“Armes looked upon the world and saw it riven with strife.” The voice was Harathes’s, reciting what was practically a child’s text. “He found the sacred mountain and ascended past the clouds, to where he found knowledge of Light and Dark. And Armes came down from the mountain and gave the gift of Light to Men, so that they would always know the Darkness. And you’re not him.”

“And it wasn’t a mountain, of course, but you tell people a metaphor and a generation later everyone thinks you were speaking literally,” the Dark Lord moaned. “You, you magician-type, you’d probably understand some of this, so forgive me, I’ll have to put it in baby-language for the rest.” He sighed. “I was a magician—the greatest of them all. And principled, as I said. I did indeed see that the world was ‘riven with strife,’ and I thought that a proper application of magic should heal all ills. You understand that, yes?”

Penthos was nodding, stroking his beard.

“But from the perspective of a mere human, the problem was too complex. I could not perceive the world in the right way. And so I had to step beyond it. I found a way to rise above it all. Not demon-worlds or elemental planes or cloud castles or any of that nonsense, but…” A frustrated expression marred the strong-jawed perfection of Armes’s familiar face. “Look, think of the whole world as just a map, a flat, flat map. All the people on it are just dots on the map. They can’t see beyond what’s immediately around them. Any line on the flat is an insuperable boundary to them. Imagine how life is to those flat little dots of people. Then imagine if you could break from that map, so that you could stand over it and look down. That was my mountain. I turned myself toward a direction nobody had ever thought about before, and walked until I could look back and see the whole of reality in one go. All the world and everything in it, its true nature and being, all laid out for me like an anatomist’s diagrams. Or… no?” He plainly did not see the comprehension he was hoping for in their faces. “Come on, this is the clever part. I want you all to see just how damn clever I was back then.”

Penthos spoke up. “You’re… talking about dimensions,” the magician said thoughtfully.