Death's Avenger 11 (Patreon)

Edited Black Friday: Hey all.  Sorry for all the mistakes you all noticed from the first version. Not only did I not see that Alex Crate’s email had been caught in my spam filter for some reason (no idea why) but that I had uploaded the wrong version.  All the bracketed bits and the names should have been changed, blast it!

Chapter 11: New Home, New Areas of Learning

The effect on Trueshot Lodge and the people living within was not at all gradual. Over the next two weeks, as Cassandra and the Pathfinder talked about how to incorporate the harpy flock into the valley and where they could live, the entire feeling of the place changed for the better.

First, there were the people. The kaldorei, most of whom had been members since long before the loss of the Spear of the Ancients and had taken the loss of a connection to Ohn’ahra personally, walked around with lighter steps, their eyes clearer, with no guilt or loss of purpose clouding their minds. The tauren, who had taken it even more personally since it had been one of their own who had lost the spear, walked around with shoulders straight, the weight of shame all of them had felt removed.

Harry doubted that it would ever be a joyous place, ‘with a lot of light and laughter about it’, as Sylina put it. Yet it no longer felt like a tomb waiting to happen, and that was more than enough for Harry.

Furthermore, there were physical changes as well. With the sudden renewal of a large-scale nature magic font, a good deal of the defensive and endurance-type magic on the place that Harry had only barely noticed in the background was renewed. This included a great deal of the tapestries around the place. Several turned out to be the same type as the one in the entryway that Harry had challenged on their first day in Trueshot Lodge, although Harry and Sylina were both warned that they would not be allowed to challenge any of them until later on in their training.

Others were of the time before the Sundering, showing images and places of the kaldorei Empire before it fell.

One of them, rather strangely, showed the court of the kaldorei Empire under Queen Azshara. Before it had been a dark-seeming throne room, with only the queen visible, but now, with magic flowing into it again, the image had changed to show far more detail even to the casual observer, the scene shifting as the viewer watched.

It seemed to be some kind of great debate, and several other formerly noble individuals whose names Harry had heard when Tyrande and Cenarius told him about the history of that time were also pictured there. Sylina had picked them out, having seen paintings of people like General Ravencrest and Prince Farondis before when she was told the history of the Kaldorei Empire.

But what the debate was about, no one would tell them yet. All Harry would be told was that, with him already passing the test of the tapestry in the entryway, he would learn that when he became a seeker. Sylina wasn’t even told that much, although she seemed much happier now that the overall feeling of the place had changed so dramatically. She didn’t care at all that there were so many secrets and pieces of knowledge they didn’t have access to yet, while it was getting a bit annoying to Harry, solidifying his plans for the next decade or so.

During those weeks, Cassandra worked closely with Pathfinder Vurg and Milifiana, figuring out where in the Valley the harpies could set up. They were not going to be living in Trueshot Lodge or nearby, of course. For one thing, most of the harpies had no interest in joining the Unseen Path. Rather, they wished to maintain an alliance with it while remaining separate. The only three who seemed interested at the moment in joining up were Aleri, Alari and Recca.

Eventually, Cassandra and Vurg decided that the best place for the harpies would be at the upper end of the valley. This was distant enough that it would take a person on foot at least a week to arrive there from Trueshot Lodge, while the harpies could make that flight in less than half a day. Thus, it was distant enough for both sides to still be independent but closely connected.

On the fifteenth day after the visitation, Harry, two of the Unseen Path’s shamans, and his friend, Davo Bluefeather, set out with the harpy clutch. Groups of harpies split off soon, swiftly flying up and out of the valley to go hunting down in the forest below. Most of the remainder stayed with the trio of ground-bound individuals, although several of them flew down to tease Harry about how he didn’t need to be so slow.

“Come and fly with us!” One of the twins shouted.

“Yes, it’s always better up in the air!” the other added with a laugh.

Harry chuckled at that, having a sudden flash of the two twins suddenly breaking out into song like a Disney movie before shutting it away very quickly. Given how the spell he had used on all the harpies had given them all magnificent voices and how generally cute Alari and Aleri were, the two of them would probably fit in quite well in a Disney movie. But trying to explain why he was laughing would probably take too long.

Instead, he turned to one of the shamans. “I take it that the great debate ended last night?”

“Indeed it did. It will take us some more work to set up, but it is better to do the work now then be constantly called over every day to deal with… shall we say… maintenance.”

Harry laughed at that, and the tauren also chuckled to themselves as the three of them and Quetzal moved off at a brisk pace through the woods. With the harpies above them, as well as Quetzal being in his medium-sized form, there was no danger of being ambushed by a wild predator, so keeping the noise down wasn’t exactly a requirement of the moment.

Because of this, Harry, moving easily alongside the far longer limbed tauren, whose every step took two or three of his own, felt free to ask questions. “What design did they go with? I wasn’t involved in the final debate.”

“A cistern system with a stone gate on a winch that can be pulled up to let the water in. Creating a lever that the harpies will be able to operate with their talons is going to be interesting and is why I’m along,” Davo Bluefeather answered. As well as being one of the better tauren warriors when it came to hand-to-hand, he was also a blacksmith, one of five in the Unseen Path. “Those things are surprisingly sharp, but I can make small caps to put on wooden handle bars for them as well as the lever and pulley system. So long as the harpies are not trying to damage the mechanism, that should work.”

Harry nodded, and looked up at Cassandra, who was flying only a few feet above them at the moment, winging her way through the trees with all the grace of a swan and the maneuverability of a hawk. “And you, Lady Cassandra? Did you decide on a design for the plinth for the feather?”

“I did, and are you now going to join the rest of your folk in calling me ‘lady’? I’m hurt, Harry” Cassandra asked, a laugh in her tone rather than any censure as she flipped over onto her back for a few moments, hovering in midair over the trio.

“Lady is not just a title, but a description, and since we first met you, you have never acted anything but as a lady should,” Harry said, taking a moment to bow even as he continued to walk forward, a move that caused many of the harpies above to laugh, and Cassandra to smile. Harry had sensed over the past few weeks that the term had grown on her as her children stopped teasing her about it.

“To answer your question in detail my young friend, Vurg and I worked on finalizing the design last night. And Lady,” she teasingly used the term, “Milifiana put it down on paper for us. I must admit to some jealousy there. I actually have long envied the way that you two-footed folk can put words onto paper. We harpies are able to do many things with our claws, but holding a single bird feather and using the end of it to write is not among them.”

“Actually, I think all you need is a teacher. Admittedly I don’t think you all would be able to create your own written language, but you could certainly learn the kaldorei language. Or maybe the tauren written language would be better, considering the majority of civilized people you’re likely to meet on the broken islands will be tauren.”

While there was a kaldorei community down on the shore of the largest island of the archipelago and more than two-thirds of the Unseen Path was made of kaldorei, that probably amounted to less than two thousand kaldorei all told. Harry estimated the tauren had around forty to fifty thousand tauren living in Highmountain Valley. The numbers were quite diffuse, spread out even in the case of the Skyhorn tribe, which only had around four thousand or so in its main town, so Harry wasn’t certain about that number, but it was probably close.

“What do you mean?” Cassandra asked, flying even lower for a moment as she ducked under several tree limbs.

“Well, what’s to stop you from dipping one of your claws in ink and using the tip of a claw to write out something? We called them hieroglyphs occasionally, although I don’t think that was the only name for using pictures to get across meaning.”

“… And now that we are allied with the Unseen Path, we have a source for ink. Why didn’t I think of that? Drat it, my people even work with dyes! Why hasn’t it ever occurred to us to at least take up pictographs or something similar!? Graah, I even remember seeing some Tauren from the north using that kind of thing before the Sundering,” Cassandra muttered, shaking her head before thanking Harry for the thought, shouting up to Maria to make a note of it for the future. Maria had a fantastic memory for details like that, and from the airborne wiggle she performed as she heard the idea, she seemed to look forward to the idea of writing in the future.

With that, Cassandra went back up through the boughs of the tree up into this clear sky above, the rest of her flock that was there at the moment flying after her.

They arrived hours before the human and his companions would at the site that Cassandra had decided on for their eyrie. This was near the uppermost edge of the Valley as it wound its way up through the mountain. The geologic movements that had created the valley in the first place had created a series of large jagged boulders sticking up here and there throughout this area, through which a large stream, around two feet across, wound. Similarly, trees and other green growing things also could exist here thanks to the amount of soil that had accumulated around the rock formations. Further, the end of this valley was completely sheer on both sides as the valley widened out. A rock climber like Feldral would be able to make his way up and into the mountain proper beyond, but for anyone not trained in rock-climbing it was practically impassible, and the walls of the valley were unbroken for much higher here than the place where Feldral had led Harry and the others on their trek.

Alighting on one of the jagged segments of mountain sticking out from the floor of the valley, Cassandra waited until the rest of her flock did likewise, looking around and matching this area to what she had seen in Milifiana’s map, holding it delicately in one of her talons. One of the trees had fallen, and two of the others were far larger than she had anticipated, but in the main, it matched almost detail for detail. “Irene, Maria, you know what to do. Alarie, Alena you are on high watch duty.”

Irene nodded firmly, and her claws began to glow with a light green hue. This was nothing like the dark green almost sickly color of Fel magic, or the dark purple and almost black of the touch of the old gods. No, this light green resembled more closely the nature magic that Shamans, and particularly Druids, could call upon.

Ohn’ahra had not been certain what would happen when the harpies began to be able to interact with, and take into themselves, magic from the feather that she had gifted to Cassandra. She had said so at the time, wondering if they would be limited, or if they would have the full panoply of nature magic, able to choose their paths like shamans and Druids could, elemental/spiritual, or shape, energy and transfiguration based.

It turned out that it would vary wildly.

Cassandra herself had actually been able to learn a few spells of her own, mostly from the Druid school, or at least adjacent to it. Irene, Icsy and Maria, had begun to show signs of magic unlike many of their younger sisters or children. Irene had begun to be able to use magic to enhance her claws further to the point she no longer needed combat spurs. Maria had begun to have a light touch when it came to urging plants to grow. And Icsy… she could make her eyes glow a light green or blue color at need. It seemed to help her eyesight to a great degree, oddly.

Viol and a few others followed after Irene now. She began to carve into the rock, shaping it carefully, then letting the others make smaller changes with their claws. This was finicky work but necessary to prepare the rocks for their nests.

Meanwhile, the others spread out through the forest, coming back with lots of downed wood, which they began to cut down and prepare for use in their nests. Meanwhile, the bonded couple of Cilla and Sazah shifted around the area, tapping at the walls of the valley. Cassandra, rolling a map with some difficulty, set it high up on one of the pillars of rocks so that all of them could see it as they worked.

By the time Harry and his companions arrived, most of the nests had been completed, and work was proceeding apace to create areas for several more. Further, large outlines in different shapes had been marked out on the ground and the sides of the valley, which, here, could be seen easily. There was an area around half the size of a football field back in Harry’s old dimension from where the valley finally tapered off around the small river to the innermost edge of the area designated for the harpies’ eyrie. There would be room to grow in the future, but right now, this area would constitute the center of the harpy’s eyrie. Even so, it certainly seemed far larger than they needed currently with their numbers, a fact Harry set aside for now, along with how many nests there already seemed for the number of harpies.

He waved up to Cassandra, who winged her way down towards them, landing lightly on her talons, a faint smile on her face as she looked at the three of them. “Well, it looks to be a little too late to start work now. Alas, we also haven’t done as much work as we need to be able to offer any kind of hospitality.”

“Except in the way of food!” Came a cry from on high as Recca and two of the others who had gone hunting came down, with Alarie beside them. She had seen the hunters returning towards the valley and had signaled them where to go with the only bit of magic that the twins had been able to learn: flashing an intense white light from their equally white feathers. It was so bright that it could actually blind people who are not ready for it, but it made for excellent signals, and they’d even begun to try to use them in pranks occasionally. It also made them excellent signalers, a position they had held since work began. This was only the latest hunting trip to return, and each time, Recca, Viol and the rest had come back laden with a good catch.

Recca landed, carrying a large boar between her claws, followed by one of the others, who carried two truly huge hares each. “Although you all will have to provide spices and greens I suppose to go with it. We’ve already cleared out most of the vegetables and berries around here.”

 Harry chuckled, and quickly, between him and the tauren, they were able to create a large bonfire over which the prepared meat of the boar was quickly set to cook. Quetzal did not partake, muttering about how cooking ruined the flavor, and headed off, shrunken down to around a quarter of his previous size, to go hunting for himself.

That night, Harry, Davo and Tjar camped out with the harpies, some of whom began to sing cheerily, showing off their magically enhanced voices. Listening, Harry murmured to his friend, “Remind me over the next few weeks to work with the harpies. We need to figure out if they’ve been able to move into the shaman or Druid path enough to create a spell equivalent to my Songbird spell.”

“Language and communication are incredibly important,” Davo nodded. “In the past, the harpies had their goddess, Aviana, to act as a go-between between them, the kaldorei and my folk, but even then, there were issues given how horrible their voices were. No matter what they were saying, it didn’t matter as long as people simply weren’t able to listen to them. That, beyond all other aid we can give this clutch, we need to keep doing, I think.”

“That, and it’s done wonders for their self-image, too,” Harry said with a laugh.

“You’re right, it has,” Aleri said before the other one picked up her sentence as they were wont to do.

“In the past, we could only,” Alari continued.

“pass on knowledge and history via words, but,” Aleri spoke up once more.

“that didn’t mean that it was all that nice to do. And” Alari once again.

Aleri resumed.“ Whenever we communicated even with one another we,”

“knew how we sounded. No harpy has ever liked the sound of their own voices,” Alari pointed out.

“Not before you came along, Harry!” They said in unison, moving to hug him from both sides. Harry had just reached forward to grab some of the meat, so this meant they collided more with one another than him, and he chuckled wanly as the twins grumbled to themselves at bad timing, nuzzling into his shoulders for a moment.

Frankly, while he found many of the harpies' upper bodies extremely attractive, feathers didn’t really do much for him despite his own phoenix form. He also preferred regular legs to bird claws. Although I would never have said so to Hedwig if she were around, he thought drolly. The thought of his old companion and familiar no longer pained him thanks to the time he had spent with the tauren, repairing and simply doing away with many of the mistakes to his Occlumentic realm he had created. Instead, it was a memory full of good humor, remembering the bad without dwelling on his companion’s death.

Nevertheless, while Harry could admit to himself that he found several of the harpies extremely attractive, and most of them simply beautiful in terms of their faces, that wasn’t the same as being attracted to them. At first, the novelty of it all, of their faces (and upper bodies) and their flirtations, had hidden that from Harry himself, but now that Harry had time to think of it, and moreover, time away from them when he was in Trueshot Lodge, Harry had come to realize that. Admittedly, he also did not like the twins' personalities as he did someone like Recca’s. Despite his body being that of a pushing twenty-year-old, simple childishness did not attract him. Pranks are one thing. Childishness is a different thing entirely.

The next day, the members of the Unseen Path quickly began to throw themselves into work. Harry used his magic to create two large stone golems, which he ordered to follow the orders of a few of the harpies. Maria had plans for some actual, small-scale farms, and with her magic, it could well be possible as the harpy’s talons could do a decent number of jobs. Similarly, the harpies were going to make an underground cave for the same kind of mushroom farm the Unseen Path had access to under Trueshot Lodge.

Both ideas had caused some protests from Cassandra’s flock. “We’re not ground dwellers! Why do we need to farm, or all things? And how? Sure, we can do some of the things the two legs can with their hands, but not everything. What’s the point of doing all that work?”

“That work will allow us to actually try to cook our meals more than simply holding them over a fire pit,” Cassandra had shot back. “And I know you liked the mushroom steaks, Icsy. You certainly ate enough of them.”

That, neeedless to say, had won the argument. While it was a saying even among kaldorei that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, the harpies also had fallen in love with cooked meals. There would always be a place for a rabbit taken on the run or a bite out of a fresh boar, but the majority of the flock were looking forward to trying their own talons at cooking with herbs, spices and vegetables.

With his first task done, Harry was able to help the harpies redirect a portion of this stream into a small pond. Eventually, that might be changed into some kind of fountain or something like that, but right now, the main thing was to separate the stream into two parts, one part for drinking, and the other, well, there were other reasons why besides their voices that harpies had never been all that popular even when Aviana had been alive. Their refuse was another.

Working with one of the earth elementals Tjar had called for, Harry created a slanted area in the ground, almost like a furrow mixed with an aqueduct. Into this area, the stream could be let in via a sluice gate, which would wash away the refuse before it could build up.

Davo and a group of the harpies worked on the sluice gate, with the harpies helping to carve into the wood and create the gate and levers with their claws, showing a decent amount of skill for people working with talons rather than hands. Harry then wrung the water out of the wood via one of the spells from his camping spellbook, turning it into dried wood as if it had been laid out in the sun for months, before a kind of laminate was pulled put on it, which would keep any water from seeping in. The sluice gate itself would need to be operated by someone with claws, which took a bit of doing, but the preceding weeks had allowed the members of the Unseen Path to plan out this little bit of engineering, and when Recca volunteered to use the crane for the first time, it worked extremely well, lifting the gate and allowing the water into the firm wrote, which then drained down into a deeper segment of the furrow and back out quickly.

“You might need to think about something to deal with the smell, eventually, and even with water on stone like this, you could see clumps of buildup that the water can’t get rid of. For that I think you’ll have to trade with the Unseen Path for cleaning supplies,” Harry said, standing back and surveying his work, wiping away some sweat from his brow. It created the majority of the large communal toilet out of the ground with magic, but true to the ideals of the tauren he had lived alongside for more than a year, he had then begun to use his muscle to create a deeper segment, the sluice area, into it at the bottom.

“And some claw holds maybe,” Alerie mused.

“If we’re tired, out of sorts or just sleepy, that slope,” her sister continued.

“Might become a little annoying to deal with. We want to make certain,”

“that this is the the best place to go to the bathroom,”

“instead of just going wherever,”

“we happen to be at the time.” The twins finished as one.

Humming thoughtfully at that, Harry looked at the project, then over at the shaman, before sighing, seeing he was too busy to direct his earth elementals. “Well, then I think we need to add those now.”

Eventually, Davo and his workers figured out a way to make the water come through the furrow faster, and Harry installed small stone perches. Irene cut them to size so that all the harpies could latch onto them as easily as a tree branch. Then Harry fused them to the rock with magic. The twins perched on them easily, and the stone perches took their weight, allowing for easy access to the furrow below. But then Harry had to turn hastily away and move off when the pair actually began to try to use the device for real.

“Is this another aspect of human or kaldorei modesty?” Recca asked curiously, alighting down beside Harry from where she had been on a nearby tree, watching the twins try out the new device. She greatly approved of the outdoor toilet, as it would hopefully keep down the smell of their eyrie tremendously. Moreover it just looked kind of neat, along with most of the rest of the changes the flock and their allies were putting into place.

“Yes. Suffice it to say that watching other people go to the bathroom like that is not something any human… Or at least not this human, is in favor of.” Ugh, fetishes like that disgust me. That’s even worse than, what was it, dogging? Ugh. “And I doubt very much that among kaldorei or tauren it would be any different,” Harry had to shake his head several times to get rid of the image of Veldral or Davo leading around or being led on a leash. Out, out damn image!

Recca chuckled at that, looking over her shoulder at the two twins. “Well, I can understand there will always be differences between our different races. And speaking of differences, tell me truthfully, do the two of them have any chance in getting you to look at them the way they do you?”

The older harpy didn’t mention her own feelings towards Harry, which had, when they first met and directly after the fight with the vry’kul, been decidedly on the romantic side of things. But since, that interest had cooled as Recca found the Unseen Path very interesting. That, and unlike the twins, Recca had not only gotten some interest in Harry back occasionally, but also didn’t feel any urge to rush things.

“I wouldn’t say no chance. I’m going to be part of the Unseen Path for a few decades, if not a lifetime or two before moving on. You harpies all live well past the thousand range. But… It isn’t a good one,” Harry admitted. “I won’t say I don’t enjoy their flirtations, but I’m not going to be taking it any further. Not for the foreseeable future anyway.”

Recca nodded, then shrugged. She had spent the majority of the past two weeks with the members of the Unseen Path, getting used to walking through Trueshot Lodge, talking to them, and learning more about their duties and everything else. The twins had spent most of that time with either Harry or Sylina, yet it was Recca who understood most how Harry’s thoughts on the harpies had changed over time now that they were back in more familiar territory and he had gotten used to their flirtatious ways. So she simply nodded and winged off, ending the conversation abruptly in a way that Harry had found out was pretty typical of how harpies did things.

While Harry’s project had been almost strictly utilitarian, the other project that the shaman had been working on with Cassandra and a few of her other daughters was not. It was slightly utilitarian but mostly for beautification. For they had been creating the plinth that Cassandra wished to house the feather from Ohn’ahra in.

This took the form of a large outcropping of stone sticking out from the side of the edge of the Valley directly above the stream, like a tree that had roots on either side of the stream. Under the direction of three of the earth elementals, the stone perch flared upwards, ending in numerous branches curving further upward like a hand held open to the sky. Irene and several of the other harpies had already begun to carve into the side of the giant construction, with the end being that it would look almost like a natural tree branch despite being made of stone.

At the final curve leading up to the end of the branch where the nest of the harpy matriarch would be constructed was a small indent, already carved out by Irene and her companions. There, Cassandra flew up, solemnly embedding the crystal-covered feather into the stone. She hovered there, her wings slowly flapping, holding it in place as one of the stone elementals reemerged with the stone of the plinth, fusing the crystal in place into the rest of the stone.

As it did, the light of the sun above caught the feather, causing it to gleam brilliantly. Cassandra fell back out of the way, flapping once to recover the altitude she had lost, shifting upwards and setting down into the area where her nest would be. As she did, several of her daughters and granddaughters raised their voices in shrieks of delight and victory. Even the flightiest among them understood what that feather meant for their clutch, for their people going forward and were ecstatic to see it.

While the two main projects were finished that first day, work continued the next day with Harry and the shaman and druid helping as best they could. Several caves were dug out of the floor and sides of the valley for the harpies to use during winter and for underground farming. A few tarps had also been donated by the Unseen Path for members of the clutch who wished to protect their nests from rain, and Davo and the others showed how even someone with claws could create makeshift lean-tos to go over a nest.

Meanwhile, the harpies continued to create nests among the rocks, including the matriarchs above where Oha’ahra’s feather had been placed, as well as several near the ground. A few were even on the valley floor.

That, and the sheer number of nests confused Harry as he stepped back in the afternoon of the third day after they had arrived at the end of the valley. The work that the harpies needed the trio of magic users for had finished, and he and his companions were due to leave, but it was only now that stepping back Harry realized how many nests the harpies had created.

“Are you planning for the future? There’s at least three nests here for every one of you.” Harry smirked suddenly. “I don’t suppose that means you all plan to shift from one next to another when they get too dirty, do you?”

“Ha! You joke, but there are many harpies who would do just that. Luckily, with the preparations we have made, I doubt that will be needed. As for the number of nests, our numbers will be growing in the future.” Cassandra looked over at one of her daughters in particular. Recca’s sister Viol. “Sooner than you might think.”

Harry looked confused as both tauren blinked, then stared at one another incredulously, before looking up at the harpy in question. Viol looked away, flushing a little, before Recca came over, pulling into a winged hug, her feathers pressing flat against her sister’s stomach as Viol squawked. “We harpies lay eggs only three months after conceiving, Harry. My little niece, nieces, will be along soon. At that point, any mother worth the name would want a nest near the ground, so any falls the young chicks have will not be fatal ones.”

“…And does Matar Orangehoof know he is about to become a father?” Davo asked sharply. “When we left Trueshot Lodge he never said anything about that, and I would’ve thought he would wish to be here even if he didn’t have much to contribute if that was the case.” While Matar wasn’t all that close to anyone given his silent nature, having a child was so momentous that even he would have mentioned something about this if he knew it was, in fact, happening.

All of the harpies looked confused, with Viol shaking her head speaking up for herself. “No, he doesn’t. Our laying together was not a formal bonding, after all”

“Anyway, how would that work? You’re all ground bound, how could any of you be a father to a harpy?” Icsy scoffed

Cassandra looked closely at the frowns on Harry and the other Tauren’s faces shaking her head as she realized they’d just run into another social issue they might need to think about going forward. Just like having privacy while going to the bathroom and making certain that the water from the toilet flowed down river from below the pond, although that last was more common sense than a societal more we need to navigate. It seems to me that they think that Matar should know about Viol being pregnant.

When Davo continued, Cassandra’s thoughts on that score crystallized into a certainty.

“I think regardless of race, a father needs to be involved in the rearing of his son or daughter. While I realize that harpies only give birth to harpies, that is not a reason to assume that Matar would not like to be involved in the rearing of his daughter. To my mind, thinking like that is far too close to what most harpies feel when they capture a male and use them for mating practices rather than lay with him willingly.”

“But how can that be? Matar and I agreed to sleep together, and I think we both enjoyed it immensely. But that is an entirely different thing than being bonded!” Viol said, scowling. “I have no wish to bond permanently to anyone. And you keep on saying that he would want to be involved in raising my daughter, but what would he have to teach her? She will be a harpy, not a landbound two-legged.”

Most of the other harpies spoke up in support of Viol, but Cassandra’s voice cut through their voices from on high.  “I think we are missing the point, daughters, aren’t we, Harry?”

“Yes.” Harry answered his tone rather clipped and harsh, causing the twins, who would just alighted near him, to twitch backwards as his anger came through quite clearly. “You have made a few mistakes here, Viol, all of which have compounded upon one another. First, you assumed that Matar understood that a child might come from your laying together. I rather doubt he did.”

“We tauren are not nearly that fertile,” the shaman interjected. “Such things can only happen at certain times of the month, and even then conceiving a child is not certain.”

Nodding at the tauren to indicate he understood, Harry turned back to Viol, who was still wearing a frown. Not one of distaste for being questioned, though, simply one of confusion. That caused Harry to rein in his anger at the very idea of a woman not letting a man be involved in rearing their children, and he went on more calmly. “For another, you are taking away his rights as the individual to even decide whether or not to be in his daughter’s life. That is wrong and is a decision that Matar should be allowed to make himself. It isn’t that he won’t have as much as you to contribute to your daughter’s future, it is that he would want to be a part of that future. No matter how big or small. Taking that decision out of his hands shows a distinct lack of empathy.”

At those words, the harpies all frowned thinking it through, and Cassandra sighed, nodding. “I am afraid that there are several… I have heard Milifiana call them social conventions that we harpies have fallen into over the centuries that we will need to rethink. Furthermore, even when Aviana was around, bonded pairings between those of you on the ground and those of us in the sky did not occur for various reasons. Now though, with our voices as they are thanks to you Harry, and no longer in danger of searching out sources of tainted or Fel magic to feed the emptiness within, we need to think about such things.”

She paused, as Harry nodded. “Could I ask you, Harry, to step aside with me for a bit? To fly rather than to head back to Trueshot Lodge on foot? I realized before this that there would be social issues I would need to work out with my flock, but I wish to pick your brain now that one has come upon us so abruptly.”

Harry nodded thoughtfully and began to transform into his half Phoenix form. Again, he felt the basilisk side of him rear its head up, but this time it didn’t try to fight him for control, rather simply staring on almost from its portion of his mind and body, before going back into slumber or whatever. Terms like that really didn’t cross over into a mental divide like this.

The introspective mood of the moment among the harpies disappeared instantly in the quick change of emotion that had occasionally caught Harry and the others by surprise when on the trail. Recca and a few of the others could be as serious and as concentrated on a task as any, but the majority of harpies were, well, quite flighty. Now the majority of the flock hooted and whistled and cheered, reading more into that invitation than Harry felt Cassandra had meant. Although I wouldn’t put it past her to be teasing me, and her family, on purpose like this.

Recca was one of the ones who was laughing and cheering her mother on, while the twins were pouting ferociously as they shouted at their grandmother. “Don’t cut into line grandmother!”

 “Yes, we’ve already staked our claim!”

Beyond a faint smile Cassandra ignored them all, flapping her wings and rising up into the air, circling around the area once, then shooting skyward quickly. Harry followed, shaking his head. Good grief, she really was teasing them… and I need to work on my shoulder muscles more before I do this straight-from-the-land type launch thing again. Thankfully, I don’t think that Cassandra is actually interested in me in that way. If she was… I don’t actually know if my dislike for feathers and legs in a sexual sense would be able to offset how attractive the rest of her is.

Perhaps because of his mental age, or perhaps because of all the effort he had gone to in terms of his Occlumentic realm, Harry knew he preferred more mature acting ladies, which had occasionally caused issues between him and Sylina, although they had worked that out in the main so far. Not women who were past the age where they liked to have fun or women who were so serious they didn’t like pranks or just jokes in general, but simply women who understood their own minds, their own worth and had their own goals.

How much of that had anything to do with his interactions with Tyrande on top of his past relationship with Hermione, Harry very carefully did not look into too deeply. And even on top of that, Cassandra was… Well, she was right up there with Narcissa Malfoy as an example in Harry’s mind of the very definition of a MILF.

Regardless of where this particular flight might take him, Harry winged his way upwards, feeling the wind on his face, the sun beating down on his back and feathers, delighting in flight as he always did. For a time, he simply followed Cassandra up upward, the chill of the air high up here in the mountains becoming merely a brisk breeze rather than the shiver-inducing thing it would have without his burning feathers.

For her part, Cassandra didn’t seem to feel the cold. Like how maneuverable and airworthy her race was in general, harpies seemed to have a bit of inherent nature magic within them that allowed them to ignore cold to a far greater degree than any similarly built kaldorei woman would be able to. And I can’t put all of that down to their built-in feather coat.

Although, come to think of it, didn’t Tyrande also seem to be able to ignore the cold for the most part? Not entirely; she had heavy boots and gloves when we were in the mountains, but she surely wasn’t wearing nearly as many layers as someone who didn’t have nature magic to fall back on would’ve been forced to use. But the vry’kul were wearing fur coats and leather covering most of their bodies. Could it be my merely human body, which simply can’t handle the cold as much as the local races?

Shaking that thought off again, Harry found himself above and to the side of Cassandra as she twisted to the left. Soon they hit a thermal and flying became easier for a moment. A second later, Harry realized Cassandra had moved close enough so that they could talk without needing to shouted one another.

Only now did Harry realize that the two of them had been followed up into the air by the twins and a few of the others, but most of them fallen back and away by this point, beaten by Cassandra’s greater mastery of flying and the simple height that she had reached so quickly thanks to the thermal that only she had seemingly been able to sense. Now they were mere dots in the distance, although as they left the thermal, Harry began to feel a bit of strain from the continued flight.

“Pathfinder Vurg mentioned a phrase to me at one point that has reverberated in my mind ever since; ‘Heavy is the staff of office’,” Cassandra said, her voice almost normal despite how high up above the mountains they were. Indeed, from here, Harry thought he could probably even see the outskirts of Highmountain valley.

“Among my people, we would use the phase ‘heavy is the head that wears the crown’. Or to put it in a little more morbid phrase, duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather,” Harry agreed.

“Quite appropriate, and a visual that needs no further translation,” Cassandra murmured, her voice now almost lost in the wind for a moment, but she went on more strongly. “It has occurred to me over the past few weeks that I am no longer a simple matriarch of a single clutch, determined to keep my family as pure as I can from the madness and feral nature that far too many of my race have fallen into over the centuries since our great mother passed. Instead, I find myself… I suppose the leader of a new culture almost, a new way of life. That is why I grabbed at the changes, the toilet and the concept of farming so strongly, because I know we must become different than our feral or Tainted fellows. But we ran into a problem down below Harry but that is just one of many.”

Sensing that Cassandra seemed as if she wanted to first get the this off her chest, Harry simply nodded making the movement so overdone that she could see it out of the current corner of her eye, before slightly letting himself fall away from her for a moment, then swooping underneath so that he was even closer to her. He tried hard not to actually look up at Cassandra at the moment though, knowing that if he did, he probably wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes off of her chest as those gloriously large mounds moved with every wing beat. Bras, I must introduce them to the harpies at some point in the future.

Seeing he was listening, Cassandra continued. “There are so many problems in the future. Problems when we interact with tauren and kaldorei for one thing. For another, our own culture needs to change. We harpies really haven’t ever had much in the way of culture in the past. When Aviana was alive, we did have a kind of society, but it was built on an age-based hierarchy and around our worship of her. We had hunters, we had clothes makers, we had leaders and so forth, but even amongst ourselves, our voices were harsh to the ear, making our entire culture almost equally harsh occasionally, based mostly on barter, give and take and simple survival. Now, that is not the case. And, although I have tried my best to keep it from happening, even my flock is not entirely immune to how more animal-like we have been forced to act since Aviana died in the War of the Ancients. What kind of culture can we build as limited as we are?”

Harry frowned, thinking hard, turning away to gaze all around them as they continued their slow spiral around the hidden valley well, well below them, a narrow diamond shape of green against the background of stone and harsh cliff faces. “I take it you’re asking me for more in the way of broad advice than anything specific? I mean, I could’ve told you that that whole issue with Matar and Viol was going to come up if I had known that she was willing to become pregnant from sleeping with him but…”

“No. I think… I think there, when it comes to landbound fathers, any concept of ‘law’ as the kaldorei or even Tauren have would be far too rigid in nature. We will need to make that some kind of cultural rule going forward, which can change and be loose enough to fit any singular situation. Personally, I doubt that Matar, from what I have seen of his personality, will wish to enter into a permanent relationship with Viol. Similarly she would fight any such move. But that does not mean that he won’t wish to be around the child. In the future, we might run into other men who will be more than willing and even happy to be bonded to one of my clutch. Yet at the other side of the equation, I am certain that there will be men among the tauren and kaldorei alike who would accept simply knowing that their seed would taken one of us, and then be done with it. Although I sense that you would not be so.”

Harry gulped a little, again not looking up at Cassandra when she spoke, shaking his head. “That sounds good to me. And no. I am very much not of that type. Family is… Is a subject I would rather not be drawn on, honestly. With my method of immortality, I suppose I could have a family, age, and then pass away peaceably, but could I handlecoming back from the dead, knowing that while my children might also live long lives but would eventually die as I continue on in a new life? I don’t think so.”

Cassandra nodded, but remained silent, waiting for Harry to speak. “I suppose that… I am not someone who has taken a long time to look at specific cultures, or social mores or something like that. But I would say that most cultures have several ways to define themselves.”

“Exactly! What should our culture be? On the one hand, I know what we should not be. I have had thousands of years watching the effects of Fel and Tainted magic on my fellow harpies. But surely a culture should not simply define itself on what it does not allow. That seems far too… Not rigid, but limiting?” Like Harry was stumbling around trying to think of advice to give, so too was Cassandra stumbling to try and figure out what she wanted to say.

“I understand your point. Looking back in my world, I think… I think my own nation had something of what you are looking for. We were known to have what we called a stiff upper lip. We prided ourselves on our ability to be thrifty and survive through hardship.” Although most of that admittedly was because of World War II, and I’m not about to try to explain that whole thing at the moment. “Another nation where I came from prided itself as the land of the free. I’m not so sure it was in retrospect, but it certainly was a place where people could make a new life for themselves if they were willing to put in the work.”

“You used a word there I have never heard, ‘Nation’ what is that? For some reason, it does not seem to match the rest of the language we are speaking,” Cassandra pointed out, confused.

Harry scowled a little. “Right, the kaldorei language doesn’t really have a term for that. They’ve always been just one Empire or one people. Drat. Consider them different tribes, although much larger than the term would suggest normally.” Cassandra nodded, and Harry continued the two of them turning slightly in the air once more, paralleling one another now without even needing to think about it, although Harry could feel his muscles beginning to get a more than little sore. “I think in the main, you need to think about what you want to build going forward in that broader term. You don’t want to be a warrior culture I presume? Devoted to fighting and combat, proving yourselves against one another and any enemies?”

“No,” Cassandra drawled, shaking her head. “Irene, Recca and Viol are the exception in that area, not the rule. In fact, I believe that is the aspect that will eventually force my little twins to leave off their pursuit of you, Harry. When they realize that you are much more of a warrior and a seeker of combat than they are willing to become, they will finally understand that you are not the man for them.”

“Well, that will be to the good then. I like Aleri and Alari, but they are a bit too clingy and, well, not my type now that I’ve gotten used to their attention. As for what we are talking about now, perhaps you should lean into something a little to the side of that topic. You can be… Call yourselves wardens of the sky almost. Gentle defenders of the air against those who would prey on others,” Harry suggested. “Beyond that, you can be singers, tale-tellers…”

“If we can figure out a way to renew the spells on our voices that you created without your input, yes, I suppose. I will say that passing things on via our oral tradition is far more pleasant on the ear now than it has ever been before,” Cassandra said before adding with a chuckle, “in the same way that a thousand is to one.”

Harry laughed at that before going on and reminding Cassandra of what he had mentioned on the way to their new eyrie. In the future, they might be able to develop their own system of writing. “Leaning into that, and maybe more into traditions and creating new structures on top of traditions, is the way forward. I don’t think you should lean heavily into the worship of that feather. That seems a little too much. Ohn’ahra certainly isn’t the type to look towards worship like that anyway…”

“Yes. From what Ohn’ahra said to us, she has far too much on her mind for such things,” Cassandra agreed. “I also think that worship of an object might in the future also lend itself to a method of thought that I don’t think I would approve of.”

Her answer on that score was quite vague, but Harry still understood it and agreed. The last thing the harpies needed to do was begin to think in terms of religious connotations when it came to where they got their magic. Harry was all in favor of the harpies of Cassandra’s flock finding other harpies who had yet to give in to the hunger for Fel or Tainted magic, but to think of that search in terms of a righteous religious war? No. Harry wasn’t that big of a student of history from where he had come from, but even he knew that would be a very bad idea.

“I think you’ll need to start looking to the kaldorei more and more for your own culture. Build on what you can glean from talking to Feldral, Sylina and the others when it comes to education, training, and writing. Leaning also into how magic has begun to appear among your people and how to train it in the younger set? I don’t know how, but maybe that can help?”

Cassandra nodded, indicating she understood Harry’s advice, and found most of it good. Both of them had never really considered things of this nature before, but it was helpful to at least talk it out. Combined with the problems that had already developed, it gave Cassandra a good basis to start to build on. And when it comes to the problem that Viol has inadvertently discovered, well, I can perhaps start to lead by example.

She said that aloud, and Harry blinked, turning to stare up at her, only for his eyes to boggle for a moment at the sight of Cassandra’s chest moving this way and that under the impetus of her wings. Cassandra caught that and, also knowing how long Harry could normally go in terms of flying without rest, decided to turn their course back down towards the valley. Although not towards where they had started from. Instead, she headed down towards the other side of the valley, where the normal entrance and exit to it were. “Harry, I have one last question I wish to pose to you. One last bit of advice I wish to ask you about.”

And the fact I can tease you outrageously is just a side product. Although before you mentioned how leery you were about having children, it might have been more than merely teasing, Cassandra admitted to herself. While Harry was a good deal younger seeming in terms of his body than she liked her lovers to be, his mind was not. The maturity coupled in a male body that didn’t look very much older than her youngest daughters was quite strange, and Cassandra had not been willing to deal with that and all the competition for Harry’s affections. But given how much she and her flock owed him, well, if he had evinced any interest at all in acting on his attraction toward her… Which will make this all the more interesting.  

Harry didn’t look up at her again, trying to control his sudden rise of hormones. The two of them remained silent as they wound their way back down towards the valley, quickly plummeting into it and to the ground where they sat down. When they did, Cassandra asked Harry to turn around for a moment.

His eyes narrowing, Harry wondered what she was up to, but did so. “I will warn you that any pranks will be paid in full, Lady Cassandra.”

“No, this is, it’s not a prank. Rather it is an experiment. One I have been working towards since Ohn’ahra’s visitation.

Harry frowned at that, before he felt a flare of magic from behind him. It felt like druidic magic, and he tried to think what it might be before Cassandra’s dulcet voice asked him to turn around. When he did, Harry gasped.

Cassandra no longer looked like a harpy. Her wings had been transformed into arms now, which caused a certain amount of shift in her blouse so that she was showing a great deal more cleavage then Harry was comfortable with looking at from Cassandra at present. Her hair no longer had feathers in it as well, falling down her shoulders and back in a cascade of raven-black hair. Her ears, long, mobile, were the same light skinned color as the rest of her. Those ears looked more like a kaldorei than the single example of Highborne ears Harry had so far seen, but the juxtaposition between Cassandra’s coloration and those ears did not detract from the beauty before him.

Cassandra’s kaldorei-form wasn’t perfect just yet. Her legs were still those of a harpy, as was the area right below her stomach and her sides, where her normal feathers were visible. Seeing that, looking at those portions of Cassandra’s body allowed Harry to keep some control of his libido, although he had not been able to stop his initial gasp and whistle of amazement.

“Ah, so I am doing this right,” Cassandra hummed, smiling in pleasure at Harry’s reaction.

“Y, you certainly are. That form is practically perfect from the stomach up, and I suppose you’re going to continue with it until you can transform your entire body? I, i, is this kind of change something you think your people will be able to do regularly?” He asked. A part of him wondering if he would be happy about that, and the rest of him knew the twins would have a better than average chance of breaking down his self-control if they could turn into kaldorei girls.

“I doubt it. None of the others have evinced any kind of transformation type magic as yet, and indeed most of those who have evinced any magic whatsoever show more attack magic or similar, like the magic which allows our talons to be able to gouge into stone as you have seen over the past two days. I simply wanted your advice on my form. Do you think that Feldral would find it pleasing?” Cassandra asked, running her fingers down her sides and purring in pleasure. Fingers were so much more sensitive than feathers.

“I don’t know him all that well to know his preferences,” Harry said, looking up at the sky now, in order to help his self-control. Malfoy naked, Malfoy naked, Dumbledore and Grindlewald having a conjugal visit! “B, but I think that any healthy kaldorei male who sees you in that kind of form would be entranced. Can I ask why?”

“Mmm… well, that is nice to hear. And I think in terms of how we are to treat any landbound lover, it might be best to lead by example. That, and I found him attractive from the moment we met,” Cassandra said, deciding to cut her teasing short as she felt the strain of holding this form catching up to her.

Now, with his self-control somewhat restored, Harry could tell that the older woman was teasing him very gently. This was proven a moment later, when she moved up behind him and whispered into his ear. “It is a pity that you are not older, Harry. Else perhaps you and I would be the example I would need to set. But such is not to be.” And even now you do not act on your attraction to me. Quite an admirable amount of self-control there, if a tiny bit disappointing.

She stepped back, and Harry felt and now watched the transformation shift her back into her other form. When she was finished, Cassandra nearly slumped, actually needing to lean on the ground with her wings for a moment. “It, haaa, it takes a lot out of me, and I cannot hold that form for very long. But I think I will be able to going forward. Perhaps I will have enough time before the Downdraft hits to be able to perfect it.”

“Downdraft?”

“Yes, that is what we call it when we harpies begin to show our age and slowly fade away. I have mentioned that before. I still have at least another century before that hits, and I need to worry about choosing who to lead our people going forward. I have much to do in that timeframe, but I think raising a little one with Feldral might be quite pleasant, as well as giving my flock an example of how to pursue such relationships.”

Deciding to be a good wingman, Harry grinned suddenly. “Do you want me to send him your way then? I could pass on that you want a landbound person’s opinion on the defenses at the far end of the valley, for example. That would appeal to his love of rock climbing.”

“If you could, that would be most pleasant. And perhaps I can also ask his opinion about what my people’s culture should be like going forward. Until then Harry, I would only ask that when it comes to it, you let my twins down easily.” Cassandra looked at him thoughtfully, then leaned forward and kissed him very lightly on the cheek. “I do not think that my people will ever be able to repay what you have done for us, Harry Potter. And I know that you are adverse to being paid in the only coin we have available to us currently. But go forward with your life, or lives, however you put it, knowing that you will forever be friends of my eyrie, come what may.” She smiled winsomely. “That too can be a pillar of our very culture, that we always honor our friends and those people who are selfless in their aide towards us.”

With that, Cassandra winged her way upwards, leaving Harry there on the ground staring after her, shocked by the suddenness of her departure and her words alike. He stood there staring after her for a time, before sighing and turning his feet in the direction of deeper into the valley. For some reason, right now, beyond his aching arms, the idea of walking alone for a time appealed to him.

By the time he got back to Trueshot Lodge, Recca and the twins had beat him there by a good several hours, although Quezal, Davo and their companions were still days away. The twins saw him coming, having been practicing flying in and out of the lodge, and flew alongside him as he walked out of the forest towards the entrance. Landing lightly beside him and walking inside, they leaned in inquisitively, badgering him about what he and Cassandra had been up to. They didn’t seem to believe Harry when he said they had only talked, with Cassandra asking him for advice and Harry only giving vague answers, only haling with their questions when Sylina came over to them in the main hall, shooing them off, saying aloud that if “Harry has said they were only talking, that was all they were doing. Cassandra also doesn’t seem the type to want to jump in line girls, don’t worry. I’m sure that when it comes to it, you, too, will be the ones to break him down.”

Harry rolled his eyes at that, muttering about how he should be getting a say in that, before asking the twins if work had finished on their quarters. That had been an ongoing project, as Trueshot Lodge and the Unseen Path had never been built to accommodate harpies before. As such, new rooms needed to be prepared near the guard posts so that the harpies could come and go as they pleased. The twins nodded, then fell into twin speech, giggling as they did.

“Yes, they have been made ready for us. We’ve even begun to”

“put down beds inside the new caves. Walking on our”

“talons is still he practice we don’t exactly like but”

“we have gotten used to it over the past few weeks. We”

“have also practiced coming and going enough that,”

“we don’t hit the guards on duty, although”

“scaring the furbolgs is always fun.”

Harry chuckled at that, shaking his head rightly as Recca appeared, walking on her taloned feet towards them from the other side, talking to two of the trainers and gesturing with her feet as if she was kicking something. “And training? What about that? Also, have you two decided to take the Oaths yet?”

The twins fell silent, gazing at one another, then back at Harry, then over to Recca, before admitting that they had not, although Recca had made that decision weeks ago. Recca seemed to be very much a woman who had discovered her purpose, a warrior who had discovered a cause worthy of her time and effort. Until the revelation earlier that day, Harry was honestly surprised that Viol, at least, hadn’t followed her into the Unseen Path. Irene too, but there it seemed as if mother and daughter had very different reasons for being as warlike as they were.

Recca was that way because that was simply how she was mentally put together. She loved challenging herself, growing stronger, and fighting. Irene was that way because it was how she had to be in order to serve the greater flock. Frankly, thinking about it now, Harry felt that Irene’s way of looking at things would probably be better for the flock going forward than Recca’s and was glad she was willing to join the Unseen Path.

Before the conversation could continue, one of the members of the Unseen Path signaled for Harry. He turned in that direction, and the man asked Harry to head up to the library. “Master Cartographer Milifiana, Pathfinder Vurg, and Master Seeker Martuc wish to speak to you.”

Harry nodded before gesturing slightly, then over to the harpies and Sylina, but the man and Sylina both chuckled. “Harry, they want to make certain that they get the most out of your abilities, abilities I certainly don’t share. Go on. I was just about to head outside to stretch my legs and get my partner some hunting in.”

Similarly, Recca waved Harry off, saying that the three of them still needed to put down nests in their room. “I’ll see you in training tomorrow morning, Harry. The twins still haven’t said whether or not they’ll join us for that,” Reca said, staring repressively down at her younger cousins.

They pouted, before glancing sideways at Harry before nodding as he gazed back at them expectantly. Smirking at that, Recca shooed them towards the doorway, her wings outstretched to either side, flapping and lightly smacking them upside the head. Looking at the hastily retreating twins and the larger form of Recca, Harry was once more reminded Harry of a hawk in comparison to two sparrows.

He shook his head with a chuckle, then turned away, heading across the main hall and then up the stairs. With the harpies finally settled into their new eyrie, it was time to get back to work and learning alike, and he was looking forward to both.

Scene break

Shy-Rotam purred happily as she raced through Ashenvale, ducking under and through foliage, leaving more than enough room for her companion’s head to clear the branches above. Murr, that one nearly hit Tyrande, I need to get better at that. Still not used to my size and hers, grrr… but it will be great fun to see Mother, Father and their reaction to how big I am.

Shy-Rotam estimated she was as big now as that first tiger she had seen when traveling with her bonded, the sarcastic snake and his two-legs, and this was not the first time she had Tyrande on her back, although it was the first time they were traveling a long distance instead of just training. But this is really nice! I think I could run all the way to the Frostfangs without stopping.

Besides having grown, Shy-Rotam had become even stronger, even faster than any natural born snowsaber or other large cat could be, and knew it. She’d trained and wrestled against other large cats, and now only a few of the most experienced tigers could beat her.

Tyrande had explained this to her a few times, although Shy-Rotam really hadn’t understood the implications before the last few years when Shy-rotam began to win in the training ring. Thanks to their bonding, Shy-Rotamhad gained a connection to Tyrande. Through her, Shy-Rotam was able to gain some connection to the Well of Eternity, the source of the kaldorei’s immortality, hidden under the massive tree that housed the kaldorei capital city of Darnassus. Or is it the tree that gives the kaldorei a long life? I can never keep that straight. Although the Well was pretty. It had sparkled really nicely with all the reflected light of the lamps situated around it.

Shy-Rotam had been to see the Well of Eternity at one point. As part of her duties as chief priestess, Tyrande had to inspect the Well of Eternity on random occasions, to make certain that it wasn’t somehow leaking out from beyond its confines. How that could be, Sandra didn’t know, considering that the entirety of the giant massive tree that the two of them and so many other kaldorei lived in had been created, as far as she could follow, to hide the Well of Eternity.

The lights within the underground grotto were kept lit, Shy-Rotam had heard, by Druids who were on punishment detail for some a minor infraction or other. That had made Shy-Rotam laugh, and hearing about some of the things that the druids in question had done had been the highlight of that day. The Well of Eternity was supposed to be a big deal, and there’d been a lot of pomp and ceremony in Tyrande’s visit, but much like that same pomp and ceremony, Shy-Rotam didn’t really care.

Similarly, Shy-Rotam didn’t care about why so many other kaldorei were coming with her and her bonded back to the Frostfang Mountains. Nope, for Shy-Rotam, this was all about going back home for a bit and having fun doing it.

Tyrande glanced down at her mount for a moment, rubbing Shy-Rotam’s head affectionately, before turning to look over at her daughter, smiling a bit whimsically at the small, warm smile that she got in return.

If only the two of us were the only ones here and we were just traveling for the sake of doing so, this would be quite a pleasant outing, she thought, winking at the large striped tiger that was Shandris’s mount. It wrinkled his nose at her, and then very deliberately bumped the younger Shy-Rotam’s shoulder lightly, breaking her out of her thoughts just in time for the two of them to shift around a large tree in either direction.

Behind them came ten other kaldorei, six sentinels on their own mounts and four Druids of the Claw. All the druids had transformed into a secondary animal form, mostly stags or does, to keep up with the large cats and their speed through the forest. Four other Druids of the Talon flew high above them. If anyone who knew anything about birds saw the four crowds flying in a diamond formation they would know something was off, but Tyrande hoped that what eyes there were beyond her own party belonged to allies like the Furbolgs or Cenarius and his people.

Mind you, even if that is the case, I am certainly feeling the glare of someone who is, if not an enemy, at least not an ally or friend, Tyrande reflected, forcing herself not to return the look she was getting from the largest stag among the herd.

That glare was coming her way from the chief druid, Fandral Staghelm, and he had been staring at her on and off since they had left the capital. Not too hard, lest Tyrande or her daughter take umbrage at it, but enough to make the man’s displeasure plain. Not that I can truly say he is wrong to be displeased. But Fandral is the one that kept on bringing up the same disastrous idea. If we can make it work, that is one thing. But trusting Fandral and his people to get it entirely right? No. Although, if he’s glaring at me because four of the druids with us are women and two of the Sentinels men… well, then he can lump it.

Since returning from the sabbatical which had led her to make a certain young wizard’s acquaintance, Tyrande had instigated several reforms within kaldorei society. Those reforms had slowly begun to bear fruit over the past twenty years in various ways. There were more female Druids, although amusing to Tyrande, only around a third of them entered the Emerald Dream, whereas more than half of all the male druids did. Although only a few, like Malfurion, have decided to stay there full time. Drat it. This whole problem would be a lot simpler if he was out here in the real world to… no, do not lie to yourself, Tyrande. Your desires for him to be among the walking is entirely personal.

Shaking her head, Tyrande moved her thoughts back to the changes in kaldorei society. On the other side of the ledger, there were more male sentinels, so many now that several watch commanders were men and thus present in the command structure of the sentinels, whereas before that had not been a thing since the end of the War of the Ancients. This had worked to offset a dangerous dichotomy that had been growing within her people’s society. Furthermore, Tyrande’s reforms in terms of government, the Grand Council, had fully taken root in the last twenty years. The Grand Council worked incredibly well to see to the day to day running of the city, the mail, property ownership, and other issues like that.

This had led to the Druids, the Cenarion Circle, which was named to honor Cenarius, the Shan’do, first teacher, and the Sentinels, the military and police force of their people, losing some of their influence. While, quite ironically, Tyrande’s pushing for this had made the church even more popular than it had been before, along with Tyrande herself, something she had not foreseen.

Fandral Staghelm was the only other Archdruid among the Circle, and had been the leader of the Circle for nearly eight hundred years, ever since Malfurion had entered the Emerald Dream and had decided not to return, fighting the Elder God’s influence there. Despite being abrasive, arrogant, and almost a misogynist, Fandral’s abilities and strength of personality had made his position unassailable until Tyrande’s latest reforms.

Instead of speaking for the Circle as a whole, Fandral was one of only two representatives of the Circle on the Grand Council. Instead of the Druids being able to nearly dictate certain areas of their society, they now answered to the majority. Instead of dominating the rest of the Cenarion Circle without Malfurion’s voice there, many of the new druids, and not all of them women, were more prone to questioning and going their own way. No more did the Druids of the Claw dominate. The Druids of the Talon had an equal say.

However, one thing has not changed, Tyrande mused. Nor should it have. We, the druids, Sentinels and the sisterhood of Elune are the final arbiters of decisions that impact the defense of Ashenvale.

That was what had led to the latest clash between herself and Staghelm.

Flashback:

Tyrande watched on, her fingers knit together in front of her as three Druids of the Claw, transformed into their bear forms with a series of bridles on them, lugged what looked like a giant black crystal into the room that the Grand Council was currently using as its meeting hall. While the Grand Council had voted on the plans for a new building to house such meetings in the future, kaldorei did not build such edifices very quickly. Everything had to be as perfect as kaldorei hands could make it, and they would not be rushed. Thus they met in an amphitheater normally used for plays and large-scale seminars.

That, however, was immaterial at the moment, as that giant black ore looked disturbingly familiar to Tyrande, and to see it in such quantities, sent a shiver down her spine. Saronite, and in Ashenvale. That is not a good sign at all.

The term that Elune had given her for the ore that she and Harry had run into had stuck when she reported it. Before that, it hadn’t had a name, simply being called Corruption by the druids who had seen it in limited quantity before that. The properties had been disturbing enough before, but until Elune had confirmed it for Tyrande, everyone, druids and Sentinels alike, had thought that the saronite was leftover remnants of the Burning Legion’s invasion. Hence why Fandral and his followers had been so frantic that they ignored the rest of the Circle’s concerns about their plan some six hundred years ago now about reproducing Nordrassil in other places around the world.

It had only been after that disaster that the differences between the Fel magic and the Old God’s Taint had become clear. Because it had not been the Fel magic which had corrupted the tree Andrassil, no. It had been Yogg-Saron who was able to use it, Taint Andrassil into Vordrassil, and thus connect to the Emerald Dream. A disaster that had taken more than a hundred years to grow to the point where Malfurion and the others realized the Emerald Dream was turning into a nightmare.

No pockets of saronite had appeared since then, hence why the connection between Yogg-Saron and the ore had not been realized until Tyrande and Harry’s adventure. But we never ran into a chunk that large!

“This was discovered by a group of druids and dryads. It had previously escaped Lord Cenarius’ attention, but it was growing near a river dominated by dragon turtles. If not for the dryads noticing a change in the behavior of the dragon turtles, who knows how large it could have grown, how much more of the forest it could have contaminated if it touched the river water,” Fandral said, his voice tight with anger and worry.

Fandral was a tall, well-built man with slightly shorter ears than normal for a kaldorei in terms of how far behind his head they reached. However, unlike most, even among the druids, he had been able to grow a beard, the dark green of which matched the rest of his hair, which he wore long in three spikes, one on either side of his chest, the other coming down his back. His eyes were deep-set a dark blue, although they gleamed with yellow-colored nature magic occasionally. He had long black eyelashes that thrust out from either side of his head, and normally wore a scowl or a frown, with deep lines of both visible on his cheeks.

He was normally haughty, arrogant and obstreperous towards Tyrande personally, but while Tyrande did not like the fact that he had brought that giant piece of saronite into the city just to make a point, she had to acknowledge that his concerns and fears about it were genuine. Despite the differences of opinion that lay between them, she had never doubted Fandral’s devotion to their people. Only his methods and leadership.

“The Druids of the Claw and a force led by Remulos dealt with the problem, and the dragon turtles tainted by it. But if there is one such outcropping within Ashenvale, there might well be more. To say nothing of outside of our realm!” With a growl, Fandral turned, staring out at the crowd before gesturing with a semi-polite hand towards where Tyrande sat across from his normal position in the room. “During her sabbatical, Lady Whisperwind and her strange companion…”

And here he paused, letting that term sink into his listeners. Tyrande had still not told many people about Harry in general, let alone any details about him, such as his magic or other abilities, and frankly, did not see a time when she would just yet. Her people still had a vast distrust for the Arcane and solving that issue had not been a priority. But the secret of Harry’s abilities did not sit well with many people, Fandral being one of them.

“…ran into Frostmaul Giants. Creatures that were very much made of simple stone and ice, given unholy life by deposits such as this, to the point where they preyed on anything made of flesh and blood. Who is to say what is happening elsewhere, down south past the Frostfang Mountains, or out on the Broken Isles, or even further afield? If saronite can appear here, it can appear anywhere!” Fandral nearly bellowed, his voice rising. “The dread enemy, the Old One in his cell, is not just pressing us hard in the Emerald Dream, but here in the physical world.”

The other druid representative on the Council slowly nodded his head, frowning thoughtfully. A Druid of the Talon, Janthese Shadeleaf was of an age with Tyrande, Malfurion and Fandral. He looked a bit younger than either of the other druids though, because unlike the pair of Archdruids, he had no beard. His face was naturally sallow, his body thinner than normal for kaldorei, his eyes a bit bigger in his face. One ear was gone, having been lost in the War of the Ancients. Janthese was a little more thoughtful, a little quieter than Fandral, and his advice was often insightful.

He was well respected amongst his fellows and he and Fandral were not allied on most things in the Grand Council. Janthese looked at each issue separately and voted wherever logic dictated he should. Tyrande had thought hard about making him into the leader of some kind of over-arcing intelligence apparatus but had yet to move on that score.

At the moment, it was clear that he was responding to Fandral’s grandstanding for the first time. “Yet while Archdruid Stormrage is leading the defense in the Emerald Dream capably, and with the help of the Emerald aspect, Ysera and her Flight, in the physical world, we don’t have as unified or powerful a response. Is that what you are getting at Archdruid Staghelm?”

While Tyrande could have done without Janthese making a point of reminding everyone that Fandral had the same level of authority as her absent lover, Fandral simply nodded, his normal pride tempered by concern. Some of his anger seemed to drain out of him, and he looked over at the Druids of the Claw. They had shifted back into their normal bodies after they set the giant hunk of ore down, stepping out of the belts and buckles which connected them to the ropes that had held the thing in the air. “With everyone’s permission, now that you have seen this, I believe it is time for it to be destroyed. Priestess?”

Tyrande nodded and, with a gesture, sent a messenger running for the temple. Moments later, several priestesses of Elune arrived. Thank goodness we are doing this under the light of the moon already. It would be quite awkward to need to move that thing outside and into the moonlight.

The three priestesses moved to form a triangle around the piece of saronite as a large piece of silver was brought forward by several silversmiths. The silver was then placed onto the saronite directly by the Druids of the Claw, who had transformed back into their bear forms.

“Now, sisters,” Tyrande murmured from behind the triangle. “Just as I taught you…”

Nodding as one, the three priestesses began to chant, calling upon the goddess of the moon. Tyrande also chanted under her breath, holding her hands together in prayer, her eyes closed, although she did not join the actual ritual.

Despite that, for those watching, a light seemed to stream from behind Tyrande’s closed eyelids for a moment, a brighter and stronger silver than in the case of the three younger sisters, causing a faint whisper to go around the chamber for a moment. Tyrande’s devotion to Elune was well-known for being profound, but seeing it in action like this and being able to compare it to other followers of the moon goddess was somewhat unusual.

From the nighttime sky above the city, a beam of moonlight streamed down, causing looks of shock and shouts from many beyond the amphitheater. In the air above the amphitheater, the beam split into three, pouring down into the three priestesses. It then grew exponentially stronger as it came back out of them towards the saronite, as if the three were acting like so many prisms on a beam of sunlight. Those beams impacted the silver where it had been placed on top of the saronite, which instantly began to hiss as if someone had just dumped a piece of metal into acid.

“Now,” one of the druids growled, his hands glowing a bright yellow with nature magic. Knowing from the reports Tyrande had shared with the druids, sentinels and the rest of the council, the druids were ready for what would happen when holy met unholy. Working together, they raised magically-reinforced vines from the stone underneath the amphitheater, forming the vines into a dome that covered the saronite and the silver. The top of the dome formed just as the blessing from Elune ended, the beam disappearing.

A moment later that globe bowed outward as a thunderous crack was heard.

At the same time, the three priestesses slumped, but Tyrande and her daughter were already there, ready to support them.  

Shandris and one of the other council members led them away to rest as the grand Council fell into mutters and whispers of worry. As the barrier fell away, those mutters turned to awe and satisfaction at seeing the destruction of the physical sign of an Old God’s corruption, causing a little bit of an upbeat atmosphere for a moment. Few there had seen anything like that in person since the War of the Ancients, and none but the most learned or the sentinels and druids knew how bad saronite really was before this. To see it destroyed was quite gratifying.

Fandral called the Grand Council back to order, reminding them of his earlier words: that there could be more such out there in the forest. “It is our duty not only to our people but to this world to destroy such. But we also must stop such from spreading in the first place.”

“And how exactly are you going to do that?” Tyrande asked, her voice lower than Fandral’s bombastic tone but just as commanding. She did not move back to where she had been standing, instead moving to stand across from Fandral, her manner calm and thoughtful. “I fully agree that this is a problem, Fandral. And I thank you truly for bringing it to our attention. That is partially why I wished to start to create a better means of communication with Cenarius and his family and why I have been teaching the sisterhood how to cleanse such things from this world. But there are only so many sentinels, so many druids.”

She shrugged. “In fact, there are only so many dryads. And there are places in this forest where even Cenarius has not been in hundreds of years. We cannot patrol all of Ashenvale even with Cenarius’ aid. So what is the solution?”

Fandral bowed back, a goodly portion of his normal bellicosity gone from his body language, but still there in his eyes. He resented Tyrande for her position as primary leader for their people, although he understood the importance of the Sisterhood. He also deeply disliked the reforms that had opened the door to more female Druids being trained. He was a misogynist, a fact that had decidedly hindered his on again off again attempts to woo Shandris.

But, again, there was nothing really wrong with his mind or his devotion to their people. Only his methods, Tyrande thought, realizing with a sinking suspicion where this conversation was going to go. And I was just thinking about the past and Fandral’s past mistakes.

“I believe that we need to look at going back to the Great Seeding concept. My fellow Druids and I worked to take saplings from Nordrassil and spread them throughout the world centuries ago. It is time to take up that idea once more.”

That caused a lot of murmuring, a surprising amount of it positive, as many in the Grand Council did not know or had never been told about the disaster that had occurred because Fandral had taken it upon himself to do something similar before. However, Tyrande knew of it, and she was quick to reply. “No.”

Her simple word cut through the background noise, and soon, all eyes were back on Tyrande as she looked across at Fandral thoughtfully. “I agree that the saronite is an issue within the borders of our forest and perhaps beyond. But there are other civilizations outside our borders. Indeed, we can hardly lay claim to all of Ashenvale in the first place, let alone any lands beyond. For any solution to this saronite, to the taint of the Old Gods, we must first consult with the individuals, the beings, be they tauren, furbolg, or even vry’kul or highborne who already live there.”

This won many a nod, and even Fandral had to agree despite his scowl, staring at Tyrande. The kaldorei were not expansionist by any stretch of the imagination. While at the height of the Azshara Empire, they had spread out an incredible deal, that was different to now, as

Thus Fandral had known that idea was not going to take root in anyone’s mind, not without a lot of prior work. And considering that the kaldorei only had very bare contact with the Tauren of Highmountain and none with their kin in southern Kalimdor, that would take a great deal of work indeed. A part of Fandral simply wanted to go forward with it anyway, to send out groups of Druids and sentinels to plant the saplings and protect them until they began to grow regardless of what anyone in the vicinity might think. But he knew that the majority of his folk didn’t even think beyond the areas of the forests they lived in, let alone beyond the welcoming eves of the trees.

Yet Fandral knew worse, for him personally, was to come.

“Moreover, you are forgetting the lesson learned when you first attempted such a thing. Even saplings of great trees like Nordrassil can be corrupted. Vordrassil.”

That name acted like a whip to the back of Fandral, and his eyes blazed, his hands clenching and unclenching, nature magic almost blooming around his fingers for a moment. Yet he reined himself in, his yellow eyes smoldering.

It was not a name known to most of the surrounding Grand Council, however, and Tyrande turned to look at them. “The attempt to replant saplings of Nordrassil has been tried before. Fandral and his fellows created several such in the past. One of which was… Tainted itself by the touch of the Old God. Because of that, the Old God gained access to the Emerald Dream.”

Tyrande went on even as the crowd began to gasp, mutter and shout imprecations. That so many here did not know of that, or the minor war it caused in Northrend, is telling, alas. We must do better in communicating between castes, let alone between towns, villages and Darnassus proper.

 “I do not fault your reasoning at the time, we had little understanding of how much of the aspects’ blessing would carry over into the saplings. How important those blessings were. Now, though, you ask us to agree to allow you to attempt such again?”

“Vordrassil was tainted, yes,” Fandral hissed before shaking his head. “But the band of druids I sent to the northernmost continent of Azeroth reported to us a hundred and sixty years ago that the great tree we had planted there had taken. There was no sign of taint.”

“Because the Emerald flight has made its home there. Those members of the Emerald flight that have not given themselves over entirely to helping Malfurion and the rest of your fellows in the Emerald Dream, anyway. That is not exactly a roaring success,” Tyrande said, shaking her head.

Fandral turned to look at the crowd of Grand Council members and, realizing that Tyrande had put him in a bind, began to explain more about what it happened more than a thousand years ago when he and those ‘forward-thinking’ members of the Cenarion Circle had thought that they had found a solution to the saronite problem then.

The information that Vordrassil was on Northrend, the southernmost portion of that continent admittedly, made many of the councilmembers breathe sighs of relief. Many of them had known that their people had a small colony there right after they started to rebuild, and all of them remembered the Moonsong Forest disaster caused by the Highborne who had not traveled across the ocean with the rest of their kind. The idea there had been other kaldorei there, however briefly, was a bit of a surprise.

But the details about the war against the corrupted furbolg city, and the fact that the furbolgs had created any population center that could be called a city, that had grown up around the world tree, then called Andrassil, and how they had been tainted made for grim listening. Tyrande herself had led that campaign alongside Cenarius. Fandral and his fellows had not been part of that war, having been under the official displeasure of the rest of the Circle.

Fandral finished the tale without embellishment or trying to hide the fact he had gone behind the rest of the Circle’s back in planting the seeds, turning back to Tyrande, his eyes still smoldering. “I am of course willing to listen to any idea or suggestion that could perhaps save this world from further contamination from the Old Gods sealed within it. But as I have not heard any such solution on offer…”

“Saronite can only give life to the un-living in very specific circumstances, such as what I ran into in the Frostfang Mountains. If it could do so everywhere, the world would even now be dealing with an outbreak of similar creations as the Frostmaul giants,” Tyrande said, holding up her hand.

She then moved back to her chair. Fandral, unwilling to simply stand there and glare at her, was forced to do the same. “But it is a problem. I would ask this Grand Council if they would be willing to send messages to the southern tauren, and… even to the Highborne in their city of Quel’thalas, warning them of the dangers of saronite. Perhaps if they too have been seeing this ore in their territory they will be willing to police themselves once they realize the danger of it.”

Fandral scoffed at that, and he wasn’t the only one. Indeed, even Shandris looked a little unhappy with the idea of communicating with the highborn. The idea of them being on the other side of the Maelstrom was that there would be no further contact between their peoples, something that both sides were very, very happy about. Even giving them a warning such as this would remind the former nobles and so-called ‘rulers’ of their people that the rest of kaldorei society still existed, something none of them really wanted to do.

Thus, it did not surprise Tyrande when her motion on that score was voted down. Similarly, reaching out to the barbaric tauren of southern Kalimdor was put on hold for now. Frankly, no kaldorei knew what was going on past the Frostfang Mountains, and few enough had an interest in finding out.

Thinking on that score, Tyrande was reminded of the Unseen Path, and its newest applicants. Or at least Harry and Sylina were new… Has it already been twenty years? How strange. I wonder how often in that stretch Harry died and was forced to go back to being a young boy again? The thought of that almost put a smile on Tyrande’s face before she concentrated on the current subject. But surely, the Unseen Path would be able to communicate better with the Tauren in southern Kalimdor than way. A goodly number of its members are from the Highmountain valley tauren, after all. Something to think about in the future.

However, the motion that she put forth wasn’t entirely beaten down because there were furbolg settlements within Ashenvale. Like the kaldorei, the bearlike beings did not spread very quickly, if at all, and the two species were on relatively good terms, although that varied from one Furbolg community to another. So the idea of sending out a group of Druids of the Talon to each of them to explain about the saronite was a good one. Furthermore, the furbolgs also occasionally produced shamans, and they could perhaps be trusted to be on the lookout for Taint among their people. Although we should have thought of this years ago, and the furbolgs may need our help to destroy any saronite deposits they find.

The conversation turned back to the Frostfang Mountains and what Tyrande had run into while there. To the best of Fandral’s knowledge, no druid had ever examined any of the sites where Harry and Tyrande had found creation pits for the Frostmaul giants. Furthermore, Frostfang Mountains marked the outer edge of the territory that even the most charitable kaldorei could say was within their realm. Ergo, it was still a concern. A motion was passed through the Grand Council to send some druids there to examine the mountains in general, making Tyrande remember that it’d been many years since Shy-Rotam had been home.

However, one of the members of the Grand Council, a representative for the Guild of educators, men and women who handled teaching youngsters their letters, manners, and history before they reached their maturity and could decide on what they wished to do with their lives, held his hand up. This was a motion to speak, and after a moment, the last speaker paused, nodded his way, and sat down.

“Correct me if I am wrong, Archdruid, and forgive me if I am poking at a sore spot,” the man said slowly. “I simply wish to get the facts straight. It was not distance from its parent tree that allowed Vordrassil to be corrupted, correct?”

Fandral’s teeth ground a little, but he nodded. “Yes. That is indeed the case. The tree on the continent of Azeroth is much, much further from here then Andrassil was.”

Northrend’s southernmost territory was actually only a week’s journey on a ship from the tip of Kalimdor, a fact that Tyrande only knew because she had actually spoken about distances and suchlike between the Broken Isles, Northrend and Kalimdor with the sailors who had taken her and Harry to the Broken Isles twenty-odd years ago.

“Thus, correct me if I’m wrong, but… would it be the various blessings by the Aspects that allow Nordrassil to contain such corruption within the ground?”

Fandral scowled, looking away, unhappy at the idea that the ancient dragon Aspects could do more than the druids with their magic. But Janthese simply nodded in his normal, thoughtful manner. “That is a supposition, but it is a good one.”

Alexstraza, Ysera and Nozdormu, the Aspects of Life, Dreams, and Time, had placed blessings upon Nordrassil to bind the Well of Eternity within Mt. Hyjal beneath it. Nozdromu bound the tree to not be tied to the passage of time, while Alextraza’s blessing of Life had extended to the kaldorei. Ysera bound the tree to the Emerald Dream, her realm. In payment for that, the druids agreed that half or more of their number would sleep so that their spirits could guard the Emerald Dream alongside the green flight.

“Then should we not be discussing this issue of the Old God’s Blood…” The man shuddered a little, shaking his head. “Such a disturbing thought. But should we not discuss this with the Aspects? Surely all of them would have a vested interest in discovering a means of keeping saronite from spreading.”

“What you ask is good common sense, and yet, it is also impossible,” Tyrande said with a sigh. “We have no means of contacting most of the Aspects. The only one we could possibly contact is Ysera, the leader of the Emerald Flight. And as Ysera is stuck in the Emerald Dream, I do not know if she would be able to get any orders out to her flight, let alone have the means to contact anyone else. The world is a very large, vast place, so much so that finding someone, even a being the size of a dragon, is incredibly difficult. None of our people have the skill set to discover the dragons, let alone actually travel the world in search of them.”

Again, though, that brings my thoughts back to the Unseen Path. Perhaps they do. Perhaps Harry has figured out a runic-based means to combat corruption rather than that spell of his, the… Pat-something. Expecto Patros? No, that’s not it. But it’s close. Regardless, that was only able to do so much. With the Unseen Path’s knowledge, though? It could become insanely deadly.

 “However, the idea does have some merit. I feel as if we should probably try to follow up on in some fashion,” Tyrande mused aloud.

“That is a solution for the distant future. I believe that we need to continue with the giant tree seedlings project now! Think of this too. Vordrassil is not the only great tree that connects directly into the Emerald dream. Both of the other trees do as well. I believe that if we are able to create other trees, keep them free of Taint until they are strong enough to protect themselves, we might be able to turn the tide against Yogg-Saron in the Emerald Dream! Not just stop the spread of saronite!” Fandral declared.

A shiver went around the room as if the very air had chilled at the use of the old God’s true name. Names had power, especially the names of such creatures despite them being trapped far, far below the earth. But after a few moments, the chill passed, and the Grand Council began to argue on this point.

Yet the fact of the matter was, Fandral, as much as Tyrande did not like to admit it, had a point. It was entirely possible that with more world trees, the druids locked within the Emerald dream battling the spirit of Yogg-Saron would begin to make some headway, and further saronite outbreaks could be kept to a minimum.

There were other problems of course. Fandral and his fellows had attempted to replant ten saplings, but only only two saplings had grown into the giant type of trees. Fandral said that he and his people had perfected new spells that would hopefully allow them to correctly grow the trees, but it wasn’t exactly something you could test, really.

Yet in the end, with Tyrande unable to come up with a solution to the spreading saronite, Fandral won the argument. The priesthood could cleanse saronite, they could not stop it from erupting from the earth in the first place. Although, Tyrande honestly did not think that it was as big a problem as Fandral painted it. Surely some of the other wild gods would have communicated with Cenarius if such was the case? Tyrande didn’t know, and could not really argue against that.

However, she did have one card to play. “Very well. I can see that this council is going to agree with Archdruid Staghelm on the creation of more giant trees. If Fandral says that they believe they have perfected the nature magic necessary to make certain that saplings do grow to become new world trees, I will not argue. However, I will demand that you, Fandral,” and here, she looked directly over at her counterpart, locking gazes with him. “Come with me to personally examine the areas where I cleansed the land of Yogg-Saron’s touch in the Frostfang mountains, and then... And then I think we should travel to Northrend to examine the ruins of Vordrassil. We cannot afford to make the problems in the Emerald Dream worse going forward, and I think you, personally, Fandral Staghelm need to realize what your past actions have truly cost.”

End flashback

That was why Tyrande and this group found themselves on the trail heading towards the Frostfang mountains. She wondered what they would find there, hoped that they wouldn’t find anything to do with saronite and would be able to continue to the port town of Danaveia without trouble.

Somehow, Tyrande just knew that would not be the case. But hope was eternal, and she smiled again at Shandris, the two of them moving alongside one another through the trees. And at least out here, I don’t have to deal with the endless meetings, debates and discussions I have to back in Darnassus.

Scene break

At the same time that Tyrande and her party were moving through the moonlit night of Ashenvale, looking for a place to spend the day as very few of the kaldorei in the group were willing to travel during the day, evening had barely begun to come to Trueshot Lodge as Recca returned from a patrol. She flew around the Lodge for a few moments, dipping her wings in the way that indicated news, but not serious news, banging one leg against another to create a light, bell-like note.

Together, this works to make the watchers look up, and she snorted. “Going on twenty years now, and only about half of the Unseen Path are used to looking up as well as out. Pitiful two legs.”

While the words were somewhat caustic, they were stated in a fond tone, and Recca smiled as she flew down, landing next to one of the men on duty. A furbolg, his fur was going silver with age, but Nashtooth was still robust for all that.

In the past twenty years, Recca had learned the names of nearly all the members of the Unseen Path. For all their fearsome combat skills, the Path only numbered around ninety warriors at this point. She wasn’t close with many of them, but Recca could say she was friendly with all of them. Indeed, she was closer with several than she was with all but her own mother and sister among her flock.

“That satyr band I’ve been tracking for a while is still down there,” she reported.

The other being nodded. When Nashtooth spoke, his voice came out in a growl. While the Furbolgs were able to speak the common kaldorei language, which was the language of the Unseen Path, they couldn’t quite get some of the vowels right, and they always sounded as if someone had gargled stone. “Pathffffinderr Vurrrg is abed. But Masterrrr Seekerrrr Martuc is waiting fffffoorrrr yourrrr rrrreporrrt.”

“Good, because we’re going to need to do something about this group of satyrs. They seem to be intent on climbing up Highmountain. They don’t seem to have any idea where the entrance to the valley is, but they’re a little too close for comfort.”

The Furbolg bristled at that, nodding his head firmly, gesturing her again inside wordlessly, although as she passed, he said, “I will join whatevvvverrrr mission is launched against them. I hate those creaturrrres!”

Recca nodded, although she didn’t feel hatred towards the satyrs, more anger than anything else. Much like her own harpies and their voices and habitually flighty nature, the satyrs could not help how they have been created, yet the satyr’s had not tried to rise above their origins as the harpies had now or in the past under Aviana. And now, unlike our flock, there’s no such thing as a good satyr out there. Or if there is, the Unseen Path hasn’t run into them. By Aviana, given all I’ve learned about the satyrs, it’s the opposite. While we harpies can be corrupted, satyrs corrupt the very land they pass through, and are born loving violence, causing pain and passing their curse on to others. Including harpies.

That had been a revelation, when she had heard of it. The study of Satyrs was not hidden beyond the Oaths separating Oathkeepers like her from Seekers like Davo and the rest, as they were the most common remnant of the Burning Legion left on Kalimdor, Northrend and the islands by far. The Unseen Path even had records of harpies being captured and unwillingly turned by satyrs, not just working alongside them in order to have access to Fel magic.

If the harpies did not give in to the Fel or willingly reach out to it, then the Satyr Curse would transform their bodies to that of a satyr, a process that Recca had learned Harry had actually seen and interrupted before coming to the Broken Isles. The process drove harpies, like any other thus cursed, insane, breaking the individual the victim had been. When the process finished, nothing of the being’s past, male, female, tauren, kaldorei, or harpy, remained.

Recca had a good deal of sympathy for those who were turned against her will, and only hatred for those harpies who became dependent on the Fel Magic. But the Unseen Path had hundreds of years of notes, observations and even a journal denoting one of their members sacrificing himself to the Curse to see if he could be saved and brought back. He could not. Within a week of the first sign of transformation, the Curse had torn his mind and soul apart, before the changes to his body finished.

That was the hard line. If someone was captured by satyrs and subjected to the torture that Harry had seen, his or her friends had a week to rescue them at most before the being turned. And even then, few minds were strong enough to survive more than a day under the torture the satyrs would subject anyone who fell into their hands to.

Which isn’t even mentioning the way the satyrs feed on the nature magic around them. I’ve seen that for myself now, the area left behind them being dead, twisted and warped. No, I have no pity whatsoever for the satyrs themselves, only their victims.

Reporting what she had discovered to the chief seeker took but a moment. After that, Recca first went in search of the twins. She found them in the main hallway, sitting with several tauren, playing a tauren game of chance.

While the past twenty years hadn’t touched Recca or the older harpies much at all physically, the younger twins had aged and now looked in their mid-twenties, almost. No longer were they the youngest in the flock, a role taken by Viol’s daughter. Alari and her sister were still a little flighty, but their bodies had matured, their faces thinning out, their hair growing longer, and their wings broader and stronger. And, Recca mused, as she looked at the pair, their chests are almost equal to mine. Almost.

As she pranced up to the two of them, Recca took a moment to thrust her chest out just a little, knowing it got to them even now. One of them looked up, and her eye instantly began to twitch a little. The pair have also become far more expressive, which is nice. Certainly helpful in moments like this. “Hey, you two, Master Seeker Martuc wants the two of you ready to take a message out to Mother. A group of us might be heading out to deal with the satyrs I reported about a few days back, and we might want some of the other harpies with us.”

The two of them nodded and stood up from the game of chance, looking at her with their heads cocked to one side as they intoned as one, “And Harry? Will he be part of this group?”

“Probably,” Recca answered with a shrug. Still after him despite the fact he hasn’t shown any sign of giving in, hmmm? Well, I can’t say I blame them. “In fact, we might use that as a start to his and my First Journey.”

The twins grumbled at that, but one of the tauren they had been gambling with chuckle. Tjar spoke for his fellows. “Give over, you two. You’ve not even become Oathkeepers in the past twenty years. You’ve had more than enough time to join us, but you haven’t. You’re much more like Sylina in that you like to travel and have fun than Harry, who likes to explore but also to fight, learn and even experiment.”

“We know,”

“But you don’t have to,”

“Point it out!” The twins retorted.

“Would you like it more if we talked about how he doesn’t find wings or sparrow legs attractive?” Recca snarked. She had gotten over her interest in Harry pretty quickly into the training the Unseen Path heaped on her, a term she used with a lot of weight even in her own head.

As the first harpy to ever join the Unseen Path, the trainers hadn’t known what to do with her. They had replied to this in the manner of all fitness sadists everywhere: by piling on the exercises and seeing what worked. For the first year, Recca had not gone to bed without being exhausted and sore all over her body.

Neither of the twins had joined her for training then or since. Instead, they had taken to teasing and taunting her the entire time.

“POUT!” Aleri and Alari put action to word as they pouted hard at Recca and then around at the Tauren. Two of them laughed, but Lufar looked over at Recca. “So Master Seeker Martuc agreed that you and Harry could take your First Journey together?”

“Yes,” Recca said with a fierce grin. “Considering Harry hopes to go a lot further afield than most First Journeys, he and Pathfinder Vurg agreed that merging ours together is a good idea.”

Much like the tauren, who made up a little over a third of the Unseen Path’s numbers, the Unseen Path believed in journeys marking the steps taken by people as they advanced through the brotherhood. Cartographers would normally be sent out to remap some important but known location on the Broken Isles. Seekers would be sent out to either guard Senior Cartographers as they went on longer missions or to deal with specific threats within the Broken Isles identified by routine scouting missions on their First Journey. Normally, they did so alone, but if several Seekers went on a First Journey together, they were allowed to travel further from Talon Peak.

Harry, who had been a Seeker for a little under nineteen years now, had yet to actually go on such a mission simply because of how important he was to the order in terms of his various projects. Recca understood that, but now that she had also taken many of the Oaths necessary to become a Seeker, she had respectfully asked if she could wait to go on her own seeker mission.

Pathfinder Vurg had agreed. And only two months ago the three leaders and Harry had agreed that Harry’s two runic apprentices could continue most of Harry’s work within the order. Neither of the Kaldorei were very good about experimenting with runes, and none but Harry could actually see the magic involved with them, but, like the Tauren he had trained in the Highmountain Tribe, they would be able to mass produce much of the runic arrays he had designed.

With teasing and message delivering done with, Recca left the twins to their own devices, knowing they’d be willing to take a message to Vurg with ease and would probably stay with the flock afterward.

As she left the main hall, Recca thought about why she had been ordered to speak to Martuc instead of Vurg and sighed. Vurg’s fading fast.

Pathfinder Vurg had been ancient for his people before the harpies had met Harry and the others. That had been twenty years ago. Vurg’s body had begun to fade away quickly within a few years of the harpies' arrival in the valley, although his mind had remained sharp and concise before the last five months or so. With both his voice and mind going, Vurg had been forced to turn over even more of the day to day decisions to Milifiana and Martuc, although he refused to give up all his authority just yet.

For the harpies, especially Recca, since as a member of the Unseen Path, she saw more of Vurg than any of the others, the sight was horrifying. To see someone fade so quickly, it’s like watching someone hit the Downdraft, but way faster. It’s a damn shame, too. Vurg was a great leader. And… and watching him fade like that makes me wonder what will happen when Mama…

Recca resolutely shook her head so hard she sent her back feathers rustling for a moment, dispelling that maudlin thought. She forcibly shifted her thoughts to the future and what might happen after Vurg passed on. I have to wonder who’s going to become the next Pathfinder. I know it won’t be Milifiana. She’s happiest stuck in her library. Harry and me are too green, thank Aviana and Ohn’ahra alike! Master Seeker Martuc could maybe step in along with a few others, but I don’t think he’s well-liked enough among the tauren to take the position permanently. Still, he doesn’t have to be.

While Pathfinders had been appointed by their predecessors in the past, Recca had learned that was only in times of turmoil or war. In times of peace, the senior members of the unseen Path voted for a new Pathfinder. There had even been a time when the position rotated between several of the kaldorei members, the ones who had been part of the order since its inception. With no clear threat out there, Recca felt that might work, so long as there was precedence to choose someone to take the position permanently if the Unseen Path suddenly discovered demonic incursions, or signs of major Old God Taint.

Talons clacking gently on the stone of the passageway, Recca wound her way down into the area devoted to the Smithies, carpenters and other craftsmen within the order. Harry had been given his own place here around fifteen years ago, a surprise for him, as previously, he’d simply been using one of the training areas or the main hall to teach his two apprentices or work on his own projects.

He had seemed touched at the time, and Recca smiled now as she heard him working on something within, the sound barely audible over one of the blacksmiths working similarly nearby. She stood there in the doorway for a moment, watching Harry as he lifted one of the taurens double ended war staffs up to the light of a magical lamp set into the roof of his workspace, staring at some of the runes he had finished etching on the metal of the weapons heads one after another. “Honestly! Davo, you better appreciate this, fire and ice indeed!”

“I’m sure he will, Harry. And he might have a chance to try it out soon,” Recca said, causing Harry to turn towards her.

He smiled at her, nodding his head, then gesturing over to a chair nearby. It had been created specifically for harpies in mind stuck against the wall in a way that forced you to slide into it like a booth, with a grip at the bottom for their claws. It had no armrests but had an extra thick padded cushion and an opening between it and the backrest for their tails. “Take a seat and tell me more, Recca. I’ve been buried down here finishing up the last of the weapons enhancements.”

“Does that include something for me?” Recca asked, her teeth flashing in an eager grin. “I don’t think you’ve enchanted anything for me, Aleri, Alari, or any of the rest of the flock.”

Harry shook his head at the harpy’s avaricious question, turning away to examine the weapon he’d been working on once more. “You’ll just have to see, won’t you?”

He heard Recca grumble at that but knew she wouldn’t be annoyed by the wait over much, unlike if he had said something like that to either of the twins. Recca understood that anticipation added to the impact of a gift. He glanced over to a corner for a moment, where a small blanket covered the weapon he and the kaldorei smiths had crafted a weapon for Recca. It wasn’t done just yet, but Harry felt he could finish it in two or three days if he pushed.

As for what he was currently working on, Davo’s specific request to add a heat-based and ice-based attack to either side of his war staff had proven annoying. As Harry had feared before, he had started to enhance weapons via runes, etching the runes into the weapons was difficult, fiddly work. Especially since Harry then had to figure out a way to protect the weapon from damage. With swords, that was relatively easy. Putting the runes on the tang of the blade or the hilt prior to wrapping it in leather worked, although it sharply curtailed the size of the array he could put on it.

Unfortunately, there was no way to put the runes on the blade unless the blade could be further enchanted to be impervious to damage. Which was not possible in this world or back on Earth. Yes, there had been an Impervious charm, but the charm only worked for so long, the energy of the charm bleeding off quickly. And in this world, there was no Nature or Arcane-based spell that could come even close to that. So the hilt it was.

For Shaman and druid staffs, similarly, protecting the runes, or at least hiding them, was somewhat easy. Once Harry had perfected the art of putting runs on cylindrical surfaces, anyway. God, looking back on it, that was way more difficult than it should have been. Even after Shali and Wotor took over creating bags of plenty it took me years to master etching runes on cylinders to the point I could experiment with them. Chakrams were so much easier.

Shali Thunderroll and Wotor Everspring were two kaldorei Cartographers who had volunteered to learn runes from Harry. By this point, they were good enough to do any of the runic arrays he had created, but neither had the imagination or understanding of the basic runic languages of Harry’s old world to try and experiment. Nor did they want to. To both Shali and Wotor, Harry’s runes were a means to an end, making the Unseen Path stronger or Trueshot Lodge a nice place to live in. To Harry, they were a source of fascination, much like his education in mapmaking had turned out to be. Along with so much else he had learned over the last two decades.  

My Chakrams and Sylina’s were a fascinating experiment, and with the runes on the inner edge of the chakram, I didn’t need to worry about damage to the runes that would disrupt the array. Well… heh, and if something does, well, as Sylina put it, “The explosion will happen over there, well away from me,” heh. Now, Davo’s idea, ugh. I spent months thinking that two different arrays, both gathering magic without any point of interaction, was the way to go, only to never get it to work without breaking the material down, the arrays fighting one another within the wood or, worse, just not working. Blast it all!

“I know that grumble, Harry. Stop it. You’re the only one who understands your strange etchings, and you’ve always maintained you were not a master in them in your old life,” Recca reproved gently. “Don’t beat yourself up over whatever you’re thinking of.”

“I know that, but drat it, I should have thought about the fact that both heat and cold runic arrays had the same basic structure and shared a rune back in my old world! I should have investigated the meaning of the rune they had in common,” Harry grumbled, running a hand idly through his hair for a moment before chuckling wryly as his hand wound down to a scar on his chin. Hah, before coming to this world, I always thought that long hair was something that Snape, Malfoy and other berks like them had just for dramatic effect, so they could toss it over their shoulders arrogantly as they strode away or to add to that whole billowing effect thing Snape’s cloak did every time he walked into a room.

Harry did not have long hair for dramatic effect. Harry had long hair because neither the kaldorei nor the tauren went into short hair really. The kaldorei, a man or woman, did not cut their hair unless they had injuries on their heads that prevented them from having a uniform hairstyle. There were admittedly several of those within the Unseen Path, but they were the exception not the rule. Tauren manes were almost important to them as height was.

Together the various members of the Unseen Path, well, and Harry’s own unruly Potter Hair, had finally worn him down to the point where he had gone for years now without cutting it. Still, I’ve kept from allowing them to put beads into my hair or anything else. There is that at least.

Harry’s hair now fell to his shoulders. It was surprisingly curly at the tips. Several crimson streaks along one side of his head appeared if he spent time in his phoenix form, but eventually faded bar one permanent streak. Similarly, his nails routinely looked more like small scales if he had been meditating on his basilisk form. A form I still don’t have as good a grasp on even now than I have on my Phoenix form. I know I’ve only been able to devote barely a few hours a week given all there has been to learn and do, but still, something is still holding me back there. I, I don’t think it’s environmental, or some kind of conscious block. No, there is something fundamental to the basilisk’s soul that I am just missing, and until I grasp it, I can’t connect to my basilisk side as well as my phoenix side.

However, the changes to Harry’s hair and fingers was perhaps the least of the changes that had come over here in the past twenty years. For one thing, while previously, his clothing had been more that of a tauren than a kaldorei, now it was almost entirely his own style. His leather leggings had been replaced by new ones, with several pairs being further enhanced by scale mail. They had come from offerings that Quetzal had given him, worked into his legs and into a chest plate by the blacksmiths and leather workers among the Unseen Path. Rather than form-fitting as both leggings and shirt tended to be among kaldorei regardless of gender, Harry’s pants hung loose on him, mimicking his old, and long destroyed, jeans.

Over his upper body, Harry routinely wore a cotton shirt, although it was currently hidden under a leather apron, a gag gift from the carpenters. A heavy wide belt was always around his waist now-a-days, containing three small bags of holding. One held just the Sword of Gryffindor, Another held various supplies that didn’t go in the far larger bag of holding that held Harry’s yurt, which itself held a lot of cooking and camping supplies.

The third was more a sheath for his secondary weapon: a dozen enchanted chakrams that Harry could, thanks to his magic, call out of the bag. With training, Harry had learned to use a modified Leviosa spell to control as many as nine of them at the same time, launching them to attack or using them defensively.

Between the various pouches, numerous small runestones hung, ready for use along with blank places for shrunken totems at need. A buckler, small at the moment to fit on his belt like a decoration, finished Harry’s accouterments. It could be expanded at a touch of a finger to cover Harry’s entire body or to simply rest on his arm via an Engorgio charm, another little idea that Harry had over the past twenty years to use a simple spell to create an incredible effect.

His primary weapon was also not the sword of Gryffindor. The blade remained a backup, a ‘everything’s gone to shite’ weapon, not something he would use every day.

Instead, Harry had adopted a spear style over the past twenty years, learning from both kaldorei and tauren. One end of the spear was capped with a kind of bronze-like metal, which Harry could use to electrocute people he touched with it thanks to the runes underneath the metal. The spear tip was enchanted with another array to have a piercing edge that would go through stone like a hot knife through butter. It could be blocked by magic, but little else.

Most of Harry’s equipment was now based on runes, although he had not neglected the rest of his training, Davo and the others wouldn’t’ve let him if he even tried. With their help, Harry had developed several different combat styles, close, area of effect, and ambush, the last being the closest to his prior combat style. All of them though were backed up by his runes to such a degree that the others had begun to call him a runic warrior, much like they would call someone else a druid or shaman.

It was a name that Harry wore with pride. He only hoped to test out his new combat style on some unworthy individuals soon.

I’m not bloodthirsty or anything like that, but a matter of time before I do have such a target. Satyrs, trolls, monsters of the Old Gods, or reaving vry’kul. One group or another will cross my path once a start my First Journey, I’m certain. And frankly, while these past twenty plus years have been nice, but I doubt that Lady Death put me on this world so that I could enjoy peace. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone else, but I am getting a little antsy being stuck here in Trueshot Lodge. Not that the years have been nice to me, even above and beyond my new abilities and weapon styles. I’ve learned a lot here, but I think it is time to move on.

That was a massive understatement, one that would have had any of his friends back on Earth twitching, Harry reflected ruefully as he finished his inspection of Davo’s weapon. Mind you, I’d wager Hermione or Luna would already be twitching. All of the knowledge that is locked behind the oath of the Seeker, and more to be learned in the future. It would infuriate and light a fire in them to learn like no other.

“Never mind. Come on, I can listen and clean up here at the same time. Tell me more about what Davo might have a chance to use his weapon on,” Harry requested.

As Harry finished with the work, Recca told him about the satyrs, her eyes locked on Harry’s back, smiling faintly. When they had first met, Harry’s body had been more like that of the twins, a bit on the young side with a good deal of growing to do yet, but that of an adult for all that, and attractive.

Now, he was a man who, according to Harry, was in his prime for his people. He was in his forties and with time and training had developed extremely broad shoulders, and a deep chest, in comparison to most of the kaldorei, even the blacksmiths. Indeed, he had more visible muscles than even Feldral, and with his unruly hair, he looked quite handsome, much better than most of the male kaldorei Recca had seen in her life up to this point.

And Recca wasn’t the only one who noticed. The twins, although they had been forced to give up on Harry ever looking at them the way they hoped to, still eyed him occasionally these past few years. And even Irene, Recca’s mother, had also been looking at Harry like he was a juicy boar that she wanted to hunt down.

Harry, though, despite the fact that he and Sylina had called it quits on their physical relationship a few years ago, hadn’t evinced any interest in any of them. Although, that could be because he simply hasn’t had the time. I swear I can’t remember a day where he didn’t wake up before dawn and then was asleep well after we had all gone to bed. Not that I can blame him for that. There is so much to learn about the burning Legion, about satyrs, about the beasts of the Old Gods and everything else! And we haven’t even learned it all yet, even now! Still, I don’t really care about romance much myself, so I can’t talk. Looking though, I like doing that a lot when it’s someone built like Harry.

Harry finished cleaning up his workshop and turned to Recca, smiling lightly and bowing towards the doorway. “Come on. Let’s go speak with Martuc. If we need to move against those satyrs, it’s best to do so quickly. I’d really like to start my First Journey now that my apprentices can keep up the work with the communication cylinders and the disappearing toilets. I’ve got some mountains, the burning kind of mountains, I want to see..”

Recca chuckled, bopping her shoulder against Harry’s as they walked through the hallway heading upwards. “Ha, everyone knows that, Harry. Or have you forgotten you had an audience the last time you tried to summon an air elemental?”

“Yes, blast it. I had willfully indeed forgotten that I had an audience for my humiliations, thank you,” Harry mock-growled, pushing the older but far less dense harpy lightly in the shoulder. “I’ve been able to make a contract with another fire elemental, but not a single air elemental has ever responded to me before that whatever-she-is on the other side takes command of the sending and…”

“WOoosh!Recca quipped, making the sound of air moving quickly, before going on thoughtfully, “Which quickly turns into SCREAAKKK as the air violently starts to wear down everything in its vicinity.”

“Yes, thank you, Recca, I didn’t need the reminder. Good grief, with friends like you who need enemies,” Harry retorted before chuckling along with Recca as they reached the main hall.

However, as they did, alarms began to sound. The three Tauren scattered around the cavern flinched, staring all around them in confusion while Harry grimaced, and Recca squawked, raising her wings to cover her ears as she crouched down, staring all around her in shock as many of the other members of the Unseen Path did the same. “What is…”

The alarms abruptly cut off as quickly as they started, and a runner from one of the guard posts came down, shouting, “False alarm! We saw the shape in the sky before he saw the color.”

“You would sound that kind of thing if you spotted me or one of the others returning and didn’t recognize us!??” Recca exclaimed, shaking her ears out. “Good grief! Talk about overreacting.”

“That alarm would never be used for a harpy, or even a flock of them,” A nearby kaldorei said, shaking his head dryly. “No, that alarm is only sounded if we see a dragon in the air.” He paused, waiting for the tauren, Harry, Recca, and the twins, who had yet to leave on their mission and who had reacted as poorly as Reeca had, to look at him in shock and horror. Then he smirked. “Of course, this valley is hidden such that even dragons wouldn’t be able to spot it physically or magically unless the dragon knows we’re here already.”

At that, Harry blinked, then his eyes widened in surprise. “This would be one of the two green dragons who are part of the Order? I thought Vurg said they both had distanced themselves from the Unseen Path.”

“Actually, Versera stops in every seven hundred years or so, hence why Vurg didn’t know about it. She’s the source of most of our information about the geography of the continent of Azeroth beyond the area claimed by the Highborne. Tuculus hasn’t been seen by any since the war against the Necrodark. Although,” the kaldorei paused, frowning a little. “It’s actually a little early for her to stop by, but I suppose she might be getting bored.”

“A bored green dragon? Oh dear,” Harry murmured while an eager grin began to cross Recca’s features. “Why does that sound like a disaster waiting to happen?”

“She is a little flighty, but don’t worry, she’s not a prankster or anything like that. I think you will get along quite well, really,” the kaldorei opined.

Hearing that the dragon was actually friendly, the twins looked at one another, then raced as fast as they could out of the cavern, which, admittedly, wasn’t all that fast. The tunnels throughout Trueshot Lodge weren’t wide enough for either girl to spread their wings any longer, and no harpy could move very quickly on their talons. Behind them, the others followed, arriving outside in time to watch the two young harpies take off, heading up to fly around the Green dragon as she grew closer.

The watchers on the ground watched as her mouth opened as if she was about to launch a breath attack before the dragon craned her neck to look back down, having possibly seen them out of the corner of its eye. As high as the dragon was, Harry doubted that he would have been able to make out much in his phoenix form, but the dragon evidently could, and seeing Harry, several kaldorei, and tauren coming out of Trueshot Lodge to greet her, the dragon clamped her jaws shut again, looking sideways at the two harpies for a moment, before seeming to do a full body shrug, as she continued to circle Talon Peak.

Soon, it was directly above the talon-shaped hill, still circling, but close enough that Harry was able to make out more details and compare them to Badrinath.

The Green dragon was a little smaller in body than the black dragon that Harry, Tyrande and the band of tauren with them had fought in the caves of the drogbar under Highmountain Valley. It looked a little more sinuous, too, its body thinner all around, with a slightly shorter tail but wider, more powerful-looking wings and a smaller crest. Looking at it, Harry got the impression that this dragon was more built for speed and endurance in the air than durability. The dragon’s scales also gleamed scintillating green in the fading light of evening, and as it twisted its head once more to look down at them, Harry could see that its eyes were a bright, luminescent blue.

That blue spread all over the dragon’s body for a second, the gleam of Arcane magic at work. A second later, it shrunk noticeably, losing at least its tail in length, and then, as it finished another turn around the hill, it shrunk once more. Finally, as she landed, the dragon was only about the size of Quetzal, who reared up to stare at the dragon. “Fascinating! Another dragon. And according to the others, this one is friendly to boot. How amazing. I cannot think of any of my race that have interacted with a dragon, let alone fought one, and been in the presence of a second.”

“To hear a snake speak in the common language of the kaldorei is equally fascinating to me, as is the tale inherent in your words, serpent,” the dragon said, hissing in excitement as she stared down at Quincy for a second before twisting her neck around to look at the two twins, who were now flying above her. “I can see a lot has changed since the last time I was here.”

The voice was powerfully deep, almost subterranean in its baritone depths, yet still feminine. Regardless of gender, however, this was a dragon in all her glory, and Quetzal instantly bowed his head, showing the dragon the unthinking respect that any reptile gave the greatest of their kind. “I thank you for your kind words, mistress. But I did not learn this language per se. My knowledge of it was gifted to me by the speaker, Harry. He can speak my tongue and use Arcane magic to give me and other animals the tongue of the kaldorei.”

“Indeed?” The dragon growled thoughtfully, then looked over at the young harpies and Recca, tucking her head thoughtfully to one side, the motion sinuous and quite snakelike to anyone who had spent any time with Quetzal. “And three harpies. I also thought I saw a few others at the other end of the valley. But I take it that they are welcome guests?”

“They are, honored Versera,” Master seeker Martuc said, bowing his head towards the dragon. “There have been a lot of changes to the Unseen Path since last you stopped by. Many of those changes initially were very poor, but in the past twenty-one years, we’ve been able to turn around, and most since have been extremely positive.”

“Indeed! And most of these changes have to do with the one who has an unusual smell and who looks like a small vry’kul, right?” The dragon sniffed the air, then leaned down towards Harry, her snout nearly pressing into his chest and face as she sniffed again before leaning back. As she did, the smaller scales on her face seemed to darken a little bit, and she quickly turned to look over at Martuc. “He smells of ancient magic and…. Something like a dragon, but not quite, and something like a bird, or a snake, but not quite that either. What exactly are you?”

“I’m Harry Potter, and I’m very glad that you called me a small vry’kul rather than a diseased one. That would’ve gotten our interaction off on the entirely wrong foot,” Harry drawled, although he was wondering what her current expression meant. He’d only met two dragon before this and Badrinath, the only one he’d met in his dragon form hadn’t exactly been in a talking mood. Worse, perhaps because Harry had been meditating early that morning on his basilisk side, that side of his chimeric soul reared up suddenly, staring through his eyes, almost pushing out into his Occlumentic Realm as it gazed at the female dragon with interest. Why that was, Harry didn’t know, and he didn’t like a lot of the other feelings he was getting from that side of his soul. Demanding is in there, along with a need to, to dominate? What the heck?

For her part, Versera, daughter of Merithra, was fascinated. She had never smelled anything quite like Harry Potter before. Ancient, ancient powers rested within Harry, or perhaps had interacted with him at some point? It almost, but not quite, smelled like he was a member of the black dragon flight. But it was different enough that she knew that wasn’t the case. He smelled of power and not just the arcane, magical kind. There was something else to him. Not the bird scent. Her mind wasn’t nearly as latched onto as the rest, and her conscious mind wondered if perhaps he smelled of birds because he was close to the harpy standing on her talons next to him. No, something else was emanating from Harry Potter, something ancient, dark, almost, and powerful.

Oddly, all of that combined to create a strange musk in the air to Versera’s nose, an extremely male kind of scent, as if he were a very powerful male dragon. Oh my, I was not ready for that when I decided to visit Talon Peak.

“Harry is indeed the center of many of the positive changes to the Unseen Path. Would you like to come in and speak about it?” Martuc asked politely. “It is nearly dinner time, and I seem to recall that you liked our mushroom steaks.”

“Oooh, I did indeed! But, first, let me change. You know I have spoken before of how my taste buds change from my real body to that of my kaldorei form,” Versera said before pausing and looking at the highborn Ranger for a moment. “And I see that another strange fellow has joined you all. Quite an interesting band you have become.”

“I wished to join the Unseen Path mistress, although its presence among my folk is very vague and nebulous,” Lathariel said, bowing his head. “I also volunteered to test a, a theory, as it were, and thus came to Trueshot Lodge and this valley. Hence why I came from the woods. I split my time, staying in the woods most of the time these days.”

“I suppose that experiment has something to do with that new Well of Eternity you all have created? It’s incredibly well shielded by Arcane magics thankfully, but we are aware of it.” There was no censure in Versera’s tone, although the listeners got the impression that she was decidedly neutral to the creation of the Sunwell and perhaps the Highborne in general.

Then, Versera shrugged her body once more, turning away, glancing at Quetzal and Harry before closing her eyes. A bright blue glow suffused her body again, and it slowly began to shrink, changing as it did. “All you males had best turn around. I’ve never quite gotten the hang of changing and conjuring clothing at the same time,” Versera said tartly. “And while I may be a dragon, I am also a female, and I know of certain proprieties among kaldorei. That includes you, large fellow.”

“Why would I care about the female form of any race?” Quetzal questioned querulously. He still obeyed, though twisting his body around in a spiral pattern, staring back into Trueshot Lodge for a moment.

Harry and the others did the same although Recca and the harpies did not, watching as the transformation continued, then finished. The twins gasped, then grumbled to one another, their voices a little too low and far away from Harry to put him here, but their disgruntled attitude coming through clearly.

“Ugh, look at her!” Aleri snarled.

“I know, that’s so unfair. Why couldn’t we have figured out how to transform like Mother can?” her sister pouted.

“Yes, all we have gotten from Ohn’ahra’s favor is the ability to flash our wings,” Aleri whined.

For her part, Recca let loose a low whistle. “Wow! Are you able to shift and change that form of yours however you wish? Because if so, you did a good job. If not, I might get jealous if that is how you would look if you were born as a kaldorei.”

“I’m a dragon, a creature of magic. While I don’t have nearly as much conscious control of my magic as a member of the blue flight would, transforming like this is simple enough. Painful but simple. For some reason, my scales are always a little resistant to changing into skin,” Versera answered, sounding first amused, then a tad bit disgruntled with the last words.

With her body change, Versera’s voice had also changed. It had now become a nice, furry kind of contralto, sounding similar to Tyrande but not quite. It was a little deeper and more than a little bit younger sounding now, putting Harry in mind of Sylina, or better, her friend Berena in tone. “Is there something wrong with your young companions? Sisters?”

“Cousins, actually. I am a daughter of Irene Skyguard, daughter of Matriarch Cassandra Moonflight. Alari and Aleri Moonfeather are Matriarch Cassandra’s daughters, her second to youngest at present,” Recca supplied. Until a harpy had a clutch of their own, their last names always had a connection back to their mother. Recca’s was Skyblood.

“And I will note that you and those two, despite their muttering, sound nothing whatsoever like harpies have before. Even when Aviana was alive and well your voices sounded like the screeching of metal on stone,” Versera said, her tone starting tart but turning warm after a few seconds as there was a whoosh of something. “It is nice to hear and to see that harpies have begun to become a little more civilized I guess. It seems the wrong term to use, but it’s as close as I can think of to what I mean.”

“I understand, but I have to warn you, it’s only our clutch that is so,” Recca warned, followed by a light thwap as if she had hit the twins over their heads with her wings. “Our mother kept us from reaching out for corrupted magic to fill the void that Aviana’s death left within us for centuries. Since interacting with the Unseen Path, we have been given a totem of Ohn’ahra.”

“Ah, I see, that is amazing!” Versera exclaimed enthusiastically. “Is that why your voices changed?”

“No, mistress,” Recca said apologetically. “That we also have to place at Harry’s feet.”

There was a sound of rustling clothing for a moment, Versera’s voice becoming muffled as Harry continued to stare straight ahead. “Yet again, something else to be set at the feet of the one with the extremely confusing smell?” There was a brief pause, a final rustle of clothing, and Versera’s voice spoke again. “All right, all of you can look now. And I heard that there were mushroom steaks on the offering?”

When Harry turned around, his eyes widened, and despite his physical and mental age, he was able to hold in a whistle of amazement, if barely. A part of Harry knew that Versera’s body was simply a creation of her mind, that she had simply crafted it like someone would be able to craft a statue out of clay. Yet that did not take away from its sheer beauty or the unique nature of it.

Her body looked around the same age as the currently absent Sylina, but there, the resemblance ended. She was short first, coming only to Harry’s mid-chest, given how much taller he was now than when he had arrived at Talon Peak. That made her a good foot shorter than Sylina. Yet Versera was incredibly well-built for all that, with larger breasts than Sylina and thinner, more powerful-looking legs with wide hips. Her ears were a little thinner than Sylina’s and were currently waggling back and forth up and down in excitement as she looked around at Recca, Lathariel, Harry and the other members of the Unseen Path.

Yet her body’s shape wasn’t the most striking thing about Versera. Because, for some reason, she did not look entirely like a kaldorei. It was very clear that she had created this body in order to move among tauren and kaldorei, not to look as if she was one of them.

Because Versera was green. Different colors of green.

Her hair was a dark pine green color, falling down her back in a wild cascade of hair that, much like her voice, reminded Harry somewhat of Tyrande. Her skin was the lightest kind of green color Harry had yet seen in this world, reminding Harry almost of this strange tea that Hermione had made him try from China. Mat-something I can’t remember. Her lips were somehow a darker green, the color of emerald, matching her previous scales precisely. Her nails were the same color. Even her sundress was green, a mix of differently shaped green leaves. The only splash of another color was her ocean-blue eyes.

All in all, Versera was easily one of the most striking women that Harry had ever seen in this world, right up there with Tyrande, and he could only shake his head in wonder. And thank the deities that he was meeting this woman when he was in his fully adult body, and no longer subjected to the onset of hormones and the lack of control of said that marked his teenage years. That would have been insanely embarrassing.

Versera smiled at them all, then moved forward, moving to stand between Quetzal and Harry, looking at them closely, her ears flicking sideways away from her head in interest. “I believe that the instigator of all the changes here should be the one to explain them, don’t you? I am greatly looking forward to this, I think.”

The tale that was shared over the evening meal in the cafeteria was one of the best that Versera had heard since the War of the Ancients. Say what you would for most of her flight, they didn’t go into wild adventures of derring-do, and they certainly didn’t create entirely new realms of magic as this Harry fellow had apparently done. Nor was Harry shy about saying that there were things he would not share with Versera until he got to know her, even as another member of the Unseen Path.

That was fine. Versera had pierced enough together already. This is no vry’kul, whatever he might look like, She mused as the meal slowly wound down. Where has he come from? The future? Surely the bronze flight would have warned everyone else that there was some manner of time traveler in play? Could he come from another dimension? That is a better explanation, given how Malygos is… mentally indisposed, as he has been for several thousand years now.

Malygos was the leader of the Blue Dragonflight, the Aspect of magic, and he was the most powerful magic user on the planet of Azeroth. That had not saved his flight from near annihilation at the hands of the Dragon Soul, a gem infused with the powers of all the Aspects and turned against the dragons near the beginning of the War of the Ancients by be who would be called Deathwing.

The losses taken in that betrayal had crippled the Dragonflights, wiping out more than two-thirds of their numbers in one battle, removing most of their ability to help the kaldorei in the war against the Burning Legion. It was only near the end of the war that the Aspects, the leaders of the Flights of Bronze, Red and Green, resumed active participation in the fight against the Burning Legion, and rebuilding after the Sundering, although none of them realized how the war would end at the time. Versera herself had fought in that war, first helping to hunt down black dragons, then acting as a member of the Unseen Path to disrupt the plans of the demons on numerous occasions, and still remembered how astonished she was at Malfurion’s mad plan to destroy the Well of Eternity.

The losses his flight had sustained in the betrayal had driven Malygos into deep depression and near catatonia. As far as Versera or any of the green dragons knew, he was still secluded away, with a few members of the blue dragon flight on the island of Coldarra, an island off the northeastern edge of Northrend, about as far north as you could get and still have the ocean be water instead of ice.

The number of active blue dragon flight members had then been greatly reduced again during the disaster in the Moonsong forest of Northrend thanks to the actions of the Highborne colony there. The entire colony of Highborne had been wiped out in the magical disaster that had also slain all of the blue dragons who had attacked them for their use of Arcane. The magical energies of the dragons had all been released instantaneously into the forest, changing the Moonsong Forest to Crystal Song, changing both the animals and the fauna alike.

The green dragons who lived in the boughs of the Great Tree on the continent of Azeroth, which they helped remain clear of corruption, had sometimes speculated that the Blue Dragon Flight had probably less than a hundred members left, all told at this point, including Malygos, scattered around the world. Most of those were in Northrend, far, far away from where any living creature could exist in the cold of that northern continent, wanting nothing to do with anyone. Not even one another. Such was the flight’s response to their leader’s mental malaise and their losses.

As the meal, but not the stories, ended, Versera wondered idly if the mystery of Harry Potter and his strange magic, and his perhaps even stranger origins, would be enough to rouse some of the blue dragons from their self-imposed exile from the world. If only I knew for a fact that some of my old friends among them still lived, I might be inclined to try and find one of them. As it is though, I think my boredom would be better dealt with by sticking close to Harry.

By the time Martuc, Milifiana and Harry had told Versera everything that had happened since the last time she had stopped in at Trueshot Lodge, it was deep into the night and the conversation had shifted from the cafeteria up into the library. Sitting alone to one side of a small sitting area, Versera stretched out in her kaldorei form, luxuriating in the touch of silk fabric underneath her kaldorei skin. Say what you will about the smaller races, but their sense of touch is far more developed than our own. Hearing, sight, smell, we beat them in all of that. But not touch, or taste. Well, outside of meat, anyway.

Dragons were carnivores, after all. Very few of them willingly ate anything but meat in their normal body, and their taste buds were not developed to the point that they could taste anything from things like mushrooms, carrots or such-like.

“Well, this was a fascinating tale, Harry Potter. But do I take it right that you wish to leave on your First Journey soon?”

Harry smiled, topping up two mugs of mead for himself and Versera, who took it eagerly, humming in delight as she began to drink it again. She wasn’t refined when it came to her taste buds, Harry had noticed, seemingly to enjoy everything that was put in front of her equally. “That’s right. I’m going in search of volcanoes, specifically a place where several of them are near one another. There’s no record of such a place in the maps here, but I’ve talked to Milifiana about it, and she says it nearly has to be someplace in Southern Kalimdor. Given how I’ve seen that image every time I’ve tried to commune with an air elemental, we think the female spirit that is always responding so strongly wants me to go there for some reason.”

The emerald dragon slowly nodded, then grinned. “And you say you wouldn’t be able to make the entire journey by air, correct?”

“No. Even on a straight line back to Kalimdor, I doubt I could make it to land before my arms gave out. And I still haven’t figured out how to make a permanent flying broomstick. Dratted proprietary rune clusters…” Harry scowled, shaking his head at what he saw as one of his worst failures as a runescribe. “I could bring along something and just use direct magic to float it along, but over the ocean… that’s enough to make me very nervous.”

“Then, the solution is simple. We commission a ship from the kaldorei in Danaveia. And we go from there. We will be able to barter for it for certain, and I can captain it. Besides, having a ship might be useful for other things than simple transportation.”

Milifiana’s ears twitched in the way that was the kaldorei version of eye rolling in a human, and she muttered under her breath, “Oh, of course! No sooner have you arrived, than you want to leave on a grand adventure. You haven’t grown up at all, have you?”

“I have, I just like adventure more than reading, that’s all. I don’t like fighting as much, hence why I became a Cartographer after the war. But you must admit, no Cartographer has been to that area, either. Wouldn’t that be a worthy task for me?” Versera shot back.

Milifiana had no answer to that one and fell silent. But Harry had a question. “You can command a ship? You know how to read the wind and waves and everything else that sailors have to do?”

“I do. Myself, Nealu and the shipwrights of Danaveia will be able to design and build the ship quickly.” Versera looked at Harry’s skeptical extra oppression, and she shrugged, both her ears and shoulders strangely enough, having apparently picked up both the Tauren version of that gesture, which was exactly the same as in humans and the kaldorei version. “What, it’s fun. You’d be astonished at how many of my flight mates have taken up some very strange hobbies over the decades. One of them has taken to collecting different bug types and sealing them in amber. Another has taken to collecting fish heads, claiming that they all came from the same original species somehow. Another, a male, has been hiding among the kaldorei for the past several thousand years. Don’t ask me what he’s up to.”

The wicked smirk on Versera’s face told Harry that he probably could form a very good idea of what that one was up to at the moment. Although Harry supposed that this hidden green dragon would also be willing to help the kaldorei at need within the Emerald Dream or something in the physical world if he needed to.

“I think that makes good, solid sense. In fact, I think we can kill two birds with one stone here,” Martuc said with a frown. “I will have to clear it with Vurg… Hopefully, he’ll have one of his lucid moments.” A pall settled over the room for a moment at that, but it faded quickly. “I think it’s time that we also send a diplomatic delegation down to the southern tauren, check-in, see what they are up to. It’s been more than five hundred years since we last spoke to any of them and far longer since we mapped out southern Kalimdor.”

“Davo?” Harry asked, putting forth his absent friend’s name for that mission. He had retired early as had most of the rest of the members of the Unseen Path, despite many of them wanting to talk to Versera, leaving Versera, Harry, and the two acting leaders of the Unseen Path to their discussion. Even Recca and the twins had headed to bed.

“Yes. Davo’s senior enough and diplomatic enough, something that many of our tauren companions cannot say. You, Recca, Davo, and Versera here. Nealu will travel with you to Danaveia but will not go on the mission with you.” One of the main tenets of the Unseen Path was to use as few of their members as possible for any single mission unless it was against a known enemy. Since neither of these missions was intended to seek out combat, keeping their numbers small seemed a good idea.

Harry and Versera both nodded. “What about the satyrs?” Harry asked after a second.

“You all can deal with them on your way, Harry,” the chief seeker said, smiling a little evilly. “In fact, I think it will be a perfect time for you to try out some of your more lethal techniques. Just don’t leave too much of a mess, will you?”

End Chapter

At first, I thought about showing more of the changes to Trueshot Lodge based on Harry’s runes, but I decided to only show a hint of what he’s been up to. This way, he can then SHOW in battle rather than just tell after the fact. Similarly, I only hint at what he’s been learning and his overall combat style. This way, again, it allows me to show it later for better effect.

As for the conversation between Harry and Cassandra, I wanted to hint at how big a dream Cassandra has for her people, but also how much effort and thought will need to be put into it. I then also wanted to show her teasing side a bit and where she personally might be taking the idea of having actual mates/bonded among other races.