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Snow glowed white on the high wall surrounding Dalaran where Khadgar stood overlooking the floating city. He had been alone in the moonlight with his thoughts for hours, and there was not a footprint in sight. Dalaran felt like a kingdom of isolation, and he was the king. The wind was howling like the swirling storm inside his chest.
What a disaster.
In the recesses of his mind a rebellion had been brewing, for years now.
At last, he hadn’t been able to keep it in…Light knew he had tried. In the distance, he could see a towering bolt of purple and azure arcane, a swath of energy spiking from the earth high into the night sky. His bolt. His spell, gone massively wrong. It had seemed like a good idea when he’d patched together the incantation in the library from an obscure series of scrolls. Using the spell during a formal examination by the Council of Six to stubbornly prove a point, not such a good idea. Casting the spell incorrectly? That had been even worse. Something went wrong with his incantation and the arcane he had released shot upward through the ceiling of the examination room as far as the eye could see.
Everything had gone wrong, actually. The Council of Six had been beyond livid. The lectures that followed had spanned hours, then days. Khadgar refused to concede that it had been wrong to explore unknown magics outside the prescribed curriculum of his mentors. The Kirin Tor held another position, of course. Mages, they believed, ought to focus on a primary area of study – on of those endorsed by their schools of thought.
This hadn’t been his first offence, either. Not by a long shot.
Khadgar wasn’t like other apprentices. His curiosity seemed to burn from within, driving him to question and learn and explore beyond what his teachers were willing to impart. He’d slowly learned to not let his masters in, to not let them see what he was learning on his own. “Can’t let them in, can’t let them see,” he thought bitterly. His family had earned great honor when they’d given him as a six-year-old to the Kirin Tor to be trained by the most powerful mages in Azeroth. He was ashamed of what they’d think of him now, if they could see what a failure he was turning out to be. Helplessness, even panic, filled his thoughts for a moment. “Be the good apprentice you always have to be. I have to conceal it. The Kirin Tor can’t know how I feel. They’d kick me out of the Order.”
He longed to just let it all go – the Kirin Tor, the rules, the isolation.
Khadgar looked up at the night sky and his towering column burning fiercely into the purpling sky. Nobody had known exactly where the young mage had erred with the spell, including himself, so the tower of light continued to rage while they searched for a solution. Despite himself, a wry smile appeared. “Well, now they know.”
Let it go. Let it go.
Sudden clarity flowed through him in a cold wave that shivered the length of his body. Staring at the disastrous, wonderful arcane in the distance, the boy laughed delightedly.
“Khadgar. You can’t hold back any more.” Speaking softly to himself, the young mage felt something shift deep inside. He knew exactly how to let it go.
He would renounce his vows. Leave the Kirin Tor. Be free.
It took his breath away.
Let it go. Let it go.
He was ready to slam the door on the Kirin Tor’s antiquated ideology. “Let them reject me. I don’t care what they’re going to say.”
Mirroring his tension, the wind seemed to pick up intensity as it swirled around the walls, flicking weightless snowflakes across his upturned face. “Let the storm rage on,” he thought, his double meaning layered with glee as his cloak and hair whipped electrically. “The cold never bothered me anyway.”
He thought with irony that the distance from the mage tower made everything seem small, including the fears that had controlled him in front of the archmages. Nothing could reach him on the wall. The young mage made made his decision fervently. He would continue to study, to learn, whatever he could, for the rest of his life. He would embrace the world, rejecting isolation. He would become the mage that he was capable of being, and not the puppet novitiate of the Kirin Tor.
Stretching his arm out, he reached for the arcane and felt it surge in response, spreading out of his hands and eyes, an azure glow spreading and swelling in and from his body.
“It’s time to see what I can do. To test the limits and break through.” Holding the arcane fountain in place, he reached for frost magic with his left hand and fire magic with his right. The three energies swirled in curling, fractal patterns into the night sky. “No right, no wrong. None of their rules for me.” Khadgar looked up at the sky, and the moon, realization dawning over him. “I’m free.”
The refrain burned in his mind like an affirmation, a promise, an anthem to the torrent rising within.
Let it go. Let it go.
He felt impossibly connected with the icy world around him, as though he were floating, flying, one with the wind and the moonlit night sky.
Let it go. Let it go.
“I’ll never be the Guardian. On this, I’ll stand, and here I’ll stay.”
He knew the magical light show could be seen across the entire city of Dalaran as the first hint of dawn touched the sky. It wouldn’t be long before the Kirin Tor investigated and learned who the perpetrator was. “Let the storm rage on, indeed,” he thought with satisfaction.
Raising his arms, Khadgar felt his power flurry through air into the ground, orange and white and blue rivulets rising exponentially. He felt intoxicated, as if his soul was spiraling in the frozen, fiery arcane fractals all around. A thought grew, crystallizing like an icy blast. “I’m never going back. The past is in the past.”
Let it go. Let it go.
His power and strength rose with the break of dawn. More and more tendrils of magic joined the first strands, twisting joyously into the sky. He knew that the perfect novitiate that he had tried to become was gone. Forever. He stood, in the mild light of dawn, as his arcane storm raged on.
Shouting in the distance. Khadgar knew the Kirin Tor were getting closer. The mana burned an inferno through his veins, nearing depletion and cauterizing his decision with furious resolve.
He raised calm, brown eyes to the approaching mages, standing immoveable against the wall in the growing light. He knew that his decision to renounce his vows would be permanent. He would be cast out, literally penniless, with nothing but the clothing on his back.
The thought was exhilarating.
A smile broke over his face as two violet-robed men grabbed at his arms, pulling him roughly to the ground and breaking the flow of arcane as he was thrust face-first into the snow. He knew that he would be brought before Council of Six to answer for his defiance.
Serene, his heart thudded with certainty.
“The cold never bothered me anyway.”