Arcane matters are well beyond the scope of my own knowledge, reader, and beyond the purview of this account, but in my research into those latter days of the old world I came to wonder how it was that the Opaline Saint and her Sainted Coalition knew to bring our people to this place. How they knew that where we emerged would be safe, or at the least, safe enough to forge some lasting security.
To understand this, I asked of Magister Marriel Tinwhistle, my elder colleague in the College of Enchantments, how the world of Thaedros had been found. After all, during the Summoning War, all that had ever emerged from the worldgates were creatures of nightmare. How she know that we were not going into one of those nightmare places, escaping one predator for another? I will not claim that I fully apprehend what Magister Tinwhistle related, but I will related it here in brief.
The nature of the worldgates is such that upon its initial opening, what we percieve as a kind of 'opening' is in fact more akin to a door revealed, but not yet opened. The magus must reach into and through the fabric of the gate, questing across the planes for an anchor point upon which to fix the passageway. Until the moment that the first Encarans passed through that opening and into Thaedros, I am told, the stark truth is that no one really knew what the anchor points were. Of course, we are all now quite familiar with the dormant worldgates of Thaedros, those great black monoliths which greeted us when first we came to this world, and which can be seen, at some distance, from most any place on land. One presumes that such constructs exist in all realms where the penultimate worldgate, the interplanar artifact itself, has by some incomprehensible power expressed itself. It is possible that there are for all practical purposes an infinite number of such expressions, and therefore an infinite number of 'anchor points' toward which a worldgate may be directed.
Magister Tinwhistle, when asked how, then, Felidara had located Thaedros at all amid this chaos, directed me to a thin, well worn journal from which I have collected some of the following, for it bears documenting here and speaks to one of the mysteries of this place which has yet to be unraveled, and which is of paramount importance to our dragonborn brethren in exile.
In brief, the Opaline Saint was directed to Thaedros by an outside influence.
Now, there are no records of what Felidara Thanorax saw in the moments before she made her choice—only the words of a single apprentice, hurriedly scrawled in the pages of a small and roughly constructed journal in the weeks that followed. Kandri Stolvarin, a young human woman and gifted arcanist of her time, stood beside her master as she poured her will into the spell that would decide the fate of Encara. In her writing, Kandri recalls a sudden gasp from Felidara, a tremble of breath, and then quiet weeping. She records these words as among the last spoken by the Opaline Saint:
"So it is true, then. You left. You left us. Please, show me, I beg of you."
By the time Kandri thought to ask what Felidara meant, the moment had passed. The worldgate flared open, its vast, unthinkable spell anchored at last to something real. Every mage maintaining the gate, Felidara among them, entered a trance as they stabilized the portal's fragile connection. There was no time for hesitation. With the gateway open, there was only the choice to flee, or to be swallowed by the black tide. Felidara's last words to Kandri were simple, spoken in a voice tight with strain.
"We will hold it. Go."
There was no question of refusal. The first through the gate were Kandri herself and the forward scouting cohort, whose purpose was to determine whether the Encaran refugees would emerge into safety, or something worse. Within minutes, their response returned—confirmation that they had arrived, intact and alive, in a world not yet consumed. The call went out across Encara, and the exodus began.
Refugees raced toward the worldgates, from every nation, from every corner of the world. For most, it was not a march, but a frantic flight, pursued by horrors too great to resist. And in those final moments, as the darkness pressed in and the Multitude clawed at the fraying threads of existence, something—someone—rose to meet it.
Queen Mysandra Thalvarn wrote of her final moments on Encara with haunting clarity. She had refused to flee at first, ordering her royal guard to take her wife and children and escape while she remained behind to oversee the evacuation. But her soldiers, loyal beyond question, had disobeyed her. They took her by force, carrying her toward the waiting worldgate even as the sky blackened behind them. And it was in those final moments that she saw what should never have been seen.
The face of the Hungering Multitude.
So writes the Iron Queen:
"It was not a beast, nor a voice, nor even a presence. It was the collapse of all that was, the unmaking of reality itself. A void that was not void, but something worse—a thing that had never been meant to exist, that had never been meant to be perceived. If I had looked upon it a moment longer, it would have devoured my very sanity, and perhaps even my soul."
Mysandra felt her mind fracture at the edges, her vision darkening as the weight of it crushed down upon her thoughts. She stumbled, dragged now by only the desperate hands of her knights, and in that moment, she wondered if the Multitude was not merely a force, not merely an entity, but rather the true nature of the space between all things. The fabric of reality had always been a fragile thing—what if the space between, the void in which all planes floated, was not empty, but hungry? What if the Multitude had not come from somewhere, but had simply been waiting?
The madness would have taken her then, she was certain. She would have been lost as so many others had before her, consumed not in body but in mind, her will shattered by the sight of something no mortal was ever meant to comprehend. But as she reached the worldgate, she saw something else.
A light.
Not the flickering glow of a spell, nor the brilliant flare of arcane might. It was something more.
A woman stood before the worldgate, clad in robes that shimmered with the soft, golden glow of lantern-light. Her hands were outstretched, her form wreathed in power not of the arcane, but of the divine. And though Mysandra had never seen her before, she knew without doubt who she was.
Broghna, goddess of passage, travel, and secrets, had come to guide them home.
The goddess reached forward, and with her touch, the failing spell wove itself whole again. Strength poured into Felidara and the others holding the gates open, their faltering wills renewed by the presence of the divine. Mysandra saw the Opaline Saint lift her head, saw her eyes shine with something not of this world, and in that moment, she understood.
The gods would not follow.
They would remain. They would stand against the Multitude, as long as they could.
With one final look at the land she had ruled, the land she had failed to save, Queen Mysandra stepped through the worldgate and into the unknown.
What she learned on the other side, she would never forget.
Ciaranol Kalvorsson had been right.
Those who opened the worldgates could not pass through them.
The spell had demanded everything from those who had cast it. Felidara and the Sainted Coalition had known this all along. Even as they stood at the threshold of salvation, even as they watched their people flee through the passage they had forged, they had understood that they themselves would never step through.
And still, they had stayed.
The worldgates closed behind the last of the Encarans, sealing forever the fate of those who remained.
By Queen Mysandra's decree, Felidara was thereafter named the Opaline Saint, and those who had stood beside her in the end were remembered as the Sainted Coalition.
But for those who had survived, there was no time for mourning.
Encara was lost. And the world they had escaped to, though unscarred by the Multitude, was no sanctuary. The dangers of Thaedros merely had yet to reveal themselves.