The Admiral shook his hand before motioning for Norman to take a seat. “Sorry for asking you to come all this way. I know it’s a hassle with the expansion but I thought this would be better done in person. How’s the family by the way?”

The Admiral looked to have aged twenty years in the last seven. Considering how much stress he was under, it was no surprise.

“They’re good, but you didn’t call me here for small talk, did you?”

“No, I didn’t,” the man seemed to deflate. “Here is the latest projection.” Norman accepted the paper and began looking it over.

By now the collapses were occurring every three months. It was nerve-wracking every time the alarms went off but things were holding together. He always had a bad feeling that something would fail, that the mitigation towers wouldn’t be up to the challenge and the entire town of Ashvale would be reduced to rubble. Every time it didn’t happen, he was relieved. It didn’t mean that other places were as lucky though. He had witnessed the destruction that occurred to the land beyond the towers. It was bad, and only getting worse.

There was one section in Normenia that now sported a small mountain range. And it grew with each consecutive collapse. Despite all that, his country was faring far better than some others. He glanced up at the Admiral before going back to reading.

The Commonwealth was in shambles. Being so spread out was turning out to be a detriment to them, even with all their pre-collapse earthquake measures, it wasn’t enough. They had eventually implemented mitigation towers as well, but they couldn’t simply surround their towns like Normenia could. So they went about it in a different way by making safe zones. It's not like anyone had the time or resources to protect an entire country.

Norman stopped reading. His heart rate spiked and he read the line again and again. “No. No, no, no. This can’t be right.”

“I’m afraid it is,” the Admiral said in resignation. “Our efforts weren’t enough. We weren’t fast enough.”

“I don’t believe that, I can’t believe that. Where is the upper bound estimate?”

The Admiral took in a deep breath before responding. “That is the most optimistic timeline.”

Norman’s face blanched at that and he read down the page. Below where he stopped was the other timeline, the lower bound. It gave them less than a year. The first timeline estimated a year and a half. Only half a year shy of the towers charging in full. The report slipped from his numb hands and fell to the floor. Why? How? He didn’t doubt the numbers. The Admiral’s people had been pretty accurate with their estimates. He just had trouble comprehending them.

The Admiral was speaking, but Norman’s mind was elsewhere. He couldn’t believe all their work and effort was meaningless. Two years of tireless work for what? Just to delay the end?

“I haven’t notified anyone else of these findings yet,” The Admiral’s words began to register with Norman for the first time since his bombshell revelation. “I know this may be a long shot, but if you have any way to improve the charging time, please let me know.” When Norman remained silent, the man continued. “…I’ll give you some time to process this.” With that, the Admiral stood and walked out of the room, leaving Norman alone with his thoughts.

He sat there in silence for an undetermined amount of time before getting up and walking out himself.

***

When Norman returned to Ashvale, he went straight home. He tried to remain positive, but his mind kept going back to the report.

Days passed like this before Kalia finally confronted him.

“What’s wrong?”

He stared at her, not sure of how to answer. “Huh? It’s nothing.” He didn’t want to discuss this in front of his children. Hell, he didn’t want to even broach the subject at all.

“Caleb, sweety, could you be a dear and keep an eye on your sister for a bit? Your father and I need to talk.”

“Sure, Mommy,” The five-year-old saluted.

Normally Norman would have chuckled at his boy’s antics. He was currently in a stage where he was infatuated with the guards and knights and wanted to be one when he grew up. But even his son’s childish enthusiasm couldn’t lighten his mood.

Kalia pulled him out of the study-turned-living room and into their bedroom. “Out with it. And don’t feed me any more of this bullshit about it being nothing,” she hissed quietly. “You only get this way when you’re stressed out.”

There was a moment when Norman debated on not telling her or simply lying. He didn’t want to burden her with the knowledge that they failed. That all the work and effort they put in simply wasn’t enough. He ruthlessly squashed that thought and took in a deep breath.

“I met with the Admiral…”

“And,” she gestured for him to continue when he paused for too long.

Norman sat down on the bed and motioned her to sit beside him. She complied but he could see the worry growing in her face.

“We don’t have enough time,” He blurted out, unable to hold the knowledge back. Once the dam broke, he spilled everything he knew. He told her about the report, about how they had maybe a year, a year and a half at most.

She sat there quietly, far calmer than he had when he first heard the news. “So we have time.”

“…I mean, I guess. But how does that help u-,”

“Shush,” she interrupted him. “We have time. We can work something out.”

“I’m not sure what we could do.”

“We. Have. Time. We will work something out,” She repeated. “We don’t give up. We cannot give up. It’s not a luxury we have anymore. People rely on us, our children rely on us.” She wrapped an arm around his back and Norman felt the tension drain away as he returned the gesture. How had he managed to land such a supportive and wonderful woman?

“What about gathering up the scientists who originally worked on the project? It’s been seven years, surely we can improve upon the design.”

It was a decent idea, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized how unfeasible it would be. He shook his head. “That’s not going to work. We both know most of those people were more of a hindrance than a help. And the chances of getting some of these other countries to come back are slim to none at this point. Besides, any changes we make to the arrays could have catastrophic consequences.”

Kalia winced at that. “Yeah, I guess I could see that. But is it any worse than the world ending?”

He shook his head.

She smiled. “Then we work with people we trust. We test on one array. If it works, then we can start implementing the improvements.”

Norman ran his hands through his hair. Other than their work not being enough, there had been another idea floating around his thoughts. One that worried him just as much. “I may have an idea. It could work, but I need to study the array to see if it will be possible.”

“You can’t do it here?” She asked with concern.

“…No. If it works, it will be a one-or-done thing. If it doesn’t… it’s dangerous.”

“Is this about your experiments you never wanted to talk about?” They had been married long enough that they had very few secrets. But that was still one he hadn’t shared with anyone.

“Yes. And how did you know?”

She kissed him on the cheek. “You always tell me about the work you do. Except when you don’t. Even though I didn’t want to pry, it wasn’t hard to figure out why. Do you need me to come with you?”

He kissed his wife on the lips. “Someone needs to watch the children. Besides, I’m not going far. I’m just going to the closest array to mull over an idea at the moment.”

She nodded and they both stood. “Don’t do anything foolish,” She said.

He smiled for the first time in days. “I won’t.”

Norman really hoped he could keep that promise.

***

It didn’t take long to arrive through the teleporter. As with most of the arrays, this one was well hidden from outside observation. It was nestled amongst some rolling hills about sixty miles from Ashvale. There was also a thick forest surrounding it.

The gold of the array may stand out to anyone passing overhead, but the array wasn’t more than a couple hundred feet in diameter. It blended in quite well with the thick grass of the clearing it was placed in.

Norman took the winding path from the teleporter in the forest and didn’t catch sight of the array until he was within fifty feet of it. Although the sucking presence of the siphons gave it away far earlier than that.

It was almost nostalgic being here. This was the very first array his people had built.

He walked around the large magical circle, clearing away a few sticks that had blown into the clearing since the last time it was inspected. While he was clearing the sticks away, he was building a map of the array in his mind. This wasn’t the same thing he did when preparing a spell for casting, but it was similar. It simply allowed him to run through spell iterations much quicker. He could have probably done this back in the castle, but he didn’t want any distractions and he couldn’t afford to misremember something or make a mistake. Not with the forces he was considering using.

Halfway around the array, he paused and tilted his head slightly. Something was off. It wasn’t immediately apparent, but Norman had probably inspected more arrays over the last seven years than almost anyone else. He overlayed the image of the array he remembered from all his trips out to fix the damn things. It was definitely different.

Some of the symbols were moved slightly and he thought he saw some new ones. He couldn’t be sure though because he never did fully understand the original design completely. He only knew it would work. Norman never messed with the original design, knowing his ability would not help him if he screwed up the non-human symbols. But someone had obviously done something to this one. If he wasn’t so used to fixing them, he might have missed the changes.

He was about to take a step closer to get a better look when he realized how stupid of an idea that was. Someone had modified this array, and it could be set up to do just about anything. Before he could move away though, something slammed into his back, shoving him forward and onto his knees.

Norman scrambled to his feet, but it was already too late. A dome of pale lilac energy buzzed around the array, trapping him inside.

His eyes followed the object that struck him as it zipped away and landed in the hand of someone he recognized instantly. Donovan.

The man casually exited the forest and made his way slowly down the hill and into the clearing, still holding the soul trap he had tagged Norman with. Why here? Why now?

Donovan stopped when he was standing ten feet outside the dome.

“So you finally decided to get revenge on me?” Norman asked.

The man quirked an eyebrow. “Is that what you think this is? Revenge?” The man laughed as a rent opened up next to him. He tossed the soul trap inside and it snapped closed. Then he dusted his hands before clasping them behind his back.

“Have you waited for me to attack for the last seven years? That’s rather sad. I do admit, you had a rather annoying tendency to ruin my plans. But I would be a fool if I didn’t plan for the occasional mistake or failure. So, no, Norman. You may have been a fly in my food, but you aren’t worthy of making me lose sight of my goal. You are simply a means to an end.”

“Seems like an attack to me,” Norman gestured to the magical dome. “And what end?”

The man tutted. “From your limited perspective, I’m sure it seems that way. But let's not be hasty, there are a few missing attendees. Once they are here, we can get into that. In the meantime let’s chat, shall we? I assume you were made aware of the Admiral’s findings?”

Norman didn’t answer.

Donovan smiled. “Let me rephrase that. I know you are aware of the Admiral’s latest findings. This little multicultural experiment of his has run its course. And it was a failure. Not that I’m surprised. Too much posturing, too much bad blood. Too many differing ideologies.”

Oh for fuck sake, he's monologuing.

“And you could have done better?” Norman asked to buy time. He already realized his spells weren’t functioning correctly inside the dome of magic. Some of it had to do with the mana siphon, but there was some component within the shield that was also blocking him from materializing his spells internally.

The man shook his head, “As much as it pains me to admit, no. I was not up to the challenge. But you were.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, I think you know,” The man waved a finger at him like he was a misbehaving child.

Honestly, Norman was at a loss for what Donovan was talking about.

“Feel free to play coy and I will explain. Do you know how cheap it is to launch satellites when you have a portal mage? Well, getting the first one with the portal up was a bit of a challenge, but after that, it only cost labor and a few precious minerals. While you were all down here thinking purely terrestrially, I was free to monitor and record all of my enemies’ movements from the safety and security of space and nobody was the wiser.”

A sinking worry was starting to build in Norman’s gut.

“Color me surprised when one of my early satellites picked out a massive hole in a jungle where there wasn’t one before. I simply had to play back the recording to see what happened. I’ll admit, figuring out you were capable of that level of destruction got me worried. Which is why I ratted you out to the Empire. Clearly, that was a mistake on my part. I overreacted thinking you might actually use that power to your advantage. But I don’t tend to make the same mistake twice. I pulled my important assets back and watched and waited. It took years to unravel what you were doing out there, but being able to repeatedly watch you cast your little soul spell was eye-opening.”

That sinking worry that Norman felt had just turned into a black hole.

“What have you done?”

“Nothing so vulgar as you that’s for sure. Do you think I want this knowledge to get out any more than you did? I had to kill every single technician I had working for me to ensure that didn’t happen. You did an admirable job of hiding it by the way. I doubt the world would still be standing if word had gotten out about the energy trapped within souls. Your efforts just weren’t good enough.”

“So what? You’re going to hold the world hostage with this information?”

Donovan scoffed at that. “No, you dolt. You never did understand me or my goals did you?” He shook his head. “I’m going to save the world. Like you should have done when the arrays were first finished. Had you the stones to use this power in the first place, the world wouldn’t be in this mess.”