Exorcising Works Of Fiction I Will Not Complete

[snarp]

First couple chapters of a Warcraft OC fic set shortly after Cataclysm.

Wheeler Stranglewire's father, from whom he had abruptly inherited the family business six months ago, had been in the habit of removing his business associates' less-necessary body parts when seriously disappointed. Wheeler went more in for looking at you sadly across his desk. His father had once had a treacherous underling assassinated in broad daylight on the crowded docks of Booty Bay, having given him an explanation as to why, twenty minutes' advance warning, and a lovely gold watch. Wheeler felt as if sort of thing might turn socially awkward. Wheeler's father had, losing his first ship in a storm, ridden it out on the back of a sea turtle, having managed to save two crates of merchandise.

Wheeler got seasick.

"You need to drink some water, or something," suggested his sister.

He thought about this. "How many days left to Gadgetzan?"

"Four."

"Maybe tomorrow. If it's not moving around in the cup too much."

"You know what? I am not actually clear why Dad left you the boat."

"Well, he hated me and wanted to hurt me," Wheeler pointed out reasonably. "So, there's that. Also, I'm the one who has good relations with dead people."

"Which is fine with me. Seriously, you need to point your head up and talk to me."

"Can't. Risks are far too great."

She whacked him on the back of his head, and he sat up obediently. Gwennie was across from him at the table of the ship's mess hall, one of the ship's cats lying purring on her arm.

Propping his head up on his arms, he said wearily, "So you have a problem with our esteemed Forsaken clients. That's what I'm hearing."

"That would be an accurate assessment of my feelings. Why're we doing this, Wheeler?"

He rubbed his eyes. "Well. Because they have money but no friends. And right now they need a lot of seasoned hardwood, which we haven't been able to sell elsewhere, and they're willing to pay a lot for it because no one else likes selling to them. And if they like the quality of this first shipment, and they don't cough up any spiders on me, then we can think about -"

"Okay, no," said Gwennie, and lowered her voice, glancing over her shoulder at a pale elf woman sitting at the next table. Wheeler had no idea when they'd picked up the passenger; it must have been just a few hours before they weighed anchor. "Why do they need wood *shipped to Gadgetzan*? Because that's what I'm not getting here. There're no Forsaken outposts anywhere near Tanaris. It's just the Steamwheedles and, like, a lot of bugs down there. What do they want it for?"

"Well, I'm sure it's nothing *good*." Wheeler was, by those who knew him, generally considered a little too easygoing for his stated profession of "mogul." He didn't like confrontation, and personally preferred to be nice most of the time. But he did occasionally - if someone coughed up enough spiders on him - form a lukewarm judgment or two. He added, "So, uh, I hear that last week you sold eight crates of drakeshot to some guy you thought worked for Moira Thaurissan?"

"That's different! She's kind of cool."

"She is?"

"Relatively speaking, sure. I'm all about short ladies who pull coups. Not that you should read anything into that."

"Okay, I won't." Wheeler's distaste for interpersonal unpleasantness had so far prevented him from outwardly acknowledging that his sister was trying to oust him. This annoyed her, as Gwennie's engagement in the interfactional economy was born as much of craving for conflict as of fondness for wealth.

She'd recently taken to just *telling* him she was up to no good. Last week she'd left a little note on his desk warning to him beforehand that she was going to muscle in on a spice deal he'd been putting together with a Troll village. She wanted give herself more of a challenge, she explained.

Wheeler considered Gwennie a pleasant counterbalance to their cousin Niccolo, who just tried to kill him a lot. Fortunately, it seemed that Niccolo hadn't yet gotten through the "boxes of candy from an unknown admirer" portion of his assassination correspondence course. His secretary had signed his name to the first one.

Wheeler asked Gwennie curiously, "But you don't feel the same way about tall ladies' coups?"

Gwennie stroked the cat absently for a while, her ears quivering a little as a gust of wind brushed through the open door to the deck. "I don't know what my problem is," she admitted. "I can't figure out the undead. The way they think is so alien… They don't care about the same things we do, or want the same things."

He shrugged, cautiously, and was pleased when the motion did not set off anything else. Ten minutes after vomiting was not the optimal time to discuss mortality. "Yeah, well. You can skip it if you want, but I think you should go. You'll want to be able to deal with them yourself someday." Whenever he was distracted long enough that she completed her coup. Gwennie had only handled domestic operations until Dad had died two months ago; he wasn't comfortable with the idea of her ousting him from power with such a limited range of expertise. She might end up losing contracts. Dad would be disappointed in both of them.

"I didn't say I wouldn't go."

"Okay. So we'll unload the the wood and they'll pay us for it. We'll wait in port three days after; knowing Apothecary Hargreaves, we'll probably know just before we leave whether they want more. Your job's going to be getting the glassmakers' sand order loaded up, and getting the rest of the hold filled -"

"Wait. Is that my job?"

"I have meetings with Scattercog Labs." He didn't want her there with him; her enthusiasm for explosives exceeded her skill. "You want to go get Darnneedle for me?"

Gwennie haughtily raised her ears and eyebrows. "He's right outside. What you do is, first you move one foot over the back of the bench, then you -"

"Yeah, okay, thanks." He did as she suggested and weaved his way out onto the deck. The elf had risen to peer out a porthole, so he still hadn't gotten a look at her face, but he assumed she was taking the ocean better than he was. People said pink-skinned things looked green and blue when they got seasick; he wondered if a goblin's hue changed, on some kind of invisible molecular level. Someday he should have somebody take a spectrometer to him.

Captain Darnneedle was at the prow, looking portentously at the setting moon, the feather in his oversized hat drooping to the deck. He had a short nose, small ears, yellow coloring, and was a little taller than average, which he felt made him popular with non-goblins. Wheeler was pretty sure they didn't notice a difference. He asked the Captain, "So has anything happened - *aside* from me throwing up on your shoes," he added when Darnneedle turned a scowl on him. "Again, sorry about that."

"You ain't going to do it again, are you, mon?"

"I'm trying my best. What's the situation?"

"Not a cloud in the sky, mon. Good wind. Nothing to worry you," he said in his smug, fake-Troll accent. Wheeler wasn't sure why he'd chosen fake-Troll over fake-human or fake-elf. It seemed faintly inconsistent with his equally fictional self-image.

"Yeah, I don't worry about things. Who's the passenger?"

"Passenger?"

"That elf woman in there. High elf or blood elf?"

Darnneedle scowled. "Her. She's no passenger. The boy Karn'es -" One of the regular crew, an orc. "- he break his leg and stay behind in port. He recommend the woman to me. Say she a friend. No mention that she one'a *them.*" He scowled at the sun blackly, chewing on his little gray moustache.

Wheeler said blankly, "Sorry, can you be more specific? Is she, like, a Beast Mastery Hunter?"

"No, no. Survival. - well, it none of my business, mon, but if she going back to Stranglethorn, I say she doing it on another ship."

Wheeler wasn't sure whether he'd actually answered the question or not. Someone yelled, "Captain!" and Darnneedle was off before he could ask anything else.

He felt a little better out in the sun and wind. Gwennie couldn't do anything too terrible on the open sea, and he didn't have to talk to any strange apothecaries for a few more days. He took his jacket off, made a cushion out of it, and laid back against the wall to the cabin.

He woke up several hours later with Gwennie frowning down at him. "Yeah?"

"I really don't understand how you're always falling asleep in stupid places like this. Aren't you all sunburned?"

He touched his nose. "Doesn't feel like it. What time is it?"

"About three PM. The sun must've been right on you for the past twenty minutes - oh." She glanced across the deck. "Well, there's one thing the tall women are good for - blocking the light." The deck in front of them was very clean, and the elf woman was now mopping up on the other side of the ship. She wore cheap brown cloth travelling clothes, patched on one knee, and with a discolored sleeve newer than the rest of her jerkin. Her long white hair was braided tightly back.

Wheeler commented in surprise, "You know, you don't really see Blood Elves and High Elves dressed like that -" The woman turned for a moment, so that he could see her face, and he trailed off. It had a murky pale green pallor, spotted and patched. He was pretty sure that wasn't what seasickness was supposed to look like.

Gwennie said quietly, "Yeah, I was watching her earlier; she's a Wretched. I guess she's not really plugged into the whole luxury goods sector of the Blood Elf economy these days."

Wheeler shook his head absently, watching her. "I've met Wretched. They can't concentrate on doing one thing for more than ten minutes at a time. And they've got *really* bad posture -"

"Well, geez, Wheeler, she's got to be on her way there," said Gwennie, leaning against the wall next to him. "Also, swabbing the deck is not exactly an intellectual challenge."

The woman turned, and her eyes met Wheeler's for a second, a still and lightless white. Then she returned her gaze to her mop. Feeling suddenly extremely uncomfortable, he climbed quickly to his feet. "Well, she's getting off at Gadgetzan. I'm going to try to eat something."

"And I'm *absolutely* going to stand there with a bucket."

"Well, if you don't have anything else to do -"

"Flight of hippogryphs bearing down from directly above!" shouted Koni from the crow's nest. "Not signalling!"

"To arms!" yelled Darnneedle from someplace. "Noncombatants belowdecks."

"To arms!" repeated Koni, unnecessarily; Darnneedle was loud. The elf had disappeared belowdecks; she was a noncombatant, apparently. Darnneedle would have asked her to hand over any weapons she might have had. Gwennie gave him a shove towards the door, pursing her lips to whistle for her dragonhawk. He said, "I'm fine. Where's your gun?"

"I don't know. I put it someplace."

"Darn it, Gwennie." He stuck one of his pistols into her hand, and they moved to either side of the cargo hatch. "Here."

She demanded, edgily watching the sky, "Why were you stumbling around vomiting with these strapped on?"

"No point in stumbling around anywhere without a gun." One of the riders fired off a warning shot; it struck the water harmlessly far ahead of them. "See? That guy agrees with me."

There was a bang underneath the cargo hatch, and they dragged it open. Triffin, Gwennie's own hippogryph, leapt out, snarling. Gwennie hopped on her back as he closed the hatch up again.

Wheeler said worriedly, "You've got to take the animals out if you can, Gwen, not just the riders. I'm serious. There are thirteen - fourteen of them -" He was counting as he spoke. "It's too many."

"I'm a *hunter*," she said impatiently, and kneed Triffin into the air. *Sure,* he thought, watching the riders nervously, *A hunter who'd rather shoot something with two legs than four.* The Stranglewire family prided themselves on their excellently developed moral senses.

"What do the little bastards want?" demanded Darnneedle, shoving a rifle into his hands. "There somethin' on this boat I don't know about, mon?"

"No. They'll want to take the boat itself. You tell me when we want to surrender." There were arms aboard for each of the twenty-six crew, but only Darnneedle, the two of them, and four Orcish mercenaries they'd hired, manning the anti-airbeast cannons at front, had any combat experience. Gwennie's hippogryph was the only flyer aboard.

"Never," said Darnneedle, then: "You shouldn't have sent your little sister up there, mon, it ain't safe."

"No kidding." One of the crew fired into the center of the cluster of hippogryphs. They parted like water, and then began to descend. "Well, crap," said Wheeler, and for a while, he had no more time to say anything else.

The first two came down onto the deck sometime in a dim, confused future in which Wheeler couldn't really remember why his right arm was bleeding.

One was a Dwarf and one was a Troll, and both were all in black, which didn't really help in determining who they were. All sorts of jerks wore black. Wheeler wished some of the criminal organizations would go in for fuchsia or kelly green or something.

He peeled off three shots into the Dwarf's hippogryph's side, and an Orc mage hurled fire at the Troll and his mount. The hippogryph roared and reared up, but the Dwarf was already off it, moving towards Wheeler with a sword.

*Do these guys seriously know what they're doing?* he wondered. You didn't want to board this early in an aerial attack, no matter how many men you had. He fired a shot at the dwarf, but something struck him in the foot, and he stumbled and fell to the deck, his pistol spinning away.

The dwarf jumped and pinned him to the deck, snarling something unintelligible and holding a knife over Wheeler's eye. "Hold on," Wheeler squeaked, "Let me, let me just get my Dwarvish dictionary -" He slipped his dagger into the dwarf's stupidly unarmored chest and shoved him off. "See, that's why you hold your blade to your victim's *throat*. It's sort of a muscle response thing, if I'd stabbed you while you were in *that* posture - hey!" His attacker rudely tried to climb to his feet, growling. Wheeler kicked them out from under him and scrambled after his gun.

The boat shook as something collided with the deck behind him. He spun, and complained, "Oh, come *on*. Where were you even keeping that guy?" There was a water giant on the deck, looking around in mild confusion.

"Hey!" Wheeler pointed in a random direction. "Ocean's that way, okay? Please get off my boat!"

The giant looked at him in hurt surprise. In ordinary circumstances Wheeler was very fond of giants; they were relaxing people to be around. However, this one had put them significantly over the ship's weight limit.

A small, black-masked figure scrambled up onto its shoulders, holding a small pouch of something. It dumped the substance, yellow and gritty-looking, onto puzzled giant's head in a purposeful-looking way. Something about the way it moved made him very nervous. He shouted at the crew, "Get that giant off my deck!"

The masked figure lit a match and dropped it into the powder. There was a burst of light. Wheeler's last thought was still about big footprints on his nice clean deck.

Wheeler's first thought, before he opened his eyes, was that he was pleased to find himself relatively dry. His second was that there seemed to be a manacle around his left ankle, and his third: *In books, people always keep their eyes closed in this sort of situation, so their captors'll think they're still asleep and say unwise things.*

So he tried that for a while, listening carefully for anything that sounded like a captor being unwise. Someone was breathing quietly next to him and a little upwards - not a goblin, unless they were sitting on a box or something. Sitting on a box might be kind of unwise. Maybe he could work with sitting on a box.

After about twenty minutes of trying to figure out how, it occurred to Wheeler that if *he* was a captor, he wouldn't say unwise things around his prisoners even if their eyes *were* shut; they might read books. And any actual captor who'd ever had twenty minutes to sit around and consider his position in life would, he decided, probably have come to the same conclusion.

So he sat up.

He had been lying at the edge of a ship's aft deck. It was not his ship. The manacle was chained to a steel loop along its edge. It was nearly sunset, and they were moving north; the wrong way. A human man in black, standing at the bow, looked back at him, then returned his gaze to the burning skies.

The Wretched was standing over him, looking down curiously. He demanded suspiciously, "What are *you* doing here?"

He belatedly noticed an identical chain around her own ankle. She said mildly, "I am blocking the light."

He felt his face heat a little. "Oh. Uh." He tried to think of a response that covered all possible eventualities, and came up with, "Sorry."

She inclined her head slightly, but made no further response. Noncombatant or not, someone had raked a blade down her left arm. Her sleeve was in tatters, and there was a rough bandage around it, soaked through with blood in places.

He said, after a second, "I can't help but notice that we're not on my boat."

"Yes."

"Any idea why? What happened with that water giant?"

She glanced at the man in black. "It is no more." He'd half-suspected that; even if whatever they'd done to it hadn't destroyed it, they would have had to throw it overboard quickly. A healthy giant wouldn't take that well. "Your ship was taken."

"In one piece?"

"At the time of our departure, yes," she said. "This vessel was nearby, made invisible by some means, it seems; it approached afterwards. The two of us were placed aboard. Your captain was injured; your crew was kept on to man the craft." She added, more quietly, "We travel towards Booty Bay, I believe. The name "Stranglewire" was spoken several times."

He sat there for a moment, trying to catch up. *Well, I guess they're going to ask Niccolo to ransom me. That'll be an educational experience.* He found that he honestly wanted to see his cousin's reaction.

But -

He hissed, "Where is she?" Gwennie should be here, too, if she'd lived -

The woman looked at the skies, and gave a miniscule shrug. Wisely, with their kidnapper just a few yards away, she didn't say anything else. He sagged a little in relief. Against all odds and all her admirably violent instincts, Gwennie had gotten away.

*But, god - what's she going to *do*?* He put his head in his hands. *Gwennie, please, please fly home and overthrow my reign of terror.* The thought of her heroically attempting to retake the ship by herself sent him into a cold sweat.

"Are you well, little man?" asked the elf.

"Nothing sororicide can't cure." He thought about it. "And - what is it when you kill your cousin? Is there a specific word?"

"- I do not know," she said blankly.

"Well, and that stuff. I need some of that."

"Your problems seem quite terrible," she said in an apologetic tone.

"I'm also thirsty." He climbed carefully to his feet, not wanting to find out the wrong way that he had a broken kneecap. He called to the guy in black, "Hey! Excuse me!"

He turned to them with a disinterested look, and said unpleasantly, "Shut up."

Wheeler considered it for a second, then discarded the idea. "Could we get some food and water? The lady's not feeling well."

The human just laughed. "That's no lady." He turned away again.

"- okay, then, let's at least assume *I'm* a gentleman. My family'll pay significantly less if they find I've been treated badly. We actually have this spreadsheet that we use -"

The man glanced at them, flipping a throwing knife with one hand. Wheeler reminded himself what the better part of valor was and gave up.

The elf said dryly, "Your efforts on my behalf touch my heart, little man."

"You're three times my size. Please feel free to just, you know, jump right into this conversation any time."

She settled herself back against the railing, declining to jump right in. The sun had sunk low, and the sky was a deep indigo blue. She said, "I am surprised by your aggression. You seemed rather passive, before."

"I got in a fight. There's apparently some sort of hormonal effect that takes twenty-four to seventy-two hours to wear off. Mekkatorque's people actually released a pretty good study a couple years back - credit where credit's due, and everything."

She said quietly, "Three of those whom you shot died. You struck their leader in the shoulder."

He found he couldn't remember hitting anyone at all. He remembered the kickback of the gun against his arms, and the numbness in his fingers; no visual memories, only tactile ones. That happened to him sometimes. It worried him. He said, "What's your point?"

"Their leader is angry."

"Did *you* get anyone?"

She said, a bit coolly, "Your captain required that I relinquish my arms into his care. There is a man whose jaw I may have cracked with my foot, but that is the extent of the damage I was able to do. I am not physically as strong as I was in my youth." He glanced at her face, which looked young enough to him; just sick. She said uncertainly, "They had that strange thing with them. That resembled a giant."

"It looked like a giant to me, yeah. And I guess it was strange it was on my boat, and everything."

"It was not a giant; that is, that was not its original form." She frowned. "When it was brought aboard your ship, it appeared to be a very small murloc - one of the fish men? The creature was carried down and placed upon the ship's deck in great haste, with a puzzled expression upon his face. Then he became the giant; then something was done to him, which I did not see clearly, and he became simply a great deal of light and water. The discharge of power rendered yourself and your crew unconscious."

"Not you?"

"Such things rarely trouble me anymore," she said complacently. Maybe OD'ing on magic made you immune to lower doses? "My wakefulness interested them; for some reason, it seems to have made them believe me someone I am not."

"And who are you actually, by the way?"

"I am called Tider." She seemed to feel that that should be good enough.

"Do you have a last name or a hometown, or anything?"

"My home is far from here; I will not return." She paused for a moment, then added, "I fear, though, that we go now to a person they believe will pay a ransom for me. As we go to this person first, before your cousin, I suppose that he is richer. Is your cousin very rich?" The word sounded slightly foreign on her lips, like money wasn't something she ever thought about.

"- He can afford some pretty fancy poisoned chocolates, I guess, yeah. And you're sure they've got you confused with somebody else, Miss Tider Nolastname? You don't have any family who might be looking for you?" Nothing good really came to mind when he thought "Blood Elf With Substantial Liquid Assets," but then nothing really specific did, either.

"I have no kin," she said tranquilly, watching the waves absently. "I explained this. They did not heed my words."

"…well, whatever makes you happy. Where are we stopping to meet your buyer?"

She frowned. "That… indeed. While I am no expert sailor, I know well the path of the sun and moons in the sky, and it seems to me that this vessel has travelled in tight circles for some hours now. I suspect that this person may mean to come to us."

"On another boat, you mean? - what the hell." The air temperature had suddenly dropped, and a dense fog rolled across the ship with unnatural speed, like an exhalation of smoke. Wheeler could see no more than twenty feet across the water.

Two figures emerged from the cabin, a richly-dressed blood elf man and a troll woman, the former pale and leaning heavily on the latter. His right shoulder was bandaged tightly, and his arm hung limply in a sling. His left hand was missing, the result of an older wound. He caught Wheeler looking at him and glared. Wheeler said in surprise, "Hey! It's my old buddy Vaeron. Hey, my old buddy Vaeron! Honestly didn't recognize you back there, real sorry about the shoulder. Change of career, huh? - Today actually makes a *whole* lot more sense now."

"You will close your mouth, Stranglewire," he said harshly.

"Mercenary work didn't go so well, huh? Well, that's the payoff when you get a rep for betraying your customers. Dad always called it "the Invisible Hand Of The Stranglewire," I dunno why, it's not like we're super subtle about this shit -"

"Close it for him," he told the woman as she lowered him into a chair provided by another crew member. She backhanded Wheeler across the face so hard that he fell on his back. Tider caught him. *Tall women,* Wheeler thought absently, struggling back to his feet. The troll said to Vaeron quietly, "Little sneak wants him alive, captain."

"Then we kill the little sneak, too, once we have his money," Vaeron said hoarsely. "Every Stranglewire yet living. We kill them all."

"Oh, get over yourself, Vaeron," Wheeler wheezed. "You agreed to fight for my old man, took his money, and ran when you didn't like the odds. You knew damn what would happen if he made it out alive. Why get all pissy about it?" Vaeron's face was suffused with red. He glared at the woman, who hit Wheeler again. Wheeler snarled, "You know, shit like this's why nobody likes you."

"What did your father do?" asked someone. Wheeler jumped up in alarm, staggering away from the railing. An old high elf man, dressed in dirty old blue robes with greasy blue hair, was balancing on it, looking down at him curiously. Tider had taken a cautious step away from him, her eyes narrow.

"Zureg," said Vaeron coldly. "The goblin's mine. You're here for the Wretched."

The old man hopped down from the railing neatly, smiling seraphically. His face was deeply lined, and his back stooped - too old to be that spry, Wheeler thought. He held a thin blue-painted wooden staff that he clearly didn't need for walking.

The old man said, "Oh, you know I don't want him. I just like stories. What did he do?" he asked Wheeler again.

He had blue eyes. There was something very peculiar about them.

Wheeler looked at Vaeron instead. He said cheerfully, "Oh, put out a rumor he was dead, drugged Vaeron one night he thought he was safe, killed or bought out his followers, cut off his sword hand, burned down his hideout, abandoned him unconscious in the mountains. Good times. He died of natural causes not long after, though, so your friend can't get the kind of revenge he wants."

"How awful!" said the old man to Vaeron, who had progressed from red to purple. "But revenge is bad for you, anyway. Raises your blood pressure, if you've got blood anyway! This is the woman?" he added, turning to jab Tider in the stomach with his staff. She took a step back, her eyes cold.

"She's as you described," said Vaeron, his teeth gritted. "A Wretched woman immune to major arcane discharges, no obvious signs of muscular wasting. I can't help it if she's not the right one."

The old man puttered around her in a half-circle, looking at her. He asked brightly, "Are you the right one?"

She said cautiously, "I do not think I am. No."

"Well, let me tell you what I'm looking for. Who knows, maybe it will sound familiar! There are certain beings which, though it seems that they have been killed, remain alive, in some place or in some way. And someday they always come back. It just takes them some time to gather up the things they need. Power's one of them, of course, power's always important - but there are others. You know about this, right? You know what's necessary?"

She shook her head slowly.

The old man looked very disappointed. "That's no good, that's no good at all… Maybe it's not you after all? Well, here's how it works, maybe it'll jog your memory. A tool has to be made, and filled up with mortal sacrifice - not necessarily the sacrifice of life, but something must be given up. A loss of some part of the self, or of memory, or time. The particular item I'm looking for was used about a year ago, near Mount Hyjal."

She flinched. "What?!"

"Wait," said Wheeler. "Wait, what? - and if it's already been used, why do you want it?"

He smiled. "Oh, I just collect this sort of thing. Do you really not know?" he asked Tider anxiously.

"No," she said, sounding shaken. "No. I know nothing of this."

The old man looked heartbroken. "And I was so sure you were the one. That's not fair. And after I spent so long looking for you!"

"I regret having troubled you," Tider said sharply.

He smiled. "Oh, well. It was my mistake; I'll just keep looking. Anything I can do for you in apology? You having been kidnapped on my behalf, and everything. I hate to inconvenience attractive women."

Tider, automatically, began to say, "No, thank you -"

Wheeler interrupted, "She needs you to clear all the jerks off this ship for her, myself excluded. Very important. Or else you could carry us to shore, if that's a thing you do, that would also work."

Vaeron climbed to his feet, snarling. The troll woman drew her sword. The old man glanced back at them in surprise, then asked Wheeler, "How could I betray my dear friend Vaeron like that? - also, how do you expect a little old biped like myself to carry anyone?" he said, belatedly remembering that he was pretending he wasn't a dragon.

Wheeler said, "Well, you probably haven't heard of me, but my name's Stranglewire, and my family's in the business of getting things from people and giving them to other people. And we're pretty good at it! Our friend Vaeron, on the other hand, is -"

Vaeron growled something half-intelligible, which the troll woman correctly interpreted as "attack!" She jumped at Wheeler, blade outstretched.

The old man calmly knocked her back towards Vaeron with one arm. He said sternly to Vaeron, "Now, you shouldn't interrupt people while they're talking. I think you should all hold still for a minute, don't you?" And a tidy layer of ice formed around Vaeron and his crew's legs. "- what were you suggesting, little goblin?"

Wheeler was of average height, he didn't know why people had to say things like that. "I'm just saying: that a blue dragon of discriminating tastes like yourself might be better served by working with an organization with a proven track record. And let me tell you, Stranglewire Industries has been trading in rare magical artifacts, among other things, for thirty years, while Vaeron has been doing it for - nine months, Vaeron? Since the last time he betrayed a client, anyway. I can't remember the exact date." Vaeron was making something glowy between his hands, which the dragon had failed to ice together, and his troll friend, by means of alarming gymnastics involving bending herself more than ninety degrees at the knees, had nearly gotten her polearm back in hand. "And it would be helpful to me and the lady if you'd - shit!"

Vaeron broke his fucking ship in half like an idiot.