Livelihood of an Apprentice

Now close to a month of training and learning we both have some achievements in casting magic, I was able to use telepathy and illusions fairly well if I say so, even if it was mostly just smoke and mirrors, it could still affect less attentive warriors or non spellcasters, as for Selia, we would for sure grow to become a Grand Mage if given time, she could are use some area of effect spells of the ice variant even if it was still quite unrefined and easy to break out of it was still nearly unheard for someone to learn such in less than a month's time.

But as our current identities as apprentices, there still things being required of us, Krasus seemed to just let others think of us as normal apprentices for the looks of it... he was often very cryptic and cunning for a red dragon, makes sense since none even suspects of him being a red dragon even after so long.

But as convinient as being an apprentice was for not attracting attention, we still had our duty to complete tasks for our teacher every once in a while.

And today we would be getting our first task, and most likely the last for some years, since I planned to leave Dalaran for a while... I just didn't get to tell old man Auron that yet, and seeing his enthusiasm in teaching Selia and even if a bit more reluctantly me, I didn't have the heart to do so yet.

I figured since we are already here and we owe Auron alot, we would take this task seriously... Ok, maybe I was a bit bored as well and wanted to play around for a bit, but I still respected the old man.

We found ourselves in the sewers of Dalaran, using spells to activate a device that Auron had given us to detect where a minor disease which would make rats grow mana crystals started, many apprentices were sent in the sewers in a joint effort to point the direction of such anomaly faster, us included.

"Are we there yet?" I ask Selia, who was not only dragging me around with the device in a cheerful mood, but also was doing her best to sneakily understand the device to learn how to make one, a task that didn't seem to be possible for such low level apprentice I thought to my self, but would not ruin it for her.

"Theo, weren't you bored? Why are complaining?" Selia said while confused about my fickle mood.

"I wanted to fight something or explore a ruin or something, maybe a bit of intrigue or scam- I mean trading would be good too... but this..." I said while pointing to piles of excrement running on the water canals "Bit too gross and smelly no? it's not like we will be in danger here too... the best we would find would be a idiot newbie mages doing some experiments that he shouldn't..." I said with a sigh.

"Hmmm, but aren't you excited about weird experiments with mana and all that? Those rats grew mana crystals! You should like this type of stuff!" She said while again not understanding her companion.

We kept our pace changing direction every once in a while in accord with the device.

"Its not that I'm not interested in the rats, it's just that I suspect the newbie mage just sticks magic crystals in the rats for them to grow... there's not much to it, and seems a cheap trick... I only find weird that those rats were all over the city, that's why I wanted to take a look, but now I find that maybe that isn't so big of a deal, he just needs to let them breed a little and based on their breeding rates everything would make sense..." I said while trying to justify my fickleness.

Selia just rolled her eyes and started to ignore me while trying to understand the device better.

Sob. My little Selia has grown, she won't rely on Big Brother Theo anymore... she can even retort me now, what happened to her broken speech and cute mistakes. But I was much happier with her like this than seeing her fighting against many personalities and then shutting herself off of everything around, it looked like arcane studies helped her bring out some memories in a more organized manner, she still heard voices but the quantity lessened a bit, I suspected that her blue and bronze dragon inheritance memories were what was surfacing, and since it didn't involve stronger emotional memories but rather their arcane knowledge it made easier to stabilize her mental condition.

Soon we both felt something unexpected bellow us, as if the ground was too thin and there were many busy presences, small presences right under our feet, the device also started to spin out of control in Selia's hand.

At this point, both of us knew what was going on, making us look at each other before starting to run.

As soon as we began to run the ground gave in and a swarm of crystallized and half-crystals half-flesh rats started a rampage in our direction, something that as far as our hearing goes was not limited to us... many screams and collapses could be heard, and soon all hell broke loose in the sewers.

Seeing as we would be surrounded soon, I was ready to give a ice breath behind me, but before I could do so, Selia had finished casting her spell.

A cone of gelid wind flew from her hands, covering the rats at the front of the mass of crystal and flesh, freezing around 2 meters in front of her. Before we could get our hopes up the frozen rats began to shatter and break apart, the rats behind them didn't care one bit as they crashed past their frozen kin.

Deciding to stand my ground I breathed a ice breath before me, covering most of the hall and leaving me tired for a couple of seconds.

The rats that were coming from behind us were drowned in ice, the ones who survived were stuck behind a wall made of their frozen kin, that would hold them off for a little while.

Seeing me tired, Selia allowed me to rest for a bit while she extended her hand to the ground, trying to find a passage underneath, she was brief to avoid overusing her draconic power but still managed to find what she looked for.

We looked at each other for a bit, she was clearly excited about finding the source of the rodents. Seeing me with a smile and eith a new curiosity to find out more about them too, she cast used her draconic power to make a small hole by which we could access the tunnels bellow.

I suddenly realized that we may be looking to put our lifes in danger in unneeded circumstances, and that I was crazy for finnaly feeling expectation for a life threatening challenge just because I was bored previously. Still I followed after Selia.

Bellow the sewers we found a net of tunnels, with smooth walls, many parts of the walls were with chunks of crystal hurting out of them, making for a quite beautiful sight albeit dangerous because of their sharp edges and a limited amount of space to avoid them.

Selia was the first to take action once again, taking out the device given to us, it was still not responding very accurately and spinning all over the place, but soon it stop after Selia casted a spell on it, and after another spell she made it work to the point where it would point to only one location.

'Talented people are scary, I should never underestimate her again... if she can do that now imagine if we had time and the right resources...' I thought at seing this scene.

We did not know that while it was indeed very dangerous to be targeted by the swarm, the other mages were not being chased by many of them, to the point where even the apprentices could retreat safely by working together. The two dragons were the targets, their mana and power was like a blinding light in the sewers drawing the mana hungry rodents to them.