The Eversong Circuit

The first thing Burrly discovered in Eversong Woods was that Valeera Sanguinar thinks rather highly of him. Exalted, in fact , a word that sits uneasily on a Kul Tiran warrior built more like a dock crane than a diplomat. The chronicler cannot say what history passed between a Blood Elf spymaster and a man who solves problems by walking into them, but the factions of Quel’Thalas have clearly been keeping notes.

Six of them opened their ledgers to him the moment he arrived. The Amani Tribe. The Hara’ti. The Silvermoon Court. The Singularity , which sounds less like a faction and more like a philosophy you’d hear from someone who has read exactly one book and made it their personality. Ritual Sites, which is either a faction or a to-do list. And Slayer’s Duellum, which greeted him with the studied neutrality of people who have seen his type before and are reserving judgment.

Then he got to work.

Burrly does not quest so much as he harvests. The man had his pickaxe and herb satchel out before the innkeeper could finish pretending there were no rooms available. Eversong Woods, for all its autumnal beauty, is practically a geological argument in favor of mining , the kind of place where interesting rocks push up through the soil like they’re trying to escape. He pulled septarian nodules from the earth. He learned things about mining that have names like Dazzling Thorium and Artisan Miner’s Moxie, which sounds like a dwarven drinking song but is apparently a technique. He learned to mine at midnight, which the chronicler chooses to interpret literally.

Then he put the pickaxe down and picked flowers with the same industrial enthusiasm. Herbalism came slower , the plants of Eversong are more subtle than its rocks , but by the time the sun began to think about setting, he had coaxed four ranks of knowledge from the local flora. The chronicler notes, with some amusement, that a man the size of a small ship can identify a Lightbloom at forty paces but still can’t tell you what Quality means in the context of herb gathering.

The quests came in a rhythm. Eversong. Sharpmaw. Fairbreeze Favors. Displaced Denizens. Lightbloom Looming. Each one handed in with the same mechanical certainty, each one paying the same thirty-thousand-odd gold , a sum that would make a younger adventurer weep and which Burrly deposited without breaking stride. His coin purse sits at three hundred thirty million. The chronicler has stopped trying to contextualize these numbers. Suffice to say the man could buy Silvermoon City and still have enough left over to tip poorly.

The gear improved. Lynxslayer’s Reinforced Gauntlets for the hands, Lightstalker’s Greaves for the feet. Both unremarkable items that are nevertheless better than what he had before. That is the quiet tragedy of the endgame: every upgrade is incremental, every victory a rounding error. The chronicler has watched heroes replace their entire armory without once feeling stronger. Burrly, to his credit, does not seem bothered. He is not here to feel strong. He is here to be efficient.

Two quests remain on his slate , Trimming the Lightbloom and Curious Cultivation , when he finally stops. Twenty-seven minutes in Eversong Woods. Forty-four million gold richer, if the chronicler’s arithmetic holds, which it rarely does after the first mug. Mining at rank six. Herbalism at rank four. A Mote of Light in his bag that glows with the smugness of something rare.

The chronicler watched him log out near the Path of Dawn. The name is appropriate. Every road in Quel’Thalas leads somewhere that sounds like a poem. Burrly will be back on it tomorrow, pickaxe in one hand, the other already reaching for the next flower.