Saul’s magic rippled across the battlefield. His spell took the form of a phalanx of mounted soldiers made of fire. Flames blazed from the steeds’ streaming manes and tails and the tips of the riders’ spears. The ghostly fire cavalry galloped through the air over the soldiers who filled the field, diving straight into the advancing columns of the enemy infantry.

“Show-off,” Emperor Baraz Karak said to Saul, following the comment up with a dig in the ribs.

Saul raised an eyebrow at the emperor, his old friend. “Perhaps you’d prefer me to leave off the magic?”

Baraz rolled his eyes. “Not at all. You are Lord of the Order of the Prism after all, and Grand High Mage of my armies. A bit of a display is a good thing, I think. Good for my reputation.”

“Happy to oblige,” Saul said with a bow.

“There’s the temple,” Karak said after a moment, pointing with one gold-armored hand to where the huge temple complex towered over the battlefield. “Go get the Sigil, Saul. This is the culmination of all our work.”

“My Lord,” Saul said, bowing his head to Baraz Karak.

They had known each other for many years, and they could share a joke and some companionable banter, but what Baraz said was true. Today was the culmination of all their work.

For nearly two decades, these two men had been fighting to unite the known world. They had crushed everyone who stood in their path: smaller empires, kingdoms, groups of rebellious peoples and, above all, any solo magicians or orders of mages who had rebelled against the relentless advance of their unifying armies.

And it had all led them here, to this last battlefield in a far-off corner of the world, where they faced an alliance of the last kingdoms. It had all led them to the temple that contained the Last Sigil.

Saul knelt before the emperor and bowed his head for a moment. He felt the presence of the Seven Elemental Gods near him, felt the power of their regard.

He’d always felt he was blessed by the seven divine rulers of the elements, and he’d always prayed to and acknowledged them. Only in the last few years, however, had he really begun to sense their presence. Month after month, the feeling had intensified.

Now, it felt as if they stood right beside him.

“Gods of the Seven Elements,” he said solemnly. “Bless my undertaking. By your elemental powers, by Flame, Earth, Stone, Glade, Air, Water, and Metal, I have come to this place. Now, I go to meet my fate. The ultimate magic artifact. The Last Sigil.”

…too much … he will destroy…

…must stop before…

That had not come from inside Saul’s head. The words had bled over into his mind from somewhere else, loud for a moment, then silenced. Someone else’s thoughts, tinged with panic.

He cast about in the psychic realm for their source. They could not have come from the gods, surely?

He stood, dismissing the strange words. They must have come from some undisciplined psychic somewhere, leaking his petty thoughts into Saul’s mighty connection back to the Prism Academy. He would have to see that the safeguards on the Academy’s power channeling were looked at again.

Later.

“Go well, General Saul Kramitz,” Emperor Karak said formally, laying a hand on Saul’s shoulder.

Saul looked into his friend’s eyes for a moment, ice blue and bright as Saul’s eyes were dark, set in a face thin where Saul’s was broad, and topped with hair as blond as Saul’s was black.

Saul nodded, once. “For the glory of the empire,” he said, then turned and sprinted down into the battle.

He slammed into the enemy lines like a juggernaut. His armor was gold and red, gleaming with flame and ice. The mass of his enhanced armor struck the enemy shield wall with the force of a battering ram.

As he charged on, he drew off magic from the constant stream that was being channeled to him from the army of mages back at the Prism Academy in his homeland of Keldor.

In his mind, on the psychic plane, echoed exaltations of the Prism mages as they channeled power into him. Lighting crackled from his hands with a deep boom like thunder and rolling drums, and the forks of his blue and white and silver magic sent the enemy soldiers flying hundreds of feet in the air.

A company of cavalry five thousand strong saw him from their position on a hill a quarter of a mile away and wheeled their horses around into a great wedge. They charged downhill to meet him.

Saul redirected the magic power he had been using for the lightning spell and sent it shooting through the earth toward the charging horses. The cavalry soldiers were clad in red and black, their battle banners streaming from the tips of their shining spears.

The earth below the cavalry shook as the magic rushed toward them. They realized what was about to happen too late to do anything about it. Saul tilted his hand in a gesture, and the ground under the charging cavalry exploded toward the sky.

Red-clad men and armored horses flew upward and backward, some as high as forty feet. A moment later, they crashed into the ranks of their own infantry like a barrage from a siege artillery battalion.

Formations broke and scattered.

Saul put on more speed.

The temple was ahead of him. The field all around him was packed with soldiers. His own men, the imperials, were distinguished by their black and silver armor and by the unshakeable discipline evident in their ranks as they held off repeated charges from the enemy along a battle line fully four miles in length.

Magic allowed Saul to run faster than the fastest horse despite the great weight of his armor, and the great temple complex drew rapidly closer.

…too much…it will be too much…

Again, those voices. It reeked of masked panic and rising desperation. Where did it come from?

Saul shook his head. No matter. Whispers could not stop him now.

All around him, pressing close now, he felt the presence of his protectors, the Seven Elemental Gods.

Reaching the cracked temple steps, he turned swiftly at the bottom and surveyed the battlefield. As far as the eye could see, great swarms of men and horses, thrall monsters, mages, huge warbeasts, monstrous flying units, and batteries of siege artillery were pressing against each other, the tides of battle pushing them back and forth like the wind tossing a great dark sea under a smoky sky.

Flashes of light and fire leapt up here and there, and the din of battle, the cry of men, the roar of monsters, the screaming and neighing of horses, and the low boom and thunder of explosions filled the air. There was a thick smell, smoke and ashes, blood and mud, the indescribable smell of crackling magic, and under it all the sickly odor of death.

But here in front of the temple steps, Saul was alone.

He cast a cloak of magic around himself to hide him momentarily from unfriendly eyes, and then sent his vision skirting over the battlefield. From point to point, his awareness dashed, seeing the progress at different places.

Three miles away, his forces were fighting to take over the ruins of a small town. The enemy were pressing them hard, but the imperial soldiers were making steady headway.

On the other side of the town, however, a group of half-troll, half-human axmen, clad in gleaming mail with broad shields on their backs, hurried to outflank the imperials.

Saul looked back to his own position. Nobody was around him, so he returned his attention to the little town. Looking down on it from above like a bird hovering above the fray, he focused on the soldiers.

“Magic of metal,” he muttered under his breath, “magic of flame.”

The power from the great channeling of the Prism mages at the academy soared toward him as he activated his spell. Light flashed, and the axmen who had been moving in to flank the imperial soldiers screamed in pain. Smoke rose from them as the combination of metal and fire magic turned their heavy chainmail in a moment into molten steel.

The whole company went from efficient advance to terrified rout in a blink—those who did not die instantly. Their screams alerted the imperials, who broke off a detachment to deal with the stragglers Saul’s magic had not caught.

Saul smiled as he shifted his attention toward the command post where the emperor stood, gazing out across the great mass of toiling fighters. Baraz Karak’s golden armor gleamed in the light of the fires. Magic flickered around his fingertips and around the simple gold and silver circlet on his head.

Karak’s honor guard was around him, and there was no threat nearby.

Saul returned his attention to himself. The shielding cloak he’d cast about himself was about to run out of power, so he dismissed it and turned his attention to the temple complex again.

When he and Karak had first come here, the temple had been stoutly defended, but the imperial forces had been here for three months now, and the defense had slowly been chipped away to reinforce the steadily broadening battle line. As the imperials had never made any outright advance on the temple itself, the defenders had eventually abandoned it, thinking the temple was not the objective.

Exactly as Saul had planned.

This was his favorite way to run a military campaign—through diversion.

Again and again, he’d pushed Emperor Karak’s military might against an objective that was valuable but was not the ultimate target. Again and again, enemy armies had taken the bait, getting drawn into defending on several fronts, or all along a straggling land border, or in multiple territories or towns.

Once the enemy was over-extended, Saul would punch a small force of specialists through the weakened line to the objective and, before the enemy knew it, they had lost their war.

This time, the small strike force was only one man: Saul.

The temple loomed over him, dark stone against a gray sky, huge vaulted arches and great smashed pillars standing ominously over the battlefield. No one else could get near the Last Sigil.

No one but Saul.

The artifact was legendary back in Keldor. In the Last Sigil was concentrated all the remaining power of the Old World.

In the years before the emperor and Saul had joined forces to unify all the lands into one mighty empire, hundreds of tribes and clans and little kingdoms had fought each other endlessly. The shifting sands of their petty power struggles never quite boiled over into all-out war, yet also never allowed Keldor to truly flourish.

Then came Grimdir’s Rebellion, the Xornian border revolt, and the grisly death of Queen Lylandra of Xorn at the hands of the rebels. That had started a chain of events that set afire the tensions between realms and flooded the world in a red tide.

That chaos had threatened to lay waste to the whole of Keldor, from the mountains to the sea.

Saul and Karak brought it to an end.

They had begun in the Riverlands, using the highly trained soldiers of the House of Karak to unify the Trader Cities by the great river. Then they secured the nascent mage academy at the Citadel of the Bright Dukes and established the Order of the Prism.

From the Riverlands, they had expanded outward, suppressing rebellion, crushing revolt, and bringing standardization wherever they went. Imperial currency, imperial armor, imperial language, imperial trading regulations, and imperial justice.

Imperial magic.

The standardization and regulation of magic was one of the hardest things they had undertaken, but they had done it, nonetheless. Many of the Old World mages had resisted but, eventually, they swore fealty to Karak and joined the Prism Academy, or they died. It was as simple as that.

At the end, a last stand had been made.

The last alliance of mages of the Old World gathered and, seeing they could not win, had poured all their magic into a single item, a magical device of the Old World of a kind once commonly used.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

A Sigil.

The Last Sigil.

For years, Saul and Karak had searched for the Last Sigil. They could not destroy it, but they could take it so Saul could absorb its power. Doing that would grant him the ultimate magic, the combination of the powers of the Old World and the new.

And now, at last, nothing stood between him and the Last Sigil.

…destiny…

…empire bringing doom to the…

…the end of times if we do not stop…

The thoughts invaded Saul’s head again. He didn’t know the voices, and he didn’t know how they could be leaking into his psychic thought stream.

Again, he sent his awareness out around him and felt only the comforting presence of the Seven Gods of the Elements.

Casting a cloak of shadow around himself again, he marched straight up the broken steps and entered the temple complex.

All was quiet inside. The walls were thick despite the ruinous state of the building, and Saul found the noise of the battle outside was dulled to a steady crash and roar like the sound of a distant sea.

Saul dropped the shadowy cloak. Beneath it, his armor made him a golden behemoth, gleaming with bright magic and lighting up the dark space. He was bare-headed, his short-cropped dark hair plastered to his head with sweat and the heat of the battle outside.

He took a deep breath of the cool, damp air inside the temple.

There were bodies here. At first, he thought there had been a skirmish at the doors of the temple and some scouting parties had gone inside, but they had only done so to establish that the old temple complex was still open.

The Darthornian people who claimed the lands around the temple had no idea what they had here. To them, the Last Sigil was just a meaningless artifact from an Old World, long forgotten.

To Saul, it was the culmination of his life’s work.

He strode briskly through the passages and corridors, constantly aware of the thrum of magical sending that came from the Prism Academy mages back in Keldor. He felt the other mages of the imperial army drawing on the power and Emperor Karak’s constant communication with the Prism mages as well.

A smile played across Saul’s normally grim features as he walked through wide, gloomy corridors toward his goal. Karak had done well.

Karak had been young when he and Saul had first begun to work together. Young, and a little naïve. But no more.

Saul had been young, too, roughly the same age as the emperor, but much more worldly, though less book-learned. They were now both men in their mid-forties, with over twenty years of campaigning behind them, and the biggest empire the world had ever seen under their hands.

This last effort would seal their rule forever. With the accumulated power of the Old World contained in the Last Sigil, the battle outside would be won in a moment, and they could change tactics.

None would be able to stand against them.

They could bring the entire world under their control with the mere threat of the power that could be unleashed.

At last, they could create peace and a thriving, flourishing empire under their enlightened rule.

The Sigil Chamber was deep in the heart of the temple complex. These Darthornian people worshiped all kinds of deities, demons, and minor godlings, and they had their main shrine up above everything else, out in the open air, high above where Saul now stood. But they collected artifacts here in the temple also and stashed them in the more damaged parts of the huge structure.

How the Last Sigil had gotten here was a story lost to time. No one knew, but it did not matter.

Through a long and careful project of location and vision magic undertaken at the Academy under Saul’s instruction, he had located the Sigil in a chamber under a rambling, wrecked temple complex in the distant land of Darthorn.

The ultimate magical item, and these fools did not even know what they held!

Saul and Karak had set about building a fleet. Four years later, they brought war to the shores of Darthorn.

…end of days…

…we must prepare…

…be ready…

The thoughts crashed loud through Saul’s mind, panic-stricken, as he stood at last before the locked stone door of the Sigil chamber. The Sigil’s power radiated through the door, and he felt the presence of his gods at his back, so close he could almost have reached out and touched them.

He frowned, still troubled by the thought that had intruded on his mind from outside. Some Darthornian psychic?

To the Darthornians, it certainly must appear to be the end of days. From their point of view, that was a reasonable assessment of the situation.

Saul raised a hand and drew off a careful measure of power from the Prism Academy’s constant channeling. Then, he directed a Stone elemental spell at the door.

Like a sledgehammer, the magic slammed into the door just above the lock. There was a loud snap, and the door crashed inward, its rusted hinges shattered.

Saul ducked his head and stepped through. Inside was no light, and the ambient glow from his armor was not enough to see by. He lifted a hand, spoke a word, and a globe of buttery yellow light floated to the ceiling to hang there.

Only one thing occupied the room. On a low stone platform covered by a thick cloth of rich black velvet thick with the dust of years, lay the item Saul had been searching for.

The artifact of ultimate power.

The Last Sigil hovered a few inches above its velvet setting, giving off an intense thrumming of magic. It was a circular object about eight inches across, resembling an intricately worked sculpture cast from pure gold.

Sigils were highly stylized runes, circular in shape, with countless decorative flourishes and windings all over them. In the Old World, they could be created by mages and applied to items—clothing, weapons, tools—to add magical effects. They could contain spells or powers a user could absorb to gain abilities or enchantments.

But that system of magic was no more.

Saul stepped toward it.

As he did so, he felt something in the room with him. Several somethings.

There was a thickening of the darkness in the room and, suddenly, seven figures shimmered into existence around him. Figures in rich, heavy robes of red, gray, green, white, black, blue, and silver.

Their hoods were cast over their heads, covering their features.

Saul knew them at once; the Seven Gods of the Elements he had worshiped all his life.

“You have come to join me in my final triumph!” Saul said.

A rush of pride and satisfaction such as he had never felt before flooded into him. He was in the physical presence of all seven gods, an honor that had not been granted to any human in history before.

Saul savored the sensation for a moment, then raised his head proudly. He lifted his hand and reached out toward the Sigil.

Do it NOW!

The thought came clearly from the Seven who surrounded him. Panic and terror were in the words, and Saul recognized the voice.

So, the stray thoughts had come from the gods! But how could that be?

Saul hesitated for a moment, facing the Sigil, ready to absorb its mighty power and, in that moment, all the Seven suddenly raised their hands. Power flooded from them, crashing into Saul with all the combined forces of nature.

This was more than magic. This was God Elemental power.

Metal and Water, Earth, Air, and Fire, Stone, and the magic of the Glade were all combined.

Combined against him.

The shock of the impact stunned him. He was without thought. In that moment, he felt his own magic neutralized in the face of the only power in the world that was greater than his—the gods themselves.

“No!” he cried.

How could this be? The Seven Gods—his gods—were attacking him!

Crackling lightning of seven colors surrounded him, wrapped and contained him, suppressing his power and pulling him upward from the chamber. He felt a sickening lurch as he flew upward at unimaginable speed. Surrounding him, the Seven extended their hands and drew him upward, upward, away from the battle, away from the world…to another place.

A place beyond.

Saul was chained. Cold stone pressed against his back and manacles of pure power held his wrists and ankles. He was upright, immobile. His armor was gone, and he wore only a ragged cloth about his hips.

He blinked, trying to resolve what he was looking at.

The Seven. The Seven, sitting at a long, semi-circular table of black stone, facing him.

Around them, a dim hall. Saul had the impression of an impossibly high vaulted ceiling, of far reaches of open space with small figures moving to and fro, of light pouring in from distant windows.

In front of the Seven, at the middle of the table facing Saul, was a skull twice the size of a regular skull, carved from gleaming black stone. Red lights burned in its eyes and in its mouth.

The Seven sat completely still, their hands on the table. Their faces remained hidden by the great folds of their robes, as were their bowed heads. They sat still as statues, not even visibly breathing, but their thoughts were a constant hum in the air, just out of reach of Saul’s hearing.

The red lights in the eyes of the skull brightened, and a rattling and metallic voice came from the mouth.

“Saul Kramitz,” the voice said. “We, the Seven Elemental Gods have judged you and have found you wanting. You have committed a grievous sin. You have sought power beyond your measure. You have sought to put yourself above the gods. For this, we decree you shall be exiled from the world, stripped of your power, and banished to the nether reaches of the universe for all eternity. And so, it is done.”

Saul’s mouth was sealed. He could not even open it to speak.

Horror flooded him. Put himself above the gods? He had never held any such ambition.

All he’d ever done was in the service and for the glory of these gods, these very Seven beings who were now about to banish him.

He could not even struggle as his vision faded, and he felt himself suddenly falling. The chains on his hands and feet were gone, the stone at his back gone.

Everything was gone.

He fell through utter emptiness, downward. Far below, he thought he saw lights like stars.

Banished to the nether reaches of the universe for all eternity, he thought, despairing.

He fell.

And then something stopped him.

As if a hand had reached out and caught his ankle, his descent suddenly checked. He was pulled, fast, in a different direction, and then a new space shimmered into place around him. A new vision.

“Cruel, are they not?” a mellow voice as smooth as honey said near his ear. “Cruel and vain and quick to judge. Not like me.”

Saul lay flat on a wooden table, staring up at blinding whiteness. A person stood over him. He blinked, squinting and averting his eyes from the light.

The figure was larger than a human, taller and broader, but with a human shape. Ringlets of golden hair tumbled across his shoulders, framing a narrow, cunning face and a pair of unsettlingly sharp blue eyes. His clothing was of rich, dark fabric, but his hands were hidden by chainmail gauntlets that glowed with a dark blue light.

“Do you know me?” the figure asked.

Saul did. “You’re…Sarkur,” Saul said, finding that he had his voice again. “Sarkur, the one they call the trickster god.”

Sarkur laughed with all the complete satisfaction of a purring cat.

“So, I am,” he said. “The trickster god, the god of tricksters. And you are Saul Kramitz, the greatest living magician of your age. And they have banished you and stolen away your powers.”

“Why?” Saul gasped. He tried to move his arms but found he could not. “I never meant them any harm.”

“Ah, but you were about to gain power that would have meant you could have done them harm. And that was enough. They care nothing for you, not really. They care nothing for your prayers or your faith. All they care about is maintaining their position, maintaining their power. And you, my small friend, you were about to gain such power that you might have unseated them, had you so chosen.”

“They betrayed me…” Saul said in a breathless voice.

The full scale of that betrayal was only beginning to register. The gods he’d been faithful to for a lifetime, the gods he’d thought had been at his back all these years, had stripped him of his power and betrayed him.

“But I have not betrayed you. I have saved you, and more… I have something for you.”

Sarkur pointed to Saul’s right, and Saul, following where he pointed, rolled his head to look in that direction.

There was something there… Saul blinked, trying to work it out. It was the size and shape of a man, but it was not a man. It was like a man-shaped cage made of incredibly fine silver wire, with glowing nuggets of crystal embedded at the hands, feet, the head, and the center of the chest.

Magic, blue and yellow and white, flickered across its surface, crackling over the wires and flickering around the crystals.

“What is it?” Saul asked hoarsely.

“It’s yours, Saul,” Sarkur said. “It’s a little something I’ve been working on for a while now—a System that will allow a man to use magic without any external power source. A System that will allow a man to gain magical power, to track his own progress and advancement, and to interact with the world and with magic in an entirely new way. And it’s a System that will allow a man to have magical powers without alerting any of the Seven Elemental Gods to his presence.”

Saul rolled his head back and looked again at Sarkur. “You are going to give it to me?”

The trickster god nodded, looking immensely pleased with himself. “I am. You will be the honored one. You will have the System. Of course, it has a few glitches that may need to be ironed out…” he waved a hand dismissively, “but you will find your way through, I’m sure.”

“But why?” Saul asked. “What am I to do?”

“Well, well,” Sarkur said, “I have decided to give you the chance at revenge, my friend. My System—your System, as it will be—will allow you to gain magical power again. You will be able to grow and strengthen your magic to an even greater level than before, but you will be able to do so without having to draw on the elemental powers of the gods. They will never know you are there and, as an extra precaution, we will give you a new body, I think. A new appearance, yes, and…something else.”

Saul stared at Sarkur.

“We will put you back into the world some years before the events of your life. Some years before your own birth, in fact. You see, it’s very essential that your work from now on should not conflict with your previous life. You will be put back into the world, Saul, and you must learn the System and use it to gain the magic power you need to take your revenge on those who betrayed you. Your System will allow you to reach new heights and new possibilities. You will be able to defeat the gods and their meddling, and then you will be the one who rules.”

“Very well,” Saul said. “Anything to regain my powers and avoid the fate they attempted to impose on me.”

“Good, good,” Sarkur said. “You have no choice, of course, but I’m glad you do this willingly. But there is one point you need to remember. You must gather the power and take your revenge before the date of your birth. There would be…undesirable results should your two timelines clash.”

“What kind of results?” Saul asked.

Sarkur waved a hand again as if the question was of little consequence. “Oh, the complete destruction of the universe and everything in it,” he said airily. “Time travel of souls is a tricky business. Now, I believe twelve years will be sufficient for your work. I have arranged for you to inhabit the body of a man who will shortly not be needing it anymore. His timeline ends at the exact moment your new timeline begins. You can occupy his body without causing any timeline clashes. I think I’ve got the calculations right. If not, of course…”

“The complete destruction of the universe and everything in it?” Saul guessed.

“Now you’re getting the idea,” Sarkur said, sounding pleased. “We don’t have much time. I must merge the System with your soul, then send you back into the world at just the right moment.”

Sarkur stepped around the table. Saul tried to follow the trickster god with his eyes, but he found he could not lift his head from the table. He rolled his head to the right and saw Sarkur doing something with the strange contraption of wire and crystal that he had called the System.

A moment later, Sarkur returned and stood over Saul. He raised a hand, and blue magic blossomed around his fingers.

The System floated into Saul’s field of vision.

It was above Saul now, held in place by some magic or machinery Saul could not see. He looked straight into the blank face of the System. The fine wires glowed, and Saul felt a sudden sensation of heat against his skin.

The crystal at the center of the System’s head shone a clear blue.

“This may hurt a little,” Sarkur said, bending over him and peering into Saul’s face. “That is to say, you may feel a slight pinch…”

The System dropped toward Saul, and sudden agony flooded him. It consumed him, suffused him, and filled all his being. He had never imagined such pain to be possible.

It was a hideous sensation, a dark agony of the soul.

He screamed and, as he did so, he fell into darkness.

“That’s done it,” Sarkur’s voice said in his mind, full of satisfaction. “Good luck, Saul, and remember…twelve years!” Then, a note of uncertainty came into the god’s voice. “Oh, wait…” he said. “I hadn’t thought of… “

Then, Sarkur was gone.

The pain in Saul’s soul ceased as abruptly as it had begun, replaced by a strange feeling of emptiness.

There was a forest below him, dark trees tossed by wind and pelting rain. Mountains loomed on either side of the forest.

Saul saw a man stumbling through the rain, barefoot, wearing nothing but a ragged tunic and a pair of trousers. His lank blond hair was plastered to his thin, malnourished face with the rain.

The man staggered up a small slope into a clearing by the edge of a cliff, then fell forward and lay still.

Silver words appeared in Saul’s field of vision, clear and bright like pen strokes of luminescent metallic ink. They unfurled along the top left of his field of vision, remained long enough for him to read them, then vanished.

Initializing Soul Interface…

Soul Interface Initialization Successful…

Initiating Reincarnation Sequence…

Searching for System Soul…

New System Soul Detected.

System Soul Details:

Name: Saul Kramitz

Level: 1

Spells Available: 3

View Spell Details: (Currently Unavailable: Await Reincarnation Sequence Completion)

Revenge, he thought. Revenge against the gods themselves. Then, Saul’s soul slammed into his new body.

Reincarnation successful.