Entities Disappear

“Otherworlders! Otherworlders, awake up!” Summer’s eyes fluttered open to the unsettlingly near muzzle of a cow who, she was surprised to notice, appeared panicked. In the first few seconds of consciousness, she began to panic herself, as there was a talking cow leaning over her when she was sleeping. She managed to scramble backwards to her feet and ball her hands into instinctively fearful fists before the few seconds of panic were past, at which point she remembered what had happened the previous day, and that this cow-who she could now see was actually a bull-was probably not something come to kill her. She relaxed her hands, as well as her body. She looked over at Seth, who seemed to be waking up as well. He, unlike her, did not have a cow hovering over her as he did it. But still, without looking behind him-where she and the bull were, as he was sleeping on his size-he seemed to stop in surprise.
“Otherworlders,” the bull said urgently, “You must away now!”
“What?”
“You must away! Dr. Taurii, he is not liking with you!”
“Toraphrate?” Summer said cautiously. The bull seemed to sigh in exasperation and nod. “What’s happening?”
“Dr. Taurii! Hee wants you to not be alive!”
“What?”
“You must away! Away, Away!”
“I think that he’s saying that we should leave,” Seth said. Neither of the two looked at him.
“Yes, yes, leave! You must be away before Dr. Taurii comes! And the Gods! The Gods come too!”
“The Gods?”
“I really, really think that we should leave, Summer,” Seth said urgently. Toraphrate nodded. Then he reached into a pocket that Summer didn’t quite understand, pulled out a knife. “Oh, Jesus!” Summer jumped back.
“Jesus? No, knife.” He turned it around and thrust the hilt at her. After catching her breath, Summer gingerly took the knife in her hand. It had a vaguely curved blade, and, very briefly, she considered that the hilt appeared to be crafted from the horn of a Bovate. She looked into Toraphrate’s eyes, and for the first time she really, really understood that these cows were just like humans, that they thought, and felt, and that this Toraphrate was terrified of what was going to happen.
“Toraphrate...” She said slowly.
“Away! Go, hurry!”
“Thank you, Toraphrate,” she said sadly. Seth was already at the door; he turned his head to look at her, urgently, and she nodded. She began to leave, knife in hand, but on an instinct she leaned upwards and kissed the bull-the Bove-on the side of the muzzle. He shut his eyes.
When he opened his eyes, the Otherworlders were gone. But when he turned to leave in a hurry, two other figures were in the doorway, framed by the shadows of the night. One was very clearly a young Bove, and the other was a similar shape to the Otherworlders, except that its outline seemed to ripple a lot more. Also, it appeared to have a long, trailing beard. Toraphrate groaned, directly from his second stomach, just as the Otherworldly figure tossed the young Bove backwards. Toraphrate saw the young Bove hit a wall in the background, then scramble to his feet and run away. The bearded cloak began to advance towards Toraphrate.
“Asshole,” Merlin muttered at him. He raised his left hand, and there was a flash of rainbow light. And then nothing.

The sky was dark. Summer took a quick glance up at that dark sky, and, though she only looked briefly, it seemed to her that the stars were not the same as the ones that a quick glance back home would have revealed, at any time of year, or in any other hemisphere. She decided to let the fact that this probably meant that they were nowhere on Earth hit her later. She turned back to seth, who seemed to be running a lot more slowly than she knew he could.
“Seth, hurry up!”
“Hold on, I gotta get a hold on this...” He called at her. She slowed down to allow him to catch up. As she waited, she noticed that he was carrying something that looked like a very large box. He was moving his arms around it a lot. He suddenly tripped over a rock that, had either of them looked afterwards, did not actually exist. The box flew a foot or two, Seth yelped, and it split into two. Summer stopped slowing down and actually went back towards Seth, to help him back up. She decided, once more, to let the strange opening box effect her later. She was unable to do such, however, as Seth scrambled through the short, cold, healthy-feeling grass to the box just before she reached him.
“What the hell are you doing?” Summer screamed. “Leave the box!”
Seth, though not ignoring her, decided, for a reason he himself could not quite discern, that it was much more important to see what was written on the page that the book had opened to.
“Seth, get up! Toraphrate said that we have to get away!” Summer reached down and grabbed his arm, and then saw that the box-evidently, a book-was glowing. “Where did you get that book?” She asked.
“It was there when I woke up,” Seth said, looking at the pages eagerly. “I can’t read it, dammit!” The symbols littering the pages seemed to both of them to be little more than just that: symbols.
“Pick it up, and...” A flash of multi-colored light exploded just ahead of them. Both of them froze and an instant later another one burst just to the side of Seth. He was knocked into Summer, who fell beneath him. She shoved him off and turned around.
Behind them was a very human looking figure, with limbs that sagged in all directions. She began to reach for the knife that she had slipped into her belt loop, but seeing the humanity of the figure she hesitated. It approached closer, and an eerie glow from behind her suddenly cast light on its face; it seemed to hesitate and jump back a little itself when the glow appeared. He quickly recomposed his calm so that Summer hadn’t even noticed his momentary fright. She did notice that he had eyes that at once looked narrow and wide, with eyebrows as bushy as a grey, impenetrable, wilderness of hair. His beard, too, was grey, bushy, and absolutely massive. It tapered to a trickle near his waist, but swirled all the way to his feet, and even dragged a few inches farther than that. His robe was a deep blue, and dangled to just above the ground. His hat was a lighter shade of blue, with speckles of orange speckling it. It seemed to be intending to grow up to a point, but flopped over to one side. Summer was, for reasons beyond her comprehension, terrified by that hat.
“Young girl,” the figure spoke, his mouth not so much appearing as a mouth but as a momentary opening in his upper beard. “Move out of my way.” The voice was at once growling and lilting, but above all was menacing. She overrode the hesitation and pulled out the dagger, holding it half-an-arm from her body, blade tilted slightly upwards. The robed man laughed a strange laugh, not quite maniacal, but similar. “You don’t realize who stands before you, do you?”
“I get the feeling,” Summer said, the terror of this man bringing out a bravado that she hadn’t known she had, “That he’s the sort who kills strangers whether they obey him or not.” The figure smiled in response, not an evil smile, but a truly happy smile. She could see it only in his eyes and the way the corners of his beard crawled up his face a little bit.
“Are you sure we’ve never met?” his voice was less growling and more casual now, though somehow still just as menacing. “Because that’s a very accurate description of my character, especially considering that most of those who could possibly know it are either dead or mad.” He took a step towards her, and she thrust the dagger out and shook it a little in a manner that she truly hoped was threatening. “Now, come, my dear, what’s a little knife going to do against the greatest wizard in the multi-verse?”
She blinked. He took another step forward and laughed.
“Come on, you don’t know yet? Usually newcomers are so quick to figure it out!” She shook her head; it slightly registered in her mind that with every step that he took towards her, she was taking one back. He took another one, and she felt the back of her leg brush against something; from the something, she heard Seth whispering something. She stopped retreating. The man sighed.
“Come on! Blue robe, long beard, floppy pointy hat? Don’t you even have a guess?”
“Leonardo DaVinci?” Summer asked sarcastically, hoping that she was doing the right thing to prolong his taunt, rather than to bring it to a swift conclusion, hoping that Seth wasn’t just distracted. She felt vindicated when the smile on the man’s face faded and his hands clenched to fists.
“That hack? You’re comparing me to that hack? He couldn’t even get alchemy right ” He reached out and stroked his beard. “Look, I’ll give you one more guess. Go ahead.” Summer’s mind raced, looking for another name. She could only find one besides the one that she knew was right, and decided that blasphemy was the last thing that she had to worry about around here.
“Jesus?” The man’s smile returned.
“Closer. But I’m bigger than Jesus.” He snickered to himself. “I’ll bet your little friend there knows. Ask him when he’s done casting... That... Oh, goddamit.” A flare of red light erupted from the book that Seth was whispering over, enveloping Seth, Summer, the book, and the knife. Merlin was the only one who saw the burst of ultraviolet rays that slammed directly into him.
He stood up a moment later and looked around; the two children were gone, and he appeared to be alone. He knew that wasn’t true, though.
“Eris, my love, why did you give them that book?” He asked the air bittersweetly. The spooky, smiling, blonde goddess appeared and slung her arms over his shoulders from behind, kissing his neck as she did so.
“Because, my dear king, it’s too boring having no one around here who has a chance against us,” she said. She let him go and removed the dagger from her bosom. As Merlin turned to face her, she tossed the dagger to the ground at her side and then tossed Merlin to the ground, pushing herself over atop him.
“I can’t seem to follow them,” Merlin said, wrapping his own arms around her and pulling her in.
“Besides,” she said, ignoring him as she pressed herself firmly onto his yellowing body, “The Kiniginomicon was just sitting there.” Both of them emitted a burst of yellow and green light, and, had anyone been around to notice, they were gone, as was Eris’s chilly dagger.