Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #12 March 2015 | Page 65

Al’Alim, Bilal, Cadell, and Calum, undertook to find and destroy Gadiel. They all passed to stone without achieving their aim. The last Great Sage, Dammar, left Elannort on a personal quest and eventually passed to stone without further proven knowledge of his actions. The remaining wizards were sent out, mostly in pairs, to live secretly within the redeveloping communities of humankind. Our charge was to preserve the Balance with minimum interference.” “My colleague Mandred and I were sent to a land far away to the north west, called Albion, where we became druids amongst a group of primitive hunter-gatherer humans. We rotted away there for thousands of years. I was bored out of my mind. Mandred was no fun either. He always seemed to be plotting and scheming against me, trying to make the tribe hate me. At the time, I thought he was just taking his patronage of Satania too far. On reflection, I see that it was much more. Foresight is a wonderful power to have. I have discovered that hindsight is even stronger. There is almost no action that can’t be judged to be flawed in the revealing light of hindsight.” “I now believe he was working secretly for Dammar in some crazy scheme. Whatever it was, he believed that he had achieved his objective because before the Sundering he passed to stone. I cannot explain why I, Manfred the Fool, should have been so important in the history of the multiverse. Why was I, the least amongst the Wise, chosen to be there that day and to be the last of the Wise struggling with the burden today? It’s true. I have been a fool. The most critical events in the history of the multiverse were unfolding around me and I failed to act. Now I finally have a second chance. But should I take it? Will it do more harm than good?” Manfred paused briefly in his monologue. He was sweating profusely and his normally pallid complexion was flushed. I’ve never seen Manfred like this. H