“Closing The Rift,” Aron Hart said with a flourish of her fingers at her chalkboard, “is possible.”

She stood at the front of one of the largest auditoriums at South Hakarth Academy. It was an impressive space in the most mundane of times, with a domed copper ceiling studded by glass panels that shone with sunlight even on overcast days, and great iron studs that arched like the ribs of a war ship towards the interior of the auditorium. Not one, but three massive chalkboards occupied the front of the room, alongside a podium and two heavy tables lined by chairs that currently seated various members of the academy research team and masters of the combat guilds. They all looked very severe, even from a distance, despite the optimism in Aron’s voice.

“Unfortunately,” Aron was adding, while Merigold peered at the individuals seated at the front of the room, “it will have to be done very soon. After the initial reduction in the number of erowist our survey teams had observed in the mountains around Hakarth for the past several months, we’ve now seen an explosion in erowist activity. The Grageic Combat Guild encountered and managed to subdue another class-four erowist yesterday, at great loss. It seems very likely that The Rift is growing, and quickly.”

“Of course it is,” Alecia said with a sigh, looking towards Merigold and Garret, who sat to her right. “And here we are, sitting in an auditorium and discussing it.”

“Necessary evils, Alecia,” Garret said calmingly.

Aron was striding quickly across the front of the auditorium, directing her chalk towards a series of diagrams on the wall. Alecia and Garret fell silent, as did most of the room, to listen. Perhaps not unexpectedly, the plan had turned out to include the majority of the combat Guilds contributing units to surround The Rift. They would collectively undertake a maneuver Aron called “tightening the noose” – an apt enough description of the units methodically picking their way forward across the occasionally impenetrable Hakarthian mountain topology to form a tight ring. The key players in the strategy appeared to be psychometers, psychics, and unexpectedly, the Illuminators.

“Think of The Rift like a tear in the fabric of our world,” Aron’s voice rang out in the auditorium, echoed by the architecture so that everyone could hear, “psychometers will be able to sense it, and with the help of a small contingent of Illuminators, make it visible to the rest of us. The affects, while short-lived, should allow our psychics, who are able to manipulate the Astral Plane itself, to pinch The Rift together, effectively holding it closed. Of course, they can’t do so forever, and that is where,” Merigold believed, that a few of the eyes at the front of the room found her in the crowd, “the necromancers come in. Since they are able to manipulate fine threads of Astral energy, they will essentially stitch The Rift together with the psychics’ help, repairing its ragged edges.”

“Stitch?” Alecia echoed under her breath. “Like this is a sewing project.” She was not alone in her disbelief. A murmur of sound had risen up in the auditorium as Aron spoke, and it increased in volume when she fell momentarily silent.

Aron waited for the swelling sound to subside, which took a full fifteen minutes. The guild masters at the head of the auditorium had risen to demand silence, or it might have taken longer. Undeterred, Aron launched turned over her place at the front of the auditorium to a willowy man who made sweeping gestures at the chalkboard and spoke with a meticulous attention to detail likely honed through years of teaching.

They had tried to create tiny tears in the Astral Plane, apparently. Merigold had the impression they had been trying for a long time, and had learned that psychics were the only ones capable of doing so intentionally. Closing the tiny tears, which were carefully contained and monitored, had proven an impossible feat until Aron suggested the necromancers might be able to do it, and do it very naturally.

“Tell me, Merigold, if you had known necromancers could also sew up the Astral Plane, would you have been less distressed to find out you could never be a Drafter?” Alecia asked with a hint of sarcasm. Merigold fixed her with an ironic stare. “I wonder if they ever would have realized what necromancers could really do if we hadn’t dragged you into the Radvik guild.”

After the better part of an hour glued to the edges of their auditorium seats, little more useful information as revealed. There would be no practice for the closing of The Rift, because creating the tears was an incredibly difficult process, the Astral Plane was clearly unstable around Hakarth already, and there was not much time before they were slated to put their noose-tightening strategy to use. In fact, through the sonorous voice of Aron’s colleague, they learned that the guilds would take action in just over a day, providing time for preparation and little else. It seemed the guild masters had discussed at length, formed their plans, and were simply not concerned that their members could carry out their strategies.

“What the Hell,” Alecia said when they were dismissed, and the great shuffle to exit the auditorium began. “They didn’t really tell us anything. We’re just supposed to know how to make The Rift visible?”

“There are runes for shared vision, aren’t there,” Garret observed helpfully. Alecia looked hard at him.

“Well, of course. And yes, it all comes naturally, but…even I think it’s a bit rash to try all of this for the first time in the field.”

“Well, good for you then, you’ll have plenty of time to practice today.” They all jumped at the sound of Ilf’s voice. The woman had clearly picked them out of the crowd. Nihil and Derek were with her already. “Eros is calling a special session now. Help me find Adarak.”

Finding Adarak in the crush of people pressing towards the exits of the auditorium proved as difficult as expected. In the end, Ilf found him – mostly by roaring his name above the crowd until he appeared, wide-eyed – and the group of them was herded towards the Radvik guild hall. The streets in front of the hall had been cleared, roped off with twine, and segmented by lines of stark yellow chalk. Ilf lost no time in directing them towards one of the chalked segments, occupied by a mousy girl with prominent eyes and hair nearly as unruly as Merigold’s. It was cut short around her head, giving her somewhat the appearance of a ewe caught in a wind-storm. Her over-sized cuirass did not help.

“This is Adri,” Ilf barked, “the psychometer who’ll be joining our unit.”

There was no further introduction, and Adri stared at them all, indeed, like a ewe caught in a wind-storm, as Ilf rattled off instructions. They set to work immediately.

Visualizing magic was not so natural as Aron and her colleagues had promised. Adri and Alecia put their heads together, under Ilf’s dark-eyed scrutiny, while the rest of their unit walked through drills handed down by Eros to prepare for combat with the erowist. Though he hinted at dozens of formations, some of which Nihil, Derek, and Adarak were familiar with, their unit practiced only two – one in which Merigold was protected by the rest of the unit while she supposedly ‘sewed’ The Rift back together with the help of an unknown number of necromancers, and one in which she hung back and sought an opening to fulfill her task.

About the time Merigold grew convinced that she was unlikely to survive her encounter with The Rift, Ilf called her over to see what Adri and Alecia had accomplished. Alecia had drawn numerous runes on Adri’s hands and arms, many of which were crossed out with dark splashes of ink. Regardless, when Adri closed her eyes and put her palms together, knitting her brows so hard sweat began to bead on her brow, Merigold was over-awed to see something shimmer into being in the air in front of her. Ilf had raised a hand, and clearly was focused on forming what looked like a very small sphere that bobbed like a Lightbringer’s orb of golden light in front of the three of them. Every color of the rainbow rolled across its surface, giving it the appearance of oil-slicked water.

“So that’s what magic looks like?” Merigold said, cocking her head as she stared at it.

Ilf grunted with the effort of maintaining her focus as she said, “So it would seem. Now, do something with it Merigold.”

“Do what?” Merigold asked, before clapping her mouth shut. Ilf cast her a look of intense doubt. “Gods,” Merigold said with a sigh, peering hard at the bobbing sphere. Nothing in particular occurred to her. There was nothing thread-like about the sphere, which was perfectly smooth and perfectly round. When she tried to think of the sphere like the great bobbins of spun thread in the weavers’ shops in the commerce district, something strange happened – the sphere began to waver, and then to split. It uncoiled like a massive snake, forming something more like a spring than a sphere.

And then it vanished as both Ilf and Adri stopped using their magic.

“It actually worked,” Adri said breathlessly.

“Not bad, Merigold,” Ilf acknowledged.

Unfortunately, Ilf’s praise meant they were forced to repeat the experiment a dozen more times, until Ilf had clearly had enough, and Adri looked ready to fall over. By that time, evening was beginning to fall in Hakarth. The sky was tinged an angry purple, both moons visible in the distance over the dark hash of the mountains.

Eros called them together, speaking briefly about their preparations for the day to come. Then he released them, without further comment. Alecia, Garret, and Merigold headed for the train together, weary and ready, all of them, to sleep. They paused under the graying branches of an old fruit tree, its flowers a nearly fluorescent blue. Insects hummed between the flowers, late pollinators going about their day’s work. There was a hush descending in the city, as if it held its breath for the day to come.

“This feels unreal,” Alecia admitted, peering down the train tracks. There was a small crowd coalescing along the tracks, silent as ghosts. Word must have spread across Hakarth already of what the new day would bring.

“Garret, Alecia,” Merigold said softly, feeling them turn tired eyes on her. “I’m going tonight.”

“To the lab?” Alecia asked in surprise.

“Meri—” Garret began.

“I need the erowist. Like I said, I have a plan,” Merigold repeated her earlier sentiments. “I have a way to control the erowist.”

“You had better be sure, Merigold. What you’re asking could land us all in jail,” Alecia observed, looking around them suspiciously. No one stood within hearing distance, nor did Merigold think being overheard would matter much.

“I asked for a favor,” Merigold said, “that’s all. When I get on that train, I’m not stopping at my home. Whether you come with me or not is entirely up to you.”

Garret and Alecia looked at each other. After all their years together, Merigold knew without words that they would be coming. She still waited, with a patience born of inevitability, for them both to nod and glance conspiratorially towards the tracks.

“We’re here for your, Meri,” Garret said.

“Only the gods know why,” Alecia agreed.