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“Atlantis, the last remaining bastion of the living in this world, is about to fall. I write this with a heavy heart in the hopes that someday, somewhere, someone will be alive to read this. The dead surround our cities. They march ever closer, and neither might of magic nor might of sword stops them. What we did to anger the gods to have this plague descend upon us I do not know, but I hope those in the future can avoid this fate…”
Last lines of the personal journal of the Mage-King of Atlantis shortly before he detonated his kingdom hoping to prevent the plague from spreading to other worlds.
I barely managed to make it out of the Dean’s office alive. Only the fact that I may have disrupted a far more insidious plot against the Elysium Magitorium prevented Dean Brahm from tossing me into Tartarus for a few millennia. As it is he had already handed me a punishment that would occupy me for quite a while.
Apparently my unkillable zombie plague in the mortal worlds had caused a great deal of damage. While normally that wouldn’t really have been much of an issue (The Professors only stopped the plague to prevent it from reaching any Immortal worlds), my actions had been much larger in scope than any previous such instances of Immortals messing around with mortals. This had prompted the Angelic Cohort and the Grand Magocracy, who were already convened, to agree to sign an accord that would strictly limit the amount an Immortal could interfere with the mortal worlds. The Elysium Magitorium had also signed the agreement, as had several other major powers that saw a chance to gain favor with little sacrifice. After all, only the Immortal worlds really mattered.
Even though the agreement didn’t work ex post facto the Dean decided that my actions still warranted punishment. As such I had been assigned the task of restoring all the damaged civilizations to their former heights.
Not a particularly hard task, as I had initially planned on just taking over a few mortal souls and establishing myself as supreme ruler on each world before simply recreating all their lost technologies. Would’ve taken me maybe a century or two if I took it easy. Then Dean Brahm dropped the antimatter bomb on me. I would be limited to only using powers mortals were also capable of and I was forbidden from simply handing them knowledge. I had to actually guide them into rebuilding their civilizations by themselves. I would also be limited by the new regulations of the accord, which I had to study in detail. Hopefully there were come loopholes.
My classmates were waiting for me outside.
Ozrantiel spoke first “So, how’d it go? Must not have been too bad seeing as you’re still in one piece.”
He was right in a way. The punishment for plagiarism was having your body separated into multiple pieces for a week. But that only lasted a week, whereas my punishment would last for potentially thousands of years if not longer.
I described what the Dean had told me to do as my punishment, and from all the winces I saw I knew that they felt my pain.
Gunhildr, blunt as ever, didn’t feel too much sympathy for me. “Well, it was a harebrained scheme anyways. I mean what kind of moron leaves a signature at the end of an elaborate prank that breaks more rules than I believe exist.”
I felt the need to defend myself. “Hey! The prank was perfectly planned and brilliantly executed. That one error shouldn’t take away from how good of a prank this was. I mean, did you not see the Professors dressed in bright pink and twirling about on-stage?”
Everyone snickered at that memory. Unfortunately, we wouldn’t be able to brag about this prank for quite a while since some of the events relating to it were classified. We chatted a bit more, but I was working under a time limit. I had only a day to pack and then depart for the mortal worlds and I needed to grab as much stuff as I could. Most of the materials I used for my better rituals could only come from Immortal worlds, so it was likely that I wouldn’t be able to restock easily. I stored everything I owned, and some stuff that technically belonged to the school, into a home-in-a-ring such devices allowed one to carry with them far more than would fit in a normal storage item, since the ring could literally carry around a full sized mansion. The higher-grade storage devices that could store entire planets tended to cause gravitational anomalies and that wouldn’t be good when mixing with mortals.
After packing I sent a command to my robes to shift from their standard shape into a set of ordinary travelling clothes (shirt, pants, boots, jacket), then set off for the departure area. Leaving an Immortal world caused spatial distortions as the formations protecting it opened up enough to allow travellers to leave. The departure area was shielded to prevent those distortions from interfering with any delicate tasks being conducted.
Ozrantiel and Merlinius awaited me at the departure zone.
Ozrantiel spoke first “Well, it will be a lot less interesting without you around anymore. I’ll miss the days of hunting down your escaped experiments before the staff found them. Try to keep better track of things while you wander about with the mortals.”
Merlinius added “You wouldn’t want to make your job harder by accidentally unleashing an Eldritch Abomination on a world just when the mortals start rebuilding. But seriously, its not like your going to be gone, we can still visit whenever we feel like slumming it with the mortals. On second though, I think I can live with not seeing you for the next few eons. “
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We had a small laugh at that, but I knew that staying any longer would just make it more difficult for me to leave.
“Well, I guess this is farewell for now. See you later.” I stepped into the departure zone and felt for the formation protecting the world. It recognized me and opened up, letting me slip into the void. Once there, I shifted myself into the plane of souls and travelled towards a region of the universe that was noticeably dimmer than the rest. These were the mortal worlds, a section of the universe where the ambient energy levels were too low to support the creation of Immortals. Even I could feel a drop in the rate my energy replenished itself, but it wasn’t really noticeable.
I headed towards one of the worlds impacted by my plague and prepared to enter it. I was momentarily surprised at how it was far less populated than I expected. Barely a million people spread out across the 3 main landmasses surrounding a body of water. It was probably pretty big for the mortal world.
As I entered the world, I felt an odd burning sensation from my soul. I examined it and realized that it was the binding agreement that Dean Brahm had required me to sign before I left. It didn’t prevent me from using my powers, but any time I violated the agreement the Dean would be informed and I would suffer some pain. I guessed that since I had just entered a mortal world I was now bound by the terms of the agreement, which meant no usage of Immortal powers. Quickly, I cut myself off from the wellspring of energy within me. Even without my Immortal powers or my true abilities I still had more knowledge about the arcane arts than any mere mortal. Plus I could still draw upon some energy, around the most a mortal could possibly handle, but nowhere near what the average Immortal had access too.
I suddenly lost control of the gravitons I was using to move around. I started dropping towards the ground much faster than I would have liked, my clothes flapping in the wind. I had to suppress my instinctive urge to will gravity to bend to my whims, as that required the power of an Immortal, which I could no longer access so freely. As I considered my remaining options, I realized that my clothes still obeyed my will and that they drew in power from the environment, not from me.
I commanded them to form the shape and structure of a pair of wings, which had to be massive in relation to my body because my physical form was by no means light. The newly formed wings grew out of my jacket, which had morphed into a bodysuit for stability. Slowly I glided towards the nearest gathering of the inhabitants of this planet. They were a fairly normal species, their slender frames slightly shorter than my current height of 2 meters. Light blue skin, no hair, two legs, two arms, and 6 fingers per hand. Altogether quite boring. They would do quite well as my experimental subjects as I tried out the various methods of restoring their civilization to the way it was. They were gathered inside and around a large building carved into a mountain. It was more like a city, but all the building seemed to be joined together with hallways running through multiple buildings. Many of the outer building were collapsed to form some sort of barrier but there were quite a few breaches in it. I observed all this as I approached rapidly. One of the building looked quite important and the people wearing the shiniest clothes were standing there. It even had a conveniently open roof so that I could land inside without having to break anything. The mortal inside seemed to be discussing something if all the noise and arm waving was an indicator.
I could use a small portion of my accessible powers to sense what they were trying to communicate by listening to their minds on the psychic plane, but with my limited power I would need to be more efficient. One quickly modified ritual that was meant to accelerate the learning of runes and I started understanding their language quite quickly. I increased the sensitivity of my ears to hasten the amount of language I took in. Minutes later and I was fluent in their language, and I knew that the people inside were debating whether or not to abandon this city in favor of more fertile ground. Apparently food was a problem in the mountain city.
I decided to go with the most straightforward plan: I would land in front of them and inform them that I was here to assist in rebuilding their civilization. I could provide them with information such as the location of other enclaves of their people and assist them with their research a bit by using my knowledge of rituals to speed up the experiments considerably. Maybe I could also use my powers to create a few crop seeds that would grow on this mountain. That was the limit that I could do with my current restrictions.
My wings wouldn’t fit through the opening, so I reverted my clothing and just dropped the last few dozen feet. On impact I realized a few things. One, the floor here was a lot weaker that what I was used to. Two, these mortals were sensitive to loud noises and flying pieces of stone. Three, when I reverted my clothing, I accidentally reverted them back to what they looked like at college, which was a hooded robe so black that it actively absorbed the light around it.
The end result, I slammed into the floor and left a large crater. The nearest few mortals were sent flying and many more were bleeding due to stone shrapnel. But worst of all, some fool shouted out “DEMON ATTACK!!” as loud as he could while pointing at me.
The people standing on the outside of the meeting and a few close to me drew their weapons and began shooting at me. It appeared these people didn’t use magic or didn’t have any offensive magic users here, but I supposed a rapidly moving piece of metal would be quite dangerous to most non-magical creatures in the mortal world.
Their shooting was horribly inaccurate though. It seemed like only one in every 3 bullets actually hit me, and even then they were striking in different places on my body. Interestingly enough, their bullets were actually made out of a slightly magical alloy so they managed to leave tiny scratches when they struck my face or hands. As they shot me, I pondered what I could do to improve this situation. Eventually I decided that this world would take too much effort to help right now. Perhaps a world that used magic more overtly would accept my aid more readily.
Quickly, I transitioned back into the realm of souls, this time heading for a world that had a rather advanced society for a mortal world. One of its countries had a king that might actually have a chance of becoming an Immortal if he travelled to an Immortal world. I think he ruled over a place called Atlantis? Hopefully he would be more receptive to my aid.