"Fellow investigators of the unknown sciences, I stand before you today with proof of the nonlinearity of time!"

Xamias stood at the podium in one of Nivix's most prestigious guildhalls. Seated before him were some of the Izzet League's finest minds - men and women, fairies and elves, even a single ogre sitting on the floor at the back. Behind him stood his creation, his magnum opus.

"For centuries, the Izzet have studied the passage of time. Those of you in the audience who have a background in chronomancy understand its nature: like a valve in a pipe, we may choose to pass through it slowly or at haste, but it fights any attempt to return the way we came. We may never backtrack to make another choice, because time will not allow it.

"But what if we didn't have to? What if we could leap between pipes without returning to the junction?" He gestured grandly towards the bulky glass-and-metal machine. "I give you the Trans-Temporal Transporter, a device to bridge timelines. With it, I will now summon my counterpart from another possible world. Another Ravnica, much like our own, but infinitesimally different. With but a push of this-"

In mid sentence, Xamias vanished.