Mithris growled deep in his throat. He hated Eaganar, had always hated him. He despised everything his nemesis represented, but now—for the first time—he felt a fury in his heart that even Master Deinre’s death had not been able to inspire. His fingers clenched into tight, white-knuckled fists of rage as he glared death at his foe.
He looked at Melendra, who still struggled. She was wearing herself out, her struggles growing weaker.
This was what came of wizards, he told himself. Melendra had never hurt anyone, he was sure of it. She was an innocent. She had lived her entire life in this dark magician’s shadow, and he had poisoned her entire world. Eaganar had corrupted her people. He had used them to pursue his mad vendetta, and now he meant to snuff her out like an insignificant insect.
Mithris would not allow another innocent to die at this man’s hands. He would not allow such a beautiful woman to perish on his account.
“No,” he declared, lifting one hand. As he spoke, he opened himself to the power he knew was all around them. He felt it surrounding them. He felt Vapor and Depths, Terra and Ember, Tempus and Absence. He hung at the center of their combined storm. He breathed in their thunder, and he channeled their lightning.
“No,” he said again, louder this time. “I won’t let you, Eaganar. I won’t let her die and I won’t let you win.”
He sensed what he had to do. In a way, the crystals planted the spell in his mind. But in another way, it had always been there. It was as though the words were imprinted on the folds of his brain from birth. The arcane sounds dribbled from his lips with a naturally flowing ease, and his fingers wove through the air as he built the spell.
Eaganar hissed angrily, and shouted an incantation.
The spells resolved in the same instant, crashing together in the space between the dueling wizards. Eaganar howled, his hands clawing at the magic in the air as he attempted to seize control of Mithris’ spell.
But Mithris had been doing that sort of thing for a while now, and he reached out and took hold of each flow of magic as though gathering a handful of tiny threads together. He twisted Eaganar’s spell, folding it into his own.
Sweat slid down the sides of his face and Mithris gritted his teeth in concentration. It was working. A hole opened in the air behind Eaganar. Wind whipped through the screaming portal. Eaganar’s eyes widened in shock and he screamed denial.
Careful, Mithris! It was Vapor. The crystal was shouting in his head. There is only so much power you can use in this place. When it is gone, we’ll be unable to send you back.
“I’m not going back!” Mithris answered aloud, only realizing he had made the decision after the words left his mouth.
Still wielding the massive flow of energy, Mithris turned his eyes briefly to Melendra. He wondered if she would want to get to know him better when this was over. Then he looked to Rethbrin, and his heart sank.
He couldn’t condemn Rethbrin to stay behind, living out the rest of his life cut off from the magic he had studied for all his long centuries of life. Mithris felt his resolve falter, and the magic bucked wildly in his ethereal grasp.
Eaganar sensed the momentary hesitation and pounced on it.
The shrieking wind died and the portal Mithris had summoned, a portal that led only to the void between foundations and final oblivion, began shrinking in size.
“You’ll never stop me,” crowed Eaganar. “I will destroy you all!”
Chapter 68
Eaganar fought to wrest control of the power from Mithris. If he succeeded, the battle would be over. Mithris knew the dark wizard would strike instantly, and there would be no time to regain control. They had summoned very nearly the limit of energy available in this strange place between the worlds, and Mithris could hear the foundation crystals’ lament in his head.
They were being destroyed, he realized. This final foundation had been meant as their final act, and in cutting it from the lattice of the other foundations they had begun their own destruction.
Mithris saw one chance. One chance only, to defeat Eaganar and save Rethbrin. It meant an end to Vapor and his other friends, but Mithris had no choice.
Do it, said Vapor. There was no fear in the foundation crystal’s voice. Do it, Mithris. We have prepared ourselves for this.
Mithris nodded silently and made his move. He released his hold on the magic, thrusting it at Eaganar. The evil magician recoiled in shock; he had never expected Mithris to surrender voluntarily.
Eaganar’s moment of surprise undid him. Before the wizard could assert his will onto the full torrent of power streaming from the foundation crystals, an invisible wave of raw, unshaped power slammed into him. It passed through him like a million unseen arrows, piercing his half-solid spirit body and pouring into the portal Mithris had summoned just before it winked closed.
Eaganar rocked back in agony. His control slipped. Mithris seized the flow back from his foe, wrangling the runaway magic like a ranch-hand roping a runaway steer.
He caught it and it jerked him forward, staggering. But Mithris held on and twisted, forcing the power into a new flow which he controlled. He pulled back. His portal bulged as if something too massive to pass through pressed against it from the other side. Streams of nothingness extended from the doorway to oblivion, pulled on invisible hooks Mithris fashioned from the power he held.
These tendrils of dark nothing wrapped themselves around Eaganar. He writhed and screamed at their touch. His form began dissolving. He threw out his arms, arching back and howling in torment.
At the same time, a new portal opened. It was small, the spell only weakly resolved, but through the small aperture in the empty air Mithris could see a familiar forest and a tall, slender spire. Deinre’s tower gleamed in the slanting light of a rising sun.
Mithris waved a hand, muttering a brief incantation. Rethbrin, understanding Mithris’ words, gave Mithris a knowing nod of goodbye as he was lifted from the ground and sent flying through that second portal just before it snapped out of existence.
The flow of power cut off abruptly. One moment, Mithris commanded every ounce of magic in this entire realm. The next instant, there was no magic. It was as if there never had been.
In the same heartbeat of time, as the magic vanished, so too did Eaganar and the dark portal to the void.
Existence winked out again. Mithris knew a moment of nothingness. He had just enough time to wonder if his spell had backfired, if he had destroyed himself along with Eaganar, and then reality returned.
He found himself standing on a ledge high above the burping, boiling lake of fire. A body lay at his feet, and all the people of the village stood close by. They stared at Mithris in stunned amazement. All of them, that was, save Melendra.
The girl stood at his side, just on the other side of Eaganar’s corpse.
That corpse began to shimmer, and then it dissolved into nothingness.
The four burly young hunters who were holding Lothar down on the ground released him, rising slowly and backing away with wide eyes locked on Mithris and Melendra. They had seen these two fed to the Inferno. Their bodies should have been consumed by the lava. Yet here they stood, unscathed. They each wore glorious robes of a deep, dark red threaded with silver and gold.
The villagers began to kneel. It was only a handful at first, individuals dropping singly to their knees. But soon the rest followed suit, and all knelt before Mithris and Melendra as if they were returning gods.
The young woman at his side turned wide eyes on Mithris. She appeared stunned. But then, with a tiny shake, she broke tears of happiness.
He tested the air, probed the ground. He sensed no ley lines, no residue of magic. It was gone. The cracks were sealed. The Final Foundation was alone. He was alone.
Mithris looked at Melendra again. No. He was not alone. Then he looked out over the kneeling villagers, and made an exasperated sound.
“Mithris has brought me back from the afterworld! He saved me,” Melindra said to her village
. With tears continuing to flow down her cheeks, she grabbed Mithris’ hand and brought it to her forehead.
These people thought he was a god. And why wouldn’t they? He had just came back from the dead and they had never seen magic before. What a concept? A world without magic.
Mithris surprised everyone by laughing out loud. It was a hearty laugh, the laugh of a man no one was trying to murder. The laugh of a man who’d finally rid himself of wizards.
“You can all get up now,” he shouted to them. Heads lifted to reveal puzzled frowns. “I mean it,” Mithris insisted. “Get up. Nobody needs to kneel.”
Melendra’s expression was shocked. “But you are chosen of the gods,” she told him. “Are you sure you want to stop them, Mithris?”
There was something in the way she said his name that made his heart swell. He shook his head, but could not help the grin that spread over his face.
“No, no, no,” he said. “I am not chosen of the gods. I’m just a wizard…Well, I guess I’m not even that any more. I’m just a man. And if I let them start doing treating me as something more than a man, then they’ll expect us to tell them what to do. Every time there’s an argument, they’ll want us to settle it. Whenever there’s some danger, they’ll beg us to solve it for them.”
Cocking his head to one side, Mithris chuckled as a thought struck him. “That sounds way too much like being a wizard, actually. Yeah, no.” Louder, he called to the villagers. “Get up already!”
They rose slowly, unsure.
Mithris was sure, on the other hand. He turned back to Melendra. “These people threw you in a volcano. You don’t really want to spend a bunch of time with them, do you?”
“They wanted to kill me because they trusted in the Great Master. I’m starting to see just how much he lied to us now, about everything, but you must understand that there is kindness here among these people,” she said, then shook her head. “If you feel you must punish them—”
“Now, don’t start that—” Mithris protested, but she waved a hand at him.
“I know you are no god, Mithris. I…I am not sure what you are, or where you came from. But I’m not as superstitious as most of our people.” She hesitated, then added, “I think I would like to find out more about you.”
Mithris grinned again. “Then let’s get away from here,” he suggested. “Is there somewhere else on this island we could go live? Where they wouldn’t bother us any?”
It was Melendra’s turn to grin. “I have heard of a place,” she told him. “Far at the northern end of the jungle.”
“Sounds like a dangerous trip,” Mithris muttered to himself.
“I will be with you,” announced Lothar. Mithris had not noticed Melendra’s brother get up off the ground and come to stand with them. He eyed the spearman warily. It was Lothar, after all, who had gotten him into this to begin with.
The hunter looked down at the ground, shame coloring his cheeks. “I must apologize, Mithris,” he said. “That vile creature posed as our people’s god for too long. Only my sister was able to see through his lies. My own eyes were opened too late. I do not believe I can ever make full amends, but let me accompany you. My spear will ever defend you.”
He turned his head toward Melendra. “And you, of course, sister. I would not be separated from you. I thought I had lost you to the Inferno. I could not bear it.”
Loving tears spilled from Melendra’s eyes, and she smiled with obvious joy.
Epilogue
Six months later, Mithris stood atop a hill that overlooked a sparkling bay. The harbor was protected by two long spars of land to either side, and waves crashed over a distant coral reef blocking the open end. The jungle gave way a mile inland from this shore, and on the plain between wilderness and beach Mithris had made a fair start on his tower.
It was not a wizard’s tower. Mithris was no longer a wizard. He grinned at that thought, surveying his handiwork.
Of course, it was slow going with no magic to call on. The structure of stone and wood was only a single story so far, but he had divided that floor into several rooms and had begun the construction on the second floor.
He’d planted a large garden to one side of the fledgling tower, and even now he could see Melendra among the vegetables.
The two of them had become very close these last six months. Mithris was falling in love with her. When he was with her, he did not miss Vapor so much.
Nevertheless, it still stung. The foundation crystal had been his ever-present companion. He had thought of the airstone as his friend. Now Vapor was gone.
Footsteps sounded behind him. Mithris did not whirl around. He no longer feared anyone sneaking up behind him. Eaganar was destroyed. There were no other wizards in the Final Foundation. Raktars were a bit of a problem, but other than that he had nothing to fear.
Lothar came up beside him, a brace of wild jungle hares hanging over his shoulder. The hunter followed Mithris’ gaze and he too smiled.
“My sister gathers the vegetables, and I have brought the meat,” he told Mithris. “That means it’s your turn to wash up after the meal.” Lothar paused, then added, “Again.”
Mithris glanced meaningfully at the dead hares. “Rabbit,” he said, then imitated Lothar’s deep voice. “Again.”
Lothar laughed, and moved off down the hill. He would go to the tower—it was more of a house, Mithris decided—to skin the hares for dinner. It was a nice little life they were building here, but Mithris would have given a lot for a decent steak-and-kidney pie once in a while.
Sighing, he started off down the hill after Lothar. But a stirring breeze brought him up short, and Mithris found himself listening to the wind that sighed its way out over the bay.
Enjoy it, the wind seemed say. And do not grieve for us. We are eternal. Though we are no more in this plane, we exist in others.
Had he really heard the faint voice on the air? Or was it only his imagination?
Mithris thought he knew the answer. Grinning wider than ever, he hurried down the hill to Melendra with joy in his heart.
***
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THE END
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Check Out This New Fantasy Novel by Trip Ellington:
Gauntlet of Time
Xalo believes that he and his best friend, Jirnik, are destined to spend the rest of their days barely eking out a living as poor scavengers-until a lost princess reveals his destiny as a Wielder.
Wielding his newly bonded magical gauntlet, Xalo and Jirnik are soon pulled into a perilous quest to reunite the lost princess with her family, all while being chased by the corrupted emperor and his minions...
***
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***
Cover by Trip Ellington
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