BECMI Chapter 90 – To the Stormspires and Overstern

“The Code Black is coming. Their dreams and ambitions are utterly meaningless,” I stated icily to the Lord Elder Equavus. “Their pride is meaningless. Their fears are meaningless. Their prejudice is meaningless.

“All that matters is the Code Black, being able to survive to see it, and then being able to survive after seeing it.

“If they run, it follows them. If they fight it, they die. They can only build themselves up and survive it, and they aren’t going to do any of that hiding in isolation and waiting for the Doom to fall upon them, whining that they don’t believe it is happening.

“Lead by example, lead by power, and if them staying in authority is going to kill all they purport to speak for, then remove them from that authority. I can certainly help you in that duty. Denying them access to Elven Wizardry as being unworthy of it is the first step. A great deal of its power is being able to use ALL of the magic that humans have developed over the years, after all. If they don’t care to be involved with humans, are they now going to claim that the spells they are taking from humans are elven in origin?” I just sniffed, and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

I gestured around us. “Everything here is going to go away, Lord Equavus. All of it. Char, ruin, ash. It will all be swept away when the Code Black comes. Hiding in the forest does nothing. They have everything to gain, and nothing to lose by taking these decades to engage, learn, and get stronger with everyone else. There is nothing here they will keep, no territory to endure, no trees to preserve.” I scrolled my eyes across this whole setting slowly, calmly, and watched him flinch and shiver. “Around me, I see only death and dust. What exactly are they defending?”

“Who, who could be responsible for such devastation?” he whispered, trying not to feel it, to unfeel the winds of time blowing past and reducing everything to ash...

“Immortals. Which ones, we do not know, but it is the game they play, and we are but pawns given no chance to change the board, let alone the game. This game will end the way they want it to.

“I would go to your reluctant fools and stare at them with the dread you give only the walking dead, and you will find a way to make them do what they must, because otherwise they doom all about them.

“Leveraging the secrets of Elven Wizardry is but one of those ways.

“Belle cannot engage with you, because she looks around and sees ash and dust and myths vanished in history. If you wish to chase after her, then you must lead your people… and you are not leading them now.”

He said nothing. There were a great many who acclaimed him a great leader, one of the most admired beings in the North, a great figure who stood at the forefront of the elves.

He looked around and saw ash, and realized he had been holding back for far too long, and he could no longer afford to do so.

“You could fly high in the sky with us, could you not, Lady Edge?” Prince Ukker asked of me, as we streaked along a game trail heading to the south.

“Lived-lines, Prince Ukker. Something you will need to pay attention to, for you will be able to , or as most call it, further and more accurately by leaving a trail of your life upon the ground. There are limits to how far one can , and whereto, yet it is possible to jump to a place one has only Scried, or flown past, or seen from a distance, or perhaps someone else has visited.

“If you move along the line of your life, and it is unbroken, without flight or magic disrupting it, you can with perfect accuracy and to twice the distance of those not using it. Thus, we stay low, the give you a geomagnetic connection with the ground, and the lines of our lives remain unbroken upon the land.”

The dwarves behind me all nodded slowly. had made them all smarter, the least of them up to a 13, and they had no problems following the logic of what I’d said.

“What then of the Portal through time?” he asked reasonably, thinking that over. “Was not Darkmoor City the very site of the Inn in the future? Would our lives carry over?”

“You have likely thought of the answer to that already,” I said over my shoulder calmly, and he smiled craftily. “What is your answer?”

“Well, thrice the answer be proper, aye?” he smiled confidently. “The Portal did break us through time, but into the past. There is implicit history in leaving behind a Lived-Line, and ours, they were left in the future, were they not?” The dwarves behind chortled and nodded at the point. “Second, were not we told that this was not even our own past anymore, but a new one created that closed the loop of time and did lock us outside of messing with our own? So not only were our Lines in the future, but a future that does not and will never exist here!”

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“Oh, that’s a sly observation!” one of his guards, Gomrig, nodded solemnly.

“Lastly…” he looked around shrewdly at the trees towering like mountains themselves around us, blocking much of the sun and as a result leaving the undergrowth remarkably clear beneath, “how important is the surface of the land to a Lived-Line, Lady Edge?”

“It is everything. It is why it is difficult to leave a Line across water. It is why a Line is broken if the bridge you cross falls down, or if a sinkhole swallows the road you followed. If the mountain collapses on the cave, or earthquakes shake the land, or the land falls that the sea may surge in, or mountains rise where should be nothing but water and devastation.

“Your Line is a trail through time, but it is tied in reference to the land, the scroll upon which the tale of your life is drawn upon. If the paper is burned, or torn, or crumpled up, that line is now anchored to nothing, and it breaks.”

“The land, it has changed greatly from the future, Lady Edge,” the dwarven prince pointed out solemnly.

“Before the future, Prince Ukker,” I corrected him mildly, and he nodded instantly at the correction as we sped along, breaking the air resistance before us so that we could still converse at the speed we were moving. “That is correct. We came back in time and saw the changes. This land was blasted into a crater that ended up with the Inn itself underwater deeply. Then it literally dragged itself and the stone around it up out of the sea, and the Immortals must have used that to drag out more and more stone, changing the very face of the land as they did so, and the Doom even changed the very axis of the planet.

“Do you remember when we came out of the Inn, and were facing north, and the sun was rising to our right? Did you mark it then, as now?

“The Inn never changed its own construction, but what direction does it face in the future?”

The dwarves all blinked as they realized it. Revered Cruxin whispered, “It faces south and east!…”

“Yes. The Doom that came down literally knocked the planet over on its side, and changed the way it spins.” I flicked up a above me for all of them to look at. “We know that the Crimson Cataclysm took place where now rises Zanzyr City, because deep beneath that place is the source of the field of magic which permeates that nation, the gammathauma, called by some clueless fools The Radiance.”

I threw up another map, this one of present-day Darkmoor, with all its many lakes and rivers, breaking up the country and leaving it a maze of narrow trails, easily-defended roads, fords, bridges, and passes.

I drew an arrow from Darkmoor City, down to the south and the west, past Cloudtop, where the tower of Daffid the Red stood over the Valley of the Ancients, where a red light blinked. “The Palace of the Gods. The source of the Crimson Cataclysm.” I dragged the line from the Inn of the future to Zanzyr City around in almost half a circle, and stopped it below us, in the Valley of the Ancients.

The distance was almost perfect.

Slowly and grandly, the dwarves trying not to turn their heads, I spun the map of Darkmoor through over a hundred and thirty degrees, following that arc back, until it was at the same angle as in our time.

The dwarves were gaping at the sight. North had almost been traded for south!

“Yes, the Doom that is coming knocked the entire planet off its axis, and forced it to take up a new one. Where the Black Sea is now, Darokin rises in the future, and the Shires of the hynfolk. The lakes and rivers of Darkmoor are now the mountains and high plateau of the Tukhmen.

“I am sure that when I take a picture of the world now, and compare it to a map of the world in our time, we will barely be able to tell that entire continents are the places they were. Mountains will rise out of seas, waters will bury lands, borders will change… and the Immortals will have fun sculpting new fun places to watch mortals live in while the world changes about them in the throes of disaster.

“So, no, your Lived-Lines in the now will not extend beyond the Doom. But by then, we shall be out of here, so it will not be relevant.

“You, of course, also are avoiding the most important reason we are not flying.” I turned back slightly. “The beast-men that are ahead of us slinking through the trees would not be available for light exercise.”

“Har!” the dwarves bellowed, clutching after their Axes and Hammers, making ready for a good time.

I was there, and I would not let them die, after all…

Our goal was on the other side of the Stormspires and its rough weather, rather too-numerous rocs and elemental creatures of wind, like arrow birds spitting lightning, and more beast-men and giants boiling out of their caves to have a good spot of fun with those traveling through their lands, how dare we?

Well, they became Karma. The hill and mountain giants in particular were useful, as the tendons and sinews, woven together with their hair, were the primary requirements for Girdles of Giant Strength, which every fighting man ever wanted one for themselves.

Harvesting them was a bit bloody, but the dead didn’t complain, the dwarves had sharp Axes, and they were totally ready to put them to work for that purpose, quite ready to add some more Naming Karma of their own. The more fighting the dwarves got in, the more their Named Weapons and Armor of the smiths might improve...

So it was that we came down along the Ironspur River upriver of the fortified town of Torwell there. We resupplied at one of the mining camps there, the goldweight we’d gathered mostly Burned away and gone by then.

I naturally helped with paving the streets and improving the walls and fountains of the town, which I did late at night after most of the population had gone to bed.

Torwell stood astride the major trade road to the south and the Empire of Iberon, with an old imperial bridge hopscotching across the Forge River and a minor island in the middle. The kingdom of Darkmoor holding this town was basically a hard stop to any invasion seeking to enter the heartlands of the kingdom, while the far side was one of the breadbaskets of the North, centered on Torford Abbey there, famous for its penitent monks and wine.

Or, it had been. All the monks were now dead.