“I’m observing that you are acting very confident and familiar with us, but I can honestly say I don’t know you from Adam, in-game or out,” Briggs admitted. “Likewise, I have the impression you have very little knowledge of our actual history here.”

“Which, I will deduce, is entirely due to you not working on expanding your fame, or you would be Emperor of Siricil,” I replied to the towering fellow nobody on this world really realized was an Ancient… or maybe they suspected he was a cave-man and whispered about in hateful tones that died under his magnificent bass and Source’s Aura of command. The way his voice thrummed on my bones was QUITE distracting… “And you would be the absolute terror of this treacherous society,” I added to Sama, earning an amused smirk from her. “I am very, very glad to finally meet the two of you, I’m very gratified to find you here at all, and I look forwards to working with you in giving the Immortals here everything they have coming to them.”

Sama smiled slowly. It looked a little too wide for her face. Eight canines gleamed, ready to tear out throats. “Briggs. She gets it,” she whispered, a hunger in her voice which definitely would have alarmed any Immortal listening to us.

Great large hands clenched, knuckles popped like stones breaking as Briggs slowly nodded. “Damn the fucking bastards left and right and upside down. Been waiting a long time to hear something like that from someone who actually knew what they were talking about, and wasn’t some idiotic atheist philosopher or Entropic dupe!” he spat with deep and grim feeling.

I nodded slowly. “My first exposure to this was the Immortal Patron of my own birth people. He is lying to them about the origin of souls, about His ultimate goals, about the very nature of magic, of the cost to their children of following His teaching, of the viability of moving to the surface, and many other things. I don’t know if He is a fool, arrogant, or actually such a sinister bastard, but He does not deserve their continued worship. He is using them, they do not know it, and they are paying all the costs for an Immortal Project of His that is likely to end in disaster and kill them all.” I looked at Sama first, whose smile had changed to a nasty grim line as she studied me, and then at Briggs, whose simple and crude features had a bit of hope to them instead as he listened to me. “You look like two experienced individuals who have had similar experiences…”

The two of them sat back in their Disk-chairs, rocking on the force constructs floating there. “You first,” Briggs waved at Sama firmly.

“I was born Croggi, from the Suderfjord Jarldoms.” She tossed a thumb north. “It probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that Grimr has been keeping the tech level of His chosen peoples of the Urtho at the longship and chainmail stage for five THOUSAND years, and has no trouble with them raiding one another for loot and captives and to gain glory for themselves. The Jarldoms are the worst of the Urtho kingdoms, as they’ve the smallest navy, the fewest ships, and the clan politics and feuds are crippling. The other Urtho kingdoms raid them at will, keeping them repressed, and none of them are going to unite under any of their own to stop the problem.

“The priests of Grimr still practice human sacrifice. I killed my first kobold when I was two, and my first man, from a rival family who was lusting after my aunt, at four. I claimed my first Auggi raider when I was six, my first ogre at seven, first trolls at eight. I’ve led raids into Humland and Austland, and I’ve seen the secret histories of the Urtho scribed into the mountains where only the Jotuns walk and keep them undisturbed.

“I butchered my first slaver ship at ten, and joined the raid that freed my kin and people at the same time.

“When one of my Aunties felt it was my time and came to convert me, I butchered her and her entire crew of reavers and burned my Curse in the hulls of both of their ships on the high seas.”

Her stare challenged me to do more. “Killed my first goblins at three months,” I offered to her simply. “I had slain more than a thousand creatures before I turned a year old in the depths of the underdark.”

Sama slowly reached up and pulled her curtain of golden hair aside, the pulsing blue-black of her Cursemark fully visible, totally messing up a face that would have been a kingdom-toppling beauty and turning it into a vicious, nasty caricature. “You aren’t lying.” She pointed at me in disbelief, turning to Briggs. “Briggs, she’s not lying!”

He was looking at me suspiciously. “I know Powered are dangerous, but seriously, Edge?” he had to ask.

“Oh, it gets much worse. Technically, I’m only four years old now as per my birthdate.” Both of them blinked. “But you can tack on like forty-two years to that, forty of which I was imprisoned in a time-looping Inn because of you two.” I leaned forwards, my own grim smile on my face. “Thank you so much, by the way,” I said with deadpan calm, as they tilted back.

“Oh, well, you’re welcome, you power-leveling monstrous bitch,” Sama grinned back nastily. “Four years old?” she repeated archly.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Alter Self lets you turn into Small or Medium forms larger than yourself. Elves physically mature only a bit slower than humans, although they lag behind mentally. So I was running around basically at brownie size while actually still a baby who couldn’t walk.” I sat back and relaxed under their gazes. “Like you, I was fully cognizant with my memories at birth. Unlike you, I didn’t have to wait around until I was old enough to start doing things.”

And to their complete shock, I fluttered my fingers deftly, and crimson-and-black shadows of Shards followed behind my fingers.

I shouldn’t have been able to do that in the face of her Null and his Source.

Briggs just threw up his huge hands in resignation. “Forty-six years. She’s not as old as us, but a gamer Powered, Sama?” he said knowingly.

Sama rolled her eyes in resignation, sitting back, her eyes on my glittery fingers. “I hope that’s an exceptionally highly-mastered spell, and not general magical use,” she told me.

“Are you familiar with the Leveling paradigms here?” I asked them calmly.

They both nodded shortly, professionally. “Different for humans versus other species. Potential to take secondary Classes. Thirty-six seems to be the maximum limit at which benefits largely stop, any monsters who surpass that limit always have Immortal affiliations,” Sama recited in a clipped voice. “Immortal clipping of the leveling paradigm and benefits of Classes, streamlining much of it and making development of advanced combat skills nigh-impossible, to the point of no chi development or psionic energies that we’ve been able to discover that wasn’t tied to things not of this world, or…” she trailed off.

“Tied to the past glory of Darkmoor?” I asked with a hard smile as she went quiet.

Both of them looked electrified, sitting right up. “Don’t you tell me…” Briggs breathed.

“That looping through time? The Inn was enchanted back in the time of Darkmoor. That was where the exit was, when we finally got there.” I leaned forwards at them. “And I can go back there as often as I wish.”

“Damnation,” Briggs shook his head, staring at me. “We’ve been around this entire planet during the last century, traveled more widely than probably anyone alive by ship and airship, seen cultures and races most other people on this world don’t even know exist. We found exactly two artifacts of Darkmoor, and neither were functional in the slightest, but we knew they were high technology.”

“Tamp down your Source,” I told Briggs, who politely drew in his natural emanation, allowing me to whip up a Holo of the globe, as seen from space. They both leaned forward in fascination as it spun in front of them. “The name of the world, as known among the Immortals, is Nown. It is a Megalith, a colossal creature of the Sphere of Matter, and it is hollow.”

“We’ve been to the moon, and to the Hollow World,” Briggs informed me, gazing in rapture at our shared homeworld. “But we’ve not seen it laid out like this…”

“I am to the wizards on this world what you are to the warriors.” They both gazed at me, then slowly nodded understanding at just what that could mean. “Unlike them, I am completely aware of Karma and how to harvest it, and as an elf I can take advantage of multiple Karmic Sources. I also came into this life with the equivalent Karma of nine Levels at Nine.” They both blinked at me in surprise again. “I was a Shard of a living soul. Aelryinth was being afflicted by the Death Curse of a Death Giant Demi-Lich. By sacrificing Karma, he was able to slice off parts of his soul and the Curse with it, while giving it nothing to build on, as once separated, we weren’t him anymore and the Curse couldn’t do anything to us.” I paused significantly for them to digest that.

“My fellow soul-shards seem to have met counterparts of both of you out there in transfinity, judging by a Sending I received before I was drawn to this world and reborn. Thus I was aware of the possibility that you were here, and then the whole temporal asshattery occurring around the Thisbean Inn bore all the hallmarks of Null locks on the Past, while my stumbling across the Inn and investigating it shows all sorts of indications of Source purpose-pushing.” I glowered at both of them, but neither of them was in the least bit contrite.

“I journeyed all the way into the past and exited the time-loop, and in doing created a free and permanent alternate time-line during the time of the founding of Darkmoor.”

Sama whistled low and slow. “And you can get back there? Repeatedly? At will?”

I nodded shortly. “Yes. Furthermore, time does not flow equally on either side. I come back ten minutes after I left, in both directions.”

“Oh, that is so ripe for abuse,” Sama breathed, while Briggs’ brow furrowed, already wondering how best to exploit such a thing.

“Neither of you could use the Portal, of course.” Sama looked at me, then looked at the sky in irksome disappointment and spat off to the side, while Briggs just shrugged his broad shoulders, clearly ready for that news. “Also, I can now potentially exit the loop anytime after the Doom of Darkmoor, and as long as I am careful and do not disturb the timeline, I can use the Rune of Time to ameliorate my minor effects on the timeline and actually mess around in our actual past.”

They glanced at one another. “So, you can observe history, but you can’t change history?” Sama deduced quickly.

“I can help history along, but I can’t make any true changes, correct,” I nodded slowly. “My sole personal trip to the past set up a political coup in Zanzyr, taking advantage of known events in the past and completely disguising my presence. The violent actions I undertook were disguised by use of Summoned monsters to obfuscate the actual source of the deaths, and the trouble-makers were noted as destroyed by sudden monster assaults in the wilds, a common enough fate… especially for people trying to use such monsters as tools against other nobles in Zanzyr. Alas, things got out of control, and the incompetent lackeys of the string-pullers paid the price.”

“That Rune must be pretty powerful if it allows you to slide between the threads of Fate like that,” Briggs mused thoughtfully.