"So did Grandmaster Delacroix survive his supposed fated end?" I lick my lips, not daring to face Boggs lest she notice my unsettled emotions. Thankfully Boggs herself is too deeply immersed in nostalgia to really notice anything else. She merely stares at the city's skyline with a sad expression on her face. Puffs of condensed breath escape Boggs's lips as she struggles to put her thoughts into words.

"I think the old fool did manage to survive. Maybe?" Boggs finally utters, "He was alive the last time I saw him a decade plus ago."

"Isn't the original Grandmaster missing?" I slump forward disconsolately, "I think he's even legally presumed dead for that matter."

"Delacroix feared being torn apart by wild dogs." Boggs says, "It sounds so stupid doesn't it? I actually laughed when the old fool first confided his secret to me."

"That's not a good way to go." I wince inwardly, recalling the headless corpse in the alternate monorail station.

"The old fool was plenty offended, right enough." Boggs chuckles to herself, "But up till today, I haven't heard any news about a man being torn apart by wild dogs. So I like to think that the old fool finally managed to find a way to escape."

"Hope springs eternal?" I raise an eyebrow.

"Something like that." Boggs leans back into the bench, "Delacroix certainly deserved to escape his supposed fate after all the effort he put in after all."

My ears immediately perk up at this stray comment from Boggs. Grandmaster Delacroix had been actively working on a way to escape his fated end. And most importantly, he might have been successful. So this just confirms my suspicion that the so called fated end is not set in stone. Its merely a possibility presented by an alternate universe.

"So getting stronger was all it took then?" I pursue this line of questioning, "Makes sense, but its a disappointingly prosaic explanation."

"Why are you so interested in this topic, Alex?" Boggs abruptly turns around and looks me right in the eye. There's no hostility in her gaze, but I'm enveloped by an intimidating pressure nonetheless.

"I just want to no the original Grandmaster's secret history," I quickly deflect, "the real story behind the legend."

"There's more interesting stuff to talk about," Boggs smirks, "like all the insider stuff I heard about the old fool's harem. Did you know Delacroix kept a diary where he graded each of his wives -"

"That's tabloid tier gossip," I scowl at Boggs for wandering off on a frolic of her own, "we're both adults here, you know."

"Adults buy tabloids." Boggs gives me a faux innocent look, "That's the primary market for tabloids in the first place, isn't it?"

I just slump back into the bench with a groan at Boggs's smartass comments. Boggs playfully boxes my arm in response.

"Most people who ask about the old fool usually just want to hear about the fun stuff. You're a strange one, Alex Mann."

"And you're not?" I quip in reply, giving Boggs the most withering look I can manage.

"I'll answer your questions, Alex." Boggs loses all her cheer and regards me with an incredibly serious expression, "As long as you answer this question. Did you experience the same thing as the old fool?"

I fold my arms protectively around myself, turning away from Boggs with a grimace. I don't want to admit it, but Boggs really is my only source of information on this topic. If I'm going to get anything out of her, I'm going to have to play by her rules.

"Yeah." I grunt, "How did you work it out so quickly?"

"Woman's intuition." Boggs jokes but relents when she sees how somber I am, "And I've been Awake far longer than you. I've seen or experienced most of the stuff you're grappling with right now."

I merely nod as several people emerge from the trattoria. Boggs and I won't have the inner park to ourselves alone for much longer.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Let's get going." Boggs slaps her thighs as she rises from the bench, "We'll talk as we walk."

Boggs and I stride down the path back to the parking lot, flanked by luxuriant bushes on both sides. All the foliage once again shields us from prying eyes and ears, as long as we stay ahead of the satiated diners.

"The old fool getting stronger wasn't enough." Boggs begins her lecture, "This is just a guess, but I'm pretty confident of it."

"Why?" I shoot back, "The logic makes sense."

"Remember how I said the old fool had a way of attracting trouble?" Boggs's mood grows troubled. I merely make an affirmative noise, urging her to continue.

"Much of that trouble came after Delacroix resolved to get stronger." Boggs continues, "The photos I have in the bar featuring his adventures? Most of them took place after he confessed about that secret to me."

"Powerful adventurers attract all kinds of attention." I dismiss, "Plenty of people would have wanted to take advantage of Delacroix's strength. So they pulled him into all kinds of nonsense."

"I thought so too at first." Boggs presses on, "But then I started noticing something really strange. Delacroix's children kept dying."

"Dying?" I raise an eyebrow at this, "Didn't the Grandmaster have like a thousand kids with his harem?"

"A thousand living kids." Boggs shakes her head in consternation, "Plenty more died stillborn. Or quickly died of various illnesses and accidents."

"That's quite something." I mutter, trying to get my head around the scenario.

"The most absurd incident was when one of the old fool's sons, just a baby," Boggs absently scratches her cheek, "had a piano fall from the sky and crush him."

"You can't be serious." I snort.

"I am completely serious." Boggs insists, "That piano might as well be a laser guided bomb. Apparently it fell out of a passing heli drone's cargo bay during transport from warehouse to the buyer."

"What are the odds?" I mutter in disbelief.

"Exactly." Boggs agrees, "A single freak accident or illness could be bad luck. Multiple occurrences? That's something else."

"But Delacroix was still obviously alive at that time, wasn't he?" I chew my lip in thought, "Whatever he was doing clearly kept his own death at bay."

"Which is why I think Delacroix getting stronger wasn't enough." Boggs muses with a hand to her chin, "The old fool could overcome the constant danger he was facing. But at the same time he was meant to be dead. So -"

"Reconciliation." I stagger back as the same theory forms in my mind, "The Grandmaster was forced to reconcile the two conflicting realities. And you think this is what killed off so many of his children?"

"Its the best theory I have." Boggs frowns, "No else noticed the dead children. There wasn't a single press report about it. Meaning it never happened in reality. Its a memory I retain from being Awake."

"But why would reconciliation kill off the children?" I scrunch my eyebrows together in thought, "They would have no connection to whatever danger Delacroix needed to reconcile his way out of."

"Unless the danger could not be fully reconciled out of." Boggs says grimly.

Both of us pause our walk under a streetlamp, admiring the gently illuminated greenery, partially covered with snow. My mind contorts as it tries to work out the implications of Boggs's theory. Something that could not be fully reconciled out of. Boggs must be meaning Delacroix's fated end of dying at the jaws of several dogs.

So when Delacroix performed a reconciliation to escape that event, there would be a suspended moment where he was both dead and alive at the same time. But if the original Grandmaster did manage to reconcile the event, wouldn't he have escaped cleanly? At least from the immediate source of death?

Unless -

"He never reconciled his death." I murmur with dawning horror, "Delacroix kept himself in a constant contradictory state. Both dead and alive at the same time."

"That's my guess too." Boggs agrees, "And that's why the kids kept dying. A dead man can't have children. So reality tried its best to work around the botched reconciliation."

"That's where your theory falls apart." I challenge, "Many of the children survived, didn't they?"

"Actually, no." Boggs's face turns even more downbeat, "Not a single one of the kids managed to survive. Remember the fire at the old fool's castle after he disappeared?"

"Yeah, it razed the whole place." my eyes go wide as the connections are made, "No way. You can't be serious."

"The fire killed all the kids." Boggs shuts her eyes for a moment, "Though some the women lived."

"So all Delacroix managed to do was delay the inevitable for his own children?" I ask, darkness rapidly swallowing up the sliver of hope I had, "Wouldn't that mean he most likely eventually succumbed to his fated end as well?"

"As I said, I like to think he didn't." Boggs graces me with a wavering smile.

"And on what ground is that belief based on?" I demand, rather upset that the hope I had been grasping turned out to be empty.

"One night, the old fool came to me." Boggs says, "Delacroix told me not to worry if he disappeared."

"So the disappearance was planned." I muse, "Still, it doesn't guarantee that he survived."

"No, but the old fool did tell me how to find him." Boggs answers, "Sort of. So wherever Delacroix disappeared to was most likely safe."

"And where did the original Grandmaster run off too then?" I shoot back.

"I don't know." Boggs admits, "He kept the actual location secret. Instead I was given a key to 'follow in his footsteps', as the old fool put it."

"There's the Grandmaster's flair for the dramatic again." I sigh, "So what is this key?"

"Its already in your hands, Alex. I gave it to you, remember?" Boggs responds with a friendly nudge, "Don't tell me you've forgotten about it already?"

And there's only one thing Boggs had given me so far.

The voucher to the Sensorium's Holy of Holies.