For the two looked at one another, they mutually agreed on a way to combat their minds. Like it read their minds, a table rose from the floor and it had two small horses on it. One green, and one yellow.
"Shall we begin?" The genius was a sly creature who would do what he could to save humanity. "Just know, I studied abroad."
"That's a silly idea. But hey, your funeral!"
The two horses on the table had their backs to each contestant and between them was a deck of cards. It was a simple game. The cards had a type of intelligence that the two would debate and whoever was superior would have their horse move forward. The first person to have their horse reach the end would win. Simple enough.
"Your play or mine?"
"Mine of course!"
The creature reached its hand into the deck and snatched a card off of it.
"And it says?"
"Memory. I can remember being born. I remember your universe being born."
The genius thought back to his childhood. He was held in a bunker ever since the fall of mankind and was forced to consume all knowledge to lead humanity back from extinction.
All mankind was sleeping soundly in their containment pods. Most of them were rich people that couldn't do a day of manual labor if you held a gun to their head. So, he laid down the framework to bring back a society.
Given, there was no saving these people, but he kept the species alive for quite a long time afterwards. See, he made a mixture of two different people's DNA whilst inside the bunker so that way the person it would make would look like a person from history. Then using a mixture of hypnotherapy, he would convince them that they were a person from history before making them be placed in an artificial society.
This would give preexisting infrastructure and allowed the sleeping to not need to do any work when the Ben Franklin down the street could keep the world running.
"My turn." The genius lifted his card and read it. "Applicable knowledge."
The flat entity didn't say anything as his gaze was locked onto the face of the genius.
The entity relied on pure strength rather than simply using its knowledge. This point was out of its depth. He still had hope. The idea shocked the entity. Hope. Hope for something so powerful and so evil and so brilliant that it could survive. Such a silly claim.
"You got your point. Now, I would like to draw something good before these games get rigged again."
The creature dropped its twig-like hands onto the deck before tapping the longest of the limbs on those twigs on the top card. Like it was some kind of magic trick, a card popped out of the side of the deck into the right hand. The appendage served the purpose of an arm, but it was too thin to be fully realized as such. It was too long and too thin as the center of the 'fingers' couldn't be called a palm.
"Logical thinking." The creature allowed its eye to rotate in the socket for four and a half seconds as it thought. "I was hunted by the entities of my world until I could barely move. Now, I came up with a scheme to wipe them all out."
Roswald let out a laugh when he heard the proclamation. This thing had dedicated its existence to the sole purpose of destruction. Such a thing bored him.
"You were foolish. I made a scheme to fix the world after someone like you ruined it. Do you know how it feels? Watching everything you care about burn?"
"All I know is the world burning."
If differences could confront one another, they would easily be the closest thing to that. Their lives were that of entities never meant to meet. But today, the parallel lines intersected.
"You must have felt some relief."
"What?"
The creature looked deeper into Roswald's eyes. The understanding was there.
He's trying to bait me. Idiot.
"The world was burning, the end of a fruitless life. The end of an era of nameless men." The creature was playing with Roswald. Roswald knew he was being played with. But the most brilliant men pale in their ego's shadow. "But I think that you get the point."
If he's trying to bait me, then his end goal must be to throw me off my game and to drag out the game. Is that because he has some secret weapon? Can't be that. Maybe he needs more time to remember his life. Maybe he just ordered a long last meal to delay his execution. I have no clue.
"My turn."
"Yes, it is."
Roswald felt afraid of the creature. He choked it up to this thing being an interdimensional predator that could squash his planet in a heartbeat. But this world, this place of pure malevolence, this place that is eviler than any of the members of the bad could ever be.
"Sensory intake." The entity's horse moved forwards without a word being spoken. "Quit acting smug." The next person to get the horse moved forward would have their horse halfway there. Two moves for one of them and they would have nearly won. Three moves and the horse would be at the end.
The entity picked up the card.
"Wow, looky here, manipulation."
The two looked between each other in disappointment shortly before they turned to the scoreboard and spoke in unison.
"Give us better cards!"
Because their game was just so boring, they spoke up.
"I'm surprised this game was so disappointing."
"Don't talk like that, you know very well that you would've won."
"Please, don't flatter me. Say, what is your name again?"
The entity thought for four seconds on the dot. He was able to speak his name.
"Call me Stanley."
Roswald looked down at the card again before he took a seat on the sandy ground. He let out a yawn and soon enough was sunbathing in the afternoon. Stanley began constructing a galaxy in his mind.