Chương 556: BECMI Chapter 555 - Confluence

"In time, they'll come for any and every world. They only need to find us first," Empress Sif purred knowingly into the quiet of the chamber.

"How do we find them?" she asked directly, the hiss in her voice promising endless death once she did. The illusion shifted, and the twelve Death Gates on Shoul glowed, as did the five on Pantera… and one on another world.

"We can access the Shroud at these three places, and follow them up and down the expansion links." The links ran up and down the cone from world to world, with Shoul naturally giving access to all of the chains… but the most dangerous of them were also first, instead of last!

"Our efforts would try to center on the last and lowest ring. If we can wipe all the most recent nexus worlds before they export their armies, we can save trillions of souls from the Shroud and undeath.

"Mapping the whole network of the Shroud is another job for Eternals. There is no way we are capable of doing so where I come from," Aelryinth shook his head sadly. I was sitting in the back, and I knew. Right then, I knew. That would be my job. As a dhampir, I was uniquely qualified to do that, and it didn't matter that it was in another multiverse. The Shroud was its own universe, outside Creation, and could reach anywhere. That would be my job, my Eternal Road!

=== And so every Eternal there knew what they had to do. They'd fought plenty of undead. Leng spit up ghouls and ghasts without end, and the Carnifex had enjoyed turning the dead into yet more weapons to unleash against their former friends and families, so they were all experienced with the variety and power of undead in the hands of completely amoral and powerful spellcasters. It was just the scale, and so the Gear that they'd need to kill them all.

Aelryinth had given the recommendations, via just letting me 'pass them on'. It was now down time, and Eternals started working on their defenses against the undead, and the tools they'd need to kill them even faster. It was good to have a new goal, after all!

Two years went by with the ease and speed of days of recovery and of hard work passing by in blurs, largely free of terrible threats and deadly combat, magic and skill and strength bent to creating things instead of slaughtering them. It was a welcome break in the action, but it was also a retooling for what was to come, for mortals and Eternals alike. The dimensional tides had become turbulent.

The Nested Worlds had quietly ceased contributing, as the effects were magnified for them, and when they were severed from Nown entirely again, it was expected and no surprise was made of it. Teleportation became unstable, and even Mirror-Portals had to be suspended after several near-fatal fluctuations during transit. The Portal through Time seemed to become harder, more rigid… but also impassable, as if it was a closed door now, instead of a tunnel through Time.

The thousands of Pyramids around the world, inside and out, were visited by Master and Eternal wizards, preparing for the transit. Immortal Power was built up in all of them by the living planet below us, preparing to join its counterpart that was now so different on many levels than it was, differences that would be magnified and celebrated so that it could establish itself from a parallel timestream, instead of having to merge.

The immigration coming in from Delpha continued as long as it could, trying to rescue the best and brightest of the Delphans, and also secure what lore and art and culture we could. The conservative Delphans naturally didn't take this well, and their Immortals were even more suspicious of our stealing away of Delphan relics and history and treasure and whatnot, to the point they actually considered raising up an invasion force to go and take back their people, by force if they had to!

That was entirely a possibility with Immortals backing them, and if supremely unwise, the Immortals just wanted the spectacle and didn't care about much else. That we could crack the Delphan Empire open like an egg just didn't occur to them or all the Overmagi there, confident in their history and magical power, and ignorant of the fact we'd been taking their unwanted and best willing recruits for thousands of years. Such is life.

But Confluence was coming, and this timeline would disappear and merge back into the original. The vast majority of this alternity had stayed exactly equal to the Far Shore, the changes would be incidental at best, and the only Immortals who would be making the transition with us were Eternals who had transformed into Elder Elementals (like many of my Sims), plus Master Ialo, Captain Emeril, Bloodcrown, and Himmelstern.

The former all made excuses to be on Nown during the crucial time, bringing the cream of their Elemental servants along with them before the trembling waves of Time beating on the Shores began to drain away, sweeping away the connecting Wormholes to the Elemental Realms with them and stranding them on Nown, how unfortunate! If the Timequakes were roiling the Astral Sea, the Immortals just rode them out, figuring they were above such things.

Heaven receded, much to the relief of the Immortals, and the Immortals of Time loudly proclaimed the whole thing just a passing ripple of chronal corrections. Alas, they didn't know they were the ones who were going to be corrected, not even able to sense the temporal momentum sweeping up from the past, attempting to overwrite and purge the stories that had been made here since the divergence in Darkmoor. ============== How I wish I could correct someone else!

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============= The Immortals weren't on Nown, so they weren't protected by the changes that had all started here. From the past to the present, the waves of Time drained away from the massive loop formed between the Other Shore in the future, the split in Darkmoor just before the Doom in the Past, and the ever-advancing Present of that split now.

Time swept up, the river running dry, timelines merging together, trying to fit in this massive aberration of a world which just would not blend in smoothly to the Far Shore. As Immortals were erased without even knowing oblivion was coming, unable to believe they were just alternates who had no more true relevance to Time than mortals did, Other Nown simply refused to be removed, its history staying intact, its changes remaining distinct…

and Time was unable to bend the bars of Null influence upon them, establishing that yes, it did exist, and a plenitude of Sources were saying that it would exist in the future, too! The temporal momentum of a whole timeline ceasing and crashing forward into a new future was taken up Other Nown in a rippling swirl of existential competition that only the most sensitive and powerful on the planet could sense… and nary an Immortal who was to be wiped away could feel, either.

As the Other Shore's whole timeline zipped up on itself and vanished, a tiny mote of it was squeezed out and dropped into the main timeline, guided along by Immortal power and the will of a world that had woken up thousands of years ago and was aware enough to fight… and the subtle help behind the scenes of several greater gods who Time couldn't mess with, either.

"That's it? The sky just shimmers, and we're all done an' saved?" the Mick complained, looking up at the sun in great disappointment, belying the way he'd felt the entire world flip-flop rather aggressively as oblivion… passed it by. I just looked off at nothing.

"The rest is all gone, Mick. Delpha. The Elemental planes. The moon and the Immortal city. The Immortals there. Planets, suns, stars, galaxies… they all just collapsed back into the matching timestream here, and were wiped away as all of their history flowed back into this one.

"I don't think we needed any great explosions or world-shaking quakes to signify that we are still around and are going to be in the future, right?" He just gave an unimpressed sigh at the very lackluster, non-combative true end to our Eternal War, a mere whisper in the night.

"Aye, 'tis only significant to the likes o' us. For everyone else, the only thing is that there be no moon in the sky for us." That was actually a bad thing, as, well, the moon lit up the night and provided a proud image of defiance in the dark. Was also probably integral to the magnetic field emanating from gravity-inspired movement of the molten iron in the megalith's shell, too!

"I'm sure Helos isn't going to put up with His symbol not being able to grace the heavens anymore." Actually, he'd been planning something related to this, as the transfer had never included Nown's Other moon of Dynos because of the Immortal City of Nexial built upon it. Helos had been rubbing his hands eagerly in anticipation.

"I suggest waiting for nightfall and getting our surprise."

"Aye? Well enough, then. Laur and I have some Wormholes to go investigate, and if necessary, re-open." His smile was hard, for good reason. The Elemental Realms were suddenly going to find out there were a large number of extremely powerful Elder Elementals sitting around on this megalith, all of whom had excellent relationships with the Sisters of the Rose!

Not only was said force going to have absolute dominion over this new world, they were going to change the power dynamics of the Elemental Planes and set them on their ears! These new Elders would naturally not be so crass as to mess with the natural tides of magic and Elemental connections by setting up Wormholes themselves.

Of course, those crazy Eternals had no such bloody restrictions on their actions, and at the direction of their Elemental associates would happily spend some X and XI Valences to reopen the proper Elemental connections… in the territories of the Rose Sisters, naturally! The Elemasters were likely to be irked and a little spooked by so many former mortals turned extremely powerful Elementals showing up, too... There was a pop, and someone new appeared on the balcony of my throne room.

I'd already given him Domain clearance, so there was no issue. Jorg Turmalez, the Immortal Tek, looked around with interest from the balcony of Castle Doomrose.

"Wow, Lady Edge, you weren't kidding with the theme!" he exclaimed, looking out over the tableau of fang-like black mountains, rings of lava, firefalls, and the green lands spreading out around the base of each of those, complete with towns, villages, farms, forests, and the like… and a whole lot of dragons lounging about or gliding leisurely on the wing above them.

"Tek! Good to see you again, you alien shite, you!" the Mick immediately piped up, coming forward for a handshake.

"Ah, the native hick! Spare me from his savage wrath!" the young Green Immortal promptly shot back, giving the Mick's arm a firm clasp of his own as both men grinned.

"I see the slaughtering of hapless horribly powerful mutant alien monstrosities has been good for you?"

"Aye, 'tis been a busy and productive time," the Mick answered lightly.

"A monstrosity here, an abomination there, an unthinkable sot over yonder, a wee world-ender butting in for attention… soon enough it adds up to real productive work, ye know?"

"I admit to not having much the same experience. For me, it's been building, building, building!" Tek admitted candidly, shaking his head.

"Oh, and Helos wanted to say the new moon is on the way." It was supposed to be a surprise, so I said nothing. The fact the gods had taken one of Other Ronkard's moons years ago for a 'special project' was not something I'd noticed, nope, nope, and certainly not something a lot of Immortals on the Other Shore had been wondering about, nopers. The now-gone great gas giant out in the seventh orbit on the Other Shore wasn't going to miss it, and it had no natives except some wandering lonely Elementals of no import.

At the Mick's expression, Tek went on, "Aye, they moved it up above the Fourth Nested World so we'd have time to do the work on it. Enough time to put in centuries of terraforming and what not. I wanted to be here for the big reveal." As the Immortal most involved with the Nested Worlds, along with Captain Emeril, naturally moving the moon along after the Confluence was not an issue, and he'd been deeply involved with transforming it. The sun was coming down, only a few minutes away from vanishing.

With slow, stately motion, the top of the Castle and its Throne Room began to rotate around to the opposite horizon, panning over the juxtaposed contrasts of my Ringlands of Fire and what amounted to tiny pastoral kingdoms around their bases… or at least, that's what the dragons living above them could delude themselves into thinking. The people below did take care of their dragons, and vice versa, however. Cirruluxul joined us, Morphing down to her half-dragon halvyri form to do so.

If restricted in her raw power by being so age-dependent on it, she was still by far the most powerful dragon native to the world, at least a peer with the Dragon Rulers now… and one of the things she had been fending off on the Other Shore was the jealous attentions of the lesser Rulers towards her kingdom, the Night Dragon especially, since basically all living dragons on Other Nown were now descended from those of my Ringlands!