BECMI Chapter 441 – Not All Immortals Are Created Equally

“That magitomic explosions plus Immortal power equals Immortality?” the huge brute replied in his rather magnificent and measured baritone. “Gaebrel. Captain Emeril, Innkeeper Lalo. I think we can assume she was counting on it at this point.”“Captain… Emeril?” Jorg blinked in astonishment at hearing the Captain’s name.

“Not yours. Alternate timeline,” the blonde corrected him firmly.

“What? There are no such things.” Both looked at him so casually, with expressions exactly like teachers instructing some total idiots. “The, the numbers render it impossible. The idea of branching alternate realities infinitely multiplies the amount of energy necessary to empower said realities, which of course must be divided among each of them from the base timeline, and so would infinitely divide…” he trailed off as their expressions didn’t change a bit.

“Magic,” Briggs said, that one word neutralizing all his arguments.

“Immortal Power,” the woman went on, tapping him forcibly on his chest. He noted that it actually hurt, although he’d had mortals chop him with swords and poke him with arrows and he could barely feel them. “Like you have.”

“Ehhh…” Given some of the utterly miraculous things he could now accomplish, he didn’t know what to say to that. “So, just… highly improbable?” he had to qualify to save his trust in higher math.

“Almost impossible, especially here.” She made a gesture. “Follow me, Engineer. There’s nobody on the base who you would be familiar with, but for different reasons than you know.

“The woman who can explain it best will be here in about five minutes, and she can tell you what is actually going on.”

“Well, that’s sounds like it should be the best thing I’ve heard all day. Uh, may I ask who designed the prop-jobs I saw on the landing strip coming in? I’ve always had an interest in the old mechanical fliers!” he answered brightly, falling in after her without hesitation.

“Your counterpart in the alternate timeline,” the looming Briggs behind him informed him cheerfully.

Jorg blinked several times. “Those really ARE Gunwings?” he asked tightly, clenching his fists. He’d played around with designs for them for how many hours?...

“We had to downgrade the munitions from plasma repeaters to old autocannons for purposes of not getting blown up by Immortals not liking our tech, but yes, those are Gunwings,” the blonde affirmed over her shoulder. “Great design, flies like a dream!” she assured him.

“Can I, can I fly one?” he dared to ask, earning raised eyebrows from both of them.

“I think we can probably arrange that,” Briggs half-chuckled, not unfriendly at all.

He was a little tense when he first saw the Lady Edge. She was one of the native humanoids of the world, with the slender, shorter stature, pointed ears, and fey beauty… only dialed up to at least thirteen! Her eyes were a very unnatural black with almost glowing red pupils, her skin looked like milk, not the faintest sign of tanning or blood vessels visible, smoother than silk or polished bone, and the magic around her made him tighten up in his chair.

It was like feeling someone was wearing an invisible suit of power armor and staring at him, setting off all his enhanced senses!

She was of the same species had been those to invade the core and make those utterly stupid fumblings with it, which had resulted in its detonation!

She was also coldly, unearthly beautiful, enough to leave him a little tongue-tied as he stared at the incredible silken black of her waist-length hair, the way it flared to crimson at the tips, and the tight crimson and black blouse and skirts that flattered everything while not exactly revealing anything, worn with a grace that actually raised the hair on his arms to see.

This woman was DANGEROUS.

Of course, the blonde, whose name was Sama, was as well, only hers was a distracting danger of not knowing how dangerous she was. His magical and spiritual awareness sank into her and drew out nothing, just like the massive Briggs seemed to burn it up. He could SEE she was dangerous, he could FEEL it, but he had no .

The magic around this elf was a coiled viper, and it was ready to strike, totally able to shame his own power, he could feel it in his bones.

She walked in, met his eyes, and just nodded once in recognition he didn’t share. Sama and Briggs both threw up their hands and relaxed just that tiny bit more.

“Second Engineer Turmalez, welcome back.” She waved her hand, and a magical illusion drew itself up in the air before him, gaining his instant attention. It was sort of a Y-shape, with a very long and uneven fork to it. The scale went from zero to four thousand on the side, with the long side of the Y measured off, several big red dots on it. The short side of the Y was not even to two hundred in its length.

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Words appeared next to the bottom of the Y’s base in Gal Standard.

FS Barhund

He sat up straighter as he read it. “This is a… timeline?” he instantly guessed, looking at the scale.

The elven woman (He had to call her elven. She and those interlopers looked too much like the NPC’s in Exudar IV to call her anything else, and that was what their race even translated to on this world!) simply lifted a black-nailed finger, a mutation she shared with the dangerous blonde Sama, and spoke.

“Several years after the crash, the king of a nation of the local humans was kidnapped and taken through a Portal in time.” Right at the split of the Y, a yellow line extended far, far up to the top of the Y, just a little bit behind where they were now, but splitting off from it. “He was rescued by a group of time travelers who had battled down the length of the temporal tunnel to that time period.” An orange line hopped down the long black line of the Y’s ‘future’ in fits and starts, eventually reaching the split. It zipped up to the yellow point, came back with the yellow, and then yellow and orange split off from the black of the main line, flowing along the new short branch. “This was the event that created the alternate timeline. Note the alternate future has dissipated.” He glanced up, and that yellow fork indeed ended when everyone headed back to the past, unable to sustain itself.

“Fifty years after this event, give or take a few years, the Doom of Darkmoor occurred.” An image of the entire globe of this world came up. A detonation which made Jorg blanch was shown in exacting detail, a stupendous eruption covering at least a hundred mile radius, something only possible with antimatter munitions!

It didn’t crack the world or set the atmosphere on fire, but it did somehow throw the planet off its axis, send it spinning, and cause massive geographical collapse and shuffling across the face of the world in a very unscientific manner.

“In the space of only fifty years?” he gasped in shock, even as the two timelines advanced, watching landmasses rise and fall and the planet somehow spin to a rest. Inertia alone should have…!

“Immortals took advantage of the Doom to perform a reset and reshuffling of the planet to support some of their personal projects.” The elfin’s voice was cold and spiteful, and he could not help but agree at the idea. “Immortals were responsible for the missile launch which destroyed Darkmoor. Captain Emeril eventually made peaceful contact with the people of Darkmoor, and in a short amount of time they together built a civilization of high technology there in the north, rising quickly and only going to go higher… and the Immortals decided they didn’t like mortals not needing them anymore, and wiped it away.”

Jorg’s face grew hard. “The crew?” he had to ask, his jaw ticcing out of his control.

“In the timeline in which we stand? Mostly dead. Some, like you, were held in cryosleep against future need. Most of those died as well.” Great red dots indicated the two Dooms. “However, I was there in the alternate Darkmoor, and we sprang a plan to escape it, knowing it was coming and could not be avoided. All the inhabitants of Darkmoor who could reasonably be evacuated were brought here, from that alternate timeline, into the future of this one.” Green lines extended from the short side of the Y to the top of the long side.

Sama nodded. “The Greens you see here are the children and grandchildren of the crew of the from timeline, which we call The Other Shore. The Jorg Turmalez of that timeline is also alive, but he is deep within the Hollow World of Nown, leading a group of survivors down there.”

Jorg could not have been more surprised when the illustration of the world split open, and revealed an entire other world existing on the inside of the hollow sphere of the planet!

“That’s impossible. Gravity doesn’t work that way. The heat, the pressure, the light, the…” he trailed off as three sets of eyes just looked at him. “It’s more magic and Immortal Power, isn’t it?” he sighed in defeat, and they all nodded together.

“The Other Shore is coming up on a hundred years after the Doom. That is where I just returned from. You were woken from your cryosleep here.” He watched a blue line crawl up the black line to a thousand years after the Doom of Darkmoor, where another bright red dot waited. “This was the Crimson Cataclysm. I actually saw you come out of cryosleep, fight off the elves and the Immortal Thanatos who led them to the core, and make the adjustments which turned the explosion of the core to a mere venting of volatile matter and radiation.” Her hands steepled before her. “I also rescued all of the surviving crew in cryosleep capsules, and I am going to be moving them to the Other Shore at some point. I have verified all of their counterparts who live are in this timeline, and I assigned Jorg to remain behind on the off chance that the same thing happened to you as happened to your Department Head, Senior Master Cerebral Engineer Gabriel Xavos Encheliff.”

Jorg blinked again, then shook his head slowly. “That arse managed to make it here?” he had to blurt out in resignation.

“Yes. On the Other Shore, Captain Emeril instead managed to make the transition, and is arguably in a better position, reconstituting himself after a mere fifty years and change.”

On the long side of her Holo, the blue line of his existence leapt past most of the line, coming to the end which represented the present day.

“It has been something like three thousand and eleven years since the Crimson Cataclysm. The as you know it no longer exists, eradicated or transformed during the Cataclysm, and any remnants were dropped into the lava flows between the mantle of the world of Nown so as to cause no further trouble.

“There is one exception to this, and that is the remaining fusion core of the ship, which exists here.”

The map of the globe returned to that of a normal planet, zoomed in on the continent he was on currently (it looked nothing like he remembered) and zoomed in on a particular area, a roughly T-shaped land bounded by mountains on all sides. A bright light winked at the center of the T.

“This is the magocracy of Zanzyr. The fusion core of the lies five miles below the School of Magic there.

“Unbeknownst to you, while you were in cryosleep, Immortals of Energy came in and altered the fusion core, turning it into the most powerful Artifact of likely the entire world. You weren’t able to sense the altered magic, but the elves who intruded upon it could, and it was what drew them in.”