The beam of angry red energy shot towards my back, barely visible in the corner of my eye. How the Evil Eye had managed to escape my bombardment of plasma bursts was beyond me, but I had to act fast.

I waited for the red beam to get closer. Once it was close enough, I fired a burst of plasma around my back with phantom limbs. The red beam tried to turn sharply in one direction, but it couldn’t avoid my counterattack from such close range and the two bursts of energy crashed into each other and let out a great big bang of light and heat.

I felt the heat wash over my back but flew right into the middle of the collision. The light covered my body and obscured the Simurgh’s vision, forcing the massive rainbow colored bird to flap its wings angrily and attempt to cover the whole area with a burst of rainbow light.

The rainbow light overwhelmed the light from the collision, instantly, but by the time it reached my body, I had already set up one of my new spells: an electromagnetic energy shield. The Simurgh’s attack crashed into the shield but the shield held firm, sparking a little bit but never faltering at all.

The Simurgh retracted its wings when it noticed my shield and it narrowed its eyes. In a discordantly harmonious voice, as if multiple birds were chirping, tweeting, and crying at once, the Simurgh asked, “How have you become so powerful so quickly? You should not have been able to control the domain of Time as soon as you took control of the Past.”

I shrugged and took the time to catch my breath. The Evil Eye was still being ping ponged around by my spells in the distance but I had lost track of Madness. I could still hear his muffled laughter through my meditative state, but I was afraid he would launch some sort of physical attack when I least expected it. “Maybe I’m just smarter than you?” I said to the Simurgh.

The Simurgh blew out a puff of sparkly smoke. It leaned closer to the ground, poised like a cat waiting to pounce. “Or maybe my accursed laughing enemy decided to give you a hand. It seems that while trying to use you against each other, the three of us have made you a little too powerful. I must blame myself, most of all. I did not expect you to be so ungrateful. You outsiders really are hopelessly selfish.”

I blinked. Why was it going on such a tangent while poised to strike? Was it trying to catch me off guard? I increased my surveillance of the area just in case it was up to something. “You’re calling me selfish? After you used the Evil Eye to drag me into this world against my will? If I hadn’t stopped Noel from taking me inside that cave when I first got here, I would’ve been incinerated or turned into one of his mindless drones!”

“And who do you think planted the hesitation in your mind?” said the Simurgh.

“You think admitting that you’ve been manipulating my emotions since I came to this world will make me like you more? Also, you only wanted me out of there so you could control me yourself. Do you expect me to believe a little elfin girl would just happen to take her otherworldly friend to the secret home of the most powerful being in this world?” I said.

“Our ability to influence this world is not as concrete as you make it out to be. I can nudge things in a general direction, but I cannot determine everything that you choose to do,” said the Simurgh.

“Then you didn’t make me not go into that cave either,” I said.

“Of course not. You almost ignored your own suspicion and went inside anyway. I had to practically frighten the soul out of your body to get you to not go in the second time,” said the Simurgh.

I frowned. This was no time to be talking about old times. The Simurgh was stalling, but what for? I couldn’t figure it out at all. But that was okay. I didn’t need to know what the Simurgh was planning, as long as I could flip the board.

The Simurgh flinched and looked down. A great rotating mass of metal shot through the earth and slammed right into the Simurgh’s beak. The great bird gave out a wild cry and fluttered its wings like a flailing chicken, and it fell backwards in a shameful manner, dragging a wing over its beak and landing on its back.

The metal bullet arced in the air and fell back towards the Simurgh’s head, gaining more momentum than gravity should have given it. The Simurgh saw the returning bullet and scrambled almost comically to avoid it. The bullet caught a single one of the Simurgh’s feathers on its way down, ripping it from the massive bird’s body before drilling back into the ground.

The Simurgh looked around the ground at its feet and quickly decided to flap its wings and fly up into the air. As soon as it had done so, the bullet shot back out of the ground right below the Simurgh and began trying to slam into the Simurgh’s body at great speed and with its rotation creating a frightening whirring sound that filled the air and melded with Madness’ laughter to create an eerie drone that made the hairs on my body stand on end.

I grit my teeth, summoned more energy, and made another dozen metal bullets shoot out of the ground. Two of them slammed into the Simurgh’s body, sending the massive Immortal spiraling backwards. The Simurgh let out a terrifying roar, far louder than anything I had ever heard before, and it flapped its wings to come to a complete and sudden stop in the air.

The Simurgh leered at me.

I stared back.

The Simurgh dove forward, I flew back. I prepared my metal bullets once more but the Simurgh flapped its wings and the entire battlefield was showered in rainbow colored light.

The ground cracked, the air crackled, and the bombardment around the Evil Eye disappeared—alongside the Evil Eye itself.

I felt my flight magic escaping from my body like loose sand clenched inside a tiny fist. I tumbled backwards through the air, unable to control my trajectory, and had to correct myself with a burst of energy fired in all directions. Brute forcing my way through the rainbow energy, I planted my feet firmly on the ground once more and opened the eyes that I hadn’t even noticed closing in the first place.

The Simurgh towered over me with its sharp beak. Rainbow feathers stared at me with mesmerizing eye shaped patterns all over them. The rainbow eyes had a hypnotic effect on my mind, bursting against the walls of my emotional manipulation resistance magic.

My meditative state began to crumble. The entire world began to swim and a wave of nausea overcame me. I almost puked but held myself together.

I slapped myself. Hard.

The world jerked back into place and my nausea vanished. I re-entered my meditative state and wrenched my eyes away from the Simurgh’s feathers just in time to avoid the beak aimed at my neck. The Simurgh’s beak slammed into the ground, mere inches from my feet.

I was sent flying backwards by the force of the collision. I used another burst of energy to steady myself but the Simurgh stepped forward and pecked at me again.

I avoided the next piercing attack but the Simurgh kept going. And going. And going. And going.

Crash after crash after crash after crash.

I danced backwards, barely escaping the Simurgh’s beak every time. It was only when I had gathered enough of a respite to cast flight magic and shoot back into the sky, that I idly remarked in my head how strange this fight would have looked. The Simurgh had become even more massive than before, soon becoming the size of a mountain, but it was still as fast as ever. Anyone passing by might have wondered why a massive rainbow colored bird was pecking at a worm at its feet, and why the worm was able to avoid becoming the bird’s dinner.

The Evil Eye had hidden itself once again. Madness’ laughter was gone. The Simurgh glared at me with its menacing stature and I realized at last that we were miles and miles away from where we had started.

There was a salty breeze and a little dull morning sunshine.

I planted my feet into the dry sand and prepared for a fight on the beach.