Azil

  “Come on Azil, we need to go!”

  “Be there soon.”

  My teammates kept calling me, but I stayed standing where I was. We were in a dying world we called Ca-3E, or Case, on a mission to extract powerful artifacts or individuals before their world imploded, or worse. A lot more worlds had been destabilizing recently, though just little enough to not worry the higher ups.

  In my opinion, it’s a little suspicious that the amount of worlds under our purview stayed fluctuating right under the limit, but maybe it wasn’t anything. The multiverse is notoriously awkward and hard to predict after all. Oh, there they are, calling me some more. I’d started to tune them out.

  On to the reason I was giving my teammates heart attacks. I had started to feel the pull of an artifact. Though, unlike normal ones, which felt like a harmless sense to go in a certain direction, this was like my mind was being dragged in chains. Of course, I’m stronger than a few measly chains, but it was interesting nonetheless.

  I snapped out of my thoughts as I felt Case finally start to crack. The rift my teammates had kept open closed, but I knew I still had some time before I couldn’t open a personal rift. Anyway, the tug had culminated under my feet. Or, maybe above me? Then, the house collapsed.

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  Hungry, pale chains wrapped around me from all directions. This was not just an artifact. This was Case’s pinnacle magic, trying to find a host so as to not be erased with the rest of itself. The world had come alive, using its dying breath in a final, desperate bid not to be forgotten.

  A world’s pinnacle magic generally is created by mages or their world’s equivalent. It is the strongest form of magic in that world, and can sometimes gain a mind of its own.

  In response to the hungry, sentient chains trying to devour me and the falling chunks of house trying to crush me, chains of my own sprouted around me, made of dark steel merged with shadow. My raven-hair and shadowy cloak flew about as the sound of steel on steel echoed in the space, clearing what remained of the house. What I saw stirred something in my heart.

  Case was falling apart. Its core laws that held it together faded as cities fell upward, air solidified, and mountains melted, among other things. I had paused at this saddening display for a moment, which Case immediately took advantage of. I felt something slip between my chains and strike me in the back with a deafening noise. Instantly, I felt Case ease up on its attacks, leaving me to instantly crush its remaining magic. But the damage was done. I felt Case’s pinnacle magic squirm its way to my spirit and mind, but nothing could prepare me for the pain that followed.

  The magic merged with my own, twisting and changing it, paralyzing me in the process. As I fell into unconsciousness in a rapidly collapsing world, I dimly realized that my time had run out.