May 8, 2019...

It wasn’t an unusual sight in Rio de Janeiro.

A beautiful human woman and a handsome halvyr, dressed up beautifully, and obviously out for a night on the town. Eyes followed the darkly handsome halvyr, who was smiling encouragingly and in a friendly manner at everyone around, and other eyes followed the swaying hips and lovely legs of the woman on his arm, a wealthy young socialite known around town and pined after by a good portion of the populace for both her looks and her money.

The halvyr was an exotic landing for her, and given his guaranteed magical ability, a decent catch in more ways than one. Everyone knew about the power of the halvyr Morningsuns, after all, and this one moved with the easy confidence of someone with some Levels behind him.

He stepped out of the elevator and proceeded towards the restaurant at the end of the hall, a high-end establishment catering only to the very uppermost class of the city, Powered preferred.

Nichita Armingwell was not Powered, but her father was, and wealthy enough to see that his daughter was looked after well. Having a halvyr son-in-law practically guaranteed his grandsons would have magical ability, so he didn’t look down on the young man, who obviously had money and resources of his own.

Said young man was engaged in chatting with Nachita when he looked ahead and saw a flaming-haired woman standing by the entrance to Champaleo’s. She was utterly magnificent, even from behind, with a scintillating, figure-hugging green dress, fair skin, and the slightly pointed ears of one of his own.

Then she turned around to look directly at him, golden eyes locking on his with the burning gaze of a phoenix.

He stopped dead in place, as did Nachita standing next to him. There was nobody in high society in the whole world who did not know that face.

“Ah, Nachita, I think I might have to be going,” he began to stammer, and the elevator dinged behind him. He turned halfway around, and froze when another flame-haired halvyri, eyes as golden as her mother and with a considerably grimmer bearing in her golden dress, stepped out of the car behind him, also looking him directly in the eye.

There was an access hall to the side, and he was just starting to step towards it when he saw a third fire-haired halvyri, this one with black bands at her temples and a dress of matching scarlet and obsidian, walking towards him in elegant heels, eyes also as golden as the morning.

There was a soft chuckle next to him. He turned slowly about to look down at the smiling Nachita... whose petite form suddenly grew in size, her white and blue dress adjusting itself with her, and her eyes were dark and cold as she became an Amazon looking down at him.

“You total fucking bastard!” she swore at him, laying a hand on his shoulder and effortlessly gripping him so hard he let out a cry. “I should tear your head off completely for what you and your Warlock freak partner did to me! I don’t even know how to tell my dad I’m already dead!” she snarled at him, clearly ready to do just that.

“Miss Armingwell, I will go with you to meet Chester,” Jaelez Morningfire said with the calm of someone in total control of the situation, shifting her gaze from the murdered young woman to the young man. “Andryov Piotr Luemykov, or as my daughter Elrii knew you, Jose Andy Complearo.” Her golden eyes met his dark eyes, glowing with inner fire. “You may know my daughter Brigette Morningflame, and my niece, Imoen Morningglory.” Her tone was as light and easy as a summer day as she studied the young halvyr who was writhing there with his shoulder nearly broken in the grip of the Amazon version of the girl he had set up to be Consumed.

“Your Warlock companion had the unique status of being the last Hungry Kiss Warlock on the entire planet, and has been Consumed in turn,” Morningfire went on with a charming smile, chasing off Nachita’s bone-crushing grip. “He is currently burning in Hellfire, a place you’re not going to reach for some time.”

The halvyr’s face was deathly pale as he looked around at the three redheads and one sable-haired Amazon surrounding him.

“Now then, we’re here to escort you to your last meal.” Morningfire’s voice was as light and airy as if she were talking about a vacation holiday. “Never let it be said that the Morningsuns didn’t know how to treat a man who messes with us, right?”

“And when you’re done enjoying your meal, I’m going to tear your lying head right off your shoulders,” Nachita promised with a delighted warm smile of her own, suddenly falling back to her five-feet nothing of height and taking his near-paralyzed arm in her own. “Cheer up now, lover boy. Everyone is going to be watching you tonight!”

Somehow, that did not encourage the bearer and spreader of the Dark Moon Bloodline at all...

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So, Collin’s father and Elrii’s murderer was dead. The news that Nachita Armingwell had been murdered and replaced by a Warlock was also rocking high society in Rio, terrorizing the young, wealthy, and attractive members of high society there and in a quickly-widening circle.

I was grimly amused as I watched the news being spread by various channels. It being done to the Morningsuns had been taken as a freak magical attack on my prominent family by our hereditary enemies, such as it was. But a random young Brazilian socialite gets body-swiped and suddenly they were starting to panic.

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Chester Armingwell was a well-known and prominent Water Sorcerer, responsible and known for keeping the local water supply clean. He left Rio with Morningfire for China, death in his eyes and a will to get stronger and hunt certain parties down in his heart. His wife and son went with him, and soon enough, hundreds of Rio’s, and then Brazil’s, and indeed spreading rapidly, South Americans did the same.

There were Shroudzones in South America, but they were for the locals to work up on. If you wanted to learn how to fight, and truly gain Levels, you went to the Orient, and the serious things going on in China and in India... or Tibet.

Andre’s head was already spitting up secrets for the Church of Harse and Mother and the rest of the family. They were taking breaks from Cultivator-killing and undead-smiting to delve into dark holes and bright mansions, all holding dark secrets that they were putting to phoenix flame.

They wouldn’t be able to take down everyone involved in this, but they were going to get a lot of them, and a bunch were already running and being tracked on where they ran to, and to whom they ran. After all, the Morningsuns now had many, many helpful eyes out there.

I could have contributed as more than information relay and coordinator, but I had stuff to do... and I had family that was INTENSELY interested in the subject matter.

So, I let them handle it. They were more than happy to do so.

And now, there were no more Poison or Hungry Kiss/Heart Warlocks on the planet, save Shvaughn and Legion themselves. That didn’t mean there weren’t dops, or body-swappers who thought they were clever, or Possessors, or mind-control parasites and symbiotes and other shapechangers and the like.

We could only be alert and look for them, and extinguish them when they were found. The mortal races had to be vigilant to survive, and if everyone couldn’t live that way, well, there were some who could and took upon themselves the duty to do so.

It was considered one of the Church of Harse’s duties to watch for infiltration of society in that manner, and was one of the big reasons they were so closely associated with law enforcement personnel... and it took a Divinely-motivated organization to look and watch across the decades and centuries for some of the really long-lived beings out there pulling shit.

Harse didn’t look at all kindly on body-swappers and the like, and would pursue those using unnatural means to prolong their lives by taking those of others tirelessly and forever. It was pretty hard to evade the servants of the Judge of the Dead who were always looking for you...

Shvaughn was also one of those people. However, she had made herself invaluable by locking away Dark Pacts, and she didn’t destroy or rape clean the souls of all those she Consumed, although she did Gestalt a lot of them.

Master Fred doing the same with Legion was technically the same way, but soul-wise, all of them were totally intact, and he gave his Cohort the right to truly die and be released at any time. The only ones trapped without alternatives were Pact Grantors, Pactbound, and those who desperately didn’t want to go to their final fates. Being Pactbound could be considered an afterlife for those people, and as long as they were contributing positively, judgement on releasing them could be suspended until their time came... which it always did, in the end.

If Cleansing them of Sin also killed them, well, it was Heavenly power doing the job. Master Fred was obviously not going to be judged poorly by Heaven for giving said souls a chance to not go Down, choosing between a painful Redemption or Oblivion if they couldn’t endure was probably better than post-death Torment, and Heaven didn’t profit until AFTER the Redemption took over. It cost Heaven the same amount of power as the Sin destroyed, so Good and Evil stayed in balance...

Also, the Shroud interfering with where the dead were going was a huge issue for the afterlife. The purgatory of the guarded cemeteries and holy grounds warding souls from a torturous existence in the Haze was a very real issue. What was being stuck inside a Warlock Grandmaster when compared to that? At the very worst, they were equal dooms... at the other end, it was being merciful while they waited for proper Judgement.

Ninety miles in radius, ten thousand miles a day. About a month to cover the Atlantic. It would take over twice that to do the Pacific.

As I was finishing up the Atlantic, there were other forces moving. The final blow would naturally wait until I had the Pacific and Indian Oceans properly mapped out, too, but this was a bit different. They had a special request for me...

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4/28/2019, ten days earlier...

“Wisdom of Winter, I know you are watching. I could use a moment of your time.”

The cold wind moaned, absolutely dry, the only ice and snow it blew about being that which scattered from off of the ground. It swirled in a sheet of refraction, and Ughril materialized out of the fractured light.

She actually couldn’t track me unless I allowed Her to, which I expressly did in Her new Domain. It was only polite.

She had taken a less brutally primitive form, catering to our modern expectations of an Ice Goddess, while avoiding the white-skinned appearance that might bring a Cultivator to mind. This was done rather simply by inverting the meme and going black as onyx of skin, and crystalline white of hair and robe, snow and ice swirling about Her in cold, ageless beauty that forcibly brought to mind the stars at the South Pole, and the cold between those stars.

Looked damn sharp, too.

“You are styling, Goddess,” I complimented Her. “Nobody is going to mistake You for Rue or Voyd looking like that. Well done!”

She lifted Her finely-sculpted head in what might have been a sniff, but Her eyes gleamed. “Why are you here, Lady of Icefire?” She asked formally.

I held up a long tube filled with crimson. “I’m going to give a shoggoth a mental anchor. If You could suppress one just long enough for me to apply this without me having to beat on the thing, that would be wonderful.”

She looked past me at the moaning, wailing teeth of the Mountains of Madness leering into the sky beyond me. “They have been mad for ages unknown. Think you such simple tricks might affect them?” She scoffed.

“Shoggoth are ageless biomechanical creations. Mad for a minute, mad for an eon, all the same thing to them. I’m going to give it a biomagical anchor it can latch onto and use to retain some semblance of its own identity. It has already worked once... although that shoggoth was not part of the Choir of the Mountains.”

She was silent for a moment as She contemplated that idea. “You can control them if this works, Icefire?” She asked curiously.

“By no means. Actually, this a method that makes it nigh-impossible to control them successfully, which is why it works.” She gave me another gaze, as if She simply could not understand my thought processes, and fixed on the tube in my hand.

“Blood-binding in some manner?” She asked, interested.