“So what in the five hells is going on?” Mirian asked. Selesia looked nervous, while Xipuatl looked surprisingly calm.

Lily said, “You were right. I… don’t believe it, but there really is an Akanan army—”

“I know that part,” Mirian said. “I mean, what’s the plan?”

“Torrviol is being evacuated,” said Xipuatl. “It’s just… very short notice. There’s a lot of people to get moving, and we can’t use the train because it’s busy moving the garrison from Fort Aegrimere north. The defense… is not going to go well.”

“Why not?”

“Fort Aegrimere garrisons a single division. The Akanan force coming south toward us is a full army group.” When Mirian stared at him uncomprehendingly, he said, “They’re going to be outnumbered four to one. If they’d had time to set up a defensive line, they might be able to hold out while Baracuel’s armies make their way up from the Persaman border, but… well, it’s too late for that now. They’ll both arrive at about the same time. Some time this evening. Everyone is panicking, obviously.”

“This is why everyone should always listen to gods-touched sixth year morons claiming a prophesy,” Mirian said.

Lily burst into tears. “I’m sorry I doubted you, Mirian, it’s just… when they took you away for murder… and then, everyone was saying you’d signed a confession and admitted it had all been in a fit of madness… I’m sorry.”

“I did not say all that shit. Hellfire, that fucking captain! He’s in on it somehow, I know it.”

“So what do we do?” Selesia blurted out.

“I… I don’t know. I mean, we have to go with the evacuation. But last time, I died in the attack. I don’t know what happens after.”

“We were hoping…” Xipuatl started. “Well, never mind then. The last word we got before the trains stopped running was that something big happened in Palendurio, though no one can agree what. But now the spellward guarding the railroad tracks is down. Sabotage, people think, and everyone’s pointing fingers, but it doesn’t matter. With the ward down, travel south along the road will be risky. We have to stick together. Archmage Luspire is organizing all the certified arcanists. Word is to take only what you can carry.”

Mirian looked over and saw someone dragging a hand-cart through the street with two pieces of furniture and loads of boxes. They’d made it about twenty feet from their front door and were already struggling.

Fortunately for her, everything that she could carry would in fact fit in her bag. The spellward barrier being down was terrible news, though. There weren’t a lot of dangerous beasts roaming between Torrviol and the Cairn River south of them, but Torrviol was still pretty far north. It would only take a few bog lions or a drake nest that was feeling particularly frisky to kill a lot of people. Going in a small group without protection was not an option. As fancy as her new spellrod was, it would do nothing against even a single bog lion.

“We should get moving, then,” Mirian said. “And add food and water to whatever you pack.” The small river coming down from Torrviol lake to join the Cairn River was drinkable, but only just. Torrviol was modern in some ways, like the plumbing, but absolutely medieval in others—like all the sewage that the farmers didn’t take for fertilizer was dumped into the river.

Selesia, Lily and Mirian traveled back to the dorms, while Xipuatl visited his fancy apartment in town. They agreed to meet by the south road. As they moved through Torrviol, Mirian looked about. Some people were taking it well. People had spontaneously self-organized around the Academy dining hall and were distributing food around. In another place, a fight had broken out with one side accusing the other of looting. Some people had clearly taken the dictum to ‘take what you can carry’ seriously, while others were like the man she’d seen trying to drag half their house with them.

The academic buildings were dark, but Mirian saw a silhouette of someone crouched on the top of one of the parapets of Bainrose Castle. “Look,” she whispered, and pointed.

The others turned, and the figure ducked out of sight.

They want something in Torrviol, she thought. She remembered Professor Viridian saying something about ‘much is buried beneath Torrviol.’ She remembered the colossal door beneath the library. Is that what Viridian had meant? What was behind that door? Was it something so important that Akana Praediar was willing to go to war over it?

Well, there was no time for that now.

Back at the dormitory, Mirian changed into her dueling jacket. It wouldn’t ward away the chill so well, but it would take a hit from shrapnel or a bog lion claw better. She put her spellrod through the loop on her belt. Hurriedly, she stuffed everything else in her satchel. She’d have to leave behind some of her clothes and several of her books, but that didn’t matter now.

They stopped by Stygalta Arena, where Mirian led them to a cabinet packed full of water skins. “Nice to have for tournaments,” she said, and started doling them out. They filled as many as they could fit in their packs, clipped an extra to their belts, then left the rest by the fountain.

“There’s waterskins by the fountain in the arena,” they helpfully told anyone else in the area as they left.

They met Xipuatl where everyone was assembling by the south road. Carriages and carts already clogged the streets, some powered by spell engine, some by donkey. There were people helping each other out, and others bickering like agitated crows. It was all a disorganized mess.

“Where is the mayor?” Xipuatl muttered. “We need a leader. This is his time to lead.”

Instead, they waited around, and the minutes ticked by. Mirian was getting antsy. “This is all too slow. We need to get moving. The Akanans have spell engine wagons. Not slow ones, either.”

Finally, a cheer went up, and Mirian turned to look for the source of the commotion. Archmage Luspire was coming down the road, leading the professors and arcanists of the Academy. With their formal robes and their organized lines, they looked more like a military unit than a group of teachers.

Mirian recognized most of them, though some of them she hadn’t had as teachers for years. Professor Torres was the only one carrying a spellrod. It was the ancient one she’d shown the class. She also, surprisingly, had an exotic looking rifle strapped to her back. Other professors had their spellbook bound by a chain so they could quickly access it. They spread out and took positions at different points along the now long caravan that had formed on the south trail.

The instructor for combat sorcerers and battlemages, Professor Cassius, had an ungodly number of wands strapped across his chest in two bandoliers. He also was the only professor not on foot; he rode an eximontar. The six-legged beast was an especially large specimen, with more elaborate carapace than the ones she’d seen on race days.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Several groups from Torrviol had set out already on foot, which was stupid. Myrvite beasts didn’t like to attack large groups, but they had no such compunction about attacking smaller groups.

Slowly, the caravan got under way.

***

The going was frustratingly slow. Ever since the railroad had been laid down some decades ago, the road had stopped being a priority to maintain. The rains that periodically washed over Torrviol had caused sloughs from the hills to their west to wash over parts of the trail, while the running water erosion had cut channels through the dirt. Mirian could hear Professor Holvatti cursing about it frequently.

It wasn’t a huge problem for anyone on foot, but anything with wheels was struggling mightily. One spell engine wagon had its front axle broken in half by a particularly nasty spot, which then caused the front end with the spell engine to get damaged. The axle could have been mended with some careful fuse metal spells, but the damage to the spell engine meant there was no simple fix. With no replacement part available, they’d had to abandon it, with a team of sorcerers using several push object spells in concert to move the vehicle from blocking the road. Further spellwork, such as force bridges and lift spells could make transit easier, but the caravan was almost the entire population of Torrviol, and there was a danger in depleting the available mana of the group just to overcome trivial obstacles.

The work to help out small groups of wagons or carriages, then, fell to the students and the able bodied. Mirian found herself constantly lifting rocks about with her spellrod to help clear the path, or using manipulate object to fill in holes in the trail, while Lily helped create small force bridges over the more damaged portions.

As they traveled, the mood got tense. A cheer went up when they heard the train full of soldiers going north, but an hour later when the echoing roars of artillery got going, people got quiet, and people got scared. More groups decided to risk leaving the main body, which started an argument between some of the professors up front and the people trying to hurry south.

To their credit, most of the Torrviol guard had stayed behind to defend the city. Perhaps the betrayal of Captain Mandez and their own complicity meant that helping hold the city would be a form of redemption for them. But now that also meant that there were less people who were trained to fight. The professors couldn’t follow the small groups that were breaking off, or they’d leave the main column of civilians under-defended.

The sky dimmed, and the air got cold. It was still winter, after all, even if the season had been light on snow. Along the route, students started channeling heat air spells. Many people were poorly prepared for the forty or so mile trek to the Cairn River. Then, only the Gods would know how they’d find all the barges they’d need to get people to Cairnmouth.

Then, their route diverged from the tracks. The tracks followed the river that came from Torrviol Lake, but the old south road cut through the hills. It was a shorter route by far, but the hills were steep, and the elevation change was enough that these were covered in snow. Worse, freeze-thaw cycles had made the trail even more of a mess than by the river, and left slick sheets of ice dotted across the trail.

The frustrated yelling started almost immediately near the front. At this point, the class distinctions between someone like a scribe and a laborer became quite distinct: the more sedentary professions were complaining about the distance they’d come and their feet hurting—it didn’t help their shoes were not the right kind for long walks on rough trails—while the laborer professions were full of people that found the pace agonizingly slow and wanted the group to hurry along.

Mirian, who was psychotic enough to run for fun, was firmly of the latter opinion. The sound of artillery and gun shots was getting louder. There had been a hope passed around the line that nightfall might bring an end to the fighting, but it was a stupid hope. Light spells were trivial enough a child could learn to cast them. The Akanan military wasn’t going to have a problem fighting at night.

Further up the trail, there was shouting, and one of the groups that had set off on their own came hurrying back. Two of the men were bleeding, and the woman had the black marks of frostbite across her face and down her left arm.

“There’s bloody frost scarabites ahead! Big ones, too!” one of the men was shouting.

Lily’s face went white. “One of those killed my grandpappy,” she whispered.

“Well, go ahead and lead them to the whole group why don’t you?” snapped one of the lead magi. “You idiots! I warned you not to leave the group.”

Talk carried down the caravan. Further interrogation of the group—who had only lost two people to the monsters ahead—was that one of the first groups to set out was killed by something up in the hills, and the scarabites had been busy finishing off the remains when they’d stumbled on them. Frost scarabites were absolutely massive beetle-like creatures with icy crystalline shells and razor-sharp pincers. Each was about the size of a wagon when fully grown, and like most myrvites, they possessed several natural spells tied to their spell-organs. One was a frost breath, as the woman had discovered. Luckily, she’d been able to shield her eyes, or it might have blinded her permanently. The two men were lucky they hadn’t lost limbs.

Professor Viridian, who had been admirably keeping up with the front of the column and had yet to complain, despite his age, cast remote eye, a rather complicated spell that transferred light signals, and therefore sight, to the caster. Through one eye, they could see from the perspective of the spell, while from the other, they could see normally. “There’s a swarm of them on the hill,” he confirmed. “At least ten. And that’s not all. The trail has eroded away ahead, and the alternate route is covered in banebriar. The group that got tangled in it might be thankful the scarabites found them before too long.”

Mirian shuddered. Banebriar was the stuff that parents used to scare children into not wandering the wilderness, and for a good reason. The thorns hooked into a person using a persistent force spell that made them nearly impossible to remove without counter-magic, while the vines slowly constricted around the caught animal, like a boa constrictor moving in slow motion. It was a long, horrible way to die.

“We should stop here, and resume in the day. The frost scarabites won’t linger without carrion, and then we can clear the banebriar without being disturbed.”

One of the women up front asked, “Can’t you just… you know… burn it back?”

Viridian didn’t even have to answer. One of the students did. “Banebriar is highly resistant to magic, and doesn’t burn easily either. It will be an involved task to clear a path for the whole group, and it might attract more myrvites.”

“But the artillery is getting closer. You hear those guns!”

It was true. Mirian wasn’t sure how the sound was carrying so well. Had the Akanans really taken and passed Torrviol in a matter of hours? It seemed impossible, and yet the thunder of the guns was carrying clearly to them.

She watched as one of the priests worked to heal the woman with frostbite. Gradually, the blackened skin faded. It was a form of celestial magic, distinct from anything they did at the Academy. She watched as he did the same for the lacerations on the two men. She wondered idly if the Gods would let her practice magic like that. Not that it would make much difference; she was unlikely to be inducted into the Luminate Order and taught the divine secrets of healing magic in the next, oh, few hours.

The conversation about what to do had ignited a loud debate that started at the front and ran its way down the line as people learned what was happening. People just started shouting out their opinions:

“Raise up white flags. We’re a group of civilians. Why would they attack us?”

“I agree, make an encampment, set some wards. We can move on in the morning. We’re all exhausted, we need rest.”

“Speak for yourself. We should push on. The scarabites might kill us. The Akanans certainly will.”

“Really? Been speaking with them, have you?”

“They’re willing to betray us and shatter any hope of alliance ever again. They’re not doing that because they want survivors.”

“There must be a reason they attacked. It has nothing to do with us though. Frost scarabites might be the least of our worries. There’s Labyrinth entrances near these hills. Something far worse might come out.”

Xipuatl took Mirian to the side where it was quieter. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Last time they had no problem gunning down civilians. We were trapped in the rotunda and they just massacred us. We should press on.”

Selesia was sitting on a log, looking dejected. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “Akana’s not perfect, God knows it isn’t, but why…?” She’d been crying, Mirian realized, though she’d been quiet about it. It must have been hard for her to see her country’s betrayal. Not that it was easy on any of them. She sat down next to Selesia and put her arm around her. There wasn’t anything comforting to say; there was no upside or hopeful solution. But she could be there, in that moment. It wouldn’t be enough, but it was something.

The moment was interrupted. This time the shouting was coming from the back of the column and moving its way to the front.

“What’s going on?” Xipuatl shouted toward the back.

“Baracuel soldiers. They’re retreating this way!” someone replied.

Oh shit, Mirian thought.