Hearing the three Immortals confirming everything I had just thought, made me feel a little satisfied. I’d been able to arrive at important conclusions without needing to be spoon-fed everything by the Immortals. It suggested that I was a smart person, wouldn’t you agree? Yes, I knew you would agree. I can even guess what you are thinking. And if you did not think so, then you are lying. But let’s not go there. Let us focus on the conversation, happening in reverse, between the three Immortals.

“I birthed the red star from the domains of malice and avarice,” said the Simurgh. “Those were domains under my control that I did not wish to keep to myself. They contradicted my domains of kindness, selflessness, and justice. I chose good over evil and let you administer evil under my wings, and yet, despite all of the power that I have given you, you dare side with an outsider over me?” It was after this that the Evil Eye had given his reply about his purpose and his desire to stay true to it.

“An outsider has no right to the powers of this world,” said the Simurgh, facing Madness. “I shaped the material world through my magic. I divided magic into domains so I could better control it, not so you could take away chunks of my power and use it for your own purposes! But still, I am willing to compromise. Return my domains to me and I will send you back to your reality. I have never wanted you here and do not want even your soul to remain here. You can leave but you cannot have my domains and you cannot have Annihilation!

“Besides, I know why you want Annihilation! You do not wish to lose yourself in me, you wish to merge your consciousness with mine! You are dissatisfied with your material form, which is understandable because it is truly detestable. But your desire to become one with me is foolish! You cannot handle so much power and your consciousness is feeble compared to mine. You will not be Annihilated, you will be destroyed! I will be infected with your impurity, with your imperfection, and this world will never be able to achieve the perfection that I had been seeking.

“You ruined my perfect world when you first came here. Already, there are domains floating about the material world over which I have no control. I can already tell what will happen to them, since I once controlled them. These domains will be entrapped within mortal beings. Those beings will become imitations of me. Those beings will seem sentient, they will seem alive and conscious, but they will only be imitations. They will be like characters in a story. I can say this because I used to control all of time before you split it into three and stole two of them from me.

“But do not fret. I will have what is mine. You two are not powerful enough to stand in my way, for I still possess more domains than you do, and my domains are more powerful as well. You gave me enough time to recover from your initial assault. I am healed and ready and you are still weak and unprepared. I will have you return my domains to me and then I will take back the domains that are floating about. Even if they are trapped inside mortal bodies, I will take them back.

“Everything in this world is mine. I am everything! I am the world! You cannot have anything! I will create perfection. I will create a world fit for me. I will give shape to the chaos of magic, and there is nothing you two can do that can stop me!

“But still, I say, one last time, before your destruction commences, repent! Beg for my forgiveness and return my domains to me in peace! I shall let you return to your existence, Mad Beggar, Mad Sage, Mad Priest, or Mad whatever it is that you first introduced yourself as. Return without Annihilation, and you will continue to exist! For even with Annihilation, you will no longer exist. And even if that were not the case, I would never give you that domain in the first place.

“If there is anything else that I can offer you, you may ask for it. I will consider it, but only if it comes with a magic oath to return everything else to me and a promise to return to your existence. What say you, mortal from another universe?” said the Simurgh, in what sounded like one breath.

It was in reply to these words that Madness had said he was only interested in Annihilation, and nothing else. All of that had led to the Simurgh declaring it had no other choice, which was followed by the battle inside the Nothingness which had resulted in the sealing of the Simurgh, the banishment of the Evil Eye, and the wanderings of Madness in a world where sentient life had begun to emerge.

And then the pond froze. So did the moon, the trees, the entire world, I could tell, had frozen as if somebody had pressed the pause button. I could also tell that this freeze in time was very different from the sort of pauses that came with my Still Life magic spell. This pause was total and complete, because it was not actually a pause at all.

Before this moment in time, before these words uttered by the Simurgh in front of the other two Immortals, there had been no time in this world at all. Or more precisely, time had existed as one domain, one united physical dimension just like space. One could freely go along different axes in time, but the material world did not follow a linear path through time.

If one thought of time like a train track going in one direction, and of beings that experienced time as being trains that rode on those tracks, then before this point in time there was no track but only an open field. No train could travel through that open field because the train could only experience time in one way—from the past to the future. My control over the domain of time had let me go backwards in time, but I couldn’t go any further.

I couldn’t go any further because there were no train tracks anymore. The three Immortals had existed in this time before linear time, but they had not existed in a form that I could see and experience, because those senses were confined to the material world and the material world did not have time yet.

It was all a little complicated and confusing, but the result was that I learned about everything that had happened before this point in time, all at once.

All at once, I learned about the way the Simurgh had awoken after giving shape to its own consciousness. The Simurgh did not know that anything else existed, just like the demiurge from the theologies in my world. The Simurgh had given shape to its powers and to the world through the power of magic, but it did not know where this magic came from or what it truly meant. All it knew was that it could be harnessed through the knowledge and wisdom that it felt instinctively within its own consciousness.

The Simurgh set about creating the material world and it started, for some reason, by creating a pond in a forest which would align perfectly with the moon. The Simurgh did not know why it had done so, but it had. It then continued to do everything else that it had claimed to do. It separated its own power into different domains, and used those domains to create a world that it thought would be perfect.

This world would have planets and mountains and trees and lifeforms of many sorts. It would even have mortal beings, specifically human beings, but those mortals would not have true sentience, for the Simurgh believed that giving true sentience to mortals would put them out of its control. And the Simurgh wanted complete control. It knew it was perfect, because it was the only thing in existence. And if it was the only thing that was in existence, then it must be perfect for it was born out of pure magic and was the crystallization of all of existence and of all power.

But the contradictions inside itself were unacceptable. The Simurgh could tell, instinctively, that it also controlled evil domains, and so it created a separate entity that could administer them in its stead. Thus, it created the red star from which all evil would be associated, but even that evil must be subordinated to the Simurgh.

And it was while the Simurgh was cutting up its own power that a rift in reality was created and Madness entered this universe, shattering all of the Simurgh’s illusions of power and importance. In one fell swoop, Madness proved to the Simurgh that it was not perfect and it was not all of existence, for here was a being that it had not created and which clearly entered its reality from outside.

Madness’ appearance shattered the Simurgh’s confidence and character. Contrary to what the Simurgh had said, Madness had not attacked it at all. The Simurgh had exploded into pieces as if its mind had been blown. Its domains had went flying, giving the Evil Eye its independence and filling Madness with power that he had never even asked for. This revelation also split time into three, which created a linear way to experience time, and it was in this linear time that the rest of the story is to be told.

It was time to return to the present.