The Gladius of Parhelion Plaza

The Void came for the Sunwell again, the way it always does, and this time it brought a general. Gladius Slaurna held the battlements of Parhelion Plaza with Voidcallers at his feet, ready to feed them to the dark for a little more strength. Then a Kul Tiran came down the stairs, smelling faintly of tar and harbor, and the general’s evening got considerably worse.

Burrly had started humbly enough. A quick crossing to the Trading Post in Stormwind City, where Tawny Seabraid hands out each month’s tender. Then back to Silvermoon, where Magister Astalor Bloodsworn keeps a hunt table in his sanctum and a list of names. The first he gave Burrly was Grothoz, the Burning Shadow: an ogre of the Twilight’s Blade and, by Astalor’s account, the brains of a particularly stupid cabal. The magister calls it Prey. The elves have a gift for making murder sound like a hobby.

Somewhere on the Shining Span, the great bridge from the city to the Isle of Quel’Danas, he also acquired a guild. Azeroth Morning Radio took him on as a Commoner. Burrly has never needed a title. He has needed someone to drink with. Now he has a roster of them.

He went into the Plaza alone. The Delvers had posted their call in Silvermoon: Quel’Danas is under attack by the Void once more, and any who can should help stem the tide. So he stemmed it. The halls gave up small mercies: a Boon of Vigor, a Boon of Possibilities, another Boon of Vigor, a Boon of Fortitude, a Boon of Potency. The elves name their blessings like perfume. A warrior uses them like bandages.

Then Slaurna himself, one of the hardest things waiting in any of these delves. The chronicler was not in the room and will not invent the blows, but the record is clear about the ending. The Gladius fell, and Burrly stood over him on the Sunwell’s own battlements, breathing hard and very much alive. Only then does the record put Valeera Sanguinar at his side, the blood elf assassin who walks the delves with anyone foolish enough to enter them. What she did before that, the record does not say. She would prefer it that way.

The Plaza’s chest paid in strange coin. A Spark of Tides, the kind of thing master crafters build their finest work around. A Primeval Arcane Remnant, humming with something older than anyone cares to guess. A jeweler’s design for a replica Haranir mural. And a pair of Pledgebearer’s Pauldrons. He put them on. He looked at himself. Moments later he took them off and went back to his old Front-Line Shoulders of the Aurora. Some men know their own shape. The chronicler respects that more than most victories.

Valeera left at the threshold without a word. She always does.

Back at the Delver’s Headquarters in Silvermoon, he laid the Remnant before Naleidea Rivergleam, who called it an extraordinary find and asked for more. Then he collected on the Delvers’ call. Somewhere between the praise and the purse he felt it again: that slow thickening of shoulder and spine that only comes from surviving things that should have killed you. Another rung. The ladder does not care.

Then out along the Path of Dawn into Eversong Woods, after Grothoz. And here the chronicle owes the truth. At Lightbloom Ath’Ran, where Light-fed overgrowth has swallowed the old Scorched Grove and nothing grows politely anymore, a stranger called Headhaunta caught him with a lance of Dawnlight and put him in the grass. Not a beast. Not a shadow. Another hunter, who saw a Kul Tiran and saw a trophy. Burrly lay among the flowers for a while and considered his choices.

He came back. Of course he did. He pried ore from the stone, picked Motes of Light out of the ground like a man collecting teeth after a brawl, and kept at the hunt until the ogre had nowhere left to hide. Grothoz, the Burning Shadow, burns no more. In Astalor’s Sanctum the magister paid him in gold, another Spark of Tides, an Aspiring Preyhunter’s Chest, and the Preyhunter’s Polished Vambraces, which he buckled on before the ink on the receipt was dry. He sold the rest, and his purse went home heavier than it had any right to be.

The last thing he did before the lamps went down was take another name: Thornspeaker Edgath, a druid who turns the wild on enemies and innocents alike. It is time, says Astalor, to clip this thorn. Burrly did not argue.

And somewhere in Eversong, Headhaunta is still walking around with a story about the day they killed a sailor. Stories like that have a way of getting a second chapter.