The being was still. It had been still, unmoving, for a very long time. It had not moved since the humans of this specific world, on which she slept, had discovered fire.

And then she had only blinked, gave the development a mental shrug and went back to sleep.

But now something happened. An intelligent being, capable of communicating with the inhabitants from a world without mana had found its way here.

That should not have been possible. It knew that steps had been taken to prevent something like that from happening.

It began to move, for the first time in aeons. It was a laugh, a mirthful laugh, directed at those that once upon a time took those steps.

”Fools. They wanted that non-intelligent beings could travel between those worlds, to act as familiars. But that had gone hilariously wrong. And now, it went fatally wrong. But something was not right here. The denizen of that other world should never have been able to get here, even if the barriers were already falling.”

But she also could not see any interference from an outside source.

”Wait”, she thought, ”no interference from an outside source?”

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That was strange. The barriers should have interfered, but they did not.

”That means someone got the bright idea to prevent any interference, but that also makes no sense. Why should anyone do this?”

This was great. The being loved riddles, and this was a very fascinating one. And it was a riddle that could affect the multiverse and in turn her in a real way. Exciting.

In another place someone swore. This being had made a mistake, and the rules prevented it from correcting it. Maybe it could influence things to correct this problem? If it did not manage that, it was screwed, and even if it managed it, it's future would not be the greatest, at least in the next few millennium or so.

Benedict laughed. The mistake that had been made was now realized. He asked himself if they had realized that even though the conditions for the problem to occur came from their actions, that he helped that it happened? It was irrelevant. But it would not do for them to move even somewhat openly, through agents heavily influenced. No, that would not do decided the old immortal being, older than most realized.

Times change always. Society changes, languages change and technology or arcane knowledge advanced. It was rare for technology or arcane knowledge to even stall in progress, not to speak of losing knowledge at all. Certainly, as new ways replace the old, the old might be mostly forgotten, but often the fundamentals of them are still there, even taught, even if the specifics are lost to time. Losing technology can happen, but generally, only through catastrophes. Technology stalling completely never happens without something strange going on. That can be a dictatorship, certainly, but it also can be other things. But is it only natural that basically only magical research happens, or is something more sinister going on?