“I think it’s time we talked aces.” Erebus began the meeting, “I have it on good authority that there’s an upcoming fight where I’ll need at least three. Anyone currently holding any cards to their chest, now would be the time.”

There was an uneasy silence, everyone, including Ilvere, was gathered around one of the tavern’s long tables. The silence stretched, the discomfort growing as Erebus violated one of the biggest taboos in the battlemage business.

Night was well and truly underway by now and the Duck was lit by a variety of magelights, Amara’s orange flame was contained in a lantern on the table. There was a faint omnidirectional blue glow from Weaver that served mostly to outline people and objects creating eerie silhouettes. Natalya had a sterile white orb hovering somewhere near the ceiling whilst Erebus, not to be outdone, had setup a pattern of white lights to imitate the stars which made the roof appear transparent.

Ilvere, more practically, had simply brought a candle and placed it on the table, bemused at the arcane jostling for position, and not entirely sure how score was being kept. Even Holly and Alec had made an effort the two managing between them to synthesize a glowing set of buds down the dryad’s right arm.

Only Lana hadn’t brought light, the demon of pride stood by the tavern’s open door to stare out at the night in search of threats. With their secrecy blown another attack could arrive at a moment’s notice and the devil easily had the best senses in the group.

The overall effect was… abysmal frankly, a kaleidoscope of mismatched lighting that turned everyone in it into a vision from nightmares.

When it finally became clear no one was going to answer him Erebus silently reached into his pocket and withdrew the lavender pearl he’d retrieved in Arcadia, placing it on the table which began to sizzle and bubble from the contact. “Right now I just have one. But I can get more, there’s a weapons cache I plan to raid.”

As soon as he’d placed the fist-sized pearly down, Amara, Natalya and even Alice had recoiled, chairs scraping back across the floor as they tried to get away from it.

“Please tell me that’s not what it looks like…” Natalya hissed, doing her best not to look at it directly, “Please tell me even you’re not dumb enough to carry one of those in your pockets.”

“I have unusual pockets.” Erebus understated, “And it is a bound annihilation spell held within a sphere of crystallized will. Creator unknown.” As he spoke a crack appeared in the sphere, slowly spiderwebbing across the surface until the necromancer placed his hand upon it and the crack even more slowly sealed.

When he removed his hand it was clear to anyone with eyes that even that brief contact had eaten the flesh to the bone, the necromancer healing it with not even a wince.

“What’s the limits on it?” Alice asked, unlike the two terrified mages she was staring at the pearl as if entranced.

“One target, and any target.” Erebus said simply, “As long as it’s made up of matter from Reath at least, that’s why I stored it in Avalon, nothing for it to interact with so there was no way for it to go critical in my absence.”

“Are you going to be able to keep it stable?” Amara asked hesitantly, her gaze darting between the sphere and the door as she wondered if she’d be able to run away in time if the sphere shattered.

“I have a couple of ideas to do it. Now, I’ve shown you mine, I think it’s time you showed me yours.” The necromancer smirked as he stared down at his fellow mages with a passable approximation of lecherous.

Natalya shook her head, covering her eyes in feigned disappointment, “Fine, here’s mine.” She pulled out a set of five hollow needles, four silver and one gold from inside her shirt, each about six inches long. “Shield piercers, manticore venom, wraith essence, catoblepas breath, blutkind blood and the gold one is elder basilisk venom.”

“Nice.” Erebus flashed his teeth in a predatory grin, “What’s the limit on the piercers?”

“That I’m not telling.” She replied flatly.

“Very well. Alice what about you?”

“I am the ace.” The warshifter told him as she got up to refill her tankard with yet another mug of ale. The shapeshifter’s resistance to poison meant she might as well as have been drinking water but she was still making a valiant attempt to get drunk.

“Amara?”

“I’ve got nothing.” The pyromancer shrugged, “You already know everything I can do, and running for my life didn’t give me much time to raid the Vulcanus armoury on the way out.”

“That’s about what I expected.” Erebus admitted, “Anyone else?”

Weaver raised a foreleg, “If you give me a week I can probably shadowweave everyone a set of armour?”

“It’s a nice thought but we don’t really have a week. Now we’ve been found we need to vacate Valda yesterday.” Erebus frowned, “Okay moving on, the ideal plan would be for me to raid my weapons cache, teleport out somewhere to regain our strength, then hit whichever pyromancer cult took a swing at Amara. How are we coming along on that end?”

“Absolutely nowhere.” The pyromancer sighed, “We were plodding along but the attacks ground everything to a halt. What we did manage to do was confirm foul play with The Cult of the Slumbering Forge, the two elementals there, Quench and Temper, were spawned as twins during the forge’s sole attempt to work with adamantine. They were boon companions, no way they killed each other without warning, not that you’d get that from the investigation. Whichever clown was in charge just saw two opposed elements in close proximity and called it a day, I had to go into the historicals to find out their history.”

Natalya put a comforting hand on Amara’s shoulder, “That’s still a lot better than nothing, it confirms someone murdered two elementals and got away with it, if we can just find a couple more you could probably just take it to Vulcanus, and they’d sort it from there.”

“Doubtful.” Erebus declared, casually crushing hope before it could surge, “All we have is supposition and coincidence. We’d need something a lot more solid to- “

He shut up as an envelope wafted in through the open door, carried on winds he certainly wasn’t seeing or feeling, until it deposited itself on the table in front of him as hundreds of miles away a desperate bard relaxed the hand they had raised towards the scrying orb in time to be lifted off his feet by the thaumic shockwave as the narrative they’d been carefully building bent and buckled under their own efforts.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Well, that was hideously overt.” Erebus noted as he picked up the letter to read it (it was addressed to him personally), first sniffing the paper as well as to test it from trace magics that might tell him who the caster was. The latter coming up empty.

To My Dearest Enemy,

I have found irregularities in the number of elemental apotheosis over the last three hundred years. Not only are mages ascending at twice the usual rate but the apotheosis are failing at an even higher rate. I have come to the conclusion that someone is purposefully dosing promising elementalist mages to force more power upon them than they can handle then kidnapping them when they ascend, faking it as a death during ascension.

I have in the course of my investigation concluded there are only two possible culprits, both of which are not suffering from these inflated rates. The Cult of the Ardent Wildfyre and Academy Vulcanus itself. You may check these facts for yourself but I sincerely doubt you have time enough to do so.

For what purpose this is being done I cannot begin to speculate and I know you have little cause to trust me but time presses and I fear we are both running out of options if justice is to be done for the victims of the Maltz massacre.

Yours hatefully,

Your godson, Allister Lutan

Erebus reread it three times before he handed it over to Amara, not offering any comment beyond the turmoil behind his eyes.

Slowly the letter made its way around the table, everyone holding their tongue until it finally made its way back to Erebus who, after taking a deep breath, rolled the letter up and placed it into Amara’s lantern.

“Well…” he began then stopped himself, not sure where to even begin.

“A bard.” Natalya spat, “A hells-damned bard. And you didn’t tell us.”

“I didn’t.” Erebus agreed, “It would have done none of you any good at all. Just made you second-guess yourself into circles, you know, like I’ve been doing.”

“What’s a bard?” Weaver asked, partly out of curiosity and partly to divert Natalya before she could build up a full head of rage.

“A narrative mage.” Alec answered, giving a hapless shrug as everyone stared at him, “It was in the Seruatis library. It’s one of the banned magics, lets a mage manipulate events from afar by setting up coincidences that fall in their favour. It’s a type of fate manipulation, which is why it’s banned, though bards are supposed to be really subtle. Like really, really subtle. And sending a letter with everything we need to us while we’re talking about it is about as unsubtle as it gets.”

“Lutan’s desperate, if it is in fact Lutan,” Amara noted, “Nothing says the bard has to use their own name.”

“It’s Lutan.” Erebus promised, “I recognise the handwriting.”

“It could be faked.” Alice rumbled, though even she looked doubtful.

“But it’s not.” There was a terrible surety to the words. “If we ignore the use of magic, and there’s nothing for fueling hypocrisy quite like hate so we probably can. Lutan adores his traps, his little mindgames, and this one is a masterpiece for all that he’s forsaken his more arcane assault against us. This fits his methods perfectly.

“I don’t see how.” The elderly warshifter declared, a double helping of scorn piled upon the words, “We go kill this cult and then we go kill him. After that we’re basically free to pursue this prophecy of yours.”

“They’ve got an elemental.” Amara pointed out with more than a hint of fear.

“Elementals can be killed.” Alice replied bluntly, eyes all but glowing with anticipation.

“Let me rephrase,” the pyromancer sighed, “they have an elemental they’ve been empowering in the hopes it can kill Qrilotesh.”

“That could certainly be a problem.” Natalya observed coolly, “But the orb would be able to kill it if it’s as powerful as Ere says.”

“Oh it is. But I’ve got it on good authority there’s something really dangerous waiting in the wings that I’m going to need it for.” Erebus replied, eyes on Lana as he asked, “unless our mystery elemental is who you were warning me about?”

The devil shook her head, barely even glancing his way as she maintained her vigil. “Listen to your own words necromancer mine, you can kill this thing in a single strike and I said you’d need aces three.”

“Do you actually know what it is that’s waiting for me?” He probed, perhaps more sharply than he’d intended.

“My master didn’t think I needed to know.” She shrugged, “I trust her judgement. So did you last I recall.”

“Uh… can someone clear something up for me?” Alec asked nervously, going so far as to raise his hand, “You said it hopes to kill Qrilotesh but… who’s Qrilotesh and how do we know someone wants them dead?”

There was a stony silence as all eyes fell on Amara, silently asking permission to share Vulcanus’ worst kept secret.

“Fine.” The vampire conceded, throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation, “Fine. Qrilotesh is the elemental that lives in the volcano the Academy Vulcanus was built on. They’re, if not the most powerful elemental on Reath, then certainly the most powerful currently awake.”

“Until now apparently.” Erebus added, turning to face Alec as he explained, “the reason we know someone’s trying to kill Qrilotesh is that they tried to kill Amara. Initially we all assumed the attempt to pluck her off the board was to prevent her from helping me but with what we now know it’s rather the other way around. They went after her in the belief that I would be unable to follow up on her assassination.”

“And why does that mean they’re trying to kill Qrilotesh?” Holly asked, about a breath before Alec could. The teenager shot the dryad an annoyed glance, the red haired tree spirit simply smiling back at him with such sincere innocence no one could think for a moment it was genuine.

“Because Amara is important to Qrilotesh, and was in the middle of a magical rite to empower her when they struck. Now it could be we’re wrong here but there really aren’t many other reason to go after her. Of all the mages here, bar Weaver, ‘mar’s led the most inoffensive life and made the fewest grudges.”

“So we’re guessing.” Alec said, wanting to show he was keeping up.

“We’re guessing.” Amara agreed, “But it’s a pretty good guess.”

Alec took a second to let that sink in, silently conferring with Holly. It was eerie to watch really, the two’s eyes and lips twitching as they responded to each other at the speed of thought.

“One final question,” Holly began, “you said it was a trap. But… I don’t see how.”

“Because we’re going to be outmanned, outmaged and outmatched.” Erebus answered tiredly, “It’s a fight we can’t possibly hope to win, and also a fight we have no choice but to take. It’s the worst type of trap imaginable, one you can see clearly but have to step into all the same. Which is another point in favour of this being Lutan’s hand at work, he wants people to know they’ve been beaten. That he’s better than them.”

“I’ll admit it fits.” Alice conceded.

“I’ll confess my knowledge of surface politics is lacking.” Weaver stated, “But why do we have to step into this trap? Can’t we just tell this Vulcanus that they’re about to be attacked and leave it there?”

“It’s a nice thought,” Natalya sighed, the necromancer rubbing tiredly at her eyes, “but I’m afraid we can’t. Vulcanus is currently hunting for us with everything it can spare. The only reason it’s not raining pyromancers right now is that none of the organisations hunting us like to talk to each other but even that can’t last.”

“Even if we told them they’ll ignore it.” Amara added, “I mean think about it, would you take us believe us right now? ‘You really should stop hunting us because this group you’ve never heard of is about to attack you.’ I wouldn’t take that seriously either.”

“Can’t we just leave them to get attacked?” Weaver suggested, “If they’re hunting us that seems a good way to get them off our backs.”

“Would that we could,” Erebus shook his head, “Doomsday prophecy remember? Vulcanus is one of Contenmere’s heavyweights, if it goes down then that’s a hole in our defences we won’t be able to shore back up for centuries.”

“Checkmate then.” The arachni didn’t sound enthused at the prospect.

“Merely check.” The necromancer assured her, “Like Alice said, elementals can be killed, and there are few tools as good for it as a warshifter.”

“It will be as noble an end as I could have hoped.” Alice agreed, getting up slowly from the table. “So what’s our plan Ere?”

“We grab the location of the cult from the Vulcanus archives then ditch Valda, pick up what weapons we can then lead a full assault on their location.”

Amara hissed out a breath, “You’re joking right? Please tell me there’s more to the plan than that?”

“Well we do have one major advantage. Eight people attacking an established elemental cult… there’s no way in all the hells they’ll be expecting us.”