Kordas didn’t have a hat to pull off, but if he had, he would have done so. He walked to the center of the circle with Hakkon in tow. “Actually, I’ve come to ask you about some history. I only know a little, and Hakkon doesn’t know any of it.”

“Oh. History.” That was Sai speaking for the first time. “I suppose you think we’re millennia old.”

“I think you are millennia wise, actually,” said Kordas, which drew appreciative cackles from all six. “And that’s exactly the age of things that I’d like you to tell us about.”

“Oh, the puppies want to know about the Great Mage War, do they?” asked Ceri, in a flat tone that made it impossible for Kordas to tell if he was being serious or mocking them.

Best to assume the former. It was always best to be on good behavior with the Circle; although they didn’t often do magic these days, he’d seen them perform mind-boggling feats.

“Yes, please,” he said.

Ceri and Sai exchanged a look with each other, and then with the other four. Ponu just shrugged, as if to say, “Well, you volunteered by speaking up. Carry on. We’ll correct you, as needed.” Ceri responded with rude gestures from multiple cultures.

“Not quite a thousand years ago, magic flowed freely across the world, and mages could do things that we would think of as god-like,” said Ceri, intoning his words as if he was reading out something spread before him. “A mere apprentice could craft the sort of Portal that could take you from the ground floor to the top floor of a building. A single mage could craft a common Gate. Three or four could create a Gate that could easily reach across several Kingdoms. Mages created entirely new creatures out of practically nothing—ice-drakes, gryphons, wyrsa. You’d think that would be enough for folks, wouldn’t you? But no—”

Sai snorted. “Of course not. Because some people are greedy bastards and can never get enough. So one of these mages far out in the West decided he was going to be the Big Bad King of the World, and gathered up mages and armies to do exactly that, and started rolling across the landscape, crushing everything in his path.”

“That sounds familiar,” muttered Hakkon. Ponu smirked at that.

Ceri took up the narrative where his brother had left off. “Naturally, people in the way didn’t much care for that, and resisted. A different mage gathered an army of defense. And, in the end, they destroyed each other. But of course, it wasn’t enough for them to just kill each other, oh no, they had to blow bloody great holes in the earth in two cataclysms that sent a pair of terrible storms screaming in waves across not just the Physical Plane, but the Abyssal and Aetherial Planes as well!”

“Idiots,” muttered Ponu.