The forest was quiet. Almost too quiet. Sadly, my traveling companion was not. “I just think you’re being a party pooper.” Said Bethy stubbornly. “It’s not like this is going to make things any harder, and you’re not getting into the spirit of it.”

“But we don’t NEED codenames.” I groaned desperately. “And they don’t work if you keep changing them anyway. Plus you keep picking ones that don’t make sense. Big Cheddar? Red Leader? Pineappleface? And you didn’t even warn me. You just kept dropping them into conversation like I was supposed to know what they were.”

Her pout intensified. “Because I was TESTING them!” She said in exasperation, throwing her hands up. “To see how they fit. But those are so five minutes ago. I’m telling you this new one is the last one. Senator Beef is absolutely the right codename for you. It’s so perfect!”

“HOW?” I all but shouted. “In what possible way is Senator Beef a good codename. Or a codename at all. Not to mention we don’t NEED codenames. I picked one for you because you asked, and I get it, you have a new costume on. Fine. Candycorn is thematic, it goes with your clothes.”

I gestured to her ‘disguise’ an orange and black striped monstrosity of shirt and skirt, a bright orange wig, and red painted cheeks that made her look like a rag doll.

Sadly, I had to admit it was a good disguise. Bethy was so…bombastic, that it weirdly distracted from her appearance. When you thought about Bethy you just thought about loud madness. With the costume on, that came into play hard, because even the vague changes to her features seemed to completely morph everything about her.

I was almost positive this was vampire bullshit, but it made arguing with her that much harder, because I couldn’t dismiss her points when she’d done such a good job.

Before she could continue though, I noticed something out of the corner of my Eye of Revelation. “Wait!” I hissed. “Hold on, we have movement. I told you we shouldn’t have waited out here for so long.”

We’d been waiting for the city to quiet, or at least for the majority of people to go to sleep. Night owls abounded everywhere, but they were always the minority. Still, there was a point of diminishing returns on waiting, and at about two in the morning we had to be approaching it.

She shook her head, red eyes (though they looked orange against the costume) becoming serious. “Not…quite…now.” She broke cover as she finished, blitzing towards the city at staggering speed. I cursed, triggering Bael and following her. We made good time, reaching city limits and slipping into an overhang on one of the buildings.

When we stopped she stared calmly out into the dark. “Sorry.” She said with a shrug. “There was a gap in the attention on the border. It’s…vampires are sneaky. I don’t know how to describe it. But we’re in and no one noticed. See? Easy peasy?”

I sighed. “I’d have appreciated a heads up, but you know I trust you. Your weird vampire powers haven’t failed me yet.”

She clapped her hands together under her chin, beaming at me. “Shane! Did we just become best friends? That was so super sweet of you to say.” Her expression wilted, becoming surprisingly nervous. “I don’t…I owe you a lot. For your help.”

I swung my hand through the air like I was cutting that thought off. “You don’t owe me anything. Inherent payment necessity of my power aside, you ARE my friend. I’m always here for you if you need me. And you always come through for me too.”

The uncertainty in her eyes was bothering me. Seeing Bethy of all people so…shaken. “It’s not just that. I’m not the most stable person. I get that from my mom. It can be hard for me to focus. Not just the bloodlust, but just…keeping myself even. Easier since you helped me, but knowing you don’t hold it against me. People get mad at me usually. After a while. Being friends with me is fun for a while, but I can be a bit much. They get sick of me.”

I hadn’t seen her this sincere in…well, almost ever. And from what she’d just said, maintaining this level of focus was tough for her. It made sense really, Bethy was always flitting from one thing to the next, and while some of that was a charade, her inconsistent level of attention was a pretty distinct part of her personality. It couldn’t all be a show.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“You’re my friend.” I repeated. “And you’ve done a lot for me too. I don’t abandon my people, and I don’t think you do either. You’re stuck with me. No matter how ‘much’ you happen to be. But what brought this on?”

“You’ve been on edge.” She said sadly. “The others don’t see it because you keep a calm face on, but I can tell. I know you have Callie to talk to and you guys have your bond, but I don’t want you to feel alone down here.” She gave me a sad smile. “You can freak out a little bit in front of me. I’m just the crazy vampire. Who's going to know?”

It broke my heart to see that smile, but I could tell she didn’t want empty platitudes or reassurances, she just wanted to know that she’d helped. And oddly, she really had. Having someone acknowledge how much stress I was under was weirdly cathartic.

I stared at her. “You know, it’s easy to write you off as flighty, but then you say stuff like that. I can never tell how much of what you do is an act.”

She winked at me. “Only most of it. I’m pretty on the ball. But don’t tell Abel. I don’t want him to get too comfortable. He might actually catch up to me in a fight..”

I burst out laughing. “I knew you were screwing with him. But thanks. For saying that thing about me freaking out. It’s nice to know I can let down my guard. Now let’s go sneak into this city where we’ll probably get caught and gruesomely murdered.”

“Probably is a strong word.” She said sagely. “We’ll either get caught or we won’t. Fifty fifty.”

She strode off into the dark and I followed her quickly, extending Bael to cover her. “Wait, Bethy, don’t get too far ahead. You need to stay close. That was a joke right? You know we still need to be careful. Stop speeding up! Bethy please tell me you know that’s not how statistics work?”

She stayed JUST far enough ahead to be easily coverable with Bael (how she knew the range on that I had no idea because I sure as hell didn’t) but we made decent time arriving at the building we’d been given directions to. We stopped across the street from the Arcadia hotel to surveil the entrances.

Given its nature as an erasure of Perception, stealth could be improved by careful observation. The more you watched and made note of the details, the better you could remove them from notice. Besides that, I trusted Bethy’s instincts, and I wanted to double check with her before we went in.

“Are we being watched?” I’d thought this would be a quick and easy infiltration, but Bethy’s episode at the city limits implied differently. They might not have a bunch of E-rankers in town waiting, but there was SOME method of observation at play. It wasn’t a shock, that was what our defenses on the fortress and volcano were there to prevent, after all. Not to mention Valen was a notable trap, and we were relatively close. They might not have an active eye on the city, but clearly they weren’t STUPID either.

With Bethy helping us avoid whatever they were doing to keep track of us though, we had a way better chance of pulling this off.

She shook her head. “Not right now. But I think there’s…something, over the hotel.” Her eyes flicked up, narrowing into the darkened sky. “Some kind of…spirit eye? I think that’s what I picked up at the border. It can’t be everywhere though.” She pointed up and away. “Right up there. Do you see it?”

Engaging my Perception, I focused hard on the spot she indicated, Eye of Revelation focused through my crown for maximum output. “I got it.” I said after a second. “Ew. It’s hideous.”

“Super gross.” She agreed bluntly. “But I have an idea. I think if I throw really hard, I can hit it with a rock. I can go around the building and do that, then it’ll look away and you can get by.” She clenched her fists intensely, like she was readying for battle.

I rolled my eyes. “We don’t need to throw rocks at it. It’s an E-rank entity. Even focused hard on Perception, it won’t be enough to break Bael. My forms are limited, but they do what they do damned well. It’s why I have them. I can study its focus for a while, and once I have a lock on where its looking and can understand it a bit better, I can walk us right past it.”

Honestly I could probably do it now, but haste made waste. Better to take the extra few minutes to ensure we did the job the best way possible. Bethy just pouted, though I suspected it was more because she wanted to throw a rock at an ugly ass ghost eye than because she was impatient to get going.

After a minute of observing exactly where the eye was focused, I nodded and offered Bethy my arm. “Alright we're good. Let's bounce.”

Nodding seriously, she grabbed my elbow, and then proceeded to skip cheerfully alongside me as I walked unhurriedly across the street. While stealth worked fine at speed, with the time and attention to map out my route, it worked even better if I took my time to make sure all traces were erased.

To my complete lack of surprise, I could hear Bethy humming something under her breath as we walked, eyes narrowed as she took in everything around us suspiciously, head on a swivel. Honestly the humming made my job slightly harder, but not enough to matter, and it was kind of hilarious.

When we reached the front door, we stopped, and I reached out casually, focusing on my finger.

While my little accident with the pseudo Domain had been a terrible thing, it had given me a few ideas. Using overwhelming or damaging power on a smaller scale to prevent hard might not work in that case, but it could work in others.

I couldn’t maintain three forms at the same time without serious soul strain, but I could take a page from Benny’s book, albeit in reverse.

Focusing on one finger, I flexed my will, bringing up just the smallest fraction of my forms. The finger in question marked as the energy from Belial and Mephistopheles flooded it, Bael maintaining my stealth.

Even just the one finger almost immediately made me wince, putting immense pressure on my soul, but it was bearable. Bearable enough to take it a bit further. A Cosmic Collapse the size of the head of a pin took milliseconds to make, and it flew into the lock on the door, bursting and hollowing out the mechanism without any outward sign.

Sighing in relief, I let the finger return to normal, just under Bael, and pushed open the door. “Alright.” I said with a grin. “We're in. Let's go pick up the target and get out of here.”

Now that we'd made it inside we just needed to collect our guy and we could bail. We were one step closer to the raid on the spawning grounds, whatever those might be. While this little side trip hadn't been even a blip on my radar…that one was setting off my instincts like nobody’s business. I had a feeling we would find something bad when we got there. I just had no idea what.