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It was closing in on closing time in The Black Dragon Inn, and the vast majority of the student mage patrons were studiously ignoring this fact in favour of nursing their favourite drinks for as long as possible and talking loudly enough at each other that they could barely hear the bartender's metal teeth grinding at them.
In one darkened corner of the common room that was conveniently shrouded in shadows, a trio of rather unsavoury-looking patrons were taking this opportunity to discuss rather unsavoury things in rather unsavoury and forbidden language.
"Listen," said the biggest of the three, who looked like she was made of muscles and spice and nothing at all nice, "I say we burn it along with the bastard we got it from and have done with it."
"No no no no no," the redheaded halfling countered, almost falling off her stool as she leaned forwards to squeak. "We have to make sure it's disposed of in an ecologically responsible manner."
"Ecologically responsible manner?" repeated the last of the three, a tall blonde waif of a girl who looked like all of the fat had been sucked off of her body and deposited onto her chest. Clearly she needed some more practice with her body-morphing spells.
"Of course," said the halfling, "You don't want to risk the magic contained within it dispersing into the upper atmosphere, do you?"
"Meredith," the bigger girl said in an overly patient tone of voice, "I don't think that was what she was really asking. You know our Mol vocab isn't as good as yours."
"What she said," said the blonde waif, "and besides, I don't think this thing has got any magic inside of it anyway." She pulled an unassuming small brown cube out of a pouch at her waist and nonchalantly plopped it down on the table in full view of everyone in the crowded-but-now-slowly-emptying inn.
"You absolute plonking dunderheads," hissed the calico cat that had until that moment been lounging on the next table minding its own business. Less surprising than the cat speaking the forbidden language of Molgoth was the fact that its vocabulary was so exceptionally rude. "You don't even know what you've got there, do you?" It dropped rapidly off the other table and hastened over to them, tail raised pompously high as it did so.
"?!" spluttered all three of the trio.
"You can talk?!" said the big girl.
"You can speak Molgoth?!" said the blonde girl.
"You can say that in Molgoth?!" said Meredith.
The cat ignored all three of their questions. Jumping up onto their table, it batted the cube off and onto the floor. Just in time, it seemed, for the bartender had ambled his way over and was looking with interest at the things arrayed in front of them.
"Say, I didn't happen to see a little wooden cube over here, did I?" he asked in the common tongue around here - a pidgin language that had been born and bred at Elemental Elementary, "I could use just such a thing for a little statue I want to carve for my wife. I'd pay you good money for it." The bartender smiled at them in a friendly manner that was rather ruined by his metal teeth gleaming menacingly in the low camphor-light.
"I've seen nothing of the sort," the big girl responded in a flat and deadpan voice.
The blonde girl shook her head and bit her lip, not risking saying anything.
"No, I don't think so," Meredith laughed nervously.
Under the table, the calico cat shapeshifted back into its gnome-like humanoid form and pocketed the cube.
The bartender continued to smile his menacingly friendly grin as he pulled a long knife out of his belt and leaned over the table to repeat his question. "I said," he growled through gritted teeth, "I didn't happen to see a little wooden cube over here, did I?"
The inn had continued to slowly empty around them now that they weren't accepting any more drink orders, and the trio glanced around nervously as they realised the last party were filing out the door as they spoke, and hadn't noticed anything was at all amiss at their little table.
"Uhhhh," said the big girl, stalling for time.
"Ermmm," said the blonde girl, reaching for her wand.
"Hahaha," Meredith laughed nervously again, hoping he would go away.
The front door to the tavern clicked ominously as it shut behind the last of the other students. The bartender's grin grew wider and he opened his mouth to speak again.
At that moment, the gnome-looking creature that had previously been a calico cat emerged from under the table with no cube in visible sight and started scrambling for the door. "Later dunderheads!" he called after him in Molgoth.
"!" spluttered all four of them.
"It's that bastard!" said the big girl, pointing at the gnome.
"The one who sold it us!" said the blonde girl.
"He sold it me first!" said the bartender, "Said it had the new dentures I'd ordered inside, then stole the buggering thing back before I could figure out how to open it!"
"It's that cat! Get him!" screeched Meredith, scrambling down off of her high stool.
"Wait," said the big girl, "he told me it was a highly sought-after piece of art that would only bring us trouble."
"What?" said the blonde girl, "he told me it was a magical apparatus for trapping lions in the highlands!"
"But," spluttered the bartender, "there are no lions in the highlands!"
"Well," said Meredith slowly, coming to her senses at about the same time as she reached the ground, "that's a gnome MacGuffin, I guess."
The other three looked baffledly at Meredith as she sighed and launched into an explanation of how the cube was really nothing at all.