I apologize for the delay in getting this out. It turns out that moving into a new home, uprooting one's entire life in my case, takes a toll on the creative process. I haven't been able to sit down and write anything substantial since moving into this apartment, and I think half the reason stems from being in an unfamiliar place. I finally managed to find the right scene for this story, and hence I'm posting it now.

Though it pains me to delay my schedule, I would much rather wait and put out a scene written with honest feeling, than force out a weekly spoonful of sludge.

I hope that I may be forgiven.

Enjoy the scene.


Sythius burst into the room like a man fit for conquest; like he thought the plague was something he could wrap his fists around, and choke the life out of. Sylvanne came next, past the splintered door that was now hanging pitifully on one hinge. Next was Olrec, and Kayli took up the rear, looking miserable and frightened.

Kin was stiff, and for one wild moment Sylvanne thought it might be the stiffness of death. But as she put a hand to the boy's chest, she felt him trembling. His jaw was clamped shut, and strangling little moans passed through his teeth like wisps of smoke.

His fever was worse, and he'd vomited up whatever food Kayli had attempted to give him. Sylvanne reached up and pried open one of the child's tightly closed eyes, and hissed. "They're growing dim," she said. Cursing, she held out her hands and closed her own eyes.

It was obscenely difficult to tap into the energy she so often felt singing in her blood—the holy light that was her calling—with the panic that was surging through her. She could feel her brother next to her, knew that he was cradling the boy's head with one of his mammoth hands. He was whispering to Kin, and it was guttural. Primal. Sylvanne didn't even think it was a language.

Yet it…seemed to have an effect. On her, as well as the boy.

She calmed. She called upon the discipline with which her father had ingrained her, and managed to slow her hammering heart, along with the swirling, whirling maelstrom that made up her thoughts. She could feel it now. The energy. The light. The power.

It flowed out of her like a waterfall, washing over the room like moonlight, and Kin's muttering stopped. But when she opened her eyes, she could tell that it hadn't done much. Kayli had been right. He was turning. However slow-acting the plague was in this tiny body, it was finally winning out. He'd stopped shaking, and his eyes were open, but now he simply stared openly at the ceiling, looking somewhere between horrified and catatonic. His breaths were hitching, whining gasps.

"This is…beyond me," Sylvanne whispered. "This is beyond anyone. He has…hours. If that. Brother, I…I am sorry."

In the silence that followed, nobody spoke. Sythius continued his wordless growling, like he hadn't heard her at all. His eyes were focused purely upon the boy, and it seemed like he intended to will Kin back to health. Sylvanne did not bother trying to pull the huge elf away; even if she could have, it wouldn't have done any good. There was no reaching Sythius when it entered his mind to do a thing.

She knew that, better than anyone else.

Big Olrec Stoutfeather closed his eyes against the scene before him, lowered his shaggy head and seemed to become a statue. He did not speak, nor did he seem to be praying, nor even breathing. Sylvanne thought that if she touched the old dwarf, his corded muscles would feel like granite.

She felt as though she were attending a funeral.

"Oh!" Kayli exclaimed, and Sylvanne turned to look at her. The young servant had snatched up a scroll of paper from the table and was now doing her best to read it. Her eyes squinted, and she turned to her mistress. "This…this message. Came for…Master Sythius." Sylvanne could tell that the title was foreign, indeed distasteful, for her to say. Nonetheless, her lips curved the faintest bit into the spirit of a smile. "From a man. A man with grey hair."

Sythius snapped upright, and he whirled to face her.

Sylvanne took the message. She read: "He won't last the night. Take him to Moonglade. I know that they taught you how to get there. Remember. Quickly."

Sythius scowled, and lowered his head in thought.

There was one final message at the bottom edge of the paper; a postscript? Sylvanne murmured, "You look stronger than before."

Unconsciously, or perhaps subconsciously, Sythius drew himself up. His back straightened, his shoulders pulled back in what must have been a swell of pride. This man with grey hair, whomever he was…was important to the druid. Sylvanne mused that this man with grey hair certainly know the sort of person he was dealing with. Quick, curt, direct. He had not given a suggestion, but an order. He had not offered opinions, but stated cold truths.

Sythius responded well to such directness.

He looked around at the others. "We go," he said softly, but firmly. "Moonglade."

"That's clear across the ocean! Back in Kalimdor!" Kayli protested. "How can we make it?"

At this, Sythius grinned his bestial grin. He took hold of one of Kin's tiny, skeletal hands, and reached out his other. "We go," he repeated.

They formed a circle, linking hands with each other. Kayli still looked confused; Olrec's expression was completely blank, and Sylvanne's attention kept getting pulled back to the pitiful half-corpse laying between her and her brother.

She wondered what miracle-worker in Moonglade could possibly pull the tiny blood elf from the brink. Moreover…what miracle-worker would be willing to do it? She thought of what Sythius had said in the forest, "I will go to Mother," and wondered.

True, Anathala Sil'nathin had always been close with her firstborn son; even now that he was disgraced. The renowned druidess who had given her birth was certainly powerful; a prodigy, she had been called in her youth, when she had taken up the calling to tend to the earth. But…prodigious or not, eternal peacekeeper or not…

Kin was a blood elf. A plagued blood elf.

Would she? Even for Sythius?

Sylvanne didn't know.

She closed her eyes as the very world around her began to melt away to blackness, and prayed.