Chương 504: AF Chapter 503 – Inside the Inner Sea

"UP!" Briggs bellowed, his voice breaking across the skin with a Warlord's command. It was remarkable. In one second, every single person there was on their feet, blinking away their confusion, most of them with Weapons out and ready to fight.

"Get on board!" Briggs ordered them all brusquely, and, still trying to get their thoughts back online, nobles and soldiers alike obeyed their Warlord and commander immediately. Even Master Oswald and Ben Ten were moving before they could think about it.

"He does that so well," I whispered to Kris, who was beaming widely at the show.

"He does, doesn't he?" she purred, her thoughts going places with deep voices and steel-bending big hairy arms and things.

"I have this image of the big hairy brute just bawling into the faces of some ascetic nerds out there right now, and it's just so appropriate." I had to smile at the image, too. Supermagic archmage with a pissed-off Source in their face, not the best of situations to be in.

"Well, we'll have to see…"

It was not a short run. The trisecting point was a good seventy miles from us. We could have gone a lot closer if we weren't at the Southern Power Forge, but that was also the most isolated spot to launch from, the least likely to have random watchers around. We'd wiped the holdings of every other faction from the Southern Landbridge, while there were plenty of undead or living people around in the west, north, and eastern sides of the Inner Sea. Thus, seventy miles of running it was.

Now, that wasn't all that bad, because Briggs and Princess Kristie could run INCREDIBLY fast. Like, fast enough I was using Primus to streamline the wind resistance, because it was shrieking around the Wagons as they were towed behind the pair of them. They were clearing a base move of 250 or so, which was a thousand feet every six seconds without serious effort. Basically, 120 mph, and they could hold that speed all day with their Constitution scores. A real emergency? They could crank it up to probably 180 mph.

There wasn't much that was going to threaten them without also being supernaturally fast. The water was spraying to either side of the Wagons with their speed, a line of foam and sliced waves extending out behind us for longer than was strictly natural as the ki of their lightfoot dissipated over the waves behind us. We'd be at our destination in a half-hour or so. There was nothing visible out here.

The haze of the sea rose up and cut down our line of sight, making it look like fog was in the distance in every direction. Detect Aquatics V below and around us assured me that there was life, but the creatures of the Deep didn't seem to be present out here. Everything I was registering was traditional sea creature variants of large size, and considerably more variety than I routinely saw in the ocean around the island. Sharks, gars, and barracuda, large lobsters and crabs and jellyfish, among other things.

There were some niffis and nefanes, the larger floaters, but no sleeches, and no remorans, either. If there were big nefanes out here, like the kind Tim liked to eat, they must have stayed closer to the shores, because they weren't in the deeper waters.

"Any interesting commentary?" Master Oswald, joining me and Ten at the front of Kris' Wagon.

"I can't go heavy on ranged Divs, I don't want to trip any alarms. No tribes of the Deep wandering around this far out. I haven't seen a nefane or niffi down below us for over ten miles," I informed the Green Hunter. He looked thoughtful as he studied the bubble of air in front of us, the way the wind sliced into the waves to either side, and the incredibly long strides of Princess Kristie, her black hair swirling lightly from her motion as she Skated forwards so effortlessly and the wind got out of her way.

"The deep waters of the northern and southern oceans didn't make that big a difference…"

"No. Deep waters are just pleasant places to rest in for those things. Also, not a single dolphin, porpoise, penguin, seal, or whale-type creature out here." Ten frowned at that.

"Reason?" he asked me.

"Killed off?" he ventured.

"Or what ones exist might have to remain near the center. I don't know. There are some subsea passages out into the ocean in the south and the northwest, but they are one-way. Most stuff goes out, it doesn't come back in. The Shorewards extend below the sea and stop the Deep's creatures from coming in, just like they stop them from coming up the rivers." I paused slightly.

"Whales and dolphins are generally considered intelligent. We know the penguins are. It is entirely likely they don't want to remain here." Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. I pointed straight down.

"Ah," both men said at the same time, glancing at one another.

"A little advice from their elders, saying to get the heck away from there…" Master Oswald murmured.

"Indeed wise," Ten agreed firmly.

"How do you expect this will work out?" I weighed my options and considered past history calmly.

"We're going to get separated at some point. Most of you are going to be lost in the illusion and not remember anything. On the other hand, Nuhmudira and her attendants are likely going to be in the same situation, so you should be able to exit the area right on top of them if we manage to find them.

"What Briggs, Kris, and I see is likely not something we can tell you without daring some extremely dangerous retribution, so be aware of that going in. If you want to learn for yourselves, you're going to have to be dangerous enough to earn that right yourselves, and the qualifications are high."

"Do you believe anyone on Dereth is aware of what is going on there?" Ten asked narrowly.

"No. If they did, they would not be here, puppets dancing to the tunes of the System. You don't become Eternal by being subject to the whims of another and living in a gilded cage." They both filed that fact away as well.

"If that is true, the tens of thousands of years the Empyreans have been here, the rise and fall of Empires about this island… has been little more than a dog-and-pony show for the masters of the System here, for whatever their own purposes are," Master Oswald ventured in a low voice.

"They are not nearly as important and powerful as they think they are, and very pointedly, when they could be living on the rest of the planet, they are still here."

"To be fair, so are we," Ten nodded.

"The Summons system and the rewards, even if just Karmic, are quite addictive to those who want to improve themselves. Add in the former loot drops of old, and who would dare leave such a place? They'd simply be left behind in the hunt for power..."

"Yes, thus cementing its place politically as being so important. The training of armies, the funding of governments, the equipping of individuals… Dereth is unrivaled in what it can give to those who control it… or think they do," I agreed with him.

"Yet the Haebrean and Yalain did not base their empires here, until they fell," Master Oswald pointed out.

"If they could not build up a suitable force to take back their world from here, where else?" I asked him, and he frowned in consideration.

"When they wanted to hide themselves and grow their power, how many forces came here to rebuild?"

"All of them," Ten said grimly.

"All the Empyreans, dead and living, came here in the end."

"And when they could not, they went out looking for warriors who could do the job for them," Master Oswald added coolly.

"And such a wonderful job we did. Such that the Empyreans became superfluous to the job that had to be done…"

"Are we then meant to clean away the last of the undead and shades, now that the living Empyreans are gone?" Ten asked thoughtfully.

"From our standpoint, or the System's?" I asked of him, and the two men reflected on that point.

"From our standpoint, we definitely want to be rid of them. From the System's standpoint, it allowed and encouraged the conversion of Empyreans into both creatures. Perhaps us exterminating them would show that we make better replacements for them, if we are not crippled in so doing." Both of them grimaced.

"Kill the dogs and become the dogs…" Oswald spat angrily, and Ten nodded agreement.

"We have to bring our children off this island," Ten declared softly.

"Otherwise, we are raising them into slavery, knowing or not."

"Our destiny is indeed not our own as long as we remain here," Oswald exhaled.

"Yet we cannot just abandon it, can we?"

"No, we cannot. The Karmic Buffet this place represents is unrivaled. Simply for training purposes, we would need to have a presence here. But living here is slavery. The problem is that the influence of the System doubtless extends beyond its shores…" Both of them exhaled.

"All the Empyreans and their empires and fell deeds ended up happening here," Oswald repeated.

"So, even if they were wise enough to reign elsewhere… their empires fell, and when they did, they came here. And perhaps the System pushed fools and pulled the egos of idiots to make sure those empires fell, and here they would come."

"That means this entire planet might be cursed," Ten murmured in consternation.

"None of us three are from this planet," I pointed out quietly. They blinked and stared at me, then swore quietly.

"Neither are the virindi, the tumeroks, the Gearknights, the drudges, the banderlings, the lugians… even the moarsmen," Oswald winced grimly.

"And, if you remember, the Empyreans themselves."

"This place is pulling in hapless fools to populate it and serve whatever its inscrutable desires are," Ten hissed.

"And it is not limited to this world, obviously…"

"If you go looking at the histories, the 'recruiting' from other worlds ramped up greatly after the Haebraen Empire fell to the olthoi," I told them.

"Because its supply of Empyrean patsies dropped drastically," Oswald scoffed.

"It really is all connected, isn't it?"

"Asheron's Portals to here were specifically sent out looking for a warlike people who could be used to fight the olthoi… and not incidentally, replace the living Empyreans. One might assume that perhaps the Empyrean settlements which might exist on other worlds are too distant or too protected to influence. Perhaps they might even have been told not to come here by those Entities they deal with."

"This is an atrocity that must end," Ten swore, his fist clenching audibly on Giri's hilt, his Katana helpfully sheathed in a tanto's scabbard.

"How do we do so? Becoming Eternal?" he asked.

"No. Pretty sure we have to go higher up the scale than the things this place can influence." I turned due east, put up a hand, and bowed solemnly. Both men turned, and after a moment of thought, repeated the gesture sincerely.

"The gods you speak of can do such a thing?" Oswald murmured, impressed.

"The gods I serve are not Great Old Ones or Elder Gods, the main Entities of Mythos beings such as the Deep, the Shadow in the Void, and N'cthail are. They are non-finite incarnations of profound principles and ideas given form.

"The System here has no power to constrain them, at best only to hide from them, and likely does not even consider that such beings exist." I smiled thinly.

"And so we pray!"