Call of the Waylanders

I. Staring at Statues

(Cover Art courtesy of NirraTam)

I stared at the statue. It was a nice statue, one of my favorites in the park. The park in question was a park of memorials, one filled with heroes who gave their lives in at least an attempt to save the Five Lands, all set in stone where their friends, family, or last remaining teammate could gaze at them, sadly wishing them to be back again. Such was with me and the statue in question: the statue of my very team, the five of them in dynamic poses with furious or brave faces on them. Really, the statue was quite accurate.

First there was Elena--or Eli'Nasudora--the wood elf, in the center, her bow drawn and she staring angrily at whatever was directly in front of her. To her right were Ko the snow elf and David the Asmerian, Ko with his daggers and David with his echo blade, a weapon that was a signature of the Asmerians, a rite of passage, if you will. Ko was crouched in such a way that he was threatening to impale anything in Elena's way, and David was ready to chop off its head. To Elena's left, there stood Karen, my childhood mermaid friend, crouched in a mirror position to Ko, and Jeff, holding an abnormally giant hammer, ready to crush anything in Elena's way.

I stood at the statue for a while; I wasn't expecting anyone to come in all of a sudden. I mostly thought about how if it hadn't been for the dragon Toxiclaw, I would have been standing with my lances pointed at Elena's target, looking furiously into the distance as they were. Such as it was, I was standing alive, with a new team I had neglected to really get to know up to this point, staring at this statue. I stood there for a while until I heard a voice from my right. I turned my head to see one of my teammates.

It was Raq Shinn, a Ranger from the Waylands. The Waylanders, those who came from the Waylands, had come to our humble continent just a week or two ago, when I had dared the Ranger's Guild to aid me in the destruction of Infernas--who had destroyed my friends when we had fought for a core of a Draenix, the combination of a dragon and a phoenix. Infernas meant to conquer the Five Lands, overflowing it with his burning fire, but I had formed a team to stop that.

Raq was a new recruit to the Wayland Rangers, but with the training the other Rangers and I had been giving him, he was as good as I was, or better. While I knew the weapons of the other Rangers in my team, Raq had never used anything but his bare hands, which made me wonder about him. He was strange, stranger than usual strange people, but that might just be because of his different culture than ours. 

"Lion! Good day!" he called out to me, and I immediately lost my train of thought as I jogged over to him. 

"Good day, Raq," I answered. "How are you?"

"I'm doing peachy, thank you for asking. Say, have you seen the others?" 

"Yes, they're very beautiful people."

"I'm serious, Lion. Where are the others?" I tried to think about where I had last seen them--Chris, Commanders Jordan and Josie of the Woodland Rangers(I called them by their full titles to annoy them), and Sari, the Asmerian from the Badlands. The one I had taken a liking to was Sari, who entertained me with her extreme lack of self-control in such situations as a mission.

"Let's go look for them," I suggested. Raq nodded, and he and I went on a hunt for our friends. They weren't anywhere in the park, they weren't at the Outland Ranger Headquarters, they didn't seem to be anywhere. We called out for them, looking back and forth as we walked around the center of the Outlands Capital until I walked smack-dab into Commander Jordan. 

We fell back onto the ground, but quickly bounced back up. Rangers didn't allow anyone to know they were down. "Goodness gracious! Are you all ri--oh. Lion. There you are," Jordan said as we stood up. Josie sashayed into the picture in the way she always did, with a swagger even Sari couldn't match.

"Jordan, what did I say about running into Lion?" she teased. Jordan sighed as if they had had an actual conversation about this--it happened often enough, I supposed. "You said don't do it," he remembered reluctantly, brushing his greaves off. I snickered, and Jordan gave me an irritated look. 

"Have you seen Chris and Sari, or either of them?" I asked. The two shrugged as I heard someone say from right behind me. The four of us turned to see Sari and Chris, walking up the hill towards us.

"That's all of us, then?" Chris asked as he and Sari reached us at the top. We all nodded, then Chris clapped his hands together.

"Right. Well, Oculus has given us a little mission to pass the time. One that I would prefer to dub 'team bonding time.' Are you all up for it?" There were about five collective "Yes'." 

"Good. Let's head on to the Headquarters and we'll be briefed on what in the world we're supposed to be doing." He beckoned as as he turned and ran, and we followed him. The Headquarters was downhill from here, as most things were from the top of a hill. We could practically slide over to there with ease, considering the smoothness of the grass. 

We reached the doors--the large crystal doors of the large crystal building in the large, grassy, open country known as the Outlands. This was going to be my first mission with my new team, believe it or not, which was an exciting development. What could this mission be?

"Are we ready for some fun?" Sari asked. We nodded, and she opened the doors.