During his two years in Stormwind, Jess had seen the tall, mysterious tower every time he looked toward the west of the city. Sometimes purple magic glowed from it, or pale-white light shone at night. But this was the first time he'd actually stood at the steps beneath it.
A mage at the entrance wore a short robe and a wide-brimmed hat to shade his face from the sun. Strangely, a longsword hung at his waist.
He was checking the badges of everyone entering and leaving. He was probably one of the Wizard's Sanctum's mage guards—a so-called battle mage.
It was said that early in the war, many experienced mages had been killed because they lacked experience fighting orc warlocks. The forces capable of countering the Horde's spellcasters had been badly weakened.
Dalaran and the magical organizations of the kingdoms began following the Church of the Holy Light's example in training paladins. They recruited ordinary soldiers who had magical potential and quickly trained them to be battle mages, skilled in close combat and using magic to support their fighting.
After the war, those battle mages had actually become a powerful new school in their own right.
Jess had expected something more impressive for security, though. Perhaps a thin wall of arcane energy that would keep out anyone without a badge, or anyone carrying a fake one.
He showed his ring and got through without trouble. Then he climbed the spiral staircase winding around the huge tower all the way to the top. Before long, he'd risen above the dense green treetops of the Mage Quarter.
Looking out, he could see the quarter's purple roofs and the blue roofs beyond them. To the east stood the tall spire of the Cathedral of Light in the center of the city, surrounded by layers of houses and high buildings. Farther north, Stormwind Keep rose on a hill above the harbor, with the noble residences gathered around it like children holding their father's hands, all overlooking the sea.
On the walkways spread across the city like cracks in a white wall, crowds of workers and merchants came and went. Wagons carried goods and building materials between the old and new districts. The traffic stretched all the way onto the main road outside the city.
Beyond the walls lay the seemingly endless plains of Elwynn, crossed by the great Nefriti River. Forests stretched toward the distant Redridge Mountains.
Eastvale, which once took him nearly half a day to reach, seemed close enough to touch.
The sight was nothing like the game. The directions were roughly the same, but the real scenery, the light and shadows, were far more striking than the colored blocks and polygons of the game world.
He hadn't felt this so strongly in Lordaeron, because the game had never shown him Lordaeron before its destruction. He hadn't had anything to compare with.
Here, though, the contrast between reality and the virtual world hit him hard.
He passed through an arched doorway into the upper part of the Wizard's Sanctum, where the library was located.
Following directions from one of the library attendants, Jess went down two floors on a spiral staircase and reached the section devoted to alchemy.
Only then did he realize he'd worried too much about his clothes.
The apprentices and mages reading in the library probably didn't care what happened around them. They weren't going to mistake someone in shabby clothes for a thief. Perhaps only the idle people wandering outside had enough free time to judge everyone else's clothes and appearance.
That eased his mind, and he started looking through the books without embarrassment.
Fortunately, his mother was a farmer's daughter who'd received a proper education as a child, and she'd taught him to read and write. His education in his previous life also made it easier for him to pick up new knowledge. Otherwise, he wouldn't have understood these technical books.
But he still needed illustrations to match the complicated herbs described in the books with the names he remembered from the game.
“Shadow protection potion... Shadow protection potion...”
He searched through one index after another but couldn't find an entry. Search engines had been so convenient. You could type a keyword and get tons of results, relevant or not. Going back to these old-fashioned methods was awkward.
After searching for a long time, he realized he was in the wrong section. A lot of material relating to shadow magic was actually on the shelves for protection against dark magic, including many kinds of anti-shadow potions and spells.
In a heavily annotated book called Laurel's Techniques for Protection Against Shadow, he found a relatively easy recipe for a shadow protection potion, along with instructions for making it.
Laurel's Lesser Shadow Protection Potion was Master Laurel Haggai's improvement on the ordinary shadow protection potion, designed for emergencies.
It was simple to make, used ingredients that were easy to obtain, and didn't take much time to prepare. It could still give the drinker some protection against shadow magic and reduce the damage they suffered from it.
Ingredients:
Grave Moss. The basic ingredient of a shadow protection potion. The quickest way to obtain shadow energy is from this frightening plant, which absorbs necromantic power in graveyards. It is somewhat poisonous.
Kingsblood. An important ingredient that turns harmful effects into strengthening ones. Kingsblood can change the shadow energy of Grave Moss so that it can instead absorb incoming shadow damage.
Evil Claw. The claw of a beast that has attacked and killed humanoids. The sharp claws of old, vicious beasts living near humanoid settlements will generally do. This ingredient weakens the potion's effect but shortens the time needed to make it.
Fresh spring water, collected far from any source of magic.
Preparation:
Set up a cauldron without lighting the fire. Pour in the spring water.
Add the Grave Moss to the water.
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Light the fire and bring the water to a boil.
When the water turns pale purple and gives off a bloody smell, begin stirring gently for twenty minutes.
As the water gradually turns dark purple, add one spoonful of dried Kingsblood ground into powder.
Remove the heat and wait until the cloudy shadow energy becomes partly transparent and settles into a stable state.
Light the fire again and bring it back to a boil.
Add powdered Evil Claw. The powder should be as fine as dust, with no grains larger than sand.
Stir gently for at least ten minutes, then turn off the fire and allow it to cool.
Note: Store the potion in lead bottles or specially made magic-crystal bottles. A small bottle provides two doses. Each dose lasts for one hour or ends immediately after absorbing enough shadow damage. The effect gradually weakens over the last ten minutes.
Second note: The finished potion should be a reddish purple, more transparent than a standard shadow protection potion. It has a sharp, sour taste. Dizziness on first drinking it, and a hot face or watering eyes as the effect wears off, are all normal reactions.
After reading the instructions, Jess could only think what a pain it was. In the game, a normal shadow protection potion needed just two ingredients and a bottle bought from a merchant. Here, there were all these steps.
He'd actually looked at the standard recipe already. It read like the instruction leaflet inside a medicine box, and it was several times more complicated than this one.
As for collecting ingredients, Grave Moss grew in most places where the dead were buried, but there was no chance of finding any in the graveyards near Stormwind. Herbalists and mages would surely have picked it all.
The graveyards inside Stormwind were also cleaned regularly. The plant was poisonous, after all, and could even harm innocent visitors to graves who hadn't noticed it growing there.
And he needed extra ingredients so he could afford to make mistakes. If he botched the potion, he couldn't have everything depend on a single batch. He needed somewhere he could find plenty of Grave Moss.
That left only one ideal gathering site: Duskwood.
Just thinking of Duskwood made the back of Jess's neck go cold.
It happened not long after he'd come to Stormwind. He'd gone with some other workers to a small dock on a branch of the Nefriti River to help unload cargo. They worked until evening. Across the river, on the Duskwood side, he saw a person standing there.
The figure stayed there for more than an hour, still standing when they were ready to return to Stormwind. It never moved, except for an occasional slight sway as it kept its balance.
Afterward, they asked guards who often patrolled near the Nefriti River. The guards said it was a zombie that had wandered along the river from southern Elwynn. They were used to seeing things like that.
A few years earlier, a massive explosion somewhere toward Stranglethorn Vale had devastated the southern part of Elwynn Forest. Huge amounts of shadow energy swallowed great stretches of woodland, covering the towns of Grand Hamlet and Raven Hill in darkness. Part of Westfall was affected too.
Many people in Stormwind still talked about what had happened. Refugees who'd fled Grand Hamlet and Raven Hill to Stormwind tended to stay silent instead. Either way, the disaster had cast a shadow over everyone living in the Elwynn region.
Some believed it was dark energy carried through the Dark Portal from the orcs' homeworld of Draenor. There was some reason behind the idea. From Stormwind, Stranglethorn Vale lay roughly in the same direction as the Dark Portal, and the explosion had happened during the orcs' great invasion.
The problem was that even the orcs had tried to avoid Duskwood while marching. If the dark energy came from their own world, wasn't that a little contradictory?
Jess knew exactly what had really happened. The cause was an evil shockwave from Karazhan, an ancient magical tower standing in a valley between Duskwood and the great swamp where the Dark Portal stood.
Karazhan's master was the great mage Medivh whom Amy had mentioned. Under Sargeras's control, he'd guided the orcs into opening the Dark Portal.
When the heroes Lothar, the mage Khadgar, and the orc assassin Garona learned the truth, they planned and carried out Medivh's assassination. At his death, the terrifying power inside him suddenly ran out of control. The resulting explosion permanently altered the landscape for dozens of miles around, including Karazhan itself.
It was also a major part of the Warcraft movie's story.
From then on, southern Elwynn, once as sunny and warm as the north, became a frightening land of evil thornbushes and black, twisted trees. Only two human towns could offer the people living there even a little shelter.
By now, many people in Stormwind were calling the region Duskwood, and Grand Hamlet had become known as Dark Town, or Darkshire.
There was a large cemetery near Raven Hill—the biggest burial ground in the Kingdom of Stormwind. Many unnamed soldiers and nobles killed in the gnoll wars and troll wars were buried there.
He would certainly find Grave Moss if he could get inside. The question was how to get in and come back out alive.
Entering Duskwood would also solve the Evil Claw problem. Countless beasts there had fed on human corpses. Some had absorbed so much necromantic energy that they'd gone mad and attacked anything alive. What could be more evil than that?
As for Kingsblood, it grew on flat ground. There were patches around Lakeshire in Redridge and in Westfall, so there should be some in Elwynn too. But it was relatively rare. He could only hope to stumble across it along the way.
The more he thought about it, the more Jess felt he might be better off going straight back to the Slaughtered Lamb and taking the shadow spells with his bare body. It was hard to say which was more dangerous: an expedition to Duskwood or enduring a warlock's magic.
The important difference was that he couldn't avoid or properly judge the effects of being hit by a warlock's spells. On a trip outside, he could at least avoid some risks.
He used the borrowed quill to write down the basic travel plan and the necessary ingredients on his scroll. He felt he should ask Gred what he thought. The dwarf was, after all, an expert at surviving in the Hinterlands.
But first he wanted to ask the herbal merchants in the Mage Quarter whether they bought herbs, how they priced them, and what a reasonable amount might be. Then he'd have a clear potential profit to discuss with Gred, which would make the dwarf more eager to go.
The alchemy shop Alchemist's Needs was near the Wizard's Sanctum. Many people assumed it was simply an alchemy room. But for most mages it was a small shop handling herb sales and purchases, identification, grinding, research into potion effects, and more.
Most experienced mages had their own alchemy labs, or at least small potion rooms. Their apprentices used their teachers' facilities too. So the shop's original purpose as a public alchemy room had largely been forgotten, while its herb business had grown busier and busier.
The moment Jess entered, he smelled the strong scent of medicinal herbs. A middle-aged blonde woman behind the counter turned to look at him.
“New to the Mage Quarter, young man? I'm Ruth Lumere, the owner. If you want to buy herbs, go farther inside. My daughter will help you. I've got work to finish right now.”
“I'm not buying herbs, ma'am,” Jess said. “Do you buy them?”
“Of course.” Ruth Lumere asked, “Are you an herbalist?”
“I... yes,” Jess said. “I'm from Lordaeron, and I haven't been here long, so I don't know the market prices yet. But I've already put together a team that can go out gathering herbs. I came to ask what you'd pay.”
“For common herbs in Elwynn, we buy by the pound. Peacebloom is two silver; Silverleaf is two silver and fifty copper; Earthroot is one silver per plant; and Briarthorn is two silver per plant.”
“Can you find Kingsblood in Elwynn?”
“If you count southern Elwynn, yes. But it's rare and hard to spot. Herbalists don't go there anymore. They call it Duskwood now. Everyone who goes there runs into trouble. That's why our supply of Grave Moss has stopped.”
“If I gathered Grave Moss, how much would you give me?”
“Seven silver a pound. How does that sound? We can also discuss prices for other, rarer herbs, like Bruiseweed and Liferoot.”
Jess thanked her and left Alchemist's Needs. Outside, he found himself torn.
Should he sell the Grave Moss or use it to make shadow protection potions?
Should he focus on learning magic or on earning enough money to live?
Standing beneath the tall tower of the Wizard's Sanctum and looking at the mages coming and going, Jess gradually decided it would be better to learn something that could keep him alive, or even let him hurt an enemy, as soon as possible.
With greater strength, gathering herbs outside would be safer. In the future, he might even collect harder-to-find herbs or other rare things.
If he gave up his chance to grow stronger for the sake of a little immediate profit, he might spend the rest of his life trembling every time he left the city.
Seven silver was a little profit?
He smiled bitterly. He hadn't expected his appetite to grow so much.
He didn't even know how difficult gathering Grave Moss would be, and here he was thinking all this through. Judging by the seven-silver price, it certainly wouldn't be easy.
But he'd never know unless he tried.