"There's an end to time?... In silence?...  And you're saying that's not narrativized?  Not just the back cover of a book that doesn't have any story on it?"

"Perhaps not quite as literally -"

"...You're missing the point again.  Staring at the tree and missing the forest.  Because in most senses no there isn't, but there simultaneously is because that's how the magic works.  And the physics, and for that matter the metaphysics, is not part of the narrative structure of...Look, this is going to sound even more absurd, but the narrative I'm supposed to be in is a romance, not an excuse to explore magical worldbuilding - unless there's some other meta-level of story I'm not aware of, which, hell, maybe there is, I can't know, but I've seen enough stories that went the way this one's been going that I wouldn't be surprised -"

Aeslin was going to ask about how the magic was supposed to work with an ending that isn't there in most senses, but she ends up just staring at Alicia in shock, whispering, "A romance?... Supposed to be?..."

"...I was not given a true choice in whether I'd be part of this story.  But I was given some choice of how.  And I chose for there to be no fate but what we make, from the point it actually began."

"That's... good..." she breathes.  "But - what!?"

And then she plows ahead. "I never held to the idea of fate.  Nor liked it.  Not since that first time I saw that kids' book talking about how dragons were all doomed and lost like everything else from the Age of Wonders, but then Svarendar wasn't acting doomed or lost - and I wanted to be like him not like that book said he should be!"

Alicia is nodding approvingly.

"Well said.  Regardless...  The idea of fate existing or not is not part of magic.  Nor is Alicia's particular circumstance."

"...And... If I can help, or arrange for help for, your Queen, or Svarendar, in not being the last of their kind, I would like to.  There are, probably, ways.  Albeit highly...finicky ones, if I were to lay out how I'd hope to accomplish this from what I know."

"Yes... first we'd need to get home, out of this universe."

"And all right, dismiss the idea of fate... but then what is this silent end of time?  If that's what's important to the magic?  Just a picture, a possible vision?"

"Yes, something like that.  ...It doesn't have to be - real, or possible, to matter.  That's the entire theory of void magic."

"Wha - what?  Every impossible daydream matters?  Even the ones about pink dancing griffins?"

"I mean...Yes and no, because Void magic is a paradox even when it's simple, but, yes?  Anything that can or cannot be, is within Void's scope."

"So... everything?  Including all the other types of magic - oh, but Void means focusing on all the possibilities, or the sense of possibility?"

"I - hm - how can I put this in a way that makes sense to someone who isn't literally me, because I have specific insights here that don't translate very well..."

"Void magic is the magic of not-being so hard that you are anyway.  Even though you aren't.  ...Damn it, that surely doesn't make enough sense..."

"... No, because kids' bedrooms aren't deluged in pink dancing griffons.  Well, unless they are in this world."

"Not-being isn't the same thing as simply not being.  Because if it worked like that, they would be, which they can't, because they aren't."

"...Alicia, dear.  She hasn't seen the Glitch, or however you put it."

"...Ah.  Yes.  Right.  Excuse me.  Um.  Hm.  How..."

"Voidstuff is not, dancing griffons.  It is the idea that dancing griffons behave in certain ways.  If...that makes sense."

"I... still don't think so?  Unless you're saying it only creates possibilities for existing things, in which case I'm guessing every child's room has toy animals coming alive."

"...No.  It creates possibilities for things existing, which is not the same thing as possibilities for existing things.  But realizing those possibilities, that's...

"I'm going to get a bit sidetracked back into creation myths and hope that makes sense of something.

"The Twisting Nether, the primordial chaos that underlies creation and from which all order arises, was made.

"Because once upon a time, there was only nothing.  And then there was light.  Illuminating, realizing, revealing.  Unifying.  Or rather, attempting to.

"Because in the nothing, there were not-things, and none of the not-things were the same as any other.  And none of the not-things could be unified in truth.

"Creation longs to return to the calm darkness of the Void," Alicia murmurs, a shadowy purple orb of irradiance cupped in her hands, even as she prepares her next demonstration.  "But the Light will not let it.  It will filter through the reflection of what Is Not, striving to make something that Is - for all that what Is is fundamentally in contradiction with its nature; the beautiful shining thing at the core of the Light is of the Void too."  She shakes her head, even as a spark of Light flares from and consumes the Voidstuff like it was never even there, reflecting a million impossible things in the scattered images it reveals.  "And it is exploiting this tension that powers both magics, not that many practitioners of either consider the subject.  Not that many even know."

"...Do you truly think that that is a feat of children?"