Aegan leaned up against the ramparts, the rising sun at his back.  The peak of Mount Rilan soared into the clouds up above and ahead of him, and immediately before him were the open grounds of the Mages' Academy.  The large fortress was virtually unassaultable, standing as it did on the steep side of a mountain, with only one wagon-navigable trail up to Lok Magius, as the dwarves called it.

The journeyman smith and apprentice sorcerer had his arms crossed, and stared in disgust at what was happening on the grounds.  Living statues of plate mail, which the mages called 'shield guardians', carried boxes, crates, tents, and other logistics of war.  The mages of the academy, whether they were apprentices, journeymen, or masters, were being organized into teams, to be dispersed into the regular Rakoran army, and to perform covert operations against an invading army.

A blue flash of light was followed by a ring of brilliant blue expanding into a gateway nearly ten feet high, on one corner of the grounds.  Shield guardians shouldered enormous burdens, and followed a dozen mages through the ring.  When the last one was through, the ring collapsed in a flash of brilliant blue.

Aegan sneered at the young mages below.  Most were young men and women that dreamt of glory, thinking that their defining moment would be to lay down mage fire against their enemies.  Most of them were more boys and girls, than adults.  The smith thought that, once they had had a real taste of murder -- for that was what he saw war as -- then those boys and girls would be much less likely to look forward to using their gifts.

The wind ruffled his hair, bringing with it the gentle smell of the deep Rakoran forests, far down the slope.  So high up along the mountain, Lok Magius was nevery warm, despite the heat of high summer, but the enchantments of the academy kept it tolerably warm inside, though less so on the parapets.  Irritably, the slight chill the enchantments let in only reminded him of the night before, and his nightmare, and his powers.

Unlike the young hellions on the grounds below, Aegan would only use his powers in self defense.  Because of that, he, and many like him, were to remain at the Mages' Academy, to guard it against infiltration by the enemy.

Aegan snorted at their concept of 'the enemy'.  Several bands of orcs had invaded the mage-friendly nation of Rakore.  From the accounts Aegan had heard, the bands were considerably large in number -- perhaps enough to warrant the feverish motivation seen on the grounds below -- but they were still just orcs.  No matter their numbers, the Imperial Vridaran Army would have turned them into dog meat with ease, especially armed as it was with mithral armor and swords.

The reminder of his former smithing days angered him, again, and he reigned in his control.  Then, realizing there was no need, he simply let go of the stranglehold on his emotions.  It mattered little, up on the ramparts, if he lost his temper and iced up the walls.

It mattered little to him, if the children went to slaughter a bunch of orcs, and feel like heroes.  He had seen heroes, working as he did along the fringe of the Vridaran Empire.  He had crafted weapons and armor for real soldiers, real knights, and real warriors.  He knew what he wasn't; Aegan knew he wasn't a hero.  He also knew he wasn't a warrior.  He just wished he weren't a mage.

He sighed, and looked down onto the grounds.  Another ring expanded into position, and another group of mages and shield guardians strode through it to make war upon a tribe of stupid orcs.

Aegan continued to stand with his back against the ramparts for some time.  Perhaps a quarter of the academy's mages were leaving, and it took time to organize them, and file them.  Aegan's anger was cooling into calm derision, when something went wrong down on the grounds.

A ring expanded into a brilliant blue circle, but instead of mages and shield guardians flowing in, something flowed out.

A large beast, a lizard with forward-swept horns, raced through the gate.  Something was on its back, but Aegan had no time to look, as two more beasts ran through the gate, before it was shut.  The lizards were enormous, with heads nearly five feet in length, and horns nearly eight feet long.  Atop the first lizard's back was a creature in plate mail that was nearly twelve feet tall; it's width and girth indicated the rider was enormously powerful.  The rider leapt off the lizard with a two-handed axe sized to fit, and instantly cut three young mages in half with one swing.  The lizard roared, and shook a mage off of its horns, gored into place during the first mad dash through the ring.

Shield guardians and mages sprang into action after a terrified moment of surprise.

The other two lizards each had a smaller rider upon them, but along their sides, in cleverly designed straps, were more riders wielding what looked to be short bows of some kind.  They shot arrow after arrow into the crowd of mages, even as their riders directed them to run over shield guardians, mages, and more.

One of the huge lizards exploded in a hellish bombardment of fire from the inside, and Aegan heard Master P'Arkon's distinctive, insane laugh above the tumult below.

The big armored behemoth with the axe was suddenly airborne, as a conjured hand of equal size to the behemoth threw him over the wall -- and far down the side of the steep mountain-side.

Mage bolts, levin bolts, magical missiles, flaming arrows, and more were flung at the remaining foes.  What scared Aegan the most was the deliberate, careful aim of the mages; there were no accidental deaths, as each mage ensured that his destructive energies struck his aimed target, and no one else.  The concentrated firepower completely obliterated the remaining attackers, and the giant lizards.

Aegan took a step forward, and heard a crunching sound that went with an odd resistance in his step.  He glanced down, to see the whole of the walkway covered in ice; the crunching sound had been his boot tearing itself free of the thick frost.

A fireball went straight up, engulfing a figure in midair.  Several lightning bolts followed it, and a flaming giant plummeted towards the earth.  The conjured hand, easily five feet wide, easily caught the flaming giant, keeping it from landing on several mages.

The smith stared in awe and fear.  It was the first time in his life he had seen the great mage-powers of old unleashed in deliberate violence.  The powers at the disposal of even the apprentice mages was far more than he ever would have considered possible.  He began to understand, then, just what kind of fear the mages of the Storm Wars might have engendered -- for mages during that time had been as plentiful then, as were the priests of the churches were in the Empire.

Equal swooped in, forcing Aegan to duck, and landed on a buttress nearby.  "All right?  All right?" it cawed in question.

The apprentice sorcerer blinked stupidly at the raven, and then dumbly nodded his head.  "Yes.  Yes, Equal.  I'm... all right."  He shook his head, and stared back down onto the grounds.

There appeared to be several injured mages, still, and several also had died.  The clerics that were down on the grounds with the mages were helping the injured, as the powers of mages rarely tended to be useful for healing matters of the flesh.  The 'stupid orcs' suddenly did not appear quite so stupid.

The nagging thought was only reinforced, minutes later while he walking among the organized chaos of the grounds.  The bits of armor that were left were being studied extensively by Master P'Arkon and a few of the other mages that would remain.  Some of the armor had even been restored with various spells, and was standing on manikins, arranged against one of the walls.

"Ah, Aegan!  There you are," said his master.  "You're all right, yes?"

The smith nodded his head in the affirmative, and glanced at the other mages working with Master P'Arkon.  One of the people there was Kendemon, the Master Groundskeeper.  While not a mage in any conventional sense, the elder elf with white hair and a gentle disposition never-the-less possessed a kind of power over plants that even priests of the Harvest God envied.

One of the mages with Kendemon, who was examining a shard of the armor in his hands, was pretty young elf with deep purple eyes that matched her purple and blue dress.  Her appearance, from her lean build to her raven-black hair, had caught Aegan's attention several times.  The smith knew only that she was an illusionist, but had never caught her name.

"Aegan?"  Master P'Arkon was suddenly before Aegan, with both hands on the brawny smith's shoulders.  "You didn't get hit in the head, did you?"  His wide, mad eyes bored deeply into Aegan's, even as the instructor turned his head from side to side, his eyes never leaving his apprentice's.

"I'm fine, Master Arkon.  I vas up on the wall, when I saw it happen.  Vhat vere they?  They vere orcs?"  Aegan cursed his thick accent, for as he spoke, the pretty elf glanced at him from the corners of her eyes.  He had never really learned the common traders' tongue, preferring instead his native Vridaran.  Most people the world over learned the traders' tongue, but it was a difficult language to learn, and could not deal with the complexities of working mithral and steel.

"Orcs?!  Where?!"  Master P'Arkon jumped back as though expecting an attack, and looked about fearfully, as though expecting one to appear at any moment.  Equal, upset by the apparent fright, launched into the air with an indignant squawk.

Aegan, knowing how to deal with his master, turned his instructor's attention elsewhere.  "That thing, that... giant, that vas in the air, up above.  Vhat vas that, that came through the..."  He searched for the word for a moment, and even before he said 'portal', Master P'Arkon was rapidly answering.

"An ogremai also came through the gate.  Crafty, it was, but I spotted it anyway!  The voices warned me that something else came through!"  The Dual-Minded one suddenly paused and appeared quite calm.  "Some of us have the ability to search for, and detect, all forms of magic.  Such detection powers can even be used to find invisible opponents -- such as an ogremai."

Master P'Arkon blinked, and leapt to one side.  Greenish bolts flew from his hands to strike one of the manikins that had the orcish armor on it.  Pieces of the armor exploded off in shrapnel and dust.  People slowly began to stand back up, from where they had unconsciously ducked.

He pointed at it, and exclaimed, "It moved!  I saw it move!"  The way Master P'Arkon said it, though, left no doubt in anyone's mind that the armor had not moved.  There was some indefinable aura of intelligence within the man's madness that fascinated Aegan.

The display of raw power taught more in a several blasts of magical missiles than any amount of explaining would have done, and Aegan sometimes secretly wondered if Master P'Arkon only acted insane.

The journeyman smith's instincts took over, as he inspected the plated armor his instructor had shot at.  His fingers ran around the holes, and his boot toes absently pushed aside bits of debris and shrapnel.  His instincts, his training, and his reason examined the armor in ways none of the mages could understand without having been raised as a Vridaran blacksmith.

The armor was not metal, but metal-like.  It had not been hammer-forged in any capacity, but had an organic look to it, and its binding ends and parts were where holes had been bored through the material.  The overlapping design of the plates looked to be almost natural, and with a shock, Aegan mentally lined up several marks from the plates; almost every piece of the refitted armor had at one time been one large sheet of material, which has been chiseled crudely down into the constituent pieces.

He asked himself, eyebrows raised, "Vhat is this stuff?"

A beautiful voice, like a mellow bell interwoven with bright chimes, answered him.  "It's srik armor.  Hide, rather.  When the orcs kill a srik, they use its carapace to make armor for themselves."

Aegan turned to the young elf in blue and purple robes, with those vividly purple eyes that could only be found in an inhuman race.  He asked, not really comprehending, "Vhat?  The orcs take it from some other creature?"

Her dainty eyebrows drew into a frown that Aegan thought would stop his heart.  "Has no one really explained what's going on?"

The smith shook his head.  "I know that ve are at war with the orcs."  He looked at the armor, bits of the brief battle raging through his head.  The armor was as strong as cast iron, but had the give of good steel.

The elven maid arched one eyebrow.  "What do you see, in the armor?"

Aegan struggled through the torturous traders' tongue, and muttered under his breath in Vridaran, "Lalcht brech dicth von."  More aloud, he said, "It is strong, like hard iron, but bends, like steel.  It vas all one piece of armor, before heavy chisels broke it down into smaller pieces.  The only vay to really hurt a varrior veraing such armor, is to punch through it, vith, say, a rapier.  From vhat I know of orcs, that vould take a long time to kill one, unless it vere poisoned, or you hit a vital part, like the heart."  He beat a fist against his chest, to emphasize his words.

She nodded her head, again, and asked, "And what kind of magical spells would most easily burst through this kind of armor?"

The smith blinked, and took his brown eyes away from her purple ones.  He settled his eyes, instead, on the armor, and its small, jagged holes where Master P'Arkon's magic had torn into it.  If only to impress the pretty elven maid, he wished he knew more about the magic he hated.

Aegan shook his head slowly.  "I've no idea.  I'm not a-"  He swallowed, having almost said that he wasn't a mage, and continued, "I am only an apprentice."

The elven woman laughed, and it sound like a peal of bells that made his heart warm.  "Perhaps.  But whether you're an apprentice or a master mage, you still have to study magic, to learn about it.  Since you arrived, I've not seen you once go into the libraries."  She then blushed prettily, perhaps at seeming so bold as to say she'd been looking for him.

Aegan, having stolen a glance at her out of the corner of his eyes, and seeing her blushing, began to feel a blush creeping up his cheeks, as well.  He was saved from the awkwardness of the situation, by Kendemon.

The Master Groundskeeper's voice was lyrical, like the young elf maid's, and Aegan supposed that it was because of the elven tongue.  Kendemon spoke for a moment in a flowing, musical language that the smith had come to recognize as High Elven.  His question was directed at the young elf woman, and she listened in rapt attention.  After a moment, she translated.

"Master Kendemon says that the srik grow quickly, and that he was hoping a smith like yourself would see a structural flaw.  But if not, perhaps one of the alchemists might be able to study the armor here, looking for a weakness."

Aegan was thunder-struck for a moment, and looked appraisingly at the Master Groundskeeper.  The elder elf looked back at Aegan with unblinking, blue-flecked, green eyes that belied centuries of wisdom and intelligence.

With one meaty hand, Aegan lifted up the armor from the manikin, his muscles bulging beneath his simple clothes at the weight of it.  He turned to the young elf maid, and asked, "Vhat is your name?"

She glanced from the armor, to his eyes, and replied with a slight frown and a slight smile upon her delicate face.  "Eriel Enelidalithan.  I'm... an apprentice illusionist."

"Eriel, please lead me to the laboratories," he pleaded with his thick accent.

She glanced at Master Kendemon, and also at Master P'Arkon, who was intently studying a blade of untrampled grass at his feet, and then turned to lead him towards one of the towers of the academy.  As she walked briskly towards Danaka's Tower, she glanced at the human that walked beside her.

He was strong, even for a human.  The one hand that held the armor over his shoulder was dealing with close to three stone of weight as though it were a small bag of coins.  Eriel had enjoyed the company of humans in the past, and let a subaudible purr of pleasure escape.  What intrigued her the most about this human, though, was his mind.

The moment the refugees from the Scarlet Skies had arrived, Eriel had begun to observe them.  There were only a handful of human mages at Lok Magius that hailed from the Vridaran Empire.  One of them was the head instructor, although Mistress Brin was only half human -- and half elf.  The other human mages from that distant empire showed similarly advanced power and abilities.  Vridara, apparently, bred powerful mages -- despite the fact that it was a bastion of Inquisition-led anti-mage sentiment.

Of all the humans that had come in from the Scarlet Skies, only one had the predator's gaze she so admired in their race.  She had learned his name immediately, hidden as she was by her illusions.  An apprentice she might have appeared to be at Lok Magius, but her powers ran deeply, and she had practiced with the spells she knew for close to a century.  A small, ferile twitch of her lips made her anticipate educating Aegan; the way he treated her made it obvious that he thought her no older than fifteen or sixteen years.  She was closer to a century older than that, long lived as she was, like all elves.

Aegan blushed, feeling Eriel's eyes occasionally on him, assessing him.  He knew he was missing something, but could not figure it out.  She led him into one of the inner towers, and up a massive staircase.  At the next landing, she went through two sets of large, double doors, and then paused inside of a strange room.

The room was filled with glass containers, roots and herbs hanging from the ceiling, and shelves of bottles, liquids, and drawers.  There were four other people in the laboratory, mixing strange chemicals or dealing with the odd items.  One of them was a small woman of medium age with lightly-browned skin and long, black hair bound back in a pony tail.  She wore a large visor of thick, protective glass across her face, and was using a small flame to shape glass into small tubes, with the flame between her and the two apprentices that had just walked in.

The woman did not glance up, but called their attention with a commanding voice.  "What can I do for you, Eriel?"

"Mistress Danaka, this is Aegan Smithdanovich of Vridara, recently arrived to Lok Magius.  He is an apprentice to Master P'Arkon, and a journeyman smith, as well.  Master P'Arkon and Master Kendemon thought that he might be able to discover a weakness in the srik armor the orcs wear."

The head of the laboratories glanced up at Eriel and Aegan, and nodded.  "Perhaps.  We've already analyzed several samples of srik armor, and found nothing unusual, per se.  The odd amount of iron and silicate in the chiton is part of its strength, but it's also an organic, giving it a considerable amount of resilience."  She set aside the small tubes to let them cool, and came from around the glass-burning flame.

Mistress Danaka appraised both Eriel and Aegan with her eyes, and asked Aegan, "Did you understand...  Did anything I said, make sense?"

Aegan clenched his jaw for a moment, and asked, "Did you try an acid test?"

The small woman nodded.  "Yes.  We tried several.  The chiton slowly breaks down in strong acids."

"Chiton?  This vord, I do not understand."

Mistress Danaka responded patiently, "Chiton is the exoskeleton of insects.  It's what makes a beetle's shell hard, or covers a spider's body.  Most insects use it to some degree to protect their bodies."

Aegan frowned.  "Insects?  The srik grow insects, for armor?"

Eriel's lips twitched, and she caught Mistress Danaka's eyes.  The young elf said, "Let me show you, Aegan.  Turn around."

With the double doors open to the laboratory, there was enough room for Eriel to begin crafting a spell.  Her hands performed an intricate dance, as she quietly intoned words of power.  A bit of fleece appeared in her delicate fingers for a split second, and then was thrown out into the hall.

There was a slight surge of something that could only be described as magic, and the hairs on the back of Aegan's arms and neck stood up in near terror.

Where the fleece flew, a hideous ant-like insect nearly eight feet long, and five feet tall, appeared in the hallway.  The creature's main color was tan, with slightly darker yellows and ochres at its joints.  Two antennae, each three feet in length, waved in the air.  It's six legs ended in long, scythe-like points, and the front two legs had a jointed, additional point that moved about, like a thumb.  Claws the size of Aegan's large hands surrounded the mouth of the beast, and they moved in an independent fashion that indicated they could tear flesh from bone.

One of the laboratory workers in the back dropped something of glass, and gasped in horror.  "Srik!"

Mistress Danaka raised a commanding hand at the worker, who paused in the casting of a levin bolt.  "It's an illusion, Gregory."  She turned back to Aegan and Eriel, and instructed Eriel, "Make it attack."

Eriel's fingers began their intricate dance, yet again, and the words of power forced the beast to move.

In a split second, it reared up on its four rear legs, and lunged forward at Aegan, its two fore-legs striking to either side of him.  Had he shifted an inch to either side, illusion or not, the fore-legs would have had him.  The jaws of the creature were inches from his face, and the antennae seemed to be caressing him, almost touching him, but not quite.  A glistening sheen of some thick gel covered the jaws -- and the tiny mouth parts and smaller jaws inside.

The multifaceted eyes of the srik never moved, but there seemed to be a change in focus of all the eye parts, so that real menace was conveyed through them, and there was no doubt in Aegan's mind that the eyes were looking directly at him.

Mistress Danaka said, "This, Aegan, is a srik.  It's stronger than any man, faster than any beast, smarter than most dogs, more cunning than a rogue mountain lion, and harder to kill than..."  She sought for an analogy for a moment, and then said, "Harder to kill than a horse in plate barding -- for its chitonous exoskeleton -- its skin -- is as hard as steel."

Aegan had not breathed.  He knew it was an illusion, but his eyes were telling him something else.  The details -- like the thousands of tiny hairs all over the underside of the creature, and along its legs -- left his legs quivering.

Eriel said softly, "The srik rarely attack, alone.  Dozens -- perhaps even hundreds of them -- will take anything that lives back to their nest, where they feed it to a fungus that lives deep in each colony.  The srik only eat from the fungus, and the fungus can eat almost anything but the srik.  This is what the orcs and the ogres of the deserts have been battling for close to a decade, now."

The creature disappeared in a puff of purple mist, and Eriel laid a gentle hand on Aegan's forearm, to get his attention.  When his eyes met hers, she noticed with surprise that the human's eyes had turned an intense shade of green.  The moment they locked with hers, though, the brown began to return.

"Aegan.  That was but a drone.  There are other srik, like the warriors, who are much more deadly."

Mistress Danaka took up the lecture, "We had thought the srik, arrayed along the northern border with the ograns, would keep them contained.  The... food-fungus, of the srik, can only exist in the desert.  They'll never leave their desert.  The ograns have lived in the desert for centuries, and had nowhere to go, but over the Avris Mountains -- or here, into Rakore.

"For the last five years or so, the pressure from the srik has been so enormous that the ograns couldn't field much in the way of even border guards against Rakore, or along the Avris Mountains.  Either the ograns are retreating, and putting everything they have into an advance on Rakore, to escape the srik, or they've found a way to best the srik.

"We've had several samples of srik armor brought to us, and found no weakness.  It's as good as steel, if a bit lighter.  Larger pieces of the right shape and size for a humanoid are hard to come by, and so the pieces tend to be more in the line of scale mail, or field plate."

Eriel blinked.  "So, there are no spells that work against srik armor, Mistress Danaka?"

"I never said that."  She rubbed her chin.  "Spells that shatter regular objects, work against srik armor.  So do spells that work against regular armor.  Spells that heat metal, or only affect metals, fair poorly against the srik chiton."

Aegan spoke, garnering the attention of both women.  "You said that the srik only live in the deserts.  Did you try vorking vith extreme cold?"

The armor that had been over his shoulder was suddenly outstretched in one hand, dangling at the end of his arms.  His fist clenched, and the armor shattered into a thousand pieces.

It was then, that the elven maid and the laboratories instructor realized how cold the room was, and they could see a layer of frost on the floor in a circle around Aegan, thickening towards his boots until it was almost an inch deep.

His fear of the illusion had fueled his powers to such an extent that he had sucked all the latent heat of the armor into his hand and his shoulder.  Though he could not see his own eyes, the flare of green in Aegan's brown eyes had come from his power, sucking up heat to fuel his fear, and his anger.

Eriel's mouth hung open in awe of Aegan's power, and his barely contained rage.  She had seen fear in a man before, but never fear wielded with such rationalization and power.

Mistress Danaka blinked several times, looking at Aegan's clenched fist.  Bits of the srik armor were still clenched in his hand, and a layer of ice several inches thick entombed other flakes of the armor about that fist.

She said, "Surely...  Surely someone thought to try cold spells, against the srik."  She looked around, not really seeing the laboratory.  "Gregory!  Find me all of the srik armor we have!  Tinian!  I need the Jar of Liquid Air!"

The instructor continued to see without seeing, until her gaze returned to Aegan and Eriel.  "Stay right here."