Three days come and go so fast.

Too fast even for mortals, let alone a god.

We’d spent time with Izahne’s family, where Orv was warm and inviting and Sodaca was as surly and inhospitable as ever. But I guess that’s just normal for them.

And then we left, stopping at the Adventurer’s and Merchant’s Guilds to announce the grand reopening of the Shadowed Plane for visitation, along with an actual teleport station to simplify the process. Both were excited by the possibilities and implications, but neither did a reasonable enough job of hiding their trepidation that I’m the one delivering the news.

Even if they didn’t know I was the plane’s goddess herself… themself in the sort-of-flesh, the second I walked in the front door everyone inside shivered. I know it was my aura of malevolence, the one I can’t turn off. No matter where I go, everyone reacts like an absolute calamity is occurring on their doorstep.

Which, to be fair, I am. But not in this moment, and not to them.

I assume humans would be bothered by that kind of reaction, but what I feel more than anything is irritation. Annoyance that my motives and intentions are immediately assumed to be destructive.

Maybe they should be. I should just kill them all, every single one.

Then it would finally be quiet, and peaceful, and predictable.

And boring. So boring.

…

Lounging aimlessly on my throne, I tilt my head in just the right way that the sound of my neck popping echoes in the silent room.

We’ve been back for a few more days now, and humans have predictably begun entering my plane, each and every one of them with the gleam of adventure and profit in their eyes. But that’s fine. That’s exactly what I advertised and what I intend to deliver.

A few even tried to get an audience with me, of all people, as soon as they entered.

Foolish.

Through my dungeon subcores, I told them to conquer the dungeon first, and then I may consider granting an audience.

Little do they know that the reward for conquering the dungeon is an audience with me to begin with, but I’m not going to tell them that.

And as a result, my castle remains silent, other than the occasional rustle and chatter of the maids, or my retainers coming and going. Some of them, anyway.

Omorth simply stands behind me at a diagonal anywhere I go. I’d genuinely thought he’d finally broken that habit after I resurrected him, but it would seem that impulse is all the stronger.

I just hope he doesn’t have some mistaken messiah image of me. I only brought him back because he was useful, and because doing it was a bridge to ease the hostility between myself and Pearl. Which at least partially worked. She still hates me, but now she tolerates my presence without constantly showering me in insults and indignant rage.

Speaking of Pearl, she and Izahne put together their old three-piece party with Nyx and have been challenging the newly revamped forest dungeon – and with its new recommended level standards they haven’t managed to even reach the middle floors yet.

Good. I’m glad it’s still a challenge for them. I can tell that my wife gets a solid amount of satisfaction from her struggles there.

As for my other wife…

I’d say she’s avoiding me, but it’s not so much avoidance as how she definitely has something she wants to tell me, but every time she considers it she dismisses it just as quickly.

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Until today apparently. I can already feel her making her way here from the bedroom planar gate.

Not even a minute later, in she glides to stop behind me…

And then get cold feet again.

I sigh….

It occurs to me that I haven’t actually been exhaling ash for a while now… when did I stop? I still can, right? I’m pretty sure I still can…

Performatively, I release another sigh, and sure enough, there’s my usual particulate cloud. Good. Some things never change.

While everything else does.

Although my patience, or lack thereof, is something that will never change for sure.

“Alright Arty, enough. Out with it.”

I feel her flinch behind me, before sheepishly slinking to stand in front of me. She looks at my hand, then my face, then my hand again.

“Oh, fine. What? You want to hold my hand?” I ask with only a little bit of my impatience showing.

She returns a small shake of her head and then says, “Show. Follow.”

Huh.

***

“What is all this?”

Artemis had promptly led me through some of the castle’s twists and turns before teleporting us through a locked door… which, I assume she could have just teleported us here in the first place…

Or I would have, until I saw the hardcore wards around the inside of this place, deep underneath the castle. Was this in the old one too? I don’t remember seeing it…

But it must have been. I probably just overlooked it.

Irons bars separated by stone dividers line the equally dark and dank hallway ahead of us, though the way my fox wife is practically skipping while leading me along would lead one to think we were in a spring field or something.

And behind the bars…

I feel barely any presence of will at all… but there’s at least some.

Barely.

Seven faint sparks of the light of consciousness, one unquestionably brighter than the others.

Artemis turns and grabs both my hands to pull me closer and says with a blissful smile, “Prey.”

I immediately furrow my brow. It seems to startle her, enough that she starts frantically trying and failing to string together an explanation…

“Can you just, show me? Through our link, I mean. I still have no idea what is going on here. Those things are barely alive, aren’t they?”

She nods rapidly, and a split second later I’ve already got one of her memories replaying in my mind…

In which a group of assassins follows us from the moment we enter the Sand Sea – every one of them a vampire.

It seems my wife was even aware of them while we were spending time with my in-laws… and when I was pretending to sleep as well.

Just how dedicated were these people?

And… oh. Well, I see how they came to be here…

Arty grins in front of me, clearly thoroughly pleased with herself.

Which… considering everything, she probably should be. I didn’t even realize we were being followed…

I should consider leaving Will Sense active. I really should.

Anyway… the quiet but wet wheezing emanating stubbornly from the brightest of the weak sparks of will down here should probably be my next goal.

…

“Have you asked them anything? Interrogation?”

She tilts her head, and then shakes it.

Great.

She’s just been torturing them since they got here.

…And she smiles and nods. Even better. I rub the bridge of my nose.

Well, better late than never.

“You in there,” I say, rattling the bars. “You can hear me, yeah?”

The lump of mangled flesh inside flinches, writhes, and releases a pained moan on par with the tormented wails I used to make when I was newly formed, or at least when my Ego was. Not much of them is left, aside from a mostly fleshless face and part of a torso. I can tell they can hear me though, considering their empty eye sockets immediately trace the source of my voice.

“I’ll take that as a yes. From the look of you though, there’s not much point in asking you anything… You definitely can’t talk like that. So, I’ll offer you a compromise. Where she can’t…”

I pause for dramatic effect as soon as I notice them feebly attempt to reel back at any mention of a dangerous ‘she’ before continuing.

“I can heal you. At the same time, I can also inflict far, far worse torment than her as well, so choose wisely.”

I glance at my wife and offer her a small nod. She nods back, and then takes a step away from me, her artfully stitched patchwork dress suddenly replaced by a dark robe and matching mask that covers her eyes, exposing only her mouth and lower half of her jaw.

And then she kneels facing me.

I know exactly what she’s doing. She knows I’m about to restore this vampire, at least enough for them to talk, and that includes their other senses.

Like sight.

And she wants them to know beyond a doubt that the monster that trivially brutalized all of them in one go is subservient to me.

She wants them to know that I am not one to be trifled with, a truly mortal threat.

A quiet chuckle escapes me at her antics and foresight, but I can tell it sounded much more sinister than I’d heard it from how the torso behind the bars is now outright shivering.

…Which gives me another idea.

I smoothly ramp up my aura of malevolence – not remotely to the level I’d used at Themis’ gala, but more than enough to make a low-leveled ascendant pass out.

…And the ones in the other cells indeed do.

But not this one.

Good.

You will make a useful sleeper agent in the future; of that I have no doubt.

With that final thought and another dark chuckle, I activate Blood Pact.