[Hub] ZephyrPhantom's Desk

{Inauguration}Inauguration

(Timeline placement: Post Fate of Averlos, Post Mious, Pre-Glimpses of Ghakar)

The halls had been quickly gilded for the evening ceremony, with a makeshift chrous of males and females of all species haphazardly organized into a few repurposed pews. Much like the gold paint failed to hide the creeping moldly edges of the floor, their gold robes failed to conceal their red, bloodshot eyes. It was a sham of a ceremony, held under the annual pretense of deluding the officials of Ghakar into thinking they still had any power over their fair plane.

The 'officials' of the more shady sort would be difficult to pick out, but to an experienced eye, they stood out like a sore thumb - facial scars, gnarled hands, and weapons under their embroidered finery contrasted sharply with the already half-drunk governors, their hands struggling to even hold mere paper cups. This was most evident in the figure limping onto the stage, a balding man that smelled of many liquors and substances best not named.

He started to speak and then gave a drunken burp, laughing raucously. One of the bandits took over for him, announcing the start of the coronation ceremony, while glaring at the addled chrous to break out into a shrill discord...

==========

....In the outer balcony, Naberas stood hidden, clenching his fists as the ceremony ended and the drinks - most of them clearly spiked - passed out. Contracts would be signed with mind-addled officials by the thugs posing as their kind, to be later used months or even years later as tools of blackmail. All to keep the status quo of Ghakar line.

He quickly whirled around as a soft moan sounded next to him. A robed official was crawling on the floor; Naberas's eyes quickly focused on the spittle scattered all over the railing near him - a clear sign of vomiting. For reasons unknown, the official was pawing at his foot, moaning incoherently.

And then he heard it.

"Hyaaa, eggggs-bozzz..."

In a swift motion, before he could even think, he had started dangling the man over the balcony. Most would scream and alert the palace guards, but Naberas knew full well the guards had long dozed off - not that they cared if they were awake enough to recognize any thugs.

He didn't remember the man's name. It didn't matter; if he had to guess, it was an assistant that had been quick to usurp his position. The rat's bulging belly dangled in midair, clearly visible underneath his glittering robe.

"You won't be missed." He sneered.

"Cowaaaaa-"

A moment later, he had tuned out the dull thud as he planeswalked away. The guards would likely blame it on a demon or perhaps a vengeful angel that somehow managed to regain some faith; he sincerely doubted the latter existed anyway, but Ghakar's crude contraptions were a joke compared to even Miousan 'techonology'. He was exaggerating, anyway.

But why did he care? He spat into the Eternities, watching the spittle bend and twist until it rippled into nothing. He didn't have to go back to Ghakar - his whimisically frustrating ex-Empress of a companion had abandoned her home plane entirely, leaving it to stagnancy while she toyed with the wild changes occuring her magic back on Mious. He didn't have to return, either; perhaps he could journey to Kamigawa, start anew with a poorly designed con of "The Art of the Doom Blade". "Naberas-sensei" had a nice ring to his ears, though he wouldn't be surprised if Hestia would quickly call it classic for his terrible sense of taste.

The matter of fact remained though; his new friends changed planes (or in one woman's case, timelines) every day they woke up, and the best he could do was drop a man off a balcony in an emotional fit. Perhaps that was why he had returned. He was powerless to change anything; perhaps even himself.

Animara's sand-rasped voice echoed in the back of his mind from the last time they had crossed in a Planeswalk, "Wh'y n'ot s'tart wit'h the m'an in the m'irror?" He had been unable to muster an answer back then - even now, as he stood in the Blind Eternities, he still could not.

He would never be anyone's servant, must like Hestia, but beyond that they had little in common besides their losses of comfy chairs. She was always full of energy, focused, ambitious, displaying lateral thinking in situations where he had been absolutely dumbfounded. The only thing he could think of to describe himself was 'lethargic' - he suspected that if not for the need to constantly run between worlds, he could've quite easily ended up a fat slobbering mess, like the man he gracelessly killed.

Mious had taught him he was guilty and sought closure. It had not, however, brought him the solution to his inability to will any change around him. He quietly shuffled around the change in his pocket and stepped further into the Blind Eternities, aiming for Delkor. With any luck, the kid wouldn't bug him for setting up camp nearby for another night...

{Echo Chamber}
Echo Chamber

Timeline: Post Delkor

===============================

"Greetings, Wind. How are you this silent night?"

"Hello there, Animara. I'm doing alright. I have to confess I find the silence to remind me too much of Entela, although it really shouldn't. The place was only silent after 374. How are you tonight?"

===============================

She had wondered what had drawn her to him back when they had first met, before the debacle that was Vis had occurred. If she had had less sense, she would've traveled back to that very moment and asked her younger, more foolish self and then be forced to knock her out when said younger Animara drew her blade and attempted to wipe her off the face of The Arena.

So she instead chose to quietly curl up in a bed of leaves, in a plane far removed from many timelines and multiverses, and stare at the sky there, reminiscing about that encounter as her sandy form heaved quiet breaths. She wondered if she had organs in this form; a second thought on the matter made her realize that even if she did, they'd be pointless for a being made entirely of sand and breathing was clearly habitual.

Foolish Animara.

===============================

"Terribly un-droll, if that is a word. I've been through quite the journey lately and it seems this is yet another step in it."

A pause.

"Maybe I should leave this place sometime."

Mm, I suppose you're not one for much quiet, aren't you? I personally am in great need of such peaceful places, where the water hums its melody and the crickets sing numerous messages bound into a single song."

===============================

They never matched. On some level, she knew that. So why did he intrigue her so? He wasn't the first Planeswalker to play a major part in a planar war nor would he be the last. She might as well have tried to form a sort of compansionship with Griff if that was the case.

But it had bothered her ever since then. She always felt...differently around him. And for all her knowledge of magics both ancient and recent, she could not place the feeling for her life...or perhaps lives, she thought, as she quietly watched a herd of green leaves float quietly over the forest clearing.

===============================

"That doesn't seem like the greatest of circumstances. I'm not too fond of isolation. There were relatively few of us in Entela, especially after the Entela Core was attacked and collapsed. So, while I learned under the influence of many people in Entela, a lot of my time was spent alone there."

"Better to learn through than honesty than deception, misunderstanding and conspiracy. Averlos is a plane teeming with life, but between an end-justify-the-means academy, an metal-worshiping commune, and a demonic cult with a sheer hatred for a metal, there's little room for the neutrals to exist. Even before I was a planeswalker, I already had to change my lifestyle several times over to get used to what I was doing."

===============================

Was it the soft, optimistic voice? Neo's was loud and boisterous by comparison - though, given his circumstances, she too would be jubliant if she had brought her home into a new era of peace and prosperity. A bird's trill lingered in the air, lilting up and down as if asking her for her thoughts.

===============================

"That must have been a fun experience. This Averlos place seems like an interesting place to travel to. Arina loved excitement, too, and I guess Volaria just didn't have enough. I'm sure I'll find her eventually."

===============================

"D'o yo'u th'ink I mi'ght've lo'ved hi'm?" She rasped quietly, stretching up a sandy claw towards the teal sky, moving it front of the brown sparrow that had its back turned to her. She quietly clenched her fist, then let it slowly sink back down without thought.

===============================

"Fun? I suppose if I look through it through rose-colored glasses, maybe. But the reality is that that probably was the harshest period in my life. I didn't have anything - not even power to do anything about the situation. Then again, I suppose my desire to never be that weak again is what got me where I am now."

===============================

Foolish Animara. They had nothing in common.

===============================

"I hope you know what you're doing, Animara. I trust you. And I'm here to help you If you ever find yourself short."

===============================

...and yet, she longed for that trust in his voice. It was something she had lost in her own raspy trill, yet it always remained a high note in his voice when they had met.

Her sandy form curled up quietly on the bed of leaves, too drowsy to notice the grains quietly falling off her face.

The Time Wraith slept.

{En Passant}

En Passant

An uncharacteristically loud explosion rattled the lab as Neo quietly peered from the protected window in the blast chamber. Ignoring Naberas's shriek of surprise (he'd learned to expect the tent to appear almost any time now), he grimaced at the smoking construct in the center.

Most researchers passing by his lab assumed that he was trying out a crazy Overlay that was miles beyond their comprehension, usually to the prodigy's practiced response of a laugh and a wink combined with an airy statement of "Something along those lines, yeah!"

But today, Neo just bit back a scream of frustration and quietly walked over to his food dispenser, punching in a synthesis code for the latest trendy dish engineered from the Monthly Biogenesis Labculinary Contest and bit into the fried wrap as he reflected on his recent magecrafts, only wincing in surprise when he found spicy Kamigawa-styled noodles mixed into the innocent vegetable-filled wrap. He probably should've read the screen, but he was never picky about his food, unlike a certain rival he hadn't heard from in months.

===============================

"Magic-sustained genes or not, it's important to take care of your body, damnit. You don't see me bedding every man in Delkor right after I eat, do you?"

===============================


Such had always been her logic. Half-sound, but always focused on improving herself. Just the right blend of sensible and crazy to make a Mastermind, he thought. He'd chosen a different route then - to him, navigating the tops of the tops and debating the same blended old theorems over and over was just not his style. He wanted original, new material. Things that could accomplish actual results on the ground. So he stayed as a rank-and-file Tracer.

That is, until he had the crazy idea to transmute his entire body into magic.


===============================

"You could've gotten yourself killed. What kind of idiot are you? Do you even know what I would've done? I would've reanimated you tens of thousands of times over, you-"

===============================

She had no idea what it was like to shoot from the bottom to the top by a stroke of sheer luck. "I guess it's to be expected," he muttered around, munching quietly to no one in particlar in the empty lab as he glanced at the screen reading of TEST FAILIURE: SUGGEST CLEANUP IN THE NEXT 24 HOURS. She had chosen to rise into the world of words and and theorems, whereas he stood on the ground just grasping at what he could with his bare hands and some wit.

So naturally, it had upset her when she sparked and realized that her confined self-focus had left her completely unprepared to take on the multiverse, compared to his brazen optimism and outrageous application of magecraft. He wondered where she was now - possibly still hammering away at a solution to permanently stop Phyrexia, ideally without visiting New Phyrexia itself. In the meantime, he labored, crafting and pushing gears, tinkering and twisting mana fibers.


Overlay had been his crowning achievement, but at the same time, he had felt empty ever since. Nevermind the fact an obnoxious bigot from another plane had attempted to conquer his entire plane for the technology - Neo just... couldn't think of anything better to do. He'd spent many long meticulous hours researching the magecrafts of other planes across the Multiverse to help Delkor grow, but ever since Overlay magic's use had become widespread, he'd done nothing but craft at his workbench all day, as if hoping another magical discovery would emerge.


===============================

"This is ridiculous! At least three threats to the entire Multiverse sit out there, and five Planeswalkers can barely resolve one without mass destruction or positive applications of the powers involved? I can't, Neo, with my sincerest apologies. If nothing else, I'm positive demons exist on a wide variety of planes - few would question the presence of a faith-based species. And with that statement off my mind, goodbye. Good luck trying to chase your own shadow."

===============================

She was right - this was ridiculous. He should be out there, exploiting his newfound power to the fullest, now that he was certain Animara would return from Averlos alive and well anyway. (Mendelas really needed to be more professional - he made a mental note to bring that up at the next Archmage Conference.) He tossed the wrapper into a wastebasket and stood up, pointing his hand at the pile of scrap to levitate it.

Instead, he was playing with what seemed like literal trash. He'd been often asked by peers why he didn't just content himself with what was likely Delkor's greatest discovery for decades to come - that was when the lax smile and wink came back, cheerfully chirping "Who knows?"

But if his rival had asked him the same question, he'd have grimaced and told her that he honestly didn't know. Overlay for him wasn't the perfect ideal - it was merely a step, and he just couldn't seem to find the next one. That's why he chipped away at the trash, recycling all the magecraft known in the past, present, and future (at least, as much of the last one that Mendelas would willingly provide), tinkering and crafting.

They had always told him "the sky's the limit", but he'd long walked past the sky. He just wished if he knew if there was anything beyond the black space above the sky; until then, that empty void was his limit.

{Discord}Discord

Love usually didn't bother Mendelas. It was a trifling thing that came and went with the aeons, eternal yet fleeting. In one timeline, the valiant Chandra Nalaar loved the quiet Nissa Revane, settling down to honor their fallen comrades. In another, Emeria, the Sacred Blossom, played a dangerous game with Nicol Bolas, always bending, never knowning. It was the same story repeated over and over to an amusing degree.

========================

"You useless piece of SCRAP! I knew it - I knew I shouldn't have trusted you with that project!"

"Ami, wait. The kid's here! Can't we at least go outside and-"

"No. You're leaving. Now."

"This is my lab too, Ami!"

"Then I'm leaving."

========================

So he found himself oddly concerned that he was feeling a vague sense of discomfort over witnessing one of Neo's possible futures... or perhaps the more accurate term would be all of his futures.

Liliam had always been a strange Demon. Unlike her more adventurous demon kin, she had almost always locked herself away with her preconceived notions of the world and the books she always held, her territorial glare ready to lash out at anyone that dared intrude upon her heart. She became a Mastermind through qualifying in most classic ways - endless nights of driven research and manipulation of results to produce the optimal conditions to show that her lack of a heart meant nothing in the face of the marvels she could produce.

Even now, she tried to recoil from the concept that million of worlds would always exist beyond her control. Menedelas sipped his rzolai tea and shook his head, his eyes glaring forlornly at the large storm terminal in the lobby of Kasir's research chapel. How could someone so gifted be so narrow-minded at the same time?

She was always so driven, so destructive, so ready to assert her will the moment the shy withdrawal into her room did not suffice - except now, she now longer had a room to hide back into. Being a Planeswalker had thrust her out into reality, and with it, her spiteful attitude towards those she hoped to overpower had surfaced, especially after the man she had loved had revolutionized Delkor first.

========================

"Okay, listen, Otto. You're gonna stay right here with Uncle Imali, okay? Daddy's gonna go after Mommy."

He paused and tilted his head to the side, his widening eyes screaming 'please don't let this be for real'. "Don't worry, I'll bring her back. I always do."

========================

So she had taken her anger out on a narrative she could easily shape and control, especially since she had been one of the leading forces to stop its advance on Delkor - Phyrexia. Mendelas had quietly thanked her many times for ensuring Delkor would never succumb to Phyrexian control, and yet he still felt a wave of unease ripple though him when he looked into those cold eyes, blazing with the hatred of a thousand generators.

For every virtue the spark had given Neo, it had given Liliam a vice. The underdog had become the prodigy, and the regent had become the forgotten. Such was the price of Delkor's lopsided equality.

========================

"Hey, darling... you know, you'll still be the best looking labgirl I've met, even if we don't get that research grant."

"You're truly a fool if you think it's about my looks."

He scratches his head, heaving a sigh. "It was just a figure of speech, y'know. C'mon, let's go home and work this out to-"

"Did you know how much I've always wanted to be better than you?"
========================

He didn't approve of her trading away the secrets of Overlay magic to questionable Planeswalkers. Especially not one who had realized that domination was beyond the colors of White, Blue, Black, and Red. But such was the timeline, and Liliam would eventually return with her theorems and protocols, slamming them down on a table with her characteristic force.

If only she would acknowledge why she crusaded alone, fighting endlessly and needlessly without pursuing more knowledgeable ones like Koth or Karn. Or perhaps that Marina walker? He sighed, reminding himself to check if she was dead in the main timeline.

========================
"Ami, we've been doing this dance all our lives. We might even do it until the end of time, if you really want me to sta-"

"It's not that simple!" She yells at him, the tears suddenly streaming from her eyes. Suddenly the beautiful, cold, succubus he has come to know is gone - they're both 10 again, and he's the boy charging into her room, only to find those piercing cold eyes rippling as she tries to kick him out.

"Every since Overlay, you've -always- been the best one! No one ever thinks of me anymore! I worked so hard to not be a cog in the system, and here you come along, with your goldmine of luck, suddenly driving us all down. No one thinks of me as anything besides your wife! Are you happy, Neo? You've won. You've won for years. Why did you even bother to push... this back together?"

"Because it's never been that simple!" He throws his hands up in exasperation. "For crying out loud, Ami, you always tell me that it's all my fault the next millennia of Delkoran inventors will be completely forgotten. Don't you think I've been forgotten too?!" He waves his arms in a wide circle, gesturing to storm terminals with a design alien to Mendelas's senses. "Overlay. Overlay. Overlay. Do you think anyone actually cares who made it? It's widespread, easily copied, and a basic aspect of life now. No one cares who invented it - they just care that it works."

"But you ma-"

"NO ONE CARES, AMI!" He's yelling now, letting his emotions get the better of himself, as he inevitably does when someone spits in the face of the things he holds dearest. "No one -cares- I made it. No ones -cares- you used it to stop The Second Invasion; I bet no one even remembers there was a First Invasion! No one -cares- because we're all thinking about moving forward, always assessing the future over all else! Do you ever stop and think that the whole world just can't be your lab? Because I have, and you clearly haven't!"

He stops after saying that, as if he's swallowed poison. Liliam stares sadly at him, the cold burning eyes laced with venomous tears slowly losing their edge as she shakes her head and looks at the pavement in shame.

"Neo, I don't know how else to live. I never wanted to be a succubus. I never wanted to be more than Delkor's best inventor. I... thought I didn't want to be a mother." Her voice sinks to a whisper, as a bird flaps its prosthetic limb overhead, passing the two without a worry in the world. "But every time, every single time, I've always had the things I didn't want trusted on me." She gives a half-broken laugh, uncharacteristically letting him place his hands on her pale shoulders as she continues staring at the black expanse below her that matches the color of her dress, still partially covered by the armor she hard worn in the blast lab. "What else did you want me to do? I never had your tendency for ridiculous ideas, so I've always wanted to prove to you brute forced research meant something. I never have."

"I suppose not." He mutters in frustration, his long blue sleeves causing a start contrast with her red hair as it blows in the wind. "Why'd you say yes, then?"

"Because I..." she struggles to get the word out, and chokes on another one "...prefer it when you make me angry. It always felt like a waste to be angry against anyone else when I could fight to serve them what they deserved instead." She sighs, letting her spellforged armor dissolve to fully reveal the dress underneath, as he does the same leaving his shirt and pants intact. "I still don't know what you deserve."

"I don't think I can really decide fairly that I deserve anything." His voice softens considerably as he sits down next to her, as the light fades and the first few stars illuninate the night sky. "But I do know that after all these years, I'd like to ..."
========================
Mendelas quietly sighed as the vision ended, taking one final long guzzle of his tea. He moved again to scry once more into the Eternities - whatever the Second Invasion was, it clearly would be a force to be reckoned with.

{Shell Game}Shell Game

"Well, aren't you out of place, Planeswalker."

"Damn." He had smirked, to suppress the boiling pot of rage within his heart. "You Featherwrought didn't even give me a minute."

"Your evasion's sloppy." The man had smiled back eerily - had Naberas taken his fedora off and shaved his goatee, he could've passed as his brother. "Tell me, what is a Planeswalker dressed in a garb almost like ours doing on our fair plane?"

Baiting the answer. Naberas's eyes darted quickly over the premises for any sign of hidden backup or potential spies - Ghakar had become similar enough to this morbid city that he knew what signs to look for.

There were crows. Lots and lots of crows. Calcermo seemed to detect his intent and gave a warm smile that had just enough of that little cold edge for Naberas to identify as false. "I pray you've not hard of hearing, no?"

A second chance meant kid gloves. He wasn't even remote in his league, and he knew it. A con man he had become, an official he was at heart. He knew the difference and at the same time he despised it. It meant he could never be accepted as a rogue, but the commonfolk would've never rallied behind his shady visage.

But enough introspection. He needed to figure out if they wanted something from him. And fast.

"I'm visiting, Senator Calcermo. So tell me, is it wrong for a Planeswalker to visit this fair city?" Thank god he knew a time traveler that knew some of time's best record keepers. He'd taken that lesson to heart from Ghakar and put it to good use on Preasti - know someone that knows someone that knows someone. This remark clearly threw Calcermo off, as Naberas quickly swerved to avoid a smart dart (clearly toxin laced) as it plowed into the wood shanty next to him. By some miracle, he also managed to banish the knife coming at him without issue - Festenya's knowledge of planeswalkers meant they also knew about their increased survivability.

At this point, he simply hoped to leave without a scratch.

"I believe you're in the wrong district." Calcermo replied, keeping that easygoing disarming smile that Naberas knew all too well. His eyes spoke a different message: "You got lucky." "Come to Vitora next time you visit. I know many that would be willing to meet with an official from a plane. Perhaps we could even assist you in finding your way out of those rags once more."

Calcermo hadn't noticed one of the crows behind him had quietly fallen off the roof, white sand falling out of its mouth as it choked to death.

"Thank you, Senator, but I'm finding being a beggar an...eccentric experience." As the words twirled off his beard, he was gone, and facing his sandy cohort again as his voice regressed into a rougher, more familliar tone. "So why 'xactly did you need that bird strangled, Animara? Assuming that's the alias you still use. I've enough faith in you to know you wouldn't pointlessly discard my life, but I'm wonderin' what the point of that was."

The Time Wraith shook her head in exasperation. "It w'ould be a t'ime con'sum'ing ex'plana'tion, but..."

"Come on, couldn't you just like rewind time by an hour once you've explained it to me? I know you can d-"

A glare.

"A'right, a'right! It was just an idea. Just the short version, at least?"

"F'ine." The Lotus Mask gave a small click as it dissolved off...perhaps into Animara's face, returning her form to a much more humanoid shape that Naberas silently thanked her for changing into. Time travel junk, especially hers, made him want to vomit - such was his 'toad-sized brain', as a thug on Ghakar had once told him, but he preferred not to think about it.

"Date 33XX of Djanim records, on the day LLDX." She continued, as if she hadn't changed in the slightest. "Someone attempted to plant an extra messager crow in Featherwrought communications to cause the start of an alternate timeline that resulted in its premature destruction."

"How?"

"That I'm not allowed to tell you." She smirked. "You wouldn't be ready to handle it."

"Oh, c'mon, way to boost my self 'steem." He retorted. "Why did you bring me along for this damned job, anyway? You could've easily just smashed that s**tbird's egg or something before some idiot dropped it there."

She simply smirked as she slapped a paper in his hand and put her mask back on, leaving her response echoing across the Eternities.

"B'cau'se I wa'nt'ed to re'm'nd y'ou that you can he'lp oth'rs. You h'ave n'o ne'ed to p'ay th' con'm'an's gam'e."

"Con man's game, my ass." He retorted, albeit to thin...void. It wasn't air, that he knew. "But I guess you of all people would know that we lower our standards to survive sometimes."

He looked at the paper and uncrumpled it, muttering something about the most powerful woman he knew not bothering to fold documents properly.

"'If you want a good time without navigating bureaucracy, go to Framiere and ask for Captain Mistral Fleuve. 'Captain' is an Aquarian title, so she'll probably realize that you're not another lovestruck fop asking for the Swan Conductor's hand. Probably. - Cadiem Honis, A.V."

"Good grief." He grumbled. "But I s'ppose it wouldn't be so bad to stretch my wits in a way that didn't require backhanded talk."


Festenya and Calcermo by ThisIsSakon.

{Grief}Grief

"So you don't even remember his face." The pale skinned vampire frowned as she watched Shvai standing in front of a wood grave, embellished with bright red flowers. She shifted quietly, looking at the grey sky as she waited for an answer from the dark-skinned boxer next to her, her Time Ward armor whistled as the wind flew through aerodynamic slits. "But yet, you know every memory of his life.

Despite having had the choice to wear native grab, Sh'vai had donned a black longcoat of Festenyan design - as if breaking a trance, he suddenly straightened and adjusted his collar, turning to look sadly at Animara. "Yes. They would label me a Branched for that reason. Someone born in the wake of someone who had affirmed their home forest so deeply that generations to come would pale under the branches of their legacy."

"I see." Animara shifted uncomfortably once more - she had witnessed countless deaths at this point, but adding a personal weight to them had always disconcerted her. She wasn't sure why, but perhaps it was the changed nature of the air that lingered around such personal matters. "And you had no way to escape from that cold, judging gaze they always gave you?"

Sh'vai gave a deep, melancholy laugh as he fingered the jade pendant lingering just above his neck, his dark eyebrows conveying morbid amusement as he stared down on Animara. "No, that would have been preferable - it would have only been a simple matter of my fists back then. But I saw pity in their eyes instead, She Who Guards Time."

"You don't have to call me that, you know." Animara replied. "Especially when 'Animara' is far more convenient."

"You deserve a more befitting title." Sh'vai merely responded, as he looked across the open grove, its orange leaves floating across the grassland. "But I would understand your desire for humility. Some would say you have too much power."

"I worked for that power and endured crises I would not wish on anyone else to enhance it." Animara replied. "What's your excuse, then? You've never visited your tribe since you left, but suddenly you feel this odd impulse to ask me to come here with you."

Sh'vai clicked his tongue. "I ask you specifically because you seem to understand the feeling. Of supposedly belonging, yet feeling like you are unfit for the forest you declare home."

"Comes with the territory." Animara replied dryly. "You have to remember I didn't ask for this life. Not the time travel part, anyway."

"I doubt any of us wanted the world-jumping part to begin with." Sh'vai retorted, feeling the unfamiliar leather pockets. "But observe. I come back now, even a changed man. I mourn my father, with traditions of another world." He placed a few clay coins of Therosian design in front of the the grave - Animara, noticing the gesture, raised her eyebrows.

"It seems unnecessary. Why return to a place where you will not grow, Sh'vai?"

Sh'vai shook his head. "It is not about the growth or the quest for the forest; those, I will struggle with on a greater scale than anyone from my tribe I have ever known." He moved his hands, pushing the surrounding Green mana slightly as a small gap in the dirt opened, swallowing and buring the clay coins. "I want to show my father that I have finally moved out of his shadow. And to query you of whether you have escaped time's shadow."

"I've thought about it." Animara replied coldly. "But time has some very dark plans in store for me as usual." She laughed quietly, as the wind blew strands of hair past her sharp yellow eyes. "I wonder why I even try to do anything differently anymore. What's the point when time feels so solidly set?"

"You only set the times of others, not yourself." Sh'vai replied sagely, bowing lightly to the grave in a rather Kamigawan fashion and beginning to walk away. "I have escaped my shadow, at the cost of being an a world I barely understand. Perhaps you will find that escape someday."

"Wait."

"I cannot; my heart calls for travel once more. Until we meet again, She Who Guards Time."

Animara inhaled sharply to fill the silence created by his planeswalk, as she channeled mana into her Refraction Gauntlet, a relic of eras long past maintained out of a sense of familiarity and longing for when times were simpler. As it began to record, she spoke.

"Day 730X, Iteration I. I continue to hope for no need to create Iterations beyond the main timeline. Crisis of faith continues; there's something I've lost, but Time won't let me get it back. Self-termination - still plausible as long as the end of Time remains pinpointed. Have personally considered a few times as of late; confident Time Ward and Djanim do not actually need my expertise, to be blunt. 'Empress', signing off."