Burning Issue

It didn't take long for Brule to make it back to the Undercity after getting the communiqué from Sylvanas' personal adjutant – it took about 15 seconds to set the portal up and then it was just a matter of stepping through. He had been attending a function in the Shimmering Flats highlighting the departure to Northrend of an acquaintance of his. The distance between the Thousand Needles where he had been representing the Broken Horn Warband at this event and the old capital city of Loarderon half a world away thus was reduced to a thin veil of arcane magic.

The scene when he arrived in his laboratory could only be described as "catastrophic". What had once been a state-of-the-art alchemical research centre funded jointly by the Broken Horn Warband and the Banshee Queen herself was now a smouldering ruin. Every book was burned, every vial smashed, the stockpiles of Arthas' Tears and Plaguebloom were gone and all of his prototype elixirs – the results of years of incessant work – had long evaporated in the inferno that had engulfed the place. The floor, walls, and ceiling were fractured, showing the evidence of a forceful explosion. The smell of solvents and blasting powder still permeated the air.

It took him some time to realize just what had happened. He had been attacked in the very core of the Apothecarium of the Undercity: his un-life's work had been irreparably ransacked. It was over. He couldn't hope to reproduce his extensive experiments without his notes... He had failed. The guards, the security infrastructure, the anti-magic fields, the frost and fire traps, the polymorph motion detection systems had all been for naught. Somehow they had all been circumvented.

Heads would burn for this.

He reached out in front of him and tore open the fabric of reality. Before him lay the inside of a large tent. A warm sweet-smelling breeze blew through the opening he had created.

"Hapa", he said. "Rouse the Warband."