BECMI Chapter 51 – Immortal Consequences
“I bound us in a Shared Life and myself in a Surelife spell,” I informed Cirruluxul calmly, the blue dragon and I watching as the last corks were stopped and the last holes in the barrels were bunged. “You should have been atomized and reduced to dust with the Inn itself. But the Shared Life would not let you die if I did not, and all the excess damage that was conveyed to me ran into my Surelife and was completely neutralized.
“The Immortal is probably not truly dead, as what we killed was likely only one of its bodies. But it suffered the loss of ALL of the power it had entrusted to that Avatar, any knowledge that body had that the others did not, and is likely terrified of the implications of investigating further.
“It will not be back.”
Cirruluxul took a long and deep breath as she stared at me in a complex manner. “Mistress,” she whispered at last, “you killed an Immortal?”
“One of its bodies, yes.” I turned and headed for the stairs. “It was cocky and overconfident. That is a bad combination to be in front of me.”
The dragon sighed and padded up the stairs after me to the upper floor.
Everything up top was perfectly intact, the larder and pantry full, the kitchen equipment and utensils all in their places, the windows to the outside remade. The Distance Distortion and the changes that went with it had been completely disrupted, of course, and I’d have to rebuild them all, but that was fine. A few hours of work Shaping some stone, that was all.
Cirru turned the corner into the main taproom and paused. “My, my hoard!” she gasped in something between a wailing and a shriek.
Naturally her hoard, as well as what remained of the spoils of the others that were not Portable Hole’d on my person, had been vaporized as well.
Not having a hoard to sleep on could be crippling to a dragon when it was time to enter their deep dragonsleep and enter the next stage of their lives. She turned to look at me in absolute distress, and so caught sight of herself in the brightly polished and spotless mirror behind the bar.
Her horns and frill had been blasted white, as had parts of her facial scales and even sections of her chest and back. She held up her claws, the talons gleaming ivory, and shifted to display that the scales down her back had also been painted white by the blasting of Immortal energy.
With a snap, her wings rose, the membranes streaked with white, like paint thrown on them, eye-catching and very unique, like no blue dragon ever.
Lightning crackled down her spine, from the short tips of her horns, all the way around her frill, and down the spinal crests down her back, snapping and popping in agitation.
I sat there and watched her, not saying anything. It was not my concern, after all, and it was a huge distraction from her hoard-loss, at the least.
“At least now we know why the Thisbean Inn is so damn resolute,” I said aloud, tapping my chin thoughtfully as she first examined herself, then slowly began to preen and test out her new look.
That drew the dragon’s attention, and she whipped around to look at me. “How’s that, Mistress?” she asked respectfully.
“The Immortal’s power was fused directly into the Inn when it died, and the Inn’s cross-temporal nature meant that power was evenly diffused across the past, present, and future, which is why it wasn’t disrupted and destroyed. Killing that bastard inside here basically transformed the Inn into an Artifact, and established its cross-time existence.
“The wizards who made the Inn didn’t make it a temporal nexus. The death of this Immortal Avatar did.”
Not that the wizards fucking around with temporal magic hadn’t helped the whole thing get started with the restoration loop, but the Immortal power had really given the whole thing a shot in the arm.
Also, I didn’t know how powerful that Avatar was, but it had been a lot of power.
“It, it did not seem to affect you too much, Mistress…” Cirru murmured, her head shifting from one side to the other to look me over.
I tilted Dread slightly towards her. “Some of the feedback went into my Staff, but basically the Surelife warded off any damage and most of the energy. As I said, most of it sloughed past us and went into the Inn itself. Basically, what you're seeing on yourself is a form of scarring from the energies not being able to penetrate into you.”
“Ah.” I could tell she thought it was massively unfair that I came through so unscathed, but then, she’d be dust if it wasn’t for me, so she said absolutely nothing about it. On the other hand, when she turned her gaze back on the corner where her hoard had been resting for years, even proudly covered with silken sheets when she wanted to sleep on it in her humanoid form, she couldn’t hide her depression.
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“I’ll message some Sims to acquire some raw gold, and we’ll get it worked up into some coins for you. I know you need it for your dragonsleep, and while it won’t be as good as gold that you earned for yourself, well, you just survived the death of an Immortal. Somehow, I don’t think you’re going to have any problems with your molting.”
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Cirruluxul studied her white streaks, which seemed to be throbbing with some sort of energy or power, she just didn’t know what.
She did find herself believing that she wouldn’t have much problem, however. Even if she wasn’t hunting down and slaying beasts and things to establish her power and dominance over lesser beings, she knew that she was far, far more dangerous than any dragon of her age was ever likely to be, and she had Mistress to thank for it.
She hadn’t expected their imprisonment to be anywhere nearly as beneficial as it was, and was heartily looking forwards to her sleep, and eventually getting out of here and showing the world her might.
Her Mistress acquiring gold for her was, she knew, a combination of courtesy and consideration, a recognition of her value, and in no way motivated by fear or greed or anything so base. The way Mistress had Burned off vast amounts of gold her Sims brought back to her to make and upgrade her Gear had clearly demonstrated exactly how she valued the accumulation of precious metals: it was merely a stepping stone on the road to personal power for her.
Accumulation of personal power was a fine goal, the dragon knew. Cirru also knew Mistress thought of her hoard as a personal weakness, not a point of honor or acknowledgment of her status, but she was not a dragon and didn’t begrudge Cirru the metal or have the slightest desire to confiscate and use it.
Mistress had Burned away more gold in the past years than Cirru’s mother Shmvoxxayl and her father’s hoards combined. Just… Burned and gone away to make items of magic that would be even finer objects in a dragon’s hoard.
Cirru hadn’t really considered that anything important, as wasn’t one’s own strength more important than any magical items which could be stolen or destroyed, and which looked better gleaming in a hoard anyway?
Mistress’ Staff Dread was a horrifyingly dangerous Weapon when Mistress used it at full power, and Cirru had specifically seen the Bane of Legends effect going off, something that Mistress had demonstrated the existence of, but had never actually used.
It was an effect made to kill powerful monsters of great power and mythical, legendary creatures… which seemed to include Immortals.
The Immortal had thought itself immune to mortal magic, and had not been at all prepared for the attack coming through at basically full power.
She served a great Mistress, Cirru knew, and had no thoughts of abandoning her whatsoever. There was far too much she stood to gain if she did not!
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The years rolled past.
The Sims I made came back via Teleports or Words of Recall, shared their experiences, left again. Sometimes it was on specific missions, mostly it was just explore the world, locate goldweight for me, track the flow of history, and remain generally outside influencing the timestream.
It was plain I was a necessary part of the past with my killing of the Avatar, so I wasn’t afraid of causing a paradox with their activities.
My Levels were slowly increasing, which was good, but not actually all that gamechanging. Ur-Priest had gotten me to Valence IX’s very quickly, after all. Just my inherited Karma had given me a massive leg up on Levels and sped me into competency that, if not the equal of Aelryinth, was still in the top .001% of this world.
Now, it was just a case of broadening the scope and making the numbers go up.
Being a halvyr/elf with limited flexibility also meant I had to focus on my strengths, while exploiting my natural gifts. I didn’t have the natural mindset of a scrapper, but all Elves advanced as basically the native fighter/arcane Casters, and there was no way I was not taking advantage of that, on top of all my spellcasting.
It was actually my biggest impediment at this point. I could alter and approximate and research alternates to many spells I remembered the effects of, but I had no true analogue to the Weapon Mastery of this world, particularly the higher levels, so I needed to find teachers willing to further instruct me.
This would have been a perfect time to get that out of the way, finding some distant civilization with some masters in spear, staff, and open hand and engaging in the training.
My Sims couldn’t do it, and a Clone wouldn’t be able to leave the building any more than I would. So, a high-end quest for later.
My foundation was pretty damn strong, however. Every rise in level was another rise in spellcasting, either a Theurgy or an advanced Class building on what I’d already done.
Mystic Theurgy was the first to end. I only took it to ten Levels to get the free Elven Wizard Levels out of it, much like Arcane Theurgy. Once those Classes were done, I had maxed Elven Wizard, and that was that.
Ur-Priest maxed out its accelerated spellcasting in ten Levels, and never improved after that. That amusingly left it pretty close in power to the local secondary Caster Classes, so that was no great loss, and I could still stack other Classes up on top of it, particularly Hierophant, and Caster Level always increased, so I was fine.
This place had Immortals, and Immortals were fucking with mortals. I was going to find out more about them and their interactions, how they raised people to Immortals, and then I was going to find another path.
More importantly, I was going to be introducing the Eternal path, because this Spheres of Matter, Time, Thought, Energy, and Entropy alternative was an amoral load of shit, and people needed to know where they stood, not which uncaring universal force a specific idiot was supposed to be representing.
If an Eternal Path could be said to exist. The fact Immortals couldn’t mess with mortals and were more vulnerable on this plane meant they were otherplanar, and so Fuck Them. If they wanted to give up this plane for power, that was fine, but they shouldn’t be thinking they had a right to dominate the lives of it and its inhabitants, self-important wankers that they were.
I’d already pissed off one Immortal, however unknowing, and I intended to piss off a lot more…