Bella was still following me. In my head, Callie was howling with laughter over my new ‘apprentice’. I thought it was much less funny, but I didn’t dignify her mockery with a response, opting to take the high road (which is much less effective when the person can FEEL how much they’re annoying you). Still, I wasn’t willing to beat her up or anything to get her to leave, so I’d had to get used to her incessant questions.

“Your armor is so cool, should I get armor too? Should I start wearing all black? Or using a staff? Maybe a really big mace. Oh, should I change my name? But Belladonna is already a pretty cool name, maybe I should change my last name. What about “Nightshade”? Or is that redundant?” She chattered happily as she trailed behind me, until finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.

I whirled on her. “Fine!” I snapped. “You can be my apprentice. I will teach you my ways. First lesson, we are people of mystery, and we let the silence speak for us. Practice looming menacingly, and more importantly QUIETLY as we walk.”

She squealed in excitement, bouncing up and down. “Yay! That’s so exciting! And you’re so right, silence can be so intimidating, like you’ve been silent this whole time and you’re super menacing and now that I know I should be silent I can totally practice that too and I’m gonna be so good at it, I’m gonna be the most silent silent person to ever silence and everyone will see me and be like wow she’s so quiet-”

I slammed all my attention into my Focus, blocking out the sound as my new apprentice fell into one of the longest run on sentences of all time without a breath as she completely ignored my instructions.

My wife’s smugness and amusement radiated over the bond, but I did NOT contact her directly. I didn’t need to hear her gloat about how hilarious it was that as both a teacher and a student I was absolutely miserable in the instructor disciple dynamic. I understood Abel’s sadism a little better now, even if I was sure I’d never been this annoying.

We came to a stop on the edge of a towering cliff, overlooking a small valley. The valley in question (more of a divot really) was set far up into the mountains, and could only really be seen from directly above. Bella whistled in amazement as she stared down at it. “Wow, I didn’t know this was here.”

“Pretty much no one does, from what I can tell.” I admitted. “It doesn’t even have a name. The locals just call it ‘town’ when they refer to it at all. I doubt I’d have ever found this place without directions.”

Which made me wonder, had my fate pushed me along the path that had led to me being ambushed by Bella and co? Without them, I wouldn’t have found Millie so quickly. Granted, I was pretty sure, given how close to Chester’s hometown she had been, I’d have found her eventually. My research had definitely paid off in that department, even if I’d also kind of tripped over the answer. Better to be lucky than good, but being both was obviously better than either.

“So, do we go down and look for him now?” She asked excitedly. “I bet you’ll find him in like…five minutes.”

I laughed. “He has a Path dedicated to Stealth. Finding him won’t be quite that easy.” Unfortunately, busting out Bael right now would be a difficult thing to explain away, given my established powerset. Using it to hide a conversation was fine, but a long term usage dedicated to finding someone in hiding would draw far too much attention.

Eye of Revelation, however, would be fine. I could pass it off as a side effect of my mask, which was pretty eye catching on its own after the changes. I told Bella I’d be using it before I triggered my observations Skill, scanning the cliffside for traps out of habit before I descended to look for the man in question.

I paused. There were…several traps on this cliff. That was odd. Maybe Chester HAD prepared for company. They looked kind of old, to be fair, so he wasn’t expecting me specifically. I glanced over them, then turned to Bella. “Second lesson, landing.” I grabbed her by the back of her coat and tossed her off the cliff.

While that might SEEM harsh, Bella’s ability was escape, which lent itself to landing just fine. I’d thrown her over the traps, and she managed to adjust in midair, landing perfectly safely (if somewhat disheveled and put out) in a small field at the bottom of the cliff.

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Double Trouble put me right behind her, and I was in time to hear her cursing me under her breath as she stared up at the illusionary copy of me on the cliff face. “Sorry.” I said calmly. “I didn’t catch that. What did you say about my mother?”

She jumped out of her skin, whirling to stare at me, then spinning back to note the now vanished illusion. “Master!” She squeaked in terror. “How? When? It’s so nice to SEE you! What a stylish and well executed descent. I was just saying your mother must be an amazing person to have given birth to such a suave and debonair master of the arts of…mountainclimbing.”

“You should work on your lying.” I informed her. “You’re terrible at it. That’s a character flaw. Lying is important. Now, what did you learn from that experience?”

She paused. “That…I need to be ready for the unexpected? Because danger could happen at any time? Was that what you were trying to teach me?”

I shrugged. “Oh I wasn’t trying to teach you anything. I just needed you down here so I could teleport. Being able to learn from any experience is certainly important though. Good for you.” I patted her on the head, ignoring the expression of horrified disbelief as I moved on. I definitely DIDN’T grin under my mask at a petty victory to pay back her incessant babbling.

To my shock, her sulking actually made her stop talking for a minute, and I peeled my eyes for any sign of…anything. I had the image of Chester in my scroll, but I’d never seen him. Still, upon searching the town as best as I could for anyone currently outside I didn’t see him, or any sign of secret buildings or anything.

Resigning myself to asking around, I decided to take a horrible risk. I asked Bella a question. “So, what’s your Path?” I realized earlier we were D-rankers, so both of us had to have Paths. I’d questioned if she had one earlier, but that had been stupid. She had to have a Path.

Her eyes brightened, her previous annoyance blown away in a storm of exuberance as she answered me quickly. “Oh, I’m on the Path of Escape! I decided to double down on my ability, that way I’d be super good at getting away. What’s your Path? It must be really strong for you to be able to do all the stuff you can do.”

DS Mastery might be a unique Skill, but Doom Sovereign itself was a very common game, especially in cult territory. Still, the less links between me and Solomon the better. “It’s complicated.” I said, brushing her off. “Has to do with my father’s infernal heritage. I won’t be teaching you my Path anyway. I’m going to teach you my staff art.”

That was something of an experiment. Theoretically, if she could practice my staff art she could learn how to use my forms. Eventually. I’d have to teach her the stances first, but the forms themselves WERE fully functional skills constructed with proper Skill construction. I should be able to teach them the same as any other Skill. My Skill was Unique, but part of the reason those were so hard to create was because you were blazing a trail no one had taken before.

If nothing else, this little experiment would help me learn more about Skill construction and legacies, which should be valuable when perfecting Skills before S-rank. Seeing how Skills (even unique Skills) could be learned and passed down should help me better understand the way bloodlines worked.

There was a small chance I couldn’t teach her, but I hadn’t ever been told Unique Skills couldn’t be learned, just that they often stalled out early because of the difficulty of development. Of course, from a Skill construction standpoint, I knew that most likely, the people making those Skills constructed them badly because they went in blind, and didn’t have the soul strength to hold it all together through the bad engineering.

Mashing Skills together like I had been, or trying to invent new ones from scratch, was undoubtedly way harder without the ability to see and study the way Skills were put together. It made me damned glad for that book I’d gotten.

We walked through town, Bella going on about her Escape Path, and me looking for any sign of our target. Finally, we came to the place I was most likely to hear something, the tavern. We stepped inside and sure enough, all conversation cut off. I strolled over to the bar, dropping a pair of E-ranked chits and asking for a drink and a meal. As the barman scurried off to make the food, a woman emerged from the back. “Haven’t seen you around here.” She said blandly as she let both hands slip under the bar.

“Haven’t been here.” I answered, my demonic voice putting all of them on edge instantly. “Just here looking for a friend. Chester Baddington.” The woman was older, maybe mid forties, and definitely an Ascendant, though only E-rank.

She glanced around. “Well, do you see him? I ain’t seen anybody like that around, how about you Lyle?” Her icy blue eyes flicked to the man seated at the bar. She ran a hand through her thick black hair, showing the streaks of grey at the temples.

Lyle the bar fly, an older man who looked fifty and was probably MUCH older given his D-rank cultivation, just shrugged. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“There.” She said triumphantly. “Doesn’t sound familiar. And Lyle would know. If he’s not here and Lyle don’t know him he’s probably not anywhere in town.” She very carefully did NOT look at the table in the middle of the room, the one with a trapped door under it that I could see with Eye of Revelation.

I shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe I’ll just eat my meal and go.”

She relaxed a bit…and then my apprentice decided to speak. “But master, Bad Millie told us he was here, if she lied we have to go back right? I don’t want to go back, that big fight with all those guys was super scary, even if I wasn’t fighting myself. I bet he’s here and they’re just lying about it!”

I closed my eyes, sighing in resignation as every person in the bar tensed up. I turned to look at Bella. “We need to have another discussion about the benefits of silence.” I said tiredly. And then I moved, pushing her out of the way of the jagged knife Lyle had drawn from his sleeve and tried to open my throat with.

My fist lashed out, battering him off the chair with an explosion of black flame as I got in front of Bella, making sure Mornax was active.

“Look.” I said bluntly. “I’m here for Chester Baddington, and I think we all know he’s in your basement. Why don’t you hand him over and this doesn’t need to get ugly. Because you’re not going to win if this turns into a fight.”

I felt my Danger Sense scream and triggered Double Trouble on reflex, only for Lyle’s knife to bisect not just my copy, but the fucking WALL behind it. I grimaced as I watched him cut the building in half on one side. That had been a technique, and a pretty nasty one too. Great.