The Third Time: Being an Account of the Spellwars and the Devastation wrought thereby, and the Creation of the Younger Races

When the Arcanarchs realized the Arcanum was being worn away at an accelerating rate by their own reckless use of magic, their reactions were as varied as the Arcanarchs themselves. Many, principally dwarves and elves who, by virtue of their long lives, were already accustomed to taking the long view, immediately proposed measures to conserve what magic remained by limiting its use. Most human Arcanarchs, unfortunately, rejected this idea out of hand. Some were pressed by rivals and feared for themselves and their people should they relinquish even a fraction of their power; others refused to believe that the Arcanum really was degrading, or that it was their fault; and still others, sad to say, were simply drunk with power and unwilling to let go.

The dwarves argued the case for conservation with passion, and the elves with cool logic, but with few exceptions, the humans would not listen. They continued to use large-scale magic for military and industrial purposes, in arcane forges and factories churning out everything from goblets that changed color when their contents were properly chilled to vast siege weapons capable of reducing the mightiest fortresses to rubble. The Arcanum continued to deteriorate, and the pleas from the Conservators (as their faction became known) grew ever more strident. Eventually, the Conservator Arcanarchs realized their Exploiter rivals could not be dissuaded from their reckless course by speech alone, and the Conservators girded for war.

What followed was, if anything, even more terrible than the wars among the gods. Although no single Arcanarch could muster anything like the power of a deity, there were far more Arcanarchs than there had ever been gods; and while the divine battles had laid waste to vast portions of the world, this had only ever been a byproduct, where the Arcanarchs now devoted their considerable intellects and magical prowess to this very end. Where the armies of the Arcanarchs met, the very fabric of reality boiled. The land heaved and bubbled; spectral beings flickered in and out of existence, snatching away the souls of their victims; wizards raised their hands and consumed entire regiments in fiery holocausts; vast constructs battled titanic aberrations from beyond the stars.

Entire races were created for the express purpose of waging war. One human Arcanarch, having allied himself with beings of primordial evil, blended that evil with a cadre of his most bloodthirsty human warriors to create beings he called tieflings. He made them the generals of his armies, and their inhuman cruelty and cunning won him many battles. At last, another Arcanarch uncovered the secret of the tieflings' creation, however, and adapted it to his own ends. Merging his own people with elemental spirits, he created the dragonborn, and they were even mightier than the tieflings. As the war ground on, however, and the Arcanum continued to degrade, both races eventually died out. The lucky ones simply sickened and died; the unlucky ones lived long enough to die in unutterable agony when the magic that sustained them drained away.

The Spellwars lasted for two thousand, three hundred and eighty-four years. Entire continents were taken, lost, and retaken, over and over. Billions died. In places, the weight of their deaths tore aside the veil between the world and the afterworld, and undead abominations rose to add still more misery to the burden of the living. At last, when the Arcanum had frayed so badly that it could no longer support any magic at all, the spellcasters died. All of them. All over the world, at the same instant, every wizard, cleric, sorcerer, and druid cocked their heads as though listening to a distant song... and fell down stone dead. The Spellwars had claimed their last casualties.

All the mortal races had been driven nearly to extinction. The dwarves and elves feared for the survival of their cultures, and took steps to ensure it. They searched within themselves for the fragments of the divine spark left over from their own creation, and coaxed it forth. From elemental air and fire, the elves created the gnomes to carry on the knowledge of their greatness. From elemental earth and water, the dwarves created the halflings to continue their traditions of craftsmanship.

With the birth of the younger races, the Third Time came to an end.