"I'm going to save the galaxy, but I'll probably just die trying. I usually do."
— Varic Vallenar
Archmage Varic Vallenar, heir of the Vallenar Corporation, cast a grand and unspeakably expensive ritual to do the impossible: Empower himself with the magical abilities of his alternate selves, making him a master of more magic than anyone else in history. The ritual works, but they got more than they bargained for—Varic remembers six entire lives, including five gruesome deaths.
While Varic is now the greatest wizard the galaxy has ever seen, and he does an excellent job of using his future knowledge to nip numerous problems in the bud, he knows that it won't be enough. He has knowledge of five coming apocalyptic threats, none of which he can truly resolve on his own. Killing cybernetic undead kings and blasting star-eating bugs just kicks the can down the road.
But then he hears rumors that the most famous piece of Zenith tech has been found. There are puzzles that he, as an archmage with the perspectives of six disciplines, might be the only person who can solve. If he can follow the trail, he might find an ancient starship. The first starship, the ship of heroes that fights fleets and rescues entire star systems.
A ship called The Last Horizon.
The Last Horizon is a series of science fantasy novels by Will Wight.
- The Captain (April 2023)
- The Engineer (December 2023)
This series provides examples of:
- Alternate Self: Using his father's Doppelgänger Attack spell heightened to epic levels, Varic tries to steal the magical abilities from alternate lives. This is specifically described as possibilities and probabilities, not true other selves from alternate universes. Unfortunately, they didn't anticipate that the ritual would work too well; Varic wakes up not just with the power of his alternate selves, but the full memories of six lives. Oh, and the other five were from at least a few years in the future, so he also remembers the various apocalypses that are going to be visiting the galaxy soon.
- The Archmage: Varic starts the book as an archmage of sealing magic. Then he enacts a ritual that turns him into an archmage of five other disciplines by using the lives of his alternate selves. Considering it's supposed to be impossible to be archmage level in more than one discipline, this makes him the most powerful wizard in history.
- Arc Number: Seven is a very important number in magic, so it shows up quite often in multiple contexts. In Varic's ritual, if everything went perfectly he would have gained the experience of seven lives total (they were expecting four, hoping for five, and got six), and Horizon's eyes are seven-pointed stars. There are also six crew positions on Horizon, plus Horizon herself.
- Blob Monster: Omega can freely shapeshift from his original human form and a pile of ooze with random body parts floating in it, mainly to gross people out. He can also reconstitute himself from almost nothing.He gave a broad grin while other, supplementary mouths formed to whisper "verbal sorcery" until the phrase echoed around the room.
- Blood Knight: Varic is very worried when the world spirit of The Last Horizon gets a look of manic glee whenever the topic of violence comes up.
- Boring, but Practical: One of Varic's most common tricks is just basic telekinesis. Apparently, most of the time telekinesis isn't actually all that useful, but his jaw-dropping skill lets him, for example, catch bullets.The blue shells whined in the air, where he was holding them.
With crude telekinesis.
It would only have been a little harder to catch the shots with his bare hands. - Broken Ace: The main cast all qualify as this. Varic has died in crushing failure five times, Raion lost most of his friends and can barely summon his Divine Titan anymore, there's a reason why Sola is known as the Fallen Sword, Horizon is stuck in a never ending cycle of finding and losing her crew, Queen Shyrax has been deposed, and there are hints that Omega and Mell are the way they are for good reason. They're also all impossibly awesome.
- Cool Starship: The Last Horizon is quite literally the cool starship. It is the oldest and greatest starship in existence, the ideal that every other one strives for. It has incredible speed, weapons, shields, teleportation abilities, and even terraforming. ...when she has a crew. She gains power from her crew, so when she's alone, she can't do anything, and when she has only her captain she can't do much more than fly.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Each of the crew is associated with a color of the rainbow: Varic=blue, Raion=red, Sola=green, Omega=orange, Shyrax=yellow, and Mell=violet. Each time a member is added their color is added to Horizon's holographic projection.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Varic takes a job training new combat mages. He demonstrates how completely useless the curriculum of "teach them a bunch of combat spells, then send them out" is when his class proves utterly incapable of protecting themselves from rain. He tries to teach them how to use their current spells to be more flexible, but the school's director has him suspended for straying from the curriculum.
- Driven to Suicide: It's not spelled out, but in one of Varic's lives he died in obscurity as the galaxy crumbled around him, but not of old age.
- Eldritch Abomination: One of the threats Varic remembers is a race of extradimensional, star-eating insects. Whether they are literally from outside the local Iteration (which would likely make them Fiends) or something less multiversal in scope is unclear.
- Enemy Mine: Omega is a Psycho for Hire, but he agrees to a much more restrictive contract than the rest of the crew have to join up when he learns that they get to take turns picking enemies to kill.
- Everyone Has Standards: Varic's father is a Corrupt Corporate Executive, but even he has his limits:Another chill passed through Benri's body, though he tried to hide it. This was it. Small and shriveled his conscience may have been, but he didn't want to see a Zenith Device in the hands of The Iron Legion.
- Gone Horribly Right: The grand ritual was supposed to give Varic the magic of his alternate selves. It did... in addition to the full memories of his alternate selves.
- Government Conspiracy: There's a secret conspiracy that controls the Galactic Union. Varic only knows about them because in one of his lives, they pushed too hard and caused a civil war. Varic finally manages to talk Omega around when he remembers that in that timeline, Omega was fighting hard against the conspiracy.
- Ignored Expert: Varic tries to warn the Galactic Union that the Iron Legion was creating an Iron King, but they ignore him until it is almost too late. Varic tries to warn his father that the corpse of an Iron King is too dangerous to keep, but Benri ignores him. Varic tries to explain to the Galactic Union that their combat curriculum was insufficient, but is suspended. By that point, he gives up. Averted when Benri tells his ships's crew to shut up and follow Varic's pathfinding spell because he knows that Varic knows what he's doing.
- Magi Tech: Normally, magic and technology work in tandem, but don't mix. Aethertech is called a "manifest miracle," and is capable of such things as instantaneous communication across the entire universe or accessing all possible databases to discover information on a subject. The Zenith technology is the first and greatest example of Aethertech.
- Master of One Magic: Wizards increase in specialization as they advance in power, making it impossible for a true archmage to be a master of more than one type of magic.
- MegaCorp: Varic was genetically engineered to be the heir of the Vallenar Corporation, and the ritual starts with them spending enough money to bankrupt a few star systems on a single ritual. They are also mentioned bankrolling entire government operations.
- Mind over Matter: Telekinesis is a basic spell, though it's generally not as useful as more specialized spells. Unless you're Varic, who can casually do things on the fly that most people can't do with an hour's prep.
- Police Brutality: Steel Avalanche is one of the superhero Advocates who polices the Free Worlds. If he has any trouble whatsoever, including as simple as the criminals thinking they can trick him, he will just slaughter them all and claim they were resisting arrest.Mell: This doesn't happen every time. They don't always leave trails of bodies behind them. But when they do, they're not punished.
- The Power of Friendship: Raion can turbocharge his already powerful abilities by tapping into the power of friendship from his nearby allies. He is startled to realize that Varic already completely trusts him because they were Bash Brothers in one of Varic's lives.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Raion is the Red to Varic's blue. Their magic and clothing colors are even red and blue.
- Sentai: The Knights of the Titan Force, which Varic belonged to in one life, are a clear send-up of Super Sentai shows. Complete with color-coded uniforms and Combining Mecha.
- Skilled And Strong: Varic started the story as extremely skilled and strong, basically the height of power for his Iteration. Then he gains the knowledge and skill of five additional alternate selves, making him more than the sum of his parts and becoming the greatest wizard in the history of the galaxy—even though, in terms of raw power, he's still exactly the same.[Varic] strolled up to the barrier spell outside, glanced at it, and then waved a hand. The spell parted as though he'd swept aside a curtain.
Teranon made a choking sound. "What?"
That hadn't been a display of raw power. It was skill, but on a different level than anything they had ever seen. It was like watching someone perform molecular surgery with a kitchen-knife. - Souls-like RPG: Sola's life ends up looking very much like a sci-fi version of Dark Souls. She is bound to an epic-level spell that allows her to resurrect at her "Pyre" (which she can move) on death, and has an arsenal of mundane and magical weapons in extradimensional storage.
- The World Is Always Doomed: The reason that Varic is so worried despite being literally the most powerful wizard in history. In each of his five other lives, he remembers failing to stop a galaxy-ending threat, and there's little sign that these are the only such threats. After he solves the problems he knows about, he becomes a bit paranoid about everything else that could be lurking out there.
