The bird pecked on a crack in the wall as if it was looking for a worm. It dug around but the crack did not widen. It pulled back and pecked again. And again. And again.
Inside the silver orb, my body shook. The ground vibrated every time the little bird pecked at the orb. Madness winced at each peck, his laughter getting weaker but wilder each time. The other birds continued their assault as did the tornado around us, but it was the attacks coming from this tiny crowned bird that shook us to our core.
"How much longer, kid?" shouted Madness over his shoulder.
"What do you mean, I can't read in this chaos," I said, quickly.
"Oh shut it with your little game, we all know you're reading it in your head. You think I haven't seen your type in my old world? Book smart kids who have no idea how to do things in the real world. Next time you wanna pretend like you aren't reading anything, try not to always have it in your field of vision. Oh, and you can't hide your hand like that. My beloved's birds are all around us, so they can see it from some angle. I can see it because you came inside my orb. You know I could bring this thing down around you and flatten you into a meaty mush, right?"
I shivered. Meaty mush? Why did insane people have a way with words. "A few more minutes, then."
Madness frowned. "That might not be possible."
"I thought you were supposed to be the most powerful of the Immortals," I said.
"Me? How could I be stronger than my beloved?" he said.
"When I came to this world, the Simurgh was hiding from you inside a tree and the Evil Eye was a tiny dot in the sky," I said.
"Fair enough," he said, "but no, I am not more powerful but I am more… dangerous. Mostly because of the domain of the Present."
"Which is the domain you didn't let me take," I said.
"Oh, I let you take it alright," he said. "You read the Book of the Present, didn't you? That means you control that domain now."
"But if that was all it took, then I would've taken control of Annihilation too," I said.
"No, that was my beloved's trick. Your ability to turn read the Books was given to you by my beloved. With that, they put in a little bit of magic that would let the domains go straight back to them," he said. "But, when you returned from Nothingness to retrieve the Present and the Future, I realized what you were doing and let you take control of my domain of the Present, willingly. That messed up my beloved's little gift, and your ability to read the Books became your own. It's funny how our powers work, you see. If one of us pushes in one direction, the others have to react appropriately or the whole thing falls apart. You're welcome, by the way."
"So you're saying I can use the domain of the Present?" I asked.
"I never said that," he said.
"You snuck in something too, didn't you?" I said. "That's why I can't use it."
"No, I didn't. It wouldn't have worked, if I had. The reason you can't manipulate the Present is because you do not know how to do so. Unlike the other temporal domains, you need to understand a little bit about the Present in order to unlock your knowledge of it," said Madness.
The ground shook again. The little bird was pecking through the orb. Its beak poked all the way through, letting in a little whistling wind as the beak retracted and the bird got ready to widen the hole. Madness' smile froze.
"I wouldn't share this with you if there was any other way," said Madness as he turned back to me. "Let my unwillingness to tell you about this serve as proof that what I am about to tell you is dangerous but true. You will have to trust me. I will have to prepare you before I say it."
I sensed something strange was going on. I was almost done reading the Book of the Past. If Madness fought the Simurgh for just a moment longer, I'd have all three temporal domains. I didn't know what I could do with them, but I was sure the knowledge would come to me once I had them all. And now that Madness knew I was able to read inside my head, he had to know that I would be able to finish this quickly. Yet, what he was saying filled me with dread.
I felt like he was dangling a lit match above a pile of gunpowder. He knew he was going to drop the match and the whole place would explode, but he had to make sure the explosion didn't blow up in his face.
"Before you take control of the Past, you need to know what happened the first time that we met," said Madness, slowly, the little bird's thumping pecks becoming louder and louder in my ears like a beating war drum.
"You mean that time you sent us into the future," I said. "Noel lost her whole family because of you. She was so broken and angry that she left me to go look for you!"
"Yes, young Noel did that. I remember. She came to me and became my Ikon after all. Did you never wonder why she had a change of heart? Why she would come over to my side after all of that?" said Madness.
"I did wonder. And I asked Noel about it but she wouldn't give me a straight answer," I said.
"It would not have been smart to give an answer like this while you were under the influence of my beloved," said Madness. "It would have been futile, pointless, a troublesome topic poked in vain."
"But you think it's worth bringing up now?" I said.
"Yes," he said. "Or rather, it is only now that it is worth bringing up at all. You see, young Caspian, now that you possess both the Present and the Future, you must learn a little more about the way domains work. Domains may be the encapsulation of the entirety of a concept or an idea, but that does not mean you have access or control of all aspects of that concept. Everything is in your head, yes, but like other things in your head, you can't fish out every little morsel of knowledge. Some of its going to stay stuck inside your proverbial teeth. But just because something is stuck doesn't mean there isn't a way to get it loose. You can continue exploring the domains slowly, taking your time to savor every little bit of it as your tongue traces over it, but we do not have the luxury of time. You cannot afford to wait.
"And so we must bring some mental floss into the equation. As someone who has held that domain before, let me tell you, the Present is not some sort of fixed anchor or a point in time that you can come back to whenever you like. Perhaps that is how you feel since you have access to the domain of the Future, but remember, that fixed present is only the present from the perspective of the future. The only reason it serves as an anchor, is because you're sailing onto the sea.
"But the present is not an anchor, it is a raft. A dinghy raft made of driftwood and weeds. It floats on the surface of the waves of time, pushed forward with a perfect sail and a perfect gust of wind that always takes it in one direction. But the important point for you, my dear Caspian, is understanding that the present is moving. It is always moving. It is moving now as I say these words to you, and it was moving all those years ago when we first met.
"But what does it move on top of? If the present is a raft, then what is the sea? The sea in front of you is the future, Caspian, and the sea behind you is the past. You have already traveled to the future, you know how to do it again. But now think of it like this. You know the three Immortals have been pushing against each other for the longest time.
"Each of the Immortals had one of the domains of time. And interfering in this world, interacting with you along the axis of time, meant giving up space to the others. I never sent you into the future, Caspian. All I did was have a conversation. The Evil Eye might have controlled the domain of the Future, but he was badly beaten after your little adventure with his Ikon and that servant called The Terrible. No, Caspian, the one who pushed you into the future was my beloved.
"My beloved was in such a rush to absorb the space I had left in my wake while talking to you directly, that it consumed the present. It continued consuming the present and pushing the rest of the world into the past until our conversation was over and I returned to stabilize the present.
"You were never sent into the future. The past simply grew so large it pushed the present further into the future."