Lucius set fire to the book, but it didn’t burn. He had no understand of what it was, but his instincts were good. The difference between it and a godling was trifling and it had already nearly killed Jean. As far as the curse afflicting her, he understood very little of it but his mind at once seized upon the solution.

Because the magic was taking the form of a runaway stigmata, Lupa’s broken sigil could devour it. Unfortunately, there were nearly two thousand armed men between the two women.

“Why didn’t you stop her?” Lucius demanded as he tossed more tumbleweed and brush onto the pitiful blaze. The leather binding hadn’t even charred or smoked. The papyrus may as well have been wet. No words appeared upon it.

Nikolai paced the stone room restlessly. He stroked his mustache and massaged his arms. He shook his head like a frightened horse. “It is a book from her temple!”

“It’s clearly alive!”

“It’s a book. I was preoccupied with sending for help.”

Lucius fixed him with an incredulous stare. “And did you?”

The northman scowled. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

Their conversation quickly ran through the preceding weeks of turmoil and hardship, both men fostering frustration for me even as basic food rations were brought forth. Lest you, dear reader, sympathize with them too much, allow me to grace you with insight my pupil lacked.

The angel of Jeameaux, for over a century at this point, had been catatonic. I won’t delve into the precise psychological reasons, but the guiding light of the faith for a very long time had been nothing more than a light. All major decisions were done by the aged clergy who did little more than pine for the past and manage ledger books. The cathedral was thus left entirely without divine protection. It was like a castle with the gates open and unguarded.

An ancient being, akin to Anubi, drew close step by step, spreading his movement over decades such that not even the most sensitive dreamer would tremble at his approach, touched upon the world and took hold of an ancient codex. I have no idea what original text laid within the book, such information has been blotted out from reality, and that matters little. The world is filled with libraries unused.

The codex however, then became an extension of a being anathema to the light of Helios. A shadow of a creature long ago banished. It was as a tiny keyhole through which it could whisper and it had to work very carefully to position Jean’s mind into just the right state of confidence dancing with ignorance. It managed the delicate act of teaching her enough to be useful, but not so much that she could forsake it.

If not for Lucius, it would have succeeded. Or, to be more precise, if not for the hungering wolf of the desert, the devouring of stigmata: Lupa.

Lucius declared, “We will have to take to the field.”

“How will you get the men to abandon fortifications?”

“To save their leader… and perhaps by force. How many men are in fighting condition?”

Nikolai sighed and guessed that the total fighting force would be about three hundred useful men. Abdul, Nikolai, and Lucius were soon assembled in the lower reaches of the mine. A wall had been smashed down, the concrete broken open to reveal an inner passage to the mine’s actual spring water. Sliding over the deep stone of the desert, it poured in through fractured channels to an ancient cistern, and from there oozed into the depths of the mine where it took on a fetid corruption.

Lined up and down from the water, tended by men whose faces were bound tight, were the sick. The air wreaked of their filth. Lucius understood what had happened at once, but it took him a while to come to terms with it. He had just been assured by an expert on the matter that the desert was almost devoid of microbial life, but the ley mine was not like the desert.

Abdul shook his head as one man vomited, barely making it onto all fours to keep his face out of it before falling over. Nurses labeled water into his parched mouth. “They’re recovering,” the Giordanan said.

“If the desert people saw this, they would charge in without a second thought,” Lucius said with a shake of his head.

Nikolai gestured to the tarps shading the men. “They haven’t yet, and in a few more days, these men will be on their feet once more. Weakened perhaps, but a weak warrior is better than these slaves.”

Lucius could see that the clean water had been hidden, presumably by Raymi’s expedition. It made the mine toxic to occupy, which kept the locals out but clearly had side effects. “Take me to where you first watered.”

Down layer upon layer, into the pit of the mine, the trash of human life had piled up into a form of organic cement. The little fissures and fractures that should have let the water drain out of the firmament had been sealed and the water which occasioned into the wide maw of the mine lingered. While anywhere else in the desert would have still had potable water, the mine had accumulated the filth of humans. They had expelled their life, bit by bit, into the mine and made it like an oasis in the arcane sense.

While Lucius squatted beside the quarry shore, Nikolai explained, “There was never enough wood to boil. The bishop had us build sand filters instead, but that only bought us time.”

“This mine may as well be cursed. Jean came here to spread civilization to the sand people but they already had it. What I’ve seen, they have more of it than we do. There are no words that can sway them. No peace that can be brokered.” He rose as he spoke, pointing to the rim which scarcely held back the marauding army. “The only thing they want is the means to go north.”

Abdul scowled. “How does attacking us get them there?”

“Weapons,” Lucius said. “First, of the divine nature. They have the means to capture stigmata. Second, they know we Vassish have cannons capable of slaying dragons. They want those for themselves.” He didn’t explain the nature of just how the wastelanders could capture a stigmata, because he would have had to explain it wasn’t really capturing at all; but much worse.

Abdul shook his head. “You’re the only Vassish here though. We have no cannons.”

“But I do.”

“What?”

“My army has two of them sledged behind our army, hidden in the sand and armed with grapeshot. I had intended to keep them hidden and fight it out safely, lest they steal them, but that isn’t an option any more. We have to settle this siege immediately or Jean will die. Worse than die, she’ll become something inhuman.”

Abdul looked to Nikolai for confirmation, and the northman nodded. “You can trust what he says. He’s not just the hero of Rackvidd, he’s the governor of the Misty Isles. At least he was before he was sent here. He hunted down and slew a demon to liberate those people.”

“You can’t slay a demon!”

Lucius smirked. “You can if you have an angel to feed it to. I brought with me the carrion bird of Tavina to rip it apart. Trust me, I’m the closest thing to an expert on these matters you’ve got.”

Abdul sighed and looked around the mine once more. “I’ve had enough sitting and waiting regardless. I can’t sleep. I keep dreaming they will drop rocks on us and come bolting out of my blankets in a sweat. I want to ride down on them, trample them! I will gather the men. Prepare your speech, boy. You’ll be leading the charge.”

Lucius gave him a bow to see him on his way. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said as Abdul trekked back up the stairs of the mine pit. His posture relaxed the moment he was alone with Nikolai. With an immature scowl, he added, “Master allowed this to happen, you realize that, don’t you?”

Nikolai’s face flushed, for the seed of love had festered inside his iron-clad chest. It sowed the rift between myself and him, pushing him closer to the embrace of a woman who would never truly see him as a man, but he had been taken by romanticism. “Perhaps he thought he had taught me enough to recognize this myself.”

“Did he ever teach you magic?”

“Did he teach you?”

“Not enough,” Lucius said.(1)

Nikolai huffed. “Master Amurabi is a most enigmatic employer. Part of me thinks he has nothing more he could offer me but what I can already grasp with my hands(2), but another part of me wonders what he would offer me if I said as much to him. What would he ask of me in exchange for more? I fear he has already written off my life with this gambit.”

“What? Nonsense, you’re just as good a fighter as Leomund. Surely you could cut your way out of here.”

The northman laughed and slapped Lucius on the back. “I alone cannot survive this though. How would I make it through the wasteland? Even if it’s the two of us, what a wrinkled pair of mummies we’d make!”

“Then we’ll have to not just win, but win greatly.”

“With you at the front? It will be a simple matter I think. Yes, you’ll take the center with your gaggle of sand people. I shall take the left flank and we stick Abdul with the right. We’ll round them up and smash them against your army.”

“Right! Just one thing,” Lucius said as they began climbing the steps to the wide shelves of work space near the top of the mine. “I need different armor. Something made of leather and hide. Any chance there’s some dragonhide I can requisition?”

“If that is your wish, we will see what can be done, but you must promise me.”

“Save the angel?”

“Precisely.”

Lucius laughed. “What kind of hero would I be if I did not save the beautiful maiden? The picture of hope and faith. I shall pull her from demoniacal clutches and carry her back myself if I must… though I do hope at least one camel survives.”

While I don’t fault my pupil for this opinion at this stage in his life, I had in fact taught him quite a bit. Magic is a form of logic and I spent many years endeavoring to teach him the art of logic as applied to the real world and evidence shows he learned well underneath me. This was entirely the foundation necessary to begin learning true magic. I trust any reader can surmise that his infatuation with the bishop was not reciprocated. Truly an example of chivalrous platonic love.