The field was empty, save for the small, dark line of people on the horizon. Cariel, dressed in the red and plum robes of her order, peered down at the scanner, looking upon the image of them advancing slowly onward.

She placed the scanner on her belt and brought her hands together. The familiar heat flowed through her flesh like it had so many times before. The air around her began to crackle, and her skin felt cold, even thought she was burning inside like a volcano. The energy leached its way over her hands, her arms and chest, down into her legs. And just as it had begun, it was over with, and she felt as she had before. To those who would try and harm her in the coming battle though, they would discover her skin had become as hard as steel.

She pulled her hood up and reached down to pick up her chestplate. It was crystal, the gleaming surface the color of wet blood. The buckles were dark purple, almost black in the dusk. All around her, her order did the same. Each wore the same colors, the same hoods and cloaks.

She pulled on her greaves next, and then her gauntlets. Each was silvered crystal inlaid with the wires of their colors, covered in hard ridges and reinforced with a thaumite cage of wire. She fastened onto her thighs the last plates of armor. These had the same look as her greaves and when she was done, she found that her entire body was a shining star under the falling sun. Her order came together as the deep, thrumming base of the alarm shook the earth. Years ago, when wars had first been fought on Zetheon, they had used horns, just like the ancient peoples of the civilizations before them. Now, the generals used the earth shaking to warn the troops of an attack, explaining that war was not to be announced, it was to be felt.

“Cariel, what do you see?” Commander Kessington asked. She was a massive woman, standing around six and a half feet tall, built tougher than an ox. She was parthanese, a holy warrior of the Mother. Her armor was different than theirs, a gleaming, white enameled plate of steel that spiked away from her chest in a harsh ridge, almost like a spine. She wore the cloak of the Seega Family, red and purple, and carried in her hand a lance of twisted crystal.

Cariel swallowed. “I saw about fifty men across, but the land is too flat to see through them. They are enchanted, some have energy shields, but there are some who have none of that. It looks like infantry on the front.” She could see in her mind the small variations in the false color images of her scanner.

Kessington nodded. She grabbed her helm, the head of a large crystal Panther with two horns coming off its forehead. It was snarling, and when she slipped it on, her eyes glowed through the glittering white sockets. She turned towards the horizon and looked across the field between them and their enemies.

As darkness fell, they waited. Cariel had began to sharpen her sword, though it had been done hundreds of times already since her last battle. She sat beside a fire as she did, listening to the dull scrape of the crystal against the hard, sandy sharpening stone. She stared into the depths of the flame, and inside of her, she felt the same urgency she had felt before. She had to fight the feeling to run away into the darkness, slipping from the fight before it begun. But if she did that, they would kill her. She could see in the flames the faces of the people she had already killed, see as each one was struck down by her sword or her hands, some sliding to the floor in pieces, others dying in some other, horrible way. As she remembered each one, she felt her muscles remembering as well, the feel of death in her hands.

When the fire crackled loudly, she almost jumped out of her seat.

She heard a chuckle next to her and turned to look at Turek, another magician. He stared at her from beneath his hood, his eyes black in the night. “Scared, Cariel?”

She looked at him for only a second longer before going back to sharpening her sword. She dug the sandy sharpening stone along the edge of the blade. Each time she dragged it across the edge, glittering bits of fine dust fell away from the crystal.

“You should be scared. This is going to be a long night.” Cassie stood from her prayer. She looked down at Cariel, her pale face in a slight grimace. Her eyes glowed bright green in the firelight, two emerald plates. She was the oldest member of Cariel’s unit. She had been there for twenty years.

Cariel looked up at the woman. She never liked me. Maybe she is jealous of my power, She mused. “I am scared. But I know I’ll live.” Cariel looked down at her sword, running her gloved ringer along its edge. “If someone stands before me, I will cut them down or burn them.”

Turek laughed and stood as well. “I would like to say that you are wrong, but I can’t just yet.” He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Just know that it only takes a moment.” He smiled and walked away into the darkness between stations.

Cassie watched him as he went, and when he was nothing more than just another part of the darkness, she looked back to Cariel. “I hope you stay that confident.” She turned to walk away, and as she did, Cariel heard her say, “This unit has lost too much already.”

She was alone now with the fire and herself. She picked up her scanner and looked into the darkness and could see the line of people had grown longer, their profiles coming into detail. They still marched, moving in the same way they had hours before. If they keep this up all night, they will be here by dawn. She frowned. A fight at dawn would not be good, the sun would be coming up behind their enemies.

The ground began to shake again, the deep, thrumming tone resonating in her bones. She jumped to her feet and looked at her surroundings. There was nothing around, but as she looked down the line to her left and right, she saw people putting out their fires.

Her stomach dropped. Bombers.

She dropped her sword and leaned down to pick up a handful of sand. She piled more and more on until the flames in the small brazier guttered and failed. She was plunged into darkness as the last ember died, and overhead, she could hear the almost silent whistle of the aircraft filling the sky.

For a breathless moment, the entire encampment was quiet as death, and then the first bomb went off.

Far to her right and farther back from the front line, two tents exploded in a ball of blue flames. Soldiers flew away from the area in pieces, some flaming and others only visible in the bright flash of firelight. Only mere feet from that, another tent and a small group of soldiers staring at the other flames exploded outward in a mix of tent, flesh, and cloth.

Cariel started muttering to herself, a spell. The heat washed over her body and she could feel the crystal hanging around her neck start to vibrate. She was aware of her whole body, and she could feel the stone as if it were a part of her.

An explosion behind her rocked the ground so hard that she fell down face first. She landed on her hands and knees and whirled around to look behind her. Thirty feet away, a large crater stood where a small barrack tent had once been. Pieces of flaming cloth twirled down around her, blue and yellow, red and plum.

Her breath caught in her throat as she watched the flames slowly die away. She could not see the other places the bombs had hit, and soon enough, it was all dark again. She started whispering to herself a spell that would clear the darkness from her eyes. Once the words were done, it was as if a veil had been lifted. She could see every fine detail of the world around her, including the bomber flying directly overhead. She reached out with her hand, the immeasurable influence contained within her shooting outward towards the aircraft. As if it were sitting in her palm, she felt it, the metal and energy pulsing like a beating heart.

Without hesitation, she crushed it.

She watched as the great, metal bomber crashed down to the ground in a storm of fire and electricity. For a second, it sputtered flame like a firework, shooting off sparks of all colors. Then, without warning, it exploded, becoming a ball of light bigger than anything she had ever seen. It was bright, a pale blue-white star burning into the surface of the world, expanding slowly outward. She must have broken the brightling containment.

Cariel focused, using her magic to contain the star’s growth. Her hands stretched out and her fingers curled around the imagined surface of the blazing sphere. She felt its energy pulse through her as pain, white-hot and burning, but beneath that she could sense the star’s internal vibration. All the muscles in her body tensed, straining to contain such a powerful object. It’s gravity pulled her forward, causing her to slide through the soft sand, and her hands began to widen as the star overcame her. But all at once, it disappeared, its fuel exhausted.

She collapsed down onto the ground, her lungs finally pulling air. She rolled over onto her back and looked up at the sky. Where the star had been, the clouds burned away and beyond them, she could see the night sky. No wonder the bomber came. It’s cloudy.

She felt hands on her chestplate and she was pulled to her feet. A small fire appeared inside the brazier was and she saw Cassie’s face materialize before hers. She was holding onto Cariel’s shoulders, a hand on each arm. Her face was white as snow, paled in absolute terror.

“That was close,” Cassie whispered first.

For some reason, Cariel started laughing. It was a giggle at first, but soon turned into loud, peeling fits of laughter that rang in the air. I was almost killed, Cariel thought. To both the left and right, as well as behind her, some others started to laugh at well, laughing at the closeness they had been to death.

Cassie stared at Cariel more intensely and shook her head. She let go of her and turned back to the horizon.

Cariel did the same, wiping the few tears from her eyes, and picked up her sword. “You were right.”

Cassie turned. “About what?”

She wiped the sand off the blade and slid it into its sheath. “It’s going to be a long night.”