The Lightbloom and the Knight-Errant

The candy bucket at the inn in Silvermoon City was the one honest thing in the city that night. Laotou reached in, came out with a fistful of Hallow’s End treats, and was congratulated for it as though a war had been won. Trick or Treat, the elves called it. The chronicler has seen grown heroes cheered for less, but not often.

It had been a wandering sort of evening before that. The monk began it in the Bazaar beneath the Sanctum of Light, and within a minute had a new name stitched under the old one: Azeroth Morning Radio. A guild, then. Laotou joined at the rank of Commoner, which is the most truthful rank any guild has ever handed out. Everyone starts at the bottom of the hall, sweeping. Pandaren do not mind sweeping. It is a close cousin to meditation.

From there the road went home, or near enough. Founder’s Point, up on Stoneveil Ridge, where a door opened onto a house and the monk went inside and stayed a while. The chronicler does not follow anyone through their own front door. Some pages are meant to stay blank. Some time later Laotou came back out onto the ridge, looked at the sky the way travelers do when they are deciding which obligation hurts least, and went to Dornogal.

Dornogal held the monk only briefly. Then the Wizard’s Sanctum in Stormwind, which is less a place than a door with an attitude, then Silvermoon again, and the bucket, and the treats.

Then Eversong Woods, and the work.

The Path of Dawn runs gold under the leaves, and Fairbreeze Village sits beside it like a village that has never once been told bad news. The people of Fairbreeze had their troubles ready: neighbors driven out of their homes, a beast called Sharpmaw that needed answering for, and the small favors a village asks of any stranger with strong hands and no good excuse. Laotou took all three and had all three settled before a candle could burn down. Sharpmaw has been answered for. How, exactly, was not written down.

After that the monk went deeper. Saltheril’s Haven, where the elves keep their manners polished and their cellars more so. Goldenbough Pass. And Lightbloom Ath’Ran, where something called the Lightbloom was looming, which is not a thing a flower ought to do. Laotou looked into it and came back with an answer someone was willing to pay for, and two new questions in hand. The Lightbloom wants trimming, and someone wants to know why it is growing at all. Curious cultivation, they called it. The chronicler calls it a garden that has started to get ideas.

The road south ran past Tranquil Repose, where the dead of this forest are laid down with more grace than they were shown in life, through Tranquillien, and on to the edge of Zeb’Nowa, where the Amani keep long memories and longer grudges. Then the monk turned back toward the city, as if remembering an appointment.

There was one. Knight-Errant Bloodshatter.

That name has sat on Laotou’s list since the monk first came to Silvermoon. At Astalor’s Sanctum the hunt was finally marked closed. The chronicler was not there for the end of it and will not invent a duel. What is known is what came after. A Spark of Tides was pressed into the monk’s hand, the kind of thing that hums when you hold it too close to your ear. There was a chest of the Preyhunters’ spoils, and gloves and boots of plain leather that were somehow still better than what the monk had been wearing. And there was a stole, the Preyhunter’s Rugged Stole, settled across the shoulders.

A hunter’s mantle is an odd fit for a Pandaren who spends their days keeping other people breathing. It suits Laotou anyway. Healing in this world is its own kind of hunt. You track death down before it reaches your friends.

Somewhere in all that a mask turned up too, Hallow’s End being what it is. The chronicler did not see which face it was. Perhaps that is the point of a mask.

Laotou ended the night in Silvermoon City some four hundred gold heavier, which in a city of elves is roughly the price of being looked at politely.

And already a new name has taken the old one’s place. Senior Tinker Ozwold. The hunt-masters at Astalor’s Sanctum hung it on the board, and the monk took it down. Out in Eversong the Lightbloom keeps growing, untrimmed and curious. And the letters from Khaz Algar still wait. The Weaver, The Vizier and The General are not known for patience.