Never agree to do a small favor for the Realmbreaker. Not even if he saves your life and your son’s honor.

Not because it’s not worth it—it will end up being too worth it. Because there is never just one favor with a powerful person.

-The Blackwind Sage

II-60

Openings (II)

“How many Aspect Advancements,” Rafael asked, leaning back slightly.

Wei grinned. Of course, it would be remiss to force one of his disciples to perform an operation so dangerous without proper recompense. But what was proper, and what was recompense?

“I think this should be discussed in detail,” Wei said, “and perhaps there will be others interested as well.”

“Now hold on there,” Bishop interjected. He chuckled slightly as he walked forward, eyeing Rafael. “This one—he’s got talents in subterfuge, but don’t take this the wrong way, Rafael. You ain’t exactly a trained operator, more a highly talented amateur.”

Rafael, despite being told to refrain from offense, still sagged a bit.

“Now, I’m not trying to warn you off,” Bishop continued. “In fact, quite the opposite. I’m going to be with you all the way there. But this isn’t just pick someone and do something. No, the reason why I mentioned experts and mercenaries earlier is because you need expertise, specialized expertise. Trying to get into the Collectress’s Palace of Lust, that’s going to take experience, adaptability, instinct, and intelligence.”

“So then show us,” Vendrian said in a low voice. “Show us what you have, and I’ll tell you what I know.”

Bishop grinned. “I was waiting for you to say that.” A pulse of Psionic Essence spread out from the trespasser, and the surrounding space changed. It only extended a full ten meters, but all the demonic attendants were excluded, as were the other disciples of the Drowned Sky sect. Wei’s chat function still ensured he was connected to them, and he could feel—still feel—the essence strings flowing to and fro.

More interestingly, the demons didn’t seem to notice anything that Bishop was doing at all. Again, there were levels to power, and levels to skill. Bishop’s was in the realms of subterfuge, subtlety, and the mind. It was something Wei could appreciate, but also be wary of. If he faced another adversary equivalent to Bishop, he didn’t know how he would respond.

“You respond by taking away their advantage,” the Shell growled. “You evade them, trace them, use your ambitions to follow them and break them. You are Sourceforged. You can strike at adversaries most cannot. Do not forget this.”

Young Master granted an acknowledgment.

Twisting furrows of bright magenta painted a new scene before them. They were now standing in the middle of a wide open boulevard, massive buildings glistening with fluid and flesh and substances, spraying fumes of wondrous scent and mind-altering chemistry. Wei glanced around and saw a legion of strangely designed demons sailing through the air. Their bodies were furrowed, extended, and sagging in places. They all looked—Agnesia looked away, her expression bright red.

Wei stopped thinking about what they looked like. The Circle of Lust was among his least favorite circles, for many reasons, impropriety being chief among them.

“There,” Bishop said, pointing a finger. I looked ahead and found his attention settling on a complex structure. At its base, it resembled a bird’s nest, with eight elongated sides. From there, however, a tower rose—a tower that seemed forged from animated water. It flowed upwards, like an inverted waterfall. And through the sheen, we saw another structure within, or another thin needle-like shape. He couldn’t fully understand what he was seeing, and the air traffic didn’t do anything to aid him.

With a flick of his hand, however, Bishop brought them closer. Not just closer, though—airborne. Top-down. They gained a bird’s-eye perspective of the Palace of Lust. “This here is the Upwater Mansion,” Bishop gestured. “It cost a pretty penny for the Collectress to create. And this den? So close to the Circle of Lust’s capital?”

“Yeah. Clear to say, our girl has aspirations beyond her current station.” From this bird’s eye view, they could see that the inverted waterfall was actually a tunnel—a tunnel connected to an elevator that dipped down into a sheer drop. A sheer drop that Bishop directed them to follow as they accelerated downward. Thankfully, the Trespasser’s mental construction removed any G-forces or other discomforts they might have experienced otherwise.

As they passed through the tube-like space, they saw that the nesting design of the outside also intersected with the space within. There were bridges, leading to different portals. These bridges surrounded the falling needle, and Wei found his attention fixed on these portals.

“Those are essence rifts,” Bishop said. “Some of them are spatial rifts. Others—we’re not fully sure what kind of Essence they’re tied to yet. All we know is that the Collectress uses these to maintain her trade network, and she’s got trade running every which way you can think of.”

“What does she mainly trade?” Agnesia asked. Her question was answered as Bishop snapped a finger. Hundreds of thousands of people appeared upon the bridge. Most of them were nude, collared, and made to walk in long processions. The Princess’s eyes widened. Humans and numerous other races as well.

“She’s a connoisseur and collector of fine specimens.” Bishop’s voice veered towards the disgusted, and all things considered, she’s not nearly the worst.

Wei, for his part, just shrugged. “It’s not like I need any other reasons to kill this one.”

“That’s the spirit,” Bishop clapped him on the shoulder. Wei frowned. He actually felt that. However, they continued downward, following the needle-like structure. And quickly, the first problem appeared. A massive wall of absinthe climbed upwards, passing through the structure. “Right now, the central needle—that’s the only way down. Only easy way down, anyway. Coming through the portal will leave you on the outside—no easy way to get back into the depths of this palace. We tried.” Bishop pointed at the approaching wall of essence. It pulsed through them, and Wei felt nothing. This was mental reconstruction, after all. “This, however, is a minor problem. This is an essence scanner. It’s going to detect anything and anyone that’s not registered to the Upwater Mansion.”

“So, do you have ideas on how to beat it?” Wei asked.

Bishop nodded. “Yeah, I might be able to smuggle you in through one way or another. It’s not that hard to stash someone within a greater being’s spirit,” he looked to Raphael. “Especially if they’re already in the Circle of Envy.” The lich nodded. “Yes, I have my own ideas as well. I cannot hide my essence, specifically. But it could be possible to disperse it.”

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They passed beyond the approaching veil, and then things got more complex from there. After this, they encountered the second layer of defense. The needle came to a final halt in a vast cylindrical room. From there, a dozen different doorways stood open, each lined with brightly colored carpets and guarded by many-limbed serpents sporting blades dripping with venom, and eyes that glistened—instilling hallucinations.

“These demons here are the Tasters. They, uh, bite everyone that comes through to mark the guests. The pneuma-paralytics makes sure that you don’t cause trouble in the Palace of Lust. In fact, it’s the only way in. See, the Collectress isn’t going to abide by anyone who starts something within her home. This is a way to make sure that her guests, no matter how powerful they are, uh, have one of her special concoctions flowing through their veins.”

Wei looked at Vendrian, and the Scion’s expression grew especially grave. “I remember.” Vendrian said quietly, “She bit me. I could fight off the venom if I tried, but most…” He shook his head. “It paralyzes you. Not physically or mentally, but spiritually. It makes you wish to surrender yourself to the Collectress—to do anything to please her.”

“It’s like… poison love,” Bishop finished. “Getting bit by these demons is hell on your Will.” The Trespasser grinned at Wei.

“Tests my will,” the young master thought. Poor fool. The Collectress was about to find out that her will was nothing before his. “But what of Raphael? He’s a lich, there’s nothing to bite.”

“Spirit poison, remember?” Bishop reiterated. “Don’t want to think of things too literally. Here, symbology means just as much as the material.”

Great. So the construct body wouldn’t help.

“Anyway, after you get past the Tasters, that’s where things get a little bit messier.” Bishop accelerated them through one of the openings at the Demon’s Guard, and Wei found them going, and going, and going. The carpet led through hallways and doors, and there were always more demons lingering. Always more. But for a good long while, no other pathways appeared. “It’s like they were wandering in the backrooms, heading for nowhere. See, without the Tasters’ go-ahead, and without them giving a green light through their local system, there isn’t going to be another door. You could be lost here forever. It’s also how the Collectress keeps her products from wandering off. You see, this place? Nothing happens without her demons saying so, or her saying so. And everything they say, she hears, she knows, she sees.”

“So, how do we beat this?” Wei thought to himself.

“How do we beat this, indeed?” Bishop made another gesture, and one of the Tasters looked to the wall. It made a hissing noise, and a sliver of essence left its mind—a chat message directed to the Collectress, no doubt. A second later, the wall cascaded down, as if a melting ice block, and in its place a doorway appeared. The doorway slammed open, and inside, a pleasure den filled with all manner of people dressed in, well, not-so-dressed manners. Wei blinked. “This is where some high-power players in the Claimed Hells get their kicks. You don’t want to wander in the wrong one. See, because there are plenty of powerful people here. Sure, if you run into one Marquis, that’s not much of a problem. You can handle that. But there is never just one person. And whoever you send in isn’t you, Wei.”

“I have second thoughts about volunteering,” Rafael replied quietly. He seemed considerably less enthused than he had been a moment ago.

“And after that, there’s finding the proper room that Aerea is in. That’s the final part, the hardest part. See, I can’t exactly push into the Collectress’s mind without her benefactors noticing, and we can’t exactly ask her straight up. So, what else do we do?” Bishop’s question was deliberately made to provoke Wei to think. The young master did so, and as he considered the various situations and impediments before him, he wondered how he might react if he were the Collectress.

Perhaps Aerea might not even be there, in another place, held by someone she trusts. This might be a smokescreen… he thought internally.

“No,” the Shell said, “as Bishop has indicated so far, she is all about control—a desperation, a need, pathological, and habitual. Even her demons ask her for permission. You’ve seen this. She must have a leash leading to Aerea. She wouldn’t let her final piece to her champion remain beyond reach.”

I frowned. So how would we force her to reveal her hand—to reveal Aerea?

Wade looked to Vendrian again and squinted his eyes.

“What?” the Scion of Death said. “What are you thinking about?”

“You. You’re her greatest prize,” Wade said quietly. “If so, then, and if your wife is the only thing she has over you—the only way she could truly control you—it goes to reason that if her nests were to be attacked, raided from within, she would try to extract your love, so that you would remain under her control before she’d do anything else.”

Vendrian’s eyes went cold. “We are not risking her life in a direct attack.”

“No, we are not,” they said. “But we can make them think they are under attack. We can make her react and see what she reveals. She is also fixed to this place and attended to the gala. What we can do is force her to divert her attention. See if she makes a mistake halfway.”

“See, I like the way you’re thinking there,” Bishop said. “But it also has a chance of going wrong when she just teleports around and pulls her into her Inventory.”

“Good,” Wei said. “I could just try taking her directly after that. Assassinate her directly.”

“Yeah, no. You can forget about becoming Hell’s Vanguard if you pull this shit after being invited to a party like this. She turns up dead, and the Old Man’s going to take that poorly. Any suspicion that you broke the rules or laws in the Heights? That’s rep-toxic. Don’t matter if you can get out of it without getting sued.”

Agnesia spoke then, her voice low. “What if… what if we have another way of doing this? What if instead of Rafael, I… I go?”

She looked at the young master, and Wei felt his guts turn cold. He almost disagreed immediately, but the Shell compelled him to remain silent. “Follow her logic. Trust in her. Do not let weakness overtake you.”

“Keep going,” Wei said, encouragingly.

“She wishes to collect me as well, doesn’t she?” Agnesia said slowly. “Well, if what she says is true, and I’m an essential part of her plan to poison, or whatever she wishes to do against the dying queen, then wouldn’t that place me next to Aerea?”

Way paused for a moment, and Bishop grinned. “It might. No guarantees, though. And it will definitely leave you at a disadvantage. You won’t be a slave, but you’ll be watched for good.”

“Perhaps my anchor can be hidden within her Inventory,” Wei said. “I could free her from whatever binds her. And I could also send whoever she needs over via my Inventory?”

“The anchor…” Agnesia replied. “Yes, she still doesn’t know that you’re a System-host. If you can break whatever hold she has on me, and then carry people across through me, then we might as well have an army behind her walls.”

“It’s dangerous,” Raphael said finally. “High risk.”

“When hasn’t there been too much risk?” the princess snarled. “We are in the claimed hells. Our lives are not even our own. Our fates aren’t even our own. If we can’t do this, if we don’t dare, then we’re just waiting to die.”

The sheer vitriol in her words made Wei worry. The girl was growing increasingly angry. Her flames were burning hotter indeed, but the control she had was slipping. And her eyes—they boiled, they simmered. He worried that he wouldn’t be able to stop her from doing something foolish. More than that though, he worried that she wouldn’t be able to save herself. And that he wouldn’t either. He already lost her mother. If he lost her as well, would his ego survive it? Would his heart?

“Well, I think this is a good start. A decent plan. And I’ll be in the background, helping make sure your mind stays your own, and you know what’s coming up.” Bishop said quietly. “I’ll be with you all, every step of the way. Back your minds, and… right now, I think I can recommend an expert. Someone specialized in these kinds of operations.”

“Thank you, Master Bishop,” Wei said. “But you have to understand that after our prior experience—”

“You already know them,” Bishop said. “They’re not with the Lodge. Not anymore.”

Wei felt more at ease. “Then, this might be more acceptable. Who is this expert? I’d be glad to greet them. To glean their measure.”

“You already do,” Bishop said quietly. “You, uh, you’re carrying him.”

And suddenly, Wei realized who Bishop was talking about. “No, absolutely not.”