Kahli smiled at Froufrou with excitement as her mind was all abuzz with the concept of choosing intentionally what her third scenario might start out like, as opposed to taking it for granted as an aspect of her system [skill] like she had been doing in the past. At the very least, Kahli figured, this effort would afford her the ability to stay informed of actions to take as she entered the timeline. And, if she could remember old timelines in each scenario she observed and took part in, there really seemed to be no reason at all that she couldn't do the same before entering a timeline specifically in order to somewhat control its outcome.

So Kahli set down her purse in the floating nothingness of the void, looked at Froufrou, and talked her through her plan. Kahli figured that their goal with this third timeline should be to either figure out why it was that Sch'laong the plant construct thought he was doing good by attempting to bring forth their doom, stop the enemy from fighting them altogether, or otherwise to try and convince it that they were on the same side. After all, even though Kahli was generally quite good at it, she didn't absolutely love fighting and killing things, and generally felt that if she was able to talk herself out of this, then it woudl be ideal.

Kahli went further on to plan for a backup in case this didn't work out. As she told Froufrou, there were really multiple backups. See, Kahli said, if Froufrou was able to do something - what it was didn't necessarily matter as much as the magnitude of ripple effects in time it might cause - but if she did something so risky that it would trigger yet another [checkpoint] in time based on Froufrou's instance of the shared [skill], then that too could afford them other options. Froufrou pushed back on this a bit with an especially lingering squelch. From her perspective, doing such a nested timeline scheme was more of a last resort than a plan for a [checkpoint] as seemingly inconsequential as this one. Not to say that it didn't seem impactful, but the fight with the jellyfish had been one thing. This was entirely different.

Kahli devised yet another backup; a backup that Froufrou found far more reasonable. They would simply plan to - if the third scenario didn't pan out as they wished - twist the second scenario and pick from those two. After all, they'd already nearly won the fight against Sch'laong in that scenario. It wasn't necessarily a life or death choice, they figured.

Kahli looked down at the final glowing scenario under her big left foot with confidence. It was time to see what all her [skill] could really do!

[Now viewing scenario 3]

Kahli stood there, looking at the formidable plant beast Sch'laong as it bared its copious thorns and stinning nettles at her - but she didn't feel intimidated one bit. In fact, she even smiled.

"WHAT do you have to be so HAPPY about, you INTERLOPER?" growled the fiend.

"What don't I? I just appreciate what you're doing is all," replied Kahli with a cheerful glance inside her purse and a poorly concealed grin. It didn't really matter, did it? She had [Tale Teller], right?

And even if the first time she'd tried it had ended in death, now Kahli knew just enough about Sch’laong to lie more effectively to him. "After all, you are the Great Protector, are you not?" She raised an eyebrow for emphasis, and felt the ever hardening plaster on her face crack a little. Classic.

Suddenly, Sch'laong's leafy countenance grew grim and shameful. His posture contorted, and his towering figure suddenly seemed a whole lot less imposing, and instead he seemed to almost become an object of change. "By the gods, had I known... I didn't realize you were one of his envoys!"

His envoys? Kahli was mighty confused by this. Who was this he who apparently had her as an envoy? Yet, at the same time, she couldn't back out of it now. She needed to play along and hope that Sch'loang would unintentionally divulge more infomration to her voluntarily.

"Yes, yes, of course, it's all so obvious now... How else would you even be able to interact with the obelisk otherwise, lest you had his same very [skill]? And of course we all know how impossible that is."

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Kahli didn't even know what to think or say about this business. So whoever this he was, had a [skill]. And had some connection to the obelisk. Did Kahli have a connection to the obelisk? She hadn't thought that she did, she'd just interpreted the whole experience as some sort of a cruel trick played on her in order to activate some sort of awful power she had no understanding of. And, with that, Kahli was starting to wonder if maybe she really did have a connection to the obelisk. But she kept all of these feelings and thoughts to herself. After all, by the blessed pincers of Theseosus, she had a lie to keep up!

So, what could she do? Well, Kahli knew exactly what to do. She was going to double down. Hell, she might even triple down.

"You don't have to tell me about his [skill] or how impossible it would be for me to have it! That's so obvious, Sch’laong, come on. Let's be real here. He knows what he's doing, okay? So, if he wanted me to come in here and finangle with the obelisk, then I am perfectly in my right to do so, aren't I?"

"Yes... Of course you are," replied Sch’laong begrudgingly.

"Awesome, thanks for helping us get on the same page," replied Kahli with a smile. "Now, what are you doing here? Are you still going to try to attack me? Aren't you terrified of all my awesome envoy powers?"

"I'm NOT going to attack you," sighed the plant construct. "I just need to check - and please tell me whether this is a yes or a no so that we can move onward here - but have you filled out all the proper scrollwork yet for messing with that obelisk?"

Kahli suddenly felt tingles of fear run down her spine like tiny little spiders. Scrollwork? Of course. It was all so obvious. The whole fight had, clearly, been about scrollwork. Just as so many other fights had indeed been in the world of Nomachiato. Indeed, as countless other fights were sure to become.

Kahli desperately wanted to walk up to the plant construct and smack him in the face. After all, he'd essentially tried to kill her and Froufrou because Sch'loang didn't want to fill out scrollwork. Talk about laziness. Tack on the property destruction of the ruins, and really, the whole thing painted a pretty ugly picture. But doing that would break the facade, the mirage of her lie. After all, apparently this thing thought that killing people over scrollwork was reasonable, and so obviously whoever she was pretending to be an envoy of thought the same thing.

There was only one piece of the puzzle that was really tearing Kahli up inside. She desperately needed to know who Sch'loang thought she was an envoy of. How could she achieve that?

[End scenario]

Kahli was back in the void, but things seemed... different.

Mainly, the fact that it wasn't at this point much of a void. It was brimming with... well, with stuff. The stuff was mostly thick fog, ever changing and morphing into itself. There was also a glowing orb of white light far in the distance and obscured by the aforementioned thick fog to the point that it almost looked like the sun caught behind an especially strong cloud.

"Froufrou, what's going on?" asked Kahli with a genuine nervousness. There was no lying [skill] at play in this moment - no, Kahli was doing one thing, and that one thing was wondering what exactly had happened to change the void she'd grown altogether quite comfortable with into this strange, eerie landscape that seemed almost like a nighttime of the apocalypse.

"You know, you've violated several time treaties over the past thirty minutes or so, give or take," replied a cool, confident voice from somewhere in the fog. "And while time itself may be immaterial, time law is, unfortunately, not. Time law is generally very strict, very cut and dry. While many of my envoys find it irritating and meticulous to adhere to, there is good reason for those stipulations. The laws of time are built on the ever changing backs of an infinite selection of permanently degraded timelines. Timelines that are as good as bunk, and yet, are forced into existence."

Kahli looked through the fog, but she couldn't rightly see any shape, whether it be person or beast that was talking to her.

"Not that you know any of that yet, of course. You must forgive me, matching up the timelines of peoples' understandings of jargon and colloquialism can be a challenge at best, and a Sisyphean task at worse."

Kahli didn't know what the voice was talking about, but she felt herself almost compelled to nod her head as if she understood every word.

"Great, great, glad we're in synch here. I guess I'll go ahead and greet you," replied the voice.

And with that, a tall, lanky figure in a long, flowing white cloak with a hood over their face stepped into view from the fog.

“Hello, Kahli. I have many names, so many names indeed that sometimes I even forget what my real one is. But, generally, I don't go by them. I go by title."

"Title?" Kahli fought herself internally, eventually deciding to go ahead and give herself away. "What's your title, exactly?"

"Usually?" he asked with a shrug.

"Yes," Kahli replied. “Wait… Are you saying your title is Usually?”

"No. My title is, and I quote, The Supreme and Almighty Overlord Tauman of the Sanctity of Time. And if you really were my envoy, you'd already know that."