Sen wakes gasping for air. Fading images of pain and fear bite at the back of his mind. He looks around, memories of his dream fading far faster than the sheer terror. He pulls his feet off the bed, burying his face in his hands, sweat pouring across his body. He reaches for a glass of water on the nearby table.

  He tries to drink as a knock sounds on the door. “Anelica,” he says, surprised, as he opens the door. She’s still dressed in her bedclothes. A streak of terror runs through her, putting him on guard. “Is everything alright?”

  “I had a— I had a nightmare,” she said. She looked around, almost jumping at the dark hall in the early morning. “I just needed to.. I don’t know. Talk to someone.”

  “It’s okay,” he said in reply. “I just had a nightmare as well. I don’t remember it, but it was… I’ve never been more afraid.” His hands still shake in memory of the terror that gripped him as he woke. His little sister’s hand shakes visibly in front of him, and he grabs it.

  “Come on. I’ll make us some breakfast. It was just a dream.”

  “Ok,” she says, following along after him, still shivering. Deep breaths follow him louder than footfalls on the creaky wooden floors.

  They enter into the kitchen to see Amery, shoulders hunched and arms posted into the table as she stares out the window, looking at the morning sun peeking over the horizon in slight purple and pink hues. She turns to them, a look of surprise on her face.

  “You two didn’t happen to have a nightmare, did you?” Her question surprises Sen, and Anelica sheepishly nods, pulling her hand away from Sen’s and wrapping them around herself. “I did, too,” she says, looking back to the horizon.

  “Surely, that’s just a - coincidence, right?” Sen’s voice stutters as he considers the chance of all three of them waking to a nightmare at the same time.

  Amery looks at him, eyes dark. “I fear something is wrong. I’ll look into it.”

  She looks toward Anelica. Her eyes go wide, and she beckons the girl to her. “Oh, my dear, come here,” and pulls her into a hug. Amery holds her for a while until Anelica finally seems back to her normal self.

  Sen busies himself making breakfast for the three of them. He finds some small comfort in working back toward his normal routine. It is a nice distraction from the terror that still whispers at the back of his mind like a raw sore, from the fear that something is coming, that something hungers and desires and consumes and will rage and all that is known will be torn asunder and flames will burn existence to ash and night will reign like a cleansing purity and—

  Sen wakes in his bed, the morning light streaming through a window. Anelica sits in one of his chairs, watching him. She has a page of notes and a book open on her lap, but both of them are lost to her as she watches the sky outside, fear obvious in her gaze.

  He sits up and she turns to him. Relief washes over her face. “Are you alright,” she stutters. His sister is normally much more composed than this, though he understands why. The sun had barely risen, and already today seemed a portent of disaster.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “What happened? I remember - thoughts, or whispers in my head, and then…” He trailed off, unsure what else to say. Were they like whispers? Or were they his own thoughts? It had happened so fast.

  “You fainted.” Tears beaded at the edges of her eyes. “One moment you were fine, and the next you were on the floor. Amery looked you over and didn’t find anything.”

  He reached out and grabbed her hand, swinging his legs off the bed for the second time that morning. His hands felt cold, but her felt downright frosty. “You’re freezing,” he said, concern coloring his tone.

  “What is going on,” she whispered, tears finally running free.

  Sen pulled her close. “Hey, hey,” he whispered to her. “It’s going to be alright. I promise.”

  “You can’t know that,” she sniffled in response.

  “I can. I’m the big brother. I get to know.”

  She snorted at that, tightening her grip before pulling away. She looked him in the eye. “Okay. I’m okay. You’re okay. Amery’s okay. We’ll be okay. Okay?” She looked to him as if for confirmation.

  “We’re all okay,” he smiled back.

  The sound of a door shutting reaches them, and the two of them leave for the living room. Amery looks relieved as she sees Sen. “I’m alright,” he preempts.

  She breathes in a sigh of relief, one hand touching her chest in supplication. “I’m glad.”

  “Any luck?” Anelica asks.

  “I have - news,” Amery says darkly. “Whatever these dreams, these nightmares, were, everyone in the village had them.”

  Anelica gasps at that. Sen stares.

  “Worse,” she continues. “Naya saw a stampede of monsters running toward the village. We have to intercept.”

  Sen cursed, moving back toward his room to gather supplies. He met them back in the living room, carrying his pack. Anelica had hers as well, face clenched. Problematic though it may be, a tangible problem like monsters were manageable. The focus seemed to help her.

  Amery stood outside, staff in hand as he and Anelica stepped into the still cool morning. A light breeze and the delicate gasp of the leaves as wind danced between their branches belied the horror of the morning so far. Amery looked him. “You’re sure you’re alright? I don’t have to tell you how disastrous another episode could be,” she warned him.

  “I’m fine. Whatever happened, there were no signs, anyway,” he said. “It would be gambling and I’m more valuable helping than not.”

  Reluctantly, she nodded. She dropped her staff, and with a pulse of mana, it began to erupt with branches. They squirmed like arms, and eventually pushed themselves up. The staff itself expanded until wide enough to fit the three of them comfortably, and each of them stepped on. A pair of handrails bookended each side, and both Sen and Anelica held on as the arms began to motion as though swimming.

  The platform they stood on began to rise into the air, gaining speed. In only a few minutes, the house disappeared into the distance. The village loomed larger and larger with each passing moment. Sen looked around, wondering if the monsters Naya had foreseen were visible yet. He saw nothing.

  “Do you see anything,” he asked Anelica. She shook her head, eyes roaming across the landscape.

  Amery spoke up. “There,” she pointed. In the distance, a number of trees began to fall, dust kicking up high into the air. More trees began to fall, a path of destruction slowly working its way toward the village.

  “Are they coming directly toward the village, or are they running from something?” If everyone in the village had those strange nightmares, perhaps other intelligent, dangerous creatures had as well. He didn’t want to think what those sorts of beasts might do in reaction, but something like this might well be the result.

  “Naya didn’t say,” Amery said. “It doesn’t matter. She foresaw the creatures coming toward the village, and there they are. She can’t always be right, but she is this time. Unfortunately.” Frustration tinges her voice as she spits the last word.

  Slowly, the platform lowers to the village. Naya and the village headman await them. The headman is a bundle of nerves, hands clenching and sweat dripping from his head despite the cool of the morning. Naya is emotionless, though she stands rigid straight, a far cry from her usual at-ease. A deep frown sits on her face, in contrast to the simple smile she normally presents. A band of cloth sits across her eyes.

  Though blind, Naya looks to each of them in turn. “We must hurry. The stampede grows close.”

  Amery grunts at her as she channels her mana. The staff returns to its original shape. It jumps into her hand, and she begins barking orders at Sen and Anelica. “Sen, you’re on perimeter duty. Anelica, traps. Help the other if you finish. Ando,” she addressed the headman. “Gather the villagers in the square. Easier to protect everyone in the same place,” she added. The man nodded with obvious unease.

  “Naya has said this has the potential to be disastrous,” he stuttered out.

  “As I remind you every time, it is her job to advise you to the extreme dangers the world offers. We will not fail you.” Amery’s voice rang out with confidence as she dealt with the headman, but Sen could see a level of discomfort that she rarely revealed.

  Sen got to his work, establishing a perimeter around the village. A slight shiver ran through him as the cool, refreshing sensation of his mana working its way throughout his body allowed him to inscribe wards all around the village. The wards covered the outskirts of the village in a circular pattern. Though invisible to sight, he could feel the wards snap together all at once as he completed the final connection. His mana trembled in resonance.

  Sen quested out with his mana sense to find Anelica. He found her near the perimeter in the direction of the monsters they’d seen earlier. She had a number of traps built, but not enough. It took the two of them another several minutes to add a number of additional traps before Amery appeared.

  “Sen, I want you to go scout. We need a better idea of what is coming.” He nodded to her and turned to the forest, taking a breath. He would have liked to use Amery’s staff to fly as he scouted, but she didn’t have it on her. She must be using it as an anchor for a stronger ward surrounding the villagers. Second, Sen didn’t have the ability to properly use the spell needed to fly with it.

  He crept into the forest, opening his mana channels to any potential disturbance. He controlled the sounds of his footfalls as he ran through the forest toward the monsters. Sen cast a spell to amplify his hearing. It wouldn’t do to run headlong into a horde of monsters without any warning, even if that was exactly what he was now doing.

  Normally, he would hear the vibrant life of the forest in every direction, but now it all sat quiet. Straining his ears, he managed to hear the slight thumps of a tree falling. He followed the sound for a short time, before cutting to the side and up a hill. He hoped to find a vantage.

  Luckily enough, Sen managed to find a tall tree atop the hill, and from there he managed to see a slowly growing dust cloud. At this rate, he expected the horde would arrive before noon. Sen pulled out a scroll of farsight. He began channeling the scroll, and after a moment a small shimmering pool of mana appeared before him. Wherever he looked, it magnified.

  He turned toward the approaching dust cloud, hoping he’d be able to get some information of value. He hoped not to approach any closer. At the front of the dust cloud he saw stone wolves and clayrillas, monstrous life imbued into otherwise inane materials found on the mountain. His heart dropped as he looked further back, and there, slightly obscured by the endless dust, rushed a mountain worm.

  It measured nearly triple Sen’s own size in diameter, almost all of which opened to several rings of sharp teeth at the front. His studies told him that within that mouth sat several eyes, rarely used in lieu of the monster’s ability to smell. Dangerous but manageable on its own, Sen dreaded dealing with one of those alongside a horde of other creatures. Especially if there were several of the worms, or potentially worse.

  Sen dropped from the tree. He had enough information, even if that information only settled a deep pit in his stomach.

  Sen arrived back in the village without much trouble, only to find a number of birds hovering near the wards, occasionally pecking at it. Their size suggested these birds came with the horde, and simply moved faster. They would sit to nearly his waist if they sat on the ground before him. On their own they were no issue, but he suspected the birds could become a problem later. He needed to get rid of them now.

  He quickly pulled out several scrolls. The first of these he imbued halfway, then balled up and threw at the birds. It exploded as it soared between them, causing a series of raucous caws of rage, or perhaps indignation. Whatever emotions that man-eating monsters preferred.

  Another scroll he imbued properly, and with a loud crash swept a blindingly bright bolt of lightning. Two of the birds dropped dead immediately, while another several fell to the ground in a slower, but inevitable, pace. He could kill those easily later. Unfortunately, there were still several other birds turning to him. They swept toward him, screeching hate and anger.

  Sen stuck a palm out, scroll affixed to his hand. He pushed mana through the page, and as he pulled his arm back, the scroll stayed in the air, floating. He pulled another page into his hand and began channeling. Moments later, two of the final three birds crashed into an invisible barrier radiating out from the seemingly floating page. They squawked and fell to the ground before him.

  The final bird crashed into the barrier, which shattered with a sound like glass shattering. One claw swept out and slashed across Sen’s arm. The pain bit into his focus, but he managed to hold himself together enough to finish channeling the final scroll. He sweeps a hand wide, and a wave of fire follows after it, pushing out and burning the birds. Their cries are cut short as they disintegrate under the intense heat.

  Another squawk cries out from above him, and Sen curses. He doesn’t have another scroll to deal with the final bird. He runs for the ward perimeter. The bird dives, and Sen prepares for the jagged pain that is coming.

  It doesn’t.

  A thin red line erupts from within the barrier, exploding the bird as it dives toward him. He raises a hand in thanks as he crosses the threshold, breathing deep to calm the adrenaline running through his veins. “You need to be more careful,” Amery calls out to him. She eyeballs the gash along his arm. “Should be fine with a simple rejuvenate.” She reaches into her bag, but Sen holds up a hand.

  “I have one,” he says, pulling another scroll from his bag. He wraps the scroll around the wound on his arm, then begins channeling. The sharp pain cools, then relief sweeps through him. Sen peels the blood-soaked paper off his arm, now entirely unharmed. Anelica walked up from inside the village.

  “General preparations complete, master,” she said, looking to Sen with worry.

  “Report,” Amery commands.

  “Common mountain monsters en masse, with minimum one confirmed mountain worm. Regular size, approximate amount unknown. Expected arrival, noon.” Sen speaks succinctly, following the protocols Amery has drilled into him. Anelica’s face blanches.

  Amery sighs. “The worm will be a pain. Will you and Anelica be able to handle the rest?”

  Sen considered that, looking to his sister. “I cannot guarantee, but I believe it within our capacities.”

  “Agreed,” Anelica says, voice wavering slightly.

  Amery looks at her, and she repeats herself, voice firm. “Agreed.”

  Amery nods at her.

  “We’re gambling on you two, then. We don’t have time to prepare for the horde as well as evacuate the village, so if you two can’t manage everything else while I handle the mountain worm, then chances are the village will be destroyed.” She left unsaid the other consequences of a destroyed village. Death, probably for all of them.

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  Sen almost had second thoughts, but ultimately kept his nerve. Sen and Anelica could do it. They might run low on scrolls, but he was sure they could manage. Amery held his eye. He nodded at her.

  “Alright, my apprentices. Time to earn our keep.”

  Sen had been right with his guess. The raucous sound of monsters in stampede began to vibrate through the town as the sun neared midday. The sun sat pleasantly in the sky, the slight tinge of warmth hinted at, but concealed, by the breeze. Blue swept across the skies, clouds absent entirely. Sen breathed in. Such a shame, he mused. A great day for a nap under a tree.

  Tremors rocked the leaves of nearby trees, leaving a small storm of green to flutter to the ground. In the distance he heard the crash of a tree falling to the ground. The roar of monstrous beasts slowly built as the horde approached.

  He and Anelica had completed their preparations with a few moments to spare. A number of traps dotted the landscape surrounding the ward around the village, he knew, though he couldn’t see them. They would mostly be small pieces of scroll, crumpled up and imbued with mana, prepared to explode as creatures crossed over them. Sen had helped Anelica create some other weapons, as well, including a few trees wrapped in scrolls. Those would explode as well, but hopefully cause a bit more of a nuisance to larger creatures. Hopefully there weren’t too many of those. The mountain worm already threatened to destroy the town on its own.

  He hoped Amery could manage it on her own.

  They had borrowed a moment of Amery’s time in order to gain access to some of her wood manipulation, which allowed them to build a ballista relatively quickly. Using some minor spells the two of them could manage on their own, Sen and Anelica spent a portion of their time creating several volleys of ordinance they could use through the wards to hopefully manage some of the horde.

  The biggest trouble was not the individual monsters, most of which Sen and Anelica could deal with easily. However, when multiple monsters all attempted to attack at once, it became significantly more difficult to manage. Many spells could deal with a couple of enemies at once, but if you found yourself circled, even those spells tended to miss one or two. Couple with the fact that some enemies - especially those in a stampede rage - may not retreat for anything less than dropping dead.

  Movement caught his eye, and Sen looked up to see the first of the encroaching monsters. A great dust cloud grew behind it, several large trees still standing between the village and the greatest mass of monsters.

  A stone wolf ran through the forest, breaking through the tree line. It’s stone shoulders moved more like water than stone as it loped forward, before exploding violently into debris as one of Anelica’s scroll mines erupted under its foot.

  The bassy thump seemed to act as a call to action, as Anelica let loose the first of their ordinance into the trees behind the now nonexistent monster. It, too, exploded, though with a great crack and a fireball that reached up into the sky. It must have bounced off a tree, Sen thought.

  He called to his sister. “Wait for some of the trees to fall. That shot missed somehow.” She nodded at him, eyes reflecting the flames as they licked at the sky from between the trees. They didn’t have enough ammunition to waste it on missed shots like that, so a bit of patience might be needed. It was a fine balance, he knew, but it would be necessary.

  Sen stepped forward toward the edge of the ward. While Anelica manned the ballista, Sen could only hope to manage any smaller monsters that approached the wards.

  As he neared the edges of the village, the sheer amount of monsters coming finally snapped into place for him. He saw a veritable sea of monsters, no longer concealed by the dust of their rampage through the forest. Hundreds, he wanted to say, but he feared in truth they numbered in the thousands. He struck down the panic that tried to claw its way into him from a deep pit in his stomach. Clenching his jaw, Sen waited.

  For a surprising length of time, nothing managed to approach the warded edge of the village. An endless staccato beat of scroll mines sounded, clayrillas shattering into mud as they exploded, or stone wolves sharding into bits of shrapnel that bit into other creatures, formed from flesh and sinew rather than mountain detritus.

  Sen saw several large wolves, bears, elk, and other common animals of the forest in the horde, all of them running as if in fear. Had they joined the horde, somehow, or had whatever overcome them all this morning sent them all into a fear that just so happened to leave them on a path of destruction headed directly for the village? Sen had no way to know.

  As the first beginnings of the true horde cleared the forest edge, trees still standing, Sen heard the snap of the strings on the ballista send away another quarrel. It soared overhead, and the sound of its flight through the air whistled a promise of death and destruction wherever it landed. It stuck in the ground, silent for the shortest of moments before a swathe of destruction deformed the ground like clay. Anything nearby died a violent death, ripped to shreds like paper in comparison to the heavy earth.

  Sen stepped out of the wards, sending a few smaller spells to unsuspecting creatures. A small array of fireballs flew from his hand, crashing toward a group of forest stalkers. The panther-like creatures often clothed themselves in shadow, hunting in pairs. To find them together was unusual, but, Sen idly thought as he began to prepare another spell, little about today had been usual. It would be out of form to expect any return to the usual at this point. His small fireballs closed in on several of the dark-furred monsters, curving in the air toward their head. A few of them managed to move out of the way, but most of them were hit, and their heads caught fire. Panicking, they started to nuzzle at the ground, attempting to wipe the fire off. They died slowly, but Sen didn’t have time to pay them any more attention until they got even closer.

  A flock of mountain rocs dove at him. He danced back across the ward line, and several of the birds slammed into the wall. They slid off, but Sen wasn’t able to do anything about them before they managed to get back into the air. They circled around, cawing at him.

  He stepped forward once more, and they dove once more. Geniuses, most monsters were not. Sen traced out a scroll in front of him, following the runes with his finger. This one pulled harder at his channels than most of his spells. Halfway through the scroll, electricity began to spark from his fingertip, until it spread up his arm and arced over his shoulder like a single spike in the air.

  Finishing the spell, Sen had a moment of complete silence as the spell took, then erupted in a beam of lightning that hit and spread between each of the birds. They fell to the ground, smoke rising from their corpses.

  Behind them, a tree fell to the ground. A great claw rose from behind the trunk, pulling a massive bear-like form up and over. It roared in anger, looking toward Sen. Spittle flew from its mouth, and a row of spikes poked up from its spine. A whistling sound swept through the air, and a ballista bolt landed in its open mouth. The monster bit down, attempting to spit out the bolt.

  The large mass fell limp as the spell-bolt activated.

  The battle continued like that for a time. Sen jumped in and out of the barrier, luring enemies to attack so he could easily take them down. Several forest stalkers crept their way toward him, acting entirely against their normal patterns. Normally, they would only face prey head-on if there was no other choice. He supposed there wasn’t.

  He dealt with these creatures by opening the earth underneath them, then crushing them as he pulled it back together. Anelica called out behind him. He looked to the side. Another several birds came toward him, though these spewed fire at him. He ducked behind the barrier, waiting for a gap in the flames as they spread across the invisible wall. He drew a spell of wind, and activated another of the traps he and Anelica had prepared.

  A slow wind swept out from his hand, spreading all across the little battlefield. Sen activated another scroll, and from this one nothing seemed to happen. “Now,” he shouted at Anelica. Another large quarrel flew from the ballista, hitting nothing. Sen closed his eyes. After a moment, Sen felt the bass thump of the bolt-spell exploding into a ball of fire.

  The second explosion, however, following almost instantly, nearly blinded him even with his eyes closed. After a moment he opened his eyes to see most of the earth for several hundred meters sat devastated, littered with small fires. Almost nothing still stood in the swathe of destruction, with only a few great trees and even greater monsters still standing.

  At the far edges of the destruction, Sen sighted the mountain worm. It slithered forward, mouth contracting and expanding as it moved. He heard Amery behind him. “Good work. Now, it’s my turn.”

  She hovered in the air standing on her staff, formed into a platform. She slid forward, holding several scrolls in her hands. Several bright orbs appeared above her head and began circling around her.

  Sen worried for his master, but knew he couldn’t spare the distraction to watch, and even if he did, couldn’t do much to help. Despite the massive devastation before him, a multitude of monsters ran over the corpses and ashes of their predecessors in a mad dash toward the village.

  Amery began her fight with the worm, most of the smaller monsters ignoring her and heading straight for the village. Eventually, Anelica’s ballista bolts ran dry. She appeared behind him moments after, assisting him as he held the line against the many creatures.

  “I’m running low on fire and lightning,” he called out. “Can you split yours with me?”

  She shot him a worried look, but pulled two sets of scrolls from her bag, handing them to him. They had been killing these things for what felt like a lifetime, but couldn’t have been more than an hour or two. The sun still stood high in the sky, certainly closer to noon than evening.

  More and more creatures crawled out of the far woods, and crept over the devastated forest of ashes. In the distance, fire and lightning and concentrated beams of light swept over the mountain worm. The worm roared in pain, and Amery clearly had the upper hand. Given enough time, she would kill it.

  Did she have enough time? Did they? Did the village?

  Sen didn’t know, but dwelling on it wouldn’t get them anywhere.

  The battle continued for a time, and slowly their reserves dwindled. Sen began to imbue spells directly, skipping the scrolls. This limited the spells he could use, but in trade allowed him finer control and increased power. No longer could he throw a group of fireballs that sought out his enemies, but he could throw a giant fireball capable of incinerating them all the same. Sen didn’t have the skill to manage the former, without a scroll at least, but it didn’t take a lot of skill to throw as much power at an enemy as possible.

  Hours passed, and finally Sen and Anelica ran out of scrolls, shifting entirely to body-channeling their spells. Their ability to massacre the horde of monsters before them lost a lot of skill and elegance after, but gained much in efficacy. Body-channeling, rather than channeling a spell through some medium like a scroll, allowed channeling through the body. While objects may degrade as the power of a spell channels through it, the body never did, and allowed Sen and Anelica to push their spells harder.

  The trade off that it required them to know the spell they wanted to use with an incredible level of detail meant that their spell repertoire dropped to only a handful didn’t mean much, when some of the easiest spells caused the greatest destruction, especially when used specifically for that purpose.

  As the sun began to droop lower into the sky, Amery’s quarry finally fell. As Sen kept stock of the battle, he had eventually realized that the mountain worm had no ability to actually threaten Amery. It wasn’t intelligent enough, and none of its abilities allowed it to truly attack her. It occasionally sent a spike of rock into the air, but those never managed to even remotely threaten the experienced mage.

  In contrast, though, Amery only slowly managed to deal any real damage to the monster. It took the work of an entire afternoon to finally kill the thing. It collapsed slowly, like a mountain slide seen from far away. In its place rose a giant cloud of dust.

  Sen took a breath, then looked around. The endless horde of monsters had, miraculously, run dry. A few scattered groups of monsters moved across the desolation, but few of them actually headed for him and Anelica, who stood at his side. He sent a cursory glance over both of them to find they were both coated in sweat, dirt, blood, and a host of small wounds.

  He pulled out several of his last remaining scrolls, ones that took too long to use and didn’t provide the ability to kill anything on their own. “Here,” he said, voice fatigued. Anelica looked at him in surprise, perhaps thinking he meant to point out another group that she hadn’t seen.

  Instead, he held out a number of healing scrolls. “Thanks,” she said, taking a few of them. “Keep the rest for yourself. You don’t look too great right now.”

  He grunted at her, then dropped to the ground, watching the last remaining monsters cross the outskirts of the village and flee. He idly pulled a few of the healing scrolls onto some of his larger wounds. They stung as he wrapped them tightly on each wound. He breathed a sigh of relief as he channeled his mana and each scroll left a feeling of cooling refreshment, alongside a distinct lack of the pain from each wound.

  After a short time, Amery floated over, unceremoniously dropping onto the large wooden platform as if she wanted to curl up and sleep. “We did it,” she groaned out.

  Anelica looked as if she didn’t agree. “What if this is just the beginning?” Her quiet words got a look from both Sen and Amery.

  “For now, we’re alive, and that’s good enough,” Amery said.

  “First, everyone has a nightmare. At the same time.” Her words are cold. Terrified. Sen tries to look Anelica in the eye. She avoids his gaze, staring into the sky. “Then a horde of monsters come.”

  Amery speaks up, voice attempting to convey confidence, but primarily showing deep-set fatigue. “We’ll figure it out. I’ll contact the council and see if we can get some answers.”

  Anelica looked to her. Sen could see tears beading in her eyes, threatening to flood out. She nodded at Amery, perhaps not trusting her voice. She sniffled.

  Then the sky opened like a gigantic maw, and an oppressive force crushed the breath from Sen’s lungs. Amery wheezed in response, and Anelica fainted.

  Slowly, the maw eclipsed the sun, and a corona of crimson red wept into the sky.

  “What is that,” Sen tried to say, but he only managed to grunt out a few syllables. The pressure beat at him, incessant. His breath came in short gasps, and he could barely push himself to sit up, much less stand. The air pressed down on him like a boulder. Sen felt helpless.

  Amery tried to say something, but it was as indiscernible as his own grunts. Her arms trembled as she began to pull out a scroll. He looked at it and saw that it was blank. She pulled out a bottle of ink, seemingly unaffected by the pressure bearing down upon each of them.

  She flipped the cap off and dashed the ink over the paper, leaving it almost completely black with ink. Amery closed her eyes, then small portions of the ink began to coalesce, leaving untainted paper behind. In its wake, a complex rune pattern that Sen had never seen before. An idle part of his mind wondered if this would accomplish anything, or if they would die, suffocating under enormous, unknown power crushing them like ants.

  The last of the ink fled from the page, and Amery grabbed the paper. Sen gasped a sigh of relief as the pressure abated and the scroll burnt to cinders from the inside out, starting at the ink.

  “What,” he coughed, “was that!?”

  Amery looked up. For the first time, Sen realized his teacher didn’t have an answer for him. “I don’t know,” she said. Sen couldn’t read the emotions on her face, but her voice sounded defeated. Sen looked up, tracing the small, spatter-like blots of red spreading across the sky above from a deep dark hole in the sky. Small lights flickered inside, as if he were staring into the night sky. Instead, they looked more like teeth, preparing to take a bite out of him, and perhaps everything he had ever known. Staring into that infinite depth, he knew, without a doubt, that his fainting episode - so distant and trivial now, with the events of the day - had been nothing short of a premonition.

  “Is this the end, you think?” His words were bitter, and they stumbled forth without grace. His tongue stumbled over itself, and he felt tears flow down over his face. He tried to look away, but couldn’t. This was the end.

  It’s not fair, he thought. Amery would have let them finish their apprenticeship in only another year or so, and they’d had plans to go back home. To finally put a stop to the rampant monsters near Eduston, to help give their parents some peace of mind, to do…

  To do so much more.

  And just like that, it would all be over.

  “I think it is,” Amery said, voice soft. Bereft. Like him, Sen thought.

  Suddenly, Anelica sits up, gasping for breath. Her eyes are wide, and she looks around, disoriented. Sen reaches for her. “Calm down, it’s okay, we’re alright.”

  She looks at him. Bloody tears run down her face, and his heart breaks for his sister. “No! No, wait. Listen to me! I had a vision.”

  “A vision?” Sen repeats.

  Amery looks on, face blank. Anelica turns to her. “Eshvanaya,” she said, breathless. “She appeared before me. She said that all might not be lost.” Immediately, life seemed to come back to Amery. She grabbed her bag with a furious intensity, rifling through its contents. Finally, she pulled out a small crest, pure white, and embossed with a small bird, wings wide open and seeming to trail flame. It glowed to his eyes, small wisps of something flowing off it.

  “It is blessed,” Amery said. Awe colored her voice.

  Tears of red continued to flow from Anelica. Another stream wept from her ear, and she coughed. Blood flew from her mouth. Sen froze at the sight.

  “Divide the crest for each of us.” Her voice came out like a coarse stone as she dipped a finger in the dirt, drawing. After a moment’s work, a simple rune, one of the simplest Sen had ever seen, decorated the dirt, imprecise and completely against all of his knowledge about magic. He saw the power in it. It resonated in his sight, blinding him. He felt a warmth that had no physical source before him as he beheld the rune, circular, like a snake eating itself.

  “And channel this spell.” Amery set to work at once. Sen stared, at a loss. Quickly, Amery pulled a knife from her bag. She gnawed at the crest, and it slowly separated into three even pieces. She dug at each piece with her knife, crudely inscribing the rune to each of them. Sen wanted to laugh.

  Amery and his sister had gone mad in their last moments. He believed in the gods, but to imagine one would intervene on their behalf? How ridiculous.

  And yet, the rune on the ground blazed in his sight, and more than that, blazed to his other senses. It smelled like the ashes of a campfire, and pressed on him like the weight of a warm blanket. He could feel it like a part of his body, the separation from him like an itch. Suddenly, the power disappeared, and just as suddenly reappeared, broken up between each of the three broken pieces of the crest.

  Amery handed him one, and Anelica another. His sister looked a grotesque sight with blood covering her face, but at once she closed her eyes, and a sigh of peace overcame her. She looked to him, finally free from the worries of the day. Her teeth were red from the blood pouring down from her nose into her mouth. “She is with us,” his sister said.

  Amery looked at him, reaching a hand out to both of them. Anelica smiled at her. “I don’t know what Eshvanaya has said to you, but I trust you.” Tears began to flow from her eyes.

  “I’m proud of you both. You were my first apprentices, but I suspect you would have been the best of them all.” She wiped her eyes, and then took a breath. She focused on the crest in her hand. She breathed out, relief washing over her.

  Sen looked at the crest. It shimmered to his eyes, but to his mana sense it felt like a hot iron. It didn’t burn, but it pressed against him, threat radiating from it. Despite that, he felt no danger, and holding it in his hand, no pain.

  He closed his eyes, sighing. He faced upward, afraid to open his eyes once more to behold the apocalypse but seeing it once again in his mind’s eye, the image of the end seared upon him.

  He channeled the rune, and suddenly he breathed easier. Life flowed into him. He blinked, and the subtle, odd feeling of waking from a dream swept over him. Between one blink and the next, it felt like a short eternity had passed. Sen looked to the little crest in his hand, now inert.

  Perhaps it had.

  He looked up to the sky, reaching his hands out to grab both Amery’s and Anelica’s. Peace flowed through him. Whatever came, he would persist.

  As he looked up, red finally filled the sky in its entirety, and like a blink, darkness swept him away.