BECMI Chapter 401 – Heaven and Earth Reversal, Part Two
Like Chalcedony, Vitae appeared human, although her flowing aquamarine locks fully indicated her magical specialty.
Both of them were actually elves with human appearances, only the mildest stretching of magic needed to change their appearances enough to make them indistinguishable. They had better complexions, and naturally aged very slowly, accentuated by Powered extra years and magic to further lengthen their lifespans.
There was no difference magically to speak of for an Elven Wizard/20 +6 and an Overmagus, so there was no lacking in power for them, and their ability to use Halcyon magic plus the Secret Schools of Zanzyr gave them powers and abilities only their Sims could truly duplicate, making their positions pretty much unassailable in terms of power and depth of knowledge.
Vitae greeted me warmly, a former Sim of Hydrosa who had gained her own soul and taken over for her creator.
“Good morning, Elder Sister,” she greeted me with clasped hands. “We have been preparing for your arrival. The Ritual can begin immediately.”
“Excellent.” We turned and walked in together, the wizards of the School bowing formally to us as we passed before swinging in after us in series. The Aquaria used a system of changing the robes and uniforms every twenty years, giving each generation its own unique style and arrangement of colors. Someone with a good eye could glance over a crowd of Aquaria’s hydromancers and identify the rough ages of all of them, with embroidery indicating rank and power.
There were twelve different styles represented here, with Vitae’s robes being totally singular and the most heavily decorated with indicators of her capabilities for the wise.
The sash with thirty-six bands on it would be enough to intimidate any fool with sense, but Aquaria didn’t involve itself in politics much, and was situated remarkably far from any seaports. Individuals sometimes got caught up in politics, but Vitae and the School took a dim view of any who claimed to speak for Aquaria. More than one ambitious wizard had found himself demoted to Ship’s Wizard and spending a lot of time on the waters and far away from home after being aggressive about the wants and needs of wizards in Iotar.
“How long ago did you complete the Flowrunes?” I asked her calmly as we stepped into the school. The mists took on a different feeling inside the place, more ethereal and much less wet. Still, there was a lot of moss around, which was patiently cleaned off by the students and made into fertilizer for the many water-friendly flowers and plants growing about the place.
Aquaria’s love of green gardens had also rubbed off on a lot of Iotari people, again tying into their making of food. Iotar exported more food than any other Remnant.
“Twelve years ago, one of the smaller creeks coming off a hill in County Condorg, stabilizing the drain of the sixth Portal,” she told me calmly. Iotar’s supply of fresh water was partially from the frequent rains encouraged by the Water Magic, and also from six different Portals to Elemental Water of various sizes, both generating that Water Magic and attracting Fey and Elemental creatures of it, including the hydrax that had invaded the nation over the years.
“Jade mentioned that she helped with some of the underflows,” I said quietly, to which she nodded. Not the normal duties of a Primal Earth Elemental Ruler, but an easy favor to her sister.
Vitae smiled, her green eyes dancing at the thought. “She had to take pains to hide her involvement, given the rivalry between their Elements, but it took nearly a century off what we had to do. Rather necessary as the time came closer.”
“All squared away on that end?”
“It was easier because of the Water affiliation, Time moves more smoothly around it. But yes, it was a relief when the present arrived and we were no longer under its gaze.” She smiled slightly. “I’d say we had a rather extreme effect on the culture of Iotar while conversely exerting very little pressure on them. As long as all the major events unfolded without issue, there was very little temporal pushback.”
“Immortals?” I inquired.
“As long as we didn’t head towards a magocracy, they were happy to let things unfold. King Iotar managed the Path of the Dynast with Jade’s help, and still drops by from time to time, pleased as punch his line still holds the throne.”
“Given how many of yours and Jade’s descendants became consorts to his line, strange, that.”
“Yes, Grandmother swooping in to call an arrogant wastrel and entitled dink what he was and remove him for the good of the country was difficult to pull off. Kings don’t like hearing their heirs are incompetent dunderheads, and dunderheads don’t like hearing that they shouldn’t be kings.”
“How did you manage it?” I had to ask.
“Oh, one of my daughters started up a quiet faction of noble-watchers whose sole purpose is to remove the incompetent from positions of rulership. It’s my job to watch over them and make sure they don’t make the ambitious jump to kingmakers.
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“As hydromancers, you could say they’ve got a talent for causing seizures, strokes, heart attacks, and magnified diabetic shock if need be…”
“I am aware you’re quite established as alchemical healers and Loch Solnus trains most of the healers of the various churches in mundane and alchemical healing. That expertise in poisons comes in handy, I imagine,” I smirked.
“Used generally when they want to blame some unscrupulous manipulative arse for the death of an either incompetent or equally deranged noble party, yes. Sometimes, particularly if it’s a competition, just knifing the party is the most appropriate way, oddly enough.”
“You are definitely more hands-on than Chalcedony,” I had to point out.
“Iotari have a lot of clan and regional rivalries that haven’t faded despite the ages, carrying on proud traditions of hating one another for no reason other than that they do. The Navy and Aquaria are the two places where this is not allowed. Displaying those grudges will get you punished or keel-hauled in the one, and drummed out of here.”
We were making our way through ornate archways and ivy-strewn ancient stone buildings, all kept in perfect shape via magic. These particular ones were two thousand years old, the only ones not rebuilt and modernized over the centuries.
Our goal was just ahead. Not at all surprisingly, it was another Pyramid tip, the rest buried below in the rock of this island.
The patterns in the stone all around were flowing channels of water, glowing with various energies, misting cold or steaming hot, sparking or glimmering, as it were.
“Before we begin, Duum would like to know if there’s any tasty frogs around?”
“South end of the lake, among the reeds,” she responded promptly, her affection for Duum drawn right from my own, naturally enough...
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As in Terrestria, students and faculty, even some alumni, had gathered to participate in the great work that had been worked on for many, many centuries. They took up their places, while the Earth and Air Elementalists were already waiting in position for us, this time two of Vitae’s sons.
There were a lot of curious gazes for me and my very non-Iotari attire, but nobody was going to say anything about the qualifications of the Headmistress’s Elder Sister in magic.
This time, the cycle began with Earth.
With a careful draw of water to supplement it, the cold energy of Earth began to gather in the form of ice.
The flows of water iced over, yet continued to flow down about the Pyramid, tinkling and chinking as they somehow stayed fluid and solid at the same time. Hoarfrost gathered on everything but the magic here as they dumped minor Valences, congealing out of the air, growing with great speed into crazily complex crystal formations that rapidly began to fill the entire plaza where everyone was gathered and obscure them from sight.
Cold gushed down from the sky, drawn to the earth, and ice stored it all, growing colder and colder, until the harshness of it was causing dry ice to fall out of the sky spontaneously with the chill, and the freezing mists were falling from on high like a boreal flow of carbon dioxide crystals.
With a grimace and icicles hanging off his beard and nose, her elder son passed primary control to me.
Fire pulsed around me in harsh incandescent sigils, and the chill in the air vanished instantly. In the next second, the ice around us didn’t melt, it sublimated right into steam and blew into the sky, ignited, expanding, and roaring in a flesh-melting storm of super-heated water.
Cold came down, steam went up. A tornado of roiling air currents began to build above us, sparks from atmospheric friction and the exchange of energies already starting to swirl.
Earth brought it in, I set it on Fire, and now Air whirled and began to celebrate.
A howling vortex of winds was rising up around the Pyramid, and now thunder cracked, lightning spat down the length of it as electricity drawn from across the sky gathered and plunged down the pipe of it, down to the Pyramid, and down into the waters deep below.
At first they were five breaths apart, but as the twister solidified, stopped gyrating, and became a geometric interchange of ice plunging down and steam going up, the shocks came at four breaths, three, two, one, and then were pulsing down like the heartbeat of the world, cracking and booming and nigh-blinding everyone with the violence of the powers at play here.
Down into the deep waters that had lain slumbering with these energies for two thousand years, waiting.
There it was, the tipping point.
The Cycle finished, and what came down, went back up.
The geyser was a solid wall of water, booming back up to the sky. It traversed the two miles linking it to the cloud layer as fast as lightning, swallowing steam and ice both as it did, and sucked in the clouds like they were wisps of candy as it spread across the sky with breathtaking speed, ranging higher and farther than water ever would naturally.
Steam billowed, condensed into water, flowed into forms, and froze to ice. Runes grew organically across the sky, painted across the miles and miles above the whole of the island, the whole thing done with impossible speed and eerie grace as the Waterdome carved itself into the sky in grand fashion… and then the first growing capillary of it brushed up against the distant work of the Earthdome.
Instead of conflicting, or forming a barrier or boundary, the water flowed into the crystals, using them as a basis to grow from, while the magic of Earth crystallized into the heart of the glittering clouds of ice, golden veins flickering across the sky through every extension of the waters, while the waters brought the Earthrunes of yesterday back into my visible sight once again.
One washed and grew across the other, the other crystallized and expanded in the heart of the one.
Resonance pulsed and thrummed in the manafield, in the Sublime Chords, as the two Domes finished exactly together, filling the sky with frozen golden glory that dominated all other things… and then began to grow again.
Now, the whole world saw it as the two Domes combined and grew, and grew, and grew, sweeping across the Vault of Heaven and drawing themselves across the skyland entire, safeguarding it, consuming the errant Air and Fire mana from the Worldstorm of long ago, replacing it with a new stability, new affinities, and bringing the magic back into a balance it had not had for three thousand years.
It grew until it circled the world entire, undoing some of the harm the Worldstorm had wrought, and firmly displaying to everyone that the magical power of the Remnants might not be that of ancient Delpha… but it was no longer weak, and a newer age would be coming, where they might start to reclaim the glory of their ancestors.
But it would never be based on Fire and Air!