Chương 566: BECMI Chapter 565 – Old Wisdom, New Wisdom

The bonfire was still burning when Briggs returned to the top of the hill. It was not unoccupied. The old tribesman had a full bonnet of eagle feathers, a figure of great importance among the tribes, but his face had agelessness and long years about it, genetic wrinkles forced deeply into it. Briggs chose a rock a pace away from the older man, his Armor ghostly silent as he sat down, stealthslake absorbing the sounds of metal against stone.

Endure was leaned against the rock, and a wet and bloody bundle was lowered by its hair to rest at his foot. He didn't say anything. He knew who the old man was, if the Immortal Power seething here with the presence of an actual Hierarch of Matter didn't blare it out.

"You called yourself a son of the Bear," the old man said in the old tribal tongue.

"Yet you clad yourself in metal and use foreign weapons." Briggs pulled off his helm and set it aside, displaying a skin color identical to that of the old man, and the same straight black hair. If his features were cruder and hearkened back to a more primitive time, well, it was what it was.

"My father was a Bear. My mother was a Bear. I am a son of the Bear. I am not a follower of Hiawatha's way. They are not the same thing, elder," he replied in a neutral voice.

"And will you return to your people now?" the ancient Immortal asked, his dark eyes flashing sharply.

"Of course not. I would be obligated to drag them kicking and screaming into a more modern age… an age they are going to see regardless, and we shall see if the cultural stasis you've kept them in for three millennia will hold."

"Oh?" the old chieftain asked calmly.

"And how are you preparing to challenge me?"

"I'm not. I'm just going to wait, and see the results of your disallowing the tribes the chance to evolve and advance before I rescue them from the results of your folly," Briggs replied cordially.

"Go ahead and warn them. Have them gather their braves. They are going to either die or be enslaved once more. A quarter-million nifloids are coming down from the north. The nomads are raiding from the east, and the theocracy to the south is advancing for slaves and plunder and conversion by fire and sword.

"My people are certainly brave and wise in the ways of the land, but in the ways of the world, they are ignorant fools and savages. It is their twilight now, if I do not save them. If I do save them, their eyes will be opened to how small and irrelevant they are in the world, and they will either be crushed and hide from the world that has left them behind, or they will change."

"The plateau I gave them has been enough to hold back any foes for a thousand years," was the immediate reply.

"You cannot be that foolish, elder. It has protected them against fools like the nifloids, who are held back by their Patrons even more than my kin. But I can think of a dozen ways to get atop the plateau with an army, and once they are up there, the tribes are not in a fortress, they are in a cage they can neither escape nor flee from. They don't have the numbers to fend off anyone who decides not to ignore them and who might want to turn their plateau into a real fortress home.

"Which is everyone that is coming. Unless I save them, they are going to die, because what you left them isn't enough." There was silence as the fire crackled in front of the two of them.

"Did you enjoy slaughtering the Jaguar?" the old man finally asked wearily.

"I gained the same joy from killing them as I would putting down a rabid dog. No more, no less," Briggs answered evenly, giving the severed head a scornful tap of his boot.

"They were a threat that should have been put down centuries ago, and instead have only grown stronger while the other tribes stayed the same." The old chieftain contemplated his words, gazing into the flames.

"And your people killed off Tzentotl?" he also asked, a thwarted old anger under his words.

"You were taking too long. Someone got impatient and fed up with his antics," was all Briggs replied.

"And the Spell of Preservation in the Hollow World?" was the next quiet inquiry from the Immortal. Briggs didn't bat an eye at the insinuation he even knew about something no mortal should, let alone that it was now broken.

"The slaves and animals in the zoo are free of their chains. They will evolve or die, and you aren't going to be allowed to put them back in their cages." Frozen at the height of their empires, the civilizations down there were already sliding into corruption, and the Nazcan Empire had fully embraced Tzentotl. It was now burning as his powerless priests were put to the sword, and Hiawatha's servants were coming out of everywhere to lead that revolt.

But it would not be the Nazcan Empire they were rebuilding this time, because the cultural stasis enforced by the Immortals would not be in force. They were actually going to be learning to use the wheel, and ride horses, and advance… or they would die to the other Empires that were also being motivated to change. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"If you would preserve the old ways of the Tribes, I would consider that a personal favor," the old Immortal finally said.

"I won't force my kin to change," Briggs nodded slowly.

"There's enough stubborn fools around who want to cling to only the old ways that they'll be preserved… if they survive what is coming." There was a long and heartfelt sigh, the sound of a mighty being holding on to an ancient dream and image that was withering away before him. He had tried to preserve so much of it for so long, but change was constant, and now, he wouldn't be able to hold it back any longer. The fire flickered as a night breeze ghosted past.

Briggs glanced over at the empty spot where Hiawatha had sat. It was one of the great promises of the tribes, Hiawatha himself descending once a year to listen to the assembled chieftains and give them guidance. As long as he used no Immortal Power, it was allowed by the Immortal Hierarchs. But younger, more desperate beings looking to secure power wanted the plateau Hiawatha had raised from the earth and gifted to his people.

The Hiawathans didn't have the defenses to hold it, while the magic to skip to the top of it was certainly available to everyone who wanted to make it to the top, be it by dimension-bending, smoke-walking, spider-climbing, earth-shaping, or any number of ways to rise to the top in numbers that would easily overwhelm the few thousand members of each of the tribes living in isolation at the top of the plateau. Briggs gave a mental /tap to his Markspace.

-Start moving in to the center of the plateau and get the fortress up. - -Yes, sir! - came the instant /replies. In the distance, transports and aircraft began to move, along with Mirror Portals flickering into existence at the very center of the thousand-foot plateau looming on the horizon. By morning, there would be a mile-wide area walled off in the very center of the plateau which the natives would be able to do not a damn thing about, which was going to be a pretty ominous sign for them.

It was going to be worse when the invaders arrived and started killing them, and they needed someplace to flee… and the fortress would be the only place to do so. The tribes would evolve or die off, and only the most conservative ones backed by Hiawatha's priests would be able to survive and endure in the face of what was coming. But that's what happened when Immortals crippled the natural evolution of mortals for their own selfish aggrandizement and fond memories of 'simple times'.

Briggs just grunted and rose back to his feet. The sacking of the Jaguar lands was almost done, and there was little reason to be staying. Virtually every male over waist-high, and any female warrior or priest of the Jaguar were dead. What was left were the few old not already sacrificed by their own people, the women, and the children. Both of their Entropic Patrons were dead. There was no Immortal backing them now. Where they would flee and what they would rebuild as was now their choice…

and, he assumed, Hiawatha would be visiting them to gather them up and bring them back to the tribes. He had other things to do.

The world was oddly alive, the Realm only slightly oriented towards Death, despite the timeless rulership of its ruler, a Hierarch of Entropy, Mistress Nyx. She was still the Mother of the Undead, yet smarting from the rebuke handed to her after her heavy-handed approach to the 'gods of Olympus' matter.

Her world had a surprising amount of color in it, yet at the same time a macabre despair and depression hanging about it which either Nyx couldn't see, or considered the same as polka dots and pink hearts, given her obsession with undead. Lots of twisted, organic spires carved from bone. Skulls everywhere, along with jagged spikes, claws, fangs.

The old and dying sun was pale and wan at best, little better than a moon, no threat to any undead or unliving corpse or soul here, all of them able to go on with the relentless monotony or mania of their chosen existence. There were dances and festivals here that went on for centuries. Musicians who never stopped playing until their instruments broke. Smiths who obsessed years over each item they forged, trying for perfection they couldn't reach because their souls could no longer grow as undead that way.

Forests of fleshy trees writhing with disturbingly familiar forms within them were tapped of blood like syrup to feed the undead. They had leaves like skin, bark like bone, and wood like mortal flesh able to sustain those who could not restrain their hungers. Here all souls were not dead and in the reincarnation cycle, but undead, protected by the light and love of Mistress Nyx, and free to pursue their mortal dreams and ambitions for the rest of eternity, if they could but endure it.

Many could not, driven to suicidal depression and lashing out against others, and so were remorselessly destroyed as the weak things they were. Despite all the garish colors, as many undead had problems seeing anything but grays and blacks, the main color was still black, the brightest of lights were only bright enough for night-sensitive eyes to read, and everything reeked of slow, slow decay and the desperation and fear of trying to fend it off. Mistress Nyx's Realm was not one to linger in.

It didn't have the Entropic energies pressing in like many other Immortal realms, but this one was insidious, wriggling in and infecting anything and everything in the layer. Even sending in Sims, Constructs wrought of ice and snow, would result in them slowly being infected, corrupted, and converted, and so my eyes and ears here had to be cycled out about every decade and purified with vivus. Still, if they could keep a Wraithform up all the time, they could play the part of a banshee easily…

and actually being able to sing Dirgesong meant they never lacked for patrons or fans of the undead arts. Never growing in power fit right with everyone else, too. Well, growing slowly. Vampires could slowly gain power, for instance. There were Racial Classes that could be taken, undead skills and Feats learned and improved. As such, I knew where to find what I was looking for, even if my Sims had discreetly withdrawn from here. He had fled a great distance from Transyvia, and wisely had not sought to come back.

He was a Grand Archmage, and thus powerful for an undead even here, in Mistress Nyx's home Realm. He had lost access to the Radiance, of course, and thus could not teach his mastery of the undead to others of his kind here, but he still had power, and with it came influence and status. My grandfather, Mordai Bludevich-Jubvanyl, former Prince of Zanzyr, High Master of Necromancy, and Master Vampire.