Echoes Beneath the White Wolf
Burthorpe was not a place of song.
The wind there didn’t whisper—it howled, dragging sleet down from the Trollheim peaks to scour the training yards and parade grounds. The sky, always a leaden gray, hung low enough to make even tall folk stoop unconsciously. The stone buildings stood grim and angular, not grown like the trees of Isafdar or warmed by hearths like in Catherby, but forged to endure—like the people who lived there.
Nyssarra stepped through the southern gates, her green cloak clinging to her damp shoulders, crystalline snow melting against the fabric. Her boots crunched softly on frost-laced cobbles, and though she walked without a sound, her presence stirred every eye.
She felt them linger on her pointed ears—half-hidden beneath sky blue hair—and on the crystal-tipped longbow at her back. The soldiers here trusted blades, discipline, and the gods of war. They didn’t trust druids, and they didn’t trust elves. She was both.
“Name and business?” demanded a guard, his voice clipped, formal.
“Nyssarra. I come from the herblore circle in Taverley. Corrupted growths have been reported near the Death Plateau. I came to investigate.” She let her voice carry calm certainty—not challenging, but not meek either.
The guard glanced to his partner, then back to her. “You’ll want Captain Rovin. North tower, central keep. Don’t wander.”
Inside the keep, the heat from brazier flames battled the cold seeping through thick stone walls. The hall was a flurry of movement—runners bearing scrolls, armorers preparing kits, instructors barking commands at recruits. A wall of maps dominated the far end, lines of red and black ink crawling across the mountain passes like veins.
Captain Rovin stood over it all, arms crossed, brow furrowed. He looked up as Nyssarra approached, eyes sharp and pale like a wolf’s.
“You’re the half-elf from Taverley?”
“Seren’s peace to you, Captain. I bring news and offer help.”
He studied her a moment. “I’ve heard of you. The druids speak your name with quiet respect. And some of my scouts mutter it too, after missions near the ruined glades.”
Nyssarra gave a slight bow. “Then you understand I do not come idly.”
Rovin’s eyes narrowed. “The corruption. It’s not just poison in the earth, is it?”
“No,” she said softly. “Something is feeding on the land. Warping it.”
“Then it’s not a druid we need. It’s a blade.”
“I can be both.”
The climb to Death Plateau was a lonely one.
She left Burthorpe at dawn, when the sky was still gray but the world had quieted. The air was bitter, and the path wound through broken trees and half-frozen streams. The plateau had long been a battleground—troll territory, skirmished and shelled. But what Nyssarra found was not troll work.
Blackened roots curled from under frostbitten soil like claws. Trees twisted toward the sun but bore no leaves. There was no birdsong. Even the mountain goats had fled.
She knelt near a scorched patch, brushing her fingers across the charred earth. The roots pulsed faintly, and something beneath them recoiled—not from her touch, but from the crystal humming faintly at her hip.
“Zamorak’s stain,” she murmured.
And then the wind shifted.
Voices.
Chanting.
She moved silently between boulders and dead pines, her bow already in hand. The whispers grew clearer—harsh, rhythmic, guttural. Not troll-speech. Something worse.
In the hollow of a ravine, she found them.
Four cultists, robed in black and red, stood in a half-circle around a crude altar of bone and iron. Runes bled red light from the stones, and a dark substance oozed into the ground like blood into snow. One of them held a severed wolf’s head high in both hands, chanting in a tongue older than human scripture.
Nyssarra’s stomach turned.
She took cover behind a frost-slicked stone and drew an arrow, its crystal tip pulsing with faint blue light. Seren’s energy steadied her breath.
One breath. One purpose.
She loosed.
The arrow struck the altar dead-center. There was a sound like cracking glass—and then a surge of light. The altar split, and the crimson glow flickered, stuttered, and collapsed inward with a sharp, keening wail.
The cultists turned as one.
And then, they came for her.
She moved like moonlight through the trees.
The first cultist died before he reached her—an arrow through the throat, silence stealing his cry. The second raised a gnarled hand, chaos energy spiraling into flame—but she dropped him with a shot through the wrist, then another to the knee. He screamed, but still lunged. Nyssarra drew her sword, short and slender, glowing softly with elven runes.
Steel met flesh. The scream stopped.
But the third was already upon her—bigger, faster, with a curved dagger and wild eyes. He slashed. She ducked, twisted, brought the hilt of her bow hard against his temple. He staggered. She spun, blade flicking up, and he fell.
The last one—the leader—stood alone, eyes burning with hate.
“You desecrate what cannot be destroyed,” he hissed.
“I cleanse what should not be.”
He spat a curse and fled.
Nyssarra watched him go, her bow half-raised, then lowered it. Let him carry the story.
She turned back to the shattered altar. The corruption had stopped bleeding, but the wound in the land was deep.
She pressed one hand to the ground. A soft shimmer of blue light flickered through the soil, spreading like frost on glass. Seren’s blessing, faint but present.
It was not healing. But it was hope.
She returned to Burthorpe by dusk.
The gate guards stared at the blood on her cloak, the soot on her hands. They did not stop her.
Captain Rovin met her at the south watchtower. Snow fell again—fine as ash.
“It’s done,” she said. “For now.”
“You found cultists?” he asked.
“Zamorakians. They were siphoning chaos magic into the earth. I destroyed the altar. But one escaped.”
Rovin sighed. “They always crawl back to their holes. You’ve given us breathing room. That may be more than we deserve.”
Nyssarra stepped to the edge of the tower and looked out across the plateau, where the last rays of the sun turned the snow gold.
“Burthorpe is a wall,” she said. “But walls must be watched. Not just manned.”
He glanced at her. “You speak like someone who's seen too many fall.”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she removed a shard of crystal from her satchel and set it on the tower’s edge. It shimmered briefly, pulsing with soft, blue light.
“A ward?”
“A memory,” she said. “For the mountain. To remind it of what it was. Of what it can be.”
He nodded, once. “You’re not like the others.”
She smiled faintly. “I never have been.”
He hesitated, then asked, “Will you stay? Even for a night?”
Her eyes flicked northward. “I cannot. There are others who must know. Druids. Rangers. And one… who walks where the flame lives.”
Rovin tilted his head. “A friend?”
“A rival,” she said softly. “Sometimes. And sometimes… not.”
She left before midnight, when the town had quieted and the sky had cleared just enough to show stars like pale crystal points.
Behind her, the crystal shard pulsed once more.
Burthorpe was not a place of song.
But tonight, it remembered one.