Limitless Path

The others ignored Beth, other than Sera, who spouted a quick gout of flame over her lover to dry her off, Beth taking the fire and manipulating it to make sure she was dry and had burnt most of the remaining dust away. She put the fire out, Sera still marveling at the amount of control Beth had, being able to snuff dragonfire with just the control from her Mana Physique alone. Beth followed along at the back of the group, stretching out as she fully returned to her regular size and proportions, other than her hair being thicker and longer. It looked like there would be another trip to the hairdresser in her immediate future.

The group moved down the tunnel, Bjorn taking up the lead and blocking most of the view. Fortunately, there wasn't much to see, nor was there far to go, as the tunnel didn't last much longer after the place Beth had destroyed the barrier. The tunnel ended in a small room, just big enough for the group to enter and gather around a small table, one with two chairs pulled up to it and a few items scattered on top. The bits scattered about looked like tools and Val's gasp of delight seemed to confirm that. She carefully picked each piece up and examined them before putting them down in a small row, going through the four objects on the table.

"What's the deal?" Beth asked, crossing her arms and leaning against the entryway to the room, readjusting her position as her hair caught a little.

"Enchanting tools," Val said as she finished examining them. "They're very high quality, made from mithril and mana silver. They're quite conductive on top of being very durable; they're also enchanted themselves, giving durability, repair, and increased precision. It's a partial set, but the tools here are probably worth thirty or forty diamond coins. It's not a top-tier set, but it was made by at least a Master, possibly an early Grandmaster, and was fairly well done."

"Anybody want 'em?" Beth asked with a shrug.

The whole group, other than Val, shook their heads. Val said, "I would take it, but I have a very good set gifted to me by my mother that is far more complete. You should either sell it or save the pieces to give to an enchanter friend."

"You're the only enchanter friend," Beth said. "At least, the only one that isn't at least a Sage, as far as I know, so not much use there. I'll grab it and hold on to it until we sell more stuff."

"Sounds good," Kris said quietly. The rest of the group agreed and Beth tossed the tools in her necklace. They were very fine, with a nice silver glow to them, considering mithril also had a bright silver-white coloring, and they were very light to hold.

The group retraced their steps and Beth had them start ascending, as she was done with the Pit for now. They were supposed to be on a bit of a vacation, and exploring further underground didn't seem very relaxing right now. Beth stopped in at the town, talking to Oumar briefly and explaining about the fades and that their group had killed two. He was rather appreciative and insisted on sharing a quick cup of tea with Beth, inviting them to stop back any time. Beth marked the town on her map as a friendly place and a good place to do some exploring later, when they didn't have several of the team members just for a few days or a couple weeks. Beth deployed the airship as soon as she was done talking, just outside of town, chuckling at the surprised reactions of the locals.

Blood took the helm even before everyone had finished boarding and making their way up to the bridge, lifting them off as the locals pointed and excitedly gestured to each other. The airship was rad, Beth had to admit, and it was likely they were both discussing how interesting it was as well as how she had acquired it. The part about it appearing out of nowhere and unfolding at a single command was also pretty crazy. She watched the people on the monitor for a moment as they lifted off, Blood taking it easy, but soon enough they were moving at an appreciable speed and the town itself was fading into the far distance. Blood took them in a loop around the desert, a large part of the Sahara remaining the same as before the change, though the area right around the Mediterranean was much lusher along the entire coast, before she flew them towards the tower in what used to be the Middle East.

Beth was surprised to see an absolute metric ton of people gathered around the tower's base, which was certainly a change from the last time they had come over, but it seemed that people had started to realize the value of the place. Even if a lot of people couldn't afford the faction that ran the place's usurious fees, the base of the tower would still be a good place to set up for business. The people who could afford to throw diamond coins around on entry fees could certainly afford tossing silver and gold coins around like they were candy, and likely the rewards that said people got in the tower would be sold or used in the town. Such things weren't exactly uncommon in the wider universe, and Beth was just surprised that the town was the size it was and had formed into such a complex development when there were still rather few people that could do the tower. There were a handful of people from off-world on Earth, and some of them could certainly afford the tower, even apart from Beth's group, but the number was tiny. Somebody down there had a pretty good head for future planning and development, and that impression was only reinforced when Beth saw just how organized everything, from the homes to the businesses to the infrastructure to the defenses, in the town was.

They didn't bother to stop, Beth not intending for them to do the tower at all now, but instead they flew on. She had not been in Asia, other than their attempts on the tower, since she had come over and done some missions in China to help her and Blood get Silver. The continent was rather vast and parts of it were now little explored. People had really been pushed back into cities and larger towns in some areas, the dangers forcing people to congregate close together. Fortunately, especially with the CRA's help, building both housing and defenses, and sometimes the two overlapped more than a little, was rather easy and even cheap. That didn't mean that everybody was happy to pack in together, nor that everyone had been able to survive the major troubles that the Path had brought with it, but a lot more people had survived than one might have thought, and they were doing better than they might otherwise have been.

They flew around for a couple hours, covering a lot of ground, but with still a lot more to go. They stopped to pick up their last straggler, Veren having shown up after teleporting to where they were, before they continued exploring for half a day or so. They discovered a couple of interesting sights, but they didn't push it too far, Beth not wanting to get wrapped up in too much. They flew on at the end to a place by the ocean, the beach having become a significantly more dangerous place now, no matter where on Earth one lived.

It wasn't nearly that dangerous for Beth's group, and they were able to spend a day relaxing at the beach, including catching some rather large and, well, toothy fish to eat before heading back to near their home Hall. They didn't go back to the Hall itself just yet, as they had a bit of time yet before anyone had to go, through Val was the only one really pressed for time. Beth was eager to get the groups reactions to a little secret she was still holding, though Blood and Sera certainly knew about it.

Beth had Blood land in a large, open area that they had explored a long while ago, back in the time when Blood and Beth were still working on their Silver Emblems and clearing trouble zones near their Hall. It wasn't exactly at the lizard dungeon they had done, but it was somewhat close to that location, and they set the airship down in the clear space before Beth packed it up. They had to take care of some beasts in the area, though nothing was particularly high level or tough, and they had the place cleaned up in short order. Beth did a final pass of the area, making sure they wouldn't be bothered for a while, though it wasn't really that big a deal with the amount of power they already had gathered. Finally, she gathered everybody up before revealing her big surprise, hoping to get some interesting reactions.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"What's happening?" Val asked crossly. "I was fine with a stop by the ocean to relax for a day, but what are we doing in the middle of nowhere? What is this?"

"God, you're impatient," Beth grunted, waving everybody to back up a step. "It's better just to show you."

Beth had already had a bit of a conversation with the reliquary, or those inside of it, and she unleashed them all at once, laughing almost immediately at the looks and exclamations of her friends. It was a bit strange that it struck her at that moment, but she did have a pretty good group of friends, ones she was very glad to have made, though she wasn't going to go getting all sappy with them about it. Sera would sympathize, and maybe Kris, but Val would tell her to grow up, Bjorn wouldn't care, Andrea would think she was moping, Adam wouldn't understand, and Veren would tell her to piss off. Still, it was great seeing them react to the large group of empyreans appearing out of thin air, Bjorn having the most exaggerated reaction out of the whole group, but that was because of the person in the group Beth suspected to be an actual titan, though they concealed their information from her friends group.

"What the hell is this?" Andrea asked Beth, grabbing her arm in both hands and shaking it.

"Just something I found," Beth said, trying to shrug while Andrea was still shaking her.

The group had recovered from their shock quickly enough, all of them being seasoned Wayfarers that had seen a lot of strange and terrible things in their lives. People split up and talked with various of the empyreans as they found their footing, with the white phoenix talking with Kris, Bjorn talking with the titan empress, Sera speaking with the rather old-looking man who was a humanized dragon, Andrea striking up a conversation with the weird empress whose body was made of some kind of glass, and Adam discussing something about Mana Physiques with a group of four empyreans that included the elf, the woman who had spoken of the City of Mended Dreams, the cold and stand-offish man, and the woman that appeared to have eastern Asian features.

Val was the one who had the biggest surprise, however, as one of the empyreans was a kresnik, one from her own clan. It wasn't surprising to the empyrean, but it was to Val, who had absolutely no idea that there were conquerors and rulers of such a nature buried in the old branches of her family tree. The empyrean was, apparently, a sub-species of Val's people, another thing she didn't know they had in their clan's distant past, and the difference between them led the woman from the reliquary to desire to lead and to conquer. Val talked very animatedly with her distant ancestor for a long time, getting a whole bunch of advice dumped on her head. Beth was a little worried about it, considering the source and what the empyrean was saying, but a quick and quiet message to Tera would make sure to sand off any rough edges that might develop. Beth really didn't want one of her friends getting any notions about galactic domination in their head, not for a good long while, anyway.

The big musclehead of an emperor stopped near Beth and just stood with his arms crossed, watching everyone interact before looking around. Beth followed his glances, not really seeing anything out of the ordinary, but that meant little. These were people with incredible skills and powers that had millennia of experience, each, in some of the harshest and strangest conditions out there. There was no telling what he could see or detect or what had set his senses off, though he wasn't getting ready for a fight or alerting Beth to get ready for one. She stood by him for a little, letting the others have their fun, even Veren finding something to discuss with one of the empyreans.

"So, uh, who are they?" Beth asked him.

"What do you mean?" he replied.

"I mean, can you give me a rundown? You all know each other reasonably well, right?" she asked.

"I can give it to you in brief," Erosh responded.

"Anything would be helpful," Beth interjected with a nod.

"Well, you know Liveria," he started, gesturing at the empress across the clearing with the silver hair. "She's the most recent, er, addition to our ranks."

"Right," Beth said.

"Then there's me," he said. "Erosh is fine. I've been in there a damn long while. Used to rule over a small place, backwater really, that did a lot of fighting with some old cults. Nothin' worth mentioning now, anyway.

"Next, you know Odorra. She's been in there a lot longer than I have, and she used to rule an empire that the phoenix clan oversaw a very long time ago. She's a skilled crafter, but her real strength lies in just how good with several different kinds of magic she is, including fire magic and incendiary spells.

"Then, you've got the rather short woman in the black and gold kimono; that's Kimiko, the old Starlight Empress. She's got a knack for divination magics, most of which let her see a short stretch of time into the future or predict the way people will react to certain things based on both their past decisions and some kinda magic mumbo-jumbo. She can hold onto a kind of temporary foresight while fighting; makes her damn hard to do anything against, especially when she's quite strong and extremely fast.

"The old kresnik talking to the young one is Belladonna; she's been in the box a real, real long time. Don't know exactly how long, but it's been well over a million years for her. Keep it a bit quiet, but I suspect it's been multiple millions of years for her and quite a few of the others. It's been far too long for some of them. Ahem, anyway, she's very good with blood magic and essence manipulation, though she's not a particularly good crafter. Only I, Odorra, and Zelmainne are really any good at crafting. Most of the rest are Masters, though I think Mikhael is a Grandmaster, too.

"Anyway, rapid-fire. The elf is Aodene, and he's from some lost empire of elves that fought a big war against a massive human hegemony that doesn't even exist anymore. He's an archer and quite damn good at it. The man who's giving everyone the cold shoulder is Alfred, though he prefers General Alfred or just the General. He's a soldier before a ruler and has a brilliant tactical mind, though his grasp of the bigger picture suffers sometimes. He's also very good with guns and other types of high-tech ranged implements. The old dragon your little lover girl is chatting with is Farahduul, a master of both light and dark magic and a skilled ritualist.

"The tall woman with the dark red hair is Abigail, who ruled over the City of Mended Dreams before it was even called that. That's back when it was the capital of her empire, though I think times have certainly changed since then. She's very skilled in unarmed combat and unconventional weapons; might be able to teach you a thing or two. Next to her, the big man with the runes on his body is Mikhael; they called him the Wandering Emperor because he carried his empire with him in a dimensional boundary. He's pretty good with dimensional magic and time manipulation and is handy with a bunch of kinds of polearms.

"The really big lady your tall and stoic friend is chatting with is Ragnheiðr, an empress of a bastion of the titans. What that means you'll have to ask her, but she's very good with blunt weapons and knowledgeable about illusion magic. I already mentioned him, but the man with the pure white hair and that lot of flashy little earrings is Zelmainne. He's the one that created the box and is extremely skilled in crafting, though he was better known many ages ago as the Sword Annihilator. You want blade training? He's one of the best there ever was, going even beyond what his skill level says, to a higher realm.

"Last, but not at all least, is the monster empress, the one that looks like she's made of obsidian. She just goes by Apogee, though a lot of the time we just call her Gee. She was trying to build a massive empire across the whole Milky Way a very long time ago, but that was a lot more ambition than it was reality, despite what she says. She tried to rush into getting to Exalted before she was ready because she needed more power to hold her empire together after expanding it too fast. Lot of us have some kind of similar thing, none of us really having been ready for the jump to Exalted and desperately trying to hit it anyway. Well, apart from Zelmainne, as his deal is really something else entirely.

"So, that good enough for now?"

"What's Apogee good at?" Beth asked.

"Ah, yeah, she uses the power of stars. I don't mean something like starlight or something; she uses the power of nuclear fusion to generate overwhelming force and destroy everything she sees."

"Oh. That explains some things," Beth muttered.