“Stacey and I were terrified that Tremblay would kill us or keep us in the Mansion forever had we not done as we wished.His plan was simple.He would create an Echo of the night in question.An Echo is normally… well, consider it a vivid hallucination.At least, that was what all three of us had assumed was happening.In truth, Tremblay had much more power than all three of us, himself included, had assumed.He instead sent us to the night of his death, when the Routshammer was passed on.Stacey and I assumed we would have to fit in.We tampered with history and bumped into William Corcoran and my past self.
“As Stacey has the mark of the Moon Kiss, I had assumed her power would be enough to destroy the curse, but?—”
“Objection,” Brynholf said.“There is no proof that she is indeed the recipient of the Moon Kiss, and I hope to address this heretical assumption later on in my trial.”
“I didn’t believe I was anybody special,” I said.“I still don’t.I’ve never claimed it, never said it, never thought I’ve had the Moon Kiss, and never ever thought I was anything but a reporter that people kept treating like a figurehead.”
“I admit, I did think she had the mark, and I would be hard pressed to say she didn’t,” Vic said.“If you’ll let me continue.I assumed that trying to break the curse would be a good test for Stacey’s supposed divinity.She did as I instructed her to.Tremblay, in the past, close after his resurrection as his house, was destroyed.The Routshammer was unrooted.Then-Stacey and I wrote a long note explaining what happened.And then--here’s where my memory gets hazy—she disappeared.The both of us blinked out.”
“The rolling temporal wave effect,” Drusella said.
“Exactly,” Vic said.“Look, I’m not an exceptionally smart man.I woke up and thought the half-way memories I had were parts of a weird dream.And then I noticed something even more bizarre.There was an Anomaly inside the city limits.I had done plenty of Anomalous scanning before and do that as a standard part of the 3P Bylaw preventative maintenance that I and the others on the City Council do.That something this powerful had completely evaded our radar was abnormal.”
“I can corroborate that,” Drusella said.“Civil Corps records indicate approximately three months prior two specific powerful Anomalous forces intervened with our timeline.”
“They were Paradoxes,” Vic said.“Shadows from when the old timeline existed.The actions we took in the past altered things, but there were leftovers from the old timeline.They were powerful enough to bleed over into the new one.This was an echo effect both ways from the Routshammer.”
“Okay, so you changed time, and then two big scary things showed up,” Judge Volkheim said.
“Yes.One could cloak itself from my spells and rituals.The other I located and kept secure.I was unsure of its nature.It was the Routshammer.I had an inkling of what it was possible of, but it kept appearing to me in my dreams.I knew its power was immense, that it was some hidden key toward something I was missing, but I could never quite crack the code on it.But I kept it secure, and thought if it was safe from detection, then the city itself would be safe.Stacey and I developed a relationship after we unsuccessfully found anything at Tremblay Manor in this timeline.I remembered her from the past.Not at first—but the memories started to come back from our time together.”
“So what was the other Paradox?”
“William Corcoran,” Vic said.“At least, that’s my assumption, and it appears to have panned out that way.When the Routshammer was undone, Corcoran was returned to his body, even thought it was just ashes and dust.He was so hell-bent on revenge that he spent the better part of the last century waiting for Stacey to be born, so he could enact his revenge against her.”
“And how do you know that?”Brynholf asked.
Vic’s face twisted into a scowl.
“I’d like to call our next witness to the stand,” Abe said.“Gabriel… uh… Gabriel Marsha?”
“Mar-See-Ya,” Gabe, my assistant, said.He sashayed through the crowd, and then Vic let him sit in the witness seat.Vic stared daggers at him.It was intense.
“And your credentials?”Brynholf asked.
“I was William Corcoran’s lover for a short time,” Gabe said.
Everyone in the crowd gasped.Even I gasped at that.Vic glowered.I guessed he was in a bad mood, all things considered.
“You dog,” I said to Gabe.
“Shut up,” Gabe said back.“I didn’t know.”
“HOLD ON,” Judge Volkheim said.He banged the gavel again afterward.“Who are you?”
“He’s my assistant at Feedworthy,” I said.
“Assistant is the technical term.Let’s not get it twisted.I’ve worked there longer than her,” Gabe said.
“This is ridiculous,” Brynholf said.“You admit to tampering with evidence, creating divergent timelines, manipulating human life, and now you’re telling the entire court room that you worked with William Corcoran’s lover?No wonder you wrote so many articles and promoted his dark magic-infested food product with your writing.”
“That’s not how it happened,” Gabe said.“Look, Billy wasn’t a bad person.Well, okay, maybe he was.Maybe I have a thing about dating guys I know better than to date.But let’s just say.A mysterious man with lots of money that owns his own business chats you up and buys you things, you start to pay attention.Especially if you’re, well, unlucky in love.Like myself.”
“Gabe, I never knew,” I said.
“I don’t kiss and tell,” he said dramatically.
“How did you two meet?”Abe asked.
