The room was quiet for a mont as everyone took in what Icon had said. Sensing that they were all choosing sothing to ask and wanting to speak first, Ashtoreth said the first thing that ca to her mind.
"So how do we kill Heaven?"
Icon turned to her. "What."
"We're attacking Heaven at so point, right?"
Across from her, Matthews cleared his throat and looked around at the rest of the table. "I think we're a long ways from deciding sothing like that."
"Okay, fine. I'm attacking Heaven at so point, and I might invite them too. But does the archive have any strats on killing angels, is what I'm saying?"
"I really don't know," said Icon. "You… use your sword thing? You've killed more angels than I have."
"Sure, and I did my sword, but when it cos to fighting Heaven… I didn't even know that was a thing you could do. Heaven has a sort of mythical status. They exist, but you never see them. They're like a real cosmic state or superpower, just the people who write the rules and you never see." She paused, then added, "I don't even know where to go."
"Why would you?" Icon asked. "You were raised by Heaven's foremost lackeys. And from the sound of things, the angels cultivated a reputation that does very well to defend them."
Ashtoreth peered at her. "So… you know where to go?"
"No."
She sighed.
"As the Five Realms should make clear to you, it's as possible to add access restrictions on realms as it is to hide them. The only location I know of it the location of the Uppermost Gates, and those have almost certainly moved in the millenia I've spent in the dark."
"But to be clear," Ashtoreth said. "The ancient humans really were just… shooting and stabbing the angels? That worked?"
Icon frowned in thought, looking up as if in the process of recalling sothing. "It appears so," she said at last. "Angels aren't easily destroyed… but nonetheless, one does so by conventional ans."
Ashtoreth grinned at the rest of the table. "So we just go there and get 'em! Isn't that great news?"
"It's at least an improvent over what we did know," said Matthews. "Even if the overall military strength of an ageless cosmic power like the Authority of Heaven is likely inconceivable."
"Strong, sure. Inconceivable?" Ashtoreth asked. "That's just pessimistic. There's so really high numbers, you know."
"If we could move on," Matthews said, "Icon, do you have any idea at all where the old humans went? There aren't a lot of immortals who have lived longer than seven thousand years, but they're still out there. We have contact with the elves, and there's at least a few of them who fit that description. Still, we've heard nothing of a war between humans and angels."
Icon frowned. "I can't speak to whether or not any specific elf is dishonest or not," she said. "After Cradle was made an outer realm, it's likely that Heaven and Hell both scoured the cosmos of all traces of your existence. To this end they had antithesis shards and all their other powers besides. I don't know the intervening history, but across ti, as civilizations rise and fall, both powers could have easily influenced the chain of successor states into forgetting you. In such an environnt, the elder beings who know about humans might have been explicitly told to act as if they don't, or at least infer as much." She shrugged, then added, "All of that is speculative."
"There might be more to this," Matthews said. "It seems incredible to that anyone could purge all knowledge of a given species from the cosmos, even given thousands of years."
One of the uniforms further down the table said, "We have no idea what's plausible in those circumstances. We've far too little information to go on."
"Say, Icon," Ashtoreth began, "do you know if Heaven is still using humans? Were they still using humans during the war?"
"Not that we knew of," said Icon. "In their eyes, the human experint was over. But who can say what they might still have in Heaven's realms?"
"Not a plan to save reality, apparently," Kylie said. "You're sure that part wasn't propaganda?"
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
"Ancient humanity would be bad at designing archival spirits if their propaganda didn't work on ," Icon said. "But I see no cause to doubt the claim that the cosmos has a lifespan. Outsiders degrade reality the longer that they exist within it. Killing them stops this process… but it doesn't reverse it. To my knowledge, nothing does."
"What's our tifra?" asked one of the suits. "How long do we have before they finish the job?"
"I don't know," Icon said. "I can't even estimate. It could be tomorrow, it could be a trillion years."
"Ancient humanity declared war over this," Matthews said. "But you don't know?"
"I don't."
Ashtoreth frowned. Had Dazel been the one to declare war? Was the goal of cosmic immortality perhaps just a justification for wanting to rule everything? Regardless, she wished they'd get off the topic. It bore too much of a risk that Icon would realize they knew Dazel.
"Say—do you know about any more of those weapons caches?" she asked.
Icon blinked. "Oh, yes. I have a map sowhere, actually, though the list of coordinates might be more helpful."
The wave of interest that seed to move through the other half of the table was palpable. Almost everyone visibly leaned in.
"How many?" Ashtoreth said. "You gotta tell us."
"There are two hundred caches on Core."
Murmurs of shock and disbelief filled the room with a hushed babble.
"We're talking a billion people," said Matthews.
"...Yes," Icon said. "I don't think Orchard will be able to keep up with the levelling needs, though the stored entities such as elentals may. Regardless, ancient humanity left you the tools to grow into a formidable cosmic power, given enough ti."
"Provided almost one in seven people go to war," Frost said, sounding doubtful.
"I did specify that it would take ti," said Icon. "The material abundance brought on by magic, along with humankind's natural reaction to population-depleting disasters, should increase your rate of breeding. I hesitate to say anything suggestive of social policy… but with the right societal affectations, a generation of soldiers is to be expected."
"You hear that everyone?" Kylie asked. "Computer says to get busy."
"Moving on," Matthews said, a little forcefully. "We need that map and those coordinates. And anything else you can give us."
"Certaintly," said Icon. "There are buried conduits, but little else to help you build an empire beyond the materials in the armory caches. And of course there's also Diadem and Pinnacle."
"Tell us everything you can about both of them, please," said Matthews.
"Certainly. The Diadem and Pinnacle realms were both the seats of power in the Five Realms. Diadem was primarily the seat of the governnt, and Pinnacle was exclusively for the curators. Though I should note that for ancient humanity, 'seat of governnt,' has different implications than what you may be used to."
"Such as?" Matthews asked.
"Your structure of rulership is a nigh-incomprehensible ss to ," said "I don't intend insensitivity, but the chaotic systems of competing institutions and ever-changing borders is hard to read."
She turned to look at Ashtoreth, her face sowhat accusatory. "And you do have dictators. One who are far more socially regressed than any human emperor or pinnacle hegemon. But I digress. My unwillingness to accept, as a given, that humanity's subordination under one individual was sohow more regressive than your highly complex, yet sohow function system of governance is not the issue at hand."
"Uh… okay," Ashtoreth said. "What is again?"
"Power," said Icon. "Naturally the seat of the old governnt was also one of humanity's most important concentrations of power. Both Diadem and Pinnacle have sothing called a reality spool, and a reality spool can essentially do anything."
"Like a virtual reality?" soone asked.
"Like a real reality. A spool is keyed to a certain demiplane, and that is the only plane within which it can operate. But if a spool produces bars of gold, or quantities of mana, or fully functional magical gear, those things aren't locked to that realm. Moreover, entire forms of enchantnts are possible only with the help of a reality spool."
Ashtoreth smiled to herself. She knew it was powerful. You could tell by the na.
"I don't entirely know what they're capable of," Icon continued. "But the history that I have on record makes it clear that they're capable of destabilizing even natural realms."
"So it's a superweapon," Matthews said. "A planet killer, essentially."
"And more," said Icon. "It's every superweapon that humanity was once capable of imagining—provided one has enough fundant."
"Hmm," Ashtoreth said. "You know, one would think that humanity would have had a hard ti losing any war if they could just pop upstairs and delete their enemy's capitol realm. There's gotta be so limits on the Death Star function."
"Surely," said Icon. "But I don't know what they are."
"Ah—nonetheless," said one of the other uniforms. "It sounds like acquiring these spools is an essential part of ensuring the long-term security for humanity."
"Okay, great," Ashtoreth said. "So what's faster—fixing the spool in Diadem, or fixing the conduit that can get to Pinnacle?"
"The forr," said Icon.
Ashtoreth grinned. "Great! So… how long until we can repair it?"
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