Enjoy ☀️

Forget genuine support and care, there's mostly mutual irritation and mistrust.

(Should have been included in the previous baby Cedric post, but boy, did it take longer than expected!)

So, this one is more of a "trying to warp around canon" kind of theory.

The main issues I am trying to solve here, which I stumbled upon while reading, are:

- how did Elias and Cedric get to 400 years in the past if Phobos is only five years older than Elyon?

- if both Cedric and Ludmoore worked for Phobos, and were seemingly close to him, why did neither of them acknowledge knowing the other in any way, shape or form?

- how did Ludmoore get a hundred years to the past to open holes in the veil if, again, he had to have interacted with Phobos?

- if there is a time travel option, why do neither Phobos nor Cedric nor any of the rebels ever try using it to their advantage?

- We know Elyon was brought to modern day earth, and that Phobos was about five at that point, so Meridianese time cannot run that much slower than earth time, unless there's a weird time warp involved, but...yeah, if I go there, my brain will probably implode. Feel free to if you're smarter than me, though, I'd love to hear thoughts on that.

- We also know that time travel will never be freely available, as otherwise, there'd be time travelers around somewhere during the comics time line for sure, but there has to be some way Cedric and Elias, who were definitely no born time travelers, did travel in time.

Now, I'm gonna offer up two different theories. The first one is the best I can come up with to explain all of the above is the following line of events:

Ludmoore is actually from future Meridian, likely Renaissance or something, so roughly equivalent to the time he ended up in on earth, as well.

He was a brilliant alchemist, and also apparently rather charming, so he managed to get a hold of the pathetic leftovers of the breath of time - remember, it was severely damaged during Phobos' attempt at reviving himself, and according to Yan Lin, only a few corns of the magical sand had remained inside. I assume Ludmoore took the remaining sand and managed to produce a potion or some other sort of product usable by anyone who got a hold of it.

Since this fatally destroyed the breath of time, and it's the only magical artifact with time altering abilities, the only option for more time travellers to exist would have been if Ludmoore got a hold of the old, complete breath of time, since he's the only one with the recipe for the potion and from his first time travel onward, no more sand of time is available, but since he never got there, this explains why no other time travellers exist.

So Ludmoore went back in time, to Phobos' reign just before Elyon returned to Meridian. Using a fake name, so he wouldn't be recognized in history books in his present, he approached Phobos to sell him his time traveling potions, and Phobos used the opportunity to ask Ludmoore to weaken the veil. Ludmoore agreed, and used his magic to travel to earth into a time he felt comfortable with. Since Cedric never saw Ludmoore, and Phobos never mentioned Cedric to him (likely on purpose, as I feel his childhood emotional trauma coupled with his love for Cedric would leave him prone to a never-ending fear Cedric might, one day, meet someone he prefers over Phobos), Cedric would only have heard Ludmoores fake name and since neither of them were aware that Ludmoore created the portals, instead expecting him to weaken the veil even further in their time, they just assumed he failed and kind off forgot about him.

It was only when Ludmoore got to earth that he realized HE was the one to create the holes in the veil in the first place. From there on, we know the rest of his story.

Meanwhile, in Meridian, Elias van Dahl decided that he, for some reason, really needed to paint a portrait of Phobos against his explicit wishes - like, dude, there are so many things you could have painted, why Phobos? - and got himself persecuted. He got a hold of one of the three time travel potions Phobos bought, and used it to escape.

Fearing he might use the extra years gained from this to create a massive rebellion scheme, Phobos sent Cedric after him, using up the remaining two potions for his back and forth travel. Rip Phobos' money.

Now, as promised, I have another take, which does not explain Elias van Dahl and Cedrics time travel, but I somehow just prefer? It came to me from the discussion with @sp1c3m0nst3r about multiple princes in the past being named Phobos.

This theory would be that Ludmoore did, indeed, live a hundred years from the present in the story, and was ordered to weaken the veil by a different prince Phobos, for whatever reason.

This theory builds more heavily on how I believe the book of elements to work. I might dedicate a post to this entirely in the future, but for now, it's enough to know that I think it works like a book for those in it, in that it displays what they would picture if reading the written words - think how the more of the girls are present, the more details we see, and how Ludmoore looks so different in chapter 2's flashback than in person. So, since they don't know it's a different prince Phobos Ludmoore talked to, the one they know is portrayed.

I just feel like this one takes less weird leaps and somehow fits the overall tone and story better? But this might be personal preference.

Last but not least, since this is kinda on the same topic: after some back and forth consideration, I do not think the dinosaurs in the book of elements are a product of Ludmoores time travels, as much as that would have been a great thing to include.

This is mainly due to two facts:

- if they were, the chapter should have been before the one where he's trapped in the book

- the dinosaurs are just so damn inaccurate, and he, being a scientist, would have likely described them in more detail, drawing attention to how they differed from popular belief during the early 20th century, so the girls would likely not just have imagined the stereotypical animals displayed

I believe that, since the chapter is called "Matt", this is the one Matt wrote, and likely Ludmoore was just like "create a highly dangerous environment that will stop my enemies and suit my new giant pet lizard" and Matt's controlled mind - remember, Cedric states he has a pounding headache that makes thinking difficult while Ludmoore controls him - did the best it could. (This should work since I don't think the island Matt stranded on is the same the girls go to, but including the reason for this would, I think, go too far off topic and take up a lot of space. I might touch on it in the aforementioned post on the book of elements, though)

Thank you for reading to the end!

And that, children, is why we don't mess with advanced alchemy.