A strange vibration suddenly filled the ground beneath my feet. That was the first sign, but I still didn’t understand what was happening until I saw the moons moving from east to west. As you are well aware, all celestial bodies have risen in the western skies and set in the east throughout the ages since the elves began recording history on this world. “Backwards...? Almighty, forgive me… but why the blast is time going backwards? This is insane!”
There was no answer except an increase in the hum's pitch. Whatever was happening was intensifying. Most of the moons swiftly faded into bright blue obscurity as the sun abruptly and bizarrely rose in the east. However, I could still track Rigon picking up speed as it raced ahead of the sun on its strangely reversed and accelerated course. Auros the Skyfather burst into view in all its ringed splendor. Even the vaporous currents of the gas giant were swirling in retrograde from their normal course. Even as I watched, an entire reverse-day came and went, then another, then more, each passing more quickly than the last.
There was no mistaking it; not only had time frozen then reversed, it was accelerating backwards, and I assure you I reached new levels of terror with that realization. This was the first time I'd felt powerless in centuries. I caught a few glimpses of people and animals rapidly backpedaling around me, but within minutes (from my perspective), the temporal reversal was moving too fast for me to track anything that wasn't a permanent part of the landscape under me. The celestial bodies became blurs, then all but vanished from view except as elusive blurs crossing the sky every few moments, forming a maddening kaleidoscope of flashing colors.
Only the sunlight of Aura and the shifting, darting shadow of Auros remained distinct at all. In fact, mighty Aura made the whole maddening spectacle unviewable at first. Thirty-two hours' worth of light was pouring around me with every passing five minutes or so. Even if I had been able to look up for more than an instant without being struck with vertigo and nausea, the sun was now moving fast enough to become a brilliant golden arc, then a constant series of blinding golden flashes followed by brief intervals of darkness.
Had my limited mortal mind been capable of tracking and analyzing what I was seeing in any sort of detail, I’m sure I could have harvested a wealth of information about the history of our world and the cosmic bodies that surround it. As it was, I had to cover my eyes to suppress the intense vertigo and ocular pain viewing that celestial spectacle even for a moment caused me.
I sank to my knees and cradled my head in my hands, but could still feel the unnatural vibrations pulsating through the ground beneath me. A chaotic cacophony of noise assaulted me from all sides, every sound made in every age of this part of the world experienced all at once in rapid reverse. Then, it all seemed to fade to a dull, bearable roar.
Gradually my curiosity returned, and with a hand over my eyes I surveyed some of the shifting landscape around me. Most of the hills, valleys, and other landmarks of New Atlantis had vanished or reverted to their historical forms. Judging by the diminished silhouette of my own Eighth Tower in the near distance, I think I was passing through the era of the Aesyri League, the first maritime civilization built on this world by humans. New Atlantis itself was rapidly diminishing, and I started in shock as I realized I was approaching the time of its founding. I had already been pulled thousands of years into the past, it seemed.
The sounds of the world around me diminished further as the speed of the temporal reversal increased. The rapid succession of light and dark gradually gave way to a perpetual twilight which was somewhat less damaging to my eyes. The sea before me suddenly rose, almost instantly submerging my surroundings. Shockingly, I was not swept away. I recalled a discovery made by dwarven miners in the Durmivon Mountains while I was growing up in Runisava centuries ago. "Seashells, all the way up 'ere under the hills!" Old Foreman Gransparr swore many an oath in the tavern that night. My father sometimes allowed me to accompany him there as I approached adulthood. "Bones of sea devils! No, no, no… that mine weren't jus' filled with water at some point. I'm tellin' ya, them beasts was too big for that! There ain't no explainin' it 'cept ta think these whole mountains used to be underwater."
