It was always promised that the end of the world would come on a very nice day. The sun was shining. There was a slight breeze. The trees were almost smiling as their leaves glowed green. Even the great tower seemed more like a natural outgrowth of the rock than a spear through the heart of the world. From its core came the apprentices. It was a sunny day and for once, they cast off their books and dark crevices and found themselves in the sun. Aza taught many things and one was the importance of joy.
Truly, it was a lovely day.
The end of the world is a common discussion point for philosophers and seers of all kinds. Would be prophets claim to hold knowledge of endings both personal and vast. Such is natural. Mortality craves to know its ending because mortality is built on the presumption that to know something is to control it. This is, of course, untrue. No force could contain the being that now slipped from the shadows between worlds into this one.
Seri had come home.
Mastery doesn't come from within. It doesn't come quickly, either. In decades long past, his face had been forgotten, even by those who had saved and those he had defeated. His enemies had rotted in their graves and cells. His friends had grew old and slipped from mortality itself, leaving nothing that remained of him but whispered stories. Seri was a storied figure. Aza's greatest apprentice, they called him. They said he had defeated more dark wizards than any other. They say he had outriddled a demon when he was just a boy. They say he mastered the forbidden curses and smote the unknowable silence. It was whispered that Aza herself had slain him to curb his own growing darkness.
Of course, that last one wasn't true. He'd merely been for a walk.
He walked home now, not in the form of a bird or a star or a shadow. He came clad in the flesh of man, a perfect facsimile of what he'd left behind. He came from the depths of the sea, walking out of the waves like a thing of the deep. Perhaps there was still a hint then. It had been a long time since he'd last interacted with humans. There were too many things he had to remember to hide. The way his tentacles coiled beneath the surface, the way his teeth were slightly too sharp, the way his shadows raged at his command. Maybe the first few people to see him saw him true as they watched him walk out of the sea, as they felt the sun darken as he passed, as they felt the depths of his hungry soul as a chill down their spines.
His name was not Seri anymore. It was Solroxoth now and he wrote that on the stars themselves. He carved it through the orbits of planets that danced maddeningly through the skies. He bore it in the way he licked his lips hungrily. He was a terrible approximation of humanity. A reflection of their capacities. He hadn't been a human for a very long time.
With him came the end of the world, although most would not realize it for some time.
Aza's many apprentices felt it. They felt it as a slow darkening, a slow outing of the lights. They felt in the way Aza's form today was old and small, built for fear and regret. They felt it in the way the door to Seri's old room finally cracked ajar, the lock unsealing itself eagerly. They felt it in the way the sunlight was cold when it should've been warm and the sky was dark when it should've been light.
Solxoroth walked across the world slowly. He enjoyed the feel of it. He enjoyed the way the dirt felt beneath his feat and the dull satisfaction of the journey ending.
A crowd had gathered at the base of Aza's tower. They could feel it too. The apprentices stood in a rough crowd, uncertain and small. Surrounding them were the common people, afraid and anxious. Before them all stood a coalition of monarchs, surrounded by their finest knights. They smiled joylessly. It was their duty to confront the interloper.
Solroxoth strode into the clearing an unassuming figure. He was small, garbed in a simple cloak and boots. He was covered with scars and small things. Nothing in him betrayed wisdom. Everything in him betrayed danger. He carried no weapon but for a simple spear. Approaching the rulers, he plunged it into the earth, tip down.
"Hail stranger," said Queen Rin, heir to the throne of Good King Balios. "State your purpose."
Solroxoth laughed. His laugh was a terrible thing. It was ice cold and angry, a vicious snake that wormed into brains to feed on happy memories. He made no movement, and yet the knights found their swords rusting in their hands, their armours peeling away to reveal the flesh beneath.
"Don't you know who I am?" asked Solroxoth.
The crowd looked at each other uncertainly. One of Aza's apprentices stood forwards. "Are you a god?" she asked.
"I could pluck the gods from the skies and prostrate them at your feet, should I so wish it," Solroxoth replied.
"Then surely you must be a demon," she said.
"Perhaps I stole a name from one, but a name does not make a being."
"Perhaps then you are some kind of impossibility."
Solroxoth considered for a long moment. The monarchs murmured to themselves, impressed with the courage of this tiny apprentice.
Finally, Solroxoth replied. "That would depend on what you consider impossible."
The apprentice raised her hands. "Do you consider yourself a wizard?"
The reply was ice cold and level. "Do you?"
The apprentice held steady, ignoring the numbness in her limbs and the cold settling into her spine. Her shadow was growing teeth and she was doing her best not to look. "If this is a riddle, perhaps you could deign to give me a clue."
Solroxoth smiled, his teeth a little too flat and his eyes slightly too big. "I am that which you could be, but never shall be. I am that which you feel in yourself in your darkest moments, but never touch. I am forgotten in all ways but the most important. I am immortal in that I am destined to die. Once I stood where you did. Now I stand here."
"Then I name you," said the apprentice. "I name you that which you were." She said something that was maybe a name. It would've been a name had Solroxoth not reached forwards to pluck his old name from her lips, crumpling it into a ball in his hand. He squished it until it was all but forgotten from the assembled crowd.
The apprentice brought her hand to her mouth. She tried to say the name again and all that came out was a horrible scratching noise.
"My name," said Solroxoth, "is Solroxoth. I am a sun-eater and a demon-slayer. I flew with birds and crawled with worms. I fought death itself and won. I am the toothless, the shadow weaver, the form master. I am the trickster, the riddle solver, and the soul taker. I bear my spear and my tools. I wear the flesh of beings that do not exist. I am Aza's greatest apprentice and I return to prove my worth to her."
Aza was there too, in such a subtle way that it was almost as if she'd always been there. She smiled and quieted the gasps of the crowd with a wave of her hand. Time itself spun down at her command, colour leeching out of the world as it froze in place. The crowd stood as statues. In the distance, birds hung in the air. A falling leaf paused just above the ground, aching to finish its flight.
Solroxoth betrayed no expression at his former master. He studied her anew, in a way he never could before. He was the similarities between them, the way their souls were perfect mirrors of each other. They had both walked the same road and they both knew it.
"Solroxoth," said Aza gently. Her face was calm, etched into an unbearable peace. "When we last met, I promised I would ask you a question."
"Surely you can see that I have answered." As it went with them, he rarely needed to repeat his lessons to her.
"Be that as it may, there is power in ritual. Before I consider you to have graduated, I must ask."
Solroxoth shifted slightly, his hand landing on his spear. The shaft was carved with intricate runes, those that marked the staff of an ancient and powerful wizard. "Well then," he said. "Ask."
Aza smiled a little and gripped her staff as well. Solroxoth saw now how she was just as fake as he was. Her carefully cultivated humanity was an illusion. Both of them were so far beyond that it was but a meaningless approximation.
"Solroxoth," said Aza. "What is magic?"
"Nothing," said Solroxoth. "It's made up. It doesn't exist."
"Correct," said Aza. It was correct. She paused for a moment, as a sadness flickered through her soul. "But can you prove it?"
Solroxoth smiled wide. "Test me then, master."
Aza raised her staff. Solroxoth raised his spear. They didn't need to speak anymore. They both knew what had to happen.
Aza threw Solroxoth through the world itself, casting his essence into void. He let her because it was bait. Outside of physical space, he could twist, breaking free of his flesh to writhe and gasp, a mass of darkness the size of a galaxy. Aza hovered before him, a tiny morsel before the storm. But that was bait too, because Aza was not alone. Uncountable trillions of her descended, until Solroxoth was the one surrounded. As one, they opened their hands, each clutching a stay, and focused all that cosmic power into a trillion blinding rays of light.
Solroxoth saw defeat and twisted himself tighter and tighter until the fabric of nothingness tore at his weight and he was skipping between universe. As a mass of darkness, sometimes in the shape of a bird and sometimes in the shape of a man, he dodged from world to world. Aza stalked his every move, effortlessly following his footsteps. She hounded him with light and power, pulling at his fabric and tugging his heels.
But this too was but a trap. In dozens of dead universes at once, Solroxoth spun and adorned his most powerful form. As a great beast, his claws slipped inside Aza's flesh and shredded it open, splattering her blood over the vast wastelands.
Aza's spirit laughed. She wasn't in the flesh. She wasn't in the air either. She was the very rock and she was leaping upwards, magma and animate stone binding Solroxoth's form and pulling it downwards, squeezing it tighter and tighter.
Solroxoth laughed because he wasn't in that body anymore, abandoned the instant it was a liability. Once again massive, he plunged a massive tentacle through the core of the world and smashed Aza into millions of pieces. She died then. But that was a small loss. Aza grabbed time itself and threw it the other way, rewinding until her body knitted itself back together and Solroxoth drew back for the strike. He was vulnerable then and she moved to strike.
But Solroxoth wasn't bound by time either. He slammed a heavy blow into the spinning wheel of entropy and split the timeline in two. In one world, Aza spun everything back and broke him. In the other, he gripped the wheel so tight she couldn't budge it as she passed from the world.
They stared at each other from across the rift in the flow of time. They both laughed. Smiling they rejoined in battle. They fought in countless ways. They fought in the ways of beings who understood the truth of the universe. They fought as gods throwing universes at each other and they fought as ants throwing their tiny bodies at each other.
They fought long and hard and long past the point that Solroxoth had proven himself. For this was not violence. This was play, the true play of two beings who had an equal for the first time in longer than either could remember. Neither could die and so they could be violent if they wanted. Neither could live and so they could be gentle if they wanted that too. They danced around each other, through reality itself. They skipped across time and in the eyes of gods. They laughed as they played.
And Aza saw in Solroxoth what he truly was. She saw the darkness in him then. She remembered that long ago she had seen her death at the hands of her greatest apprentice. She remembered the way that shadows clung to him, the way he danced over the lives of mortals as mortals might dance over dirt.
And she did nothing, because in truth she had been lonely. For the first time in the trillions of years she had stalked between worlds, she had an equal. For the very first time since she was young, she was not alone.
And so when they returned home, they were smiling and laughing. They found the crowd as they had left them, not moved an inch. Solroxoth smiled and waved his hands and time resumed its inexorable spin.
"This is Solroxoth," said Aza. "He was the greatest of my apprentice. Now, I recognize him as my equal."
Solroxoth and Aza bowed at each other.
The crowd stared. They could almost sense the hunger radiating from Solroxoth. But Aza was master here and they had no choice. They parted to let him pass as the two of them left to do whatever it was that the gods above the gods did.
Solroxoth smiled, his teeth clutched in his open palm. It was always promised that the end of the world would come on a very nice day. And oh, it was such a lovely day.