Nathanial was not a handsome man. The High Inquisitor was missing the left half of his nose and his lip was split into a ghoulish scowl by a blade. Even without the unfortunate wound, the man’s grey skin and uncomfortable staring would have made the man unpleasant.

Together with his personality, it made him terrifying.

That old, old, saying, don’t judge a book by it’s cover? That didn’t not apply to Nathanial. He acted exactly how he looked, and he seemed to relish any opportunity to prove it.

“Jenson.” Nathanial barked out Finn’s last name.

“Yes!”

“Dig through her clothes,” he said, pointing at the small pile of clothes in front of the pregnant villager covering herself with her palms. She was the least starved person in the village, most likely through a concerted effort by the other villagers to keep her baby alive, although that wasn’t saying much.

They had stopped at every single village on their way by, even though it cost them a day each time, and had forcibly rounded up the couple hundred people each time to perform a witch hunt. So far the only thing that they had uncovered was that people were starving, and Finn was becoming increasingly aware of his plumpness, as people tended to stare at him hungrily.

Four other soldiers dug through the individual piles as Nathanial rode his Charger back and forth across the lines, singling out who to search, mainly old people and pregnant women.

“Yeah, you fucking heard me. Search the gravid bitch’s clothes, or I will halfway cut off your head and you’ll find out what spinal fluid tastes like before the lights go out, do you understand?”

Finn dropped down onto the woman’s clothes like it was a life-preserver slowly floating away.

“Sorry about this,” he muttered, beginning to search the scratchy, rough woven pockets. They were covered in dust that seemed to fall through the rather large gaps in the lining, drifting down to the ground as Finn shoved a hand in one pocket, then the other, hoping to at least get this over with as soon as possible.

Squish.

Squish? Finn pulled out his hand, and a thick, ropy string of rotten egg followed his hand, nearly overwhelming him with its stench. Finn had to fight not to gag as he backed away from the woman’s clothes and started wiping the slimy, disgusting stuff off in the grass.

She looked genuinely apologetic.

“I was removing some eggs that had gone bad from the coop.” She said apologetically. “They must have broken when my clothes were tossed on the ground.”

“It’s-“ Finn choked on the putrid smell, his body jiggling. “It’s fine.”

Dear Goddess, why would you put me on this path, fumbling through rural hick’s pockets, hands soaked in a substance that can only be described as foul on an industrial scale?

What kind of idiot carries rotten eggs in their pocket? I’m not going through that dumbass villager’s vest any more, Finn thought, switching to the woman’s frayed pants. I’d rather die.

“JENSON!” The High inquisitor’s shout made Finn freeze, shortly followed by the ringing of drawn steel. “Put. Your hand. Back in that pocket.”

Finn put his hand back in that pocket.

The pregnant villager tensed, looking at something behind Finn

“Remove the egg.” The inquisitor’s voice came from directly behind him, now, and Finn felt a line of cold steel touch the back of his neck.

Finn stopped breathing through his nose, trying not to vomit as he scooped out the runny, disgusting substance that was both solid and liquid, and somehow making his eyes water despite no longer breathing through his nose.

Finally the pocket was cleared of eggshells, but the whole rough fabric was coated in slimy egg.

“Turn the pocket inside out and run your hands along the seams.” Nathanial said.

Finn did so, then noticed a lump in the pocket’s inner seam. A knife appeared, inches away from Finn’s face, and he took it, teasing apart the rough sewing to reveal a tiny, egg-soaked, silk pocket with a key and a tiny scrap of paper with some egg-mottled writing on it.

“Hand them here.”

Finn, not daring to look up, handed the objects over his shoulder.

“Looks like our resident swine here caught one!” Nathanial shouted with glee.

Finn dared to look over his shoulder long enough to get a glance at the High Inquisitors face: Glee was not a good look for him.

A hand grabbed Finn’s shirt and tossed him aside.

Nathanial stepped forward, his blade settling on the woman’s shoulder.

“This, gentlemen, is a learning experience. If you find something during an inspection that makes you want to stop, like a pocketful of rotten eggs, or someone who just has to be innocent, that is when you look harder. Always check the old and the pregnant first. Humans instinctively shy away from suspecting them.” He scanned the rest of the spectating soldiers, whose faces were unreadable.

“Making them excellent spies.” He directed his gaze back to the shivering woman. “I’m not a monster. Would you like to executed with your child, or wait until after it’s born?”

“After,” she gritted out.

“That’ll take a lot of effort, make it worth our while.”

“Don’t you dare touch Marie!” a man shouted, lunging out from the lined up villagers, barreling toward Finn and the golden-armored Inquisitor.

Finn flinched like an idiot, putting his arms in front of his face as the lighter, weaker, malnourished man charged them, but the inquisitor simply held up a hand and lightning arced out of his hand and blasted the villager in the heart.

The charging man slid to a halt directly in front of Finn, his dead eyes staring lifelessly.

“That the father?” Nathanial asked.

She nodded silently.

“huh.” He snapped his gaze back to the villager – spy – Finn corrected himself.

“Well, if you want that moron’s child to see the light of day, you’ll do everything you’re told. Havier, see to it.”

One of Nathanial’s subordinate inquisitors, a man with dark hair and skin with a misplaced hawk-nose, led the woman away.

“Jenson.”

Finn flinched involuntarily.

“Sir?”

“Record this and send a report back to HQ once we hit MidSomner.” Nathanial said, holding out the smudged note.

“Sir.” Finn said, taking it and trying not to let his teeth chatter.

Nathanial’s face went blank like an animal taking a shit in the woods, then he turned and clomped away, holding the brass key in a tight fist. It was only after the Inquisitor had disappeared around the corner did Finn risk taking his eyes off the murderous fellow to inspect the message.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

It was soaked in foul smelling goop, but with a little squinting, it was still legible.

Finn quickly decoded the message with the speed of an old hand, and arranged it in his mind.

It was the coordinates of a series of dead drops, and the times to use them, that would no doubt allow the empire to round up quite a few dissidents, at least until word got out that Marie was –

Screams pierced Finns ears as the rounded up villagers scattered and fled for their lives, the inquisitors leading their chargers through them. Finn witnessed one child split in two by a casual slice from an Inquisitor’s blade.

It was pandemonium as the soldiers fell on the villagers with no purpose other than to exterminate every single one of them.

This time Finn did throw up.

“You know what they say,” Nathanial said, appearing from nowhere to stand beside Finn. “Dead men tell no tales. Well, dead men and newborns.”

He glanced at Finn’s breasts. “On that subject, do you lactate?”

“No, sir,” Finn gasped between heaves.

“Damn. I guess we’ll have to leave the woman alive a while yet.” he clicked his tongue and wandered off, heedless of the slaughter around him. The only creature whose life the Inquisitor even hinted at guaranteeing was the baby’s.

***Garth***

Garth made a couple more adjustments on the Hail Mary Body, an idea he’d been toying with the last couple days, weaving Design Plant with one hand and changing the sliders on his interface with the other, targeting the rightmost body on the Phylac-tree.

The concept: If Garth got between a rock and a hard place, it would most likely be some implacable enemy that had wiped the floor with Garth.

If that were to happen, the worst-case scenario would be aforementioned enemy burning their way to Garth’s Phylactery, steamrolling anything and anyone in their path.

If they whipped his ass once, there was no reason they wouldn’t be able to do it a second time at his phylactery.

If he showed up in the same body as before.

The Hail Mary concept was to throw aside any pretence of humanity to minmax combat potential and survivability…for a day or two, until the body literally burned itself out through sheer overclocking.

Drain nearly all the points from Strength and Endurance to bolster the mental stats while also siphoning some of it away to create a body that intrinsically cast spells on itself without user input, folding space to store a very large amount of tissue into an object the size of a quarter, then folding space and causality around itself to create a nearly impenetrable maze of contradictions.

Getting a spell through its defences would be less an issue of strength, and more an issue of time. Calculating Pi to a million places while rubbing your tummy, patting your head and playing Jenga with your asscheeks.

Once the maze-like barriers of illusion, warped space, and mental blocks were penetrated, it would be a simple matter to destroy the body.

But in the meantime, Hail Mary would unload a devastating amount of firepower on the person forcing him to use it.

Garth made a couple more adjustments, still trying to get the fetus to accept shifting so many of its resources into harnessing so much magic. Garth lowered the sliders on the physical stats again, and tried to convince the body to fold space around itself, creating the first layer of defence.

After a minute struggling with the damn thing, the slider in front of him slid back up to its previous levels, the Design Plant failing.

Making something more powerful than Garth already was was a tricky proposition, and actual living things didn’t take kindly to minmaxing a two day lifespan. Even mayflies spend a couple years as nymphs.

Garth shrugged and relaxed, allowing the mana in his lair to dissipate back into the environment. I’ll put some more study into the theory of space mana. If I can make a plant copy Castavelle’s one way space bubble, that’ll be an excellent first line of defence.

Garth stepped away and faced his other developing problem.

Off to his right, the firehose filled with Garth-Aid™ was going a little slack. There was still plenty coming in, but demand was starting to outpace supply, especially since the hunter-killers had basically hunted every goblin in the surrounding countryside, and had to start ranging far from home to find them.

Eventually they would reach some kind of equilibrium between natural goblins and hunter-killers, but for now, there were dips occasionally, where his creatures didn’t find anything much to munch on.

Maybe I can kick start this process, Garth thought to himself, forming the kernel of an idea.

***Alicia***

Alicia drew mana through the wand held behind her, and shoved it forward in time with her sword thrusts, compressing it along Guile’s edge and sending it shooting forward.

Lightning raced along the razor edge of the adamantium rapier and shot out in a wrist thick arc, striking the training dummy in the head. the pure magical force split the dummy’s head open and lit it on fire.

That’s more like it, she thought, but the visual evidence of her improvement paled in comparison to the secrets she was now a part of.

Ancient: Check.

Magic User: Check.

Plants: Check.

Lair in the Green hell: Check.

Every hint that Edw – Garth – Every hint that Garth had given her had been shrugged off as a simple coincidence. How could I have been so fucking blind?

Alicia was, by all accounts, the last person to know.

And yet he still had the friendly air of the young man she’d come to know him as. She couldn’t look at him and see a horrible ancient wizard, when he’d already created the image of a boisterous young man. It wreaked havoc with her attempts to straighten out her feelings for him.

She felt stinging at the corners of her eyes as she lunged forward, gliding along the ground with Aiding Wind and burying the rapier hilt-deep in the face of the mannequin, sawing the blade out of the smug, handsome purple face she saw in her mind’s eye.

Alicia levered the wand at another target across the way with a shout and a jagged bolt of lightning exploded a third straw stuffed dummy from the inside.

She stood there, panting and trying not to think about the sense of betrayal she knew she shouldn’t be feeling.

Should I have just torn up the contract and woken up at the Denton Manor none the wiser? She thought for the one hundred and eighteenth time since she’d spoken to Caitlyn.

No.

Alicia knew she’d never forgive herself if she simply woke up and realized she’d failed somehow. The shame would have eaten her insides out, and made her do something highly irresponsible. Not only would she be driven mad, she would have lost her powers.

If keeping the secret of history’s most reviled man was what it took to keep this – She laced Guile with crackling energy – then she would shoulder the risks. The only impediment now was spreading her legs without having a panic attack.

Just like Maggie taught us.

The brief thought of her aunt lead her mind to dangerous memories. Painful, murderous ones.

“You looked pretty evil just now.” Caitlyn said from the sideline, sitting on a bench and waiting for her turn as the dummies regrew.

“Your face was underlit by lightning and everything.” Garth said, casually rocking beside Caitlyn in a wooden rocking chair that hadn’t been there mere seconds ago. “Very mad scientist.”

Alicia flinched and froze, the lightning dissipating from the sword as her heart began to hammer in her chest.

He doesn’t know I was imagining him when I was practicing does he?

Did he like what he saw? A tiny voice in the back of her head chimed in, so quietly she barely realized she’d thought it at all.

Why is he looking at me like that?

“Now you just look guilty.” Garth said, the bastard rising to his feet. They’d been the same height when they’d met, but now the ancient wizard towered over her, sending shivers down her spine whenever she looked into his perfect– Munasei leave me be!

Alicia took a deep breath and calmed herself.

It’s all just a trick to make himself look more impressive. I can’t be led around by the nose by physical appearances….

You thought he was cute before he was handsome.

I swear to Kolath, I will enter my own brain and find whichever cluster of synapses is talking out of turn and end them! I am in charge here!

“Alicia,” Garth said, and stepped closer. Alicia’s meteoric rise in Senses meant she could easily feel Garth’s body heat pressing against her own from a couple feet away, should she choose to focus on that. It was hard not to.

“Yes?” Alicia asked focusing on listening to him and not trying to feel him up with her enhanced senses.

“I’m gonna go on a bit of an errand, and wanted some company. You in?”

“Sure, I guess – ack!”

A whorl of telekinetic mana wrapped around her and the two of them shot straight into the air at ungodly speeds, causing her ears to pop from the sudden change in pressure.

The two of them were still standing still, guarded from the wind, with their feet solidly underneath them. The world though, the world slid underneath them like Garth had picked up a miniature figurine off a map, slid the map beneath it, then set it back down.

A moment later they were plummeting downward with no indication they were falling other than the rising pit of her stomach telling her about the fact that she was about to be a pancake.

They descended into an unassuming clearing that resolved into a strange above-ground goblin village. Goblins rarely made their own structures, but these ones seemed to be rather industrious.

Alicia tensed up, ready to swing about her with the rapier as the little monsters assaulted them, before Garth put a hand on her shoulder.

“Not here to fight,” Garth murmured.

In the corner of the clearing, a rather plump woman dressed in rags that barely contained her pendulous breasts released one of the goblins from a suffocating hug, watching them descend from the sky with a gaping jaw. Her clothes were studded with bones and shiny rocks that seemed to mark her as one of the tribe.

Weird.

There were goblins literally making music on the other side of the little village.

Even weirder.

“Hey, Mark One, good to see you.”

“Good to see you as well, Father.” The previously struggling goblin said, nodding.

“I see your English has come a long way.” Garth said.

“Thank you father.”

“How’s life?” Garth asked.

“Living it,” the ugly green man said.

“Rock on.”

Garth threw up a strange gesture. Alicia wasn’t sure if it was magical, but she didn’t see any mana forming around him, so it probably wasn’t Magical.

“I’m looking to take…let’s say…a dozen volunteers to start their own tribes, like Mark here.” Garth said, addressing the crowd.

“Not enough tribes?” The goblin apparently known as Mark One asked curiously.

“Oh, there are plenty of your tribes,” Garth said with a sly grin. “On Earth.”