The street went dark around us, the pitch darkness of the deepest void wrapping itself around us like a lover.
A single mote of light appeared high up in the sky, rapidly expanding into a single drop of raw starlight. It fell down towards me, landing right in front of me. It was eaten up by the void, the fabric of space ‘rippling’ where the drop fell, reverberating around us.
Like a popping flame shooting out sparks, a thousand, a million, a billion stars slowly lit up around us, bathing us in many-colored starlight. Yellows and oranges, reds and blues, blazing whites and rare greens, all of them shone brightly around us.
I flinched as one moved past my eyes, and the newfound perspective let me see what was going on.
All the stars were converging on the point right in front of me. My target of [A Drop of Starlight in a Sea of Eternity] was being rejuvenated by a billion stars cascading into their body.
One by one, faster and faster, the stars swarmed into her body. She couldn’t contain or hold all the starlight, and it started to leak out of her. First her eyes, then her mouth, then her skin cracked and flaked, revealing the blazing lights underneath. She glowed like a person-shaped star, then slowly transformed in front of our eyes, going from an elderly great-grandmother, down to a middle-aged woman.
It was the age she felt most comfortable at, that she wanted to stay at forever.
The burning light slowly faded away, the rest of the world returning around us. Most of the street had stopped and stared at us and the informal ceremony that had just occurred, and a moment later White Dove fluttered onto my unoccupied shoulder. She nodded to Auri.
“Cousin.” She acknowledged, before giving me the traditional stink-eye. I grinned like the unrepentant reprobate that I was. I’d given away Immortality to hundreds of people, and if I had the chance, I’d give it away to thousands more. I didn’t dare say or suggest that White Dove had done her worst to me - it was always a poor idea to provoke the literal grim reaper - but I wasn’t going to be stopped or cowed. I was going to hold my head up high, proud of my work and what I was doing.
There was a difference between that, and yanking her tail feathers though. I did want to offer her an apple with a shit-eating grin though.
“Brrpt!” Auri was happy to see White Dove, but it wasn’t exactly the time or place for a reunion.
“And you.” White Dove eyed the woman with ire. “Cincia Livigena. [The First Class]. [My Second Class].”
White Dove paused for a moment. I didn’t blame her, I’d done a whole ‘who’s on first’ bit with Iona when she’d tried to tell me what the classes were. In short- a pair of omni-jack of all trades classes that let the woman be solid at anything she tried to do, if not fantastic. We had to remind ourselves that level 400 was still a strong Classer. It wasn’t like we had infinite time to find the PERFECT person to bestow Immortality on.
“I curse you to haunt this city forevermore. You will roam these streets, unable to pass the walls into the great outdoors. No more will you see open fields, no more will you feel wild grass beneath your feet. Your friends are only those who stay here, and you will be barred from visiting any family that should move away.”
She smirked, in an impossible way that no dove could manage, only Dove herself.
“Forever… can be such a short time.”
With a twist of her wings upon herself, White Dove vanished, off to continue reaping the hundreds of millions of lives that were currently dying in the Immortal War.
Livigena looked stricken, and the performance we’d just put on had halted all activity in several streets, as people stopped to stare at the performance. [A Drop of Starlight in a Sea of Eternity] had been a little more dramatic and a little larger than I’d expected, and I don’t know what black magic had stopped people from panicking - that absolutely could’ve been a lethal attack.
The moment was broken as the street - no, not just the street, the buildings, the land, everything nailed down - just dropped six inches.
Chaos erupted as gravity remembered everything not nailed down. Most people were able to smoothly recover, even a modest amount of dexterity helped greatly.
In an odd twist, most objects were also fine. Sure, there was a great shattering of a thousand pieces of pottery breaking, along with the clattering of a millions knives and spoons rattling on each other, but the Decay elf had ruined most fragile, non-vitality reinforced wood objects in the first place. A number of carts did break wheels and axles, completely unable to take a short drop, even with the weight and the System, but that was the largest casualty by far.
My mana did blip as horses broke legs and dinosaurs had their claws crushed, and it wasn’t like everyone got away injury-free. They were minor - simply the scale was massive.
“Fuck.” Iona swore, shooting up into the sky. I joined her a moment later, and Fenrir unfurled to his full size.
“Healing run.” I said, swooping around Massa. I could tell my radius had gotten far larger - I quickly stopped losing any mana, regenerating back to full - but without extensive testing, I couldn’t tell how large. I played it safe by circling the entire city, but didn’t notice my mana dropping at all. I rejoined Iona a moment later, my wife scanning the horizon with furrowed brows. A half-dozen other Classers were up in the air, looking around themselves. Difficult to see in the dark, and I wasn’t going to blind everyone with [A Light Shining in the Darkness]. No matter how good the levels might be.
“See anything?” I asked her.
“Nothing obvious. This might’ve just been a side effect of a battle going on somewhere else.”
I supposed that was better than a giant stomping over to Massa to give us a hard time. Iona pointed to the mountains, far off to the south.
“Avalanche going on over there.” She added.
“Brrrpt!!!” Auri pointed out the glow of a large fire off to the east. She knew all about huge wildfires.
“If we go that way, yes, we’ll handle it.” I told Auri.
“Brrpt!”
Trumpets blew, and my eyes darted over to the column of soldiers from the Sixth. It was midnight, or near enough, and the Legion was heading out of Massa, leading by example. Or not wanting to get trapped when it all went to hell. There were all sorts of reasons, from cynical to noble, that I could ascribe to their actions, but either way I was going to stick with them until they found a spot to settle in. Reed and a number of other [Standard-Bearers] started to make city-wide announcements.
“Citizens of Massa. Please remain calm, and evacuate in an orderly fashion. The city is becoming uninhabitable. We will not be responsible for the lives of those who remain. I repeat. Citizens of Massa. Please…”
My ears picked up a… I wanted to call it disturbing, but it was a more frustrating conversation.
“Everyone’s leaving, yeah?” One… I wanted to call him a kid, but at mid 20’s, that was my age talking. I was a Sentinel at that age.
“Yeah, we should get out of here as well.” A second voice chimed in.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“No, idiots!” The first voice said. “This is perfect! We’re going to stay here, have the run of the place. Live in the fancy villas with the huge pools and bigger beds and shit. Everyone’s leaving, we’re going to be the ones staying and live like [Emperors].”
“How do we not, you know, starve to death?” A third voice sarcastically asked.
Goddess, they were all so young.
“Easy! Let the idiots do the farming. Who’s going to really travel miles and miles to plant some leaves and shit? Nobody! Everyone’s going to want to get started right now, right here, right outside the walls. They’re planning the same thing we are, except if we let them, they’ll have the run of the place, not us. We claim the prime spots now, all of them, then rent them out and shit to everyone. Make ‘em pay up. And if they don’t? Well, all the fancy rich people have a shitton of guards, which means weapons. We’ll take the weapons, make a stash of them, and be the only ones with swords. If they don’t pay up, we’ll make them.”
More voices argued, but the first, confident voice had all the answers, clearly assembling a gang out of his existing friends and their friends. I repeated the conversation to Iona. She looked put-upon.
“Where?” She asked. I pointed to the house in question.
“Polish me up?” The Valkyrie asked. I whipped out a spellbook, flipped it open to the right spell, and in a moment Iona’s armor was shining like she’d just spent hours polishing it, with a remnant ‘sparkle’ effect making it look extra nice.
“Meet you at the gate the Sixth is leaving from. Auri, want to come with me?” She asked. I flew over to Fenrir’s back, settling into my usual saddle.
“Brrpt!” Auri agreed, zipping over to her.
“Full display?” I asked Iona, trusting her judgment in this.
“Yeah, go for it.”
I flicked Fenrir’s reins, Iona and Auri off to talk some sense into some idiot about-to-be-bandits. Seriously, when everything went to shit, whose first thought was ‘great, let me start robbing everyone else’, honestly. It was embarrassing. They’d do so much more for themselves and their chances of survival if they honestly tried to figure out how to farm, or herd animals, or a thousand other skills. Heck, their idea of ‘lots of weapons in the high end villas’ was a good one, and could be applied practically. Even if they left them as weapons, nevermind the vampire transforming items as quickly as he could, grabbing them and distributing them or even selling them would be a good plan. As it was, they were all too low level and plain stupid to do anything other than cause a few bodies before dying themselves.
Then again, criminals were never truly blessed with an overabundance of intelligence.
Fenrir flew low over Massa, roaring triumphantly. He evoked gasps and people pointing, and I shone with [A Light Shining in the Darkness], a show of strength and force to raise morale.
[*ding!* [A Light Shining in the Darkness] leveled up! 851 -> 854]
The world’s ending, but look who’s on your side.
I enjoyed flying solo on Fenrir. It was rare - there usually wasn’t an occasion or reason for it. I liked flying on my own, but here and now I could pretend to be something I could never become - a [Dragonrider].
I saw Katerina, and she waved to us. Good to know we weren’t completely on her shitlist, and Fenrir and I certainly caused a ripple through the column.
We were heading out, to land both familiar on a map, and utterly unknown what we would find there.
----------------------------------------
The sun rose on a tired column of [Legionaries] who’d marched through the night. Three of us had energy skills, with only Auri being the odd one out - and her interesting biology suggested she might be able to simply ‘skip’ sleep, or in Auri-language - burn the need for sleep away.
Phoenixes were bullshit. I was very happy she was on my side! A signal came from down low, and we swooped down, Iona, Auri and myself bailing off Fenrir’s back to land near Katerina.
“Legata.” I saluted and lowered my head deferentially, a public display of submission and ‘you’re the boss’. Given our earlier conversation, I was still in ‘Make Katerina Happy’ mode, and I knew mouthing off or undermining her authority could easily result in poor morale, desertions, or the collapse of the Sixth.
They’d caught half a line of soldiers trying to desert already, and the regulations were clear - they would be stoned to death. Katerina was fortunately not testing me right now either, because ‘turn my eye and let them die’ wasn’t on my list right now, and I didn’t want to ever have to allow it.
“Sentinel Dawn. We’re aiming for this river junction, and it was brought to my attention that the river might not be there anymore. We need to know now, and our scouting and reconnaissance Optio is reporting that they’re severely underpowered and undermanned to start with, before they lost half their scouts in the last few days. I apologize, I know this is beneath you, but can you go forth, and check if the river still exists?”
I saluted.
“Ma’am, of course. Would you like me to do a wider sweep of the region and bring you more intel while we’re at it? Get the lay of the land, and make sure, like you said, all the mountains are still in the same place, and check if any rivers have gotten up and slithered away?”
The river-snake Oddity existed, and a river ‘getting up and slithering away’ wasn’t just an idiomatic expression - there was one that could literally get up and decide to be somewhere else.
She nodded.
“Please, that’d be helpful.”
My eyes flickered to Iona, who looked positively delighted to be the one to sketch out a brand new set of maps, for a useful purpose. The [Optio] in charge of scouting unfurled several maps in the back of a nodosaurus-pulled wagon, and six of us leaned over.
“The river’s here, fed by the mountains in Bhutai. It meets a second river here, where it feeds into this lake. We want to settle down here, where the lake meets the river.”
I eyed the map somewhat doubtfully. ‘Lake’ was a bit of a misnomer - it was larger than most seas. Both Massa and Ephesus were on the ‘lake’, and where a river met the lake was prime grounds for a town to be founded.
The reason it wasn’t? It was in Bhutai territory, a harsh red line across the map demarking where Exterreri ended, and Bhutai started.
I decided not to argue with the politics of it. In Katerina’s defense, there were no better nearby locations to try and settle down, and most of the ‘good spots’ would result in evicting large numbers of civilians. To my understanding, most of the giants didn’t come down out of the mountains - the spot being pointed to was an awkward location that was part of Bhutai, but not settled by the giants or the inhabitants. It was also in the wrong direction from the Sixth’s old stomping grounds, making the trek twice as long for the camp followers.
Not my problem. I reminded myself.
“I assume you’d like me to also check if anyone’s currently living there?” I asked.
“Yes.” The [Optio] answered. “Also, please check if it looks like the river’s about to be diverted. If it’s not there, check if it’s been dammed up. We don’t want to get flooded out as we settle.”
Iona and I traded a look, and I nodded.
“We’ll get right on it.” I promised.
We took off south, crossing the two hundred miles in a few minutes.
Yet, within those minutes, trouble found us.
A small faun woman teleported in behind us, swinging a greatsword twice her size at our heads. Iona snapped her arm out, axe already in hand, intercepting and deflecting the blow. Before I finished recognizing the danger and applying lethal Radiance to the problem, she teleported away, entirely out of sight and range of any of my senses.
“BRPT!?” Auri fired a belated fireball where the would-be assassin had shown up.
“I’ve never seen or heard of her before.” I said. “Iona?”
She grimaced.
“Same. Best I could tell, an Immortal trying to pick people off? I barely got a glimpse of her stat sheet before she vanished.”
We stayed alert the rest of the way, but the assassin didn’t reappear. Part of me analyzed the path the Sixth needed to take. It was going to be hell to march - the roads simply ended a little to the south of where the Sixth currently was, and with all the good things I had to say about the Legions, they didn’t march terribly far or fast when the famed Exterreri roads didn’t exist.
Iona’s hand was flying over the paper, her [Vow] somehow kicking in on the situation when it came to drawing maps.
“Brrrpt.” Auri warned her.
“I’m fine.” Iona replied.
“BRPT!” Auri complained that she was already extinguishing fires from the sheer friction of Iona’s pencil against paper.
“Exactly.” Iona smirked at the bird. “You’re here, I’m fine.”
“Brrrrpt.” Auri gave up.
The river was more or less in the same location, sarcosuchuses prowling the bank. The dinosaur-crocodiles both weren’t a threat to the Legion, and a great ambush threat from the water, as they could snap away unsuspecting people grabbing a bucket of water. I briefly debated wholesale slaughtering them before the Sixth arrived, but everyone else beat me to it. Iona summoned her bow and arrows, Auri threw down Lava [Meteor Strikes], and Fenrir shot down jagged javelins of Ice.
I shrugged. Fine with me. While everyone else was slaughtering the beasts, I scanned the horizon, keeping an eye out for threats. Also shamelessly enjoying the raw majesty of the Bhutai mountains once again, the titans of earth scraping the sky. I thought of my time at the Jukong Monastery, wondering if Kunchenjab was doing alright. Might be worth a skim down in that direction, it wasn’t too far. It’d be good to know how the Sixth’s neighbors were going to do.
My eagle eyes caught sight of several elves in the mountains.
“Hang on, checking something out.” I said. I spread my wings out and flew off, getting a better long distance look at what was going on.
There was a major operation going on, the elves trying to dig something out. With how powerful and damned perfect they were, they were threatening to move entire mountains with their sustained efforts. I frowned as a detail worried at me, a very quiet alarm bell going off.
I flew back to Iona, and unceremoniously [Teleported] her latest map to me.
[*ding!* [Teleportation] leveled up! 510 -> 511]
Oh, that was bad. The little alarm bell grew a little louder, and I closed my eyes, trying to overlay the map Iona had just made with all the maps I had, trying to cross-reference exactly where I was… and if the map causing the alarm was a problem.
I sucked in a cold breath as my mind made the connection.
I’d dabbled in being a [Loremaster] at one point, and the cornerstone to the class was knowledge. I still had all the knowledge, and I still had the responsibility. I just wouldn’t be rolling in levels.
“What’s wrong, love?” Iona asked me at the same time Auri brrrpt’d a similar question.
“I think the elves found Valytheria, the World Sunderer.”