She walked through the encampment of the army, her army, after another day of fighting that had not ended decisively, but simply petered out until the opposing forces withdrew from the field in disorder to rest, depleted and unable to continue. It was strangely silent, even the complaints of the wounded lacked any sense of purpose. Overhead an unnatural sky flicked with all the colours of chaos, throwing painful moving shadows on the ground from the few ragged tents that still survived and had owners with the energy to erect them. Here and there small fires had been lit and these drew the eye with their welcome normality, until the eye saw the exhausted figures sat or slumped around them, and recoiled. Would the enemy's camp look as disordered? Surely it must. How ironic it would be if it did not, if the forces of Chaos were, in the end, more ordered than the forces of Law.
She reached the edge of camp, a distressingly small distance with so few of her forces left, and looked out towards the Tower. It rose from the floor of the valley to an impossible height, thinning until the top disappeared into the sky's chaos. Around its base the enemy camped, showing only as a few fixed spots of fire in the changing amorphous lighting. In the distance the backdrop of mountains that surrounded and defined the valley seemed to shimmer and dance, their very reality now under threat… she knew that the world stopped at those mountains, and as the end of time drew near space had twisted and shrunk in upon itself and the world she had known, all the worlds that had ever existed, were gone… runners sent out of the valley, the few who were brave enough to enter the chaos where the sky now met the earth, reported that no matter which direction they took into the nightmare realm they soon found themselves returned to the valley. Her mathematicians had explained that there was no outside, but her mind recoiled from the idea. It was better to believe that the worlds of her memory still existed and would continue to exist, than face the fact that soon nothing would remain, not this last valley, not even the Tower, which had been the centre of the universe, of all the realms of life, since the dawn of time itself… all would soon be dissolved back into the formless chaos.
With a discrete cough he announced his presence beside her. She nodded at the wizard, as he too stood looking at the Tower, and thought to ask the question she had asked before, but which he had always deflected.
"How old are you? And the truth this time, please. My father said he had known you as a child, and his father before him, and you had not changed. So I know you are old, but there are tales going back to old Earth itself of wizards, before and after science, and I, well…"
He was silent for so long she wondered if he had heard her. But his eyes had lost their focus on the Tower and it was clear he was looking into some other distance, and she waited. Eventually he looked at her then back at the Tower.
"My lady… I was here when this was built."
"But… The legends say the Tower was the first thing the Gods made, it was here before the world, before all the worlds, before… before people..."
"Yes. This is so." He sighed. "I was here at the dawn of time, and it is fitting that I should be here at its end. Time was my idea, after all."
She was shocked into silence. He turned to her. "Yes. We made the Tower first. It's not just metaphorically the centre of everything, the axis on which reality turns, about which all of reality revolves… there's a degree of truth in that. It started here. It all started here. And it all ends here.
"Why do you seek the Tower, my lady? Is it to demand answers of the Gods? It usually is. You lead the forces of Law and you fight the forces of Chaos, or more accurately those who think they champion Chaos, and both wonder what the point is? What are you hoping to find there as the last dregs of time run out? A purpose? A meaning, a justification to, to - " he gestured around "- what's left of reality? You ask the wrong questions. People always did"
"What questions should I ask, then, here at the end of all things? What will I find in the Tower?"
"If you reach the Tower? You will find nothing. It is empty now, emptier than the Gods it once homed. The Gods are gone, only one remains, and one isn't enough to hold back Chaos…" He turned back and looked again at the Tower. "You never understood reality at all. Outside - and your mathematicians are wrong, there is an outside to these dimensions - is Chaos, an infinite sea of possibility, utterly random, formless, eternal… and in that sea of Chaos arise creatures, who can impose their will, locally, and briefly… it comes to nothing. They arise and dream and fade away. An infinite futility… but sometimes it happens that several meet and join and dream together, combined they are strong enough to inflate a bubble of their will, impose order on a point and inflate a bubble in the sea of Chaos with rules they create, and from these rules came complexity. Your reality is a shared dream of creatures you call Gods. But their interest waned. Good and Evil? Gods and Demons? Just contending philosophies, now played out and understood, and ultimately boring… Your Gods grew tired and lost interest.
"No, there is no purpose. With the will that created it gone this will all fade back into Chaos. An infinite Chaos where all dreams exist… to be dreamed over and over again, no doubt, but never with purpose."
After he stopped talking, and she had waited to see if he had finished, she turned and walked back. There didn't seem to be anything else to do.
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