Retribution is at Hand, Chapter 2
Argent Officer Pureheart was having a bad day, worse than usual.
The heavy rain and mist forced the camp to take the extra mile in warming and protecting their supplies. High Priestess McDonnell sat by her, and took a brief look at her steel armor, and said, “It will rust.”
“I’d rather not lower my defenses,” the officer replied.
“Officer Pureheart!” shouted a stout dwarven lady came into the circle of tents, breathing quickly.
“Report,” the officer demanded. Alexia Ironknife’s hair was flat from the rain, and as were her clothes. “Did you find any sightings?”
“Nay, officer,” she replied. “But there is a human approaching us from the south, from Hillsbrad.”
“Change your clothes,” said Officer Pureheart, relaxing her stance. “Bibilfaz, where are you?”
“Over here, officer!” came a voice from a nearby tent. A gnome appeared from under the flap, his hair riffled with gryphon feathers as the dwarf retreated to her tent.
“I ordered you to stay on your gryphon for any newcomers from Hillsbrad!”
“I’m sorry, officer, but it’s not my fault! There were no callings from Hillsbrad,” the gnome replied in shrill voice.
What? Why would this person come on foot? “Erm…Very well, it doesn’t matter. Alexia, go and bring this newcomer to me,” she said at the tent where the scout disappeared. The dwarf appeared, bowed low, and hurried off.
“Well, at least we don’t have any undead to combat,” the high priestess said, smiling.
“I wonder who this is,” Bibilfaz said out loud.
“Must be the sorceress of Stormwind,” the officer said, taking off her metal shoulder and leg armor and placing them in a yellow tent by a newly-started fire. “Quartermaster Lightspark, please take care of my armor.”
“Will do, officer!” A voice called from within. The officer sat down by the fire pit, and crossed her arms, waiting for the scout to return with the sorceress.
“I’ll head off to tend to the commander,” the priestess said in a heavy tone, as she headed into the largest tent.
Not long after, two figures appeared from the mist, one taller than the other. Alexia, a dwarf clad in yellowing leather and orange hair appeared first, leaning her musket on her shoulder, and then the newcomer arrived. Clad in purple robes that swept the ground, a gray staff and a leather-bound book, face hid under a hood.
“Welcome to Chillwind Camp, sorceress,” Officer Pureheart said, as she stood up and extended her hand. The newcomer reached forward, and the officer frowned; the hand was too soft to grasp a weapon. And she needs to head to Light’s Hope. We barely have any escorts left since Weldon Barrov’s death. The officer bit back her thoughts and asked, “We were informed that you’ll be passing by here. I am Officer Pureheart of the Argent Dawn. How can I help you?”
“Well met, officer,” the sorceress replied, pulling back her hood. “My name is Lyrissa Dawnweaver, and I need safe passage to Light’s Hope Chapel in the Western Plaguelands.”
Terrific, this is just what I needed, thought the officer.
“I’m afraid I cannot spare any of my forces in the moment, Lady Dawnweaver, but if you remain with us for two nights, we may be able to find you an escort once officer Dumah recovers,” the officer said, sitting by the campfire, keeping her azure eyes on the sorceress, who shivered slightly.
“I don’t really have time for waiting, dear officer,” the sorceress said, as she gripped her robes tightly. “Can I take a gryphon to Light’s Hope?”
Bibilfaz’s voice came from within his large tent, where a gryphon shrieked briefly, “I don’t think she’s up for a trip to Light’s Hope, my lady!”
The gryphon tamer’s head appeared from the tent flap, and he said, “She’s been struck by a few arrows yesterday. We can call for the chapel’s Gryphon trainer, Khaelyn, though!”
“Please do!” said Lyrissa, loosening the grip on her robes. “Thank you!”
“Very well, then,” said Officer Pureheart. “Send the signal. I’m sorry we can’t be of more use, Lady Dawnweaver; the Scourge has been quite tough lately, and most of our forces are in Northrend.”
“Have you seen any unusual things lately? Anything related to magic?” Lyrissa asked.
Officer Pureheart frowned deeply, and gazed into the fire silently.
Lyrissa waited, but there was no elaboration. She nodded, and stood by a tent’s pole.
The smoke of the fire was thin, and the firewood cracked and cackled.
“Well…There have been queer things about,” said the officer.
“Like what?” Lyrissa asked.
“Like see here,” Officer Pureheart began, running her hand through her crumpled hair. “Alexia reported a few days ago a castle appearing in the middle of nowhere in the Western Plaguelands, near the middle of the area.”
“Aye, I have, and me eyes weren’t lyin’,” Alexia said. “It was a huge white mansion, with red roofs and clear windows, it had. It appeared in the middle of the land, as if out of nowhere.”
“The design was reported to be similar to Lordaeron architecture,” Officer Pureheart said.
“Interesting,” was all Lyrissa could manage.
“Commander Ashlam Valorfist was ordered by Light’s Hope Chapel to investigate, and he did, with forces supplied from the Argent Dawn and volunteers from Stormwind and Ironforge. He came back, alright, but not before the mansion disappeared for five days. He was cold, starving, and near death, as were most of his troops,” the officer said in a low voice. She turned to the commander’s tent. “He’s being tended to as we speak by High Priestess McDonnell. I’m glad we didn’t allow her to accompany him.”
“Do you know anything about a missing paladin?” Lyrissa asked.
“Derrick Mace?” Officer Pureheart asked. “Is that the paladin’s name?”
“I wasn’t given a name, but was he missing?”
“Derrick Mace isn’t exactly missing; some of us think he’s hiding,” the officer grinned slightly.
“Why would he be hiding?”
The officer’s eyes thinned. “Are you from Lordaeron, Lady Dawnweaver?”
“I am, but I was travelled to Stormwind when I was of fifteen years, and lived there ever since.”
“Then you probably don’t know about the times following the anarchy with Prince Arthas’s fall and the invasion of the Burning Legion.”
“I do! I just wasn’t here!”
“Many of the paladins of the Silver Hand broke or left to join Arthas after Lord Uther Lightbringer died to the Scourge. There are few who joined the Argent Dawn, and later the Argent Crusade, but there are few -very few- who remain here still.”
“They belong to the Scarlet Crusade?”
“Not completely. Derrick Mace is rumored to be dead, while some witness seeing him alive. Some say he lives in the wilderness, while some say he’s in the Argent Dawn in disguise. Many who knew him say he was traumatized with his mentors’ dark ends, and say he isn’t any more alive than the Scourge,” said the officer, and she smiled mysteriously. “He’s not really here. Maybe that’s why the Cathedral of Light wants him.”
“I thought you did, too.”
“We don’t seek to hold the person who owes allegiance to us. If he wants to be a ghastly hero, we will let him, but I suppose, as well as Commander Ashlam, that the Cathedral of Light needs him for one reason or another.”
“Maybe to rebuild the Silver Hand?”
“Or they need his strength against Arthas,” the officer said, and then shrugged. “There are many people of Lordaeron living in Stormwind, like you. Maybe he has relatives or friends who need him with them.
“However, it isn’t my concern.”
Lyrissa looked up from the charred fireplace. Office Pureheart leaned back, and turned the ashes of the fire with an arrow, and she said, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed, “He did many good things, like most of the Silver Hand survivors who didn’t leave. There are still people, Men, who cannot leave their homeland, and suffer each day for that. The Silver Hand, or those of them who remained, stand vigilant and ever watchful over all of the Alliance who tread these lands.
“Some say they all left and mostly because most didn’t find much of them in their travels, but for the life of me, if they did not roam these lands, the Argent Dawn would have never stood-the Forsaken would be under constant siege, and these lands and those beyond would be lost.”
The soldier turned her sharp gaze to the sorceress, and said, voice stern and hands quivering, “We will not stop Derek if he wills to leave, but know that in fulfilling your mission we would lose a great ally, and a testament to the might of Men against the Shadow.”
“I think I know him, in that case,” Lyrissa said, casting her eyes back to the dying embers of the fire. The cold wind swept on them, and she shivered; her robes were light, and besides that, only a cloak lined with fur guarded her. “Does he wield a light blue blade? A hue so light it could be white?”
“That’s probably him,” Officer Pureheart said. She opened her mouth, but then closed it, and leaned back further, and crossed her hands against her chest.
“Was there something you wished to say?”
“No,” she replied, standing up. Lyrissa followed, but the officer shook her hand, and continued. “Rest. Your journey will be two days from now, and the Plaguelands is not Stormwind’s park.”
Was that contempt? Lyrissa was hard-pressed to blame her, as she slumped against a tent’s wall. After all, I wasn’t here for the last six years.
“Take my tent, I’ll be on guard for the next two nights,” the officer said, as she stooped down, and drew a black scabbard from her tent and tied it to her belt. She picked up a pack, and headed to the injured commander’s tent, and said, “Commander, I’ll take over Officer Dumah.”
“Light be with you, officer,” came a heavy voice from the tent. High Priestess McDonnell emerged from the tent. In her hand was a bloodied towel, and once she saw Lyrissa Dawnweaver, she smiled, and said, “Welcome to our camp, my lady! How can I assist you?”
“I did the necessary,” said the officer, as she tossed her pack over her shoulder and walked out to the mist.
Once she disappeared into the white mist, Lyrissa turned back to the priestess, and sat down, hands covering her face.
“Why so glum?” asked the priestess.
“I feel unwelcome,” answered Lyrissa very softly.
“What was that?”
“Officer Pureheart said she’ll wait until Office Dumah recovers, but she left to guard,” she said in a louder tone.
“Officer Pureheart has an unorthodox way of operating,” the priestess said, sitting beside Lyrissa and looking out into the North, where the Plaguelands’ mist reigned. “You might feel left out, or deliberately ignored, but times hardened her. Light knows I felt the same once I left Stormwind.”
“You come from the South?”
“Yes, I was born in Stormwind, but in these lands, I learned why Lordaeron is worth so much,” she answered. Her eyes gazed into the sky, and as she sighed, a cloud of mist faded into the shadow. “A land is by its people. Lordaeron has never fallen, unless people like Officer Pureheart, Tirion Fordring, and the Argent Dawn all do.”
“That’s an optimistic way of seeing it.”
“It is the only way to see it if you live so long here. No matter how black the ground is, no matter how foul the air smells, and no matter how the land echoes death, it never really died,” the priestess replied. “Don’t lose faith in your duty.”
She stood up and headed out to a small tent. Lyrissa turned her eyes down to the embers, and a chilling wind dove in from the North, and the embers flared bright red. In the distance, there was a shrill howl, and Lyrissa shuddered, wrapping her arms around her knees.
If only I was back home and away from this land I once knew!
Day gave no comfort for the sorceress, for thick clouds hung against the Sun, undeterred by the rain. The mist was lighter, but in the day, ominous and scary. Where there should have been respite, was nothing but more hours to count for the young sorceress.
The gryphon master hasn’t left his tent save for three times the entire day, and that was only to request bandages, healing spells and food. Officer Dumah hasn’t left his tent, and the commander’s tent was still. The High Priestess hasn’t left her tent save to visit the gryphon master, the commander and the officer. As she passed by Lyrissa, who took a permanent residence near the campfire, she was asked a single question by the sorceress.
“Priestess? Where is the Argent Guard?”
The priestess didn’t answer right away, and said at the commander’s tent flap, “These are dark times.”
“Who protects you?”Lyrissa asked, eyes widening.
“We cannot ask for reinforcements from Hillsbrad or from the Eastern Plaguelands. We’ll have to endure. Prepare your journey for tomorrow night,” the priestess said, eyes lost. “We have been contacted by a Silver Hand member who will escort you east.”
There was nothing more from the Argent Dawn of the Western Plaguelands.
They're in too deep trouble to have me as a guest, Lyrissa thought. I'll have to make due without their help.
The heavy rain and mist forced the camp to take the extra mile in warming and protecting their supplies. High Priestess McDonnell sat by her, and took a brief look at her steel armor, and said, “It will rust.”
“I’d rather not lower my defenses,” the officer replied.
“Officer Pureheart!” shouted a stout dwarven lady came into the circle of tents, breathing quickly.
“Report,” the officer demanded. Alexia Ironknife’s hair was flat from the rain, and as were her clothes. “Did you find any sightings?”
“Nay, officer,” she replied. “But there is a human approaching us from the south, from Hillsbrad.”
“Change your clothes,” said Officer Pureheart, relaxing her stance. “Bibilfaz, where are you?”
“Over here, officer!” came a voice from a nearby tent. A gnome appeared from under the flap, his hair riffled with gryphon feathers as the dwarf retreated to her tent.
“I ordered you to stay on your gryphon for any newcomers from Hillsbrad!”
“I’m sorry, officer, but it’s not my fault! There were no callings from Hillsbrad,” the gnome replied in shrill voice.
What? Why would this person come on foot? “Erm…Very well, it doesn’t matter. Alexia, go and bring this newcomer to me,” she said at the tent where the scout disappeared. The dwarf appeared, bowed low, and hurried off.
“Well, at least we don’t have any undead to combat,” the high priestess said, smiling.
“I wonder who this is,” Bibilfaz said out loud.
“Must be the sorceress of Stormwind,” the officer said, taking off her metal shoulder and leg armor and placing them in a yellow tent by a newly-started fire. “Quartermaster Lightspark, please take care of my armor.”
“Will do, officer!” A voice called from within. The officer sat down by the fire pit, and crossed her arms, waiting for the scout to return with the sorceress.
“I’ll head off to tend to the commander,” the priestess said in a heavy tone, as she headed into the largest tent.
Not long after, two figures appeared from the mist, one taller than the other. Alexia, a dwarf clad in yellowing leather and orange hair appeared first, leaning her musket on her shoulder, and then the newcomer arrived. Clad in purple robes that swept the ground, a gray staff and a leather-bound book, face hid under a hood.
“Welcome to Chillwind Camp, sorceress,” Officer Pureheart said, as she stood up and extended her hand. The newcomer reached forward, and the officer frowned; the hand was too soft to grasp a weapon. And she needs to head to Light’s Hope. We barely have any escorts left since Weldon Barrov’s death. The officer bit back her thoughts and asked, “We were informed that you’ll be passing by here. I am Officer Pureheart of the Argent Dawn. How can I help you?”
“Well met, officer,” the sorceress replied, pulling back her hood. “My name is Lyrissa Dawnweaver, and I need safe passage to Light’s Hope Chapel in the Western Plaguelands.”
Terrific, this is just what I needed, thought the officer.
“I’m afraid I cannot spare any of my forces in the moment, Lady Dawnweaver, but if you remain with us for two nights, we may be able to find you an escort once officer Dumah recovers,” the officer said, sitting by the campfire, keeping her azure eyes on the sorceress, who shivered slightly.
“I don’t really have time for waiting, dear officer,” the sorceress said, as she gripped her robes tightly. “Can I take a gryphon to Light’s Hope?”
Bibilfaz’s voice came from within his large tent, where a gryphon shrieked briefly, “I don’t think she’s up for a trip to Light’s Hope, my lady!”
The gryphon tamer’s head appeared from the tent flap, and he said, “She’s been struck by a few arrows yesterday. We can call for the chapel’s Gryphon trainer, Khaelyn, though!”
“Please do!” said Lyrissa, loosening the grip on her robes. “Thank you!”
“Very well, then,” said Officer Pureheart. “Send the signal. I’m sorry we can’t be of more use, Lady Dawnweaver; the Scourge has been quite tough lately, and most of our forces are in Northrend.”
“Have you seen any unusual things lately? Anything related to magic?” Lyrissa asked.
Officer Pureheart frowned deeply, and gazed into the fire silently.
Lyrissa waited, but there was no elaboration. She nodded, and stood by a tent’s pole.
The smoke of the fire was thin, and the firewood cracked and cackled.
“Well…There have been queer things about,” said the officer.
“Like what?” Lyrissa asked.
“Like see here,” Officer Pureheart began, running her hand through her crumpled hair. “Alexia reported a few days ago a castle appearing in the middle of nowhere in the Western Plaguelands, near the middle of the area.”
“Aye, I have, and me eyes weren’t lyin’,” Alexia said. “It was a huge white mansion, with red roofs and clear windows, it had. It appeared in the middle of the land, as if out of nowhere.”
“The design was reported to be similar to Lordaeron architecture,” Officer Pureheart said.
“Interesting,” was all Lyrissa could manage.
“Commander Ashlam Valorfist was ordered by Light’s Hope Chapel to investigate, and he did, with forces supplied from the Argent Dawn and volunteers from Stormwind and Ironforge. He came back, alright, but not before the mansion disappeared for five days. He was cold, starving, and near death, as were most of his troops,” the officer said in a low voice. She turned to the commander’s tent. “He’s being tended to as we speak by High Priestess McDonnell. I’m glad we didn’t allow her to accompany him.”
“Do you know anything about a missing paladin?” Lyrissa asked.
“Derrick Mace?” Officer Pureheart asked. “Is that the paladin’s name?”
“I wasn’t given a name, but was he missing?”
“Derrick Mace isn’t exactly missing; some of us think he’s hiding,” the officer grinned slightly.
“Why would he be hiding?”
The officer’s eyes thinned. “Are you from Lordaeron, Lady Dawnweaver?”
“I am, but I was travelled to Stormwind when I was of fifteen years, and lived there ever since.”
“Then you probably don’t know about the times following the anarchy with Prince Arthas’s fall and the invasion of the Burning Legion.”
“I do! I just wasn’t here!”
“Many of the paladins of the Silver Hand broke or left to join Arthas after Lord Uther Lightbringer died to the Scourge. There are few who joined the Argent Dawn, and later the Argent Crusade, but there are few -very few- who remain here still.”
“They belong to the Scarlet Crusade?”
“Not completely. Derrick Mace is rumored to be dead, while some witness seeing him alive. Some say he lives in the wilderness, while some say he’s in the Argent Dawn in disguise. Many who knew him say he was traumatized with his mentors’ dark ends, and say he isn’t any more alive than the Scourge,” said the officer, and she smiled mysteriously. “He’s not really here. Maybe that’s why the Cathedral of Light wants him.”
“I thought you did, too.”
“We don’t seek to hold the person who owes allegiance to us. If he wants to be a ghastly hero, we will let him, but I suppose, as well as Commander Ashlam, that the Cathedral of Light needs him for one reason or another.”
“Maybe to rebuild the Silver Hand?”
“Or they need his strength against Arthas,” the officer said, and then shrugged. “There are many people of Lordaeron living in Stormwind, like you. Maybe he has relatives or friends who need him with them.
“However, it isn’t my concern.”
Lyrissa looked up from the charred fireplace. Office Pureheart leaned back, and turned the ashes of the fire with an arrow, and she said, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed, “He did many good things, like most of the Silver Hand survivors who didn’t leave. There are still people, Men, who cannot leave their homeland, and suffer each day for that. The Silver Hand, or those of them who remained, stand vigilant and ever watchful over all of the Alliance who tread these lands.
“Some say they all left and mostly because most didn’t find much of them in their travels, but for the life of me, if they did not roam these lands, the Argent Dawn would have never stood-the Forsaken would be under constant siege, and these lands and those beyond would be lost.”
The soldier turned her sharp gaze to the sorceress, and said, voice stern and hands quivering, “We will not stop Derek if he wills to leave, but know that in fulfilling your mission we would lose a great ally, and a testament to the might of Men against the Shadow.”
“I think I know him, in that case,” Lyrissa said, casting her eyes back to the dying embers of the fire. The cold wind swept on them, and she shivered; her robes were light, and besides that, only a cloak lined with fur guarded her. “Does he wield a light blue blade? A hue so light it could be white?”
“That’s probably him,” Officer Pureheart said. She opened her mouth, but then closed it, and leaned back further, and crossed her hands against her chest.
“Was there something you wished to say?”
“No,” she replied, standing up. Lyrissa followed, but the officer shook her hand, and continued. “Rest. Your journey will be two days from now, and the Plaguelands is not Stormwind’s park.”
Was that contempt? Lyrissa was hard-pressed to blame her, as she slumped against a tent’s wall. After all, I wasn’t here for the last six years.
“Take my tent, I’ll be on guard for the next two nights,” the officer said, as she stooped down, and drew a black scabbard from her tent and tied it to her belt. She picked up a pack, and headed to the injured commander’s tent, and said, “Commander, I’ll take over Officer Dumah.”
“Light be with you, officer,” came a heavy voice from the tent. High Priestess McDonnell emerged from the tent. In her hand was a bloodied towel, and once she saw Lyrissa Dawnweaver, she smiled, and said, “Welcome to our camp, my lady! How can I assist you?”
“I did the necessary,” said the officer, as she tossed her pack over her shoulder and walked out to the mist.
Once she disappeared into the white mist, Lyrissa turned back to the priestess, and sat down, hands covering her face.
“Why so glum?” asked the priestess.
“I feel unwelcome,” answered Lyrissa very softly.
“What was that?”
“Officer Pureheart said she’ll wait until Office Dumah recovers, but she left to guard,” she said in a louder tone.
“Officer Pureheart has an unorthodox way of operating,” the priestess said, sitting beside Lyrissa and looking out into the North, where the Plaguelands’ mist reigned. “You might feel left out, or deliberately ignored, but times hardened her. Light knows I felt the same once I left Stormwind.”
“You come from the South?”
“Yes, I was born in Stormwind, but in these lands, I learned why Lordaeron is worth so much,” she answered. Her eyes gazed into the sky, and as she sighed, a cloud of mist faded into the shadow. “A land is by its people. Lordaeron has never fallen, unless people like Officer Pureheart, Tirion Fordring, and the Argent Dawn all do.”
“That’s an optimistic way of seeing it.”
“It is the only way to see it if you live so long here. No matter how black the ground is, no matter how foul the air smells, and no matter how the land echoes death, it never really died,” the priestess replied. “Don’t lose faith in your duty.”
She stood up and headed out to a small tent. Lyrissa turned her eyes down to the embers, and a chilling wind dove in from the North, and the embers flared bright red. In the distance, there was a shrill howl, and Lyrissa shuddered, wrapping her arms around her knees.
If only I was back home and away from this land I once knew!
Day gave no comfort for the sorceress, for thick clouds hung against the Sun, undeterred by the rain. The mist was lighter, but in the day, ominous and scary. Where there should have been respite, was nothing but more hours to count for the young sorceress.
The gryphon master hasn’t left his tent save for three times the entire day, and that was only to request bandages, healing spells and food. Officer Dumah hasn’t left his tent, and the commander’s tent was still. The High Priestess hasn’t left her tent save to visit the gryphon master, the commander and the officer. As she passed by Lyrissa, who took a permanent residence near the campfire, she was asked a single question by the sorceress.
“Priestess? Where is the Argent Guard?”
The priestess didn’t answer right away, and said at the commander’s tent flap, “These are dark times.”
“Who protects you?”Lyrissa asked, eyes widening.
“We cannot ask for reinforcements from Hillsbrad or from the Eastern Plaguelands. We’ll have to endure. Prepare your journey for tomorrow night,” the priestess said, eyes lost. “We have been contacted by a Silver Hand member who will escort you east.”
There was nothing more from the Argent Dawn of the Western Plaguelands.
They're in too deep trouble to have me as a guest, Lyrissa thought. I'll have to make due without their help.