BECMI Chapter 29 – Time is Cruel
“Can we, can we test that?” Hanvol the wizard asked, his eyes keen, seeing an opportunity. “Forget seeing myself when younger, just knowing things that happened in the last ten years is a great opportunity!” he exclaimed, but he made no move towards the door.
“Indeed. Change your name, live elsewhere until you catch back up, mmm. Unfortunately, those we could have tested it with, the gnolls downstairs, are dead. They came through the Portal as well, unlike these goblins. So, the only way to test is to drag this one downstairs and take him with us backwards further.” I toed the still-living goblin on the ground.
“That… will take us even further back in time,” Horn pointed out calmly.
“Absolutely true, Sir Horn.” I inclined my head. “If anyone would like to volunteer to leave?” I waved at the closed door, and the darkness outside. “Also, the road to getting home is somewhat perilous, but if we can leave, then well enough, we can do so in the morning after partaking of supplies from the Inn.”
All eyes turned on the last goblin, tapped on the head by me and going to stay very unconscious.
He had a necklace of human thumb bones. I had no guilt for using him as an experiment, nor would I let him live even if time didn’t kill him.
“I think I would rather go back a few years more than risk death walking out that door,” Buck proposed with a sigh. “And we’ve no reason to stick around longer, right?”
“If Master Guy would take the first coin from the till as a test, I suggest we return to the floor below, then.”
The rake was quick to do so, opening the till up, flicking up the first gold coin cast millennia ago in a land long forgotten and holding it nervously in his hand. He smiled and led the way downstairs quickly, where the Portal still flickered.
“Follow me, weapons ready,” I told them calmly, after pulling out the Temporal Beacon, lifting it up, and releasing another/the same golden Cone as before.
“What is that?” Hanvol asked eagerly, as I slid the Beacon into a sleeve it couldn’t possibly fit into.
“A Temporal Beacon. If the Portal turns around and leads into the future, this is a marker I can sense and home in on across the years. Line it up.” I reached back to grasp Buck’s small hand, Horn put his shield on the hyn’s shoulder, Guy was last dragging the goblin on a Disk behind him, and they all followed me in.
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Evil!
I oriented on the three things radiating darkness from different corners of the room instantly, as well as the blob of much lesser Evil right in front of us.
A score of different humanoids and two giant weasels, all animated as monstrous zombies.
Completely unimportant compared to their masters.
I didn’t really see them all. My Rose exploded up, Thorns discharged in a screaming howl of undead-loathing hate, condensed into a single Ray, and the skull in the back corner was the first target of the Thornray, the Holy Metas empowering it looking like a single great black skull glowing silver as it came screaming in to consume the very existence of the thing.
It started to wail, and then the entire room lit up in under a second with blazing black skulls flying in every direction, undead writhing, their spirits howling as arcane black flames edged in unwhite vivus dragged them down for the Land to feed on. Suddenly the whole chamber was silent, but swamped in clumps of ash, crude equipment, and knee-high mist.
They’d all seen the dead ignite and start Burning away when I tapped them with the black flames around Dread, and not even Guy wanted to dare the touch of my Staff now. They all swallowed as they registered the number of opponents here.
“Well,” I murmured, lowering my hand. “Gentlemen, I have a very bad feeling we are going to see more events like this if we keep having to go back. Something powerful setting up shop and killing large numbers of those left with no chance to escape but using the Portal…”
“That makes sense, especially if they are trapped in the bottom here and can’t get out.” Which, if you couldn’t pick the lock or Knock it open, was precisely the situation. “Master Guy, your coin?” I asked him.
He held up his hand, looking around numbly and counting the clumps of enemies. There was nothing revealed as he opened his palm.
I gestured, and there was a tinkling as an array of coins and minor gemstones came up out of the mist and fell onto the Disk with our goblin prisoner. Included among them was a glowing Mace, a sturdy Shield, and two Potion bottles.
Everyone’s eyes lit up as the coins built up around the goblin.
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“These are not coins from the Inn here. Master Guy, open the door for us, and let’s head upstairs. Swords out, gentlemen. There’s more undead up there, and they are now free of their masters.”
Swallowing, the men nevertheless followed Guy up the stairs, Sir Horn following the rogue as they prepared to fight.
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More monster zombies, humanoids turned to undead, of all species that might be found in the Broken Lands. There were over forty of them, with five being of ghoul status and in control of the others, who I sniped off one by one as the warriors worked through the rest. Even Hanvol contributed with his staff, the Greater Magical Weapon and Striking upon it turning it into a crashing thing able to totally crush a skull despite him having the strength of a scribe.
His spells he was saving for emergencies. Watching me let off Reserves and Cantrips doubtless roused a great envy and wonder in him, but he held his tongue and did not ask, accepting that he was the lesser Caster here and obeying orders dutifully.
I smote the undead, and vivus took them all one by one, with Vivic Barbs-as-Skulls picking off the ghouls one by one while the men held the line against them. Master Hanvol was much more confident after I Cast a Force Armor on him, and if not the most adept combatant, he was fully impressed by the very deft way I wielded my own Staff and could pierce and pound my way through the undead, Burning them down with alacrity and impunity.
When it was done, the men all collapsed into chairs in the main room, looking at the piled corpses Burning down to ash… and my Phantom Servant Jeeves, translucent and in a classic butler’s outfit despite being a skeleton with ruby roses in his eyes, picked up their belongings, then hauled the corpses off to the nearest midden to clean up after them.
“There were three druj downstairs,” I told them as I waited by the door out. “They were slaying those who came out of the Portal, and could go incorporeal and pass through the doors to meet those who came through the door instead. They probably could have used the key to open the doors, but figured it made better sense to trap any unlucky explorers.”
There’d been six humans among the undead up here, all turned into zombies under control of the druj.
“Druj are powerful undead. You killed them all with a single spell!” Hanvol murmured. They wanted to be eating something, but all of the food had rotted away and was spoiled and fouled by the presence of the druj. There was nothing edible left in the entire building, and that included the few supplies they had with them, which they had to chuck down a midden themselves!
“Yes. I am particularly effective at killing undead,” I confirmed coolly. “Before you get too comfortable, there is a small matter.” I inclined my head at the Disk, and the still-unconscious goblin there. “One man per limb, please.”
They looked at one another, stood up without complaint, and stepped over to the goblin.
Horn and Guy at the front, Hanvol and Buck at the back, they walked up to the door as I opened it.
“On three.” I lowered Dread towards the Portal.
They calmly swung the goblin back and forth, building up momentum, and on three I lowered my Staff, there was a wavering pulse and something like an iris opening, and they hurled the goblin forth.
A single silver coin hit the ground, rolled, and vanished before our eyes.
The doorward snapped closed, and everyone stared at the emptiness outside, no goblin there.
“I’m not stepping outside,” Buck said shakily, his eyes wide. “What was that with the coin?” he managed to ask in a really quiet voice.
“I put three coins on him, all of different ages,” I replied shortly. “Ten, twenty, and forty years old. The oldest of them was the one that managed to hit the ground.”
“How far back are we?” Sir Horn asked stiffly, as they all contemplated the horror of simply vanishing if they set foot outside the door.
“Outside that door it is the winter of 967,” I informed him. “Twenty-three years before I entered.”
“Eighteen years for us,” Hanvol murmured. “Another jump like that, and none of us will be born yet…”
“Another jump is all we have left, right?” Guy asked, a haunted look in his eyes. “We can’t get out of here any other way, but to keep going back, until we can go forward?”
I nodded slowly. “Along with everyone else, we are on a one-way trip into the past. And as you know from the future, there’s almost no sign any of those slain were ever there, nor the monsters we killed. It’s one of the reason I’ve been insisting we clean everything up as we go, although I’m sure others would do the same.”
“They either take the Portal, or they die from something coming through the Portal or the door and their remains are shoved down the latrines,” Horn agreed thoughtfully. “By something like us.”
“We still have time to go further back. Can you back us all?” Hanvol asked urgently, everyone’s hands moving to the weapons I’d enchanted for them.
“Of course. We move on and fight, or we die, and I will not let you die.” I did not smile at them, but they did, immensely cheered by the statement, cold and factual as it was. “Also, there is nothing to eat here, and will not be until the morning Renewal. We should be able to get in at least three more jumps before dawn comes and the Portal closes until the next night.”
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The first thing I noticed on coming out of our last jump for the night was that there was a lot of noise coming from above, including shouts of pain, the skirl of metal on metal, and the thumping of floorboards under bodies and blows taking place.
Some of the voices were human.
“Combat up above!” I said authoritatively. “Some of those fighting are not humanoids! Horn, take lead, prepare to fight!”
Sighing but ready for it, the boys followed the Wahrsherzan warrior up the stairs, me behind them all.
They had been getting in a lot of fighting, and I had been Healing them and disposing of bigger threats from behind them… or ahead of them if I sensed a greater Evil that needed to be disposed of.
I was seeing a knot of Evil and Neutrals fighting in the main dining area, and had a good idea of what we might see coming in.
There were two wounded men on the ground in the kitchen when we burst up out of the basement, who gasped and clutched weakly at their axes as the lads ran by. I instead knelt down by them, placed my hand on the chest of what looked very much like a Nordic warrior from the island kingdoms, his mail rent and stomach cut open, and Healed him, black vines snaking down from my hand and across his gut. He gasped and struggled, seeing that, while I fended off his arm, and ten seconds later, it was done and his gut wound was gone.