BECMI Chapter 503 – Words of a Dame

My return to the Other Shore was naturally ten minutes after I left.

A great many things had happened in those ten minutes, and yet not much at all.

When I came back upstairs with Cirru, there was a new person sitting at a table, raising a glass of wine in welcome, Lalo and Emeril already there and chatting.

“Helos,” I greeted the current Avatar of the God of Silver Magic, curtsying to him. As always, his Avatar was a suavely handsome southern elf, brown of skin, white of hair, and snappily dressed, if not so debonair as Chardon. The two of them worked together frequently, and got along like houses on fire when things had to be done, both preferring swashbuckling styles of magic and blades alike.

His eyes lit up. “Loveliest of my own servants, Lady Edgina!” he winked at me, rising to give me an equally courteous bow. I could not resist smiling slightly at his very sincere charm, especially given how long we’d known one another. “Let me be the first to congratulate you on your successes on the Far Shore!”

I took the seat Master Lalo graciously held out for me, while Captain Emeril did the same for Cirru, and Duum stayed on my shoulder. “I would congratulate those who made it possible, and yet, I don’t believe any of them are celebrating at all the wondrous things the Nucleus managed to accomplish.” Said ironic words drew chortles from everyone at the table, and even Duum squeaked his appreciation.

I looked to Cirru, who nodded. “I have spread word of what went down among nine different dragon kingdoms back home,” she stated calmly. “They will spread it further afield, and especially to the Rulers. Dragons were not so affected by the Pulse, even those living in Delpha, although many have had to hastily relocate their lairs, and that has caused some conflicts.”

Hundreds of dragons losing their hoards and having to find new places to live was not a fun combination for anyone. Still, it was Delpha, plenty of lesser wizards up the kazoo in the border areas not affected.

Also bunching them up for potential conflict on the shattered islands left of the nation, making them easier to deal with in some ways.

“Sama and Briggs are already committing to clearing some of the islands and making them ready for refugees,” I related to them all. “They believe a one to ten time ratio is sufficient time for them to prepare what is needed while we advance towards what is coming next.”

“The echoes of the Cataclysm and the Nucleus’ effects are far-reaching,” Emeril reported next through his custom android, obviously lower-tech, quite mechanical, and certainly not housing an Immortal intelligence, nosirree. “Dozens of Immortals are finding themselves barred from Nown suddenly, including some very old and powerful ones. Their anger is sweeping through the Spheres. If Thanatos could be found, I imagine they’d bust him right down to Temporal, but he seems to be completely missing, as well as several other Immortals of Entropy, and Immortals who dealt with Entropy.

“There is widespread talk of planar collapses, home realms nearly obliterated, Immortal Storms sweeping away eons of work, and everything triggering off multi-dimensional waves of magical consumption that all lead back to the Crimson Cataclysm.”

Immortal homes suffering like mortal realms had! The horror!

“There’s easily a dozen Immortals surrounding the detonation area of the Crimson Cataclysm. I passed on the warnings to the dragons again, and they are keeping very out of sight,” Master Lalo said as he finished pouring a fine celebratory champagne for each of us. “However, the Immortals who approached the Crimson firestorm so confidently suffered both incredible burns, and permanent loss of Health as well as Immortal Power being consumed by the Radiance there. They’ve become a bit more patient since then, looking for a way to magically shield themselves. Nothing seems to have worked yet.”

That had been one of the upgrades to the Nucleus, devouring the Immortal Power of any Immortal without the proper security clearance and attunement to it, as well as tweaking the Radiance to Burn and Consume Immortal Avatars, which were hugely invested with Immortal Power. Permanent losses to Immortal Power were dangerous, and something to be avoided!

Since Immortal Power backed all of their magic, using magical means to try to ward off the Radiance wasn’t going to work at all well, either. That same magic would also Burn away very quickly, forcing constant re-Casting, depleting IP quickly until the Immortal had to run or die.

“How’s the Core?” I asked Emeril directly.

“Nown is moving it on a lava flow as we speak, I’m riding along.”

Moving it south and east, to beneath a certain Time Portal, under a looming doomed castle of roses, and deep below a great geological shield of darkstone underlying a land of rings of lava and unnaturally steep mountains inhabited by a considerable number of dragons.

Soon enough, the Core of all Magic was going to be plugged into the Doomrose Dungeon, the Radiance would be saturating the area under the Ringlands, and the next stage of our preparations would be going forward.

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The Immortals who’d made it couldn’t come to the Prime to find it, some were even dead, and the ones who only knew about it couldn’t search for it until the Crimson fell away… and then it wasn’t going to be down below anywhere, it was going to be feeding power into Nown and the vast Rune-carved darkstone shield.

Radiance, successfully tapped without damaging the mana field!

“Heaven?” I asked calmly.

Helos beamed happily, a very nice thing to see. “We have done it!” he declared, raising both fists and shaking them in celebration. “A direct connection across the temporal gap, albeit one we cannot test without implications!” Meaning, Immortals of Time would instantly sense something as profoundly weighty as the gods moving across a Temporal Divide. I could only do the same because I was tied directly to the Portal, and Cirru and Duum with me.

I sighed in relief.

The greatest thing it meant was that Good souls on the Far Shore would finally make it to the proper afterlife, and not merely be harvested by an Immortal for whatever reasons, or be shoved right into reincarnation!

That had been happening for centuries on this Shore already, once Shadow Kheper was fully cleansed, upgraded, and lifted up in the proper profound direction. The Immortals hadn’t really noticed, because the number and power of Good souls involved with most of them was quite small, Law and Chaos factions here dominated by Neutrals and Evil folk. Yes, Good folks were often heroic, but their numbers in this world, versus the others? They had been small.

That number had begun to increase significantly with the Church of Heaven and the establishment of the Bright Empire, of course, but Good souls didn’t go to Immortals unless they personally made sure to bring them to the afterlife somehow. Blind to Alignment mechanics, the Immortals were just irked at the quality and commitment of the Empire’s people, and those of the Church of Heaven.

That being irked had resulted in a lot of hostility from surrounding nations and tribes with their own Immortal Patrons, despite the Bright Empire being rather slow and methodical in most of its expansion phases… and rather brutally effective in its retribution against those who attacked it. Sythia, for instance, was located between the Isle of Heaven’s Reach, once called Kheper, and its close ally the Bright Empire, but had never been invaded from either entity despite its rather regular activity against both of them.

The Immortals driving Sythia simply didn’t like either of its neighbors, and so constant small-scale tension and skirmishing was always going on, usually to the detriment of Sythia and its people. But all that did was irritate their Immortal sponsors more, as the gifts they’d given the mortals in magic in return for worship still weren’t enough to do the job!

The Ringlands basically only traded with Brightmoor, although adventurers from all over the world still sailed up the River of Steam to dare the Dungeon of Doomrose. Drakkunport was now the second-largest city of the Brightmoor Empire, behind only the capital of Celestial itself, almost solely because of the wealth of the Dungeon brought out by the adventurers who came through the city, many of whom had also retired there.

The same Gold Dragon Autzenmark had been Lord Mayor of Drakkunport for the last eight hundred years, as much an institution in his own way as the Emperor and Empress themselves, directing the growth of the city, overseeing its laws, its wealth, and its culture with a keen and long-term eye. In his eyes, the whole city was his hoard, and a magnificent hoard it was!

Now the Crimson Cataclysm had irradiated the land to the northwest of the Ringlands, Immortals were ready to scour the area looking for the cause, and the cause was no longer there.

Training in the Secret Schools of Zanzyr, especially Cryptomancy, was going to begin forthwith!

“Lunia has advanced to Intermediate God,” Helos added after the salute from everyone and downing a drink. “That status allows her to bring Good souls to Heaven, and begin the makings of a Heavenly Host. The temporal acceleration of the plane actually helps with such matters, but the fact remains we are eons behind the accumulations of the Immortals in this matter, and their first reaction to the appearance of actual Celestials will likely be to fight them and dissect them for new secrets.”

“That is about right,” Captain Emeril nodded somberly. “What magic can be made from them, what are their special abilities and resistances, where do they come from, who is their maker, do they have unique energies or powers, and so forth and so on. Even rote psychopomp duty is likely to be lethal if you attempt it!”

“The proper reward for a Good life is one of the most sacred duties that the gods of Heaven must perform, Emeril. Interfering with the proper dispensation of souls is cause for Heaven to go to war. We will not take it lightly if Immortals think they can steal the souls of our people!” Helos stated, his tone uncompromising and grim.

I just nodded. “That would start with mortal heroes going to rescue them, and then rapidly escalate. Immortals have no innate duty to the souls of their faithful, only the belief and backlash if they should be found to be false. From an outsider’s standpoint, it is a great weakness of the Divine.”

“They will think it means you are reliant on Faith and Souls, instead of merely performing your obligations and duties. In any event, an easy way to bait and lure you out,” Master Lalo reasoned slowly.

“And of that we are quite aware,” Helos acknowledged with an air of experience. “We are being circumspect about their removal, but few question why there are fewer soul-stealing beings around than there used to be, and being free to have an active Avatar on the mortal world is very useful in many respects. Our Divine Awareness concerning our people is also on a significantly higher level than any Immortal, meaning we are aware of their plans and schemes much sooner than they expect, if not their personal movements.”

“Has there been a faction building against the Church of Heaven, Emeril?” I asked him directly. His Spock Avatar had the most communication with other Immortals, given his constant locating and exploration of new realms in the Astral Sea.

“There are more than a few Hierarchs and Eternals concerned that none of the Immortals backing the Church are known and represented, although they acknowledge all of the previous mortal identities of the Gallivants. However, the Church’s comportment and generally non-aggressive mortal policies, despite constant prodding and poking, have won a measure of respect for their patience and ‘respect for the Immortal codes’ in not taking personal actions.”

“That is not quite true,” Helos admitted grimly, “but those we moved against aren’t able to remember it after Avatar destruction.”