Chương 55: BECMI Chapter 54 – A Final Pause

"Well done, everyone," I added as the Salute to Aru and the Dawn finished. I pushed the door closed, and two elves zipped up to stuff cloth from the closets in around the door and stave off the leaking draft coming through it.

"Fifteen clears is our new record. We traveled over seven hundred years backwards. If we can match that pace, our next series might just get us out of here." There were cheers behind us at the news. I glanced at the officers.

"Notice it?" I asked shortly.

"The rim was much shorter than before," Prince Ukker declared instantly, with a dwarf's eye for stone.

"Even with the snow and ice covering everything, it is plain the land has changed."

"We are coming up on the Doom of Darkmoor. The Ruin was devastating. The earthquakes supposedly lasted for centuries." I looked down at the ground, and smashed Dread's butt down on the ice beneath us. It cracked and fractured under the force of the magical Staff, again as I cracked it again. I reached down, and pulled up a block of ice a good six inches thick, about what we expected by the door. I blew on it, and the dirty, frosted ice cleared up like glass under Prestidigitation.

A couple frozen small fish and what looked like a shrimp and waterbugs were all visible amid the dirt and small stones inside it.

"At some point, this place is going to be underwater. This whole area was likely blasted into a crater and then shattered with tectonic movements and earthquakes." I'd already lost most of them and just continued.

"Based on our future, I'm presuming that Immortals intervened and lifted this entire area back above the surface, using the opportunity to create a vast underworld of cave systems in the area at the same time.

"If you have not deduced it, this Inn used to be located in Darkmoor, and the Bleaklands were where Darkmoor once rose. A cruel fate, to be marked as a place for savages to dwell." They hadn't really thought about it, and there were murmurs of wonder around.

"Wait, this Inn is taking us all the way back to legendary Darkmoor?" Bjorn gasped in disbelief.

"Yes. This Ice Age about us is the direct result of the Ruin of Darkmoor. It took two thousand years to settle down and start the process of recovery, and that was likely with the Immortals helping the process along a great deal." As true Ice Ages of this severity tended to last for many thousands of years and affect a whole planet, not just an area.

"So… we will be coming in while the Inn is underwater?" Prince Ukker inquired carefully.

"Probably. I will have to take steps. If we are lucky, we will not have to do much fighting, as overcoming the water itself is likely the barrier. Something may have taken up residence and will have to be killed, however. We are probably fortunate that the doorway would limit the size of what can enter. Finding a kraken in here would not be fun." There were grim chuckles from all around.

"Giant octopi are still possible," Hargold spoke up, getting everyone's attention.

"Their bodies are very flexible and can fit in small places. I have seen them when their bodies were brought back after attacking a longship!"

"Yes. As well as shark-men, eel-folk, ray-folk, crab-folk, and worse things in the depths. Size is much in the seas, but it is not everything," I agreed.

"Crab-folk?" Prince Ukker asked in disbelief.

"Aye, heard of those, along isolated beaches on the ocean," Bjorn nodded strongly.

"But… we are hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean…" I held up the ice block in my hand.

"Shrimp don't dwell in fresh water, Skifnerson. The world was likely a different place back then. For instance, where are most cities of humans built?" They all blinked at me, then looked around.

"On the water," Speaker Eryis spoke up.

"Without water, human cities do not survive long."

"There are no rivers or lakes or anything within a hundred miles of this location of note, certainly not enough to support a city that would need an inn of this size and quality. The Ruin of Darkmoor changed the very world. If you go look upstairs at the maps in the books of the owner's room, you will find that this Inn was once located in the city of Darkmoor, a port city located on a sea and river that is no longer there.

"The Immortals made great changes to these lands. We will be entering a land that literally does not exist any more, wiped from all but myth and legend." This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"But… to be under water, you must be under the level of the sea," Bjorn spoke up, frowning.

"We are… far inland, and not even close to sea level!" he pointed out.

"And you have noticed that we are in the middle of a crater in the middle of the Bleaklands, the lands having risen up around this Inn. Indeed, from above, this crater is very, very circular, as if something monumentally heavy were weighing upon it and not allowing it to rise… and yet broken on the ground enough that the water simply drains elsewhere, not filling in what should certainly be a lake of some sort."

"Time weighs heavy here," Cirruluxul said, walking up to join us.

"How would the Inn have sunk, if it is frozen in time and too heavy for even the rising earth to move it?"

"As time weighs heavy and does permit it to rise, the Inn would drag the earth up to reform its foundation every morning, before likely falling from a height and ending up on the sea floor… until the following morning, when it would disappear and be rebuilt up where it was meant to be, pulling at the earth with the force, dragging the land back up to support it relentlessly, and with it, the surrounding territory.

The Immortals likely took advantage of it to do their rebuilding, since it only pulled up the land, and not the sea.

"It likely took years, but eventually the Inn reformed the very land it was sitting upon, and the land continued to rise around it even after it did so. Immortals or momentum, who knows. Most of the water that falls upon these lands drains away into the deep tunnels, it does not flow out of the lands. Immortal handiwork, or likely the Bleaklands would be a far more bountiful and wet land than they are."

"Such thoughts are too heavy for me," Bjorn finally admitted.

"I am more concerned why we could not return to our own times."

"As are we all," Speaker Eryis chimed up, and they all nodded in agreement.

"The coins of the till never changed. That means I never gave them to anyone to take with them as a memento when they step out of the Inn, which I fully intend to do. I watched the number of coins very closely." They all grimaced.

"Can you think of a reason why, Lady Edge?" Prince Ukker asked, clearly unhappy with the fact.

"A conjecture is that we close the loop when we arrive as far in the past as we can go, and the temporal loop either traps us in the past, or it anchors to the furthest point that it can, the last time an outsider entered the Inn and took the Portal," I replied quietly. They all winced.

"And Mistress comes from further in the future than any of us," Cirruluxul said firmly.

"So, we will be able to exit in the past, or in the future you come from, Mistress?"

"One of the two, definitely. Both, maybe. But it is far more dangerous to live in the past than the future. Changing the past is a nasty thing that can easily wipe you out of existence, and should not be done. Going to my future is a guarantee of freedom and no consequences with Time. Staying in the past, well… I am ultimately unsure of how much should be risked, and do not advise it at this point."

"The Rukheim of the future sounded like a great nation," Prince Ukker remarked quietly.

"And the dwarves a plentiful people known in many lands."

"The elves have a nation of their own, by your words. I would live to see it!" Speaker Eryis nodded.

"We are already counted as dead by our kin. If a new land and life is something we must forge, at least let it be interesting and worthy to know!"

"Well-spoken," I nodded to her.

"I pray that I am wrong, but I must doubt it. If I am… then the past we are returning to is different from our own, and nothing matters what we do, our rivers of time diverge at the end of the loop. What that means for Time itself is something doubtless planned by the Immortals themselves to see what happens…" Something powerful playing with alternate realities at that point.

"And that will be true if the coin endures?" Cirruluxul asked, interested in this. The coin that we threw out, always from the future, which the tides of time wore away.

"Yes. If the coin is washed away, then our past is absolute, and the future is our only choice. If it endures… then the instant we throw it, we are in a new timestream, and we are changing a past that will have no effect on our future, like stepping to the other side of a flowing river. Our future will be anchored to that past, the time loops will close, and we will be free one way or another."

"Then it is out of our hands, and we can only worry about when we get there," Hargold threw up his hands in relief.

"Let us all survive to then, and we can decide what to do when we reach it!"

"Well-said!" I agreed, as heads nodded all around.

"I will be making efforts to make sure any underwater arrivals we have go rapidly in our favor. The lunar cycle will be miserable enough, but if things go well, in a month, we will be free."

I made another Sim, of course, just to give me another anchor and historical point of reference in my home time stream. If they survived to the future, they knew of and could join up with my Sims there. If not, they had instructions on where and how to leave things behind for me to pick up in the future. There was a lot of swimming training, and everyone, knowing we were going to be underwater at some point, took it seriously.

I had to heat the pool up with Eternal Flame braziers, but soon enough the warmth of the waters meant it was a favorite place for everyone to spend time, and since it was such good exercise, everyone undertook it diligently, even the dwarves. If some of the women took the opportunity to dress rather scantily in public, that was on them.

I had 'grown up' faster than a normal elf, of course, my dhampyr blood having its way, and I filled out more than a normal elf, too, almost reaching human dimensions in the chest area… which was annoying and earned me a whole lot of dropping male eyes right along, but now it was all real and not faked and I had to live with it. Eh, it wasn't like it was a bad thing, and if it wasn't my style, I was the granddaughter of a vampire and the daughter of a shadenelf.

Everything about me wasn't Ael's style, so I'd make do with what I had, and have as much fun with it as I could. The lunar month went by smoothly, and soon enough, at least compared to forty years of waiting, it was time to go once more.