Chapter 5-130: Changing Images

Both of them sighed in unison. “Forgive me for being blunt, Lady Traveler, but we have seen some very, very bad Powered,” the Firesword told me.

I steepled my fingers and looked at him calmly. “When you can remember looking into the eyes of an undead entity that sacrificed an entire world to undeath for its own glory and aggrandizement, speak to me about bad Powered, Void Brother.” He grimaced. “If you think you are the only ones who are aware of how corrupt and awful stuff is, I will say to you that divination and magical awareness is a thing, and it is not a joke... and my awareness and comprehension of the Shroud and its Haze probably surpasses your own.

“While I admit you have likely seen some very bad things, that is relative to this one little world that you are trapped upon. The true horrors of the multiverse aren’t knocking on your doors every day, or you would be far more dangerous than the Tens you are.”

Master Fred lifted an eyebrow, staring at the Void Brothers. He hadn’t thought there were any Tens on the planet.

I noticed his expression. “Void Brothers are constantly busy, just like Warlocks, except their remit is somewhat wider than yours, Master Fred... and unlike your Pact, the Breath of the Land is anything but quiet. They are also called the Favored Sons of the Land... they are probably the only people able to easily push past the Shroud’s suppression, letting it pass through them as if they didn’t exist.”

WHAT ABOUT SAMA AND BRIGGS?, he asked. THEIR NULL AND SUN WERE IMPRESSIVE.

“Yes, but they aren’t capable of staving off a spell cast north of Forty.” He thought about that, and nodded despite himself. “So, they are being suppressed and finding it hard to advance, and that’s without their problems getting Karma. The Voids just let it pass through them. Cheating bastards.”

Both of the Brothers smiled despite themselves. That said, I could see at a glance they had very suboptimal configurations of Classes, and hadn’t even managed to get Sustained yet, so they didn’t have a Vajra. They were both Scout Primaries, which was great for skills and stealth and knifing people in the dark, but lousy in stand-up fights both at range and up close...

“Gentlemen, there are two things I can do for you. The first is simple... I will give you these.” I slid each of them the sheets I’d Written out while we were talking, and tapped the top sheet. “You are both wielding Weapons made by Powered... dwarf-work, I’m guessing, but not Forsaken work.

“You need to go see Briggs at the First Light of Dawn in Baltimore, and get yourself proper Weapons made by a Forsaken Smith that you can sacrifice the ones you own to, Name properly, and grow on your own.” I considered them grimly. “Naming Karma and the ability to grow your Weapons will change your lives... as will a proper Leveling guide.

“Read, digest, then do. Talk to Briggs, who would be abso-smurfly willing to start up an organization of more and more Forsaken. Really, Forsaken should be spreading across the world. Powered aren’t supposed to exist without them.”

They looked astonished to hear me say that. “What?” I asked. “This is America. It’s a land of equality. If you don’t believe in that, were you really born here?”

“It... is just very surprising to hear a Powered say that,” the Firesword murmured. And what exactly does abso-smurfly mean? It didn't translate...

Master Fred snorted. THIS IS HEAVENBOUND HALL. YOU SHOULD TALK TO MORE OF THE POWERED HERE.

They studied him and his scars, and decided not to look down on him, as anybody who could maintain both Heaven and Hell Pacts had to be some kind of serious badass.

And this was, after all, Heavenbound Hall, just like he said. It wasn’t pretentious... the kind of people who were here believed in the heart of the name, not the snooty holier-than-thou attitude that people expected of them. Arrogance and pride weren’t valued traits in this place.

They picked up the sheets and perused them intently. That changed to intensely as the implications became clearer to them. Their jaws were dropping as they realized they’d made some very suboptimal choices in the past... probably because they were under great pressure to Level so they could survive against the people and things they had to fight.

“In all seriousness, Brothers, you should probably find a happy wraith, get yourselves Drained down to Three, and rebuild yourselves properly. As you are now, your long-term potential is sort of screwed. Now, you can make sure those Brothers following you don’t go in your footsteps, but you’re going to be suboptimal for the rest of your lives, with so much stuff that you cannot do...”

They looked up at me in disbelief. I was literally telling them to go from Tens to Threes?

“With the right Weapons and an Amulet of Death Ward in hand, you can regain a Level a day fighting the undead in the Shroudzones. You would literally only be a Three as long as you want to be.”

It was interesting watching the play of emotions across their faces. The ability to gain Karma and Levels that fast... was it actually possible?

They looked at the potential configurations of Weapons they could use, the existence of Vajras, and finally started to realize what being almost tireless could actually mean for them.

They glanced at one another at the same moment, their Helices giving them preternatural awareness of one another, part of what enabled them to work together so well.

“So... this Commander Briggs can make us appropriate Weapons?...” the Shadowknife asked aloud.

“He most certainly can. He’s probably the best Forsaken smith in the world, and he’ll be happy to help.” I held up a finger, however. “He’s also going to be going down to help me in Mexico, since he wants some of that sweet, sweet slaughtering-undead-for-heaps-of-Karma experience, so if you want to get something made for you, it’s going to have to be quick... and it might be good for you to be in a team if you decide to reconfigure yourselves.”

The two men looked at one another again, thoughts whirling, near-invisible Helices touching. Their faces were twitching, probably with the impetus to FIX THE WORLD that they couldn’t ever satisfy, and the Shroud encapsulating it only made more horrible...

But reconfiguring would solve a LOT of that issue. Not doing so was totally stupid. Being Sustained alone would mean they could do twice the work a day without any issue!

“We will set out today for Commander Briggs,” the Firesword finally said, his dark eyes gleaming despite himself. “We want to see what a powerful Source is like.”

I smiled slightly at the thought of Briggs’ powerful Sun bearing down on them with the purest possible mana, and just smiled despite myself. “Master Fred will let him know you are coming.” Who nodded, pulled out his Vaccine, and started typing.

----

The Brothers were in no great hurry once they made the decision. They finished off the sausages, rolled the pages up in impromptu scroll tubes I fetched for them for easy carrying in their packs, and headed off with the rest of the beer and bottle of wine in their hands.

Master Fred and I watched their Helices wrap around them, light distort, and they were barely blurs as they stepped out of the room. If I had sufficient senses, I could probably have felt them start their Veilwalk towards Baltimore.

Briggs had quickly replied that he was awaiting their arrival. If Sama was there, that meant a full trio of powerful Forsaken meeting for the first time in the world. I believed that would mean Much Bad Stuff for certain parties, but it didn’t really concern me.

I was tied to the Shroud. The planet wanted the Shroud gone, which, coincidentally, the spirits inside the Shroud wanted, too.

I was also pretty sure that once the Shroud was gone, I was either going to be eating a huge loss somehow... or I was going to be drawn somewhere the Shroud still existed. I didn’t know what would happen to this world when the Shroud vanished. Would the coming of magic recede like a wave, or would it stick around? Certainly things about technology that had been constrained would be released... but if non-Shroud magic was back, that should mean the full rules of the Power of Ten might come back, too? In which case technology would crash and fall completely...

Ugh, the implications...

---------

So, Nature itself has an antibody system, and it’s those Void Brothers...

Fred wasn’t sure quite how he felt about that. He was, after all, in the service of Heaven, and firmly believed it was the best possible thing he could be doing. After all, he had intimate knowledge of the uncaring callousness and inflexibility of Hell, and its complete willingness to sacrifice however many others it needed to in order to get what it wanted.

It could be said that the Void Brothers served the most important Cause of all, keeping the Land intact and dealing with the problems of those who would threaten it. Did they actually serve Creation itself, and the continents and worlds they were on were just small parts of it? It was hard to tell.

Mmm. Regardless, the Land had precious little empathy for anything besides its own needs, and the ants that lived upon it were, in the end, just ants. Trying to interpret its desires without killing off multitudes was a weight the Void Brothers had to deal with... or perhaps humanity had evolved them just to take care of those problems, so humanity wouldn’t be killed off in passing by some momentous Correction Event?

That would make them paragons of a symbiotic relationship, appointed as much by the rest of humanity as by the Land, their lives sacrificed to eternal service so the rest of humanity could stay alive.

That... actually sounded like it was probably the case, and it fit the ‘theme’ better. Creation wasn’t going to just pick out Void Brothers and make them serve it. It could probably barely even tell they existed, it was so large. It was probably more likely humanity had evolved them as a safeguard against arbitrary extinction...

He could have been Forsaken, too, if what the Lady said was correct... but he doubted he’d had ever made Six, let alone Seven, to do so. After all, he’d been the epitome of a white-collar noncombatant. He’d be lucky if he ever hit Four in an NPC Class, in normal circumstances.

Definitely not the case now. He had a great deal of blood on his hands, and if it was people who definitely deserved to die, it was still there...

His Hellpact hummed happily at the thought. He had definitely helped cycle a bunch of Pacts for Hell, had he not? Let them live, the Hellbound grew stronger, inflicted misery on others, showed that you could be powerful if you sold your soul to Hell, drawing in more suckers to take the Pact and get the magic. Kill them, Hell collected the souls, cackling, idiots got sent off to endless torment, and the Pact was freed up for someone else to take.

It was a vicious cycle, and there had been no way to end it...

Except now, there was!

Idiot flicked itself into his hand.

His Sword was starting to develop a nascent intelligence, and had a calming influence on him. It was Mnecromonic, recording everything he fought and killed by its aura, so grasping it meant anyone could tell who and what he had fought and killed, and judge him by his deeds, if they were of a mind to.

He was always relieved to see that he hadn’t killed any innocents... save those three, and that had been by pure mercy, as what had been done to them was worse than dying. Their relief at dying was stained into his Sword...

Vivic fires burned the length of Idiot’s long, straight blade, the heavy Adamant too weighty to be used by any normal man... but a fool of a Heavenbound who was going through the Angel Weight discipline, and becoming a high-gravity dweller thereby? It was a willow wand...

Vivus could actually eat up a soul and send it back to the land as raw energy, dispersed and pure. It would not do that in normal circumstances, as the spirit would generally be released from the shell of the body and proceed on to its reward, completely natural.

But a Hellbound Pact would instantly interfere with that natural process, and the instant it did so, the vivic energy would pounce.

He had headed over into Chicago for a day, hearing that Demonbound were proliferating from a nest there. The Grantor had gotten away, but he and half a dozen Heavenbound had put down over a score of idiots who had sworn Demonpacts... and watched their spirits burn en vivus, their Pacts unable to whisk them away before they were consumed and gone.

It didn’t just kill undead, it also denied the Lower Realms their Pact prizes!