BECMI Chapter 213 – A Way Forward

There was a crunch as both of their knees hit the balcony. Their hands were out, their eyes closed, faces turned to the sky… and tears started to come down freely.Not quite what I expected, but you know? I’d take it, and take it happily. I watched Briggs’ hand find hers, and they clasped together with the sincerity and trust of long-time lovers and friends.

It was a good five minutes before they lowered their heads and sighed in unison. They still weren’t looking at me as their eyes opened, their hands went to their thighs, and they just sat there and thought, probably Mark-talking, before pushing themselves up and back to the Disk-chairs.

I was waiting there, my long fingers steepled, just looking at them, neither mocking nor impressed, just accepting.

“I’ve been waiting all my life to feel something like that. To have the soul shriven, to stand in the Truth of Heaven, to look up and know it’s all really there, and out there, after all the shit we’ve seen…” Briggs whispered in a heartfelt low rumble of tempered joy.

“Words of Creation,” Sama crackled in a low voice, somehow even sharper than before. “I didn’t think they even existed here. Certainly couldn’t use Karma to learn them on my own…”

“The power of Good is present in this multiverse, but it is not Incarnated. Nor are any of the Alignments, for that matter. Hence the Elements have risen to prominence, especially with the lack of profound Entities of any stripe, themselves opposed by the Immortals as outsiders and interlopers… and they very well might qualify as such, here.”

“Which is why there are no naturally-occurring Holy effects that actually draw on the power of Good, these people don’t even recognize such as worth following, and Neutrality is so overwhelmingly common that it’s basically seen as an anti-undead thing, more than anything else. Even the magicks that purport to draw on the powers of Sin and Virtue don’t have any real teeth behind them,” Briggs grunted with feeling.

“’Holy’ here tends to be subjective to the Caster,” I agreed with them calmly. “Actually using powerful Alignment-based energies would probably alarm any Immortal who witnessed such a thing. Divine energy here is biased towards the Immortal granting it and has minimal Alignment applications, except possibly between Law and Chaos, and even then it is more nominal than any kind of defining factor,” I sniffed. “It’s not much different than having no Alignments at all, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, and without such implications, the power of Levels and magical ability leads straight to abuse.”

Both of them nodded tiredly. “There are times it has been VERY hard to do the right thing,” Sama hissed, her black nails caressing the arms of the Disk like she was sharpening them in whispers of motion. “Respecting the less powerful while doing it is often even harder. These people are often so dense about the implications in living in a world where Levels are right goddamn in front of them, measurable, and they still don’t care a damn about Leveling up. It’s, it’s So Damn Frustrating…” She clenched her hands and pounded on the arms of the chair.

Briggs patted her arm consolingly. “You can speak the Words. That means a heavy metal soul, as they used to say in-game,” he remarked with a click of his tongue. “Being Powered and knowing the Words help that much? Or have you just never been confronted with hard decisions between bad choices?”

I lifted an eyebrow at that, but his face was honestly interested and waiting for an answer.

“In the past of Darkmoor, I genocided an entire human tribe who followed the Immortal Gulguz on His mandated quest to invade, conquer, and bring down the Iberon Empire. At His behest, they engaged in massacre, slavery, and the Summoning of Fiends, including soul-eating monstrosities.”

They both looked rather impressed at that, but I went on. “In this time I have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of humanoids, or, more accurately, nifloids. You see, I found out that in the ancient past, Nifl Herself, one of the Hierarchs of Entropy, created a race of rapidly-mutating Beastfolk and reincarnated Evil souls into them as Her tool for spreading chaos and violence in the world. In time, She turned to other Projects, her subjects mutated themselves into something approaching genetic stability by cross-breeding with other races, bred their own Immortals, and became the kobold, goblin, orc, hobgoblin, gnoll, ogre, and troll races of these times.

“They are still a trap for reincarnating Evil souls, basically one of the karmic punishments levied upon those souls… and yes, I appreciate the irony,” I added before Sama could comment.

“In the time of Darkmoor, I genocided the entire species, save a handful who were led off to safety in the Hollow World before I could get to them. I’ve never been there as yet, and have only been on the surface for a couple of years real time here, mostly in Zanzyr and the Bleaklands.”

They glanced at one another. “We’d heard that the elves of Zanzyr had started pushing into the Bleaklands, but it was just a rumor few believed, given the nature of elves,” Sama purred in appreciation. “Your influence, I now suspect.”

“I’ve been leveraging the connection to Darkmoor as a training tool. In particular, I brought Brittabelle Erewan, Princess of Erendyl of Zanzyr, back with me last time. She is an Elven Wizard, and she needed to climb the Warrior Path of the Elven Racial Progression. It turns out that thoroughly massacring every male, female, and infant of the progenitor race whose descendants killed your husband is a very effective way to change and evolve your mindset and how you value martial skills and the threat of an enemy whose essential nature will not change for four thousand years… because an Immortal made them that way.”

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Sama’s hard stare offered up an equally hard smile. “Okay, if you can do all that and say Words of Creation, I think you just put the heavy in a heavy metal soul,” she acknowledged.

“I concur,” Briggs rumbled eagerly, shifting forward to present his right shoulder as he rolled up the sleeve there with remarkable deftness considering the size of his fingers.

A Mark Tat glowed there, fed and sustained by Source energies. Strength, unsurprisingly. Smiling, he read my thundering lack of surprise. “You know what this is, obviously.”

“Sama Rantha is also known as the Mistress of the Marks, the woman who tore them from the succubi and delivered them to mortals on Terra-Luna. I also bear one, and like your hyn agent, it is inside my nasal cavity.”

Sama’s smile was toothy as she slugged Briggs’ other arm. “Told you!” she said simply, leaning forward eagerly. “Please tell me you found a way to get Soul Magic working!” she asked urgently.

I had to shake my head, sharing in their instant disappointment. “Soul Essence dissipates into the overarching mana field here, as I’m sure you realized. Trying to manifest it in Shapings or Tattoos is a good way to kill yourself.”

“But the Marks still work, even if the style is somewhat changed, and you can join us in Markspace,” Briggs said simply.

“Conceal us from your people initially. I do not want mine to be overwhelmed, there will be considerably fewer than yours.”

He tilted his big head sideways, his pale violet eyes flickering. “Done,” he agreed.

A strand of my crimson-tipped ink-black locks inserted into my nose, then withdrew, towing behind it a Mark of demonic significance, mine being to Intellect.

I got up, took a step forward, and calmly laid my cheek against the Strength Mark upon his bicep.

Unsurprisingly, he had managed to retain his mastery of ki techniques, and that included the Crystal Shield techniques of the Crystal Dragon. It felt like placing my cheek against warm, living metal, skin like bronze and muscles like ironwood, not really any softness at all… and of course Source energy billowing softly off them, pressing against my own magical Aura with endless strength and vitality.

Contact! A new Door appeared inside my head, strong and vital, and without hesitation I swept it open and stepped through, even as I was returning to my chair, taking care to keep contact totally incidental and not flirtatious the whole time.

I heavily doubted Sama was jealous and possessive of Briggs, given what I knew of her original, but I wasn’t going to be doing anything to either of them like that.

The whistle was mental, not physical, but Sama and Briggs still let it go as this Lady Edge stepped through the Markdoor.

One of the few things that had kept the two of them on track over the years had been the fact that they could see the Colors of other souls in the Markspace, if not their own. So, they were able to warn one another about decisions and conduct unbecoming a Good person, and keep themselves from falling into Brown or Green or Blue, and thence taking that incredibly easy next step to the darker Colors.

Their people could see it, too. Sama was Yellow streaked with Orange, always a bit too emotional and independent and totally unwilling to change that part of her personality with a stubbornness that could erupt right into apocalyptic violence for those who thought to control her.

Briggs was also Yellow, but laced with some hard and stern Whiteness, always thinking of others and how his actions impacted them.

This Lady Edge was truly heavy metal.

The arcs and whorls of her magic spun about her, tighter, brighter, and more controlled than any Caster Sworn into their service and Marked. They played into one another, synergizing, harmonizing, and boosting one other in complex ways that looked completely overwhelming compared to the Matrices of any Cleric or Wizard the two of them had ever seen here.

Her size was relative to her Mental Stats, which meant she was actually far deeper in hue than either of them, indicating a truly dangerous Intellect, while her height was comparable to their own here, indicating a truly strong and Charismatic personality, and the glow of her spiritual depth was also the equal of either of theirs, indicating Wisdom and experience that belied her years.

She was also a deadly edged Gold. Her mental form moved like a dancer, under tremendous control, swift, precise, flexible, graceful, and balanced. There was a hum surrounding her as she floated out to meet them, and they both identified it: an echo of the three Words she knew, reverberating around her Golden self as surely as their own Forsaken Auras.

Above her head floated a faint crown, not a halo. It took a moment for the two of them to realize it was the simple recognition of a Monarch without many followers!

She didn’t look like some holy saint or angel. She looked like the weapon of one!

Sama squinted as she leaned forward. “You’ve got Soul Tats, and is that a Pact marking?” she asked incredulously.

A finger rose to buy Edge time as she slowly spun, taking in their Markspace. Hers was naturally on the other side of her Door, a metaphysical barrier between the two that would swiftly mesh with any work on their collective parts.

There were over two thousand souls in the Markspace. Sama watched the play of lights upon Edge’s mind, and deduced that she was… a little disappointed at the size of the Markspace. Of course, the two of them hadn’t been trying to actively expand their Marked, and since placing each Mark required masterful Tattooing skill, it was not a simple process, nor one that could be easily foisted off on others.

Some of their Marked were literally on the other side of the world, too, or in other very distant lands. Two dozen species were numbered among their Marked, a fact they were rather proud of, although humans dominated.