Chương 555: BECMI Chapter 554 – Eternal Commitments

My return to the Other Shore was as unannounced and unseen as my departure had been. Still, there were plenty of people to keep informed of everything that was going on, with nigh a thousand Eternals to keep busy, and the warriors especially wondering where to go next. Or they had been, until Aelryinth had talked to them all. === A couple days prior, in the Doomrose Throneroom… When he stood up in front of them with the cloth across his eyes and the Hellscar burned across his face, he had their immediate attention.

Permanent injuries like that were extremely rare. There were a great many ways to restore people to perfect health, and the Eternals made sure they had access to all of them. They all knew what the blind man could do, that he had no eyes, and he didn't have them because they'd try to eat his brain if he grew them back. So, yeah, he had their respect.

They'd seen his power, his ability to fry a Star-Spawn and MILES of Leng natives, rip out Shards endlessly like they'd never seen, and do it cheerfully and with a smile. Magic swirled above him without word or gesture, resolving into a lovely blue world of white clouds and brown/green continents. A moon appeared before it, small in scale, at a fair distance. He didn't say anything, just showed them the pictures of Terra-Luna before and during the Fall. A world with no magic, only science.

Sprawling cities, metal vehicles, computers, and people. Humans. So, so many humans. Then the Thing came. The moon was shattered like a porcelain toy. The planet was dragged out of its own orbit into inter-dimensional space. People looked up and lost their souls to the horror in the sky. Science shorted out, and the world blew up as electricity went wild, chemicals destabilized, and spirits of fire sought anything explosive… like fuel. Then they were saved by the Great Seals going off.

The world tumbled through the void, ripping open a slit in reality, out of which poured a hungering force called the Mazakeem, who came to eat the Thing just like it had wanted to devour a world. Like a world caught inside a crystal die, Terra-Luna fell through space-time, finally aligning with some universe and getting spat back out. The remnants of Luna not falling flaming to the planet below were spread out in a new ring about it. Four new moons hung in the sky about it…

and the world was in orbit around a great red giant of a planet below. And undead, undead were rising from the corpses of the slain all over the world.

The record of the last ten years of Terra-Luna, of crashing down from the heights of tech, fighting, rebuilding, impressed even the Eternals. Such an incredible turnaround had taken massive willingness to sacrifice time and effort to raise everyone up… and coherence and willpower to endure strife, change, and a nasty readjustment process as they did so. But they were doing it.

"Your Eternal War is over, and your world is again your own. How long it remains that way… well, your Immortals are busybodies and want to make use of all this empty territory you currently can't, putting in new surprises for you to strive against, doubtless.

"But the War is over.

"This… is not good for those of you who have spent thousands of years getting very, very good at war, as I'm sure you know," Aelryinth finished with grim patience. There were murmurs of agreement from around the great chamber where so many Eternals had gathered. Wondering what they were going to do now was on many of their minds, even if being able to finally take some time off after millennia of fighting was not something they regretted at all.

"You need a fight. A BIG fight. Well, I have one for you," Aelryinth went on calmly.

"As you might know, I've been traipsing through multiverses trying to get back home. I've run across a fair amount of stuff, but what is important was how I started." The world above him shifted… except for the dark moon, which stayed oddly present as another world came into being, one almost black and hidden by foul clouds from pole to pole.

"This is the world of Pantera. They tried to invade us, and we annihilated the undead force sent to do so, then followed them back to where they came from." The scenes of the Terrans fighting hundreds of square miles of undead had been impressive. This time, they fought a world claimed by the dead, with monuments to death everywhere Animating to fight against them, endless hordes of undead creatures native and not who had come there, and the level of fighting was just at another level.

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"But we were optimized to fight undead. We were stronger than before, Geared out, with ten years to build ourselves up, break Ten, and get even stronger and nastier as we faced the things which had threatened Terra.

"The sky, the sky is what gave it away." The view revealed the clouds which rumbled and glowered with hate lightning and abyssal balefire, clearly magical, clearly foul.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to The Shroud. It is a horrible spell, at least a Fifteen Valence, wrought by Eternal-class undead necromancers, legions of lesser undead spellcasters, and millions of their minions.

"The undead under the Shroud are, we believe, invading a world of mortals per year, and neither Immortals nor gods are able to sense them, or even stop them." The Eternals rustled in interest and disbelief, but held their tongues as events played out before them, and they saw what a truly dead world looked like.

The Gates on Terra-Luna's moon of Shoul gaped open, twelve of them. Pantera's five Death Gates looked small, but they were a basis for expansion. Twelve Deathgates expanded to twelve worlds in bright, living colors and worth, and they blackened, were consumed, and died. From there the initial red lines became orange, and extended out to sixty more living jewels, which blackened and were devoured by darkness and undeath.

The men and women out there were fidgeting, and yet could only watch as yellow bands stretched out, and three hundred more glittering jewels of life perished. And they swallowed when the green lines reached out, and fifteen hundred worlds perished above them, going black and dead as the Shroud took them all. One of those worlds zoomed in, and lo, it was the world of Pantera, the Shroud burned off of it… but four blue lines extended out into the night.

Around it, fifteen hundred worlds sent out seventy-five hundred more blue lines, more worlds glowed in the void… and began to die.

"Before you leap up and ask how this could be, it is simple. Nobody up the scale knows what is going on." Aelryinth stood there, back straight, the picture of professionalism.

"I have already brought all of this up with Captain Emeril and Master Ialo. Neither of them remembers a damn word of what I have shown them.

"Gods, demons, angels, devils, proteans, modrons, Elementals, genies, the Fey… and Immortals, none of the great powers of existence know anything about this.

"No word of it has spread. If any such worlds had mortal partners, like, oh, you have with Delpha in the distance, they probably just consider the world as having moved out of alignment and it can't be accessed.

"There is only silence and mystery in the darkness… and a war that only mortals can fight.

"Mortals… and Eternals, because you are neither Immortal nor Divine." He held up his hand, and the five tiers of expansion extended down above it in a reverse cone.

"Every light is an entire world of undead. Everything on it has to die and be put to vivic flame. The wealth of worlds, the lore of ages, the mysteries of a thousand races and cultures, land enough for any who would wish to rule…

"It is all out there, floating under the Shroud, feeding it while the souls of the damned scream, trapped and helpless and caught in a foulness beyond anything I ever thought mortal souls could devise.

"They are waiting for you."

"Holy fuck!" the Mick blurted out for everyone, the appalled look on the most senior Null's face as bad as anyone there.

"No Divine or Immortal aid at all?!" he repeated in disbelief.

"There may be a way to recruit some help, but only while everything stays under the Shroud. From outside the Shroud? The gods can do nothing. Immortals can do nothing. Under the Shroud, you vanish and do not exist any longer to them. You could be the lover of a god, and they would instantly forget you. Until you come out from under the Shroud, they won't think about you for more than a moment before the Shroud wipes it away."

Aelryinth pointed to the black moon which had started it all, and the immense, crumbling Death Gates upon it.

"Not a single Celestial, Fiend, Elemental, genie, or even some Aberrant things I've run across can even acknowledge that that moon called Shoul exists. It can be right in front of them, and they won't even see it there… and it's not even truly Shrouded, because all the undead have left it behind.

"You want to know where to go? What fight you could possibly have that could measure up to the one you just fought here?" The funnel-circles of blackened worlds spun above his hand with their colored links, earning all their stares.

"It is here. Here, where we can roughly figure that it takes them about a thousand years to rework the face of a planet enough to power the Death Gates and then export an army of millions of undead to another hapless world… along with The Shroud that Animates all the sapient dead and turns them into an undead apocalypse.

"Seventy-five hundred Death Gates… maybe. We are guessing. It could be lower, if they only average four. It could be much higher, if they average six or more. A thousand years.

"We expect that they are murdering anywhere from one to five new worlds every year."

"We can't possibly keep up with that," Empress Sif hissed quietly into the aghast silence, like steel sliding over silk.

"It's… those are whole worlds of undead. Planetary populations. Heroes, villains, monsters, beasts…" Her voice was very mixed, because that was also an incredible Karmic banquet!

"You wanted to know where to go to get a fight. A fight against a worthy foe! A fight against a foe you'd have no regrets fighting! A foe Creation itself will laud you for battling! A fight on a scale with a need worthy of Eternals!

"Here is your enemy, and it is waiting for you to get started.

"If you want gold, you have the wealth of worlds awaiting you.

"If you want battle, I daresay there are trillions of foes to be slain!

"If you want magic and lore, the lost and forgotten works of nations and heroes are out there waiting to be discovered, and the gods themselves can't stop you from taking them!

"And if you want to settle and rule… there are going to be empty planets entire waiting for a wise hand to rebuild them!"

"We would have to be able to stop at least seven of those expansions, preferably ten or more, a year," Emperor Thor rumbled from his central seat, blue eyes staring at the illusion before him grimly.

"That… will require multiple armies, Master Aelryinth."

"Aye, Your Majesty. Ten at least. Twenty to make real progress, and save worlds while attacking those already fallen. Armies that can wipe away a world of powerful undead in but a year or less!

"They'll have to be Geared out, optimized, and capable of tireless fighting and slaughter of the dead. It's not going to be fun, but there's literally nobody else who can do it..."