I had many things on my mind as I wrapped up my latest touch ups on the floors. Since I found it relaxing to both talk to my children, and create small art pieces within every possible space. This piece was set into the library, and was both a pretty statue and a visual representation of what I wanted. Lady Mirabella was an interesting case study for me in many ways, and I had taken a lot of time, almost three days, to observe her.

With my influence having to stay below the surface of the Hold, or those mages would sense it. I had to rely on some new additions to my workforce, a beetle that could send sound to others of it's kind. I called them my Leetles, since they could send the conversations all the way into my influence for me to listen to. It required watching the air mages in town sending messages to each other, but I got the hang of doing it with my children quickly.

The larger issue was that it was just air mana usually and couldn't pass through earth mana at all. Which explains the tall tower that the Hold had that I didn't understand at first. It had been constructed shortly after all the mages arrived with the important people who kept going into the ruins.

Yet, I knew of so many secondary and advanced mana types through my various experiments that I was sure I had something that would work. In the end I settled on sound mana, which is an advanced type composed of air, earth, and fire. Since many bugs use sound to find their way around, it wasn't too hard to get them to use actual sound mana instead.

Then, it was a matter of creating a built-in spell construct to their life pattern attached to their senses. The attachment was easy enough, but creating the relay spell had taken a few hours of nearly all my attention and focus. Though, since I had heard the mages complaining about their own created spells taking days to come up with, let alone create. I decided that it was a decent speed.

The end result was a rapidly expanding beetle population that allowed me to listen into almost every conversation in the Hold. Usually from within the walls of the same room, and, unlike before, there wasn't a chance for them to be caught either.

The beetles were a fun side project while I thought about what to do with the Lady. With the various knowledge that I was gathering now, I could understand her importance to the people. As well as understand the organization of the humans and beastkin easier.

I also came to understand how they did many things. While I couldn't read their minds, I would have to work on that project another time, I did have a better grasp on their structure. And the structure of their buildings which allowed me to improve my own dungeon. Reducing structural mana costs would always take a priority.

The Lady worked like one of my Queens in many ways, and yet she didn't have the loyalty my children did. So, she spent part of her time enforcing loyalty in those around her. Which was a horrible waste of time, and one idea I had was to offer a gift to just make everyone loyal.

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Kalos had offered his wisdom here to remind me that humans and beastkin wouldn't respond well to forced loyalty. Especially the kind that was enforced by magic since it couldn't take over the mind directly. Something about that organ resisted any attempts to change it without explicit permissions. He had offered the idea of a meeting between leaders.

I thought it had some merit, but had a feeling that talking to them would be too annoying to deal with. Like Marshall had been when I first talked to him, and all the staring, pleading, and foul smells he gave off. It had taken days for the creature to listen, and then it kept asking to leave all the time. There were days I hoped he would feel the headache he gave me for the rest of his life, but that would be too convenient to happen.

Instead I went back to a tried and true method. The trick I had done to get Kalos and the other. I would put them in a situation that would certainly kill them, and offer them a way out that would give me access to their patterns. The only trouble with this plan was they could run away right now.

I had to figure out a good way to keep them in the Hold without them running away, but make Mirabella's death certain. I had lots of options of course, but I wanted it to be fun.

Kalos had asked me if I needed to take her pattern, and I told him that I didn't NEED to. But, I had found his level of understanding and maturity far higher than the first two I made. While some of that could be explained by his earth nature. I had a feeling that the knowledge and age of the pattern came with significant benefits to just creating from scratch.

Considering that both Yana and Pyra had some imbalances that couldn't be explained by just the mana imbalance after all. Pyra already had an event that the humans and beastkin both called a calamity, and I had felt something off and yet better about her last time we talked. It was like she was "growing up" like the children in the Hold did, but I didn't want my children to have to go through those.

It had made me sad to realize how hurt she had been from that one day. Granted a day that killed many people, and seemed to have made her stronger and weaker in various ways. AND had bound me with mental chains from the damn system until I had broken them with a crazy experiment...

Needless to say I had a few reasons for using bartered patterns rather than creating my own. Yana was made by copying a pattern set, and he had similar issues to Pyra, but slower. So, with Kalos being as steady as a rock. I was ready to put the ultimate plan forward.

I would release a dungeon break upon the hold, but first I would stir up some monsters in the forest around the hold and on the road. Making it seem too dangerous to flee into the woods, and making the lady worried. She would likely set up extra defenses, and I would get to hear about all the ways the Hold was designed to fight against monsters.

Then, I would create tunnels for the War Queen to release troops to surround the Hold during the actual attack. This would prevent anyone from leaving, and we could storm the walls and town with little issue. Lives would be lost, but I would take my favorites carefully.

There was this family on a farm that had amusing fights with their neighbor every day or so that I would keep safe. Or, the little girl who collected and protected some of my Leetles. She was definitely being kept safe. In fact I had a list that I wrote on paper, and handed out to the War Queen.

Then, I had to teach her to read and write, because she didn't know, and her embarrassment had been so cute. Kalos had offered to help her with it, and she learned quickly after that. Just in time for my plan to reach the final step.

I sent my mind across the miles to the Hold, where the panic was already setting in.