(In the town of Sang Sacre today, everyone seems to be whispering.) (Or, you know, not.)

I walk on by the Goblin Market. The proprietress seems to have shut up shop early today.

"Inga" I say into the intercom while I look out at window at the blizzard outside.

"What is it?"

"Is the weather contoller on right now?" I wait for a little bit while my assistant checks out things in the weather lab.

"No. It's off. What's up?"

"There's a blizzard outside. I thought for sure it must be the weather controller acting up again. You know how impossible the controller's software is to debug."

"No way. It's not even connected to the power supply right now."

"Get it connected. We've got some weather to fix."

"Okay, try it again." I yell to Inga over the noise of the weather controller.

"Here goes." Inga yells back after pressing a big red button.

"Readings look good here. How's radar?"

Inga checks another screen. "Doppler's picking up circulation. We'll have tornados soon."

"Snow?" I ask.

"No change, still coming down hard. Radar's showing more circulation, we'll have multiple tornados."

"Shut it down!" I yell.

Inga flips a few switches and the control falls silent. I just shake my head. "Damn. The software just isn't designed for dealing with this unnatural stuff. Who knew fixing the weather would be so hard?"

"oooh snow!"

I stare blankly out the front window of Goblins Market, then turn to my towel-swaddled Devilbunny.

"Don't you 'oooo snow!' at me. This is partly your fault."

"snow means hot chocolate and gingerbread minions for biting heads off of."

"No, this snow means you traded the frozen orb of Azagoth for defective melty minions. You are not getting rewarded with gingerbread minions for this."

"am cute bunny," Clovis replies in a sulky tone. "am cute bathed-against-free-will bunny, and deserving of gingerbread minions."

I shake my head, then pick him up and head back to my store room. I unlace the velvet curtains blocking the door, turn counter-clockwise three times and say "Dociousalliexpetitousfragicalirupus". The door glitters, then vanishes.

I walk into the room and set Clovis down on the marble-topped table, then start climbing one of the ladders attached to the shelves.

"looking for box of gingerbread minions?" he asks hopefully.

"No. I'm looking for a way to try and fix what you did."

Where is that box? I know I put it back here ... ah-ha!

I climb back down the ladder, a cardboard box labled Stuff to put on eBay floating down behind me.

"prezzie for cute bunny in box?"

Setting aside the ziplock bag labled rings of power, misc., I raise my eyebrows, mouth the word "NO", and go back to looking in the box.

"Bag of holding, magic daggers, clockwork nightingale, playing cards, a black spot ... yes!"

"yes means prezzie?"

"Yes means that we're going to take this NON-chipped frozen orb of Azagoth and go put it in a bowl of hot water with some mint and lavender. That should help take care of this current mess."

Frozen orb in one hand, Devilbunny in the other, I walk out of the storage room, the velvet curtains lacing themselves back up over the door behind me. It only takes a few minutes for the tea kettle to whistle, and then to pop the orb in a bowl with the herb-laced water. With the left-over hot water, I brew a pot of cinnamon-rose tea.

"not hot chocolate," says Clovis, looking at his teacup.

"No, it isn't. But if you're very, very good, maybe I'll let you wear your batty wings for a bit and fly around the store."

"not outside?"

"Not until the orb that's taking an herbal bath starts to have an effect."

Bob raises his head and stares at the window. "It's snowing. My god, have we been in bed all through spring, summer, and fall and now it's winter again?"

Befuddled vampires are cute. I pat his cheek gently. "Sure did, sweetie, wasn't it fun? Let's see if we can stay in bed till it's spring again."

"OK."

I wait at the edge of Spring. Someone has decided to try to foil my spell with another orb and has created spring in a two block radius around the store where I obtained my orb of Azagoth.

Finally, my little chocolate theif appears with a frozen orb of Azagoth. I rub the chocolate smears off the orb and pocket it in my robe. I hand the demonic chocolate bunny Melf's sphere of Annoyance to replace the orb with. The chocolate bunny bounces off as spring begins its retreat.

I had hoped to find a more devestating cursed item to replace the orb, but Melf's sphere of Annoyance was the only one I had in stock that looked anything like the frozen orb. Oh well, at least it should attract some annoying customers when soaked in an herbal bath.

t oh, fine, now he's going to piss off the DevilBunny by suborning the chocolate minions

"How's the weather now Inga?"

"Same"

I adjust a few more dials on the weather controller. "How about now?"

"Same"

I kick the flux regulator and it springs into life. Then I flip the switch on the emitter array. "Now?"

"Same"

"Well, crap. The weather controller just isn't going to cut it. I'll have to reprogram the whole system to compensate for unnatrual influences. What's causing all this winter weather anyhow?"

Inga hands me a report. "After a lot of Googling, I think it is a curse using a frozen sphere of Azagoth to conduct the power of an ice dragon heart."

I put down the report, I don't like reading all this "magic" stuff, it might as well just be blah, blah, blah, presto desto, blah, blah. "So how do we stop it?"

"We have to stop the ice dragon heart from beating. Only thing is that it's a frozen wasteland in the dimension of Thymeria underground past a city of undead and..."

"No problem. I'll design some robots to take care of it, they'll go through undead like a hot knife. You know, some people actually think Zombies are better than robots, I never could understand what the..."

"Problem sir."

"Problem?"

"Thymeria is one of those dimensions where technology doesn't work very well."

I ponder this for a moment. "No problem, we'll just hire somebody to handle it. Post some want ads for contract employment of adventurers."

"The first applicant is here for his interview, sir" buzzes Inga over the intercom.

"Send him in."

She lets in a tall fellow with pointy ears wearing a bright blue suit. I stand up and shake his hand. "I'm Gudanov, it's nice to meet you Mr. Elf". I gesture to a chair and start the interview.

"I see you have a lot of experience in archery."

"Blue Elf needs food badly."

Not the comment I was looking for, but onward. "Okey, dokey. Is there a particular role you see yourself in when working with a band of adventurers?"

"Blue Elf is going to die soon."

"Grrrreat. You know, I think we've covered everything." I buzz Inga. "Please show Mr. Elf out and maybe get him a donut or something."

"Blue Elf needs food badly."

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!!!