Coming of Age Above the Clouds

The wind on Zephras Isle has been wrong for centuries. The Skyborne feel it the way other people feel a missing tooth: something that used to be there, and now every breath reminds them it isn’t.

Parzelle Starfall came of age on the day Forever opened, which is either excellent timing or a cosmic joke, depending on who you ask among the shen’dorei. The wind spirits that once kept their floating home aloft are gone. The anchor pylons the spirits left behind are failing. The High Order, descendants of the Highborne magisters who fled Eldre’Thalas ten thousand years ago, have decided the answer is not to wait for the spirits to return. The answer is to reclaim the arcane, walk back down to Azeroth, and learn to keep the island in the sky without begging the Elemental Plane for another favor.

Ailee Farheart sent her to Rorian the Dayseeker beneath the greatfather tree in Thendal Village. Coming of Age. A relic passed from hand to hand until the ashes are scattered to the winds. Rorian named her people plainly and set her to work: Harmony in Balance, Infestation Investigation, the small mercies and smaller cruelties of a village that can feel the magic on the wind going sour.

She died the first time in the Shen’dar Highlands before she had even finished the infestations. Level two. The chronicler notes these things. First deaths are the ones that teach a mage whether she means it. She got up.

The day unfolded the way first days do when a people are in a hurry. Elemental Unrest. Agitators among the wind sprites. Harvesting Windstones. Reading the Leylines. The Anchors of Zephras. Falling With Style, which is the High Order’s polite name for being dared off a watchtower and remembering that Walk on Air is not a metaphor. Aetheen of the Gales came to Thendal Grove to read the winds and take the measure of the newly grown. Foul Matriarch. Aggressive Encroachment. She died again in Thendal Cave, got up again, and kept the list moving.

By the time the road turned south to Shen’dar Village she was level five, and the High Order was waiting. The High Order. Welcome to Shen’dar Village. A Magical Affront aimed at Windshaper novice seers who would rather the isle stayed dependent on spirits that have already left. Cooking from Zerril Softbreeze. Level six in a column of gold light on the cobbles, with a basic campfire recipe in her hands and a staff on her back.

One hundred nine minutes. Eight hundred seventy-two copper earned, seven hundred fifteen spent, which is what happens when a mage discovers that trainers, reagents and a new life all arrive on the same invoice. Two deaths. Twenty-two quests finished. And at the end of it, a satchel full of unfinished business: Pilfered Windstones, Hippogryph Harassment, The Problem With Prideclaws, Restocking the Larders, a Wanted poster for Vulgara the Insatiable, and a Magical Affront still only partly paid.

She logged out on the Shen’dar Highlands with the island still chained to the sky and the High Order still arguing that the chains would hold if the right people learned the old spells again.

The chronicler will be curious to see which lesson she believes first: the one that says the wind will come back, or the one that says it won’t.