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At length, Hector decided that he wanted the memory to resume, but since he still wasn’t sure how he’d managed to pause it in the first place, he didn’t know how to make it continue. He floundered for a bit, searching up and down and all around him, as if he might perhaps find a hidden button somewhere that he could press.

Thankfully, though, it soon started back up on its own. Or had that been his doing, too? Yeah, it probably was, huh? He didn’t see how anyone else could’ve been responsible for something that was occurring his very own mind. Other than maybe Rasalased. But he didn’t sense the Dry God anywhere, right now.

The apparent queen was now quiet, perhaps thinking twice about saying something to further antagonize Rathmore. And Hector couldn’t help feeling rather anxious for her. Rathmore didn’t exactly seem like the nicest guy so far. He wasn’t about to kill this woman, was he?

For a time, the blurry Rathmore seemed to just be staring at her, but eventually, he took a deep breath, rubbed his face with one hand, then exhaled a heavy sigh. “...Apologies, dearheart. I seem to have... overreacted.”

“‘Tis unlike you to speak to me so.”

“Yes, I... let emotion get the rule of me. I suppose I was more frustrated with my results than I realized. Please forgive me, Anicca.”

“Hmm. I shall have to think on it.”

“Anicca, please...”

“Tell me again why this monument confounds you so. I recall you mentioning before that you believe it to be some manner of gateway, yes?”

“Ah...” Rathmore turned away from her to look at the Gate again. “Belief has no bearing on it. It is a gateway. And so much more than that, as well. In truth, calling it a mere gateway may be doing it a disservice.”

“You know this how?”

“I can see it. The full breadth of its divine form and heavenly function. No doubt, when you think of a gateway, you think of a simple threshold which marks the passage of one area into another, but this monument... it can bend those areas as it pleases. It can make them overlap. Or distort. Twist them up and down. Turn them bright and beautiful. Or dark and ugly. Or perhaps something else entirely. Perhaps a ‘bridge’ might be a more apt term for it, in some sense. Ah, no, but even that will not do, naturally... what then... hrm...?”