This does not get a reply!!

Figures.

Further attempts to gather evidence of magical trickery turn up nothing. Attempts to brainstorm a way out of anything else that might be going on don't get very far. Daeran takes a bath. Ember holes up in a corner with a blanket and starts feeding expensive pastries to Aivu and Soot. 

"Okay, so - assuming we did time travel. Has anyone come up with ideas for that situation."

"Uh, throw a party?" says Woljif, from one of the fancy silk beds. "The Worldwound's closed, all of the demons are in the Abyss where they belong, and none of us have to deal with Galfrey or constant mortal peril anymore. Win, win, win."

"An unsurprising analysis for a deserter."

"You can't desert from a war that doesn't exist. Our war doesn't exist right now! We couldn't fight it if we wanted to! Nobody could blame us for calling it good. Hell, if we really cared about preventing the forces of chaos from wreaking havoc on the material, I bet you we could find a way to keep the wound from opening in the first place. That's gotta be even better than closing it."

"The Worldwound will not open for eight hundred years. Even if this were not a transparent ploy to convince the commander to abandon the crusade, neither you nor I will survive long enough to prevent the wound's creation."

"Well, you might, if you stopped being allergic to fun. Anyway, just write them a letter. 'Dear future people, this bitch named Areelu Vorlesh is going to be born in Sarkoris in some year that the commander remembers and that I can't be bothered to. She's gonna open a portal to the abyss, so do us a favor and kill her before that happens.' Easy peasy. - oh, or, like, tell Iomedae, who's supposedly leading the Shining Crusade and probably about to ascend or whatever?"

" - okay, wait, for most of history the gods were able to see things like that, which is why they mostly didn't happen. They only couldn't because - how does time travel interact with prophecy breaking?"

"Thaaaat is a great question that is beyond the scope of my argument. Anyway - "

"Woljif, that is your argument. If time travel that allowed you to alter the events of the future you came from existed, then the gods ought to be aware of it, and ought to be able to use it to - okay, actually I'm not going to claim that I know exactly how this ought to work, because I don't, but it seems extremely arrogant to assume that we can effectively shape events nine hundred years in the future when the gods themselves could not."

"I notice this argument also assumes that we're willing to alter the timeline in such a way that it destroys - probably everyone we've ever met. ...also capable of doing that."

"Commander, if you're worrying that you may have already erased the world we came from... I can't believe your power would do such a thing."

Woljif sighs. "I guess that would be kind of insane, as a fifth circle spell and all."

"That's not what I mean. The commander's power has always reflected Elysium. It represents - freedom, and hope, and possibility. I simply don't believe that it would have reacted to her call for aid by destroying everything she cares about. Not even for the sake of a greater good."

"There are many powers of Elysium. The only constant in their nature is to be unpredictable."

Korva blows at a butterfly that's strayed too close to her face. It spins and rights itself. The insects are, as usual, fluttering around her in numbers that would be pretty darn unlikely even if she were outside in a tropical climate and covered in fruit juice, as opposed to inside a tavern in Kalsgard.

She puts any thoughts of Zara back in their box.

"I am not going to try to reason about what my powers would or would not have done. The argument that they couldn't have done that seems more compelling. I'm not sure what it means, exactly, but I am not in fact arrogant enough to think that I possess the power to accidentally undo nine hundred years of history."

" - in which case we're wasting time. I got us here. It stands to reason that I can take us home the same way."

" - woah! Woah, woah, woah, just because you've decided that all your other friends are still alive doesn't mean we need to go home right away!"

"Commander, I must advise against using your power naively in an attempt to right the situation."

" - wait, I thought you two were on opposite sides of the going home argument."

"Returning to the crusade is obviously of paramount importance. The methods we use to accomplish this are another matter. I gather that you did not intend to travel centuries into the past. Do you have any reason to believe that you will be better capable of controlling where you end up the next time you use the same ability?"

"...I suppose not."

"Then I suggest that we avoid making the situation worse, as we almost did via repeated attempts to teleport to a city that does not exist. If we have indeed traveled into the past, then we happen to have found ourselves in a time period that contains one of the largest and most well-organized collections of adventurers that has ever existed: the Shining Crusade. I suggest we investigate whether their numbers include any arcane casters who are better capable of understanding your abilities, perhaps resulting in a second attempt that is more... controlled."

"He just wants to meet his heroes. I was gonna remind you that you are a time traveler. You can time travel to any point in history you want, including five seconds after you left. If you're set on going back, fine, but at least take a vacation first."

"Fine. In the face of an unprecedented united front from the two of you, we can hold off on trying to go back until we've checked whether the Shining Crusade has anyone with time on their hands and more information on how this might work. Unless anyone else thinks that's a terrible idea."

"I don't think so. I think you came to this time for a reason."

Ember is singing to her bird. Aivu is curled up on one bed, already asleep again. Daeran is taking a bath, and she probably doesn't care what he thinks anyway. 

"There's actually one more thing I wanted to test, before we go back to Ustalav. I still think we go to Kintargo tomorrow morning to see if we can get what I need for it. After that we can... see if we can talk any of the crusaders into believing that we're from the future, I guess. So, as before, day off."

She calls dibs on the bath after Daeran. It's nice, on one level; she hasn't actually washed herself in - a long time, she's not sure how long, these days she just prestidigitates herself. On another level, it's really uncomfortable. She keeps imagining Seelah and Lann trying to figure out what happened to them, or trying to run the crusade in their absence. It shouldn't work that way, but she'll be very disappointed in herself if it does.

Beyond the worrying, there's just... nothing. She doesn't have hobbies anymore. She doesn't stop to catch her breath. She's spent so much time burying her simmering anger at an ever-increasing list of impossible obligations, but she can't remember, anymore, what she thought her orders were keeping her from doing. She can't remember what she thought she might be, if ever she were free.

A poor representative of Elysium, if ever there was one. 

In the morning, she pictures the beach by Kintargo and teleports in.