.

The thoughts of the tavern-goers ran something like this:

That little pest set a barrel of liquor on FIRE. He's started a FIRE inside a bar where there's gallons and gallons of FLAMMABLE drinks that will catch FIRE, and wood everywhere that FIRE, and FIRE between us and the door and too many to get FIRE out all at once FIRE. FIRE FIRE FIRE.

Two people had two very good ideas at the same moment.

The first was the waitress Gakpep had previously compromised, who hitched up the bucket of sudsy water tucked in a corner and slung the scum-covered washing at the top shelf of the bar. The sploosh doused the fire, and Gakpep, and eleven surrounding bottles, all of which fell to the floor and crashed around the imp. Gakpep squealed angrily.

The second was a fellow student sitting next to Topiary, whose idea resembled that of the waitress to the extent that he picked up his glass of water and threw it in the gnome's face. She jerked upright and dripping with a squeak.

"Your imp is--"
"Control that--"
"--On FIRE!"

She caught the message out of the cacophony, if not the words. She launched out of her chair and swung around it to glare at her damp minion.

"Gakpep!"

He somersaulted to his feet and extended his claws towards her, flames bursting to life in his hand.

"No fire!"

The searing cord of words tightened around his throat to strangle him... The fireball hissed out and the imp balled his tiny hands into fists.

"Get back in your, um, your sack!"

His footsteps were heavy and slow. His burning eyes watched Topiary every inch he traveled, memorizing her, measuring her.

The entire room exhaled in relief when he climbed back in to the gnome's backpack and pulled the flap over his head.

"Strap it in and throw the little blighter into the canal!"

Topiary sank to her knees and covered her face. Another patron, a mage, a friend, knelt beside her and put a comforting hand on Topiary's shoulder. "It over now, Jel. Nobody thinks it was your fault."

Topiary wrung her head back and forth miserably. "But he shouldn't be able to do that. Don't you understand? He shouldn't be able to endanger me at all!"

- - - -

Pipyal tugged on Topiary's sleeve. "We're here, boss. You want I should sneak orf, or somethin?"

"We're here?" the gnome echoed. She looked out the port window. "Oh. So we are."

Darnassus.



~POST 6~



Topiary dropped into the grass beside the Cenarion Enclave and wiped her nose with her sleeve. She sniffled. She plucked a blade of grass and threw it into the water, where it caused a stir of rosy ripples and then drifted away. She glared at it and wished that it would sink. The dew soaked through the seat of her robe and she sniffled again and punched the turf, blinked tears out of her eyes, and then wrung her hand out with a wince.

Ishonbu strolled the verdant walkways of Darnassus with her little kitten, Milo. He pounced at wisps, bugs, leaves, small rocks, his tail, his shadow, Ish, and grass. As she rounded a corner that lead towards the Cenarion enclave, Milo spotted something plop on the water's surface and shot off with a prrit of delight. Milo careened towards the blade of grass floating lazily on the pond and was completely unable to stop soon enough to prevent running right into the sniffling gnome.

"Milo!" Ish ran to stop the impulsive kitten from falling into the deep pool. She, too, paid no attention to her surroundings and nearly tripped over Topiary. She stumbled to right herself and prevent a fall. "What do we have here? Little one... I almost mistook you for a weepy rock!"

Milo mewed softly and nibbled at the hem of Topiary's robe. The gnome blinked and tentatively reached out to stroke the kitten between the ears. She blinked again, knocking the tears out of her eyes, and she looked up--and up--to Ishonbu. She shrank back and gave the elf a weak smile. "Um. Hello. I hope I'm not, um...sitting where I...um...shouldn't be...sitting..." She wiped her cheeks with her sleeve.

Ishonbu smiled warmly. "No, not at all... I think anywhere is perfectly fine...but it is sort of damp here. You'd probably be better off using one of the benches." She crouched next to the tiny gnome and tilted her head to one side. "What's wrong little one?"

Topiary lifted her eyes shyly to the elf's and bit her lower lip in worry. She blurted, "The Archdruid shouted at me! And I didn't want to disturb him and I really didn't, um, want to disturb him, but I asked who I should talk to and everybody said the druids and then the druids said that I had to go talk to him, even though, he's so, I'm not important, and I tried and tried not to be a bother but nobody else would talk to me and then he, um, he shouted!" Her gaze plummeted and she scratched Milo's neck forlornly.

"Ah... Fandral... has never been the most tactful elf...and he's not really one for conversation unless it concerns how he looks from day to day." Ish grinned impishly and fished a handkerchief from her pack, handing it to the gnome. "So what did you want to talk to a druid about? Perhaps I might know of one that yells less and wears slightly more clothing."

Topiary's eyes widened and she blushed abruptly. She blew her nose and managed, muffled, "There really was, um, an awful lot of him, um, visible. For the shouting. Um." She folded the crumpled fabric and looked down at it in her lap. "I just...wanted to read some books. I mean...that is, druid books. And they're not...available...I mean, they're nowhere else but here..." she cringed in anticipation.

"What sort of books? Some druids read up on how to best pounce on someone from the treetops, and others learn how to control their waddle as moonkin, and still others learn how to not poke themselves when casting the thorns spell...There's quite a lot of different books and," she leaned in and whispered, "The elves here are rather stuffy."

Topiary gaped, then shut her mouth. She blinked rapidly. "Um...I'm looking for...for theory, mostly. The...how...the connection between druids and, um, and their magic, and the Emerald Dream. That's what it's called, isn't it? The Emerald--oh!" Topiary picked herself up off the grass and brushed herself off, then offered her hand. "My name is Topiary! Um, Milliner. St. John de, um, Gewgaw. But you really only have to remember that first bit, that's what I do."

Ishonbu's eyes widened in surprise and amusement as she heard the long name stumble from the lips of the green haired gnome. "A pleasure to meet you madam Topiary Milliner St. John de Gewgaw." They shook hands. "My name is Ishonbu Elu'Noir, and I happen to know a few things about druids," she winked. "Now it just so happens that I also happen to know a few things about the books you seek, but first.... why do you want this information?"

Topiary brightened. "Oh, gosh, um, it's for my research! I'm a student of magic, you see, and I think, I mean, it's possible that, um, I think a lot of what I need to figure out lies in druidic magic! It's so different from the other kinds, and druids are so, so insular! I've met a few friendly ones who let me take some measurements, but it's not the same. I mean, as reading...you know, the...all the...things," she finished lamely.

"Measurements?" Ish's eyebrow raised in surprise. "That sounds... interesting." She shook her head. "Druidic magic is tied so strongly with nature and Elune... what makes you so certain you could grasp its intricacies even where you to 'read' about it? It's something so innate to those who practice it that most books are merely recounts of their experiences."

Topiary nodded rapidly. A lock of hair was dislodged from her coif and flopped over her face. She blew it away impatiently. "But there must be some theory, isn't there? About how it all, how it all works? How...what the Emerald Dream is, and where the...their powers come from, right? The science behind druidism. The measurements are interesting for the--oh! Yes, um, measurements! Of the different forms! It's all very, that is, absolutely fascinating!"

"There are a few theories on the reasons why, but most druids tend to accept their innate talents and grow to use them in the way Elune intended. I fear you won't find much science in the texts available.. at least in regards to the origin of druids. There is much meditation upon the powers we possess and the best way to use them in harmony with nature."

Topiary's eyes sparkled. She worked her hands together and shifted her weight from foot to foot. "Oh, that would do very well for a start! There isn't, um, a lot of scientific rumination on the magic of paladins, either, but a lot can be deduced from what is written!"

Well...yes, a lot can be derived from the simplest thing. Although I don't know if you'll find what you seek. I'll tell you what," she took a piece of parchment from her satchel along with a pre-dipped quill and wrote in flowing script. Ish rolled the parchment up and tied it with a bit of leather. "I'll escort you to the library here. No one should bother you there. And this.." She handed the rolled up parchment to the gnome. "This you should give to the head librarian, should you not find an answer in the general circulation." With that she picked up Milo and began tickling his stomach. The kitten nipped at her knuckles and kicked his tiny back paws against her arm.

Topiary squeaked happily and hugged Ishonbu, throwing her arms around her shin. "Thank you so much!"

"You're... you're welcome, Lady Milliner St. John de Gewgaw. Use it well." Ish grinned down at the gnome attached to her leg and set Milo in her arms. "Here, take him with you, he'll make sure you won't get lost. And when you're done... you can visit my quarters at the inn, and see him home."

Topiary fumbled the kitten in her arms and winced sympathetically as it yowled in protest. She settled it and stroked its head and looked up at Ishonbu with wide eyes and smile. "You've been, um...you've been very nice to me. That's...that's just...nice. Um."

"Milo's very good at finding his way around places... Sometimes an animal is born with more than just the baser instincts. A blessing of Elune, if you will. Shall we head to the library?"

Topiary smiled up the elf trustingly, and nodded.

[Archivist~Addie]

~POST 7~



Topiary had found a lot of books. A lot. She had considered building a ziggurat out of them and living inside of it.

"It looks similar to priest magic," she mumbled. She was trying not to blink anymore. She was pulling in on her fiftieth consecutive hour of consciousness and the inside of her eyelids felt like sandpaper. "But the underlying dynamics are all...wossnamed."

"Diff'rent?" there was a sticky sound from behind a stack of books.

"Different," Topiary acknowledged wearily. "But I feel like...if I can get this...and I can get paladins...then the whole theory will click. I can just feel it."

"Snrffle."

She raised her eyes and squinted blearily into the dim candle-sentried reading room. "Part of it is just trying to translate the, um, characters...I mean, I took a year and a half of Darnassian writing, but...the dictionary isn't very...Pip, what are you doing?"

There was a silence, and then snnnrrrk...gulp.

"Are you eating something?"

"Mno," the imp slurred guiltily.

"You're eating something. In the rare book room."

"'S a 'orrid untruf, fat ish--ughh--"

"Pip, what are you eating?"

"'Sh jush thish rishe cweam shtuff wif doughy somefins--"

Topiary blinked and regretted it. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and whimpered. "Just this rice cream stuff with doughy somethings?" she translated.

"An its stuch 'o the roof of ma mouf," he concluded mournfully.

"Where did you get this rice cream stuff? I didn't give it to you."

"Nigh' Ewf wif a cart--"

"You stole it from a Night Elf vendor?" she cried.

Pipyal hissed and the phosphorus around him flared. "Mno?" he tried. "Ack--hchchkk...PWEH!"

Several seconds passed.

"Did you just spit in the rare book room?"

"No, 'course not, boss. Yechh, that was better out than in, right?" Pipyal hopped onto the desk, unsettled a tower of books, slipped, and sent himself and the volumes cascading to the floor in a slumping parchment landslide. His head poked out of the scrolls and books a moment later. Topiary was massaging her temples. "What're we doin' wif all this, anyway, huh?"

"We're laying the groundwork for Unified Theory."

"But why?" the imp persisted.

"Because it can save the world, Pip." Topiary dragged herself out of her chair, winced, imagined the imprint of the chair could be directly molded from her backside by this point, and started sorting and stacking the books and scrolls once again.

"Oh." A light fizzled in the imp's brain, then snuffed itself out. "Hey, you hungry, boss?"

But of course Pipyal wouldn't understand, Topiary thought. That was one of the things she prized the most about him; he had all the brilliant inferential and deductive skills of wet wool. But Unified Theory brought together all schools of magic. Unified Theory made the bold, unprecedented declaration that all forms of magic--even things that weren't ordinarily called magic, like the Light, or the power of druids--were actually drawn from the same source. The Nether, the Amorphia, raw magical essence so many of them tapped in their meager, pathetically limited ways.

But if all forms of magic were just alternate ways of channeling and interpreting that wild magic, then it must follow that all forms of magic could be combined.

One magician. Unlimited control. What he (or she, her inner voice quietly amended) could do with the magical essence would only be limited by his (or her) imagination.

If it were developed--if it were put into practice--it could put an end to the Lich King. To the undead. To hunger, and sickness, and death--

Pipyal meekly handed her a scroll, which she slid into the bottom of the paper pyramid. She tried not to notice that it was damp.



~POST 8~



She would start small. Gnomes have little alternative.

Topiary perched on a stool at the center of a spiral of runes and candles and flasks that seethed colored smoke across the dusty floor. The runes were the language of magic, both mainstream and alternative, and they provided a boundary and gave her a focus. The potions had been expensive; she had hired a passably competent and politically apathetic alchemist to prepare the arcane essences that would charge and measure the success of her experiment. At least, she suspected they would. If not, well, thank old Shoggred's mother for taking an interest in science, and Topiary hadn't paid for a dime of it.

The candles served no particular purpose, but they gave any magic circle such a finished look.

In the middle of the circle was a glass of water. Outside the circle paced Pipyal, who sprang from his feet to his hands and back nervously.

"Pip, shut up," said Topiary.

"But boss, I didn't say--" the imp protested.

"That one was preemptive. I need you to stay quiet."

"But then how am I gonna know when to--"

"You'll know, Pip, I promise." She had changed a few words in their contract; loosened her grip over him so that he would be able to act with autonomy, if she collapsed. When she collapsed. She didn't want to be trapped inside her circle if anything went wrong. The imp would be able to drag her out.

She closed her eyes and drove the tip of an iron dagger into the swell of her palm. Blood slid down the apple of her wrist and dripped onto the floor.

Blood was warlock magic, old magic. It called to things that went bump in the night. Topiary used it as a base in her calculations. She was a warlock; it went down to her blood. So it seemed logical to presume that what made her a warlock would be in her blood. A biological approach to the old arcane problem. Why couldn't a mage heal? Why couldn't a priest start fires? Why couldn't a paladin turn into a bear? It was all magic, so what separated them? It came back to blood.

But blood was a code, and what bound her to her specialty was a code, and codes could be broken. And once you understood a code, you could write anything with it. Anything.

Why couldn't a warlock chill a glass of water?

Topiary began her incantation. Old words in a language with harmonics that couldn't be reproduced by a throat of flesh without magical assistance wove around her and spiraled up to drift along the ceiling and then drip back down to the floor. Candles shivered. Flasks belched and bubbled. The runes on the floor began to glow, radiating tendrils of phosphorous.

The glass of water remained squatting on the table, serene and placid.

Topiary's chant slanted sharper in depth and pitch, and sweat rolled down her forehead, and a trickle of blood slid from the corner of her eye to caress the curve of her cheek. The blood spatter on the floor began to boil. The candlewicks hissed and sparked and spluttered fires ten inches high. The flasks emitted a silicate whine, and the potions roiled with heat.

Something coalesced around the glass, a haze, grasping fingers of colorless smoke that snatched at the water. The air within the magic circle prickled.

Topiary screamed. The flasks shattered and sprayed glass and elixir across the floor. The runes blazed for an instant and smote their impressions upon the floor. The candles exploded.

Topiary blacked out.

She woke up in the corner of the room, feeling jostled, her hair tugged out of place. Pipyal leaned over her and blinked anxiously. His small hands clasped and unclasped together.

"Boss? Boss? Boss?" he was repeating.

She cringed her hand up to her face and wiped the blood from her eyelashes. Her vision swam as she focused over the imp's shoulder.

The glass of water still sat on the table, utterly undisturbed. But it, and the table, and the three feet surrounding the table, were encased in a perfect prism of ice.



~POST 9~



A weird alchemist lived on the hill overlooking Ratchet.

Or so Topiary had heard. She had in fact gathered "weird," "alchemist," and "on the hill" by eavesdropping on three separate conversations, and had divined that they all referred to the same individual over the next several months of skulking in from the docks, spending a few days at the inn ducking tauren and orcs, and doing furtive errands around Strahad's tower. She didn't like Strahad, or her errands, or the inn. They all had a tendency to ooze.

But she needed an alchemist. And a weird one who chose to live in isolation--whether he was specifically on a hill or not was probably irrelevant--was likely to be her best bet.

She left her mechanostrider cooling and seeping fumes in the graveyard outside the sun-bleached house, cleared her throat nervously, and tapped on the door.

Greaves wasn't used to visitors in his new lab and temporary home. He lifted his head from his work with a groan. He pulled the wolf's head mask over his face and threw his tattered cloak over the bits of armor he still wore, then rose and opened the door.

"Hello," He began in Orcish, then tilted his head as he looked down and saw his guest. He finished in rusty Common, "Can I help you?"

Topiary looked up. Her eyes widened. She squeaked.

"Er," she began. "Um. I was just...I mean, I had heard...er. See, um, I heard that, that you were a...or that somebody who, um, who lived here was, was a...that is, an...alchemist? And I was hoping--I mean, I was wondering...if you...I mean...could maybe..." she stammered to a halt and shrank, if it were possible for someone starting from such a diminished stature, further. "But I really don't want to bother you so maybe I should just, should just...um...go," she finished weakly. She tugged at the front of her robe.

The hand under the cloak that rested on his sword relaxed, and he knelt to the gnome's height, cringing at the clanks of the plate armor on his legs changing position. "I didn't mean to scare you," He cleared his throat, then smiled somewhat just under the edge of his mask. "I am indeed an alchemist. Why are you seeking one?"

"Um..." she stared into the eyes of his mask in terrified fascination. "Because I...need some...um, help? With...I have...some research, and--I can pay you! And...um." She tilted her head. "Why do you, um, I mean, that is...wear a mask?"

"Well..." He paused, touching the mask, then reaching underneath it to adjust something that gave off a leathery creak. "It has.. sentimental value. And I like it. I can remove it if that would make you more comfortable..." He switched subjects without pausing. "Anyway," He nodded back to the interior of the room. "I don't get to discuss my trade much. I should at least hear what you need, although I'm not particularly interested in... recognition or payment."

"Well, um..." Topiary peered around him into his house. "It's all...very theoretical. Although I've tested it once, now, and it was an astonishing success! But it didn't, um, didn't...well, prove anything, technically speaking, and..."

He rose and led her into his house, ducking beakers and drawing up a stool to his workbench. "Theoretical, huh? Anything new interests me, but you're going to have to elaborate..."

Topiary followed him in and climbed up into the stool across from him. She fidgeted into place, bit her lip, looked down, looked up, took a deep breath, and explained Unified Theory.

When she stopped talking, it was dark.

Greaves stirred, blinked his eyes open, and sat up. "Interesting."

"Isn't it," she gushed. "It has so much, um...so much potential! We could, um, I mean, we could defeat the Lich King! And, and give Lordaeron back to men! And, um, and retake Gnomeregan, and...and anything!"

"Anything..." He unclasped his mask and pulled it from his head, closing his one eye long enough to will the unmistakable yellow glow of the Forsaken away. There was no reason to tip off his guest that she was speaking to a dead man. "I'm willing to help you, but I'd like some specifics about what you need from me, Miss...um...I didn't catch your name..."

She blinked. "Oh!" she said. "Um, my name's Topiary. Er, Milliner St. John de Gewgaw, unfortunately, but I can't do much about that now. Who are you?"

He returned the baffled blink for a moment, and seemed a bit reluctant for the first time. He spoke slowly as he said, "Well, Miss Gewgaw, you may call me Alexander."

She beamed. "It's very nice to meet you, Alexander!"

He smiled faintly, more than a part of him suddenly wishing very much to be back to his hidden nook on the other side of the world where he would be tickled to be called "Alexanda." He dragged his thoughts back to the Barrens and smiled more warmly. "Well then, Miss Gewgaw. Now that we've gotten that part out of the way, what can I do for you? Er, specifically."

"Well..." she paused. "I told you about my experiment. And the ice."


"Yes, I understand the importance of bloodline related magical affinities. I've done my fair share of experiments. I suppose the proper question would be...What can I help you with next?"

"Well, it's not...bloodlines, so much, it's just...blood. And..." Topiary's eyes went unfocused as her attention drifted between the ivory spires in her mind. "I can do the calculations for how the energy has to be channeled, but I can't, er...change my blood to line up with the, um, the numbers. It's just not my specialty."

A smirk played on his lips for a moment. "Have you identified what it is in blood that decides how the things.. er.. line up?"

"Well..." she hesitated and focused on him again. She worked her hands together. "I mean--well, my theory revolves around certain subtle chemical properties in the blood that ought to be able to be, um, manipulated through alchemy..."

She reached into her packs and pulled out several sheets of vellum densely packed with runes and alchemical sigils and diagrams. She held them out for his inspection. He took them from her hand and studied them for some time in silence.

Topiary looked around the cramped living space, cluttered and stacked with vials and tubes that looked like they had been made at some Glass Blowers' All-Comers Hiccupping Tournament. After several minutes she looked back at her host. "How come you live out here in the middle of, um, of nowhere?"

Greaves looked up from the alchemical charts, a troubled look flashing on his face for just a brief moment. He shrugged. "I need my space and my work has, lets say, not been met with unanimous support."

She tilted her head the other way. "Don't you get lonely?"

He smiled weakly. "Very."

There was a moment of silence. He smiled at her, a bit of life returning to his voice. "I suspect you need to be a bit wary in your work as well... So perhaps it is beneficial that you and I have met. This research is very advanced. The formulas aren't perfect, but it's nothing short of amazing when viewed as a whole. Was all of this work done by yourself so far?"

"Oh, no--" Topiary shook her head quickly. "Um, a lot of the groundwork was done in the general, you know, alternative magic community. The raw calculations, um, most of those were done by Darkmaster Gandling. He's the schoolmaster at--"

Greaves stiffened noticeably. "Scholomance..."

Topiary winced as he said it.

He cracked his knuckles and straightened the notes before handing them back to her. "I believe some of that information you've worked on may actually help me with my problem as well. If you don't mind me referencing some of that for my own purposes, which... I'm afraid I can't get into that," He ground his teeth ever-so-slightly, swinging back to the original discussion. "Anyway... Where would you like to start?"

She blinked at him once or twice. "I want to prove Unified Theory. Um. I want to...change myself so that I can do unified magic. I don't...I don't know where to start, other than where I've, um, come from. With the ice. And, um."

Greaves raised a brow. "Easy there, tiger. The first thing," he paused a moment, thinking; "--Should be to fortify yourself, magically. A while back, I noticed a significant difference in the effects of...experiments...under the care of a priest's blessings. Adjusting these chemical mixtures will be another benefit. I mean just look at the amount of blindweed used in that..."

He sighed, relaxing his professional ego. "You're trying to drive a nail with a wrecking ball if your mixtures aren't perfect. It wouldn't be long before something broke, believe me. You can leave that to me though. I can't think of anybody else--well, maybe a few--who are as good as I am at this science."

By the time they were finished working out the details, it was light out again.