BECMI Chapter 17 – The Elements of Time

I wasn’t too concerned about going into the past. I was now concerned about being trapped there, aging normally forward in time, and being around during my approximately two years of childhood. I didn’t know if that would destroy me or not.

Presumably I could use the Inn here to wait out the crossover, if I had to.

I eyed the scum and crap on the floor, and reflected that I’d not stayed in this place for any length of period into the past, because I would have compulsively cleaned it up.

I wandered up the steps, the carpet that was more like sandstone and remnants of who knew how many fights, and trotted down to the apartment that the hobgoblin was hiding in.

There was no consideration of letting it live and leading others back to me, or spreading word of this place. It was very dark, very malicious, and the world was better off without him.

I pushed open the door, Cast a through , and snaked it around the corner the hobgoblin was waiting to jump out from, hitting it in the chest and dumping a whole lot of voltage into it. The wine-colored hobgoblin grabbled and gargled and expired, slumping to the floor as black and red lightnings faded away, and vivus poofed up on it.

There was a midden hole, basically a garbage pit, tied to a communal bathroom on this floor.

It was clean. Antiseptically clean. As in never had been cleaned, it was so clean.

I looked down it, and realized where all the trash had gone.

The two goblins, and one dead orc, that already were rotting in their rooms were dragged byover and into the midden, dumped into the bottom of it, and left there.

I was 99% sure that at the dawn, it was going to reset and there weren’t going to be any corpses down in there.

That left the Elemental down in the basement.

I wasn’t worried about the Elemental, even if it was enraged and trapped.

This world didn’t allow on Rings. That was extremely unhappy for me. I liked having my spell options, and raw spell power I could sacrifice for other spells if I needed it through Arcane Theurgy.

The closest thing that existed was a power for clerics, which started at +1 spell for Valences I to III, and conceivably could be increased to all Valences.

I was working on the Matrix side of things, which was a slow and steady long-term investment, using Naming Karma.

Elemental Command Rings existed here, however, and moreso, were part of a powerful trifecta of Talisman, Ring, and Staves that granted great power on the Elemental Planes and over Elemental beings. The key part of the trifecta was that the items could be aligned to one, two, or all four Elemental planes, but Elemental Command Rings were generally mono-Element.

That was probably because the Rings defaulted to Elemental , not Elemental Command. Adaptation just let the wearer survive on those Elemental Planes and in conditions like those planes. So, able to survive the pressure of the depths and breathe underwater, survive in a lava field or a forest fire, etc.

Elemental Command was much more domineering, especially with regard to power over Elementals. The extra spells that normally went with the Ring I couldn’t make stick, which also did not surprise me. Those abilities seemed to have been oriented here to only manifest through a Staff or something similar.

Elemental Command was enough, however.

The door to below was locked. Since the door was effectively unbreakable, this had trapped the Elemental below.

found the key to the lock in the drawer of the desk to what was obviously the office and private apartments of what had to have been the owner of this place. I could probably have picked it, but I spent a III to locate the key and never have to do so again, so I retrieved it after disposing of the goblins, headed back down and popped it open.

The Elemental didn’t even notice the door was open by the change in windflow, busy whizzing about the chamber in agitation at being so caged, spinning half-into and out of whirlwind form as I came down the stairs.

When it finally noticed me there at the bottom of the steps, it paused a moment in shock, then finding an outlet for its rage, it barreled in at me.

I was lucky elven women on this world averaged pretty short, as I could play at being an adult while being a two-year-old in size. The enraged Elemental barreled at me, manifesting frozen encasements on its limbs and slashing tears of ice and lightning in the currents around me as it charged at me.

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I flared my Aura once.

It stopped a foot short of me, almost frozen in horror. The swirling winds and air of its form rapidly slowed down and went very still as I leaned forward at it.

“An Elemental that cannot control itself is of no use to me,” I informed it in exquisite Cirrus. “Return to your base form and gain control of yourself, or be destroyed.”

The winds it was made of darkened in the equivalent of a swallow, and I felt its rage leave it quickly, replaced by great fear. It couldn’t even touch me, and it knew that I had the power to absolutely annihilate it.

It faded down slowly towards the floor, not daring to move. “What is your command, Great Mistress?” it asked hesitantly, not happy about such matters, but not about to fight with me over them.

“I neither brought you here nor kept you here. I assume you came in through the closed temporal Rift and trapped yourself.” The uneven swirling of winds about it indicated my guess was correct. “When did the Rift close on you?” I asked it calmly.

“Four days ago,” the Elemental replied immediately, eager to get into my good graces.

Four days ago. I looked up at the sky above reflexively, although I knew what I would see.

A waning moon. Four days ago had been the full of the moon. Was the Rift below opening active on the full moon? Magic could be so predictable sometimes…

“Be still a moment.” Taking me literally, all of its winds stilled, and it was only a patch of floating, congealed air as I Cast upon it, specifically looking for when it came from.

Five years hence.

“Recite to me the circumstances of how you came to the mortal plane here,” I ordered it aloofly.

The Air Elemental’s sussurant voice in Cirrus related to me that he had been brought in to fight some monstrous humanoids of the mortal world by a wizard, but then was trapped here and could not be released. Enraged, it had turned upon its Summoner as soon as the magic failed, but the mortal and its companions had fled upstairs, leaving the Elemental alone with the slain humanoids and their compatriots, and the open Rift.

The Elemental had taken the Rift and ended up here, seemingly in the same room, but with no signs of the creatures it had fought before. Unable to break out, it had slowly begun to go crazy in such confined quarters, and then I had appeared.

Its unspoken question was completely apparent.

“I have no need of you, nor need to compel you into my service. Come and follow me, but be wary. If it is your freedom you seek, it may destroy you.”

The solid air of its body trembled, but it only replied, “Yes, Great Mistress!” and followed me dutifully as I glided back up the stairs to the upper level, which was in a doorway off the kitchen. Given the basement held many more supplies, that was to be expected.

It was careful to disturb nothing as it flowed around the shining, polished ovens and stoves of the kitchen, breezes setting hanging cooking instruments to swaying a bit, but otherwise politely doing nothing.

It came out into the main dining area, and trembled visibly when it saw the open doorway there… but dared not make a move for it.

“You are an Elemental. Approach the door, and feel what lays across it. You will not be able to pass without my leave.”

Quickly yet carefully, the Air Elemental flitted across the room, pausing on the threshold and extending tendrils of swirling air at the doorway, cautiously feeling for some barrier there, pressing forwards…

And then it was displaced back a second before it reached the door, startled.

“Time, Great Mistress,” it whispered back to me. “There is a barrier of time across the doorway…” it confessed unhappily.

I nodded slowly as I came up next to it. “Yes, but that is not the problem. I can open the door for you.” Excited cold winds instantly tripled in speed around it next to me, vaguely humanoid face amid those winds showing joy. “The problem is that you come from the future.” I pointed out there. “Out there, the you of five years in your past already exists. You have come back in time to before when you were Conjured forth on this plane.

“The same object may not be able to exist twice in the same time here, I do not know. It is possible that you may exit through that door, and cease immediately to exist here, because you already DO exist here.”

The Elemental trembled next to me.

“Or, perhaps as an Elemental being you are beyond such restrictions of time. If that is so, you need only avoid going anywhere near yourself until such time as your past self is Conjured into this place in the future. I am absolutely certain if the two of you should touch before then, you will be annihilated.” I turned to look at it. “If you wish to go, I will not stop you. If you do not care to take the risk, you must remain inside until the future, and hope that I am there to let you out at that time.”

The winds actually steadied. “Time is of the Waters! Air has dominance over the Waters! I will go!” it actually declared grimly. “I will avoid myself until Time is at peace again!”

“Well enough.” I glided forwards, reaching out with . His black star sapphire Orb glittered, and the veil of time across the door reluctantly was pushed aside. “Go.”

With a joyous howl, a rush of wind blew past me and was out the door into the night, rushing happily up into the sky as I stepped after it. Aspects of it swirled in Cirrus in my ear, and I knew that the Elemental had just given me its Name if I needed to call upon it again.

I sensed only a weird churning in the temporal flow, as if some monstrous hostility was dissipating and dispersing across the sky, instead of condensing and chasing the Air Elemental.

It looked like it was right. It didn’t have a structure solid enough for Time to grasp, and so had slipped away. Presumably, hostile Fire would not be so constrained, either.

All well and good. Now it was time for me to prep myself up a bit. I was going to clean this Inn up, then cover the area in Wards that would conceal it from the ground and fliers alike. There’d be no more stumbling into the place without my approval, and nothing overhead was going to notice anything amiss on what I did here.

Then I was going to start doing some research on chronomancy, work out how to make a Temporal Beacon for myself, and really knuckle down and earn some impressive amounts of Karma as I shot for my IX’s on both the clerical and mage side of things.