I found it surprising that one of the first things Madness had taught the sentient races had been the prophecy of the coming of the monsters. The sentient races even seemed to have heeded the wise toga-clad man’s warnings, and yet, despite all of their preparations, the release of the Simurgh from its seal had heralded the end of the peaceful golden age that Madness had brought about.
Madness himself had disappeared during those first years of darkness, and I remembered that when he would return to teach the Mad King Jora, he would no longer be the calm and thoughtful being he had been before the return of the Simurgh. Piecing everything together, I concluded something fascinating.
Before the return of the Simurgh, Madness really had not been madness. Or, more specifically, he did not have the domain of madness under his control. The Simurgh’s fearsome return had been mad and chaotic, so perhaps the toga-clad Immortal had stolen away that domain of madness to prevent the Simurgh from going out of control. Even though he went insane, his madness was not as severe and dangerous as the Simurgh’s had been.
And so I went even further back in time. I was still following Madness, or the Immortal that had yet to become Madness. There was a time before he met the sentient races. During this time, he spent his days wandering the wide open world, exploring landscapes and enjoying new sights, sounds, and even tastes. He was like a teething baby, nibbling on anything he could get his hands on. It was quite the odd sight.
The further back I went, the more childlike and innocent Madness became. Eventually, I came to a time when he walked awkwardly like a toddler. And then he was crawling. And then he was sitting still in a meadow full of wildflowers and buzzing insects and the sun was overhead and there was a sweet scent carried by a warm breeze that caressed his Immortally young face and whispered strange things in his ear.
I stood by this stationary Madness for many, many years. It seemed like the amount of time he had spent in this phase far outstretched the time he had spent afterwards. He had been waiting here so long, that when I first saw him, he had been covered in moss and weeds up to his head. In fact, he had been like a mossy stone covered in soil and grass, and if it had not been for the powers I received from my domain, I might not even have known that he was there at all.
Going back through the years, the soil, the grass, the weeds, the moss, everything began to slowly disappear. It was a strange kind of erosion, since in reverse it looked like the vegetation was shrinking and the earth was being blown away and a young man was being revealed from under his earthen grave. Except, one day, when the young man’s eyes opened, a few years before—or after—a long weed had grown up his cheeks and reached for his eyes as if to shut them.
As Madness’ body cleared up, I approached another milestone. My magical capacity had increased almost tenfold. Somehow, watching Madness’ meditations on this random patch of earth had been particularly helpful. I had learned something, instinctively, about magic that I would not have learned with pure thought and reason. It made me wonder why I had not considered this obvious thought before.
Magic defied reason. That was, in essence, the very point of magic. In my old world, where magic did not exist, the allure of magic lay precisely in its impossibility. Magic encapsulated yearnings that human beings held but which we could not bring into existence. That made us wish we could simply will an answer to those yearnings into existence.
If the object of your love did not love you back, would it not be wonderful if you cast a love spell on them?
And if you did not look the way you wanted to look, wouldn’t it be great if you could alter your appearance?
Or perhaps you desired riches, then why not turn metal into gold?
Or perhaps you wished for power, then why not conjure up flames or gain super strength?
Perhaps one yearned for flight, invisibility, mind control, or something else that might make one’s life easier or less monotonous.
The aspirations of magic were also great vehicles for morals and teachings that could be passed down through riveting stories. To teach new generations the dangers of greed and avarice, through the story of those whose wings melted when they flew too close to the sun. Or to teach those who coveted wealth that there was more to life than gold, especially if a hand that could turn anything to gold did so to one’s loved ones.
And so magic had a strange relationship to reason and I came to finally accept that. But the real importance from this discovery lay in the boundary that I had just crossed. So far, in this world, I had accepted the Simurgh’s explanation that magic in this world was governed by knowledge and wisdom. I had built both my old magic system and my new magic system off of this explanation.
Yet, now that I had been confronted with the reality of ‘domains’ that covered the entirety of all knowledge of certain subjects, I began to realize a very simple truth. Not all knowledge could be codified and reasoned out. Not all things that one knew were things that one knew rationally and consciously. Sometimes, you had to feel the truth. Sometimes, you had to learn through experience, through feeling, through meditations that did not rely entirely upon rationality and reason.
Sometimes, ‘knowledge’ couldn’t be put into words on a page and explained to others in meticulous detail. Sometimes, people had to accept that a professor knew things that they did not. That an elder had lived a life that had taught them many things that a child may not know and that the child could not learn through books or through stories. Sometimes, you had to learn things the hard way, through a lot of time, hardships, and mistakes.
In reverse, Madness got up from the random patch of earth and began walking aimlessly once more. His eyes were blank and his mouth hung open and he did not look like he had any idea who he was or what he had been doing. I followed him while slowly digesting my new understanding of magic. I could feel my control of the temporal domains nearing completion. My magical energy was increasing at a rapid pace. I was sure I could fight for years on end with basic magic spells, if I had to. But no, I needed more. I needed to know more. I needed to know why Madness was acting the way he was acting and what happened to the Simurgh before this. And where was the Evil Eye, anyway?
And what even was this world? What were the Immortals? What was knowledge? What was magic? What was I doing here? And could I perhaps find a way home without even having to fight the Simurgh?
I hadn’t been able to figure out how the Simurgh or the Evil Eye had summoned me to this world in the first place. Perhaps I would return to my first few hours in this world and see if I could learn something from that, but I knew there was another option too. I wasn’t the only one who had come to this world from another world.
I looked at Madness as he walked into the sky. I followed him as he took a step into a plane of existence that I had not even noticed and as he disappeared from my vision so did the rest of this world and when I opened my eyes next I was back in the Nothingness.
Only this time, Madness walked backwards into the middle of a massive explosion of rainbows and silver moonlight with which came a mighty roar and a shout and a scream and unbridled laughter and then before the carnage two beaten up Immortals glared at each other and a third Immortal, the now familiar smiling Madness, stood in the middle of the two with a calm but wide grin on his face.
And I knew I was about to get some answers at last.
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