クリスティランに入るのは難しいかも知れないが、私が開発したクリスティランの儀式用の鍵があれば、インカリアックスの「凍りついた涙(Frozen Tears)」の 領域にある「白き死の髪飾り(White Death’s Diadem)」の中で儀式を行うことで、影の世界の裏口を開くことが出来る。そしてもちろん、カルズーグが最後の鍵を 握っているかもしれない。サイファーゲートは単なる窓ではないはずだ。しかし、カルズーグに話しかけて彼の秘密を知るというのは気が引けるのだ。 他に協力を得る方法があるのではないだろうか。 ------------------------------------------ Death was as painful as I’d always feared it would be. What stings the most isn’t that Alaznist tampered with the wards that should have woken me millennia ago or that most of my holdings are now lost to me -- it’s that she must have used my own research to locate the Scepter of Ages and used it against me. She MUST have used my own research on the topic. There is no way she could have found it on her own!
And now, Alaznist has changed something in the past... I think. I can’t prove it. Has she used the Scepter of Ages to manipulate the past, to change the course of historical events? My memories would have changed, and the historical texts would have been altered to fit the new timeline.
She doubtless kept her manipulations subtle, to avoid true paradoxes, but I feel that something is different. It is like trying to remember a dream that begins to fade immediately upon waking.
Xin-Edasseril may hold the solution. Belimarius fell for Karzoug’s trickery and became trapped therein not long before the cataclysm. My cultists inform me that her city’s core remains the same today as it did on the eve of the end of my world, trapped completely “outside” of time itself in a dome of force known as “Crystilan.” If Alaznist changed any events prior to the city befalling its fate, true accounts of those events would still reside within Crystilan’s walls. Once I have that information, I could compare those documents with others from this world that were not so protected and potentially narrow down those specific points in time where Alaznist meddled. If I could then but secure a method of traveling time, I could return to these points and, if not ambush Alaznist and regain my stolen power, at the very least learn how to warn myself of her treachery before she killed me.
Entering Crystilan may be problematic, but with the ritual key to Crystilan I’ve developed, I can open a back door of sorts through the Shadow Plane by performing the ritual within White Death’s Diadem inside Inkariax’s realm of Frozen Tears. And of course, Karzoug may yet hold the final key. The Cyphergate has to be more than a window. I may not need the Scepter of Ages to travel backward after all, but the idea of speaking to Karzoug to learn his secrets offends me. Perhaps there is another way to secure his cooperation.