The Last Battle

The demon lord Malachar stood at the edge of reality itself, his form flickering between shadow and fire. Behind him, the rift pulsed with hungry light, a wound in the fabric of existence that led somewhere unspeakable. Before him stood two figures: a young woman with sun-gold hair and a sword blessed by seven gods, and an older man in patched traveling robes who looked like he might have wandered in by accident.

"You cannot stop what has been foretold," Malachar said, his voice carrying the weight of centuries of prophecy. "The opening has begun. The age of mortals ends tonight."

Elara the Brightblade raised her weapon. Divine light cascaded along its edge, illuminating the floating stones of the shattered temple where she and Theron made their final stand. She was everything a hero should be. You might know the type, the one that is fierce, determined, and burning with righteous purpose. The prophecy had named her as the one who would save the world, and she had never once doubted that destiny.

Theron, the wizard accompanying her, watched her prepare to charge. He had watched hundreds like her over the centuries: the blessed champions, the chosen ones, the destined saviors. They all had that same fire in their eyes, that same certainty that this moment was what they had been born for.

He wondered, briefly, what it would be like to live without constant heroism.

"Theron," Elara said without looking back, "can you hold the rift stable?"

"I can manage," he said, his attention elsewhere.

The truth was that he could do considerably more than manage. He could feel the threads of reality straining around the portal, could sense exactly where to apply pressure to seal it entirely. Three centuries of magical study had given him an intuitive understanding of cosmic forces that most wizards spent entire lifetimes trying to achieve. He could close the rift in perhaps thirty seconds if he devoted his full attention to it.

But that would mean leaving Elara alone against Malachar. And while the prophecy claimed she was destined to strike the killing blow, prophecies sometimes had a tendency to be less literal than their interpreters assumed. Usually, "destined" meant "probable, assuming sufficient support." The number of chosen ones Theron had seen die because someone took their destiny too literally was not a number he enjoyed counting.

Why was Theron in a supporting role rather than being a hero, you might ask. The reason for that was the fame that came along with slaying the proverbial, or sometimes more real than many would like, dragon. Heroes were celebrated all over the world, and Theron didn't want any of that. However, he knew that people needed their heroes, and that is why he had chosen to be the forever sidekick.

So he stood behind her, one hand raised toward the screaming rift, the other holding his walking staff in a grip that looked casual but was far from it. He fed power into the breach slowly, delicately, a trickle rather than a flood, leaving most of his attention free to intervene if needed.

Elara launched herself at the demon lord.

The battle that followed was, objectively speaking, magnificent. Theron had to acknowledge at least that much. Elara moved like liquid lightning, her blessed blade carving arcs of holy fire through the air. Malachar countered with shadow and flame, reality bending around his ancient form as he fought with the power accumulated over thousands of years. Stone shattered. Light clashed against darkness. The very air burned.

After a while, Theron watched it all with the detached attention of someone observing a particularly well-played game of chess. He was one of the few people who had seen demon lords before. In his mind, they were all show, no real challenge.

He noted when Elara's guard dropped slightly on her left side after her third combination strike. He noticed when Malachar began favoring attacks that targeted that weakness. He calculated the probability of the demon landing a critical blow in the next thirty seconds (seventeen percent, rising). When that probability crossed twenty percent, he made a small gesture with his staff, and Malachar's next strike went slightly wide, deflected by a whisper of force that the demon lord would dismiss as a momentary fluctuation in the local magical field.

Elara didn't notice. She was in the grip of battle fury, every cell in her body devoted to the single purpose of destroying the evil before her. Theron envied that simplicity sometimes.

The fight continued. Elara gained ground, lost it, gained it again. The temple shook. The rift howled. Theron fed power to the breach and made several more small interventions that Elara would never know about, each one just subtle enough to be mistaken for a coincidence or divine favor.

Then Elara found her opening. Malachar overextended on a sweeping blow, and she drove her blessed blade straight through his chest.

The demon lord looked down at the sword protruding from his form. His eyes met Theron's over Elara's shoulder.

"You could have stopped me at any time," Malachar said, smoke beginning to pour from his wounds. "I felt it. The power you hold back. You could have ended this in moments."

Theron said nothing.

"Why?" The demon's voice was fading, his form dissolving. "Why let her take the glory? Why not simply destroy me yourself?"

Elara looked back at Theron, confusion flickering across her features.

"Because," Theron said quietly, "it was her destiny."

Malachar laughed, a sound like breaking glass, and dissolved into ash. The rift screamed one last time, its anchor to this reality severed with the demon's death. Theron released the power he'd been holding back and sealed it with a gesture so casual it looked almost like a wave goodbye.

And then it was over. The stones settled with a loud crash. The light faded, letting darkness swallow everything. Elara stood in the ruins of the temple, her blessed sword dripping with dissolution, breathing hard and glowing with the aftermath of victory.

She was radiant. She was triumphant. She was everything a hero was supposed to be at the moment of their greatest victory.

Theron felt nothing at all.

No, that wasn't quite right. He felt something, but it wasn't triumph, relief, or even satisfaction. It was a kind of hollowness, a vast empty space where emotions should have been. He had felt it before. He had been feeling it more and more frequently over the past century.

"We did it," Elara breathed, turning to him. Her eyes were bright with tears of joy. "Theron, we did it. The prophecy was true. We saved the world."

"You saved the world," he corrected gently. "I was just a humble assistant."

"Don't be modest." She laughed, sheathing her sword. "I couldn't have done it without you. When that portal nearly broke through, when Malachar had me cornered, I felt something push back. That was you, wasn't it?"

She was more perceptive than he'd given her credit for. Most heroes never noticed his interventions at all. But like all the other heroes, she chose to ignore things that contradicted her heroism and seemed to ignore Malachar's last words.

"Perhaps," he said.

Elara studied him for a moment. Some of the joy faded from her expression, replaced by a more searching look. "You don't seem happy. We just defeated a demon lord. We closed a portal to the abyss. You should be celebrating."

Theron looked around at the ruined temple, at the settling dust and fading magical residue. Tomorrow, word would spread like wildfire that the demon lord Malachar was destroyed, the rift sealed, the world saved once again. Elara would return to her kingdom as a hero. Songs would be written. Statues would be commissioned. The grateful masses would cheer. The whole package.

And then, in a few decades, something else would arise. Another dark lord, another apocalyptic threat, another prophesied hero. Theron had seen the cycle repeat so many times he'd lost count. The faces changed and sometimes even the names changed from your generic hero names. Still, the fundamental pattern remained eternal.

"I have been happy," he said. "Many times. I expect I will be happy again. But at this particular moment, I find myself simply... tired."

Elara's brow furrowed. "Tired? From the battle? You barely exerted yourself."

"Not that kind of tired."

Before she could press further, a new light bloomed at the center of the ruined temple. It was a portal, but this time not a threatening one. This portal was the extraction point, the magical doorway that would take them back to the capital where anxious people waited for either celebration or funeral.

"The exit," Elara said. "Come on. Everyone will be waiting."

She started toward the portal, then stopped when she realized Theron wasn't following. She turned back.

"Theron?"

He stood at the edge of the temple, looking not at the portal but at the mountains beyond. The sun was setting, painting the peaks in shades of gold and rose. It was, he suddenly realized, genuinely beautiful. He had not stopped to notice a sunset in... how long? A decade? Two?

"I don't think I'll be joining you," he said, surprising even himself.

"What do you mean?"

He wasn't sure. The decision felt less like a choice and more like something that had already happened, something he was only now becoming aware of. He had been walking toward this moment for centuries without knowing it.

"I have been a wizard for three hundred years," he said slowly, working out the words as he spoke them. "I have defeated dark lords and sealed rifts and prevented apocalypses. I have watched heroes rise and fall and be forgotten. I have done great and terrible things." He paused. "And I still have no idea what I actually want from life."

"What do you want?" Elara looked bewildered. "You want to save people, obviously. To protect the innocent. To fight evil. Nobody could do what you have been doing for so long without actually wanting it."

"Do I?" He turned the question over in his mind. "I have certainly done those things. But wanting implies choice. I'm not certain I ever chose this life so much as simply... continued it. One threat after another, one hero after another, one world-saving after another. I have been a wizard so long I've forgotten what it means to be anything else."

The portal flickered, waiting.

"You're scaring me," Elara said quietly. "This doesn't sound like you."

"That's rather the point." He offered her a small, tired smile. "I have been 'me' for a very long time. Perhaps it's time to discover what else I might be."

He turned and began walking toward the mountains. The setting sun warmed his face.

"Theron, wait!" Elara's voice was urgent. "Where are you going? What am I supposed to tell them?"

He considered the question. What was he supposed to say? That the legendary Theron the Worldkeeper had grown tired of keeping worlds? That three centuries of heroism had left him feeling less like a person and more like a function?

"Tell them whatever you like," he called back without turning around. "Tell them I died gloriously in the battle if it makes for a better story. Tell them I retired to a tower to study some ancient magical object. Tell them I went to find a really excellent cup of tea." He paused. "Or tell them the truth: that I simply decided to walk somewhere, and I'm not entirely sure where, and that I'm rather looking forward to not knowing."

"Will I see you again?"

The question made him stop. He turned, looking at the young hero silhouetted against the portal's light. She looked very small suddenly, very young. He had known her for six years, had watched her grow from a nervous girl into a genuine champion, and had come to respect her in ways he hadn't expected.

"I don't know," he said honestly. "But I hope so."

The portal flickered again, more demanding.

"Go," he said. "They're waiting for their hero. You've earned this."

She hesitated a moment longer, and he saw her wrestling with the choice. Part of her wanted to follow him, he realized. Part of her understood, even if she couldn't articulate it, what he was feeling. But she had a destiny still to fulfill, a role still to play. Her story wasn't finished yet.

"Goodbye, Theron," she said finally. "And... thank you. For everything."

She stepped through the portal and was gone.

Theron stood alone in the ruins of the temple, watching the last light fade from the sky. The mountains were dark shapes now, mysterious and oddly inviting. He had no supplies, no plan, no destination. He had nothing but his robes, his staff, and three centuries' worth of experience on how to fight monsters and whatnot. Still, he had no particular desire to use any of the skills he was known for.

For the first time in longer than he could remember, he felt something that might have been anticipation.

He quieted his mind and began to walk toward the unknown.