Rambleon came down from the High Seat and through the Great Forge the way he always did now, Ironforge's stone warmth giving way soon enough to Astranaar's familiar lamplight. Ashenvale received him as an old companion might, and Therylune's Escape was settled almost before the trail had properly begun. The real work waited near Greenpaw Village, where a camp of foulweald totemics, warriors, and ursas kept him busier than he'd expected — a rogue named Rip fighting at his side for a quarter hour, then Ialach the druid staying longer still, with Alourah the shaman and Sertuvius, a fellow hunter, passing through in their own turns. An Aggressive Defense closed out clean, the den watchers and totemics and warriors all accounted for.
From there the road bent west, across the Veiled Sea to Stonetalon Mountains, a passage worth a picture at the border. Stonetalon Peak gave him Reclaiming the Charred Vale, and the early going was easy enough — a sap beast, an antlered courser, basilisks thick and slow along Mirkfallon Lake. But the Charred Vale itself proved a harder country than its neighbors, the kind of ground that took as much as it gave, and more than once that night the graveyard at Webwinder Path knew his step better than he'd have liked.
Cassidy found him there past nine-thirty, as she so often did now, and her company steadied the rest of the night the way six nights together tend to. Between them they worked the vale's harpies and ambushers down, a special delivery seen through for Gaxim at Sun Rock Retreat, and by the time Arktalis and Falsila — two druids new to him — joined the hunt, the Charred Vale's harpies and ambushers were falling in earnest, six of each, until Reclaiming the Charred Vale closed out whole.
He rode back to Astranaar with the three of them past eleven, parting ways with Arktalis and Falsila at the edge of the lamplight. No new level tonight, only the long patient grind of it, but the vale was quieter behind him than it had been, and that felt like enough.
