What the Murlocs Left at Stone Cairn Lake

The half-eaten body was Malakai’s. Guard Thomas had sent Andric up the river to look for two missing guards, and the river had kept one of them for itself.

The other, Rolf, was somewhere in the murloc village at Stone Cairn Lake. Andric went to find him. The murlocs killed him. He went back. They killed him again. The third time, the chronicler suspects, they were simply showing off.

He found Rolf on the fourth try, or what the village had not finished with, and took the medallions from both men so their names would go home even if they could not.

That was the end of the day. It began, as most days in Elwynn do, with somebody else’s problem.

Andric woke at the Lion’s Pride Inn in the white Friar’s Robes of the Light, which he now wears with a crimson tabard and the slightly startled air of a man who has been officially approved of for the first time in years. He walked out past the Tower of Azora and the quiet waters of Stone Cairn Lake, gathered wolf pelts for Helene Peltskinner, and then walked into Stormwind for the first time since the cathedral sent him away. He stood a while in the Valley of Heroes among the statues. He did not go up to the Cathedral. The chronicler notes this and says nothing.

Back in Goldshire, a man called Remy “Two Times” had opinions about murlocs, and Jason Mathers the fishmonger had worse ones. Something had been tearing through the fishing traps on Crystal Lake. Andric checked the traps, found them shredded, and cleared the murlocs and their Streamrunners from the far shore. They drowned him once for it. Lee Brown wanted the shiny junk the murlocs hoard, which says something about Lee Brown. Remy wanted animal blood and Duskweed petals for murloc bait. Andric collected all of it and learned two new prayers along the way: Renew, which keeps healing a body after the priest has stopped touching it, and Fade, which is the Light’s way of saying “not me, I’m only the healer.”

Then Fargodeep Mine, where Andric ran with a band of other adventurers and died three times in quick succession, which in Fargodeep is not a failure so much as an admission fee. He came out with the Gold Dust Remy wanted, the large candles William Pestle wanted, and a satchel of Brother Paxton’s stolen books, including one titled “Fun with Elementals.” Someone in Northshire has unusual reading habits.

In the evening he walked down to the farms.

Elwynn has its own small war, and it is not the Defias. The Stonefields and the Maclures have been feuding for longer than either family can sensibly explain. Their children, of course, are in love. Andric carried Maybell Maclure’s letter to Tommy Joe Stonefield, spoke with Gramma Stonefield, and heard Auntie Bernice Stonefield’s sorrow over a lost necklace, which sent him to the little Maclure boy, Billy, who wanted pie. Andric brought boar meat to Auntie Bernice so she could bake it, and the pie back to Billy, and the chronicler would like it known that a man who believes all peoples are one family spent an hour running pies between two families who will not share a fence.

He did not fix the feud. Nobody does. Billy told him a kobold called Goldtooth has Bernice’s necklace, deep in Fargodeep. The mine killed him twice more before he gave up for the night. Ma Stonefield wants a sow called Princess dead and her collar brought back; Princess lives at the Brackwell Pumpkin Patch among the Defias, who killed him there too.

Between all that, Andric carried William Pestle’s shipment to Morgan Pestle in the Trade District, took a smith’s errand into Stormwind’s Dwarven District, rode the Deeprun Tram to Ironforge and back, and came home to Goldshire ready for Guard Thomas and the river.

So, Stone Cairn Lake.

After he found Rolf, Andric carried the medallions back to Guard Thomas on the east bridge, and Thomas sent him to Marshal Dughan with the report. Dughan paid him seven silver for two dead men, which is the going rate in Elwynn. Then Andric sat down with his books and learned the rest of what the Light had been waiting to teach him: a stronger Lesser Heal, a deeper Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast, which is exactly what it sounds like, and Resurrection.

Resurrection. The night he found Rolf’s body in the reeds.

The chronicler has no comment. The Light has a sense of timing, and it is not always a kind one.

Marshal Dughan has given him a letter for Gryan Stoutmantle at Sentinel Hill in Westfall, where the Defias came from. A priestly matter called Divine Grace is waiting too. Goldtooth still has Bernice’s necklace. Princess is still alive. And Andric, who walked to Stormwind and did not go into the Cathedral, is about to walk into the country of the men he once bandaged in the cellars of Old Town.