"You're with them Burning Blade folk, right? Had a fella in here awhile back, was lookin' for recruits. You're with 'em, yeah?"

"Dunno what you're talking about." Margoz's words were sufficiently slurred that his consonants barely qualified as such. " 'Scuse me."

Margoz then got off his stool, stumbled to the floor, got up while refusing assistance from Manuel, and then walked very slowly and unsteadily toward the door.

A moment later, after Manuel gave him a look and a nod, Strov abandoned his long—empty mug and also exited onto the streets of Theramore.

The cobblestone streets that formed a lattice amid the buildings of Theramore were designed to provide reinforced ground for people, mounts, and wheeled conveyances to travel without risking getting mired in the swampy ground the city had been built on. Most people walked on them rather than the muck and grass on either side, which meant the thoroughfares were so crowded that Strov could follow Margoz without fear of being noticed.

After Margoz bumped into four different people, two of whom actively tried to avoid him, Strov realized that they could have been alone on the street for all it mattered. Margoz was so drunk he wouldn't have noticed a dragon following him down the street.

Still, Strov refused to let his training go to waste, so he kept a good distance behind and rarely looked right at the target, though he kept him in his peripheral vision.

They soon arrived at a small adobe structure near the docks. This particular house was constructed of the cheaper material rather than wood or stone, indicating that very poor people indeed lived here. If this Margoz was a fisherman, as Manuel thought, he was obviously a bad one, as it took a true lack of skill to not succeed as a fisherman on an island on the coast of the Great Sea. The nearest cesspool was poorly concealed, and Strov almost gagged from the odor of waste in the air.

Margoz entered the building, which was probably originally constructed as a four—room house, but now had each room rented out to a different tenant. Strov took up position behind a tree across the way from it.

Three of the rooms already had lanterns burning. The fourth lit up about half a minute after Margoz entered. Strov casually walked across the way and then stood near Margoz's window, making as if to urinate on the wall. He made sure to stumble as he approached, so that any passersby would assume he was drunk. It wasn't all that unusual late at night to see drunks relieving themselves on whatever surface presented itself.

From Margoz's room, Strov heard the words: "Galtak Ered'nash. Ered'nash ban galar. Ered'nash havik yrthog. Galtak Ered'nash."

Strov started. He didn't recognize the rest of it, but the first and last part were things the orcs who attacked them at Northwatch had said.

Pleased with himself for having rightly made this connection, Strov continued listening.

Then his entire face scrunched up in revulsion at the sudden stink of sulfur. On the face of it, sulfur should have been more pleasant, or at least less revolting, than the cesspool's overwhelming odor. But there was something wrong—something evil—about this smell. Margoz's words had sounded like an incantation, and now this. Not only was magic afoot, but Strov was willing to bet his sword that it was demonic magic.

"'M sorry, sir, I didn' mean to—" Margoz paused. "Yeah, I realize y'don' wanna be bothered 'less it's important, but it's been months, sir, and 'm still in 'is same hole. I jus' wanna know—" Another pause. "Well, it's importan' t' me! And wha's more, people keep talkin' t'me, like I can help 'em or somethin'."

Strov couldn't hear the other half of the conversation, which meant that either Margoz was crazy and was talking to himself—which Strov had to admit was likely, especially given his inebriated state—or the other half of the conversation was meant for Margoz's ears only.

"I dunno whatcher talkin' 'bout. Nobody didn'—" Another pause. "Well, how's I s'posed t'know that? Huh? I ain't got eyes'n the back'a my head!"

What Strov knew about demons was mostly how to kill them, but this odd one—sided conversation definitely had the stink of demon to Strov—and not just because of the sulfur.

He did up his pants. At this point, he had enough to report to Colonel Lorena. Besides, he didn't much like the idea of being this close to a demon.

Turning around, he found himself facing absolute darkness.

"What the—?" He whirled around, but there was only darkness behind him as well. Theramore had completely disappeared.

I do not like spies.

Strov didn't so much hear the voice as feel it in his very bones. It was as if someone had sewn his eyes shut, only his eyes were open, but he couldn't see anything.

No, it wasn't just sight that had gone quiet. The darkness extended to his other senses. He could no longer hear the bustle of Theramore, nor taste the salty air, nor feel the breeze wafting in off the Great Sea.

And the only thing he smelled now was sulfur.

Why do you spy on my minion?

Strov said nothing. He wasn't sure he was capable of speech, and even if he was, he would never give up information to a creature such as this.

I do not have time to play these games. It seems you must simply die.

The darkness caved in on Strov. His body grew cold, the blood freezing in his veins, his mind screaming in sudden, terrifying agony.

The last thought Strov had was hope that Manuel wouldn't blow Strov's entire pension on boar's grog…

Muzzlecrank used to like being a goblin bruiser. Truly, it had been easy work when he first signed up. Bruisers enforced the peace in Ratchet, and the pay was good. Muzzlecrank's shifts were spent wandering up and down his section of the pier at Ratchet, beating up the occasional drunk or vagabond, taking bribes from shipmasters moving contraband, arresting the ones who were too stupid or too cheap to pay bribes, and generally getting to meet all manner of people.

Muzzlecrank had always thought of himself as a people person. Ratchet was a neutral port—goblins as a rule did not take sides in the numerous conflicts that ravaged the land—and as a result, pretty much every type of creature you were like to find in the world came through at some point or other. Elves, dwarves, humans, orcs, trolls, ogres, even the occasional gnome—it was the crossroads of Kalimdor. Muzzlecrank always liked seeing the different interactions, whether it was dwarves shipping construction materials to elves, elves shipping jewelry to humans, orcs shipping crops to elves, humans shipping fish to ogres, or trolls shipping weapons to pretty much anyone.

Lately, though, things had gotten somewhat less pleasant. Especially between the humans and the orcs—which was problematic insofar as the most common patrons of Ratchet were those two races. Ratchet was right at Durotar's southernmost border, and was the nearest port to Theramore as well.

Just last week, he had had to break up a fight between an orc sailor and a human merchant. The former had apparently stepped on the latter's toe and the human took umbrage. Muzzlecrank had been forced to break them up before the orc beat the human into a pulp, which hadn't been any fun at all. Muzzlecrank preferred to get into fights with vagabonds and drunks because they were kind enough not to fight back. Fighting—mad orcs were another kettle of grease entirely, and Muzzlecrank preferred to stay as far away from them as possible.

Fights like that usually meant that he had to draw his net—gun, and every time he did that he ran the risk of someone figuring out that he was really bad at using the stupid thing. Oh sure, he could fire it easily enough—any idiot could do that; just point and pull the trigger, and a compressed air burst sent a net out to snare whatever you were shooting at—but his aim was lousy, and the net always missed the target and usually made a big mess. Luckily, the site of a bruiser pointing a gun with a giant muzzle at you was enough to stop most fights—or at least slow them down long enough for reinforcements to arrive.