Gone With the Wind
- The Gamebreakers
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
The Windrunners didn’t so much arrive back from their scouting mission, as they simply occurred in the vicinity of the Chosen of the Spirit Tree camp at a high velocity. One moment, there was a quiet forest glade; the next, there was a localized atmospheric disturbance and several Aiyani scouts lounging on branches with the casual gravity-defying arrogance of people who treated physics as a polite suggestion rather than a law.
“Report,” said Fen, who was currently hanging by his knees from a branch of the tree, looking like a very dangerous bat.
Liri, who was standing on a leaf, that shouldn't even have been able to support a moderately sized caterpillar, ticked off points on her fingers. “Three Phalanx patrols. One fortified shield line. And a captain whose armor is so blindingly polished that he’s technically a navigational hazard. Also,” she added, her voice dropping into the hushed, reverent tones usually reserved for ancient prophecies, “Old Boro is glazing the root buns.”
The forest went silent. It was a tactical silence. A silence of deep, spiritual calculation.
Now, it is a well-known fact in Astira that Windrunners are elite scouts - the eyes and ears of the Chosen. They can cross a valley before their own echo catches up. But their most evolved trait, the one that truly separated them from mere mortals, was a sense of smell that could triangulate a tray of pastries through two mountain ranges and a thick layer of cognitive dissonance.
Below them, Old Boro, an Ailur of magnificent girth and a serenity that could weather a hurricane, was hum-singing to his ovens. Boro believed in the Balance of the Universe. He believed that for every hungry scout, there was a bun. He also believed, with the tragic optimism of the truly kind-hearted, that he had baked twelve of them.
“Operation Gentle Breeze?” Fen whispered, his eyes narrowing with the intensity of a hawk spotting a particularly delicious mouse.
“That’s the one where we pretend this is for morale,” Liri clarified.
“It is for morale.”
They descended. They didn’t fall; they simply decided to be lower down.
Liri landed near the flour-dusted table with a bow so respectful it was practically a weaponized compliment. “Master Boro! Your culinary aura is… radiant today. Is that a hint of star-anise, or has the Spirit Tree itself blessed your glaze?”
Boro beamed. His heart was large, his ladles were larger, and his suspicion was, unfortunately, nonexistent. “Ah, Liri! You bring news of the Silver Line?”
“Grave news!” Liri cried, gesturing wildly toward the horizon. “The enemy is… standing over there! Very menacingly! With shields!”
Boro turned, his brow furrowed in paternal concern for the fate of the forest.
In that precise tick of the cosmic clock - the golden moment between the turning of a head and the blinking of an eye - the tray of buns achieved a state of metaphysical transition. It didn't fall. It wasn't grabbed. It simply ceased to be on the table and began existing forty feet up in the canopy.
There was a faint whoosh, the kind of sound a breeze makes when it’s in a hurry to be somewhere else.
Boro turned back, blinking at the now-pristine wooden surface. He looked at the empty space. He looked at Liri, who was wearing an expression of such pure, unadulterated innocence that it was legally classified as a felony in three provinces.
Liri blinked, wide-eyed. “The forest provides, Master Boro. And sometimes, it reclaims.”
High above, the leaves rustled with the sound of muffled chewing and the quiet satisfaction of scouts who had confirmed two things:
The Silver Line was reinforcing its left flank.
The glaze-to-bun ratio was, at last, spiritually perfect.
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The Windrunners are now available in the Shroudfall Shop. Guard your buns and go break the game with them :D
