Most of the great wizards of the world had epithets fitting their status. Julian of the Third Eye, Markos Sorceries Bane, William Windwalker. Ezra the Abandoned did not have an epithet that anyone would be proud of. He had earned his epithet the day after he had earned his wizard's athame, when his newly named master had perished trying to unweave a seventh level Mendrel's Unbreaking Knot. A wizard's athame could only ever know one holder, and the ritual bound that holder to a single master. Ezra was a wizard, just a wizard without a spell or a teacher.

He did have a spellbook. Well, his master had a spellbook, and since the few pieces of the man that could be packed into a box no longer had much use for it, the only rational place for it to go was to Ezra. There were no words for self taught wizards before Ezra, but in his time there had been a few: hedge witch, wardless, hopeless, dangerous.

That last word, frankly, had a point. In general, a wizard's apprentice was expected to raise about one circle in spellcasting every two years until the third level, five years until the fifth level, and then once a decade to the seventh. Any who progressed beyond the seventh and didn't perish was considered exceptionally skilled. His master had known and recorded three seventh level spells. One of which had killed him.

He had also recorded one ninth level spell, Terenicus' Eonic Tutor. The brief description scrawled under it in his master's hand "this spell was recovered in fragments by my master's master, and to my knowledge has never been attempted. In theory, it condenses the knowledge accrued in the athame bond through the master-apprentice chain. Seeking out the most powerful of the descendants, though whether in raw mana or in spellcasting theory is not currently known."

A ninth circle spell was suicide for a second year apprentice whose total tutelage was less than a full afternoon, but it was also seemingly the only way out of his current bondless predicament. It had taken every day of those two years to prepare the ritual space. Dew from the morning grass after a full moon, the ink of a quill spilled on parchment, a freshly laid hen's egg boiled in honey, the tears of a newborn babe, and the tears of the mother. So many other ingredients, none - luckily, expensive, but all somewhat tedious to gather. The ritual circle seemed too simple and spartan, especially scratched into the dirt behind his master's old college, as he began to encant.

The first stanza was spoken as the athame sliced the egg in half, leaving the yolk exposed in a pewter bowl. Hand passes were simple, but the sun was high, and soon sweat beaded his brow. The second and third stanza's passed without incident and his confidence began to build as the sun started to set. The tears were sprinkled into the bowl, they and the dew had been the last to be gathered, too soon and they would have been naught but smoke by the ritual.

The fourth stanza was spoken as the dew entered the bowl and the moon shined above. He was tired now, and the precision of his passes was not what it should have been, but still he felt power building somewhere behind a wall he couldn't see, and his athame began to glow a faint silver.

Finally came the sunrise, and the seventh stanza. As the parchment was laid atop the egg in the bowl and his athame glowed nearly as brightly as the rising sun. His eyes burned to look upon it, and the final pass brought the athame down into the bowl, stabbing through parchment and yolk into the gleaming fluids in the bowl. His final word "Teoch!" ringing in the small yard, imploring something to answer.

The athame pierced the veil into that power beyond, and his call went out.

Then things went wrong.

The blinding light of the athame went dark, the blade itself instantly becoming an unlight of some kind, a luminous black void that seemed the enemy of the very sun. The fluid in the bowl went from shining water to dark boiling blood, and for a moment his soul stretched the eons, seeing, knowing, and being a thousand - ten thousand, different mages everywhere and everywhen. It lasted an instant, but time was meaningless, since he was forever. But as time coalesced around a single point again, he didn't return alone. Something, someone, came along for the ride.

"You know, I never thought someone would actually cast it. Let alone get it so wrong," the other figure in the clearing slowly coalesced into a man with a shock of unruly brown hair, green eyes, and a distinct scar stretching across his left cheek. His smile was handsome, and his body strong, if not young. He was perhaps three decades ezra's senior, and his gaze recalled in Ezra memories of horrific devastation in his time from that abyss, "I must say though, you've gotten it wrong rather perfectly. Better in fact than I had planned it. My own version left me bound to your will, and it might have taken me some time to break free. Your version though? Somehow you've managed something far greater. I am free to act, and you've unbound an athame. Ten millenia of safeguards and ritual to place limits on wizardry, and you've broken them all in less than a day. Truly, truly magnificent work. Ezra the Abandoned they called you. I name you Ezra, Last of the Heralds."

The man stepped forward, and placed his hands around Ezra's neck. He tried to run, to flee, to do anything - but his very soul seemed pinned to the ritual circle by the Athame. As the life was choked out of his body, Ezra heard only the laugh of a man he had learned to know in that infinite abyss; the heretic, the magebreaker, the bringer of chaos, Horus, first of the Heralds.