“Why are we still here?” Calein Emeris asked no one in particular. The question itself bolstered him, for he felt his uncertainty reflected in his comrades. The dragon crest glowed dimly on his mentel next to a burn mark from one of his Spells. His hands were scarred. Young mages often misfired. In a panic they sometimes couldn’t cast at all. He and the other Invocateers had been covering for them, and the proximity to the heat was causing fatigue injuries.

Warm arcanery mended hands just a few meters behind him. He didn’t partake; there were a lot of injured apprentices that needed tending to, and the third line would need their support. He wondered if it would be enough. Many of the mages were less than sixty years old.

“It’s alright,” a woman was saying as her healing Spell pulled flesh together and closed the seams in a peer’s skin. “We will make it through this. Even the mundane are fighting. Lord Mason is with us as well. I’ve seen him fight beside us. If those without arcanery can muster so much bravery, so can we.”

‘Garela Julius’, the invisible marking on her mentel read. Calein remembered the name. She was a scarcely forty year old Auxilium. Impressively young. Many would continue to be an apprentice for decades more at that age. The sight made him forget the pulsating pain of arcane burns on his own hands. A dangerous trickle of hope wormed its way into his heart.

I can’t let us end here. Calein turned his head towards the citadel’s highest tower. He recalled his underlings’ dense fear during the attack by the undead golems. There had been much retching and panicking, especially muttering: a dangerous thing to do as a mage. A hundred torrents of their strongest fire Spells could not fell those things. Then came the awe when a single Spell turned night into day.

“He will save us,” another apprentice was muttering. “He will save us. He will save us…”

“I can’t die. I have so much learn,” yet another said to themself.

Foolishness and idolatry. Calein scowled, eyes narrowing at the speck of a balcony.

“You. Yeah I know you can hear me,” Calein whispered. “Insubordination be damned. Our relationship with them has always been transactional, and now they’re done with us. They have been since before the war. We owe them nothing. Save us. Embark your students out. Please.”

A low moan swept across the scattered remnants of the city. Calein’s gaze snapped from the tower to beyond the city’s ruined walls. The other Invocateers maneuvered themselves to the front of line. Static energies popped in the air as Minds warped translucent barriers into existence. Calein thought the bridge to Hrimner’s plane and formed his own barrier, a curved wall of faint crimson. He peered through the arcane glyphs dancing across the energy lattices of the shield, perusing the developing battlefield.

A rising plume of miasma was crawling over the rubble of the city. Taller than any house, it boiled and frothed, an impenetrable wall of death.

Calein reinforced his voice and shouted, “Wind!”

His command travelled throughout the line. His Mind heard the twisting whistle of opening planes. Berthen, Kalla, Jaffray, all planes of infinite turbulence. The air became thick with the murmurs of the Mind. A hundred mages recited arcane script, hammering the energy into shape. Together they casted, and a tide of air rushed towards the incoming miasma. Calein reached his vision into the sky to monitor the results.

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Black fog slammed into silver wind. From high above, the city appeared to have been draped with a black and white blanket, tilting upwards at the two waves’ meeting points. Like the intertwining fingers of lovers. The miasma halted.

Calein extended his vision further. A disturbance in the miasma. He saw it before he heard it. There, rising above the black, a mighty roar parted the deadly fog. The atmosphere relented to the double beats of wings. Ragged, hole-ridden expanses of membrane bolted by bone to its back, the whole thing resembling an enormous bat’s. Spikes grew like a mountain range on the creature, modest at first at its swaying tail, gradually lengthening until its apex at the torso where its spines were veritable hills. Twin horns grew out of its head, one shattered, the other full, forming a crown above red eyes. Calein could taste the energies of Gate from here. Gate, the forbidden plane of ever-motion, undeath.

“Wyvern!” He shouted. Just as he dreaded, the panic among the apprentices rose.

“How? Where was the necromancer hiding the body?”

“Where did he get it from?”

“How are we expected to survive with such horrid intel?”

Calein reached out with his voice. “Prepare your Spells! Don’t bother with fire!”

More planes opened. The sound of cracking ice and chilling wind filled the mage’s ears. He heard Spells being spun behind him laboriously, stutteringly. The apprentices could barely remember processes they had spent years reciting. Some looked to him for guidance. Others seemed to plead. For what exactly, Calein didn’t know, nor would he have the power to grant it to them. The dead were coming, and mages must cast.

He tore into his own selection of planes and prepared the most potent cold Spells he knew. Emptiness was gnawing on his Mind; he had been casting all night and ignoring the advice of the other Invocateers. The apprentices weren’t ready, and he needed to cover for them. But the whispers were growing louder, cackling, promising failure with every Spell. His sight of the heavens blurred and sharpened, split into double and rejoined.

Streams of blue bolts froze trails in the air and struck the underbelly of the undead wyvern. The monster flapped its wings to remain afloat, apparently encumbered by the cold, but more annoyed then wounded. Annoyance would become anger, and anger had a threshold. It drew breath deeply and screamed. The air rushing through the rotted orifices in its throat split into a thousand voices. Each mage heard their own doom. And all casting stopped.

Calein only heard the muffled impacts of shattering ice. The glyphs fled his fingers before he finished his cast. The planes left his Mind. He found himself with his knees on the mud-slick streets, diving in and out of lucidity. He was spent.

The reflection in the shallow, dirty pools of water warbled before him. A shriveled man stared back while wrestling to stay awake, his mouth ajar. Mist was billowing from his nostrils. He raised his hands, horrified at how they shook, and cupped the visible breath as it escaped him. Why had it gotten so cold?

The earth’s pull brought the horizon to a vertical. Hands grasped his shoulders before his head impacted the pavestones.

“Wy…wyvern…”

“It’s alright sir.” The young Auxilium’s voice. What was her name? Calein’s eyes were so heavy.

“No… it’d attack the citadel… we need…” The planes won’t heed his call. He searched and searched, digging through his Mind, but found scarcely enough power to lift a salt shaker. Sleep was coming. It was inexorable. Why was the sky so bright?

“Master Calein, we’re going to be fine,” Garela said. “Cease your recitations and rest.”

A mending touch warmed Calein’s shoulders. With the last of his wakefulness he opened his eyes fully, and saw the Pegasi of the Moon. The sky was full of them. Beautiful horses the color of the palest stars. Manes that bled the cosmos in the wake of their prancing. Hooves of the most polished silver and wings of pure snow. Atop their backs were the Saturnine riders. Wingtip helmets held a waterfall of silver-blond hair. Lithe arms maneuvered moonlight spears the length of castles. They pierced the wyvern over and over, like wolves circling prey, each spear wound metastasized crystalline tumors. They didn’t stop until the monster was entirely encased in frost. It expended the last of its breath in a pathetic cry, and fell back to earth. The muddy reflection rippled once before freezing into stillness. Calein’s eyes finally slid shut.