A divided city

How must a person feel when the fate of an entire nation is placed upon their shoulders?
Tarian may be the most powerful wizard ever to walk the face of the earth. However, the greatest challenge of his life ended with a nasty surprise, and he found himself in a place completely unknown to him.
When he loses all his power in the blink of an eye, he is forced, for the first time in a long while, to rely on the help of the people he had despised until recently. Can he cope without his magic in a city whose rules mean nothing to him, and which is also grappling with a host of its own problems?
What will be the outcome of the clash between magical talent and the reality of a dystopian city, whose functioning depends on failing technologies from centuries past?