Chương 557: BECMI Chapter 556 – Immortal Inattention

That attention of the Other Ruling Dragons was gone now, as Night wasn't protected during the jump, and her little extra-dimensional hidey-hole where she'd cowered during the Eternal War had been severed before Confluence. Too bad, so sad, we didn't have to deal with ANY of the Ruling Dragons from the Other Shore here now, only the ones here eventually finding out about us. There were flickers of more magic as others arrived to share the moment.

Captain Emeril, Ialo, Himmelstern, Thor, Sif, their children, the first Hobgoblin Immortal Bloodcrown, the Avatars of the gods, and scores of Eternals not otherwise occupied all arrived to watch. My Throne Room was big enough to host a council of great wyrms and could multiply space on demand, so it had no problem holding all of us.

Moonrise flickered as the sun fell, a different turn on magic washing in Chords of Silver across the world as a soft white orb hove slowly over the horizon, the stars winking into view being out of position for our time of year and sure to annoy the astronomers who had to re-calibrate everything now. At least the seasons had stayed the same, based on axial tilt as they were.

The new moon looked like an ice world with an atmosphere, having a train of tumbling ice cores or coated asteroids trailing behind it to accentuate the stars about it. Hints and allusions of grand Formations seemed to rise and fade underneath the clouds that swirled across its face, giving glimpses of something of great power there put into place.

"Now isn't that a pretty thing," the Mick admitted, watching it with the eye of both a soldier and a man who appreciated fine things.

"Magic about it, aye, and a lot of it. What be it supposed to do?" he asked on behalf of everyone. I answered before Tek could.

"It's Cloaking the whole planet," I said firmly.

"Not mere Invisibility, a true combination of illusion and camouflage in the broad spectrum, using continent-sized Rune Formations to do so. Were we gazing upon the dark of the moon instead of the full, we'd probably be seeing them gleaming in the black, like strands of silver under the clouds." Tek nodded confirmation.

"Anchor Pyramids with full technomagic resonance form the foundation of the Rune Patterns. At least two collapsed Immortal Realms went into empowering it, there's no chance of it failing for tens of millennia, at the least, and it should last for millions of years, unless an asteroid slams into it, or something else on that level… and the Obelisks are in place exactly to shunt those kinds of things off into open space or orbits which will take them into the sun.

"It also shares in the Immortal Ward against non-native Immortals on the planet, so you needn't worry about any coming in with their true forms, only mortal Avatars." The entire planet was under Pyramid Domains now, so doing that would instantly draw our attention. The five Immortals who were tied to the Nowns were not so limited, of course, nor were the thousand and more Eternals now dwelling between them.

If the Immortals decided to take direct action against the planet, that gave the gods the excuse they would need to intervene, and that wasn't going to be a thing Immortals wanted to see, either. Well, maybe to watch. Not to be in the middle of. There were a lot of Entropics who were going to get what was coming to them, and were not going to like it a bit.

The chaos of the fallout from the Fall of Delpha and the Impact echoing as devastation to their Immortal realms had already shaken the Immortals up a lot as events spiraled beyond their understanding and control. I wondered how long before they noticed Heaven was here, up and fully powered, and was finally going to give all Good souls their reward. It was the underworld and the Immortals connected to it who had first started complaining that souls weren't coming to them.

I guess they didn't want to be stuck with the trash left behind by self-interested Neutral and Evil souls...

The Eternals of Nown finally came home, three thousand years and a few months after they had left. In addition, Sama and Briggs finally got to meet their son and daughter and grandchildren. Their descendants had massively out-Leveled them, of course, but all that did was give them tons of stories to bandy around. Their ambitions were all leading them away, and they weren't going to interfere in what Briggs and Sama were attempting to build, except maybe give some advice from thousands of years of rulership.

The Shroud was calling all the Eternals, with promises of more Levels and Good deeds at the highest level of existence. For a time, there would be peace, as things were put on track, but the whole of the Other Nown world was now gearing up for a very different kind of fight, one that might take as long as the Eternal War, or longer. If not, it certainly would rise in scale! ============= Nexial, the City of Immortals on the moon Dynos of Nown, years later...

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. The meeting chamber was abuzz again as Immortals met, Avatar forms of all five active Spheres crowding around and speaking with one another, almost as if they didn't have deep rivalries and conflicts on viewpoints and agendas between them. Three High Hierarchs had fallen from grace, along with a score of other Immortals.

The existence of the Nexus of all Magic was now known to every Immortal, along with the names of those who'd built it in secret, and those who had Cursed it in even more secrecy. Likewise, the Entropics who tried to use it to empower an unrivaled catastrophe were also known. Stellaria, former High Hierarch of Energy, was one of the former, and had been demoted all the way down to Eternal for the ramifications of her project.

Urm, High Hierarch of Matter, was one of the second group, and the way that Curse had twisted the function of the Nexus in a horrible manner that had threatened the interests of all Immortals had also resulted in him being demoted to lower Hierarch himself. Voxus of Entropy, grandmastering the plot, had the efficacy of his schemes praised by demoting him to lower Hierarch status as well.

With the deaths or disappearances of over a score of Entropics during the last couple of years by unknown sources, in addition to those who had died during the Catastrophe of the Nexus activating, it was really insult added to injury. Thanatos, Nergal, Delphax, Crungilor, Napathos, Ken-Kendish, Zygulorm… all were gone now, just part of a tally of Immortals who had suffered catastrophic reverses or cosmic retribution from an unknown foe over the past few years.

There was a relative outsider there: Anubin, one of the dusty Immortals who had once been patrons of fallen Sythia, a Judge of the Dead who was associated with the Sphere of Death.

While it was known among mortals as the Underworld, and Anubin and his handful of fellow Immortals were also in charge of the condemnation of evil souls not claimed by Immortals, the Sphere of Death encompassed reward, limbo, and punishment in equal measure, and many Immortals simply shopped out the final fate of their worshipers to the impartial Judges of the Dead. The Judges rarely mixed with the other Immortals, who were mostly concerned about the living world and universe, not the afterlife of mortals.

Seeing one here was rare, and generated some interest in his reason for bothering to attend the session. Terra, the former Earth Elemental now serving as High Hierarch of Matter, called the meeting to order with rumbling formality, quieting everyone down. Quarizon, serving as the new High Hierarch of Energy, was the first to speak up.

"There is a new world in orbit around the sun!" he announced to all and sundry, and took an obvious delight in the flurry of questions and shocked faces showing up all around. He held up his hand, quieting the questions solemnly, and waited for silence before speaking again.

"It is unseen to our eyes, cloaked by powerful arts, but the effect of its gravity cannot be disguised so easily. Those of us who watch and measure the heavens noticed the effect on our instruments, and though it took several days of observation and calculation, we were able to deduce its location.

"However, we were not able to investigate further. Hierarch Numzael?" he directed the question to the acclaimed trickster Immortal of Thought. They were recent opponents during the recent events on Nown, in opposed factions, but such things were ever-shifting among the Immortals. The eight-eyed Avatar smiled his well-known cheeky grin as he became the center of attention.

"The arrival of an entire planetary mass in the solar system is an event which should have created far more attention than it did. The artistry and subtlety of the powers that did so is beyond question. The Star-Watchers, led by Hierarch Nunthalos, confirmed that the insertion was so smooth, the entire solar system was adjusted to be as if the planet was always present.

"Even the orbits of various rogue asteroids and comets was adjusted!" the somewhat wild-eyed fore-mentioned stargazer of Time blurted out, very excited and perturbed.

"It would have taken dozens of Hierarchs working together in absolute harmony to accomplish such a thing, and to do it in secrecy?" He shook his head energetically.

"I do not know of such a way to do so, save by the hands of those Beyond!" There was a quiet, uncomfortable murmur at the thought of the Old Ones being involved in such things around them, their intentions as inscrutable as always.

"On that note of undetection, how many of you were aware a draeden entered the system, and sought out the new world?" Numzael smiled mischievously.

"A draeden was in the system?" Korradrick exploded, the Eternal Immortal of Time as ever dressed in shades of pink and magenta as he shot to his feet.

"And we were not summoned to chase it off?" His disbelief was reflected by the other Immortals present. It took whole teams of Immortals of Empyreal rank and up, led by Hierarchs, to have any chance of dealing with a draeden, a moon-eater, successfully!

"It died," Numzael grinned even more widely, absolutely silencing the council of Immortals.

"So, there was no need to summon anyone. Indeed, if I had not been cautiously surveying the space where the planet should be, I never would have known it was there at all." He waved his hand, and an illusion of deep space filled the chamber they were in. Quick glances around showed everyone present their relative position in the sphere, and cautious progress forward on the far side of the sun from Nown.

Movement to the side attracted everyone's attention, and alarm rose at the sheer speed the physical object was traveling at, a significant fraction of light speed and beyond all but extremely enhanced Immortal Incorporeal movement! It looked like the brain the size of a mortal nation, easily a hundred miles across, and it was the center of a great web of at least a hundred tentacles ten times as long as itself, each such thousand-mile tentacle tipped with a set of toothed maws ten miles across.

Those jaws were of a size to pluck up mountains like dainty treats, crush them down, and swallow them down the thousand-mile tubes, pulverizing them to dust and less as they did so! The size, scale, and awesome power of the creature were in no doubt whatsoever. Like a great hunting hawk, it swooped on towards something unseen ahead of the watchers, and hackles rose as the distinct impression that they had been seen, acknowledged, and dismissed as a threat rose in everyone, even across time and space.

No single Immortal could take on a draeden, they were simply too powerful. The Immortal-Draeden war had happened so long ago that only the older Hierarchs even remembered it at all. It had not been easily fought, and ended with more of a truce than any kind of victory as tenacious Immortals earned the grudging respect of the ancient and inscrutable creatures.

And then, very suddenly, the creature came to an impossibly-fast halt from such speeds, its tentacle mouths turning about and angled towards something in front of it. Something very small, which the view zoomed in on…