The sound of the gong could be felt across every inch of my body. It had a kind of physicality to it that went beyond mere sound.

  Biff put his hand on my shoulder, “Are you okay, Gwyd?” He had a concerned look in his eye, and I realized that I had gasped and brought my hands up to my chest in surprise.

  The university bell tower began to ring.

  It was noon.

  At the moment, personas began to appear out of thin air. There had to be around a dozen of them in the area around my shoppe alone. If a thousand of us entered early, who knew how many entered the Shallowlands across the entire Seventh Kingdom at this moment.

  “I’m fine, Biff. I just had a thought that maybe I was in deeper than I had first suspected.”

  He snorted in a “No kidding,” kind of manner. He had not noticed the entrance of the new heroes.

  They were an odd assortment covering mostly warriors and mages. Closest to me was a large barbarian who was covered in colorful tattoos and animal hides. His cognito was a standard black, not gold like my own, and it indicated his name was Smash.

  Further down the street toward the Cathedral was a gray-robed Elementalist who was eyeing the Gray Master as he walked by, but by good luck, he let the guild master of the Thieves guild pass unharmed. The persona's name was Myrrdin.

  As I searched the crowds for more heroes, I noticed that a large cloud must have begun to block the light of midday, because it suddenly got darker all around us. Everyone around me looked up, surprised by the sudden change, and we saw that a new gray moon had grown so large as to nearly block the rays of the distant day orbs over our kingdom.

  But no, that was not correct. It didn’t just obscure the day orbs. The orbs had grown far dimmer than they should have at high noon.

  And they flickered on and off for just a moment.

  My blood ran cold. Some memories struggled to bubble up, and just as the thoughts coalesced in my mind that this was a warning out of legend, brilliant beams of red light leaped up from points all around Alluvion. Nine red beams struck the new moon at different locations on its surface based on where in the nine kingdoms they originated. A thrumming could be both heard and felt that emanated from the moon. It was not the sudden vibration of the gong’s chime of a minute ago. It was a soft, low vibration that set my teeth on edge.

  Apparently, it unnerved everyone around me because there were shouts and screams from locals. Unlike the arrivals of the personas mere moments ago that went unnoticed, this was something everyone could see, hear, and feel.

  A red beam of magical energy had erupted from a different location in each of the nine kingdoms and had some point as its focus on the new moon. I couldn’t see exactly where all the beams struck the moon, but the area facing us that was struck lit up and spread across the surface like a storm of red light and fire, darkening the moon where its effect passed. In a matter of perhaps a minute, the entire surface of the darkened moon glowed a misty red just like the Deathlight had yesterday morning.

  The light of the day orbs flickered once more and then settled into a very low level, akin to its light just at the moment of sunset, before they turned off. Simultaneously, the night orbs flickered on at the same brightness level they radiated just at the moment of sunrise before they turned off. The combination of the dimmed and mistimed lights seemed to struggle against each other and resulted in a dull, low-intensity, gray-white color light with hints of yellow, red, and blue shimmering across a sky that began to fill with a misty fog, too light for rain clouds but thick enough that the rest of the hollow world began to become obscured..

  My awe of the spectacle above me was interrupted as I was drawn to one of the new arrivals who was just down the road from me, near the Round and close to the entrance to the Double Dragon. This white robed wizard was yelling, “Klondike! Murderer! Traitor! I will unmake you!”

  Stomping toward the center of the Round, I could see a persona with a black cognito that read, “Kato II.” He must have been in the golden cognito group and didn’t make it through the first day.

  I’m not sure what his beef with Klondike had been, but she was a wizard hero from the Deathlight. I wondered what this persona with such an odd name had to do with her and why he was so angry.

  “Gwyd, what is happening?” Biff asked, interrupting my thoughts.

  My voice stuck in my throat as I looked up, immediately forgetting about the angry persona. I had to try twice before I was able to respond to him. “It’s Twilight, Biff. The necromancers released Twilight.”

  He paused. “What does that mean?”

  I turned to him. “It means things just got much, much worse.”

  We both looked a moment longer at the spectacle in the sky. “Let’s get inside. We have some plans to change.”

  Bella, please make the walls outside this floor transparent and ask everyone to come to the main level for an emergency meeting if they are at a point where they can safely drop what they are doing. I asked in a calm, controlled voice.

  But she knew me. She could read my thoughts and emotions. Yes, Gwydion. They are on their way. She hesitated. “It will all be okay. We are safe in here,” she said out loud, appearing and standing beside me. She started to reach out her hand to put it on my shoulder, but then changed her mind and left it at her side.

  I reached out and took her hand, squeezing it firmly once before letting it go. As a spirit, her understanding of humans was paradoxically both deep and limited. But she knew I was troubled and certainly would be in tune with the magical forces around us far more keenly than any mortal.

  Despite her words of comfort, she knew I was not thinking about my own safety. I was thinking about my family, friends, our city, and the whole kingdom. The Seventh Kingdom was the last bastion of the living. All eight other kingdoms, with the exception of maybe the archipelagos, were home to the corrupted. Nobody knew if all its former inhabitants were dead, undead, or if some living humans and other species remained alive as slaves.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  But what we did know was that our kingdom was the last holdout against these forces of evil.

  Those on the first floor and early arrivals went immediately to the walls and looked into the sky.

  Biff closed and dropped the crossbar across our entryway. There were no customers inside at the moment, and I doubted that I would get any for a while. Eventually, this shoppe would become one of the centers of magic in the fight against the goblin invasion. No doubt people would come here seeking answers that I doubted I would have. I certainly did not have them now.

  When it appeared everyone who was coming had arrived, I called out in a firm but gentle voice. “Gather around, we need to talk.”

  I motioned to Petra, the sage guild journeyman who had joined the Patron’s Service at the urging of her guildmaster and Master Davon back in Council Chambers this morning. It already seemed like a lifetime ago.

  I spoke with her as the others drew near. “Petra, are you familiar with the legends of Twilight?”

  She nodded her head yes.

  “After I introduce it, could you please share what you know with our team? I doubt my knowledge compares with your own.”

  Petra, like all sages I had ever met, had an amazing mind and memory. She was also soft spoken and not drawn toward crowds, power, or, for that matter, public speaking.

  “Yes, Patron. I’ll do my best.”

  I gave her a smile of encouragement and thanks.

  Turning to the wide range of university students, crafters, irregulars, and journeyman mages present, I began. “As you can see, something has transpired outside that has dimmed the day orbs to near darkness and lit the night orbs at the same time when they should be resting.

  “Just before this happened, beams of red light shot up all across the Shallowlands, one from each of the nine kingdoms. They all struck a new, large dark moon that had moved out of its inner orbit and is now close and quite large in our sky.

  “It is my suspicion that each of the red beams of light was some kind of modified Deathlight created by necromancers.”

  The room that had been silent began to rumble with worried outbursts.

  I raised my hands and turned to Petra. “Our resident sage, Lady Petra, will explain further. We will then discuss how this impacts us quietly and calmly in light of the forthcoming goblin invasion in a week.”

  Red moved to stand next to Petra and held her hand briefly. I had no idea they had become an item, or more likely, that they had known each other previously to joining the Services.

  She cleared her throat. “A Twilight is created when thirteen necromancers open up their magics in a shared ring around a special source of power. Several of these had been attempted over the millennia but had either been stopped by heroes or failed because of the bitter rivalries held among necromancers who did not easily share power and knowledge. The ritual puts the necromancers in a vulnerable position relative to their peers.

  “The archmage himself had written about three notable occasions that he and others just barely stopped a single group of necromancers from accomplishing this feat. It had long been held that finding necromancers of sufficient power to engage in this ritual was extremely rare. Getting thirteen of them to the same place without killing one another was also extremely unlikely. And having them cooperate in a ritual that takes up to thirteen hours from beginning to conclusion without a single interruption was also nearly impossible.”

  She motioned outside. “Based on what the patron just shared, this event not only happened for the first time in the history of our world, but it happened in nine different locations simultaneously.”

  Her tension and terror seemed to drop out of her, and she turned to talk to everyone in the room. It was as if the impossibility of the situation flipped an academic switch in her head, and she went into what my dad called “professor mode.”

  Her voice calmed and became more matter-of-fact. “The total effects of this are unknown. But in the writings of the archmage, one of the only credible sources on the topic, he indicated that ,besides the obvious effect of dimmed light, hence his coining of the event as Twilight, there is a dampening of magical energies across all mage guilds except shadow mages and necromancers.

  “In essence, the natural restoration process of mages to renew their casting points will be diminished or entirely subdued. Magical items that reset themselves at sunrise, sunset, or upon night orb, day orb, or moon changes will likewise be impacted. It is unclear how divine magic is affected by this.” She motioned to Steven and continued, “Clerics may have all their normal abilities or not. Spells may have unexpected results, or not. The literature is unclear on this, or at least what I know of it.”

  She turned back to me. “That is all I know, Patron. Of course, the sages and scholars will be working overtime on this, and I will share what I learn over the coming days. But what we do know with fair certainty is that mage casting points will not restore as usual, and all our efforts to build protective devices just got a lot harder.”

  I let her words rest on all our ears for a few moments. When most eyes had turned to me expectantly, I said, “We have already begun production of minor magical restoration potions with some success.” I looked at the group of alchemist university students who stood a little straighter as their spokeswoman said, “Patron, we are 25% ahead of schedule, and if we can secure more ingredients and equipment, we will double or even triple our production.” She looked around. “But we will need more help. There are not enough of us to complete the work.”

  Voices of support were volunteered from all around the room. I was proud of these young students, who had just had the improbable success of our efforts made exponentially more challenging.

  “Thank you, Marcia. Please round up all our alchemists to meet under your direction for the next steps.”

  I looked at Sandor, the Alchemist Mage guild journeyman. “Sandor, please join her. Your combined efforts, despite the politics here, would be deeply valuable.”

  He nodded and walked over to Marcia.

  I turned to Red. “Red, work with Marcia and her team. I want all those chemistry students we turned away back in here, as well as some chemistry professors, if they are willing to take direction under Marcia. She is in charge of production.”

  Simon was standing beside Biff. As usual, I did not hear or notice him approach. I often teased that he should have been a burglar, not a monk. “Simon, our top priority with the Irregulars is to come up with as much equipment as we can find that her team can use to make more potions. She will also hand out ingredient lists that we will need to locate across the city.”

  “Yes, Patron.” He replied. He and Biff had begun to share responsibility with the Irregulars, and I had, in essence, just passed the authority off to him. Biff didn’t seem concerned.

  I turned back to Red. “Red, work with the shift captains to rearrange crafting stations as needed so we can maximize the addition of new alchemy stations around the sinks and counters. Use your judgment. Everything can move except the forges. They need to remain in full production.”

  “Are there any questions?”

  A couple of dozen hands went up. Looking around, they all laughed.

  I corrected myself. “Are there any questions that everyone here needs to hear answered?”

  The hands went down.

  “Then off with you all. Stay safe and calm. Work diligently. The enemy just played a big card, and we need to counter it. Their mistake was to give us so much time to react before the goblins arrived. We will use that against them.”

  A few cheers met that last comment, but mostly everyone went back to work with a set and determined cast to their faces. They did not panic. They got angry.

  The journeymen and Red approached me. We looked at each other. “Well, this stinks,” I said to some nervous chuckles.

  “In truth, nothing has really changed,” I admitted. “It just made what we are doing all the more difficult. If you have ideas, bring them to each other. I will make rounds in a little bit, but I have some communications to write. I will be in the map room. Any words of advice?” I asked before departing.

  Seeing none, Biff raised his hand.

  We all smiled. “Yes, Biff?” I asked patiently.

  “My advice would be to stop standing around with our hands raised and get to it.”

  We all laughed. We needed that.

  I went to my former showroom, which we had just turned into a map room using the model city and sewer systems from the university. I asked to have two small desks squeezed into the room for communications that we borrowed from the enchanter’s guild hall. It was at these desks that Simon and Red had made their personal spaces.

  They followed me in, each having new tasks added to their already full schedule.

  Bella, who is the lead for our bookkeepers this morning?

  Daniel. He was standing right across from you sixty seconds ago.

  I sighed. Of course. Please apologize for me and have him swing back up to meet with me briefly.

  He’s on his way. She replied.