Rambleon left Darnassus by way of its familiar terraces, past the Craftsmen and the Warrior's district, and out beneath the boughs of Teldrassil. The road to the Oracle Glade was one he was coming to know: strigid hunters in the dark above, an elder nightsaber padding through the underbrush, and always the sound of the Wellspring River running nearby. He put down the first of each without much trouble, and there was a small private satisfaction in it — the kind that comes only once, the first time a new kind of foe falls to your arrow.
The glade itself proved less forgiving. Twice the river took him under before he understood what he was fighting, and each time he woke in Darnassus and walked the long path back out through Teldrassil to find his body again. A third death came later, deeper into the glade, among the Bloodfeather harpies and their rogues and sorceresses — he'd cut down one of each before the glade cut him down in turn. Three deaths in one night was a great many for a hunter still finding his feet, and he did not pretend otherwise to himself, only shouldered his bow again each time and went back.
Between the dyings there was real work done. He tracked down the lost runner and saw that errand through, then took up new charges — a spring gone strange, a glade that needed enchanting, a beast that wanted taming. He cleared timberlings from the mire, root and stone alike, and gathered the mossy tumors that had been asked of him, and stripped a bloodfeather belt from among the harpies for the glade's sake. Somewhere in the counting of it all he crossed into his tenth level, a quiet threshold he felt rather than celebrated — sturdier now, a little more himself. By the time he reached Dolanaar the moon was well up, and he took on the errands waiting there, filled a flask with spring water for the Great Tree, and let the night's work rest.
He walked it all alone, no one beside him at fire or ford, and there was a certain solitude in that: the glade's lake at dusk, the river's cold each time it claimed him, the long lightless road back from Darnassus. But alone was not the same as idle. Three quests closed out, several more accepted, a level gained and three deaths paid for in patience rather than despair — a fair accounting, he thought, for one evening under Teldrassil's branches.