The look on Adrian's (I assumed he was the smaller guy based on his aura) face when he saw Bethy walk into the office was akin the the face of a mouse seeing a snake slither into it's den. Probably. I'd never seen that, but he looked wary and a little afraid. "Oh." He said flatly. "You're back. I see you found your friends."

"Yup." Chirped the vampire excitedly. "And now we're here to steal all your maps!" She said it with such enthusiasm and conviction it took me a second to realize WHAT she'd just said, and my eyes widened in panic as I rushed to contradict her.

"Whoa!" I said, seeing the two tense up for battle. "We are NOT here to do that. We're here to ask to LOOK at the maps. We're all on the same side here. We're not going to attack anyone or rob them." I said the last part emphatically, glaring at our vampire friend.

She scoffed. "That's boring. No wonder I ignored it. Are you sure we can't just take them? These guys talk too much. Plus they're bossy."

Adrian glared at her. "We aren't bossy, we're part of an alliance. One which you agreed to join when we let you into the fortress." His voice was tightly controlled and barely restraining his obvious fury, but he was clearly unwilling to fight Bethy, which was probably very wise.

She just shrugged. "I didn't know it was going to be a boring alliance. I thought we were gonna go on like, adventures and find cute animals. Maybe murder some people I don't like. You know, fun things you do with friends. Your alliance is all stuffy rules and annoying jobs." She screwed up her face in a faux serious expression. " You're all like 'protect the gate Bethy, repel the invaders Bethy, don't eat that guy Bethy, he's on our side' It's super gross."

Despite not wanting to turn into an uber monster when she used her powers, it was sometimes hard to remember that Bethy, even in her normal non bloodlusty mode, was still an apex predator. She had no issues killing and eating other people. I frowned at her. "Can you even eat people here? Like...we're all soul fragments."

She rolled her eyes. "Duh. Vampirism isn't just physical. Otherwise we couldn't drain people's stats. I tuned out most of the explanation but daddy says the people in this place are like...diet Ascendants. I get way less from eating them, but they still taste ok." She grimaced. "Except devils. Devils taste like sulfur. Super disgusting. But they taste bad anywhere, so that's not a surprise."

I'd never considered that humans might have different tastes. Shaking my head to clear it, I refocused. Bethy tended to suck you into her tempo. "Maps. Right." I repeated as I turned back to Adrian. "We were hoping to get access to your maps. We just want to design a search route to maximize our results." I lied. I was going to use Eye of Revelation on the map to find the next flag if possible. I wouldn't be sharing that though.

He looked suspicious, but without an understanding of how my abilities worked he had no way of knowing about my divination. It was totally obvious that I was a candidate and people knew I could grant wishes. While they might know I had some attack abilities and weird magic tricks, stuff like divination was almost always a main ability, with Skills based on the concept being rare and hard to acquire. Me having one would be pretty out of the realm of expectation.

"You'll be staying to help with the next wave I assume?" Adrian said suspiciously. "We have scout teams looking, as well as several rapid deployment teams on standby. As soon as the flag shows itself we'll be sending out a force to defend it. The same will undoubtedly go for the other side. We need as many viable warriors as possible." His eyes flicked to Bethy. "Which means you can't EAT any more of them."

She sniffed in annoyance. "That guy was so rude. Daddy says that when prey mouths of to a predator it means it has flawed instincts. It's better to thin out those kind of idiots. They can't be used for much except cannon fodder anyway."

"He just said he didn't like cats!" Hissed Adrian. "How is that rude?"

She rolled her eyes. "He said it in front of Donuts! My cats are very sensitive. How would you like it if I said I didn't like humans?"

He threw up his hands. "Your cats are INVISIBLE most of the time? How was he supposed to know it was there?"

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "We'll watch her, and try to prevent her from...consuming any more team members. But we want to get a headstart on our search route, so can you let us access the maps?"

The taller man nodded. "Just let them into the map room Adrian. Bella made those maps for a reason. It'll be safer if they know the terrain, and the more of us that make it through each wave, the better we'll all fare. If you're that worried why not send Callen with them?"

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Adrian nodded thoughtfully. He shot Bethy an annoyed look. "You're lucky Travis is a more reasonable person than I am. I'll ASK Callen. If he agrees to go with them then I'll let them into the map room." When Travis started to respond, Adrian cut him off with a sharp gesture. "No. Just because we're on a team here doesn't mean we're really allies. Cooperation is fine, but I don't trust any of them."

Bethy, to my surprise, shifted herself slightly to the side, putting her between the Fist God Temple initiate and us. I was wondering why she seemed to be baiting him, and I'd pretty much figured it out. Bethy was a threat, and by pushing she was putting up a strong front, making him think she wasn't worried, while also establishing herself as a non threat. Too high maintenance to attack but too crazy to be dangerous. It was a line I was pretty sure she tried to tow most of the time.

Travis nodded, heading up the steps to the tower. After a minute or two, he came back with Callen, the huge bearded blonde man looked bored, and when he saw Adrian waiting he gave him a shallow nod. "I was taking a nap." Grunted my sister's bodyguard. "What do you want? And don't expect me to do anything strenuous. I spend almost all my time guarding the young lady, now that we're on opposite sides I can finally take a break."

As he spoke, I took the time to look him over. He was wearing worn plate armor that I could tell at a glance was enchanted. It was F-rank, of course, because nothing higher would be emulated here, but the dense script I could see engraved on the metal told me it was probably on the higher end of F-rank. On his back I could see an absolutely colossal sword, large enough that the hilt stuck high up over his head and the tip nearly scraped the ground.

The sword appeared to be wrapped in enchanted bandages as well as sheathed, and I got a really weird feeling from it. It didn't seem like any weapon I'd ever come across, more like a person in the shape of a sword. I dismissed the feeling, deciding to focus on the here and now.

Adrian glared at the big man, his own modest height made even more eyecatching by being seated and towered over by the giant. "We want you to escort a team. If you do, we'll offer you first crack at enemy flag when we discover it."

Callen rolled his eyes. "Oh joy." He drawled. "Just what I always wanted." His voice was surprisingly soft for such a big man, but still firm enough to tell me this wasn't anyone to mess with. He noticed me staring and turned to look at me quizzically. "Oh." He said with interest. "It's you. You made quite an impression on the young lady."

I wasn't sure if he was playing dumb or actually didn't know who I was, but I wasn't going to complain if it got us map access. Plus Chelsea had told me plenty of stories involving Callen, and aside from being a decent guy, he was apparently TERRIFYING. It would be nice to have him around if Gabriel showed up.

Speaking of, I was wondering how he was going to handle this competition. As an Adamant, he wasn't able to lose, but that might only be in combat. If not, he might need to bail before the last trial, whatever the hell that might be. He hadn't seemed worried about it though, so he probably had some kind of plan. He knew his Path better than I did, after all, so there was no point in second guessing.

Callen looked us all over for a minute before sighing. "Alright, fine. I'll babysit them. It's not like it's not my main job anyway. But only until the next round. once that passes I'm going back to my nap. I'm not too far off an Azure Soul-Body anyway. I only need a few of those flags. Plus it'll be good for the young lady to try to fight for a few."

That was a good point, actually. I wanted my sister to get some resources too. She couldn't use her faction's heritage because of her top secret second power, so this was a big opportunity for her. I wondered if she'd broken her mind shackle yet.

Once Callen agreed, Adrian grudgingly allowed us past him and into a small walk on closet type room. Inside the room was a series of small mechanical objects covered in gears and propellers, all sitting around a large table layered with various maps. Next to the map table sat a small girl in overalls with pigtails.

"Bella, I presume?" I asked the tiny tinkerer. Her face was covered with a huge pair of goggles, but she didn't seem surprised by my interruption, ignoring me other than a small nod. She was holding a pair of small thin tools, one was a tiny maneuverable claw and the other was a pencil thin welding torch.

There was a spark and a yelp and she jerked back the claw, cursing up a storm. "Shit. That's one fried." She whirled on me. "Don't you know it's rude to interrupt a girl when she's working? What the hell do you want?"

"Maps." I said dryly. "Since this is a map room, we came here to look at maps."

She brandished her claw stick thing at me. "Don't you mouth off to me you big ox. What are you dressed as anyway? The world's most fashion challenged tree? Are you a dryad or are you just so ugly you have to cover your face so you don't scare all the children?"

Rolling my eyes and letting the dig pass, I gestured to the table. "Ok, which maps are which?" I needed to have some heading or even if I found the right map I wouldn't be able to track down the flag. Maybe I should learn a cartography Skill? Maps seemed to be an excellent loophole for my Eye of Revelation skill.

Sighing, she walked over to the table, pulling a few papers out. "This is the fortress, this is the enemy fortress, this the lake to the north. This place is weirdly huge so I haven't mapped even close to all of it, but this should be enough for now, from what we've seen the flags are sticking close, though they might be further out as the rounds progress." She rolled up a few papers and threw them at me. "Now go look at your maps somewhere else, there's not enough room in here for ugly tree brutes." Then she hurried us out of the room, slamming the door behind us.

Turning to Adrian, I chuckled lightly. "So, do you have a table we can use to check these maps out?" He glared at me, clearly having hoped to be rid of us, and then pointed to the corner of the room. I nodded my thanks and gestured for the others to follow. I wanted to get this done and get on the road. We had a flag to find.