A pale yellow sun pouring a deluge of late-noon light across the landscape bled through a windowpane at just the right angle to catch Erin in the eye as she overslept.
She grumbled, but the sun would not relent.
With an angry, scorned huff, Erin cast her covers off and stood bleary eyed. She rolled out of her bed onto the carpet below and took a good ten minutes of standing with her head against anything she could press it against.
With a yawn, Erin eventually dragged herself through her daily tasks.
She ran herself through the arcano-shower, did her hair and glamours, put on some easy clothes; a hoodie and some slip-ons, grabbed an apple for breakfast and kissed her wife. She procrastinated, really, for about as long as she could. Some light reading. She went into Halfhill before the market closed, and restocked their shelves and put things in little over-organised containers. She took another nap. But as night drew in, Erin could delay the inevitable no longer. The Valley's cold winter winds buffeted her, as she coasted around the front corner on paved stones, to the back of her house and through her little garage door into her office.
As she had learned in both school, college, and her own travels- there was only ever one way she'd be able to learn spells or get better at casting them. As much as she loved shortcuts, for her, here? There were none. Sit down. Drill the material. Drill the casting.
Tonight's topic was freecasting teleports- being able to appear at any point across any leyline, and therefore almost anywhere in the world, rather than just major cities. Until now she'd used a visual guide to do that. But she was going to try to learn it by heart.
The clock struck eight.
Erin unfurled two scrolls, one translucent, and one of paper. The parchment scroll depicted a map of Azeroth, all four major continents and every island in between. The entire length and breadth of her largest table, it was detailed enough to hold major roads and routes through each land as well as towns and locations of lesser import than local capitals. As she overlayed the translucent map she made sure it was of an equivalent size to the other and of the correct orientation, and unwrinkled each fold. A map of the leylines now laid directly over each location they would lead to, with major crossings directly over major cities like Stormwind and Silvermoon.
Learning an entire world's worth of ley lines off-by-heart was possible. Wasn't it?
The clock struck ten.
Another coffee brewed, and back to business. Good progress was being made! Not that any actual study had been done yet. Ever the optimiser, Erin had divided each section of the world into squares that she called 'quadrants', and labelled them alphanumerically. Northwest Kalimdor, the ruins of Teldrassil, took place in the first quadrant and the south-eastern most corner of the Blasted Lands was the final quadrant. With each continent mapped out, finally Erin could get to work!
The clock struck midnight.
Four coffee cups piled up onto themselves. With a yawn, Erin found herself idly checking other books, staring out the window, spending far too long reading the label on the back of the soap bottle she held when in the latrine and too many other ways to distract herself.
She almost didn't want to gaze back at the progress she had made in her notebook.
One quadrant. Stormwind, and the leylines leading through the river Elwynn. She knew the area well, obviously. Stone Cairn Lake was a documented place of power, the Kobolds in the mines to the west certainly weren't just making all that about candles up, and the less said about Goldshire the better. But there was guilt there- she could've worked harder. She could've done more! But the night was young, still. Like all the other times, she'd wait and wait but then... when that illusive impulse hit, the rush of stress and adrenaline, that 'Oh shit!' moment... she'd hit her stride, and surely she wouldn't stop.
Another two hours on the clock passed.
Erin had swapped out coffee and started breaking into her arcwine collection by now. A sweet buzz, an electric aftertaste, a fruitiness that lingered on the tongue. How much work had she done? Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe this could be one of those "do it for yourself" days, for stress relief! But... then she wouldn't bother being awake so late. By now, she couldn't even escape to anywhere for another adventure. All the bars she knew would be closing up soon, or certainly not letting anyone new in. The streets would be filled with nothing but drunks and people with nothing to lose.
As she continued to ignore it, her workbook's work had grown to a whopping... three quadrants. Leading all the way up into Lakeshire. There was no drilling, at least not now. It was barely reference material. Maybe it was already too late for any progress...
Erin had stopped checking the clock, reaching that timeless, ethereal hour that you usually only ever see when you wake up from a bad dream or because you're ill. All numbers had lost their meaning, and she did not think to check how much wine she'd churned through. The night was silent, cold. She was alone. Hating that disconnect, to be so far away from everyone, she opened a portal and spied what it was like in... say, Kalimdor.
The sun had already begun to rise in the west.
“Oh shit!”
Here it was. Finally! The rush, the surge she needed! Erin's heart pounded, her mind- usually out of sync with her body- finally aligned and began absorbing information. She desperately held onto that focus, for as long as she could. The lines she drew in her notebook, each quadrant, each zone- she actually remembered them. Major ley lines ran under Ironforge, connecting it with Azeroth- could that have been how Magni had such a direct connection with it when he became speaker? It flowed up through Thelsamar, but weakened through the sundered loch, and the dam that held much of its waters. Into the highlands, past Ancient Stromgarde too, and even old Lordaeron.
The lines nearly faded through the Plaguelands- but they were there, and she could see them, imagine them! A few test portals helped her get a feel for it, the trail of magic she had to follow, the strings she needed to tug. She was Magi. Knowledge is power. The Eastern Kingdoms revealed themselves to her.
And then it all came down.
Erin's mind burned out, however-many hours later. A glint of yellow, that damned sun, again! But then she looked back at her notebook. A whole continent laid before her, written down, and if she closed her eyes... oh, if she just closed them, she could see it all. The next few days would prove if it was still there... but for now, she'd done all she could. She packed away her things, and turned in for the morning.
The Eastern Kingdoms was only one small part of the world, though- and she'd need a lot more all-nighters to get it all done.