The old wizard stared deep into the scrying pool built into the highest room of his tower; Paris burned, Versaille was in ruins. Hot winds howled outside unheeded as he stared at endless scenes of devastation. The Grand Spire of the Magus in Rome was shattered. In Constantinople, fire efreeti and hell hounds stalked the streets hunting for survivors amidst the wreckage of the once proud city. The Seven-Sided Pagoda lay broken on the slopes of Mount Tai, and the scholars and mages of Izumo Taisha lay dead outside the destroyed shrine as the carefully curated ponds boiled around them.

  The old man gripped his staff so tightly his knuckles were white. All Taliesin could see were flames and ruin. Cities and towns were laid asunder as their nations burned. Forests and fields were naught but ash, the rivers and seas boiling away under the might of Balidar the Destroyer and his endless legions of efreeti, fire giants and hell hounds. Against the encroaching inferno, his tower in Londinium stood alone, the last bastion of humanity. He was bent under the weight of loss and responsibility to his people, but he was unbroken.

  The strange continent of Africa had fallen to the Destroyer first, despite the united power of the Maasai nation, while the savages of the Americas followed soon after. The ‘uncivilized’ continents had not advanced much beyond shamanistic magics and blood rites and proved easy prey for the hungry armies of Balidar. Asia was far stronger and held out long enough for the nations of Europe to gather their fractious might, but when the massive armies of the Chinese dynasties began to fall, Taliesin knew they were doomed, and looked for a way out for his people.

  With a sigh of regret, Taliesin released his scrying spell. The images of destruction and doom faded from the still waters. He took a moment to wash his face and tidy his hair, for he was still but a servant to the great Lords of Britain and must be presentable. He gathered up his Staff of the Four Winds and straightened his enchanted robes. Taliesin was at the height of his power, easily the most brilliant mage seen anywhere on Earth in a hundred generations, yet for all that he lacked the ability to repel the Destroyer.

  Taliesin walked down the long stairs of the tower and out into the castle proper. It was built at the edge of Londinium, set out on an escarpment of bedrock a thousand meters deep and towering high above the city. He exited the stairs at the top of the castle walls rather than continuing down to the muster yards where Arthur’s knights had trained, then walked to the edge to look down into the courtyard.

  Below was a massive Gate, standing easily twice the height of a man. The Gate was constructed of stone and mithril, every inch covered in a dense web of runes that glowed with an eerie eldritch light. Yet what showed through the Gate was anything but disturbing - clear blue skies lit by a warm sun hanging over a wide, lush field. An ancient forest lay to the north, and in the distance were snow-capped mountains. It was an untamed paradise, and it was the escape Taliesin had found for all of his people. It was their salvation.

  A line of carts filled with goods and thousands of citizens filed through the Gate as swiftly as they were able. Many of them gave the sign of the cross and whispered prayers to Jesu Invictus before stepping through. The line extended out the open castle portcullis and all the way into the heart of the city. The dukes had worked together for once and sent through an army to secure a place for the people, swiftly followed by farmers and builders. Everyone else was going now. Neat rows of soldiers stood alongside the path in enchanted suits of armor, the pride of the British Isles and the elite powerhouses that had helped the island survive as humanity's last bastion. They kept the lines moving and stood ready to battle should the enemy fall upon them at this last, most inopportune moment. The nation was committed, and had no other options now. It was time to either evacuate or perish. With their entire winter food supply as well as every scrap of metal, tools, and ready building material all shoved through this unstable Gate to a strange new realm, now it was down to saving as many lives as possible before time ran out.

  Boots scraped against stone behind the old wizard. He did not turn to look, for it could be no one else.

  “Milord Duke,” Taliesin said respectfully as he leaned heavily on his staff.

  “Taliesin,” said Duke Arthur as he took up a position to Taliesin’s left. This put Taliesin at the Duke’s right hand. The Pendragon never failed to consider symbolism, even in the private moments of daily life. Even a wizard who would normally be scorned in polite society was respected by the noble. He is a good master to these people, Taliesin thought to himself.

  They stood silently together, watching as the soldiers helped an elderly peasant steer a cart heavily loaded with vital food supplies. The man’s family was behind the cart, but the donkey pulling it had balked. Aside from a glimpse through the Gate, neither Taliesin or the Duke had seen sunlight since the flaming legions landed on their shores three months ago. Ash and smoke had replaced clouds and rain. They considered it lucky to get in one final harvest before the invasion force created a successful beachhead for their forces in Dover.

  “What news have you?” asked Duke Arthur finally.

  “We are the last,” The old wizard reported sadly. He stroked his white beard out of habit. “I could find no life outside of my shields.”

  “Can you hold the enemy at bay long enough to complete the evacuation?” he asked, looking more resigned than alarmed.

  “The Gate draws most of my power, even with the Orb of Eternity to fuel it. Even now, I’m forced to pull back the shields. The island is lost to us. I am protecting only the city now. Any who remained in the outlying villages are dead. Balidar’s armies have slowed to burn it all. Their own rapaciousness is our only salvation. If they had any urgency to their attack, we’d be doomed.”

  Duke Arthur frowned. “Can we truly save no one else?”

  The duke was far younger than Taliesin, yet he bore the weight of responsibility well. Taliesin was once more impressed at the young Duke’s courage and desire to protect their people. It was radically different from the old king’s temperament, or for any of the other squabbling Dukes for that matter. Taliesin had worked to protect these lands for decades even as the world literally burned around them, yet the nobility had barely risen to the challenge. Arthur was cut from a different cloth. He made his decision.

  With a sigil drawn deftly in the air, Taliesin cast a minor summoning to grab an item from his nearby tower. From within, he drew forth a sword in an engraved scabbard. The spell ended in a tiny flash of blue light, leaving only the sheathed weapon in his hands. He turned to Duke Arthur.

  “The Merlin would have sent you on a quest for this, perhaps leaving it with an ally to gift to you. I am no fan of such games, especially in such dark days. This is the blade Excalibur. When you reach the Realm of Avalon, you must unite your people. The might of this sword will aid you. If the fractious politicking amongst the other Dukes continues in the new realm, it may doom you all.” It was the most words Taliesin had spoken in days.

  For once the Pendragon was speechless. “My word! Won't the Merlin object?”

  Taliesin may have been the genius talent of a hundred generations, but none could compare to the strength and raw power of the famed wizard known only as the Merlin. Over the decades, Taliesin’s knowledge had surpassed the Merlin, yet even he could not hold a candle to the Merlin’s might.

  “My former master abandoned this realm, Duke Arthur, in favor of another where the world may actually be saved. He left me behind, not even staying for the funeral of his sister - my wife! Ganieda and my son, both dead, yet he couldn’t be bothered. I care not for his objections.” Taliesin complained bitterly, then turned to look at him full on. This was history from before Arthur’s birth, a deep well of bitterness that was still lodged in the old man’s heart. Yet this loss from long ago had left him with one sole duty to discharge - the protection of his people. “You will be a good king, Duke Arthur, once free of this madness. I only wish I were there to see it.”

  “Surely you will remain at my side?” said the Duke, his eyes rising from the new sword in his hands. “A sword alone will not help me rule wisely.”

  “The Caledonian Knights are loyal only to you,” Taliesin brushed aside the question and spoke with a stoic expression on his face. “With them at your side, most of the army will side with you as well. Seize the food supplies immediately, and you’ll have a bloodless victory from the very start.”

  Arthur laughed, but there was a thoughtful expression on his face. “I can only imagine how the other dukes will respond. But why do you speak as if you cannot be there?”

  “Someone must close the Gate, so that Balidar does not follow. I can hold the line alone for at least that long.”

  “Is there no other way, old friend? Can I not render at least some aid to your stand?”

  “I have lived a long life. Jesu Invictus willing, I shall be with Ganieda and Ambrose in the Infinite Heavens once the Gate is destroyed. Your safety will be my victory.”

  Duke Arthur nodded and clasped the wizard’s shoulder meaningfully. Arthur had been tutored by Taliesin in his youth, and took Taliesin for an advisor upon his father’s death and Arthur’s own ascension to power. Arthur choked up for a moment, but could recognize the resolve in Taliesin’s voice. He did not disrespect him by trying to dissuade his decision, nor did he proffer false words of honor and farewell. Taliesin was glad to see his decision reaffirmed. Sometimes, the best thing to say was nothing at all.

  “Retreat! Retreat through the Gate! Run! Leave it all behind!” shouted the Caledonian Knights at Taliesin’s back.

  Panicked civilians fled through the gate, leaving behind wheelbarrows and small wagons. Women scooped up children, while men gathered what they could move swiftly. The Knights kept the crowd moving, and on more than one occasion they helped people who tripped back to their feet before they could be trampled.

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  Taliesin stood at the top of the closed castle gates as powerful gouts of fire blasted away at the arcane shields he’d retracted to protect the castle. He’d been forced to draw back his protections to the castle walls and watch as Londinium burned before him, lest the shields fail altogether. Thousands of effreeti were assaulting the castle, each wiry with abnormally long limbs and flames crowning their heads instead of hair. They had swords in one hand and fire spells in the other. Behind them, massive fire giants were gathering boulders for the bombardment, ripped straight out of buildings and the very streets of the city. They loomed so large they would be at eye level with him once they reached the walls.

  Inside the courtyard, the last of the castle staff and cargo teamsters were abandoning their posts. They’d nearly finished their work, but had simply run out of time. The last few dozen carts of supplies would be lost to the refugees. Duke Arthur stood at the Gate, watching impassively as people fled by him into the peaceful countryside on the other side. The knights were retreating in good order, as well. The movements were almost choreographed, abandoning the walls as one to leave Taliesin the sole defender against the fiery horde.

  Taliesin was in full battle regalia. His Staff of the Four Winds was in one hand, while his Celestial Grimoire floated before him on his left. Taliesin hovered over the parapet of the wall, his masterwork mage robes glowing with lines of energy. Taliesin spared one final look back at Duke Arthur, for it was time to truly lay waste to his enemies. Below the surface of his calm mien, years of repressed anger and helplessness raged, barely held in check.

  The Pendragon was the last man in the courtyard below. All others had left, leaving him standing alone with his Knights lined up and waiting on the other side. Arthur and Taliesin made eye contact, Arthur’s frost blue eyes meeting the wizard’s that glowed with every bit of his eldritch might. The Duke nodded a respectful farewell, then turned and walked to the safety of the new realm without looking back. He had done his part, and trusted in Taliesin to do his.

  Taliesin immediately began to draw more power from the Orb of Eternity, which was embedded in the side of the Gate. The portal flickered and destabilized, obscuring the view to the other side. The connection was still there, however, needing only an infusion of power to reconnect. But with this fresh infusion of power, Taliesin would be a one man army - if only for a few minutes. The old man expected that he would burn himself out and die soon after. He had long come to accept his fate, so long as he had time to destroy the Gate completely. Decades of work safeguarding his people would come to fruition in the battle. Taliesin viewed his own life as a fair trade for that of his people.

  The old man turned his attention to the hordes at the castle walls. He glared down at them with all his anger, finally allowed to unleash his power at the foe that had destroyed his world. Taliesin stared down at them and prepared to unleash his own version of hell.

  With a deep breath, Taliesin settled himself. He allowed the aether under his control to rise up, and it swirled around him as his grimoire’s pages flew open and fluttered to a page at his thought. Taliesin had many spells memorized, but the Celestial Grimoire held hundreds, ready to cast as needed. He nodded to himself, and loosed his anger upon the army below.

  “{Animus Blast}” he intoned, and a torrent of arcane energy washed forth. A massive blast of arctic power laced with lightning landed in the midst of the enemy, freezing hundreds of fiery creatures with its impossible cold even as horrendous energy devastated them. His soul rejoiced to strike at his enemies, but it was not nearly enough to slake his rage.

  “{Infernal Doom}” came the next spell. A ball of glowing plasma the size of the castle keep appeared above the enemy army, burning with hellish flame. The efreeti laughed as it descended, for flames only empowered them. The laughter ended when the unholy fire burned them to cinders in a flash, destroying another thousand with an infernal energy far too powerful for them to absorb. Taliesin laughed at their dismay, yet it was a wrathful sound with no joy in it.

  These two powerful spells wreaked havoc on the enemy army and bought the wizard time to rattle off a few spells that weren’t epic level even as his castle-sized shield flickered and failed. He could not defend and attack at the same time, and could not close the Gate while focusing on defense. Taliesin needed his enemy in chaos so that he could slip from the walls to the Gate.

  “{Storm of Vengeance}, {Meteor Strike}, {Acid Spray}!” Taliesin shouted, gesturing across the army and letting his magic go, along with his anger and frustration. It was liberating, to let loose with no regard for consequence. Already, he could feel the constant stream of power tearing at his insides, threatening to rip him to shreds even as it obeyed his commands. The wizard spotted an enemy general trying to regroup his soldiers and targeted him. “{Celestial Tempest}!”

  The shield quit completely. Taliesin cast one last spell, {Illusory Clone}. A duplicate image of the old man appeared in his place. The clone cast dozens of fake ice attacks that sent the enemy diving for cover and allowed Taliesin to sneak off the walls. It would take only a scant few seconds for enemy fireballs to rip the illusion to shreds after they realized the fake spells were doing no damage. Taliesin needed every one of those seconds.

  He landed next to the Gate and began to work on the enchantments. First he shifted the portal to one of dozens of other worlds he’d scryed. It had taken hundreds of worlds to find even one where they could survive, and thousands before Taliesin had found the one his people could thrive in.

  “We can thrive there,” mumbled Taliesin to himself. Then he shook his head as he worked and corrected himself. “They can thrive.” He knew he was a dead man.

  “This is it? One sole holdout managed to scatter my armies so easily?” came a deep voice from behind the old wizard that sounded like the two rocks grinding together.

  Taliesin looked over his shoulder to see Balidar the Destroyer standing there in all his terrible glory. He stood near ten meters tall, with two black horns protruding almost straight upward from his forehead. Balidar had long, scaly dreadlocks cascading from his head, each one flaming at the end and able to move independently to attack if he so desired. Black armor rested atop his red skin, and hellish runes carved deep into the infernal metal glowed dully with the color of hot embers. Balidar carried a sword twice as tall as Taliesin, rested casually on his shoulder.

  Taliesin did not stop working or otherwise acknowledge him. He gave the control rune a spin, sending the gate connecting randomly to other worlds faster than anyone could keep track of. Then he ripped the Orb of Eternity from the Gate.

  “Where are the people? Did you hide them from me?” asked Balidar angrily. He had finally realized Taliesin was truly alone.

  “They are beyond your reach, Destroyer. You can hurt them no more,” replied the wizard. The control rune was still spinning, but the Gate still had plenty of power stored. Taliesin needed to keep the demon distracted to lower the chances he could find where Taliesin’s people had escaped to. If the power ran out altogether, Taliesin knew that it would be almost impossible for Balidar to retrace his magic.

  The Destroyer glowered at him. “What have you done?! Those souls are mine, wizard. You cannot hide them from me! You still have the artifact. Give it to me, and I shall make your end swift before I hunt down your kith and kin.”

  Taliesin looked down at the Orb of Eternity. He could use it to fight Balidar off for a time, but he had no illusions that he could win. He shrugged his shoulders, then carelessly tossed it through the Gate as worlds kept spinning by. It fell into a realm filled with water before the Gate flashed again, a pebble in the endless sea of worlds for Balidar to seek out. It was one last act of spite that deprived the Destroyer of its power. Taliesin felt the loss of its strength immediately.

  Balidar stared at the spiteful man, struck dumb in outrage. “You dare?! I will torture your soul for a thousand eons for that! You steal my souls, then deny me power as is my due?!”

  Faster than Taliesin could process, Balidar swung his sword at him. The flat of the blade smashed into the wizard and sent him flying across the courtyard. He tumbled to the ground, only to be struck by a gout of flame from Balidar’s follow-up attack. Taliesin’s Celestial Grimoire burned beside him as he coughed up blood. Agony swept through him as he felt bones in his chest grind against each other. He’d broken at least a few ribs. He looked down at the ruined book, its pages burned to ash, and mourned the loss of his oldest artifact. He kept his expression fixed, unwilling to give Balidar the satisfaction of seeing him react.

  Instead, he grinned at Balidar in defiance, his teeth bloody. “{Greater Ruin}.”

  Taliesin felt the majority of his power fuel the growing magic, the most powerful single-target spell he’d ever developed. A black cloud of aether seeped into existence and dimmed the ambient light throughout the courtyard. The arcane energy darted to Balidar, smashing him with deceptively greater force than it seemed, which sent the demon stumbling back before smashing into the gatehouse. The building behind him began to collapse, further destabilizing him. Balidar fell backwards and dropped his sword. For a brief moment, the wizard dared hope.

  Taliesin stood and grasped his Staff of the Four Winds. Taliesin’s robes were in ruins, bloody, torn and burned. He was severely injured from just from one round of attacks, and doubted he could withstand another.

  Balidar stood from the ruins unharmed. His armor was badly damaged, partially disintegrated from the spell. The runes guttered out and were losing their glow. “You will suffer for your defiance!”

  Taliesin tried to cast another spell, but at the same time Balidar moved. In one moment, he was next to the wall. In the next, he snatched Taliesin up from the ground. Balidar ripped the Staff of the Four Winds from Taliesin’s grasp and snapped it in one hand. His powerful claws dug into Taliesin’s torso, holding him up near the demon’s face. Taliesin gasped from the sharp pain as the talons scraped across his burns and carved new furrows in his skin.

  The old man coughed blood again, his injuries obviously internal as well as what could be seen. He knew his time was limited. He just needed to be a distraction for a bit longer.

  “Tell me where you sent my souls!” shouted Balidar as his sulfurous breath blasted Taliesin’s face. He scraped a claw across the wizard’s chest, cutting and burning an agonizing line from shoulder to his waist. What was left of the old man’s enchanted robes were merely scraps.

  “Never,” he said weakly, then tried to spit blood at Balidar’s face. The weak attempt dribbled blood onto the demon’s two thumbs, his lungs damaged and unable to reach the monster.

  “You defiant little thief!” shouted Balidar, as he threw Taliesin down to the ground. “Fine! You can watch your world burn around you! Only once your world is ash, will I grant you a slow, painful death. Then I will extract what I want to know from your soul! {Rain of Fire}.”

  An impossible amount of aether drew into Balidar’s spell, causing giant clouds of smoke to form overhead. Massive fireballs and flaming meteors fell from the sky. They slammed into the buildings and castle around them, leaving Balidar, the Gate, and Taliesin untouched. Every structure caught fire, even the stone melting in the intense heat. Taliesin felt himself growing weaker from blood loss and the drastically increased temperature. He knew he’d be delirious in moments at that rate.

  At that moment, as his entire world was literally in flames around him, Taliesin recognized exactly where Balidar had thrown him. He had tossed the wizard down beside the Gate controls, where Taliesin spotted an opportunity nestled amongst the runes. The old man was next to the power matrix that powered the Gate. He could see that it was starting to run low, but there was enough left for his purposes. Using his own blood, he sketched in a few extra runes before joining them by way of a bloody sigil to the Gate. The Gate began to give off an ominous hum.

  Taliesin stumbled to his feet before the Gate. Behind him the worlds stopped flashing by, instead blurring out altogether into the void between realms. In a last act of defiance, or perhaps relief, he laughed and laughed as Balidar stared at him without comprehension.

  “What did you -”

  The Gate’s power matrix exploded, sending Balidar flying over the castle walls even as Taliesin fell backwards into the void. The last thing he saw were the shattered remnants of the Gate crumble into ruin as the portal collapsed for good.