BECMI Chapter 162 – Time is Anchored

I was so prejudiced against Immortals and their fucktard interference in the lives of mortals, playing with them in their insipid games, that I’d completely overlooked the goddamn obvious.The temporal traps? The erasure if you meddled with the past? The elusiveness with the future? The automatic creation of an alternity when the loop actually reached its proper location, a time period where it was fixed to a future past my own, past the Source who existed at the same time as me?

That was all Forsaken Temporal Anchoring, Pillar of Reality stuff from the highest tiers of Forsaken capabilities!

My timestream didn’t have a king abducted into my future. The alternity did. I still had yet to see that happen. Meaning the actual king of my timeline was the other split point, the convergence that brought the two lines together.

He would go forward into a future that could not be, and would vanish the instant we departed. When it came time, in the present, it could be re-enacted, and the two streams would be anchored by him returning from the future.

We couldn’t exit the Inn to mess with time and would disappear because that would instantly send us into an alternity. The vanishing we saw was an alternity being created, whisking away the living… and when that being died, the alternity it created died on the vine with it.

Alternate Darkmoor existed because it was now anchored at the split in the past, and the connection to me in the present, a hard line that kept it from vanishing as it became part of my own future.

A new future. Splashed by the powers of a Source changing Fate on a great scale, yet without changing things up to the anchor point in the past here.

“Gods in Heaven.”

Based on the words of the other Shards and Aelryinth, there was probably a Briggs and Sama here. Maybe had been here for a very long time, maybe just recently and they’d just out-Leveled the locals with pure badassery.

I had automatically assumed I’d hear of them, because how could people that competent actually hide? But then I hadn’t dwelled on the fact that the Immortals would likely be as or more opposed to the existence of Forsaken than they would be to even a Heaven-bringing fool like I was, and Briggs and Sama would know it.

They might be keeping a remarkably low profile, and their own nature quite under wraps. It would be simplicity itself for an Immortal to arrange, oh, a meteor to come down and blow apart wherever they were living, for starters, or arrange earthquakes so devastating entire landmasses sank…

They’d done it in the past for pissy reasons. I fully believed they would do it again.

I could, of course, be wrong. But I totally did not think I was.

Oh, oh how that might change things...

Two powerful Forsaken with potential access to high-end science? I could imagine, that is…

Damn, I was probably fate-manipulated into going back to Darkmoor just to get that science for them! If they had heard about Darkmoor, realized the implications, or stumbled across its tech somewhere…

There was no way any Forsaken but a Void could use the Portal, however, and if there were Voids here, they’d be beings of utter horror to a magocracy as corrupt as this one.

Was even being drawn to this world a subconscious fate manipulation by a Source? I couldn’t say no. Even technically being didn’t render me immune to things being nudged around me, and I’d gone back in time of my own free will, for my own reasons.

Because they couldn’t go back there themselves!

I began to laugh with a dire gleam in my eyes, chuckles under my breath that had the closest students skittering away and looking around wildly, wondering who was about to incur my wrath.

The only thing I knew was that they weren’t in Zanzyr, or the two principalities ruled by undead would now be un-alived all the way. Neither of those two were going to tolerate the existence of such places and beings, and the undead were not at all prepared for two Forsaken who could defy soul-eating touches and just Feed them to the Land on general principle.

While Delpha might seem a good place to hide, with all those people and powerful adventurers among them, the ripple effects of them being able to defy the wizards there would have definitely reached out. I could totally see Sama cutting a swathe through the reputed Overmagi there with about as much concern for them as they had for non-Casters, and Briggs leading a rebellion that would spread across their Empire and cripple them with incredible speed.

Resentment of non-Casters against Casters could be fanned to quite the fever pitch, after all.

But, no. That would also draw Immortal attention, and likely utter catastrophe when the Immortals realized the implications of powerful Forsaken around. Briggs and Sama could probably deal with lesser Immortals, just like I could, but the powerful ones would simply be too much.

That likely meant they’d had a ‘typical’ adventuring career, more about exploring and fighting against monsters than mass combat and accumulation of temporal power where their unique natures might be sussed out the more easily.

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Both of them were fighters, and simply would not be able to hide their competency in that manner. They would have to go somewhere with other great fighters, where there were enough people that they didn’t stand out too much, and their skill would be lauded and admired, but would not be unique.

They’d be gathering students and followers in the largest non-mage dominated metropolis in this part of the world, extending their reach out slowly and invisibly via Marks.

They’d be hampered by the native Siricilan penchant for treachery and underhandedness, but the Siricilan Empire had many different peoples under its banner to recruit from… and the Marks would give them a communication edge few could even imagine, let alone match.

The knowledge of a Siricilan would be useful to verify this, and lo, Nico Bastionelli came from Fuireze, whose people had very close ties to Siricil. I doubt he’d ever been there, but some news just had a way of traveling…

“The best current gladiators in Siricil?” Nico repeated with some astonishment at my inquiry in the Great Library a short time later. “Is there a specific one you’d like to know more of, Lady Edge?” he asked carefully, yet eagerly.

“I know none of them, so no? It is a list of possible contacts in the future for other purposes,” I deflected casually, yet truthfully.

“I see. Well, Emperor Magni himself was a former master gladiator, and prides himself on being the greatest warrior of the Empire,” the young Alchemist began, fingers tipped together as he concentrated. “The current favorite of the arena is supposed to be Alexei Kravimos, from the Hinter tribes of the southern Empire being pacified there now. He’s younger and rising in popularity, some say starting to rival the Emperor himself, although he has no military exploits to his name.”

He was warming to the topic under my steady gaze. “Zenakwol the Butcher was a favorite, but he’s long retired to obscurity, and might have been killed by some of the relatives of those he dueled. Nelasha the Snake is a rising up-and-comer, and a rare woman having a decent career, although she’s nothing like Sama the Golden Hag. That woman has quite the fell reputation, but she hasn’t performed for over ten years, preferring to train the newer generation with her husband, Briggs the Fellhammer…”

I valiantly didn’t let anything twitch at the names going off as he happily rattled off a dozen more former and semi-current champions, talking about them with the enthusiasm of a sports fan and bemoaning the sad state of such warriors in his home principality.

Well, duh. Why would anyone want to fight for glory in a place as twisted as Fuireze, where today you’re the Prince’s favorite, and tomorrow you’re facing a dragon with a butter knife for his amusement? The Gulimani were as despotic and mercurial as any House in Zanzyr, if not moreso, like all the most treacherous aspects of Siricil wrapped up in wizardry and trotted out on display for the droll amusement of Immortal watchers.

Sama and Briggs were in the City of Siricil, capital of the Empire of the same name, hidden in plain sight among the gladiators fighting for glory and the amusement of the citizens there. They were likely massively expanding their power among those fed up with how things worked there and looking to make some moves, somehow, somewhen, but not knowing how far to take it because they’d likely heard tales of Darkmoor, recognized the science, then how it had died, and had realized Immortal powers were at work and had shut it down.

Had to be so frustrating for them.

It seemed that I was heading to Siricil for at least a short time. I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to the trip, but it was something I was going to have to do at least sometime, if only for Teleportation and trade purposes.

Hmm, that meant I should make it a group excursion, which meant I should find out things I could bring back and forth, and, huh.

Darkmoor needed to prepare some ground. If I could bring Sama and Briggs on board with that, and their resources in Siricil, that would cover a LOT of bases.

What was the likes of the Delphan Empire going to do, complain when someone else immigrated from elsewhere and set up a country where none was? Then again, they had enough magic that they could just DO it…

Because there was a lot of information on Delpha in the Black Rose library. One of the Sims had been living there for nearly two thousand years. As the most powerful nation and Empire on the planet, that was not to be unexpected, and it was right next door as far as continents went.

Indeed, probably the only reason Zanzyr existed today as it did was because the mages Delpha had sent to take over the area had NOT reported back to them on how truly unique the area was for mages. That was likely because House Argencal wanted the power for themselves, and not cut up and dispersed among a thousand Overmagi eager for all the secrets of the Radiance.

On the Immortal level, Thauma probably had all the information on gammathauma under lock and key, and was keeping it very safe from any other Immortals, most of whom probably didn’t even know how he Ascended. Since His ascension to Immortality using the Radiance was probably a direct cause of the Day of No Magic, the last day of the calendar year, and had required no other Immortal aid, that was probably a really, really good idea on His part.

All that would still naturally known or alluded to by the Immortals who had altered the fusion power core of the in the first place, although all the evidence pointed to Thaum/Grandmaster Jean-Arc being the first mortal to take the cheap and free trip to Immortality. They probably even had a trite and fearsome name for the Artifact they’d made up out of it.

Did they even know what the Radiance could do? That the gammathauma actually ate at the magical field of Nown, and would consume it over time? I couldn’t imagine the Immortals of Energy working such an effect into the thing, so I could only assume the other Spheres had intervened and changed things.

After all, I knew the spell that had made Thaum an Immortal. My discovering it was likely what locked it into the magical field. There should not have been such an effect at the time I realized it was possible… but the gammathauma field now was obviously not the same as it had been three thousand years ago.

Yes, someone had definitely interfered with the plans of some Immortals of Energy to make a cheap and easy way to become an Immortal of their Sphere. After all, you had to be an arcane spellcaster of Grand Archmage power to even attempt the spell, and it specifically made you Immortal to the Sphere of Energy and no other.

Since it completely sidestepped the traditional quests and patronage involved, replacing it basically with some very high-end, rarefied, and precise spell research on an energy very few mortals knew existed and even fewer could wield, the Radiance was definitely a cheat by Energy, and the consumption of magic basically a curse on the makers from the other Spheres.

None of which helped mortals at all, naturally…