05/01/2026: Secrets Shared

The party finds themselves, displaced and uncomfortable, in this alternate timeline — a version of Strixhaven where things are subtly, sometimes painfully, wrong. They are listening to Debbie explain her recent experience behind the Biblioplex. In an attempt to banish him eternally, she inadvertently released the vengeful apparition of Old Murgaxor, released when she burned the logs that served as his spiritual incarceration. Thankfully, the smoke-form entity didn’t recognize her, which is the only good news. But that may be a matter of time.

Now they need to get home — to their own timeline — and they don’t have a way to do it.

Everyone looks dejected and a bit worse for wear: Debbie smells faintly of campfire, KFC has the bruises of someone who has been in more than one fight recently, and Reyna, also injured, keeps to the edges of the room. KFC idly twirls the Headband of Intellect in her hands, frowning at the fallout from its use in this timeline.

Rampart is the first welcome face they’ve seen all night; he has knocked on the door to check in on KFC. He goes to hug her then lunges back, unsure now that he accepts that this KFC is no longer his girlfriend. Rampart instead gives KFC a tentative pat on her burly, feathered shoulder.

The conversation has turned to another problem: their hexmate, Diro. Already suspicious of what he has called “unusual behavior,” the comrades are going to have challenges maintaining the illusion they are this timeline’s version of themselves. He will have to be told.

They find him in his room, sitting at his desk buried under fifty books.

They invite him into the common space of their hex suite, and awkwardly array themselves on the beat-up furniture in front of the unlit fireplace. Titania excuses themselves, stating, “I must take Squid to the Campus Health Center for a — hmmm — checkup.” They depart with the child.

Hester begins, breaking the news: “We’re from a different timeline. All of us, and Alistir, Titania and Squid as well.”

Diro stares at her. He asks, smirking, “Is this a joke?” He seems deeply unimpressed. Diro also is looking longingly at his books, visible through his open bedroom door. Then he asks them to explain.

Reyna talks him through the basics: Murgaxor, the artifacts, the ritual, the Convergence Catastrophe of 1487. Diro has questions. He has, it turns out, a lot of questions — about why the version of Murgaxor here seems merely annoying rather than actively murderous, about what exactly happened to put them here, about whether the alternate versions of themselves are still alive somewhere. Nobody has good answers to any of this.

In his turn, Diro explains that despite being hexmates, they don’t have much to do with him at all before yesterday. He’s been watching them act strange for hours. What Diro shares with them is a picture of who everyone is in this timeline. He realized that something about Hester was seriously different when she gave him a functional healing potion on the first day — something the Hester he knows would never think to do, wrapped up in her own dramas as she is. This Hester, the one standing in front of him, is clearly not the same person. Diro still doesn’t entirely believe them. But he’s willing to share and to listen.

“KFC is valedictorian here,” he tells them, “and has spent the last three years telling me I’m going to fail.” He hasn’t been, he adds, grinning and gesturing to his books. “I’m engaged in my own pursuits.”

“I bet she never took off the headband,” mutters KFC, bitterly.

Diro goes on: “Debbie, you’re usually pretty needy — insecure — kinda hard to be around. You’ve sunk your entire savings into an ancient school bus you call a ‘tour bus,’ hoping it’ll get you in good with Hospital. That’s Quentillius’s band. They already have a van. Reyna, you keep to yourself and have a thing about dead animals that’s pretty unsettling, especially when you use the dorm fridge for specimen storage. It’s pretty gross.”

Rampart, who has been quiet to this point, quietly asks, “And the other Rampart? What’s he like?” The answer comes back: leaner and apparently much smarter, a monk. This Rampart, a barbarian, owns that he is not smarter, but he is significantly larger, and accepts the omission of this detail graciously.

The conversation seems to stall, then Diro says, “I had assumed it was a bad herbology practicum. Possibly mushrooms were involved.” This precipitates some laughter.

The companions share with Diro what his own alternate self is like in their timeline — a Witherbloom student on a far darker track, someone who apparently won a formative fight through sheer luck rather than preparation and came out of it differently than this Diro did. This Diro is approachable. Sweet to Squid. The other Diro is not.

“A fight, huh?” Diro considers, then retrieves a staff directory, marking a name in pen: Professor Aldrevus Thenn, Chronomancy and Alternative Time Magic — Retired (on-campus). “I’ve never actually had a class with this professor. But it sounds like he’s spent his whole career doing time magic at Strixhaven.”

He also adds, flatly, that if they actually manage to get this retired professor to help them time travel, he would like to come along.

All the more things to discover.

⚔

Professor Aldrevus Thenn keeps them waiting in his narrow office corridor for the better part of half an hour. When he finally appears, he is much younger than anyone expected — maybe a few years past student age himself. Debbie notes, quietly, that this tracks for a chronomancer.

He recognizes Hester Slightfeather’s name immediately. She has quite the reputation, he says, without clarifying whether this is good or bad.

Reyna explains their situation: wrong timeline, no way home, somewhat urgent. The Professor lights up. He pulls out a quill and starts taking notes, reading aloud what he transcribes. “Travelers. No — unwilling travelers from an alternate timeline — fascinating.”

He tells them what he knows about this timeline’s version of Murgaxor: annoying, brilliant, not dangerous as far as he’s aware. He notes that Hester is on academic probation — she was likely placed in the wrong college because her father insisted and might be acting out. He expresses what sounds like genuine regret about it. He seems to have a lot of opinions about Strixhaven’s institutional failures, delivered in the tone of a man who left rather than fight about it.

He digs through a catastrophically disorganized desk and emerges with a scroll. It is almost translucent, written on paper that moves slightly on its own, sealed with pale purple wax. He calls it A Wrinkle in Time — a banned text in this timeline, though apparently not in theirs. Hester does a reasonable job explaining the tesseract principle to the group using the whiteboard. It’s basically a wormhole, but for time instead of space.

The scroll, the Professor explains, is not a spell — it’s a ritual. One full minute of casting. Any willing creature within thirty feet of the caster will be carried along. Executing magic of this level will require a high degree of arcane skill. Fail, and the scroll still activates, but the destination — both temporal and physical — becomes entirely random. Biblical times, possibly. Or far in the future. Somewhere with no earth left.

The scroll, he adds, does not take them where they wish to go. It takes them where they believe they are needed.

He hands it to Hester.

He wishes them luck and says they should look him up, whatever timeline they end up in. They are quite enjoyable people, and he looks forward to hearing how their misadventures work out.

⚔

When the party returns, Diro’s bedroom door is slightly open. They hear nothing — and then they see why. He is entirely absorbed.

He has a small green bottle, partially empty — arcane plasma, throbbing with wild magical energy. He tips one drop onto the spectral arms that extend from his shoulders when he channels his arcane self, the ones he’s been cultivating quietly for months, since the fight nearly killed him. Something appeared to pull him back from the edge. He’s been trying to reconstruct what it was ever since.

The arms flicker. The color shifts. And then, slowly, the manifestation extends: past the elbow, past the shoulder, resolving — almost — into a full figure standing in front of him. A silhouette in black mist, humanoid, still not quite what saved him. But closer.

He reaches for it. The figure holds for a moment, then disperses.

He summons it again. Still the mist. Still not all the way there.

The party watches from the doorway.

Hester says: “Dude. You just grew a whole person.”

Diro doesn’t hear her. He dismisses the figure, notes something in the margin of one of his books, and only then turns around to find them all standing there.

He says: “How long has it been?”

He looks at the books scattered across every surface of his room — fifty of them, none left in a stack, all of them splayed open at different pages — and decides it took longer than he realized.

Then he tells them his own recent history: the fight a few months ago, for reasons he isn’t going to explain. Something appeared and saved his life. When he was safe, it vanished. He’s been looking for it since. The arms are progress. The full figure is closer still. He thinks he knows what it is, and what he needs to do to bring it back properly.

The party tells him about the scroll: one minute of casting, willing creatures within thirty feet are carried along, say yes if you want to come.

Diro considers this. His face does something strange — something that might be called excitement, if excitement had an edge to it. Then it’s gone.

He says: “Okay. I’ll do it. I’d like to come with you when you go.”

Titania, quietly blocking Squid’s ears, tells the group she is not certain she and Squid will join them. She will not risk Squid’s life in any timeline. Not for anything.

⚔

Alistir breaks off on a separate errand while the others meet with the Professor. They want to know if this timeline’s Murgaxor is indeed actually dangerous — whether there’s any version of the threat waiting within him.

They leave Squid with Diro first. Squid, predictably, refuses to cooperate until Diro produces a novelty family-sized checkers set from his room. “Don’t ask me why I have it,” he tells Alistir, embarrassed. Squid is immediately enchanted, and tells Diro they lied about not liking him.

Alistir crosses campus to Witherbloom Tower.

At the top floor in Murgaxor’s lab, a graduate student tells them the Professor is in the basement feeding his pets. Nobody else is permitted to feed them. One would assume they’re fairly dangerous.

Alistir takes the stairs. The cellar door is open. The air smells of ozone, brimstone, and old magic. Alistir mutters to themselves about Titania, about fey courts, about the inherent liability of being married to anyone with a kingdom — and steps inside.

The space is cavernous and echoey. Alistir hears something clicking along the stone floor toward them from the dark.

They turn into a butterfly.

Just in time. What rounds the corner is Orestes the Horned devil — stereotypically horned, leathery-winged, trident in hand, fangs curving up from his jaw. Alistir recognizes him: this is the creature responsible for Debbie’s near-death in their second year, in their own timeline.

Orestes moves toward the wall where Alistir rests, blending into the pitted stonework. He squints. “How did you get in here, little butterfly?” His snarling smile is not one of wonder, but of menace.

Alistir knows he recognizes them.

Alistir transforms back. “I want no quarrel with you.”

The devil raises an eyebrow. “Then what are you doing in Murgaxor’s cellar?”

Alistir claims they’re here to discuss a paper. The devil goes to find the Professor.

Murgaxor comes out. He asks in a most unctuous way, “Do I have the honor of speaking with Titania or with Alistir?”

Coldly, Alistir responds, “You should be able to tell by the gray hair.”

His already wide mouth widens further. Murgaxor purrs, “I can never tell, Alistir — you both talk to yourselves so frequently.”

Ignoring this, Alistir asks directly, “Where do your intentions lie, sir?”

Murgaxor doesn’t pause. His eyes narrow and his pale lips compress with what might be rage. He leans into Alistir’s space to hiss, “My intentions are to make sure you never leave this timeline. Because you killed my father.” A beat. “If I must suffer, so must you.”

Alistir’s response is quiet, and very flat: “My hexmates and I are already suffering.”

Murgaxor’s patience runs out. Before anything can escalate, Alistir announces that in honor of his father’s death, they will allow Murgaxor to remain — and puts on the Helmet of Teleportation. One last look at Murgaxor before they blink away, and Alistir must struggle to keep their face very, very still.

Because they’re not certain, but they think one of Hester’s pinfeathers is stuck to Murgaxor’s pant leg.