Chapter 86

Chakra, unfortunately, had no idea where Beog’s hall of splendour might be, though he promised to go through all the ancient works in his archives to see if he could find any clues and correlate some form of evidence. “A lot of it is, however, contradictory,” he noted.

“Anything you find will be helpful,” Athena thanked the machine. “Its location will be physical, on this planet, but well concealed.”

“Whenever we did contact him, the initial reply was always as if from a great distance,” Brnnt, who was with us, added.

“That will be the nature of the shielding,” Athena replied thoughtfully.

“There is a legend of the ‘home of the gods’ in the great mountains,” Chakra stated. “But that was supposedly all the gods, not just Beog, who was never mentioned as residing there, but close by in the lone peak.”

“Unless he took it over after they were expelled,” I suggested.

“It’s a possibility, yes, John,” Athena replied. “From what we know, he was quite lazy, so grabbing something already in existence does fit the pattern.”

“So, which are the great mountains?” I asked.

“They are the tallest peaks in the greater landmass,” Brnnt replied.

“In your time, perhaps,” Chakra corrected him. “In my time, the term referred to the peaks you could see from Draenor itself. Remember, we were only a city state.”

We all looked out to view what we would consider the Alps far off in the distance.

“Well, we can start the Seers probing, I guess,” Roxanne shrugged. “Though whether they’ll be able to spot something hidden deliberately by a Power is anyone’s guess.”

“We can put feet on the ground if necessary, Roxanne,” I shrugged. “Though I do wonder if he’d have a door.”

There was a flickering as Chakra put up several images of the so-called home of the gods, all somewhat stylised, but all having the image of the Matterhorn somewhere in the image.

“Can’t see the Matterhorn from Draenor,” I murmured.

“These are all the earliest images I have, they were taken from various tribes all over the planet as the Yr’ch expanded and formed their own states. Many would never have even seen the great mountains, yet this image is scattered through them. Later images show their local mountains however,” Chakra replied.

“I’ll get the Seers at it and also begin deploying the Shayetet Kheshig in the region to have a nose around; their experiences in Myrkálfar might enable them to spot something a mental probe won’t,” Roxanne added.

“I will continue to look through my transcribed records and correlate any further data I can find, but that might take a while as there is so much and a lot of it contradicts with other parts,” Chakra stated, before we politely bade farewell to the machine.

“Well, I suspect we have a region,” Roxanne stated out loud.

“A very big region and I suspect I’ll be of no help as it will be specifically designed to keep the likes of me out,” Athena added.

“Aye, Beog never struck me as the type to permit visitors, though clearly Sarkal knew how.”

“I suspect Sarkal was his overlord, or had power of some kind over him,” Athena shrugged.

“Yes, what we know of Beog was that he didn’t really have any sort of plan except expand and worship him,” Brnnt sighed.

“Those days are over, Brnnt,” Athena said gently.

“Yes. Those of us who follow you have never been happier, even those who don’t have better lives,” he nodded.

“What will happen if the previous Powers manage to return?” I asked.

“They’ll go back to their roles as planetary guardians. Other than the God squad they’ll all be much reduced to the state of Minor Powers,” Athena replied.

“So you’ll be much more powerful than them?”

“Yes, John. Yr’ch numbers are not that great as yet, though they are growing, but of them, the majority are now my followers. I’m not as powerful as Beog was, but, I’ll be there soon.”

“So you’ve passed the threshold from Minor to Higher?” Roxanne asked.

“Yes, about a month ago.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you, but I’m still trying to remain me. Gregorius insists.”

“Insists?” I chuckled.

“Yes. He pointed out where I went wrong in the past and is determined his goddess will not go down the same path again,” Athena replied with a slight blush.

“You love him,” Roxanne stated.

“Of course. He’s my Theurgist.” The reply came with an even deeper blush.

“No, not like that,” I replied. “You once mentioned that in physical form you have human needs and desires, hence, as Roxanne said, you love him.”

“Er...”

“It will go no further,” Roxanne stated, getting nods off us all, including a grinning Brnnt.

“Thank you.”

The Seers and Athena probed the Yr’ch version of the Alps extensively, but there was no trace of any hidden ‘home of the gods’, which wasn’t too surprising as we all knew if they didn’t want to be seen, you didn’t see them. This simply meant that the Drow battalions were sent in along with the four teams to do a painstaking search of the area, particularly with reference to the earliest descriptions and drawings of where the gods were supposed to be approached from. Not that we expected to find a set of pearly gates; hints from Athena had already told us that, at a certain stage, the gods were supposed to fade into the background or face consequences from the Heavenly Realm. That Beog had survived so long was more down to Chakra banishing the Powers than any ability of Beog.

The work was painstaking as, despite our numbers, the area to be covered was huge and we couldn’t trust our magical senses so had to check everything physically. Even then, there are ways to hide entrances and accesses, even if viewed from above, hence our use of the old maps and comparing them to modern cartography as well as satellite images. Not that the old maps were to scale ... or that accurate, but they did hopefully provide a few clues before the Powers hid themselves away.

“Can’t imagine that this place is real,” Róisín sighed as another check of a valley ended with nothing to be found.

“There are always legends about the home of the gods on many worlds and cultures,” I shrugged. “Though Athena did once confirm that Olympus was a myth.”

“Yes, true enough.”

“We’re running out of places to look,” Birry announced as yet more reports came in of nothing to be found.

“I know. We always suspected this might be a wild goose chase,” I replied, ticking another valley off the list.

“What about this one?” Clara asked, pointing out a small valley that was on the old maps, but not showing on anything modern.

“Had a team up there yesterday, said it didn’t exist,” Birry replied.

“Odd,” I mused out loud. “Geography alone would account for it. Got the topography map of our Earth, please?”

We laid the map out and used our powers to show that, yes, on our Earth (and presumably others) there was a valley where, on Draenoric, apparently, there wasn’t.

“I think we need to take another look,” Birry stated.

“Yes, my friend. I think we do,” I nodded. “Get the various squads to head there after completing their current assignments.”

“No problem,” he replied and sent out a series of orders.

Despite our Mage powers it took several hours of hard slogging to get there. I insisted that we did it on foot to avoid missing anything, though we spotted nothing. Where on the Earth map and the ancient map there was a valley, here the slopes kept rising to form a small peak, one indistinguishable from the ones surrounding the area.

“Nothing,” Róisín reported, being the most sensitive amongst us.

“Seers have nothing either, but Gregorius is porting in ... now,” I replied with a smile as Athena’s Theurgist arrived.

“So, possibility of a hidden valley?” he asked with a grin.

“We think so; the location is confirmed on our Earth maps and on the earliest writings from the Yr’ch religions,” I replied.

Gregorius simply nodded and began a chant of revelation in classical Greek which, although it did not pierce the construct, did reveal for certain that it was there.

“Powerful bit of summoning,” he admitted with a frown. “I suspect you need a key phrase or code to open it ... or simply be in the right place.”

“Well, we’re a bit above from where the old maps and directions tell us the ‘doorway’ is supposed to be. Might be worth trying from there,” I shrugged.

“Can’t hurt,” he agreed as we set off back down the track for about fifteen minutes.

This time we did a bit better as a definite gateway appeared, though was clearly not open or opening for us. By this time we had all the Seers who weren’t keeping an eye on the Vultoqi as well as Athena herself, along with Morgana and Simon, literally looking and scanning through our eyes, which was occasionally disconcerting as what had their attention, definitely didn’t have ours at the time of their scan. Morgana and Simon were at least polite about it, which is more than could be said about the Seers. As far as I was aware, Athena was politely scanning through Gregorius, at least by the serene expression on his face. The most put out amongst us though was Róisín, her scanning ranges were still away and above what I could do as well as more subtle in variance and hence the Seers were mostly elbowing their way into her mind to take advantage of this.

“That was bloody awful,” she groused during a quiet spell. “I’ll be having words with Abi about this afterwards.”

“They just become mono-focussed when presented with something new and exciting. They’ll apologise later,” I shrugged, hiding a grin, having had the Seers going bananas through my mental faculties a few times in the past.

“I know, but it’s still not very pleasant,” she grumbled.

‘Sorry, Róisín. We just got a bit carried away, ‘ came Abi’s mental reply, which, whilst supposedly contrite in tone, clearly had an undercurrent of amusement in it which went right past Róisín, but didn’t fool me for an instant.

‘We’re still going to have a talk about this when we’re next together, ‘ Róisín growled mentally.

‘Sure, Róisín,’ came a mental giggle.