-Urp!-

I slid an /eye Shvaughn’s way. That was her general alert that she’d just Consumed someone for some reason. -Something I should know?- I /asked her fatalistically.

-You’ll be happy to know that a certain someone was contracted for a substantial amount of money to kill Sir Pellier,- she /informed me, giving me a view of a hard-eyed, dark-eyed fellow who was now contributing to Shvuaghn’s assassination skills.

-Not sectarian?- I /asked calmly.

-This was a specific posted contract by third parties I am not aware of, with no religious bias,- she /answered blandly. Clearly, this wasn’t the first time an assassin had crossed the wrong Hungry Warlock. -However, the fixer either will be aware of them, or will know how to get the proper clues. They have to get paid, after all.-

That career was also one of the prime venues for Shoul’s followers, who held themselves as the assassin elites, regardless of the truth otherwise. Skulos might rule over death, but Shoul had influence over actual deliberate murder.

-The shot heard ‘round the Throne,- I /sighed. -Okay, let’s consider this as the Competition of Kings for America formally beginning. There’s going to be the Evil trying to remove anyone that can’t be a pawn to them, and Neutrals trying to remove the competition, both having types trying to stop everyone, while the Good will start trying to vie for attention.-

-Sir Pellier has a virtually unassailable position,- Shvaughn /assured me snarkily. -Really, who is going to grab hearts better than a Paladin?- Her opinion was like getting an automatic straw poll. She could even break it down by percentages if you liked.

-Yes, entirely by design. Do you want to leave off Windwising your Warlocks and start playing politics? If not, there are a lot of Inquisitors ready to go.-

-You know I rather specialize in exactly that kind of information gathering.- Her tone was quite whimsical about it.

-Are you willing to not destroy any souls while working with the Inquisition on this matter?-

-I reserve the absolute right to stick a Vivic knife in my Pactspace and burn away any truly annoying bastards,- she /sniffed back. -The Inquisition would love to off me too, you know.-

-You have presciently formed a situation where it is much better to tolerate you than get rid of you. As long as you don’t go about feasting on souls and preying on the innocent, you’re even quite tolerable.-

-Why thank you, my darling liege, for your expeditiously flexible morals,- she /laughed at me. -Still, I shouldn’t be announcing my discoveries to the Paladin, I trust?-

-No, he’ll insist on using mundane methods which will slow down the process. Make sure you design a coincidentally and wonderfully compelling series of clues that are going to make wonderful reports for the Inquisitors.-

-Ohhhhh, a writing challenge on top of merciless hunting of elite paid assassins. You set up the most unique objectives, my liege!- There was a unique /sound of flexing authorial muscles. -My, I haven’t written a good novel in a few decades. The Hunt for the Killers of Kings has quite a catch to it!-

-How much help are you going to need getting around?- I /inquired reasonably.

-Far less than before. It might not surprise you that I have an extensive set of Lived-Lines that I’ve been linking up since I learned of their usefulness. Waterjumping can get me to any of the continents fairly quickly, and from there any of my many Lived-Lines are going to be immediately accessible. They are QUITE extensive, as you might imagine.-

I looked at The Map, and the huge swathes of it filled in by her, dated over a span exceeding two centuries if you knew how to look at them. Attune yourself properly, and you could look at the world from many, many decades ago in The Map.

From what I deduced, Shvaughn’s original Pact had been sworn around 1800, but naturally she had Consumed people born well before that... and she had access to all their histories and Lived-Lines. Of course, Jumping magically to locations that were no longer there was unwise, but The Map was always there to verify current status and all.

‘Extensive’ didn’t quite cover it. She had literally tens of thousands of years of travel she could hook into to get to a whole lot of places. People’s lives crossing meant she could shift between Lived-Lines as readily as most people could follow their own. They all ended up in her, so they were all linked.

The Consuming Pacts really were that dangerous and powerful. I guess it was a good thing they didn’t work for Powered. Massive fast and easy power-ups by Consuming those stronger than you were in every discipline could get sick fast. If you were lucky, you could take on one Powered Class, but you’d never be able to advance further in it, so you had to be very picky about such things...

Of great usefulness to her was the Lived-Line of her Pact Patron. It admittedly jumped all over the place with Teleports disrupting them... but it went a LOT of places. Those were the primary links she was talking about.

Among other things, it also meant that she had been in and out of places before almost anyone else alive was even born. If she wanted to get into someplace that was well-guarded and not Interdicted, well, she already had the way in...

There was also the fact that she could Firejump, and wasn’t restricted by the horizon like Teleport was when doing so. It was the mechanic on how she could zero in on Legion and hop right to them out of a burst of hellfire... although their Pact connections was what gave it unlimited range.

It meant she was arranging for fires to be built at certain spots on her Lived-Lines she wanted to be able to hop to from across the world. Eternal Fires worked just as fine as natural ones, after all... and such also counted as basically permanently Energized.

A Firejump was naturally twice the range of a basic Teleport, as such didn’t require an Elemental anchor.

-Have you considered your aspirations on Queendom further?- I /inquired of her.

She /radiated dissatisfaction. -Legion says it is unwise.- And despite everything, she trusted Master Fred.

-They are correct. It paints a target on you. You cannot be a Queen in secret. The fact we are willing to keep you around does not mean that there are not some immensely powerful forces that will energetically try to get rid of you... and they will be even more merciless than you in the methods they choose to employ.-

-Annoying!- she /grumbled, as my /visualizations of some of those methods wafted over to her. Not only wouldn’t we be able to stop them, at a certain point it was not going to be worth it to keep her alive on our end.

That realization made her fall silent as she contemplated the true and vast power of those she was pissing off. Without Heaven in her corner, she didn’t have a Profound buffer, nor could she use its influence to gain greater power while fending off servitude to one of the other three Alignments.

If she went grabbing for Racial Levels outside the auspices of her Pact, she was going to be forcibly lost to the Alignments very quickly. Even the Fey were something of a strain on her cognition, and she belatedly realized that both the eight-tailed hu hsaio and the hamadryad’s status as nobles and powers among the Spirits had likely fueled this ambition to rule.

-I have to make Eternal, use the Mortal Realm as my anchor... and then I’m going to have to run, am I not?- she /asked after a long and thoughtful moment.

-Yes,- I /agreed. -At some point, planetary destruction becomes a viable means of getting rid of you. Such things take time to put into effect, of course, but it means you are going to be a walking disaster wherever you go.- She’d be pulling in all sorts of devastating influences and forces wherever she went, bringing death and ruin to all around her. Nobody would want her around, which would isolate her... and was pretty much the whole point, making her easier to kill.

Her /cursing filled our Markchat, and she was really, really good at it. I took notes at the audible vitriol she was dispensing, pure conversational alchemy, and /sent notes to The Mick for his reading pleasure.

-But they cannot reach me under the Shroud,- she finally /growled.

-To be precise, they will totally forget you exist while you are under it,- I /corrected her. -This is the main reason why you’ve been able to grow your strength so extravagantly to Ten during the past few decades... there is no Profound or Divine Forces moving against you.-

-Can I gain the power to move freely in and out from under the Shroud?- she /asked reasonably.

-That is a silly question to ask of me. Eternals can do many things, so certainly that is possible. The key thing is whether you will retain your memories. The greatest power of the Shroud is how it weighs down on the powerful. The suppression of mortals under it in comparison to what it does to Soulborn is truly minor.-

She considered that point coldly. -So, the point is to stay mortal and be able to get in and out from under the Shroud?...-

-Yes. Normally this is done by using the Shroud’s own Death Gate connections, to and from worlds that they are connecting to, but which are not actually under the Shroud... or where the connection was cut off, or the Shroud was brought down.-

-You are referring to the prior Shroudworld of Pantera. A mortal could use the Death Gate connection from here to there to escape the Shroud directly, if they are sufficiently powerful.-

-Yes. When they attempted to assault Terra-Luna, their vanguard was obliterated, and their connection was followed back to its source. Pantera was invaded and its Shroudlords destroyed. Be that as it may, it still has Death Gate connections to all the worlds it has invaded, attempted to invade... and to the world it was invaded from, while no longer being under the Shroud itself. Through those connections, mortals can move into and out of under the Shroud, and they are not subject to memory wipes.

-While I have no proof of mortal Eternals doing this, and the souls in the Shroud are silent on the matter, I believe Eternals will be subject to the same power as Immortals and the Divine. It is the primary purpose of the Shroud, after all.-

She /cursed quietly again. -Would it bind one of your Forsaken Eternals?-

-Not if their Void, Sun, or Null was high enough, no. I’m not sure how high it would need to be, however. 60, 70, 80+? That aspect of the Shroud is crazy powerful. It is literally blocking the Profound Forces and Greater Gods from being aware of this place. Only those from Outside Creation are retaining some awareness of it, and even that is limited... or the King in Yellow would not have an Avatar trapped in Tibet.-

-Boxer recommended I be the Grand Warlock of the Conflict Lands,- she /half-sniffed.

-A useful short-term job to keep yourself occupied and in the shadows. Longer-term, it’s just something to keep you busy and entertained until you realize everything is closing in and it is time to go.-

-Unless I join the Greatest Game, on my own terms.-

-Which will be difficult at the very best. The normal Warlock solution is to leave the Greatest Game.-

She hissed at that /thought. -I will not be joining the Mazakeem!- she /declared firmly.

-Surviving Outside Creation will be little easier than doing so inside it. The difference is things want to Eat you, not just kill you. The main point is that the Mazakeem do not feed on Creation, and thus Creation tolerates them.

-While the Mazakeem may collectively seem mad, we do believe they were all Warlocks once. Individually, they may be as sane as you or I. The Mazakeem is not an ‘it’, it is a ‘they’; the gathered powers of a lot of once-lesser beings who have gone Outside Creation.

-I personally posit that Creation uses them as an exterior cleansing and acquisitions force, reclaiming old and new power from outside itself to grow, and as a weapon against the Aberrant that it does not claim nor control. Be it from duty, scorn, ambition, greed, or vengeance, as long as they do what they do, Creation leaves them be. Such a collection of disparate individuals of great power in such numbers as to be what they are would indeed seem collectively mad to us...-