The response to this particular work has been positive, if a bit quiet, so far. So I'd like to take a moment before we begin this week's outing to thank you for reading.
Another canon figure shows up in this chapter, this time a prominent one. I hope that I've done him justice. The years I've spent playing WoW have largely been spent in relative solitude from lore figures. Dark, dank dungeons and such. So I only have a vague notion as to the characterizations I should be using.
But sometimes vague can help. Sometimes, knowing too much about a character can make it difficult bordering on impossible to write them. At least for me.
In any case, after last week's…performance, let's see Sythius's reception from some of the top brass, shall we?
The grizzled human veteran was tall, well-muscled, and imposing to anyone he had ever met, even his family. He had to crane his neck to look upon the face of Sythius Sil'nathin, who somehow managed to look sheepish and awkward in front of him. The hulking elf did not, however, seem nervous in the sense that most people would. He looked, as he almost always did, like a caged animal ready to tear the throat out of the first thing that threatened him.
Or his cub.
Maxwell Tyrosus looked long and hard at the sleeping elfling still held in the crook of Sythius's arm, but his single working eye—the other was hidden behind a cloth patch—showed no sense of fear or superstition. He turned his attention to the remainder of Lingham's company, giving a nod to Big Olrec Stoutfeather before finally stopping at Lingham.
"How many of them?" the commander asked.
"Final count as of burning was one-hundred-twenty-three, sir," Lingham said.
This made Tyrosus stop short. "That's no skirmish, captain. That's a full-scale assault. There were no casualties?"
"We lost one man, after the camp was cleared. Emile Gram. Infected on patrol."
"He…wasn't involved in the attack?"
"No, sir. He was too far gone to fight."
The commander looked over the fifteen soldiers, clearly impressed. "Well done, boys." This was as much praise as any of them could have ever expected from the tight-lipped, thoroughly pragmatic leader of the Dawn. Perhaps that was the reason so many of them immediately started holding up their hands.
"T'wasn't us, Commander," said Alkin, with his simple farm-borne humility. He seemed to be forcing the words from his mouth; still shaking as he was, they came out in a slight tremor. "'Twas the elf." He gestured to Sythius. "Came into camp like a force of nature, 'e did. Turned into a bear, 'e did."
"Shapeshifter," Tyrosus murmured, eyeing Lingham's rookie with renewed interest. "You're of the Claw, aren't you?"
The druid nodded.
"What banner do you fly, druid?" Tyrosus asked.
Sythius seemed not to understand the meaning of the phrase. He looked confused, and looked around at his fellow soldiers. Dobbs, offering a nervous sort of smirk, said, "He means your allegiance. Who do you fight for? Where do you come from?"
The elf thought long and hard on this, looking down at the ground as he did so. Finally, after nearly thirty seconds, he looked back up at Tyrosus and said: "This Scourge…it is evil. It poisons the earth. I fight to protect the earth."
Tyrosus raised an eyebrow. "Is that right, now? Well, that's fine. Fight for the earth, Druid of the Claw. The Dawn is at your back." He saluted.
Sythius offered one of his predatory grins and saluted back.
That seemed to be the end of it for the both of them. They had reached an understanding. Vant Lingham's company was dismissed, and they all went about their own ways for the scant remainder of daylight hours. Some gathered supplies, some helped with repairs. Big Olrec assisted Rayne with the newly wounded.
As evening fell across the chapel where the men and women of the Argent Dawn made their stand against the tainted wasteland once called Lordaeron, the druid stayed outside the walls, in the cold. His fellows laughed and shouted and fought each other, gambled and shared stories. It all made Sythius nervous, and when Sythius was nervous, things tended to die.
At least, that was how Captain Lingham put it. Sythius thought, in his slow and plodding way, that the man was probably right. The exile sat with his legs crossed, his bundle of an elfling in his lap, stroking back the boy's hair with his fingertips. He wondered where this child had come from. Where his home was. If he had a family. Starved and diseased as he was, the other men said it probably wasn't likely anybody wanted him anymore. He wasn't going to live long enough to make much of a difference. Nobody lived long when the plague had their guts.
"Children do not die," Sythius whispered in his lumbering voice, with more emotion than was typical for him. "You will not die, little one. I will not let you die."
"Big promises," came a scratchy, dwarven voice as Big Olrec approached the elves and sat down next to them. "Ye want to watch the big promises, elf. Dangerous business." He handed a hard loaf of bread to Sythius, who took it without comment. "Saddest days're always born when fools like us make big promises."
"Fools," Sythius repeated.
"Aye. What else ye call a man goes out 'n sheds blood fer a livin'? Hero? Soldier? Patriot? I ain't much fer flowers in me words, elf. We're fools." Sythius seemed to mull on this, looking out at the tortured landscape that surrounded them, lit in otherworldly orange light by flickering torches and throbbing forge-fire. His face, weathered by the harshness of his home but softened by his youth—most of Lingham's company, and Lingham himself, thought that one-hundred-nine years was an eternity; but then, they were human—was pulled in conflicting directions. Sythius trusted Big Olrec. He liked Big Olrec. But what he saw before him was not a place for fools.
The Scourge of Lordaeron had to be cleansed, and Sythius Sil'nathin intended to cleanse it. Everyone was intent on celebrating the great victory he had won for them that day, but the hulking druid did not think that way; he did not think of victories and accolades. All he could think was that the taint of the plague, the thick miasma that soaked the earth here, was painful. He wanted it gone. He would rid this land of it.
His body ached from it, his joints sang in numb agony from it.
Olrec reached into the pack he wore on his back, which was almost as thick as he was, and pulled a bundle of black cloth out from inside of it. He folded this cloth, ceremoniously as though it were his nation's flag, and passed it over to Sythius, who looked at it without understanding.
"Fool 'r not, though, ye've proven yer chops on the field, elf. Commander Tyrosus sent this along for ye." The old dwarf stood, unfurled the bundle, and revealed it to be a tabard, black as midnight with silver trimming, and the gold-and-silver sunburst of the Argent Dawn emblazoned upon it. "Ye've earned yer colors, Sythius o' the Claw. Wear 'em with pride."
Sythius finally seemed to comprehend what Big Olrec was presenting. Another of those bright grins of absolute delight rose on his lips, and Olrec could see in that grin the child that hid behind the corded, sculpted muscle and animalistic fury.
The old, battered shaman had to grin himself, feeling an inexplicable sense of pride as Sythius took the tabard in one of his mammoth hands and regarded it reverently. The sight brought Olrec back seventy years, when he had watched his own trueborn son take up the banner of Ironforge and fly out to the fields of war like a hero straight out of myth.
The former thane of the Stoutfeather Clan only hoped that he wasn't sending another child straight to his death.
And so our hero's first true allegiance is born. Or, so we've seen.
The Argent Dawn has always been one of my favorite factions in Warcraft Lore, and I accordingly spent a lot of time with them. The chance to actually get a tabard of the Argent Dawn for myself during the second Scourge Invasion—as mentioned previously, I missed the first one—was a golden one, and I jumped on it.
My days in WoW have always been about unfolding a story.
This story. Sythius's story.
And it might be, behind all the flowery metaphor and trappings of adventure, my own story. I guess we'll see.
Thanks again for joining me this week.
See you next time.
