I survived, of course. I hoped that you would not be foolish enough to think that mere humans could destroy one such as I. But yes, I lost. I lost to mere humans.
They invaded my palace with eight warriors, each specializing in a different aspect of magic, while I controlled each aspect myself. Even so, they were humans—petty, blind creatures without regard for or understanding of the mysteries of the world from which power springs. I had faced countless like them in the past, even armies, and usually only needed to wave my hand to dispatch them. But there was something different about these—a subtle magic I had never seen. I could not get a direct look at it, but I saw the faintest shimmer as they evaded each of my perfectly aimed firebolts and shadow blasts, the intricate trajectories of which could only be seen by the finest scholars, those who studied the quiet currents of the world in the deepest trenches and the highest peaks. I caught glimpses of the edge of its shadow in the smoke and fog of battle, guiding their movements and attacks. They did not stumble over each others’ spells even when they should have been blind, as if they had fought side by side for centuries. I uncovered its footprints as their feeble magic arrows slipped through microscopic holes in my barriers, which had held against dragons’ breath and the hexes of barrow kings older than these humans’ backwater civilization. It was as if they were under the protection of some being from beyond the heavens—there was no other answer, for their skill itself was truly pitiful.
At the very end, after I unveiled my final, most powerful spell and they somehow, unexplainably, escaped it, I finally saw the force that was guiding them. It made no sense at all. It was like watching bees burst out of the sea, sending a light sprinkle of water to fall gently on your boat like dew, and then fly into the sky and cover the sun. It was like a gong sounding forever, the sound always expanding and spreading outward as gongs do, but always the same, never getting anywhere. It was like un-watering a garden. It was like everything in the world hardening into wax, then melting, uncovering little blackened stubs of people and houses and seas that you could light on fire, emitting a pleasant floral scent. It was like steel inside steel inside steel, all occupying the same space, all the same material, all separate, all horribly wrong. It was the most distinctly human magic I had ever seen, and by extension the most revolting.
Perhaps noticing my bewildered expression, the human in the front of their formation, with all the others channeling power into her for their final attack, spoke to me.
“You have power, yes,” she said, her voice squirming with that nauseating energy.
“Yet one thing you lack. You are alone,” she said with a smile as pure as starlight, a disgusting smile. “But we have the power of friendship.” Then they released their beam, a puny display of power, an attack I was nevertheless helpless against. In the last few milliseconds before what surely would have been my demise, I used the last of my energy to rip a hole into the Parallel and escape into it.
If you choose to enter the Parallel for any reason, do not spend more than few hours there, even when the other choice is death. This rule has been strictly followed by the wise since before my birth, and it will be followed until the Parallel is gone, or until there exist no beings in this world who can enter it. I knew this, going in. I also knew that if I used all my energy to enter the Parallel, I would not have enough strength left to exit for three days. I did it anyways.
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From the Parallel, I watched the humans, who believed I was dead, loot my crystalline halls, my labyrinthine gardens, even the deep rooms where I stored my greatest posessions. Not that they had the wisdom to take any of the truly precious treasures, instead opting for simple weapons and magic. Always short-sighted, humans.
The power of friendship. That one phrase had jumped from that human’s mouth and burrowed into my brain. There was only one thing it could be—that strange power, that slippery force that had carried them through the fight, that prevented them from dying every few seconds. I fumed. Here, where no one would see my display of weakness, I screamed. I cursed them. I wept. They were only children, lacking any measure of power or skill, but through this one quality—from spell, artifact, or divine intervention—they had bested me. It was unearned. Yet they had won, and I had lost. This simple, unarguable fact, despite everything else, frustrated me the most.
Still, I had survived. I forced myself to keep watching as they defiled everything I had built up in three thousand years. I would have my revenge. If human vermin could use this Power of Friendship, what more could I do with it, in all my surpassing wisdom and strength? As soon as I learned it from their people—and I was certain that this magic was human in origin—I would turn it on them and destroy them. Then I would build my palace again, and this time, with this new power, my reign would carry on forever.
The humans were quick in sacking the place—they’d done it before, surely. When they left, they dragged my precious treasures out in big sacks, where they all scraped together with a sound that called me—their protector—to rescue them from these dirty mortal hands. Then they were gone.
Things were out of focus here, and I could see the faintest hint of another landscape superimposed over my own. It was easier to tell where I was when one of the humans was in my line of sight—their movement anchored my perception of reality. After they left, it became more and more difficult to tell where I was, in this castle that I built, had spent every day in for three thousand years, this place I would have been able to navigate with all my senses blocked in the real world.
I could not even walk without sinking into the floor or rising into the air, or turning around or flipping inside out (not in the physical way). And I knew that this disorientation was not the reason why students and apprentices were warned every year not to linger in the Parallel for too long.
There are predators in the Parallel. Or guardians, or lost souls, or manifestations of one’s own psyche. There are countless theories to choose from, but the only agreed-upon fact is that whatever lives in the Parallel will try to kill you, and they are very good at it. Naturally, it is considered theoretically impossible to describe them, or even fully perceive them, but suffice to say that when they came for me, I had no trouble recognizing them.
Don’t ask me how I fought them. I don’t know either. All my memories from the fight are a haze. But I survived for three days, I suppose, and I managed to get out. I don’t remember getting out, nor do I remember falling unconscious on the floor of the throne room of my silent castle. But it must have happened.