BECMI Chapter 411 – Ire of the Eternals
To those looking on, the attack was incredibly quick, crashing through the camp of the legion at breakneck speed as two women moving faster than charging coursers went at it.
It was explosive, men, equipment, and mounts going flying as the fight blew through them without regard for their numbers, Consort Istana caring nothing for their lives, Sama just avoiding their interference with smooth aplomb.
It was gorgeous, two incredible beautiful women moving like goddesses of war… well, one of them was supposed to be an Avatar of Tenya Herself! Swords skirled and flashed, blood flew.
And a Hag laughed. There were quite a few there who’d seen Sama Rantha compete in the arena, even if only as children, and they’d never heard a sound cut them to the marrow like that.
It seemed to crush the light and Aura escaping from Istana, dulling the awe and fear of Her presence to merely an empty shell.
And Grandmaster Sama Rantha was Singing, crooning a Song that grabbed the heart as she pursued her foe through barrages of magic that were destroying everything about and in her path, ignoring them all as she cut into the Avatar.
“Bitch of an Immortal lusting for war,
Generals and legions died by the score
To satisfy your lust and scorn.
You raised an Empire, its slow death comes
Its rotten heart beats bloody drums
As slaves became warriors born.
You think your past all mortals should feel,
Your pains and struggles you thought forged steel
Are but chains on the slaves you bound.
Now the war is aimed at you,
The butcher’s bill is coming due,
So TREMBLE, YOU BITCH, AS FATE COMES ROUND!
TREMBLE, SHE COMES!”
It looked like a fight, but it wasn’t.
Tenya’s fighting style was two thousand years old, classic Siricilan short blade. Her Avatar wasn’t even a weapon master, such skills had long degenerated in the barbaric time in which she had lived, and as an Immortal, such mortal skills were beneath her.
The magic she could employ with literally eye-blinks of concentration was sheared through or did absolutely nothing to her opponent, if she could use it at all.
Even surges of Immortal Power to raise her strength didn’t rattle her opponent, also unnaturally strong, unnaturally fast, unnaturally sure and precise of motion. Her Aura effects did absolutely nothing, either, when they should have just smote the woman dead.
And Sama was fast. So very, very fast.
Istana could not keep up from beginning to end. Her Immortal power gave her no advantages.
For some reason, she couldn’t get away, either by flight or dimension-shifting, and any shape-shifting magic was cut away even as she tried it.
Her wounds weren’t Healing. Her attempts to Dispel the Curses affecting her injuries didn’t work. The mortal magic should not even have been able to affect her!
She was at the apex of power Immortals allowed mortals as an Avatar, but that was far, far too slow to deny the woman opposite her. Sama was moving far too fast and surely, and even if Magni’s Gladius was one of the best Swords in Siricil, it could not keep up with the speed of Tremble.
And Sama could still Sing while fighting like that!
Maddening. Humiliating. Frustrating.
Overpowering!…
Sama slammed her to the ground, Tremble cracking ribs as its quillons bore down on her chest and perfect bosom, Immortal Light instantly starting to flare around the lethal wound as Tenya was impaled clean through her Avatar’s heart and nailed to the green grass and earth outside the camp of the First Legion.
“You fight well,” Istana said coldly, spitting out blood, cuts all across her face and body, staring into the heavens-blue eyes glaring down at her. “But there will be a reckoning for this, Sama Rantha!”
“You think I’m done, Liishion Naracresta Temenydola?” Sama purred back, and Istana’s eyes widened in horror as her Truename tore through her resistance and rent all of her control of her Immortal Power. “Now fucking FEED THE LAND!” roared down at her.
Stolen story; please report.
The world went white as the Avatar Istana screamed futility at her killer, but her time as an Avatar was done, and her main body had no idea what was happening...
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Sama Rantha came walking up out of the hundred-meter hole blasted in the ground. Tremble was ringing with two slow and ominous tones, like a bell tolling death for anyone who dared to come too near to the Grandmaster wielding it.
Sama patted herself once, and all the white dust was repelled off of her in a small cloud of falling white dust. She looked back at the crater behind her, spat once for emphasis, and flipped her sated Blade around once to sheathe it behind her back.
“Be a better emperor than she is a goddess, Magni,” her Warlord’s Voice purred to the watching man keeping a safe distance from her, with his nervous Praetorians set up between them. They’d all just watched the fight and knew they had no chance of stopping her if she acted against the emperor… but it was plain she was not here for him.
She took a step, and vanished from their sight like a passing shadow. Even the mages looking for Invisibility saw nothing, she was simply gone… and had left only a whole lot of questions and soul-searching for the men, and the women, of Siricil at what exactly Tenya had been doing to Siricil for all these years…
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I came out of the Portal through time, Master Lalo there to greet me after waiting patiently for ten minutes for my return.
“Oh, my.” He looked me over once, then tilted his head as he beheld the rather large child in my arms, calmly sucking down a very large bottle of milk. “I trust it has not been that long. I don’t think you could carry such a large boy…”
“No, this is Thor Briggson, the child of Sama Rantha and Commander Briggs on the Far Shore. I had to bring him through the Portal before his Source field was powerful enough to disrupt it. He won’t be able to return, but this world needs him more than the one behind us.”
“But… the separation from his mother? So soon?” Master Lalo was quite sympathetic.
“He is fully cognizant and aware, just has a bit of trouble focusing. It’s been almost a year since I left.”
“I see. Will you be raising the child here? Should I prepare accommodations?” Master Lalo asked reasonably.
“No. Thor will be staying for about a month, and then I will be delivering him to the remaining Ertobolle who have come out of their caves and adopted into a clan. I have already talked this over with Thor, and he has agreed to this. I will give him a Mark that will allow him to speak with me if there is need, but for this to work he has to grow up among the Bolle. I’m going to take Grimr’s chosen people away from Him and suborn their warrior spirit for my purposes. Their eternal stagnation under Him is a curse on their bloodline, and it’s time to break it in the best manner possible, twisting His own story and legends against Him.”
“The child is fully aware and intelligent?” Master Lalo found that fascinating.
“He’s still a baby. Full control of his body is something he’ll grow into. For now, eating and pooping are still his main jobs,” I said calmly, hefting him up. “In nine months, I go looking for his Sama, wherever she pops up.”
Master Lalo’s eyebrows headed for his returned hairline. “The swordswoman the Forsaken called their Mistress?” he remembered quickly.
“Where comes a Sama, there will be a Briggs. It is part of the Hag Curse that brings them into existence. I’ve made the reverse happen here. Now that there is a Briggs, a Sama will be catalyzed to appear. Together, they are going to reshape this world while the Immortals are still trying to recover, doing it from the bottom up.” I bounced Briggs a bit, and he gurgled happily. “I will be staying for many years this time, so there is a great deal of work that needs to be done over this amount of time, on the part of us all.”
“Of course.” He and Emeril needed to grow their congregations and influence, and start advancing up the ranks of Immortal power, one way or another.
I, I just needed to make sure the twats on the other side didn’t come to power like they had in this one, and start building for a future.
Always more work to be done.
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Ten months later…
It was on the neighboring continent, in the lands that would be part of the Delphan Empire one day. The people were a nomadic horseclan, coppery of skin and reddish of hair, one day to be abused and subjugated by alien archmages needing some more brute laborers to work for them and salve their egos on this new world.
The sounds from within were not all that unfamiliar, Tongues translating their harsh language as needed for me to understand. The woman within had just given birth and was resting with her new baby, while the others were making sure she was recovering as well as she might from the trauma of birth.
I threw back the flaps of the hide door and stepped inside.
I had no trouble seeing, as all the women there stood up and turned around, their dark eyes widening in alarm at seeing me there. My Aura was enough to make them nearly fall down and stifle all of their cries of alarm in horror at my almost ghostly presence.
“I am here for the Hagchild who was just born,” I said in no uncertain terms, my eyes moving unerringly to the newborn, sitting in her mother’s arms.
“Hagchild?” the eldest woman gasped out, staring at me, then following my gaze. “She is a Cursed Child?!” she repeated in horror and instant revulsion.
“She is a Rantha Hag, a Curse on the Hags,” I corrected her mildly, sweeping forward toward her mother, a tired young woman aging early, looking up at me in shock and awe. Her instincts were telling her to protect her child, tradition was attempting to reject the babe, and thus did not know what to do.
I bent down and took the child from her arms carefully, her resistance was almost nothing. “She will one day walk this world as the greatest swordswoman alive, and true Hags will live in terror of her coming,” I promised the mother, bouncing the child once and settling her into position.
Small eyes opened, and heavens-blue eyes that were not those of a child glared up at me.
“Your name?” I asked the mother calmly.
“P-Pela,” she managed to gasp out, gaping up at me.
“Your daughter will be known as Sif Peladottir, should she ever return to this tribe.” I flicked up a coppery Ring, and smoothly fit it onto her shaking finger. “This will respond only to you, and no other. If she returns, you will know her by it.”
Not having to worry about temperatures on the plains would be an immense benefit for anyone, and not having to worry about starvation would also be very handy. Ironblood Sustaining Rings were very nice for normal people that way.
I swept back out of the room, and as the flap to the hide tent closed, I was Teleporting away.
No one else saw me, and the women in there would forget that I gave her a Ring, and she would know never to mention it to anybody else. Giving birth to a Hagchild and someone coming to take it away would enter their local stories and legends, as well as the scarlet-clad ghost with demon’s eyes and skin the white of death.
All well and good and within expectations.
“I know you can understand me,” I said down to the blue eyes looking up at me. “I am not naming you Sama. Your name is Sif.” I smiled down at her warmly. “Your partner, Thor Briggson, is waiting for you. You have a people to save from Grimr together…”