The Key is one of those things that makes me nervous.

At first glance, it has the risk of being one of those things where ... like ... something was impossible mainly because they story needed it to be in order to function, and now that part of the story is over, so to expand possibilities they immediately reveal that it's totally possible and actually quite easy "now that we know what we know" (see: tempering-curing porxie). Obviously - in real life - the sudden realization of a possibility that fundamentally eases the difficulty of a task is a thing that happens pretty regularly. But - in fiction - when such an event more or less perfectly coincides with the plot's needs and limitations and doesn't feel integrated into the big picture very well, it just feels like a cheap shuffling of plot devices to ease constraints on the writer, narrative quality be damned.

So far I'm hoping that it's just the way the Traveler ... traveled. Without getting too strange, it could be the case that - since the shards were all once the world Azem knew - it can go between them as easily as within them. Taking bigger risks, it could be the start of a new plot about what Azem was up to post-defection, whether they had any inside knowledge from Venat, and how whatever they did before they were sundered functioned within the Hydaelyn vs. Zodiark dynamic.

Though I do think it's funny how many people are bringing Alexander and the horn into the mix. Remember what the horn/tablet combos were called...? <xfilestheme.ogg>