Colchester breaks it on the stone wall of an other-dimensional concentration camp, where esoteric concepts are penned up and tortured, then returns with the death toll of the hurricane that killed the entire town of Galveston in 1900. Eight thousand deaths come shrieking out of history, eight thousand ghosts hungry for life, aimed at Eric.

Eric opens a door in the ether and sends them back to their graves, which is a mercy. He timesteals the electricity from Tesla’s 1904 demonstration of Wardenclyffe Tower for J. P. Morgan, dooming the inventor to failure and poverty as he sends the power at Colchester instead.

Colchester sneers and deflects the bolt into the upper atmosphere before he calls upon an ancient thing sleeping on the ocean floor. Psychics as far away as Russia scream at the visions that suddenly appear in their minds, their hair turning white. Eric empties the horror into a black hole, using an adjacent dimension as a convenient trashcan.

He and Colchester go back and forth. They summon lightning and thunder, demons and angels. Neither can stop the other. Neither gains the upper hand.

But Eric is not trying to win. He’s only trying to get close enough. He opens a portal, and a blazing blue sun in another corner of the Milky Way, far too hot and bright, casts its light on Jeremy and Colchester.

Jeremy closes his eyes and stumbles. Colchester is suddenly looking at the birth of a star, which is more than even he can handle easily. He summons a dome of protection. But he is trapped, along with Jeremy, in the sudden glare.

Eric takes another step forward. He is within arm’s reach of the boy now.

He gestures, and closes the door to the alien sun. Colchester and Jeremy blink, dazzled in the sudden dark. Eric takes another quick step, and he has his hand around Jeremy’s throat.

He could snap the boy’s neck. He wouldn’t need magic. That would shut Colchester down. He’d be locked in a dead body. A prison for his ugly, black soul. Let him spend eternity that way.

Eric’s hands shake. Jeremy doesn’t move. He looks at Eric, fully aware and awake again, and terrified.

Colchester, above them both, laughs.

“What a hero,” he says. “Go ahead, Merlin. Sacrifice the child.”

It might work. It might save the day.

“You see now, boy?” Colchester says. “You cannot alter the cycle. Someone always has to die. This is the rule of magic: there must always be a sacrifice. It was written long before you were born. You tried so hard, but you cannot alter the fundamental shape of the universe. All your pissant little schemes, all your struggles, and you still end up with the same blood on your hands. You do this, and I will still return someday. Now you know the truth: The End always justifies the means.”