Part 1 of 3 - In flame

War Council, Marshal's Keep

"Okay, Tika, are we ready to begin?" Asked Gerald at our war council. Over the past eight months we had hammered out a very solid chain of command, and several people had been promoted from simple captains to Majors and Commanders. Our structure generally went Marshal, Commander, Major, Captain, Lieutenant, Sergeant, Corporal, Veteran, Soldier, Recruit. With a detailed chain of command, we were able to plan much more thoroughly. To compliment our new structure of command, we had created new divisions of units which went from Grand Army, Army, Division, Detachment, Battalion, Company, Platoon, Squad, Patrol. Gone was our historic pattern of sending a rough collection of men as a "patrol" and labeling everything larger than 500 men an army and anything under a company. We now had rigid structure in place.

"Yes, we can begin as soon as we get men in place on the opposite side," Tika said from his chair. The man looked exhausted, and he would soon be at the head of one of the largest spells ever launched on this continent, with three hundred mages channeling power directly into his body. The structure that they had created had a massive crown atop it's tower just to have room to hold everyone, making the structure look like a brazier. The structure itself was a masterpiece of enchantment and spell work that would amplify everything they would do up there.

"Very well, Roderick you'll be in command of that company. After this meeting, you'll gather them up and head out. Form a special company and take whoever you need to ensure that your work on the opposite side goes well," Gerald commanded Roderick, who saluted smartly.

"The rest of us will hold this fortress in the unlikely event they decided to take the field en masse and try to annihilate us for our temerity. As soon as the town of Darkhallow is a black spot of soot on the soil we will give the mages a week to rest before we begin our tunneling spell. Dorman, you'll be leading our magical defenses," Gerald looked to Dorman, who nodded simply. It would be on his shoulders to ensure that we wouldn't be annihilated by counter-spell and mage artillery when our exhausted archmage and his exhausted helpers tried to rest. Every mage not attached to Tika's grand working would be attached to Dorman, and over the past month the entire mage detachment had been slapping spells on our walls like they were going out of style. Or like they were about to do something our enemies would not like very much, and expected a harsh magical response.

"I want our logistical cache's moved two hours before the commencement of the spell. I am sure they have managed to scry out a location or two, and it will be harder for them to strike at our supplies if we shuffle them around. Ensure that there are enough arrows at the walls and towers for us to sprout a new forest in the two mile stretch between our walls and theirs. Double the manpower on our walls and pull in the pickets an hour before the spell commences. Pull our artillery back now and get it behind our walls, that way we don't have to spend another few months getting everything set up as well as we have it now," Gerald rattled off order after order and soon men began to sprint out of the room to see to their parts in the grand plan. Roderick and I gathered ourselves up and left to go put together his company.

"Probably take most of Gerald's knights, I think" Roderick was saying to me as we walked through the halls.

"You'll also probably want a detachment from the Greenward," I said, my respect for the tough bastards had skyrocketed over the past few months, and I placed them on the same level of professional excellence that I put the knights of Hexenguard on.

"Aye, doughty bastards. We'll also want a mage strike team, a mage counter-surveillance team, and a ward-breaker or three with us. Probably a couple of engineers as well." Roderick added as we stopped and snatched up a group of soldiers who looked like they had nothing better to do than follow our orders.

"That's why you always try and look busy," Roderick said to them, "Otherwise some officer might come around and give you work to do," he laughed at his own joke and then we detailed instructions to them individually. They shot off at a dead sprint to ensure that word was passed to the respective groups that we were summoning, trusting in those groups to send the appropriate people for our needs.

Mage's Point

"Ladies and Gentlemen, to my knowledge this will be the largest spell this continent has ever seen. Failure is a mighty possibility, and should we do so then we will be the one's destroyed. Get to your positions," Tika said, his version of a pep-talk over in a few short sentences. The assembled group of mages hustled to their assigned locations in the massive spell circle while Tika shuffled to his position in the very center. If the tower they had constructed was a masterpiece, with its many engravings and enchantments piled on so densely even non magi could see it's faint glow of thrumming magical potential, then the circle that Tika and his hand selected mages had drawn was a masterpiece amongst masterpieces. Though the lines seemed like solid engravings, they were in-fact hundreds of thousands of runes etched so small and so precisely that they only seemed to connect when viewed in regular sight. When viewed with mage sight or a magnifying glass, these runes became apparent and they were breathtaking in their scale and numbers.

In mage-sight the entire tower glowed in a multi-hued light show, as the building itself imprinted itself on the fabric of reality. The language that the mages had developed centuries ago was a powerful symbolic thing, and since so many mages now used that script it gave the language a power that normal languages lacked. It was one of the few languages in the world that could channel potential by itself. "And so we are gathered to do great and terrible deeds," Tika said to himself as he reached his position in the center of the spell. Tika watched everyone else get into their positions, and he slowly spun in a circle to make sure that everyone was in their assigned circles themselves.

Once Tika was satisfied that everyone had made it to their positions, he relaxed his immense will. Immediately potential flooded the room as it rushed into Tika, and the mages surrounding him felt goose bumps prickle their skin as they watched the man channel torrents of power that would vaporize any one of them individually. This was the secret of the Archmage, the only true symbol that one had achieved such status, for Tika was no longer truly human. He was a strictly magical being whose very body had been altered many decades ago. Mages who were not at this level had to fight the potential, struggle with it, and utilize languages and aids to help them craft spells.

But with Archmages, as with Tika, the potential wanted to be used, as if the world itself wanted Tika to shape the destiny and potential of everything atop it. And once you reached this stage, all you had to do was to let go, as Tika had done, and the potential would flood in to your body. All of his immense willpower was normally focused on maintaining a rigid hold over the potential that surrounded him, keeping it from flooding his body. Now he just relaxed and everything in the immediate area was sucked in like water down a drain, and the vacuum left behind pulled in even more potential.

Tika continued to relax, fully wiping his mind of emotion or thought, as close as he could be to sleeping without actually falling asleep. He knew that soon the potential would equalize within his body, as the world seemed to consider him a font for potential and when he was out of potential or low on potential it would rush the energies at his body until the font was full again. He simply had to wait for that moment. As he stood there with his eye's closed, casually blowing the minds of every mage present, Tika's skin began to change. His wrinkles began to recede, and his skin color darkened and shifted hue's until he was a strange purple-and-blue skinned man of no more than forty standing among them. He opened his eyes and brilliant green emerald orbs stared out at everyone. He was ready.

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"Lets begin," Tika's voice vibrated the room around them, and those who had not been with Tika during his last great working were suddenly struck by a primal terror as Tika began to actually consciously channel the potential around them, instead of passively letting his body be flooded with it. If before the power was akin to water rushing down a drain, this was more like a small whirlpool in a lake as Tika actively ripped potential from the air and filled a metaphorical container with the power. Clutched in his fist was a ball of potential glowing denser and denser by the second. As if possessed, the next eight mages out from Tika all began to channel potential from the cardinal directions directly into him. Since Tika himself had crafted their circle, they had no fear that he would be unable to regulate the power. The entire circle was designed to feed Tika neutral Potential, also known as True Potential, at a rate that he could handle.

Ring after ring felt their consciousness slip as more and more mages joined in at the perfect time with perfect synchronicity. They couldn't know that Tika was essentially just using them as batteries for his spell, and that he had sank into the consciousness of every single individual in the room and was guiding their actions from the surface level thoughts. It was a highly illegal thing to do, but few knew that Tika had mastered magic to such a degree that he could begin to actually change the potential in another's body - something that many people considered impossible.

Once the entire circle of mages had joined in, Tika thrust his hand into the air and the roiling chaotic ball of potential left his hand, and he began to chant.

Aurelia-Seaward border, Northern Front

Theresa stood with her mages at the top of their own stone tower, their gazes locked to the south. Even this far away they could feel the draining of potential as a massive spell catalyzed. Attempting to scry the area would provide no affect, since the chaos caused by so much potential would warp any spell thrown in that general direction. It didn't matter that they knew the key-words to bypass the anti-warding spells layered over the Hexenguardian military's position. It just wasn't possible to work magic in that valley from this far away since everything was in flux. But they knew, and they felt the echoes of eternity from hundreds of miles away. The mages surrounding Theresa were in awe, as they had never felt such a powerful spell unleashed before. Theresa had, had been with Tika the last time he had unleashed eternity in himself and channeled True Potential to such a degree. And she felt terror and fear bloom in her heart at the consequences that their actions would have.

The Imperial Institute of Magic, Estoria

"Sir! Our magistivor devices are going haywire" shouted a mage lord as he sprinted into Devallian's chambers. "Someone out there is performing a supreme working," he said breathlessly.

"What?" and Devallian immediately jumped out of his bed, rushing to follow the mage lord to the devices he had been watching over. The magistivor devices measured the local density of potential in area's all over the world as a check for immense magical activity outside of normal fluctuations. Such fluctuations could herald a disaster, signal a war, or otherwise show the presence of an Archmage channeling eternity. Devallian watched in awe as the reading's were spat our of the magistivor directly into his mind. Devallian noted that the magical activity was coming from the magistivor tuned to the country of Pervalia, one of the only countries in the world that worked magic in a similar way to the Mage Empire of Estoria. This far away, they were shielded from the spell's draining effects on the environment, but Devallian could only wonder what was happening on that tiny continent, and how they always managed to generate impressive archmage's generation after generation.

"Send out the messages, summon the council. It might be time to visit Pervalia," Devallian, the Imperial Prime Mage said to the man standing behind him.

Northwest of Darkhallow Fortress, Hexenguardian Towers

"Once the mage's launch their spell, we will push out, and in the confusion we will scout the area behind Darkhallow's walls looking for any point of weakness that we can take advantage of," Roderick continued to brief us on our mission. We were an eclectic group of officers ranging from Major - that was Roderick - to Captain, Lieutenant, and Sergeant. I was a brevet lieutenant under 'Major Roderick', which was slightly funny to me since Roderick as a Knight Commander and noble already held a higher title than any of the Captains. But military bureaucracy was a lot like regular bureaucracy, impossible to escape.

In this instance, Brevet Lieutenant was a rank granted to me because I technically outranked everyone on this battle field for the Hexenguard side excluding only Gerald as the official Marshal and Tika as an Archmage. It was an honorary rank without much meaning, since I didn't need the added authority for Hexenguardian soldiers to listen to my instructions. I had made a solid reputation for myself during the siege, and I had even earned a pet name - De'sarturan, which was Old Pervalian for "Stoic Killer", or at least close enough to it. It was apparently a name given to me because I had a blank expression during every combat engagement, as if nothing could crack my facade, and killer because I was apparently good at killing, to my dismay. Nevermind the fact that I definitely screamed, hollered, and made many facial expressions. Nothing can stop a rumor mill, and in this case it wasn't a terrible name to have. The killer moniker was one I deserved, and not one I treasured. Brevet just meant that I was an honorary member of that rank without necessarily receiving authority or pay commensurate to that rank.

"It should be launching any minute now..." Roderick said, turning to watch Mage Point, the name for the area where the Mages had constructed a large stone tower from which to launch their deadliest spell.

The world seemed to hold it's breath, color bled from the world, twisting and writhing until everything seemed bleached or monochromatic. I watched from my afar as everything seemed to concentrate at one point. Hundreds of mages channeling potential, channeling the very power of the world itself. All of it pinpointed on a singular mage, Archmage Tika, and even from this distance I could feel the words of his incantation vibrating the stone around me. It was pure gibberish to my mind, but I knew Tika was utilizing a systematic language that gave shape to his spell, words created by mages centuries ago to describe cause and effect. The world went still, sound seemed to travel oddly, and everything went fully black and white.

At the center of the mage circle, the opposite was true. Color returned to the world, but everything was wrong. Reds were blue, greens were brown, white's were black, and everything seemed to shift wildly, without any sort of organization. Tika's voice thundered through the crescendo of his spell, and I felt terror bloom in my heart at the strange, lilting language that left his lips and shook the very ground beneath us. Clouds on the horizon would rapidly advance before being blown away again, black and white lightning ripping the air above us while multicolored bolts struck Tika's fist above the mages.

And then all of that potential coalesced above Tika's head, a massive ball of potential swirled chaotically, and suddenly shifted into that of a multi-colored fireball that roiled and screamed with unleashed destruction. Tika cast his hand forward, and the spell seemed to laboriously move away from its point of inception. It gained speed as it went, and soon it was screaming through the air with twenty times the ferocity of a regular artillery spell, tearing the air as it passed through, loud booms ripping apart the artificial silence left behind by the Mage Circles grand working. It bypassed the fortress entirely and came to a sudden halt above the town of Darkhallow.

The massive spell hung there ominously, and several counter-spells hit it's surface and bounced down into the town, affecting neither the spell itself nor the town below. Then the ball of fire seemed to elongate downward into a giant spear from the sheer speed as it was shunted into the center of the town. A massive explosion rocked the valley as color returned and sound tore across the valley. Glass as far away as our fortress on the opposite side of Darkhallow Fortress shattered, and I fell to the ground in a daze.

Eight months had passed since the start of the war, and with the turning of that eighth month I found myself on the opposite side of the valley exit. The mages had managed to finish the first tower up, and then rapidly finished a second tower down the opposite side. The total scale of our fortifications now proved taxing on our mages, as keeping everything melded together took constant effort and time. Our infantry forces, myself included, had climbed one side and went down the other in preparation for Tika's spell. As we picked ourselves up off of the ground, we watched as a massive cloud of dust, ash, and debris was hurled into the air and flaming bits of wood and stone rained amongst us.

We watched as the town of Darkhallow burned.