While everybody else began to prepare for war, I decided to go to the mountains. We were planning to attack the Singing Horde anyway, so if I holed up in the so-called roof of the world mountain range, I would be right next to the border and could join the others when they were ready. I also figured the clear mountain air, breathtaking vistas, and relative isolation would do me some good. I wanted to be on my own so I could do some thinking, and so I could untangle my complicated emotions too. I still hadn’t gotten over my defeat, after all.

My defeat did have a silver lining though, and I was slowly coming to appreciate it. I had learned a lot from Ikons, even though I had lost to them twice. I had learned about my magic, its weaknesses and strengths. I had learned about the magic of the Immortals, as well as the magic that they bestowed upon their Ikons. I had learned about this world, and the rules and system that governed it. I also understood my experiences in this world a lot better now. But the most important thing that I had learned from this defeat, had been something Noel had only mentioned once.

Noel had said that the foundations of magic that the Immortal of Desire had taught us was not meant to allow us to create our own spells. The Immortal had wanted to teach us their own magic, just like the other Immortals teach powerful spells to their Ikons. If things had gone according to the Immortal of Desire, or perhaps I should use the name I had learned, the Simurgh’s plan, I would have learned a few spells as powerful as Noel’s magic time bubbles and that would have been it. Noel had shared this information to get me to question the Simurgh and its motivations, but she’d let something else slip in the process. She’d said that I had gone against the Immortal’s expectations by digging deeper than the ‘fundamentals’ and asking questions about knowledge and wisdom.

Despite the crappy situation that I was in, with enemies all around me, this fact gave me enough hope to keep going. It gave me the strength to face the seemingly unassailable odds that were stacked against me. After all, if what Noel had said was true, it would mean the Simurgh hadn’t given me my magic after all. The Simurgh had given me information, but I was the one who had come up with this magic system. Me. I had invented magic in this world, apparently, through a few lucky but incisive questions.

And my magic might be the same kind of magic that the Immortals used, but it was much more flexible. Noel said that the Immortals were personifications of abstract concepts and experiences, that they were, in a way, representations of knowledge and wisdom. This would mean their magic was powerful, since they could completely encapsulate a certain kind of knowledge, but it also meant they couldn’t be what they were not. Madness could not overlap with the Evil Eye, the Evil Eye couldn’t overlap with the Simurgh, and so on. But my magic wasn’t limited that way. I could use spells that fell into concepts that might fall into any of their categories. Theoretically, I could make a spell that included the concepts of moonlight, the red star, and birds. The Immortals couldn’t do that.

But that wasn’t the most exciting thing. So far, I had been assuming that I had learned magic from the Simurgh, which meant that my magic was bounded only by the rules of this world as I had learned them. I had trusted the Simurgh when the birds had told me that ‘knowledge’ and ‘wisdom’ were the foundations of magic in this world. But now that I knew that the Immortal might have been trying to prepare me to be its Ikon, I could assume they had only told me what I needed to know in order to learn magic from them. Perhaps there was more to magic than I had initially assumed. Perhaps there was something that the Immortals either did not know about, or did not want me to know about.

I found a cave in the mountains and looked around. The cave wasn’t very deep, but it was well-shielded from the elements. For some reason, I didn’t want to make a cave with magic. I wanted to find a natural cave and spend a little time away from the kind of magic that I had assumed was the most fundamental kind of magic in this world.

I climbed the mountains and cliffs without magic, falling and stumbling until I finally got the hang of it. Thankfully, my cave wasn’t too high, and there was a little stream nearby. I foraged through the forest for food and made some old-fashioned traps to catch wild game. I collected firewood, and lit a fire without magic. It took forever and my hand felt sore, but I managed to light a little abandoned birds nest on fire and used it as kindling to make a large fire. I hadn’t brought anything with me but the clothes on my back and the shoes on my feet, so I could only skewer some pieces of meat on sticks and roast them over the open flames.

The moon was out and all, but I didn’t look up. I didn’t want to admire the sky tonight, and focused on my food instead. Night in the mountains can be a little scary, since it’s hard to tell if you’re about to step on solid earth or dangling off the edge of a precipice. Still, I grabbed a long stick, wrapped one end with tinder and resin, and decided to take a walk through the mountains. I took my meat skewers with me, munching on the meat as I took a walk to help me think.

I wasn’t thinking about magic. I was thinking about myself. What was I doing? Stuck in another world, a world of magic and monsters, wasn’t this the kind of excitement that I should have enjoyed? Why do people enjoy fantasy stories? It was for the escapism, wasn’t it? If you could throw away all of your worries and open a cupboard to step into a new world, I bet a lot of people would think they’d enjoy that experience.

No more school, no more work, no more taxes, no more expectations. Leave behind your responsibilities and go out and explore a whole new world with new possibilities. To many people with regrets, it would be like a second chance. To many people with great weights on their shoulders, it would bring relief. But what about me? Yes, I didn’t have to worry about my future in this world. There were no finals here, no struggle for jobs after college and a dreary existence working a nine to five where the most fun you’d have is making boring jokes by the water cooler. I didn’t have to worry about dull things like promotions and clothes and becoming successful. I didn’t feel like society was breathing down my neck, judging me for my social media posts or cheap wardrobe. In this world, I wasn’t staring at a screen all day, hoping to scroll past something that would make the right neurons fire in my head, bringing a little color into my pallid existence.

“I can’t be sure,” I said aloud into the darkness that my torch could not completely fight off, “that I really want to go back. I can’t even remember why I wanted to return. Did I feel that way when I first came here? After meeting Noel and learning magic, did I want to find a way back to my world, or did that feeling only come later.”

I wasn’t speaking to the darkness. There was no answer.

“I think I only began wanting to return to my world, after my first fight with Noel. Losing my best friend in this world, perhaps that made me feel like it wasn’t worth staying here. But, I’ve made new friends. And despite everything, I’m not willing to give up on Noel.”

No answer.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get that book back for you,” I said as I climbed down a cliff and sat next to a creek full of clear, cold spring water. My torch had died a while ago, but I could just about find my way in the moonlight. “I’ll get that book back, because I don’t want Noel to have it. As much as I hate you for manipulating my emotions, I hate that madman way more. But just so we’re on the same page here.” I stared at my reflection in the water. The moon made a halo around my head, and the silver moonlight made my glaring eyes sparkle dangerously.

“If you try to mess with my head again, I’m going to pluck all of your feathers.”