“The verdict is in, the winner is Super Hot. What a great naming sense he has, Marvelous.” The announcer exclaimed as the game came to an end.

As the fireworks went off, they looked like stars in the night sky. The crowd cheered as the underdog of the competition won. Super Hot looked up at the crowded stadium with a face full of smiles. As he did this he thought, These poor people don’t even understand what it means to be here right now. He was almost sad as he knew that these people would be the first to fall.

BOOM!

A huge explosion shook the entire stadium as his smile turned even more genuine, with a hint of madness and sincerity. He thought about how long it took to form this plan of bringing it over. How long it took to gather people that he could begin to trust with his plan. How long it took to make the game he created as large as it was. The amount of time he needed for the people in the stadium to not notice the lack of security. The lack of people tending to them. The lack of focus on his face, the so-called “underdog’s face” as he effortlessly won the competition of the decade.

After the explosion went off, the stadium went silent; there was no trace of the previously loud cheering. It seemed as if time stood still.

As he smiled with the most genuine emotions he had felt in a long time. He started laughing as he got onto one knee and placed his hands onto the center of the intricately drawn circle (the circle that would soon be known throughout time immemorial as the first magic circle). The circle that would be taught to kids in countless worlds is ‘the circle of beginning’, the circle cast by the first mage remembered throughout history. The mage that wouldn’t be remembered by the crazy act of sacrificing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to bring the outer gods into the plane of existence that he was living in.

He was the first mage, the only one to ever communicate with the outer gods, and the person with the worst naming sense throughout time and space, Merlin. And this was how he did it, spending a millennium to see through the human mind and create the perfect conduit to summon his pets.