Warcraft: Twilight Grove
Year 25, Day 3
I silently watched the last few feet of Ysondre’s long, snakelike tail vanish through the swirling, emerald-green portal set into the trunk of the great tree. I waited for several long moments and only once I was sure she was fully gone did I allow the smile on my face to fade and my shoulders to slump.
“Haah…” I exhaled heavily. That had been utterly exhausting. But oh so worth it.
I closed my eyes and reached into my spark, feeling for my growing library of Blueprints. Ysondre’s Blueprint had a weight to it that none of the others I’d collected had. The amount of history and knowledge that had come with the Blueprint was staggering, even though I lacked the context to understand most of it.
Ysondre was ancient. Far, far older than I had initially believed possible. She herself barely knew how old she was, because no one had been keeping track of dates when her egg first hatched. She was, at the very least, twenty-five thousand years old. Probably closer to twice that. And she wasn’t alone. Her mother was already thousands of years old when she’d hatched, and Ysera was not even the oldest living dragon.
It was an unfathomably large number. Sure, she’d spent a not-inconsiderable portion of that time dreaming within some sort of sleep world they had around her, but even still. It was…hard to wrap my head around. Even by the lowest possible estimate, she was more than five times older than my people’s recorded history. Many times older than the oldest signs of wizards we’d ever discovered.
I could trace my ancestry back eighteenth centuries. An eternity, even by wizarding standards. Ysondre had great-grandchildren older than my civilization. She’d taken naps longer than the House of Black’s storied history.
My head hurt. It had been faintly pouding from the moment I’d first created a Blueprint of the dragon, and my occlumency felt brittle like a too-thin porcelain tea cup. It was a very good thing that the knowledge associated with Blueprints seemed to be primarily housed with the Blueprint, because I had no doubts that all that knowledge rushing into my mind all at once would have caused potentially catastrophic damage. After all, even a brief overview of so much history was colossal in scope.
It wasn’t a problem I’d ever expected to encounter, but it was something I’d need to keep in mind going forward. I hadn’t had any issues after copying Kent, Grundy, nor Peach, all of whom had decades of history associated with their Blueprints. I’d never really considered what would happen if I tried to copy someone so many times older than them, because I hadn’t even considered that such a thing was possible.
Glynda’s hand on my shoulder guided me over to the steps leading up to the portal and I gratefully sat down on the cool, smooth stone. I braced my arms against my knees and leaned forward, cradling my head in my hands.
Despite the pain I was feeling, my lips slowly pulled into a savage smile. And now, all those unfathomable years of knowledge and experience were all but at my fingertips. One more source of Green mana––something I was confident I’d be able to find on this Plane with Ysondre’s help––and I’d be able to summon her wherever I went. Plus, if she came through and was truly able to secure the willing cooperation of mages that she considered to be experts…
Azeroth had very quickly gone from something of a disappointment to an absolute treasure trove.
I sat up and slowly rose to my feet, my eyes panning around the clearing surrounding the Great Tree. There was something I was forgetting. Something I’d been planning to do…
Oh, right. I reached for the land beneath my feet and a mote of Green mana appeared inside me, followed swiftly by three more motes from my other lands. A moment later, Professor Peach stood beside me, dressed in the same combat outfit as when we’d gone after Cinder and with a pair of vines wrapped loosely around her shoulders.
It took her a moment to gather her bearings. She glanced at Glynda, frowned at Cinder, and then her eyes landed on the closest lantern flower. A moment later, she was kneeling beside it, a small cloud of pollen marking where she’d been standing a mere instant before. “Ooooooooooo,” she breathed, her hand rising to cradle the glowing flower. It twisted unnaturally, the stalk straightening and the petals opening wide to allow her a clear look at the shining blossom.
Glynda mumbled something rather rude under her breath. “Thumbelina,” she said sharply.
Glynda’s fellow teacher did not respond. One of the vines on her shoulders had moved down to wrap around the flower’s stem, a new flower starting to bloom a scant inch away from the petals of the light flower.
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“Thumbelina!” Glynda repeated, and this time the peach-haired woman looked up, a wide smile on her lips and a wild gleam in her eyes.
“Yes?” she demanded. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Yes, I certainly can! You can play with your new toys later. Hydrys is unwell.”
The woman’s gaze snapped towards me, her head turning fast enough that I was certain it was only her aura that had prevented her neck from snapping. “Oh? Is that so?”
I…didn’t particularly like the way she was looking at me. She probably couldn’t hurt me, but…”It's just a bit of a headache,” I said quickly, “a little bit, uh, overloaded I guess. It’ll pass soon enough on its own.”
Thumbelina Peach slowly stood up and began walking towards me. “Nonsense,” she exclaimed cheerfully. She reached down and withdrew a pair of goggles from within the pockets of her tight-fitting white coat, then slipped them on. “This may not be Beacon, nor are you one of my students, but what sort of a doctor would I be if I turned my back on a young man in need?”
I suddenly had the urge to dispel her right then and there, but managed to stop myself before I did something I would regret. It would take hours for the lands I’d used to summon her to refresh, hours that we could be using productively rather than waiting to gather plant samples here.
Instead, I swallowed heavily and nervously looked her up and down as she marched towards me. Peach’s ‘combat outfit’ was just as impractical looking as that of most of the huntresses I’d met. She wore thigh-high heeled boots made from shiny black leather. Her hair was pulled back into a bun and her primary weapon––a sort of dagger with a syringe-like capsule filled with dust and handles like those of a pair of scissors––was neatly stabbed through the base of the bun for convenient access.
Instead of a shirt, she wore a tight-fitting white jacket vaguely reminiscent of a doctor’s scrubs, two rows of buttons holding it firmly in place. It had a high collar and over it she wore a pair of long, shiny black gloves that came up well past her elbows and matched her boots. Finally, beneath it all she wore a sheer black bodysuit. Only the opaque black lining at the bottom of her jacket––just long enough to go down to the top of her thighs––preserved any semblance of modesty.
She stopped in front of me and leaned forward, peering into my eyes. “Hmm, doesn’t look like a concussion.” She poked my forehead and I felt something brush against my aura, making my skin tingle. “Hmm, hmm. Yes, I see, I see. Close your eyes, please.”
I complied. A moment later, a cool, refreshing wave washed over me, pushing away the worst of the pain. I felt my aura reserves dip slightly, but barely more than if I’d stubbed my toe or hit my arm against a doorway. It did nothing for my damaged occlumency, but I instantly felt far better than I had initially. The knowledge was all still there, as was the strain of learning it, but it just…didn’t hurt as much.”
“There. How do you feel.”
I opened my eyes, blinking rapidly. “Uh, better. A lot better.”
“Good. Drink lots of fluids, avoid hitting your head, and try not to do whatever you did again in the next day or two, okay? Okay.”
And then she turned around and flounced away, the vines on her shoulders waving at me as she hurried back towards the glowing flower. I watched her go, slightly shocked by what had just happened. I…wasn’t sure what exactly she’d just done, but it had felt like she’d commanded my aura to heal me in a way that it didn’t actually know how to do. And then it had just done it. Just like that. I had no idea how I would possibly repeat that trick myself.
Glynda sighed and sat down next to me. “Don’t worry, no one else understands how the hell she does it either. There’s a reason Ozpin hired her, despite her less than stellar reputation.”
I nodded slowly. Ozpin certainly knew how to pick good subordinates. Raven and Glynda were both highly competent, and Peach was rapidly proving her value as well. It was almost a shame I hadn’t had a chance to copy any of the others.
“I can see that. Can she do that to anyone, or…”
“Unfortunately, just other people with aura. Even she can’t heal someone else with her own reserves. There’s a few semblances I’ve heard of that can, but they’re few and far between.”
Unfortunate, but not unexpected. She was a healer at a huntsmen academy, after all. Everyone there had aura. Well. Hopefully whatever light mage Ysondre found would be an expert healer. Otherwise, I’d need to track one down myself. Zatanna would have the best possible care available to her throughout her pregnancy. I’d make sure of it.
I heaved a sigh and slowly stood up. “I’m going to go take a look at that pool and then the portal.” I reached into my bag and one by one withdrew a number of glass tanks, the same ones I’d used to transport some of Peach’s plants from Remnant home. “Can you make sure that she gets a sample of both the flower and the big tree?”
The tanks floated up into the air and Glynda stood up as well. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks Glynda.” I glanced between the pool of glowing water and the swirling portal, then made a beeline for the water. That one was probably going to be easier to examine, and I was pretty sure that Ysondre would be able to answer most of my questions about the portal when I saw her again in two days' time.
For now though, there was still a lot of work left to do. I’d already gotten most of what I wanted out of Duskwood, but there was still plenty more to explore. Althea had mentioned a potential necromancer, one of the types of spellcasters Ysondre had said she likely wouldn’t be able to track down. That sounded like a good use of my time. As did investigating the other undead she’d listed, and those worgen creatures that had recently appeared.
I had initially been planning to go bind another land in the forest somewhere, but now that seemed like a waste. Ysondre would hopefully help me find a much, much better land to bind in the coming days. I just needed to make the most of the time until she returned.