BECMI Chapter 449 – An Eternal Measure of Success

We stepped through the final Portal together, waving goodbyes to the phanatons and the araneas they lived with in their jungle home. The lemur-folk and intelligent spiders were very interested in the fact that the population of Shadow Kheper was coming out behind us, only slowed down by the fact it was colonizing the planes in between us as it did so.

The smells of the mortal world hit us square in the face, suffused with the ancient plant life and reptiles that lived atop the plateau here on the Isle hit us square, totally absent of the alien life, mixture of gases, and slightly off elemental affinity of the planes behind us.

The familiar magic stood out to me most, and gentle, somber notes played automatically as I reached out and touched the Sublime Chords.

We’d been gone nearly three years. Between clearing the various planes, making bases, helping the initial colonizers, blazing the roads, and making Pyramids, it had taken us a lot of personal time to stride our way back from what arguably was a trip to one of the cesspools of the planes and back to mortal life.

Sama was sitting there waiting on a rock for us when we came out of there. We’d been able to re-establish a decent telepathic lock on the previous world, especially since the temporal affinities were starting to level out some a bit, and she’d had no problem finding the place.

Or, given the number of fresh white spots around, dealing with some rather aggressive latecomers, perhaps berserk werespiders trying to reach their dead Mother Spider and stuff.

Still, a great cheer went up in Markspace as we exited, and the Mick’s crew returned it heartily, even the normally cool Kavva. The elfin ran right to the nearest doorway out of the temple, throwing open her arms and letting her face get a taste of real, unfiltered sunlight and drawing in great lungfuls of the prehistoric forest around this place.

“Less than a week?” I asked Sama after the rest of the Mick’s team greeted her and also moved to the entry of the temple they’d cleared out quite recently in real time. Duum flapped down from a rafter under a broken ceiling, hopping onto my shoulder to nuzzle and be nuzzled in return.

Sana nodded once, trailing after the team. “We’d prefer you to take this place down as rapidly as possible. We looted it clean of anything valuable, so if you can get rid of it, more power to you.”

“That sounds like a very astute piece of advice,” I agreed with her,Primusalready reaching out and starting the process of dropping slabs down into the basements, and then unmaking the dark stone around us and reducing it to just a mound of stone that would have no relevance other than being the target of countlessDisintegrationspells for rep count practice. “Briggs?”

“Thasophyt is officially being turned into a protectorate of the Eismark Federation now, which naturally muddies everything up in the Siricil and Delphan fighting going on, as they don’t really know how to process a third party being here.”

“They are going to like it even less when people start coming out of the Portal behind us in a steady stream. Tek won’t let the population get out of hand, but if it’s been a week out here, he’s had at least a century behind us, and a steady stream of emigrants is going to start coming out of this Portal here, once they work out the mechanics to open it without him needing to empower the things personally.”

“Only a century? The multipliers must have fallen,” Sama judged, heading out into the camp her own team of operators had set up outside the fallen temple to the Mother Spider.

“Using the vivus,” I nodded up to her. “It’s down under ten thousand, still viable, and the closer planes are under x5 from the one before, in relation. I’ve been working on the Portals being able to operate if aGateis thrown on them, and with that much time, there should be at least a couple Archmages and Archpriests among the kids coming after us who will be able to open them at will. I will have to work on the one here, so I’ll reshape the Temple around us while I work on it.”

“That’s good enough.” She sent a gaze over to the Mick’s team in both reality and the Markspace. “They are looking strong there, Edge. Enough for the Arch?” she asked quietly.

“Yes. I had them working on Artifact-gathering off the list from Gulguz’s Hierophant in Buraval, just to prep for this. They’ve all got the reqs made up in one way or another after this mission.”

“Legacy?” she had to ask archly.

“Other than their families? They also trained up all of Tek’s operators and officers for the military behind us. Legacy isn’t an issue, either. Plus killing an Immortal qualifies for a lot of things.” I smiled nastily.

“You’d know best,” she agreed cheerfully, having experience with that requirement as well, at least as far as Avatars went. “You mentioned you had the Banner. Think it will do any good?”

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“No.”

“Blunt. The kids?”

“The Clones of the Kids are in my Sanctum in stasis and can be brought forth at any time. I would actually be surprised if they didn’t have other Clones prepped by their parents, but at least this way they can give a first hand account of what has happened.”

“Which, regardless of how much it probably shaped their own personal views of things, will have little effect on their parents.”

“Despite having close to a million descendants now.” I could only be amused. “Tek is looking to move the entire living population save for a token number out of Shadow Kheper, and turn it into an agrarian production realm with some high-tech fabbing factories for case of emergencies to supply defenses if need be. The natural resources there aren’t extensive, but they should be able to set up a decent reserve.”

“And he can justGatein any materials required, or conjure them up if needed. He’s getting solid streams of Faith and collecting Immortal Power off their achievements and goals… and just gathering resources and turning them into items at speed. With the time acceleration of the Realm, he’s getting in years of work in relative hours. By the time he comes out, he’s probably going to advance multiple stages, which is by far the best result that we need.”

Sama shot me a side-eye. “These realms all exist on the Other Shore, right? But the Mother Spider shouldn’t have found them yet there…”

“I am certainly not the type to take advantage of this sort of thing for my own measures over there, right?” I wondered aloud.

“Especially with your own Immortals and burgeoning Eternals,” she agreed, as her son and daughter-in-law were both bound to achieve. “Even better if you have to clear the place and can get some additional Karma from doing so.”

“Time has been accelerated to help it towards degradation into pure Entropy. I imagine there are all sorts of Entropic creatures inhabiting it right now. The problem will likely be getting to it. I had time to study the borders of all the planes through my Domain link. They have no Astral access, meaning the only way in or out is through Gates or via the single links that connect the five planes in a linked line. I can only imagine the level of obsessiveness required to find those planar connections and actually discern the planes exist.”

Sama considered that, then nodded. “That was likely the home plane of another Immortal at some point, and they have either died or passed on. They set up the other planes to conceal the existence of their own, and make it difficult to enter. Simply by shutting down the link, they could make it impossible to find, if the entropic decay made it still possible for Immortal Power to force an exit to the place.” Or an IP-boostedCallto bring someone specific in through an existing weak spot.

“Someone else knew of the planes and their existence, and they fed the information to Mother Spider instead of taking advantage of it themselves,” I agreed. “I have no clues as to the original Immortal, but the Ninefold Web is a derived legacy that is strongly aligned with Thanatos’ Dark Web mysticism, at least according to the documents that I’ve gone through of their belief system.” I had time, the locals had the numbers, Marks were given to the worthy to help them, and there was a hissing storm of busy bees in the corner of the Markspace that most people couldn’t see. It was difficult for the returning natives to gain many Levels with the lack of opponents to do battle with, but training, internal competitions, rewards, achievements, and development of items magical and scientific could drive people to the apex, as Siricil’s gladiators had displayed for years. Siricil had more Grand Warriors near or at the Apex than any other nation of the world, and its gladiatorial arena was the biggest reason why, not its conquering military.

Of course, when your tech advanced enough to simulate interactive environments combined with magic, i.e. a Dungeon, the whole paradigm was something that could be shifted. Turning Shadow Kheper into a hidden realm with a Dungeon or five of great size that could Level people with what seemed to be blistering speed was a total possibility. The only problem was that it wouldn’t do so for the natives so easily, as not being born on the Prime meant they could not become Immortals, and might have real problems becoming Eternal, too.

Sacrificing their potential future for a pleasant and safe present, relatively speaking. Given how few people could reach the Apex, let alone step past it, it wasn’t much of a sacrifice, but it still was one, and they were aware of it.

It wasn’t going to stop those who wanted a peaceful life from staying, nor those that wanted an exciting life and unlimited potential for their children from pressing towards the realm out and back to the Prime Plane.

“How do you want to handle the diplomatic side of things?” Sama asked me. “Given the absolute mess we made of the whole thing by invading Thasophyt and all.”

“In less than a day, you’re going to have people coming out of this Portal and down the Plateau. The flow of people will likely never stop much, due to the time acceleration. Unlimited numbers of immigrants, reinforcements raised in our philosophies, with ties to Tek, believers in the Morning, with no other Immortals around to contest things and the planes now utterly Sealed by the Pyramid Domains there.

“You aren’t going to give up Thasophyt, and Thasophyt is going to be growing with frankly shocking speed shortly.” I tapped my chin softly. “I must suggest that you tell the other diplomatic parties to go fuck themselves, they’ve no business here, and if they do want to fight, oh, but there will be some rude surprises as Tek starts sending along some of the arsenal he’s already made.”

Sama just laughed low and sly. “That’s about what I was thinking. One minor thing: are the demiplanes going to be able to handle the increasing numbers of mortals?” she asked calmly.

“No, but they can all be increased greatly in size by permanent Immortal Power sacrificed to do so, and it doesn’t take that much effort. Extra reality will be spun out of nowhere and into potentially whole new worlds by Immortal Power. Immortals don’t create many new planes, but they create a lot of worlds within them, both by planar expansion and bringing in new material from the Elemental planes. It’s not all that unusual when expanding them.”

Sama nodded. “Good. Tek is going to have a very strong foundation quicker than we could give it to him. Let us thank Mother Spider together…”

I laughed under my breath as we entered the camp, considering what the next moves would be...