In case you thought time-traveling email was as weird as it was going to get, Deirdre just found two entries from her father in the new volume of The Monarch Papers.
One to her.
One to us.
I am drowning in a sea of lore and implications.
New DG Post: Here/Where We Go
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Historical Comment Archive
I don’t want it to come to that either. I really just met all of you, and you all have already become one of the biggest and best things in my life. Really, for me the most selfish thing would be to stop now, to not even try and keep things exactly as they are so that we don’t risk losing our magiqal family.
But, at the same time, how many crazy chances had to take place for all of us to get here in the first place? How many of us had to remember the Guide to MAGIQ, or some other lost book, or something that you’re sure went differently than everyone else says it went? Is there really no chance that we can open the book and still find one another?
And on the other hand, what are our other options? This time-hack is what magiq opened for us, a dangerous, dicey piece of magiq that seems…pretty implausible, if not impossible. If we don’t trust the flow of magiq here and now…what do we trust?
I say we trust Sullivan. Here’s why:
Because it isn’t about us.
We have a mission and a purpose that drew us here and, quite frankly, saving lives is more important. Don’t underestimate the power of the bonds we have. Don’t underestimate a destiny that brought us here - almost all of us seeking something more that had been missing from our lives before this. We will find each other even if we don’t remember this moment, if this timeline never happened.
We can save Augernon. Portencia’s fathers. Marty. Wanderer. All the people that have been hurt, erased, or killed. We have a responsibility to them.
It isn’t about us.
Oh boy. This is pretty intense - yet another interesting post by Deirdre.
I personally think there is no way we don’t follow Sullivan - we literally have the ability to save the Mounties, the Book, and magiq in the mundane world, and we are putting it up for debate? How selfish can we be to be willing to throw away the work we’ve done over the past 12 fragments, and the work of all Mounties over the years, just to save ourselves when so many others have sacrificed so much more? I appreciate the debates and the weighing of decisions, but this one just seems a little crazy to me
As for the paradoxes, alternate realities, and all that other time drama - I think that the magiq will sort us out and we can probably relax about the implications for changing the past and how it will affect us and our existence. I’m not saying contact Augie and go all crazy telling him everything and freaking him out, I’m saying let’s be less concerned about the time magiq effects on ourselves and more focused on what we can do to help those in the past and to make a better future.
Look. Yes, it’s risky. We don’t know what will happen - Sullivan didn’t know what will happen.
But we absolutely cannot do nothing.
Our actual, physical existence isn’t really what we’re afraid of losing. Be honest. You’re afraid of losing this, but you also don’t know what that means.
I was 3 years old in 1994. Some of us weren’t even thought of yet. But I really don’t think your actual life is what you’re afraid of losing here.
Our generation of Mounties would not exist at it does now, that’s true. But imagine a world where our current mission - and all the pain that brought us here (deaths, torture, memories wiped, Augernon’s sacrifice) - didn’t exist because it didn’t have to.
Because we grew up with Magiq. Because our world’s memory was restored. Because the Silver and their Storm weren’t able to destroy another generation of Mountaineers.
Who is to say that our younger Mounties don’t grow up learning about the Guilds, about Magiq, and about the history of Monarch’s Mountain in this alternate timeline?
That’s also assuming that we don’t just create a time split entirely separate from our own. That we continue to live in this world devoid of magiq and threatened by The Storm, trying to figure out how to save ourselves and free our world while they are saved by us.
We’re making a lot of assumptions.
And Sel is right. We’ve done all of this for others, for the Book, for the world. We’ve risked and sacrificed our own for this mission. We owe it to them to finish this.
If you have a better idea, I’m all ears. But I don’t think you’ll find one. And we are running out of time. We have maybe a few weeks, or more likely only days, until Augernon faces down the Storm on his own.
I’m not abandoning him to that fate without doing everything I can to help them. I don’t know that we will be the same after we do this. I don’t have answers for you - and for those of you who need them, I’m sorry that you’re uncomfortable or afraid. I truly am. I’m scared of what this means, too.
But like I said… this isn’t about us. It was never about us. I love you all, you know that I do, and I’d do anything for you. But I also can’t refuse to do this out of fear.
Dey has the right idea.
Objectively, if losing this reality means saving the world, it’s the better decision. Sure, we’ll lose each other, our bonds, our history, our lives, our existences, but it’s not like we’ll feel sadness in oblivion.
In a way, we won’t lose anything at all because there will never have been anything to lose. Our story that never existed saved everything that does exist. We march on with the knowledge that the stem we’ll leave behind has a second chance at growing into a beautiful blossom and not the decaying petals we have now.
In the case that the realities split and ours trudges on as normal while another thrives, then we made a whole reality strictly better than ours and lost nothing. We still have each other, we still have D and Cole, we still the charred remains of the apparent answer to everything. We can keep going and find another way, and even if there is none, we’ve already made all the difference where we were needed most.
Remember the end of Toy Story 3 with the incinerator? That’s us right now. Let’s hold hands, be together, and let fate decide the future of this existence. And, while we’re at it, let’s save magiq somewhere in between.
There is understandably a lot of concern about what we’re doing with Augernon and helping the '94 Mounties open their book. I’ve said my peace on the topic in the other thread (linked above).
We’ve lost track of the fact that our mission outlined in Sullivan’s original letter is two-fold: Reach through time AND help Deirdre get to Neithernor.
We have 12 hours in between each inbound and outbound message. While we wait, we need to help Deirdre - she practically asked us to compile a list of places to visit to help unlock more passages in The Monarch Papers: Neithernor. More guidance from Sullivan can only help at this point, so I say we work on that list. My suggestions are:
Central Park
The Morgan Library
Any others? We should probably stick to NY for now, rather than sending her jet-setting around the globe (again).
wanders back in and gets bamboozled
A perfect reference @Chordie
When I first heard the idea, as you all may have seen, I was rather upset.
I mean how the heck am I supposed to want to use magic when Im not with people I love to experience it with?
That may have been my Weathermere side being sentimental about all this, about all we have put into this, and now we are to be blown to the six corners like dust onto the wind?
I offer an alternative while keeping in time with what we already know,
A spell, to strengthen our bonds in this reality and the other.
Its just a seed of an idea, do with it what you will.
For now I state with my fellow leaders and senior members, this is our duty and our destiny.
Let our bonds be burned, to keep the world from loosing its light…
Love & Luck
Oracle
I was going to maybe suggest one more location, but I can add it in a separate comment
.
Question for everyone, should I comment the old Abandoned City Hall Station because of Brandon Lachman?
If you haven’t checked DG’s comments, she and Cole have visited The Cloisters, but didn’t find anything new in the journal, and the Morgan Library is closed today. They’re heading to Grand Central now.