Fragment Thirteen: Inlaudetus
Overview
Fragment Thirteen took the Mountaineers on a journey of time-bending emails and papercraft. After completing the Third Assessment and unlocking the Fletcher Dawson website, an address hidden in Deirdre’s scarf led her and Cole to the hidden apartment of M. Grey Ackerly, who gave Deirdre a box from her father, Sullivan. The box contained a new volume of Sullivan’s journal, with a letter to Deirdre written inside, and a Chronocompass. After spending several days examining its text, the Mountaineers noticed that certain words hidden in the letter corresponded to descriptions of the Guilds found in the Guide to MAGIQ. Clicking those Guilds on the Chronocompass image found on the Dawson site caused the compass to spin and chime four times. At 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time that day, the site changed to show a contact form, along with the text "Be Careful What You Say And Send Or Time Itself Is What You’ll Rend.”
Mountaineers rushed to send messages, and at 4:00 a.m. Eastern Time, the page changed again to display “A Reply.” The Mountaineers quickly discovered that they were emailing Augernon, a surviving member of the last generation of Mountaineers, in the 1990s. New entries appeared in Sullivan’s journal, explaining his plan to have the Council of 18 Gates sacrifice the Book of Briars to the Storm and protect the current Mountaineers in its place. They would then communicate through time to help the Mountaineers in the '90s open their Book of Briars.
Augernon, not knowing he was communicating with Mountaineers years in the future, shared the clues his own Mountaineers had received from the Book of Briars: a journal page with a circular cutout and a calendar of letters. When Deirdre visited a series of locations suggested by the Mountaineers, one spot triggered a pocket to appear in Sullivan’s journal. Inside were journal and calendar pages to match those Augernon had sent from the past. Cutting and weaving the calendar strips yielded more clues, and a sketch of the number ‘18’ in Sullivan’s journal revealed how to create a ribbon, and then a Mobius strip, out of the calendars. Completing the mobius strips caused strange clock faces to appear in both of the journal cutouts, with each clock face showing part of a jumbled nursery rhyme. All the while, Mountaineers continued to exchange emails with Augernon, updating him on their progress. He responded with news of the Mountaineers in his own time being hunted by the Storm.
The past and present Mountaineers worked together to decipher the rhyme and followed its new instructions, splitting the double-twist Mobius strip down the center to create two interlocked rings. Augernon related that Ascender had been attacked by Mountaineers who had been brainwashed by the Storm and had barely escaped with the help of a fellow Mountaineer, Knatz. While Augernon pondered how he could save his friends from this malevolent entity, the present Mountaineers discovered how to attach the strange clock faces to the linked timeline strips and used the resulting paper code device to spell out the word ‘Inlaudetus.’ They emailed this word to Augernon, who entered it into the past Book of Briars, completing Fragment 13 and revealing the next clue.