“Remember that he worked for Nuhmudira, just like Lord Mick did through the Radiant Blood. They likely have met, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mick was one of his students in scout work,” I said quietly. “Certainly he’s pretty forgiving of the man.”
“That’s… entirely possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a family relation in there somewhere, given Oswald is an Aluvian name. At the least, they traveled in some of the same circles.” She’d probably ask him directly, enjoying lineages like she did. She’d already chatted with the other scouts and had all their family histories down cold, and had even drawn connections out to clans back on Ispar for eight of them, astounding them that she’d know of such distant cousins.
“I admit to never having heard of him back home, although if he earned an appellation and they commissioned him to taking out the Queen, he has to be something of a legend here, right?”
“Well, that’s true for just about everyone here. Everything I know of Elysa Strathelar and her husband seems to indicate she comes from a low-country clan in Aluvia, and he was the son of a cobbler in Celdon. Commoners both, rose to royalty here on the basis of what they accomplished. Even MacNaill was really nothing special at home, but now everyone knows the Undead Lord of Hebian-To, even the Empyrean undead.”
“Yes, jump through a Portal to a land of opportunity!” I rolled my eyes. “Or get turned into food for a mound of fungus or olthoi soup.”
Princess Kristie’s response to that was only a cold glare back north. “Just means there’s a whole lot of butchering to be done, Ryin.”
“Aye. After you get the whole process of starting up an Allegiance and training to raise the floor accomplished, I know, I know.” She just nodded shortly.
Holding Ranthas back from a fight probably was not a good idea. Sama Rantha had been called The Tip of the Spear for a reason, as one of the most dangerous vanguard fighters and infiltrators in the game. Kris was perfectly ready to get the blood of humanity’s enemies on her hands.
“So, we have a whole crew of new Isparian Warriors and gamer Rogues to deal with, in addition to some experienced older bastards. In addition to drudges, burun, Gotrok lugians, red tumeroks, virindi, shades, at least three different factions of undead, and the minions of various Elder Entities, including one of the deep seas and one of tentacles through space, such as it is.”
“The Mick mentioned Rynthids or something, too,” I reminded her.
She gave me a beady eye. “I’m not forgetting the mosswarts, banderlings, monugas, or the like, plus all the damn Summon points scattered across thousands of square miles of landscapes.”
“Peace, peace!” I held up my hands, laughing softly. “Or I’d say don’t forget about all the extra-dimensional spaces forcibly returned to the world, too…”
Kristie made an exasperated noise as she sat back against a tree, watching the Scouts poring over the notes of the late unlamented Lady Swiftfoot. “This place is utterly insane. Expecting so many mortal intelligent races to just get along, and then prodding them to start fighting on command for fun and games? Just… what kind of insane entity does stuff like this?” she asked helplessly.
“Gamers?” She glanced over at me. “They are just playing games with mortal lives. The level of power being wielded here is definitely divine, or, if not, Eternals with resources so vast we can’t really grip them. Just think of it from the point of gods playing games, getting bored with the current game, changing up the rules and setting, and seeing if they like the new game better.”
“Or they could wipe the whole thing and start anew?” she asked rhetorically.
“There’s that, or they could just go away somewhere else, try something new, and perhaps come back to here in the future when they get bored again, and see what has happened without them meddling, and if it’s interesting enough, start up the games again.
“Consider all the crazy stories Lord Mick told us, how many potentially catastrophic world-shaking events from so many sources happened in just the span of a few years, when we know the active history of events on this world goes back for tens of thousands of years by his own word. The undead played their events across centuries and millennia, and then suddenly ALL of their shit comes to a head at almost the same time, plus extradimensional invaders by the boatload?”
We both shook our heads. “Fate loves its grand schemes, and the more Chaos the better, from that side, but it’s too grand, too trite. There was an active hand stirring the pot for entertainment, especially on just one little island here.” Kris glanced at me. “Was it like this for Terra-Luna, and Aelryinth?”
“It was the Stages, exactly as the Archmage laid out. You should remember them as Power of Ten ‘history’. You were in Stage Eight in the game, as real as it seems. They are on, eh, Stage Four or Five, depending on how you want to see it, after about ten years.
“So, yes, there were world-threatening events taking place, but they were across the entirety of the planet, and damn if there was not a LOT of globe-trotting going on to cut some of those things off at the nub.” Just the continual meteor-drops from the bug-world of Verdan took up the time of dozens of teams! “Stuffing all that into an area the size of Rhode Island is just crazy, and then this fantastically overpowered ley line field…”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Mmm,” Kris nodded. “Well, happily they seemed to keep their paws off of Ispar, or Mom and Dad might have had more of a time of it.”
At that, I just had to laugh. “What?” she asked archly.
“Just what do you think the Ranthas are, but one sneaky and underhanded game piece shoved into position on so many different worlds?” I asked her.
She opened her mouth, closed it, and stared at me. “That’s rather an appalling way to look at us…” she sniffed haughtily.
“Well, you’re one of the Good pieces, deployed right on top of a massive artifice of Evil, the Hag Curse, which is itself a corruption of a Lawful punishment for wicked souls, purpose bent by Chaotic magic to fouler ends,” I pointed out.
She sneered at the thought. “Gamers one-upping one another,” she muttered, shaking her head.
“Yeah, but you’re FORSAKEN. The Divine powers, and probably the Eternal ones, can’t even see you Ranthas unless they are manifested through physical senses, and thus can’t tell how you are upsetting everything on their pet worlds hither and yon. If Mithar and Sylune are the ones responsible for you, it shows a huge amount of trust in you and yours to do the right thing without them watching over you.” I tipped an invisible hat to her. “Congrats. The ultimate free agents of Good, set into motion to save whole worlds!”
“Damn straight! Who else could they possibly nominate?” she promptly spoke up, then turned a sly and knowing eye on me.
“Yeah, well, there’s bound to be bunches more of you than there are of us. The last Sending I received was that there are a whole seven of us. There’s potentially a pair of you Ranthas, and whoever your sons and daughters end up as, on every single world that the Hag Curse touches.”
She thought about that, and then really THOUGHT about that. “Well,” she finally admitted, “that does leave a whole lot of us running around, doesn’t it?” And true to form, she grinned widely at the thought of it. “Forsaken bitches and brutes running around setting things right! I really like the sound of that!”
“Yeah. You’re so much better for the average person than having Powered folk there it’s not funny. Low, broad power,” I had to agree. “It’s just… you need the spikes of the high ceiling there. And Powered at the top of the game can just do shit the Forsaken can’t, and against some of the shit that’s out there, you need that.” I shook my head slowly. “Ael had some experience with that on Terra-Luna, too. Opportunistic post-Eternal shit trying to sneak onto the world and get themselves set in place for stuff.
“Hells, Kris, Ael and company had to make up Gear for the World-Angel and his subordinates, just to get them up to an acceptable level of power. There was some NASTY crap involved out there, such that they had to help power-level Planetars, a Solar, and Devas!”
Kris had the grace to wince. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Superman has to fight the super-villains, heroes fight the villains,” she agreed. “You deal with what you can deal with, and you get better so you can deal with more stuff and tougher stuff, trying to keep pace with losses. After all, losing just once could be goodbye planet, right?”
“No pressure, then,” I murmured, remembering a few Significant Events, and Kris laughed under her breath.
“What are the implications if we succeed?” she asked softly, eyes narrowed. “I don’t intend to stop, and I’m not a good patsy for those who want me performing for them. The fight to win is going to be exciting, and I might lose, and that’s all fine. But if I win, this is suddenly going to be a very boring place for those bastards.”
“We’re an island,” I reminded her quietly. “Didn’t the Lord Mick remark that the living Empyreans were sent into stasis by Asheron to protect them from the olthoi? And those olthoi might occupy the rest of the planet?”
Her eyes widened slightly. “Oh,” she murmured once. “That… is pretty ominous…” she conceded.
It was a LOT of potential bugs, and alien ecologies, and the like.
“And the Empyreans are world-walkers. Almost all the other races here were brought here from other spaces. Tack on the fact they dealt with what are basically Mythos Entities, and do you really think we’re going to be allowed to become boring?” I just shook my head slightly as she nibbled at her lip. “At best they’d give us a generation to rest and recoup and to grow, testing how well we can prepare, and then they’d start unloading shit onto us again.”
“Because it would be fun to watch!” Kris proclaimed in a nasty turn of voice, a special gleam in her eye.
“Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of battle... the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat! The human drama of murderous competition!…”
“That dates you soooo much,” Kris sniffed with a roll of her eyes.
“It does, it does!” I agreed sagely. “His memories of the Schoolhouse Rock series are also particularly keen, if you would like me to sing them.”
“I have no idea what those are,” she admitted. “So, no, I’ll have no context.”
“But you can probably recite to me the tactics and battlelines of four thousand years of military campaigns.”
“Those Skill Ranks of Military Lore are there for damn good reasons!” she sniffed in reply.
“Juuuust because you’re a Warlord…” I rolled my eyes theatrically.
“The Mick has no skill or experience as a soldier. His total experience is feudal vassalage societal norms and small-unit skirmishes,” she sniffed. “Someone has to be the general with experience in a magical world!”
“Hey, guys! This eighteen year-old is going to be your general for the campaign to kick ALL the bad guys out of your little island, no matter how powerful they might be, and then she’ll start on the rest of the world!” I called out in a whisper.
“Damn right I will. If they don’t like it, they can arm-wrestle me for it!”
“So typical.”
Her knuckles popped like cracking rocks, earning a few startled looks from the Scouts reading over there. “So, what’s your accomplishment list look like?” she asked me.
“The big one? Break the ley line network here, chopping the mana down to the standards of the rest of the planet, probably Isparian level.”