After a few days' journey home, Penjaga sits on the dock as the boat he, Uhlanya, and Lanetli had shared for the past week dissolves into nothing. Penjaga had spent some time looking at the journal of the man who had created the original rituals, and he felt like he was closer to opening the book and a little closer to understanding the magic in place on the book.

Master, we are home. Time does not pass, yet it's been long. I have never been here but I am happy. And hungry. Can I feed on the man in red? Uhlanya thinks to him. He smiles, a tad surprised that the "madness" asked his permission at all, though he was glad she did, because she would not be able to survive an encounter with Lanetli.

"No, not him. I'll find you someone to feed off of later. Maybe I'll catch a bird or something for you." he responds out loud his human-shaped cloud of spores which regularly disassembles itself and then reassembles itself in different places, seemingly without reason.

I don't like birds. . . They don't think enough for good eating. she responds. Penjaga assumes that there is either some sort of link to the type of magic produced by thought and Uhlanya's apatite or thought simply produces the right chemicals for her to feed. Taking that a step further, it's possible that is why she drives people insane, their mind breaks down because Uhlanya is eating. People go crazy because I eat and tell it I need more. Their mind starts having fun then.

"Come on kid, where do you want to do this? I have a lot to do today and I'm sick of drawing this out." Lanetli shouts from the other side of the dock, having a conversation with his chicken just like Penjaga was speaking with his familiar.

"This was always my favorite spot. I always loved the unpredictable insanity of the ocean in motion." Penjaga shouts back as he moves to his feet. He flares his arms out to the side, preparing for the ritual. In his mind his past flashes through his mind, how he never really fit in with anyone but was known by everyone. A kid that no one had strong feelings about, he was just kind of. . . There. Throughout his whole life, he would improvise as if he had always planned for things to turn out the way they did. Even dealing with the old, their minds rotting from dementia, he was always able to keep up with their madness without thought.

Uhlanya spreads herself into the revised summoning circle as a sort of stencil, and Penjaga starts filling her with magic, focusing to make sure none left her form, then condensing the magic within her as she moves away from the magic, forming a tube around it before retreating and surrounding her master as he feeds magic into the activation sequence. The focus was easier with two sentient minds holding the ritual in place, and there was no hint of instability during the entire sequence. The ritual finishes, and a series of chickens start building themselves from the ambient magic.

"You can eat them," he tells Uhlanya, who falls on the chickens with joy radiating through their soul bond. One chicken after another starts flapping erratically, pecking at themselves and each other, none of them seem to have any sense of self-preservation, quickly ripping each other apart and attacking nothing. Before long one falls over, dead, and briefly mushrooms appear in their open wounds before the chickens all return to magic, Uhlanya happy with her meal.

Uhlanya floats up to her master, taking her human-like shape and sitting on his shoulder. Penjaga stares out into the ocean, wishing time wasn't as frozen as it was. He loves the water and the creatures that live there.

"You know, I had a hand in making those." comes a voice that seems to shift with every syllable.

"I feel like I should be more surprised by that," he says back. "But I'm not. Some of the most interesting creatures live down there, and we haven't even explored most of it."

"That's why I like you, Penjaga. You and I, we touch Madness, play with it even, and yet, Madness has not touched us. That is the essence of insanity, to be part of it without it being part of you. To control the Madness. Although, you always have, haven't you?" says the icon. Uhlanya had stayed quiet, simply listening with her master. "Shall the three of us go up to my room in the pyramid so I can truly reward you for being the first in millennia to grace my presence?"

"I don't see why not. Let's have a look," says Penjaga. The world suddenly shifts, and he finds himself in a dark room, surrounded by rainbows, colors finding themselves more prominent, then fading to express other colors. The icon doesn't become some great being of light, as Lanetli had described, Madness simply stays as a human, although the features specifically don't make sense. The hair somehow all lengths and colors at once without ever actually being any color or style. The icon's entire being is similar, having all forms, and in a paradoxical fashion, no form.

"I have the wonderful honor of bestowing on you a power. One that all practitioners of my art have. You have a remorseless soul, Madness is pervasive in you, and part of that is no remorse. As such, you cannot be cursed, all curses placed upon you will end immediately, and you cannot willingly take a curse upon yourself. You cannot relieve Lanetli of his curse, but you may still help. Both of you." says the icon. The pair accept, knowing it would be useful in the long run. What Penjaga doesn't understand is, how can it be madness if it's something all Madness magi have? "Madness is patterns without pattern. I just personally like that power, so all my children get it eventually. Not giving a shit about anything is Madness in and of itself, is it not?"

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"I suppose. Madness is truly whatever you want it to be. It has no proper form." Penjaga responds.

"So you understand. Madness is a concept unlike any other. It doesn't stay the same, even Chaos wants to be unpredictable and enact change in the world. We let reality enact its own change, keeping to our minds, acting however we want. We don't want change, we want to let our minds have fun." the icon says back, excitement coloring his many voices as he speaks on this matter he is so passionate about. Penjaga can't help but get excited as well. "You actually earned another power already. Before you ever even bonded to me, you made a discovery of magic that no one has learned until they incarnate. Magic picks up corruption from the area around it, aligning it slightly. You see, corruption is of that layer, we can only take the pure magic. It's not me rewarding you with an alignment of magic, it's a consequence of our bond. Your nature is so changed that your mere presence changes the magic around you by cycling it through yourself. I cannot give you the secret of the powers yet, but I'm sure you'll find it in the next century."

"I was thinking something along those lines. Although the nature of our bond wasn't clear to me yet. I would have figured most of that out pretty quickly with our newfound connection. I'm assuming that's why you were allowed to tell me."

"Quite so! I bestow onto you your second power, everywhere but nowhere. You can teleport to where ever you want. You just step out of view, and be somewhere else! Simple, powerful, and most importantly, ridiculous and insane!" he says. "By the way, the next thing you summon, I might be able to interfere a little bit. Just keep that in mind when jamming Madness into your rituals." he finishes with a wink before Penjaga returns to his body with a wave of magic pushing itself from his body. As it does, time returns to normal speed, him and Uhlanya glowing with a rainbow of random colors before settling back to normal.

The magic wave woke a few of the more sensitive, but they didn't think much of it, a few going back to sleep while the children lost their minds because it's Christmas morning. It's one A.M., but it's Christmas morning!

"What did you get?" asks Lanetli as soon as Penjaga and Uhlanya return to their bodies.

"Nothing that will help you. In fact, I can't even take your curse from you. I'm immune now." Penjaga says, unable to keep the bragging tone out of his voice. Uhlanya nods along, feeling no shame in her bragging as she mimes blowing a raspberry at Lanetli.

"Alright, I have to finish my run, then I'll be right back. I only had a few states left in the U.S., so I should be able to get all of that done with one rushed eternal moment." Lanetli says. "We'll talk then." he then blurs and speeds off into the distance. I could see that all around Penjaga and Uhlanya had slowed considerably, but they were moving at a normal pace, and Lanetli had moved incredibly fast. Penjaga isn't sure how long Lanetli would be gone, so he takes out the book written by the same man that made the original set of rituals.

Upon taking out the book, he felt it examine him, and then the book lit up with invisible rituals, ones that fade quickly before the book opens itself and becomes inert again. Penjaga and Uhlanya start reading. The book explains that magic that can be done without an icon is soul magic, something that binds, or uses, souls for some purpose. The soul-familiar ritual is laid out in detail along with several other rituals that Penjaga had no use for. They were weaker on average than a power granted by an icon, most likely because they grant a sliver of their power alongside the power granted. The book also explained that one needed to "walk both paths", meaning that he needed to have a soul familiar and a connection to an icon. Penjaga mostly just skimmed the book, some stories, and a lot of ritual diagrams.

Penjaga puts the book away just a few minutes before Lanetli returns, after which the world went back to regular speed. "So, Madness gave you immunity to curses?" he asks as soon as he gets within talking distance.

"Yeah. Should we go somewhere else to talk about this?" asks Penjaga. Uhlanya circles her master, going behind his back and emerging from behind the back of Lanetli, who raises his arm to allow for the cloud of spores to pass around him.

"I do think that may be best," he says. He holds up his hand, drawing a circle of runes in the air and motioning for his young apprentice and his familiar to follow him. The two would have rather just used their power, but they didn't know where they were going, so they step through the circle of runes, to a room where Time permeates all. It looks exactly like Lanetli had described, with the giant glowing minotaur and the door off to the side with a symbol on it in red in stark contrast to the green everywhere else in the room. Penjaga and Uhlanya had no problem with being in the room, simply filtering the magic through their bond to Madness. The magic in the area abruptly fled from their vicinity, and the boy and his familiar could hear a mad cackle from the back of their minds.

In no time flat they cross the room and exit a different circle of runes. Lanetli seems surprised by how well they handle being in the room before leaving. After the Penjaga and Uhlanya step through the circle and into a small cottage in the middle of a snowstorm. "So you can't help me, at all?" asks Lanetli. Clearly, this is tearing him up inside.

"No, we can't help. Madness did say something that could help. I'm not sure if it will work, but we could always try." says Penjaga. Uhlanya exclaims in delight in his mind as she finds and eats a mouse. She likes it far more than summoned creatures.

"Anything," he pleads.

"He said to summon something. So, I'll do that, and pack Madness in there, and see what happens. Can't hurt, right?"

"It's gotta be better than nothing," he says dejectedly.

Penjaga and Uhlanya step outside, followed closely by Lanetli, where they repeat the summoning process they used to connect to their icon. Uhlanya forms her body in the shape of the ritual, and Penjaga fills her with magic, then she becomes a tube for the magic, then Penjaga feeds Madness into the activation sequence.