The flames seemed to stretch out from one horizon to the other, dropping orbs of fire like hailstones. The two stood there, drinking their late archmage's wine as they stared out at the burning sky. He never had a taste for wine, but Witney seemed to like it. The wine was bitter, and filled his mouth with the taste of acid. John shook his head, smiling, and took the cup. "One drink, Johnny," Witney said, pouring out the dark red wine. "Shame to let it go to waste before the world ends." "Did you know she was on an Emperor's Christmas list?" Witney said, pulling out the stopper and producing a pair of goblets from behind her back. This must be a hundred and fifty years old. "Holy skyte, this is from the vineyards of Emperor Julian. "FL…CL…IV…LIA…NVS… PP…AVG… Iulianus?" realization hit John square in the face. His head was flanked by letters, and in John's state he had to sound them out before they made any sense. John took a closer look at the seal, showing the embossed profile of a distinguished, bearded gentleman staring off at nothing in particular. "I also found Archmage Vespa's private stash," Witney said, and produced an amphora from behind her back. "At least something good comes out of all this," John said. Retroactively gave us first class honors." Still, she was every bit the vision as the first day John saw her. Her ornate staff was blackened and spewing clouds of smoke, her pale skin was marred with cuts and black bruises, and her white robes were stained in blood and ashes. "Poor," said Witney, who looked little better. "Just a few expired health tinctures, some celery and half a tin of mints. One eye was swollen shut from bruising, the tip of his pointed hat had burned down like a spent candle and his right arm up to the elbow was a blistered mess. A slight, dark figure, with curled black hair and piercing eyes, he looked like somebody had been beating seven kinds of excrement out of him. "I couldn't find any xerion, Witney," John said. No matter what happened, this would be the final battle. And so they climbed, an ocean of corpses at their back, facing the dark creature at the height of his power, and at the only moment he could be stopped. None of the wizards knew what his aim was, but they knew that he needed the eclipse to accomplish. The creature was at the very highest point, embroiled in some dark ritual. Only a handful of wizards still dared to resist, and even now they were climbing the Aspicia Celestia, the highest tower on the campus grounds. The strongest of the arcane order had fought and died. All who opposed him had burned, and all who survived had fled. Wizards gained the powers of the gods, and Pteratos fattened up its livestock.Īt the height of his power, Pteratos was the unquestioned supreme magical overlord in Brittania. It knew ancient secrets of magic that could remove the restrictions of the body and turn a person into a walking magical engine. It wouldn't merely feed on wizards it would twist their minds into its thralls or seduce them into serving it willingly. As it wore the skin of a human, its mind became more like one. A single wizard would wither in its gaze like a blade of grass in the desert, but among hundreds it could feed from the whole without killing the parts. It hid among the wizards for years, wearing human form. It called itself Pteratos, the winged death. Those who had faced it and survived called it the gaping maw. The earliest records called it a thaumophage, the eater of miracles. The thing fed on magic itself, sucking it from the world as around it like a dry riverbed drinking a river. No one knew the precise nature of the creature, for no wizard could get close enough to study it. In a freak accident, the jar was broken, and the thing inside emerged into our world. It had been a shapeless, nameless thing, sealed inside a canopic jar in the depths of the arcane archives at the Academia Magica. Roughly ten years ago, the greatest evil the world had ever seen had been unleashed. It was nothing but superstition, of course. Most people back in the 6th century had no idea of the astronomical forces at work, and assumed that the shadow of the moon meant that the sun was being slowly devoured by a shapeless black maw. The sun turning black was, of course, an eclipse, a perfectly natural phenomenon. The sun was turning black and the sky was burning. The Kingdom of Mercia, Britannia, Former Roman EmpireĪugust 22, 518 AD, the Day of Abandonment The Academia Magica, once the finest magic academy in the Latin world
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