Mercurio Andros

UP : Yew (Napa Valley)

    A young child was trapped inside her burning home last night, and her mother could only live each second in horror as burning flames and thick smoke prevented a rescue. It happened in a small farmhouse in Yew. The young girl was Waylona Jaroll, the daughter of Yew animal trainer Victoria Jaroll.

    "I couldn't believe my eyes", said the Lady Jaroll, "The flames quickly ate though our simple wood and straw home, and before I knew it, my eyes were so irritated from the smoke that they were swollen shut. I couldn't see anything, and I couldn't get back in the house to save my baby."

    Jaroll says she did the only thing she could think of, which was to run toward the nearby Empath Abbey for help. "I couldn't see a thing," says Jaroll, but I have walked to and from the Abbey so many times that I can find it while blind." When she got there, Jaroll says many didn't believe her tale, thinking she was trying to lead them into a trap or ambush.

    But according to Jaroll, she somehow found three brave souls who were willing to believe her as they ran to the wooded home which was already full of flames and smoke. "I will never forget their names," says Jaroll, "Pejus Letho, Lord samanmax, and Briddle. Three names that are like sweet music to me now."

    The three brave souls charged into the fire, aided by potions of temporary invulnerability, family heirlooms that Jaroll had been saving for many years. However, one of the three lept into the flames without a magic potion, as they saved it for young eight-year-old Waylona, who was trapped inside.

    Said Waylona, "I was so scared, but those nice men helped me be not scared anymore. They told me to follow them into that fire, but somehow I knew everything was going to be ok."

    "I was so thankful to have my daughter back, that I offered a reward of almost all the gold I could save from the house," said Lady Jaroll, "500 gold pieces to be exact. But as if saving my daughter wasn't enough, those three men refused the gold."

    A tear welled up in Victoria Jaroll's eye at this point, and she could barely continue as she said, "Those men will never know how much that meant. Now my daughter and I will be able to use that gold to rebuild our home. With my husband missing since a monster attack on Yew, gold has been hard to come by."

    The brave rescuers did, indeed, refuse the gold. They said they were from a group known as the Order of the Blue Flame. They said it was their job to protect the innocent, and those noble gentlemen refused any reward at all.

    "Truly, if there are more of these citizens of the Order of the Blue Flame, then our world is a better place to be because of them," said Lady Jaroll, "at least I know that my own little world is, for I would have no world at all without the daughter that these men brought back to me.

A tearful goodbye is said as young Waylona Jaroll hugs the men that helped save her life

From the Town Cryer - The Journal of Ultima Online, Monday, March 23rd 1998