“Well, that sure took you long enough. I always thought Fey had a decent gossip system, but I thought you decided to forget all about that matter.” Which would be precisely something a Fey would do. After all, I’d given no time limit to it, sparing his life or no.

“I grew somewhat more curious after meeting one of her blood who was so dangerous.” He watched me for some sign, found none, and was disappointed. I was just listening to him, literally having a bunch of things on my mind. I just gestured for him to keep talking, knowing I had power over him by Fey obligation to repay debts.

“While she has been many places in the human lands to the South, right now, she is there.” He pointed.

I very pointedly turned around in that direction, staring with a frown. “Well, now. Well, well, well...” I turned back to him, sitting back in my chair and swirling my glass of wine, thinking. “Damn, she’s sold out everyone...” I murmured to myself, drawing lines and making connections. “Have you tracked her movements over the last few years? Ah, it doesn’t matter, I could get lucky and guess, given how many places are showing her fingers...”

I took a sip, looked to him. “Is she inside the Rift, or just around it?”

“She may have led a coven of senior Hags in establishing the stelae that anchor the Warp Rift in Yle Tyorm. In any event, she is walking among the Warped without being attacked.”

Dear Hagmom had brought the Warped here. That was pretty bad, but she was also definitely affiliated with the doppelganger substitutions that had been going on, as my erstwhile dopped nanny Mera had likely been the one to deliver me to her to be consumed by her Hagborn.

If she was affiliated with that, she was probably working with, or at the very least aware of, the moves being made by the Things Outside Creation.

If the Hags were the ones helping things into place for when the Stars Were Wrong... well, I could see why Void Brothers might not like Hags. She must have been biding her time for long years to slip under their radar...

Of course, she was an Annis, and her forté would be ripping things apart with her bare hands, not dominating via witchcraft or Hagwefting crap through prophecy and Curses. Physical killing wasn’t something that the Brotherhood did much about, and if she was just helping others get things in place, she could have lurked for a long, long time.

Yle Tyorm was a place so fucked up that not even the Brotherhood was going to sense anything going on there until it was too late. As long as anyone found a single safe zone within, and as long as someone insane didn’t go exploring, they were perfectly hidden away.

Wise, clever, patient... and totally freaking nasty when their plans came to fruition. A plan worthy of Hags.

Was I going to be able to catch her there? I had severe doubts. She’d have many ways to escape, and if she learned anything of my reputation, she quickly wouldn’t want to cross blades with me.

But she could run, and I could follow. It’s just a Caster who could use spatial magic could run a lot farther and faster than I could... if I couldn’t get close enough in time, whereupon she couldn’t run at all.

But still, she was in Yle Tyorm. Good to know.

News that a coven of senior Hags was likely the force that had anchored the Warp Portal was already singing out through Marktell. It meant another force involved in multiple things, and stepped up the level of wariness, as Hags were known shapechangers and infiltrators. Certainly they’d attempt to infiltrate the forces gathered to fight them, as hitting us from inside would naturally be the most effective.

Being at the center of a modern-class information-sharing network made for scarily effective counter-intelligence. No infiltrators were going to like how we were looking at them. Notably, Detect Shapechanger wasn’t all that hard a spell to get ahold of, and was being disseminated rapidly.

Mmmm. Scenarios spun out, but I didn’t have enough information. That was fine.

“If you want to get Marked, it’ll have to be on your neck, in direct contact with that Torc, if you are wearing it. Otherwise, it’ll cut off the telepathic communication just like it would any other outside mental contact,” I told him agreeably. “Of course, I don’t think that’ll happen, and you’ll just tell some of your officers to get Marked to coordinate through them, but I’m putting it out there. To get the real benefits you need to get as many troops Marked as possible, but I’m already putting eight hours a day into that, so I’m going to be busy for the foreseeable future.”

He regarded me carefully. “I will do it.”

Despite myself, I blinked. “Really.” I finished my wine, reached for the bottle. “Well, that’s fine. You want it on the back of the neck, where it’s hidden, or on the side, where you can tear it off if needed?”

Stolen novel; please report.

My continued lack of being impressed by him was probably getting to him. “The side. I wish to be able to see it.”

“Good enough. Now? I’ll make an exception since I don’t think you want to line up with more dwarves on the morrow to get theirs.”

He only paused briefly. “Well enough.” He weighed me with his eyes. “I would ask, but I doubt you would be offended if I ripped it off immediately after I received it, would you?”

“I long ago ceased to wonder why Fey did anything. You’ve got your motivations, I’ve got mine. You waste five minutes of my time, no skin off my nose.”

“You may proceed, if you have the tools.”

I raised an eyebrow, set down my glass, and pulled the case out of my Masspack. “Which side do you want it on?”

He tapped the left side of his neck with his talon. I picked up the Torc, and as he watched, snapped it around his neck, making sure where it crossed.

“Okay. If you whimper even a bit, I’m telling ALL the Nymphs.”

Needless to say, he didn’t make a peep as I went to work. He was surprised I didn’t need needles, relying on my fingers... and Tremble lending Blooding to my hands, so that his fast healing wouldn’t force the Ink out instantly. I think I annoyed him when his quick healing didn’t slow me down at all...

===============

I stuck him in his own chatbox. He got to look at The Map, and listen in to the Scout updates, and look on as I played Warlord for three different battles at the same time, and see the real-time effects of coordination, and hear Tremble Singing.

He wasn’t a Marshal, and had no power to Buff his troops and lead them like I did. He was very quickly aware that if he faced me on a battlefield, I would not only butcher him, I’d chew his troops into minced meat alongside him.

He was a Champion; I didn’t consider him a Warlord at all. A true Warlord had to be able to lead AND turn their troops into the most awesome fighting forces imaginable. He had none of the power to do that, relegating him to being merely a very normal officer trying to command his troops, if he bothered to at all.

And, of course, he also had to put up with the fact that my mental presence totally overwhelmed his. Yeah, he was a Twenty. Yeah, the strength of his soul allowed him to access abilities and Feats and powers that I simply could not.

But he was oooooh so not smarter than me, wiser, or charismatic. In force of personality alone, I crushed him.

It is a really harrowing feeling to a big bad physical kind of person when the fact they are blatantly inferior in the mental arena is shoved into their faces. Worse, he was a Fey, and a Twenty, and it was really, really hard for him to change anything about that. Add in that in the physical arena I could still kick his ass, and he was definitely having insecurity issues.

But be that as it may, he could still Cast magic, and it was powerful and lethal. He could fight for hours, he could fly, he could stealth; he could do a lot of things. I simply asked him how much he wanted to contribute, gave him a list of things he could do, and inquired what he wanted me to do about the Fey forces he was commanding.

He put on the Crown. He put on the Torc. He lifted his enSkulled Sword, burning at +VII with Banefire against the Warped, and he looked at The Map, and the many forces of Warped all over the damn place.

“What are you recommending?” he finally /asked.

-Terrorize them while you keep their positions up to date. Maximize use of your magic and your speed. Hit their flying forces especially. Be unpredictable, be savage. Reap their lives, don’t worry about killing them all at once. Set them up for the ground forces to do the job.

-Your goal every day should be to expend all your magic to wreak maximum harm upon the foe. If using the magic in one place allows even more of them to be killed by other hands than doing it in another, consider doing so.

-When the Fey who’ve been lured in succumb to the Warp, slaughter them all. I imagine they are Unseelie anyways, but it should send a clear message to everyone that bowing to the Warp is completely unacceptable to the Fey.

-If you come up with some inspired move, just let me know and I’ll work with it. You’re very good at your job, you know how to do it, and if everyone else knows where you are and what you are doing, the effects of it will be magnified.

-Also... you are uniquely equipped to be a roaming savior. The spatial disturbance of the Warp is not friendly to teleportation travel as we get closer to it. You are the Fast and the Furious, you can get somewhere and pull people’s ass out of the fire better than anyone else in this force. I know that being a savior is not what you normally do, especially to non-Fey, but I believe you can imagine the boost to morale that will result if you undertake such actions.-

And the glory and honor that would be heaped upon his name, but no need to say that, he could work it out for himself. Even if all he did was park himself up in the sky and rain down Baned arrows, that would be more than enough.

“But before you do all that, you need to do some supply runs.” His mental eyes turned on me. “At least forty quivers of arrows. They’ll be disseminated among the forces currently at work, so you can re-equip rapidly at some place nearby, without you needing to run off somewhere to get more.”

“This... ‘killing them in downtime’ philosophy you have.” He ruminated over it. “You know that my Queen makes my arrows personally.”

“Your Queen has enough power to make everyone’s arrows personally.” Woodshaping at will was a natural part of a Hamadryad’s powers.

Every arrow loosed on the field a personal expression of the displeasure of his Queen... I could see he found the idea quite stimulating.

“I will speak with my Lady. I imagine she will have many questions.”

“Which I’m sure that you’ll now be able to answer.” I waved him off. “Go do.”

“I will be sending some lancers to you for your attention.”

“Mmmm.” Okay, I was going to have to forge some magical Tat-making tools, to cut my time in half on the things, or better. The demand was getting ridiculous. My modifier was only +35 or so, and although the people didn’t know it, they were carrying around QL 40 pieces of art on them, only seen correctly under high magnification.

Some Tools of Shaping could cut the time down to a third, and with some Marvelous Pigments, a fifth.

Somehow, I doubted getting the raw materials was going to be that difficult, and Briggs could handle the alchemy...