Chapter 4: Mage 4

Life guarding the Crystalvein Mountains was monotonous, to say the least. We eventually settled into a comfortable routine: visit a mine, handle any tasks that needed to be taken care of, then move on to the next. If nothing came up, we could finish the entire circle in nineteen days. We’d then give ourselves two days off before starting the loop again. Two of us would stay behind each time the loop was done and take care of the general tasks needed of a military posting: writing reports, taking care of the quarters, ensuring supplies were to be had. It was an effective setup for us, and our morale was fairly high.

The normal soldiers were envious of us. They worked the entire time they were there doing…something. I’m still not sure what they were there for. Never came to the mines, just patrolled short distances around the camp and did a lot of training. Seemed kind of pointless to me, we were so far from and front that having both of us there seemed kind of redundant. Of course it was nice to have someone else to win money off cards from, we knew each others tricks and tells already. Other then that, I didn’t see a point. Little did I know how soon that would all come crashing down.

It happened when we were out on our loop. Gallig and Marlip had stayed behind this time, giving us a hard time about leaving two of the women behind to clean up after us. Collum was supposed to stay behind, but Marlip and hurt her ankle the last time and, well, we all knew better than to leave Gallig and Collum together. They’d spend the entire time screwing and nothing would get accomplished. The trip itself was fairly normal, except for a few oddities. Wyverns had migrated close to one mine outside of their normal migration period, a landslide had stopped up one of the passes used to transport ore. We cleared out those issues, and were on our way back, spirits high and ready to rest.

Raglan noticed something was wrong first. Normally we run into a patrol or two on our way back in, and yet we saw nothing. We then began to notice other things that were off: deep grooves and strange tracks on the road, a large smoke column coming from the direction of camp instead of many smaller ones, an increased number of birds in the area. We double timed it back, already dreading what we’d find but hoping for the best.

We found Gallig first. True to form, she was surrounded by bodies skillfully slain by her sword. It looked like they had to overwhelm her with numbers, her body pierced from every side. Marlip was found in the smoldering ruins of our camp area, a surprisingly larger amount of dead around her. We realized why when we found her ruined body, the only recognizable thing on her being the tattoos we all shared. She’d burnt out her body channeling magic, doing the only thing she could to help stem the tide. Shock and disbelief was evident on all our faces, trying to take in what happened here. Loud shouts drew us back to the real world, and we saw patrols of soldiers racing towards us. We’d hoped they were ours, but the unfamiliar language and strange uniforms dashes those hopes and replace them with white hot rage.

Stanten immediately drew our circle, and we linked for a battle cast, the light from our tattoos traveling from one person to the next in a continuous cycle. He drew death on the rapidly approaching groups, rending many and stone alike with great bolts of arcane light that was his signature. None were spared, and we broke our link thinking our revenge was taken. Surprise overtook us when we heard a great noise coming from over the ridge, the sound of drums and horns alerting us that there were far more men coming. We argued amongst ourselves briefly, some such as myself arguing in destroying as many of them as we could until we all burned out, taking revenge for our fallen family. Others argued that it was our duty to escape and get information of this invasion to our superiors. It almost came to blows before little Ruewyn, my sweet, sweet little Ruewyn, calmed us all and cast her vote to leave, that she would leave on her own if need be but there were countless people who would die if high command wasn’t informed and allowed time to prepare. I immediately changed my vote and said I’d go with her if she left, and one by one we all agreed to get this information out of here.

Ruewyn died our second night, taken by a surprise patrol. I almost lost my mind when I saw her fall, almost didn’t link in time to push them back. Brislig died two days after that, along with Stanten, in an ambush once they realized where we were going. After that it was a running battle, stopping long enough to cast dire magic on them and give us some breathing room. Callen died next, slipping a ravine in the dark when fleeing from scouts. Collum wasn’t the same after that, and threw himself into and enemy formation to give us time to escape. Haflur was taken by enemy arrows, before we showed them it was a bad idea by cast a reflection back at them. Branten went next, just didn’t wake up one day. Auldwyn was the last, hurting his leg during a fall and burning himself out to put some distance between the patrols and me. I’ll never forget the great glowing ropes of energy, the pained screams or wild look in his eyes as he crushed multiple formations. I won’t forget any of them.

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