BECMI Chapter 334 – The Far Shore Beckons
It had been ten minutes since the last of the survivors of Darkmoor had made the transit. Soldiers, Regency Council members, trusted nobles, adventurers, Giant-Slayers, Rangers, Paladins, Wizards…
Those trusted to go last, to see Doom coming from the sky, and to close the door behind them on it.
On the vaulted ceiling above them, that last image, of the dot of fire plunging down from the sky in a psychedelic trail of supernatural fires, remained frozen, the last image of the scanners.
Teleportation Circles put into place long ago had whisked everyone arriving through multiple Portal exit points to here, a spur cavern in the Underdark. Anything that might be a threat had long been eliminated by adventurers and grim soldiers, whereupon engineers and construction workers had quickly made it both a warehouse and temporary shelter for tens of thousands of immigrants.
This was Deepmoor One, the main first stop for all immigrants from the Other Shore, and it was large enough to handle ALL the numbers coming through, something the people had worked tirelessly on for months and years to bring into place. Elves, dwarves, hyns, and humans moved smoothly across the leveled floor, dragging what belongings they had on Disks or wheeled cases, or carrying them by hand as they stared up at the sky and that frozen moment of the Doom of Darkmoor now hanging above them.
There was a lot of sorting and arranging of fates that had to be done as people were both reunited and assigned to where they were needed. The Greens and those familiar with technology were the quickest to adapt, helping everyone around them with directions, keeping good cheer up, and looking up at the sky.
The image up above shimmered, attracting everyone’s attention and silence.
The camera seemed to bend and shrink, drawing back far, far away from the city, from multiple points of view. Those in the know knew they were the suborbital observation platforms, locked onto Darkmoor City, and the Doom coming down upon it.
It detonated.
Gasps of horror and disbelief from those who didn’t believe arose as the first camera saw the city obliterated in a wave of flames beyond anything they could imagine. They saw the buildings blown to ash, walls destroyed, fields and farms and trees fried… and then the flames reached the platform, and screams shouted as it was consumed.
The view switched to the next platforms, and they watched that wall of fire rising up and up, the shockwave and wall of flames expanding outward. Trees were torn free like twigs, flying into the air from a wall of fleeing winds, only to be consumed as the fires advanced… and the second viewer died, then the third.
The most distant view, from hundreds of miles away, watched the flames rage across all of what had been Darkmoor and the dark sea, and consume everything.
Where the flames stopped, the shockwaves did not, raging over and leveling hills, mountains, and forests, while flaming debris cascaded down over the border areas and spread more fires and devastation around them.
Nothing of Darkmoor and its environs survived.
There was silence as the last view remained, of fires slowly falling back, and a great burning cloud of ash and debris all that was left of the rising promise of the great kingdom of Darkmoor.
“My People.”
The face of King Antius appeared amid the devastation, looking down on it sadly with them all, witnessing the true face of the future the Immortals had planned for them.
“We have survived the Doom of Darkmoor. Fifty-two years we have planned for this, and we have rescued who we could, those who could trust us, and those who could be allowed to join us.
“This is a great blow to us, but we are ready. There is a new land above us, waiting for brave new souls to lay down their roots. Already it begins to echo the greatness that was our Darkmoor, as we lay the grounds for a better way of life and doing things.
“Do not fear, and do not fret. Your sons and daughters and cousins have been working hard on this, and all of you will find a place, and we will start anew. A free land awaits in this place called Eislas, and we, we shall rise again, and rebuild all that we have lost, for our children and grandchildren alike!
“Eismoor and the world without awaits! We go with our heads high, hearts fast, and hands ready! We have survived, and we will rebuild!”
The roar of acknowledgment of his earnest words echoed off the stone roof behind the hologram of a burning world above them. The steady stream of people coming into Eismoor was going to surge, and suddenly all those little towns and villages with a few too many buildings and storage areas were suddenly going to have a lot more people around…
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“Oh, wow, feel that there Caster Level,” Sama purred, holding out her black-nailed hands near my face. “Feels like an electrical storm seething on my Null, Fuzzy!”
Briggs unabashedly did the same, but over my head while I rolled a crimson eye up at him. “Yeah, it feels like you’re popping on my Sun, Edge. How long has it been for you?”
“Fifty-two years and seven months,” I replied, nodding to my side at Cirruluxul. “Up to Old now. Doesn’t she look like an old biddy?” I said in a flat tone. Cirru cocked a palest blue eye at me in reproof, as she was literally in the most energetic years of a dragon’s life right now, and looked like a devastatingly attractive halvyr with draconic ancestry. “Two hundred years to Very Old, two centuries more to Ancient, and on and on and on.”
“Success on the Eternal front, then.” This area around the drop zones was already empty, the people hurried out in all directions to start assignment proceedings and dispersal across the claimed lands in Eismoor. The population of the new kingdom was going to inflate by nearly a hundred thousand people almost overnight.
It was like all those many, many miles of forests we’d been clearing and grasslands we’d been turning into farms had uses. The druids weren’t going to like it a bit, but the amount of food stores we had were going to be put to use now, and factories were going to be going up here and there to start producing living goods.
The elves were going to be split between my lands of Eistree, for the more isolationist elves, and Brittabelle’s realm of Erendyl for those more willing to work closely with humans, if they didn’t start a community in Eismoor. Most of the viable woodlands for elves were actually already settled by other elves, but the Ceruil-dominated clans were naturally very interested in the concept of the Lumina Trees and their usefulness in establishing an area where Halcyon magic could be learned.
Moorian dwarves had plenty of mines and factories they could choose to work at, and the hyn would disperse across the countryside and farmlands as they liked, with intentions to put down at least one new Shireland for themselves.
There were also hyn Immortals in this day and era, and the Moorians were eager to learn about such things from the local hyn, with a lot of tale-swapping to be going back and forth.
“How long are you planning on staying?” Sama asked, knowing it was irrelevant on the Other Shore, as I’d be back there in ten minutes, and time, time was no longer an issue.
“At least nine months, depending on how long it takes you and Briggs there to give me a son to take back with me.”
Both of them did the eyebrows to the hairline thing. “That’s pretty direct,” Sama noted wryly, reaching out with deadly fingers to clamp Briggs’ mace of a fist. “What are you planning now?”
“You’re going to name him Thor. I’m going to find the Rantha that is made by the Hag Curse for him, and her name is going to be Sif.” They both blinked. “And then I’m going to take the surviving Urto tribes away from Grimr and Sonr, and fuck them when I do it with a hammer and sword-wielding duo named that way.”
The Ertobolle clans that had fallen into coexistence with us were some of those warned of the Code Black, and had been able to get into caves or fallout shelters before the blast. There was plenty of living area in those caves, especially once I opened them back up and they prepped them for the worst. Many of them had lived, with those shielded by the higher mountains managing to endure with a little bit of Immortal help on the side.
Sama’s mouth widened into a feral smile. “Thor and Sif, taking the Northmen away from that prick Grimr’s cultural stasis.” There were hundreds of noble Bolles who’d fled with us and were energetically looking to expand our naval and air power, exploring the new world as they had our old one. “I hope they appreciate the irony!”
With four thousand years between them, and very different histories, the world was a much, much different place, as good as a whole new planet. New rotation, landscapes, even the stars had moved in the intervening years.
The Immortal called Donner had popped up about three thousand years ago here, wielding his trademark hammer. The brother and sister team of Syr and Syrja had arisen a couple centuries later, and together with Grimr, Nifl, Sonr, and Vindler formed the Aysener Pantheon.
I didn’t need any Immortals keeping people at the same fucking tech level for four millennia and calling themselves benevolent gods. Taking them away from Grimr would be a great accomplishment, and a couple Ranthas were absolutely the perfect people to do that with. Cultures that adored martial prowess just loved them some Forsaken hagbloods who could eventually do battle with the uncaring gods…
“Starting from nothing and needing to get a population back under you?” Sama asked, thinking of the implications.
“I’m also thinking that a Rantha bloodline moving through the Northmen is going to leave a lot of Forsaken behind, too.” Much longer-term thinking than before. “I’ve sort of drafted a bunch of dragons to help me out, and I’ll have the remaining living Greens from this timeline safely ensconced under my Castle Doomrose there shortly.”
“Doomrose?” Briggs asked, clearly amused.
I flicked up a Holo of it for their perusal as we walked. They peered at the firefalls and mobile black roses of stone, tower-sized thorns around a multi-spired darkstone castle that was really a small mountain thousands of feet high, and whistled in appreciation. Those deepened when I drew back and illustrated the Rings of Fire and Fangs of jagged stone circling it, totally filling in the blast crater from the Doom and completely denying the Immortals the chance for the Bleaklands to come into being.
The dragons winging around it, basking in the mana of storm and fire, didn’t hurt the image, either.
Eff the Immortals. Let them start building out a new underdark somewhere else, which I was sure they would. There were five other major continents to work with, at the very least, and I was sure the former North Pole was getting a lot of attention, giving how fast it was being populated.
“That is definitely a Castle Doomrose,” Sama was forced to admit, shaking her head. “Ah, to be Powered with a whimsical moody streak and lean so hard into a trope…”
“You are living Amazon Swordswoman and Genius Bruiser tropes, you lean into it like you’re bracing for a hurricane, and you call me out?” I replied flatly.
Sama affected a big disapproving scowl. “Amazon?” she sniffed haughtily.
“Genetically superior female physical combatants are not troped as ‘hags’, girl.” Hey, I was older than she was now, I could say that to her!
Briggs just laughed knowingly…