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By the time Indaturan returned with Marian and the diary blocks, Darylyan was awake and had double checked Kezia, Celeste and Asra for boobytraps. Now he was sitting in the corner of the room reading a book while Alsia sat as far from him as she could and studiously ignored him.

Lydia really wished she could bang their heads together and get them to talk to each other, but she had a sense they’d have to work it out for themselves.

“Okay, let’s try this and see if I’m right.” Indaturan handed the first block to Adrian. “Try risata karizalia.”

Adrian raised an eyebrow. “Eater of Worlds? That makes sense with what we just leaned.” He closed his eyes. “Risata karizalia.” He fell silent and his frown deepened.

“Well?” Indaturan said.

“It worked,” he said. “But I hope she was wrong. Apparently she’d figured out why our ancestors had started the purge, but she thought that Xantaria had manipulated us into for reasons of her own. She intended to sneak these back to Earth back then to warn them, but Xantaria must have killed her before she could.” He looked back down at the blocks. “But she didn’t know why she wanted the purge. Could she have been mistaken?”

“Of course she could,” Indaturan said. “Anyone can be mistaken, but in my aunt’s case I doubt it. She was an amazing clairvoyant and always double checked everything. But there was a lot of information and you’ve only given us a tiny bit. What’s the rest?”

“That’s all that was on this block. A warning that they are being manipulated.” Adrian took the next one. “I’ll see what the rest say.”

Marian picked up the first block from where he’d put it down and closed her eyes as she read it. A moment later she gave a sharp gasp and her eyes flew open staring into space.

“Marian?” Julie put a hand on her shoulder. “What do you see?”

“That’s why Xantaria killed her,” she said. “Not just because she was red but because she’d discovered too much and Xantaria realised somehow.”

“Retrocognition?” Indaturan said. “After all this time? I know you said you were good but Void, that’s impressive, Marian-iatia.”

Marian managed a half-smile at that. “That’s why I’m confident I could see what my ancestors saw, with help. Please let me try.”

“Ah! Your aunt had visions about the Eater of Worlds as well,” Adrian interrupted. “She’d recorded them onto the blocks so that our ancestors could use them to decide if the best course of action was the one they’d been manipulated into or something else.”

“And I think we need to look at them and our ancestors visions to understand what we’re dealing with,” Julie said. “Can we do this without damaging Marian even more?”

“I would have said no until she had this recognitive incident,” Indaturan said. “But now I think we have a reasonable chance if we’re careful. I’d still like her to recover a little more, first.”

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