Chapter 441 - Far Future Ch. 151 – Things are Happening (1/2)

It was quickly decided that the exploring Ranthas would try to make their way to the closest node cities of the drow. From there, it would be much less difficult to either arrange passage to Gloomheart and link up, or come out from Gloomheart.

There wasn't a huge amount of concern, as the number of people doing the exploring was under ten at this point, having other obligations, worries, and opportunistic harvesting of karmic excitement going on to distract them. Once they got some of their Curselines up and running, however...

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The shadow demon was still squirming a bit. Chalice bit in, and shadowfire began the process of transforming it into more of the Gloom. The demon didn't seem to like the process much, what with the flailing and squealing, but it converted in the end. Heh!

Our little trips in the tunnels within a thousand miles of the Fane had been entertaining and informative. The numerous hyn clans spread out in the nooks and crannies of the place were starting their transformations, and Shadowknives were extending their reaches as they touched on the disciplines of Void Brothers.

My Queen and the Princes had actually attended a conclave of the Shadowknives, and while they had spoken in Markspace, the hyn were still astounded to experience the fact that there were more beings like them, yet subtly different. They were also delighted to be called 'Elder Brothers' by the bigger humans, as My Queen had not been a Void anywhere near as long as any of them had.

They did all confirm that they had powerful instincts and obligations to the lands of their birth, which meant that the Shadowknives would not be leaving the Gloom. Any hyn who grew up to be one would be drawn back to the Gloom if they left, meaning only hyn conceived and born on another world would be able to stay there.

The fact their younger generations could leave the Gloom for the mortal world was a source of wonder, and with the Markspace, they could see what all those mortal worlds were like... and they could get colorful cloth, especially blankets, to hold a piece of those worlds closer in this shadowy world of greys.

Keva was already popping the Rift open to the portal here, a lost contraption stuck in a wall and watched over by a confluence of undead shadows, possessed Umbvar, and Shadow Demons under one of their boosted leaders. All were now dead and burning in shadowfire, being returned to the Gloom.

-Hello!- /said Keva from the other side, and we all turned to look, including the Brother. We all converged on it, and even the Brother stepped through, even if he couldn't stay there long.

The sky was kind of greenish, the star was more orange then old Sol, and the vegetation was more brown than green, the forests more primitive and palmlike... but the air was breathable, the climate was temperate, and there were no perceptible contagions in the air.

”Interesting.” I looked around at the thick forest around us, sniffed at the air. ”I smell big lizard. Is this some sort of primitive world?”

”More to the point, are the elvar here? The Portal is old and hasn't been used for millennia, judging by its position,” Celestia replied, studying the area. ”Fliers. Looks like primitive feathered.” We all looked that way, zoomed in with our Masks, and studied the big glider with its rough patterns of bright feathers here and there. Not completely avian yet, maybe a few thousand generations away, and still had a toothed muzzle, not a beak.

-Get me a location.- Chalice spewed out the spatial coordinates into Markspace, I read them and had a rough fix, but astronomical data was pretty precise, even for the untold millions of stars the Empire had not visited.

The return was pretty quick, a dim yellow-orange star on the fringe of known space, judged unlikely to have habitable worlds from a great distance, and so far out nobody was much interested in it. There were known storms and tides in the Warp that far out on the fringe, and so nobody traveled there without damn good reason, because they probably weren't coming back. It was over four thousand light years from Janus III, so not on the immediate travel plans... but it was on them.

Whether or not there were elvar here, in the end made very little difference, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Given how buried the Portal was in a narrow capillary, it had definitely been long disused... and now that we had the lock, we weren't going to be using it anyways.

That would be for the Brothers, to get their Weapons Named and up to Riftcutting, and open the ways for their people out of here.

Scouting this place out would be the job of Colby, her Curseline, and the hyn who would want to move here.

Forty-seven Portals, this was the first one leading to a habitable world. It was a place that could be built up, outside the Empire's direct zone of influence... which naturally would not be at all amenable to the Empire's intentions.

But if it could support the hyn, and was intrinsically less deadly than Gloom, than their population could explode. With technological and psionic training, their society could advance very quickly, as they built it from the bottom up.

Not that the Empire would give a shit if they discovered them; it would be knuckle under or die. So, secrecy was definitely going to be a thing.