BECMI Chapter 378 – It’s Story Time!
“First point, we were all hurled precisely here through a wormhole that took at least two Immortals working together to direct here. So, they wanted us here, for some reason none of us know.” The eyes of the ship captains inside my little dimensional Sanctum glanced at one another, naturally assuming that wasn’t necessarily a good thing…
“Second. They actually brought back over three hundred dead and ten ships which were destroyed in the initial attack by the undead fleet.” A flicker of Faerie Fire limned the men with the ships that had been sunk or slaughtered, all of them blinking and looking around in surprise, while their fellows just nodded at them. “You’ve no memory of the way you were killed. I don’t know why, perhaps it was mercy, perhaps it is just so you’re available to fight.
“You were dead, now you’re alive, and your ships can still be sailed. Very strange.” I looked over all of them, and they stayed silent as they pondered that.
“Third point. We’re stuck here.” I waved my hand around at the Sanctum I’d linked to the Scampering Wave for the moment. “In actuality, I should be able to cram the entire crews of all the ships in here, Cast a Gate, walk through it to home, and then bring everybody out safely there. It should be that easy for me.” I let the moment draw out, the hope rise, and then get mercilessly quenched.
“Not that easy for us, eh, m’Lady?” Admiral Solgas muttered in his rough voice, and a dozen soft curses complemented him. Who cared about ships that should be sunk or at the bottom of the sea? If they could get out with what they could carry, every captain and their crews would bail from here immediately!
“No, this world is dimensionally fortified. I cannot open a Gate to elsewhere right now, such things will function only in very specific areas. It not incidentally restricts a lot of Conjuration and Summoning magic for spellcasters… including bringing in things which could help bring us home, send messages there, or the like.”
The fact I’d locked down the Markspace for the half-dozen Marked present so they couldn’t use it, a fact they all knew as well as the reason for it, indicated how serious that problem was.
“Now, it didn’t stop me from throwing out a Sending to those I thought appropriate to receive it. They will contact King Taravon and let him know his fleet is in a very strange place, indeed, but with me and still alive.” Also, reassuring my elven followers that I wasn’t in any danger I couldn’t handle, although they were totally capable of staying on top of things without me, by design. Sims to the fore!
The more they could handle without me, the more I could handle that they didn’t want to, after all.
“The thrust of this is, wherever we’re going to get to, we’re going to be sailing there. Something is messing with the Veil, and even Teleporting through the sky is severely limited in range.” As a result of the disruption of the Skygates they used to use to get around the bands of Meandral, actually, and Immortals fucking with the stuff to inhibit the mortals’ ability to get around. Hampering more Empire-building, as it were.
“Lastly and most worrying, the Immortals are still watching us.” The men shifted uneasily as I said that in a very flat, very unhappy tone. “You should know enough tales that being the target of Immortal interest is very, very rarely a good thing if they are not your Patron, and it is almost never safe, especially if you aren’t the star of said story.
“I think some idiot Immortal is trying to craft a fine tale and interesting narrative for us all to star in, and now, now gentlemen, we’re going to be jumping through an arseload of hoops in order to get home.” I let that drag out for a long and cruel moment, before adding, “I will try to wreck that story with all my might and get the Hell out of here, of course!” I hissed, and earned me some cutthroat smiles of understanding and quick curses of support on my behalf, too.
“So, be prepared for strange crap to start happening to us… starting with being here. Weird shit. Violent shit. Deadly shit. Magical shit. It is all going to be full of shit, but if you’re an Immortal standing out there looking on, it’s all going to be vastly fun and exciting to watch.
“Prepare to be part of an Immortal’s story. It’s not going to be fun.”
They all winced at my words, because the secondary characters never did well in Immortal stories…
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The sky island was perhaps a hundred miles across in a rough circle, looking like a few forested mountains surrounded by towering palm trees, at least from the distance here.
It also had an ocean around it, sloping down to a ‘point’ at the edge of its gravity plane, clearly indicating the safe place to come in atop the water.
The fleets came in slowly and carefully, but the gravity plane drawing us in to line up for it did make things easy. Sails out and broadly spread out, the longships ran in front of us as they broke the gravity plane and splashed with great welcome into warm waters, and suddenly the great bands of the sky and abyss were gone, replaced by a warm golden sun, simple blue sky with scattered white clouds, faint tropical breezes, and what looked for all the world like a mighty ocean around us going off into the horizon with a jungle island ahead in the distance.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
There didn’t seem to be any hostile presences, nor any signs of habitation along the shores. The water was extremely clear, however, and there was a surprising amount of fish and seafood visible below us, although no seabed was visible these several miles from the shore.
The Wave was allowed to take point, Primus effortlessly able to keep her sails full and drag from the water minimal since it could stay above the water even in a gravity well. I stood at the prow, the only things ruffling that which I wanted to do so, my Mask of Tears in place and looking ahead of us.
Some thing, things, were coming out of the treeline ahead of us on the beach. Apparently the sails had been seen and the island had natives!
“This is Lady Edge. The island ahead appears to be inhabited. I can see numbers of the natives setting out in canoes in our direction slowly, but this could simply be a welcome party to our arrival, it is hard to tell. I will keep you posted. Slow sails and do not engage the natives without my permission, I will take the Wave in closer.”
If they were an attacking force, I was pretty confident four thousand men could take on the force I was seeing. War canoes were not a significant threat to true sailing ships, and the only canoes with sails were the few ones with outriggers.
The Wave zipped on ahead as the others lagged back, content to let us find out what they were facing.
Up at x100 magnification, I couldn’t see any weapons, although there were some baskets of fruit and vegetables loaded onto the ships, perhaps to greet…
Were those yyota fruits? They were the size of apples, something that only grew berry-sized on Nown. They were one of the banes of Delpha old and new, a parasitic thing sapping out the heart of its society among the wealthy and powerful. They had been introduced thousands of years ago by ‘random happenstance’ (meaning, an Immortal had stuck some where they were bound to be found), and idiots had brought them back to breed them, make them more potent, and turn them into the culture-wrecking force that they were.
“These tribesmen are yyota fruit eaters! They are bringing baskets of the addictive narcotic fruit with them on their canoes! I don’t think I need to tell any of you to throw the things overboard… the salt water will ruin them, but they actually make fine fishbait.
“I will also tell you this: anyone partaking in yyota for any reason is making the choice to make an addicted lazy, wasted, and useless arse of themselves, requiring some of the Divine magic that is keeping everyone fed and alive to break the addiction.
“Deliberately making the choice to do that means you are making us bear the cost of your stupidity. If you are not left behind to waste away, you will at the minimum inherit however many lashes from your captain is determined to be appropriate.”
This island was not a coincidence.
Yyota islanders shouldn’t even have the energy to come out to greet us. Maybe if we made it to their homes they would normally bestir themselves to celebrate.
Yyota gardens sprang up and were purged with relentless regularity back in the Delphan Empire, the addicts and those profiting from them simply not going to stop trying to get their hands on the stuff, especially the most potent varieties. An island where the stuff grew naturally was both a source of great potential profits and a total disaster waiting to happen!
It also meant the stuff grew easily enough in a paradise like this that the natives didn’t have to work too hard to find enough food. Which meant there should be tons of stuff we could forage for to fill out the supply ships.
Which would probably bring us into contact with multiple gardens of wild yyota. Undisciplined crews would turn that into a disaster!
I would have to take steps against the fruit, and being as powerful as I was, I had some rather unique ways to approach the problem which wouldn’t be too accepted in civilian life, but made perfect sense here.
And nobody would even consider them inappropriate!
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“Attention native islanders, this is the Lady Edge.”
The islanders paddling energetically out to meet us and bringing either gifts or trade goods or tribute paused in their paddling as my cold and clear voice, in perfect classical Delphan, came to their ears.
“Among the foodstuffs I can see you bearing in your boats are yyota fruits. I do not know and do not care what status the fruits have among your people, but if you offer them to us, we are going to assume you are attempting to poison us, and we will kill you immediately.
“There will be no negotiation on this matter. I am not allowing that poison onto our ships, and if you attempt to get us to use it, you are going to die.”
The incoming collection of boats had all stopped rowing and they were slowing to a crawl.
“I thus suggest you throw any such fruits overboard right now. If you cannot bear to do so, and I don’t think you can, then hand them off to a few of your boats, and those boats had better turn right around and get the Hell out of here, or those boats and the fruits and all those aboard are going into the waters and not coming back out.”
A Thunderbolt, screaming like a wailing skull, left a black streak and red smear across the sky as it cracked and boomed overhead and past them. They all craned their heads to watch the titanic skull blast on by them and out over the jungle, scattering a swathe of misting bloody petals in the air behind it.
There was a sudden frantic level of activity among them, grabbing the reed baskets of yyota and exchanging them for more permitted foodstuffs hurriedly among those on the canoes. Then a fair chunk of the canoes turned right around and headed back for the shore as the Wave came skimming up a foot above the seas, right into the middle of their formation.
I looked down at them with eyes of blood and shadow inside my Mask of Tears delicate white silk streaked crimson and black-feathered for macabre effect, and they paled. They were all sun-bronzed, with coppery skin and red hair. Stranded Ciristi/Frier, probably prisoners or stranded mariners gone native…