In the moments before the End of Days, Logister Semina ViPADua was thinking about grapes. She was thinking specifically about monwar grapes, a thin-skinned, dark red variety that grew on and around the Victra estate in Siana’s hinterlands. It was integral to the production of a dry, delicately pink wine that had such a refined effervescence that it didn't sparkle so much as it had a delightful, almost creamy mouthfeel. The wine, known as “Risen Dawn,” had been produced for nearly a century, but raising it from obscurity and securing it a place at the tables and in the cellars of Siana’s most respected Logisters had been the signature accomplishment of Semina’s early career. It was so closely associated with her that even decades later both friends and detractors sometimes still called her “Dawn.”

Despite being one of the cornerstones of her commercial empire, it had been years since the monwar grape had occupied Semina’s attention with any regularity. More recently it had been cosmetics–paints, dyes, bleaches, lacquers, powders, scents–that had consumed her waking hours as her conquest of Siana’s luxury markets had entered a new phase. The monwar grape demanded her attention again only because of its threatened absence. The window for harvesting the grape–just a handful of weeks–had nearly closed for the year with almost half of the vineyards that produced the grape failing to report that harvesting had even begun.

And this was only one of the issues plaguing the sprawling empire of ViPADua luxury goods, so Semina had gathered her lieutenants, Victra, Palio, Athrofonte, and Dualine, to offer them a meal and demand answers. So far, she hadn’t liked any of the answers she’d received.

The meeting took place in the top most chamber of the Tower ViPADua, a circular room clad entirely in black marble and ringed by windows that alternated between intricate stained glass and more practical panes of clear crystal that each offered commanding views of Siana. Beneath the black vaulted ceiling of the chamber sat Semina’s Great Table. Constructed from mighty pieces of bleeding oak, the crimson surface had been polished to a mirror finish. Around the table four unique, intricately carved and lacquered chairs had been set. Each had been designed to reflect the domain of luxury items over which an individual lieutenant had been given authority. Semina’s chair, massive and imposing, was constructed from a single limb of the same crimson oak as the Great Table itself. It had a simple but generous seat carved into one side and its naked canopy of forking branches, oiled and shining, reached up toward the vault of the chamber’s ceiling.

Semina fixed her gaze on Victra, her first partner, her most loyal lieutenant, and her oldest friend. She ignored the men and women standing behind him. All of her lieutenants had appeared with their own retinues of the lesser Logisters and managers they employed to help run the many ViPADua subsidiaries they oversaw. Semina had time only for those four who answered to her directly.

Under his short, thinning black hair and his neatly trimmed beard, Victra looked exhausted. His spare frame was dwarfed by the monochrome chair he slouched in. It was champagne colored and had been carved to look like an elegantly twisted collection of fruiting grape vines.

“How can it possibly be,” Semina said, her tone calm and precise, “that none of the couriers you’ve sent to the hinterlands have returned with assessments from the vineyards? How many–how many exactly–have you sent?”

Victra looked around the Great Table with a pained expression, but Semina’s other lieutenants avoided his gaze. Either they had already answered questions of their own, or they were busy trying to anticipate which of the crises Semina’s would want them to answer for. All three of them stared fixedly at the meal Semina had ordered prepared: well water instead of wine; brown laborer’s bread instead of pastries; pieces of dried fruit instead of bowls of juicy, freshly peeled citrus; wet looking farmers cheese instead of the creamy, or aromatic, or aged varieties that usually graced Semina’s table.

The food had remained largely untouched. Semina’s lieutenants, however hungry they might have been after saving their appetites for the normally sumptuous offerings at the Great Table, knew better than to sample the pointed arrangement. They knew as well as she did that the offering had been intended as a statement more than a meal: the many luxury enterprises of Semina ViPADua were at risk of collapse, even if no one dared say so at the Great Table. If ViPADua crumbled, if her Logisters didn't help Semina solve the many problems facing their luxury craft houses, they deserved nothing more than the simple fare assigned to the many laborers languishing in ViPADua’s undersupplied workshops and wineries. Indeed, if they couldn’t patch the holes and mend the breakages in their supply chains, nothing better may be available for many months.

Victra finally met Semina’s calm, implacable gaze and opened his mouth to reply, but he was interrupted by a gasp from one of the women standing behind Dualine, Semina’s newest lieutenant in charge of perfumeries and cosmetic houses.

Irritated, Semina looked for the source of the interruption. Every eye in the room had turned incredulously to look at Casqat, an impeccably manicured and intricately coiffed young blonde woman. She was a bright young woman, diligent and discreet in her dealmaking, and her massively popular perfume house had been one of ViPADua’s most recent acquisitions. Semina froze when she saw the woman’s terrified expression. Her red lips trembled and her eyes were wide and wild looking.

Casqat raised one delicately scented hand to her mouth and pointed across the Great Table with the other. “Look!”

Everyone in the room turned as one to look out the window Casqat had pointed to. As a wave of gasps rippled around the Table, Semina stood and walked slowly to the window that looked due east over the city of Siana. What she saw caused all her frustration, anger, and exhaustion to collapse into horror.

The sky above Siana was a perfect blue. Aiol, the brilliant yellow sun that had been warming the city all morning, was rising in the east. Ytol, the green sun, swam through the sky behind its larger yellow sibling like an iridescent jewel tethered by an invisible chain. Up in the sky beyond both, the blue of midday had begun to darken in patches. At first they darkened to a midnight blue, then strange ripples began to form around them. The distortions in the sky made the vastness of the firmament look like the inverted surface of a great ocean and the suns appeared as tiny orbs that skimmed just above its surface. Like ripples on water, the disturbances in the sky began to spread,. Where they overlapped they began to turn gray, and soon they were frothing, bubbling, then boiling downward with increasing violence.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Semina’s lieutenants and their subordinates began to crowd around the windows. She heard their gasps and confused murmurs as they stared out at the unnatural sky, but she couldn’t turn to look at them. She watched, fascinated, horrified, as the gray sky, now shot through with smears of black, erupted downward to roll over the crystalline sphere of green Ytol. When the column of gray fell upward again, back into the mass of the curdling sky, Ytol was gone.

The chamber at the top of the Tower ViPADua erupted into screams.

“Oh…” Semina breathed, barely aware of the chaos behind her.

She watched as a bank of leaden gray storm clouds boiled up along the horizon. She cringed back from the sight, unnerved both by the unnatural speed with which they flew across the land and by the mind-rending sense of nothingness she felt when she looked at them. She knew in the depths of her soul that everything swallowed by those clouds was lost. Every tree, every building, every creature–every person–completely and irretrievably gone.

Gone.

Gone.

A deep rumble shook the Tower and Semina stumbled back as a web of cracks exploded across the window in front of her. The shock brought her back to herself and she stepped quickly to the side of the window as the sound of breaking glass filled the room. She raised her voice in command even as she reached for the wooden handle closest to her.

“Close the shutters!”

She worked with Victra and one of his attendants to wrestle the massive wooden shutters closed. As she stumbled backward, uncertain the imposing black shutters would stay shut despite the thick wooden bar across their backs, she heard the shutters slamming closed all around the room. When the Tower groaned and shuddered again, she heard the priceless stained glass encircling the room shatter as the windows began to shake free of their casings.

Semina rushed back to the Great Table as the black marble under her feet jumped and slid sideways. She collapsed into her chair, knowing as she did that it wouldn’t offer her any protection if the Tower grew any more unstable. It would offer her even less when that terrifying mist on the horizon, that storm of nothingness, reached Siana and swept over the city.

All around her the Logisters of Semina ViPADua’s elegant luxury goods empire screamed, wailed, ran for the room’s only massive door, or stood frozen in terrified indecision.

Palio, her second partner and her lieutenant in charge of textiles and fashion houses, stood next to the chair Semina had commissioned to celebrate his partnership. It had been carved to resemble gauzy sheets of white silk blowing in a gentle breeze, with a bowl at its center to cradle its occupant. Semina watched Palio raise his arms over his head as gray dust descended from the ceiling. She pitied him, even in the depths of her own terror, as she realized that he hoped to protect his elegant thin frame from the avalanche of black marble that threatened to fall from the vaulted dome above.

Athrofonte, Semina’s third partner and the Logister in charge of ViPADua’s jewelry and accessory houses, had run for the door even before the last of the shutters had been closed. Now he struggled to wrench it open along with a small group of his own attendants. Watching them work desperately at the thick wooden door, Semina saw that the marble arch of the doorway had shifted slightly as the Tower shook, wedging the door in place. Behind him, abandoned along with the rudimentary meal rolling around on the Great Table, Athrofonte’s other attendants threw themselves to the floor. His chair, a delicate looking frame of black pine covered with intricate inlays of silver, gold, and tiny gems, skittered wildly across the flood beyond the edge of the Great Table.

Dualine, Semina’s most recent partner and the Logister in charge of nurturing growth in ViPADua’s perfumes and cosmetics houses, huddled with her own small retinue. Her chair, pink and carved to look like it had been woven from flowers and other botanicals favored by perfumers, paint mixers, and dye specialists, had fallen onto its side as Dualine rushed to stand with her entourage. They clustered around her tall, imposing frame, all of them wailing or shrieking each time the Tower shook. Dualine stood in the middle of them, her wide, painted eyes flickering as her gaze jumped from one shuttered window to another.

Victra, faithful Victra, steward of ViPADua’s vineyards and vintners, had returned to his own chair. He sat across from Semina and held onto the arms of his chair with a white knuckled grip. Semina met his gaze as the Tower shook, both of them grim but silent.

The sunlight shining around the edges of the shutters winked out a moment later and a despairing moan spread through the chamber. The yellow sun, Aiol, was gone. Semina could feel it with despairing certainty. She looked around the room and even in the gloom she could see each of the faces around her. She knew that they had all just felt what she had, and she watched as they descended into animal panic, screaming and running and clinging to each other.

The gloom deepened. A great crashing boom filled the chamber, and another chorus of screams and sobs erupted from the chambers occupants.

Semina shut her eyes and prepared for the end. She knew it was coming even if she had no power to comprehend it. It was just outside the Tower. It would be inside with them in just a moment. Then it would be on them, smothering them, choking them, consuming them. Blotting them out the way it had blotted out two suns and swallowed a world.

But the mist didn’t push its way in through the shutters. Slowly, slowly, the rumbling of the earth rolled away into silence. Then, as Semina listened to the weeping and cursing all around her, the great thunderous noise of the stormy sky faded as well.

Tower grew still.

Semina opened her eyes and found that light was shining around the edges of the shutters again.

Bright light. Sunlight.

Aiol had returned.

In the deafening quiet, Semina surveyed the room. The ceiling hadn’t come down. The floor hadn’t collapsed. The shattered windows remained safely behind the shutters. Everyone still capable of self-possession looked as confused as she felt. And slowly, everyone she could see turned to stare back at her.