The first sign was the teacup.
Mei Lin had been on the balcony for most of the evening, stirring a pot of something stubbornly improvisational, and the teacup was sitting on the railing beside her with a half-finished jasmine brew going quietly cold. Normal cold. The kind tea went when you forgot about it.
Then it went other cold.
Frost bloomed across the porcelain. Not the soft crystals her water spirits made when they were playing, the kind that melted if you looked at them wrong. Real frost. Thick. Opaque. The sort you'd scrape off a windowpane before breakfast. The tea underneath hardened in one motion, a perfect disc of ice in a white cup, and her water totem by the railing shivered so hard it actually hopped.
"Oh," Mei Lin said. Setting down her ladle. "No."
The air opened.
Not a portal the way Celceta opened portals, those elegant arches of arcane light that made you feel you were being invited somewhere. This was a tear. Pale blue at the edges, breath-white in the middle, the cold pouring out of it in a wave that made the lanterns along the balcony flicker and die.
And through it stepped a gnome.
The gnome was not tall. She was, however, carrying a frost staff that was. Cold Convergence, although Mei Lin wouldn't learn that name for another minute, taller than the gnome herself by the measure of an entire head, runed and breathing a low blue vapour that looked less like magic and more like opinion. Her hair was white at the roots and dusted with something that might have been snow and might have been permanent. Her armor was scored. Her eyes were the colour of a winter sky at the hour light loses the argument.
She walked straight past Mei Lin without stopping.
She went to the totem.
Bent down. Put her hand about a fingerbreadth from it. Tilted her head like she was listening to a song only gnomes could hear. Then she nodded, satisfied, and turned back to Mei Lin with the expression of someone who had just confirmed a suspicion.
"Your totem," she said, "is resonating with the Tempest frequency."
"My totem," Mei Lin said slowly, because this seemed like a sentence that deserved the respect of a slow response, "is resonating with the Tempest frequency."
"Yes. I thought so from across the Vale. I came to check."
"You came to check."
"The set is incomplete," the gnome said, and the words came out of her in one long runaway breath, all at once and without permission. "The Tempest Regalia. I have six of the seven. The seventh is a cowl. The cowl is in a place. The place is Mount Hyjal. Past Archimonde, who is, technically, a problem, but not one I consider insurmountable given the correct composition. I have been dreaming about the cowl for a while now. Your totems have been singing in its key for longer than that, I suspect, although you may not have noticed. Shamans rarely do. The elements tend to know things before you do."
"I'm sorry," Mei Lin said, "who are you?"
The gnome looked genuinely surprised to be asked. Like Mei Lin had asked for her birth certificate mid-conversation.
"Yoniana. The Immortal."
"Of course you are."
"We're going to Hyjal. I need a cowl. You're coming."
"Am I."
"Yes."
That was when Mei Lin noticed the second gnome.
She had missed him. Easy thing to do, given how much of the available air space Yoniana occupied. He was standing at the back of the balcony near the archway, leaning against the stone with his hands in his coat pockets, watching the whole exchange with the patience of someone who had heard the destiny speech more times than he'd heard his own name. His hair was dark. His eyes were dark. He was small the way Maxiona was small, which was to say not small at all the moment you noticed him.
There were tiny sparks falling from his knuckles.
Not a cast. Not a spell. Just sparks. They drifted down from his fists the way dust drifts down from a rafter and winked out before they touched the tile. He wasn't trying. They were happening anyway.
He caught Mei Lin's eye. Held it. Communicated without words.
She does this, the look said. I know. I'm sorry. She's worth it.
Mei Lin blinked once. Understood perfectly.
"And you are?" she asked.
"Devonmichael."
"Also here for the cowl?"
"She said she felt something." He shrugged. One of the sparks fell from his thumb and went out before it touched the floor. "I came in case it needed burning."
"Fair."
Yoniana turned to both of them with the kind of absolute conviction that made weather systems reconsider their life choices.
"We're going to Hyjal. I need a cowl. You're both coming."
"When," Devonmichael said. Just the word.
"Soon."
"How soon."
"Soon-soon."
"I'll bring the warm coat."
Mei Lin looked at her frozen teacup. Looked at her still-shivering totem hiding, yes hiding, she was sure now, behind a potted plant. Looked at Yoniana's staff, which was emitting a kind of reverent hum that suggested it had already decided this was a done deal.
She sighed. Smiled. Gave in.
"The balcony is big enough," she said, "for small people with big destinies. Sit. I'll make more tea. Hopefully the kind that survives you."
Yoniana sat. Fluffed her coat around herself like a queen holding court. Immediately started reading the totems like menus.
Devonmichael sat on the railing. Quiet. Watchful. The sparks finally stopping.
The mist rolled in over the Vale. The lanterns came back one by one as Yoniana's cold receded into something more polite. Mei Lin brewed new tea and Yoniana drank three cups while explaining that the Tempest Regalia had, in fact, been waiting for her specifically since before the Sundering. Devonmichael contributed the phrase "probably" at one point and otherwise did not speak.
When they finally left, Yoniana summoned her mount in the lower courtyard.
Mei Lin walked to the railing and watched.
Not a horse. Not a gryphon. A bear. Massive. Golden-maned. A mount that shouldn't have existed anymore and very clearly did, because a small gnome with a staff taller than she was had decided it would. Yoniana climbed up with a practised hop and rode once around the Shrine courtyard, slowly, making sure the people who hadn't noticed her arriving definitely noticed her leaving.
Mei Lin filed that under things gnomes did that should have been ridiculous but were, actually, impressive.
She went back to her pot. Her totem came out from behind the plant, cautiously.
"It's alright," she told it.
It was not convinced.
— Mist