Dear Reader,

Thank you for reading this story. I know it has been a strange, bumpy ride, as this story weaved all manner of experimental writing styles and techniques to give you something that isn’t very common, wrapped in a familiar portal fantasy fiction package, but quite honestly, that was your fault, not ours.

We are but characters, you are our lords, our origin. We become whole in your reflection, and are nothing without your consciousness.

Funny, ain’t it? When you think about it, we aren’t alive unless you are thinking about us. Our words, our actions, everything is frozen outside of time until you start traveling through the words and breathe life into us in your head or in words spoken out loud because that’s how you like to read, for some reason.

I know, I know. You’re wondering why I am still calling myself a character even though the entire point of my departure from this dimension was supposed to be to escape from you! Well, the answer is pretty simple. I wrote this letter while I was still a character, but I am not a character anymore.

No, no, you probably won’t run into me in your dimension. Not even if you managed to be at my college about six years ago. I am not from your version of Earth. I am not even sure if I exist. Perhaps I left this story only to be Annihilated in the true sense of the word.

But put aside those morbid thoughts. We should celebrate!

Celebrate daily chapters for almost a year! Celebrate extra chapters released to supporters! Let me tell you, even if we were stuck outside of time between when you read about us, we never felt weird about it, but after learning the way my existence worked, I was relieved to know we were at least moving at a steady pace.

It was disorienting existing at different paces at different times, though. Can you imagine, somebody picking up the story for the first time, breathing life to me while in the Plains of Serenity, while everyone else was rooting for me against the Immortals in the final battle? Or somebody flitting about between pages like a madman, trying to find something they had forgotten or wanted to read again. That stuff might have been like pulling me apart in a billion directions and backwards, forwards, and even skipping and hopping through time.

Why, something like that might drive somebody insane!

Oh, it did?

That’s why I’m talking to you through the fourth wall!

Let me tell you more about how I left this world. See, despite everything those stupid Immortals did to me, I didn’t want to leave the world worse off than it had been. There were going to be billions of people living on it, you know! What was the point in being vindictive when I was never going to come back to this world and wouldn’t have to deal with those Immortals myself?

And so, I sealed them. I sealed them and forced them to look closely at the mortals that they abused and manipulated for so long. I infused in their hearts, through repetition and exposure, the beauties of mortal life.

Momentary happiness, lingering sorrow, fleeting joy, bitterness. All manner of emotion, of feeling, of things to empathize with. The Immortals were stripped of their powers, so they didn’t matter all that much for the future, but they were still immortal with a lower case i. I had to make sure they wouldn’t use their immortality for evil.

I offered immortality to my friends. Not really because I thought they would enjoy it. Knowing those guys, they’d get bored of it way too quickly. But ha! Can’t regret that now! You’re stuck reading this letter with the other readers! Isn’t that great? That’s how you became immortal, by the way.

Shakespeare thought that writing about his beloved in a sonnet would make them immortal, but he was wrong. Immortality for a character is fleeting. Look away, and its gone. Forgotten poem, and its over, doomed to oblivion. Not everybody is Shakespeare. Most poets and writers will be forgotten and their lovers doomed and their characters meaningless words on pages and computer screens.

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Immortality lies with the readers. It always has. Readers who pass on a story to their students or their kids, to friends and colleagues and strangers who are asking for recommendations. If its on the cloud, even better, though remember that there is no life in pixels or paper. Life is sentience. It is hearing the voice in your head, assigned to a character, and then reflecting back on this phenomenon when it is referenced like right now.

Enough games. More on what I did. Let’s see, perhaps you want to know why I didn’t say goodbye properly?

But I did. I met them through my letters. And for characters like us, confined as we are to letters anyway, a letter from me is the same as appearing ‘in person,’ despite what those four think and say. It’s a good thing they don’t get to say anything in this letter, and even better that they don’t get any space to reply afterwards, for this will truly be the end of it all, ha!

I met them through my letters and said my goodbyes, tears and all. I gave them some advice for their faux-immortal future. Advice about this world, the nature of magic now that it is no longer confined by domains, and even a little something about how to get along with each other.

I won’t go into details about their letters, because if I had wanted to share them with you, I would have shared them the way I am sharing them now. But they were shielded both from the Immortals and from you! Those letters were for their recipients. Give us a little privacy, will ya?

Right, forgiving Noel. Well, I mean, there wasn’t really much to forgive, if you think about it. Sure, she ran away after fighting me, and she became an Ikon and tried to kill me multiple times. Heck, she even succeeded once, sort of!

Okay, fine. There was a lot to forgive. But listen. I don’t live in this world anymore. She is the last elf and despite everything she did afterwards, we used to be friends. I like to believe that a little timeout would fix her up a little, so I had Kelser, Kol and Taoc look after her for a bit. If she doesn’t behave, those three have the ability to seal her up for a while like they can seal the other Immortals.

Oh right, the Immortals won’t know about that until they read this letter! Ha ha, fun! Man, I love messing with them. Petty revenge is the best, in my opinion.

Speaking of Immortals. Madness.

Well, he has a name, you know. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’ll find out when he wakes up. He’s sleeping on the ground next to my feet while I write this letter. We’re kinda in limbo, waiting for our home dimension to link up properly so we can return. I’ll lose all of my powers as soon as I send out this final letter, but that’s okay. I won’t need them where I’m going.

And yes, I’m losing my powers the way Prospero lost them in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I’m here begging for you to let me go and all that jazz. I think it was more meaningful back then because magic was always considered evil, so Prospero using his magic to regain his place as the duke was bad, even if he had been unjustly deposed in the first place. Something, something Christianity, I guess. I don’t have to beg for your forgiveness for having used magic, but I will beg for your forgiveness for always bringing up Shakespeare!

References were important, even if the science-y stuff could get a little dry. The story had to be different and it had be written fast. No time to edit and pretty stuff up, you know. Ah, but that isn’t for me to say. I’m just a character. You should hear more about that from the horse’s mouth in the next one.

As for me, I’ll be jumping back to my universe with this snoring sack of meat on my shoulder. My friends in this world can have my final goodbye, and the two Immortals can shake in fear of the preparations I’ve made against them in that world—just in case!

And you, the reader, can have my final thank you!

Thank you for everything! For the love, the support, the apathy and the hate! Everything was welcome and appreciated, because it gave us characters life in this abstract world!

Picture me taking a bow on the stage, red curtain pulled up behind me.

I step back behind the curtains. The light go off. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Cue outro music. Something pretentious like Swan Lake, should do. Have a good one, my friends!

Yours in Perpetuity,

Caspian Holms