A silence. It stretched on and on. The Scout kept watching the High Priest's expression, but it betrayed nothing. Like staring at a cliff face.
"…Your holiness?" said the Scout nervously.
"How many know about this?" said Lan Arandor sharply.
At this point, the Scout had the sinking feeling he might be in some trouble.
"Just the Scouting department…" he blurted.
Lan's gaze sharpened. He went quiet again, thinking.
Another interminable silence. Then—
"The whole department?" said Lan.
"Yes."
A third silence. And this one was the most awful of them all. This time there was a little crack in the High Priest's mask of an expression. Just a few little twitches—but through that crack the Scout felt he got a glimpse of the High Priest's inner thoughts. It leaked out of him, a dark thundercloud of an aura, the emotions of his vast soul bleeding into the world…
He was brooding. Weighing things. And the Scout got the feeling one of them was his life.
This time the Scout didn't dare interrupt. He just stood there sweating.
At last, Lan turned to his head Inquisitor—standing in a corner of the twisted grove. Taele. A slender man clad in elegant pure-white robes. He had features sharp as knives, and his silver eyes shone like full moons—no pupils. You had to constantly blank gaze slightly unfocused. Like when you looked at him, he wasn't really seeing you but seeing past you, somewhere deeper, under the skin…
"Inquisitor! Round up every last Scout," snapped Lan. "Sign them all to Soul Contracts. I want them sworn to silence. Go. Now!"
Taele gave a bow. There was a strong gust of silvery wind—and when it passed, he was gone. Blown away, like just another leaf.
One final silence, and this time the Scout couldn't bear it anymore. "…Sir?" he said.
Lan's striking green eyes focused on him, blinked—like only then did he remember the Scout was there at all.
"You have stumbled upon a very delicate situation," said the High Priest slowly, carefully. "This… new Mistress. I presume—an Earth Native?"
The Scout nodded.
Another nod.
"A youngling, then. Yes. This may yet be salvaged."
Lan closed his eyes. The lines on his face started to soften, slowly. The Scout felt like he might breathe again.
Before Lan Arandor the Mistress Maker had taught that the Earth Mother was a gentle, kind deity, a sower of seeds—but Lan had long been the Head of the Inquisition, and he took a different tone. His lectures tended toward the strong, mighty, unyielding aspects of the doctrine. The World Tree was the organism which held up the Universe. One where every root and leaf faithfully served the whole. It had to shed all its rotting limbs, if it was to serve its purpose...
At last, Lan spoke.
"Have you got anything else to report?"
"Ah!" The Scout scrambled to track back his thoughts. "Err—right!"
He did have one last piece of information to share. Once he remembered it, he paled.
"Say it," commanded Lan.
And it was like the Scout's tongue moved without his permission. "She was in a party—a party headed by the consensus #1 Pick—Zane Walker!"
And Lan went still again.
"That one," Lan breathed. "Yes. I remember. He follows the paths of the Azure Flame Faction, does he not?"
The Scout jerked a nod, trembling.
"And—and they seemed quite intimate, your Holiness."
Lan's face was marred by one black line. Then another.
For a moment, the Scout was certain that was it for him. Then—
"I see," said Lan softly. "And what Floor where they sighted on?"
"…Sixty-two, your Holiness…"
Lan let out a breath. "You may leave."
Feeling very lucky, the Scout did.
***
Soon Inquisitor Taele returned. Blown in on a cold autumn wind.
"Its is done," said the elf.
"Good," said Lan. "This could be catastrophic… unless we make use of it. This new Maker can hardly be a few decades old. Inexperienced, naive in the ways of the world. If she survives Integration, controlling her should not be a problem. What is a problem, and a serious one… is Zane Walker."
Taele gave a slow, careful nod.
"He will have to be dealt with."
"…Understood." Taele turned. Paused. An eager glint filled his blank eyes. "…And the Scouts. Shall I silence them. Permanently."
"Control your bloodlust, Inquisitor," said Lan sharply. "A single scout is one thing. Would you have me vanish an entire Order? A tight Soul Contract accomplishes the same without raising needless questions."
"It would be more secure."
"It would be sloppy. When the body falls they must not see the hand that holds the knife!"
Taele stared at him silently. Lan held his gaze.
The Inquisitor left.
Lan brooded alone in the dark.
The likelihood was, this new Mistress would die in that dungeon, and that would be the end of things. If she didn't, though… he was already imagining the ways he could control her.
Just as he had the old Mistress. The Mistress Maker Title tended to choose gentle, kind, meek souls. Souls easily bent by strong wills.
Lan expected this new one would prove no different.
***
𝔽𝕝𝕠𝕠𝕣 𝟞𝟚
𝔾𝕣𝕒𝕧𝕖𝕪𝕒𝕣𝕕 𝕠𝕗 𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕘𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕟 ℝ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕞𝕤
Zane felt ready to go. Just a little woozy—mostly recovered essence-wise. He was still up for a good fight. But Reina insisted he recover all the way, and she looked kind of scary when she glowered and crossed her arms at him. So he sat down and did.
Evan and Avery felt a little bad they couldn't do much back there. Zane told them not to sweat it. They got ambushed—and also those things were just weird. Non-living, super-dense. They hard resisted them. Besides, he was comfortable taking the load.
Reina did feel though if they wanted the best chance against these Monsters, they would be best served working together—she felt they could have supported Zane a lot better if they had time to really strategize. Zane nodded.
***
A few hours later..
𝕐𝕠𝕦'𝕧𝕖 𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕕: 𝕊𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝟚-𝟙: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕕 ℙ𝕝𝕒𝕫𝕒.
The mini-map just went on and on, tracking a seemingly endless grid, stuffed full. Zane remembered this was once its own world.
A little compass popped up at the very edge of the map.
𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕪𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕞 ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕒𝕤𝕤 𝕨𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕘𝕦𝕚𝕕𝕖 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕥𝕠𝕨𝕒𝕣𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕟𝕖𝕩𝕥 𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕚𝕣𝕔𝕒𝕤𝕖.
They passed through the stone archways—which opened up into the city.
The dwarves did nothing small. Big fat buildings rose up to either side of them, each a massive hunk of a sculpture chiseled out of plateaus of stratified stone. They came in the same style—chunky, like very elaborate bank vaults. Lots of bolts, steel girders stacking seamlessly into the stone.
It might have been magnificent once. But the whole city had been broken to bits. Black and burnt, broken, incongruous, shattered—you could hardly find a building intact. Most of the high rises were cratered or decapitated, the domes split in uneven halves. But in the chunks that survived, you could see the craftsmanship. The fine edges.
Even after all these years, there were still precise sharp lines; there was no erosion to them. Lots of little details running all over the sides of buildings, tons of perfect geometries, honed to the very millimeter.
Some still bore old runes, glowing weakly, struggling to hang on. Whatever magic had been here was long gone. You could only see its echo.
There were pillars lining the Main Street, mostly toppled statues missing heads or arms. They walked under the shadow of a huge one—some sixty or seventy feet tall—a dwarf, an ancient with blank eyes and no mouth. It looked like it was screaming into the void.
And that was just the stuff they could see. There were still torches here, still blazing, especially close to the main road—the road they were on, a path beaten to perfect smoothness. Not counting the old craters. It was wide enough to be a highway.
The mini-map compass pointed a pretty simple path. Straight down the road. The farther you strayed though, the more the city was lost to shadows.
Shadows that seemed to flicker.
Zane saw a few little blips on the mini map—tiny flashes of red… they vanished. He frowned at them.
"There's definitely stuff there," said Avery, squinting into the vast wall of darkness, barely held at bay by streetside torches. "…Oh boy."
After their first Monster encounter, Zane knew he had to be a little careful. There were things in here that could hurt him—and bad.
It had been a while since he felt this kind of threat. He kept keen. And again he put himself out front—trying to be as big a shield as he could. Hopefully just by putting his body there, by being first, anything that came for them would come for him first too. That was his hope, at least.
They kept trudging through the broken city… kept seeing little red flickers in the distance, vanishing fast…
And Zane's plan worked.
The first Monster that struck did get him first.
When it hit him, he didn't even feel it.
Mostly because it didn't really hurt him.
First, he heard Avery cry out—then there was a screech of rushing air, then a screech of sharpness on steel—and sparks showered.
Zane looked down.
Something was trying to stab his abs. It was a dark shape. No eyes, a living shadow with shadowy wispy hands way bigger than its body suggested—honed to fine jagged points, points smoking dark and poisonous Laws.
𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕕𝕠𝕨 𝕊𝕥𝕒𝕝𝕜𝕖𝕣 (𝕄𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣)
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟚𝟜𝟜
It kept stabbing and shrieking at him. But his abs were proving quite impenetrable.
Frowning, Zane made to grab it—and it just blipped out of sight.
Hm.
Zane surveyed the damage. It tore his shirt. But that was fine. It didn't make much progress on his skin—barely even left white marks there.
With how many Levels he had poured into Indomitable Hide, cutting damage was simply not the way to hurt him.
He looked at the spot where the Monster vanished. It was nice to know at least that not all of the Monsters in here were like the things out front. At least—they could not hurt him the same way.
Zane wondered if he'd refined his bones and organs if those Wardens would've bounced off him. Just like the shadow.
Reina ran up to check in on him, but Zane showed her his abs. He was okay.
They kept going. And as they went, Zane extended the range of Sage Mind, trying to get a hint if more were coming. He couldn't really probe those shadows—the mini-map couldn't either. It made a dense solid wall. When he tried chucking a little fireball of Stormfire in, it burned bright for a few seconds—but it was like trying to burn the deep ocean. The darkness moved like water, swamped back in… in seconds it reasserted itself.
There was some high-level Law at play there, Zane felt. Something down to the corrupted nature of the realm itself. Maybe if he went all-out, he could get rid of most of it. But it would not be a very good use of his powers right now.
He kept moving. Trying to keep as alert as he could.
"Incoming!" called Avery.
An instant later, Zane felt a flicker of killing intent. His eyes darted left—Gotcha.
He rammed out a fist.
It turned out he did not get it.
He actually missed by quite a bit.
By then the Monster had already gotten in a flurry of free slashes. But a hasty grab later Zane managed to get his hand around its throat. He held it there wriggling and frothing.
He felt a brief flicker of satisfaction.
He tried to squish it in his fist. The thing gave a little shriek, dissolved in his fist, and sped away, a pool of shadow.
Zane frowned as he watched it go.
…This was very birdlike behavior.
Before it could get all the way away though, Evan let out a cry. "Hiya!" A brilliant beam lashed out so fast it was instantaneous like the sun coming out—so fast the speed of light beat the speed of dark. And he caught the thing going back, speared the shadow to the ground.
There it spasmed and shrieked—before Evan pounced on it, slashing and slashing and slashing—until he finished it.
He hopped up and instantly looked up at Zane, all excited and hopeful.
Zane gave him a pat. "Good job."
Evan beamed.
They kept moving like this. Zane being big and obvious in front, getting ambushed, getting scratched up a few times—before Evan nailed them and cut them up. He was getting faster and faster at it.
Avery was getting better at sensing them coming too. She could give a little cry—"Left!" "Right!"—sometimes Evan caught them before they even got to Zane.
Evan got some good Levels—essence and Skills—out of it.
It worked out all the way down the main road. Zane kept plodding forward, happily meatshielding. Drawing the Monsters out. They didn't seem to be very smart—just fast and aggressive. It made them pretty easy to pick off.
So far this section felt a good deal easier than the front gates. Reina felt it was too, but not by as much as Zane thought—he was just better suited for it. If a less resistant person than Zane came in here, someone without a Godbeast Bloodline, they would've been shredded very fast. If Reina and Avery and Evan came in alone… it wouldn't have been pretty. She felt it was also a matchup thing.
It was still early going yet, though. These things felt like scavengers to her, like vermin—lurking in abandoned buildings, hiding in the shadows. They were nowhere near the main event. Zane agreed. He didn't mind—it was a good breather.
Soon the main road started opening out. The buildings faded back—and they hit the namesake of the section. This had to be the grand Plaza.
It wasn't so grand anymore. Mostly flat.
You could tell the open spaces where the life used to be. Where market stalls might've been once. There was a circle of giant pedestals ringing the middle—no statues.
The only thing there stood in the very middle.
𝕎𝕖𝕝𝕝 𝕠𝕗 ℍ𝕣𝕠𝕥𝕙𝕘𝕒𝕣 [𝔼𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕙 (𝔻)]
𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕨𝕖𝕝𝕝 𝕨𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕖 𝕕𝕨𝕒𝕣𝕧𝕖𝕤 𝕨𝕠𝕦𝕝𝕕 𝕘𝕒𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕥𝕠𝕤𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕚𝕣 𝕞𝕠𝕤𝕥 𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕔𝕚𝕠𝕦𝕤 𝕞𝕖𝕥𝕒𝕝𝕤 𝕕𝕠𝕨𝕟 𝕥𝕠 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕗𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕤𝕥 𝕕𝕖𝕡𝕥𝕙𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝔼𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕙 𝕒𝕤 𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕓𝕦𝕥𝕖 𝕥𝕠 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕘𝕠𝕕 𝕠𝕗 𝕡𝕝𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕪, ℍ𝕣𝕠𝕥𝕙𝕘𝕒𝕣, 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕦𝕤𝕖 𝕚𝕟 𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕕𝕖𝕖𝕡-𝕡𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕖𝕥 𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕘𝕖.
𝕃𝕖𝕘𝕖𝕟𝕕 𝕙𝕒𝕤 𝕚𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕤𝕖 𝕞𝕖𝕥𝕒𝕝𝕤, 𝕒𝕔𝕔𝕦𝕞𝕦𝕝𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕕 𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣 𝕞𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕟𝕟𝕚𝕒, 𝕞𝕖𝕝𝕕𝕖𝕕 𝕚𝕟 𝕒 𝕤𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕖 𝕞𝕠𝕤𝕥 𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕔𝕚𝕠𝕦𝕤 𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕠𝕪 𝕒𝕥 𝕚𝕥𝕤 𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕪 𝕓𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕠𝕞…