The third age was a thousand years old, and the Painter sat in silence for all those years. The Eternal Tower was shaking, and the final words spoken between it and Eos were being held in the air, kept from dissipating by the attention of the Painter.
"Will you continue to bear it?" the Painter had chuckled. "You would attack me while I ravage your creation?"
"Yes," Eos had said. "I will continue to bear, and I will also begin my attack, for nowhere in the rules of the game was I prevented from doing this."
The audience, in its face, was whispering to each other furiously. The Painter's present state was strange; this was the first time from the moment it became aware that it felt this strange emotion inside itself, and the audience in its face was observing the Painter with the same voracious appetite they used in observing Eos.
