What you see now, my friends, is a sight few will ever see - the entrance to the Nexus. While its ancient architecture has been described by many former students as relatively austere, it has always been immaculately kept, looking as if you’ve stepped into a perfectly preserved monastery from long ago. During my time studying there, one of the resident clairvoyant masters once told me jokingly: “It’s one of the few buildings I’ve been inside where I didn’t need to use any powers to see into the past.”

It is no secret that the Nexus is a collective of many of the most powerful psions on Athas, and they’re certainly not shy about mentioning they have trained most of the rest. There are many long-standing stories of their links to the now defunct Order, and it’s hardly a secret within the Consortium that some of those that once served the Order became the founders of our organisation. This perhaps explains their shared interests and connections.

By design, the premises of the Nexus Academy can only be found by those who are invited. Amusingly enough, the masters here seem confident enough in their protections that they have not shown any concern with my leaking this image to you.

Upon my arrival, I learned of their plan: using the lost psionic technology from the Green Age, they will attempt to place my mind and soul inside a properly crafted obsidian orb. The trouble will be finding one – the method of creating guardian orbs has been lost from Athas for millennia.

In spite of my condition, I insisted on being a part of the exercise. I knew where they were going, and I had a hunch that I might still be useful yet. Focusing my will, I let my new ethereal form drift up and away from my shattered body and joined the others in traveling towards Saragar. Just as we reached the Burning Plains, my suspicion was proven right – I sensed a floating obsidian orb sentinel just south of the border. Reaching out, I could tell that it still recalled the touch of my mind from the last time I was here - that might just be the opening we needed to make this work.

I notified the group, and they descended upon the sphere.

Descriptions of psionic combat can become extremely surreal to those not involved. The mental manifestations of two egos colliding is strange enough, even before you factor in each trying to play by the rules of the other’s internal mental landscape. When I say the psionic warriors invaded the mind space of the orb, it oversimplifies the world jumping and many metamorphoses of themselves and the environment the warriors experienced while inside the orb’s psyche.

Upon my request, one of the psionic warriors telepathically shared with me what they saw: there were glimpses of the world before the Cleansing Wars burned everything down; I saw the city of Saragar looking much as I had seen it only a few months ago; I saw a prisoner from Marnita’s jail having his psyche transferred into an obsidian sphere; and I saw millennia flash by as he relentlessly protected his corner of the world from destruction at the hands of defiling magic.

It proved to be much more of a fight than any of us would have expected – the ancient mind locked inside the sphere was a powerful one even given the limitations of the form and the senility brought by thousands of years of isolation within a ball of black glass. But they did manage to capture it and return it to the Nexus while I still lived. Gulem says I’m quite fortunate to have access to an orb which has already touched my mind. He does not know what will happen to the existing resident within, nor how intact I will be after the transition, but I am not ready to abandon my mission quite yet.

Wish me luck. And may the moons guide you.

(I’m afraid I do not have a prize today for whoever can guess this location from Earth, so I shall instead simply offer whoever guesses correctly an invitation to my funeral…)