Against the Morons · 8:41am Dec 30th, 2019

After 3 years of being focused elsewhere, I have done another chapter of this story, which will go up soon, titled 'Against the Morons', starring Luna, Ivan, and Cunning Thought.
It should be up by New Years. I hope you enjoy it.

Here's a snippet:

Cunning Thought’s Entirely Honest Journal:

Immortals don’t need to sleep but I sometimes choose to, partly to confuse people but also because I find it helps me order my thoughts.

So I went to sleep, while manifesting one of my avatars, Bogdozan, in Hule, asleep, in front of a provincial High Priest, Icthar. Mostly I wanted to see what he would do. He made up, on the spot, a sermon about how this means Bogdozan wants us to strike at our sleeping enemies while they are vulnerable. And that we should *not* sleep, not lose vigilance.

I could tell he wanted to rifle through my pockets, but wasn’t *that* bold. I like him. I decided to keep an eye on him and crafted a Watching Eye and left it, invisible, to study him and report in after a week.

I most easily scry through fire, but like any Immortal, I can make things to serve my purposes. Since it doesn’t do anything beyond the reach of Mortals, it won’t draw the Council of Intrusion down on me.

If Icthar finds it and turns it into a servant, he will *definitely* bear watching.

I did a quick scan for Storm Soldiers and other morons of Thanatos; the whole city was free of them. Good.

No sign of Sombra, either, who is still locked up, while Odin is busy stuffing himself with cheese or whatever he is doing. Probably looking for omens and the like. He’s one of the last survivors of the Immortal Storm and I know he fears another one will come in the future.

I just know that if all goes well, Thanatos won’t be around for it.

If all goes well. I laughed at myself for even thinking that.

I slept and let myself dream; I could tell you what I dreamed of, but that would tell you too much if you’re sneaking in and reading this, Ivan.

Of course, I might be making this all up. How would you tell?

He hasn’t tried to read my five hundred year diaries yet, which disappoints me. Admittedly, he would have to *find* them.

Only the totally fake version is easy to find. I think I went kind of overboard on it.

This one stupid hero really did believe that I rode a meteor down from the Great Girdle, destroying Blackmoor with it, though.

Being eaten by a giant weasel was a just fate for him and I only wish I could take the credit. Djaea didn’t even MEAN to kill him off.

Allegedly, but then how did her alleged pet get loose, then get into a dungeon in the Broken Lands?

I tried to investigate once, but it got so implausible I decided I was better off not knowing.

I’m not a self-mutilator for knowledge like Odin.

Once I’d done enough brainstorming, then I decided I had to go see Far Sight. It’s been too long. And with Odin gone, I only have to worry about Thor catching me, which is very unlikely.

*****************

Or about Heimdall, who I of course forgot still exists, because he is so boring. What use is immortality if you spend it being a border guard?

I need to figure out how he worked Plane Shift into grappling and throwing; I flew off Bifrost and then somehow found myself above Thyatis City, where I of course crashed into a garbage dump.

It may involve psionics, the loser version of magic favored by the Sphere of Thought, of which Heimdall is a member, along with Odin, who is the boss. But Odin also has his own multi-Sphere Cabal of Immortals with an interest in the Northern Reaches.

I shifted form to an old woman, a bag lady, so as to avoid attracting attention, before I made it to the baths. I could clean myself with magic, but I felt the need for a good soak. I was going to have to smuggle a message to Far Sight, but how?

Normally, I could easily do it with magic, but Odin has wards around his hideyhole, which he deludes himself will weather the next Immortal Storm. I myself suspect that if he is right and another one comes, the ancient powerful Immortals will be the first to get slaughtered.

I could smuggle myself in as a shipment of grain again. That either got past Heimdall or he let me go because it amused him. Hmm, maybe I could fake being some fruit. Frigga loves fruit.

I tried sending Far Sight a message, as it’s entirely possible that he’s actually out on a mission. He lounges around Valhalla more than is good for him, but Odin’s Titans do get plenty of work.

Lost in thought, I failed to realize I had walked into a big man in scalemail, a mace on his hip and a shield on his back, under the big white surcoat with a black rimmed yellow lightning bolt on the front he was wearing over his armor. *A Storm Soldier*!

There were five of them.

Because I had assumed a mortal identity to avoid trouble with the Council of Intrusion, and because I am too much of a method actor for my own good, I fell to the ground as he slapped my face. “Out of the way, you old bitch! Yield for the men of Hattias!”

Ahh, Storm Soldiers. The most worthless trash on a planet which is overrun with amazingly stupid people. Being proud of your heritage as a man of Hattias (one of the provinces of Thyatis, founded by one of the three tribes that fled there like whipped puppies nigh on 2000 years ago, after being whipped in Davania) is like being proud that you successfully ate a piece of bread, yet acting like you just killed Tiamat with a spoon.

“Mercy!” I cried out. “Mercy on an old woman!”

I could turn to one of my other mortal forms, but this is going to be more satisfying. I cringed as he kicked me down and then kicked me more; I screamed in pain; at first, his companions approved, but then they looked around and saw the growing angry crowd surrounding them and tried to get him to stop.

He finally had enough, relieving whatever stress had made him keep going after the slap in the first place, only to see he was surrounded by hundreds of angry people in togas or work clothes.

“This foreign bitch attacked me! She got what she deserved!” he said angrily.

“GET THEM!” someone shouted as I cringed pathetically.

Friendly hands helped me up, though I noticed *three* people all tried to steal the money pouch I had forgotten to actually conjure. I’m too used to not needing money. Sloppy. They got me to a bench, dusted me off, and I got to watch the mob beat up those fools, while three women tried to comfort me and asked me my name.

“My name is Ignisius Aurelia and I am a Thyatian Citizen from Specularum, though my mother was Karameikan, but my father was of the Thyatian garrison and brought us home with him when he finished his tour of duty,” I lied.

My actual father died several thousand years ago, squashed flat by a Fire Giant, the worst thing being that I don’t think it actually noticed it had killed him. It did notice when I eventually found it, killed it, trapped its soul in a jar and gave it to demons to play with forever.

I should check on his misery and make sure some idiot didn’t misfile him again.

“Now all my children are grown and my husband is dead and I have to scrape by on what they can do for me and his pension. He was slain fighting the Alphatians on the Isle of Dawn ten years ago.” Real war, but of course this husband never existed.

Having finished beating up the Storm Soldiers, the mob dispersed as actual Soldiers of the Watch began to arrive. I told them my sob story about how I had been robbed and thrown in the garbage dump and they, plus the ladies, were kind enough to give me some money, more than I expected. Thyatians… can sometimes be super-generous and sometimes tight-fisted. But I know how to play people like a violin.

I could *make* them do it, but when you have been an immortal as long as me, you avoid controlling minds because it is boring. And sooner or later, backfires; mind-controlled people get stupid.

And sometimes the Council of Intrusion gets pissy about it. I would rather not spend time in time out for a century or three.

I then went and got myself a bath at the bathhouse and let my new friends pamper me, while my brain tried to think of a clever way to get in contact with Far Sight.

While I soaked in hot water, I used the fire heating it to do a scrying on the Cutie Mark Crusaders. I’m sorry, the *Immortality Mark Crusaders* now. They were busy doing homework and complaining about it. I both appreciate their desire for freedom and wish I had that opportunity as a kid. But I grew up in a radically different situation of being a human in a society that mixed farming and killing each other for no reason with periodic massacres by giants.

Where I didn’t fit in because I wasn’t good at stabbing and I was never going to be strong. My talent was magic, but only women practiced magic, the witches, and they didn’t take male students. Basically, the male ideal was to be Thor and I was never going to be Thor.

I met Thor before he was Thor, by the way. He was just as stupid and violent and prone to idiot grudges then too.

The absolute best thing about my daughters’ kingdom is that they don’t celebrate big stupid violent lug-heads like Thor.

Dinky now looked up. “We’re being scried! We’ve been made!” She dove under the nearby bed… I think this is Sweetie’s room at her other sister’s place, Doctor Snow Belle.

“What? We’re doing *homework*,” Scootaloo said. “It’s totally boring but who would bust us for that?”

If I was using Immortal power, they couldn’t notice me, but I’m actually impressed that Dinky could tell. And a little disappointed in Sweetie, who finally looked up from the book I think she had fallen asleep on. “Maybe Twilight is making sure we’re actually doing our homework.”

I popped through the fireplace, transforming in the process into Cunning Thought. “It’s me, my friends. Sorry to pop in when you’re busy.”

Sweetie hugged me, Twist and Apple Bloom waved and Dinky crawled out from under the bed. Scootaloo nodded, then asked, “Tell me you’re good at geometry?”

“You’re not?” I said, actually surprised for real for once. Usually I am faking it. “That’s normally an area where pegasi excel.”

“I’m good at *real* geometry, like how to do the best arc from where you are to where you want to go, but this is all words and line drawings and things with names,” she said, grimacing at the papers and the textbook.

“Look, lemnas are not a kind of food,” Apple Bloom said. “This ain’t hard, but you keep making it that way.”

“I finished mine and moved on to composition,” Sweetie said.

“You moved on to napping,” Scootaloo grumbled.

“I’m having a hard time with it too,” Twist confessed. “I can do regular math, but this is Unicorny stuff.”

And that’s how I, one of the high ranking Immortals of Entropy, gave a lesson in geometry to a group of fillies on their way to being mares. Since this required only a tiny part of my brain, I put the rest to work trying to figure out some way to contact Far Sight that Heimdall would not notice and would not be as annoyingly slow as Immortal Mail somehow always is, despite being run by *Immortals*.

What exactly is the Sphere of Time for, if not for this?

*************

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