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“Gunther. Can you send a message drone to the Council? They must know about this place!”

The young air mage was hunched into himself. Simon heard the young air mage’s tortured breathing across the chill, moisture sucking air as though it was his own.

He watched Gunther marshal his strength. The tense moment stretched longer than Simon would have liked. Then a haunted look crossed the young air mage’s eyes and sweat beaded his brow.

“There’s … interference. It feels like … reaching through … tar! I’m not sure I could reach the Citadel…”

Simon watched him struggling, and saw what it cost. But he had no choice.

“Try, Gunther. This may be our last opportunity.”

Gunther nodded weakly. He hobbled to the back of the wagon to retrieve the last of their precious message drones. Meanwhile Simon scrawled a message, knowing that if the drone failed to reach the Citadel, it might never be read. It took him three attempts to start his spark light before he could begin his message.

“Deliver this message to the High Mage of the Doormaker Council. He will know what to do.

We arrived at the Island of Black Glass near midnight. Refer to previous report for location of the T’kulpa on the western Migration. We wait here for a guide who will decide whether we die or we gain entry to the Gathering of Ten Fallen Stones. The White Sea is a poison salt flat, causing intense fever if it contacts the skin, death if inhaled. Wet the path with Tears of the Sea to prevent stirring up toxic dust. Cross only at night, or the sun will dry your Tears. The Island rises at sunset but disappears by day. The Sea thirsts for the body’s water and the spirit’s essence, beware.

Magus Simon, Greater Earth Mage of the High Council of Doormakers and Magus Gunther, Greater Air Mage of the High Council of Doormakers.”

Simon dared add nothing more to the cryptic message. His writing was shaky and barely legible. He discovered that he had unintentionally lapsed into code after the initial greeting in common script. Should he rewrite the note? Written as it was, the message had an ominous tone. There would be few alive who could read the second half. But the High Mage was one of them.

His hands were cramped and ached in the cold night air. He left the note as he had written it. He sealed it in a message tube and handed it to Gunther with hands that shook. Together they put the message into the message tube and locked it in place. Then Gunther sat wearily on the shelf underfoot and propped the drone upright in front of him. His eyes were already slightly out of focus, but they became even more glazed over in the reflected star and moonlight. Slowly a faint whine filled the air and the drone started to vibrate. It began to turn, gaining speed tortuously slowly, until it gained enough power to lift off the ground. It was not stable, bucking and weaving as though beset by strong winds. But it spun faster and faster and slowly rose up over Simon’s head.

It climbed higher and higher, dipping erratically but steadily gaining altitude. Then it began to arc out over the White Sea, not in the direction they had come, but east, toward Edgeways and Doormaker Citadel. Gunther began to moan, then to whimper, and Simon felt cold needles prickling his spine. Something was wrong. The laugh like tinkling of the crystals above them grew louder and more insistent. The drone was slowing, loosing altitude.

“What is it Gunther!”

“Something is… draining the… power! Can’t… hold it… steady!”

Simon felt the attack before he saw it. He felt earth energy pouring into the sands out on the salt flat and saw an explosive cloud of sand launch skyward toward the drone a moment later. Gunther flinched and grunted aloud, but somehow the drone darted at the last moment and the sand projectile scored only a glancing blow. Now the drone was losing altitude rapidly as it approached the barrier of sandstone on the eastern horizon. Simon didn’t hesitate. He wrenched as much power as he could from the elemental plane and forced it into the White Sea beneath the troubled message drone.

The sensation was shocking. Simon immediately found himself in a fight for control unlike anything else he had ever encountered. He fought against burning concentrations of energy wrapped around more sand projectiles to launch against the fleeing drone. He shunted aside two such attacks with brute force, but then something changed. He felt his elemental power being sucked away into deeper parts of the sands, and altered somehow, rendered colder and harder. Then all of that power was turned against him as a ram of deep sands rocketed to the surface and broke through his containment to tower up above the sandstone ramparts that marked the edge of the White Sea’s domain.

The drone would be crushed against the hardened sands in moments. In desperation, Simon changed tactics, and slammed the door on his own power, envisioning all of the elemental power being sucked back into the elemental plane in a powerful vortex. It only worked for a moment. The center of the ram of sand softened and the top edge slumped forward as the power supporting it was withdrawn. For a brief moment the center of the towering wall of sand was lower and thinner than the edges. Drawing on a hidden reserve of strength, Gunther pushed the drone higher in altitude, and the small craft burst through the trap into the open desert to the east.

The suspended sands crashed back to the surface of the White Sea, defeated. But now a new towering mass thundered across the salt flat toward the exhausted mages who huddled on the dubious shelter of the obsidian shelf. The sounds from the crystal spire were harsher now, and more like screams than laughter. Simon looked at Gunther, but the young mage’s concentration was still locked on getting their message drone as far across the desert as possible. The craft was beyond their sight now, but Simon doubted it could reach its destination in its mangled condition, despite the air mage’s sacrifice. Gunther slumped where he sat, unaware of the trickle of blood from his nose and ears.

“Gunther, we have to move!” Simon shook the air mage, but got no response. Gunther’s eyes were focused somewhere far away, and he mumbled unintelligibly under his breath. Simon looked back across the salt flat to see that the sand tsunami had crossed half the distance to their perch, and was growing as it came. He hooked both hands under Gunther’s armpits and dragged him up away from the edge of the shelf. He didn’t stop until he got both of them up around behind a curve in the winding glass path toward the center of the island. He raced back toward the wagon, thinking to pull it up onto the shelf. Just as he stepped out into the open, the sands broke against the wagon and the island’s jutting shelf of obsidian. Like sea foam spraying into the air from crashing breakers, white salt clouds billowed up the shelf toward him but he scrambled back onto the sheltered path in time to avoid being enveloped.

On his last fleeing step, his foot caught on something soft and heavy behind him. Unable to turn, he cartwheeled helplessly backward. Through the numbness that had been slowly overwhelming his senses since they started this disastrous crossing, Simon felt his head crack against something hard and unyielding. His vision narrowed to a black tunnel. For a moment longer he saw the wheeling stars overhead, and then he saw nothing.

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