BECMI Chapter 113 – A Road to the Eternal

The Immortal Thaum was the other guise of Grandmaster Nathanael Jean-Arc, the jealous guardian of the Radiance and Patron Immortal of Zanzyr, the main backer of its magocracy. He had organized the cultural revolution that restricted nobility to wizards, barred clerics from Zanzyr, set up the Secret Schools, and then claimed the top spot in the country with his Avatar, all without being beholden to anyone else and unsuspected by the mortals around him. He was already Immortal, and so the Day of No Magic could not impede him. Likewise, anyone who walked the Radiant Road to Immortality was immediately beyond caring if they left the world weaker behind them. They could always go find another mortal world to work with, right? If their Testimony fell to dust behind them, well, they were already Immortal, so it did not much matter, and if they really wanted to, they could just spirit their faithful away to another world with magic, leaving this one behind as a sacrifice. Sometimes being smart and magically aware was incredibly burdensome. There were no ‘gods’ that I could feel about ANY of the lands I had gone through. There were only these Immortals, who possessed power of their own and did not truly need mortal worshipers for anything but Immortal projects, treating them like cogs in a grand machine, to plug and play in the manner desired. There were a LOT of these bloody Immortals around. Of course, they were Immortal. They didn’t die of age, only to obscenely powerful things powerful enough to actually kill them if they were foolish enough, or if they gave up Immortality for further enlightenment. They also tended to stick to their motivations and cultures from life, only moreso, and had a horrible habit of restricting the evolution of their own followers, or abandoning them if they strayed too far from thousand-year-old ideals that didn’t apply to a current age, instead of updating with them. That was the problem with Iberon. The pantheon of Immortals that had helped it rise to power had expected them to adhere to everything that had driven their rise to greatness, and instead of actively correcting them as rising empire became mature empire and then became decadent and dying Empire, they had begun to ignore them when they didn’t stick to the same standards, despite the fact that times and attitudes naturally changed when young and striving became mature and stabilizing, then falling and grasping. They played games with mortal souls and societies with impunity, because there was no standard to hold them to account, save their own superiors chastising them or their rivals checking their actions. It was a completely corrupted Alignment system based not on goals, not on mindsets, and not even on power, but on who belonged to what. Sure, a Pantheon could cross Spheres. But it still had no moral or ethical obligations, only acts of support for their Spheres, all of which were at best Neutral, and which Entropy was basically Evil personified. Being a good Immortal was backing your Sphere and carrying its obligations forward. Not being a good Immortal could mean forcible demotion, but as everything was earned by your own efforts, it could be earned back. Enforcement by strength, and since everything was earned by one’s self, with only occasional gifts or bonuses from one’s superiors, they were the very embodiment of Independence, without any moral compasses to guide their overall behaviors, or at least ones without any teeth. I was very outnumbered, my opponents were powerful enough to reshape a world on a whim with permanent expenditures of Immortal Power, and I didn’t have any viable allies who could assist me. This… could be bad. ------- As the Immortal finished up, my eradication of the Khirifi long done, I nodded once at him. “Two additional questions, both related. One, what is the Land, the planet, to you? Clearly it has the power to grant magic as an Immortal.” He hesitated a moment, probably wondering whether he should reveal such a thing to me. “This planet, called Tera by mortals since many ages past, is known among Immortals as Nown. It is a Megalith, one of the largest and greatest beings of Matter, and a natural bearer of Immortal power and energy. Such wondrous beings are often used by Immortals to host mortal souls upon their surfaces, protecting and nurturing life as is their way.” Huh. Not just the ecosystem, the planet was actually an Immortal being itself. Important! “Second, why have there been no additional travelers from future? What is the prohibition against traveling to the past?” Okay, that gave him pause. He opened his mouth to cover for it, I frowned, and looked away before he could say anything. “You don’t know,” I interrupted him. “Am I correct that you cannot successfully change the past? Only create a new timeline that disappears as soon as the creating Immortal leaves it?” Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. He stared at me as if I’d grown another head. “How could a mortal possibly know that?” he asked archly, as I once again exceeded his expectations. “Likewise, attempting fifth-dimensional travels up the timestream results in nothing concrete manifesting off the main timeline, which refuses to be locked down and indeed seems to actively avoid a future any Immortal has witnessed?” His expression as he stared at me was incredibly strange. “You are touching upon great mysteries of Time, things neither they nor we of Thought are fully cognizant of. Where did you possibly learn of them?” “You are aware I come from four thousand years in the future, are you not?” He paused, then nodded slowly. “By your own definitions, I must then also come from an alternate timestream, one where someone like me does NOT come from the future to save the King of Darkmoor. The timeline of my future does not intersect the timeline of this reality, and likely deviated from it the moment a being from this time was sent into the future. “Which timeline is the true one is ambivalent, as they are all true. But the reason the Soul Eaters could not touch the souls of me and my comrades is not because we are souls not yet born, as that Prophecy seemed to dictate. It is because we are souls that never will be born in this reality, and so are beyond Entropy itself. “The Time Portal in the Thisbean Inn is not a Portal across this world’s time. This time and place is a single connection to an alternate reality that anchors the loop of the Time Portal’s existence through a closed temporal circuit. Any attempt to exit the Loop anywhere but one’s own time, including a jump into the future, will result in temporal pressure wiping them. “Thus, your time-traveling Dynasts can only jump forward in time, and never return to the past, if they wish that future to remain part of the same timeline. Exactly as if they went to sleep and woke up in the future,” I remarked, barely paying attention to him. He was eyeing me in amazement. “You have deduced this all on your own?” he asked incredulously. I wasn’t about to tell him that my mental Stats, especially Intelligence, were at very non-mortal levels, and I possessed plenty of outside knowledge that he did not… and he would likely happily take me apart to learn for himself. “You have long deduced all this, and it is completely obvious if you know what to look for in temporal mechanics. A few hundred miles from here is a starship from an advanced scientific society, which is part of an interstellar federation of many sapient races. Any one of their more advanced theoreticians could have told you the same thing.” He glanced in the direction of the tellingly. “Were you one of the Immortals who sabotaged it and brought it down?” I asked coolly. “The evidence of Immortal involvement is obvious.” “Me?” he asked, a bit startled. “Of course not! That level of interaction with mortals is above my tier…” he trailed off, watching my unmoved expression, and he sighed. “I really want to meet your Patron, Lady Edge. They have an incredible Aspirant on their hands.” “As an elf, I have to make it to Twenty to become an Aspirant. I’m just motivated, Elder,” I replied in a flat voice that didn’t sound motivated at all. “I will dispose of this Egranzier for you, but I am not going to make it obvious so you can use it. I believe evidence of his activities will be found by securing his skull for questioning, which I can then deliver to you.” “His defenses should be exceptional, as he is a Conjurer, after all,” he deigned to warn me. “Summoned creatures make him exceptionally vulnerable to me, not better defended. Has Elder never prepared to fight a Summoner before?” I asked, my voice dry as bleached bone. “Er, yes, of course,” he answered as smoothly as he could, remembering that he couldn’t dispel my earlier, and the very, ah, eclectic appearance of my magic. “I will leave such matters to you, then.” I just huffed. “The Khirifi are fleeing to the home valleys they abandoned a long time ago. There they will dig in and beseech Gulguz to save them from what is coming. Are you going to allow Him to intervene to save them? Things might get exceptionally pyrotechnic if you do.” His eyes flashed with a brightness that wasn’t mortal. “Will your patron intervene if we do?” he smiled. “We will identify them then, most certainly.” “Interesting. Allowing violations of Immortal Law in order to violate more Immortal Laws. It appears your laws are merely conceptual words, rather guidelines, a general code, some quaint old traditions, ceremonial fluff, interpretive rules hashed out over burning souls and the ruins of empires and the like?” I inquired blandly, and his smile faded away. “I admit to some morbid curiosity as to how big the explosion is when a true Immortal dies, but I would rather not discover that first-hand, Elder. “I will be about the task you bargained for when I am done with my current one.” He sighed again. “Such a vicious tongue you have for a mortal. Have you no fear of Immortal grandeur whatsoever, Lady Edge?” He was probably getting ready to pulse a little Immortal Aura at me to awe me into submission, or at least impress me. “The only things I’ve seen Immortals associated with at the current time is ruination and destruction, and my definitions of grandeur tend to be less on the destroying the local landscape side of things, and more about hope and promise of brighter days. Mmm, perhaps fear is correct, but grandeur is the wrong word to use. I’ll indulge in fear when it is productive to do so. I understand the truly craven are expert backstabbers and all, among other things,” I nodded to no one in particular as I turned away. “By your leave, Elder!” He tamped things back down with a long-suffering look on his face. “Very well, we shall make sure Gulguz doesn’t appear to rescue his people, nor will there be any other Immortal interference.” Which didn’t bode well for the last of the Khirifi, but I wasn’t feeling magnanimous, even if this horrible defeat and lack of deliverance would likely crush their faith in Gulguz forever. Nor did I believe they’d stop Him from trying to rescue them if He was suitably subtle about it all. So, cheating was definitely going to be on the agenda. That was fine, as I was really good at cheating. Did they really think that someone who could and was really just whizzing around flying after them? The Khirifi were already dead, they just didn’t know it. After all, their ultimate flight destination was obvious. Did they really think I wouldn’t go there ahead of time and prepare the place for my arrival? Runes make for really good ways of striking at things ahead of time, after all…