Lukas walked up the Tower with aching legs and a scowl. Bustling up and down the stairs were a number of servants, their robes fluttering and their steps echoing off the stone walls. Walls that you should be repairing, Lukas thought of them as they passed. He had said as much already to Laurant, on multiple occasions no less, yet still they persisted in their usual habit of walking about the Tower, attending to this floor or that. As if a battle had never taken place.

With the Tower’s servants neglecting the important work of repairing its shattered walls the only option, as he saw it, was to take up the work himself, despite the protests of his creaking knees and his popping back.

Reaching the fourteenth floor, which sat almost halfway up the Tower, Lukas paused to rest and sighed. He could already hear them arguing.

The smell of old paper filled his nostrils even before he opened the red painted door that led to the Tower’s largest library, a smell which doubled in strength as he entered. At another time it might have soothed him.

“I don’t have the mana to detect that far away,” Amadou said, and, Lukas thought, not for the first time.

“Use the stone!” his sister, Karine, said.

“I…” Amadou began to protest. Then, noticing his master, he turned to greet him. “Good morning, Master Lukas.”

“Good morning, Master Lukas,” Karine and Simon said together.

“Good morning,” he replied, though he was uncertain where the good might be. The three of them were nervous and a touch impatient, as if Lukas’s entry had ruined their plans. “What is the issue today?”

Amadou spoke for his siblings. “Karine has been tinkering with magical theory…”

“And,” Karine interrupted, “I think Amadou’s detection magic could cover a larger radius. Twice, no, four times the usual size.”

“And how, pray tell, is that possible?” Lukas asked.

Karine took an open book from the table and handed it to him. “It’s an issue with the initial mana used for detection. If he were to focus his mana into numerous beams instead of an orb he could vastly reduce mana usage. Then he’d be able to focus his mana on distance, instead..”

“Ah yes, just. If I could do that I would have already!”

“The book tells you how!” Karine complained.

“I don’t have the mana control to do it! I’d run out of mana just focusing on making beams.”

“That’s why I said to use the Stone. Then all you’d have to do is practice.”

“Silence!” The two looked at Lukas sheepishly. Ignoring them, he read the passage Karine mentioned. It was a long winded one, verbose in the ways that only old passages were, especially those older than himself and by an author who, by his reading, possessed twice Lukas’s own pride. But, beneath the insipid layer of arrogance, there was a certain genius in the writings.

“An interesting drill,” Lukas said, to the joy of Karine. Then, with his next words, she was all gloom again. “But it will have to wait. For the moment I need Amadou atop the Tower. Hastily, I might add.”

“What is it?” Karine asked, in that inquisitive tone that tore into Lukas’s will. How he longed to sit and dictate to her and all the rest his plans and the minutiae they involved, that they might learn something of value. Cursed time! To always be passing by and allowing only the most important work to be done.

“Follow,” Lukas answered simply.

By the time they reached the top of the Tower his legs were burning and his feet were swollen around the ankles. If there was any positive it was that it was warm, even as they exited the Tower and entered the glass dome that contained the Stone. It was not true heat, but the work of mana itself; surrounded by such a font of mana, the magical energy seeped into the skin and invigorated the body.

“What are we doing?” Karine asked again. Again Lukas gave no answer. She would see soon enough.

The Stone of Azphine shifted slightly in their presence, as if it was an eye turning to see them. Perhaps it was an eye, swiveling to see who dared approach while it machinated some scheme for them. The Gods, all the Gods, were schemers, always laying down their plans for mortals to enact. Lukas was, above everything, proud to enact their will wherever they might wish it.

“Pull the mana into yourselves,” Lukas said, doing the same himself. They needed to be filled to the brim with mana, as much as they could hold without bursting.

When they reached their limits they called out to him to let him know; Amadou was first, then Simon, and then lastly Karine, whose voice was shrill from agony from straining herself far more than her brothers.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Simon! Karine! Funnel your magic into Amadou while he conjures his magic. Amadou! Focus on the north, past the border. I want to see everything.”

The trick Karine had read in the old book was an intriguing one, and entirely at odds with what they did now. Detection magic, as with all magic, diminished in ability the further out it was conjured. The basic theory behind it, of course, was that mana was sent out, then, upon hitting a target, returned to the mage with information. The solution to detection magic’s poor range, according to Karine’s book, was to separate the mana into countless beams, akin to a hail of arrows, thus allowing for more effort to be focused onto the range.

A thousand issues were present in such a theory, useful as it might later be, and Lukas did not have the time to iron them out. Before them was an infinite well of mana that Amadou might use. Lukas intended to use it.

His hands tightened into angry fists as he observed Amadou’s glowing map. To the north lay endless waste littered with snow as deep as his knees, and the further one went the deeper the snow became. Eventually there would be something; whether it was a town, a city, ancient ruins, or a slowly moving army, Lukas needed to know. His task was to put an end to the influx of migrants from the north, which he intended to do as quickly as possible, yet he saw little evidence of their existence in the north.

“How many miles is this?” he asked Amadou. The boy pondered a moment, his head wavering back and forth as he thought.

“Fifty,” Amadou replied.

“Double it.”

Shifting and twisting and shimmering, the image condensed to reveal a greater section of the north bit by bit. For a time there was nothing but white expanse, the telltale sign of deep snow, until, to Lukas’s relief, life was found. Yet his relief was not long lived, for the life Amadou discovered brought Lukas’s blood to a cold halt.

Covering more than two miles in width and another three in length, the host of people formed an oblong blob that traveled steadily south.

“How many?” Lukas asked.

Amadou scrunched up his face. The image faltered, blurred. “I can’t–” he said, then the image disappeared and he fell to his hands and knees, panting hard.

“How many?” Lukas repeated.

Amadou strained to breathe, gasping great gulps of air as his body shook from mana overuse. Already the skin of his neck and face was discolored, taking on the dark purple hue of bruising. Too far, Lukas thought. But necessary.

“Thousands,” Amadou said, once his breathing began to still.

“How many thousands?”

“Tens. Many tens. Perhaps as high as a hundred. I don’t know.”

Hopeless. Hopeless was the word that came to mind at such a staggering number, which exceeded every expectation so completely that Lukas was tempted to force the boy to check again. But the boy had the disposition of honesty, as well as a clearheaded mind that greatly surpassed his siblings and, as importantly, other mages his age. If he counted a hundred thousand, then a hundred thousand cursed barbarians there were.

“What do we do?” Simon asked. The question was not for Lukas, specifically, being directed to the group, that someone might have an answer. His siblings, of course, had no answer to give, and so turned to Lukas. And I have no more answers than they do.

“A frontal assault is suicide,” Karine said when Lukas deigned to remain silent.

“Divert them, then?” Amadou suggested.

“Divert them where?” Karine asked him. “There’s nowhere to go but south.”

His robes fluttering behind him as he walked, Lukas called out to his students. “We go north,” he said with confidence. A false confidence, one he hoped would inspire his students to follow him and, hopefully, ask no further questions.

Opening the Tower’s door, he turned back to look at them and saw that they had not moved.

“Coming?” he asked them. The three siblings exchanged looks, silently debating amongst themselves, then followed.

“What’s the plan?” Simon asked.

It was too much to ask, after all, Lukas thought.

The stairwell, with its great gray walls that, in the dim light, appeared no different than the walls of a dungeon, echoed their footsteps as they descended. And, though their footsteps were noisy enough to drown out the simple sounds of their breathing or the fluttering of their robes, they were not enough to obscure conversation. As they continued the descent with not a word spoken between them, the truth of Lukas’s intentions were, surely, known to them.

“Is there a plan?” Karine asked, impatient.

Lukas hoped that something might reveal itself to him shortly, and sooner rather than later. When it did not, he gave only possibilities.

“There are some battle techniques we might use, with the proper preparation,” he said, turning slightly to his students. “Techniques that make use of dirt and stone, for one. With some time we might carve out a proper trench at the border.”

“A delay tactic,” Karine said.

“Of sorts.” Lukas, in the swelling anger that derived itself from Karine’s unreserved questioning, turned the idea over in his mind, examining it from every side like a puzzle box. As ideas went, it was a poor one. If there were any pairing of four mages that could equal an army numbering a hundred thousand, it was not this one. Perhaps with Hugo, Coralie, and Violaine it might be possible. But they were far and gone, and the students at his back were all he could rely upon.

Their conversation dead, the echoing of footsteps against the stairwells imposing walls seemed to double, as if there were eight robed mages instead of four. The thought alone was enough to make Lukas unconsciously focus his hearing, which revealed that there were not one, but two, sets of footsteps. Their own footsteps, which were loud and melodic from their consistent and varied gaits, were the louder of the two. The second set of steps, as well, came from below them and, growing louder, the source appeared from behind the stairwell’s twisting walls.

Four of the Tower’s servants approached in gray and white robes with, perplexingly, unusual dark patterns that stretched from legs to chest. The Tower’s lights, though magical in nature, left much to be desired, and Lukas cursed whichever ancient mage deemed them suitable. Focusing on the strange patterns, Lukas began to make out the dark red hue.

He sniffed. Blood.

A servant raised a hand.

In the next instant the four servants were dead, and Lukas clutched at his bleeding shoulder in which a dagger had been stuck. Mutiny.