Tree of Aeons

Year 252 (Part 2)

The decisions of the dwarven rulers were taken badly by the Valthorns and Valtrian Order of Branchhold, and here, those native to the Mountainworld wanted a stronger reaction. The response of the Valthorns from Treehome was relatively muted. 

They didn’t really have an emotional attachment to the cities of Mountainworld, but for the natives, some of them were immigrants, and some even had distant relatives in that dwarven city. 

Within these Mountainworld natives, there were those that understood why we couldn’t force the dwarves to evacuate, and why they had to bear the burdens and consequences of their choices. There are also those who believe that it was our duty to save them from their stupidity. 

Even more extreme, were those that believed I wasn’t doing enough. That Lumoof, my patreearch, should be able to be here and save the dwarf city. 

Their argument was that the demon comet didn’t threaten anyone yet. Not until another eighteen years down the line. There was another chance since Lumoof could intercept the demon comet during it’s 2nd passthrough near Lavaworld. The dwarves were under a much more present and immediate risk, compared to Treehome. 

Some supported this view. 

This view essentially created a rift between those of Treehome, and those of the Mountainworld. I predicted this, but facing it for real was a lot more troublesome than I expected. 

***

Lausanne walked back to her table, sipping the already cold tea. She finished her briefing. Her mother and Kei sat on a small table by the side, and waited. There were a few more Valthorns nearby as their bodyguards, in case anything happened. The crowd was small, but consisted of the former heroes, Meela, Alexis, the few other accidental summons, and the senior members of Meela’s institution of spies and informants, the Rosewood Hotels.  

Folks I did not pay much attention to, because they didn't have the intention to participate in whatever schemes I worked on. They were victims of Alexis's propaganda, and so we started on the wrong foot.

Suspicion.

Still, Lausanne remembered Meela. Her mother did as well. Friends, at one point in their lives. The truth of their origins were something the elves realized much later. 

Lies shrouded their relationship since day one, even if they meant to be friends. 

We were the same.

In a different world, where I didn’t feel insecure. 

In a different world, where we could all be open and trusting, perhaps we all wouldn’t have to be like this. 

But what is done is done, and I allowed the lament of ‘what-it-could-have-been’ linger briefly, before it dissipated away. 

“-there’s time.” Meela said. Slightly more than seventeen years before the Comet threatens to blow this world apart. “Does TreeTree have a plan?”

“Evacuate.” Lausanne answered without revealing too much. The fact that we can travel worlds was fairly well known since our attempts to educate the world of the multiverse. 

“Only evacuate?” Meela said. Lausanne was not privy to the full extent of our operations. She may be de-facto royalty, and I still consider her special, as one that I’ve seen grow from a baby since my early days, but her actual role these days is ceremonial and diplomatic in nature. 

“There are other worlds that are currently set as shelters. Dwellings and accommodations are under construction. As part of the arrangements with former earthlings, Ken requested that we extend the evacuation offer to you, and those under your protection.”

Alexis didn’t buy it entirely, of course. I knew her well enough. She doubted my intentions, despite all the evidence to the contrary. 

All because things didn’t start properly. Relationships are like that. 

I think about how certain relationships could be salvaged. Like the Crystal King. If only there were a way to unite all the domain holders. We’d have strength equal to the heroes, or even more. 

“This isn’t all,” Meela answered, saying the truth that was plain to all but still needed to be said. 

“Perhaps. I don’t know the full extent of it.” Lausanne answered frankly. 

“-when did Aeon first know about the presence of the comet?”

Lausanne paused for a moment and sighed. “Eight years ago.”

Alexis slammed the table with her beetle-like arm. It was made of armored carapace and had improved slightly since we last met. But she was not stronger than Lausanne. I could feel it through my prying trees. “Ridiculous! And you choose to tell us now?

In fact, I even felt like she was weaker. 

They have lived in this world for decades, and strangely, plateaued. They lacked the means to gain more levels, especially with the demon issue mostly sorted. I had taken away their stairways to ascension, gobbled up all the experience for ourselves to feed my little army of Valthorns. 

I would do so to all the worlds I establish a clone in. Thinking from an experience point of view, I am the invader, muscling in to rob the natives of their experience and future growth. 

Lausanne merely nodded. “There is still an estimated fifteen or so years before the demon’s comet approaches us, so, there is plenty of time to decide whether you want to evacuate, or stay put.”

“And face certain death?” Meela clarified. “No- knowing TreeTree, there is a plan in motion? Is it linked to the massive resource collection that- No. It has to be linked. Now everything fits.”

“Again, I don’t know the details.” Lausanne answered, ignoring Meela’s attempt to gather more out of her. “I come to offer a chance to migrate to another world, at the behest of Ken, one of your former earthlings. You have ten or so years to decide.”

“-wait. When will this be made public?” Meela asked. 

“I was told, about six years before impact. The mass migrations will occur then.” 

“This isn’t right. We have front place tickets because we are earthlings?” Meela answered. 

Lausanne thought for a moment before she realized Meela had a point. “That- that’s frankly a good point. I will bring it up with Aeon.” 

“-tell us more about this other world?” One of the reincarnated humans was just a tiny lizard. He hardly leveled, but remained under the care of Alexis. I wasn’t sure when and how they managed to find him, but it seemed that the gods did have accidents every now and then. 

Lausanne nodded and began to explain about the world that would host them. She has been there a few times. 

***

“Am I wrong?” I asked Lumoof as he waited on the Turtleworld. The Comet remained stubbornly out of reach. “Should I tell the truth to the whole world?”

The consequences of telling the world that we are aware of an incoming disaster we may not be able to stop. To tell the world that death is coming for them, and the only sure way out is to leave. 

My Valthorns did not doubt my decision to keep it a secret. We know so little about it, so, why cause panic in the general population by informing them of this coming disaster? But I realize that was also selfish because we didn’t want to trigger widespread chaos while we tried to prepare for the comet. 

In a world where resources and man power were no constraint, I should inform the general public of the looming threats, and they should then decide to make their assessment and act accordingly. 

No.

There was likely nothing they could do.

The only choice the locals could make was to migrate to Tropicsworld, since Lavaworld, Mountainworld and Threeworlds were not suitable for large-scale migration. 

There was no way these two existing worlds could absorb such a large immigrant population without causing even more conflict and fighting, and it would massively wreck the relationship we have with the existing local rulers. 

In theory, I could forcefully assume control of Mountainworld, and I do hear folks within the Valthorns who advocate that sort of view. Threeworlds still has the three hegemons that could potentially resist me, and as such, that’s not within the picture. 

So, for the locals, the only effective choice they have is to migrate, or stay. Should I tell the world of their future death, one that they could do nothing about but wait until the time comes?

Not just that, the whole reason this Comet occurred is because of a sequence of events that we triggered, because we defeated the demon king before it arrived our way. 

I couldn’t help but briefly consider whether this was my fault.

No. 

Defeating the demon king on their home world, before they could even damage our world is sensible, even if the consequence was retaliation. A planet sized retaliation. Whether the people living their lives deserve to know? How different is it from an oracle making a prophecy about a coming doom? 

No. 

Yes. 

I wasn’t sure. 

I decided to look at it from the lens of preparing for the comet. Not telling the world would buy us time to make more preparations. 

It is not preparations they would desire. It is not what the locals will want. 

It even reeks of a nanny state. We will do preparations on their behalf because we don’t expect them to be able to do better. It’s certainly an elitist thought process, even if it feels true. 

No, we know it’s true because of the levels. The system of levels, classes, and skills in this world legitimizes feudal behaviors and elitist behaviors. Quantified value, especially so at a later stage. We feel legitimized to act on their behalf because levels and our power tells us for a fact that we can do things they cannot.

So- coming back to the topic, should I let the general populace know?

No.

I realized Meela may be morally right, but I will not let the world know. 

Not with what we need to do. Not with what’s at stake.

If this is a sin, so be it. I accept it.  

***

The heroes gathered to discuss the coming battle. Their attempts at diplomacy failed. Time was running out, and there was only a few months left to the next year. Even if they agreed to evacuate, it would be an incomplete one. 

“Let’s force the dwarves out.” Adrian said. “They cannot behave like this, not when a demon king’s going to land on their heads.”

Ken panicked. “Please, don’t do something hasty.”

“I don’t think it’s hasty.” Adrian, the native mountainworld hero insisted. “Our power was granted to us, our class, to defeat demons. We are just getting collateral damage out of the way-”

“Collateral damage.” Ken repeated, and he felt his body ache. Age wore him down, even if he was augmented in many ways. The hero class’s effects are well documented. We know they behave like this when the demons are involved.  “Adrian- let’s think for a moment.”

“We have been thinking since we knew about it. If the damned dwarves don’t want to move, then we’ll have to move them. Use some earth magic and move the entire city if we have to.” Adrian said. 

“Wait- you mean- like Superman?” Ken interjected, realizing that Adrian might have a point.

“Well, yeah. Like Superman.” Adrian answered. 

Ken paused. “It- It might work. If the reason why the dwarves resist the whole issue is because of the old buildings and history, moving it and relocating it elsewhere.”

“-actually- that might work?” Prabu said. “We could try and move the city, a bit.”

“Why didn’t we think of this shit?” Chung complained. That was superhero-tier stuff, moving entire cities. 

There was a long moment before the answer everyone hated. It was Colette who sighed. “-because we’ve gotten lazy. We’ve been relying on Aeon and the Valthorns to solve all these kinds of problems.”

Hafiz, the defender hero turned to face her and tapped her on the shoulder reassuringly. Colette looked back and smiled. “It’ll be fine. We’ll just have to solve this with what limited time we have.”

“Yeah. We’ll deal with our laziness later. Let’s think about this strategy.”

Hafiz shrugged and looked back at Ken. 

“We have to move them quite far for it to work.” Colette thought about it, and then briefly carried Rohana and placed her child on her lap. “It’s a huge city, and we’re dealing with the demon king. We need to move it quite far, a small diistance won’t be enough to avoid the collateral damage.” 

Ken nodded. Chung frowned. “We’ll have to be selective with what we save- And get the rest to leave.”

“Has Aeon announced the details?”

“Mostly. The Valthorns began to spread news of the demon king’s projected arrival on the capitol.”

The demon king’s detonation was usually enough to annihilate a small region. They’d have to move the city quite far just to be safe, which meant this was a far, far larger act. If they resist, the cost of magic would just increase. If they had a focused earth archmage instead of a general all-rounder like Prabu and Colette, it would be possible with the amount of Star Mana they have. 

Prabu did the calculations and quickly concluded the strategy. “It’s possible, but we’ll need a lot of time. We’re pretty much forcefully evicting the dwarven nation to another part of their country.”

“We don’t have enough time.” Ken answered. 

“Better than destroying everything?”

“We won’t be able to save everything,” Prabu concluded. “It doesn’t matter, I guess. I think we should do it.”

Ken stared at his friends. He looked so much older than the rest and seemed like the grandpa among the young adults. Forcefully moving the city could be a recipe for disaster. “Do we have enough time?”

Prabu hesitated. “-Let’s just move what the dwarves care about, I think we can come to a compromise. If- if we agree to move it back after the war.”

***

“-How many times do I have to throw all these perfectly good mugs of beer your way, until you understand that we are not moving?” The Dwarven King stubbornly insisted. But, as it turned out, the dwarven council was a lot more level-headed and understood that the heroes’ solution of teleporting ancient parts of the city was the best compromise they’ll ever get. 

They stood by the King when there was no good option because they couldn’t abandon the ancient structures their ancestors blessed and built for them. This was their heritage, and they might as well die with it. 

But moving the entire structure via hero’s magic was different.

The council of dwarven elders, in a strange moment of conflict with their King, stood and agreed. The dwarven king stared murderously at his council, but the dwarven society did not grant their King absolute power. There had been too many drunken berserkers and rampages by past kings for them to do so. 

The heroes got to work.

They wouldn’t be able to move everything. But they would be able to preserve some of the old structures and ancient buildings. Each building needed three-four days. 

Of the heroes, only Prabu and Colette could move the cities. The rest of them were not mages, so they couldn’t help much. Ancient buildings, so they had to be careful. And because there were only two, the amount of structures they could save was limited. 

History. 

History, which the dwarves actually respect and do a pretty good job of safekeeping.

It was incredibly taxing to move the city just fifty miles from it’s original location. The void mages triplechecked all the computations, and reaffirmed the location of the demon king’s arrival. 

The dwarves themselves were split into two groups. Those that resisted the heroes’ idea, and tried their best to stay put, and those that worked with the heroes. 

I could see this decision taxed them. Forced to act without the native’s approval pit the hero class’s own internal rules against each other.

The dwarves were not happy about it. Some cursed the heroes, accusing them of bringing calamity to the city. Some of the dwarves tried to sabotage Prabu’s attempts to move the ancient relics.

There were accusations that the heroes cared more for the powerful than the normal people. After all, they only saved the historical structures owned by the powerful. 

For the weak, all they could do was run, and lose all they had built.

The heroes tried to ignore the naysayers, ignore the negativity. 

The heroes were designed to fight demons. Defeat the demon king.

The class, to a much lesser extent, asked them to protect locals. This was a much weaker mental compulsion. Each hero was subtly told not to do too much harm. The gods didn’t mean for the heroes to cause the world’s death. 

They were meant to be medicine, not poison that killed both the disease and the patient.

***

The heroes’ idea of moving the city away made me ask the same question. 

Could we move our world out of the way?

I tried to reach out to the Will of the World of Treehome, and felt it rouse from slumber. I sent it my message, and all I got was-

No.

Rejection. The world wouldn’t move to preserve itself. Instead, it responded with acceptance. 

I didn’t get it. They curse the demons, and yet when the demons come their way, they do not act to preserve themselves?

Why?!

Stella had a theory, of course, that the act of deliberately moving through the void sea is an energy-consuming process. The sole data point is Cometworld. Moving through space consumes the core’s energies, and thus, causes the world to collapse.

This is because in this world, the Core and it’s suns appear to be a package. Each world doesn’t exist beyond it’s immediate solar system. Far away ‘stars’ that we see- they don’t exist, or are perhaps reflections from the edges of the void sea. 

The world’s constellations are artificial. Magic.

We also have not seen ‘twin’ worlds. Worlds where there is more than one habited world. This leads to the idea that each ‘realm’ we visit is centered around the planet. The sun thus exists as an extension of the planet, not the other way round. Even the Sun-Rings had a single once-habitable planet. Void magic also guides itself to the planet, and not the sun as it’s center. 

If people need to spend mana to travel through the void sea, it is therefore logical to assume, that worlds and realms spend mana to move through the void sea. 

Cometworld now moves entirely on pure momentum. But even so, looking back to that movement, or the speed of that movement, it is not hard to suspect that it’s movement is likely detrimental to the core and the sun. That was why it eventually collapsed, leaving the tiny bubble of darkness. It’s even possible that if I withdrew my clone, the realm would collapse forever, never to be seen ever again.

Moving either spends energy or accelerates the decay of a core’s energy. It’s possible that each of these worlds or realms maintains a barrier or bubble of reality, and movement in the void sea erodes this bubble of space. This ‘resistance’ in the void sea is what causes realms to stay clustered together with their astral partners. Moving quickly through the void sea results in a realm spending more energy to maintain that barrier, more than what it produces, resulting in these worlds losing its ability to hold its realm together, and thus triggering a collapse. Their sun or suns would vanish. 

Again, this entire theory hinged on one sample size, ie, Cometworld. We do not know for certain whether moving quickly through the void sea has any such implications. It’s also hard to test empirically because we are unable to view the worlds’ respective moments in the void sea through all frames of reference. 

How does this even relate to the demon’s comet?

Because we wanted to know how it moves, and why worlds are reluctant to move. 

It was getting closer each day. 

If I took Will of the World long ago, that domain choice clearly led to the ability to move the world. Did that set of abilities come without the usual ‘costs’ of moving worlds? 

Is there a price to pay normally? How are the demons doing it? I wanted to know. Because moving worlds seemed like the best way of attacking the demon sun on our terms. 

On an interplanetary scale, demons were pretty much cancer. Mutant cancer that hijacked each world to self-replicate. Moving through the void sea was how this cancer spread to different regions.

Why are the worlds not defending themselves? Why are they not moving out of the way?

What loophole were the demons abusing?

No. The fact that the world refuses to move out of the way merely makes me ask the question that everyone didn’t want to ask. 

Are demons a deliberate design feature of the system?

Because if I wanted to end the demons by destroying the demon sun, in the event we actually succeeded, how do we know it’s permanent? 

This would lead to the question, how did the demons come about in the first place? Are they creations of the [system] itself? If so, destroying the demon sun merely bought time, and eventually the system will create new demons to replace the old ones. 

My hope is that the demons are quirks, bugs, or a virus. Not a feature of the system. 

A haphazard but persistent anomaly that has somehow found itself as a regular occurrence in the landscape of the multiverse, countered by injected medicine, heroes.

Because there is no happy ending any other way.  

***

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