Monday September 1st, 2013 C.E. - 5:15 a.m.

Wandering in a city where she was not a fugitive for theft and murder was liberating for the Ilinoira of the future: she still retained the power she needed to protect herself from those that would harm her, those that had done so in her past, but without the consequences of the crimes she had committed to obtain that same power. For however long she had in the RhyDin of the past, she was well and truly free.

But she could not escape from the Noira of her past. She had been recognized by showing up to the places she had used to haunt, the same street as her old apartment, the Stars End Bar where she used to work — and when she was recognized, she embraced the role of the determined yet naive elfess from 2013.

She saw Toby there, while assuming her old shift on Thursday night; the reminder of their almost deadly confrontation, the reason she was banished from that bar (and all of Stars End) in 2014, was enough to resolve her on a decision that she had been avoiding since her arrival: the Noira of 2013 must be given a leg up.

She would find the source of power that had set her down this path in the first place, and deliver it to her past self on a silver platter. It would not change life for this Ilinoira, as she would return to a future unchanged by her meddling in the past — an "alternate timeline," as she'd heard it explained on the news since her arrival — but there would be a version of her with a better life because she would become powerful before suffering pain and torture, and thus powerful enough to avoid it altogether.

The tower was called Twinmoon: it had been built by a conjurer a century ago, and used to summon power through cosmic alignments. Rumors swirled around the owner's disappearance, as attested by the two chatty and nervous adventurers standing over Ilinoira's shoulder as they surveyed the ruin from a distance, but she knew its true fate:

The power the conjurer had found, that he had drawn from ancient ruins on RhyDin's larger moon Arabrab, had been too much for him. His remains could still be found atop the tower, twisted in agony like the many other adventurers that had come to Twinmoon in the years since. But Ilinoira was a channeler, and in the end she had bonded with this anciet power, as would the Noira of the past...

"We should turn back." One of the adventurers, both summoners, clearly felt what was waiting for them within. Ilinoira turned her head and raised a cruel eyebrow.

"After the trolls, and the bandits, you've....what....lost your nerve?" Lips curled in a smirk, and the summoners exchanged a nervous look.

"Look, we just — look, we don't need your money, you can have the advance back," the other offered, loosening his coinpurse from his belt. Ilinoira extended a hand to stop him.

"It's no matter. You and your friend served your purpose well." Her smirk angled sharply upward. "Moving targets for our foes. I don't expect I'll need either of you again, so I suppose you can — "

Kill them. The echoing voices hissed insistently in her mind, while the dark power they carried soothed her eyes shut....They may disrupt this new union, stop our spread across timelines, keep the Ilinoira here from ever achieving our power. They will make her weak. They will make her suffer.

Memories of her own suffering flashed before her eyes before they snapped open: now they reflected the blackness of the cosmos and the light of moons and stars. The summoners knew they were in trouble. One pulled a knife, raising it to her neck with one hand and raising his other to the heavens, muttering words to call upon one of his bound spirits to assist him in battle; the other turned and ran.

The summoner who had chosen to fight had not counted on Ilinoira's ability to shape magicka without gestures. She could not shoot bolts from her fingertips or call a strike from the heavens without channeling through her hands, but she had more than enough to kill the man holding the knife. A shadow pooled around her feet and suddenly enveloped her, dark flames that flickered at the tips with a dozen colors of pale starlight. Chaos entered the summoner's body through his knife-wielding hand, searing his skin with starlight, stiffening meat and bone with the piercing chill of the surface of the moon, and setting his blood to boiling and his body to bending as the blackness sucked air from within and around him, whipping it violently around her.

He did not even have a chance to scream, though his body's last act was to peel back his lips and stretch his jaw to attempt one. He rattled out a final hollow breath as his ravaged body collapsed, his knife falling harmlessly away from her neck.

Which left the other summoner. She could barely see him, dark as the early hour was, but his frenzied path through the dense underbrush away from her certainly helped. The shadowy aura vanished from her body, only to reappear within her curled fingers. She tipped her hand and the shifting mass of cosmic magicka erupted, cutting a path through weeds and brambles after him. She saw him turn, saw him beginning to shift to one side, and reflexively reached out after her own spell with a smaller, faster burst of power.

She had to be quick, but it was quick enough. Her first spell turned, strengthened from behind by the smaller spell, and caught the summoner squarely in the chest. He managed a single scream before he burst from within, glittering ashes falling to the ground with his seared and tattered robes.

Showoff, the echoing voices murmured, but she could tell they were pleased.

"You love it." Eyes reluctant to return to their normal shade of gray turned back to the tower, and she could feel the tug of power from its pinnacle even at this distance, a mirror image of the same power bound to her...."Let's get this over with."