Life was a form and source of magic that could be subtly shaped by elves, and doing so was the essence of being an elf. And so gardening to enhance life in the world was the normal vocation of most of the elves of Alure, and helping life flourish despite the chaos that ruled much of the multiverse was every elf's true calling.
At last he sat back on the soft ground, wrapped his thin green cloak more firmly about his shoulders to combat the lingering chill of morning, rested his tired old arms, and looked about critically at this small unspectacular corner of his gardens, which included several patches of critical life from far away worlds. This was by far his favorite garden section, though it was the least successful in terms of amount of growth and was by far the most work for him to maintain. Every individual patch of ground was strongly warded to maintain environments specific to each different world being emulated.
He critically regarded the results of his most recent labors. The tiny plant was called a Parat on the distant planet of Tunic, and had no known commercial value for the Tunic people, yet it was priceless to them. They hadn’t yet acknowledged the Parat’s vital role in the life cycle of Mordat fungus, or the vital role of Mordat fungus in maintaining the soil’s ability to support Tunic food crops, not even after he had patiently explained it all to them on several occasions.
They were a science oriented people, but hadn't gotten around to finding out yet what Soone could directly sense: Mordat fungus and Parat plants were keystone species for the ecology of the planet of Tunic. As the Parat moved steadily towards extinction on Tunic, the Tunic people would soon face extinction themselves as a result of their stubborn environmental ignorance and carelessness, and in addition to dooming themselves would doom much of the life of their world.
Theirs was unfortunately a recurring theme in the universe: an ecosystem that eventually developed intelligent life forms became subject to their arrogance and ignorance: a panicle species could and often did make foolish choices that drove big changes in their ecosystem that resulted in ecological catastrophe.
The soil in this small recent addition to his garden, which Soone had patiently nurtured for an Earth century, was as close as he could come to that of the planet Tunic, and included as much fungal and bacterial life as had been possible to gather through several dangerous trips to Tunic by Soone and his friends over many years. The Tunic were not a friendly people, but Soone still hoped for their eventual enlightenment and deliverance from extinction.
Perhaps he could yet help save the Tunic species from themselves, if his six tiny Parat plants and the underground growth of Mordat fungus they supported survived long enough. Among the dozens of planets known by the elves to harbor abundant life the Tunic people were of course unique. Soone rather liked how they were constructed: four powerful legs, two delicate arms ending in something like hands, and a head that resembled that of an earthly spider, all protruding from a bulky shelled body the size of an Earth rhinoceros covered with colorful poisonous spines. What a beautiful creature! It would be a shame and crime against the Maker if such a nifty appearing species went extinct!
His latest garden additions had firm, healthy looking green leaves, including new growth, and his probes of their life-force showed them to be very much alive. He judged that they would likely continue to live, at least for now. At the proper time he would re-introduce them and the fungus to Tunic. With his help, perhaps life on Tunic had a chance after all!
Would Soone himself survive long enough to help save sentient Tunic life? That was impossible to know. Elves were very long lived, but Soone had already lived much longer than most. It greatly troubled Soone that the survival of the entire Tunic race apparently hinged on his own personal longevity. That was an absurd situation, and it worried the elf greatly. Billions of sentient lives and countless non-sentient lives depended on this small patch of life-forms that were alien to the elf home world Alure, and on one very old elf’s own tenuous grasp on life. That situation didn't seem to be at all sensible.
As much as elves strove for everlasting structure and sensibility, ultimately it seemed to elude them, as it generally did for all known peoples. Sensibility seemed to always be tantalizingly just out of reach, always only a generation or two away but never quite currently reachable, even for elves.
Much as on Tunic, the status of life on Alure seemed to be increasingly threatened by its panicle species the elves. The current Elf High Council was unusually isolationist and increasingly devoid of sensibility, it seemed to Soone. They did not agree at all with Soone’s concepts of engagement with others and with the ultimate necessity for interdependence between the sentient races of the universe. Of late the Council even seemed to be abandoning long-held elven knowledge and beliefs that for many millennia had formed the center of elf culture!
Soone's response was to work alone even harder in his beloved gardens. As long as life on Alure remained strong, he was confident that elves would endure and that in time the Council and elf culture would return to traditional wisdom. What immutably made sense in centuries past still made sense today, it had merely been forgotten for a while.
The old elf’s eyes wondered to the towering kaleidoscope of magic-enhanced life beyond this hand-worked patch, to wondrous growth unmatched anywhere else on Alure or any other known world. Not even the gardens of the nearby Grand Hall, supported by a dozen senior Wizards, matched what his own magic had helped to achieve here. Life begat magic that Soone subtly shaped here to encourage yet more life and more magic. Gigantic tree-like plants towered miles into the sky, buoyed by enormous hydrogen filled gourds. Millions of flowers bigger than elves and more colorful than any rainbow grew everywhere! Alure creatures of every shape, size, and color imaginable climbed and flew among the plant growth, exchanging nutrients and other life-essential commodities. Even shy rare creatures like dragons and pixies lived within Soone's gardens!
As the elf watched, an entire section of forest changed from green to dark red, maximizing solar power absorption from the setting sun. These fantastic results achieved through magic and unending physical toil allowed him to live apart from most of elf society and discretely pursue a variety of activities unsanctioned but unopposed by the Elf High Council.
His activities having to do with helping other races, such as his Tunic project, required consorting with beings that were not elves and who did not necessarily support The Balance. For some reason he could not understand, lately that disturbed many elves. Somehow dealing with non-elves had become politically incorrect, an attitude now reflected in the High Council that Soone could not accept.
However, among the several million elves on Alure, Soone was one of only a hundred or so elves declared to have reached the status of Gaou, or Master Wizard. As such he was traditionally provided much latitude, though as of late the Council had been meddling and threatening more and more. Why they did so was incomprehensible to Soone. Why would any elves oppose him? He was dedicated to the long-term pursuit of life! Soone persisted by mostly ignoring the trivia of elf politics and the fleeting cultural variations that came and went over the decades and centuries. Regardless of what the Council thought or did, life was good here in his gardens.
As he did every morning he sat quietly for a time and focused on his wondrous gardens, drawing on some of its Life Energies to renew the wards that maintained the Great Balance by protecting Alure and all elf-protected worlds from the Demons and Evil of the Void. This time he was once again shocked to find the ancient protective galactic Balance Wards even further weakened!
He hated to admit it but the weakening was part of a very disturbing trend. In recent years increasing numbers of elves denied tradition and refused to contribute to the renewal of the Balance Wards! Some members of the Alure Council were even questioning the very existence of Demons and Evil! Soone personally did what he could to defend elf traditions and the Balance, but he was only one elf, and by necessity he dedicated most of his efforts to his own garden rather than to Alure politics.
As he finished with his daily spells, Soone sensed that a visitor was approaching from far above; a creature of great power but not an elf. He quickly recognized that it was Sky the sprite that approached, a fact that did not displease him. He had outlived his mate and most of his friends, and welcomed occasional visitors. He very much enjoyed the exuberance of the young sprite, and tolerated free-spirited Sky far better than did most other elves.
Besides, as a naturalist Soone was fascinated by sprites. Sprites were living contradictions: a non-biologic life form that reveled in and consumed rampant energies and even Wild Magic instead of being destroyed by it. Sprites were exceedingly powerful creatures. Too bad a sense of responsibility had evaded them almost completely; they would have made powerful allies in the unending struggle against Demons and Evil.
Looking skyward with large elf eyes, he soon sighted the sprite visually, dropping below the clouds, but also immediately noticed that Sky carried something nearly as large as herself: something that was not blue like the sprite. Knowing Sky, it was probably some tantalizing curiosity that she planned to barter for his elf cookies, though truth be known, Soone would gladly treat her to free cookies to secure her visits. Yes, he was a loner, but he was a lonely loner. Especially in recent decades he counted the young sprite as one of his closest remaining friends.
Sky landed lightly a few feet from him, and watched the elf’s face for reaction as she lay her burden gently on the ground before him, her every motion as smooth and graceful as the most elegant of dances imaginable.
“Greetings old elf,” she said cheerily. She was small even for a sprite, largely humanoid in form and only half a head taller than Soone, but very slim and elegantly graceful, even when standing on solid ground with wings somehow folded and absorbed into herself and levitation powers extinguished. Her smooth, featureless skin and long head hair were rich blue in color, and her big eyes were very elf-like: wide yellow orbs with huge grey pupils that danced with hints of blue or green when she was excited. Right now they were solid green, which suggested that the sprite was very excited about something. Cookies, probably, thought Soone.
Soone’s jaw dropped open and his own eyes widened in surprise when he studied the sprite's burden that now lay before him, evoking a mischievous giggle from Sky. What the elf at first had thought to be merely a bundle of rags was clearly humanoid in form: it was a creature of some sort, and a live one and an air-breather at that, for he could see it move rhythmically very slightly and sense the small amounts of warmed air that it exhaled. It was likely sentient, as evidenced by the clothing that covered most of it. The exposed skin of its face and one arm was light tan with a hint of pink: almost white in color. Oddly, the skin appeared to be clean, even though parts of the clothing it wore were covered in blackened ash.
The oddest thing about it was that it was warded in some manner, for he did not directly sense it as a living creature, but merely as a neutral void in the continuum. “What creature is it that you have brought to torment me and The Balance with this time, foolish sprite?”
“A small injured creature, wise old elf, another life for you to mend. A male, I think.”
“You think? I truly doubt that. Oh!” He finally recognized what it was, and the recognition took his breath away. It couldn’t be! Not even Sky would be so foolish! “It’s an Earth human?”
“Only a very small one. A child.”
“Humans have emerging magic abilities and are among the Council’s two dozen or so strictly forbidden species of the Galaxy to contact, even you know that! Look but don't touch is the rule! Growing sentient beings is very similar to gardening! Other than protecting their environment from Evil it is generally best to let nature take its course with an emerging species, lest weaknesses inadvertently be introduced. Evolution on Earth is relatively rapid; already it has resulted in humans that begin to control magic. They need to evolve on their own! Why did you bring this one to me?”
In reply Sky merely laughed, with laughter like the soft tinkling of dozens of tiny bells. Look but don't touch? Elves had too many silly rules! Generally she bothered to remember them only so that she could be certain to purposely break them.
“Mischievous one, this is your twisted sense of humor at work!” Soone admonished sternly. "You likely brought the human here to cause me further grief with the elf High Council of Alure!"
“No, good elf, only to have it mended, unless it is beyond all hope.”
“Beyond hope you say?” Soone didn’t like to see any living thing suffer. It was a quirk in his psychological makeup that caused him to do things such as his Tunic project, a project that clearly broke the elf 'look but don't touch' rule.
He knelt next to the child and gently placed his hand on its forehead. He had to rely solely on touch and other base senses; he still sensed nothing of its life forces and functions directly, though it obviously lived. This human was very strongly cloaked and shielded, whether self-induced or via the persistent spell of another entity, he couldn't tell. In fact he soon realized that he wasn't even actually touching the child's forehead! He was touching an invisible magic shield that covered the child like a second skin! Soone pressed a little harder and the shield pushed his hand further away from the child with irresistible force!
Sky laughed! "Yes indeed, you can look at this boy but not actually touch him! Perhaps he also knows the silly elf 'look but don't touch' rule! His shielding makes him slippery as a Saturn gas eel; it was very difficult to carry him! His mass and weight I could not control either, making flying and teleporting almost impossible."
Soone shook his head in puzzlement. The human was a complete enigma. “It is weak, but lives, at least for now. As you say, if I recall correctly human anatomy basics it appears to be a male and seems to be very strongly cloaked and shielded, but clearly in some way traumatized. What did this to him?”
“Demon blasts, powerful ones. The Demon killed two other humans that I believe were the child's parents.”
“A Demon! On Earth? Impossible! Earth is entirely elf-warded against Demons and Evil. Tell me more.”
The sprite smiled. “I would be happy to, sir elf, but I have come far across this galaxy to tell this tale, and have not eaten food for many an Alure week.”
“Fool sprite, you are an elemental creature of magic energies, not a biological being! You have no physical requirement to consume the food eaten by biological life-forms such as humans or elves! Through some arbitrary quirk of elemental physiology you do however have the ability to taste things, perhaps as part of some practical means of accomplishing chemical analysis.
"You expose your real motive for coming here sprite, but by pure chance you are in luck, for as it happens I made dozens of fresh cookies this very morning. Spare my old bones and carry the human to my cabin then, and we’ll see to mending it first, and then second we’ll hear your story, and then only at the last when you’ve earned payment we’ll see to your endlessly empty stomach.”
Grinning, Sky easily picked up the human in her strong thin arms and followed Soone to his cabin. The old elf limped slightly, but walked much faster than usual. He glanced about anxiously, half expecting to be spied upon by either a nosy Council member, or by his annoying apprentice Rog, whom the Council had inexplicably appointed recently to work with him. Clearly a Council spy, that one!
Soone feared someone unexpected would suddenly appear and discover the human, but they reached his cabin without incident. That must have been mostly the work of whatever mysterious ward protected the child, who obviously had powers, for otherwise Wizards constantly on watch to protect Alure should have surly detected the boy and taken action by now. Sky was herself by now much too frequent a visitor to raise any alarm with them.
The cabin itself was heavily warded by Soone, which would help prevent any detection of the human for now, unless Rog himself happened to show up and barge past the wards and into the cabin itself. Thus far, the only thing that Soone truly appreciated about hi
s newly assigned apprentice was his frequent absence. In a sense it was good that the Council Hall was a mere two hour walk or a moment's teleportation away. Young Rog spent much more time attending public High Council meetings and reading in the Library than he did here with Soone, which suited Rog's supposed mentor perfectly.
Soone had Sky lay the young human upon his living room sofa, as the pens behind the cabin where injured animals were usually placed for rehabilitation would not be suitable for a sentient creature, and were less strongly warded. The reclining boy fit on the short sofa perfectly, which suggested that when standing he would be roughly the same height as Soone. It had been several centuries since he had seen any humans, but the elf judged the boy to be no more than six Earth years old. Of course that was still quite a significant age for a human, when it was considered how absurdly short-lived they were!
Soone next examined the child more closely, or at least he tried to. Outwardly, the human appeared to be uninjured physically, which was a very good sign. However, try as he may, the old elf could not properly probe the boy’s inner condition! The child was indeed strongly cloaked and shielded somehow. How? Was that a tinge of Wild Magic that he sensed? Impossible! Not even elves dealt in Wild Magic!
Meanwhile, Sky smelled the cookies, and in order to get at them as soon as possible, she hastily described the entire Earthly Demon incident to her host. Distracted by his efforts to treat the human, Soone took in the entire improbable story without comment. Frustrated with his inability to delicately scan his patient, he finally attempted to probe the boy with as much forceful magic as he could muster.
“What?” mumbled the boy suddenly, as he opened his eyes. “What was that? It tickled!”
“Sorry,” Soone replied, using the boy’s own language. The human fortunately spoke English, the only human language that Soone knew! Tickled? Human or elf, his powerful probing should have at least knocked the subject unconscious! Instead his attempt had merely weakened himself, such that he had to sit down on the sofa with the boy while his tired old head stopped spinning.
Apprentice Wizards of Hope Page 2