Regius Elath paced behind the earthen ramparts of the camp, his eyes furiously scanning the ground, although he saw nothing of the soft mossy carpet underfoot. The background din of the soldiers behind him, preparing breakfast, joking and laughing with one another felt far away as though it was coming from underwater.

 Instead, symbols and runes for spells blazed through his mind as he walked, and occasionally his fingers would twitch, to aid in the tracing of a particularly complex set of characters in the spell.

He was sure no mage had ever dreamed of a spell with such destructive power, but it was such a complex piece of magic that any mis-carved rune or slight mistake could end in disaster. Perhaps if he could see the runes again, just to double check…

A tall wiry young man strode towards him, down the main alleyway of white canvas tents. He wore tight, fitted robes, over a hauberk of scaled armour, marking him out as a battlemage. The casual grin on the man’s face was at odds with his, sharp harsh features. The smile didn’t quite reach the young man’s eyes.

On his shoulders he carried two satchels, each bag resting on one hip. Kanick, the other half of the impossible plan, had arrived.

“Do you have them?” Asked Regius with a tense snap.

Kanick laughed and gestured to the satchels. “I’m not lugging these around for fun!” When he saw Regius’s expression was unchanged his voice softened to a more serious tone. “I have them.”

“Sorry,” apologised Regius. “I’m anxious, that is all.” Kanick nodded. “May I see them, one more time?”

“Very well,” Kanick replied with a sigh, “but they haven’t changed.” The battlemage shrugged off both satchels, laying them to rest on the damp earth. Kanick flicked a bag open to reveal a hinged mahogany box about the size and dimensions of a large book; inside was a rectangular plate made of a strange reflective but dull metal. Regius took the first in his hands and began to examine it while Kanick opened the second bag.

The tablet was densely etched with circular runes and magical characters, so that almost not an inch was untouched. Going from left to right, Regius examined the marks, stopping at the jagged far edge, the mirror of its counterpart. When he was satisfied his carving had been correct, he handed it back to Kanick and took the next.

“Well?” Kanick asked.

“They look correct, though I worry that the seam between the plates will interfere with the spell.”

 “It didn’t in the tests,” Kanick reminded him.

“That’s true” Regius conceded, his mind struggling to find the words for his misgivings. “Well, almost true. I observed some deviations from the expected efficacy on the spells I tested. This spell is much more powerful, it’s on a different scale, and I don’t know if that relationship I observed is predictive…” Regius trailed off as Kanick hefted the satchels back onto his shoulders.

“Why even use two plates?” Kanick asked, the question taking Regius by surprise. “Surely the rune is the same either way?”

“I can sense the power in the two halves myself,” Regius explained. The rationale was simple to him, but this spell had been his life for the past year. All the problems he had encountered, and their solutions were simply self-evident. “If the runes were whole, the power contained within would mean that any mage who sensed the spell might be able to activate it – inadvertently or otherwise.”

Kanick let out a long, slow breath and glanced nervously at the tablets and the camp around them.

“Are you saying Palregon could sense and activate the spell here?” Kanick whispered.

“It’s possible,” Regius admitted. “If the spell was traced on one vessel only. I just don’t know how powerful this spell might be.”

The two mages walked into the forest, following a narrow path through the morning mists. The area had been well scouted and chosen for the lack of nearby settlements. The king had set up camp here, hoping to lure his brother south. Each battle in the war between the King and his usurper brother had followed a predictable pattern. A vast host was assembled by the Union of Kingdoms, Palregon then met it on ground disadvantageous to himself before he, and his armies, utterly annihilated it.

Time and time again, this pattern had repeated. From the frozen plains of Nerrath and all through the Winter, creeping further and further south. Normally Regius’s order, the Order of Mages, would never have become involved in such a conflict. The Union was hundreds of years old and comprised four Kingdoms; it was no stranger to dynastic squabbles.

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The crown had passed over Palregon, the elder of two brothers, for one simple reason. He was a mage, and no mage was allowed to wield political power over non-mages. It was a rule born out of a more tumultuous and violent time, but a law cast in stone, nonetheless.

Rather than vanishing into a life of service in the Order, Palregon claimed the throne with a host conjured demons at his back, horrors created out of magic and fashioned for war. He compounded transgression on transgression, subjecting his followers to blood curses and other forbidden magic.

And now his vile influence had spread across half the continent.

Regius and Kanick emerged at the other end of the strip of forest on top of a hill, blinking in the bright light of the day. A landscape of meadows stretched before them and Regius could see small birds darting in and out of the field. Apine forest ran half a mile from their left and off towards the distant hills, while gentle hills rolled away to their right. Straight ahead, veined in snow and ice, the peak of the Bergarm mountain was visible, rising from the distant mists. It would have been beautiful, but for the black mass travelling up the road.

At this distance it was impossible to make out individual soldiers, though Regius knew the bulk of this army was made up of magical abominations created by Palregon himself. He had other, more human armies, burning across the north but this mass of horror was his vanguard. They didn’t so march but rambled in a scrum of dark shadow, with no order of battle that Regius could see. Being in staff meetings with the generals, Regius had seen the military men go from glee to horror as the easy victories against a disorganised opponent failed to materialise and instead turned to routs and massacres. There had still been no word from Nerrath, and the worst was feared.

Regius glanced at the two satchels again, not for the first time wondering if the order itself was staring down a similar dark path and questioning his place in it. They were skirting close to forbidden magics themselves.

“He is where the scouts said he would be.” Regius commented, pointing towards a small knot of horsemen at the head of the host.

“Indeed,” Kanick agreed, grimly, “that is him, in the middle, I think, holding council with traitors.” There was a pause as they both took in the desperate scene, Palregon inching inexorably closer.

“Time to begin?” Kanick asked, and, without waiting for an answer, dumped the satchels on the ground. “You might want to stand behind me.” Regius moved as Kanick began to pull on thick gloves overlaid with bands of silver and themselves densely etched with runes.

The battlemage took the two tablets, one in each hand. “Remember, the secondary marks must be activated before you join the tablets or the-“ Regius started.

“The vessel will be destroyed, and we have lost our best chance to stop Palregon.” Kanick finished for him.

“Yes,” Regius continued, “and make sure you activate the fusing marks as they touch before you activate the main rune.”

“I will.” Replied Kanick, his voice thick with concentration. He then added the command, “Keep. Back.”

The runes on the tablets began to glow with a purple fire and Kanick gasped, slowly raising his arms. Regius stepped back, he could already feel the heat.

There was the sound of a click, metal against metal, as Kanick brought the two plates together. The metal glowed an eery dark purple, but grew progresivley brighter over a few seconds to become a terrible white light, harsher even than the sun. Kanick screamed and the air let out such a roar that it quickly drowned out the battlemage. Regius covered his ears and dropped to the ground.

The wind was hot with anger, searing against Regius’s back. He could not say how long it had been since the earth had tried to shake itself apart. Regius peeled his face from the hot ground.

The light was all wrong, the sky a dirty orange colour and embers flew in the wind like snowflakes. Kanick lay weeping in a small crater of upturned earth. His robes had been burned away, the scales on his armour were blackened with soot and missing in scorched patches. The gloves, meant to protect Kanick’s hands, were lumps of cooling metal half buried in the dirt.

 Regius leapt to his feet and clambered to his friend, turning him over.

Kanick tried to resist, holding his bloodied hands close to his chest. Regius dove into his own robes and pulled out a small rolled up scrap of paper. He slapped it onto Kanick’s hand, who kicked and cried in return, and activated the marks of healing even as the paper began to soak up the viscera of the wound. It wouldn’t be enough, Regius realised, as he repeated the ritual, with Kanick’s other hand.

Healing had always been an art that fascinated Regius; most healers didn’t understand their marks and only knew that they worked through trial and error. Some marks only worked on simple cuts and bruises, while others could cure illness, but did nothing for physical wounds. The paper he applied only had marks for the binding of lacerations and numbness. Kanick’s cries died down to a whimper as the paper disintegrated into purple sparks. Regius held his friend and looked past him at what they had wrought.

The landscape was hazy through the smoke that choked the air, despite the strong wind. The rolling hills and meadow were simply gone, and a flat, dry plain stretched all the way to the horizon. The pine forest, ancient and dense, was now further away than it had been, and was on fire.

Patches of the ground were burning in small fires as far as Regius could see. Casting his stinging eyes to the hazy horizon, he could see where the silhouette of mount Bergarm should have been. The peak rose above the orange mist, scraping at the sky, but where there had been one peak there were now two. Regius blinked, trying to make the two peaks one, surely the problem was with his eyes.

The wind howled even fiercer in Regius’s ears but failed to rise over the sick throbbing inside his head. In his wildest nightmares, Regius had not dared to think the spell could reach the Bergarm. Between the mages and the mountain had been the city of Shadburgh some one hundred leagues away. Regius thought with increasing horror of the other towns and villages that had been in the spell’s path, surely destroyed now. A whole province was simply gone.

“What have we done?” Kanick wailed from the dirt below, his voice eventually breaking into sobs. “What have we done?”