“Welcome, Noel,” I said, returning to the dialogue tags for the convenience of my Beloved.

Noel was visibly shaken. And no, it wasn’t because she had been eviscerated by sharp volcanic rocks and ash that had been kicked up by my fight with the Immortals. Needless to say, such an experience would be terribly traumatizing and painful, but thankfully, something like that never happened to her. She was merely knocked unconscious for a little bit and happened to wake up as I walked over with my entourage in tow.

“How’s the head?” I asked as I reached out and rubbed over her head. There was a lump there, you see. Terrible, really. I wished it would get better soon, but these things take time. A lot of time.

Noel did not thank me for my concern. She seemed a little shocked. She had tried to use a spell against me when I rushed over, sadly mistaking my concern for her with something nefarious. But when the spell failed to fire, she said something about the look in my eyes and the connection she had lost. Was it her connection to her Immortal? She said she didn’t feel like an Ikon anymore.

“Yes, I think Madness is going through a little trouble right now,” I said in response. “He must have realized that Madness is a terrible domain to form your core around. It erodes the narrative, you see. How is anybody meant to follow what is happening if the narrator is insane? You know, there was a writer in my old world, great guy, super talented. He made one of his characters, his narrator, insane. Truly insane. Came up with crazy words like Zembla. The narrator pretended to be annotating a massive poem entrusted to him by a certain poet, but in the footnotes, the narrator all but admits to having murdered the poet and stolen the poem and published the book despite the protests of all who actually cared for the poet. What a terrible story, don’t you think? So unnecessarily complex. Why would anybody read it?”

Kelser said it sounded interesting.

I smiled. “I agree! I loved it! One of my favorite books of all time. Dear Beloved, you should go look up Nabokov’s Pale Fire, it’s a great read. Just don’t go yet. I need you here for a little longer. Just a little longer.”

Kol asked who I was speaking to.

“Nobody, my dear queen,” I said, “and no Taoc, my Beloved is not the Simurgh. That demiurge! The Simurgh did not breathe life into all of you. It is a construct, just like the rest of us. The only one that can bring true life, the true essence of existence into this world is my Beloved. No. I will not entertain any more questions on this subject for now, Kelser. I must prepare for the return of my adversaries.”

Noel asked what I was talking about. Was Madness going to return? And the Simurgh? And the Evil Eye?

“Of course they are!” I said. “My Beloved would not believe if the three most powerful beings in this universe simply vanished like this, after all. There has to be a final, climactic battle. The Evil Eye may have lost the domain of Evil, but he will make a new personality. Probably around something unimportant and small.

“Madness has lost his domain of Madness so he will pick another, more fitting domain, I am sure. I am afraid of his choice, I must tell you. He has some fairly powerful domains to choose from. I fear he will choose one of Music or Dance, and then I will have no choice but to have a dance-off or karaoke duel. Horrifying idea, I know.

“The Simurgh still possesses Desire, although it has lost Annihilation. The problem is, the Simurgh’s Desire was fueled not only by her own desire but by the desire of others. Now that the Simurgh has lost its most ardent admirer, Madness, it only has its own desires to fuel itself. Worse still, I have now attached myself to the most powerful being or beings in all of reality. I cannot be defeated. Nobody likes a tragedy. Or at least, not anymore. There better be a happy ending or there will be hell to pay, you know!”

The ground rumbled. The air trembled. The night sky shook. The moon returned. The red star blinked into existence. Bird cries filled the air.

“It is time,” I said. “I should say that it is quite convenient and believable that all of you, my dear friends Kelser, Kol, Taoc, Noel, Paris and even the enemies who have somehow survived until now, have been whisked away by the wind that I summoned and gone far, far away from this battlefield. So far away that no matter how much destruction is wreaked on this landscape, nobody will be injured, let alone killed.

“In fact, let me take it a step further. Let us say, I blinked and the Immortals and I were back in the Nothingness. They were not surprised by this, since they knew by now that I held the power of Annihilation which was intrinsically connected to the Nothingness. To achieve Nothingness, one needs Annihilation. It was why I was only one step away from leaving the Nothingness.

“The seventh step of Annihilation is known simply as the step of Annihilation. It is the step where my self has disappeared and merged with the space of the universe, and all time has become meaningless. Once I achieve that step, I will transcend space and time, and be able to return to my world or indeed I would be able to control this world almost entirely. Very dangerous. I can understand why the Simurgh was nervous about handing this power over but also it explained why the Simurgh could not use this power on itself.

“Once the step of Annihilation is completed, I would cease to exist in this world. It would be a sort of death, really. No soul, no will, no consciousness of any sort. It would be Annihilation in the most literal use of the word. I would be gone. Whether something would come out on the other end in another world is hard to say, but I would be gone. Truly gone from this one. Isn’t that right, my friend?”

“Don’t call me your friend,” said the Immortal that was formerly known as Madness, as he snarled at me and walked over in his disheveled clothes.

He wasn’t wearing the toga but a modern shirt and jeans, all ruffled up and torn in various places. Poor guy was really in a bad state. Didn’t help that he had mud on his face too. Maybe some of it had gotten into his mouth, being gritty between his teeth.

“Stop that!” he cried.

“Stop what?” I asked innocently.

“Stop doing whatever it is that you’re doing!” he said with a shout. “Stop changing my clothes with a thought. Stop putting mud on my face, some of it even got in my mouth!” He spat out. “And stop stealing my domains!”

“Stealing your domains?” I said turning my head askew. “What ever do you mean? I simply took over some free floating domains. Look, the domain of Sleep. It just happened to be there and I just took it.”

“You did it again!” he shouted, incredulously. “How are you doing this? This shouldn’t be possible. Even if you have the domain of Annihilation, it can’t possibly have made you this powerful!”

“No measly domain is giving me my power,” I said. “It is my Beloved, who bestows upon me, unimaginable power!”

He frowned. “Your beloved? That’s my line. No, that was, wait, you already Annihilated yourself? Except, you got further than me. But that shouldn’t be possible. The sixth step is impossible. You have to observe the Beloved for a long time, and be destroyed by its beauty and power. You haven’t even seen the Simurgh for a day since getting that book. How could you have passed the sixth step already?”

“My dear friend,” I said with a gentle, knowing smile. I also spared a glance for the still silent Simurgh. “If you choose a beloved as pathetic as that bird brained pecker over there, you’ll never be entranced by a powerful enough sense of awe and beauty. You can’t destroy yourself in a flame that is barely warmer than your own skin. It isn’t possible. To surpass the sixth step of Annihilation, you needed to pick a Beloved that is more powerful than any other.”

“I chose the most powerful being in this world. The creator deity. The Immortal that once controlled all of the domains,” he said, his brows furrowed.

“Yes, you chose a powerful character,” I said, nodding sympathetically. “But I chose one better. I chose the reader!”