Chương 54: BECMI Chapter 53 – It’s Time to Go

P+40 years… The Mass Break Enchantment rippled across them, and living figures, caught in a dream for all this time, rippled, cracked, and burst forth from stone statues, which fragments crinkled and fell and vanished before it could hit the ground. Magic hummed around everyone in a faintly crackling sphere of magical power, everyone drawing deep and shuddering breaths for the first time in decades…

and two of them finding they were grasping the hands of a tall not-human female who was very familiar to them, not the scales and tail of a blue dragon.

"The Portal will be up in less than a minute," I informed them all calmly.

"The effects of the radiation have dimmed greatly, but the sphere's magic will protect us all from them regardless. If you notice, Cirruluxul has learned how to take a humanoid form during this time, which is much less awkward for her and us." There were definitely a few approving eyes for having another female among the mostly-male company, awkward heads bobbing in greeting.

"How long was it, Lady Edge?" Bjorn Skifnerson asked hesitantly.

"I know you would come into our dreams and speak with us every night, but I lost count long ago…"

"It has been 476 turnings of the moon, Captain Bjorn," I replied evenly, and even the elves sucked in a breath at that. Nearly forty years I'd lived out, trapped inside this Inn, just so they wouldn't have to!

"There is little to speak of, save that I kept myself busy doing a great deal of boring things." The most important of which was getting older, so that I could actually stand before them as myself, a fact not even Cirruluxul realized!

"Prepare yourselves!" I ordered, reaching out my hand, and a rather awed Oswald Brandybuck took it automatically.

"I promised to lead you to freedom or death, and I will not let you die!" Mass Force Armor, Mass Greater Magical Weapon, Mass Magical Vestment on the Shields, and Mass Endure Cold went off, one after another, and everyone's confidence spiked once more. Behind me, the full moon peeked over the horizon, and I spun a Rune before me. It was a Rune none of them could look upon, for it represented the meaning of Time itself, and gave an iron foundation for the manifesting Portal to lock onto.

Shades of time swirled, condensed, and steadied before us for the first time in four decades.

"Freedom or Death!" I declared, and if there was a relieved iron in my voice, none of them said anything about it, except…

"FREEDOM OR DEATH!" they all agreed emphatically, and followed me into the Portal.

There was two feet of ice on the floor. It was bitterly cold, several degrees below freezing. A dozen things pinged my Detect Non-Good upstairs, and they weren't weak. By my guess, they were probably ice trolls, but we'd have to see. Not undead, at least. Breaths sucked in all around me, as the cool of the basement of the Inn of the future was replaced by a lung-tingling chill here.

Dread hummed, and the Mass Resist Cold settled over everyone, taking all the chill completely away, and not incidentally rendering them all immune to any cold Auras. It would not last as long as Endure Cold, but it was much stronger. On its heels came the Mass Flaming weapons, and steel and bows ignited in the hands of those who held them.

"Go." I just pointed, releasing Buck, and he shot up the stairs, all of the others flowing after him. One of the elves Knocked the door open before he got to it, and the whole company flowed past me, up the stairs, and into the fighting that broke out very rapidly above. This set of runs wasn't going to cost me much effort at all.

I glanced at the Disks, lined them up, and headed up sedately after the warriors as they proved emphatically that they didn't need me for this fight, and hopefully most of the ones that were coming afterward… I glanced at my Detect Time. Only sixteen years before the explosion, but fifty-six before when we'd left. Good enough. Our progress backwards had started once again.

The men were turning the place upside down for the belongings of the ice trolls, which mostly involved a lot of bones that went into the midden, and some random coins and objects of little value. Most of the scrap was gone, of course, a fact everyone noticed, but nobody commented on. As a matter of fact, most of the loot was gone, and even Cirru's hoard had new coverings on it. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"What news, Lady Edge?" Prince Ukker asked very respectfully, looking at the much smaller number of Disks.

"As I informed you all in dream, an Immortal visited us during your sleep, probably the patron of the lich who had taken up residence here after the Crimson Cataclysm. I managed to destroy him, but in doing so he utterly destroyed the Inn and everything within it, including your petrified forms. If you had not been statues and rebuilt by the Inn's magicks, I would likely have been the only survivor, as I could not have protected you all."

I tapped the inches of ice across the floor, snow drifting in to cool the place down further and make places for the trolls. For all that, they loved them some warm flesh and blood of their prey.

"Cirru's hoard was incinerated, as was the entirety of the stash I hadn't had squared away or used up. Rest assured that I know how much was there, and I will fairly replace it all for you." That news, if nothing else, would spread rapidly. Those spoils were hard-won, and losing them really hurt everyone.

"The dragon?" Bjorn asked under his breath, glancing at the almost-human form of Cirru, who had picked up an ice troll corpse twice her size in each hand and was carrying the charred corpses towards the midden.

"She went through her dragonsleep and is half-again the size you remember. Rather awkward to move around in, so she's staying in human form for now. If she looks great, that is absolutely and totally by design." The Northman and his brother flushed. It was hard for men not to take notice of Cirru, and the dragon was absolutely aware of it… and not above testing out the sexual side of her draconic human form.

But that was for them to find out, and the two brothers were already bedding the two Northwomen, Gruna and Igvild, in their party, which prevented a lot of fights about such matters. The fact that this was definitely not the time and place to get pregnant also meant the two women were quietly coming to me for contraception, too.

"What are we looking ahead to?" Prince Ukker went on neutrally.

"We are in the middle of the Ice Age that once blanketed these lands, and it will likely continue for nearly a thousand years of jumping. Which is to say, two more sessions. At that time, we face the fallout of the Ruin of Darkmoor. If the tales are correct, this whole land was actually underwater at one point, and the very planet shifted with the force of that blast.

"The Crimson Cataclysm was a mere torch against the blast that was the Ruin. The disruption to the Time Portal is likewise probably more severe. However, that hopefully means that we are forced to jump past it. If we run enough jumps, we might clear it on our third series of runs."

"Then we'll keep running our jumps as fast as we can, Lady Edge!" the grim Hargold, brother of Bjorn, declared.

"Do we even have to fight? Could we not just jump from time to time without fighting?"

"... No," I shook my head at the idea, silencing that.

"It is not a coincidence that we are being dumped on top of combat-ready forces who have been murdering other time-jumpers. Killing them actually is clearing the time-line of things which are blocking travel forward and back. In effect, we are forging a road through hostile territory, just like we would through hills or mountains or forests, only this road is through time.

"These creatures are the impediments to the smooth flow of time. They either need to join us and exit the loop, or they need to die."

"We will be able to get back to our own times?" Eryis Luswyr, elected speaker for the elves, piped up. I closed my eyes, turned my head towards the till. Everyone followed my gaze, and I slowly shook my head.

"No, I do not think so. I believe that you must exit the loop in either the past, and stay there, or in the future where I came from."

"What… does the till have to do with that?" my fellow elfin asked cautiously. It was currently empty, the coins scattered among the belongings of the ice trolls. They were scooped up regardless, everyone knowing that they wouldn't come back with us, and indeed would be right back in their places come the dawn.

"Because what I fully intend to do is give a coin from the till to everyone who exits the Inn… and the coins in the till have not changed in number from the time I entered, meaning nobody among us permanently exited the Inn before my time. Even the lich and that Immortal did not bother to take any coins out, probably appreciating the irony of them sitting there, undisturbed all this time.

"We will know we can exit if the coins are different in number than they are now, but they have always been the same."

"That's why you never used them to test the time…" Prince Ukker judged, nodding.

"Useless to do so. They have never gone back in time."

"All clear up top as far as we can tell, Lady Edge!" Sir Darryl Hornswain called down from above.

"No dallying! Downstairs and form up! We make as many runs as we can before the dawn!" Bjorn bellowed out, and the motivated humans, elves, dwarves, and hyn scrambled for the way down. Cirru watched them go past, falling in next to me as we headed downstairs. She'd used a spear in the fighting, to great and lethal effect, and they were all happy to fight with her in this much more attractive and less imposing form. She also took up a lot less room.

The end of the third night… The fires were stoked and ignited quickly all over the Inn, soon roaring heartily. Ice still coated everything, mixing with the blood of the tribe of white-furred man-apes that had taken up residence and were now stacked up in the middens waiting to be disintegrated. Changes for the month-long stay were waiting for the dawn in a few minutes. The wood would be restored, the food would come in non-frozen, and we could move cloth around to cover the windows and vents.

The Distance Distortion was already cast, this time centering the Inn so only the east walls were touching the outside. The additional space would create insulation for the upper floors. I was casting the Mass Eternal Flames that would last until the reset, starting off downstairs where the heat would rise through the floors. Of course that was going to melt a lot of ice, but the floor down there could take it… and I could drain it outside if needed.

Or, you know, create an ice-skating pond where everyone could learn to skate and learn to fight on ice. Dozens of the simple braziers were already burning and being carried off. The previous nights, the only upper floor kept warm was the kitchen, while everyone else waited in the relative warmth of the basement that was heated up around them, crouched around braziers and the toasty flames in them.

Frozen mattresses had been stolen from upstairs just to keep people off the floor, whisked back to where they belonged at the dawn. Self-cleaning was so useful, even if it didn't clear up the entirety of the Inn. We never had to worry about leaving a mess behind. Mass Endure Cold took away much of the discomfort, but the air temperature was still bitterly cold outside and had spread within here. The man-apes had not even used the fireplaces, but also had fewer numbers and basically stuck to the taproom.