The foot of the Hyjal mountains, Ashenvale.
It seemed that even the sleepless wanderings around Mount Hyjal over the past few months in an attempt to stop the spreading Darkness could not shake the irresistible appearance of the beautiful elf. This individual, possessing lush, wavy hair of a rare green color, still rivaled the recognized beauties of her race.
However, in a moment of rest, so rarely falling to the lot of the High Priestess of Elune, Tyrande Whisperwind was not at all engaged in maintaining her "irresistibility," as any other girl might think, nor did she spend her free time sleeping, as everyone else might assume—no, the elf's thoughts were directed toward a very specific thing connected to her past. In her delicate maiden hands, capable of firing an arrow from a bow at a distance far exceeding the visibility of keen elven eyes, was an unremarkable-looking small gray stone. Should one stumble upon such a specimen, despite its pyramid-like shape, one might think—what a mistake of nature? But in this case, such a verdict of plainness was prevented by a light blue magical haze, which was an inseparable feature of this particular representative of cobbles. It should be noted that before, some ten thousand years ago, the color of the haze was green, and the intensity of its glow was such that the owner sometimes used it as a desk lamp.
However, now the artifact interested the priestess not as an interior item or a nostalgic trinket—this "trinket" was one of the gifts from a friend enamored with the beautiful elf, who answered to the name Illidan Stormrage. Concurrently, the handicraft served as an artifact allowing one to track the status of the caster, though the stone's capabilities provided nothing particularly outstanding—for the most part, they simply gave knowledge of whether the elf in question was Wounded, alive, or dead... True, with its help, one could certainly find the creator's location, but that was another matter.
And so the artifact, which since the time of the War of the Ancients had remained merely a memento of a fallen friend, had turned into something more a few years ago. And though it glowed with a different color and not as brightly as its owner would have liked, the mere realization that the eccentric magic-lover had survived made her heart flutter with joy.
Tyrande Whisperwind had still not told anyone that the former traitor-hero of the past era had been resurrected. Not even her friends. Not even her husband... Especially not her friends! She knew Malfurion Stormrage like the back of her hand: he would only wave away such evidence and bring forth an iron argument in defense of his version—if Illidan Stormrage were alive, he would not have hidden for ten thousand years; such seclusion was not for his active nature. But her friends, a list that included elves who held a grudge against the Main character's brother, might rush off in search of the former suitor and stir up half of Azeroth in the process. Tyrande Whisperwind really did not want to inform her kin from the other continent about Illidan Stormrage's appearance.
"And it's not for nothing that he still hasn't sent any word, right?" she muttered, hiding the pyramid in a bag slung over her riding saber-toothed cat and jumping into the saddle after it.
Together with her surviving kin, the priestess of Elune was heading toward the new residence of the night elves—a vast valley in the center of the continent, surrounded by almost continuous mountains. And while there were no familiar forests there, there were also no traces of the Void to be seen. On the journey, considerably shortened with the help of teleports, the girl had to vigorously ward off troubling thoughts that behind the silence of her surviving friend might lie some weighty and extremely valid reason—the kind you wouldn't wish on an enemy. For example, something connected to Sargeras or N'Zoth...
***
Kalimdor, somewhere in the sands of Tanaris.
Nozdormu liked watching sandstorms. Therefore, he occasionally emerged from the abode of his flight—one of the largest temporal anomalies of Azeroth called the Caverns of Time—and watched the chaotic flitting of sand grains obeying the will of the wind. It seemed very appropriate to the Time Aspect to compare the sand grains to the fates of sentient beings, the wind to the flow of Time, and the storm itself as a whole to the variability and inconstancy of this powerful force, over which he and his Bronze Dragonflight had stood guard for many tens of thousands of years, from the very moment when Aman'Thul, leader of the Pantheon of Titans, endowed them with the ability to control it...
The huge bronze dragon, lying on a rocky ledge, watched the fury of the elements and reflected. And he had much to reflect upon. At the very least, how to get rid of the nagging feeling that everything was not going as it should. Lately, Nozdormu was beginning to feel that his kin were right: the bronze dragons, who for millennia had protected the timelines from the machinations of various ill-wishers trying to change history, were certain of the existence of Destiny. However, no matter what anyone said, the Time Aspect himself knew for a fact that no fate or predestination existed, even taking into account the magic that allowed interference with the future and the presence of those very ill-fated time loops. And yet, he looked into the future with considerable trepidation... Or rather, he tried to do so, but for some reason, certain moments stubbornly escaped the Aspect's gaze. And that was precisely what caused the greatest concern.
Recently, he had found a lead. Surprisingly, the threads led not to the excessively emboldened N'Zoth, hiding demons, or even the elves, who, by the way, had gained significant power over the last centuries, but to the humans—a relatively young race settled on the eastern continent. And now Nozdormu was, among other things, deciding on candidates for a messenger to the human lands, choosing from his closest assistants. Perhaps it would be more promising for him to go himself and personally deal with all the uncertainties, but the existence of an Aspect did not allow him to leave his post for longer than a brief admiration of a sandstorm.
"Chronormu or Soridormi? Hm... At any other time, I wouldn't even think twice about the choice—both are excellently versed in the intricacies of time flows, but in terms of communicability with other sentients, Chronormu is a hundred times better than anyone of our flight. But he's been acting too strange lately. His new appearance alone is something—a Midget Gnome girl. What did he call himself? 'Undecided'? What a word he came up with... No, better I send him to Wyrmrest Temple—let him work as an ambassador there, maybe his kin will set his head straight? And then, who knows, he might come to his senses, or some dragoness will snag him..."
***
Menethil Harbor.
"And still—why Ironforge? Why couldn't they send us on some less trivial task? Is 'come, take, and leave' really the level of the personal students of the most powerful Archmage of Dalaran?" the blonde girl, having lightly run down the ship's gangplank, finally stopped holding back her indignation, which had accumulated throughout the boredom of the sea voyage from Southshore to the only port city of the dwarves.
"What do you have against Ironforge? Do you think wandering through swamps in search of some special speckled crocolisk is more interesting than reading books in warmth and comfort?"
"Where did you find 'comfort' in a vessel that reeks of fish?!" the indignation in the young mage's voice allowed the true source of her discontent to be identified.
"Who stopped you from using magic to get rid of the smell and other inconveniences?"
"It's impossible to know spells for every occasion!"
"But one must strive for it," Lir countered and immediately, in passing, demonstrated an air purification charm.
"You can do that too?" she asked in surprise, but then immediately became indignant, "Hey! Then why didn't you use it during the voyage?!"
"What do you think?" A slight smile crossed his face—the way a teacher would look at a negligent ward who asked a question with an obvious answer.
During their time studying together, Jaina had managed to become well-acquainted with her companion's teaching talents, so she sighed and guessed:
"Motivation, right?"
"That's the one, that's the one... By the way, do you know what we're going to do today?" Lir asked, casting an appraising glance at the mountains approaching the sea, which towered over the city wall.
His friend did not fail to look in the same direction.
"Don't tell me you want to take a shortcut to the dwarven capital through the mountains?"
"Make a week-long detour or reach the goal in a day... Hm, let me think... Fine—I won't tell you!"
"Oh..." the girl sighed again, but this time theatrically. "Are we going to practice jumps and portals?"
"Spot on. As usual—I don't even have to explain anything to you! Eh... where were you before? You and I would have done such things..."
Jaina glanced at her companion, who, having immersed himself in some memories of his own, had started talking nonsense again. And although hints about the past of the excessively talented lad had been voiced more than once, the young princess, despite all her genius, had still not been able to uncover Lir's secret—who he was and where he came from. But the time for questioning had not yet come, so the girl remained silent again. Meanwhile, the pair left the relatively small town, rounded the bay, and turned onto a path leading somewhere toward the aforementioned mountains, crowned with white caps...
"It's beautiful here," Jaina froze on the edge of a ledge, which offered a view of the ascent the pair had just conquered, as well as the sea bay on one side and the swamps stretching to the horizon on the other.
The students of the Archmage of the Kirin Tor needed the remaining half-day until evening to climb the nearest peak, so at the moment they had the opportunity to watch as the sun, half-hidden behind the sea surface, painted the surroundings red.
"Mountains are always beautiful," Lir shared his life experience, also curiously surveying the area.
The girl suddenly threw back her hood, threw up her hands, and, shouting something triumphantly, fired a bolt of lightning into the sky with all her heart. A bright flash illuminated the rocky peaks. Lir, not expecting such a thing, spent the next half-minute intensely healing himself, restoring his vision and swearing godlessly to himself. To Lir's credit, it should be noted that he was not at all dissatisfied with the trick by his friend, but with the situation as a whole, and so he berated himself for his loss of vigilance.
"Why are you scaring the shorties?" he said with a chuckle while a dim glow broke out from under the palm pressed to his eyes.
When the lad finally blinked his eyes clear, he was surprised to find that his student had frozen right in front of him, in close proximity. And she stared at him with very, very sad blue eyes. Intuition told the former long-liver that there was about to be another twist of female logic. He didn't have time to ask what was wrong before a tight hug followed, and a girl's voice, almost breaking into tears, whispered into his ear:
"Don't leave, please!"
"I declare with full responsibility—it wasn't even in the plans!" Lir hurried to reassure her, lightly stroking her back. "What makes you think I'm going anywhere?!"
Jaina pulled away from him and gave him a searching look.
"You said yourself recently that the normal books have run out. And since you only came to the academy for knowledge, nothing holds you in Dalaran anymore: you can practice anywhere!"
"Where would I go?" he shrugged. "Back to my fishing village? No thanks, fish for the fishermen, magic for the mages. So don't imagine things, I'm not planning to run away from you."
"Not even to the elves?" The blue maiden eyes began to grow sad again. "I see the nostalgia with which you look at them. You're constantly asking about the situation in Quel'Thalas. You look thoughtfully at the horizon..."
"Nonsense," he chuckled good-naturedly. "The one place I'm definitely not going is Quel'Thalas, even if Antonidas himself orders me under threat of expulsion! No—even if the whole Order falls at my feet and starts begging!"
"Really, really?" Jaina hugged the lad again, and because of the height difference, he bumped into the girl's shoulder.
"Definitely," Lir snorted in response. "Actually, you know, let me tell you something. I should have done it a long time ago. I can see it—you're dying of curiosity. Maybe your motivation for practice will grow too."
The girl tensed for a moment, but then relaxed and only hugged her friend and teacher-in-one more tightly.
"You often slipped up... but I didn't want to pry into your business."
"Alright, let's go. We still need to set up camp before dark..."
***
The northern mountains of Dun Morogh.
"...Let me summarize," the curiosity, interest, and delight so clearly readable in the listener's emotions at first had faded as new details of her friend's life's ups and downs were revealed, leaving behind only seriousness and concentration on the face of the girl, who had engaged in her beloved analysis of facts. "Ten thousand years ago, you were an elf and 'not the least' Mage. Demons invaded Azeroth, whom you fought off at the cost of a global cataclysm. And then a certain god N'Zoth appeared, operating with Darkness, killed you, and tried to seize your soul on the way to rebirth, but failed. Which most likely caused your rebirth specifically as a Human, not an elf. And this happened only ten thousand years later, but with the memory of your past life, even if it suffered a little..." she thought about the brief interpretation of the not-so-short story, and then expressed her opinion: "It sounds incredibly epic! But, to be honest—I have a ton of questions."
"Ask away."
Lir suspected that the questions would be far from ordinary—after all, Jaina is Jaina; she is no friend to triviality. In short, that's how it turned out.
"What is it like to be an almighty immortal Archmage and then find yourself in a fragile human body with a tiny gift of magic?"
"As for the lack of magic in this body—it gave many downsides, but there were quite a few upsides too. After all, thanks to the modest core, my control has already reached sky-high heights compared to the past, when the power of a spell took precedence over the art of weaving it. And you know, overall, it's also fine," the lad admitted and looked thoughtfully at the fire blazing in the center of the tent, which was not at all bothered by the lack of firewood. "At first, of course, it wasn't easy to get used to such radical changes. But then I calmed down and now I'm just enjoying life. In the last decades of the previous one, it didn't work out that way—I was always rushing somewhere, grabbing at everything at once. And now the understanding has come that my death freed me from all debts and obligations, and I can start living almost from a clean slate."
"Almost?" she caught on when it became clear that no continuation was forthcoming.
"My knowledge of magic is still with me, as is my knowledge of enemies: I am sure that neither Sargeras nor N'Zoth has gone anywhere. So I didn't come to this time empty-handed."
"I see... Listen, why do you have such a strange reaction to elves? Shouldn't you have done the opposite—strive to get to your former compatriots instead of hiding from them? What if they could have helped somehow?"
"That's a difficult question," Lir replied a little later, continuing to watch the play of the tongues of magical flame. "Someday I'll tell you everything in more detail, but I'm not in the mood right now. In short, I had a difficult relationship with our... with the leaders of the elves. What do you know about Azshara?" he asked suddenly, looking up.
"Well, she's the greatest Mage of modern times... an immortal beauty-queen..." she began cautiously.
"Say what you think, I won't be offended," the lad interrupted.
"I've never seen her, but according to my father—an extremely power-hungry and selfish nature, but at the same time, there's enough greatness and personal charisma for a dozen kings."
"Yes, perhaps there's no better way to put it—she has no lack of greatness and charisma. And Azshara is also an extremely vengeful person, and something tells me she might recognize me even in this guise. Whether by habits or the set of spells I use—it doesn't matter, but it could happen, and then I'll be in trouble! I, to put it mildly, neglected my duty to the Queen a couple of times. But I believe that death closed all debts," he repeated. "So I don't plan to reveal myself and will avoid attention from my former kin by all means. Though it's unlikely to succeed—sooner or later our paths will cross, because neither you nor I plan to remain in the rank of backwater wizards."
"I see," Jaina said with a barely perceptible relief in her voice, and then her face changed subtly. "And you probably have relatives, friends... family left among the elves?"
"A former teacher, a brother, a former lover," he listed calmly and immediately clarified, as it seemed he understood the subtext of the question: "These ties don't pull me back: I respect all three of them, but considering they imprisoned me for an indefinite term—our paths have clearly diverged. True, I only realized this after my rebirth. I am grateful to Cenarius for everything he taught me, but I don't agree with his one-sided views on magic. Tyrande Whisperwind... once she was the meaning of my life, the center of all my thoughts and actions, the source of inspiration... But she turned out not to need any of that, and she chose my brother. It happens. Malfurion Stormrage himself, in my opinion, cared too much for the mentor's positions. I didn't agree with their slogan: 'Nature is our everything!' And also, by the way, I dreamed of irresistible power and as soon as I found it, I went in search of something even more destructive, not realizing that power is far from everything a mage needs. In short, now I don't care about everything that was so engrossing in my past life."
His interlocutor nodded slowly, digesting the answer, but another question arose by itself based on his last words:
"But what about magic?"
"What about magic?" he shrugged. "I'm still interested in it, but no longer in terms of searching for powerful charms—my Mana wouldn't be enough for anything serious anyway. It was worth losing power for me to realize that magic does not consist of power alone. I have, to be honest, become very fascinated by research into fundamental laws. How things are arranged, how they work, where things come from and where they disappear to. Understanding the basics, as it turned out, can give incredible results."
Jaina, recalling Lir's training fight with Uther, nodded again, but did not have time to ask the next question. The lad asked himself:
"Since we're having a night of revelations, can you answer one question? My experience tells me it's not worth delaying it—one might be fatally late."
"Of course."
"Do you like me?"
"?!..."
***
Ironforge.
The capital of Khaz Modan turned out to be a city of hidden contrasts. Although, it would seem, what kind of contrasts are possible in an underground city, when from all sides the guest is pressed upon if not by the buildings themselves, then by the stone vaults hanging over houses of monstrous size? However, the dwarves found something to surprise any sentient being who visited Ironforge and paid a considerable toll at the entrance.
Firstly, the lighting. Rivers and waterfalls of magma, illuminating the gloomy underground abode of the bearded shorties with a dark red light, could leave no one indifferent. Street lighting... However, it was represented by standard spells and therefore was of no particular interest, much like ordinary torches, except for the mere fact of its presence and then only to emphasize the variety of light illumination. The most striking thing from the point of view of the pair of traveling mages were the light-producing inventions of the Gnomes: bright lanterns hung throughout the Gnome City worked on completely different principles than magic.
And secondly, the sounds. One could walk in silence through a dark corridor and then, suddenly, around a corner run into the deafening clangs of working smithies. The roar of drunken dwarves from taverns was replaced by the strange ticking and rustling of rotating gears in the Gnome domains...
In short, while Jaina and Lir were making their way to Tormus—the blacksmith with whom the head of the Kirin Tor had placed his order—they managed to go around half the city, share impressions, and also specifically go deaf when they passed by workshops and smithies...
"Here, your order," a grim dwarf, seemingly no different from other such bearded, stocky shorties, straining, lifted a medium-sized chest from the floor and with a jerk threw it onto the counter, right in front of the visitors. "Are you going to check it?"
Lir glanced suspiciously at the sturdy product of an unknown carpenter, realizing that behind the relatively small dimensions lay a considerable weight of goods, and turned his gaze to his friend: she was the one who had received the task from their patron. Jaina, realizing that a hitch had occurred somewhere and sincerely hoping it hadn't crept into her information, frowned, and from under her hood came:
"Master Tormus, wasn't this supposed to be an arcanite rod?!"
"That's right," the blacksmith nodded solidly, and, removing the covers from the empty eyelets of the lock, threw back the lid and revealed his goods to the representatives of the customer. "Beautiful arcanite rods in the quantity of thirty pieces—everything as agreed."
The pair of young mages admired the steady reddish glow emitted by the arcanite products even without enchantment and looked at each other. Lir took one of the rods and immediately realized that the whole chest must weigh about fifty kilograms. The lad shook his head in doubt, looking at the contents of the future delivery.
"Hm... It looks like we'll have to get to the port by road," Jaina, unlike her partner, did not need to try out the weight of the blank for an enchanter's main tool to know its weight.
"We could drop all our things and quickly cross the mountains, but I don't like that option. Master, where can one hire a wagon to Menethil Harbor?"
"Ask at the city entrance," the dwarf grunted. "Have you checked everything? No complaints? Close the order."
Next to the chest, on the counter, was a parchment decorated with two seals. Jaina scanned the contract, looked into the chest, clinked the rods as she rolled them back and forth, and only after making sure the written word matched the contents did she place the stamp of the seal issued by Antonidas. At which the shorty immediately snatched the sheet and silently disappeared into the depths of the shop, without even saying goodbye.
The visitors looked down at the open chest again and thought.
"Alright," Lir slammed the lid shut, neutralizing the hypnotic effect the glowing blanks were having on them. "I suggest you stay here—guard the rods, and I'll go look for a wagon and, I suppose, a porter—we're not going to drag them to the gates ourselves, are we?"
"Alright, Lir. I'll wait..."
Only ten minutes had passed since Lir set off in search of hired help when the door of the blacksmith shop opened, and two tall figures stepped over the threshold. The "guard" raised her head, tearing her gaze away from the book she had taken for such occasions on the journey. The pair of entering elves smiled kindly and surprisingly synchronously, causing goosebumps on the young girl. Но Jaina did not have the opportunity to use her powerful intellect and manage to realize what her intuition warned her about and what was wrong with the visitors—the plain artifact-bracelet made of woven twigs, given by her partner about a year ago, suddenly grew hot.
The spirit magic embedded in the artifact helped identify the arriving guests as enemies who did not shy away from using spells that influence the mind.
Meanwhile, the visitors moved to more decisive actions. From the pommels of short rods that appeared out of nowhere in the elves' hands, a pair of crimson sparks flew, hitting Jaina right through the successfully cast bluish cocoon of Defense, and seemed to be absorbed into her body without a trace. However, contrary to the attackers' expectations, their victim was still in no hurry to fall unconscious. Instead of the girl, smoldering wooden dust fell to the floor—all that remained of the gift-artifact. The young mage herself jerked awkwardly and vanished into thin air. To the complete surprise of the attacking perpetrators. The long-eared mages were indeed enemies—the escaped princess had no illusions about that.
The elves reacted promptly to the disappearance of their future captive. One of the mages jerked his palm in a clever way, and an air wave rolled out in all directions, bringing a bit of chaos to the shop's interior. Several exhibits fell with a crash, hiding behind the noise the soft rustle of pages from the book that had fallen from Jaina's hands, but not a sound came from behind the door where the owner had disappeared, and even the box with the order from the Archmage of the Kirin Tor remained motionless.
"Not an illusion? Doesn't look like Invisibility," the one who had cast the last spell broke the silence, continuing to look around warily.
The second—the one with short hair—did not answer, closing his eyes and concentrating.
"She's outside! It was a portal!" he exclaimed.
The first one's face lengthened in surprise.
"But such portals..."
"Later! We must catch her quickly before she alarms half the city!"
Both immediately enveloped themselves in a barely discernible gray haze and then, demonstrating a clearly artificially increased movement speed, dashed outside one after the other. As soon as the guests disappeared past the threshold, the door to the inner rooms swung open, and the aforementioned dwarf literally rolled out from there. Showing no surprise at the absence of the buyer's representatives—as if what had happened was no secret to him—he simply and without fuss dragged first the coveted chest and then the backpacks left by the two humans into the depths of his house, not forgetting to pick up the book from the floor.
When he had been asked for a favor by compatriots from among those close to power, though famous in narrow circles but still remaining bound hand and foot by ties of debt and guild obligations, the blacksmith, not being a fool, had agreed to the proposal. No damage to his reputation was foreseen, for as he was assured—"no one will know anything," and Ironforge knew how to keep secrets...
***
What Lir had not yet begun in her training, she mastered herself under the influence of emotions and the moment. And the moment for self-education, it should be noted, turned out to be just right—Jaina was so frightened by the sudden attack, which became the first clash with enemies in her life, that she herself did not understand how she escaped with a jump, simultaneously maintaining useless protective charms on herself. And yet Lir had once claimed that such tricks were a definite sign of mastery... And as if that weren't enough—she also broke her record for distance in a single bound! Previously, half a kilometer had been a difficult, hard, but doable task for her: well, that "film" separating space that Lir talked about just wouldn't yield to her, and that was that... And here, she just went and jumped three times further! And to a place that was outside her field of vision...
So it turned out that in the process of becoming a "master," Jaina had overexerted herself somewhat, given her all, and now, limping through the gloomy corridor toward the main gates, she felt terrible. Right now, there was no question not only of further jumps but of using any other spells at all.
But seconds flew by, and her uneven gait became more confident. The time between steps decreased, and at some point, the girl began to run. Only to stop thirty meters later, just ten steps from the next turn, and turn around to face the pursuers who had caught up with her so quickly. Admiral Proudmoore could be proud of himself and his daughter—the sense of dignity instilled in the princess demanded she meet danger face to face with her head held high. For the sake of the latter, the girl jerked back her hood, releasing a shock of wheat-colored hair that immediately scattered over her shoulders.
The approaching ill-wishers were hit by a lightning bolt, quite powerful for such a deplorable state, which, however, merely "flowed" onto the stone floor as harmless sparks over manifested turquoise shields. The elves didn't even slow down and, right on the run, used their rods again, obviously enchanted with some highly specialized charms from spirit magic—a field whose spells were suited like no other for influencing the mind. But this time, the artifact could not help Jaina due to its complete failure in the previous incident. The girl, already knowing what to expect, resisted the influence for three long seconds on pure stubbornness, but still gave in to the struggle, staggered, and, going limp, fell at the feet of the individuals who had made an attempt on the royal person.
"And now..."
An ordinary dagger costing a few silver coins prevented the elf, who followed the fashion of the last ten thousand years for a short haircut, from sharing his further plans with his partner...
Elemental shields are good for everything! Well, except for the fact that they don't protect against physical attacks in the slightest...
A human lad appearing out of nowhere behind the elf's back, with a hand that did not flinch, introduced to his former compatriot's facial features a much-needed element that was, in his opinion, missing—namely, a hilt sticking out of the chin, firmly connecting the two jaws. Before the body of the hapless kidnapper could collapse to the floor, his accomplice was already sinking nearby, demonstrating an identical hilt in the back of his head. And neither the difference in height or age, nor the superiority of elven physiology over human, could stop the slaughter. Experience once again proved its superiority over other components of success.
Lir, returning just in time, glanced around briefly, noting the curious heads of witnesses peeking out of the windows of nearby houses, and knelt beside his friend. Placing his palm on the girl's head, he froze, assessing the situation. After a few seconds of immobility, the lad, having come to some conclusions of his own, rose abruptly to his feet and launched into a flurry of activity around the scene of the massacre, remaining remarkably cold-blooded throughout.
First of all, he healed Jaina and, in the process, tucked her own hood under the girl's head. Then, he began searching the corpses, whose belongings—like the bodies themselves—he considered legitimate trophies. Within five minutes, Elven runes were scorched directly onto the stone floor, and around them were placed power cells extracted from the artifacts belonging to Azshara's former subjects after they had been dismantled. The bodies also found a place in the resulting composition, the scheme of which any person even slightly versed in magical aspects would confidently identify as space magic, albeit one using the bodies of the fallen mages as mana sources—but when did such nuances ever stop Archmages, even former ones? Since he couldn't solve the problem using his own energy, he could use someone else's.
A minute later, a small portal frame flared with blue light in the center of the "rock" painting, powered independently by the "ingredients" laid out around it. Through the spatial window, the shore of a lake was visible, and it was quite possible that a geography expert could have determined the area belonged to one of the largest lakes on the continent.
Lin silently picked up the girl in his arms and vanished onto the other side. A few seconds later, one of the precious stones that had previously been part of the attackers' staves, serving as pommels, flew back through. Its counterpart lay at one of the focal points of the magical pattern.
Be that as it may, the precious stone, tumbling merrily across the floor, gave one last flash, and then the scene was swallowed by a flare. The explosion that followed destroyed both the portal itself and practically all traces of the skirmish and the subsequent preparations for escape.
However, for the interested parties who were rushing to the scene to investigate the cause of the Highborne's deaths, witnesses were enough, and exactly how the killers escaped was a secondary matter... Regardless, it was already impossible to influence the fact of their flight, unlike the possibility of gaining profit even from a failed operation. Whether it was a full-fledged benefit or just a small jab at rivals on Azeroth's political stage...
***
***
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