The Path of Ascension Chapter 353

Chapter 353

 

Fabian Lacor didn’t like being dressed down like a child by a foreign noble, but he put on his best contrite expression and begged for forgiveness, which seemed to work when combined with his Talent to slink into the metaphorical shadows.

The lordling left after he promised to get the magical rods distributed to the hospitals by the end of the day.

Fabian noted two things.

The first was just how quick the lordling was to notice the issue, but only when he was on the world.

The second was that despite the warning there would be a second check up to ensure he did as he promised, there was no check up.

Fabian could work with this. Some plans would need shifting and adjusting, but he could most certainly work with this.

***

Tara Felgrave, President of the Vimar Republic, stared off into the distance, seeing beyond her office’s walls and to her country beyond. She had been doing a lot of that recently, but she still wasn’t sure what to do, and the proposal on her desk on how the Empire intended to switch her people’s currency to the ‘credit’ had only derailed her thoughts further.

Part of her hadn’t really expected to survive this long. She had expected to be killed or locked away, which at her age would have amounted to the same thing, to make room for the new order that was seemingly more and more inevitable as time passed. Except instead, they sent her a message through Councilor Samuel that they would help fund her efforts.

And while her eyes may be going, Tara could still see that Councilor Samuel seemed terrified of their new lords. Many of her fellow country leaders dismissed that as the man simply being fearful, but Tara had known Samuel before he was pulled ‘out of the veil’ as he called it. He was never a fearful man, but he seemed terrified of offending these new leaders, and she trusted his instincts.

She had asked him why he was so afraid of them but he hadn’t explained much, and his words still echoed in her mind as she twisted them around and looked for the deeper meanings.

“They didn’t mention it, and that can’t be an accident, so I won’t say too much. But the Republic Immortal told me they were akin to gods of combat, the likes of which are rarely seen even among millions of planets, which is why they were being given thousands of worlds despite the Empire officially losing the war.”

When she pressed he had clammed up, but Tara gleaned a lot from that short statement.

None of it good.

Which is why she was concerned about accepting Duke Moores’ faustian bargain.

Tara paused as she stumbled over the plural address of the dukes, but waved it off as unimportant. Maybe it made more sense in their language but in her’s it conjugated weirdly.

That was for her democratically elected successor to deal with. They would be one of the last truly representative leaders of the Vimar Republic chosen by their people, and that thought broke Tara’s heart.

The offer of ten billion credits a decade had been… Large, but without context. Tara had had no frame of reference to equate it to. Depending on a credit’s value relative to her own nation’s Kenthals, that could be a large amount of money or it could be a weekly paycheck to an office worker.

With the arrival of the administrators, she finally had a frame of reference.

She was an attractive young woman who could have fit into any Vimar Republic college campus without anyone batting an eye. Al’Ta was her name if Tara was pronouncing it correctly. She had used one of the tablet things to chat with Tara, and answered all of her questions while explaining the document that had been sent out.

Her appearance made it hard to imagine this woman as an immortal who was over 8000 years old, and had been doing administrative work with her company for just over two thousand years. Tara had asked about the seemingly young woman’s experience, worried her country was getting someone inexperienced assigned to them, just to find out the woman had been doing her job longer than the Vimar Republic had existed several times over.

How were they supposed to resist an Empire that had thousand year old immortals working as an admin?

What did that say about the rest of the Empire?

Nothing good for her people, Tara was sure of that.

Tara had tried to learn more about the general situation and Al’Ta had been willing to share a little.

Through their chat, Tara learned a lot of incidentals, but when she tried to ask about their new Dukes, the conversation ended almost immediately. It was all too telling for Tara and reminded her of Samuel’s reaction.

The main positive thing Tara had learned was the credit was currently valued at about one for every two and a quarter kenthals. That number could fluctuate as her people’s purchasing power increased, but so long as she or her successor didn’t try to hyper inflate their currency, her people would be able to buy credits at a one for one ratio, which would double her people’s wealth.

Tara had been worried about hyperinflation, but Al’Ta had explained that was functionally impossible with how the Empire controlled the credit economy. Learning this Empire had something like forty different economies depending on power was more than a little shocking, and didn’t make a lot of sense, but it was also irrelevant to Tara.

What was of concern was that things like the cost of food and housing were strictly regulated by the Empire, and she was expected to start getting her country into a ‘proper state’ as soon as possible to smooth over the transition.

In theory, it seemed great that this Empire mandated everyone had a place to sleep and that food was to be made available at low reasonable prices, but Tara couldn’t help worrying.

Why would a monarchy care about such things?

The Moores had said the immortals let mortals live their own lives, but if that was true, and the striking down rule was so important, why couldn’t they just leave them alone?

Tara knew that was an impossibility, which is why she was trying to preserve what she could.

The issue was that such efforts would be expensive. A billion credits a year, roughly 2.25 billion kenthals, was a lot of money, but not nearly enough.

Tara couldn’t help but worry that the idea behind the Moore’s action was to trap her by giving her just enough to feel like they weren’t hindering her, but not enough to make real strides in her efforts.

If that was true, then accepting the deal truly would doom her people.

Tara’s mind went to her plans. The plan she had refined after reading the relevant section of the document the Moores had provided.

Tying in with museums and pivoting them into general cultural keepsakes was a good idea, but Tara feared it wasn’t enough.

Vimar and Soerilia as a whole needed to remember their roots, teach their kids their ancestral language and traditions, because Al’Ta made it very clear that Empire standard would be the only official language teachable in schools after integration or to be used for official business.

If language and culture was relegated just to museums, it would be far away and be lost even faster.

Part of Tara scoffed at the idea.

Was she whistling into the wind?

Were her actions pointless?

She didn’t think so, but she was old. Having rejected the ‘awakening’ and magical healing devices, she knew she had at best another decade in her before she returned to Soerilia itself. Why should she spend her final years struggling to resist the inevitable?

It all felt so hopeless and nihilistic.

What was the point when an administrator working for a company was two thousand years old?

Were the Moores right in that this bland faceless Empire culture was the only thing that could endure the time and size that these immortals seemed to operate on?

Tara wished she could confidently say they were wrong, but the more she learned, the harder it was.

That didn’t mean she was about to give up.

Even if it was pointless and the younger generations spurned her efforts, she would do it anyway.

If she and people like her didn’t try, the younger generations wouldn’t have the option to reject their past, as the past would be lost to time, impossible to claw back.

That thought was what kept Tara going in the face of the seemingly inevitable.

Immortals and immortality changed things.

Tara hated the very idea, it seemed anamatha to what was right and proper, the natural order. But it seemed that immortality was what was natural after people reached a certain level of power.

But if immortality was unchanging, maybe she could use that?

Not for herself. She hated the very idea, but maybe she could gather a group of youngsters who would be eager for such power and longevity and teach them the ways of Vimar and her many cultures?

If some of them could reach immortality, then there would be permanent first generation Vimarians who were free from the inevitable cultural drift. They could be shepherds for Soerilia and her descendants.

Already today there were lost cultures which had been destroyed, absorbed, or forgotten only to be remembered in museums.

That was exactly what Tara wanted to avoid.

The more she thought about it, the more that seemed like a good idea.

There had been something in the packet about being able to go off world to go to a place where her people could advance further and reach immortality. The Moores had said they would subsidize a number of people to do so.

Tara’s mind raced as she called Al’Ta, who immediately answered, which made Tara wonder just how many administrators they had brought? Were there thousands of immortals waiting around for someone to call them?

Immortality just seemed like endless work.

Either way, Tara was happy to get a quick answer to her question.

Even without immortality one could truly become long lived, reaching over a thousand years old, and the Duke’s were willing to sponsor people who wanted to advance.

Al’Ta did mention that cold weapons were preferable to hot ones. Swords and bows over guns.

That would take some thought.

Al’Ta said there were schools on the neighboring world which could teach such skills, and the Moores knew the owners. They were offering slots for those who wanted to learn. While Tara thought it would be good to send people to take advantage of those skills, she didn’t think it was a good idea to push younger people off world.

If she wanted to preserve her culture, these people would need to be in the culture, living it, or they were no better than wall carvings to be looked at by her current people. A curiosity for children to marvel at before moving onto the next wonder.

Al’Ta’s comment about guns not scaling to the power levels needed gave her pause. Was that just a ploy to get them into the Empire’s mindset?

It didn’t seem like it, even Samuel mentioned that the immortal he interacted with had a sword and metal armor in his office, but Tara couldn’t help but doubt.

Where was she supposed to get melee specialists on Soerilia after guns had taken over warfare so completely?

The answer was surprisingly obvious once she let her mind wander.

Grand Secretary Gerard, of the Palkar Union.

He had hated this as much as she had, and better yet, the Palkar Union had a sect of ascetic monks who continued to train in melee weapons. She didn’t know too much about them, but their reputation was that of fierce combatants of a hundred weapons. And should one be foolish enough to enter melee range with them, they were in for a world of hurt. Not that useful on a modern battlefield, but now…

If their reputation rang true, Tara desperately needed their skills.

However, she knew she couldn’t let the Palkar Union and their religious beliefs take over her idea. Their religion, like every other, should be preserved. But if given full control, they would probably only preserve their own culture and heritage.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

No, this needed to be a planet wide effort with their support. Not the other way around.

The more she thought about it, the better her idea sounded, and Tara called out to her secretary to set up a meeting with Gerard.

Part of her longed for that portal thing. That, if nothing else, would be nice to have access to. As it was now, she’d be spending ten hours on a plane, but she could manage the sacrifice.

Anything for Vimar and its people.

No. That was the wrong way of thinking now. It wasn’t about just Vimar now, but about everyone else who shared this sky.

Anything for Soerilia and its people.

***

Captain Yosef Yilik hadn’t quite believed it when he and his team were pulled out of a six month long mission to infiltrate the Balsar dictatorship, topple the military controlled government by killing the grand general, and secure The Joined Provinces of Turistia’s southern border.

Thousands of hours of work went down the drain, along with millions of taxpayers’ hard earned money.

Then, they were asked if they volunteered to gain magic and fight monsters. It seemed like bullshit, but he and his men, Raven Team 4, were told magic existed by President Westley Bakerfield himself.

It all seemed too fantastical, but they had proof.

President Westley had with him a bar of copper and steel that he gleefully touched to Sergeant Martin. Martin had nearly lost an eye when they had taken over a military outpost just days before they were recalled, and the wound was still red and gnarly to look at, but they had all suffered similar injuries over the years. It was nothing new.

That was what it meant to be a Raven.

With a small pulse of light, the wound on Martin’s face rapidly healed.

It was like magic.

Yosef caught himself, it wasn’t like magic, it was magic.

“By the Founder’s testicles.” Yosef breathed out as he stood and moved to Martin’s side along with the rest of the team.

They made way for him and he gripped Martin’s head in his hands and twisted the man’s face up, ignoring his pleas.

“Hold still Martin. For fuck’s sake. We are trying to see your ugly mug.”