Iyepsilon stood on the walkway above the great pool of silvery water in which the image of a sphere, a planet with oceans and land masses was cast. On the land masses he saw mountains and rivers and forests and even settlements and constructed roads.
He saw also rivers rushing from source to mouth, winding through forests and branching out to sprawl across open plains and ultimately pour into the sea. He watched the motion of the vast saltwaters, undulating seas following a great current west-to-east with many smaller swells and swirls throughout.
Suddenly the image shifted, and the elf could see a sort of reflection of the planet and its surface features; colored lines and rays of light formed the outlines of masses and objects. Gridded patterns of light emerged within everything. The water appeared as swirls and flowing patterns, one of top of the other in variant colors of light. This etheric double of the planet and all upon it were visible to the elves who gazed into this pool.
“Has it started?” Shiyeknihel asked as she strode across the walkway to join Iyepsilon, her flowing, glittery robes sliding easily along beside and behind her.
Iyepsilon turned to watch her approach, noting her pale skin was nearly as white as the robe she wore, and appreciating how the silver of her eyes and hair matched perfectly with her silver jewelry and the trim inlaid along the seams of her robe. He felt a bit underdressed in his plain, gray toga, but then he hadn’t expected any company at the viewing pool at this time.
“Yes.” He answered his lady’s question, pointing to a dark, splotchy pattern encroaching on the gridded matrix of light representing Mirabillis below them.
She followed his pointing finger to the irregular dark shape now forming and creeping, somewhat like rising water along the surface of the sphere. As the irregular blob progressed, lines of light forming outlines and grids flickered, some of them changing color, some vanishing, others becoming malformed, ugly shapes or knots of twisted light.
The Premier Lady of the Moon lifted her gaze from the pool to the immense window in the wall ahead of the pair. Beyond that vast window a deep blue, purplish sky with no clouds expanded in all directions as far as even sharp elven eyes might see. Suspended near the top and center of the window hung Mirabillis, not an image, the actual planet as seen from the surface of the moon.
“Woe to them once more.” said the lady elf. “There is so much to lose.” Her voice carried an ancient sadness that had seen many lifetimes of pain and suffering.
“There is.” her servant admitted. “The cycle may at last be remedied, now that the higher powers of the mortals below have taken notice.”
“Taken an interest, you mean.” The Premier Lady corrected.
“I’m sorry Prionsza.” he used her formal title. “I don’t take the nuance.”
“They’re gods Iyepsilon. They noticed the Corruption long before we started watching it in this pool. They simply didn’t care. Now they have, for what reason who can say, taken an interest.”
“A rather harsh tone don’t you think?” the question came from an elf taller than the first two and now standing on the balcony high above them. His long white hair formed into an impossible braided design of a cross rising from his crown and centered amid spirals and swirls spinning out in all directions. His eyes a deep, glowing purple and his thin smile almost too wide for his narrow face.
“Harsh but true Gulydriadge.” the lady countered. “The fickle gods of this cosmos care not for the suffering of the lower beings until it suits or amuses them to do so.”
The tall elf stepped through an aperture in the balcony’s railing and out into the open air, a translucent step appearing for his foot to touch down upon. Another such step appeared for his other foot as he stepped again. Down he spiraled from the balcony along steps that appeared as each foot descended and faded away when the same foot lifted off.
“From our perspective, perhaps. It is as likely the nature of the gods is not wholly apparent to us, and where we see uncaring there is in fact simply a behavior we do not comprehend.” The Keeper delivered this mini-lecture as he descended.
“Regardless. We shall render aid this cycle. The mortals below have withstood this Corruption for eons, and much longer than it has been made to stay on other worlds. Enough.” The Prionsza did not invite debate with her tone.
“Made to stay? By what force?” The elf with purple eyes coaxed. “I thought we were in agreement the Corruption was a force of preternatural origins and tied to the fates and fortunes, the karma of the beings on the worlds where it feeds.”
“That is because you confound your love for your own pedantic ideas with the agreement of your peers.” Shiyeknihel cut deeply but with a kind tone.
The tall elf said nothing, nor did his expression change. His molded smile challenged the outline of his face, seeming to overhang the jawline somehow and his eyes remained wide and alive to everything before them.
Finally he spoke. “We must not intervene. It is not our place, nor are we immune to the Corruption should we spend too much time in observation of it.”
“The darkness has its agents working against the innocent.” said Shiyeknihel. “We have all witnessed them. A vile network of fiends who will cause limitless harm, and where are the agents of good to oppose them?”
“There is nothing to stop the men and elves and dwarves below from forming alliances to combat the darkness.” the Keeper pointed out.
“Except that most don’t even know of the cycle.” said Prionsza. “They have no idea the dark tide comes and its agents move against them even now.”
“How are we to be blamed for their ignorance?” Gulydriadge asked.
“They shall receive aid from this observatory. Is that clear?” the lady stated with finality.
“It is Prionsza.” Iyepsilon said without hesitation.
“I will not disobey my Premier Lady.” Said the taller elf. “Yet I will not refrain from informing Da Ylaek either. He will be most displeased with your actions.”
“Let him be displeased. He is the Law, yet I am the Binding. He is the Authority, but I carry the Power.” spoke the lady.
“The dreamer is real.” Shiyeknihel announced. “We must find it.”
“Likely this dreamer is nothing more than poetic interpretation on the part of the seer who recorded those visions.” the purple-eyed elf said dismissively.
“Of course.” the Premier Lady touched her chest. “The Watchers were, after all, such a lyrical race.” Sarcasm dripped from her words.
Iyepsilon chuckled. “So true. Their manuals are excruciating.”
“It is a sentient being.” the Premier Lady went on. “The comet and its attendant asteroid are but astrological initiators. They make the dreamer sleep, and then it dreams.”
“Reminiscent of one of the K’ras’thk Dominion races if memory serves.” said Iyepsilon.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
”Precisely.” said Prionsza.
“How inconvenient for our cause that all such beings were destroyed by our gods twenty-six-thousand years ago.” noted Gulydriadge.
“Seems they missed one.” said the Premier Lady. “We will find it.”
Gulydriadge rolled his eyes.
“Seems they missed one.” said the Premier Lady. “We will undo their error.”
Gulydriadge rolled his eyes.
“Premier Lady.” spoke Iyepsilon.
“Yes, Custodian?” she used the formal title of the elf stirring the pool.
“It has happened again. Before I was unsure but this time I know what I have witnessed.” the Custodian looked up from the pool to meet the Premier Lady’s gaze. “A time loop. There have been at least two now.”
“Most concerning.” said Shiyeknihel.
“How can you claim to know this?” demanded the Keeper.
“Watch.” said the Custodian.
The image on the pool showed the planet below, it’s rotation subtly visible. The Custodian stirred gently with his staff. The image shifted; the scene remained the same, but the planet had a liquid quality to its image, and a faint luminous shadow superimposed itself upon the sphere’s form.
“The etheric pattern betrays the change.” Iyepsilon claimed, “This was just a moment ago.”
On the pool, the luminous shadow of the planet rotated with its physical likeness. At one point, as the physical image continued unfettered, the echo of light attached to it faltered and blinked, falling just behind its corporeal twin.
Gradually the light-shadow flowed back into place directly over the image of the physical planet, but the disruption could not be denied. It happened even as the three elves watched.
“So the alignment with the Crown of Heaven does cause time to ripple.” said Gulydriadge. “Amazing.”
“Is the looping not continuous?” the Premier Lady looked at the Keeper.
“Not usually.” he replied. “According to lore it can be but generally a loop plays out as one or two repetitions and the timeline moves on. It’s like a kink working its way out of a rope, if you will.”
“Did anything change?” Prionsza asked Iyepsilon.
“I don’t know. I would have to compare now with the alternate timeline, which we would now consider the events prior to the loop.” he explained in response.
“That will be impossible to keep up with over any significant period.” the Premier Lady looked at nothing and did so with a wrinkled brow.
Iyepsilon elaborated on her thought: “If a timeline is changed, for example outside of a loop, someone just alters it, I could see what has been changed but I wouldn’t necessarily know to go looking for it.”
“The null inquiry.” said the Keeper.
“The what?” asked the other two elves in unison.
“The question unasked because we don’t know it needs to be asked.” Gulydriadge clarified. “A common problem when considering altered timelines.”
“We won’t even know the timeline has been changed.” Prionsza said to nobody in particular, appearing to be lost in her own thoughts.
“Precisely!” Iyepsilon confirmed. “For all we know the timeline has been changed and re-initiated a thousand times, and how many times have any of us gone looking for events we think may have been lost to memory due to temporal manipulation?”
“Ah the ‘Veiled Divergence’, as the Watchers referred to it.” A very old elf had appeared on the walkway at some point. He had apparently taken it upon himself to listen in on the conversation of the first three elves without announcing himself. Now, having spoken, he stood smiling, his gaze averted as if he were re-visiting an old memory.
“I’m sorry Da Ylaek. Veiled Divergence?” Iyepsilon asked. “I’ve read all the manuals left by the Watchers but have never seen this term.”
The Venerable Law smiled and nodded. “Some instructions are found not in the manuals but rather in the tales and stories of a people. The same can be said of the religions and legends of mortals, which may give insight and even tutelage beyond those found in a society’s laws and overt philosophies.”
The other three elves waited quietly after the elder finished speaking. He stood smiling without a word for another moment before Shiyeknihel decided to clarify the desire to hear more.
“Yes Venerable Law. Could you elaborate a bit?”
“Oh.” the Law realized he had missed his cue. “Certainly. In a story about a group of Watchers from the third generation I believe, the matter came up about time travel and an altered timeline. A Veiled Divergence is the changing of our timeline, the joining of the present with an altered past for example, that happens without our ever knowing.”
Shiyeknihel turned to Gulysdriadge. “Keeper. I task you as follows: This moon, or at least this observatory, shall no longer be tethered to the same temporal river as the world below. Do not alter the passage of time here, just see that we are not bound to the same essence of time and space as below.”
“So when the timeline shifts we retain continuity of experience, remembering everything without blind spots.” Gulydriadge elaborated on Prionsza’s plan.
“Exactly.” the Premier Lady approved.
The Keeper nodded, looking sideways at the elder elf as he did so. Without another word the elf with purple eyes vanished.
“I won’t keep you then.” said the Venerable Law. “Just checking in with my busy watchers on my way back from the garden.”
“Always a pleasure Da Ylaek.” said Prionsza.
The old elf smiled then turned slowly to leave. He faded from sight by the time he had turned halfway around.
“That was close.” said Iyepsilon. “I thought he knew.”
“He will soon enough.” said the Premier Lady. “Gulydriadge will make good on his threat to inform him.”
The Custodian shook his head. He made his best attempt at a growl.
Prionsza smiled. She wasn’t about to tell him how silly his effort looked, for she knew he wanted to seem threatening on her behalf.
“Shall we look upon the wolf now?” asked Iyepsilon.
“No. The All Father has seen fit to intercede through that one. For now let us visit with our blue cousin.”
“As you wish.” The lady’s faithful servant took up his staff of hawthorn, fitted with silver and moonstone, having an amethyst point at the top. He dipped it into the pool below and stirred.
The image faded, then shifted to an open plain near a coastline. On a roadway near the sea, a great Khelt stallion trotted eastward. Its rider was a very tall man with a hood pulled over his face. Closer the vision in the pool moved, and the moon elves saw the rider was not man, but elven, his skin a lovely, pale blue and his shoulder length hair dark purple with hints of blue.
The lady spoke to the image in the pool. “H ō z’b’nahzioh, receive me.”
