May love and laughter light your days
And warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
Wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
With joy that long endures.
May all life’s passing seasons
Bring the best to you and yours!
“Aye, fer the tenth time, Widge, ” Beli Flinthammer said, marching up the ramp and out of Ulduar. “And stop bouncin’ around.”
“Aye, we’ll be pourin’ us some tall cold ones soon enough,” Ringo Flinthammer said, licking his chops in anticipation as he packed up Rusty. “Ah’m thinkin’ a nice Loch Modan Lager to start with …”
“Yes, but the Argent Tournament …” Widge Gearloose trailed off.
“Yogg-Saron is dead,” Beli Flinthammer sighed, collapsing back onto an outcropping of rock here in the lowest depths of Ulduar. She stared at the giant head, covered in mouths big enough to swallow a dwarf, now still and slack in a pool of slime. “The Curse o’ Flesh, the war between Stone and Iron, all that evil he did in them visions: It’s all o’er.”
She sniffed a stray lock of hair.
“Ugh. I’m gonna be washin’ the smell of that beastie out o’ me hair fer weeks.”
Ringo Flinthammer blinked in surprise and looked down at the note again.
Dear Ringo,
I hope ye’re doing well and that ye’ve had time to recover from our shenanigans in Ulduar.
Me lads from the prospecting team happened upon this poor ‘alf dead riding-drake hatchling. Must’ve been an Iron Dwarf experiment of some sort.
We’ve patched him back to health and ye’ll find he’s not so wee anymore! None of us know much about riding anything but rams and pack mules and since we owed ye one for what ye did back there … We thought perhaps ye’d accept him as a gift.
Yours,
Brann Bronzebeard
Ringo looked back up at the proto-dragon, covered in rusty metal plates fused to its flesh, and sighed.
“Beli is going to kick me arse fer bringin’ home another stray …”
“Any luck?” asked the battle-mage, tapping his weapons together impatiently as he watched the gnome fiddle with some device pulled from her tool belt.
“Not a bit,” she replied, shaking her device and holding it up to the sky, tapping the mechanism with a fingernail before turning back to the glowing field filling the space between the two spinning rings. “For the life of me, I can’t figure out how this thing works.”