To say that Vixus was surprised by their progenitor being so open with her divine title would be an understatement. Vixus was the kind of being to always plan far into the future with redundancies abound, but this was so far out of their expectations that they had no plan that covered this eventuality.

It did throw a few wrenches in their long term plan, or rather a few finer details of it, but it wasn’t unrecoverable. For the moment they would have to carry on as is, hoping that they could find some way to salvage a few of the preparations they had done to prevent her progenitors' divine title from becoming public knowledge.

To that extent they kept a closer eye on the entities they flagged as the most important in a situation like this. Those were, in order of priority, the church, the government, and of course the Paranormal Council.

The last one was probably the most likely to not act out, and as the bodies in Tika Loltharim’s office and Geralt Loltharim’s shadow reported, that was at least the case for the moment. Lady Tizanta would have it in hand for the time being.

Vixus had to focus primarily on the other two, with the church especially being liable to cause problems. At the same time they were also the most subtle, at least the elements that Vixus cared about knew the meaning of covert movements.

The more public part of the Church was, of course, in uproar, many of the priests and followers either denied the possibility or were ignoring the incident altogether, if they even knew about it. The main issue was the very loud minority that was screaming for bloody murder and punishment in the eyes of god.

Or something along the lines, Vixus didn’t pretend to understand what they actually wanted, maybe they were just afraid that their bubble would burst, who knew. Apart from a lot of yelling and expletives the public facing part of the Church didn’t seem to do much. Many of those who believed the claims were praying for something, others had long and in-depth discussions about possible meanings should this claim turn out to be true.

All in all, however, nothing much happened that could threaten New Thelvadore. No, the element Vixus was most interested in was the “Golden Cross”. It was almost scary how well hidden they were, not that the Living Shadow was actually afraid. Worried would be a more apt description.

The “Golden Cross” didn’t seem to react much to the claims. On the one hand that was good, on the other it raised Vixus hackles, something fierce. They had no real idea what their goal was, nor did they know much about how the organisation worked, but they did know that most of the members were almost fanatical believers.

So to be this silent seemed entirely out of character. Did they plan something?

With no way to find out more from passive observation they decided it was time to use the bodies they had placed close to suspected “Golden Cross” locations, only to find… they couldn’t.

Now, losing connection to any of their bodies wasn’t new to Vixus. It was actually quite a common occurrence, something interfered with their racial magic and as a result they only got distorted or unreadable feedback from the bodies in question. Most of the time the bodies affected started to develop their own proto identity, that would be absorbed by Vixus, together with the memories, once the bodies returned to them.

In this case, however, it wasn’t just that they got a distorted or unreadable feedback. They got nothing. Even if they could not fully connect with the body, usually they still felt its presence, as it was part of them. Here? Nothing, absolutely nothing. As if they were gone.

That raised the alarm bells inside Vixus’ mind, and they quickly made their way over to one of the locations. They had chosen it at random, it was one of the closer ones, but what they found there was… suspicious.

A lot of people went inside the complex they had tagged as belonging to the “Golden Cross”, all of them seemingly with baggage, and none came out. The amount of people was also much too large as the small building should fit comfortably.

But with no way of looking inside, they still hadn’t figured out how the “Golden Cross” managed that, they had no real way of confirming their suspicions. So they carried on to the next location, seeing the same thing.

Now sufficiently alarmed they started sending out bodies to each location they suspected of belonging to the “Golden Cross”. The only issue, once they came close, their signal vanished once more.

After personally investigating they found nothing, no body, no residual magic with their own trace, no hints of what had happened.

Vixus preferred to work alone, their goal was to offload as few things as possible and to make sure that neither their progenitor nor the Council had to worry too much about things that should be beneath them or a waste of time.

This, however, was much too important. With a thought they moved away from their current location, appearing right in front of her Majesty.

As was to be expected their progenitor was not thrilled seeing them, they had, after all, more or less, divulged the one secret she had wanted to keep quiet about.

But before she could snarl at them, Vixus knelt.

“Your Majesty. I bring grave news.”, they said quickly. They knew Vuthe would want to punish them, and while it wouldn’t be pleasant, they actually didn’t mind too much. But right now there were more pressing concerns.

“Even more grave than you telling a mortal, a family member no less, about my tile?! You best speak fast before I behead you on the spot, Vixus!”, Vuthe growled, and despite Vixus' resilience to emotions like fear, even they couldn’t help but swallow as the full might of a divine ancient dragon's aura beared down on them.

“I suspect the Church is planning something. I have been keeping an eye on them for a while now, and they have a small subsection of their organisation that likes to keep hidden. Now they are moving, and I do not know why. My attempts to penetrate their defences have been unsuccessful, somehow they can even make my bodies disappear.”

Vuthe, predictably, didn’t take this news well, and her already dark mood only worsened. “Continue.”, her voice was now cold and calm, a sound that somehow frightened Vixus more than her previous open displeasure.

“I don’t know many details. I have observed a number of people entering some locations I am certain belong to this subgroup. And they seem to be preparing for a prolonged stay.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

There was a long moment of silence in which Vuthe thought, until finally she sighed, “Inform Tizanta and Calagrophy, make sure our men are ready. While I hope this is just something unrelated, I am also not naive enough to ignore it. If you come to me personally then there must be something larger going on. You may keep your activities hidden, Vixus, but do not forget that my domain is the very thing that you are.”

“Yes, your Majesty”, Vixus said with a bow and vanished. They didn’t put too much stock into their progenitors' warning words about Vixus activities. If she truly knew what they were up to, she would react much differently.

Not even a minute later they appeared before Lady Calagrophy, who was currently busy cursing while running in circles in her tent, Sir Castaphiel and Lady Tizanta already present.

“Fucking. GREAT!”, Lady Calagrophy was shouting as Vixus appeared.

All of the people present immediately turned to the Living Shadow, who gave them a nod. “Her Majesty Shade Dragon Vuthe de Thal sends me. I have observed suspicious movements from a subgroup of the Church, and she ordered me to inform both Lady Tizanta and Lady Calagrophy about it. Lady Calagrophy is to ready our men, although her Majesty hopes that it won’t be needed.”

The three draconics exchanged glances, then Lady Calagrophy spoke. “Understood. I will make sure to do so promptly. Castaphiel, get your men. If Vuthe is that paranoid maybe we should be too.”

And with that both Lady Calagrophy and Sir Castaphiel left, leaving Vixus alone with Lady Tizanta, who seemed just as annoyed about Vixus as their progenitor was.

“I hope you don’t forget that you are the one responsible, Vix. Even if things are too dire to deal with that at the moment, don’t think I will let you get away with it. Whatever is to follow, you are the one to blame.”

Her voice wasn’t quite a snarl yet, but it was close enough.

“Of course, Lady Tizanta. I was merely doing what I thought would be best.”

“Yeah. Best for whom, exactly? I’m starting to question your intentions. Out of all the things you could have done, revealing her divine title was the last one that should have even crossed your mind. Now go. If Vuthe wants her men prepared, I best make sure to keep our defences up. And, Vixus”, Lady Tizanta spoke with an icy tone, just marginally less frosty than their progenitors, “I hope this time you actually act in her best interest, understood?”

Without giving Vixus time to respond she turned around and left.

Vixus had been prepared for a certain amount of backlash from their decision, however this was a little further than what they had intended. It hadn’t been their goal to disappoint nor to betray them, but now it looked like that was how they viewed things.

With a quick shake of their head they discarded those thoughts, that was a tomorrow problem. Right now they had to deal with whatever the church and their secret subgroup was doing.

Perspective: Clive Bohart

The Lab, while built to house at least a few researchers if necessary, wasn’t really meant to hold as many people as it was now housing. The individual laboratories were thankfully left well alone, so Clive didn’t have to worry about someone messing with his experiments, yet he was also not entirely comfortable.

Even outside the happenings from the last week, he had gotten a better insight of what was going on, even if they hadn’t gotten an official announcement. From what he had heard others talking about some kind of event had taken place, the word “Goddess” had been thrown around so often that he was beginning to think that at least a bit of what he heard was true, although with so many different tellings of the story nailing down anything in this hail of words was nigh impossible. And Clive was not one to jump to quick conclusions without proper proof.

That’s what his motto was, anyways. The practical implementation of that motto was quite often not as easy as he wanted it to be, and despite his best efforts he couldn’t help but feel slightly uneasy. Considering what had happened in the past few days with that stranger with the haunted eyes, he was not as sure as he would like to be.

With that in mind he tried his best to distract himself, throwing himself into his experiments once more. At least that was what he wanted to do, but before the first day in his new home was out he was ordered to the head researcher's office.

Having no idea what to expect he quickly grabbed all his important documents before making his way over through the quite tightly packed hallways.

When he arrived in the office there were already four people present: The Head Researcher he had worked with before, the Leader of the Laboratory, as well as the Sanguist and the Handler he had spent the past few days with.

Trying to hide his displeasure he sat down the documents on the table and looked at the Head Researcher with a questioning glance. The woman looked just as dead inside as she usually did, with bags under her eyes, dishevelled hair, and an obvious disregard to personal Hygiene in favour of more time in her Lab. While he couldn’t agree with her lacklustre approach to cleanliness, he could at least appreciate her workaholic personality.

She, in turn, didn’t speak and instead waved a hand to the Leader of the Laboratory. Now, with a Head Researcher being present, calling the man the leader wasn’t quite correct, but he had never been introduced by any name or title and only by observing the interaction of others with him was he certain that he was the asshole in charge.

“Mister Bohart”, the man spoke with the same voice that always made Clive’s spine tingle in this ominous way, “It has come to my attention that your work on thaumaturgic biology has had recent breakthroughs. Normally I would carefully examine your reports before giving you more time to work through the possibilities, however, our timetable has been drastically accelerated and therefore we must also accelerate the schedule for your experiments. To that end I have decided to give you full access to the Sanguist you have worked with over the past week, as well as its Handler.”

The way the man spoke and addressed the person who was responsible for the Sanguine magic made his teeth ache, but Clive was not about to grandstand on morals when his own were questionable at best. And, in his experience, it was best to just ignore it if you didn’t want to get involved somehow. They needed his research for whatever they were working on and he was given more time with a valuable asset, even if being in the presence of the Sanguist made him feel all kinds of awkward.

Nevertheless, he was a scientist and a follower of god, and he would be damned if he didn’t do his best to help the great lord's plan, whatever it might be.

“Sure, I can do that. Can I ask what you need my work for?”, he asked as casually as he could.

“Certainly. We are devising a method to control monsters, to make them docile. As your work has shown there are some possibilities there, if only we could somehow help them with their incessant rage.”

That had Clive raise an eyebrow. The idea of controlling monsters wasn’t new, not by a long shot. Tamers, Animal Whisperers, or whatever else you wanted to call the lunatics that went out and got mauled to death by bloodthirsty monsters on a regular basis, were one of the oldest groups of people around, even if they personally often didn’t survive. Some even had success if the tales were to be believed.

Although none that could be proven. Something nagged at him, and despite not really wanting to he voiced his concerns.

“What would you need that ability for?” He regretted asking the moment the words left his mouth.

“That is none of your concern, Mister Bohart. Save to say it will aid the lord.”

The reply was as courtly as it could possibly be, and despite the rather tame choice of words there was an underlying warning there, a certain tone in his voice that brooked no argument.

“Fair. When do I begin?”, he asked, despite already being pretty certain of the answer.

“If it works for you, I would ask that you begin immediately.”

Figures…

The man gave him a stack of papers and with that he left the room with a measured yet somehow quick pace, leaving Clive, the Head Researcher, as well as the Sanguist and the Handler alone in the office.

Before Clive could start asking any more questions the woman shooed him out, and with a begrudging sigh he left, noting that the other two followed him closely.

“Come on, you know the way to the Lab…”, he said with a sigh.

This was going to be a fun month…