BECMI Chapter 331 – The Portal Returns
Fifty-two years and six months after the Doom of Darkmoor, the chronal streams finally settled down. Antimatter reaving space with Immortal Power accenting it had disrupted time, and not even salvaging oh-so-much darkstone from under the lands of Darkmoor had materially affected the disruption.
However, the mile-wide Rune of Time underneath Castle Doomrose did completely obscure the Portal’s survival from Immortal attention, and my building my abode above it in suitably ‘gothic brooding’ style was a marvelous distraction from what was actually going on below.
Reactions from the Rune brought me down to the Thisbean Inn to watch the process of the Portal finally rebuilding itself, reached out to by its counterpart in time to close the temporal loop and reforge its path between alternate Shores.
The Inn had long rebuilt itself, including the demiplane additions constructed directly into it and other spatial expansions. Walking into it was like stepping back into Darkmoor at its height, save that it was populated only by fallen memories and the Phantasmal Servants who maintained the place for me.
I hadn’t let anyone know this place still existed. What students and Marked I’d rescued from death, starvation, or worse still lived on the upper levels, being educated by Sims and slowly rebuilding, training themselves against the violence being unleashed in the world, and spreading word that there was another way, a better way to fight the Doom come upon the world.
If only to spite the Immortals who had brought it upon us.
The main floor of the Inn folded up and out of the way, exposing the Portal room below. Temporal flows writhed and built up, coalescing, guided by the Rune of Time and the impetus of past and future Inns to return to integrity.
The moon rose, magic pulsed, the stars and planets aligned, and everything fell into sync.
With a swirl of colorless motes of energy, the Portal through time swirled, and came into being once more.
Instantly spewing out something made of Immortal Power, which burned and gathered and imploded several times as it gathered energy and power to itself from across time, rebuilding a stout and portly frame out of things more durable than mortal flesh and bone.
He collapsed to the floor, his body steaming, glowing with Immortal Power inside and out, transcending the mortal condition through an accident of fate.
“Master Lalo,” I greeted him softly, not so much surprised as gratified as I called out to him. “Your Inn awaits you.”
His palms were on the floor, as something reached out and locked onto the local space. I looked away from him, smiling slightly as I felt space start to grow and bulge around us, and the Inn… started to become something greater yet, using the basis of the demiplane bound to it to become a grander thing.
The home plane of a new Immortal!
“Lady, Lady Edge?” the innkeeper of the Thisbean Inn asked hesitantly, standing up awkwardly and looking down at himself.
I’d long spent the Wishes in the past to bring him to Apex Human, knowing he was doomed to perish with Darkmoor. He’d naturally built his first Immortal body to at least emulate his human one, following instincts and imprints that came with Immortal Power to build himself a true body. He still had a dad bod, but it was all solid muscle now, with none of the fat and softness of his mortal life and travails.
He was strong, young, energetic, at the height of his life and ability, and he was an Immortal of Time, albeit at the weakest level of them.
An Immortal without a sponsor, and so without obligation to greater Immortals!
“I am here, Master Lalo,” I responded, and he looked around and then up at me, even as his hands moved up to his head.
“L-lady Edge, there are things going on with my mind,” he began, as I gestured and clothed him in basic comfortable and baggy cotton attire.
“Master Lalo, you are an Immortal now,” I replied to him softly. “Your mind is expanding to touch upon the powers and potentialities of the Immortal Power that now resides within you. You will need time to master those powers, but, for now, I suggest your Cooking Zen state.”
He blinked at me.
One of the most overlooked aspects of Darkmoor had been the cooking school that was run out of the Thisbean Inn, covering the full range of innkeeper, tavernmaster, and eatery services. It was a training program of incredible depth, skill, and adaptability, and it had taught some of the greatest masters of hospitality services in all the lands. Those men and women had commanded fabulous sums for their services in places all over the world for their skills… and many of them had remained behind in their new homes, determined to be sparks of life and hospitality in this crazed fallen world.
It was an order of mystics/monks that nobody was truly aware of, and all of them were Marked, a great and secretive intelligence-gathering force that I had done my absolute best to grow and keep sponsoring.
Master Lalo had been the first of them, turning his isolation and tie in his Inn into a very unique and special endeavor that had extended across the years and decades, and had now left him in a unique position.
Stolen story; please report.
Grandmaster of a mortal order that he was now an Immortal Patron of, like popping into Immortality and already having a dispersed, widely enjoyed, stable, and firmly-established Church that nobody really knew about it already in place among diverse mortal populations.
He looked at me again, and then slowly nodded. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began to steady and clear his thoughts of distractions. “Who am I cooking for?”
If Master Lalo was here…
I looked above at the unseen storm far above us, a seething chorus of hot and cold air interacting with plenty of energy. “Ciaphal Eldontis Emeril, Captain of the FS Barhund between the stars and upon this world, it is time,” my Voice thrummed in the Sublime Chord, addressed to only one person.
I knew both of their Truenames. I’d discovered them all, Enruned them, and given them to them, as I had all members of the Regency Council who had earned my respect. Nobody had been able to shackle their minds and spirits, Charm them, Glamour them, Geas them, bend their hearts and minds and thoughts.
Truth had made certain that lies and mere words couldn’t do the work in a subtler manner, all of which had made the Ei of Hazz and several Immortals very frustrated over time. Their schemes to ensnare and divide the Regency Council into rival camps instead of a united front had kept failing over and over and over again, and they had hated and not understood why they kept failing.
==============
Here's some more truth. Novel Bind and other sites are scraping stories without permission again, including mine.
If you're not reading (or hearing) this on NovelFire, you're helping pay a thief. Please read it in its original home, it's still free! You get the foreword and afterword, author comments, and answers to people with questions! I have not given permission for this story to be copied by a bot and posted ANYWHERE ELSE.
=============
I wasn’t about to tell them the arts foiling them wouldn’t be publicly invented for nearly four thousand years, and I couldn’t even teach them now, because the betathaumic field from the Barhund’s core wasn’t active yet.
Idiot Immortals hadn’t finished messing around with it and screwing things up. They wouldn’t be happy to know I still had a link to the remnants of the Barhund, and more importantly, I still had the command codes to really take control of what they were trying to do.
More importantly, if any part of the Barhund survived, then he had… and Immortals had been pouring their power into the Core, literally giving him Immortal Power and making him an Immortal, not just turning the Core into an Artifact of incredible power.
Thunder rumbled. Lightning crackled and arced and responded into stratifying patterns. If you looked inside those clouds, you could see see something like a set of brainwaves gathering all the lightning together, then crackling and snapping, expanding and shrinking at the same time, out into a pattern of nerves and Kirlian fields, which twitched and gathered substance to them in automatic fashion, yearning for the touch and feel of solidity, instead of life as random brainwaves.
Lightning danced over the dome above me as the bearer of that Name followed the Sublime Chord down, knowing the spatial coordinates perfectly, and cracked and snapped as it condensed outside the front door.
He had standing permission to enter and leave as he liked. The front door creaked open, and Captain Emeril, his eyes shining with emerald fusion fires, his green-tinted body whole and unbroken and in the prime of his life, stepped through in the exploration gear that he was most famous for, and which he had worn instead of his captain’s uniform for the latter half of his life.
I turned back to the smiling Master Lalo, whose grin slowly spread as he looked slowly between us.
“A meal for three, I think, Master Lalo.”
------
It was a fine meal, and nary a hint of magic touched it. Natural, free, balanced via ki and intimate knowledge of his skill, the light lunch of shaved ham sandwiches, tea, and buttered scones was light and very welcome, and a perfect thing to be welcomed back to corporeality with.
We ate in companionable silence, clinking warm mugs of herbal tea running with a dozen mild tastes both men marveled over, able to appreciate them as easily as an elf might now.
Then I dragged my Mark out of my nasal cavity with a strand of crimson-tipped raven hair, and put it on my palm, holding it out to both of them.
Marklinks died upon death, and both of them had truly died in every way that mattered. Technically speaking, they were still dead, they were merely at a very advanced state in their afterlives!
Regardless, they had both automatically reformed the Marks that had been part of them for fifty years. Without hesitation, their own Marks emerged from their noses and shone on their cheeks, were transferred to open palms, and came down to touch my palm and re-establish the Marklinks.
They were very restrained, as Immortal Power gave them a strength and brilliance in the Markspace that mortals simply did not have, a higher form of being with a greater perspective.
I could easily see that they were fifth-dimensional existences now, able to look up and down timelines and see time passing as naturally as we saw light and experienced three dimensions. Immortal Power tapped into the vast sea of mortal knowledge, and the ways to use it with magic, a lower form of energy, were bouncing back and forth inside their skulls, so hard to focus on with so many possibilities.
There was a cheer from the Mystic Cooks as their Grandmaster returned.
The conclave of Greens down in the Hollow World, led by Jorg Turmalez and taking advantage of the preservation magic of the place to protect themselves from Immortal attempts to eradicate the last of them, likewise gave a cheer as Captain Emeril rejoined the Markspace.
They looked at me there, I looked at them.
I purchased the Feat Legendary Spell Engram X.
Magic rippled, gathered, refined itself into a new paradigm. The Sublime Chord altered in ways no non-Eternal could sense or feel, revealing a depth and power to it that was every bit the rival of Immortal Power… and it had no ceiling to which it could be limited to.
Level 37 opened before me, the first true step beyond all mortal limits, and I sat as an Eternal before them.
They were clearly on one path, newborn Immortals who had no familiarity with their power, no greater Immortals to guide them in its use or power. I was clearly on another, their Immortal Power an energy that was not native to me, just one more thing I could tap, as magic at X and potentially higher beckoned to me with possibilities.
But they were Immortals bound to great and mighty Artifacts, to things and places that were still of this world, still of Nown.
Just like me.