I opened my eyes and I was back at the flattened mountains near Mount Smoke. The debris from the blown up mountains littered the ground, crunching under Noel’s feet as she staggered to the side with her head in her hands. To my left, Alek Izlandi stood frozen inside a large diamond. His face was contorted in pain and frozen with an unflattering grimace. The silver moon shone dangerously overhead and the red star was burning red but a bird shaped shadow covered the night sky, blotting out constellations and casting darkness down onto the ground.

I knew I didn’t have much time. The Simurgh could only hold back Madness and the Evil Eye for a little while. And it certainly couldn’t interfere directly again. I suspected it was only able to bring me into the Nothingness in exchange for all of the liberties the other Immortals had taken to carry out the ceremony. Now, the ceremony had failed and I had recovered the domain of Annihilation for the Simurgh. After I retrieved the Present and Future, the Simurgh would finally send me back home.

Or so it claimed.

I put my hand on the diamond entombing Alek Izlandi. The diamond shook and shuddered before losing its luster and shine. With a little effort, the middle of the diamond began turning darker and darker until it became a darker, more brittle type of carbon, resembling coal. The carbon cracked and the diamond split open like an egg. Alek Izlandi gasped and flopped on the ground like a fish. He coughed and made weird noises, some of which sounded like the words of the poem I had been chanting when I read the words that led me to Nothingness.

Gravel crunched underfoot. I looked over to find that Noel had recovered and she was sporting a frightening look in her eyes. With both hands held out to her sides, she summoned a burst of bubbles and began running over.

I thought I’d be able to stall her by talking to her about the things the Simurgh had told me. I knew she’d be interested in learning more about this world, but I also needed her help to parse through the Simurgh’s words and make sense of them. Especially the part about this world being some sort of reflection of the Simurgh itself. But judging by the look in Noel’s eyes, a look full of chaotic madness, I knew this was not the time for a conversation.

I jumped out of the way as a deluge of bubbles crashed into the split diamond. I used magic hands to fling Alek high into the air. A high shriek escaped Alek’s throat as he flew into the air, but I kept him up there and out of range of Noel’s spells. It didn’t take a genius to realize Noel hadn’t been aiming for me with her magic. She knew the Immortals would push the Simurgh back at some point. If she could freeze Alek in time for a bit like she’d done to the fairies and spirits in the Republic, she’d win this fight without ever having to fight me at all.

But now, I had to fight her while juggling Alek above my head, sometimes avoiding stray bubbles Noel would fire into the air just to mess with me. I also had to be careful, since the actual worst thing she could do right now would be to run away or to freeze herself in time. I suspected both the loss of rationality thanks to her madness and the fact she didn’t know exactly what I wanted were stopping her from realizing that I didn’t just want Alek, I wanted both of them. Oh, now that I thought about it, she probably thought I was still trying to read the Book of Annihilation off of Alek’s body.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I pointed one hand towards Noel and the two chunks of diamond flew towards her. She tried pushing them away with larger, more solid silver bubbles, but the bubbles popped with a metallic ting and Noel had to jump out of the way in a hurry. She then began scrambling on the ground as I fired tiny pellets of diamond and metal towards her, although I made sure they weren’t going fast enough to hurt her too badly. The Simurgh had said I needed both of them alive, and I wasn’t sure if damaging them too much would make it harder to read the Present and Future from them.

While Noel scrambled on the ground, I quickly began preparing a way to incapacitate her. First, I prepared a powerful ball of fire and flung it towards her. Noel could have blocked this attack with her silver bubbles but she was in no position to cast a spell, especially with the other pellets of diamond coming towards her. She tried to dodge the fireball the same way she had avoided the pellets.

The fireball exploded when it got close to her. I activated another spell to suck the oxygen from the air at just the right time. By timing this with when she appeared to be breathing in, I was able to give her body a terrible shock as she was flung aside. Her lungs would probably feel like they were burning, but I’d controlled the smoke and ash to make sure she wasn’t in any real danger. But this gave me enough time to rush over to her with flight magic and put my hand on her head.

The Simurgh had said it would give me the skill I needed to reveal the Books and sure enough, as I put my hand on Noel’s head, weird words started falling out of my mouth like drool. The words formed into a poem, giving a new meaning to Wordsworth’s famous line about poetry being “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

I didn’t recognize the words either, but as I began to utter them, the sky darkened and thunder roiled and rumbled. The silver moon glared with an intense silver shine but the shadow of the Simurgh kept the moonlight from falling on my body. A wild cacophonous melody erupted around me but calm birdsong soon overpowered it, leaving me with only a little nosebleed.

At the same time, I brought Alek Izlandi down to my side. The demon Ikon was wide-eyed and green-faced, and he barely resisted as I placed my other hand on his head and began chanting as well. This time, the red star shone fiercely, slamming into the contest between the silver moonlight and the bird-like shadow, but unable to break through as well. Weird whispers also filled the air but the birdsong overpowered that too.

The world stilled. The crunching gravel, the whistling wind, the thunder, an arc of lightning frozen like a scar in the sky. A bead of sweat dangled off an eyelash, unable to drop down to the ground below. The only thing that moved were my lips, but I couldn’t feel them moving. The only sound that could travel were the words I was speaking, but I couldn’t hear them. My body was moving inside the temporal limbo, as if running on auto-pilot.

Or perhaps like a puppet dancing on a stage, oblivious to the strings holding up its body.

I finished the words and two pages appeared on my hands. To my left, Alek turned into the Book of the Future, and on my right, Noel turned into the Book of the Present.

The Simurgh’s shadow shook. The silver moon shuddered. And a red glare blinked like an eyeball that had just been rubbed by a clumsy hand. All three Immortals looked down at me with surprise.

I smiled, picked up both books, and began to move in the limbo. I imagined the scene was akin to Pinocchio coming to life in Geppetto’s workshop. People often forget that in Collodi’s famous story, Pinocchio started out as a talking log—alive before he was carved into a puppet. And also, that the first part that was carved was Pinocchio’s infamous nose.

Pinocchio, you see, had been born to be a liar.