“Now, this was a long, long, long way from where we are. And it was before there was an Empire, or an Emperor. Just a High King wearing the Wolf Crown ruling over eight County-sized Kingdoms. The High King knew about the war, of course, because a lot of big magic flying about makes disturbances even when people aren’t blowing each other sky-high, and he had scryers and Seers and Foreseers keeping an eye on things in case they boiled over enough to affect his realm. And, of course, when the end came, the Mage-Storms certainly did affect his realm. The mess was far enough away that it actually took about half a day for the front of the Storm-Wave to hit his kingdoms, and before that could happen, he had every mage, great or small, organized to create a shield over as much as he could—limited by the fact that shields are always circular domes, so, well, too bad for anything and anyone that didn’t fit under the dome. It wasn’t so bad for people who didn’t have much that was made by magic in their land—they only needed to hunker down for the physical storms that also came through, watch out for Change-Circles, and hope they weren’t caught in one. But anything that was made by magic and still empowered by it turned to vapor in a most spectacular fashion.”

Sai evidently felt he had said enough and stopped.

“Is that all?” Hakkon asked after a period of silence.

“Well, of course that’s not all,” Wis snapped. “Don’t you even think? There’s a thousand more years of history between then and now!”

Ponu piped up, “It’s always ‘a thousand years’ in stories, even if it was eight hundred ten or fourteen hundred eighty. ‘A thousand years’ is dramatic, and drama means more to people than accuracy, I’ll tell you that for free. That’s how you get throngs of obedient morons, while the educated have to work doubly hard to keep records accurate. Historians and librarians have saved more lives than Healers.”

Wis and the rest nodded, and Wis continued. “That’s the reason the High King became the Emperor and the Empire grew! The High King had the only powerful magical artifacts and constructions that still worked! And he had most of the only mages that were left, even though about half of them died keeping that shield up.”

Dole added, “Not that the ones who died then wanted to. They had no idea what they were up against, though the High King knew. Their lives were taken from them.”

“What was under that dome put the High King at an advantage that no one else had for centuries. Really, except for the Change-Circles, the lucky ones were the people living without much magic in their lives,” said Ponu.