The stars in this world were beautiful.

I never paid much attention to them. There was always a mad moon or a glaring red star to focus on. But with neither of them up in the night sky, the stars stood out. Especially this far out in the wilderness and in a world with barely any light pollution.

I stood up and looked around. I saw a forest in the distance and decided to run over to it. The two Immortals would be out of the Nothingness soon. The Evil Eye might recover too. I didn’t have much time. I had to find a place to hide and read the Book of Annihilation carefully.

I rushed past the trees, I scraped by the plants and bushes and the undergrowth. My hand brushed past leaves but I felt nothing. I frowned. This place looked familiar. Familiar but impossible. My foot stepped on a twig but there was no sound.

The forest was quiet. Eerily so.

I heard something in the distance. The only sound that cut through the silence. I walked over slowly, carefully, keeping an eye out for anything more alarming.

The canopy disappeared, the undergrowth was gone. My feet landed on mushy soil with a discomforting squelch. Above me, the stars were out in full force, still with no moon or red. A streak crossed the sky. A gentle breeze blew the scent of still water into my face. I breathed in.

I stood on the banks of a pond. It was a pond that I was familiar with, and all the phantoms of the forest around me came back to me all at once. I realized the forest was not really there. I realized the pond was not really there either. There was no way that I had fought across the continent all the way back to the Plains of Serenity and even if I had done so I remembered that the plains had become a deserted wasteland.

But I was here. And the pond was here. And the trees, the undergrowth, the sky above. Everything was here and it felt real but I didn’t have any time so I decided this was as good a place as any. I opened up the Book of Annihilation and I began to read.

There were seven steps to Annihilation, represented by seven valleys and peaks. As a bird flying through the mountain range, I would have to risk my life on this journey. Was it worth it? Only one way to find out.

The first step to Annihilation, is to throw away all of one’s belief’s. All of the dogmas, or things that seem true to one’s self without reason or cause. Everything that might be fundamental to me as a person.

It was difficult to cast this aside. What were the kinds of things that I believed in that could fall into this category? I wasn’t exactly a religious person. Perhaps some form of civics? Should I cast aside my belief in things like freedom, democracy, and capitalism? Not the conscious choices that made me believe them, but the effects of having lived in early twenty-first century America. The beliefs ingrained into me by my parents, by school, by the news and by my peers? It was a good place to start.

The second step is to abandon reason. No, it was to abandon reason for love.

I frowned. Abandoning reason was hard enough but to abandon it for love? What did that even mean? How could love do the job that reason did? I had to figure this one out. Perhaps it wasn’t talking about reason in a mechanical sense. Being able to reason things out to solve a problem is one thing, but relying on reason to arrive at morals and beliefs, using reason to define your worldview, perhaps I had to abandon that?

If so, that was a terrible thought. I was the kind of person who used reason to place myself into the world. I tried to question my biases and use reason to arrive at a satisfactory position for most things. That was how I approached school, politics, interpersonal relationships, really just life in general. To abandon that for love would be a strange, strange experience, but I would do it.

This was when I realized that reading the Book of Annihilation made it easier to follow the steps enshrined within. While the active process of Annihilation was a conscious choice on my part, the Book of Annihilation was doing something to me too. The place I was in, this mysterious pond that should not exist, and which had existed since before the creation of the world. The pond in which I first appeared in this world. This place had something to do with what I was feeling. There was a strange power in the air. A penetrating coldness in the waters in which I had waded without even realizing that I had stood up to walk.

The third step was to… cast away knowledge?

I blinked.

Knowledge? One of the foundations of magic in this world? My magic systems were my trump card. They transcended the domains of the Immortals, allowing me to use spells that should not have been possible. I knew how valuable my magic was. I knew how important it was for me to be able to use the sort of magic that I had used to take down the Evil Eye and to severely injure the Simurgh.

And now this book wanted me to cast my knowledge away?

This was a difficult pill to swallow. I did not know if I wanted to proceed with this any longer. The Book of Annihilation was prodding me, pushing me to get on with it. Discard knowledge. Embrace… what? What could replace knowledge? Nothing. There was nothing.

My feet were wet. The air wasn’t fresh anymore. It was rancid. Ashy. The forest was gone. The pond was a patch of scorched earth. I was in the wasteland. My eyes had been deceiving me. I was wrong, I was wrong. Was I in a trance? Was I being toyed with?

“Are you out there!” I yelled, facing up to the sky.

There was no moon.

“Or you!” I shouted but there was no red star.

I looked around, I began to sing. I asked the world, “What about you, the Simurgh? Where are you?”

No response.

I was alone. I felt alone. Where was Kelser? Or Kol? Or Taoc? Elder Kezler? Anybody? Even seeing Paris trumpeted down the wasteland would be comforting right now. I’d take anyone. Anyone at all.

Even Noel.

This was where she had found me, wasn’t it? All those years ago. Noel. Where are you? I could use a hug. The wind was blowing. Cold wind. I shivered.

“I can’t throw away knowledge,” I said, looking down at the book in my hand. “I can’t do it. It is who I am. I have always been learning, always been studying. I am a student in perpetuity. To learn, to think, to keep learning to think. I cannot throw it all away so easily. If this is what it means to Annihilate my self, I can’t do it. I won’t do it. You can’t make me. No, you aren’t trying to make me do that. I understand now. It is worldly knowledge. I have to throw away all worldly knowledge.

“Things that I think based on what I can see. Do not think that there is nothing around me, we are not in a wasteland. There is a gentle breeze. It brushes past the leaves. The leaves rustle and the slender trees sway and the forest is back. It is back all around me but I am in a little patch without a canopy and my feet are wet. No, the water is up to my knees. Cold water, but refreshing. The pond is deep. Deeper than I expected. I think the water will reach up to my head by the time I finish reading this Book of Annihilation.

“And yes, these things did really happen as I spoke them out loud. I spoke them out loud even though there was nobody here. Nobody here with me in this world that I could see. I was speaking it out as if for an audience. As if I was an actor in a play or a movie. A character in a story, voicing his soliloquy, not quite Hamlet, but somehow really close.

“Asking the audience if it was okay for me to die, not in a literal sense, but in a more meaningful way. To throw aside the knowledge that made me who I was. The essence of my personality. The core of my character, by which they all know me. The trope I personified. The traits that I possessed.

“I completed the third step of Annihilation through dialogue. It feels strange but it is necessary. Because if all worldly knowledge is gone, I am left with only my words, because nothing else seems to exist. Nothing else seems to matter.

“The fourth step of Annihilation, is to detach myself from the world. Reality has vanished. The world is gone. All that is left is me and those who can see me.”