You would think a highly-trained temple priestess, skilled in the arts of diplomacy and telling men what they wanted to hear - they were better than whores by far in this regard - could manage to make it sound like talking to him wasn't a nightmare, listening to him sort through things wasn't an awful experience, and bitter endurance wasn't the only emotion she could currently experience. Then again, Skandra supposed you didn't have much that would prepare you for Skandra Tyullis when you were just training at a temple. Probably some half-bald, half-blind paladin who swore a lot and talked about how good he was at his job. Scared a few priestesses and such. Made the new acolytes piss themselves.
Something told him he didn't want to hear the inevitably boring stories, so he didn't bring up his theory.
"I was traveling in the desert with a friend of mine," Skandra kept up his walking as he talked. "Looking for Uathis, who as usual was in over his head. What we ended up finding was a gateway to the Empyrean."
At her blank and inquisitive look, he rolled his eyes.
"The heavens. The place where the gods live, where the tree of life grows eternal?"
Smoke was streaming from the side of his mouth. He didn't wait for her to say she understood. He just plunged onward and stopped worrying about how much of this was actually making sense to her.
"Traveling through that gateway to reach the Empyrean felt like... all of this," and he gestured expansively with one hand. "There were... everyone was talking twice. Everything that happened repeated itself. And then we were in a cage, and Onainat was looking at her mother, only it wasn't her mother. And then we were at a fountain... this must be the same travel, but a different destination. Gods damn it! Shantar was finally right about something. Aeotha, do you realize what's going on?"
He'd stopped. Planted his feet, and seized her by the shoulders. His face was illuminated by excitement.
"We're on another world! I wonder if anything lives here..."