While in the Tower Guard, Part 3

She entered the mess hall just as the tables were clearing.  Two hands clapped together from among the rising soldiers, a sharp enough sound to snap her to attention.

"Hey, there she is!"

Her eyes focused on Elmo as he sat with his cleaned breakfast plates, a smile on his face.  "I said I would be back."  With a groan and a clatter she fell to the bench beside him, pushing her hands through her hair and trying to keep her eyes open.

"You get him?"

"Yeah."

"You bring him in?"

"Yeah, marched him overland hobbled and gagged about four miles. It took a while."  She pried her eyes open, focusing on her benchmate.  "Elmo, I watched him report to his superior.  His superior was -" She paused, looked around.  Elmo's eyebrows bristled.  "You know how I was watching the Lord of Vision yesterday?"

He shook his head with a disbelieving grin, then met her eyes once more with a kind of sober curiosity.  "Are you sure?"

"Yeah.  It was him. Same stature, same voice.  I almost caught a clear glimpse of his face.  Other names, too.  They're everywhere."  She sighed a little.  "The guy recognized me, too.  He knows my brother."

"Everyone knows someone in the Cult these days, Martin."

She turned her face to him, with an expression like spilled milk.  "Their twin brother?"

His hand landed heavily on her back a moment, then lifted as he pushed himself to his feet. "Lemme get you a mug of black bean.  We've got to be back uptown in an hour."

"What?  Back up... what?"  Her eyes followed him as he poured a hot mug from the samovar, adding a few generous spoonfuls of sugar.  At the same time her hands reached for bread and butter to stuff into her mouth while she could.  "I was just there.  They held me 'till daybreak for questioning.  Half the Second Circle was there. *He* was there."

"Your sweetheart, too?" Elmo set the steaming mug down in front of her, a hint of amusement in his voice.

"I'm in no mood, Elmo," she muttered, quickly diverting her attention to the hot coffee.

"Look, Martin," Elmo began, sitting beside her again. "We know those guys yesterday were Cult of the Damned.  We know they're our... well maybe not biggest, but most insidious problem right now.  We know they're up to something. But you go and accuse an archmage of the Kirin Tor of being one of them and -"

"Oh, like an archmage of the Kirin Tor isn't behind all this?" she interrupted, more than the coffee's bitterness on her tongue.

"You believe that shit?"  Elmo rose, mumbling something unpleasant about ignorant people from the southern hills. 

She followed, voice muffled by the bread and coffee filling her mouth.  "Yeah, I do. That kind of magic doesn't grow on trees - "

Elmo turned a furrowed brow to her, when a sudden CRACK from above widened his eyes.  "What the fel was that?"

She answered with a wide-eyed shake of her head, trying to swallow her mouthful without choking.  The echo of soldiers scrambling filled the barracks.  They joined them.

The sky had darkened over Dalaran, a deep black cloud forming low over the city, settling on the peaks of the towers.  The streets were quickly trading their flow of civilians for guardsmen and wizards, most of them rushing towards the newly dedicated tower.  Like an upright pin to the center of the cloud, it crackled with blue and black lightning, vibrating with an unsettling hum.

"Oh gods, are there people inside?" Martin's eyes never left the shimmering tower, clattering with Elmo through the streets towards it.  A bright purple globe swept up from the base, encapsulating the spire and eating away at the lightning, some kind of protective shield quickly summoned by the mages.  From the cloud above a thin blue beam struck down to combat the sphere, shattering the three high crystals.  Shards came down like rain.

"Dedicated... yesterday... Opened... today..."

They arrived at the green space around the circumference of the new tower, close-cut blades of grass laid low by a cyclone of wind.  At compass points mages stood, hands outstretched, controlling the lavender orb above.  The eyes of the elves blazed in the darkness, and even some of the humans' seemed to glow.  A gnome magister ran past, hurling a cold cloud toward the tower, skinning the first four stories in a sheath of supportive ice.  "It's coming down!" he cried above the wind.  "It's coming down!"

A steady stream of guardsmen flowed through of the four doorways at the base, ushering out trapped civilians.  A captain cried out for them to get to the southern entrance, and they moved quickly, hustling through the arched doorway into darkness.

Like the sound of boots crunching hard snow, the stones of the tower ground against each other, an oppressive ambiance.  Some cold darkness fell through the structure from above, extinguishing any light that was fired or conjured, though mages and soldiers kept trying.  In flashes of vision two curving staircases were revealed: one lead the guardsmen upwards; one gave the tower's occupants a path to escape.  Along the way captains and lieutenants shouted orders and tried to keep the rescue effort organized.

Through the darkness, death whispered.  Know death's power.  Come to death's door.  Kneel and become one with death's ultimate intent.

"Fuck this shit," Elmo spat, leaping up the stairs two at a time.  They turned on a landing and went up a second floor, then a third.  An intersection met them, where terrified faces screamed and gaped in staccato, lit by the flashes of light.  Orders were drowned by pushing and shoving and reaching and clawing, like soldiers were liferafts to be grasped and ridden to safety.  A fine dust began falling from above.

Martin almost crumpled under the sudden weight of the man who grabbed her, taking her with him down the exiting staircase.  She turned swiftly, throwing him off her.  In a glimpse of light she saw him trundling quickly downwards.  A guardsman and a woman pushed past, pinning her to the banister, the thin wooden rail catching her from a fall down the center of the spire.  "Only three stories," she whispered, then looked away from the chasm to throw herself into the rush of escapees.

At the second floor landing, reality bent with a resounding groan, and for an instant all the attempts to light the tower succeeded at once.  In a glaring flash they saw the rings of stone turning, seams parting unevenly, the entire tower twisting like a tall pine in a tornado.  A communal scream echoed through the tower's corkscrew core.  She did not scream, but moved, throwing herself over the landing's banister into a sudden darkness that signaled the tower's fall.

After the blast of sound and pressure there was nothing.


***

Little flecks of light grew larger.  "Found one," someone called.  The snuffling of a dog's muzzle grew close, closer, a wet touch to her ear, then drew back suddenly.  Bright sunlight pierced the gap in the rubble.  She made no attempt to move.

Three others with her, not as protected by the second-story landing as she was, would not be moving at all.  She was pulled out by the collar of her cloak to lay on her back, eyes barely open, squinting at the blinding sky. 

Hands moved over her armor, turning the gorget at her throat.  "Martin," a voice read.  "10th division."  Fingertips lightly nudged her cheek.  "You with us, guardsman?"

She nodded a little. Her throat was parched.  She was hungry as hell.


***

"Lucky.  Damn lucky, I have to say," Elmo rumbled, half his face still in bandages from where the blast struck him as he exited the tower.  He stabbed at his food inefficiently with his left hand, the right bound up as well.  "You didn't even get OUT and you're in better shape than most."

She shrugged a little, not wanting to relate her past experiences with crumbling stone.  She knew a method of survival, that was all.  The stifling darkness still haunted her, and the dead that had not escaped.  "Did you see it, after, Elmo?  After it fell?  Was there a sign?"

"A sign?  The whole damn thing was a sign."  Elmo took a gulp or two of coffee, wincing.  "Would take a helluvan archmage to do that.  Or more than an archmage."

"Told you." 

He frowned at her, then silently returned to his meal.


***

The day was cloudy and the mood somber when they next stood on the green of the new tower.  The rubble had been cleared away, the foundation smoothed into a circular pit.  Maybe they would put a fountain there.  Or grow a garden.  Martin mused idly while representatives of the Second Circle moved down the line of guardsmen.

As the actions of the Cult hung heavy over the city, both terrifying and enthralling, the Kirin Tor had decided it would be best to counter the effects by honoring their own.  The mages who had fought the dark forces that had destroyed the tower had been granted decorative cowls, potent with magic.  Officers of the Tower Guard were issued bright new swords that flashed with spellbinding enchantments and gems.  And the long row of guardsmen were having little trinkets pinned to their cloaks.

The Lady of Names wore one of the elaborate new hoods, and it almost completely covered her face.  Martin stood at attention, eyes cast forward and beyond, projecting - she hoped - her devotion to the city.  White hands clipped the trinket to her cloak and left her, moving on to the next.  The next archmage thanked her for her service.  The next shook her hand.

As the mages moved away, Elmo broke into quiet snickers.  "By the Light, Lucky, you puff your chest up any further you'll be pokin' someone's eye out."

She wanted to smack him, but she didn't.  She stood at attention, even straighter than before.