Magister Luminash Dawnwing

The Waiting

(Continued from Still Air)

The realization hardly had time to set in before action had to be taken. The Reliquary camp had come under attack, their Nightborne allies mysteriously vanished from the perimeter, their wards tainted by the Void, their communication and visibility swallowed up, like all else, in the fog of Nazmir.

“Get as many of us as you can, I don’t care who - diggers, guards, arcanists, anyone you can find! - get them to the center of the camp. We are going to have to defend ourselves!” Luminash ordered the lead digger, who had been the bearer of the bad news.

The nervous, fearful man nodded, and mouthed under his breath as he receded into the inky blackness, “Eternal Sun guide us now.”

Luminash ducked back into his tent, seized his weapons, such as they were - a crystal-headed scepter, roughly the length of his arm, and a tome, locked shut, both foci for his magic - and after a moment of deliberation, the bronze mask, the visage of a Titan. He pulled up the hood of his robe, and with a makeshift tie torn from his tent flap, he fastened it to his face, forging onward into the dark.

Pushing past his tent-flap, the magister began moving towards the center of the camp, the blackness of the night and the dense fog obscuring everything further than a few feet. In a short time, the circle of tents around the camp’s center abruptly rose from the darkness. Huddled in a mass were a handful of diggers, their clothes still stained with muck from the swamp, shovels clutched rightly, knuckles white. Surrounding them, shields and weapons in hand, were a ring of guards, mostly blood elven, but some Nightborne as well. The arcanists Luminash had expected to have gathered as well were notably absent.

Breathless, the lead digger pushed through the gathering and ran up to the magister as he approached, “This is everyone, Magister. The arcanists are…”

“Gone? All of them now, not only the illusionists?”

The digger nodded, turning back to the ground, “We are ready to defend ourselves if need be. But without our arcanists, we are at a severe disadvantage.”

Luminash strode nearer to the gathering, the lead digger following close behind, “Everyone, please, listen carefully!”

The panicked Reliquary crew looked to the magister as he began to speak. A few of the guards turned their eyes momentarily towards him, their ears flicking to his voice, before turning their attention back to the perimeter.

“As I am sure  you are all well aware by now, we are under attack.”

One of the diggers, a broad-shouldered woman with a pickaxe clenched in hand, spoke up, “Is that where the others are, the other scholars? They’ve been picked off!”

Luminash shot her with a withering glare, golden eyes narrowing in the eye sockets of his mask, “We are under attack, presumably outnumbered and outclassed without our arcane support, yes. Whoever has done this will come for us next, and we must be prepared. We are in a good, defensible position here, so we ought to get to work - Reliquary, those of you with shovels in hand, begin digging trenches between the tents, pile the soil in a heap on the other side!” The magister ordered, pointing with his crystalline scepter towards the gaps in the circle of tents, “Guardians, as many other tools you can find in the storage tent, bring them here, hack their staves to points, and drive them into the trenches - hurry now! Anyone seeking to harm us further will pay in blood!”

As the assembled elves quickly ran to their work, Luminash made his way to the very center of camp, planting his scepter into the soil. As activity swirled around him, he closed his eyes and drifted somewhere else, reaching out - elsewhere - and opening himself, a conduit, to the arcane.

Many of those digging feverishly, or carving shovel and pickaxe hafts into stakes, turned towards the magister as the blackness of the camp began to recede, blue-white light surging from Luminash’s crystalline scepter - and from the magister himself, a cloud of energy swirling around his raised hands, and from beneath his mask, his feet raised off the ground as he filled himself with a torrent of power.

Turning back to their work, all felt something wash over them, a barrier, expanding outward from the scepter, a shimmering wall in the air surrounding the inner ring of the camp. With an abrupt flash, Luminash’s channeling ceased, and his feet dropped back to earth, but the barrier remained.

The magister dropped his hands to his knees and exhaled heavily, shaking with exertion, “Keep moving, and we may yet get out of this in one piece!”

                                                        _______________________

Dawn was near. A pale glow was growing in the east, gently illuminating the thick fog.

Luminash sat, robes soiled by the damp mud of Nazmir, his knees pulled him in front of him, in the center of the camp. There had been no sleep for anyone, but drawing as much power as he had to erect the barrier around the tents - no arrow, no bullet would penetrate it, but troops could always pass through - had drained him more than the others.

The magister looked around with pride at the defenders who had scrambled to drive stakes into the ditches, and the Reliquary diggers who had built their crude earthworks. His thoughts were disturbed as another, the leader of the dig team, fell onto the ground next to him with a heavy sigh.

“It’s looking like a stalemate, isn’t it, Magister? We are defended here, now, but they haven’t come.”

“Perhaps. Our defenses may be enough to deter them from an attack for now, but how many of them are there? We have no eyes out there; we simply do not know.”

Luminash furrowed his brows, his ear twitching as there came a rustling from beyond the tents, beyond the earthworks, just past his barrier. He raised a hand, motioning for his companion to be silent. Before he could say another word, however, shouts erupted around the perimeter as a vanguard of worgen ambushers phased through the barrier and leapt over the earthworks.

The magister surged to his feet, “To arms! Defend yourselves, and push them back!”

Camp guards rallied to the gaps in the tents as more Alliance troops pushed in, a combined force of Gilneans and Kaldorei. They stumbled as they slid down the mounds, some crashing into the stakes below, their bodies trampled under their own companions’ feet.

Luminash opened himself up once more, a conduit for the arcane, though his body felt about to collapse under its force. He scanned the camp, and already his defenders were giving ground. For those who fell on the stakes, more replaced them, all too quickly.

Taking a breath, Luminash stood tall and prepared himself. It did not look likely anyone would make it out alive.