The soft glow of recessed lighting gleams from the crystal stemware in racks behind the bar. The bartender, an ancient Elf, how old must he be, delicately layers a drink in shades of orange and red in a thick frosty glass. Steam and smoke rise from the glass. He calls out to a waiter that the gargle blaster is up, and the waiter hurries off to deliver it before the glass melts to slag.
A young man, dressed in a long, white coat sits on one table at the far side of the restaurant, sipping his coffee while looking outside the window. His hair, worn long, flowing down his head like thin strands of silver silk, covers half his face. The other half not covered shows an orb of steel gray that almost looks as if it pierces through your very being, a long nose, full lips, and skin that radiates some sort of glow, such that he has definitely solicited a wayward glance more than once from the other patrons. He sits there, expressionless, minding his own, as if in deep thought.
One could say he is a frequent patron here; this has become one of his favorite places in all of the Planes and Time. Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. He had grown to like its exquisitely fine taste in interior decor, the sumptuous food, the coffee, and of course, the view. He stares at the Maelstrom that is the inevitable end of all things and finds the explosions of color and swirls of energy and matter reduced to mere nothingness soothing to his ageless soul.
The Restaurant had contracted for a system of anchors and generators to hold it nearly in place at the End of Time, drifting forward just to the End and then pulled back again, cycling endlessly; “had contracted,” the past tense was a necessity in discussing such things, because everything was in the past, from here.
The view of that final explosion was, of course, the most spectacular there could be. All of the tables had a view through the windows facing directly into that Maelstrom.
A young human female passes his way and captures his attention, throwing him a glance and a smile, and he smiles in return. A fine lady, a beauty that stands out even among the number of equally beautiful patrons in the restaurant, and an elegance in the way she carries herself. She looks around her mid twenties, he gathers. If only you knew how old I am, I wonder if you'd still find me interesting, he thinks through his smile.
His gaze goes back to the Maelstrom, and his thoughts begin to wander, scenes flickering through his memory. He has been making a point of replaying memories, ever since he began to notice that some of them were fading. That was a problem with this much Time; even though he knew more of history and events than almost anyone else he had met, and certainly more than anyone outside the Order of the Guardians of Time, he had the uncomfortable feeling that he had forgotten more than he would like.
A middle-aged Elven waiter cuts his reminiscing off, telling him he has a message and handing him an envelope made of vellum. On its flap is a red wax stamp, the mark of the Order, but something that is only visible to its members. He nods his thanks and proceeds to open it.
Another assignment. Just when I am enjoying myself. They sure know how to bust my leisure time. He is ready to dismiss the summons when his eye catches one single word at the bottom of the letter. “Vargareth”. His usually blank face disappears, replaced by one with a look of disbelief and bewilderment. He finishes his coffee, stands up and acknowledges the host before proceeding to the main entrance. As soon as he closes the door, he is gone.
Ducking through a concealed service door off the lobby, he hurries down a short corridor and out through another service door onto the dark paneled hallway for the private rooms. This summons had to be read immediately and thoroughly before it disintegrated. He had no fear of that; his recall was perfect for anything that happened to him recently; it was just the ancient past that had become a little less perfect.
The private rooms attendant, a pleasant-faced woman in restaurant livery, nods in uncertain recognition. She seems sure she has seen him before, and he did just come through the service door, and he does seem to know where he’s going, so… he can see the familiar thought pattern behind her eyes. He radiates such confidence when he chooses, that it’s the rare gatekeeper who does not let him pass unquestioned. She lets him through a door at the bottom of a short flight of stairs leading above the main dining room. All of these rooms also have a window on the view; that was why patrons came here. The room is comfortable, with overstuffed chairs and a small conference table in front of the window, and a private bar on the back wall next to the stairs. He settles into a chair and scans rapidly through the letter. There is a lot of official verbiage at the top, important to read but not too interesting to his eye. He can’t wait to get to the handwritten message at the bottom; he recognizes Ishtari’s writing.
Ptolemaeus:
Read this letter in its entirety before using the Key to disintegrate it, with special attention to the final Cautions section.
Assignment
You are to attend to an incident that is detected in the Timestreams. A Rift is opened at a location in its Timestream, and an explosion occurs resulting in Maelstrom formation. The Maelstrom is not severe in itself, but it has resonance with another much larger Maelstrom that is detected in a nearby Timestream. Standing waves are developed between them.
You are to assess the potential for damage and the need for repairs. A team is being sent if necessary; otherwise you are on your own.
You are to use the special Lisker’s Key at the end of the letter to Timeslip directly to the location at your immediate convenience.
Its use, or the passage of the standard Order period of 30 minutes of your personal Timeline from when you first touched this letter, whichever occurs first on your personal Timeline, causes the letter’s disintegration.
Cautions
First, the Standard Cautions: It is my duty to caution you to ensure to use your Shield Suit to avoid Strands adhering that you cannot strip off quickly; as you are well aware, a sufficient mass of Strands could cause you to lose directional control and find yourself dragged into one of the Maelstroms, or in this incident, ripped by a standing wave. We cannot guarantee rescue from such Time phenomena; as you know, you can be lost Forever.
Also, you are present to observe, not to intervene, unless there is imminent danger to the stability of the Timestreams. As you know, most incidents have only local effects, no matter how severe.
The Special Cautions: There is a Chronomancer who passes through this incident. The preliminary reading shows that her presence in the Timestream is evident. She is not a member of the Order and is difficult to track at best through our readings. The dossier for this Chronomancer indicates that she is unreliable in her support of our aims. Further information is classified; if you have a need to know please communicate it and your request will be researched.
You are not to intervene unless there is imminent danger to the stability of the Timestreams that is caused by the Chronomancer; if so, the least intervention possible that averts that danger is the best.
The Order relies on your good judgment in this matter. You are selected for this incident because of your talent in handling complications. Please do so at once.
The Key is below.
It takes Ptolemaeus less than a minute to commit these few details to memory, and then he quickly skips ahead to the handwritten note from Ishtari, his contact with the Guardians, and really the only one among them that makes him feel connected. Her face flashes into his memory, as perfect as if she stood before him. Shoulder length hair, jet black, offsetting her fair skin. Almond shaped eyes of the deepest brown. Full lips, bubbly, mischievous smile.
She begins, “Dearest, dearest Ptolemaeus,” she always does that, trying to reach him. He is sure the rest of the letter will be as overblown and teasing. She truly is sweet and caring, as well as careful and insightful; she’s just a little young by his standards, in the ways she chooses to express her affection.
Sorry about the formal language, you know I have to write the official memos like that. This time I really meant what I said about wearing your Shield Suit, even though I always have to say that. I know you don’t care much for our rules, especially when they interfere with your debonair looks, but this time, please, please wear your suit, with two Maelstroms and standing waves, this situation is really dangerous. And remember to peel off an onionskin layer and discard it even before you feel the drag of Strands stuck to it, if you wait it could be too late. I’m not supposed to tell you but we already lost one Guardian who probably did wait too long to strip a layer from his suit and got sucked into the smaller Maelstrom, that’s how we know the Chronomancer is there, from the partial report he sent back before he vanished on his way from the larger one where she is, to the smaller one with the Rift. That’s why the powers that be, here, decided to send you. You’re just that good. It made me smile.
About this Chronomancer, be extra careful of her too. Every report we have about her is very extreme. I checked her dossier in the archives. She never shows up on Readings and no one seems to know why, if that first Guardian hadn’t spotted her from a distance, we still wouldn’t know she was there. I just had to say that because there are special notes on her dossier that say to avoid calling attention to her because she is really on the fringe and the Guardians would rather she just went away somewhere. And also I wasn’t supposed to put his disappearance in the official memo until an investigation is complete.
I have room to tell you a few tidbits I found, you should be able to finish reading before this note goes poof, haha. Don’t be slow and burn your fingers. I love that they vanish, I can write whatever I want to you and only you and I will know our secret. So here is the dirt I found.
She and her boyfriend are in serious disrepute with the Order. She calls herself Dr. Star Feather, and her boyfriend is Dr. Michael Winston, both from that magic University on Yggdrasil, but there is no record of her ever actually completing any classes there, instead it seems she took classes over and over again many, many times, as if she couldn’t pass them, at least that’s what our official investigation shows. She was an undergraduate for 5,000 years even though she claims she was only 5 years old at the time, can you believe that. She also has a terrible reputation about exploding her lab every time she’s there, but I have heard that everyone in the Department of High Energy Magic does that, so I don’t know. The official investigator concluded she must have gotten special treatment because both of her parents are department chairs. He just called her Miss Feather in his report, wouldn’t even use the Dr.
Winston, he’s even worse, just showed up there claiming to be a Dr. of something, no one really understands what. And he claims to be a Professor of Chronomancy, but founded the Department of Possibility Magic, of all things, and wrote a paper that he called Theory of Timeloops that, according to the investigation, makes no sense at all, as if Time kept going backward, and anyone who has been in the Timestream knows the flow goes only one way. The two of them have very unorthodox ideas about Time, and have repeatedly refused strong requests from the Order to recant their views and join us to help save the Timelines. There is a response from Winston where he writes, “Of course you believe in what you do, Theory predicts that you find confirmation for your choices along your Timelines.” I think I agree with the investigation, that’s silly, what else could there be?
Just to make things worse, Winston and Feather have been connected to the appearance of what seems to be an entire constellation of strange dim stars across many Prime Planes that readings show are warping Time around them. The Timestream is completely disrupted there, but fortunately seems to be so tangled it is practically isolated. The dossier says they are trying to use it, no one knows what sense anyone could make out of all that boiling noodle soup, that’s how the Timestream supposedly looks there. Winston wrote another paper calling it a Tipler Cylinder, but there is no record anywhere else in archives of what a Tipler might be, and the paper is supposedly full of strange mathematical symbols instead of proper magic, so it was discredited.
I saw what the pair of them look like, it’s in the dossier. She’s too beautiful, I hate her already. Elves always have an edge compared to us humans. Feather has golden hair, and she actually glows. Really. But she calls herself Star and dresses in blue stars, no fashion sense. Winston looks big and dangerous, something like 6 feet tall and 200 pounds of muscle. What is a wizard doing with himself to look like that? Elves shouldn’t be that tall and broad.
There’s just one more thing to tell. Winston and Feather don’t like us much either. One of our less experienced Guardians found them in the middle of an anomaly he was investigating and decided to go back and Timestop them at the University so he could consider what to do about them. According to the archive of the incident he must have bungled it because it didn’t work at all, but they took it as an attack anyway rather than just the defensive maneuver it was. The Order didn’t respond to them directly, but sent official regrets to University Security for the trespass.
So, my dearest friend, be very, very careful out there. I want you to come back. And don’t fall in love with the Elf. Besides, her mean boyfriend wouldn’t like it.
With love, urequited of course, you cold-hearted man, Ishtari
PS. There is one more thing about them you should know. The dossier said that along with someone named Glom, no last name and extra-weird no personal dossier either, they are partners in some organization called “MetroMagic, Purveyors of Rarities”, a confederation of specialists. They have a lot of commercial success, especially shipping into Sigil, which is very hard to do. They are who your favorite restaurant contracted with, to build and maintain the generators holding it at the End of Time. They use some of that gold to fund practically the entire Department of Divination at the University, it’s considered to be a plum job to be part of the MetroMagic Scrying Team there. Two of their specialists, a Sverfneblin named Reverie and an Elf named Robinsong Aeyrieling from the powerful Aeyrieling clan going back to near the Beginning, head the team. If anyone could ferret out a past event or secret well hidden, anywhere in Time, it might be them. So if you do have to make contact with Miss Feather, and she doesn’t hate you, how could anyone hate that beautiful face? then just maybe they could help you find out something about your obsession, Vargareth.
Just as Ptolemaeus finishes reading and reaches the word Vargareth again, the letter begins to heat and fade. Drat. He did burn his fingertips. She probably wrote it just a little too long to tease him about it later. Touching the Lisker’s Key encoded at the bottom, he invokes it and the room fades into blue-gray smoke.
Ah, the attendant. She will wonder what happened to him, but it’s not the first occasion that he went into a private room and did not come out.
Quickly reversing the trench coat to the Strand Suit held in Dimensional Space on the inside, Ptolemaeus recalls in amusement Ishtari’s concern about his putting debonair before safety. No reason he couldn’t have both; he had far more secrets than even Ishtari knew. It still looked like a white trench coat but now had thin layers to peel off and discard as needed, whenever the clumps of Strand stuck too thickly.
Strands were one of the many hazards in the Timestream. They washed downstream, were very sticky, and took along with them whatever they were stuck to, if enough of them were stuck. Eventually, if he did nothing, he would be covered in them. Near a Maelstrom where stray eddies and swirls could be powerful, the Strands might be pulled in, taking with them whatever was attached.
Blue-gray mist was everywhere in his view, laced through with ribbons of golden and silvery glowing lines, ending in the huge explosion dwindling behind him as he raced upstream, carried by the Key to its preset destination.
Strands in ones and twos splattered against his coat, most sticking, and just as he began to feel a drag downstream, he peeled off a layer and it raced away from him downstream, taking the Strands with it. Onionskin-style, he had thousands of layers to use before he ran out and had to switch to one of his spare white trench coats. How else could he always keep them looking perfect?
Ptolemaeus is swept along from one immense bundle of glowing lines to the next as the Key takes its course. The passage feels Timeless, and could not feel otherwise. He recalls Ishtari’s PS over and over in his mind, picturing every curve of her consciously artistic handwriting, almost calligraphy. Could he really find more information about Vargareth? Get some confirmation of what happened to both of them? Ishtari always called this his obsession, then usually chastised him that he should be obsessed with her instead. Then he recalls what she wrote about the Milliways generators, and another very old impression swims back into his memory. Many, many visits ago, he had come to the restaurant and was told it was closed for maintenance not yet completed, but since he was such a regular customer, they allowed him to go up into one of the private rooms for a while until the restaurant reopened. That was when he learned about the hidden service door from the lobby. Looking down through the private room’s window with some professional interest, he had seen a tall Elf and a tall human working on the machines, and then was very startled to see a glowing Elven woman floating out into the Maelstrom, waving some signals to them as they made adjustments. He thought she was much, much too far into it for her own safety; she was hard to see clearly against the energies flashing around her, and he might not have noticed her if she had not been glowing. She didn’t even have a tether line to keep from falling further in. On other visits, he had seen the tall human again, a few times, with different dinner parties each time, but hadn’t seen the two Elves again. Ah. Now that he had pulled back this memory, he would recognize her if he saw her again.
Suddenly Ptolemaeus can feel the Key orient and dissipate, and he is there. A massive bundle of glowing lines extends to his left and right into the distance as far as he can see, fading into the blue-gray clouds that float in this gravity-free void. At near range, the clouds are faint, barely perceptible with a misty or smoky quality; at a distance their cumulative effect becomes nearly opaque, and they are streaming past him from right to left, slowly tugging him downstream.
The bundle is hugely thick, from high above to far below; the lines are in many different colors, in hues from silvery to gold, through brilliant to bright to dim, and they seem to squirm and vibrate slightly in their place, like a boiling mass of live spaghetti stretched taut.
A well designed Key should place him moments before the incident he is to observe so that he can prepare, and so as he studies the mass of Timelines, waiting, he exchanges the white coat for blue-gray patches and pulls up the hood, becoming indistinguishable in the misty smoke. Suddenly a Rift opens a distance in front of him, and a scene opens out before him in the distance.
It's a large room, but seems cramped because it is full of exotic equipment. There is a bank of dials and lights on one wall, hundreds of them, and the near corner of the room directly at the Rift is completely dominated by an enormous contraption. He has seen these occasionally before in other disruptions; here is a fresh Rift, so it’s hardly a stretch to think the contraption must be the Rift Generator.
Looking closely at the edges of the Rift, they have a graywhite shimmering quality to them, and the room itself seems a little pale for a Prime Plane. No wonder this is precariously unstable; someone is opening a Rift into the Timestream from other than a Prime.
D20 roll please, and apply appropriate skill bonuses if using 3.5 skills; otherwise a percentile roll, to tell what Plane the room is on – or if you can guess from the few somewhat unreliable clues, feel free.
Just beyond the Rift, standing inside the room that has come into view, two large creatures are struggling, and it looks like they are trying to kill each other. One is wearing a robe in a formal cut, with decorations of office, belt and sword. He has a massive snake's tail, in striped black, purple, and white skin. He pulls off his belt and robe, reaches for the sword, and as you watch, you see that his skin has become more and more mottled and reptilian. The muscles of his back are broad and powerful, and his fingers now end in sharp, hooked claws. It seems that you’ve caught a Naga in the midst of Shapechange.
The other is a large Reptilian humanoid, wearing a bandanna on his bald, enormous head, and a big rectangular tattoo of many black black bands of varying thickness is on his neck. He is wearing some kind of form-fitting suit in tough-looking material, and a battered, dark heavy duty trench coat that is flapping wildly in the battle. He has huge metallic boots, inscribed with runes and glowing symbols. On his back is a strange looking shield of medium size, made of a carapace, with an old sword underneath it, and the ends of other things extend from under the shield as well. As the pair swing around, you can see he is also wearing a vest with many pockets and pouches under the coat.
The Reptilian is moving a lot faster than the Naga, but with the slightly jerky telltale motions of Hasted Time, an effect that Ptolemaeus recognizes instantly. He also seems trained for combat, but the Naga seems awkward. This fight may be over quickly.
They are struggling over a Wand that the Reptilian has raised; the Reptilian is trying to strike the Naga with it, but the Naga turns at the last second and intercepts the wand with a clawed fist. The two of them strain against each other, for the moment locked in an impasse.
"Who sent you?" the Naga grates, then continues, "It doesn't matter, and anyway I think I can guess. You are here to kill me, I take it?"
At that moment, it seems that the Reptilian suddenly notices the Rift open behind him as little flickers of blue mist spill out. He is startled, concentration momentarily broken. The Naga shouts triumphantly and shifting his grip, muscles bulging, he flings the Reptilian bodily into the Rift. He forgot about the Reptilian’s tail, though, which smashes through a column of the Rift Generator contraption on his way through.
The Reptilian flies backwards through the rift into the blue gray mist, facing the Naga, and gets a perfect view of the huge machine overloading, and the horrified look on the Naga's face as it explodes in a huge fireball. Ptolemaeus can see the Naga's skeleton as he is vaporized almost instantly. The Rift winks out as it explodes, cutting Timelines and sending them snapping; Ptolemaeus can feel an immense pulse as a burst of energy disrupts the mass of the Timeline. Kinks and tangles fly everywhere, loops and whorls expanding rapidly.
For a moment after the Rift snaps, the Reptilian is floating, weightless, in the blue-grey mist facing where the Rift was, with the current tugging him gently downstream. Then, the misty blue-gray clouds are blasted into swirls flying past him, and past Ptolemaeus, as an expanding shock wave accelerates them both away at high speed and sets Ptolemaeus tumbling head over heels. The gigantic whorl of a Time Maelstrom rotates into existence behind Ptolemaeus, a storm around a huge eye, a hurricane throwing blue-gray jets streaming everywhere.
Trying to keep an eye on the Reptilian, not mentioned in the report at all, Ptolemaeus can see him turn to try and swim against the shock wave, but it presses inexorably. With a thrill of death escaped, Ptolemaeus realizes that if he had been a little closer and off to the side, he could easily have been blasted into the Maelstrom when it formed instead of carried away by the expanding shockwave around it. The first Guardian must have gotten caught in the eye, instead of being on the fringe, no wonder he hadn’t reported on the Reptilian; he was lost and didn’t have the chance. But why hadn’t Ptolemaeus seen him? Ptolemaeus had a clear view of events unfolding; he always chose his observing point carefully. The Guardian hadn’t been in them. If Ptolemaeus finds that Elf Chronomancer, perhaps he can question her.
Ahead, Ptolemaeus can see a shimmering ripple rapidly approaching; it almost looks like a mirror, because through it he can see a similar scene: an enormous tangle of silver and gold Timelines, and an expanding shockwave. Except, as he gets closer, he can see it’s much, much larger, perhaps the size of a small city, and the shockwave is brighter and faster.
Suddenly the Reptilian flashes through the shimmer, pushed by the force of the shockwave, which is starting to slow, but not enough to overcome. Ptolemaeus follows, flung through it as well. There is the twisting, wrenching tumble Ptolemaeus recognizes as passing through a standing wave, and then, passing into the adjoining stream, there is the tsunami of the other shockwave sweeping toward him and then downstream.
Ptolemaeus can see that the tangle on this side is indeed even larger than he thought; there are loops and snarls everywhere. He gets control of the tumble and studies the scene, as the Reptilian washes away from him accelerating in the shockwave on this side. Ptolemaeus is carried along too, but the full force hit the Reptilian first, opening even more distance between them.
As Ptolemaeus gets his bearings, he notices a brilliant gold-white orb, tiny amid the silver spaghetti. Just beyond the exploding whorl, a very bright gold line, and easily the most brilliant silver line he can see, intersect with that moving gold-white orb that suddenly appeared, now blinding, nearly actinic, even at its considerable distance away. The orb expands as the silver and gold lines resolve, suddenly changing into three figures, quite small at this distance: An Elven woman dressed in dark blue, glowing with a yellow-gold light; and a human woman in leather and a cloak, accompanied by a sleek black cat. The cat is holding onto the human woman, and the Elven woman has both of them in tow as she sails directly through the whirling storm, a bubble of calm around them as the rest of their surrounds explode. The bubble speeds forward, expertly controlled, riding the edge of the shockwave downstream, passing through the tangle undisturbed. The Chronomancer! Golden hair, a glowng Elf, the one that Ishtari wrote about. Yes, she was the one helping to adjust the Milliways generator. Ishtari’s message didn’t mention a human and a cat. They must not be Chronomancers themselves; the first Guardian, in his typically narrow view, would not have thought them important enough to mention.
Where did the Reptilian go? Ah! Ptolemaeus spots him, then loses him again as the Reptilian vanishes through a hole that suddenly opens in front of him. Then he reappears, closer to the trio in the bubble, and then suddenly disappears into another hole. A series of holes. He must be trying to work his way to them through this Effect he is producing, by mimicking the flight of the bubble. Yes. The Reptilian is timing his holes in resonance with the expanding wave, and soon is hurtling along behind at very high speed.
The Maelstrom from the Rift explosion is fairly large, worth sending someone to investigate, and this is one of the largest he has seen, but neither are threatening the Timestreams themselves. A lot of damage, and probably a lot of lost lives from all of those snapped Timelines, but the Guardians will get over it. Ptolemaeus has more than one agenda, from the closing line of Ishtari’s message. He is free to choose the direction of his investigation, and if Ptolemaeus doesn’t act fast he will lose the trio entirely. Looking around desperately he spots a huge clump of Strands rushing down on him, thrown from the Rift explosion. Its angle looks nearly right! He throws himself into its path. It smacks him, wetly sticky, and he goes flying with it, half-buried inside the mess, carried deep into the second shockwave.
Ptolemaeus, tumbling wildly in the huge clump of Strands, and the Reptilian, jumping through hole after hole, are gaining on the bubble, but a black disc expands in front of the bubble, and the bubble and its three creatures hurtle through it, their presence here shrinking down to brilliant gold and silver lines, and an actinic white-gold point. They are leaving Temporal Prime! The black disc too begins to shrink. Just before it closes, the Reptilian flashes through it, followed by Ptolemaeus, and with a final jolt they blur through the disc as it winks out.
They all have incredible momentum from the shock wave as they pass out of the disc, and Ptolemaeus, looking far ahead, sees the Reptilian roll and tense as he comes out the other side as if he is trying to soak up some of the impact, but of course there is no impact. Ptolemaeus knows they all have far too much Time momentum to interact with a Prime Plane, flying through a smear of grayish strobing colors.
Ptolemaeus scans even farther ahead, looking for the three forms; now out of Temporal Prime, their physical forms should be visible. There they are; the glowing Elf makes them easier to spot. But they aren’t racing ahead, they are dropping out of the gray smear. With a shock, he realizes what is wrong: The telltale blue-gray afterimages that their Time momentum should leave behind them are not nearly a long enough tail; they hardly have any at all! Somehow they passed through that shockwave unscathed, and were dropping out in the Now. He was going to lose them, flashing past them uncontrolled.
But then, just as the three figures vanish into the flickering gray, the glowing Elf… separates. There she is, descending out of view. And there she is, speeding ahead! Ptolemaeus has a second shock. No wonder the Guardians’ readings of her are confounded!
The Reptilian doesn’t seem to have noticed any of this; his attention was on himself, bracing for the impact that didn’t come. But Ptolemaeus is very intent, now; he may not have been able to drop out into the Now where she and the cat and the woman went, but he is determined not to lose her twice.
Ptolemaeus realizes he could try to shed a layer of his coat to get out of the mess of Strands, but reconsiders. First, he is so deep into the huge clump that he might just get stuck even more if he tries to wriggle out now. At least he can still move his hands a bit; what happens if his struggles make things worse? Second, if he succeeds, will the Strands carry off too much of the Time momentum and drop him out before the Elf does? This is not a textbook situation, in fact he doesn’t ever recall even hearing about someone in this predicament before, much less reading about a solution. He knew about Time momentum, of course, and occasionally had dropped out of Temporal Prime having to deal with some of it, but this much of it? Ishtari was right so far, following that Elf was leading him into the extreme. Best not to risk it yet. He speeds on.
The sense of motion starts to decrease, colors start to become more coherent, and as things slow even more, Ptolemaeus starts to pick up alternating patterns of light and dark, though still too fast to resolve. He is decelerating at a rapid pace, now. Things are slowing down even more, and as his surroundings start to come into focus he realizes that he is having momentary sensations of falling, as things continue changing around him. The light-dark patterns are quite clear now and getting more spaced out. There are blurs of motion around him, as things speed in and out of his vision. Light cycles with dark, each time slower and slower.
The glowing Elf suddenly slows down, much more quickly than Ptolemaeus or the Reptilian are decelerating, and the Reptilian sails ahead out of sight, looking in a daze, near hypnotized by the flickering. Ptolemaeus, still rushing up from behind firmly stuck inside the huge mass of Strands, crashes into her!
Immediately, everything comes to a halt. The sky is not blue, it's black. The two of them tumble to the deck of a ship. Ptolemaeus has a momentary view of the strange scene beneath them.
Both of them are covered in goo and Strands, sticky and spluttering. The Elf’s hair is plastered down, and her blue robe is barely visible under the mess. Still covered with Strands himself, Ptolemaeus staggers to his feet, now that there is a solid surface to stand on. Not exactly the entrance he wanted to make. Gallant, or unobtrusive, or impressively in control, and always well informed and with a well formed plan of action, that was his style, but this? Ugh. What to do now?