The Frustrations of Research, with Minor Discourse on the Bounded Dimension of Yee, thee Gate and thee Key thereunto.

After my conversations with my new allies aboard their flying ship (note to self -locate lodging appropriate to newly-met Dragon. I am uncertain she has a proper hoard yet, which is deleterious to dreamful dozing in dracoforms), I have decided to spend some more time researching the origin of this 'Vanishing'.
 
More particularly, it is time to get into the Far Libraries.
 
I have not called up the Manor which is the Gate since I left it upon reawakening. An abdication of responsibility, I know, but after so many ages of the world unconscious, the Bounded Dimension can wait a short time for my returned attentions.
 
Even so, I begin. Making my way to a quiet place in a run-down corner of the city, where old buildings lean half-abandoned in silent lots - the parts of Millennium City, of Detroit, abandoned over the years and never rebuilt - I feel sympathy for such places... I find one that suits my purpose - fading, but not yet fallen, and uninhabited... indeed, none of the houses in this area are.
 
I stand before it, fingers outstretched into the air. Roiling the words that open the self in my mind and on my tongue, I reach into the door of the abandoned manor. The door becomes the Door, and the lock appears if only to my magical vision. A coolness across my brow, a prickling at the spine, as my fingers become one with the lock, fitting in just so. And I am home. And why not, I am the Gate, and I am the Key.
 
The door opens, but not onto the dilapidated Detroit dwelling. The Manor which is the Gate has subsumed it, for so long as it remains here - and is inside it. An odor of dust, of forgotten ages - peeling wall-paper, yellowed ceilings, cob-webs hanging like lace over doorways. In the distance, an outline of sheer horror reaches out ephemerally, her painting from life visible through her ectoplasmic embrace..
 
Ahh, Sonjana! You missed me! Do not fear, darling, you will be fleshed again as soon as power allows. Shh. Sleep for now, beloved one.
 
Unfortunately, what I seek will not be found in the Manor proper. No, esoterica such as the Vanishing, on one world in one dimension, is too narrow for the libraries I keep here - the Manor is only so large!
 
But no doubt *some* civilization, some culture, will someday know what the Destroyer has wrought to cause the vanishing, and as such - if it is written, now, then, or to be, in a when or a where - it will lie somewhere within Yee.
 
Girding myself, I set forth from the manor. Wandering the passageways of my home to one of the Other Doors, I take a deep breath and open it.
 
An endless vista of labyrinth before me, set in moldering stone. Glowing lights above may be stars - or perhaps simple cave creatures in an unimaginably distant ceiling. I have never found out. The Slender Walkers step gently about the maze, crooning to one another as they look out from their leagues-high vantage.
 
Down, down into the Labyrinth. Left at quarter-past time. Taking a down-west turn when the third star is green. The Labyrinth is kind today - small and gentle - I think it has missed me. I pet the wall, and I would swear it shivers, like a praised hound.
 
But what I seek will be deeper. The Labyrinth offers up Libraries from Lendor to Leng, but I am out into the deeper reaches of the Bounded Dimension. A door opens onto a lost lemurian landship, whose crew barely notices me as their refractor closet itself leads into a cliff overlooking the Sacred Flame of Malva - or what will be their sacred flame, when the Malvans evolve some few million years from now, from this point of view.
 
Light rain and the distant sounds of bells, a fairy-castle out of legend. They owe me, the Guardian of the Bounded Dimension, fealty from the fae - and I must call upon them soon - but I have not the time for their revels. Onward. Through the Forest of Dross, and then cutting back through the Manor proper, the path leading through the hallway in front of my bedroom - then a half-turn on a Wednesdays closer to my goal.
 
A thin, keening howl greets me, firestorm wind whipping past. The air is too thin, and far too hot for life - a whispered word cures both concerns. Dust, sand, blowing in and about a faded city. But such a city! Vast vistas of magnificent menhirs float above causeways of quicksilver, the jinn-towed gondolas long abandoned into ruin. Most of the monolithic mansions are fallen, shattered - their onyx surface bloodied by the light of the colossal crimson sun that dominates most of the sky, a baleful brand reaching to gently char this long exhausted Earth. This land lies in the last days, and I dare not be here long.
 
Rising on wings of will to touch one of the crystalline cathedrals, a flash and I am drawn within. Inside, we are transformed - reworked into light and reflections and purities of spirit, flashing through the infinitely small passageways, the mind subsumed into the substrate. In modern parlance, each monolith is a massive supercomputer, and one 'enters' and 'leaves' by being read and copied into it interacting with all within, and then exits by will and by being recreated on your exit. In their last ages, the inhabitants retreated into such places, and went slowly mad.
 
They gibber little, now. Minds fallen quiescent, even as the pathways they walked in the magical machines have decayed into near uselessness. I feel stones shift under my feet.. are they stones? Do I have feet? As I walk into the data-storage folder, the archive, the library - to my senses a Library. The knowledge of the last days of earth, collected by a few mad dreamers who felt that it was worthy of stepping aside from the dance at the edge of forever to record what was.. spread out before me. Collected by their Rotilloscopic Retrospective, they had the ability to record anything, anywhen, within their reach, and here in the last light, they had nothing but time.
 
What they did not trouble themselves with, it appears, is to properly catalogue their vast knowledge. Oh, certainly, powers help. A seeking-spell is whispered. Daemon Agents summoned and let loose, my Sufficient Servitors spreading out to ransack the Library at the End of the World with me. The life history of an Australian Ninja is presented to me... Australian.. Ninja? How odd... close in time and dimension, but not exact. Ahh! Here is a work on the technology and plans of a skull-faced villain in power armor.
 
Professor Muerte. No, according to this, he died well before the vanishing.
 
What world needs *two* skull faced murderous mad marauders in high-tech powered armor? It is vulgar.
 
A hissing, a ratcheting, a clicking. I know that sound.
 
Out of the corners of the library, out of the angles and edges, a disturbance.. a screaming blur at the edge of the eye as aspects of reality smear and tear.
 
Gods-damnit! Anglers. Well, it *has* been three Ages of the World, and if the Bounded Dimension is to continue to encompass and exemplar that which will have been lost, there must be room for things to get in. In this case, horrible little multi-dimensional predators that do not appreciate the temporal effects that have caused a lost library, baking under the swelling red eye that is the last days of the sun, to have been present in this Bounded Dimension of Yee since 19 eons before the species that built that library was first grown in the labs of Khanshu, in lost Gree...
 
Time to go. Leaping over a ruined desk, and tearing down the crumbling hallways as the sibilant clicking grows behind me. A gesture, and a series of rune-words that will explode when perceived springs into life along one wall. A moment later, a dull, fiery explosion. Apparently Anglers have the same need to read interesting things that they come across as I do. Who knew?
 
Through the bounds of the machine-intelligence menhir, back into 'reality' or what passes for it. A glance over my shoulder and I see the qulippothic angles of time straining their way through the metal-stone exterior, watching it flow under their pressure. To them it is simply a dimensional boundry, and one they can pierce at any angle, with time.
 
Flight. Through the lightless sea of Lendor, riding for a moment on the trained Leviathan-Eels with the other Eel-Knights. A hearty wave, and gone again, into the benighted warrens of Neo-Calcutta, where a cyberized corpse with flawless eyes looks to me for salvation I cannot grant. A choir on my left hand, the screams of the damned on my right. Avoiding the Labyrinth this time, as the Anglers will be less troubled than I, and instead detouring through the Rainbow Cascades, where the dancing Sun-Scatter Nymphs will disport themselves with the Anglers before sending them, lost, back whence they came.
 
I am lost a time as well, in color-play dreams and the tinkling of a dozen dozen waterfalls, before they release me with dancing laughter and a whispered impression of a kiss on the brow. The Nymphs remember when I moved their realm here ahead of the Lord of the Graven Spear's armies - and I thank them with a bow and a promise to return.
 
Back, back, back into my own home, into the stolid fastness that is gateway overlooking the Bounded Dimension. Closing the door to the pantry behind me with a last wave to a tumbling cavalcade of Red-Caps and Rawheads, I spare a second to revitalize a failing chair - my favorite - before collapsing into it with the books I was able to take with me.
 
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing specific. Nothing about how the New Champions fare, or how (or even IF!) the Destroyer caused the Vanishing. But more about this 'Seeker' and 'Jaguar' and 'Solitaire'... who claim to be the Champions. Will they be the Champions after us? No, the year is wrong.
 
Damn. Damn and thrice damn. Wrong world-line history. I will have to go deeper into the Bounded Dimension. I am not eager to do this - though I am by duty and blessing and choice and oath its keeper, and in a way its lord - this Realm is inhabited by things that won't yet be born for a million-million years - far older and younger than I - and far from friendly. In truth, though this be home, the feel of the place is oppressive - it will take time and effort to return it to some place that I feel comfortable. I can still hear the susurration of the Anglers in my inner ear. I will sleep still this night and more upon the windship I think - the gentle lapping of the waves against the hull quiets the inner cries of the mind.
 
I will wait before returning to the distant places of Yee. I will sleep secure upon my ship. And I will see about returning Sojanna to the Realm of Flesh, at least for a few days. I have missed her, in the millennia since her betrayal, and my redress thereof, and I think she might enjoy some cake.
 
We have missed a few anniversaries.