"Yes – or, better, ask him to coordinate auctions for them when we have the spells available. Abadarans love that sort of thing." 

"You'd think, given how much they do, that they'd do it for free. They have their explanation for why they don't, and it makes perfect sense from a certain point of view, but I find myself disagreeing with it anyways. I'll suggest auctions for future circles if Tilbun doesn't beat me to it."

And with that she's off to Absalom to talk to Tilbun.

She returns betraying absolutely no indication that anything interesting happened, apart from immediately dropping a telepathic bond on Élie.

We need to get out more. The glasses - it's different in Absalom. Cleaner. Not like in the demiplane where it's mostly just empty - tidier.

Huh. It does make sense, though – the crusade has to be the most consequential event anywhere in the world right now, with all the most consequential people tangled up in it.

That seems likely - There was a lot of prophecy around Tilbun, and I presume some around myself, it's not just that there was less in total going on - Something, maybe, about how many different - subjects - are here, how many predictions come into conflict -

Hmmm. What can we test? Is there anywhere on the planet with half so much going on as the Shining Crusade?"

Nowhere obvious. You're the one from the future, you tell me.

It might be interesting to see what happens when we get the major characters out on their own – does the camp look that way when none of you and Iomedae and Arnisant are present, what does it look like when you go anywhere else, what about the places you've previously spent significant amounts of time – 

We made glasses, not a mirror - seeing what a place is like with neither of us present sounds like it'd be another research project. Perhaps the two of us can take a trip together, and you can see how much my presence is affecting things -

If I had Félix I'd put the glasses on him. I wonder how long we'd have to be in a place to get any significant result – seems hard to test – and then there's the question of how much our presence alone twists fate, apart from our actions. What'd Tilbun say about the auctions? 

Oh, he'll arrange them of course, and his fee really is quite reasonable. Did you get a resizing enchantment in the glasses that I missed, I can't imagine they'd fit a bird well - I could get Curiosity, though, he's in this time and has a larger head. I'm reluctant to do too much active experimenting in the Material, if we can do more passive observation first - I worry it would be noticeable. It might not be avoidable, at some point, but it seems safer if we can to just look at the results of things we're doing anyways.

We should try everything we can think of. Curiosity, trips together, trips separately, places you've been, places Iomedae has been, places that couldn't possibly matter to anyone at all. If we're really worried about interfering with our own predictions it might be worth binding an outsider, but the ones I'd ordinarily trust for keeping secrets might have particular reason to object to what we're doing.

Yes, all of those - also places Iomedae or I will be, if there are any future events involving one of us that you remember - and aren't crusade-related, I suppose. Something we might not have already derailed.

Yes – actually, why limit it to you and Iomedae? We can check all the most historically consequential events of the next eight hundred years, see temporal proximity really makes a difference. 

Alright. Let's stop by Diobel so I can grab Curiosity and then we can do a tour of all the historical sites that aren't yet.

There's only one place to start a round-the-world tour of places of prophetic import, and that's Absalom. The weave of past and future events is visible as soon as he sets foot in the city – heavier than it is around the crusade, but cleaner. Élie isn't inclined to verse, but if he was, he might say that the isle of Kortos echoes with destiny. As is, he'll observe that the angled light he's seeing must be the reflection of Aroden pulling the island up from the sea floor, because it's everywhere, and because it gets stronger and denser as they approach the starstone cathedral, where it takes on a vast crystalline solidity. 

He takes off the glasses and rubs his eyes. This, you have to see.

It's so solid. When I was talking with Tilbun I could see prophecy around him, and - it was like I could reach out and push it aside and it would snap back into place like a taut bow - but this doesn't look like it would bend at all, even for a moment. I wonder if that's because we're looking at things that are bigger, more intrinsically hard to move, or whether it's because we're looking at - fulfilled prophecy, in large part, things that have already happened and are fixed and cannot be changed by any effort.

It's hard to say, which is why their next stop is a place where nothing important has ever happened – the town of Kantaria in central Cheliax, notable only for the fact that Iomedae is due to rule it for a year and a day in Élie's timeline for reasons even he can't recall. It's a flat, dusty little place with one inn, one shrine to Erastil, and no obvious fate in store besides the general gauzy dusting of inevitability that Élie is starting to notice every time he puts the glasses on. 

It's only after staring at the motes for half an hour that he notices a pattern to it, or rather the opposite of a pattern – less cacophonous than at the crusade camp, but of same nature. Faint tracings of order, resolving and collapsing again. Whatever was going to happen here, it looks like he's managed to disrupt it. 

Hmm. We should check something that's unrelated to Iomedae, maybe. I expect she does different things after the Crusade if it ends early and you're around.

I expect so. I still don't have a good sense of what kinds of things leave prophetic traces – the Chelish secession from Taldor, maybe?

That seems like something that'd be visible in prophecy if anything is.

The question is, where? We could start in Westcrown, at the – I'm not actually sure if the imperial palace exists yet, but I do know where it will be.

I was going to suggest Westcrown, yes - not that I know the relevant history. If Aspex started his rebellion from Ostenso we'd want to try there, obviously.

Walking through the city center of Westcrown they catch their first glimpse of it. Like a ponderously spinning sphere or an oncoming tsunami or the down-swing of a pendulum. Distant, still, and not as solid as the starstone cathedral, but with a heft to it, an inertia that will not be easily pushed aside. Alfirin can see it reaching out, touching a million other events big and small.  She thinks, seeing it "up close" now, that it's familiar, that she's seen its shadows in Kantaria and Absalom. Unsurprising, really, the separation of the Western Empire would have effects elsewhere.

Over there, Alfirin says, handing over the glasses.

It takes him a moment. 

...We're both idiots. We're not going to see Aspex here. We'd never be able to pick him out. Not standing next to Aroden.