The franchise is called "Warcraft," and so the Alliance and Horde being at odds will always be the status quo looming just behind any storyline the game is currently exploring. Even in times of collaboration and peace, the promise of new conflict is right on the horizon.
I knew, even as a kid who didn't know anything about the world or the stories involved in its creation, that Sythius was never going to be interested in that conflict. I knew that he was always going to be a neutral force; even if he ended up fighting the Horde, it would never be out of patriotism or obligation or anything like that.
He just isn't that type.
He'll fight literally anybody. That's part of living for him.
But he won't go to war.
.
Time had a way of removing itself from Moonglade. Enraptured by the seduction of perpetual nightfall—or so it often seemed—many newcomers fell into the trap of drifting, listless and dreamlike, waiting for that age-old signpost of daybreak to lead them to their duties and obligations.
For people like Lady Anathala, who knew well what her obligations were, the ever-present moonlight brought a bastion of calm. Without the constant lasso of time's passing wrenching her out of her thoughts, she found it much easier to work, to weave, to coax and guide.
She was, in her own way, a nursemaid to the earth itself.
Anathala worked long into the night, hours upon hours, bent over the blood elf boy with her daughter at her side. Some time ago, she had sent Kayli off to find her son. The pair of them returned and Sythius unloaded enough food to last them all for half a month. Anathala asked him how he had come across a trove, and how—or whether—he intended to pay for it; he shrugged and simply told her he'd built a storage shed for one of the cooks.
Something slammed into Anathala's brain in that moment, and she turned a mystified look at the druid, convinced she must have heard incorrectly. He'd built the shed; surely, she thought, he'd simply promised to help with the building once it started. But Kayli was nodding sagely, and she gestured toward the village like Anathala would be able to see the druid's handiwork from this distance.
Anathala simply shook her head and returned to her charge.
Kayli fell asleep first, while Sythius stayed near his sister. Eventually, Anathala instructed Sylvanne to follow her maidservant's example and sleep; it didn't take much convincing. Channeling the magic of Elune's blessings was taxing in the best of times, and Sylvanne—aside from being young—was not a gifted healer. It crossed Anathala's mind that her husband would have been a much better fit for this work. He was older, stronger, and had centuries of experience melding his magic with hers.
Then again, she thought, Norothain's idea of healing this boy probably would have involved restructuring his skull with a six-bladed mace.
Sylvanne curled up on the grass and fell asleep almost immediately, not even bothering to wrap her cloak about herself. Sythius continued his vigil, like he fully intended to keep watch until Anathala was done, perhaps even until Kin woke up. Eventually, though, sheer exhaustion took over and he slumped over, snoring lightly in concert with the other two.
Anathala was less impressed than frightened that her son had lasted this long. His first venture into the Emerald Dream should have left him flat on his back for days; he'd hauled off and built a damn shed.
Sythius had one mammoth arm draped over his sister's shoulders; ever protective, even in sleep, was her firstborn. Anathala found another smile touch her lips. She hadn't smiled this much in what seemed like years. She turned her attention back to little Kin.
If this was all it took to make her feel like a mother again, Anathala mused, then she would doctor all of Silvermoon.
Some hours later, the heavy, booming steps of Austerion Cloudrunner caught the druidess's attention, and she turned over one shoulder to watch him approach. The tauren looked thoroughly bemused. "The dwarf snores fit to wake the earth. I'd stake my left horn that the walls are shaking."
Anathala chuckled low in her throat. "You recognize him, too, don't you?" she asked.
Austerion nodded. "One of the most notorious shock troops in all Ironforge's armies during the Third War. People called him the Hammer of Khaz'goroth."
Khaz'goroth the Shaper. Father of Dwarves. Patron of Neltharion the Earth-Warder. If ever there was a figure in dwarf-lore who matched Elune's might and importance, Anathala mused, then he was the one. The title had a lofty, weighty feel to it. Big Olrec did not strike Anathala as intimidating; he seemed a steadfast, earthbound sort of man. But, she thought, he was older now than he'd been during the Third War. And when she pictured him taking to the field, it wasn't difficult at all.
After all, he'd taken to mentoring her son, and Anathala was no stranger to the threat that Sythius presented to anyone, and anything, that crossed him. If she found herself doubting that, like she did when she looked at him sleeping beside his sister, as innocent as a baby bird, all she had to do was remember the roar he'd loosed on the glade when he'd been in the Dream.
A heaven-bound, declamatory pyroclasm of primeval triumph: a warning to the essence of danger itself that Sythius of the Claw would brook no interference.
Austerion eyed the three sleeping youths near Anathala's space. He let out a raspy chuckle. "For all their aspirations and lofty plans for the world, they look so small here. Vulnerable and delicate: the future of the world."
Anathala nodded. She looked down at Kin and marveled all over again at the risk Sythius—a true-blooded kaldorei despite anything his detractors might say on the matter—had taken for the sake of this wasted little waif.
"The future of the world," she said.