BECMI Chapter 272 – Year 997
Twenty-four years on the Far Shore, an entire human generation. Halfway to the Doom of Darkmoor.
Two years in my native timeline. One month for every year right now, in addition to the extra fifty spent in the past before and after the Crimson Cataclysm.
I was officially an adult by elven standards, which I thought most amusing. Temporally, in this timeline I was still only seven years old!
I’d be having to go visit my mother soon, arranging for the impertinent and overly-inquisitive One to disappear on one of her adventures. One was careful to make sure I was known to be a prodigy and exceedingly magically talented, despite her age, and faithfully kept to the same blood and roses theme I did, setting up the stage for my return.
I sent word for her to disappear on one of her childish expeditions outside of the city, which would surely cause no end of worry for Mother when I did not return, and she could not find me.
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“Well, that certainly looks inappropriate, doesn’t it?” I asked nobody in particular as the rocks fell down and the dust cleared.
The collapse was completely unpredicted. I’d been asked to come in and clear up a section of a small river here, further north up the coast towards Seacall. The bed of the river was shattered and broken, completely unsuitable for river traffic in its last five miles. I could mold the entire thing into a relatively wide and smooth runway for the waters for much less effort than, say, blasting or even dredging it technologically, although we had the capabilities to do both.
Oh, the sheer banality of having an archmage clear up your rivers for you!…
About a mile from the end, my pushing the stone down and away while smoothing out the walls seemed to trigger something, and a whole column of stone had fallen away with a roar and crashing, making more work for me to do… and revealed a completely concealed palatial wall carved out of the cliffside, along with a broken set of great bronze doors!
Sitting on a grav-sled, Chief Engineer Timmistad just gaped at the revealed construction. “That, that is completely impossible!” he blinked. “Nothing like that could happen naturally!”
“I agree.” My Rune of Stone had expired, but I could still Shape via Funf, and I drifted over the choppy water towards the stacked rubble, eyeing the architecture. “I believe I even know what this place is.”
“Seriously?” Chief Tim asked, sending the sled with his team after us, all of them looking around warily, but not nervously. They were all armed with laser sidearms, and any of the normally hostile magical lifeforms popped up were going to get some unwelcome surprises about how they worked on their marksmanship, too.
“This whole section of land was on the far side of the continent on the Far Shore. What might have arisen in between then and now is not surprising, but note that linearly we are not all that far from the Crimson Cataclysm or the Doom.” I nodded at the detail. “I believe this is Calfragia.”
There were no more Greens in the future here. Aware that they were unique and stood out, steps had been taken to ensure they could build into the local populace after some thought. It was a basic Polymorph effect, but more powerful, and designed to be both permanent and non-dispellable. The only effect of it was to change the skin tones of the Greens from their lightly photosynthetic native coloration to the earth tones of normal humans, choosing whatever shades they wanted that were none-too-unique.
The exception was spellcasters. They had the option of choosing a hair and/or eye color that went with their magical affinity if they desired, and many of them did. Artificers were restricted to metallic shades of silver, copper, gold, or blue, while spellcasters picked any odd coloration they wanted… as long as they themed their spells about it.
Oinster had the standard green eyes of a Green (pale in his case), but his hair was a metallic light blue, indicating his Artificer Levels and Class. He was eyeing his sensors as they swept the cliff-face, while I worked on clearing out the stone.
“The age is right, over four thousand years, give or take,” he admitted after a moment. “Where is it from?”
“After the Iron Graf mauled the Iberon Empire, the entire south and west of the continent basically started to collapse into anarchy. We got word of an ambitious wizard carving out his own small piece of the pie, opening up a port he carved out with his own magic, not long ago.” I pointed at the detail on the cliff-face. “That is the coat of arms of his little empire-to-be on the western coast, or what remains of it.”
It looked something like a stylized dragon coming out of the sea, although a lot of it was cracked and broken. A man was atop it, bearing a glowing stave.
“There’s no sign of a city… or a port?” Utalya asked, the tanned blonde looking around at the walls of this river.
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I flicked up a Holo of the world of the Far Shore, centered it on Darkmoor, indicated where Calfragia had been… then blew it up and spun the world on the axis of the Doom, using the Barhund and its Core as the fulcrum.
Coastlines rose and fell to colossal tsunamis and Immortal meddling. South became northwest, continents changed form and heading… and Calfragia was once located exactly atop our location, changing from far to the west of Darkmoor to a similar distance to the northeast.
The sea had once been here, too.
“Wow. Buried here for four thousand years. I’m guessing he never even made it to the history books, along with most of Iberon and the real history of Darkmoor,” Utalya murmured in astonishment. “Washed away and buried with his dreams.”
“Tch. You have an opportunity to investigate a ruined underground dungeon of a sort, which by all indications fell very fast, and likely has all its secrets and wealth still intact. At least, I don’t think anything dug through the stone burying it.”
Their eyes all lit up. “We don’t have to call one of the delver teams?” Normand asked quickly, hand falling to his sidearm.
“I am here,” I said simply. “You’re all Tens or you wouldn’t be on the advanced survey teams. I will let you know what’s coming, and you decide how to handle it.”
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The Death Rays from the four floating skulls lashed out, but splattered harmlessly against the Death Wards on the four engineers. Instead of shooting back at those targeting them, the four engineers concentrated fire on the master druj hanging back, the incorporeal thing thinking it was quite safe until four Ghost Touch lasers hit it squarely. Ghostly bone flared with light, and then the shadow of it overloaded, flared, and was gone.
Its four doubles popped out of existence instantly as their primogenitor died.
“Nice reflexes,” I complimented the four of them.
“Is that solid gold?” Bragga asked, both hands still on his pistol, looking around for more threats, but everyone’s eyes were drawn back to the dazzling golden doors rising twenty feet high before us.
“Gold-plated, but there’s still at least five hundred pounds of it there,” I assured them, and they whistled.
“That’s a lot of easy goldweight, if we can get it off there!” Oinster agreed with a wide smile. “Uh, Lady Edge?” he asked uncertainly.
I walked up to the doors, put Dread on one, my hand on the other, and invoked Shape Stone at VII, up-Cast to Shape Metal.
There was a curious tinkling and creaking sounds as the gold began to peel away from the stone, running down it like melting tinfoil as it pulled and peeled and merged into itself while doing so, flowing down the stone and gathering into several standing bricks of the metal.
“75 percent pure, ornamental gold. A refiner can even it out, the alloy quality isn’t the best, as you might imagine.” I stepped back and gestured forward. “After you!”
I hadn’t called out any enemies, and so far I’d caught them all as we advanced through the broken caverns and buried homes of this former underground holding. Given the craftsmanship, this wouldn’t have been much different from living inside a large castle or palace, really, but the ground tremors which had broken up the place had brought a lot of it down… and then time or Immortal magic had filled in atop it, burying it from view.
It looked like a tsunami had come in after the first shockwave had collapsed much of the place, depositing the rubble that had buried it from view. Than something had lifted up the stone and the sea had receded, trapping what had once been a viable port city far inland and buried in rubble. If I went digging I’d probably find the old docks underneath the river bottom.
Two to each door, the engineers pushed them in, and the light from their headlamps lit up the chamber beyond.
With a quiet woosh, two Eternal Lights in the form of braziers of flames ignited, one still on a tripod, the other fallen over on the ground.
He’d been at least an archmage to allow his spells to last this long, although likely they’d been dormant this whole time.
“Activating in the presence of the living?” Utalya guessed. Exudar IV made everyone an expert in magical tropes, it seemed, and the game only grew more popular with age, treated as a training program for all the crazy shit that could happen in a magical world.
“Logical,” I agreed, scanning the area and ignoring the shadows with Devilsight. “I have nothing threatening.”
Pistols came down warily, and I followed the four of them in.
The stairs at the end led up the elevated dais, but what throne had been there was gone, buried under a boulder at least the size of a bus.
Gleaming in the light, not a hint of the deep dust about our feet clinging to it, a golden rod about three feet long, made heavily enough to serve as a mace, was clasped in a skeletal hand extending out from beneath that slab of stone.
Everyone tensed, looking at me, but I just shook my head.
“The remains of Calif,” I informed them shortly. A flick of my hand sent somberly dirging skulls down to set the remains en vivus, the ancient skeleton disintegrating almost instantly as they fed along the bones back under the stone, which audibly shifted minutely as the bones became dust beneath it, blowing out the white mist as it settled.
The Rod floated up to my hand. My Void Phoenix Bloodline burst over it as a shadowy flame extending from thorned tendrils underneath dancing skulls, jabbering at me and feeding me knowledge of what this thing was.
“Well, well, well. No wonder he enjoyed a moment of fame and glory.” I spun the heavy Rod between the fingers of my off-hand. “That might be one of, if not the oldest, Rods of Victory still in the world. Iberon was founded on the strength of them, the Rods awarded to their greatest generals, until the emperors grew afraid of them and locked them away to try and stop from being usurped.
“This is Vincere, the Conqueror, fourth of the seven Rods of Victory of Iberon.” I gave the taller humans around me a nod. “It appears you’ve found an emblem for the Warlords of Eismoor.” I then lifted my chin and pointed dramatically at the wall behind the throne. “Now, if you can open the secret door there, I believe you’ll find the treasury of Califrag intact beyond.”
The four of them looked at me, looked at the wall, and hurried over. Two minutes later, stones were pulled, pressed, and rotated, and a wide door ground open fairly smoothly despite the millennia. The gleam of gold from beyond filled the room, along with some very excited whooping from the engineers.