![](http://cobalt-company.wdfiles.com/local--resized-images/writing:2026-05-21-honoring-the-dead-vale-campaign/style="margin:/medium.jpg) |
| Details |
| Author: | Alli |
| Summary: | Aszera, Baird, Lena and Melancholy continue to assist the Golden Lotus against the mogu. Sometimes that involves putting out fires and respecting one's ancestors. ~1900 words. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Baird is once again — as always — leaning against a pillar at the Golden Pagoda, watching the east.
The usual warlock-laden gryphon comes flying in from the direction of the Shrine.
Baird straightens when he sees it.
Aze circles around a pillar, raising a hand to Baird.
Melancholy smiles wide at Baird, giving him the little knuckle salute as she dismounts, smoothing her other hand over her bodice. "Here we are then," she says.
Lena dismounts and shoos the gryphon off into the sky. "Here we are."
Baird flashes a smile at Melancholy. "Here we are," he agrees. And then, to Aze, "Here you are." He gives Lena the knuckle salute.
Azse looks a little confused at all the knuckle saluting, and then she does it too.
Baird flashes another grin at her.
Leven Dawnblade nods. "Indeed. And our work is not yet done. More sky serpents to fight today, and they bring down lightning with their stormcaller staves. Beyond that, the usual. Help those of ours that you can, kill mogu."
"No healer today?" Melancholy asks, as she takes out her focusing athame to pull up a soul well, and then sets a soulstone on Lena.
"I begin to get the feeling this fight will go on forever," Lena says, staring off toward the Golden Stair. "But surely they'll run out of people at some point." Lena absent-mindedly grabs one of Melancholy's healthstones. "I think we'll be fine, with the four of us."
Aze nods. She hesitates, but then also grabs a healthstone.
Melancholy frowns. "Well, surely the mogu will have to run out of people to throw at the invasion," she says and then pauses in thought. "Or maybe not, if they keep finding more statues."
"We've got plenty of people," Aze says, a touch uncertain. "The Alliance is big."
Lena frowns. "Well, and the Fallons go on about recruitment. Not that big."
"Behemoth," says Baird, changing the subject.
As they bring down the behemoth, a sky serpent spits lightning at them from above.
"I do wish we could figure out how to stop them getting the serpents," Lena says, cursing one as it descends.
"It's a shame," Baird agrees.
"Oh my garters," Melancholy curses (?) as lightning shocks her from the ground. She winces as she hobbles off the epicenter, her felhunter power already working to heal her.
"Melancholy?" Baird looks over at her sharply and surveys her up and down.
"I really can see the benefit of absorbing demonic power," Lena muses, watching Melancholy heal.
"I'm all right," Melancholy says, hissing a breath between her teeth. Another sky serpent immediately tries to make that untrue.
Baird shoots the sky serpent. How very dare.
Melancholy pulls up an Unending Resolve around herself, ribbons of shadow protecting her, and she smiles at Baird.
Aze sticks to the ground. She moves over to stab a mogu that's tormenting a captive pandaren.
Lena spots a sparking staff. She swings her mogu dagger in an arc to smash into it causing destructive feedback.
"What a trick," Melancholy says, watching the staff explode.
Lena grins. "I figured if it broke the dagger, I could always get another."
Melancholy flicks water off her hat as the rain finally stops.
"I think we've done our part…" Lena says, looking around. "Let's check back in?"
Baird shoulders his rifle and nods.
Back at the pagoda, Leven nods approval at their work. "Things are quiet, but you might check in at Whitepetal… they do send scouts down that way sometimes."
The team heads off to Whitepetal Lake.
When they land, Melancholy refreshes the soulstone on Lena.
He Softfoot is standing by the body of a saurok today, instead of a mogu scout. He nods at the team. "Ah, saurok today." Lena says with a wince.
"Ugh, disagreeable lizards," Melancholy says blithely.
Baird is reloading his rifle. He nods.
Aze lands a little belatedly, stumbling off an unfamiliar gryphon.
"Saurok," Baird tells Aze.
"It is a shame we've not been able to turn the saurok more against the mogu," Lena says with a sigh. "They've as much reason to hate them as any."
Aze nods and draws her blades.
"I wonder what does motivate them? Maybe it's that we impose too many rules against certain types of horrific violence?" Melancholy wonders. "And the saurok would rather be horrible than anything else."
"Sounds like some people," Baird agrees. "Some people just don't like being told they can't be horrible."
Aze slashes a saurok across the chest and turns toward Baird a little guiltily.
Melancholy nods.
"I don't think the pandaren have all that many rules though," Lena muses. "And they've never managed to befriend them."
"Some people are just !@#$%^&s," Baird says, and shrugs equably.
"Nobody here, though," Aze says, and it's a statement that's halfway to question.
"Nobody here," Melancholy agrees immediately with a plum lipped smile.
"Nobody here," Baird agrees.
"Except the saurok," Lena says, snapping one last drain soul. "And they're not here anymore."
Baird laughs.
Ren waves cheerfully at the team. "When you're done slaying saurok, Che wanted to meet you down at Mistfall! I told him I wasn't sure if you were available. So, you know, you needn't go unless you want to."
Baird shoulders his rifle and eyes Ren impassively.
Melancholy narrows her eyes at Ren.
"Oh, I don't mind going down to Mistfall," Lena says, raising an eyebrow at Ren.
"Very considerate," Aze says cheerfully. "But we'll check it out."
Aze tries to whistle, and then waves frantically for her rental gryphon. It deigns to land and let her mount. Now it's off to Mistfall.
Lena watches with faint amusement, and calls her own gryphon.
At Mistfall Village, fire is everywhere. Che stands by his tiger, and waves down the team. "Ren sent you? Good, good. He has a playful air, but he follows through when it counts."
"The sprites again?" Lena asks, looking at the spreading fire.
"The sprites again," Che says heavily. "If you could help — and there is unrest in the burial grounds."
Baird shoots a sprite.
"Would music help?" Aze asks.
"Oh. Oh, no," Melancholy says, a hand up on her cheek at the sight of the fire. She looks over at Che. "Oh, spirits. I have some incense, too. One of the funereal sorts."
"Perhaps," Che says politely. "I would ask you to rid the area of mogu spirits, and to honor their gravestones. Remind them that they are respected even now, and worthy of peaceful rest."
Surprising no one, local goth girl is all for honoring the gravestones. She gives Che a plum lipped smile. "Of course. Easily done."
Baird continues to pick sprites off casually.
"'See'st thou yon gray gleaming hall, / Where the deep elm-shadows fall? / Voices that have left the earth/ Long ago,/ Still are murming round its hearth, / Soft and low: / Ever there,'" Melancholy recites.
Lena moves around with buckets, putting out fires the good old-fashioned way.
Baird puts fires out preemptively. By killing sprites. He looks at Melancholy. "That's pretty."
Melancholy doesn't look like she can do much more than maybe haul a small bucket to a fire, and she opts for violence instead.
Aze darts around, slashing sprites. She's not really that great at putting out fires.
"'The Haunted House,' by Felicia Dorothea Hemans. An old, old favorite of mine," Melancholy says brightly.
Baird slings his rifle across his back and picks up a bucket to help Lena with the fires.
Soon enough, the fires are settled, and it's time to head to the burial grounds.
"'Rising, wandering, floating by / Suddenly and silently, / Through their earthly home and place, / But admist another race,'" Melancholy says, as they move towards the rise with the ghosts fighting.
Aze reaches for her bag, and the neck of a guitar peeks out. "In case the poetry needs some accompaniment."
Melancholy gets out several sticks of incense, and a box of matches, lighting a stick and placing it carefully on a grave with a solemn reverence for the dead.
Lena lowers her head slightly at the grave in reverence. "It's important to honor those as came before."
Aze tucks away the guitar when it becomes clear that honor is maybe best done with violence, against mogu spirits.
"Yes, it is," Melancholy agrees, as she straightens.
A larger mogu ghost in a cave seems to be getting a lot of pandaren ghost attention.
"Who's this one?" Aze asks, pausing by the mouth of a cave, where pandaren souls rush in.
"I don't know," Melancholy says.
"Looks important," Lena says, peering at him.
"Well, no matter who he is, he shouldn't be here," Melancholy says definitively.
The ghostly mogu slaughters several ghostly pandaren with a slash.
"Aye," Lena nods. "Let's destroy him, give the pandaren heart."
Melancholy sets another stick of incense into place by the gravestone.
Baird stands by respectfully. Then he shoots a mogu spirit. Respectfully.
"I hope that will settle them," Lena says. "They deserve their rest, after all they've been through."
"All the dead always do," Melancholy says, a genuine sorrow in her voice, as she strokes a black lace gloved hand lovingly over a gravestone.
Lena nods, looking at the grave sadly. "And for so many reasons, sometimes they're not allowed it. I'll stop that where I can."
Melancholy turns up a plum lipped smile at Lena.
Baird shoots another mogu spirit. Rest now, buddy.
Aze pauses after slashing a mogu, half-turning towards the warlocks with a more vulnerable expression than her usual smile. Then she shakes her head and goes after another spirit.
"'Rest, enfranchised, like the Dead; / Rest till Love be born anew,'" Melancholy says, playing her last stick of incense.
"Sleep now, the rest you deserve," Lena says quietly, touching the grave. "Let no one call you back."
Aze pauses to touch the grave, saying something low in Thalassian as she passes.
"Well, I think that's done it?" Lena says, looking around the burial grounds.
"I can always come back and play later," Aze suggests. "In case it helps. I know some good lamentations."
Melancholy smiles at Aze. "I could come with you, if you would like some company. I have more incense, and of course, my horn," she offers.
Aze tilts her head toward Baird. "We'll just let the pandaren know what we're up to, before we start. That way they won't think it's a ghost concert."
Baird grins at Aze.
"That would be startling, if the ghosts started playing horns and strings," Lena says with an amused smile, as they approach Che.
Melancholy laughs. "'But here the autumn Melancholy dwells, / And sighs her tearful spells / Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain,'" she recites. "'She sits and reckons up the dead and gone, / with the last leaves for a love rosary.'"
"And here I thought it was the end of spring," Baird says thoughtfully to Melancholy.
"I don't know if that's prophetic or not. I think I won't hope so," Melancholy says to Baird.
"Let's count on happy autumns," Lena says with a nod. "And that we'll have an end to the fighting here, by then. And in the Wastes…" Lena sighs.
Che looks up at the sound of Melancholy's poem. “Thank you, my friend. Your respect for our ancestors means a great deal."
Melancholy gives Che her plum lipped smile. "You're welcome. I am always glad to honor the dead." Melancholy considers for a moment, and then refreshes the soulstone on Lena, as she looks out over the Golden Vale.
"Time to make our way back," Lena says, looking not toward the Shrine, but toward the gate. "To be ready for another day."