Quote:
Dear Erissa,
To consider what was or what might be your destiny, and to view it in the present with fear, or any other strong emotion, is to give it the substance to trap you. You become a slave to time itself, which your mind has made real through the emotions to which you cling.
You spend each waking day in servitude of your attachments to things that, in all truth, do not exist. Consider your time in the room. You feared the bodies behind you because they represented both your failures and your possible fate. And for all your efforts to change a future you feared, you only served to make things worse.
So, you understand the danger of owning a book that can allow you to see what was and what might be. The traps and snares that could entangle you are innumerable. To wield the book auspiciously is to understand a simple, fundamental truth.
Time is the illusion, and we only exist in this one, continuous moment of flux, in which we create history, and in which we defy any number of futures that might have been. Consider that, and good luck in this, your final challenge.
--K.S.
“One more thing,” the imp interjected as Erissa folded the note. He removed his hand from his pocket. “The coin that killed your brother,” he said, spining it into the air and catching it. “I went to some trouble to retrieve it because I thought you might like to have it as a souvenir.” He flipped it to the elf who caught it on its downward arc. Erissa grimaced when she opened her hand, revealing the exposed side as tails.