The Simurgh flapped its wings and let out a loud screech that made my body shake. I steadied myself with magic, rooting my legs in place over the water, and cast a spell to submerge the still groggy giant bird in a massive wave of seawater.

I tried to exchange a glance with Madness, figuring he wouldn’t mind getting his beloved a little wet since it wouldn’t actually hurt it. But Madness was gone. I clicked my tongue and faced to the side. That was where the Evil Eye’s beam of red energy had come from.

I crouched down, gathered my energy, and shot off. The wind whistled past. I scanned the area and found the Evil Eye hiding behind a pile of rubble. There were a bunch of red tentacles coming out of the Evil Eye’s massive eyeball, and they looked like empty blood vessels that were still somehow beating with blood. Some of those tentacles were stuck under the rubble and the Evil Eye was trying to quietly escape from under them without giving himself away. Unfortunately for him, I had already found it.

I put a hand in the air and the sky began to darken. The Evil Eye looked up at the sky, froze in place, and then began to hurriedly blast the rocks off of its tentacles. It escaped the rubble and began floating in the air, looking from side to side as if searching for the source of the energy that had turned the sky gray.

Chuckle.

The Evil Eye turned around.

The moon peeked out from the gray clouds. Eerily, the only place in the sky without gray clouds was precisely where the moon was. Emblazoned on the moon, were two familiarly wild eyes, each looking down at the Evil Eye with insanity and derangement.

The Evil Eye shuddered.

Madness laughed.

A pillar of silver energy slammed into the Evil Eye, who only managed to shield himself with a burst of red light at the last possible moment. The Evil Eye fell all the way to the ground, and the silver beam incinerated the soil and made a plume of ash fly into the air.

Trees and small monsters were destroyed as collateral damage and the ground shook for miles around. I had to squint my eyes because of the brilliance of the silver pillar, and I kept seeing afterimages of the attack even as I flew out from over the ocean and the beach, returning to the forests where the Evil Eye had been hiding.

The silver light petered out. A tiny black husk lay in the middle of a massive crater. The husk shook and red skin emerged from under the ash. The Evil Eye’s body trembled but as he flopped over and faced its pupil to the sky, I confirmed that it was not seriously hurt. Madness had only attacked its physical form. The more dangerous metaphysical attack, the kind that would take some domains away from the Evil Eye, had not happened. Yet.

I kicked the Evil Eye right in his massive eye and the Immortal of Evil squealed as he shot away into the forest. I flew after him and landed another kick. And another punch. Kick. Punch. Kick. Punch. Roundhouse. Jab.

I gathered a slab of metal from the ground and sharpened it into a spear in midair. The Evil Eye saw the sharp, spinning projectile moving towards his eye, and scrambled with some newly regrown tentacles. The tentacles lugged the eye out of the way, but I managed to slice into his side anyway. He let out another scream.

Beating up the Evil Eye was a rather gruesome affair. It involved a lot of physical punches and kicks and a general beating with my bare fists, with a few stabs and slices added in for good measure. From time to time, the hole in the clouds would reemerge and a beam of silver energy or a pulse of moonlight would crash into the Evil Eye and torture him further.

The Evil Eye’s reaction were becoming less coherent and forceful. He barely avoided the worst of my piercing attacks, almost letting his massive eye get popped on multiple occasions. His entire body was a beaten, bruised, and bloody mess, and it had regrown its tentacles so many times that the ground was littered with them.

When the Simurgh reappeared behind me, it was clearly enraged. The massive rainbow bird tried to blow me away from the Evil Eye and even pecked at me with its beak, but Madness reappeared and began to keep his beloved busy. Still, the Simurgh was desperate to get past Madness and get to me, since it knew what was going on. It knew that I was beating up the Evil Eye’s physical body to try and get him to use one of his domains.

The Evil Eye, to his credit, was enduring quite well. He must have realized what I was trying to do, and pretty much refused to use his domains at all. Even when I scraped his eyeball with my spear or punched him in the same place a few hundred times, the Evil Eye didn’t use a single domain, denying me the opportunity to try and take it from him.

That wouldn’t work forever. It wasn’t like the Immortal’s physical body was completely worthless. Their physical bodies were tough and robust but they could still be damaged pretty badly. The Evil Eye wouldn’t want to be going through immense pain for too long, would he? He would have to give in eventually.

I began experimenting with what I had learned about damaging the metaphysical or abstract bodies of the Immortals. If they could attack me when I was using my domains, then perhaps I could attack them even if they weren’t using their domains. After pushing and pulling on the Evil Eye’s metaphysical body, specifically against his domain of evil, I managed to make the Evil Eye glare at me in disbelief. His body shook. He launched a burst of red energy at me, which I quickly neutralized, and soon, I launched another series of fists and kicks in retaliation.

These were no ordinary physical attacks. I had realized from my bombardment, that the Immortals could weather energy attacks quite well. But a physical attack that was laced with some ‘knowledge’ about the domain that they controlled was enough to bring them a higher form of pain.

And yes, that was the secret to pulling apart an Immortal’s domain. All I had to do, was use my own knowledge of that domain, and batter the Immortal’s understanding of it with my own. It was kinda like questioning a thesis, except much more violent. The Socratic method but with fisticuffs, if you will.

With a fist, I asked the Evil Eye if evil was innate or experiential. With a kick, I asked him if an evil action done with good intentions was still an evil action. Was evil subjective or objective? Who decides, who arbitrates, who defines what is evil, what is good, and what is either or in between?

Is evil natural? Is the natural, evil? When a wild monster eats another painfully and without regard for age, weakness, or other things that may affect sentient morality, does that count as an evil act, or is such an act only considered evil if it was done by a sentient creature?

Over and over, I began to hurt the Evil Eye with attacks laced with questions, and over and over, the Evil Eye let out a garbled cry and without a response to any of my questions, the weight of my questions began to weigh down on the Immortal of Evil.

This was not an efficient way to steal a domain. With every question, I felt as if I was pulling the domain a fraction of an inch closer to me, but at this rate, making a serious dent on this domain would take me many thousands of years, if not longer. The Evil Eye knew this. It knew that despite all the pain it was suffering, it wouldn’t have to endure forever. Eventually, the Simurgh would shake off Madness and come to the Evil Eye’s rescue. I didn’t have much time. There as only so much I could do alone.

I smirked. One of my punches turned into slap which turned into an open palm that grabbed one of the Evil Eye’s tentacles. Before the Evil Eye could resist, I kicked him with both feet like I was playing with a soccer ball. I launched up into the air with magic, kicking the Evil Eye as we flew through the air and headed back towards the remains of the temple of Madness.