The group has left the time-vault of Nodden-Torr. A few days have passed. Alexis waits until the camp has settled, then moves closer to Ethelred.

“Something’s been sitting with me since we came through.”

He keeps his voice low, not quite private.

“Raiden Ascended. Fixed point, 687 SL.” he flips through his notebook aimlessly. “Stand before that point and Ca’armine can’t reach him at all. Makes sense. The warren existed, but Raiden wasn’t in it yet. Some in the Collegium would stop right there: you attune to a region, not a person. No region, no attunement.”

He nods a couple times.

“But we came home through a sky full of possibilities. Every point of light another timeline.” He looks at the page, not really seeing it. “Which means somewhere out there there could be a timeline where Shasharak succeeded. That shadow-fiend that came for us in the hourglass room could be Shasharak or a minion of his from that alternate timeline trying to ‘correct’ all the timelines.”

He closes the book.

“If a god begins at a fixed point, does it exist in every timeline after that moment? Seems unlikely. But Raiden said we were looking at it too much like a road, when it’s a tree.” Alexis shrugs “Or it’s an agreement.” Alexis shrugs again. “Is a single Hood collecting souls from every timeline or is there a Hood for every timeline? And if so, do they know about each other? Do they compete?”

He looks at Ethelred.

“Is Shasharak already a god somewhere? And if he is, can the ‘him’ here get help from the god there?”