Waking up first thing in the morning is an even worse experience than usual when it's being caused by explosions.

I'm a light sleeper anyway, by training if not inclination, and years of assorted nastiness have honed my reflexes.  I'm out of bed before the first blast has dissipated, fully dressed before I've even woken up properly, and out the door of my room before I've figured out what woke me.

My room is on the third floor of the tower.  Master Rylgen's quarters occupy the whole fifth floor, and his study and laboratory occupy the sixth floor.  His official ones, anyway.  He operates the tower's defensive measures from the seventh floor, though, so I start sprinting up the stairs at top speed, to the tune of the spellbursts peppering the wards outside. I'm in pretty good shape; Master Rylgen has certain firmly held views about physical conditioning, and I happen to like being able to outfight the average tavern bouncer.

As I pass the fifth floor, I hear an even louder blast with overtones of shrieking mink, and feel more than hear one of the  primary wards collapse.  What in the hells is hitting us?  This tower has the strongest defenses outside of the capital itself!  Who could-  No, how could-

I sprint into the upper chamber, and all my questions are blown away by the sight displayed in the tower's magical image projector.

The tower is surrounded.

By an army.

I stutter incoherently for a second, trying to figure out just what's going on. I'm seeing catapults. Actual catapults. And over there, that squad throwing hexes at the tower. They're wearing outfits without adornment, no identifying marks, but those curses are the sort of thing you'd see from the Council's own Spellbreakers. And the perimeter guards are thinly spread, but those mounted units roaming around the edges have to be Heshanid light cavalry, set to chase down any escapees. How in the hells did-

“ABEL!!” A roar snaps me out of my funk, and I spin to look at Master Rylgen, who's trying to glare at the spell control board, the image projector, and me, all at the same time. He's about to say something else, but instead snaps his gaze back to the projector and rapidly manipulates the board. A third blast rings through the chamber, and Master curses, reshuffling the defensive spells to fill in whatever new gap has been blasted into the shields.

He's sweating. I've never seen him this, this… uncertain.

He turns back to me. “Abel, you-”

“Master, what in the-”

“ABEL!!!”

I flinch. I can't help it. If he looked worried before, he now looks enraged. I know that he's not furious at me, but I cringe all the same.

He closes his eyes for a second, which stuns me even more than his anger. Ignoring the defenses in the middle of a full-scale assault? When he opens them again, he's calm again, at least on the outside.

“Abel, there is no time for explanations. I need you to go down to the sub-basement and start the dissolution spell. I will maintain the shields for as long as possible. Do you understand?”

I blink. “The dissolution? But what does-?”

And then my words freeze in my throat.

Of course.

Of course.

There's really only one thing this invasion could be about.

“Yes, Master. I understand. I'll-”

I can't help but gulp.

“I'll get it done, no matter what.”

Master Rylgen looks sad for an instant.

“Thank you, Abel. I wish-”

“It's all right, sir. I understand.”

I turn away, then stop.

“Master Rylgen? Thank you. For everything.”

He says nothing. I sprint for the stairs.

It's two weeks from my eighteenth birthday.

Neither one of us is going to live to see it.

----------------------------------------

I run down the stairs as fast as humanly possible. Faster, in fact; I'm using a hastening enchantment to speed myself up. And as I do, I think.

All of this should have been impossible.

Master Rylgen's protections are impeccable. His defenses have defenses. There should be no way for a force of this magnitude to approach his tower without setting off a single warning spell, much less surround us like this. And even if you could do such a thing – and obviously, someone has – the magical defenses on this tower should be able to hold out for months. Months. Instead, they're being torn apart in minutes. And even then, this place has multiple redundant contact channels to the Mage High Council itself. The instant an attack on this tower occurred, it should have alerted every Archmage in the country and summoned reinforcements in a matter of minutes. In short, this tower should be able to hold off any assault.

But Master Rylgen's sending me to trigger the dissolution protocols. Which means that he's completely certain.

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This isn't an illusion. This isn't a diversion. We've been attacked, overwhelmed, and cut off from all support. There's no help coming. This tower will fall.

In which case, the attackers can't be allowed to capture what lies beneath it.

I charge into the ground floor's central area and skid to a halt right in the middle of the room. I kneel, grab the amulet around my neck with my right hand, rip it from its chain, and raise it above my head. At the same time, I press my left hand on a flagstone that looks exactly the same as those around it, while speaking my passphrase aloud.

The flagstones dissolve into mist, and I fall straight down into a pit. I don't panic: this is just the next defensive layer. I scream out another three passphrases, while forming my left hand into a series of hand signs. Each phrase disarms a layer of protection, while the hand signs trigger a spell that stops my fall right before I hit the bottom of the pit.

I pick myself up and run down a spiral stairway that opens at the edge of the pit, towards the secure laboratory. As I do, I whisper the commands which enable the final trap arrays. This is it; once they activate behind me, there's no turning them off.

I'm trapped in here. Not that it'll matter for much longer.

The amulet in my hand makes a clicking noise, and I feel a prick as it stabs a needle into my palm. This is good: the stairwell's wards are keyed to recognize me and my master by our blood. If the amulet hadn't stabbed me, I would be very dead right about now. And I can't die yet. Not before I've finished my task.

I finally reach the bottom of the stairway. At the bottom, the way into the lab is barred by an iron door, also heavily cursed. I asked Master Rylgen once if he thought that hexing the door was overkill on top of everything else. He slapped me upside the head and told me that past preparations were no excuse for being sloppy. I suppose he's being proven right at the moment. Heh.

The door opens onto a circular chamber, and in the middle of it, looking as beautiful and inscrutable as ever, sits the item that's caused so much trouble.

The Rift Matrix.

It looks like a huge, uncut blue gemstone, just floating in the middle of the room. Once you get close enough, though, you can see the facets, impossibly carved into the inside of the gem, in an asymmetrical fashion that plays merry hell with one's eyes. It defies both the laws of nature and magic. The source of the former Dark Lord's power.

They're here to steal it. I'm here to destroy it.

Speed won't help me here. I cross the room to the main workbench, pick up the main research notebook and leaf through the pages. I have to be absolutely certain that I get each step exactly right, otherwise… well, put it this way: the problem has never been destroying the Rift Matrix. The problem has always been in making sure that destroying it doesn't blow up half the continent.

First step. I open a chest by the wall, pull out the mana crystals stored within, and insert them into sockets around the edges of the room. The spell patterns etched into the stone beneath my feet start glowing.

I hear a muffled explosion. If I can hear it all the way down here, through layers of stone, it must have been massive.

Second step. I take the engraved runestones from a cabinet. Each of them represents a different type of protective spell. They have to be activated in order, if their effects are to harmonize. Once the spells come together, it'll create the single strongest magical shield in all recorded history. It'll only last for a few minutes, but that should be enough.

We're not ready for this. Master Rylgen planned to carry out a month of further testing and analysis before we performed this ritual. As it stands, everything could go catastrophically wrong. More so than it already has, anyway.

Third step. I set the runestones into the control board, in order. I have to-

Through the amulet, I feel Master Rylgen's magical signature vanish.

I-

No. Continue.

Fourth step. Prep the dissolution spell. I have no idea how it works, just what it does. It'll grind the Rift Matrix down slowly, so that it's power will be released gradually rather than all at once.

The amulet blinks. They've found the access portal in the ground floor.

Fifth step. Harmonize the shield spells, link them to the spell circle in the floor. They'll be activated when the time is right.

The amulet blinks again. They're through the access portal. Too fast. I was afraid of that. They either have the best wardbreakers in the world, or they must have been scrying me as I passed through the defenses. Which, again, is impossible. Except here we are. There's no disarm codes anymore for the rest of it, though. They'll have to come through the slow, painful way.

Sixth step. Trigger the Rift Matrix itself. That's the solution Master came up with: dump all of its excess energy released by its destruction into the rift between worlds. The trick is to keep the rift open while the Matrix is being destroyed.

The Matrix is warming up. A low hum fills the room. The amulet blinks. They've made it to the bottom of the pit. Slower, but still too fast. Who the hell are these people? Has the Mage High Council gone rogue or something? Who else has the power and know-how to-

No. Focus.

On what?

There's nothing to do but wait. The spell circle is charging up. The dissolution spell is ready and waiting. The Matrix is preparing itself to tear a hole in reality. Except the enemy is going to get here before the spells are ready. There's nothing left for me to do but wait to die-

No, hang on a minute.

I've got an idea.

It's stupid and suicidal, and there's so many things that could go wrong, but it's worth a shot, right?

In a sudden burst of energy, I run over to the door and grab a satchel that I left behind when I was bringing alchemical reagents down for testing purposes. I throw the research notebook into it, then dash over to the workbench and start stuffing loose notes into it. I have no intention of leaving anything behind for these bastards to get their hands on. And if my idea pans out, I'm going to need this information eventually.

The amulet continues to let off flashes. They're coming down through the stairs. I was worried they might try to tunnel straight through the stone, but they must not want to risk breaking the Rift Matrix. The stairs are actually safer on a grand scale; they must know that Master Rylgen would never booby-trap the Rift Matrix to self-destruct if an attack occurred. Many mages would, just so that they could take their enemies with them, but Master wouldn't place his pride over half the continent.

The list of candidates for this assault is getting shorter.

I run over to the reference bookshelf and grab a few of the most important books. Then I pull out a simple firelighting wand from the alchemy table and light the remaining texts on fire. It hurts to do it (I've always loved books), but it has to be done. Then I turn and do the same to the workbench.

The amulet flashes. I'm running out of time.

I snag a few wands from a rack near the alchemy table. They're technically non-combat wands, but some of the spells on them could rip a man in half, and the others might be useful. And one of them is going to be absolutely necessary for what comes next.

The amulet flashes. They're almost to the door.

I charge over to the control board and trigger the multidimensional shield. The circle on the floor starts to glow in more colors than should be physically possible, but I can't watch. This has to be perfect. Satchel in hand, I jump inside the boundaries of the shield. And in the instant before the shield is raised, I spin around and pull out a specific wand. A disintegration wand. Normally, I'd never be allowed to touch this, but this is an emergency. I blast the control board with the wand, and it collapses into powder just before the shield cuts off the world.

I'm going to have to do the rest of this by hand.

The amulet flashes – crap, I left it out there. Well, I don't need it. They're already at the door, what else do I need to know?

I slap my hand on the Rift Matrix. This should really have been done through the control board, but I don't have a choice.

I concentrate.

The door is blasted off its hinges.

The universe tears itself apart.

This is a really stupid idea.

I trigger the dissolution spell, and jump into the abyss.