The next morning, sunlight streamed through a dusty window. Jess didn't recognize the room at all, and a strange thought flashed through his mind.
Had he been sent to another world again?
He pushed open the window and looked outside. Green trees and grass filled his view. Blue and yellow birds chirped as they hopped between the branches.
The rhythmic clang of hammers on anvils mixed with the bellows of a forge. In the distance, the town center was noisy with people visiting the morning market.
Looking down beneath the eaves, Jess saw a crowd lined up outside a blacksmith's shop, collecting something.
This was Goldshire. In the two years since he'd come to Stormwind, this was his first visit to the town.
He noticed bandages wrapped around several parts of his body. Without them, he might not even have remembered being hurt.
When he moved those areas, though, they certainly hurt. Judging by the pain alone, the injuries didn't seem too serious.
Last night felt like a dream. Hogger, the gnolls, that awful attack in the rain, a dwarf warrior fighting like a madman, and an archmage emerging from the dark forest with magic that drove away evil. It was like he'd landed in The Lord of the Rings.
Oh, right. He hadn't collected his pay yet.
When he went out, he could hear someone plucking a lute from the stairwell. A woman's powerful singing voice carried up the stairs.
Jess caught the smell of beer and bread. Was this the Lion's Pride Inn?
In the tavern hall, a woman around thirty stood surrounded by drinkers, singing to the music of a musician leaning against the wall.
“He came at last,
Before Blackrock Spire.
The Doomhammer
Once made men tremble.
Lothar, rest in peace.
His name will fade from memory, but your blade will live forever.
Thunder and lightning,
Before Blackrock Spire.
The beast's great roar
Once shook the heavens.
Lothar, rest in peace.
His name will fade from memory; your children now stand proud.
The darkest night will soon be gone.
The dawn is close at hand.”
The tune was quite different from the background music Jess remembered hearing at the Lion's Pride Inn in the game, but the style was very similar.
The song was about a battle a year earlier, when Anduin Lothar, commander of the human forces, had faced the orc Warchief Orgrim Doomhammer before Blackrock Spire.
Although Lothar died in the duel, the orcs suffered a defeat they could never recover from. Lothar's lieutenant Turalyon took up the general's broken sword, defeated Orgrim, and sounded the call for the Alliance to strike back.
The dawn really was close. It would be even better if Elwynn Forest didn't have so many monsters causing trouble.
Jess went outside into the street. The dampness left by the rain still hung in the air. A group of veterans stood around a table—the same men he'd seen from upstairs.
He walked over and gave his name.
The quartermaster separated two silver coins and a few copper coins from the piles on the table. “A lot of people died. None of us expected it. Some came from Lordaeron and Alterac, and there was a mercenary from Menethil Harbor. They have no family or friends here. Even if we set their share aside, we wouldn't know who to give it to.”
Jess weighed the small purse in his hand. It felt heavy.
When he returned to the inn, he found Gred sitting alone in a corner, staring blankly at a large mug of ale.
Jess sat across from him and remarked, “Drinking's bad for wounds.”
“A dwarf's body is built differently from a human's,” Gred said, his eyes half closed. “I'll explain it to you properly. Our ancestors were the ancient earthen. The earthen came from underground. They were made by the earth. Now, guess what else comes from the earth? Grain. Fruit.”
“Look here.” He lifted his mug and swirled the bubbling ale. “When these things ferment, it's just like the solid, primitive earthen turning into us lively, wonderful dwarves. See those bubbles? Not one bit different from an old dwarf's beard. There's your proof. In other words, we dwarves and good booze are exactly the same thing! When ale slides into my stomach, it's like coming the hell home. My wounds see that ale and start crying, ‘Our brother's here!’ Then they smear it all over themselves, and my muscles hurry to grow back. This isn't even booze! It's a miracle medicine that could bring a man back to life on the spot, something even Dalaran's finest alchemists couldn't make. No question about it.”
“Of course, that only works for dwarves.” He drained the entire mug in one go.
Jess smacked his lips as he watched, then waved a hand. “I'll have an ale too.”
Gred pointed at Jess's bandages and said with heavy sarcasm, “Drinking's bad for wounds, human.”
“Mind your own business.” Jess took the cup from the server and gulped down a mouthful, only to choke and start coughing. Every cough made his muscles and wounds ache.
“Ha! Weakling!” Gred bellowed. “Another drink! A proper dwarven brew! At the very least, something made the way those sissies in Ironforge make it!”
Before long, an annoyed-looking server handed him a large mug. Under the light-brown foam, the liquid was as black as cola.
“Close enough!”
Gred broke into a grin, took a deep sniff, and sighed.
“What's wrong?” Jess asked between sips.
“I'm homesick. I want to go back to Aerie Peak,” the dwarf said.
Jess drew a long diagonal line on the table, bending it around Durnholde Keep and stretching it into the northern valley. “But to get from Southshore to the Hinterlands, you'd have to cross the Hillsbrad Foothills. It still isn't safe there. I hear there are orcs wandering around.”
The dwarf's eyes followed the line across the table. “So what? Even Orgrim Doomhammer's been thrown into a dungeon. The rest are just bandits and thieves.”
There was more to it than that. The Frostwolf clan had settled in Alterac Valley. Those fearsome hunters commanded white-furred wolves bigger and stronger than old bulls. They weren't content to hide in the snowy mountains; they often came down into Hillsbrad to raid supplies and survive.
And there was another clan several times more terrifying: the Warsong clan, led by Grom Hellscream, a berserker whose name had struck fear into people even on Draenor.
Any one of those brutes who'd drunk demon blood could probably smash Hogger's crooked mouth with his bare hands.
Jess remembered that they roamed Lordaeron's mountains, forests, and hills for over a decade. But he couldn't say exactly where they were hiding now.
That meant sailing from Stormwind's harbor to Southshore should still be fairly safe.
After all, the orcs' warships were no match for the navies of Gilneas and Lordaeron. As soon as the Dark Portal came under attack and their supply line was cut off, they'd disappeared.
But traveling north from Southshore into Silverpine Forest, or toward Durnholde north of the Hillsbrad Foothills, was a different matter altogether.
Then Jess suddenly realized he didn't even have enough money to pay for passage from Stormwind Harbor to Southshore, let alone food and supplies along the way. What was the point in worrying about all this?
“Sorry, Jess,” the dwarf said suddenly. “Yesterday I told you this job was money you could make lying down. Never thought we'd almost end up lying down for good.”
Jess shook his head. “Silver coins aren't that easy to earn. I learned that lesson pretty thoroughly the day before yesterday.”
“What were you doing?” Gred asked curiously.
“Don't ask. Someone told me about a job paying two silver coins. I went there thinking I had no idea what kind of work it would be, and they ended up beating the hell out of me.”
Gred stared at him for a moment before bursting into laughter. Beer foam covered his beard.
“You let someone pay to beat you up? I thought you were selling your ass for money!”
“Selling my... my ass?” Jess's mouth twitched.
“Next time you run into that fellow, send him my way. Look at these muscles.” Gred stroked his rock-hard shoulder. “If I don't make him go broke trying to beat me, I'll be letting down the body, strength, and spirit my home in the Hinterlands gave me.”
Jess drank several mugs of beer with Gred, and all the pain and lingering fear from the night before faded away. At some point, the woman who'd been singing left the tavern. Only the musician remained, holding his instrument and playing an unfamiliar, gentle tune to the cold fireplace.
They stayed in Goldshire all day. In the afternoon they joined a merchant caravan bound for Stormwind, reaching the Trade District by evening.
The smell of roasted meat drifted from the Gilded Rose on the other side of the little square. Neither Jess nor Gred cared about the prices anymore. After going a day and a night without food, they rushed inside and ate their fill of pork-liver pies and smoked chops they'd normally never spend money on. They drank until midnight.
Back home, Jess scattered the money he'd earned over the past two days across his table and counted the coins one by one.
After the ale, pies, smoked chops, and the money he'd spent yesterday, he had four silver and sixty copper left. If he paid the rent and spent carefully, he could just about make it through the month.
But if he wanted a home of his own and hoped to bring his parents over from Lordaeron, just scraping by would never be enough.
The last two days had been far too dangerous. He couldn't earn money like that all the time. Even if he stayed lucky enough not to die, his body couldn't take it.
At least Edan Marin had agreed to hire him as an assistant. Maybe he'd eventually get to live in the Mage Quarter and stop paying rent all the time.
Better still, maybe he'd get free room and board. Didn't mage apprentices in Dalaran live and eat at their school in World of Warcraft?
Did they? Or didn't they? He realized he was starting to forget the little details of that world.
In any case, an assistant should earn something and get certain benefits in the Mage Quarter, right? At least it was steady work.
Even though he was drunk enough to barely think and everything before his eyes was swimming, Jess couldn't help smiling.
Suddenly, a fierce wave of nausea shot up his throat. He rushed out of his room, ran to the canal, and threw everything up into the water.
He rolled onto his back and looked at the night sky. The two moons, one large and one small, stared down at him like a pair of glasses reflecting the light. Jess remembered a girl with glasses he'd had a crush on in middle school.
Was there still any hope of going home? Back to Earth?
Maybe never.
Still, this place wasn't all bad. Every day was dangerous and exciting. It was more fun than being an office drone.
Maybe one day he'd even date a white-haired elf girl. He giggled at the thought, drool running down the corner of his mouth.
“Forget the Earth girl with the glasses! I don't want her! I want an elf girl! An elf girl!”
Two old men fishing at night nearby looked over at the drunk. One asked, “What's he saying?”
The other shook his head. “Can't understand him. Maybe he's from Kul Tiras. Heard they all talk like that over there. Like they're singing.”