The Wizard's Final Stand

In the moors near world's gray end
Stands a tower of olden wood and stone
The mightiest wizard here time spends
For old grows his flesh and bone

Knows the wizard almost every spell
In all tongues that were ever spoken
Many grimoires he owns as well
Their power not yet in full awoken

His eyesight now is failing
His limbs grow old and weak
In sleep he turns to wailing
Dark voices hears he speak

They cry their warning every night
But he ever fails to understand
They cry of creatures once of light
Now under darkness' command

Ignored the whispers and the pleading
The wizard wishes for calm days
A violent life he had been leading
But changed are now his ways

And so they came shrouded by the dark
When no moon hung in the starless sky
Creatures with faces dead and stark
Arose and uttered their unholy cry

The wizard then awoke most frightened
A spell of light over the moors he cast
And so he was at last enlightened
To an army, both mighty and vast

Then he knew what must be done
This old and nearly crippled man
Face-first to them he spun
Their passage he must ban

Fireballs and lightning lit the night
The creatures fell, but more there came
In magic's flickering white light
They sought to end the wizard's game

And now matter how he tried
Uttered spells and curses old
Still came their ghastly tide
The wizard knew he couldn't hold

So the oldest, dusty grimoire he took
And uttered the one spell he knew not by heart
Closed his eyes and then closed the book
Then felt his soul so painfully depart

The light burst out from inside
Ripped him swift to bloody pieces
But the creatures could not hide
And thus their advance ceases

So ends the wizard's final stand
So departs the oldest of us all
Preventing world's untimely end
He died so we would not fall