Davrland and the Kor Cycle

The Shadow Without Form

The being Daniel Kane knew as the Shadow Lord, or Shadow Demon, bears an uncomfortable resemblance to another entity: Vel Tharuun, the Shadow Without Form.

Both are difficult to describe because neither appears to possess a permanent physical body in the conventional sense. They are shadows that can become more than shadows, intelligences capable of reaching beyond the boundaries that should contain them.

More troubling is their relationship with thought.

The Shadow Lord of Avariel gives form to nightmares. Fear becomes substance around him. Creatures imagined in darkness can become creatures capable of walking beneath the sun.

Vel Tharuun operates differently, but the distinction may be one of degree rather than nature. He, too, exists partly beyond the physical realm. He reaches through possibility, perception, and fear. His presence is less that of a creature entering a room than of something discovering that the room was never truly closed.

There are differences, certainly.

There are also ages between the stories.

That matters.

A being existing outside ordinary physical constraints should not necessarily be expected to remain unchanged across centuries—or millennia. Names disappear. Civilizations rise and fall. Memories become myths, and myths eventually become stories told to frightened children.

Could the Shadow Lord and Vel Tharuun be the same entity, encountered during different ages?

Perhaps.

I would not claim that they are.

I would be considerably less comfortable claiming that they are not.

The Black Crystal and the Shard of Transition

The resemblance between the Black Crystal encountered by Vear and the object known in Avariel as the Shard of Transition may be even more significant.

The Black Crystal is not merely a source of power. Its relationship with reality is far more dangerous. It touches the lattice of possibility itself—the branching paths of what is, what might have been, and what may yet become. In the wrong circumstances, it can fracture boundaries that were never meant to be crossed.

The Shard of Transition demonstrates a remarkably similar property.

It can create pathways between realms.

More importantly, those pathways need not obey the ordinary geography of either world. The Shard does not simply move something from one location to another. It appears capable of reaching across the barriers separating realities themselves.

Different worlds.

Different realms.

Perhaps even different timelines.

That raises an obvious question.

Are the Black Crystal and the Shard of Transition two unrelated objects that happen to manipulate reality in similar ways?

Or are they fragments of the same phenomenon?

One should be careful with the word same. Two stones broken from a mountain are not the same stone, yet their composition reveals a common origin.

The same may be true here.

A Door Between Worlds

Daniel thought of the structure near Blackwater Lake as the Door Between Worlds.

The name is more accurate than he probably realized.

The Door did not create the original rupture between Earth and Avariel. It provided a means of controlling it—a boundary placed around something that otherwise had no reason to respect boundaries.

That principle would be familiar to Vear.

The universe contains more doors than most civilizations ever discover. Some are technological. Some are natural. Some require crystals. Others require machines of extraordinary complexity.

And occasionally a door appears so simple that someone mistakes it for an ordinary wooden door standing in a forest.

The appearance is irrelevant.

A door is defined by what lies on the other side.

Time

There is another similarity that should not be ignored.

Time does not pass equally between Earth and Avariel.

Twenty years may pass in one world while only months are experienced in another. The difference is not constant and therefore cannot be reduced to a convenient ratio.

Those who have traveled aboard the Aetherion should find the underlying idea familiar.

Time is not the universal metronome most people imagine it to be.

It bends.

It diverges.

Under certain circumstances, it can be crossed.

The people of Avariel describe these things through magic. The civilizations encountered by Vear might describe them through temporal mechanics, dimensional boundaries, or probability.

Terminology is useful.

Reality does not particularly care what terminology we choose.

Emily Parker

Perhaps the most intriguing connection, however, is not a crystal, a doorway, or a creature made from shadow.

It is an eight-year-old girl.

Emily possesses an extraordinary relationship with Avariel. Her dreams and imagination can become real there. Yet there are indications that she did not invent everything she believed she imagined. Sometimes she dreamed of things that already existed beyond the veil between worlds and later incorporated them into her drawings and stories.

That distinction is important.

If consciousness can perceive another reality without physically entering it, then imagination may occasionally be something other than invention.

Sometimes a dream may be a memory of something that has not happened.

Sometimes it may be a glimpse of somewhere the dreamer has never been.

And sometimes a child drawing a castle may simply be drawing what she has already seen.

Coincidence

I have been asked whether Davrland belongs to the same universe as The Kor Cycle.

That is not quite the right question.

The Black Crystal touches possibilities.

The Shard of Transition opens paths between realms.

Avariel exists across a boundary where time behaves differently.

Vel Tharuun is a shadow without permanent form.

The Shadow Lord is a being from another world whose nature changes when it crosses into Avariel.

Each similarity can be explained independently.

Taken together, they become more difficult to ignore.

Perhaps Avariel exists somewhere within the same vast structure of realities through which Vear has already traveled without fully understanding its extent.

Perhaps the Shadow Lord is an earlier manifestation of the entity that will one day be called Vel Tharuun.

Perhaps the Shard of Transition and Black Crystal are distant fragments of something older than either world.

Or perhaps the universe simply enjoys repeating itself.

I have lived long enough to know better than to provide an answer merely because someone wants one.

There are mysteries best solved.

There are mysteries best left alone.

And then there are mysteries for which the distinction has not yet been decided.