As a wise teenage space knight once said, sand is annoying and it gets in everywhere.

Sand gets in your eyes when you kick up from the ground to avoid a piercing beak attack from a massive rainbow colored bird.

Sand gets in your mouth when you twirl around to avoid a red beam of energy from a sentient eyeball. The sand crunches coarsely between your teeth as you fire off a blast of plasma to neutralize the red beam, and a plume of sand flies into your face when the two energy beams collide.

And the way the sand sounded underneath my feet and in my mouth was distracting. An annoying grating worse than white noise. Like scratching sandpaper with nails and keys and the rough tongue of a mountain lion.

Don’t ask me why that image came to my mind.

I kept avoiding the Simurgh’s attacks but I knew I couldn’t keep this up forever. The Simurgh was preparing something, I was sure of it. There was no way it would stick to such simple physical attacks when they clearly weren’t working. I hadn’t even needed to jump through time to avoid the Simurgh’s attacks yet. The Simurgh would surely use the next time I jumped through time as an opportunity to push against my domain in the way the Immortals had mentioned before. I still didn’t know what that felt like, so I knew I couldn’t counter it. I couldn’t use my domain recklessly, now that the element of surprise was no longer on my side.

I also couldn’t wait for Madness. His laughter was gone and that was unnerving. Dawn was breaking but the full moon was still hanging overhead, fighting against the pale blue sky with its own silver light.

But the biggest problem in the short term was the Evil Eye. Now that he had escaped from my spell barrage, he was able to shoot it at me from all sorts of angles without any fear. I had no idea where he was hiding or how far he was from the battlefield, so I couldn’t tie him down again.

I knew he was hurt. If my plasma beams could neutralize his red energy beams, then they must be able to hurt his main body too. But clearly, pummeling an Immortal with a bunch of energy wasn’t enough to do them any serious harm. Physical attacks were never going to work anyway. I knew that. I had to find a way to hurt their domains.

But I didn’t know how to do that. The only way I could find out was if one of the Immortals told me how to do it or if I experienced the process myself. I couldn’t learn this method from another Immortal, since they would probably just give me a limited use power like the Simurgh had done when it gave me the power to ‘read’ domains from the Ikons in their book form. Madness and the Evil Eye, even if they decided to help me after all, wouldn’t give me the sort of power that I could use against them.

So, the only option was to experience the loss of a domain. I was pretty sure the Simurgh was going to try and force me to use my domain of Time soon and that as soon as I did so, the Simurgh, or perhaps even the other Immortals, would use that opportunity to take control of the domain from me. That would be my one and only chance to learn how to steal domains from other people and I would have to use what I learned from that experience to come up with a spell that would let me take domains from any of the other Immortals.

Another beam of red light slammed into a beam of plasma, sending a cloud of sand flying into the air. The sand landed in my hair and on my face, forcing me to close my eyes as I ran right through the cloud of sand and towards the sea.

The sea was vast and empty and calm. Waves lapped lazily against the shore and the water was clear and blue. There were some docile fish shaped monsters in the distance but there was nothing menacing like the Sahagin in these parts. The image of the peaceful sea contrasted sharply with the hellish fight on the beach.

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I emerged from the cloud of sand and my feet splashed inside the salty waters. A little ocean spray landed on the tip of my tongue and I spat it out along with some sand and grit. The waters caressed my feet and my shoes were so worn out by this point that my water got into them and made a shiver go up my spine.

The Simurgh pecked at me again and I flew backwards to avoid it.

I landed on top of the water, my whole body bobbing up and down with the waves like a buoy. The Simurgh stood on the edge of the water, staring at me strangely. I met its gaze and stood still.

A beam of red light crashed into a wall of plasma and a column of water rose up with the collision. The water sprayed all over me but the early morning light, the first few rays of the morning sun, coincided with the water and somehow, with the Simurgh’s ostentatious rainbow feathers right in front of me, another rainbow appeared right over my head.

I held my breath. Was the Simurgh going to use this against me? Should I use light magic to mess this rainbow up?

The Simurgh stared at the rainbow for a little while. The Evil Eye did not launch another beam of red light. A gentle breeze brushed past my hair and I breathed in the salty air. The waves were quiet. The wind was quiet. The Simurgh, the Evil Eye, even Madness, everything was quiet.

I blinked.

The world lost its color.

I blinked again.

The world looked like a pencil sketch, a world of white with black boundaries around objects and scenes.

I blinked again, despite not wanting to.

The world lost its boundaries too. There was nothing but light. A strange white light that consumed everything.

It was overwhelming. Powerful. And definitely unnatural. This had to be the power of a domain. The domain of light? Of existence? Or of my ability to see?

I closed my eyes. Entering my meditative state once again, I used all manner of detection spells. Everything from my old motion detection spell to my new echolocation and even radar spells. Soon, I had a detailed picture of my actual physical surroundings recreated right inside my head.

I jumped backwards.

There was a loud splash.

Then a flutter not unlike a dog shaking its fur after being doused in the rain.

I opened my eyes and sure enough, I could see again. Whoever had used that domain must have realized there was no point to keeping it up if it didn’t stop me from dodging the Simurgh’s attack. I wished there had been a way to get them to keep using it, since the other Immortals might get greedy and try to steal it, giving me the chance to see how that was done.

The Simurgh stood inside the shallow waters, its tall legs keeping it clear of the sea. Some of its feathers were wet but that had only made its rainbows more intense. I had to use light magic to make sure they wouldn’t blind me with their brilliance. The rising sun was making everything worse.

Well, not everything.

I snuck a glance at the sky and realized the moon was still there. Pale. Fading. And struggling against the sun, but still there, hanging in the sky right above my head like a guillotine. Waiting for the opportunity to fall and sever my head clean off my shoulders.

Do not ask me why that image was coming to my mind.

The Simurgh opened its wings. The rainbow become brighter.

Five beams of glaring red light pierced towards me from different angles.

And a mirthless chuckle echoed in my ear.

I bit my lips. Snapped my fingers. And leapt into the future.