My 'Bubble' (Part One)

Kallinda and Sashana, the two apprentices assigned by the council.

"Born in Eversong Woods, raised in Eversong Woods, never having breathed Silvermoon City's decadent air-the finest apprentice material. Take them to the Red Sun White Tower. First cultivate the habits an Arcanist should have, then wait for the two little apprentices to grow. Nurturing them is one of the pleasures of my life. Hehehe."

His mentor's laughter grew almost shrill.

"When training apprentices, developing their knowledge is important, but what matters most is getting them to accept your values. It's like staining a white canvas, dyeing it in your own colors. Nothing makes a mentor happier than instilling values in an apprentice, and nothing is more tragic than an apprentice whose values clash with their mentor's. Soon you'll understand where the pleasure lies."

All masters have their quirks. The rumor's origins were impossible to trace, but at least one-eighth of its accuracy had now been confirmed.

In the past, Shane could never have seen this side of his mentor or realized that he was regarded as an equal.

"Mentor, I'll go pick them up myself. Until they've achieved something, I won't give them the chance to come into contact with Silvermoon City."

After bidding his mentor farewell, Shane stepped into the arcane radiance, met the plane of folded space, and passed through it to the other side. The coordinates his mentor had given him pointed to a farm in Eversong Woods, but he emerged from space onto a small hill, with the farm below.

The deviation was within acceptable limits. Mastering the application of core knowledge was not something he could accomplish overnight.

Shane walked down the slope. Mana wyrms flickered in and out of sight among the trees, poking their heads out from behind leaves and atop branches to study the unfamiliar visitor curiously. The visitor did not seem frightening. They approached carefully, testing him warily. Once they confirmed there was no danger, they drifted closer and circled slowly around him.

"The little fellows were drawn here by the arcane energy." Shane gathered the three sets of spell orbs above his head together, lest the wyrms get caught on them and cause an awkward incident. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven..." He counted nine altogether. Occasionally, they brushed affectionately against his skin like pets, cool and remarkably pure.

When he reached the foot of the hill, a thunderous metallic clatter startled the little creatures, sending them scattering back into the woods. Constructs were working on the farm. The elves of Quel'Sera lived in such comfort that they had eliminated heavy manual labor. Beneath the Sunwell's radiance, the weather was favorable; once the seeds were sown, they could simply sit back and wait for the harvest.

"I'm here to see Kallinda. I'm her mentor."

Shane knocked on the door. The elf who answered was also a mage, though only of the third circle. The three sets of spell orbs above Shane's head frightened him.

"M-m... sir, I'll fetch my daughter." The master of the house invited Shane inside, then went upstairs.

"My mentor's here! I thought he'd never come in my entire life! This is wonderful!"

The girl's excited voice carried down to the first floor, making Shane smile.

When he met Kallinda, he found a girl poised between childhood and adulthood, aptly described as being in the bloom of youth.

"I'll be an adult in five years, so don't underestimate me, Mentor. My goal is to become an archmage," she told Shane. She was only of the first circle, and her talent was unknown.

After presenting the council's credentials, Shane took his apprentice by the wrist and teleported to another farm. His second apprentice, Sashana, was a girl with slightly dark skin. She, too, was only of the first circle, with unknown talent.

When he met her, she was fiddling with a wand-a scorched wand with only the faintest magical glow, barely more than a piece of plain equipment.

"Let's go. Your lives as apprentices officially begin now!" Holding one apprentice on either side, Shane fixed on his mage tower's location and activated the teleportation. All three jumped through space together. Taking two apprentices along was like carrying two bundles on his back. Passing through the folded plane required him to pay their costs as well, consuming three people's worth of mana and mental energy.

They stepped out of the teleportation space onto the soil of Windrunner Outpost.

"Bleeergh..." The two apprentices ran to the roadside and vomited. Afterward, they said teleportation felt like spinning inside a whirlpool.

"Low-circle and high-circle mages perceive things differently, so teleportation feels different too. They get motion sickness." Shane made a note of this and arranged for the two apprentices to share a room while they recovered from the aftereffects.

Back at the mage tower, Firehawk was the first to seek Shane out. He had finished half of his magic-item crafting work and wanted an advance on some of the profits. Feeding nearly four hundred rangers at his wedding and letting them drink their fill had bankrupted him. Shane understood his difficulties and gave him the advance.

"Before, I only felt you were a head above me. Since you came back from Silvermoon City, it feels like we're no longer on the same plane at all. My friend, tell me what happened." Firehawk was delighted to receive the money. In the past, he would usually have declared happily, "Money exists to be squandered."

"Some things did happen that took me to another level on the arcane path. But those are secrets I can't speak of."

"Now you've really got me itching to know. I'll have to raise my own level too. I can't fall too far behind. I have plans tonight. See you." Firehawk pushed off with his toes and departed, heading home to his two wives.

Shane prepared to put into practice what he had learned from the Highborne Wisdom Scroll: "Cultivating Taste, Establishing a Space of Your Own." During his two-day stay in Silvermoon City, he had learned only three sixth-circle spells. It was not a good place to put his knowledge into practice.

A honeycomb, a slotted spoon, a sieve-that was how the space around Silvermoon City felt to him, the result of elven Arcanists' excessive use of it.

Would it attract demons? Every Arcanist capable of exploring worlds understood one fact: Azeroth was a world riddled with holes, yet extraordinarily sturdy. The more powerful a creature was, the greater the price it had to pay to cross into Azeroth-a price so steep that it might be hunted down and killed as soon as it arrived.

Establishing a space would take a long time. Shane sealed the door to his quarters and lay on his bed to put his knowledge into practice. In his mental perception, the black dot above the Red Sun White Tower was a passage to outer space. He projected his mind through it. The world beyond was just as he had seen during his advancement: a boundless realm of dark purple, known in arcane lore as the void.

The void was not empty. On the contrary, matter and energy were abundant there. Following the method taught in his core knowledge, he extended his mind outward, stretching it to a suitable length, neither too fragile nor too short and thick. Then came the waiting: waiting for a "bubble" to drift past so he could catch it with his mind. It was arduous work that depended on luck.

With exceptionally profound arcane mastery, he could also establish a defensive barrier to isolate himself from the void, then summon matter to create a space. But that was something for the future.

Matter constantly passed through his mental reach in the void: hard chunks of rock, great masses of powder, black blocks of ice, and all kinds of unfamiliar viscous substances. A few bubbles drifted by as well. He caught them with his mind and examined them, but they were either too large, too small, or filled with unsatisfactory matter. Shane wanted a bubble rich in arcane energy.

After a long time sifting through a great many candidates, he finally found a bubble with a radius of two meters, brimming with blue-white arcane energy. Against the backdrop of the void, it looked like a star. He caught it with his mind and drew it toward Azeroth, the "chain" pulling it steadily closer. His mental projection did not extend far, so he had no fear of the void tearing it apart. Slowly but surely, the bubble moved toward the black dot through which his mind had passed, pressed against it, then filled and smoothed it over.

Part of its surface plugged the passage through the black dot, completing the pull. But he was not finished yet. Shane still needed to leave his "scent" inside the bubble and make it his own.