Two weeks.
And a weekend.
That's how long it took to walk through every temple, monastery, and cursed brewery that Pandaria had to offer, plus one detour east that Maxiona insisted was for morale, which in her case meant for fire. Two weeks of kicking down doors that hadn't been opened in a long time, clearing shadows from places the mists had tried very hard to keep hidden, and discovering that Pandaren brew masters do not appreciate it when you set their barrels on fire. Even accidentally. Even a little.
Four companions walked with her. Not strangers. Not hired blades. Friends, the kind who show up before you ask and explain things patiently when you've never set foot in these places before. They knew every corridor of the Shado-Pan Monastery, every trap in the Gate of the Setting Sun, every cursed barrel in Stormstout Brewery. And they walked Mei Lin through all of it.
She'd never seen any of these places. Every fight was new. Every room held something she hadn't faced before. The first time she walked into the Siege of Niuzao Temple, the mantid came in waves and she panicked, threw totems everywhere, and sent a chain lightning arcing into something that turned out to be a friendly defender.
Nobody mentioned it. Good friends.
The brewery was its own adventure. Hozen swinging from the rafters, beer-soaked grummles underfoot, a whole crowd of patrons who had been drinking since before the trouble started and saw no reason to stop now. One of them pressed a mug into her hand between fights. "Dark times," he said gravely, "call for dark beer." She drank it. It was terrible. She said so.
But the group was patient. They showed her where to stand when the ground turned hostile. Where to plant her earth totems so the spirits could breathe. Where to aim the chain lightning and, more importantly, where not to. She fell more than once. Tasted stone more than she'd like to admit. Every time, the water spirits pulled her back to her feet.
"The river does not fight the rock. But the river always gets back up."
Somewhere in the second week it clicked. The storm and the water found the same rhythm, like two instruments that had been arguing about the key and finally settled on the same song. Her hands stopped hesitating. Lightning Bolt with the right, riptide with the left. Both at the same time. Both because she could.
Maxiona took her east that weekend for what she called morale. What she meant, Mei Lin found out on the way, was that there were still Scarlet Crusade cells holed up in an old monastery complex in Tirisfal Glades, red-cloaked zealots who had survived every kingdom falling and were still polishing their tabards. Somebody had to go remind them the Light had moved on.
"You took me on a field trip," Mei Lin said.
"We are liberating a library."
"We are setting fire to a library."
"The books will be fine."
"The books are zealot propaganda, honey, the world will cope."
The monastery had two wings, which nobody had bothered to mention. The Scarlet Halls on one side, a library the size of a city block stacked floor to ceiling with books on heresy and proper posture. The Scarlet Monastery on the other, a cloister and cathedral where the last true believers stood in neat rows and prayed at them between swings of the hammer. The first wing smelled like old parchment and fresh smoke. The second wing smelled like incense that had been burning for a decade without anyone remembering to open a window.
"Who lit candles for ten years and forgot to open a window," Mei Lin muttered, totem already in her hand.
"Zealots," Maxiona said cheerfully. "That's what the tabard is for."
A man in a red cloak came around a shelf. He took one look at Mei Lin. You could watch the revision happening on his face in real time.
"Unclean!" he shouted.
"I had a bath yesterday," she said, and hit him with a chain lightning that forked through the row of three behind him. "That's rude."
"Focus, Mist."
"I am fully focused. I'm also offended."
The woman who led the Crusade's last stand was pale and red-haired and burning with a Light she was wringing out of herself. She looked up from her prayer when the doors came down and said something in Common that was probably a sermon. Maxiona set her on fire mid-sentence.
"Your Light," Mei Lin told the cathedral, riptide leaving her palm for the paladin who had taken a hit he shouldn't have, "could work on its bedside manner."
"Mist, please."
"Nope. They started it. Somebody has been polishing that tabard for ten years. Ten years! I haven't polished anything for ten years. I've polished no tabards. Where's the variety? Where's the growth?"
She was giving this speech to a man she was also hitting with Healing Rain, which was a stupid combination and apparently her instinct now. Maxiona was laughing somewhere behind her. Maxiona laughed harder the worse things got. It was one of her most alarming qualities.
By the end the cloister was grey, the incense was thinner, and the cathedral windows were throwing flatter light than they had been an hour ago.
This was what the smith in the Valley of the Four Winds had rebound the chestplate for. The Tuesday fight. The cleanup run. The kind you walk into expecting to walk back out of. Somewhere in the middle of the cathedral she noticed she was enjoying herself, which was something she was a little embarrassed by, because enjoying a cathedral fight felt like a step on a road grandmother would want a word about. She filed the concern and kept working. Her hands and the storm had agreed, and when that happened you did not argue with it.
When they walked out, the sun had gone sideways over Tirisfal and turned the old graveyards amber. One of her companions said, for the only time that day, "You did well." Another said, into the back of her own hand, "She did fine, she doesn't need to get arrogant about it."
"Too late," Mei Lin said brightly. "The tabard's already being designed. Embroidery and everything."
"No."
"Mist Emberwave, Bedside Manner Inspector."
"You are banned from this guild."
"I founded this guild."
"You did not."
"I'm about to."
They went back to Pandaria in the morning.
And then the last piece fell into place.
Shoulders that hummed with something old and furious. The Regalia of the Witch Doctor. Shoulders, chest, legs, hands, all of it singing in the same frequency, like four totems planted in perfect harmony. The helm came with the set and she put it straight on her belt, because grandmother had taught her nothing she loved ever went in a bucket. Athame of the Sanguine Ritual in one hand. Tortos' Discarded Shell strapped across her back, as tall as she was from the bottom rim to the top edge. Even the Relic of Chi-Ji around her neck, warm against her fur, steady as a kept promise.
She stood outside the Shado-Pan Monastery after the last fight and caught her reflection in a rain puddle. The Pandaren staring back had the same flowered roll her grandmother had taught her to pin, the same small hoops in her ears, the same cream face and the same small flower tucked in above one ear. But behind her shoulders the shield rose nearly to the top of her head, and the mail sat the way it had started sitting after the smith at the river. She looked like someone the elements had finished arguing about.
Full armor for the storm. A second set for the water, packed away for the nights when lightning isn't what's needed. The helm stayed on her belt. Every piece earned. Every piece a story.
One of her companions looked her over and whistled. "Not bad for someone who set a brew master's barrels on fire two weeks ago."
Mei Lin shrugged. "What can I say? I've always had a... spark-ling personality."
They walked away. All four of them. Didn't even look back.
They came back a breath later. They always do.
— Mist
Achievement Unlocked
Cataclysmically Epic