Chapter 7
"The Magus Antonidas was but a mere boy when he became an apprentice to one of the Kirin Tor. He was a tenacious learner, pouring over books in the magical libraries of Dalaran. After only a few short years of studying under the sect, Antonidas had outclassed his peers and earned their admiration, as well as the respect of his elders. At the age of 12, Antonidas' thesis, "The Ramifications of Refined Reverse Time Travel Phenomena into Quantifiable Magical Practice", earned him the Kirin Tor Sash of Supreme Acumen, the youngest to ever receive the award..."
… it went on further to explain that before him there have been fads where students abandoned their family names, but never to the sort of trend that went on after Antonidas took the reins. He had been taken so young he did not remember his family and never sought them due to his interests in magic taking priority. However, many tried to mimic Antonidas afterwards, even those who were from prestigious households. In the past decades, Antonidas has shaped Dalaran's culture into one to his liking.
He was not actually very tall or very muscular. He stood less than six feet tall and if I took even a cursory glance over him, it was easy to notice his thin, bony limbs and fingers. If he had been anyone else, then he would have looked like a simple breeze would have knocked him over. Despite being well groomed and impressively presented, Antonidas' robes were baggy and just a tinge too large for him that this was noticeable. It was like there was an absence of flesh, or simply that he was over a hundred years old or something. Considering he had experimented with time travel, who knew what his true age was?
Antonidas
The Kirin Tor
Level <Skull> Archmage
HEALTH: 52,945,000
MANA: 16,585,000,000
STRENGHT: 120
AGILITY: 290
STAMINA: 5520
INTELLECT: 23754
SPIRIT: 12019
KARMA: Neutral
Equipment: Sash of Supreme Acumen, Khadgar's Pipe of Insight, Archus...
Once our powers of observation grew powerful enough, I saw the world through a lens. It was like walking the world while having one eye peek over the game master's shoulder. I sighed and stopped trying to pry deeper into Antonidas' status. For one, I didn't even know if those numbers were good. Not for the first time, I wished that I had fallen into a Dungeons and Dragons world. At least prestidigitation was considered a low level spell there; I wouldn't have to study a whole bunch just to learn the most simplistic things. And for another, I doubted that Antonidas would just sit here for us to study.
They were nice numbers though, big and large. If I had any inkling of their meaning, I might have went far as question how Arthas had been able to defeat him. But the power of destiny is and always will be a powerful thing...
"You've been expecting me?" His eyebrows rose to his forehead. He stroked his beard distractedly, but his acute eyes followed my movements as I welcomed him into our room. He knew something about me, perhaps?
This was not how I had planned our first meeting however. I nodded, "Are you not Antonidas, ruler of Dalaran?"
"You have me at a loss, young lady," He clarified immediately. His eyes swerved over the room and took in everything about our habitat. It looked like he was already forming his own conclusions about us and me in particular. "A student of magic too... you seem to think you know more about me than I do of you."
"Well, that is to be expected, since you're a public figure written about in books and I'm... a twelve year old girl," I replied not without a hint of sarcasm.
He huffed like he had choked down a chuckle and peered down at our gloriously set tea table. "Tell me, do you know what was my first accomplishment, Miss Proudmoore? The one that really, truly set me apart from my peers?"
"Oh, I don't know, is it your thesis about the—"
"No." He cut us off immediately, his eyes piercing and sharp. There was an edge to his voice, as if speaking to one of the thousands of imbeciles he dealt with on a daily basis, like he want to choke the ignorance out of us with a flux of knowledge. The radiance of power was back and brighter than before, visible and tangible in the room. Beside us, Finn seemed to have a hard time breathing.
"... er, what?" I was actually about to ramp up for a rant of my own.
"No, Miss Proudmoore. That is not my first accomplishment. That is but a study and the first scrap of knowledge I shared with my peers. People are inherently superstitious. They believe in the folk lore of hedge wizards and follow the archaic rituals of high elves, but both have become obsolete in the last one hundred years. Do you know why that is, Miss Proudmoore?" He asked, invitingly. I felt not intimidated to want to converse with him under this atmosphere, for it seemed like even if he was so vastly more knowledgeable than I was, he would not laugh at me for my guesses. It was a rather silly feeling, since it was the feeling a chimp would have when a human would teach it to use sign language rather than to use it to test the toxicity of cosmetics.
"For thousands of years, we have learned magic through the same methods of 'try, observe, and try again' school of thought. It was passed down to us from the high elves, and from various myths to them. But that is limiting, not in what mysteries we study but how we study," He lectured, while pouring himself a cup of lemon drink. "Perhaps others will disagree, but my contribution to the arts was the formalization and standardization of the process. There is never a need for guesswork, superstitions, or folk lore, when there is science to be done."
He was cold and bold about it, as if there was no arguing with him. There was a sort of charm, but if you knew what to look for you could see it very well. It was very similar to how Steve Jobs was after his return to Apple. He, oh. Oh! Oh... I get it. "Oh, you're a psychopath."
Antonidas blinked not unkindly and smiled further, "I like you. You have the boldness of a much older woman, Miss Proudmoore."
"... Thank you?" I blinked, confused.
"That wasn't a compliment." He replied jokingly? Probably? I couldn't get a read on him anymore and all we used Observe on were still objects or people while they weren't paying attention. I never bothered trying to us it as a mind reading skill yet, so it was so hard to see why he was smiling further. "You think I'm here to recruit you."
"Well, yes, of course." That was obvious, wasn't it? Why else would he be here? I ought to pencil in trying to learn to read minds sometime in the future however. "Why, you don't think I deserve to go to your whatever bullshit magic school?"
"I can tell you all you need to know about yourself, young lady. I can tell you more about yourself than you know about yourself." He went along with the conversation, as if we were truly just having tea.
"Oh, I highly doubt that, even if you are... very smart." He didn't have the ability to just Observe something and just read off all that data just neatly complied and scripted into a pop-up window, after all. I leaned forward, staring him down and calling his bluff. Jaina panicked inside us, firing a hundred questions at me. She thought I was trying to get us out of going if I just insulted Antonidas enough. She didn't see that the man was not insulted. How could a leader of men be insulted by a twelve year old girl who could do nothing to him, in a room of almost absolute privacy?
His face never so much as twitched, and he only leaned back against his chair. He took a sip, "I do, and do you know how I do, young lady? Statistics, data analysis, and things that you can learn of in Dalaran."
"Oh yeah? Well, why don't you prove... wait, what was that? Did you just say learn in Dalaran? But I thought you..." Jaina blurted out for us. I thought for a moment there Jaina was going to make us go cross-eyed, because of how panicked she was.
"You have what it takes to join my, ah, how did you so eloquently put it? My 'whatever bullshit magic school', was it?"He smirked over his tea cup before setting it down. There was an audible clatter. "Theorize, observe, hypothesize, predict, gather data, and so on and so forth. When I first though of standardization, it was just the next logical step for me. For everyone else, it was the next logical step only after I had explained the idea. It was simple enough to begin with, and I had done so with so many other processes of magic. Now, Dalaran is on the forefront of learning that the high elf prince is arriving to learn from us. It was with that same process that I deducted you would excel in the academy or as an apprentice."
Hold on a minute, there was... "You spied on me!"
He actually rolled his eyes at this.
I sighed, realizing I was right, but that there was nothing I could do about it.
"Miss Proudmoore, I do not spy on little girls. That is unbecoming of me." He paused, before adding, "I have people to do that for me. If you do not understand, that was a joke. Miss Goldensword—no, not you Finnal, your mother—has informed me of your curiosity and the amount of powerful flowing into and out of you. It is indeed as if you were a grown and trained wizard, but you are not."
"What? How would you even know that without Father knowing?" We felt the heart pounding return.
"A large amount of energy—pure, arcane energy in such concentrations not even witnessed at the Sun Well—keep flowing to you from the rather stormy oceans to the west." He stated. His face was grim. He was not joking now. "What do you know of that, Miss Proudmoore?"
"Um." Oh, that was probably my soul doing the whatever thingamajiggy soul bullshit that allowed me to have rather unique and hilarious powers. That thing. Oh, it's noticeable. And... people can track it. And... they can study it. Oh. Oh... "... I don't know what you are talking about?"
He stared.
"I plead the fifth?"
Antonidas sighed. "I cannot persuade you to give up your course on dangerous magics, Miss Proudmoore, but I can use my position to insure your safety and the safety of those around us, such as the world. Do you understand me, Miss Proudmoore?"
"You're saying you're offering me a position as your apprentice, but not because I am that talented. It is because you think I'm dabbling in fel magics that might somehow destroy the world?" I blinked. I was quite flattered, to be honest. But Jaina was having another anxiety attack for some unknown reason. Really, Jaina, get it together, girl. "I'm flattered, sir, but I don't know... even if I did I doubt I can do anything that catastrophic."
He chortled and shook his head. "No, Miss Proudmoore. I do not expect you to be able to do such a thing either. There is no need to be dramatic. But you are not the first student to delve into the unknown, to cause unknown effects upon the world."
He said it with such conviction and forlorn knowledge that I almost thought he was the one who accidentally accidented the world before. That couldn't be right. "Um, thank you?"
Antonidas sighed again. "That wasn't a compliment, Miss Proudmoore."
I blinked.
"That said, you have open to you two options, Miss Proudmoore," He reached into his flowing robes and from somewhere that was obviously not on this dimension, pulled out a scroll that was just a tidbit too large to fit into his robes. It was thick, and there were golden letters on it that sparkled and change. They scrambled and rearranged themselves with each passing second. I thought I was going to get a seizure from staring at it for too long.
"And what might they be?" We asked in unison. I tore our eyes away from the script and back to Antonidas, noticing how amused he was by our reaction.
"First, you can be a regular student within Dalaran. What you cannot provide will be provided to you once you choose one of three sponsors, the Kirin Tor, the Mages' Guild, or the Sorcerers' League. Each will have their rules to abide by, but they can be summed up as limiting and boring and general education for the underachieving wizard. You do not want to choose this route, Miss Proudmoore, unless you wish to squander your opportunities and be a lackey, a minion, and a nobody," Antonidas intoned. He certainly cut to the chase immediately, and he expected me to abide by his predictions instead.
Well, fine. If that was how he wanted to play it, I'd at least give him the respect and listen to his proposal. It would be a hard life if I somehow did spurn him and cause enmity between us. "Alright, then what is my other option?"
He nodded along. "The other option is to be my apprentice, Miss Proudmoore. It is a more prestigious position, but you and I do not care for prestige. We are people who care for results. You will certainly have more resources at your disposal, but you are a princess of a major power, and so I do not doubt you can acquire anything if you set your mind to it. But you will have access to my mind, Miss Proudmoore, and all the other wizards who are like me, and pursue a greater goal for a greater good. Of course, this means you will need to change somethings about..." He waving lazily at our... everything.
"What?" We blinked and frowned indignantly, "What? What's wrong with the way I am? I'm getting along with my studies perfectly."
Antonidas nodded again, but now it just felt condescending. "Sure, sure, Miss Proudmoore. But sometimes, you have to change what is already, ahem, "perfect" to something of your own. Do not worry your pretty little head over it, for any changes you make are simply my instructions for you to be a better you."
I tilted our head and narrowed our eyes at him funnily, with a half-smirk as I thought I had finally figured out a side of him that was not in the games. "... You're the kind of guy who fixes something that's already working."
"And you'll be the one to clean up my mess, Miss Proudmoore," He chortled. I wasn't sure if I should be amused. He turned back to the scroll, which was now switching back and forth between 'Terms of Academic Residence in Dalaran' and 'Terms of Apprenticeship'. "Now that we are done describing the age old institution of apprentices and mentors, what is your choice?"
It was boiled down pretty easily for us. Freedom or knowledge?
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Note: I think I need help from people who know Warcraft 2. And maybe some refreshers from Warcraft 3. I'll be honest, I never played 1 or 2. Can anyone help me with that?