Chapter 057: New Mission
“I’m beginning to suspect that you are actually enjoying it.” I commented, seeing how red Simea was. She was almost certainly into it, right?
I sat on the edge of my bed with my legs spread wide in an exaggerated ‘manspreading’ position. Using it exactly like a man should use it - I had completely naked Simea sit right in front of me, with her back facing me, and her arms bound on her back. Which allowed me free, unlimited access to… well… everything.
And oh boy, she was reaaally red.
“You… don’t… say?” She managed to utter, panting heavily. Oh, well, it looks like the night elf skill to get used to anything as long as there is sex involved did indeed work for Players. Colour me surprised.
Suddenly there was a pounding to the door.
Ugh, who is it now, I explicitly told them to not interrupt us. We were finally making up for the cold period when doing anything outside of a cozy place between the quilt was… hard. It wasn’t until I figured how to supply the Arcane Core with some additional power (to make my own bedroom slightly warmer without compromising my conscience) that we could finally have sex again.
“Yes?” I shouted.
“Firewing wants to see you. Says it’s important.” Vaera. Our resident trap (ugh) dragonbride. I should have expected that little troll to be the one to interrupt. He probably volunteered, only so he could later on ask “so, how was your little alone time, hmm?” with a shrewd smile.
I’m seriously going to kill him one day.
“Yes, yes, I’ll be there as soon as possible.” I guess we’ll need to hurry. So much about my plan to tease Simea by pointing out how perverted she recently became and what a bad girl she is.
Ugh.
***
Tyrant’s Hold was… crowded. Much more than ever. Especially since the Grandma/Firewing people moved in. There was no place for them on the second level, despite the fact that the place we managed to reconquer was several times bigger than the first. So we had to move them into the old cult quarters.
I wasn’t exactly used to seeing children play hide and seek in the Hold, but I guess I could get used to that. Certainly made the place a little more cheerful.
Judging from the noises coming from the entrance hall, where the Gore Altar stood, Leria was busy disciplining trainees. The opening storm of the Long Night (a period of terrible weather that made the whole mountains look like Siberia on steroids) was about to end, and she was anxious to send the first group of people to our Dungeon They needed combat experience and we needed things to sell.
Ugh. I’m not gonna go and tell her hello, she’d probably kidnap me and force me into helping them train. She had a rather… well-defined opinion on me and my permanent attempts to avoid working myself too hard, especially since she became a Chosen One. It got even worse after she spoke with the her religious equivalent of angel that turned out to inhabit the same place we did.
I actually agreed with her on an intellectual level. Working hard was a good idea. But I was also a lazy bum, and she looked so happy pushing me around that I lacked the cruelty required to rob her from that little daily fun.
Let’s go to the Firewing’s lab.
***
Firewing, as a resident archmagician and semi-immortal being of great power and knowledge obviously had to organize herself a lab. The perfect time came during the last week. We had little to do since we uncovered the Cathedral - and Yhrezerach was quite vocal about us trying to push deeper right now not being a very good idea. So once again we were dying of boredom.
There was a collapsed stairway right behind the corridor I dubbed the officer’s quarters. We uncovered it… wow, a long time ago. Almost at the beginning of our journey through Gates of Eternity. Kytar, the head of our workforce, told us that trying to uncover it had to wait until we had more workers and perhaps some architect to figure out how to exactly construct it without risking the whole stairway collapsing on its own under the weight of some unfortunate people.
Workers were no longer a trouble. We had a lot of them. And Firewing had some knowledge about architecture - as an archmagician she had enough time to dabble in many arts - though she also had a much better idea.
An elevator.
When it came to fusing magic with technology, the best idea was to have as much technology and as little magic as possible. Magic could be sabotaged. Often much easier than its technological counterpart, but it had an edge in terms of flexibility, precision and being easy to use.
But we had little in terms of technology… so after our workers cleared most of the collapse, Firewing installed a magical form of an elevator. Well, mostly magical. A wooden platform created from boards we salvaged from empty food-crates.. Plus a rope connected to the ceiling. Magic pulled it up and let it down. Magic also made sure that the very primitive platform didn’t lean towards any direction and was completely stable Otherwise, we’d have to balance the weight any time someone tried to use it. Even more magic worked like a failsafe and should catch any person about to fall down.
Magic was handy.
This way we uncovered… well, I guess it should be called a Tyrant’s Hold level 0 or -1. Though it would be a massive exaggeration. Even more quarters above us and some more beneath us. Enough to house all our craftsmen, Kovacs’ group (Kovacs himself decided to live in one room with the liberated slave that worked as our cook, imagine my surprise), Firewing, Ytar, his girlfriend’s family and herself…
Not married, not in legal age (or, to be exact, not in ‘moral’ age, since local laws didn’t give a shit to that matter), and in a base filled with somewhat zealous followers of monotheistic religions. Living together was obviously a nope. Also, she and her family required some social rehabilitation after living in slums, it was still sort of miracle she was… well… almost normal.
Everyone besides the villagers and Firewing’s people got their own rooms. And we still had free space. Some of which we decided to convert into Firewing’s laboratory, library and a ‘hospital’ for her to work on healing people. We planned to move the books from the library in my quarters soon.
I knocked on the door.
“Yes, yes, come in.” I heard from the other side. Firewing was busy doing something. Which wasn’t that much of a surprise since she was permanently busy doing something. Not having to sleep was a great help in that regard.
The inside was a mess. A big mess. I wasn’t sure how Firewing keeps track of this chaos. Probably another Archmagician’s trick… or simply good memory. She was busy concocting some alchemical potion on the alchemical lab we already moved over from my quarters.
I think I know that mushroom.
“Let me guess, intelligence enhancers?” It was this weird twisted mushroom that seemed to love living in our caves. Eldritch in nature. Used as a mutagen. When used for years it raised IQ and improved memory. A great find since it worked strongly and locals loved using mutagens to improve themselves and/or their children into being prettier, smarter and healthier.
No wonder you could figure out that a person was from the local elite at a glance. And most of the changes could be inherited, though they diminished over generations if not reinforced by more mutagens.
“Yep.” She answered without even turning towards me, still manipulating the lab. “It’s always better to sell finished product rather than simple resources. And in case of ingredients like that, refining it into a potion is the simplest thing ever. You just had to purify it and then dilute properly.”
Well, we had a lot of water so diluting wasn’t a problem. It was a water blessed by the local ‘angel’ of Overtyrant, so we had also a guarantee that if there was some eldritch corruption in the mushrooms, it was going to be purified properly.
On the table beside her there were… twenty seven bottles of various size, with stickers describing how diluted the contents were. If we wanted to turn this into a proper business we should invest in a steady supply of glass bottles of the same size, rather than recycling those that earlier held healing potions.
They should be blue. I mean, it’s intelligence so it helps in using magic. It’s obvious it should be blue, right? Like mana potions.
“I’m not exactly sure if I really want to start a business dealing with occult alchemy.” I said. “I had some bad memories from World’s Requiem. One asshole gave me an anti-bleeding occult potion with something living and moving inside. This stuff is weird.” She chuckled.
“I think I know the potion you speak off. Yes, it’s weird. But we don’t have to drink it, we just have to sell it. You, of all people, should understand the value of that.” Ugh, you don’t have to remind me. I know I’m seen as a moneylover around. Not the worst thing I’m associated with in common belief. “And I know I repeat myself, but the whole idea of you coming from another world and the possibility that this world is fake is absolutely fascinating.”
She actually looked at me this time. It wasn’t the first time we talked about that. She seemed pretty fixated on that.
“Yes, it still troubles me. Until we ran into the Glitch I have leaned heavily towards this world being true. Now…” I sighed and shook my head. “Now I don’t know.”
“I guess. Well, from what I can feel and think, it is true.” She returned to alchemy. “So I’m going to stay faithful to this option. Besides, Gods already pulled weirder things. We are talking about beings that supposedly create alternate realities with completely alternative civilizations where they wage brief battles merely to decide little details of the Great Game that they couldn’t decide by negotiations. Brief for them, since we talk about eternity from our point of view. So it’s totally possible that your world was merely an addition to this one.” She sighed. “Still, a fascinating matter.”
I haven’t thought about that idea. DFI made one or two remixes of this universe - Underlord placed in one of them - supposedly happening in such alternative realities. The idea of Earth being merely an addition like that…
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… wow, the butthurt that the Vasyr and the rest of the assholes from the city would got if they hear this theory would be glorious. They all stick to “hehe it’s merely a game so let’s enjoy ourselves with the fake people living around” mindset. Assholes.
“I’m especially interested about how the completely different approach to religion.” She said, giving me a glancing look. “I can’t even imagine world where their existence can be sensibly doubted. It’s not like they show themselves here, since they prefer acting through proxies and the only person to speak with them are Chosen Ones… the miracles are also so rare that it’s safe to say that the only contact with them for the 99% of people is visiting the temples. While in your world…”
“I think the differences are smaller than you think.” I answered. “In terms of religion, said 99% has completely the same experience as 99% of people from Earth. What’s different is the number of daemons with their family tree reaching Gods running around, the existence of scientifically verifiable theurgies and said Chosen Ones. But… be honest here, how often do you pray daily?”
This surprised her.
“I… don’t really do that. I took part in some religious celebrations in the temples, but to actually pray..”
“So, as I say, the difference is smaller than you think. In our world the only religious thing most people do is saying OH GOD when they stepped on something sharp or saw something terrible.” I shrugged. “On Earth we tend to have doubts, here you have problems with knowing that they exist and treating them like natural laws… but the reactions are pretty similar.”
And it’s getting worse and worse on Earth, mostly because people are idiots and fail to understand that applying scientific approaches to religion is stupid, because religion is closer to a system of ethics and philosophy than scientific laws. Bonus points for irony when people go into ‘HUEHUE THERE WAS A BIG BANG SO WHERE IS THE GOD IN THAT’ without knowing that the guy behind the big bang theory was a priest that didn’t think there was anything in his theory that contradicted his religious views.
But of course they knew better than him!
Ugh. It wasn’t a time nor a place to go into religious rants.
“Well, I’d love to debate things but you seemed to want something from me. Enough to interrupt my time with Simea. What is it?”
“Oh, right.” She forgot, am I right? “I activated the machine.”
What mach… oh.
“You activated the automata we found in the Woods?” She nodded. “And… you know you could have like… warned me before you activated it?”
“Uhm… what’s the point?” What? “It’s not like you could tak ancient kynevian, right?”
“Actually, I do speak it.” I said in ancient kynevian She opened her eyes wide, looking at me in disbelief. “...And yes, I know that my pronunciation isn’t good.”
“It’s… quite good.” She shook her head. “I apologize for that. I thought that… I guess I haven’t worked for anyone in a while.” You don’t say.
I guess that studying history and learning some latin can turn out to be useful at the weirdest occasions.
“So… the problem is that most of our automata’s memory data was lost. Not very surprising due to spending thousands of years lying in some cave, but even the part that survived contains interesting stuff.” Gimme the knowledge, gimme. “She was assigned as a bodyguard of Flavius Iunius Niger. A quite notorious archmagician of the Old Empire that fought in Aevaria during the Dawn War.”
Which also meant that we weren’t going to learn anything really interesting about him. The Dawn War was a mess on a metaphysical level. This Flavius Iunius guy probably died in at least a hundred ways, at least if you counted deaths that left some sort of evidence (like surviving tales of Imperial Religion soldiers that took part in it). All of them equally true. And that was merely a single way in which the slow and painful death of Reality manifested itself.
Sure, the victors cleaned the mess from things potentially dangerous and fixed the Reality, but there were still leftovers lying here and there. We uncovered one of them. The automata probably died a hundred times as well, each time brought back into existence by past, present and future suddenly rewritten due to Gods’ wrestling over control of the Reality.
“So I presume that this Niger guy was responsible for the Anchoring Station, whatever it was.” Firewing nodded. “Any idea on what it was?”
“Unfortunately, the most recent memory, one from the time when she was assigned to the Station, is amongst those the most damaged.” Ugh. “We did manage to find out few things. For example I now know what sort of spell was anchored in the Anchoring Station.
Wow. That was… big.
“Come on, speak. I’m curious and you have my unflinching attention.” Firewing sent me a wry smile.
“Ascendance. Mass one.” Huh.
That was one of the options I considered. Ascendance - known also as Apotheosis - was a process through which mortals changed into a daemon (or daemon lord, though it was only a variant of Ascendance) or deity. Sometimes even into Gods, but it was very, very rare.
I knew only of single confirmed case and it was reverse. The preexisting God (Allfather of the ceverian pantheon) elevated one of his believers - a young woman of peerless faith - into godhood and married her. But it was a unique situation. Some other Gods might’ve had mortal origins, but if that was the case they weren’t going to admit that publicly since it would mean a massive drop in faith.
For some reason people had less faith in beings that started as one of them. Felt more mundane or something.
Ascendance was a tricky and dangerous process. There were many ways of achieving it, and even more of achieving a state called Partial Ascendance. Even becoming an archmagician was a Partial Ascendance, since you stopped being mortal in traditional sense of the word after you did that.
The problem was that it could end up bad. As in REAL. FUCKING. BAD. At least several major ancient civilizations died because they attempted what could be considered a crowning achievement of any magical civilization - ascendence into a higher state of existence… without leaving a single one of their citizens behind - and failed spectacularly.
Ascendance was not a toy. Especially when you tried to go that way on a big scale. Personal apotheosis happened to this day, I mean even relatively minor things - like a necromancer becoming a lich, or alchemist completing an Elixir Vitae (or the Magnum Opus, for a full Ascendence), or Aura Manipulator achieving top level of Aura Conductivity - counted as it. But mass ones?
This notorious civilization-killer stopped murdering powerful civilizations after inrithism came and introduced the idea of ‘modern’ afterlife to primitive religions of that age. Gods of Old Empire had it as well but it was very weird and limited to heroes. The idea of “don’t be a dick and we will reward you with eternity in nice place even if you don’t become a well renowned hero or something in your life” seemed to phase out mass ascendences into obscurity.
“They must have been really terrified of the Usurpers to try stuff like that.” I commented, using the name the Old Empire had for the current Gods, back then during the Dawn War. “Especially when done in hurry it literally begs to end up horrible.”
“Well, I’m not exactly sure if they tried it in hurry.” Huh? “I think they started working on it before the Dawn War started.”
Oh.
“For real? The Old Empire tried to pull a mass Ascendance?” She nodded. “Well… that’s big news. I don’t think anyone knew anything about that.” I’m totally going to write at least a short history book about that. I might need to publish it anonymously but it would be glorious.
“I think they planned to use the magic from the Anchoring Station to construct special dimension in the Dark. Man-made afterlife, essentially. Though much worse than proper afterlifes, if I know anything about that matter. “
Curiously, omnipotence and omniscience seemed weirdly useful when it comes to creating alternate realities… and not forgetting about, like, making food supply without a chance to fail randomly and have all your inhabitants eat each other. Or the oxygen running out because you forgot to add a system to replenish it (probably because your civilization simply didn’t know it existed). And so on.
“But they failed to finish it before the Dawn War started.” Firewing continued. “Then… I think that Flavius Iunius was supposed to… militarize the entire project and use it against the Usurpers.”
Do I even want to imagine what one can do with enough magic to construct a different dimension? Especially when your Gods (I mean, that archmagician obviously had orders from above, and one much more straightforward since Gods worked more openly during the war) ordered you to do that?
It’s probably something terrible. I saw enough of Weapons of Mass Destruction (capital weapons obviously required) made according to Gods orders during the late World’s Requiem. Especially when the Dark Ones came and the world was in Dawn War-like state again.
The best example was the Worldkiller. An Absolute Magic device that, if activated, would change laws of physics (on who knows how big an area), changing pi to 0 and probably causing a sudden implosion of all matter in half of the universe due to… like… half of science and mathematics no longer making sense. Just to deny the Darkness its victory, if it actually overwhelmed local defences.
Ugh. We really shouldn’t touch this thing, am I right?
“Good news is that it probably doesn’t work.” Firewing tried to cheer me up, but stop after I gave hear a Look. One of my best. “Alright, I know, ‘probably’ isn’t enough for us to touch anything, even if all of the Anchors beside the third were swallowed by the Dark. Still, the chances for somebody doing anything with it are slim, at best. So I don’t think we should worry about it.”
“Better. Still not perfect though. Any idea about what exactly happened to the place?” This was interesting as well.
“I… think that the Usurpers used Nyrathzm to wipe the place out. And prevent the Old Empire from constructing some nasty weapon and using it against them.” Oh. That would explain a lot. Gods and Aberrants alike fought on both sides back then. The first and only time Pentagram fought alongside the the normal Gods. Though, to be precise, it was more like fighting the same enemy in the same time, while ignoring each other… and with frequent friendly fire.
“So, the Nyrathzm swept the place clean, murdering all of the Old Empire personnel… and what then? I mean, I understand that he changed the whole place into his domain, creating the Black Woods. It’s pretty natural for powerful archdaemons and aberrants when they gain power over some place, but… what’s with the Anchoring Station? It doesn’t… why did he even preserve it?”
“I don’t know. But I think you should visit the place as soon as possible. And kill the Forsaken.” Oh, the boss that killed me and Simea when we ventured into the depths of the Anchoring Station. I almost forgot about it.” It might give us some clue as to what sort of place the Station truly is, what’s the Nyrathzm agenda… and what Gods expect us to do.”
The worst case scenario? The Glitches are some new type of multiversal conquerors like Darkness… and Gods are already busy preparing the chessboard for the Gates of Eternity version of the Twilight War from World’s Requiem. I don’t like the idea of an ancient superweapon being suddenly uncovered. Things like that rarely happen randomly.
That’s of course if this really is Reality, and not just a game beginning to glitch.
Ugh.
“The Werkmonth should be finished already.” Firewing continued. “So after the snowstorm ends, you should probably go to the Black Woods soon. Preferably after visiting the city to sell the loot you got from the cathedral raid… I think we’ll also need few parts for Aurora.”
“Aurora? Oh, the automat.” Now that I think about it… “What stage is she on?”
“Early.” Nice.
Automatas were a curious bunch. Humanoid robots… without the tiniest bit of magic inside. According to some theories the few fabricators that could manufacture them (that were a very valuable and well guarded assets) somehow got here from the Long War universe due to certain similarities between automats and certain ‘species’ of machines in that world.
They started as cold, psychopatic killers. Very intelligent and completely without conscience. Tell them to murder a pregnant woman and they would do it obediently… as long as you had control over them or they had some business in the murder. There are certain items to ensure their obedience, and… well, even Imperium was more or less ok with people having total control over SUCH beings, even when it bordered on mind control. They had to be controlled. Preferably by decent people.
After some time, the influence of the Dark slowly changed them. It was like… brainwashing with a conscience and general goodness. Automatas could live for centuries. After three hundred years (faster if they spent a lot of time in anomalies and other places heavily tainted with Dark) all they were good for was running charities and orphanages. In that particular cases this wasn’t the case, it seems. Probably because she was off in the meantime.
But if we just got ourselves a homicidal humanoid robot… well, that was just one more asset for me to use.
“She knows how little she knows about the current situation. She could as well stay with us. You should still get her a controlling circuit, preferably before she repairs herself and gets funny ideas. For now she will stay in my lab. Plus a memory core with knowledge about modern language, otherwise she’ll be talking in an antique form of kynevian and I assure you that this will… draw attention.”
Right, right, more money to be spent. At least the blizzard is coming to an end.