27th of Taka, 1000, dawn

The pookkalam, roof of the Fort Kitapüru mage tower.

Fitzhugh had endeavoured his entire life to sleep through this portion of the day. No matter what people said or thought early mornings were the worst. He yawned. Especially when you commanding officer decided that meetings could drag on through your allotted sleep time.

The captain had re summoned everyone at various point during the night as more information came in. How anyone was supposed to function in such instances was beyond him. Fitzhugh was some who like sleep. He wasn’t a hater. In fact in his humble opinion sleeping would be his preferred hobby.

Why, before a battle, had the captain only let him get a measly six hours sleep. Sane people slept almost ten hours. Yes he knew that some people ‘survived’ on five or less. He thought they were lying of course.

He glanced at the sky. The storm was almost with them. Which explained why he was yammering on to himself. Nerves. The tension before the fight, the almost itchy feeling of being at the starters line waiting for that bang that fires the muscles to action.

I had surprised him too be summoned to the officers mess the night before to hear a plan to end the siege from Claudia no less. He didn’t know the lady, which was unsettling. Fitzhugh liked to know everyone, in detail, at the level of His Majesty’s best informants. Claudia was a problem though.

She appeared a few years ago in the captains residence as if by magic. No past. No History. And now she was directing their battle plans. His accuse sense of paranoia was working overtime. Something just didn’t still with him about the girl. She was hiding something. Something that he felt the over supply of spies in the fort would have ferreted out. But if they had others weren’t concerned. Which just fed is paranoia.

Still they were all here on the roof. The professor, fiddled with his new journal. The twins, off to one side giggling away to each other, about nonsense he was sure. Silvia was sitting in her spot in the pookkalam. The only member of the team who was. She like he was yawning her head off. Fighting tired was not a recipe for good things in his mind.

He glanced at Max the only genuinely happy person up here. Having found a good breakfast he was unrepentant in his joy, savouring the flavours and giving the captain, who seemed to have joined them on the roof, a detailed review of the meal. Mandy seemed to have discovered the joy of the professor’s journalistic attitude as she conferred over some detail or another with her mentor Claudia.

An ominous rumble echoed across the desert.

“Finally, places people.” Silvia expressed his feelings exactly.

There was an orderly filing in of people to places. Chairs and other implements that were benign in effect but troublesome in location removed and for the first item since the recast everyone was ready for action.

Naturally everyone was destined for disappointment. Nothing happened for a while. Quite a while in fact

Suddenly, without a warning, a brilliant flare of light transformed the dark sky and Erica sank to her knees. Then, with a pause, as if for emphasis, a monumental crack reverberated though the fort, signifying that the storm had come.

Erica rose shakily from her knees. Steadying herself for a minute she reached up, as if grasping a rope, and grasping started to pull towards herself. If Fitzhugh hadn’t know what the plan was he would have thought she was grasping at fresh air. Looking around he checked to ensure that everyone in the pookkalam was following the same actions and keeping time.

Once again the pookkalam started to vibrate. This time everyone was ready and expectant. As they continued to motion the grains of powder still loose in parts of the circle started to bounce slightly. The silvery white lines started to glow. A vibration or resonance seemed to start. Not something audible but for anyone sensitive to nguvu if could be felt.

Slowly the resonance started to increase in tempo. Fitzhugh could feel nguvu being sucked out of him. The draw increasing in intensity until it felt like his stomach was being pulled out of his body through his nose. Blood started to seep out of his nose and the pain steady increased until he started to moan. Something others in the pookkalam seemed to be doing. He couldn’t tell, he was so focused on his own pain.

Then the nguvu dam burst. Never in his life had Fitzhugh experienced such an out pouring of nguvu. Down it slammed from the store above, smashing everyone flat within the pookkalam. It bounced back up the storm before slamming back down. Over and over it repeated slowing time and loosing intensity until it petered out into nothing.

Fitzhugh just lay there, in the pookkalam, sucking in deep breaths whilst endeavouring to ascertain if he’d lost a lim or something else that as equally painless in comparison to what his body just went through.

A week moan came from the other side of the circle. “Let’s not do that again.” It was one of the twins he thought.

A conviction reinforced as another voice joined the conversation with the same irreverence. “Yeah, that sucked big time.” Then in a more cherry tone of voice continued. “Hey, the professor seemed to have slept through the recovery part of that cast.”

Silvia, groaned. “Are you saying he’s unconscious?”

“Yep, he’s out like koala stoned on eucalyptus leaves.” The twin replied.

“Well that’s just fantastic,” Silvia muttered. “That means someone else is gong to have to play scribe for the rest of the fight.”

Max joined the conversation. “Not me. I ain't touching the glittery stuff. It’s dangerous.” Then obviously looking at the pookkalam he added. “Hey, does anyone know, are the sigil writing thingies supposed to be glowing still?”

Fitzhugh looked around. Yes the pookkalam was definitely glowing. Slowly he started to rise to his feet. Both the mages were also staggering to their feet. Slowly Claudia started to move as well. The twins continued to just lie where they were as did Mandy.

Erica staggered upright. She looked awful. Obviously holding up the shield for almost two weeks combined with the recent lightning strike and their latest cast was doing bad things to her. The lack of sleep, malnutrition and mental punishment left her looking gaunt, tired and listless.

“Do you have control of the storm?” Silvia asked Erica.

Before an answer could be made a lightning strike slammed down on the listless water mage. For a moment the lightning seemed to touch her and she screamed as the powers channeled through her body in to the pookkalam.

The scream wasn’t one of pain however, rather one off rage. Her scream turning into a yell at the top of her lungs. “Stop doing that.” And with an aggressive wave of her arm the lightning bolt reversed direction slamming up into the storm above.

She gritted her teeth. “No I don’t have control of the storm you foolish woman. I have stopped it. Which was what I told you could be done. It will not move to wherever those other mages want it. But control it? No.”

“We have to control it,” Silvia whined.

“Well, why don’t you take over the storm then. Go on, you control it.” Erica raged back at the earth mage. “Oh, that’s right you can’t. You have as much water affinity as rock. Foolish me! How about you take over the shield then so I can focus on controlling the storm. Oh, that’s right you can’t do that either. I have to do both jobs. So back off bimbo.”

“Hey, hey, calm down.” Max piped up. “Do you really need to hod up the shield so much if you control the storm properly.

“Back off, fire boy. I didn’t see that lightning bolt try and fry you. It targeted me twice.” Erica snapped at him. “I go down and you’re all gonna get fried.”

She glared around the group. “I hear a bunch of whiners going on about how they’re a little tired from a late night meeting. Or how its sooooo hard to pay attention for five minutes whilst you draw some pretty little pictures in the dirt. Quite frankly I’ve had enough of you prima donnas. Next time there’s a lightning bolt coming for one of you I’m letting it through.”

She drew a ragged breath. “So anyone want to take over the shield duties?” She waited for a couple of minutes looking around. There was no answer. “How about controlling the storm?” Again there was no answer.

“In that case why don’t you all shut your mouths for five minutes or five hours however long it takes whilst I do this.” She glowered at everyone. “Oh, and since we’re talking about the jobs everyone’s doing, I suppose it is now my job to spot the enemy attacks as well as stop them.” With a violent back handed motion a fireball that nobody else had seen coming towards the fort suddenly changed direction as if hit.

She waited for a reaction. Receiving none she shouted in frustration and anger. She took a breath trying to even out her emotions, not quite succeeding. “And since I seem to have bled during the most recent activities perhaps one of the os so esteemed scribblers can remove that and fix my sigils since I can’t leave the circle to do it myself…” her volume ramped up significantly, “… as I haven’t for two straight weeks.”

A quite voice obviously still in pain rose. “I can look at the sigils if Miss Khumalo will give me hand particularly with the professor’s notation. I would suggest that maybe the twins check the whole pookkalam for blood. I’ve spilt some too.”

Fitzhugh looked at Silvia. She was obviously just as angry as the water mage. He could see where she was coming from. It had been a reasonable question that had sparked the latest tirade from the water mage. Perhaps the tone hadn’t done any favours but tone is not something to get explosive about.

Grinding her teeth and swallowing her anger Silvia finally managed to speak with an almost even tone of voice. “Fine. Mandy and Claudia will sort out the scribe role. The twins are on cleanup…”

“Awww. No fair.” They chorused together.

But Silvia wasn’t in the mood. “Shut it. Captain, any word from those outside the walls on the location of whomever you want us to take down with this storm.”

The captain, still recovering from the stress of seeing his little girl pounded into the ground by raw nguvu, took a moment to gather his thoughts. “Ah. No actually. We haven’t heard from them. Other than a brief message to say that the growth of the fort had been halted in preparation for the incoming storm. All mages, labours even the slaves evacuated to avoid any localised flooding that may occur.”

Fitzhugh’s minds started to wonder as the usual tedium took over on the rooftop. After all what was supposed to happen. Pretty up the salt circle, wait for Erica to rip control of the storm from some mage too far removed to retain power, or wait for the inevitable fireball or two to come floating in.

Really, he thought to himself, this isn’t what he thought mage battles would be. They were supposed to be more. More what he wasn’t sure but more something.

Over the next few hours the circle was attended to, sigils fixed blood removed. Erica struggled on. At times she seemed to be winning and others loosing. It wasn’t what was expected. She should have been able to exert control easily.

Then out of the faded light the enemy started to advance. The cry started to come up form all over the walls. Before they had sent small little raids. This time they were serious. Fitzhugh saw looking down the vast numbers of people that Fujiama had sent to take the fort. Someone behind him commented that halting the storm had refocused the enemy swirly on the fort, rather than bypass it.

Fitzhugh wasn’t worried. The walls were big and strong. They were at least holding their own on the storm front. Erica was better than he had anticipated with the shield and whilst they knew that the enemy had connect them with only three mages he was confident that the coven hadn’t used the it’s full pool of nguvu. Lastly and perhaps most importantly they covered all the element and sources in the pookkalam. There was nothing missing, they were covered.

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Fitzhugh should have known better. The phrase his father loved and had stood his family in good stead had been forgotten. Take heed when you think you stand, least you fall. Like dominoes things started to go spectacularly wrong.

One of the watchmen cried out pointing of towards the north east. Most of the defenders of were focused on the troops advancing from the south east. So it was a rude shock to see a swarm of rock lizards racing in.

Fitzhugh didn’t have a lot of experience with the desert fauna. It struggled to understand much about their life cycle and so on. What he knew about rock lizards could be written on the palm of his hand. Unfortunately it was all scary. Almost 2 meters long with curved claws ten to fifteen centimetres long that were ideal for climbing walls and eviscerating their prey

Max didn’t wait for Silvia calling up a far see cast. Nobody had ever contemplated using animals to attack. He wasn’t sure how it worked but he knew that he had to intervene or they would loose. Then he caught sight of something that turned his stomach.

Far to the north east an alter had been set up and as they watched a struggling slave was dragged to the alter. With a vicious slice of a knife the throat was opened. As they watched the blood floated out of the body. It swirled and started to divide. Half going into the lizards that continued to rush past the castor towards the fort. The other half seemed to evaporate as it floated up toward the storm. The body shrivelled as it’s life for was drained with its blood. Another slave was dragged forward.

“Blood mage.”

Fitzhugh wasn’t sure who spoke but any attempt to discover the source was dropped as Erica started moaning. “They’re in my head get out.” His focus snapped over to her. That didn’t sound good, in fact it sounded distinctly bad. A sense of impending doom started to form in Fitzhugh’s

He was beaten to the punch by Cindy. “Who’s in your head?”

“The voices. They’re getting louder.” Erica started to wail.

Silvia wasn’t interested in her situation. She was focused on the incoming hordes. She tuned to max. “Right max, biggest fireball you can manage. We need to kill as many of those rock lizards as you can manage.”

Just a she spoke wave of dirt like sweat forward toward the walls ahead of the charging fujikan infantry. As the charging troops ran forward the wave seemed to lift them towards the wall. With out hesitation the captain walked towards the signal corp. FLages started to wave backwards and forwards between the captain and the various officers on the wall.

With a grunt Erica flipped a hand at the dirt wall. A significant portion suddenly rolled back on itself. It crushed tens of troops and must of the lift died. But three small portions survived to the wall building an instant ramp to the top of the walls.

“Max, we need to change to blowing those ramps.” Silvia spoke.

“Belay that,” the captain commanded. "It is time for the guards to earn their pay. We cannot afford to be overrun by those lizards. We can hold those small breaches against the attackers. They will bottleneck sufficiently and he can hold that.”

Looking through Max’s far see cast in time to see another slave have her throat slit he commented further. “But I suspect that the blood mage is controlling them. Kill or disable him and they will fight each other as much as us. If you have something that can start to attack him directly I would line that up as quickly as possible. I have repositioned the defenders as best as we can. But seriously, focus on the mage.”

Erica’s groaning intensified as she started mumbling to herself.

The captain turned to the signals people. “Tell them to light the trench before the lizard wall. It won’t stop magically controlled beasts but it will kill or main some of them before they reach the top of the wall.”

With a certain resignation Fitzhugh realised he had the most useless seat in the house. He literally couldn’t do anything and the action was happening all around him.

Max was finally starting to drop his fireball when Cindy cried out. “Clara what have you done.” It was more a wail.

Fitzhugh turned form the battle in time to see Cindy launching herself at Clara. Everything seemed to go wrong at once. There was a scuff mark in the sigil at Clara’s feet. Ftizhugh was awful at script work but he knew that the change reversed the effect of the sigil.

Max’s fireball sprang into being and immediately backfired. Nobody ever discovered that blood was still within the pookkalam. Even if they had, they would never have been able to tell you which twin was at fault. But just as blood was bad in general this blood belonged to Erica. It was water affinity attuned it was also connected to a circle of power driving a massing source of water. The storm was not a normal storm either. Mages had been pumping nguvu into it for more than ten days. Like all things in magic, there was no effect until expression and the fireball was the first cast since the blood was added to the pookkalam.

The blood returned the storm, pookkalam connection to it’s previous resonance. Worse actually but that wasn’t the end of the fireball’s backfire. Max as the caster was relatively protected, as a fire mage the explosion deformed around him sweeping out from towards the other castors.

The one person who should have been able to save the day was busy having her mind attacked by the tormented souls of the salves the blood mage was busy sacrificing. With each death another voice was added to the storm. A magical creation she was desperately trying to control. It was inevitable that the voices would start to trigger the one thing that all water mages feared, the water madness.

The mental fight completely consumed her and so the shield wasn’t used to save anyone. Two guards immediately in front of Max instantly turned to ash. Another was blow completely off the top of the mage tower. Silvia was the closest of the mages. The blast picked her up and tossed her across the roof. She would have left the tower except that the pookkalam was still active and it required a controller. With a savagery unexpected it yanked her back into the pookkalam’s centre. Doing so her legs were viciously pulverised as they were smashed into the parapet walls by the violence of her return. She was unconscious before she landed.

The twins, standing directly behind Max didn’t even register and they tried to tear each other apart. The professor remained safe. Flat on his back the flames amazingly washed through the air immediately above him. The captain, having stepped into the signal house and the signaller felt the wash of the flames heating the air but they remained safe. They were the extent of the unaffected.

The chairs that have been used all week were instantly converted to splitters that acted as particularly viscous skewers. A guard was reduced to kibble due to his proximity others endured varying degrees off damage. Fitz was one of these. A splinter the length of his foot slammed into his side. It missed all the important organs but the shear shock and pain left him staggering.

Mandy was blown back from the circle she clipped Claudia as she went, summersaulting as a result she slammed into the parapet dislocating her collarbone breaking a finger and receiving a knock on the head sufficient to keep her unconscious for he rest of the week.

At this point, the power of the fireball corrupted by blood magic and a broken cast circle ran into something that was a match. The cast that Claudia ran was munch more powerful that either she or other imagined. It had been running continuously for six years, it was feed by Claudia continuously and recently she had been using that most powerful and misunderstood substance, dust.

The two strong forces collided, but Claudia was not a fire mage. If she was there would have been a chance to deal with the cast. One of her affinities however was water, water shares a natural enmity with fire. So her cast, which was a general shield at heart, attempted to correct the blocking of water. It failed and succeeded. A sudden blast of power smashed the flames aside as her water affinity contacted the storm, drawing nguvu to fuel the involuntary cancelation cast.

The force of the cancel cast propelled Claudia backwards into her unconscious charge. In the process her precious jar of dust smashed, dust flew everywhere settling on the pookkalam that was now on the verge of collapse.

The other side effect was that Claudia’s defensive cast struck Erica. In her embattled, tormented and exhausted state she couldn’t deal with another attack. I without conscious thought she fired a lightning bolt at Claudia. How she managed to express a cast with the pookkalam failing as it was is something nobody could explain.

The lighting struck Claudia but rather than doing damage too her it smashed the last vestiges of the defensive cast he used. Like the a wave crashing on the beach her limits blew off and the sweet fleeing of nguvu washed through her tearing away all pain, tiredness and weakness. She felt the storm unconsciously grasping for it.

The lighting cast by Erica ran through the pookkalam activating the settling dust with a massive smash the pookkalam failed. Coloured dust flew every where and suddenly Erica had control of the storm. She didn’t have time to breath though.

The enemy had not been idle. They had observed the obvious failings of the casting on the top of the mage tower. Now was their time to strike and strike they did. The fire mage pushed all his reserve fireball through the cast arrow. Granted his friend the source castor had nothing to contribute, but as nine fireballs sped one after another towards the tower in a nice line, he grinned in satisfaction at his contribution.

Erica didn’t really grasp what was going on, she just knew that everyone was attacking her. Reaching out blindly to the storm she fired a lighting bolt at the first fireball. It was then that Fujikan forces leaned why you did not get between two contending mages. Fireballs are inherently unstable, so the lighting didn’t need to destroy anything. All it needed to do was tear the containment structure. Which it did without significant loss of force, skipping on to the next fireball. Then the next and so on down the line until it slammed into the arrow casting structure. Lightning and metal yelling predictable results the whole structure welded solid in places and reduced to slag in others.

Erica’s next target was the mage the next mage who attacked her. A second bolt did blow Claudia off the tower successfully this time. But this time things were different. Claudia was an expression mage what’s more a dust mage. Air was an element and the last hing that she was going to do was let a half grade mage make her look foolish.

Without even straining she redirected the majority of the lightning bolt into a battering ram the Fujikan forces had brought to smash the gates down with.

Erica was on the verge of a another attack on Claudia when she felt a tugging on the storm. She had never seen the waether mage who had cast the storm. It didn’t matter. Screaming “It’s my storm now. Get you hands off.” She ripped the storm from his control. Normally this would not have been possible. By every measure she was a stronger mage.

But unbeknownst to practitioners of magic one of the underlying measures that govern magical ability is passion. At that time and in that place there was nobody as passionate as Erica. The opposition mage didn’t stand a chance. She was not gentle, caring or forgiving and so as she ripped control from the mage she did not care that she shredded her mind.

In a small cave well back from the action an old lady slumped over. A little drool started to form at the corner of her mouth. Her guardians knew the sign, or at leas they thought they did. In reality they were making assumptions based on poor understanding. They thought that the water madness had claimed her. The didn’t understand that the ground rules for mage on mage warfare was being written and future generations would teach each other about surrendering magical creations before the mind came apart. That was all for the future. As was the tired bewildered and lame rock lizard who discovered a nice warm stack when he finally returned to his burrow some time later.

Erica’s focus was drawn by the far see cast that remained active. It was insubstantial and so it had remained unaffected by the turbulence of the pookkalam failure. There she could see that hateful mage readying himself for another sacrifice. In that moment and that place Erice knew exactly how the slave felt. She had been cadged for most of her adult life. Forbidden from venturing outside she understood the desire for freedom.

With a gesture a lighting strike form the surrounding storm smashed down upon his location. It wasn’t enough, he was protected by a strong shield. Erica didn’t know if he had cast it himself or it was being sustained by others. She didn’t care. She smashed another, and another, and another. On the fifth strike the shield failed and he collapsed to the ground.

As predicted by the captain not that long ago, the collapse of the blood mage broke the control over the rock lizards. With nothing to control and govern them, their instincts of territory and conquest sprang to the fore. In a wave of pure chaos rock lizards, frightened and agitated by the storm attacked what ever was nearest. Some where within the fort and continued to attack the defenders. Some randomly attacked the nearby humans, Fujikan or Miylanese it did not matter. But the majority started to attack each other.

The storm hadn’t been just hanging there waiting for Erica to drop another lightning bolt. It had been designed to convey vast quantities of water from the sea. Finally control had slipped. Slowly rain started to fall. Initially the there was little of significance but with every second that passed, with every lightning bolt released. The rain increased.

In her infuriated state Erica din’t care. She smashed lighting bolt down, striking whomever she felt was her enemy. If she looked at herself in her current state she would have been the first to admit that she was gone. That she was consumed by the water madness.

She wasn’t. It was Claudia who flew in behind her. Erica rounded on her flinging another lightning bolt at her. Claudia, didn’t look exactly sane herself. She was grinning ear to ear. Not that she enjoyed being attacked, no, she was ecstatic to have her magic back. She hadn’t realised how much she missed being able to cast. It was like what she imagined to be reattaching a missing limb.

The captain ventured out from the signal booth. Gauging the scene scene spoke in an overly cautious manner. “Ladies, how are you doping?”

The two mages turned slowly towards the captain the wash of battle, adrenaline and aggression had them at a hairs trigger. The captain couldn’t work out how to ease the situation until an unexpected voice broke the silence.

“Fine, if I can persuade dum dum here to calm down.” Cindy chirped brightly. “I wasn’t attacking her. I saw that she hadn’t been paying attention before the battle and obviously dragged her chair though Mandy’s pretty writing and it was going to explode. I just had to rescue her.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Clara asked

“Because you were busy hitting me. Which so hurt, you used your nails too.” Cindy pouted “Party foul for sure, next time you have to go the party without nails. Friends don’t scratch friends.”

Claudia’s jaw dropped. “You mean all this damage is because you were clumsy?”

“All what damage.” Clara said.

“Yeah this wasn’t us.” Cindy protested.

The captain didn’t know if he was going to laugh or cry. Why ever it was they needed to remove everyone from the roof the rain was now getting really hard. Hard enough that it felt like needles stabbing on all his exposed skin. Glancing he watched the enemy fleeing before the lizards and oncoming flash floods.

Turning back he looked at the four girls before him. “I don’t know what you are all planning but after this story gets out none of you could ever set foot in Miylan again.”