In the present, Sapience was at a standstill. The summit at Falaq'tor had brought few answers in the resulting avalanche of questions. Many tried to reconcile what they thought they knew with what had been, and what was. If they could no longer rely on their own remembering, were they yet themselves? Or was the now-self an imperfect mirror of some past self who had come before? What else had been stolen sight unseen?

On a theory and a prayer, Pryla'ari decided her next course of action. As the Fifth of the Conclave, she would be the one to hold a ritual on the alterations to the current timeline, to wind back the past and see where exactly the threads had frayed. Again she called for an assembly of mortalkind, and again they came to the frozen tower, some eyes more haunted and afraid than others.

Asking for their resolve, the mage-priestess invited four to submit to the magics of Life at her gelid touch. The first to step forward was Gallus Blackwing, a Hierophant of Eleusis. Frost spread across his temples as time slowed within the tower, and suddenly all present could recall the rise and fall of ancient Ceylon as though they themselves had lived it.

The second was Ryssa Embersong, her wings nervously aflutter. In the gentle atavian, they saw the spent lifetime of an Azatlani warrior, a kaleidoscope of colour, blood, warfare, and sacrifice to the Skylord blazing past them until, gasping for breath, they noted they were still too far back in time to find an answer.

The third was Fitz Devi, a mhun from a long, occult bloodline. This memory was expected. The mhun, as they oft were, hard at work in the mines of Moghedu, carving out a new ancestral home for their kin.

Lastly, Aroan Shire joined the ritual circle in his amphibious form, for to him this was a small task. His mind had been rifled through before. No sooner had Pryla'ari touched him than he was plunged into the watery depths of anamnesis, borne along a tide that carried him far away from Falaq'tor and deep down beneath the waves. Torn between two worlds, he and every ritualist still shivering under the Fifth's spell underwent a spiritual death, an agony that set the collective membrane of all grooks quivering with remembered terror. As the vision of Asem'wah faded, Aroan and Veldrin collapsed to the ground, their pain echoed by the gurgling screams that now rang out from Ulangi.

Pryla'ari halted her ritual at once and dismissed the crowd who swiftly turned to two venerable experts of the grook race: Oorangu the Wise and Balai the Scorned. Led by Veldrin, most sought counsel with Oorangu, valuing caution and civility above all else. Aroan, however, sought Balai's guidance, desiring action and promised knowledge of a secret known only by madmen.

Blood stained Aroan's hands as Oorangu fell, met swiftly by Veldrin's retaliation against Balai. The opposing factions stood poised, their metaphorical battle lines drawn. Then, a spectral thread emerged, and another relic faded out of reach. Beckoned by forgotten memories, the grooks embarked on an ongoing journey to reclaim their obscured origins.

Through their thread, the grooks traversed mystical islands with names unheard of upon Sapience: Asem'wah, Nanga Tu, Bandar Selat, and Bandar Selam. Each revealed fragments of a tragic past, intensifying their yearning for understanding with every wretched revelation. Determined, they sought the truth of their veiled minds, that they might break free of the chains that once bound them.

Thus came the crash of the Roaring Wave, as the Protean relic was ripped from the folding reams of time and space. Time, as if angered, answered.

Rippling currents in the Nilakantha River birthed one more shimmering thread, its otherworldly light familar to all who had been pulled through a doorway to another age. The light moved over the now-selves of Aina, Shirszae, Alashi, Theosis, Ardor, and Aroan, drawing them into the flicker of centuries to land on the deck of a seaworthy sloop.

The fog here was a blind squall. Yet their captain, a golden-haired woman of towering stature and foreign dress, gave them no pause, immediately putting them to work manning the sails and navigating the cold grey mists. More questions came thick and fast. What year was this? Who was she? To where were they sailing? To adventure, the captain declaimed, and so they sailed on.

After half a day on the bucking seas, the intrepid crew of the nameless ship made landfall, running aground a spit of sand between tropical islands. There they were met by a horkval scout, green and fierce, who dismissed their proffered gifts of gold and fibre and demanded to know their purpose. A tense conversation followed, in which blades were drawn halfway out of sheaths, but no blood spilled. The horkval finally agreed he would be their guide for as long as they required guidance, lest the dense jungle to the west consume them. His name was Ortho.

The sun glaring off her shoulders, the golden-haired woman smiled as she gazed out at the far horizon.

"My name is Himalia," she said, confirming the crew's suspicions. Indeed she was Queen Himalia, Oceanstrider, beloved daughter of Sinope and Callisto, one of the Offspring and humanity's first explorer. Before others had ever voyaged from their homes, she had uncovered the far edges of the map, the Strait of Himalia and beyond.

The memory could clarify no further for the travellers. The past shuddered and heaved at their intrusion, and they were spat back out onto the humid beach of Ulangi, a crumbling map the only proof of where and what they had seen.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Summary: Seeking discrepancies in the timeline, Pryla'ari wove a ritual in Falaq'tor to comb the memories of those there. She encountered a strange resistance in the minds of grook, a barrier erected against conscious recollection. Threads of Memory soon appeared in Ulangi and Nilakantha as Time continued to warp, a connection to the distant past that saw a small ship sailing through fog. The legendary sailor Himalia would chart the seas once again, or now, or then, as she had so long ago.

Penned by My hand on the 7th of Scarlatan, in the year 919 AF.