Alice in Wonderland. Dallion knew next to nothing about the book. All his knowledge came from cartoons and movie adaptations. There was no denying that when removing the layers of absurdity that the story could be viewed as a description of the other world. More correctly, it could be viewed as someone retelling a story from an awakened, adding certain elements of his own.

No one could tell whether that had happened or not. Jeremy believed in it, but that didn’t make it true. All he had to go by was the story of the woman who had once been his wife in the awakened world, as well as Dallion’s great-great-great grandmother and the founder of House Elazni.

Married to someone who died centuries before you were born. Dallion looked at Jeremy. No wonder you went insane.

“Let’s talk in the kitchen,” Jeremy said with the typical detachment Dallion knew him for in the other world. “I can use a drink.”

The drink turned out to be water at a staggering price of five-hundred dollars the bottle. After a sip, Dallion could see why. It would be wrong to say that the water tasted of anything. It was a lot more relevant what it didn’t taste of—no additives, excess minerals, or anything that would ruin the taste. One would almost say that it was made specifically for awakened.

“How long have you been back for?” Jeremy asked.

“A few months,” Dallion admitted.

“A few months. Your memories must still be fresh. I can’t even remember my first few months.”

“In what way?”

“The other world enhances our abilities. To be exact, the Moons do. Since there’s only one of them on earth, we can never reach the level we had there. If both of us teamed up, we’d probably get beaten up by a single digit newbie. Skills help, but not to the extent you might think.”

“Weren’t skills supposed to be everything? That was the philosophy of your Order.”

“There. Skills here are pretty much analog—you have them or you don’t. You can’t level them up, and it takes a heck of a lot of training to improve them even a bit. If you go back, you’ll be at the bottom of the pile with no guaranteed way to boost your level. Still set on going?”

“You know the answer.”

Jeremy laughed, possibly for the first time since Dallion had seen him on Earth.

“Okay, let’s get to it.”

Going through several rooms of the mansion, the two went into the home theater room. At least it had been a home theater at some point. Five rows of six luxurious seats filled the back. Each had enough space for a person to take a nap if they wanted. Naturally, there was a mini fridge filled with more water and a few bowls of exotic fruit. The only thing missing was the screen.

Jeremy made his way to the front row and sat down. Threads of electricity emerged from the floor, only to be plucked by him midair. Bit by bit, a loom was created, very similar to the one Alien had made, yet comparing this to the mage’s was like comparing a stick figure painting to the Mona Lisa.

“You’re using this instead of a projector,” Dallion muttered.

“Much better. Cheaper, too.” He kept on building.

The threads became so close that soon they gave the impression of being a solid block. Then, the really extraordinary thing happened—layers of shapes emerged within, making Dallion see the first real-life version of a hologram.

“Much better than Alien’s.”

“That kid’s here?” Jeremy sounded genuinely surprised. “Didn’t think the watchers would let anyone from the Circle go.”

“They almost didn’t.”

“Well, good thing he’s alive. Maybe I’ll go see him one day.”

Dallion couldn’t tell whether that was meant as a friendly gesture or as a threat. Alien was to blame for losing the Moonstones, which in turn had helped Simon prevent Jeremy from becoming the Architect. There was a chance that he wasn’t set on that, especially after Dallion had told him the shortcomings of the title. Then again, he wasn’t willing to bet anyone’s life on that.

An image of a newspaper clipping emerged in the aether-loom. Dallion wasn’t able to read the text, but it had a picture of a young girl in a straightjacket. More clippings quickly followed; their number so great that they started covering one another.

“It takes some practice to see through the layers,” Jeremy humble bragged. “Once you get it, you’ll be able to see all of them simultaneously.”

Like hundreds of screens all atop of one another, Dallion thought.

“When I got back, I wanted to kill you,” Jeremy continued calmly. “Then, I found out that I wasn’t the only awakened on Earth. Hardly unexpected, when you think about it, but it was annoying to find out that a group of bugs had gotten together and formed an organization. To be exact, they kept forming and dissolving secret organizations for centuries, probably millennia. This one was a lot more organized, and very stubborn.”

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“I know the feeling.” Dallion concentrated, but still wasn’t able to make out anything beneath the front layer.

“So, I paused a bit to get enough funds to deal with them. Ironically, in the process, I lost my drive.”

“The fading of the memories?”

“Yep.” The man’s fingers kept on moving wildly, as if he were playing a harp. “I still know what happened, or the important things, but I can’t visualize it. And at the same time, I remember friends from high-school I haven’t seen for hundreds of thousands of true time years.”

Finally, the images stopped appearing. Pleased with what he had achieved, Jeremy relaxed his left hand on the armrest of his seat.

“More to your point, I spent a lot of time and money looking into the topic, which is how I found a few favorites.”

“You found Simon,” Dallion said.

“Oh, I definitely found him. Or what’s left of him, rather. Last I checked, he was a ninety-seven-year-old man in southern France,” he said with a chuckle. “Brother Simon,” he added in a French accent. “If you can believe it, he joined a monastery thirty years ago. I can’t say his life was pleasant, but he had the skills to survive, and so he did. But that’s not the big reveal. I found her.”

The newspaper clippings shuffled until a small column went on top.

Teen believes she’s a demon or humanity’s savior. Dallion read the title. There were no pictures, just a brief story of a girl in Scotland who was forcefully taken to a mental institution. From the article, she insisted that she had been bestowed with special powers from another world and was meant to lead humanity.

Several moments later, another article was brought to the front. This one had a picture.

“Wait,” Dallion said. “I’ve seen her…”

The clothes were different, but there was no doubt the face was an exact copy of an echo he had fought—the Star’s echo. At the time, he had believed it to have been created by Arthurows. Clearly, that hadn’t been the case.

“The girl described herself as the Broken Star,” Dallion read out loud, “Fueling speculation that she might have been part of a cult.”

“I bet the person who wrote this doesn’t even have an idea how right he is. She was the original creator of the Star Cultists and, if I remember right, the reason the great city was destroyed.”

The Broken Star… Dallion remembered his experience in the pyramid while exploring the Fallen South. At the time, he found it weird that one of the signs had read “Armoury.” It wasn’t the English letters that had confused him as much as the needless “u.” Now it made sense—the Star had been originally from the UK.

More importantly, it was in the same pyramid that Dallion had found an item from Earth itself.

“She’s been kept in a mental institution for the last seven years, at least,” Jeremy said. “Heavily sedated with no chance of being discharged. There are also a lot of interesting stories—from the gutter press, mostly—of nasty things happening to people in the facility who had something to do with her.”

Not the best biography, to say the least. After being on drugs for so many years, there was every chance that she had forgotten everything she’d known. No wonder Jeremy, or anyone else for the matter, hadn’t snatched her from the facility. The girl had become non-communicative. Although, there was one option that no one had exploited.

“Can I skim through those?” Dallion asked, pointing at the images.

“Go ahead. Use your magic threads as a mouse cursor.”

After a few attempts, Dallion was able to grasp the basic principle, but his speed and accuracy were like that of a senior citizen struggling with a computer. Despite that, he managed to eventually go through enough snippets until he found what he was looking for.

“She was described as locking herself into her own mind,” he said.

“True. Just as it was said that she’d gone into a homicidal rage several times, and almost escaped the facility once.”

“She’s hiding in her personal realm,” Dallion said. “Or that of an object. If I can physically get to her, maybe I can talk to her.”

“See? I told you my information is good.” The former emperor smiled. “There’s just one minor problem, though. She’s under constant surveillance.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll just turn into a doctor and—”

“Under constant surveillance,” Jeremy interrupted. “The watchers are terrified of her, even more than they’re terrified of me. The only reason they haven’t killed her outright is because the network is a lot stronger in Europe than here.”

“Then I’ll talk to them.”

“You’re still not getting the picture. The network doesn’t want her in the open, either. Not with the levels of void she has. And trust me, she’s probably got a lot. They’ll be damned if they let her be harmed by the watchers, though.”

“So, it’s a stalemate.”

“Two groups ensuring that the other doesn’t get her out of there. To have your talk, you’ll have to make it in and out through both. And even then, there’s no guarantee that she’ll have the answers.”

There it was—the greatest concern of all. If this didn’t work, Dallion would have gone through all his best leads, with nothing to show for it. It had to work, though. There was proof she had managed to get something between worlds in the past, and it wasn’t thanks to the Moons.

“Do you have anything recent on her?” Dallion looked at Jeremy. “Taped sessions, doctor reports, articles, anything?”

“No, but I can get some if you want. I know the facility still exists.” He paused. “I can try to find something.”

“Thanks. I’ll also need you to get me there.”

“I really don’t like going to the U.K.” Jeremy sighed. “They don’t pay as well as they used to.”

One warning glance from Dallion quickly made him change his tone.

“Well, I didn’t want to be here during renovations, anyway.” He moved the fingers of his right hand. All images on the aether-loom disappeared. “I’ll need a day to set things up. Not that she’ll mind. In her state, I doubt she can even keep track of time.”

You’re wrong, Dallion thought. If he were in the Broken Star’s place, he’d keep track of every day he’d been there, of every visit, of every interview, of every injection that was made.

After all this time, he couldn’t say that it was a race against time, but every hour of delay was one hour closer to her, reaching her breaking point. The only glimmer of hope he had was that someone who’d withstood the wrath of the Moons would be able to keep their sanity in an Earth mental institution.