I stood on the roof of my tower beside my former assistant and now fifth-tier [Planar Lord], Baron Alred Froom. Both of us were reeling from the red-tinted night sky to the south, a sign that the Tervans had summoned the avatar of their bloodgod. The wind carried the scent of blood in the air. Even my four owl-shaped gargoyles perched on the roof were unsettled, which they showed by turning their heads in the direction.

I had the urge to cast a scrying spell, to see what things were unfolding in that distant land, but I withheld it. It would do no good to attract attention of that kind. Yet, there was only so long one could spend staring in the distance, “Come, let us return to our meal.”

The Baron simply nodded, the grey hairs on his head shook in the wind. Downstairs, the meal we had been eating had grown cold, though I didn’t feel hungry anymore. The wine tasted the same, and I drank a heavy gulp hoping the fragrance would overpower that of what I smelt above.

The room had previously felt warm and inviting with the fire flickering off the expansive copper and amethyst geometric designs I had placed. Now, it felt darker and foreboding. An uncomfortable silence passed for a few moments, the two of us trapped in our thoughts, before I spoke again.

“Tell me of your fifth-tier class,” I said, an attempt to return us to the previous jovial conversation, the one from not even an hour past.

Alred waved his hand as if dismissing the thought, “I will, but first, we should speak of the Tervans. Do you think they mean to war on us?”

His eyes were startlingly clear as he asked.

I considered the matter. It wasn’t impossible, though normally the Tervan people stayed in their jungles. When they did come north, it was raiding parties looking for sacrifices and not war. The shattered lands and their people stood between us. It lay unclaimed by Sena, so that the Kingdom would have no obligation to defend them. Nor were they claimed Tervan, who only viewed those settlers of the shattered lands as cattle to be sacrificed.

If they were to point their god north then there was little Sena could do to stop them, not with the ongoing war against Mirktal. A fearful thought indeed. Yet, an even more fearful thought was that the Pestilence, the ocean of hydra that would end our age, had broken through the mountains or even circumvented them through the ocean. That the summoning of their deity was because they had little else to fight off the monsters.

My frown only grew as I considered both options. Neither one was pleasant. I found myself scowling by the time I answered him, “I doubt they intend to war with Sena. More likely the Pestilence has arrived on Tervan shores.”

“Tell me of their god, I only know some from bard’s tales and tomes. I understand you campaigned there?” Alred asked.

“Yes,” I said and paused.

The war against Tervan was long ago, and one of my most unpleasant memories. Rather than rehash the past, I pulled out what I could remember of their religion and began to speak, “I won’t speak their god’s name, especially not at the moment, but the Tervans believe it has two forms. During the day it is an enormous snake with a head on each end of its body. The king of all serpents who seeks to drink the blood of the world. At night, it is said to become a raven that ferries the souls of the honored dead to the afterlife. The souls of the unworthy become feathers in its wings, wings that cause night itself.”

“The king of serpents?” Alred muttered in a growing shock. After a moment, he seemed to reach a decision, “Then we must move swiftly if we are to save anyone.” It was a declaration stated more firmly than I had ever heard him speak before. He had grown accustomed to command with his age and position.

I sipped my wine as I watched and waited. I hadn’t considered it much before. The idea that the Tervans could use their god to somehow control the hydra created so deep a fear in me that I didn’t dare to approach the thought. It wasn’t long until he spoke again.

He withdrew a tome from one of his bags, and slid it across the table to me, “This is my observations regarding the Planes and my class. I have detailed all I could for your library, but let me show you what I have planned.”

In the air beside him, he began casting an illusion. First, a globe of green and blue formed, and then the image of plate-sized crystals formed around it. Each crystalline disk seemed as big around as the globe itself.

“With the world we live on at the center, the planes float around it. As you know, each plane is tied to a type of crystal.”

He began speaking as if an instructor, but I didn’t interrupt. The plates began to rotate around the globe in some pattern that I was having trouble following, if there even was a pattern.

Alred continued, “The elemental planes are known. Yet, when I went to the plane of nature, I was able to make it to the edge and see the other planes as well. There are far more than we ever suspected. And they fight constantly with each other. Each time one nears the other, there is battle.”

I nodded along, watching as a plate topped with fire brushed against one topped with water and small creatures on top both began to war. Alred was much better with illusions than I had realized.

“But there are some planes that do not battle. The Plane of Nature,” he paused to make one of the discs larger, this one with an enormous tree growing in the center. “That tree in the center is the Woodfather, one of the original gods that created this world. The nature elementals say he sleeps and waking him may end everything.”

The plate shrunk back to its previous size and continued to spin around the globe. Next, another plate stopped rotating and grew. The crystal looked clear, and on the top of it, a shimmering dome of magic hid what was within. “The Plane of Giants. Built upon a Plane of Quartz. They are trapped sleeping, and none of the other planes go near for fear they might wake.”

I glanced curiously between the image of the plane and Alred. When I had attempted to send my mind through quartz in the past to discover what kind of elemental connected through that crystal, I had never received a response. Never would I have guessed that this was because giants slept on the other side.

I had assumed that this meant there was nothing associated with the crystal, but if that wasn’t true it had a whole host of implications. I glanced at the amethyst I had used to make patterns in the room with new ideas floating in my head.

Alred, though, continued and brought my mind back to the conversation at hand, “My class allows me to claim a plane and territory to build upon. I plan to claim quartz and build outside this dome. Humanity can hide beneath the shadow of giants. We are too tiny to wake them, and the other planes won’t attack us because of where we build.”

I gave him a knowing smile, “You say it is your plan, but you have already begun, haven’t you?” It wasn’t that wild of a guess. I knew the man, and when he was my assistant. In the past, he had often began projects before asking for my permission. With no one's approval needed, it was a fair assumption.

The illusion disappeared into the air. Alred returned the smile and gave me a single simple nod of his head acknowledging that he had already begun. It seemed he hadn’t changed much in his ascension to fifth-tier.

“It sounds dangerous, but so is what we face. What do you need from me?” I asked, though my mind was already traveling.

My class gave me access to a magical Authority, three of them in fact, and the first I had chosen recently as Earth. One of the spells I had been investigating this past week would allow me to grow crystals. I had planned to use the spell to summon even more elementals to fight off the Pestilence, but perhaps I could put it to better use now. I owed the man a gift tonight, and such a spell would likely offer him much more benefit than what I had prepared, a book of recipes for Flame Boar.

He leaned forward, his face just as grave as when we stood on my tower-top moments ago, “I have my assistants and disciples working on creating quartz doorways. I would ask for your help to place them and evacuate as many as we can.”