(March 15)
Dichotomy
Silental Tower
Autumn 83
While Esmund is still studying the crystal matrix, Ixtalan discreetly instigates a burial of the proto-Esmunds with Aureya and Peach, using Bonfires and shovels to soften the frozen ground.
Aureya tries to tell Ixtalan that they’d talked a lot about timelines and paradox, and the suspicion had arisen that perhaps it’s impossible to have both— but Ixtalan doesn’t want to hear any more.
Esmund has a breakthrough and then a breakdown, as he mourns that Desmun was the genius and he, the failure. Eventually he figures out how to use the Door Jamb to alter an already-existing tear to lead to the Place Between. He also reveals that the Memento device was meant to preserve Queen Lil’lith’s existence, as she had a disease called Chronophasia, which was erasing her from existence. Her father created a device to stop it, but it was flawed and destroyed adjacent realities as a side affect; Lux Gnomore repaired it, but the White Tower’s disruption of the Weave and terraforming of the land is fighting against the Memento’s stabilization and revealing its flaw again. If both devices continue to exist, all of reality will be destroyed.
Kaisi and Aureya have both seen glimpses of Xalati in reflections of Ixtalan, looking like she’s lost and searching for something.
Esmund has a private conversation with Ixtalan and tells her he’s figured out how to use the temporal snatcher, and since Xalati and Ixtalan share the same temporal aura, he can use it to call Xalati back, but that would mean switching them; since they have the same aura, they can’t be there at the same time. After pondering, she asks him to do it, after writing a report on everything they’ve learned she can perhaps take with her to fill Sylas in on. She refuses the offer to tell anyone else what’s going on, but gives him a hug and a kiss on the head and musses up his hair to give the others something to gossip about.
Mohs whispers, “Esmund is wrong.”
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