68

"Oh, what have you experienced?" Dr. Sabbatine says, instantly skeptical. "Has the mountain attempted to communicate with you? Or someone you know?"

"Stop calling it the 'mountain'!" Stralchus cries. "It's the False Icon, and it rules this nightmare realm!"

"I'll try to explain as clearly as possible with what time we have available to us," Dr. Sabbatine says. She clears her throat.

Control nods eagerly, quivering like a student ready to take notes. The effect is charming, if a bit theatrical.

"Though modern science has thrown many assumptions of Orthodoxy into doubt," the doctor says, "we have confirmed two things. First, powerful and mysterious entities we call 'Icons' created the world about eleven thousand years ago. Second, one demiurge, which we call the 'False Icon,' opposed that work, lost a struggle against its fellows, fled across every corner of the world, but was captured and imprisoned.

"Neither of these truths apply any longer."

"What?" Stralchus shouts. "How can they no longer—?"

"Oh, do be patient, Stralchus!" the doctor says. "Previously, the False Icon fled across all of time and space, only to be captured. But somehow, it used the Specular to…create more time."

"More time?!" Stralchus screams.

"Millions, perhaps billions of years of it. That's where the False Icon has hidden itself, in a span so vast even the other Icons have not been able to find it. And that's where you are now."