I left them on the march back, unmelding my mind from the hawk and racing home ahead of them.

The storm was pouring closer, the flashes of distant sky lighting up the desert in strange colors that always returned to a low, ominous red. For a moment all would be white, then the light faded and the sands were painted orange like coals beneath a blood-colored sky. As the storm barreled forwards, there was no longer any denying the facts - it was headed straight towards us.

Wherever Arak had left his armies after he tired of stomping on the ashes of the world, they would be coming to us through the storm, through the rifts. I had only hours left, and somewhere out there Ramses was bearing my warriors to me, fighting through the winds. I trusted he’d be here in time.

As for me, I would work. The storm brought my enemies, but it also brought me Mana to work with. Floods of strange, foreign magic poured through the skies in unearthly rivers. Few would ever see the tides of Mana so clearly, for few had my countless immaterial eyes.

The storm was a jewel of colors that rained death on the desert.

“Time?” I asked, and was surprised to hear myself speak aloud. It had become a habit.

Divine Protection - Abyssal creatures above [Unranked] are restricted.

Protection will weaken to allow [Bronze] creatures in:

0 Days : 03 Hours : 51 Minutes : 03 Seconds

Not much. I felt pressure building in me, a tense, terrible waiting.

A feeling I refused to indulge while I still had work to do.

I raised pillars from the earth. Before I had made a shrine to a goddess, nameless and ancient, and now I gave her guardians. Men and women of lustrous marble, with helmets and capes, sword and spear, slightly bent in their posture so they seemed to be charging forward as their limbs emerged from the earth underfoot.

Moss twined and traced up their bodies, the land clinging to them.

And each of them bore a single crystal of deep purple streaked in white, the color of lightning. Some bore it as a jewel on their cloakpin. Some as the tip of their spear. Others still as an eye, gleaming in the dark of their helmet.

As work goes it was crude stuff. The inner structures were complicated, and the tiny lightning-grubs didn’t give me much of a plan to work from. The spear had taken vast amounts of Mana to forge a single weapon. These would be weaker, flawed, but as long as they could hold a charge I would be satisfied.

My goal was to build myself a weapon so I could stand with my creations. A spear of lightning to fly at my command. As I fed the Mana into each crystal, they lit up, crackling threads of blue forming cages around each jeweled face and slowly sinking down, the energy becoming enmeshed in the inner facets and faults.

When I pushed more Mana in to a fully charged lightning-stone the whole thing overflowed. It expanded out in wild, shaking arc of electricity, striking at the earth in wildly to try and find some conduit down to which to flow. It dissolved in moments, spent in all directions.

I carved diagrams of copper into the earth. Stretching beneath the cover of grass, they formed leylines for the lightning to pour down. It was crude and inefficient, requiring the enemy to actually step foot on a hidden power line to work - but I had to work quickly now and the pressure settling over my mind made it hard to think of a more elegant solution.

It gave my gardens a stately look I thought. Now with the addition of the stone soldiers, with their heroic bent and shining marble, the oasis looked like it might be the ruins of a forgotten era. The leaning shadow of the abandoned tower above added to the desolate atmosphere.

In the distance, I heard Ramses bellowing. My work had consumed me. It had taken my Mana too, all that I could give, and now I ached with the emptiness. Still. There was more to do.

My wounded lemur lifted his head as moonlit fish swam through the water, made of my healing gift. They entered his body and dark red fur pushed up from his burnt skin, the flesh healing itself, the bone sealing together. His mind-

His mind had been touched by some foreign influence, I realized. His thoughts were sharp and strange when I brushed against them. No time to worry about that. On to the next.

Lazarus- Lazarus was hidden in a deep cavern, thrashing in pain. His shell was losing color, cracking and flaking away as the body within grew. I sent concerned thoughts to his mind but he pushed them away with a stoic pride - and what I thought might be a tinge of guilt. He would be fine, he insisted. He only needed to molt. His new shell would serve him. He would be ready. These were his thoughts, but-

Damn. There was a strange Mana in him, one I faintly recognized but couldn’t place. It surged in his veins and he fought to swallow it down. What had he eaten?

No time. Not even for this. I could trust him.

My raiding crew had returned, Shine-Catch leaping off the hippo’s back and into the water with a shout of relief, eager to get the grit off her skin. She carried the still crow, its body thawed and limp in her hands, deep into the cool blue of the oasis.

Now we would find out.

The spectral fish arose all around the goblin, spiraling in, one luminous body after another passing through the crow and lending it sparks of life. They resembled koi, with sleek bodies and trailing veils of white for fins. As they touched against the crow I could feel the dark energies inside.

Too long in that snow, that landscape of death. I found dark veins of something like glass swelling out from his heart, closing over it in a mesh of onyx. Something only half-physical, grown as his unconscious body dreamed and drank the enchantments in the air, drew in the frozen tundra’s Mana in the way it once drew my own.

It was inside him now and I could find no way to remove the evil stuff without rendering him down to nothing.

I watched as the red eyes I'd painted on his wings lost their luster, turning to a snowy white.

And yet.

His heart beat, a sudden pulse shifting the knot of muscle, flexing it against the cage of glass. I pushed more into him and his wings fluttered, clumsy, shifting to find his balance in Shine-Catch’s hands. She let out a yelp of surprise, and stared in wonder as the small, still ball of feathers came to life.

His wings spread.

He took flight.

And like that, my army was whole again. Ready to face the storm that ate the horizon.

Shadow-Eyed Crow

[ Silver ]

Kingdom Infernia

Age - 11 Months

Physique - Bronze

Arcana - Bronze

Psyche - Bronze

Diet - Spirifuse

Biome - Wasteland

Cycle - Nocturnal Once a beast of cunning mind and hot passion, this creature has passed the veil and been tainted by necromancy. Its blood runs cold, its eyes see clearly the shades of life and death, and no warmth will touch its heart again. It bears poison spurs and a certain fell magic, able to bend mist and shadow to its whims.

Notable Features - Half-living biology, arcane sensitivity, life-sight.