Amadou ran down the steps two at a time, his siblings following hastily, their robes fluttering as they tried to keep up. They passed archer after archer, each one loosing arrow after arrow, their bows thuming as they did so. Soldiers and knights, all of them, Amadou noticed. Not an attendant among them. He didn’t know what to make of that, except to be angry. Except he wasn’t angry; anger never came to Amadou Argmont, even when the times called for it. And if there was a time it was called for, he supposed, it was now.

As a young learner Lukas would him for his lack of anger, saying that it was good to have a clear head. More to do with how often Lukas himself was angry, Amadou thought, though he’d never say as much aloud. And his master was right, he supposed. He did have a clear head, else he didn’t think he would be able to use the magic that was his forte.

At the bottom of the stairs, upon the great wooden platform that rested above the ground floor, Amadou led his siblings to the nearest arrowslit and knelt. The wood bit into his knees. He prayed.

“How many?” Karine asked.

“Give me a moment,” Amadou replied.

“Hurry,” Karine said.

Amadou breathed deeply to relax himself, the chilling air stabbing painfully at his nostrils. Perhaps I do get angry, he thought. Focusing his mana, he shot it out in every direction then, once it reached far enough, pulled the mana back into him. Like drops of rain they came back to him, forming an image in his mind. An image he presented to his siblings with countless colorful lights.

“Thousands,” he said. “Hundreds of mages. Weak ones, mostly.”

“Any like Lukas?” Simon asked. Amadou checked again, just to be certain.

“No,” he said.

“Good.”

Spreading his arms apart, Simon cast a barrier around them, its yellow light momentarily shining over them. Karine opened the arrowslit’s metal hatch, its hinges groaning in protest. Then, looking at Amadou’s map, she picked out her targets and unleashed hellfire.

Orange flames shot out as fast as any arrow, falling upon the invaders outside like a waterfall. The flames splashed upwards and outwards, engulfing body after body. There were screams. Karine released another onslaught of flames at another mage, dousing them and all around them in fire.

She got off another few bouts of flames before they invaders got wise. Then it was their turn. First was a bolt of lightning that struck against Simon’s barrier with a tumultuous noise like that of falling rocks. The energy ricocheted off, sending thin bolts back towards the enemy.

Next was fire and wind together, the two smashing against the barrier in a wave of blistering heat that Amadou could feel a yard away, despite the barrier. When the flames dissipated Karine retaliated with flames and wind of her own. Amadou watched as lights blinked out.

“This’ll take all damned day,” Karine said.

The dozens of numerous tiny groupings of mages had spread themselves thin, dispersing unevenly into the ranks of the warriors. The only choice against Karine’s magic, which boasted such force that it tore through even reinforced barriers with ease, and which meant every bolt of lightning or stream of flame killed only one or two where before three or four might be felled.

“They’re working on something,” Amadou said.

The lights danced, their sparkling glows changing in size, intensity, and color. Outside he saw pillars of flame, bright towers of hot orange and yellow that lasted only seconds. Harmless, if not for the pattern unfolding before Amadou’s eyes. Five feet tall, three feet tall, ten feet tall, different every time. He thought he could see their tiny heads turning to see.

“They’re communicating!” he yelled, too late.

Magic struck the Tower. There was no time to notice what kind; one moment he was crouched beside his siblings, sensing their enemies with his magic, and the next he was sprawled against the floor on his back, with a miserable headache to boot.

Sitting up his head swam, the ground beneath him swirling; he was some twenty feet from the arrowslit, his siblings nowhere to be found, and when he touched the back of his head his hand came away bloody. Whatever struck the Tower had sent him flying. Peering over the platform's edge, he gasped.

The great wooden gates had been burned and blasted into charred shrapnel. Large sections of the surrounding walls had come down with it, forming piles of rubble twice as tall as a horse. Clouds of dust obfuscated everything else. Wails of anguish broke free over the cheers coming from outside. Shadows moved in the dust. Others didn’t. The dead and dying, and the soon to be dead. Those down below were but the lame and elderly, unable to help themselves in all the chaos. There was nothing they could do as large shadows descended upon them, weapons raised and yelling in the harsh, foreign tongue of the north.

“They’re attacking,” he said, though there was none to hear him. His voice was too quiet, choked by stress and confusion. What few men were near him were too busy loosing arrows down below.

Hoisting himself up, Amadou felt the pain in his back double and the pain in his head worsen even more than that. But he remained standing, despite the ground tipping and turning beneath him. He took a step, then another. Aimless, at first, until he remembered his siblings.

“Karine! Simon!”

“Over here, you oaf!” he heard from behind. Simon was sat at the far edge of the platform against the wall, grimacing and cursing as he held his bloodied leg.

Amadou hobbled over to him, as fast as his back would allow, conjuring his magic along the way. Visions of flesh and bone filled his mind. He scowled.

“Your knee’s broken,” he said.

“I know it is, you fuck! I can feel the fuckin’ thing!” Simon groaned as Amadou took the leg in his hands and poured his mana into it. “Tell someone before you start grabbing them, you fuck!”

“Hold still and quit complaining.”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

The bones beneath the skin cracked as they shifted back into place. Blood poured out from the movement. Then, once the bones were set, Amadou worked on healing the flesh.

“Gaaagh!” Simon screamed, his face growing more and more red. Then his head lolled to the side and the color left him.

With a gentle hand he slapped his brother in the face, hoping to wake him. His brother stirred, though not from him; at Amadou’s back was the familiar sound and heat of flames, too close to be an enemy’s. He turned to see Karine, her lips turned up in a maniacal smile as she torched the invaders with her magic.

“You’re alive,” Amadou said.

“Obviously,” Karine replied. She loosed a bolt of lightning out of the Tower. Then she ran and ducked as the enemy’s own lightning careened past her head and struck the far wall. “Is Simon sleeping again?”

“That he is.”

“Jolt him, will you?”

Pulling up Simon’s sleeve, Amadou wrapped his hands around his brother’s forearms and pushed his magic into him.

“Fuck!” Simon said as he was dragged to the world of the waking.

“Barrier,” Karine said plainly. Simon grumbled but did as he was bid.

Karine rose again and loosed another bolt of lightning, a chuckle escaping her lips. Amadou shivered. The cold, he told himself. Simon always told him it was unreasonable to be afraid of one’s own sister. Despite that, Amadou thought Simon might have been afraid of her, too.

“Wait,” Simon said, peering down below. Amadou followed his brother’s gaze to the shadows of the invaders already in the Tower. They screamed taunts and jeers and bloodlust filled cries of victory as they swung their weapons into the attendants below. Simon paled.

Karine aimed her magic at them, lighting a number of them in a blazing inferno that rose half as high as their platform. But in her distraction lightning struck Simon’s barrier, blinding and deafening. The platform shook.

“Keep at it!” Amadou yelled. “He can’t take many more hits like that!”

“No, I’ve got it,” Simon protested. Another flash of white. The platform shook. Cracks formed in the stone.

So much for enchanted stone, Amadou thought.

“Leave them! Kill the mages!” he yelled.

Karine nodded.

“You can’t leave them to die,” Simon said.

“We have to,” he said.

“You can’t,” Simon said again. His conviction was leaving him. “You can’t.”

Amadou let his lights disappear. He cupped Simon’s face hard, squishing his cheeks until they bulged out.

Smeared with sweat and dust, his brother looked pitiful. Tears sparkled in the corners of his eyes, threatening to come flooding down a face so contorted with anguish Amadou could barely look at it. But he did, killing the part in himself that cared.

“We don’t focus on the mages, we die. We die, everyone dies,” he said. “Do you understand?”

Simon looked away. “I do.”

“Then keep that barrier up. Karine, here!” Lights danced before her, a number of them shining bright orange. Twenty? Thirty? More? Too many.

“Got it,” she replied. She loosed her magic.

The Tower continued to shake as wind and lightning struck Simon’s barrier. Us, and not the Tower. It would have been trivial to fell the Tower in its current state. After something, then. The Stone, he guessed.

Dust and stone rained upon them as another wave of magic struck them. “We have to move,” Amadou ordered.

They moved as one, circling around the platform, away from the stairs and the high wall. Amadou’s decision. The wall should have served as protection, allowing them to strike back with magic through the many arrowslits that dotted it. But the wall was littered with dark, ominous cracks that sprawled across its face in a terrifying webwork. There was no protection there.

But moving away came with issues of its own; the inner wall rested opposite the great hole in the Tower’s outer wall, and every step further from it obscured from view the great many invaders.

“Arrowslit,” Amadou said, motioning. The three nestled themselves by the arrowslit, with Amadou and Karine opening the hatch as Simon maintained his barrier.

It’ll have to do, Amadou thought. The platform, from outer wall to inner edge, was more than thirty feet wide, and from their position against the wall the entrance below was gone from view entirely. The arrowslit was little better, much too narrow for the more showy magic in Karine’s repertoire. It’ll have to do.

“There’s three dozen or more on this side alone,” he said, conjuring his lights. “Take them out, then we’ll move to the other side.”

“Where the fuck is Lukas?” Simon asked.

“Never mind that,” Amadou said, though he agreed with his brother’s frustration. Simon was right. Lukas was nowhere to be seen, nor were the telltale signs of his magic.

Lights disappeared one by one as minutes passed. The screams below had long ceased, leaving only the angry taunts and yells of the barbarians. Beside him was the growing pile of glass flasks, drained of their sticky potion. Their third pile by now. So damned many of them. Simon downed another, adding to the pile.

Karine shot flames and lightning and wind as sharp as steel out the arrowslit, transforming the white plains outside into a series of craters and pools of blood. More lights disappeared. Despite the freezing air her face was covered in a sheen of sweat. There was exhaustion there, too. She looked liable to fall over at any second.

“Where the hell is Lukas?” Simon asked again. The fourth time? Fifth? Amadou had lost count.

“Focus,” he said. That was all they could do. Focus. Kill. Win.

The Tower rumbled again in a great uproar of noise, the platform beneath them shaking wildly. Another hole in the Tower’s side, if Amadou had to guess.

“Focus,” he said again. “Focus.”

The words were for him. His shining lights dimmed, then went out. Karine sighed with relief. He produced them again. Karine scowled, then shot a ball of flames at the enemy.

Outside there was frantic yelling in that barbaric tongue of the White Wastes, so frantic that the savages did not even return fire. Amadou tensed, his eyes flickering across the battlefield, searching, expecting to find some new trick. Instead he saw that the savages had stopped in their tracks. No, he thought, watching as they began to turn away from the Tower. They’re retreating.

He felt it then, the painful prickling of mana, like a thousand tiny shocks that covered him from head to toe. It was numbing to feel, more intense than he had ever felt before, by far.

Casting his lights, he saw them flicker and fade, unable to withstand a single moment. But it was not deaths that caused the lights to die out. There’s too much mana in the air, he thought. Amadou smiled. Mana he could follow.

New lights took form and began to follow the interference to its source, the lights growing brighter and brighter as they closed in. Up, up, up, the lights danced in a brightening stream. He knew what had happened before the lights even reached the top. The Stone of Azphine was alive once more.

Then the Tower shook again, so violently that Karine stumbled to the ground and knocked into Simon. His barrier disappeared. They’ve done it, Amadou thought. Panic rushed through him. His barrier was up before he’d even realized he was conjuring.

Only the Tower did not collapse, nor did debris fall from the ceiling high above them. There was only the murmuring of frightened man-at-arms and knights.

“Outside,” a woman said.

Amadou looked outside and gasped.