The Rossem Project

Crisis Conference

Natan Crowley was enjoying a rare moment of free time in his private laboratory, at the top of the tower of conjuration, trying to master the intricacies of an extremely difficult and complicated high level spell, when Saturn burst in, his face red with the effort of sprinting up the two hundred and twenty two steps. "We've got a problem," he said, panting heavily.

"Can't it wait?" said the Director impatiently. After a futile three months of trying to learn this drassing spell he had the sense that he was finally making progress. Another hour or two of concentrated effort and he thought he might make a breakthrough.

"It's a big problem," insisted Saturn. "We've lost contact with Kronos."

Natan looked up, about to tear a strip off the normally calm and enigmatic wizard for bothering him with a simple breakdown in communication, but one look at the seamy, weathered face told him that it was something more serious than that. He laid the dusty old spellbook down on the acid burned, potion stained surface of the old oaken table, therefore, and gave the other wizard his full attention. "What happened?" he demanded.

"Just over an hour ago three humans emerged from the teleportation cubicle, babbling about a massive earthquake on Kronos. They described walls and ceilings collapsing in rubble, explosive decompressions, the ground shaking like a dog with fleas. They said they only managed to escape because they happened to be close to the teleportation chamber at the time, but that everyone else must have been killed. When a troop of Beltharan soldiers tried to return to Kronos, they found that the teleportation chamber was no longer working."

"Let's go," said the Director, turning to the open shaft in the middle of the room that contained the top of the spiral staircase. They sprinted back down, risking their necks on the perilously worn, narrow stone steps, and raced along hallways and corridors, shoving their way past proctors and junior wizards as they went. They left the conjugation building and ran along the Lydian Path to the small building, standing all alone in the Agglemonian Gardens, that contained the teleportation cubicle linking Lexandria Valley with the island of Pargonn, the home of the Fellowship of the Golden Griffin.

A co-operation agreement worked out during the Fourth Shadowwar, and which neither side had yet seen any reason to rescind, allowed senior Lexandrian wizards to use the Fellowship's teleportation network, with some restrictions, anytime they liked, and this agreement had become even more useful to the University since the advent of the interference affecting long range magic. The University was busy constructing a teleportation network of its own, as well as a more robust version of the teleportation spell that would, they hoped, work despite the interference, but until these were completed the Fellowship network was the only means the wizards had of traveling fast across the globe.

A few minutes later, therefore, Natan and Saturn were in Marshall House in Tara, standing in front of the now useless teleportation chamber that had, until recently, linked Tharia to Kronos. Malk Lov, a Lexandrian wizard who worked for the Beltharan army, and Colonel Augar, the officer in charge of the Kronos observatory, were already there, along with a handful of other men, most of whom were just scratching their heads unhappily.

"What's the situation?" snapped Natan impatiently. "What's going on up there?"

"We're not sure," replied Malk Lov. "We thought at first that Kronosia had been destroyed, but we now suspect a simple failure of the teleportation chamber. The chamber up on Kronos is pretty robust, physically at least, and a simple rooffall and decompression of the surrounding area ought not to have affected it much. The first attempt to return to Kronos took place before I was informed. They could have arrived on Kronos only to step out into hard vacuum. Fortunately for them, though, the chamber down here doesn't seem to work at all. It's as though the magic's been bled away at the other end."