He couldn’t have guessed.

            Adventures always seem to start that way; activities which seem innocuous at best at the time expand and distort into events which change lives and alter perceptions to the point that what they used to be are not only unrecognizable, but entirely irrelevant. “Where’re you gonna check first?” Thordin had asked him, once he’d gathered his own weight in supplies and had finally gotten them situated in their various packs and pouches so that he could actually walk with them.

            “Stormwind,” he’d said.

            “Dare I ask how long you think you’ll be able to travel like that?” Mikial had put in.

            He’d chuckled. “They’re not as heavy as they look. I’ll be fine.”

            “A burden never feels lighter than the moments before the first step,” the priest had offered sagely, and Thordin nodded in agreement. He’d waved them off, hardly concerned at the time. He’d fully believed that he would be perfectly fine during the walk from his home in Loch Modan to the human capital. In fact, he’d rather been looking forward to the journey; he wasn’t the sort of man to spend much time beneath the open sky. The trip had seemed novel and exciting.

            In a way, it still was.

            He just couldn’t remember that part of it. By the time his boots met the shining white stone of Stormwind’s main bridge, his entire body was screaming at him, and the pouches and packs which had seemed so vital at the time he’d packed them had become sixty-stone demons bent on grinding his bones and straining his muscles to the breaking point.

            A guard clad in chainmail and marked by the gold lion of the Alliance approached him as he nearly stumbled and sent his face crashing into the ground, and helped him right himself. “Careful, sir,” said the guard with a pleasant expression as he straightened, placing a hand casually on the pommel of the shortsword at his belt. “Wouldn’t want your stay in the city marred by a bad first impression, would we?”