"But thereafter he shall suffer whatever Fate and the dread Spinners spun with her thread for him at his birth, when his mother bore him."

  - Homer

  All sensation ended for Taliesin after he fell through the gate. He tumbled through the void beyond. This was no realm so far as he could determine, nor was it a dimensional space. It lacked stars and moons, air and gravity. The agony from his wounds stopped instantly, as did his ability to breath. Despite this physical change he was not unduly distressed, for his need to inhale ended as well. Taliesin tried to shout, but he could make no sound. The only result of his silent screams was the expulsion of what air he did have from his lungs.

  Curious, he thought to himself. I’d expected more from death.

  How long he floated, he could not determine, nor could he tell if he was moving or not. Taliesin had been flung through the gate at a terrible speed, and he suspected that he had earned further fatal injuries in the explosion. Despite having somehow survived the battle, Taliesin couldn’t help but try to understand the Void. He’d thought of it as ‘the void’ at first, as in devoid of life or meaning, but the longer he drifted, the more he came to understand it as “the Void” as in a place deliberately devoid of life but with some deeper purpose in the cosmos where all realms must have sprung. Then Taliesin began to wonder if this was the fancy of a sensory-deprived mind trying to make sense out of nothing at all.

  This place defied the laws of physics, so any momentum he may have carried into it could have bled away already, or he was still hurtling along at the speed of destruction, unknowingly flying away forever. This consideration nagged at Taliesin for a while once he tired of contemplating the Void. At least there was no pain. Then he realized he was still thinking of the Void as a proper noun, so his subconscious must have settled on that side of the debate, rather than accepting that he might have started down the path towards madness.

  Boredom set in swiftly, for without pain, hunger or concerns, Taliesin had nothing to occupy his mind. He could not see, for though there was a dim glow that precluded absolute darkness, it was insufficient to even look at his own limbs. It was the complete deprivation of all his senses at its very worst.

  He stared into the gloom, trying to see… anything. He hoped that with enough effort it might yield some clue as to his location and to see if anything at all existed around him. After some time, the void seemed to respond to Taliesin’s desire. He could make out the dim glow of the aether around him. It was diffused and disparate, the stuff of chaos and the unformed. In his own world, such aether would flare into uncontrolled destruction. In this place, there was nothing to destroy, nor any universe to reject the nothingness.

  Despite this seeming breakthrough, Taliesin wasn’t certain that he was truly looking at aether, or if instead he’d simply imagined it. Instead, he replayed that final battle, and his hasty runes that he’d sketched in his blood. He could not understand why the portal had caught on the Void rather than just collapsing. Over and over he studied what he’d done, until he couldn’t be sure if he was even recalling it correctly. He pored over his hazy memory, but could find no explanation as to why the power overload had dumped him here. Taliesin had counted on the excess energy to disintegrate the Gate and the portal as one. The explosion was a beneficial measure of spite. He’d expected it to kill him, but after it had accomplished his goal of protecting the people as he’d sworn to do.

  Eventually Taliesin came to the conclusion that he’d succeeded, and his people… He stopped his thoughts to correct his train of thought. Duke Arthur’s people were safe, lost in the endless sea of realms. Should he ever somehow be able to recreate the Gate, he’d still never find that world again. If he couldn’t do it with all his decades of expertise, then Balidar had no chance at even building a new Gate without any of Taliesin’s work left behind to analyze, much less finding Avalon.

  With that settled, at least in his own mind, Taliesin was once again alone with his own thoughts - exactly the last place he wanted to be. He had no projects to complete, no research to consider. He was left with only his own memories to contemplate, and many of them came unbidden and unwelcome.

  Memories of his dead wife and son flooded him, and for the first time in decades he had no choice but to face his grief. Initially he felt wracked with pain - mentally at least. Yet reopening these old wounds after so much time felt more like he was airing out his feelings more than the raw agony of recent loss. Taliesin instead found himself remembering the good years that preceded the tragic end. Rather than knife sharp wounds, these memories were now healed over by time and distance. A sense of bittersweet relief replaced the stress of avoidance, and the far more recent grief of watching his world destroyed while he stood helpless at his scrying pool gave him a sense of perspective.

  Age and wisdom replaced the emotional highs and lows of youth and this exercise turned that old grief into acceptance. His tragedy was but one of countless millions in the grand scheme of his now dead world. Taliesin had loved his wife and son, well and truly, but they would not have wanted him to grieve for as long as he had. A final outwelling of emotion would have brought tears, if he could still feel his body. Instead, he was left only with the emotional catharsis and warm memories of his beloved family.

  Eventually, Taliesin’s thoughts wandered back to his wounds. He’d had no way to sense time. He could have been mired in his thoughts for seconds or years. He wondered if he was simply a soul now, untethered to flesh and life. Was his body disintegrated by the nothingness that surrounded him? Would Taliesin just fade away as well, diffusing into the unformed essence that he’d been hurtled into? He hoped this wasn’t the situation, for dying was one thing. Losing one’s soul had a permanence he refused to accept.

  Staring into the Void had brought Taliesin some understanding of himself. He’d been just one of a network of wizards who had tried, and failed, to defend against Balidar and his armies. A widower and loyal follower, he had long since surrendered himself into Duke Arthur’s service, working long, grueling hours rather than face the ghosts of his family and his empty apartments at the top of his tower. Taliesin realized that he had lost an important piece of life by not actually living it, and vowed that should he get that chance, he’d not make that mistake again.

  Even still Taliesin could not bring himself to regret his choices, for he had been able to develop the Gate that allowed him to save thousands. The Merlin’s raw power might allow him to cast dimensional spells that let him jump from realm to realm, but Taliesin’s research had taken him far beyond what the Merlin could do. Taliesin had saved tens of thousands, while the Merlin had simply moved on, unable to take anyone with him and unwilling to die alongside them.

  Now that Taliesin had found peace with his grief, he accepted that Ganieda and Ambrose were either in the Infinite Heavens with Jesu Invictus or reincarnated into a new life. The second choice was heretical, an idea of the bodhisattvas in the far East, but Taliesin found the idea far more comforting than eternal life in an endless array of heavens praising Jesu. His current experience led him to think that heretical idea may have more resemblance to the realities of a thousand thousand realms.

  It occurred to Taliesin then that perhaps he could try using magic. For someone who’d been a master wizard for so many decades, it was not surprising that he decided to try a spell. Rather, the surprise came in realizing it had taken him so long to think of experimenting. He could not sense his own power, for he could not feel his body. Nor could he cast aloud or with gestures, for how could Taliesin be certain he spoke correctly or made the right movements? To his fortune, he knew many cantrips sufficiently well that he could cast them without any of these crutches. As naturally as breathing, Taliesin cast a simple [Orb of Light].

  A brilliance lit around Taliesin and gave immediate contrast to the endless nothing. His eyes watered, the first sensation he’d felt since arriving, either from the sharp light or the emotion of finally seeing light once again. The feeling numbed instantly, and he could see nothing for there was nothing to see. Matter and physics simply didn’t exist here, so light could not exist either. Instead, Taliesin saw the lines of aether that infused and made up the spell he’d cast. He had no words for how beautiful it was. A mixture of joy and wonder flooded his mind, overwhelming him until the spell lapsed. After he regained control of his emotions, he re-cast the spell. Taliesin studied the arcane structure of this simple cantrip, and it was a revelation.

  Taliesin had, along with every other wizard in the world, been operating using the collective knowledge of hundreds of generations of spellcasters. Things worked because wizards knew they worked, but not why. Taliesin stood at the end of a thousand years of trial and error that had refined magic in his world into a few dozen styles of spellcasting and creation, but with little more than conjecture and educated guesses as to why it did. Here in this place that wasn’t a place, where he was blind and could not feel, Taliesin could finally see.

  The threads that made up the spell wove a complex geometric structure of interlocking shapes of aether working in concert. A bright sphere in the center was the power source of the spellform, with all other structures stemming out from it in multiple directions. The sphere slowly dimmed over the course of the spell, which Taliesin knew could last for hours. Yet at the same time, as he watched, he could see inefficiencies in this simple casting. What am I looking at? How had it formed like that?

  Taliesin re-cast [Orb of Light] next to the last one, but slowly. It cost him a bit more aether, but he was able to watch as the spell came to life piece by piece. Each portion of the casting soon corresponded to a portion of the spell. He created the power sphere, then the structure, before finally adding in the interlocking geometric shapes. Again and again, he cast, learning as he went. Taliesin felt a giddy joy in the simple act of learning once more. It had been decades since he’d had such a transcendental experience with magic, and he was getting it from a minor cantrip!

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  Time passed.

  Taliesin worked his way through all of his cantrips, studying them, refining them and learning, always learning. He felt like he had understood nothing before he had arrived here. This type of spellforming was more efficient and more natural than wizardry, and Taliesin felt as though he was directly accessing the raw stuff of the arcane.

  A deep desire rooted in him to take notes, but could not, for he had only his own mind to work with. Taliesin had spent a lifetime as a scholar and researcher before Balidar came, so his own mental faculties would have to do. He absorbed himself into research to stave off the inevitable madness. Perhaps my research is my madness? Taliesin lost time to that question as he tried to determine if he’d simply lost his mind and imagined everything. After some considerable debate with himself that also might have been construed as insanity, Taliesin concluded that he had not succumbed, for his studies were too internally consistent.

  More time passed.

  Taliesin reconstructed every spell he could remember. Many times he wished for his Celestial Grimoire and its hundreds of spells that he’d spent a lifetime collecting. Most were useless to him at the end, superseded by better or more powerful variations. All of them could have contributed to his new learning. Without the grimoire they were gone, and he mourned that loss of knowledge.

  Instead of wallowing in self pity over his lost tome, Taliesin worked on his crowning achievement, the spell construct that had saved his… Duke Arthur’s people. The Gate was a complicated blend of enchanting and spellcrafting, with hundreds of individual spells and runic engravings that worked in concert to pierce the veil between worlds. It had only been possible because of the artifact, the Orb of Eternity, providing incredible amounts of power, and he’d had to use the Orb to charge it for months before he could even test it.

  I could do so much now, thought Taliesin excitedly, thinking back on his life’s work.

  Taliesin had spent years working on the project, and he had filled shelves with his notebooks, as well as entire workshops with prototype enchantments. Here he had only the theories he could recall and a half-dozen key spells. It mattered not at all. Taliesin had time and nothing else to do. He set about re-creating his signature achievements, but with improved understanding and many refinements.

  Linking spaces allowed Taliesin to create shortcuts between locations on the same plane of existence. He had summoned Excalibur for Duke Arthur using such a shortcut. The Gate linked two different realms, which was several magnitudes higher in difficulty. As he worked, Taliesin found countless flaws and inefficiencies in his original design. He even started wondering how the Gate had worked in the first place.

  Taliesin reconstructed several of the spells into the newer, more efficient spellforms, before marveling at the flexibility of the casting. He still had many more to go, and would need to do some serious thinking about how to work enchantments to match.

  Something brushed his consciousness.

  If Taliesin hadn’t been so hypersensitive to aether, and so deprived of any other senses or sensations, he’d never have noticed. It was the barest of touches, like passing through a soap bubble. Only it felt as if he’d passed into the bubble and was inside of it somehow.

  Taliesin could feel the aether was different here. It was more ordered, less chaotic. He couldn’t pin down why he could tell, it felt instinctive, similar to how one could feel like they were being watched when no one was visible on the street.

  Something had claimed this space. Not someone. That much, he knew with certainty. There was no intelligence in the presence that touched him—no will, no curiosity, no malice. It simply was.

  The realization settled into him like a puzzle piece falling into place. It did not come from logic, nor from deduction. It came from recognition. The moment Taliesin understood the truth, the presence affirmed it. A quiet, undeniable confirmation.

  And the presence confirmed Taliesin’s existence at the same time.

  From the unordered chaos around him, a tendril of aether formed and snaked towards Taliesin. He who could see nothing but aether could see this new ethereal creation reach out towards him, and could not dodge or avoid it. The magic spell touched him, and the sensation of pain radiated from his very soul.

  Taliesin screamed silently, for even if his jaw moved there was no air to carry the noise or to fill his lungs. The tendril jerked away and dissipated as if surprised.

  Then a new tendril formed, a larger, more menacing one. Taliesin instinctively cast a defensive spell. He shouted “[Phantom Armor]” as he cast, and blind as he was could not see the end result other than the aether spellform that constructed the pieces of mystical armor around his body.

  The tentacle of alien aether reached out and probed the phantom armor around him, with a strength that soon shattered the spell. Taliesin braced himself for pain, but the strange magic vanished along with his own. Instead, he could feel the presence once more, only now he could feel its understanding like….

  Once more, he had a clear comprehension that the presence was no rational being that could be spoken to. It was merely was–like an enchantment with a given function. Now that being had seen and understood him, it accepted that Taliesin was in the Void.

  Two new spells formed, and Taliesin understood this was offered to all beings who entered the Void. He didn’t understand either, at first, for they seemed to do nothing at all. Both were incredibly complex magic circles, beautifully constructed with neat modules of power and logic, with detailed logic gates, looping sigils and geometric shapes, all tying back to create a specific function.

  What that function was, Taliesin did not understand. But he had time, for the presence did not seem to care how long he took, and he had nowhere else to be. It was a nice change from recreating old spells from memory at least.

  The first, more complex puzzle spell was the one Taliesin chose to start with. Ironically, because it was complicated, it had more individual modules that were simpler to puzzle out. Taliesin was able to break them down piece by piece, and understand what their function was and why.

  The larger puzzle was a way for Taliesin to connect to the presence. If he was able to create the correct spell, and pour enough aether into it as to power his old Gate a thousand times over, the spell would share aether and information back to him at will. If he failed… its powerful aether would destroy him. It seemed too good to be true - except for the fact that he could never come up with that kind of power, and if he did, he would die trying to use it. It would take... realization took hold and the presence confirmed it.

  This was the divine interface.

  Gods and goddesses interacted with the presence through this spell, and easily had that kind of aether to throw around, especially since it was less a cost than an exchange. The presence had no need of aether, it just needed a way to connect with the gods at a higher level.

  Taliesin turned his attention to the smaller, simpler spell. Now that he had figured out the harder puzzle, this one was child’s play. It was a mortal interface, and required far less to cast. At first, he fed it aether, but that merely activated it. After awhile, the power bled out and into the Void, leaving the interface dormant once again.

  That left creating a spell circle of his own. Taliesin used both puzzles as templates, and reverse engineered a new spellform. This was similar to the divination spells he’d used in his old world to watch the inevitable tide of doom cross the planet. He shuddered at the memory, but continued anyway. What else did he have?

  A feeling of correctness confirmed it when the spell completed successfully, and the interface unlocked and powered on for him for the first time. Taliesin was suddenly rocked with a powerful vision, as his natural talent with divination activated.

  Powerful deities tore through the air. Entire pantheons clashed. They threw attacks at each other so powerful the grounds beneath them were shattered. Cataclysmic typhoons and tidal waves were swept across the land as fire and volcanoes blasted from the mountains.

  Below these warring gods, terrified humans huddled in their villages and towns, looking at the skies with fear. Dying gods fell around them as their cities burned. In other places, where battles had already come and gone, they were so devoid of life not even insects remained.

  Taliesin jerked from his vision to a feeling of recognition. He had accessed the Akashic Records, the universal collection of all human knowledge and belief in the world. What world amongst the endless multitudes he’d discovered, he had no way of knowing, but Taliesin could at least hope, now, that his time in the Void had an end in sight.

  With this new comprehension of where he was and what he’d discovered, Taliesin’s experiments took on a strange turn. The interface wasn’t helpful for direct knowledge, as it required a level of mastery of divination he simply did not have. Rather, he got much better results by returning to his practical spellcasting.

  To that end, when he cast a spell, he would know when it was correct or when he erred. The Akashic Records seemed to confirm accuracy when you were within them. Taliesin couldn’t just absorb the knowledge by floating in it, nor could he understand where it came from. Rather, it confirmed information that he rationalized, and showed him he was correct when he demonstrated his spells, which were the only thing he could actually do in this Void. The interface spell seemed to be the only way to proactively seek information, and that was akin to trying to drink an ocean in one gulp.

  Did his old world have one of these records also? Was this what Balidar had wanted to consume in the end? Taliesin couldn’t directly extract information from the Akashic Records; perhaps only the gods could draw from it directly. Yes, only the gods can draw from it directly, thought Taliesin after the Void confirmed his supposition. The constant distraction of confirmations makes it difficult to follow a train of thought.

  But if he couldn’t query it, he could certainly use it to work on his spellforms. In fact, the existence of the Akashic Records and the ability of deities to interact with it to gain knowledge meant that it should be possible to figure out a way to do the same. Taliesin smiled inwardly when the Records confirmed his theory. With rising excitement, he knew he could create incredible spells here. First he would have to -

  “How did you get here, little lost soul?”

  Taliesin startled at the sudden voice in his head. Where did that come from? Why now? Am I finally going mad?

  “You’re not mad, child. Come, let’s fish you out now.”

  Strangely, at some level Taliesin was mildly annoyed at the interruption.

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