Just because Sadde's already won, it doesn't mean he doesn't have to think about it. He still needs a plan that will actually, you know, work. And the Behaims of Jacob's Bell might have a veneer of friendship but they still screwed him over majorly, there. There's one Behaim who doesn't hate him, though—actually probably quite likes him.
Sadde should pay Duncan a visit. Is he home?
No; it's pretty early in the day, but he's fairly findable at work. He manages to get them a space in the police station with enough privacy.
"Diana's alive," Sadde says as soon as they're sufficiently isolated from eavesdroppers.
“Time travel? I heard you’ve done that before, but this sounds...different. Controlled.”
He shrugs. "It—not by me, exactly? It's already happened. Now I just need to make it happen."
“Huh. I don’t know any way to go about doing it; this is the one thing you’re never supposed to use chronomancy for. Which shouldn’t apply if it’s more contradictory to not do it, but it does mean that probably not even Laird knows how. How did you do it when you invented the money?”
"A creature, called the Charybdis. It ate me—that was actually a bootstrap paradox, too, it ate me because I was in a fight with a goblin who tripped and fell onto me and into its mouth, but the goblin only came to fight me because my future self had challenged it and then tripped it later..."
“Less of one. A goblin happening to be there to attack you doesn’t really need explanation the way spontaneously deciding to do this would.”
He shrugs. "Yeah. I still—probably wouldn't have done it if it weren't already done. I very well can't not do it now."
“There probably are safe ways not to. But yeah, if someone time-travels it should be you.
This creature, could you use it again?”
"Unless Laird's sealed it or hidden it or something, yeah, probably. The problem is, I sealed it—in the past, but when I visited it again in the present it was already not sealed... not sealed yet... one of those. But I feel like it would be against the spirit of the Seal to threaten it or something now just because according to whatever weird relationship it has with time it hasn't yet been sealed."
“From what I’ve heard it looks like your Seal is all about whether you can technically fight something. Especially now that you’ve joined with Conquest.”
"'Fight' is a rather simplistic gloss over the meaning of 'harm'," he says, raising an eyebrow. "Regardless, the reason I came here was that I would prefer to trade with the Charybdis, or bribe it, rather than fight it, and you might know a thing or two that could help me."
"Not very. If it was capable of speech, it didn't show it, and mostly it just seemed to want to eat me and slash or send me to the past, unclear whether there's a difference there."
“We should assume there is. Otherwise it’s...still not safe, but easily repeatable and with a built-in bribe, and that’d be too easy.”
He shrugs. "No rule against that. And it's meant to be super rare and hard to find? Malcolm—that's Laird's grandfather—said he'd had an argument with some people once who were hunting cryptids and he thought they weren't real."
“It’s not impossible. But as far as going in with a plan...
Negotiating with animal Others is always hard. Food, changes in conditions, others of its kind...this one doesn’t sound domesticated enough for attention to be a good lever. Maybe these cryptid hunters would know what it eats or wants.”
"It seems to eat living things and send them to the past, at least—maybe it eats their time? Or something." Pause. "Maybe it eats time."
“Hmm. You don’t seem to have lost sixty years off your life span or anything. And judging by how far back it usually sends its meals, it could take a lot to bribe.
Actually, I could try and find out how the Jacob’s Bell people are feeding it, if they are. Laird might just tell me.”
"I... would prefer you didn't mention me asking you about it, if possible."
“That’d be easy to guess, especially if he comes here for the Lordship fight and notices we’re on the same side. I could just stick with speculating, if you’d rather risk it being wrong.”
"You can say you heard me mention I went to the past, during the Conquest debacle, and you asked me how I did it so I told you about the Charybdis, and now you're wondering how they're dealing with it."
“Sure, I can try that. He’d still guess, but maybe not too strongly. And I am also just plain curious.
We’ve been in contact a lot because of the Conquest thing, so it won’t be too unnatural.”
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