Chapter 203: Chapter 203

The battle began in a lackluster way. Madness jumped at the Evil Eye, music still blaring all around him. The Evil Eye escaped backward, still reciting a bunch of inane prose to drown out Madness’ music, although it didn’t seem to work very well. There were always pauses and gaps between words, after all. Music had the advantage of being incessant. It never stopped.

Which was why Simurgh’s singing worked with the Evil Eye’s speech. When one would pause, the other would get louder. The singing extended notes, the speech enunciated in an exaggerated way. Together, they countered the music and helped bring some semblance of order to the void.

But despite working together against the music, the two Immortals did not work together in the fight. The Evil Eye retreated in front of Madness, but Simurgh used the distraction to flap its wings and try to fly away again. The Evil Eye noticed Simurgh’s flight, and fired a beam of red light at the golden bird.

The flames on the Simurgh’s feathers swirled and clashed with the red beam, forcing the mighty golden bird to stall in the air. Madness followed the beam with his maniacal gaze and saw Simurgh attempting to escape. Madness laughed and did a backflip towards the golden bird. Simurgh stepped out of the way without flapping its wings. Madness fell past Simurgh and did a pirouette before facing his beloved once again. With a savage look in his eye, Madness rushed towards Simurgh once again, his white robe fluttering around him.

Simurgh let out a beautiful high note and the flames around its body grew larger and larger, until the golden bird was completely engulfed by them. Madness slammed into the flames, clawing at them with his large hands, but his hands snuffed out the flames and wisps of smoke drifted into Madness’ nose, making him cough and wheeze. Flames reappeared behind Madness and coalesced into Simurgh’s golden body. The bird stared at Madness’ back and prepared to flap its wings once more.

But the Evil Eye had taken the opportunity to rush towards the Book of Annihilation. The eye snuck behind Simurgh’s back, ducked under the flapping wings, and pressed its body against the book. The book struck the Evil Eye’s pupil and tiny red tendrils began wrapping around it. The book began to flutter and struggle, but the tendrils had it completely tied down and were beginning to absorb it into the Evil Eye’s body.

Simurgh flapped its wings, striking the Evil Eye with one of them. The force of the strike was strong enough to pop the book out of the Evil Eye’s body, although the Evil Eye quickly recovered and trying grabbing the book again with its red tendrils. Simurgh bent towards the Evil Eye and stabbed at it with its sharp, pointy beak.

The Evil Eye shuddered and retreated, narrowly avoiding getting skewered by the Simurgh’s beak. The Evil Eye glared at the golden bird once more, this time saying something loud and incomprehensible in its monotonous tone before firing off a massive beam of red light that completely filled the void with a reddish tinge.

Simurgh looked surprised by the intensity of the Evil Eye’s attack, and scrambled out of the way in an undignified way. The book flew to the other side of the red beam, hovering in the air but no longer fluttering or moving on its own. The Evil Eye’s beam disappeared and it rushed forward, before suddenly flying straight down. Madness appeared where the Evil Eye had been, with his hands clasped together. He had struck the eye from above after appearing suddenly from behind.

Simurgh rushed to the book without flapping its wings, but Madness rushed towards the golden bird with a crazed look in his eyes. Simurgh had no choice but to flap one of its wings towards Madness, sending a wall of golden flame swirling towards him.

Madness tried to move out of the way of the flames but they followed him, so he was forced to grab his white toga and swish it in front of his body. The flames licked at the toga, sending sizzling sounds across the void. Not only could I hear it from here, I could even feel some of the heat that was coming from the battle that was actually quite far from where I was floating. I hadn’t even noticed when I had fallen so far away. I frowned. In fact, it felt like I was getting further and further away from the action.

The strangest part of all this was how despite all the fighting, the music, the song, and the speech never ended. Even when it was steadying itself after Madness’ strike, the Evil Eye was uttering countless inanities, like a charlatan uncle at Thanksgiving. I couldn’t even tell what it was saying, but even when it had been hit far away, its voice never got any quieter or distant. When the golden bird’s beak was closed to peck at Madness, the words of its song still filled the air. And of course, no matter what happened, Madness’ music never stopped. In fact, it was the only one of the three that was changing.

The music was getting louder.

Louder and more chaotic.

Soon, I felt as if the song and the speech could no longer drown out the music. All it could do was draw attention away from the moment for a little bit. As Simurgh grabbed the book again, Evil Eye fired another beam, and Madness danced around the two, sometimes sending Evil Eye flying and sometimes forcing Simurgh to give up on flapping its wings to fly away. Evil Eye, to its credit, soon realized it was being pushed back by Madness and stopped trying to go for Simurgh at all. Although, whenever the book came in reach, the Evil Eye couldn’t resist trying to swipe it.

A silver light filled my vision. Behind Madness’ head, a giant silver disk began to materialize.

A red light shone in the void. The Evil Eye’s pupil began to glow. A glaring, intimidating shade of red.

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I held my breath. Despite everything, I couldn’t help but look forward to something. I had always wondered, if the Immortal of Madness had the moon, and the Immortal of Evil had the red star, what did the Immortal of Desire have? Would I finally find out?

The golden bird faced off against the moon and the red star, but nothing appeared around its body. I had been expecting the overwhelming shine of the sun, or the light from another star, or anything, really, but apparently there was nothing. What a disappointment. In fact, this whole scene was a disappointment. Like a low budget reenactment, or a live action adaptation of a popular animated movie. Really, as I fell further and further away from the battle, I felt as if I was watching a bad movie off the reflection of a TV in a mirror. Just layers upon layers of washed out colors, intermittent action, and strange reactions.

The Book of Annihilation flew this way and that, landing mostly in Simurgh’s control, and sometimes getting wrapped by the Evil Eye’s red arms, but it never landed in Madness’ grasp. In fact, Simurgh even endured a few strikes from the Evil Eye’s red beams to make sure the book did not fall into Madness’ hands for even a moment. The tactic was especially effective because the slightest damage to Simurgh’s feathers would send Madness into a rage, and he would rampage towards the Evil Eye for a while afterwards.

Throughout it all, the only constant were the sounds. I kept falling and falling and falling, the fight becoming smaller and smaller in my vision, but the music, the songs, the speech continued. The Immortals became specks in my vision, with flashes of flames or red light the only thing that I could see from time to time. But the sounds began to melt together. Complementing each other in a way that they had not done from up close.

I fell.

The music began to make sense.

I fell.

The song became clearer.

I fell.

The words, I could understand them at last.

“Forlorn! the very word is like a bell,” came the words, in the voice of all three immortals. “To toll me back from you to my sole self! Adieu! The fancy cannot cheat so well as she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! Adieu! Your plaintive anthem fades past the near meadows, over the still stream, up the hill-side; and now it is buried deep in the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream. Fled is that music, do I wake or sleep?”

“Fled is that music,” I repeated, “do I wake or sleep?”

A loud thud.

I blinked.

Noel stood in front of me, holding a book closed in front of me. She looked down at me with a strange look in her eye.

I was back in the metal room, and there was a pain in my knee.