Dungeon Keeper Ami [Sailor Moon / Dungeon Keeper] [Story Only Thread]

[Pusakuronu]

Within a small chamber, King Ral of Nimbadnur sat at an undecorated wooden table. Across from him stood one of the various rank-and-file wizards whose name he didn't bother remembering. The hooded mage had his hands on a brightly glowing crystal ball, which projected his shadow onto the script-like wards engraved into the walls.

Both wizard and king were showing identically incredulous expressions as their eyebrows crept towards their hairlines.

"She WHAT?" Ral broke the silence as he shouted at the crystal ball in front of him.
Within the transparent orb, the image of Duke Libasheshtan cringed. "My Liege, I know it sounds unlikely-"

"Unlikely? Try impossible!" he interrupted.

"I beg your pardon, but she was able to work the adamantine," the Duke repeated his preposterous claim. "I saw it myself. You are aware of what this means, naturally."

King Ral nodded gravely. "Yes. Yes indeed." He understood perfectly that there were several possibilities, some of which he could discard due to the gold-patterned marble pillars visible behind the Duke. Since he was inside a temple, he could be neither an imposter nor an illusion, and mind control or possession could be excluded too. "It means that you were completely taken in by her deceptions, Thol!"

The Duke flinched. "My Liege, I understand that this is a tempting interpretation, but there is proof! Simply scry on the adamantine box to observe its damaged wall," he suggested.

"The box hidden under ice? The box whose interior doesn't show any damage? That box?" With each question, his voice became more acidic.

Duke Libasheshtan seemed to shrink. "The hole is under the mace that's sticking to the wall," he explained.

"Which, surprise, means it can't be seen," he replied, crossing his arms.

"It exists! The wall is punctured! It has to be! She couldn't have escaped otherwise," Duke Libasheshtan insisted.

"Unless the trap never closed properly," he pointed out dryly as he managed to regain his calm. He shouldn't direct his anger at the confused Duke, but at the monster who had caused him all this trouble. Poor Thol looked as if he had aged years in the past few hours.

"But we were completely cut off from the outside," the Duke pointed out. "Even scrying didn't work on us!"

"What's more likely, a Keeper piercing adamantine or said Keeper finding a way to block scrying?" he asked. "One who has been temporarily unscryable in the past?"

The dwarf in the crystal ball grimaced. "But I could sense the seal hardening…"

"Thol, you have to face the facts. The Dark Empress and her illusions deceived you. I'm sure that if one of the priests were to check you for magical residues, he would find quite a number of them."

"From the potions I imbibed before our confrontation," the Duke protested stubbornly, shaking his head.
The King sighed. "Enough," he said. "I do not have the time to keep arguing with you. Try to shake off Mercury's influence and don't cause any more damage," he half-ordered, half-pleaded.

"But-"

The dwarven ruler leaned heavily on his cane as he rose from his seat and addressed the wizard, "Sever the connection. You may go rest; I won't require your services in the immediate future."

"Thank you, Sire." The mage let the light within the crystal ball fade with a relieved expression. He bowed deeply, and a few beads of sweat dripped from under his hood onto the floor.

Ral turned without a word and approached the chamber's exit. He parted the jingling curtain of wards that covered the door and pulled it open, and the noise of heated discussion assaulted his ears.

"-at the limit! If I had a way to recharge the flywheels faster I'd already be using it!" Duke Alnisalath, a rather large dwarf with a greying beard shouted down at the much shorter Duke Cattenor.

Seated just to Alnisalath's left, the slender dwarf leaned away from his neighbour, grimacing as flying spittle landed in his short-cropped hair.

"You are both morons!" the rotund Duchess Ducimezar shouted as she slammed both fists onto the table, causing their goblets to jump. "Why are you discussing logistics when she can just do to our army what she did to Salthalls?"

The white-haired Duchess Lalimush stared unhappily at the wine droplets that had landed on her map. Her wrinkly hand rose and made a rude gesture in the other Duchess' direction.

At the same time, a wad of paper flew over the empty chair reserved for Duke Libasheshtan and smacked Ducimezar right in the forehead.

Duke Omerreg gave her a flat look as she turned towards him with an outraged expression, his arm still raised from his throw. "Read the damn reports, will you? Countess Zasod did-" He stopped as he noticed the King returning to the meeting. "Your Majesty," he greeted, rising from his seat.

An instant later, the four other dukes followed his example. Lined up on the side of the table closest to the readied hero gate, they stood with their heads respectfully inclined.

King Ral's gaze swept over them, lingering for a moment on the gap where Duke Libasheshtan should have been. "At ease," he said, approaching his own throne at the head of the table.

Wooden chair legs scraped over the ground as the nobles seated themselves.

"My discussion with Thol was less than satisfying," he began, absently stroking his beard. "He is physically safe within a temple-"

A few of the expressions along the table brightened.

"- yet his mind remains thoroughly compromised by whatever the Dark Empress did to him," he continued, dashing the rising hopes. "Consider him lost to the enemy for the time being."

"For someone like him to break so quickly…" Duke Alnisalath said, shaking his head sadly.

The others looked uneasy, perhaps imagining such a thing happening to them.

"That said, have you made any progress while I was occupied?" Ral asked, not expecting much after the previous display. Marshalling troops faster in response to an unforeseen catastrophe was difficult when one had already been doing so at top speed before.

To his surprise, Duke Omerreg nodded and picked up one of the scrolls before him and shoved it in his direction. One of the advantages of using the hero gates to meet in person, rather than wasting limited scrying ball capacity on communication. "In fact, this is a report on one of the leads you had us investigate. The human Baron Leopold confirms that Keeper Mercury had the opportunity to interrogate him, though he remembers no such thing happening during his kidnapping."

With a loud bang, the King's fist struck the table, making wine spill from shaking goblets once more.
"She played me for a fool!" he exclaimed in sudden anger. "She knew! She knew all along!"

"S-Sire?" Duke Alnisalath asked, looking hopelessly confused.

The King gritted his teeth. "Baron Leopold acted as the bait in the trap that killed Keeper Bartholomeus," he hissed. "Mercury knew to expect an adamantine box and incorporated it into her plans!"

Unlike his frowning fellow nobles, Duke Uzolgim looked thoughtful. With a hesitantly optimistic tone, he said, "Sire, I believe this may be good news."

Ral focused on the haggard, black-bearded Duke in surprise. "How so?"

"Don't you think it explains a lot about how she managed to pull off her attack on Salthalls?"
He met the Duke's expectant gaze with a confused look. "You may have to elaborate a little. Not everyone here has studied at a magical academy."

Uzolgim paused, his hand absently starting to adjust the clasp of his purple cloak. "Ah, yes, pardon me. Normally, a magical ritual of the observed magnitude and duration would be impossible to conduct in enemy territory, due to being too vulnerable to interruption. However, if she was expecting the adamantine trap, then she could have arrived with the intent of keeping it from closing and using it as shelter – all while keeping us blind to what was really going on!"

"That makes a disturbing amount of sense," Duke Cattenor commented.

"It's the kind of convoluted and deceitful plot she is infamous for," Duchess Ducimezar agreed grudgingly.

King Ral groaned. "So she couldn't have done it without me." He sighed and turned to Duke Uzolgim with a nod of understanding. "The bright side, then, is that she cannot do it again."

The other nobles suddenly sat straighter, as if a great burden had been lifted from their shoulders.

Duke Alnisalath pushed aside the stack of papers with drafts for evacuation strategies. "Looks like we won't be needing those."

"Wait, can we be certain she can't do it without the adamantine box?" Duke Cattenor cautioned.

"Reasonably so," Duke Uzolgim replied. "She's still busing trying to establish control over her victims. That means she couldn't do it directly with her ritual, which indicates a lack of precision – likely the need to work through a tiny gap in an impenetrable barrier."

"Well, I'm convinced," Duke Omerreg said. "Doesn't really change that we need to reach and destroy her as soon as possible."

"I still say we should attack right now!" Duke Alnisalath suggested. "The forces besieging her dungeon could take her by surprise since she's busy elsewhere!"

"Nonsense, that's completely out of the question due to her ability to turn people into monsters," Duke Cattenor objected.

"We have countermeasures! Like most people here, I actually read my paperwork,"Alnisalath said as he glowered at Duchess Ducimezar.

King Ral had skimmed the report in question. Before fleeing through a hero gate, Countess Zasod had recovered some of the adamantine wards that had been used against the invader. They provided a bubble of safety against the contaminated water, repelling it. Unfortunately, the repulsion went both ways, which made crossing larger bodies of water rather impractical.

Duke Cattenor pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation. "We can't protect the prisoners in her dungeon. If she turns them into monsters, then our besieging forces will be hopelessly outnumbered."

"Which means we are stuck with the original plan of massing our forces and hitting her with everything. Except now we need to do so before she can receive reinforcements from Salthalls," Duke Uzolgim summarised the situation.

"The railway tunnels between Salthalls and Whitemountain have already been blocked?" King Ral verified.

Duke Omerreg nodded. "Blocked, trapped, and put under observation. She won't be using our own infrastructure against us."

"Good. What's the current worst-case scenario you came up with?" the King asked. "Her flying ships? Teleportation?"

"I have given the elves access to our hero gates," Duchess Ducimezar replied. "Their wizards should be able to deal with any flying transports."

"Right. And the teleportation?" King Ral looked at Duke Uzolgim.

"She doesn't have enough warlocks to teleport a strategically relevant amount of troops," the cloak-wearing Duke replied.

"I'm glad to hear that," Ral replied.

"Wait," Cattenor said, "what if she creates more dungeons between her current one and Salthalls and then transports her minions?"

Duke Uzolgim winced "That's- it would be risky and expensive, but it's not impossible," he admitted in a chagrined voice.

"Oh, our wizards will love to hear that there's something else to look out for," Duchese Ducimezar grumbled. "They are about ready to keel over from exhaustion."

King Ral made a quick decision. "Duke Uzolgim, adjust the scrying rotation appropriately to take that threat into account. We will have to rely on the intervening villages to spot any troops travelling from Salthalls to Whitemountain." Untrained peasant militiamen might not be up to assaulting a dungeon, but detecting enemy troops near their village was within their capabilities.

"It shall be done."

He considered the most aggressive of his Dukes. "Duke Alnisalath, your troops are close enough to Duke Libasheshtan's lands to arrive this evening. You will be the vanguard of our army and secure the most likely locations her troops would have to pass through. Our highest priority for now is preventing her from linking her forces!"

---

Ami, unable to leave Salthalls without losing her local territory, had claimed one of the palace's vacant offices as her temporary workroom. The missing owner was probably a noble, given the expensive wood paneling on the walls and the size and craftsmanship of the desk. If there was anything to complain about, it was the chair's thick padding. It was so comfortable she risked dozing off if she closed her eyes and took a break.

For the moment, however, she was fully alert and concentrating on her work. Despite the outcome of her ill-fated attempt to initialise negotiations– or perhaps because of it– the dwarfs still refused to listen to her or to her representatives.

She sighed and tried to convince herself that, technically, she hadn't made her situation worse. They had already been ignoring her diplomatic efforts and trying to kill her before. What she had really lost was time during which the dwarven army continued gathering and approaching. In return, she had gained a dwarven city of dubious usefulness and a whole lot of additional complications. Nevertheless, there were enough demi-youma within Salthalls to keep her dungeon heart safe, if she could arrange for appropriate transport.

Her palmtop computer was open in front of her, showing the schematics of the large tunnelling machine she was designing. Trains were her most practical option for transferring people and materials between the two locations, but she had decided not to co-opt the dwarven railways. Potential for sabotage and roadblocks aside, none of them connected all the way to her dungeon. If she already had to create the equipment for building part of the tracks, then she might as well use it to construct a new, direct line to Salthalls.

It should be possible before the bulk of the enemy forces arrived. With a large drill coated in imp pick metal and a treasury-derived power source like the one used by her reaperbots, she was expecting her machine to dig through the underground at least at walking speeds. The distance between her dungeon and Salthalls was about 250 kilometres in a straight line, so about fifty hours of digging. If she used two machines and dug from both directions, they would meet in the middle in a little more than a day. Enough time for her to design a room blueprint for laying tracks, as well as the trains themselves. In addition, Jadeite was testing a few ideas for helping out with his glamour.

Best of all, she could potentially get away with this before the dwarfs noticed, as long as all the work happened in complete darkness to protect it from scrying. She should provide a distraction, too. Sabotaging their railways to slow down their approach would work, and perhaps she could use her airships to-

"My Empress? Pardon the interruption, but I have run out of test subjects," a mental message from Monteraine derailed her train of thought.

That, at least, was a problem she could solve quickly. She shifted her Keeper sight to a tiny hatchery back at her dungeon. Hens and yellow-feathered chicks scrabbled in the dirt of the square pit, their heads bobbing up and down as they gobbled up the unearthed worms and maggots.

Mentally apologizing to the unsuspecting birds, she forced a spell into the pit's wards crushing it into chaotic mana, and then added a trickle of Metallia's power to the mix.

Replicating the calamity that had befallen Salthalls on a small, controlled scale wasn't difficult, but she disliked the need for animal experimentation. The dense, black fog streaked with rainbow colours spread through the tiny hatchery, and the contented clucking turned into disturbing pops and screeches.

She zoomed her Keeper sight in on the empty cages lined up on Monteraine's lab table. One by one, she transported the mutated chickens into the metal containers.

Immediately, the vaguely bird-shaped monstrosities started throwing themselves against the bars.

The clattering alerted the black-haired sorceress, who glanced over. A pleased smile appeared on her face. "Thank you, your Majesty," she said, addressing the air above the cages. "Would you like a progress report?"

"Yes, please," Ami replied. A single glance at Monteraine told her why the chickens were trying to escape.

The older woman was wearing an apron covered in blood over her barely-there dress and holding a crimson-stained cleaver. From her other hand dangled a dead mutant chicken, held by one of its four legs. Its left wing was smaller than its right, and stitches surrounded it, clearly visible through the plucked gap in the corpse's plumage.

Without looking, the sorceress carelessly tossed the dead chicken towards a large waste bin, where the salivating goblin inside caught it.

"Very well. So far, replacing mutated body parts with healthy organs has been a complete success," she said, "in as far as there were zero incidences of the transplants becoming contaminated. Long-term survival rates are still unknown, though they don't look good for the current batch of test subjects. I didn't check for compatibility in order to get faster results. "

That didn't bode well for the unconscious birds in the cages stacked against the wall. Ami regretfully made a note to have their suffering ended quickly. Perhaps their original purpose of ending up as some creature's meal would have been a kinder fate. "That's… that's valuable knowledge, but we have neither enough surgeons nor spare body parts for this to be an applicable solution," she informed Monteraine.

The sorceress shrugged. "Regeneration could solve that problem." She paused. "And provide some surgery practice too," she added, sounding thoughtful.

That conjured up a whole lot of disturbing scenarios. "Youma do slowly regenerate on their own when provided with enough magic," she pointed out. "They wouldn't need transplants."

Monteraine shook her head. "Of course, your Majesty, but the amputated parts grew back wrong for about half of my regenerating test subjects." Her expression turned contemplative. "My current theory is that the cuts were simply in the wrong place, passing through subtly contaminated tissue. In that case, just trying again in other spots once the subject has sufficiently recovered might work." She made a few enthusiastic chopping motions with her cleaver.

Ami paled and was suddenly glad that Monteraine wasn't anywhere near any unfortunate dwarfs. "I would prefer a less invasive solution. Depending on the location of the infected body parts, removing them would be fatal."

"A fair point," the sorceress agreed. "I admit I'm curious about whether or not I'm having more success with this than the Light priests."

"Well, they don't seem to have any trouble curing the corruption-induced insanity," she replied. "Unfortunately, my sister's idea doesn't seem to work as well as I had hoped. The basic idea of the youma's shape being influenced by its self-image is valid, as far as I can tell with animals."

At least, the fully youmafied chickens she had delivered to the dwarven temple had turned into proud, formidable-looking birds, which she considered a good sign. Of course, an issue remained that complicated her evaluation.

"However, mutated youma flesh – as opposed to healthy, normal youma flesh – stays mutated even when the youma's shape changes. Fortunately, their bodies are adaptable and can work around the mutations so this doesn't kill them." She paused. "For as long as they don't get turned back to normal."

"They can already turn them back to normal?" Monteraine blurted out, sounding almost offended.

"Yes, the dwarven priests have a ritual that exorcises dark magic, which returns the youmafied parts to their original state," Ami elaborated. "It's somewhat similar to one of Jadeite's Glamour spells running out of power." However, she wasn't as elated as she should have been about that discovery. Her stomach lurched as she remembered the outcomes so far. "But it only works on the youmafied parts. Healthy flesh and mutated bits – they don't get moved into proper alignment or changed to fit, and, well, the result is rather messy."

Monteraine nodded along, mollified. "How intriguing! Could I – no, wait, the goal is having more troops." For a moment, she looked disappointed before her expression turned confident. "Actually, I believe one of the possibilities I'm looking into could be an expedient solution for this problem." With a few deft steps, she walked over to an alcove and pulled aside the curtain separating it from the rest of the lab.

Its green-skinned occupant started and looked up from the necromantic tome resting on the pedestal in front of her. Landra brushed a strand of cyan hair out of her face as her button-like purple eyes focused on Monteraine.

"Continue with your studies," the sorceress told her.

The youma looked puzzled, but nodded and resumed reading.

Ami was a little surprised to find Landra here, but after a moment of thought and a quick look at the page, she approved of her learning some healing spells. Landra currently didn't have any special abilities of her own, unless being attractive by human standards counted. Upon closer inspection however, she spotted something horribly wrong with the elf-looking woman's left earlobe.

A small, bumpy tendril the size of a caterpillar dangled from the bottom of the large, triangular ear like a wriggling earring.

"Monteraine, what's that mutation? Are you experimenting on her?" Some anger was seeping into Ami's voice. "You were explicitly forbidden from harming anyone!"

Monteraine stiffened. "G-general Jadeite volunteered her since she's not good for much else! Besides," her tone steadied, "there's no harm done. It's an earlobe. Completely irrelevant to her overall health. People get them pierced for cosmetic reasons all the time." She waved the hand holding her cleaver dismissively, causing Landra to flinch as a droplet of blood flew towards her.

Ami breathed in deeply, trying to remain calm. The explanation made some twisted sense, even if it was against the spirit of her orders. The harm done was certainly insignificant when compared to her current problems, so she could overlook it for the moment. "For future reference, you are not to perform any experiments on non-animal test subjects. Now, what did you want to show me?"

Monteraine bowed her head. "Of course, my Empress. At first, I was planning to see if a youma could exert enough conscious control over her body to move the mutation."

Landra nervously eyed the cleaver as Monteraine waved it back and forth between her earlobe and the tip of the ear.

"But then, I noticed something interesting. Regular test subjects are just a confusing mishmash of various degrees of mutation and youmafication all blending into each other. I couldn't even begin to guess what their healthy state would look like, let alone try to heal them. However, with a full youma, it's actually pretty simple to tell what's wrong. The remaining mutations stand out similar to wounds or foreign tissue. This should make them susceptible to treatment with regular healing spells."

Ami perked up. If she turned the victims into full youma and had them healed of their mutations, then the priests should be able to turn them back to normal without complications. "How long would it take for a competent healer to remove someone's mutations?" she asked, considering the logistics.

Monteraine shrugged. "It completely depends on their extent, complexity, and location. Could be a few hours for mild cases, but most would probably take a week or more."

"Oh." Ami slumped in her seat, disappointed. Even if she assumed that all of the dwarven priests had been safe in their temples and were willing and able to help with the healing, there were around thirty thousand patients to treat. It would take years to cure everybody.

"Is that too slow? We could always just chop the mutated bits off." Monteraine pointed with her cleaver at Landra again.

The youma backed away and covered her ear protectively. "What? No cutting!"

"Oh, don't be such a cry-baby! You can grow it back! There's nothing to complain about!"

"It would still hurt!" Landra shot back, glowering at the dark sorceress.

"That falls under not being allowed to harm anyone, Monteraine! No amputations!" Ami reprimanded her, disturbed by her enthusiasm.

The sorceress seemed to shrink as her shoulders slumped. "As you wish. In that case, I have a question that may be relevant."

"Yes?"

"When you transform a test subject into a youma, can you aim towards a desired outcome?"

Ami paused. Could she influence the resulting youma's form? So far, she had simply been flooding the mutated chickens with Metallia's power until they turned into full youma. "The possibility hadn't occurred to me yet," she answered even as she decided to ask for Jadeite's advice on the subject. "Why?"

Monteraine smiled. "Oh, I have an idea that could work…"

 

[Pusakuronu]

Someone was insistently knocking on the temple's door hard enough to rattle its stained glass window, and showed no intention of stopping.

Gnashing his teeth at the thought of the centuries-old artwork taking damage, Brother Momuz rushed over, unlocked the door, and yanked it open. He breathed in deeply, ready to unleash a tirade about respecting priceless masterworks on the offender.

A bright light shone right into his eyes, forcing him to squint at the grossly obese visitor who was wearing a yellow helmet with a lamp in its centre. No, wait, it was actually just an imp standing behind a large metal pot.

The only reason he didn't slam the door in its ugly face was that it probably would resume knocking.

"Oh. Another delivery?" Sister Tosid's voice came from behind him.

With a metallic screech, the pot slid forwards as the imp kicked it over the threshold.

Momuz barely managed to pull his sandaled feet away before the heavy cooking utensil could slam into his toes.

The pot came to a rest but continued shaking on its own.

He glowered at it, and then at the imp, deeply unhappy with the situation. "Is that another chicken? Why is it in a pot? The previous ones were in wicker baskets!"

The imp tilted her head aside and stared at him with her large, pitch black eyes. A moment later, she fished a large scroll from her backpack. Baring her teeth in a mischievous smile, she ignored his extended hand and threw it at his face.

He made a startled noise as the roll of paper bounced off his head. Before he could complain, the imp was already running off.

Snickering, she crossed the bridge leading over the decorative pond outside and hopped over the line of colourful discharges where holy ground held off the expansion of the dungeon beyond.

"Brother Momuz, are you all right?" Sister Tosid asked from close behind him, sounding worried.

He let the angry scowl fade from his face. "Yes, yes, I'm simply annoyed by that vile little creature." He opened the scroll and added in a resigned voice, "Let's see what this says."

At least the handwriting was neat and easily readable. Nevertheless, he paled and swallowed. "It's from the Dark Empress herself. Says she personally modified the chicken in that pot."

Sister Tosid nervously tugged on her sleeves and lowered her voice, "Is- is it really acceptable to do this? It feels…"

"Treasonous?" he completed her sentence with a dark look. "We do have orders from the Duke himself to find a cure using all available resources."

She looked at the ground. "Yes, I know, but it kind of feels like skirting the edges of the law," she admitted.

"We will simply have to trust in his judgement and in the Light. He was here in the temple, so he shouldn't be under outside influences," he replied. However, he secretly mirrored her concerns. There was no denying the fact that some degree of collusion with the Dark Empress was happening.

For the sake of the victims disfigured by Mercury's magic, he could temporarily set aside his concerns about the lawfulness of a investigating a potential cure. Helping them would be worth it, even if relying on a Keeper's aid made him feel as if he needed to scrub himself clean. Besides, he didn't actually dare to refuse her requests, especially since he'd soon have to worry about food…

They carried the pot past the pews and close to the large altar that vaguely resembled a huge anvil covered in gems and gold-filled engravings. It was the safest spot for experiments, as evil magic would be greatly weakened in its presence.

He placed the pot down within the tiny pen made from overturned pews that they had used for previous chicken experiments, and shook his head when Sister Tosid reached for the lid. "The note says to read all of the instructions before beginning, so let's see. Huh."

He waved her closer as he quietly read the key points out loud. "Only cure insanity when subject is fully healed… it has redundant organs… it regenerates lost mass…" His eyebrows shot upwards as he reread the words before him. "The thing is liquid?"

The female priest blinked and looked into the pen. "Wait, that's a pot of chicken soup?"

The container rocked and shook, making clanging noises.

"Very angry chicken soup," she amended.

He finished reading the note and put his hands on the lid. "Aside from the delayed insanity cure, we can use almost the same procedure as before. The only weird thing is that we are supposed to chase the creature around a bit until it has left behind all of its solid parts."

"That sounds simple enough," Sister Tosid said, though the dubious look she was giving the limited room within the pen somewhat contradicted her statement.

"Well, no choice but to give it a try." He unscrewed the lid with a deft motion.

At the pot's bottom rested a reddish, transparent liquid with irregular chunks and veins suspended within. It went unnaturally still the moment light fell on it. An instant later, it contracted into a ball shape and launched itself upwards.

He yanked his head backwards, too slow to avoid the gross, slimy liquid splashing all over his face.

"Ah, I suppose straining the chunks out with your beard works too?" Sister Tosid commented with a nervous laugh.

Momuz clawed at his beard ineffectually as his fingers simply passed through the liquid. "Less terrible jokes, more help!"

"Right! By the Light, sleep peacefully!" she intoned, and a tendril of blue light snaked through the air, connecting her index finger with the slime on his face.

The thing went limp and stretched out into a long, sticky thread as it flopped unto the floor. Somehow, it stayed in one piece even as it splashed into a shape that reminded him of a splatter of vomit.

He grimaced, all too aware of the wobbly chunks left behind in his beard. The sensation made him shudder in disgust. The weight of the fleshy tumours and root-like tendrils lessened as part of the dirt disintegrated into dust. Unfortunately, some blood and bits of offal remained behind. "Urk, the smell!" he complained, feeling bile rise in his throat.

The slime on the ground undulated slowly, presumably still asleep.

While Momuz was wringing out his beard, Sister Tosid had procured a mop and started shoving around the viscuous ooze. The liquid held together well, leaving no droplets behind. However, the solid bits and pieces that swam within gradually stuck to the floor and came loose.

"Do you think the solid stuff is mutated tissue that didn't transform properly?" she asked, watching the deteriorating remains.

"That would make sense," Momuz agreed as he used his sleeve like a washcloth. He frowned at the mostly inert slime on the ground. "I'm more concerned about that thing's pustules though. Ugh."

Ugly boils and bumps were growing on the ooze's surface, giving it a diseased and plagued look.

Sister Tosid instinctively edged away even though there was no realistic chance of contagion, given the altar's proximity. "It might be growing back lost mass?" she guessed after a moment.

"Regenerating on its surface, rather than where it was hurt?" Momuz asked, dubious.

She shrugged. "Well, it's a liquid. I don't see any wounds, so it probably doesn't care where it lost stuff."

He paused as he considered the idea, and then threw up his hands in disgust. "Bah, I don't even want to consider how much magic is necessary for that thing to stay alive."

The slime in question eventually stopped looking sickly as its surface smoothed out.

Sister Tosid used her mop to slosh the monster around some more, but there weren't any more pieces coming off.

"I think it's ready," Momuz said. "Do you want to do the honours?"

"After you," Sister Tosid declined. "I'm still un-slimed and would like to remain that way," she added, sounding slightly smug.

He looked down at his stained vestments and hands, grumbled, but accepted her logic. He squatted down, hands glowing as he muttered a diagnosis spell and poked the oozy puddle.

The liquid felt surprisingly warm, and apparently suffered from extreme exhaustion. Its anatomy was utterly incomprehensible but alive.

He could feel the mostly water-flavoured magic holding it together. There was also an uncomfortably large helping of evil, ice, and corruption mixed in.

Shuddering in revulsion, he watched his healing magic stir up the insides of the being, moving liquefied parts to different locations for reasons he couldn't discern. "It's done," he announced when he sensed that there was nothing more for him to do.

"Well, time to restore its sanity, then," Sister Tosid said as she proceeded to sweep the slime into a bucket. Carefully, she raised the container up onto the altar and inclined it until a tendril of liquid dribbled down onto the consecrated surface.

The bucket in her hand shook as the tendril whipped back into the main mass and the slime woke. With a loud slurping sound, the ooze rose and sculpted itself into the shape of a chicken. The transparent, red-tinted bird peered over the buckets edge curiously, wobbling with each jerky move of its head.

Both priests looked at each other and joined hands, ready to exorcise the evil magic afflicting the creature.

Oily black streaks shot out of the bird and burnt with a bright flash. With bulging eyes, the chicken wobbled and stretched, and then it fell over.

"Did it work?" Sister Tosid asked as she stared down at the feathery, normal looking bird in the bucket.

Momuz reached down and grabbed the hen, who feebly batted her wings. The light of a diagnosis spell seeped from in between his fingers. "It feels healthy enough," he concluded in a disbelieving tone. "There's a few remaining issues, but nothing life threatening. Some more healing spells and she'll be fine."

There was a delighted squeal from Sister Tosid. "It's a working cure? Oh, oh, I can handle the rest, I'm not feeling as drained as usual!"

"Maybe that's because it was already in the right shape?" he speculated, also feeling elated by their success.

However, Sister Tosid suddenly froze and paled dramatically. "W-wait, one of us will have to meet with the Dark Empress to report this, correct?"

---

The echoing boom of an explosion shook the underground. Moments later, a thin jet of water burst from the curved rock ceiling, ripping loose a chip of stone. It bounced off the boring machine below with a metallic ping, barely audible over the noise of the drill. Rock groaned, and water gushed everywhere as the cracks widened. Within moments, larger stones rained down on the train-sized machine, their impacts hard enough to knock it out of alignment. Water was already pooling around its wheels when the ceiling caved in completely, crushing the engine under rock and flooding the tunnel.

Ami's view of the ruined machine was lost as her last imp teleported out of the area. Instead, she saw the narrow corridor she had been walking through for the last twelve hours. It ended only a few steps ahead of her, but an imp was digging through the rock at the same pace she was advancing. A second worker was claiming the newly excavated space, producing brief flashes of aquamarine light that revealed two more imps fortifying the walls.

"My apologies, your Majesty," Torian's voice intruded into Ami's thoughts. In her Keeper sight, he was glowering at a crystal ball that showed mud-covered dwarven soldiers high-fiving each other near a small village. "We were expecting their attack closer to the stream up ahead. There was an unpredicted aquifer, and with us not knowing the positions of their hero gates-"

"Don't worry about it," she interrupted. "Successfully defending a tunnel outside of my dungeon's area of influence was unlikely to begin with," she assured him.

Which explained why she was down here in a tiny dark corridor so deep underground that sweat turned into steam from the ambient heat. Her imps could claim territory up to sixty kilometres out from her dungeon heart or from herself. Thus, by travelling said distance from Salthalls towards Highroot Mountain, she almost doubled the length of the tunnel section that was part of her dungeon territory while still maintaining her claim on the city.

The dwarfs knew that she was moving, of course. She had detected multiple attempts to scry on her so far, but she didn't think her opponents would attack her directly. Why commit forces merely to chase her away when it was harder than assaulting her new railway tunnels?

Case in point, they had gone for the tunnelling machine currently outside the borders of her territory. It implied that they understood Keeper distance limitations and could somehow detect her – admittedly noisy - digging operations.

Without Keeper transport, her ability to deploy defenders was limited to having youma teleport them in, especially if she wanted to avoid damaging the tunnel. A few ice golems couldn't really do much against a more numerous enemy willing to bypass them in order to damage her equipment first.

She hoped the dwarfs were satisfied with their easy victory. After all, she didn't want them to keep looking and finding the second boring machine digging a tunnel at a greater depth than the first. The noise of the collapsed tunnel above flooding should mask the sounds of its drill. If the dwarfs found it anyway – well, they would be surprised when they encountered its defences.

The ice golem body she possessed kept moving on its own, carefully putting one foot in front of the other and brushing its left hand against the wall in order to maintain uninterrupted contact with her claimed territory. This allowed her to focus her attention on working remotely.

She looked up a map, taking note of her current location and updating the positions of her boring machines. "Jadeite?" she contacted the dark general mentally. "You can drop the glamours; one of my tunnels has been spotted."

"Understood. We are proceeding to the critical phase, then?"

"Yes. Please make sure the civilians stay calm, this will be an unfamiliar experience for them," she told him.

---

At the top of Highroot Mountain, the airships anchored to the looming citadel fell out of the rainy sky one after the other. Their huge, elongated silhouettes came apart from the top, canvas flaking away as if it was burning up. The metal ribs underneath shattered as the vessels started to fall, breaking up into smaller and smaller pieces. Remnants of the gondolas disappeared last, leaving only the anchor chains to plummet into the depths.

Baron Sodnil grinned widely has he lowered his telescope. "Impressive work!" he complimented as he gave the slender man standing next to him a pat on the back that made him stagger. "Much faster than last time!"

The tanned, shivering and pointy-eared elf caught his balance and turned to face him with a puzzled expression. "But, but we didn't do anything?" he said, sniffling as he pulled his fur coat tighter around himself.

"What?" Baron Sodnil furrowed his brow and stared back up at the tower of black stone that remained bereft of its airship fleet. He turned back to the elf, but the bunker's door flew open at that moment.

A scout burst into the room and shouted, "Illusions, my Lord! They were illusions!"

The Baron whirled to face the panting dwarf clad in a rain-drenched hooded leather cloak. "Illusions? The flying ships weren't real?" he asked even as his hackles rose. Had the enemy not only managed to dig a tunnel, but also to smuggle out troops right under his nose?

The scout stared at him with his mouth open, a small puddle of rainwater forming around his feet in the sudden silence. "I don't know anything about no ships, my Lord," he said after a moment. "I'm talking about the monsters!"

"What? Explain!" Baron Sodnil disliked not knowing what was going on. He had the sinking feeling that he would dislike finding out even more.

"The enemy troops! They just disappeared along with the dungeon's fog! There's nobody down there!"

"That doesn't make any sense! They must be hiding, because…" He stopped as he caught movement in the distance from the corner of his eye and whirled to face the window.

The stone tower on the mountaintop was melting away like wax in a blacksmith's forge. Occasionally, something sparkled like gold in the runny mass that was evaporating into nothingness.

Baron Sodnil paled as he put the pieces of the puzzle together. As expected, his horrifying conclusion didn't make him any happier. He grabbed the elven wizard by the arm and rushed towards the door. "RUN! RETREAT! ALL TROOPS, GET OUT OF HERE NOW! Away from the mountain!" he shouted at the top of his lungs.

He hoped he was wrong. In that case, abandoning his position here was likely a career-ending mistake. If he was right, however, then the Dark Empress had just emptied out her dungeon and left herself defenceless. Which meant she was about to blow them all up with some kind of huge, indiscriminate attack before they could take advantage. Dungeon hearts couldn't move, after all.

---

A vehicle resembling a cylindrical tank cart slowly advanced through the new railway tunnel. It was far larger than a regular train cart, big enough that it needed to use both of the parallel tracks, and its many wheels groaned under the weight of its armour.

Flexible rubber tentacles as wide as a man's torso protruded from the sides of the self-propelled machine, giving it a caterpillar-like appearance. Some stuck to the walls, elongating as the vehicle advanced, while others remained loose.

Whenever one of the taut tendrils was stretched close to the snapping point, one of the escorting imps ran down its length and dug its pick into the block of ice that kept it attached to the wall. At the same time, other imps would rush ahead of the machine carrying one of the loose tentacles and press it against the tunnel's surface. One freezing spell later, the formerly loose appendage was firmly connected to the masonry, and the imp performed a claiming dance on the ice block.

King Ral let out a long sigh, his breath streaming over the cold surface of the crystal ball and causing it to fog over. "So," he said, turning towards his assembled Dukes. "That dungeon heart is moving while still maintaining a connection to its territory. As far as we can tell, all of Keeper Mercury's assets from Whitemountain are currently within the unfinished tunnel. Suggestions?"

Duke Alnisalath shuffled awkwardly. "They are only moving at a brisk walking pace. I've managed to get troops in position, but they can't get in. She fortifies the tunnel walls with steel wherever someone tries to break in."

Duke Omerreg shuffled his papers, nodding his head. "Oh. Yes. Naturally, she can afford to do so after plundering Salthall's treasures. What a disaster."

"Is there any chance we can amass enough troops in time to successfully intercept her?" the king asked.

"Effectively impossible as of roughly an hour ago," Duke Uzolgim stated drily. He raised his hand to pre-empt Duchess Lalimush when she looked as if she was about to contradict him. "I can state this confidently without even considering our own logistics. The area of influence extending from her own body and that from her dungeon heart will be touching before we can get in position. At that point, she can reinforce any breach with troops from Salthalls."

King Ral seemed to shrink as he let himself drop onto his throne. "Damn it all. What are we supposed to do now?"

 

[Pusakuronu]

The underground train station resembled a widened tunnel section, its greater diameter offering enough room for four parallel tracks under the curved ceiling. Two of them, both occupied by one stationary train each, were dead ends. On the other two, the short, armoured wagon that carried the dungeon heart rumbled past. It slowly descended into a tunnel that led deeper underneath Salthalls. From the ceiling descended a steel gate as thick as a man's torso and sealed the passage, muffling the sound of the thunderous heartbeats that emanated from the wagon.

Meanwhile, the occupants of the other trains continued disembarking and moving towards a much larger, rectangular hall that merged with the enlarged tunnel at a right angle.

An open hatch as wide as a barn door revealed a crouching dragon squeezed into a compartment. Its large, scaly head emerged from wagon onto the crowded platform, prompting a few startled cries from orcs and goblins who had to jump aside. The head on top of a sinuous neck swung left and right like a pendulum as the dragon gawked at his surroundings, jostling some of the passers-by.

A goblin, pushed over by the impact, started to complain before she squeaked in fright and rolled aside. A clawed foot stepped down close to where she had been, and the entire wagon started tilting sideways as the dragon shifted his weight. About halfway emerged onto the platform, he suddenly froze as his eyes were drawn to the brightly lit balcony set high in the reception area's back wall.

Ami was watching her disembarking underlings from a throne framed by attention-grabbing blue banners that cascaded down the wall. She heard the indistinct muttering from below become louder and more irritated when the dragon stopped. Her troops didn't appreciate being cooped up in a train for hour and hours, and they didn't hesitate to loudly voice their frustration when somebody blocked the way.

"Mercury! Jered!" Cathy's voice distracted her. The blonde swordswoman emerged from a door in the back that led to the staircase. Winded from the long climb, she was breathing heavily, but that didn't slow her down at all when she threw herself into the arms of the brown-haired man standing close to Mercury's throne.

"Glad to see you too," he replied as he returned the hug.

Cathy let go after a moment and turned towards Ami, her smile giving way to a raised eyebrow. "I'm surprised you are here already. I thought you would be arriving once your dungeon heart was settled in."

"Oh, I had it stop for a moment when it was close enough to the city to maintain my territory in order to transport myself," Ami explained. "That's why the trains slowed down for a short time."

"Ah, I must have slept through that," Cathy replied.

"Lucky you," Jered sighed. The wavy bangs hanging into his face couldn't hide the dark circles under his eyes. "I can't believe I'm now wishing that I had travelled trapped in a small box filled with horrible monsters instead of one full of children." He raised his arm, swung it slowly in Ami's direction, and pointed a finger at her. "It's your fault my life stopped making sense!" he whined teasingly.

Ami shrunk back a little and blinked at him. "I, um, I suppose children can get a little excitable when they are bored?"

"Or when the walls suddenly start rushing past at insane speeds," he commented.
He was referring to the second half of the trip, when the slow tunnelling machines had met up and moved out of the way. At that point, her trains had finally been able to move at full speed down the finished tunnel, becoming too fast for the dwarfs to threaten them.

"Once the kids stopped being terrified, they became curious. So did their parents," Jered continued, shaking his head with a pained expression. "So many, many, many questions."

Behind him, Cathy put a hand over her mouth as she tried not to laugh. "Speaking of questions, Mercury, is there a particular reason why you are personally supervising your troops' arrival?" she asked, her tone becoming more business-like.

"Yes. I want to make sure that they are really paying attention when I lay down some ground rules," Ami replied. She was particularly worried about the goblins and their short attention spans.

There was a loud clanging noise as a reaperbot walked into the railing of one of the bridges leading across the tracks. Case in point.

Cathy nodded approvingly. "It's certainly going to make more of an impression coming from you than from me." She paused. "Do you want the vampire bats out of their crate for this?"

Ami hesitated. "I actually have no idea how they will interact with the aquifer above. Best to keep them as bats until we figure it out," she decided.

"I see. I'll have to adjust the guard shifts and rotations accordingly." Cathy reached into her backpack and pulled out a few sheets of papers with rows and columns covered in her handwriting. She held them out to Ami. "Here, let me know if there's anything else you want changed."

Ami read through the detailed schedules and occasionally made suggestions, usually where the allocation of warlocks to scrying and research tasks was concerned. It took long enough that the trains had emptied and its occupants assembled below the balcony when she was done.

She handed the papers back to Cathy, took a deep breath, and stood. Hoping she could convince her troops to behave, she approached the railing with an expression she had copied from one of her stricter teachers.

On the ground floor, the crowd had split into several groups that were idly chatting among themselves, separated mostly by species. The orcs with their pink skins and bright white manes stood out almost as much as the four towering dragons. Green was the predominant colour, as goblins, followed by trolls, were her most numerous minions. The tentacle monsters were looking a little ill too, adding even more green tones than usual to the sea of bodies. Colourful warlock robes contrasted sharply with everything else, making them the most distinguishable of the human and near-human employees. Recognizing at a distance whether a slender figure dressed in leather was a dark mistress or a dark elf proved much harder.

The chattering died down when Ami approached the railing, and she tried not to let her unease show as hundreds of eyes focused on her. "Everyone, welcome to Salthalls," she greeted, her voice boosted by a simple spell. "Food, drink, and comfortable beds are waiting for you, so I'll keep this short."

The crowd produced a few cheers and a mutter of general approval.

"First, there will be no looting and pillaging," she declared.

The hundreds of faces staring up at her lost their cheerful expressions, and the excited atmosphere gave way to a disappointed silence.

"That's bullshit!" someone protested in a gravelly voice.

Ami had been expecting some opposition and turned her head to stare directly at the orc who had spoken up. "Is that so?" she asked. He wasn't hard to pick out of the masses. Those with more developed survival instincts had immediately stepped away from him upon hearing his shout.

His eyes widened in surprise as he suddenly found himself isolated, surrounded by a ring of unsympathetic faces and expectant grins. His head darted left and right like that of a trapped animal looking for an escape route before he dropped to his knees. "I didn't mean to-"

"Strange," Ami interrupted him, her voice drowning out his own. "I don't remember seeing you here while I conquered this city."

The orc whimpered as she kept staring at him for several seconds.

Finally, she moved her gaze away from him and swept it over the crowd, trying to make eye contact with as many of her underlings as possible. "I'll keep this very simple. I," she pointed her thumb at her chest with a wide gesture, "conquered the city. I claimed it. It is mine."

This time, there were no protests from the crowd. Some were nodding nervously.

"You don't get to steal my things," she continued. "You don't get to destroy my things." She made sure to keep frowning while she swept her gaze over her listeners once more, waiting for her words to sink in. "Thus, no plundering and no pillaging. You will, however, be paid a victory bonus!"

A few goblins jumped and thrusted their fists in the air while shouts of approval echoed through the room. The warlocks reacted to her announcement with polite clapping, as well as a stray jet of fireworks from a staff.

Ami pretended she didn't notice the orc she had singled out slink away during the commotion. She raised her hands and made a shushing gesture. "Next point," she shouted, and the noises died down. "There are still temples of the Light active in the city."

A few bloodthirsty shouts came from below. One troll bounced his hammer against the ground rhythmically, producing a metallic drumming noise, and a few goblins chanted, "Burn! Burn! Burn!"

"You will leave them alone," Ami ordered loudly. "Ignore them. They are useful to me."

Confused looks and gaping mouths revealed misshapen teeth Ami would have preferred not seeing. A moment later, the monsters started exchanging looks to see what the others thought of that revelation.

Before the grumbling could start, she stretched her lips into a wide grin, trusting more in the lighting to hide its fake nature than in her acting skills. "For now." She added in a flat tone, as if it was the punchline to a joke.

A ripple of understanding went through the crowd, and the tension dissipated as creatures chuckled.

"Finally, the other inhabitants of the city," she said, relieved about clearing another hurdle. "If you spot strange creatures you don't recognise, then avoid them. Most are insane, and many have strange powers you can't handle. They are bound to my dungeon heart, so just leave them be. They are not your problem."

Her underlings shrugged or nodded, but aside from a few intrigued looking warlocks, they seemed to accept her words.

"Told you that phrasing would work," Jered whispered. "Imply that youma-wrangling is dangerous extra work, and your minions will lose all interest."

Ami internally agreed with his assessment, but didn't visibly react because she was still addressing her audience. "Likewise, if you see dwarfs, don't attack them. They, too, are mine. In fact, don't attack anything that doesn't attack you first. That will keep you out of trouble."

A few of her employees looked a little apprehensive but didn't voice their objections.

"If that makes you uneasy, just remember that anyone who isn't supposed to be here has to first get past thousands of mutated dwarfs to reach you," she dismissed their concerns. "That's all I wanted to tell you. Now go to your new quarters, celebrate and rest!" She swung her arm to the side, and the large portcullis blocking the exit swung open. "Just follow the very obvious signposts!"

"Oh, you learned from a certain general who was unwilling to ask for directions?" Jered commented with a grin.

"Wait, Jadeite got lost guiding the civilians to their quarters?" Cathy asked.

The dark general had arrived with the rescued villagers at Salthalls a few hours ago. Their trains could move faster than the slow, armoured dungeon heart transporter, and sending them ahead of the troops had simplified the disembarking process.

"You were with him, Jered," Ami sighed as she walked back to her throne and let herself drop onto it. She closed her eyes and massaged her forehead. To be fair, she found it hard to navigate the maze-like tunnels and alleys too, and she had a complete map of the place in her head. "I'd have sent an imp to guide you earlier if you had just contacted me."

"Well, excuse me for being busy keeping people from wandering off and for expecting him to actually know what he was doing. Besides, the civilians seemed to enjoy the sightseeing tour," he replied with a shrug. "Dwarven architecture is quite something."

Ami nodded with a weak smile. "It certainly is. I'm hoping to have a closer look myself once I have a little free time."

"Say, when was the last time you had a rest?" Cathy asked with a concerned expression. "You look as if you are having trouble keeping your eyes open."

Ami straightened. "I'm awake. Just dealing with placing the dungeon heart as we talk," she explained.

"That doesn't really answer my question," the swordswoman noted as she put her arms akimbo.

"Well, it was…" Ami trailed off. When had she last slept? Not today, not yesterday. The day before, perhaps? That seemed wrong, too. "I'm fairly sure it hasn't been longer than a week yet," she admitted after a moment.

"Right. Go to bed," Cathy told her. "If there was an urgent crisis right now, you wouldn't have given the troops some time off."

"The dwarfs-"

"Won't be catching up with us for at least a day or two," the blonde interrupted. "More than a week at least until they can bring a force large enough to pose a credible threat."

"Besides, I don't think they will bother us down here," Jered commented, shaking his head. "Strategically, it's not worth the risk. The city is already lost, its main export is rock salt, and there's no Underworld portal around. Mercury won't be getting any stronger if they let her keep it. On the other hand, an assault would have at best even odds to retake a dead city in exchange for losing most of their military."

"I think so too," Ami agreed easily. Assuming – as her opponents would - that she used the youmafied citizens as defenders, she would have close to forty thousand soldiers. Nimbadnur could field less than three times that, which would make assaulting a fortified dungeon a costly and desperate proposition. They'd also have to worry about her just turning the invaders into more mutants.

Jered scratched his head. "Then what's there to be concerned about? Assassins sneaking in?"

"Famine," Ami replied. "This city is a major population centre, but the vast majority of the dwarfs live in the countryside. The closest villages have already been abandoned, and more people will flee when the news that Salthalls has fallen spreads. I doubt the surrounding Duchies have enough food reserves to handle a massive wave of refugees."

Cathy and Jered fell quiet for a moment, shifting uneasily.

"That's- that's an unpleasant thought," the swordswoman said after a moment, crossing her arms. "But can you really do something about it?"

"At the risk of sounding callous, it's not your job to deal with it," Jered pointed out. "In fact, any dwarfs you take an interest in will just run away harder. This is a problem for the dwarven rulers to handle."

"I know that!" Ami snapped. "But I can try to arrange a cease-fire agreement so they can do something useful instead of preparing to fight me!"

Cathy shook her head, looking a little irritated. "Yeah, because they are clearly going to jump to the negotiation table immediately when they were unwilling to do so before."

"Give them some time to get used to the idea that they can't get rid of you," Jered added. "The best thing you can do right now is to get rest so you'll be thinking clearly later."

"But I can already draft plans and…" Ami started to disagree, but trailed off under the combined disapproving stares of her advisers. They might have a point.

Right now, Tiger, with the aid of imps, was doing a good job managing the youma-dwarfs. Jadeite's presence scared the more dangerous and animalistic ones away from the civilian complex, and safety tests for the de-youmafication treatment were in progress. Trying to rush those would defeat their purpose. This was one of the increasingly rare occasions where nothing urgently required Ami's attention in the immediate future.

She let her muscles relax and slumped against the backrest of her throne. "Fine, maybe you are right. I'll take a break after I finish setting up the dungeon heart and get Duke Libasheshtan's report on the state of the Light temples."

---

Two trolls and an orc pressed their foreheads against the red-veined floor, shivering as they knelt at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Mukrezar's throne. Droplets of sweat glistened on their bare backs, reflecting the light of the flames shooting from the deep fissures surrounding the main path.

Above them, the towering backrest worked into a horned reaper's stylized grimace scowled down at them. Its fanged expression was almost as fearsome as that of the Keeper seated underneath it.

Aside from the chattering of the minions' teeth and the crackling of the flames, all was quiet until Mukrezar's fist thudded against his armrest. The pink-haired elf leaned forward, eyes narrowed into crimson-blazing slits. "I appear to be short one tied up and crippled fake Avatar. Explain yourselves!"

The creatures before him almost broke their knobbly noses as they grovelled harder against the unyielding ground, unwilling to speak up and draw his undivided attention.

"Answer me! You, the mottled one!" A single finger stabbed forward, singling out the troll whose green skin showed patches of lighter colour.

Reluctantly, the underling raised his head out of the tiny puddle of sweat that had formed around his forehead. "Wasn't m-m-m-me, Master! Just t-t-turning winch!" he squeaked.

Mukrezar swatted lazily at the air before him, and an invisible force struck the mottled troll with a whip-like crack, forcing his head down and bouncing his chin off the floor.

"I don't want to hear excuses. I want to know why tonight's entertainment isn't ready to be slowly lowered head-first into a vat of heated fat," Mukrezar said. "Alive, that is. There's really no point doing it to a corpse. Orc, you tell me!"

The white-maned warrior glanced briefly at his whimpering companion, who was spitting out teeth, and jumped to his feet.

"Y-yes, Master!" he said, saluting. "Reporting that the prisoner s-s-slipped."

"He slipped," Mukrezar repeated, raising his hand and wriggling his fingers. "Go on, elaborate. How exactly did a man unable to move under his own power slip?"

The orc gulped. "W-well, we wrapped the chains around his shins as usual and suspended him above the pot, but then Zogig thought that for this special occasion, we should get the fresh human fat from the kitchen." He paused, pointing at the troll picking up his teeth.

The Keeper waved dismissively. "Sensible. Go on."

Shuffling his feet, the pink-skinned soldier gulped once more. "Err, yes, so we left to fetch it, but he, well, kinda slipped out of his chains and broke his neck in the empty pot."

Mukrezar growled. "I see. You bungled attaching him."

The troll who hadn't spoken yet looked up as if stung and waved his hands defensively as he protested, "No no no no! We d-done it all right and proper! Is your fault for cutting off his feet!"

The other minions cringed and turned to stare at him with wide eyes.

Three slap-like noises echoed through the room, quickly followed by cries of pain.

"Quiet, you miserable wretches! Do you have any idea what you have done? He may have been a fake Avatar, but the real one still shares his senses! I was going to gloat at him! I had this entire taunting yet soul-crushing speech prepared! The masses would have loved it!" Mukrezar complained, sighing theatrically.

"Indeed, your Wickedness," the butler imp agreed as he stepped out from behind a demonic statue. "Especially the part where he consigns a loyal, trusting follower to brutal torture and death each time he hands out one of those plagiarised rings."

The pink-haired Keeper raised an eyebrow. "You think so? Not my favourite passage, but admittedly one of the better ones."

"Actually, I was referring to the moment where his corpse would transform back into a sheep," the Butler explained as he stroked his moustache.

"What?" Mukrezar's eyes opened so wide they resembled blank crimson discs for a moment. "I was about to monologue at a common barnyard animal?" He trembled with rage, the scar across his nose standing out more as his face reddened. "How? My rings can't do that!"

"I would never insinuate that you stopped when your designs were barely functional, your Brashness. Again," the butler replied. "Also, your minions are sneaking away."

The trio froze in mid-motion when Mukrezar's stare snapped back to them. The orc stood precariously balanced on tiptoes while the two trolls were still in their kneeling position, but further back from the throne than they had started.

"Ah, yes. Off to the torture chamber with you," the elven Keeper said. With a shooing gesture, he made the three disappear, and then let himself slump in his seat. "The stupidity of it all…"

"You did achieve your primary objectives, your Sulkiness," the butler pointed out as he approached the throne, carrying a bottle of wine and an empty glass on a tablet.

"Indeed, I should focus on the bright side. Another potential mantle creation site destroyed, its defenders massacred, and a volcano rigged to explode! What more could I – nah, this isn't working!" Mukrezar threw up his hands in disgust and slumped even deeper, almost sliding off his throne. "Butler! Tell me something that will cheer me up!"

"As you wish." The smartly dressed imp poured a glass of wine and proffered it to his master. "I expect you will be delighted to hear that the dwarfs finally suffered a major defeat and lost one of their larger cities to a Keeper."

Mukrezar sat up straighter. "Hah! Someone finally got one over those hairy, drunk zealots? I'll drink to that." He emptied his glass in one go, contemplating. "Keeper Mercury's work, I assume?"

"Indeed. The Dark Empress conquered the city of Salthalls, co-opting its magical infrastructure to transform everyone within the city into strange monstrosities," the imp said, a wide grin baring his teeth.

"That's hilarious!" Mukrezar laughed. "Now I'll have to come up with something even better, or I might start to feel a little inadequate here."

The imp smiled up at him innocently. "Indeed, your Enviousness. However, may I point out that you might have a little trouble performing a ritual whose power requirements rival those for creating a new Avatar's mantle?"

The glass in Mukrezar's hand shattered as he suddenly clenched his fist. "And just like that, it stopped being funny." He shook his hand, getting rid of the bloody shards stuck inside. "But seriously," he groaned, "Is there any chance that it wasn't the city covering most of the ritual's cost? She is a freak of nature with a ridiculously unfair amount of magical power, after all."

The butler shrugged. "How should I know?" He raised his tablet just in time to block the thrown wine bottle aimed at his head. "More importantly, can you risk assuming that it was her, rather than the city?"

Mukrezar plucked the last splinters from his hand and healed his cuts, all the while keeping his eyes closed and staring straight ahead. "Going by the fact that I would be a cloud of smoke and ash if I tried channelling that much magic, I can't," he muttered sourly. "Arrgh! Now I have to add a whole bunch of nigh-invincible fortresses full of booze-guzzling vicious midgets to my list."

In the centre of the path, amidst the fire-spewing fissures, a circular section of the floor shook. Rumbling, it rose to the height of a table while its surface changed to turn into a map of the dwarven lands.

He jumped off his throne and strutted down the stairs, approaching the newly raised platform. "Salthalls, Salthalls, ah, there it is." His thumb approached one of eight glowing castle-like shapes and squished it flat. "Not so invincible as they appear. Yes. I have a good feeling about this."

"That's what you said last time, just before the glacier hit," the butler commented.

"I choose to attribute that to mere bad luck. This time will be different," Mukrezar said and snapped his fingers. A swarm of bearded beer barrels sprouted from the map around the marker he had just flattened. "The dwarven troops are busy with Mercury and not defending their cities, for one. Hmm. No doubt other Keepers will also try to take advantage of this vulnerability."

"Some opportunists softening the enemy up first will only make things easier for you," the butler said, drumming on his tablet with his three-fingered hand.

Mukrezar scratched his head. "Well, maybe. We are talking about the dwarfs here; they have a reputation. Too many losses early on and reinforcements might dry up."

"You could try not losing so many minions, your Wastefulness."

"I prefer to keep my options open," Mukrezar said as he marked the Underworld portals nearest to the dwarven cities. "Which means I'll have to bring in some actually competent subordinates for this, not just the fodder."

The imp tilted his head to the side. "Where are you going to find some of those?"

"Some of the more experienced recruits seem promising. Keeper Reebald, to start with, showed some excellent creative thinking with his combination of pressurized barrels and bile demons."

"Yes, but the Avatar got him."

Mukrezar frowned. "That's too bad. Oh well, Keeper Lavaine had a much larger force tripping over their own feet chasing her while she wiped out isolated villages. She's ripe for a promotion."

"Avatar got her."

"Curses! Then Keeper Mir will have to-"

"Avatar got h-"

A bolt of lightning from Mukrezar's finger interrupted the butler, making him twitch uncontrollably. His moustache puffed out from the static.

Mukrezar sighed. "You'd think equipping a bunch of idiot followers with dungeon hearts and ordering them to stir up trouble would result in at least some battle-hardened survivors!"

"Keeper Tagleos counts by that criterion, your Short-Temperedness," the butler noted, unperturbed by his smoking suit.

Mukrezar stared at him blankly. "Tagleos, who's Tagleos? Oh, the rat fetishist. That one's actually still around?"

"The benefits of minions with a short life cycle who are willing to work for cheese, I assume," the imp said with a shrug.

"It's a start," Mukrezar decided as he returned his attention to the map, focusing on the Mercury symbol he had planted at Salthalls. "I hope the Dark Empress appreciates all my hard work against her enemies." He looked over his shoulder at the butler. "Think I could send her a bill for services rendered?"

 

[Pusakuronu]

Ami and Tiger were having breakfast together in a small chamber that overlooked the palace's courtyard. However, the dishes with eggs and poultry currently went ignored because the crystal ball resting on the table between the girls proved much more captivating.

Tiger had dressed sharp for the occasion and replaced her corruption-eroded Sailor Mercury uniform with something that showed off less of her black-striped skin. The combination of red loincloth, metal bikini, and assorted bits of shoulder and leg armour that formed the modified reaper outfit looked right at home on her muscular frame.

In contrast, Ami was still wearing her somewhat wrinkled pyjamas. The faces in the crystal ball were familiar enough that she didn't mind not looking her best.

Within the orb, Mrs. Mizuno was listening to Tiger with rapt attention, the cup of coffee in front of her forgotten. Without the red-tinted light of the rising sun falling in through the window, her face would have been pale as a sheet.

The adopted youma, in full control of the conversation despite Ami's half-hearted efforts, was currently updating their mother on the situation at Salthalls.

Ami listened with mixed feelings. While she wasn't exactly eager to confess to her mother that she had accidentally conquered a city, leaving the explanations to Tiger wasn't optimal either.

"…and she even got the Duke on our side by-" she glanced out of the window, at the crowd several floors below, and lowered her voice. "By doing something I'm not supposed to talk about in public. It involved both of them alone locked in a room for a few hours, though!"

Sailor Mars, sitting to the side of Mrs. Mizuno, choked on her tea.

"Tiger!" Ami shouted, feeling her cheeks heat up. "It's not what she makes it sound like!" she said in the direction of the crystal ball, waving her hands. "I only worked a metal that can't be shaped by evil people, which the troops mustn't know! That's all!"

Completely ignoring Ami's reproachful glare, Tiger pointed at the transformed dwarfs outside. "Anyway, that's why all of these guys are working for us now," she finished.

Mrs. Mizuno blinked, visibly at a loss for words, and turned towards Ami for confirmation.

Ami nodded. "Yes. It was an accident," she mumbled. "I promise we are going to turn them back to normal as soon as possible!"

Sailor Mars angled her head to get a better look at the youma assembled in the courtyard. "And there are really thousands of them?" she asked, her eyes wide.

"Up to forty thousand, according to Duke Libasheshtan," Ami replied. "We aren't sure how many people managed to flee before it was too late."

"This… this is all quite a lot to take in," her mother said. She looked straight into Ami's eyes and asked, "Are you really all right, Ami? You nearly died! Multiple times!"

"I'm fine, Mum," Ami hurried to assure her, "I was possessing a golem body, so nobody managed to hurt me."

"Still, I can't help but worry," Mrs. Mizuno sighed. "Even if you aren't injured, all of this stress still isn't good for you! For a moment, I almost didn't recognise you!"

The young Keeper managed to suppress a wince. She was still in Sailor Mercury form even though she wasn't wearing her uniform. Tiger had activated the crystal ball and then addressed her as Ami, shattering the identity-concealing effect of the transformation. "Ah, that- that's probably the lighting?" she suggested, pointing at her eyes. "With the red glow, my face looks different than what you are used to."

"I- I suppose so?" her mother replied, tilting her head to the side. "It's actually rather alarming, by the way. That glow can't be good for your eyes."

"She'll be fine, she spends most of her time in a golem body for safety anyway," Tiger came to her sister's aid. "Of course, she also abuses that ability to go without sleep for days."

"Ami…" Mrs. Mizuno said, sounding disappointed.

"I only do that when it's necessary!" Ami defended herself. "I take a break when I can afford to. In fact, I just had a good night's sleep."

"Did you sleep well? No nightmares?" her mother asked.

"None," Ami answered honestly, gently shaking her head. She had expected to spend the night tossing and turning, but apparently, safety and exhaustion ensured undisturbed slumber.

"Good. That's good, I think." Mrs. Mizuno paused. "At least I hope it is. I'm no psychologist, but after everything that happened, I feared…" she trailed off. "Are you absolutely sure you are feeling all right Ami?" She stared into her daughter's eyes as if trying to see into her mind.

"Actually," Tiger interjected as she waved a hand through the space between the crystal ball and Ami's face. "Things aren't as grim as they look at first glance."

Sailor Mars scowled. "Everyone in the city got turned into youma!"

"Yes, but that also means everyone became very resilient. It's hard to deal actually life-threatening injuries to a youma," Tiger replied.

Sailor Mars nodded. "Isn't that the truth," she grumbled under her breath, speaking from experience.

"You are saying that casualties were low despite all the chaos and infighting?" Mrs. Mizuno asked, sounding sceptical but cautiously optimistic. She hesitated, her eyes darting back to Ami for a moment. "Do you have some way to confirm that even without knowing exactly how many people are missing?"

Ami nodded slowly. "My imps are supposed to collect corpses they find. So far, they haven't retrieved anything larger than a rabbit," she said. "It's not complete certainty, but I'm taking it as a good sign," she continued, trying to sounding upbeat.

Sailor Mars looked indecisive for a moment, but then pressed on and asked, "What if the dead youma simply turned into dust?"

Ami shook her head. "None of our test animals did."

"I'm relieved to hear that the… the takeover was relatively bloodless," her mother said. "You already have so much to deal with. This is all a lot to take in."

"W-well, things are actually looking up, Mum," Ami said, trying to alleviate her parent's worries. "Despite everything, I may be safer right now than I have been at any point since arriving in this world. That means I can finally focus on fixing things. If everything goes according to plan, the dwarfs should be back to normal within one to three weeks," she said with a smile.

Sailor Mars leaned in closer, looking interested. "You already have a cure?"

"One derived from animated chicken soup!" Tiger said, grinning widely when the comment earned her confused looks from within the crystal ball and an annoyed groan from Ami.

"One step of the procedure involves transforming the patient into living liquid," the latter explained.

"What?" Sailor Mars shouted, staring at her incredulously.

Mrs. Mizuno simply stared with a puzzled look. "I'm not sure I heard correctly," she said.

Ami spent the next few minutes explaining why the liquefying, filtering, mind-restoring and exorcism steps were necessary and how they led to a cured dwarf.

When she finished, Mrs. Mizuno was massaging her temples. "I'll be the first to admit that magical healing is completely outside of my area of expertise, but I have severe misgivings about just plucking pieces out of a body, even if they grow back."

"You can think of it as magical surgery, if it helps," Ami defended her method.

"I can see the similarities, Ami, and therefore I'm concerned about accidental brain surgery," her mother replied. "What happens when the malignant pieces you remove are part of the brain? There could be permanent damage to the patients' mental faculties."

Ami shuffled her feet. In a small voice, she answered, "We can't be certain, but we don't think that will happen. At least, we have strong evidence that, between youma magic and divine healing, it won't be an issue."

"That evidence is?" Mrs. Mizuno asked in a tone of voice she usually reserved for questioning ill-prepared trainees.

"Mengolin," Tiger answered before Ami could. "He's a mutated wizard who's more algae than dwarf. When he turns his head, the inside of his skull sloshes and rustles. No brain, still sane. Well, mostly sane."

"Actually, I sent him into a temple to get that fixed," Ami informed her sister. "She put both hands together as she continued, a little embarrassed. "Um, I assume it worked, because he's refusing to come back out and yelling about how I'm not going to deceive him again."

"Figures." Tiger shrugged and turned back to the crystal ball. "The important part is that he's thinking without a brain. His youma magic is compensating for the missing parts, somehow. Now, since corrupted parts of a transformed dwarf's brain are effectively useless, magic must have already taken over their function. Therefore, they can be safely removed."

Sailor Mars scratched her head, while Mrs. Mizuno was blinking rapidly with a blank look. After a few seconds, the adult woman sighed. "The more I learn about magic, the less I understand it. How does it do what it does? How does it even know what to do?"

Tiger shrugged again. "It just does. Not thinking too hard about it helps."

Mrs. Mizuno gave her a pained look. "That attitude offends my inner scientist."

"I know exactly how you feel, Mum," Ami commiserated.

"Yeah, she's absolutely terrible at working glamours on her own," Tiger confirmed smugly, "unlike her much more talented sister."

Ami swallowed a comment about the orange-skinned youma being very much an expert at not thinking things through. Instead, she said, "In any case, I have to trust Tiger's judgement here. I can't experiment on sapient beings."

"I agree completely," her mother said. "Perhaps you could start with curing only those people whose heads are clear of tumours? You might discover alternative options in the meantime."

"That's my plan," Ami said, nodding.

"Ami, there's one part I'm not getting," Sailor Mars said. "How do you plan to cure thousands in just a few weeks? If I understood you correctly, Jadeite needs about an hour to safely turn someone into a slime, and you can't manage the spell yourself."

"Oh, that," Ami said with a smile, relieved at being asked a question she could answer easily. A sheet of paper and a pencil appeared before her as she prepared to show off some math. "It's very simple actually, look here…"

---

Limul woke to the sight of two female faces staring down on him. He recognised Mengkun, the nervous-looking priestess from one of the local temples, but the human woman was unfamiliar to him. Strangely, it was Mengkun who was shivering when it was the human who looked as if she should feel cold. The long strands of black hair dangling down onto her chest did more to preserve her modesty than her barely-there outfit did.

He paused. Shouldn't he be embarrassed or outraged at the sight? The expected emotions stayed suspiciously absent, and so did the alarm that such a realization should entail.

"He's awake," the insufficiently covered human said, addressing someone he couldn't see. The priestess at her side glanced in the same direction and started shivering even harder.

He blinked. Instead of going black, his vision went blurry and red-tinged for a moment. That wasn't normal either. How had he ended up in this situation?

The human leaned forward and waved her black-gloved hand in front of his face.

Unimportant. The last thing he remembered was his Keeper-Empress casting a spell on him. He blinked again. Since when did he serve a Keeper, and why didn't he care that he did? He'd always thought of himself as a righteous, law-abiding dwarf.

The hand approached his face, prodding his skin with an index finger.

Oh, wait, he knew the answer to the first question. He had joined her a while after her dark magic had turned everyone into monsters, shortly after fighting his former comrades for control of the nourishment zones became unnecessary, but before he'd gotten bored and returned to his guard duties out of habit. In addition, every part of that recollection should have had him screaming in horror and revulsion, but somehow it didn't.

The digit stabbed through his cheek with a curious absence of pain. It started moving in a spiral pattern, making weird slurping noises.

At this point, he intellectually knew that he should be doing something about that. Yet, he simply didn't feel alarmed enough to bother.

"Monteraine, stop that," a young voice he recognised as belonging to the Empress said. "You are interfering with my scan."

The now identified human withdrew her finger from within his face. A trail of reddish goo stuck to the digit, stretching out into a thin thread before it came loose and snapped back to his face. He was reminded of a spring snapping back into shape.

Monteraine turned to Mengkun. "He's completely senseless. Great job messing up a simple calming spell, midget!"

The white-clad priestess took a step back. "I-I did not! I made it as strong as I could!"

Oh, so he wasn't feeling anything because of an emotion-suppressing spell. That made sense. He could definitely understand why they thought he could use one of those.

"Perhaps that's the problem?" Empress Mercury said from somewhere behind him.

Upon hearing her voice, the priestess flinched and let out a whimper through chattering teeth.

The Empress sighed. "Perhaps you could use that calming spell on yourself, Sister Mengkun?" she suggested. "Not at full power, mind you."

"Do as she says," Duke Libasheshtan's voice came from the same direction. Why was a noble like him present and apparently cooperating with the Dark Empress? Why was the priestess still complying with his orders despite this obvious corruption? As a servant of the Light, she should be holding herself to a higher standard.

"We still need to get the patient ready to talk to us," Mercury said.

Monteraine stopped waving her fingers in front of Mengkun's face, earning herself a frown from the no longer shaking priestess. "Very well, time to put him back to sleep before I cancel the current enchantment," the sorceress said. Thimbles of purplish light formed around her fingers as she pointed her hand in his direction.

Dread wasn't an emotion Limul could feel right now. If he could, he would have felt motivated to dodge the thin purple ray that cancelled the spell preventing him from becoming upset.

---

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" The patient sat up from the bed so fast that his liquid upper body whipped forward, elongating and thinning as the momentum stretched it.

Ami started in surprise, having expected a more muted reaction. It seemed as if Sister Mengkun had gone too easy on the calming spell this time. She lowered her head in sympathy. Still, she would count herself lucky if that remained the greatest problem with the curing procedure. With practice, the priestess would eventually get it right.

She also figured that the spell was at least partially working. The patient, called Limul according to the priestess, was hugging his knees and curling up into a quivering ball. It was far from optimal, but still much better than panicked flailing about with stretchy, whip-like limbs.

"NO! NO! NOOOO! LIGHT, WHY?" the liquid youma yelled between pitiful sobs. "I'M A MONSTER!"

"Soldier, pull yourself together!" Duke Libasheshtan barked in a voice used to command. "Your behaviour is unbecoming of a member of the Guard!"

On reflex, Limul jumped to attention with a picture-perfect salute. It was fortunate that the bed sheet covering his body adhered to his liquid skin, as putting clothes on a slime had proved impossible. He stood still for a moment, but then his right eye started twitching when he noticed that the fingers of his balled fist were merging into a single whole.

"My existence is unbecoming of a member of Guard!" he howled as he sat down on the bed with a defeated moan, head and shoulders hanging. "I'm no longer a dwarf! I'm an abomination! Worse, I'm a Keeper minion!"

"Um, at least turning you back into a dwarf can be done in an instant," Ami spoke up, wringing her hands guiltily.

Slowly, the liquid youma turned his head in her direction, as if scared of what he would find. His entire body went rigid when he confirmed that yes, the Dark Empress was in the room and yes, she was looking straight at him. His eyes went wide, far wider than they could have if his body was solid, until they looked as if they would fall from his skull.

"E-E-Empress," he finally managed to choke out, falling over as he tried to simultaneously bow and drop to his knees."

"Please, get up," she said in a friendly voice when it looked as if he would remain sprawled out on the floor, resembling a half melted wax figure. "I do apologise for the inconveniences," she added. "You are the first dwarf we are trying to turn back to normal, and the procedure still has some flaws."

In the back of the room, Sister Mengkun tried to shuffle farther out of Ami's line of sight unnoticed.

"Y-your Imperial M-Majesty?" Limul asked as he looked up at her in surprise before hurriedly lowering his gaze.

"You were supposed to wake up calm enough to read all the explanations we prepared in advance," she gestured at a small pamphlet lying untouched on the nightstand. "Ideally, you would have known that you are going to be turned back to normal before you could worry about your current fluid state. It's just a necessary step before you can be transformed back into a regular dwarf. I intend to cure everyone in Salthalls eventually."

The transformed dwarf, still kneeling, swallowed as he looked at his hands. His arms were drooping like wet noodles, arching at the elbows. "T-Truly? This is reversible?" he whispered, his face vacillating between disbelief and hope.

Ami smiled. "At this point, all it takes is a simple exorcism."

His eyes darted over to the priestess for an instant before his gaze locked onto Ami's boots again. "C-could you…?"

"Just one moment, please. I'll need your help curing the other dwarfs too," she said.

"Mine?" Limul answered, his shoulders straightening. "But I'm a simple soldier, not a mage. How could I possibly help?"

"Right now, you are a type of creature called a 'youma'," Ami told him. "That means you have a natural affinity for the kind of magic required." She telekinetically moved the pamphlet over to him. "Please read page two, which explains the necessity of the liquid phase."

Limul flinched as the levitating paper touched his hand but started reading as instructed. After a while, he lowered the pamphlet and said "Your Imperial Majesty? If I understand this correctly, the liquid transformation is required to remove corrupted flesh that would kill the victim during the exorcism?"

Ami nodded enthusiastically. "Exactly! However, I currently have exactly one person who can turn patients into liquid youma, and he can only manage around ten of them a day. As a youma, you have the potential to learn the technique, too."

Limul's shoulders slumped in resignation. "A-as a youma. You want me to stay like this. V-very well, if that is the price for being cured eventually..."

"It's not a price," she replied, waving her hands defensively. "If you refuse or turn out to not have the required talent, you will be restored back to normal immediately. It's delicate magic, someone coerced into assisting couldn't be trusted to help anyways."

Duke Libasheshtan took a step forward. "It is, however, only a minor inconvenience. Consider this: if only two out of every ten people cured can help cure more people, then we can already cure thirty people tomorrow. If, again, six out of those thirty people have the talent, then we can cure ninety people the day after. Two-hundred and seventy the day after. Over eight-hundred the next. After a little more than a week, every citizen of Salthalls could be back to normal. Will you delay your own cure for less than a fortnight to help your people, soldier?"

Limul's stance shifted the moment he made his decision. His spine straightened, making his slouch disappear, and he raised his head as he saluted. "I will serve, your Grace! It is a small sacrifice on the way to restoring what's left of my honour!"

"Great!" Ami clapped her hands together happily. "Prepare yourself; I will transport you straight to your new teacher, General Jadeite. And keep the pamphlet, it will answer most of your questions about living arrangements."

The moment Limul looked from Duke Libasheshtan back at Ami, his newly gained confidence fled him. "Y-yes, your Imperial Majesty," he replied with a shudder that made most of his jelly-like body wobble.

She transported him to his new destination and addressed her other assistants. "Monteraine, Sister Mengkun, go prepare the next patient, please."

The priestess bowed repeatedly in Ami's direction as she fled backwards towards the exit, almost bumping into the smirking Monteraine in the process.

"That could have gone better," Ami commented, looking at the empty bed. "Still, it wasn't too bad for a first attempt. Thanks for convincing him to cooperate."

The Duke frowned. "You do remember that we do not have enough priests to perform exorcisms on hundreds or thousands of victims a day, right? It feels distasteful to deceive him about the expected length of his service."

"Being unable to immediately complete the final step won't stop us from slimifying everyone," she contradicted. "In fact, building up a backlog of exorcism-ready liquid youma could be beneficial."

The dwarven noble crossed his arms. "Is this going to be part of one of those convoluted plans you are famous for?" he asked.

"No, I'm simply hoping that it will be politically unfeasible for your countrymen to reject a plea to let victims be restored at their temples. Which would require them to open communications to discuss the details with me," she explained with a satisfied smile.

"Does that mean I can skip the regularly scheduled fruitless attempts until then?" the Duke asked, his expression brightening.

"No, but you can already tempt them into talking with the prospect of saving the citizens of Salthalls in the near future," she replied, looking apologetic.

"I'm sure the part about turning everyone into slimes will make them take me more seriously," he grumbled.

---

Duke Libasheshtan withdrew the arm he had wrapped around Umbra's waist, splitting up the inky shape formed by their combined silhouettes. Still disoriented by the teleport, the dwarf took a stumbling step away from the taller youma.

Ami looked up from her computer's display and down the table lined with empty chairs. As she watched, shadows peeled themselves off her two visitors and dissolved on the floor tiles.

"Empress," Umbra said, inclining her masked and hooded head in greeting.

The Duke squinted, blinking rapidly to adapt his vision to the sudden brightness. Luminous crystal squares shone at him from all of the chalk-white walls, seamlessly integrated into the room's geometrical engravings. After a moment, he managed to spot Ami at the other end of the room, and he turned to face her. "Your Imperial Majesty," he greeted as he bowed.

"Duke Libasheshtan," she acknowledged as she rose from of her chair to return his bow.

He froze for a split-second, his gaze lowering and the corners of his mouth twitching downwards briefly before returning to a neutral expression.

Following his gaze, she quickly identified the issue. While standing, a small section of bare skin had become visible between the gold-rimmed hem of her dress and the surface of the table. While the black garment felt as if it had shrunk a size, it was still at least as long as her senshi uniform's skirt.

Nevertheless, she sat back down quickly, sinking into her seat's thick padding. The dress wasn't particularly scandalous by her own standards, but she still felt her cheeks heat up due to the dwarf's disapproval. So much for making a professional, dignified impression despite the corruption effects eroding her wardrobe.

Avoiding the Duke's gaze, she focused on Umbra's masked and hooded face instead. "Umbra, you may leave until the Duke has need of transport again."

The youma nodded and disappeared in an expanding wave of shadows that briefly made the lights flicker.

Walking across the impeccably clean floor tiles, Duke Libasheshtan approached the table.

"How did it go?" Ami asked him expectantly, shifting on her chair. Proportioned for a dwarf, it was too wide for her. Even with the fabric of her cloak bunching up over its armrests, she didn't manage to fill up enough space and resembled a small child sitting on an adult's seat.

The Duke's lips tightened in annoyance. "Poorly. I'm afraid you won't be talking to any dwarven diplomats today," he replied, briefly glancing at the inactive crystal ball to the right of her computer. Less utilitarian than regular models, it rested on a silver pedestal with decorative carvings and tiny embedded gems.

Ami's eager anticipation turned to disappointment, which she was unable to out of her voice. "Really? I admit I was expecting better news after you remained in the temple for so long."

The Duke pulled out the chair closest to her left. "Don't remind me," he grumbled. "So much time wasted talking to clerks who go on and on without saying anything of consequence." Shaking his head, he let himself drop into his seat. "Do you mind?" he asked, gesturing towards the tablet with silver goblets and a bottle, which, according to him, were a traditional staple of dwarven negotiations.

Ami pushed it closer to him, not seeing a reason to worsen his mood.

"As I said, I wasn't able to contact anybody important," the black-bearded dwarf continued as he poured himself a drink. He looked at Ami the whole time his hands moved, but somehow didn't spill a single drop. "I assume there are orders to keep me from interacting with anyone in a position of power. And also to encourage me subtly," he rolled his eyes, "to find the nearest hero gate and escape."

"That's unfortunate." Ami lowered her head, frowning at her reflection in the table's glass-sheathed wooden surface. Sighing, she reached up to her forehead to remove the weighty crown-like tiara she had put on in preparation for a diplomatic meeting.

A surprised choking noise came from the Duke's direction. Cross-eyed, he stared into his goblet for a moment before tilting his head to the side and meeting her gaze. "Grape juice?" he asked in an incredulous voice. His perplexed expression urged her to explain herself.

She sank a little deeper into her seat. "I'm too young to drink. Even if I wasn't, I would try to keep my head clear until I was off-duty," she said quickly. "Anyway, I was really expecting that there would be progress with everything we are doing and with a Duke arguing in my favour."

The noble in question shrugged. "Your mistake is assuming that my title would exempt me from the laws about not negotiating with Keepers or their servants. In fact, I have to choose my words very carefully to avoid giving the impression that I am working for you."

Ami steadied her elbows on the table and rested her head on her hands. "Your laws are irritating. I can't negotiate with the King personally. I can't order anyone to negotiate on my behalf either," she summarised her dilemma.

"They are meant to prevent non-violent interaction with Keepers," the Duke pointed out.

Ami narrowed her eyes at him. "That's- that's just…" She groaned in frustration. "Do I really have to conquer the entire kingdom just to make peace?"

Paling, the Duke sat up straighter. "Please don't," he said in a flat voice.

"Don't worry, I wasn't serious," she assured the alarmed dwarf, making him relax fractionally. "Why would anyone think those laws were a good idea in the first place?" she asked tiredly.

Duke Libasheshtan cleared his throat. "Well, it made sense in context," he said. "Not listening to Keeper Bartholomeus would have avoided a civil war and a third of our nobles going into exile in disgrace." His teeth clenched and he looked down, his gaze unfocused.

She paused while he relived unpleasant memories, pondering. Quickly, she made the connection between the poorly regarded dwarfs in Sirith Anlur who couldn't work adamantine and the disgraced exiles. It figured that the only dwarfs she could potentially convince to exert political pressure on her behalf didn't have any influence worth mentioning. "Is there really nothing that could convince King Ral that I have peaceful intentions?" she asked after a moment.

The Duke stopped brooding and hesitated for only a moment. "Short of digging up the adamantine prison, putting it on a train, and sending it to him? No. I doubt there's anything aside from inspecting the damage himself that could make him reconsider his stance."

"Tempting, but it would get me killed," she replied. "Too many people would handle it to preserve the secret about my true allegiance."

"Your minions," the Duke said, "how much do they know about adamantine? Could you not pretend that you broke through under your own power?"

Ami briefly considered the most likely outcome. "I'm sure some of the dark gods would gleefully set them straight. Though, with my luck, I wouldn't be surprised if King Ral believed me."

Duke Libasheshtan didn't smile at her attempt at levity. Instead, he slowly looked her up and down, stroking his beard as he let out a drawn-out humming noise. Just as she was getting uncomfortable under his measuring gaze, he started muttering, "Perhaps… yes, with your Empress title…"

"You have a new idea?" she asked, perking up.

"Yes. I believe it's workable, but I will have to refresh my memory on family and succession laws relating to foreign nobility before I can be certain."

"Why would you-" She gasped as she made the connection, and her skin tingled.

To get around her diplomatic obstacles, she needed someone who didn't work for her and wasn't her subject, but who could still negotiate in her name…

Cheeks burning, she jumped to her feet. "I- I'm not marrying anyone!"

 

[Pusakuronu]

"Jered, this is serious," Cathy drawled, frowning at her boyfriend. Her arm twitched, but his ribcage was sadly not in elbowing reach even though he was sitting right next to her.

The wavy-haired man was bending forward so much that his forehead touched the top of the same table he was slapping with his right hand, chuckling to himself. "I'm just imagining their faces when Mercury drops that bit of news on them," he said and promptly dissolved into another round of chuckles.

Ami, seated across from him, felt her cheeks starting to heat up. "I'm not seeing what's so absurd about the notion," she stated, pulling her arms closer to her chest.

"It's, well, it's unprecedented, at least," Cathy said. "I'm assuming the Duke," her eyes flicked over to an empty chair briefly, "knows what he's talking about, so I'm not saying it's impossible, but, given your situation, it sounds like it should be."

"It's not like it costs me anything to try," Ami replied.

"That's not exactly correct," Jered objected. He rose to an upright position, his grin fading into a more business-like expression. "You may want to start thinking in terms of political capital," he said. "While the Avatar might only be a little annoyed at your request for wasting his time if Duke Libasheshtan fails to convince him, you'll definitely owe him a favour if he goes along with your plan."

Ami nodded, accepting his point.

"More importantly though," Cathy said, "what's going to stop the dwarfs from continuing to ignore you? It's not like they'll want to talk to you just because it's no longer legally impossible."

Ami smiled. "Well, I'm hoping to make them believe that this will annoy me more than them."

---

"… one saving grace is that trains can't turn quickly, which helps us by keeping the required density of the detection grid lower than their size would suggest," Duke Uzolgim said, adjusting his spectacles.

"Low enough to afford it?" Duke Cattenor asked while he continued frowning at the papers before him.

Duke Uzolgim hesitated. "If we prioritize it over everything else, yes," he offered cautiously.

"That's a 'no' then," Cattenor sighed.

"We can't not do anything about it!" Duke Alnisalath said loudly. "Troops moving undetected underground is a nightmare already; mobile dungeon hearts are so much worse!"

"Which is why we are scrying on the individual trains as a workaround," Countess Lalimush said. "As long as we don't miss any new ones she builds, it's even somewhat workable."

"And ties up wizards that would be much more useful keeping an eye on the other Keepers," Duke Cattenor sighed. He looked up from his calculations for the first time. "Do we actually have any indications that Keeper Mercury is planning another attack in the near future?"

"Her building up an army of fluid monsters that would be perfect for slipping through our underground defences is a pretty strong hint," Duke Omerreg pointed out.

"Can't shift too many resources then," Cattenor agreed with a pained nod.

King Ral lamented that this strategy meeting was shaping up to prove just as fruitless as the ones that came before it. From his place of honour at the head of the table, he swept his gaze over the long faces of the Dukes and Duchesses sitting with him.

So far, the collected nobles were proving themselves much better at emptying wine bottles than at coming up with viable plans. Looking down at his own blank list of suggestions, he forcibly fought down the urge to order a drink with a little more kick.

"Sire?" Someone called out in a low voice.

The elderly king turned his head towards the hooded wizard approaching him with a glowing crystal ball. Unexpected calls weren't uncommon in times of war, but they usually meant dreadful news. "Put it over there," King Ral sighed, pointing at a spot where the tablecloth was relatively free of maps and papers.

"At once, Sire," the robed mage confirmed.

"Am I calling at a bad time?" the voice from the crystal ball asked barely a moment after the device had come to a rest.

"Lord Avatar!" King Ral's posture straightened when he recognised the red-bearded face in the orb, his morose mood brightening. "Have you reconsidered? Are you going to assist us in this dark hour, after all?"

Around the table, the nobles leaned in closer, more attentive than they had been since the beginning of the meeting.

The Avatar raised an eyebrow. "If you are referring to Empress Mercury, then yes," he said, nodding slowly. "However!" he added, pre-empting premature cheers, "My assistance will take a more indirect form than you are probably expecting."

King Ral closed his mouth, his momentary elation dampened. "Any and all help will be warmly welcomed," he said after a moment, "Though I find myself curious about what you mean with 'indirect assistance'."

"It's very simple," the Avatar said. "King Ral, Duchesses Ducimezar and Lalimush, Dukes Omerreg, Uzolgim, Cattenor and Alnisalath," he nodded briefly in the direction of each of the nobles as he said their name. Now having their undivided attention, he proclaimed, "I am hereby officially appointing Duke Libasheshtan as Empress Mercury's regent."

King Ral felt his jaw fall open as he forgot to breathe for a moment. Stupefied, he stared at the crystal ball.

Not all of his council took the announcement as quietly. Amidst gasps and the sound of Duke Omerreg ripping one of his notes in two, there were shouts.

"WHAT?" Duke Alnisalath had shot to his feet so quickly that his chair fell over and made a muffled thudding noise on the thick carpet.

"HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?" Duchess Ducimezar asked, quick as always to make her displeasure known.

"I am quite sane, I assure you," the Avatar replied cheerfully, looking unperturbed.

King Ral felt his own ire rise. What was Amadeus thinking, raising their hopes only to dash them? Was this some kind of sick joke? Worse, if he were serious then he'd be adding legitimacy to that Keeper's title!

"You can't do that," King Ral heard himself say.

"Underage; no liege; no vassals; no suitable family members," the Avatar listed calmly, raising one finger with each point. "I most certainly can appoint an appropriate guardian in situation like those, rare as they may be."

"That's not-" King Ral began, but thought better of it. "All questions of appropriateness and authority aside, why would you do that?"

"Simple. If Mercury likes to play at being an Empress, then why should we spare her the inconveniences and obligations that come with such a title?"

"Because it would mean treating her like a legitimate noble!" Duke Alnisalath said with a scowl.

"Which is preposterous," the King agreed. "She is a Keeper."

The Avatar shrugged and let his gaze linger briefly on the empty suggestion sheets on the table. "I take it that you have a better option for making her life difficult, then? Or any at all?"

The resulting silence was answer enough.

"There you go then," the Avatar continued. "I gave you a tool to put pressure on her where you had none before."

King Ral forced down his anger enough to give the idea some serious consideration. His expression soured. "This plan of yours puts Duke Libasheshtan in a great amount of danger for nebulous benefits," he said. "You are putting him in a position where he has to intentionally irritate and annoy the powerful Keeper who is holding him captive."

"I doubt giving him some actual power, even if it's dependent on Mercury's willingness to play along, will increase the danger he's in," the Avatar said. "She apparently wants to be taken seriously as an empress, which means that she has to at least keep up the appearance of sticking to the rules."

"I do like the idea of forcing her to expose her rule as the sham it is," Duke Omerreg said, nodding along thoughtfully.

"Oh, can we have Thol just ground the brat until she's of age?" Duchess Lalimush suggested with an eager grin.

The Avatar's face in the crystal ball turned to shoot her a flat look. "I expect you would be disappointed by the results. She's more than happy to stay with her books unless forced into action, as I have repeatedly pointed out before."

King Ral snorted. The day he started to believe that the Dark Empress had an elaborate city conquest plan just lying around with no intention to use it was the day he'd abdicate due to senility. Unwilling to rehash the point, he asked instead, "Lord Avatar, why select Duke Libasheshtan for this role? Why the captive Duke of a nation she is at war with, rather than someone safer from her retribution?"

"Two reasons. The first is Salthalls. It's the only one of Mercury's current holdings that requires administration, and there's nobody more qualified for the job than him. He'll be in the best possible position to minimize further damage to the city and its inhabitants. The second reason is that it actually improves his safety."

"Please elaborate," King Ral prompted, his words sounding more sceptical than he intended to reveal.

"It turns him into an irreplaceable asset for Mercury. Someone who can make deals on behalf of her Empire without working directly for her. As the only available liaison with you, she'll also have no choice about letting him regularly visit temples to stay in contact and prove that he remains uncompromised."

King Ral frowned. The explanation made a twisted kind of sense, even if it offended his sensibilities. With a deep sigh, he nodded once. "I hate it, but it seems at least like a feasible course of action. Duke Cattenor, what's your take on this?"

The Duke stopped leafing through his sheets. "I'm sure I can think of a few ways to hamper her war effort by keeping her busy with keeping up appearances," he said, baring his teeth in a vicious grin.

"You seem to have things well in hand," the Avatar commented. "Very well then. Please inform the Duke of his promotion at your earliest convenience." He inclined his head briefly before his crystal ball went blank.

King Ral stroked his bushy white beard as he shifted to sit more comfortably and considered the… surprise… the Avatar had just ambushed them with. "So," he said, dragging out the word, "what do you think? Are we better off pretending this never happened?"

The various nobles were quiet, unsure if he was jesting. He wasn't really sure himself. Finally, Duke Omerreg spoke up "Distasteful as the concept may be, I think it offers opportunities to gain intelligence on the Dark Empress' intentions. Tell me what you think of this plan..."

---

Gleaming forks, knives and spoons formed an elaborate arrangement around Ami's plate. With some hesitation, she selected one of the more silvery-looking spoons and prepared to crack the cooked egg open.

"Close, but incorrect, your Imperial Majesty" Duke Libasheshtan interrupted with a stern look. He was seated to her right, directly across from Tiger to her left. "The egg-breaking ladle is the one over there."

"Why are we doing this again?" Her adopted sister asked. Tiger's slouched posture gained her another stern look from the Duke, which she ignored. Like Ami and the other women at the long table, she was wearing the dwarven version of a long evening dress. Imps positioned strategically around the room with the sole task of watching the diners prevented corruption-induced alterations in an unobserved moment.

"Because making sure that her Majesty or her sister don't embarrass themselves by being ignorant of proper etiquette is part of my duties now," the black-bearded dwarf replied, sounding resigned.

"And we just happen to be collateral damage?" Cathy asked. The swordswoman sat further down the table, across from Jered. Despite her words, she seemed to be actually enjoying the atmosphere.

"You are some of the more presentable members of her Majesty's forces, and thus may be required to appear at public functions. It would, therefore, be wasteful not to have you sit in on these lessons," Duke Libasheshtan explained.

Ami glanced up at the figures sitting past Snyder and Torian. Her gaze briefly lingered on Jadeite, who looked quite dashing in the dwarven style formal shirt and vest. Snyder, wearing something similar, appeared less comfortable without his acolyte robes. No, never mind, that seemed to be Venna's fault. If the Duke could see under the table what the dark elf was doing to the redhead with her foot, he would certainly have reprimanded her.

Further down the table, Torian was the only one who had forgone the dwarf-inspired formal style. The head warlock had opted for stiff black robes with wide silver trim instead, proudly displaying his mastery symbols on the opulent cloth. He visibly perked up at the mention of possible promotions.

Unlike him, the warlocks and dark elves she was less familiar with sat stiffly in their seats, their expressions rigid. Some of their pasty faces gleamed with sweat. Only the youma Landra provided a dash of green colour among the general pallor.

Ami could understand their unease to a degree. The prospect of more prominent positions didn't exactly balance out her own presence. Nobody wanted to mess up in front of the boss, especially when said boss was an Empress and worse, a Keeper.

Perhaps they would feel more comfortable if she gave them more context on what was going on? "I certainly wasn't expecting the dwarfs' first demand to be a gala to publicly announce your new position as Regent of my empire," she told the Duke.

"They are testing the waters," the dwarf replied. "That's why they are asking for a relatively tiny concession that's still inconvenient and will waste your time."

"Wanting to laugh at her for being an ill-mannered peasant unfamiliar with the etiquette doesn't factor into it at all, I'm sure," Cathy commented, apparently unconcerned that her grip on her wine glass was not perfectly traditional.

"We should just make our own," Tiger moaned. "Etiquette I mean. Our empire doesn't have an established tradition yet, so whatever the Empress says goes, right? She'd define what was appropriate and formal, even if it was something involving racy-"

"Tiger, no!" Ami interrupted quickly, shaking her head.

"That's quite enough, your Highness," Duke Libasheshtan said. "The idea is to not offend the other party. Besides, as the acting Regent, it would still be up to me to set the empire's standards."

The striped youma narrowed her eyes at him but didn't protest.

"Your Majesty, if I may?" Torian broke the momentary silence. "This seems like as good an opportunity as any to clarify a point I am confused about. What does the chain of command looks like now that it includes Duke Libasheshtan? Are we supposed to take orders from him, or..." he trailed off, looking rather dubious about the arrangement.

Some of the other employees at leaned in closer in interest.

"You continue to take your orders directly from me," Ami answered. There was no way she would allow her enemies that much influence over her armed forces. "Technically speaking, all of you are my mercenaries and not citizens or soldiers of my empire. As such, he has no direct authority over you."

Torian nodded, and so did some of the people seated farther away. "I see. Thank you for answering my question to my fullest satisfaction, your Majesty." He directed a smug smile in the Duke's direction.

"However," Ami continued, "You will have to keep in mind that he is also in charge of upholding the laws of the empire, so if you broke them, he would be within his rights to have you dealt with accordingly."

The warlock raised an eyebrow. "I assume those situations are purely hypothetical as we don't have an official code of law yet?"

She paused for a moment, considering. "For now. That's not a sustainable state though. There will need to be clear rules when more and more of the locals return to sanity."

"They will be used to the previous laws, your Imperial Majesty," Duke Libasheshtan pointed out. "It would cause the least disruption to simply carry them over, with adequate adaptations for your particular situation, of course."

"It would be a lot of work to ensure no loopholes that could be used against me remain," Ami noted. "Slow, painstaking work." She winced when another thought struck her. "The dwarfs will be pushing for this, won't they?"

Jered nodded. "Yep. Citing rule of law as a prerequisite for diplomatic deals to stall any progress while still appearing reasonable sounds like just the kind of thing they would do."

Ami sighed. "Right. I will-" she stopped and turned to the dwarf sitting to her right. "Or rather, Duke Libasheshtan will have to hire some professionals to work out the details on behalf of the empire."

"You want to trust lawyers with this?" the Duke asked, sounding bemused. "I suppose that's feasible, with sufficient supervision. I can contact a few reliable ones when I go prepare the gala."

"In your southern holdings, right." Jered said. No diplomats wanted to visit Salthalls for obvious reasons. "I'll need the exact location and timetable as soon as you have made the arrangements so I can make some of my own."

"Additional security?" the Duke asked. "I hardly see a reason for that. Who in their right mind would want to get into a fight with the Empress after recent events?"

"You misunderstand," Jered waved his hand. "I simply intend to make sure that the event will receive sufficient public attention. It would be unfortunate if the dwarfs decided that things with the regency weren't going the way they liked, and therefore pretended that it never happened."

Duke Libasheshtan blinked, but didn't deny that the possibility existed. "Fine, but that will raise expectations. The absence of the fairy ambassador in anything but pristine condition would raise concerns about the safety of future diplomats, for example."

Ami leaned forward. "Torian, I told you a while ago to search for the fairy sisters?"

"Indeed you did," the head warlock confirmed. "I am aware of their location and foresee no notable difficulties in collecting them." His toothy smile wavered a little. "Though there is something a little odd going on with one of them."

 

[Pusakuronu]

Torian had claimed a corner of the palace's library as his office. His desk stood hidden in the shadow of a bookshelf that touched the ceiling, and he had even hung a dividing curtain to dim the light further. The twilight wasn't ideal for reading or working, but it did make the images within his crystal ball easier to see.

Seated in his looming chair, the warlock waved pale fingers over the glowing orb as he zoomed in on a particularly fluffy and plump youma. "And the fuzzball menace to carpets everywhere over there is the Ambassador."

Ami, seated across from him, nodded. Using the image in the scrying device as a reference, she sought out the transformed fairy with her Keeper sight for a closer look. With two fur-covered wings emerging from beneath her long, blonde mane like floppy ears, she reminded Ami of a well-fed rabbit. The young Keeper briefly pondered running her fingers through the soft, inviting-looking fur, and then sighed. Not only would doing so be inappropriate, it would also be completely mortifying if Camilla remembered it once cured.

When she focused on Torian again, he seemed to be studying her face with a knowing look. "Be advised that the fluff she sheds paralyzes on touch," he said.

"R-Right, I'll warn Jadeite," she said quickly and faced away from him, mildly embarrassed. Like the overwhelming majority of the new youma, Camilla had a minion link, which was likely to cause both her and Ami a lot of trouble in the future. In the meantime, it meant that transporting her into one of the waiting rooms for the high-priority patients took only a moment of concentration. Scribbling a warning on the door with a telekinetically controlled piece of chalk didn't take much longer.

As soon as the fairy disappeared from Torian's view, he started waving his fingers over the crystal ball again. "Ah, here we go, your Majesty. Our healers will need a larger tub for that one."

Ami focused on the amethyst-coloured figure visible in the orb. Crystalline carapace formed an exoskeleton around a female figure who towered over the surrounding youma as she walked in a hunched position, her head scraping against the ceiling. Her right arm was much larger and thicker than the left, easily reaching the ground.

"That one can change her size, fully or in part," Torian explained. "Your Majesty, I recommend putting her in a sealed room with sturdy walls, because she can shrink down and squeeze through any small gap."

"Indeed?" Ami had a better idea and transported the mutated fairy into a regular jail cell with a barred door instead.

The confused youma turned her head to look at her new surroundings for a moment before walking towards the bars, losing height with every step.

Ami hit her with a sleeping spell when she was about the size of a doll. The healers would be grateful for not having to haul around a creature that, in her estimation, weighed about as much as a fully-grown cow.

"The next one makes me a little dizzy," Torian confessed.

It took Ami a split-second to notice that his crystal ball wasn't showing an empty corridor. There was one spot where the brickwork distorted and curved. She squinted, trying to make sense of the strange way light and shadows failed to outline contours properly.

A quick inspection with Keeper sight revealed that she was looking at a purely optical phenomenon, rather than some patch of twisted space. A faceless youma with smooth, reflective skin sat in the exact centre of an equally reflective disc-shaped patch of ground.

"She's surrounded by a field that makes every surface inside act like a mirror," Torian elaborated. "It doesn't seem to interfere with friction, but everyone inside is blind until-"

Ami jerked upright, prompting the warlock to stop talking and look at her in surprise. She held up her palm, signalling him to wait for a moment while she investigated the sudden alert she had received from her dungeon.

Some of her underlings were fighting. Given their nature, brawls and violence weren't uncommon, but this time, she sensed that someone without a minion link was involved.

She willed her Keeper Sight towards the source of the alert, and it jumped to a district of the city she hadn't personally visited yet. She found herself looking at a corridor junction where three residential alleys merged into a larger shopping district.

On the ground, three prone trolls flailed around in an oily bluish puddle. A fourth held onto a tall statue, his green arms wrapped around its waist. Sculpted granite armour pressed uncomfortably into his skin as he tried to remain upright, his kicking feet failing to find purchase on the stained cobblestones.

A bit ahead of the slippery puddle, the leader of the team was lying on his back, a footprint-shaped bruise on his face slowly turning a deeper shade of green.

The culprits hadn't gotten far yet. A blur consisting of two female figures was racing down the street. The youma in the lead had yellowed, wrinkled skin and obviously some kind of speed-related magic. Her partner in crime trailed behind her like a banner fluttering in the wind, one elongated, stretchy arm trapped in the faster youma's grip.

"Don't let them get you!" the former yelled. "They are melting people into goo!"

Ami suddenly flinched as a façade covered in figurine-holding alcoves entered her field of view. With her Keeper Sight, it felt like the equivalent of the sun suddenly shining into her eyes without warning. She was looking at holy ground.

The sensation was more startling than unpleasant, but it distracted her long enough for the door to slam shut behind the two fleeing youma.

Opening her eyes, Ami lowered her arm. "The team supposed to retrieve the first two fairies failed. They have taken refuge in a small shrine." She could detect a minion link to the rubbery youma, but her sane sister's grip on her arm prevented Ami from just transporting the "prisoner" away.

"I'm sure a number of bored minions would be happy to drag them back out for you," Torian suggested with an eager grin.

"Better to just send their sisters once they are cured," Ami replied absently while she telekinetically pushed the fallen trolls onto less slippery terrain. Looking at Torian she asked, "Who's next?"

The scrying orb fogged up briefly underneath the warlock's touch before it focused on the next fairy.

Ami's eyebrows rose. "I thought you wanted to keep the odd one for last?"

She was looking at an emaciated being with enough branching limbs to look like a cross between a skeleton, a spider, and a leafless bush. Series of holes ran down the thin, bone-coloured appendages, giving them a flute-like appearance.

Ami shifted uncomfortably when she noted that similar holes in the youma's forehead let her see right into the bald skull. It seemed to be as hollow as the rest of the limbs. She wondered how the mutated fairy was even alive, though her functional minion link left no doubt that she was.

Torian looked up at her and blinked. "That isn't the oddity," he said in a surprised tone.

Ami was dreading to learn what the warlock considered odd if he took that kind of weirdness in stride. Wait, no, she had seen six mutated fairies so far, so the last could only be the dragon-like one she had briefly encountered in the casting chamber.

"All right." Ami took a deep breath and considered the flailing flute-spider thing again. "I think we better hold off on trying to heal that one before we are completely confident that the slime method will work on her."

"Very well, your Majesty." Torian made his crystal ball change perspective again. "On to the one I figured you might take a personal interest in."

The image in the sphere changed to show a treasure chamber with the chequered floor common to those constructed by Ami. It was otherwise unremarkable, aside from not containing any treasure.

Ami didn't need to verify its coordinates to recognise it as the treasury she had created near her railway station to temporarily stash the wealth arriving by train from her abandoned Whitemountain dungeon.

Right now, the room should have been empty. Instead, it contained a crowd of youma and a large, snoring dragon, who had curled up like a dog sleeping in its basket. Aside from the dragon, everyone was looking at the red-scaled figure resting in the crook formed by the dragon's body as if it was her own personal armchair.

Blinking, Ami took a closer look at the transformed fairy leaning her back against the fire-breathing lizard's flank and using his tail as a footrest. Had she sought ought dragons when reminded of her siblings? It made a little sense, but it didn't even begin to explain what Ami was looking at here.

There were several things wrong with the situation, and not just because dragons generally didn't cuddle or sleep in empty treasuries. Youma shuffling towards the fairy in a small procession to offer their hard-won shards of crystallised black mana as tribute went against everything Ami knew about their behaviour.

An imp joining them with her own contribution for the pile pushed the situation from strange to outright alarming.

"You were right to bring this to my attention," Ami said, instinctively lowering her voice as if the creatures in the treasury could overhear her.

Torian lowered his head in a shallow bow, a self-satisfied smile on his face. "Glad I could be of service, your Majesty."

Ami nodded absently as she considered the situation. The transformed fairy, whom she tentatively assumed to be Anise due to her red colour, had gained a minion link since she met her, most likely when Salthalls had become Ami's territory. While diplomatically problematic, it was good news in this particular situation. Someone outside of the dungeon's chain of command being able to influence her imps to such a degree could be disastrous.

Wanting to see how much her control over the imp was compromised, she ordered the crystal-carrying worker to leave.

Without hesitation, the imp turned around and started running towards the chamber's exit.

The horned fairy's half-lidded expression changed into a wide-eyed look of surprise before turning into a frown. Staring at the imp's back, she leaned forward to reach into the pile of mana shards on the floor in front of her.

For a moment, the imp looked confused, and then turned around again to take a spot at the back of the procession.

Ami positioned her Keeper sight for a better look, frowning as she thought about what she had observed. Whatever magical ability Anise was using to control her entourage wasn't registering as an attack to the dungeon heart. She hadn't tried to use it when she had briefly confronted Ami in the casting chamber, so perhaps it was something she had only recently learned.

With a repeated order from Ami, the imp turned around once again and ran towards the exit.

Now visibly irritated, the fairy-youma reached into the pile of black crystals again, giving Ami's zoomed-in Keeper Sight a great view of what she was doing. Her hand didn't just close randomly around one of the shards. Instead, she aimed straight for one specific crystal at the bottom of the pile that looked very different from the others. Bright, clear and elongated, it looked perfectly symmetrical and intact, unlike the uneven shards surrounding it.

Within the transparent material, a faint pattern lit up briefly when Anise placed two fingers on one of the crystal's sides.

The imp returned to the back of the file of youma once again, and the circuit-like designs flickering within the clear gem winked out.

Ami considered the strange crystal. Was it something Anise had created herself? With its clean lines and almost technological look, it didn't fit the mutated fairy's dragon theme. She could have taken it from some other youma or even found it in the city. In any case, its origin was less important than stopping it from affecting Ami's employees. She could just ask the fairy where she got it later, once she was back to normal.

Being currently unattended, the mysterious gem could simply be picked up with Keeper Transport, which Ami did. She felt a little resistance from the crystal sticking to the ground somehow, but it came loose with a sharp popping noise nevertheless.
Anise gasped the instant the gem disappeared into storage. With a cry of despair, she launched herself into the pile of black crystals, only to collide face-first with the chitin-armoured chest of another youma who had been diving for the mana shards.

Crystals went flying every way as more youma landed on top of the two as they jumped at the pile of delicious food. The smarter ones stayed on the side lines to scavenge whatever shards were kicked and flung their way.

As Torian's roaring laughter echoed through the library, Ami hung her head and watched the chaos. Well, at least this proved that the crystal's control didn't linger.

---

Duke Libasheshtan sat at his desk, a quill in his hand as he concentrated on his penmanship.

Cathy's voice came from the direction of the door to his office. "Just another dwarf without a minion link setting off an alarm trap, nothing to worry about."

The Duke grunted an acknowledgement, not taking his eyes off his work. The occasional false alerts were annoying, but Mercury considered infiltration, poison, and sabotage the greatest credible danger to Salthalls. It was an assessment he agreed with.

The ink in his inkwell vibrated from Cathy's footstep as she approached. "Isn't Mercury here to help with the planning?" she asked, casting a shadow over his work as she peered down at the immaculately drawn characters.

The Duke snorted. "I hardly need her assistance to give orders to my own people." He placed a final dot, and, satisfied, finally looked up at the human woman, only to boggle in surprise. His eyes widened as he took in her form-hugging leather outfit that wouldn't have looked too out of place on one of those horrible dark mistresses the empress employed.

Cathy tilted her head to the side upon seeing his raised eyebrows. "What's with that reaction? It doesn't even show any skin."

"But- no, that's not it," the Duke said, blinking. "I could have sworn you were wearing armour."

"Right, dwarven senses," Cathy muttered to herself. She clapped her hands, producing a metallic clang before they touched each other. "I am," she explained. "I just had a warlock turn it invisible for aesthetical reasons," she explained, sounding irritated. "Not a bad solution, but I keep accidentally bumping into things I thought I was clear of."

"The effect is rather unpleasant, Commander," the Duke said, "I recommend you not to use it around dwarfs."

"Noted," Cathy said. "So where is Mercury?"

"She mentioned something about revisiting an old experiment."

---

"… and then I realised that I don't actually need a completely sealed, hollow adamantine container," Ami told Snyder as she excitedly gesticulated with the glass tube she held in her left hand. The noise of her lab coat swishing echoed faintly in the bare, white-tiled lab that she had designed to be easy to clean, not unlike a modern bathroom.

The red-haired acolyte standing behind a stainless steel pedestal looked up from the notes before him, his pale face betraying a certain lack of enthusiasm.

"Question," he said, interrupting her explanations. "Correct me if I am wrong, but this spell you are having me study," he met her eyes. "Isn't this the summoning spell with its safety features stripped out?"

"Yes, exactly," Ami nodded with a pleased smile.

"Oh dear. I was hoping I was mistaken," Snyder said, his eyes darting towards the exit from the lab. "I cannot conceive of any safe, let alone constructive application for summoning something into occupied space."

"Filtering," Ami replied.

The acolyte paused for a moment, raising his hand to his smooth chin before shaking his head. "How does flinging mashed-together bits at insane speeds in every direction make things less intermingled?"

Far from discouraged, Ami held the metal-capped glass tube closer for him to see. "We are going to teleport pure magical energy, so there's no need to worry about explosions," she said as she put one finger on the glass. "Watch, it passes right through solid objects."

To demonstrate, she pushed a bit of mana through the digit, producing a small glowing sphere attached to her fingertip that passed through the glass without resistance.

"I even made this container so I could pump all the air out first so that nothing but mana will be teleported," she continued.

Snyder pondered this for a moment. "Ah, well, that does sound like it could work," he said. "If there is no interaction between- wait a moment, what does this have to do with filtering? Don't tell me…" he looked up in alarm, his gaze wandering to the only table in the room.

An anvil-like block of stone covered in white tiles protruded from the ground, topped by a metal plate. From its centre rose a light blue hilt like a tiny flagpole, the rest of the dagger buried deep within the thick steel.

"And suddenly, I am worried again," Snyder said. He started massaging his temples. "That's an adamantine weapon, isn't it?"

Ami simply nodded.

"Of course it is. Naturally, you want to teleport something that can pass through solid matter safely into the one thing it cannot. Why am I even surprised?"

"That isn't entirely correct," Ami said, her confidence audible in her voice. "In the absence of wards, uncontaminated mana will pass through adamantine easily enough."

"Meaning yours won't," the acolyte pointed out immediately.

"Which is why it will be filtered if it's teleported inside," Ami replied. "With the adamantine being indestructible, the contaminants will either get crushed into some harmless form or just stay stuck inside, leaving only uncontaminated mana to trickle out."

Snyder sighed and walked around the table, eyeing the steel keeping the dagger in place critically. "I don't know. Are you absolutely sure this is not going to end with an indestructible dagger being hurled in a random direction at speeds that would make lightning seem slow?"

"Yes, Snyder. You wouldn't be here if I hadn't already run a few tests myself," Ami said as she placed the glass tube onto a circular depression on the table. It locked into place with an audible click. "Nothing bad or violent happened using either mana, pure dark energy, or life energy."

The acolyte relaxed. "Oh, yes, that makes sense. You are obviously able to cast the spell yourself, possibly even at safe range." Now looking more interested, he approached within touching range of the dagger. "So what happened?"

"In order, the experiments produced mana, mana, and life energy," she reported. "I was a little worried about the adamantine gobbling up the latter, but apparently, it doesn't do that unless activated first."

"That sounds like it is working according to your predictions," he said, looking over at her questioningly. "So why are we both here- oh. Oh no."

Ami had just transported an unconscious chicken into the room and was holding it in her arms. While she had expected Snyder's reluctance, the whine in his voice that implied she had failed to learn from previous experience still felt a little irritating.

"I remember that experiment," the acolyte said, backing away from the table, "and I have no desire to end up covered in chicken guts again!"

"That only happened after we tried to heal the chicken with synthetic holy power," she protested, running her fingers gently over the sleeping bird's feathers. "You are only here to evaluate the results and to figure out a warding scheme for collecting the filtered energy."

"I see. You need someone who can make it work without interfering with the summoning spell," Snyder said with a nod.

"Yes, but in a first step, I'll need you to just cast the spell. I'll be too busy manipulating the life energy to do it myself. Don't worry, with both circle and distance being so tiny, it won't tax you much." Ami petted the chicken once again before cancelling her possession spell.

In a streak of darkness, she popped up next to her glamoured golem twin. Though they both wore identical lab coats, nobody would confuse them standing side by side. Ami's eyes were glowing red while the golem's had reverted to aquamarine, and the chicken remained firmly in the animated statue's grasp.

Ami plunged her index finger into the animal's feather coat, touching skin, and cautiously drained a harmless amount of life energy. With the white glow trailing her digit like a misty thread, she touched it to the glass of her vacuum tube and pushed the faint wisp inside.
Snyder shot her a bemused look, glancing first at her and then at the golem.

"I only have enough control for this in my original body, especially when working through glass," Ami explained even as her visor expanded out over her eyes. The golems' ice just didn't conduct Metallia's dark energy with enough precision for the complicated fine manipulation needed to weave life energy into off-brand holy power.

"Very well." The redhead watched intently as Ami placed her hands left and right of the standing tube. Threads of black lightning darted from her fingertips into the mote of life energy floating within the container, dragging the glowing sphere into its centre. "I only have to get the ball, correct?"

"Yes," Ami confirmed. "You can start already; I should be finished before you."

The acolyte got to work, carefully evaluating the distance between the light energy and the dagger stuck in the table. As he started chanting, tiny counter-rotating circles of flame appeared around the weapon's thickest part, a section of the grip near the crossguard. Matching circles appeared within the glass tube, burning brightly despite the lack of air.

Ami only spared them enough attention to verify that their positions were correct before concentrating fully on her own part of the work. She felt a bead of sweat run down her forehead as she concentrated on twisting the energies into the right patterns. She doubted she would have managed to produce the delicate, complex structures required without the dungeon heart aiding with stabilisation, control, and memorisation. Perhaps some of the dwarfs might be able to do it though, given the intricateness of the artwork she had seen. Oh no, don't get distracted now.

The minutes passed faster than Ami had expected, and she barely managed to finish before Snyder's voice rose to a crescendo. The spinning circles flared up a final time before they disappeared along with the sphere of synthetic light power at their centre. In an instant, the vacuum tube was completely empty, and a terrible sensation washed over Ami.

"Eeeep!"

Snyder flinched at the startled cry and looked up from the pulse of white light emanating from dagger. Spotting only the statue-still golem, he blinked at the empty spot where the blue-haired Keeper had just been standing, and then shrugged. "Success, I guess?"

---

Using Keeper transport to escape from danger was usually a great idea. Doing so on reflex, without a predetermined destination in mind, was considerably less so. As a Keeper, Ami couldn't keep herself stashed away in her own storage, after all.

She found herself at a new location, still staggering backwards from her leap away from the holy-infused dagger. Waving her arms to recover her balance, she caught a glimpse of Cathy's and Duke Libasheshtan's widening eyes as she stumbled past his desk. Oh, so she had appeared in his office – which was the last spot she had observed with her Keeper Sight, she quickly deduced.

Her back slammed into something hard before she could congratulate herself for learning something useful. She had run out of space and collided with a tall bookcase near the wall, which wobbled and buried her under an avalanche of books. A crystal chandelier above rang from the force of the impact.

"Mercury?" Cathy's voice called. The thick carpet muffled the clanging of her boots as she approached with rapid steps.

"Your Majesty?" Duke Libasheshtan reacted only a moment later, rising half from his seat to better peer over his desk.

"Ow," Ami complained, rubbing her head where a particularly heavy tome had struck her. She sat upright, causing some of the books to slide off her, and looked up. "I'm fine, just startled," she said and held a hand out for Cathy to grab unto.

With a deft pull, the swordswoman helped the teenager back on her feet.

The Duke blinked rapidly at Ami as he inspected her more closely. "You are actually here in the flesh, your Majesty!" he exclaimed before he let himself fall back into his seat with a heavy thud. Kneading his nose bridge between thumb and index finger, he added in a wry tone, "Should I take it as an indictment of my work as your Regent that you are trying to kill yourself barely a day after I took the job?"

Ami stopped straightening out her lab coat to look at him. "I wasn't actually doing anything dangerous. Unpleasant, yes," she didn't try to suppress the large smile that was forcing its way onto her face, "but that means it was a success! Yes!" She pumped her fist in the air with an elated hop.

The dwarf raised an eyebrow. "Enthusiasm aside, please be careful. It would be exceedingly awkward if I had to explain that you tripped and broke your neck shortly after becoming my ward. That said," his voice became less dry, "what were you doing that has you in such a good mood?"

"Creating artificial holy power using adamantine!" she answered clapping her hands.

The Duke's jaw dropped as he stared at her, at a loss for words.

"You actually got it to work this time?" Cathy asked with barely any hint of disbelief.

"Yes!" Ami clapped her hands together, barely able to contain her excitement. "We'll finally have enough power to break the curses on the blinded citizens' eyes! Or to brute-force heal transformed dwarfs when the slime method seems unsafe!" she cheered.

"That sounds amazing," Cathy said with a smile. "And it works just like that?"

Ami's elation faded a little. "Well, I may have skipped a few steps. The holy power needs to be captured and stored in batteries." She shook her head, thinking. "No, make it wands instead. They can be brought into light temples and directly handed to priests." She paused. "Oh, I should inform Abbot Durval that he can focus entirely on healing now."

"I'm sure he'll be so disappointed about no longer needing to handle that creepy dark energy gauntlet you made for him," Cathy commented.

The abbot's training with the Metallia-energy infused gauntlet was redundant now that Ami had a way to produce holy energy without the dungeon heart ruining it.

She inclined her head, touching her chin as she thought out aloud, "Actually, it might be worth investing some time into developing a spell that can automatically transform the life energy for me." Her own contributions were the bottleneck here, as she had to treat the life force personally with Metallia's power.

"It sounds like the only thing stopping you here is minor details, your Majesty, surprising as this may be considering the topic." The Duke shook his head in disbelief before settling on a neutral expression. "However, it's fortunate that you are here. In light of the upcoming gala, there is a topic I need to discuss with you."

Hearing the seriousness in the dwarf's voice, Ami turned to give him her full attention. "Yes?"

"As your Regent, I have no choice but to point out that your…" he slowed down as if thinking about his phrasing, "preferences… concerning your redecoration efforts and sense of style are highly, well, inappropriate." To illustrate his point, he held up an empty envelope made from high-quality parchment.

With a sinking feeling, Ami focused on the white and golden rectangle clearly meant for official correspondence. Given his opening words, she could already guess what the problem was before she spotted it.

Hair-thin golden threads emblazoned the envelope, gathering into denser geometric patterns at its four corners. Tightly layered and overlapping, they formed decorative but abstract angular patterns. At least they would have, without a number of minimal distortions to the intricate web. They tricked the eye into composing the image of two bat-shaped women without a stitch of clothing between them framing the centre of the envelope.

Ami felt a blush creep up her cheeks and hung her head. "I see, this-" a jolt of alarm went through her as the Duke's exact words sank in, and her blush intensified. "Wait, you think I'm doing this on purpose?!" she shouted, staring at him wide-eyed.

At her sudden outburst, the Duke retreated deeper into his chair and looked her in the eyes inquisitively. "You mean you are not?"

So embarrassing, but she had failed to inform him about the details of her dungeon's Corruption, hadn't she? With everything else that was going on, it had never crossed her mind…

Looking apologetic, the dwarf continued, "I thought you were at an age where humans-"

"NO!" At this point, Ami's ears felt so hot as if they were about to combust, and Cathy's snickering wasn't helping. "It's a side effect of preventing the dark gods from using my dungeon heart to kill us all!" she elaborated.

"That's not exactly reassuring," Duke Libasheshtan said. "I almost prefer my previous assumption, your Majesty."

"They can't do anything now," Ami hurriedly assured him. "I fixed the weakness in the dungeon heart's design. It worked through the Corruption it pumps into the environment. The problem is that the more I control one of the Corruption's aspects, the less control I have over others. To fix the issue, I had to permit cosmetic alterations within my dungeon." In a small voice she added, "Of which Salthalls is now a part."

The Duke hummed as he took in the information. "I see. So the more scandalous elements of your wardrobe are due to the influence of this Corruption?"

"Yes!" Ami confirmed, nodding rapidly.

"Actually, some cultural differences remain, your Grace," Cathy warned. "She sees absolutely nothing wrong with wearing skirts about this short." She brought her hand down to her thigh, indicating where the hem of Mercury's sailor skirt ended.

The Duke grimaced. "Cultural differences. Very well. On the bright side, that's still more modest than those fairy uniforms." He sighed. "Is there some way to mitigate or eliminate the effects of this Corruption? I can't bear thinking about what it will do to the ancient and priceless works of art in the city." His expression darkened. "Especially to the pieces with artistic nudity…"

Ami clasped her hands guiltily. "Well, dealing with it hasn't been a priority so far. I can think of some options, but they all have considerable drawbacks. For example, before the fighting started, I asked the dwarfs of Sirith Anlur to come up with acceptable designs that incorporate the Corruption's themes so it won't make further changes. I never heard back from them, though."

"Imagine that, with this war thing going on," Cathy deadpanned.

"You commissioned work from the exiles?" Duke Libasheshtan asked with sudden interest. "Intriguing. I will have to invite them to the gala. Still, that approach won't work for preserving the city."

"The other option is releasing control on the surface to impose harsher limits within the dungeon," Ami said. "However, that may render the surface uninhabitable."

"What kind of effects are we talking about?" The Duke asked.

Ami mentally estimated how much control she could maintain while still achieving her goals. "Inundations, lethal cold, crushing glaciers. Brittleness, decay, random magical effects. Insect plagues and poisonous, strangling thorn thickets," she listed. "All three themes supplemented by an undercurrent of generic evil."

Duke Libaheshtan was frowning when she finished. "… might be tolerable..." he muttered to himself.

Ami couldn't believe her ears. "Um, I think you might be underestimating the lethality of those effects."

The Duke gave her a grave look. "Your Majesty, I believe you may be underestimating how much value we dwarfs put on protecting our irreplaceable historical treasures."

"But-"

"Consider the structures on the surface expendable," the Duke instructed. "Once you do, how much can you limit the collateral damage?"

Ami blinked. She didn't have a scenario ready that just gave up on the surface buildings, but once she permitted herself to consider that option, a new possibility presented itself. "Oh! I can cycle the effects!" she exclaimed. "Start with the rampant growth, kill it off with frost, then switch back," she said. "This way, the effects can't build up and spread into the surrounding regions."

Duke Libasheshtan nodded with grim acceptance. "Do it. That should tide us over until you come up with a better solution, or at least long enough to get the gala over while avoiding complete mortification."

 

[Pusakuronu]

The ice and snow coating Salthalls glittered in the sun. Strong winds whipped clouds of mist past empty buildings and shook the withered thorn vines crawling across facades and roofs. Icicles dangled from one of the dead plants arching across the road, making it look like the upper jaw of an ancient predator. Its icy fangs quivered, not from the wind, but from the trembling of the ground as a large shadow blotted out the sun.

With loud shattering noises, something shaped like a huge maggot brushed the frozen vines aside as if they were mere spider webs. Metre-long spines protruded from its barky segments, reaching even the frozen vegetation connecting the roofs and tearing through them in a hail of broken icicles and plant matter. The being slowly inched forward and completely ignored the bombardment. Not even sharp-edged fragments tumbling into the gaps between its stiff segments and reaching the silk-like webbing underneath could catch its attention.

Two pinpricks of red light shone behind a tall window of one of the buildings burrowed half into the mountainside. Ami's breath condensed on the cold glass in front of her as she watched the crawling creatures scraping wide trails through the snow. She turned towards the room's second window, where seven insect-winged girls were huddled together.

Three of the fairies were leaning shoulder to shoulder on the windowsill, their faces so close to the glass that it was fogging up. Three more peered over them, also trying to get a good look at the wintery landscape. The final one had her hands on her sisters' backs to push herself up, rapidly beating her wings to lighten the load. Her hovering caused a strong breeze in the already uncomfortably cold chamber.

Ami cleared her throat to catch their attention.

Dandel, the eldest of the fairies, reacted first. The indigo-haired girl straightened and turned towards Ami. This caused Roselle's hand on her back to slip. The orange-eyed sister lost her balance, and her steady hover turned into an involuntary dive even as the buzzing of her wings intensified. With a startled yelp, she bumped into the small group of girls.

Some jostling, a chorus of startled noises, and an indignant screech when a cheek made contact with the cold glass later, all of the fairy sisters had noticed Ami looking at them and turned to face her.

She gestured towards the various couches and armchairs arranged around the room's fireplace in a wordless invitation, claiming a high-backed seat with red upholstery for herself.

Camilla, as the official Ambassador, sat down separate from the others in an armchair directly across the low coffee table from Ami. Roselle and Tilia picked the couch to the blonde's left, close to the fireplace. Dandel, Anise and Melissa took the couch on her right. Cerasse ended up in the armchair furthest away and brushed away a few specks of dust that had gathered there since the dwarfs had abandoned the surface.

"As you can see," Ami said, inclining her head towards the windows, "I have good reasons for delaying the construction of your new embassy."

Cerasse abruptly stopped her cleaning efforts and looked up. "What exactly are those creepy things?" She asked curiously. A moment later, her purple eyes widened in alarm and she quickly tacked on the "Your Imperial Majesty" she had forgotten.

"You don't have to worry about addressing me formally while it's only us here," Ami reassured her with a gentle smile. In truth, she still hadn't gotten entirely used to being treated like an Empress. For a moment, she wondered how many people would only talk to her painstakingly according to protocol out of spite if they knew it made her feel a little awkward. "As for your question, they are hives. Colonies of venomous bugs taking shelter in the frozen remnants of cacti."

The redhead wedged between Dandel and Melissa glanced at the amulet placed among the plates with snacks on the table. As it remained dark, there were no people scrying on them. Without hesitation, Anise took advantage of the absence of potential lip readers to accept Ami's offer and speak freely. "What in the world made you think it was a good idea to let those overgrown pincushions loose in the city?"

Ami scratched the back of her head. "Ah, that was unintentional. They are an undesired side effect of rerouting my dungeon's Corruption to the surface. Periodically cycling through different modes was supposed to make the different effects counter each other."

Dandel tilted her head to the side. "How does this lead to shambling plant husks, your Majesty?"

"A little overlooked problem," Ami admitted, her cheeks flushing lightly. "The cold part of the cycle was supposed to kill off the lifeforms generated by the hyper-fertility part, but then the river started freezing up and threatened to turn into a dam. I had to make some quick adjustments to exclude it, which unfortunately allowed some of the bugs to find shelter and adapt."

The fairies stared at her in silence, various expressions flitting over their faces. Cerasse raised a sceptical eyebrow, Melissa was blinking rapidly, and Anise narrowed her eyes in annoyance.

"… don't want to be pumped full of Corruption," Roselle muttered as she scanned the corners of the room for suspicious alterations.

"Right. Rerouting Corruption to the surface," Camilla said after a moment. "But, why? Why would you even do something like that?"

"To protect the rest of the city," Ami answered. "The idea is giving the Corruption an outlet so it stops enforcing its more, um, embarrassing themes elsewhere."

Tilia snorted. The emerald-haired fairy sat with her legs folded, demonstratively staring at Ami's short skirt through half-lidded eyes. "As if you would mind."

Ami felt the blood rush to her cheeks at the reminder of her undeserved reputation. She wringed her hands for a moment as she suppressed her first reaction and swallowed her protests. Arguing the point right now just was unlikely to change their minds. Instead, she let out a long breath. "Most of the people who live in the city do. They aren't as comfortable with suggestive outfits as you are."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Melissa growled, an uncharacteristic look of indignation on the usually placid fairy's face.

The fairies were wearing their white uniforms, which blurred the line between a one-piece swimsuit and a bikini. They covered even less than Ami's Sailor Mercury uniform and were, in her opinion, just a simple colour switch removed from looking like typical Underworld wear. With as little insulation as their clothing provided, the sisters had to be using some magic to keep warm.

"I mean that lots of people here have a low tolerance for bare skin," Ami clarified in order not to needlessly antagonise the fairies. She had a small request for them, after all. "In any case, I was hoping that you could contact your superiors to notify them about the current difficulties with constructing the embassy on the surface. If it's acceptable to them, the plans can be altered to build it underground instead."

Camilla briefly glanced at her sisters, but they were leaving the answer up to the actual ambassador. After a moment, she inclined her head in a nod. "That sounds reasonable."

She didn't sound very enthusiastic, and Melissa and Roselle showed slightly bitter expressions. The others were keeping their faces carefully neutral, but their postures shifted slightly as they tensed up.

It was clear to Ami that they weren't eager to report that except for Tilia, they had all formed minion links. Sure, it hadn't been voluntary, and Ami had severed them as soon as the sisters were able to think clearly again, but that wouldn't shield them from the repercussions. She had better distract them from their justified resentment for ruining their careers with something more pleasant, she thought guiltily.

"Good. In the meantime, you have free choice of accommodations. You may opt to stay with the civilians, move into the quarter reserved for the cured dwarfs, or into a temple," she listed. "If you don't like any of those options, you can also pick any building in the city. Just let me know first so I can keep the insane dwarfs away. Finally, if you prefer, I can also construct you a temporary home to your specifications."

"I believe a shrine would-"

"Can we have a heated pool?"

Dandel and Melissa, who had started speaking at the same time, stopped to look at each other.

"I don't mind if you discuss your options among each other first," Ami said.

Cerasse looked thoughtful. "I don't know, doesn't this feel a little like a bribe?" she pondered.

Dandel's pupils contracted, and she shot the purple-haired girl a look that all but screamed, "Don't say things like that out loud!"

Ami had to admit that Cerasse's suspicion wasn't entirely off the mark. While she genuinely wanted to recompense them for the hardships they had suffered, she also needed them in a cooperative mood. "You can always run your decision past your superiors first to avoid giving the wrong impression," she suggested quickly.

Camilla nodded. "That would be for the best if I'm contacting them anyway."

"Indeed." Ami hesitated for a moment before continuing with fake reluctance, "At the same time, you may as well ask for permission to attend a gala Duke Libasheshtan will be holding to celebrate his appointment as Regent of my Empire."

The blonde was about to nod before she froze, her eyes widening and her jaw dropping.

"Wait, what?" Roselle asked, sitting up straighter.

"Did you say 'Regent'?" Melissa asked, blinking.

"Are you serious?" Anise seemed the most incredulous of the lot.

Ami had to stop herself from giggling at their flabbergasted expressions. She was pretending to be annoyed about the devious dwarven plot, after all. In a flat voice, she answered, "It was the only way the dwarfs would agree to opening negotiations with me, even if it's over a middleman."

"And you are willing to go along with that, your Majesty?" Dandel asked curiously.

Well, yes. It was Ami's own plan, after all. Still, she did her best to sound grumpy as she answered, "Their laws don't really leave me a choice. It's either going along or forcing them to consider their citizens lost and hostile combatants, with all that entails."

Camilla gulped. "Yes, that would be horrible."

"So you want to avoid a fight," Tilia said. The somewhat smug twitch of her lips indicated that she was coming up with her own conclusions about Ami's motivations. "So why invite us? Wouldn't you want to keep such an embarrassing predicament secret?" At that point, she wasn't putting much effort into hiding her glee, which earned her a warning look from her eldest sister.

"Well, I'd prefer not to go along with all of this only for the dwarfs to back out of the deal as soon as it's convenient," Ami said. "The more public the proceedings, the greater the shame if they break the agreement. Thus, having an ambassador from the Shining Concord Empire attend will greatly reduce the chance of open hostilities resuming. Besides, your presence will reassure other diplomats that they have nothing to fear from me."

Anise jumped to her feet, her face red. "Nothing to fear? You turned us into monsters!" she yelled, pointing her finger accusingly at Ami.

Next to the redhead, Dandel twitched and bit her lips, and then urgently tugged on her sister's wing to try to get her to sit back down.

Ami shrank back in her seat. While the redhead posed only minimal danger to her, even considering her magic, being shouted at by someone with a justified grudge still made her uncomfortable. "That- that was a complete accident! I turned you back as soon as I had a cure!" she defended herself.

"Because you had already achieved your goal of turning us into your minions!" Anise countered. She winced when the tugging on her wing became painfully insistent. With a sideways glare at her indigo-haired sister, she let herself fall back down on the couch.

Ami shook her head. "But that doesn't make sense. If that had been my goal, then why would I have sent you to Salthalls, where I would have very little control over the situation? It would have been much more straightforward to just transform you at my dungeon."

"To serve as a distraction? Plausible deniability?" Cerasse speculated, earning herself a grateful nod from Anise.

Ami sighed. "No. What would I have to gain from making you form a link just to sever it again? Without even keeping it a secret?"

Neither Anise nor Cerasse had an immediate answer. In the sudden silence, Roselle muttered, "Now that's a question that's certain to keep me up at night."

"Well, it's evil," Melissa pointed out. "Keepers do evil things for no particular reason all the time."

Ami hesitated. That was a frustratingly simple argument that was nevertheless true and somewhat undermined her position. "Well, I don't!" she said lamely. "I wouldn't make more unnecessary trouble for myself by causing you harm on purpose. That would be completely pointless and counter-productive!"

Melissa frowned. "Still turned us into minions and ruined our future," she said and turned her head aside with a resentful sniff.

Ami averted her gaze from the dark looks the seven sisters sent in her direction. "And I'm really extremely sorry about that," she said quickly. "I will be offering restitution as soon as I can make sure it won't be interpreted as bribery or cause you further complications," she added. In a firmer voice, she clarified, "It was still an accident, though!"

Tilia uncrossed her arms and straightened her spine so she could deliberately look outside. "You do seem rather accident-prone. Sounds like it's a good thing you will be getting some adult oversight soon, doesn't it?"

Dandel clapped her hands. With a strained smile, she said, "I believe it might be best to return to the topic of the gala, your Majesty."

Ami relaxed her grip on her armrest and smiled gratefully. "Ah, yes. As I said, it would be most convenient if you brought it up with your superiors along with the possible blueprint change and the issue of your interim lodgings. You probably want to avoid giving the impression that you were doing me a favour."

Anise, with her arms crossed, immediately interjected, "Which it would be. Camilla, I'm not sure we should be doing her a favour."

Ami narrowed her eyes. "It's a favour to everyone currently living at Salthalls, as it will help keep them alive. Avoiding further combat is in everyone's best interest." She turned her head to address Cammilla directly. "Besides, isn't meeting important people part of your job as an Ambassador anyway?"

"That's true," Camilla admitted.

Tilia leaned forward. "Wait a moment, important people? Nobody important is going to risk entering a dungeon, right? Especially after what happened!"

"Actually, that won't be a problem," Ami said. "Duke Libasheshtan isn't holding the gala here, but at one of his other holdings." With a theatrical wave of her hand meant to avoid startling the fairies, she transported a map into the room.

The roll floated towards them in mid-air before slowly unrolling. It drifted down until it hovered a hand's width above the mostly untouched snacks.

"There," Ami said as she pointed at a location south of Salthalls with a hovering fork. "Fortress Nailcastle."

The fairies farthest away got up to get a closer look.

"Nailcastle?" Roselle said, frowning worriedly. "I can't think of a single way in which that name inspires confidence."

"The rock spire that the castle is built into is called 'the Nail', since it's tall and pointy," Ami explained.

Cerasse took a step forward and studied the map, her eyes darting back and forth between the different settlements. "Well, I can't fault the dwarfs for not expending much creativity on naming that place. It looks like a complete backwater."

"Makes sense," Anise nodded. Raising her hand to hide her mouth, she stage whispered, "Wouldn't want to invite her anywhere important," and promptly earned herself a reprimanding kick to her ankle from Dandel.

Ami pretended not to have heard the redhead's comment. "Nailcastle is the Duke's outpost farthest from Salthalls that still has a suitable ballroom and a hero gate. As for guests, well, the Avatar will be attending. Perhaps you could convince him to put in a good word for you with your superiors?"

The fairies sat up straighter.

"The Avatar?" Roselle's orange eyes gleamed.
Cerasse nodded after a moment of thought. "It makes sense he would want to be there to keep an eye on things."

"It certainly sounds like an opportunity…" Dandel considered, sounding as if she was still trying to find fault with Ami's suggestion.

As the sisters started chattering among themselves, Melissa addressed Ami: "Empress Mercury, will General Jadeite be attending the gala too?"

Camilla closed her eyes and let out an exasperated sigh.

Ami felt a flicker of irritation. "Unfortunately, his presence here at Salthalls remains necessary for sustaining the eyesight-restoring glamour on the cursed civilians, I'm sorry to say." She wasn't feeling very sorry at all.

Melissa's face fell briefly before lighting up again. "Right, I can just find him here instead."

"There won't be any shortage of interesting people to meet at the gala," Ami said. "Aside from dwarfs, there will also be human and elven delegations."

"Sounds fun," Roselle commented. "Will there be good food and music?"

Ami nodded in confirmation.

"Well, I'm game. It will be great to get some proper daylight again."

"I wouldn't want to miss it either," Anise said. She was facing her sisters, but watching Ami from the corners of her eyes. "Empress Mercury having to accept an appointed regent! You can't get that kind of entertainment elsewhere!"

Camilla quickly cleared her throat. "Ahem. Right. I'll see what I can do to properly represent the Shining Concord Empire at this memorable occasion, your Majesty!"

"Good." Ami nodded and got to her feet to signal that the audience was over. "Duke Libasheshtan is in charge of the preparations. Contact him if you require an appropriate wardrobe or other supplies."

Following her example, the fairies stood and made various polite noises of gratitude as they bowed. Dandel's bow was the deepest, while Anise's was barely more than a nod.

As the group was taking the first steps toward the door, Ami called out, "Oh, Anise? Stay for a moment, please."

The redhead froze, blood draining from her face. She slowly turned back to Ami, a light sheen of sweat on her forehead as she was apparently starting to regret her confrontational attitude.

Her sisters stopped too and watched with concerned expressions. Dandel in particular looked ready to step protectively in front of her ruby-eyed sister.

Ami wasn't petty enough to let the group worry just because one of them had been a little aggressive. Quickly, she raised her left hand, palm facing the ceiling, and reached into her Keeper storage. A clear, elongated crystal filled with complex glowing conduits appeared floating above her palm. "Do you recognise this?"
Anise's eyes widened in surprise, even as some tension faded from her body. Her right hand rose as if she wanted to reach for the gem, only to change direction after a moment as she crossed her arms.

"Do you still remember where you got it from?" Ami asked even as she moved the crystal a little farther away.

The healed transformation victims generally kept their memories of the experience, which included the knowledge of how to perform magical techniques they had access to as a youma. Granted, most of them were unusable without the matching body, but it would be relatively simple for a talented mage to derive a functional spell from knowledge of the incomplete ability.

Ami was understandably wary about someone being able to create crystals that could control her troops.

"Yes," Anise admitted. "I found it in a crate full of gems."

Ami breathed a little easier. The thing being some kind of dwarven treasure was preferable to it being potentially mass-producible. "Where?"

The fairy tilted her head to the side. "Your treasury, obviously. Where else would one of your command tokens be?" After a moment, her pupils shrunk in sudden realisation. "I didn't mug anyone for it!" she said, raising her hands defensively.

"A command token?" Ami asked, somewhat distracted by the question of how something from Salthalls could have ended up inside one of her sapphire crates.

Anise shrugged her shoulders. "Well, I don't know your name for it, but that's what I call it. Since it's used to command your minions."

"I see." If anything, Ami had more questions than before, and her eyes narrowed. "What makes you so certain it's one of mine?"

Anise shot her an incredulous look. "Well, what else am I supposed to think when it's in your treasury, in a crate with your emblem on it, works on your minions, and has your shadow inside?"

"It has what now?" Ami blinked wide-eyed at the crystal that had just skipped ahead in her priority queue.

 

[Pusakuronu]

A dungeon heart's standard library pattern included the expected bookshelves, lecterns, and reading tables. However, it also came with test tubes, alembics and similar research equipment. This didn't sit well with Ami, who doubted the wisdom of having experimenting warlocks and flammable books together in the same room. Therefore, she had split her library into a reading area and a separate laboratory built from fireproof stone. It turned out to be a prudent decision.

Thick clouds of grey steam billowed out of the crystal she had taken from Anise, rapidly filling the chamber behind the sturdy observation window.

Ami's eyes widened, and she stopped mid-typing to whip her head around and stare at the bald warlock assisting her. "What did you do, Harold?" she shouted in alarm.

The researcher seemed to shrink under her stare as if trying to hide behind the row of differently sized crystal balls on his workbench. Little beads of sweat appeared on his bald and tattooed scalp, glittering purplish in the light emanating from under her visor. "I w-w-was just c-calibrating the m-magnification, your Majesty, I swear!" he replied, tapping his finger against one of the spheres.

She redirected her gaze to the device that, contrary to her expectation, wasn't showing a close up-image of the circuitry within the gem.

Harold gulped as he realised what it looked like. "It's not off, it's just dark!" he blurted out. "In fact, it's stuck! There has to be some kind of warding on the thing!"

A functional ward against scrying? Normally, Ami would be salivating at the thought of studying it. Unfortunately, saving it from going up in flames took priority. She quickly zoomed in on the smoking gem with her Keeper sight, bypassing the steam and the glass that was fogging up.

So far, the crystal seemed intact, but it was sliding back and forth violently. Keeping the gem on a small dish floating in a water-filled bucket had seemed like a fine idea to keep it from touching her dungeon directly, at least before the water had started boiling inexplicably.

A trio of particularly large rising bubbles struck the floating dish at the same time, causing it to capsize. With a quiet splash, the gem sunk to the bottom.

Its motion reduced the precision of the readings from Ami's visor, which had just started to become interesting. She had detected traces of an invisibility spell coming from inside the crystal, which would certainly explain why she hadn't yet found any sign of the shadow Anise had described.

Did she need to interfere, or should she keep analysing what was going on with her visor? So far, the crystal didn't seem to be taking any damage. The twisted little pathways in its interior seemed to be vibrating at a high frequency, but they weren't generating any heat directly.
Infra-red indicated that the water was heating up fairly uniformly, which indicated-

It was hard to think. Huh, why she was on the floor? Had she been taking a nap? She felt like she could drift off back to sleep any moment.

Her visor flashed lines in an irritating red colour at her.

She blinked. Red was bad, wasn't it? Scrunching up her forehead, she tried to make sense of the symbols before her. That one over there was a seven, she was pretty sure. Wait, why was she having trouble with this?

The sudden spike of alarm cleared some of the haze from her mind. Her desire for wakefulness clashed with a pressure trying to lull her back to sleep, its concealment broken by directly opposing her will.

There was an intruder in her head! Startled, she started paying close attention to her thoughts, trying to separate her own mental processes from foreign ones.

The spell numbing her thoughts was now dealing with a target too agitated to go to sleep even if she wanted to, expended the last of its power, and faded away. In response, the foreign presence in her mind gave up on subtlety. An impression of cold fury, screaming skulls, and a burning crown radiated outwards from it.

Ami froze in horror. How could Crowned Death be here?

The giant skull composed of black fire and more skulls barrelled towards her like a tsunami, howling with bloodlust.

Impossible. While Ami wasn't completely certain that the dark god couldn't get into her head somehow, she knew that he wouldn't need to bother with petty tricks like trying to get her to fall asleep. She was dealing with one of his underlings trying to possess her.

The corners of her lips quirked upwards. In a battle of pure magical power, she was confident that she could outlast her attacker.

Her perspective shifted. The wall of fire and skulls that had been about to fill her entire mindscape retreated and shrunk as her own mental representation grew. The distance between her and the intruder expanded at the same rate as her own size increased, and she decided that there should be gravity, and a floor.

The enemy's advance turned into a lunge that fell way short of its target. The intruder flopped to the ground with a wet smack, sending skulls and flames bouncing in every direction. A prone spectral figure in black robes decorated with chains remained behind.

Ami crouched down and reached for the surprised spectre before it could recover.

Pinned between her thumb and index finger, the thing squirmed like a caterpillar, unable to move either digit even a little. Neither was it able to ignore physics and obstacles as it did in the real world.

Ami frowned. Without a doubt, this was the spectre who had once controlled many aquatic undead and who had gotten loose when she got trapped in the adamantine box. Why was it here now, and what did it have to do with the crystal she had been investigating? Speaking of which, she really should check what was going on with that, too.

"-Majesty? Are you all right, your Majesty?" Harold's voice came from his corner of the room. The warlock was at the side of his workbench, looking undecided on whether he should rush to her aid or flee the room.

"I'll be fine," she commented, focusing on her visor. The crystal was no longer producing heat, but there, in red, she saw the outline of a root-like underground tendril connecting the six-sided gem with her left foot.

Apparently, the spectre had sprung an ambush from within the gem, phasing through the solid matter underneath the floor to sneak up on her.

Well, that neatly explained what exactly Anise had seen inside the crystal. Still, Ami wasn't satisfied. The spectre shouldn't have been sapient, let alone smart enough to use tricks and deception. She wanted answers, and she could extract some from the creature currently trapped by her will if she dared to seize them.

A part of her balked at the idea. Sifting through Keeper Malleus' memories had been bad enough. Diving into the mind of a creature that may or may not be a tiny fragment of a dark god had the potential to be much, much worse.

Thinking on the issue for a bit, she decided that she should be fine if she took precautions. She would start with its most recent memories and slowly go backwards in time. The being hadn't been able to commit any atrocities while stuck in her dungeon, after all.

She checked up on the state of her prisoner once more. The spectre was trapped in the same condition as it had intended for her to end up in, unable to think under the pressure she was exerting on its mind and effectively comatose. Safe enough, but she wasn't going to take any risks. One imagined rubber band wrapped around her fingers later, the spectre would get squished the moment she lost concentration.

Satisfied with her precautions, she forced her way into the being's memories.

A strange, distorted view of squished-together shapes and odd colours appeared before her. The spectre didn't see like living things did, but relied on magical senses that were closer to Keeper sight.

Disoriented, Ami hesitated for a moment as she learned to make sense of what she was seeing. It didn't take her long to figure out the colours didn't match the visual spectrum and that the spectre had 360-degree vision, which was annoying, but not incomprehensible. At least it was perceiving the world through something like magical radar or echolocation and not something that the next Incarnation of Extinction she ran into could use to kill everything around it.

Her prisoner's intentions, on the other hand, were straightforward and easy to interpret. This attack had been a premature assassination attempt. Fearing discovery, the spectre had been forced to act before its preparations were complete. The plan was to knock Ami out, take enough control to make her drop her possession spell, and then inflict a fatal wound on her body. Its success chances had been minimal from the start, given the power disparity, but minimal was still better than non-existent from not acting at all.

The spectre's original plan had been both simpler and more dangerous at once. It was going to gather enough magical power to force a possession without bothering with fighting for control, and then explode once within her true body.

Ami grimaced at the thought. That kind of attack could have worked on her if it caught her by surprise, as it targeted her, rather than the body she was possessing. Now she knew why the creature had tricked Anise into collecting dark magic crystals, too. It could drain power from them, though it took some time digesting it. Why did it pick the fairy, anyway?

Ami jumped a little farther through the spectre's memories, catching short glimpses each time. Most of it was the simple drudgery of lying below a pile of black shards and slowly extracting magical power from them. The treasury's occupants changed with each glimpse. Occasionally, the gem housing the spectre got picked up by Anise to establish control over yet another underling.

Ami paid particularly close attention to that process. According to the being's thoughts, it could have seeded pieces of itself within their bodies, similar to how it controlled and animated corpses. In this case, however, it deemed such an approach more prone to detection and wasteful to boot, as illusions of the Keeper giving orders worked just as well. It could even trick the transformed fairy into casting the spells herself without realising it to preserve more mana.

Ami paused. Trickery, deceit and illusions were not what she would have expected from an undead minion of Crowned Death. Subtlety just didn't seem like his usual modus operandi. Of course, that also gave him the advantage of surprise if he employed it sparingly. Still, she wouldn't have believed the spectre to be able of more than instinctive action after it lost so many of its component undead. Putting such a plan together and executing it should have been completely beyond it. She also hadn't figured out yet why it opted to work through the crystal, or why it was hiding inside in the first place.

One of the memories she checked actually showed her the spectre drawing Anise's attention to the gem crate. The being didn't know who she was, but her magic showed up brighter in its strange vision. This seemed to signify to the monster that she would be compatible with – yikes. Ami really didn't need to know a spell-boosting method that consumed the caster as fuel. Without delving into its details, she checked back further in time.

The crystal stuck inside of a gem crate. Irrelevant.

Inside of the same shaking crate on a train. Still irrelevant.

Suddenly having a monochrome viewpoint that more resembled normal vision, accompanied by impulses she'd expect from a very murderous instinct-guided animal? That was very interesting, and possibly too far back.

Ami considered the memory. This was back at her now abandoned dungeon, even though it was a bit hard to recognise with the spectre's vision somehow being able to see through walls. Its simplistic thought processes matched what she would have expected from the undead minion more closely. The main difference between its sapient and its animalistic state was the gem, which it had apparently found in her dungeon.

She examined more memories, going slightly forward in time, until she found one that caught her attention.

The spectre moved through her dungeon, unbound, moving towards a glow that stood out strongly to its magical senses and enraged it. Something was calling out, lighting up like a beacon, and the spectre would stop at nothing to destroy this rival.

The ethereal thing ghosted through several walls until it ended up in a sapphire-filled treasure chamber. Among the monochrome field of jewels, one crystal glowed bright blue in the spectre's vision. From each facet, a flailing tendril extended, reaching and grasping blindly.

To Ami, the crystal resembled some strange, injured sea creature. The tendrils looked as if they had been longer originally and something had torn them off.

The spectre reacted like a predator spotting a wounded prey animal and pounced, going right for the frayed end of one of the tendrils. Grasping the appendage with both hands, it started sucking nourishment from the wound.

The gem reacted to the assault by trying to stab its remaining tendrils into its attacker.

From the spectre's memories, Ami could tell that those attacks actually inflicted damage on it, unlike her own futile efforts to hurt it directly. The fight itself was something of a chaotic mess, as the creature didn't really remember the details clearly. It remembered aggression and wills clashing, pain, ripping and tearing, and pitting magical power against each other as both creatures tried to subsume each other.

In the end, the spectre proved itself a little stronger than its opponent and crushed the gem-creature's will, turning it into an empty husk. As the survivor possessed the crystal's inert corpse, its thoughts achieved clarity, rising above mere animal instinct.

The crystal seemed to provide as much mental capacity as an entire horde of animal zombies, which Ami found rather concerning. At least now, she knew why the spectre had been more capable than she expected. There was more, though. She got a first-person perspective of how the undead creature digested its gains. Its memories were back to the odd mode of vision in the first memory she had accessed – which seemed to be that of the crystal.

In an uncomfortable parallel to what Ami was doing right now, the monster had been looking at the memories of its victim. She got to observe them twice removed, which felt a little odd. Somehow like watching someone's memories of watching a TV show. If said TV was for magical senses humans didn't have. The spectre seemed to be rather bad at using the gem's senses, since the crystal's own memories were clearer and more vivid-looking. Most of them, however, were from the familiar perspective of an imp.

Ami was running into a little trouble finding what she wanted, as the spectre hadn't accessed the crystal's knowledge in chronological order. Between self-satisfied gloating to itself about beating a minion of the hated Unraveller – Ami took note of the gem's origin – and a hunger for more, it had mostly been interested in locating more victims.

She did catch some useful glimpses, not that the spectre agreed. There were foreign imps in her gem furnace room, each one with a crystal just like the one she was investigating embedded in the forehead. A network of straight lines connected each of these gems with each other, visible as a transparent overlay to the imp's vision.

The picture of said workers disassembling one of her gem furnaces in a coordinated effort worried her, but when she saw that they spent as much time and effort on the useless distractions as on the real mechanisms, she relaxed. It was clear that they didn't understand enough to know what was important.

She was more interested in their leader, the clearly Keeper-possessed dark mistress. Unfortunately, the spectre hadn't been, so it didn't pay much attention to her. Ami got a few glimpses of the intruder walking off towards her treasury, and that was it.

The spectre had been much more interested in hungrily eyeing the imps swarming over her equipment, wondering if it could catch up to them.

Ami, in contrast, was fascinated by the eerie coordination of the imps as they took apart the gem furnace bit by bit, handing each other pieces and tools without ever communicating or even looking at each other. Was that how the Unraveller of Mysteries got her name? It certainly looked as if the minions managed to take everything without inflicting damage, and she doubted they would have trouble piecing it back together again.

They didn't have an instruction manual, she reassured herself. Without knowing the right temperature range, the furnace wouldn't produce sapphires.

She skimmed through more memories, trying to get a better look at the dark mistress so she could identify the intruding Keeper.

Working imps, more working imps, more hungry gazing at forehead gems…

She paused as the imp the crystal was personally controlling licked the ashes in the growth cavity. According to the crystal's memories, it was analysing its composition. To Ami's alarm, it got surprisingly accurate results. She briefly wondered about imps being forced to eat all kinds of weird and harmful things just so the gem could recognise the taste. Did the intruders have similar ways to determine temperature and duration?

Questions for later. Where did the thieves come from? There were no memories to find before their arrival at Ami's dungeon. Apparently, the imps had been created on-site by the Keeper, using the possessed dark mistress as a piece of claimed ground. The crystal's earliest memory was a literal headache from being stabbed into an imp's head without any kind of anaesthetics. A dead end for her investigation.

Also, her speculation about the imps ingesting harmful substances in the name of chemistry had apparently been wrong. Fortunately, the gem furnaces had already cooled down from their operating temperature before the imps got here. At this point, she wouldn't be surprised if the crystals could get an accurate read on temperature by the painful burns they inflicted too. That sounded like a technique the dark gods would enjoy.

For a moment, she considered what kind of burns an imp would suffer from touching an active gem furnace before dismissing the unproductive thought. She still didn't know who had broken into her dungeon, aside from the fact that they had the Unraveller's support.

Her search continued. She saw a few scenes of the ice golem fighting the imps – the spectre found it amusing to watch something that looked like Keeper Mercury fail against the weakest kind of dungeon denizen that existed. She also saw the imp in which the captured gem was embedded die. The perspective shift from imp vision to crystal vision was rather jarring. It dropped into a deep, bent gap between two pieces of machines, sliding too far for the short arms of its allies to retrieve it. They could have managed to get it out eventually if they hadn't been retreating in a hurry, or if they had paid less attention to salvaging machinery.

Ami felt a renewed surge of worry. Was it possible they had retrieved enough of the furnace to figure out its operation? Normally, she would not think so, but with the Unraveller involved… Which phases would give a reverse engineer the most trouble? As she started mentally going through the steps, she hesitated.

Why did her mind keep circling back to the details of her gem furnace's inner workings when she was interested in tracking down the intruders? It wasn't relevant to her investigation at all.

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Was she being manipulated?

Of course not. There was obviously no subtle way to make her divulge that the correct temperature for the crystal forming process was-

Stop it!

A crystal-clear mental pulse that conveyed the message "It was worth a try" along with the equivalent of a shrug and a feeling of amused mockery answered her.

An instant later, the spectre radiated a feeling of mortal terror before abruptly disappearing from her mind.

Darn it! Ami suspected that the moment of animalistic fear had been her only genuine glimpse into the creature's mind, rather than at the carefully constructed façade that its puppet master had shown her. Expecting a renewed mental attack, she took an instant too long to focus her attention outward.

The crystal was slurping the elongated form of the spectre up like a noodle. According to Ami's visor, the ghostly being was now plain dead, rather than undead. The spiking energy levels in the gem also suggested that the process was fuelling a spell.

Without a flash or any other overt magical effects, a small sphere of matter just large enough to contain the gem disappeared. The surrounding water rushed in to fill the void and then spilled out through the circular hole in the bucket's bottom to fill the semi-spherical depression gouged out of the floor.

Ami doubted that the gem creature had simply committed an elaborate form of suicide. Typing frantically on her palmtop computer, she first checked if she wasn't dealing with some new form of trickery or illusion, and then confirmed traces of teleportation magic. She stomped her foot in frustration.

In the back, Harold silently tried to make himself smaller and less visible, trembling faintly. He froze when her gaze snapped onto him.

"Try to track that crystal, quickly," she ordered. There was a chance the thing hadn't gotten far with the power it had available. Its teleportation spell wasn't an innate ability, judging by its effects on the gem's environment, so it should be rather expensive to cast so quickly.

"At once, your Majesty!" The warlock almost toppled his crystal ball in his haste to touch it. "Seeking, seeking, I'm getting something, nearly - got it!" he shouted excitedly.

In an instant, Ami was right next to him and stared into the scrying device.

The gem was lying on the broken tip of a chalk-white stalagmite. It glittered in the single ray of sunlight that shone like a spotlight through a tiny gap in the cave's roof.

Ami didn't believe for an instant that the crystal had landed in the only illuminated spot by sheer good fortune. This was either an attempt to mislead her, outright mockery, or possibly both.

An imp stepped into the small circle of light and grabbed the gem.

On second thought, it might also have been a deliberate arrangement to make itself more visible to allies. Ami still wasn't willing to rule out the other possibilities though and grabbed a crystal ball of her own. "Keep a view of that location, they might be working with illusions," she instructed.

Meanwhile, the imp was bringing the pointy end of the gem up to his forehead with trembling arms.

Ami scried on the crystal herself and got a view of the same location as Harold. Unlike the warlock, she brought her perspective closer and closer to the gem, which earned her an unfortunate close-up view of the minion's face contorting in pain as he shoved the crystal slowly into his own forehead. Fighting through her revulsion, she zoomed in on the inside of the gem.

Her crystal ball went dark, which matched Harold's results earlier and confirmed she was looking at the real thing.

She discarded the temporary useless scrying device for another.

There was a flash of green from Harold's crystal ball, and the warlock bit back a curse. "It teleported!" He reported.

"Maintain view of the cave," Ami ordered. The place where the gem had first landed might be important, and once the crystal ball's point of view changed, it couldn't simply flip back to a previous one. With another scrying device in hand, she searched for the vanished gem herself.

The resulting image was an assault on the senses. A dizzying network of black and white lines completely covered the walls, forming patterns that seemed to wiggle in the corner of her eyes.

Ami blinked once and tore her gaze away from the strangely hypnotic sight, focusing entirely on the imp instead. Her face fell when she realised that he was standing at the edge of a rectangular basin where strange rainbow patterns played across the dark waters.

The imp stopped tapping his foot, looked up, and grinned in her direction. The gem set in his bloody forehead was blazing a bright white, growing in intensity when the imp waved at her.

With a loud clinking noise, cracks spread over Ami's crystal ball as if something heavy had struck its smooth surface.

Startled, she let go of the sphere, which shattered into pieces a moment later. She hurriedly picked up a replacement, but it refused to show anything but darkness.

 

[Pusakuronu]

Snyder's palms glowed a gentle white as he pointed them at Ami.

She shuddered, clenching her teeth as the wave of purifying magic washed over her, and slid backwards with her chair as far as the armoured hands on her shoulders would let her.

Cathy shoved her back towards the redheaded acolyte with a little more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary. "So now we have to worry about a Keeper with unlimited gold on top of everything else?" the swordswoman asked, her exasperated voice tinged with a hint of fear.

"No, we have to worry about the Unraveller of Mysteries potentially figuring out at some point how my gem furnaces work from the clues she has gathered," Ami replied, trying very hard to ignore the feeling of the holy magic working on her. "I don't think she has all that much to start with, and the dark god's realm doesn't really seem well suited for experim– eep!"

An unbearably white glow shone straight into her eyes.

Instinctively, she squeezed them shut and turned her face away even as she ducked and rolled sideways off her chair. "Snyder! Enough already! There's nothing wrong with me in the first place!"

The acolyte's robes swished as he took a startled step back. He raised his arm to scratch the back of his head as he watched her get off the floor. "How can you be sure? Your scanner wasn't good enough to catch that infiltrator in the first place now, was it?" he replied, the dark circles under his eyes explaining why he sounded grumpier than usual.

"I wasn't scanning for it!" she protested as she backed away from him, briefly glancing to her right to ensure she was staying outside of Cathy's grabbing range. "I certainly scanned myself very thoroughly for any abnormalities after the incident."

With a tired shrug, Snyder let himself drop into one of the armchairs. "Well, I admit I did not find anything either," he sighed. "Still, I would feel better if you underwent another few cleansing cycles just in case. Direct servants of the dark gods should not be underestimated."

"And this one was working with a Keeper too," Jered took the opportunity to interject. "Unless the Unraveller has her own dungeon with imps now, which is a scary thought." He was walking up and down at one end of the room, flipping through a notebook. "My informants haven't mentioned any rumours about Keeper minions with crystals stuck in their heads, but they might not have deemed it relevant information. I'll tell them to keep an eye out."

"You think the crystal retreated to a temple in the Underworld?" Cathy asked.

"Well, we found a broken-down Underworld portal in the cave the imp showed up in, and we know the Unraveller can temporarily restore those," Jered answered.

Ami shook her head. "I doubt the portal could have been restored quickly enough to react to my discovery of the intruder. Besides, I got a rough direction when that imp destroyed my crystal ball."

"You did?" Cathy asked, perking up.

"I was looking through my visor at the time," Ami confirmed with a small smile. "The hostile magic came from somewhere to the southwest."

"Where exactly?" Jered asked, looking around the room for a map.

Ami shrugged apologetically. "Sorry, that's about as precise as I can tell. The magic was barely detectable in the first place."

The wavy-haired man sighed. "Well, it's better than nothing, I suppose. Excludes most of the continent. I can check which Keepers are rumoured to be active in the region," he offered.

Jadeite, who had simply listened quietly so far, looked thoughtful. "Speaking of rumours, it would be unfortunate for your unassailable image if news about you being laid low by a sneak attack spread," he said. "Did you do anything to keep that warlock who assisted you from blabbing?"

Ami suppressed a grimace. Of course she hadn't done anything bad to Harold. "He's smart enough to figure out that he was the only one around when it happened, so I would know exactly where such rumours started," she said. "He'll keep quiet. In any case, he's too busy trying to track down the crystal to make trouble."

"Wait, I thought it was gone or hiding inside of a dark temple, completely shielded from scrying?" Cathy asked.

"He's not using scrying. I don't think the part about there being more than one crystal in the memories I saw was false, so we are looking for other, similar crystals using sympathetic magic. The dwarfs did something similar to create a magical link to my computer and interfere with it," Ami explained.

"What are you using for the search?" Snyder asked, looking interested.

"I have made an accurate replica of the crystal using the dungeon heart and my recordings," she replied. "Aside from that, I also have the warlocks looking for individual parts of the gem furnace that was stolen."

Snyder nodded with a thoughtful expression. "That sounds reasonable. You should also take measures to prevent the opposite party from using them the same way. If they forged a sympathetic link to your furnaces, they could interfere with them."

"Good point." Ami decided that adding some individuality to the various furnaces wouldn't take much effort. Giving a few brushes and different buckets of paint to a bunch of imps and telling them to go wild would be more than enough. Unfortunately, it was likely that the thief had already taken similar precautions with the stolen parts.

"Any progress so far?" Cathy wanted to know.

Ami's face fell. "Less than I would have hoped. Getting the crystal to look just right is difficult, since it has those moving patterns inside. I have recordings, so replicating them with glamour is possible, but the problem is that the targets need to show the same patterns at the time the searching spell is cast," she said.

Snyder frowned. "I see. Under those circumstances, you would have to repeatedly restart the sequence and recast the spell, hoping it matches the target the moment you do through sheer luck," the acolyte evaluated.

"Yes, and that's assuming that the movement of the patterns is repetitive," she replied. "I'm still looking for a better solution. Torian suggested searching for crystal-shaped forehead wounds instead."

Cathy sucked in a breath, the corners of her lips curving downwards in disgust.

Ami felt a little queasy too. "I can make mindless imps, that's how I feed the vampires after all, but his suggestion is still not very practical," she said. "Depth, angle and position of the wound would have to closely match, and that's assuming that the individual differences between organisms won't prevent a match from the start."

"You are searching by the shape of the crystal then, I assume?" Snyder said.

"Yes, but it's getting too many results," Ami sighed. "The shape of the Unraveller crystal matches that of natural quartz crystals, so the spell just uses up its power to return a flood of useless results."

"In other words, the thing is designed with in-built countermeasures to tracking magic," Jered summarised.

Ami had reached the same conclusion. It was reasonable to assume that the Unraveller had a greater breadth of knowledge about magic than she did. Therefore, the crystals were likely to have adequate protections against common means of magically affecting them.

Ami closed her eyes and pondered the problem. Ordinary approaches were useless. Did she have unique strengths she could apply to the situation that the dark god wouldn't have considered? A moment later, her eyes opened, shining with determination. "Jadeite, I need a portal to space!"

---

After reassuring the dark general that no, she didn't mean for him to open a portal into the vacuum of space right that moment, Ami had quickly prepared what she needed. This amounted to bare room with a solid glass floor that served as the ceiling of an equally bare room below.

She nodded encouragingly at Jadeite, who disappeared from her side in a blur of vertical black lines and reappeared below the glass.

He extended his right arm before looking up through the transparent ceiling at the imitation Unraveller crystal glued to the topmost point of the rock dome above.

Ami felt her face flush. He could see up her skirt from down there, couldn't he? Due to her leotard, this wasn't a problem, but she still turned a little sideways so he could at most see her leg. Nevertheless, she almost felt disappointed when he looked away after a brief moment, having verified that he was pointing at the right spot.

A flat oval of darkness appeared in front of him as the portal opened, and his blond curls moved as wind picked up. Leftover dust from the imps digging out the room trickled down the walls and crawled towards the growing gateway.

Jadeite stuck around until the portal was as tall as he was, visibly leaning back to avoid the suction pulling him in. The moment the magical gate stabilized, he teleported away.

"Thanks," Ami said as he reappeared near her, but she kept watching the room below.

The whooshing noise died down when the last of the air below disappeared into space. The surrounding rock creaked faintly from the shift in pressure, but nothing visibly moved and the thick glass floor remained solid as well.

Ami summoned her visor and inspected the walls. Good, nothing was shifting or vibrating. She needed the room to be at rest to take accurate measurements.

Straight below her, the planet was partially visible through the portal. Clouds covered the area Ami was most interested in, but that wasn't a hindrance for her plan. At this point, she was simply measuring the distance to the ground.

Satisfied, she entered the numbers into her palmtop and turned her attention to the table. She needed a map appropriately scaled to the portal's elevation, and so she had her computer project an appropriate shape onto her visor. Now she simply traced what she was seeing with her Keeper powers, quickly engraving the map into the glass floor.

The replica on the ceiling wasn't made of crystal at all; it was solid steel instead. All it had in common with Ami's quarry was its shape.

She had picked steel because it was sturdy, as it needed to survive acting as the anchor for a sympathetic search spell with far more power than usual. Enough power that she could form links to all those natural quartz crystals in the target region before running out. Other Keepers might be able to manage it too with enough ritual preparation, but they couldn't simply concentrate on the spell, pick their target, and then let the mana flow.

As she just did.

Faint light gathered at the bottommost tip of the fake crystal and shot straight down, passing through the map etched onto the glass floor on its way through the portal. Like a spotlight shining out of the replica, it expanded the farther away it got from its point of origin, forming a cone that was wide enough to fill the entire portal where it passed through.

The individual threads that formed the light cone were only visible with much closer inspection. Each one connected the replica with exactly one crystal shaped just like it. Seen together, they looked like one single solid shape.

Ami cast a second spell, infusing the map with mana. Little glowing dots appeared where the threads passed through its surface. Finally, she shifted the threads into invisibility until only the dots remained.

It looked like someone had spilled glowing sand onto her map.

Magnified by Ami's visor, she could see the individual grains that each represented the location of a crystal. There wasn't much empty space between them, and some even overlapped, but her approach had worked. If she had tried this from a vantage point closer to the ground, more of the threads would have been overlapping each other, and she wouldn't have been able to tell them apart. She smiled in satisfaction at having bypassed another layer of the Unraveller's security.

With quiet footsteps, Jadeite moved to her side and looked at the map. "You seem pleased."

Her smile faded a little. "Yes, but now comes the most time-consuming part."

"Finding the correct targets in that mess?"

"No, that's easy, I only have to pick the few that move," she answered. At least it was an easy task for her. Anyone without her visor and computer would have to get creative to spot or even observe the minuscule movements of a select few dots among the masses. Sure, some of them were probably false positives, like natural crystals getting swept along inside of rivers, but her real targets should be among the dots she had identified.

Jadeite blinked in surprise. "Then the hard part is…?"

With a wave of her hand, a desk and a chair dropped out of thin air and landed before her with a clatter. She picked up a pen. "Copying down all of the suspicious coordinates so my warlocks can investigate them."

---

The airship hovered hundreds of meters above the ground, facing a terrace the size of a basketball court carved directly into the vertical cliff face. The vessel's propellers hummed, hard at work to keep the howling winds from pushing it out of position. With a clank, the cabin split along a horizontal, gilded seam and opened like a giant maw.

The small groups of people assembled around various standing tables stood frozen and watched the widening gap with pale faces and clenched jaws. Maids and valets in red-jacketed uniforms stood out in the open, tablets threatening to slip from their shaking hands.

Ami's mouth felt dry as she faced the silent crowd. Head held high? Check. Breathing even? Check. Facial muscles relaxed? Check. Hands not clasped in front of herself, although she dearly wanted to? Check. Reassured that she had successfully avoided timid body language so far, she calmed down fractionally. She was slowly getting more used to being the centre of attention, but, well, when she was talking to her employees, then the audience was friendly.

The looks she was receiving from the elaborately dressed courtiers and their bodyguards were anything but.

She supposed she could at least count herself lucky that the serving staff avoided meeting her gaze at all.

With a flex of her Keeper powers, the ice underneath her feet rose from the floor, lifting her up. It had been sculpted into the shape of a real snowflake, magnified enough to carry her as well as the six bodyguards her role demanded. They were ice golems, formed up in a semi-circle behind her and covered from head to toe in armour that was mostly ornamental, but disguised their true nature.

A ripple went through the crowd as the intricate, glittering platform emerged from the open cabin and drifted towards the terrace.

Ami wasn't going slowly for their benefit. She was more concerned about keeping her balance than about giving people time to move away or about dragging out the moment. Right now, she was envying her golems who didn't have to worry about high heels or the wind turning her voluminous, bell-shaped dress into a sail.

Her fingers moved down to the silky fabric whipping around her legs like a flag. The motion, while intended to keep the dress down, also allowed her to confirm that the wiry, rune-shaped keystones sewed into its layers were still present. Losing them and setting the entire place on fire when Nailcastle's wards combusted around her would be even more of a faux-pas than stumbling.

Although it would easily convince everyone that she didn't really want to be here.

The snowflake touched down on the polished sandstone floor with a clinking noise. A well-timed spell shattered it into a mist of glittering ice particles that billowed up around Ami.

One of the servants, a well-groomed dwarf whose jacket had epaulettes and an extra helping of golden chains, gaped at the towering misty column dissipating into the wind, his gaze focused on the two burning red eyes shining from within. As if waking from a daze, the herald closed his mouth with an audible click. His chest swelled as he sucked in a large amount of air. "Her Imperial Majesty, Empress Mercury of the Avatar Islands!" he bellowed.

The echoes of his proclamation faded away at the same time as the last wisps of icy mist drifted over the terrace's railing. His voice reminded the people that, yes, there was now a Keeper among them, but that the situation was under control and that formalities were still being observed.

People slowly started moving and talking to each other in hushed voices again. From what Ami could overhear, most were arguing about whether or not they would have to approach her.

Loud footsteps came from the arched doorway that led deeper into the fortress, and people relaxed as they recognised the approaching figure in jewel-encrusted ceremonial armour.

Duke Libasheshtan approached with a steady, dignified stride, his ducal crown gleaming on his brow and his purple mantle waving behind him. As the host, he was in charge of welcoming important new arrivals. Since Ami had bypassed the hero gate and arrived directly at the reception area, he had missed her entrance.

Similar to the other guests, Ami felt a bit relieved upon seeing him and was more than willing to wait and let him take the lead. Her own role during the gala required little more than her presence, but she was still worried that she would say or do something that people would take the wrong way. Even being too friendly with someone could land that person in trouble.

Admittedly, it didn't look as if she would have to worry too much about that. So far, people were at best directing strained, fake smiles her way if she looked at them for too long. If she wanted conversation, she would have to initiate it. The thought prompted her to search for familiar faces among the sea of pinched, wary expressions.

She spotted the fairy sisters almost instantly. With their glitter, wings, and colourful hair, they would have been unmissable even without their revealing uniforms sticking out like a sore thumb among the fully covered crowd.

The next attention-grabbing figure she recognised was a large human with an impressive moustache. Baron Leopold was surrounded by a group of dwarfs fawning over his armour, whom he ignored in favour of watching her over their heads.
Ami's eyebrows creep upwards. She hadn't expected to see the human noble here, but in hindsight, his presence wasn't too surprising. The dwarfs wouldn't have rewarded him with a suit of adamantine plate if he wasn't a staunch and valued ally.

"Wait, those winged girls are not hers?" a puzzled voice whispered, its nervous tone drawing Ami's attention. She had perceived the whisper with her Keeper senses, which, on foreign territory, meant that the speaker was near one of her employees.

Without moving her head, Ami focused her attention on Jered. Dressed in a colourful outfit that included a stiff collar and a surprising amount of frills along the sides of his pants, he fit right in with the other high-ranking dwarfs. Arm in arm with Umbra, whose human glamour was almost unnecessary underneath the many layers of blue and black velvet and veils, he was staying near the corner of the terrace farthest from its edge.

The clean-shaved human who had whispered was one of the twelve Silver Hawks mercenaries Jered had brought as bodyguards, which was pushing the limits of politeness. After all, it implied that he didn't trust the Duke to keep his guests safe. Of course, his real safety net was Umbra, who would teleport him out at the first sign of trouble.

Jered raised an eyebrow and leaned in closer to the speaker. An amused smile played around his lips as he replied in a hushed voice, "You had better not let Ambassador Camilla from the Shining Concord Empire hear that you mistook her bodyguards for Keeper minions." He pointed out the blonde fairy wearing a dress similar in style to Ami's, aside from lacking the royal purple and having an open back to accommodate her wings.

To be fair, Ami could hardly fault the man for making that mistake. Unfortunately, the fairies had been unimpressed by her warning that their traditional uniform, while sensibly lightweight and streamlined for fliers who kept themselves warm with magic and had to swim occasionally, might not be the ideal attire for this event. Glancing over at the sisters in question, she noticed that Tilia, Roselle, and Melissa were standing close together and glaring at the group of mercenaries.

Another of Jered's hirelings, who had been keeping a vigilant eye on Ami, turned his head towards his boss in alarm. "S-Seriously?"

Jered nodded slowly, and the man's face, which was marred by razor cuts, went bright red, and his shoulders slumped. "Shit, I totally embarrassed myself there."

A female voice came from the face-concealing helmet of the smaller figure to the right. "Godsdammit, Jack! And here I was wondering why the dwarfs were glaring more at us than at her. She made a concealed hand gesture in Ami's direction.

Yet another mercenary in lighter armour and with a thin moustache nodded. "Yes, I was finding that odd, too," he said in a low, cultured tone. "My father has a close enough relationship with some of them that they must have recognised me, and they are usually impeccably polite when dealing with nobility."

The blushing mercenary groaned.

Jered snorted. "In your party member's defence, it's not his actions that they are have an issue with, Prince Norton. They are actually more annoyed by your presence here."

"Excuse me?"

"You must have some idea of how unpalatable this entire regency arrangement is to them," Jered elaborated. "With noble witnesses from foreign realms, it becomes considerably harder to, let's say, interpret its terms loosely when they become inconvenient."

The prince looked thoughtful. "I had not considered that. Should I leave? I obviously won't expect pay for-"

Jered interrupted him with a short laugh. "Denied. That would let all my effort go to waste. It's neither simple nor cheap to find a bunch of noble scions so far down the line of succession that they work for hire."

The woman in the suit of full plate whirled to face him. "You! You bastard!" She snarled. "You are working for her!" Her face remained invisible under her helmet, but her clenching fists and aggressive posture left no doubt about her feelings.

With a soundless, gliding motion, Umbra advanced half a step and tilted her head in Ami's direction.

Ami, while not too enthused about Jered's gloating, took the cue and turned towards the group of mercenaries.

Her gaze had the same effect as dumping a bucket of ice water over the angry adventurers closing in on her employee. The circle widened as they backed off, swallowing and lowering their heads. Some even tried shuffling sideways until their wavy-haired employer was between her and them.

She stopped paying attention to the situation when Duke Libasheshtan finally finished his walk to her location.

He welcomed her with a bow deep enough that the six neat braids of his black beard dangled freely in the air. "Welcome, your Imperial Majesty. I hope you had a pleasant journey."

Her return bow was shallower, in accordance with her higher title. "Duke Libasheshtan," she greeted him, "I did indeed enjoy the view."

It was even true. Being above ground after spending so much time underground felt very pleasant, and the forested mountainsides passing by on both sides of her airship had presented her with some spectacular panoramas. She hadn't indulged too much, as she could work with her dungeon remotely, but she had certainly been paying attention to Nailcastle as the rocky column grew larger and larger in the distance. The arrangement of balconies and terraces jutting out of its near-vertical cliffs, interspersed with occasional trees and vines, reminded her of artful rock gardens.


"Very good, ma'am" the Duke replied stiffly. "Let us drink to that." He handed her an alcoholic beverage from one of the standing tables as part of the formal dwarven greeting.

To her, it felt a little odd, but none of the many guests watching them both batted an eye at the proceedings.

She accepted the offered drink, which didn't come in the flutelike glass she had expected. Instead, a weighty stein decorated with intricate geometrical patterns occupied her hands. Overlapping squares that represented salt crystals, if she didn't miss her guess. Admittedly, at this altitude it made some sense to use furniture and tableware too heavy to be easily blown away.

She took a sip of the mushroom-based wine, and immediately regretted that her glamour included functional taste buds. The flavour wasn't bad enough to make her grimace, but it was definitely an acquired taste. Perhaps the dwarfs were aware of this, as the stein certainly contained enough wine to make a serious attempt at acquiring it.

Duke Libasheshtan lowered his own stein with a pleased expression. "I'm glad you had a smooth journey, ma'am," he said. He bowed again and took a step away from her. "Please excuse me, but duty calls." While turning towards the entrance, he stopped briefly when facing the orchestra, and gave a hand signal.

Twelve dwarfs seated on two long benches started playing a slow tune on various percussive and stringed instruments.

The Duke glanced back at Ami a final time. "Please enjoy mingling with the other guests, your Imperial Majesty."

Clearly alarmed by his parting words, the closest guests turned away or moved a little faster when Ami's gaze moved in their direction.

A shadow briefly fell over terrace, prompting a small hitch in the music. People looked up with nervous expressions as they spotted Ami's airship circling the spire at some distance like a shark. To someone who wasn't aware how much volume the vessel dedicated to lifting gas, it would certainly look massive and menacing.

While looking up, Ami noticed that there was a roof that could be lowered like a drawbridge over the terrace in case of inclement weather. Deciding to give the other guests some time to acclimatise to her presence, she remained in place and admired her surroundings. Especially the highest parts of the fortress, where the rock spire tapered to a point, bristled with an impressive amount of orchards layered not unlike rice paddies.

When it became clear that she wasn't going to immediately seek out people to corrupt, the attention on her slowly died down to cautious glances, and conversations picked up again.

Ami decided that she had waited long enough, put down her stein, and stepped away from it. She gracefully pretended to not notice a shaking maidservant almost tripping when she got close enough to sense that Ami's golem guards had no bones.

She acknowledged Jered with a nod and ordered all but two of her golems to remain behind as she directed her steps toward Camilla. Out of everyone around here, the fairy ambassador was probably the least reluctant to chat with Ami, which would demonstrate to the others that she wouldn't hurt them for trying to talk to her.

The blonde fairy in question was near a dwarf who looked like a monk, albeit a monk who had decided that poverty and abstinence were for other people. The rope constraining his rotund belly glittered with threads of gold, his robe depicted a colourful landscape, and the staff he was leaning on could have doubled as a king's sceptre.

Ami recognised him from images as Roderser, the designated representative King Ral had sent to attend in his place.

While physically close to him, Camilla wasn't paying him any attention right now. She was too busy backing away from a dwarf with an amicable expression who was talking loudly while he intruded into her personal space.

"… wouldn't you agree, Ambassador?" the pushy dwarf said. He was wearing a colourful ensemble with purely decorative pieces of armour, but most of it was covered by a long tabard with the goat-headed sigil of Sirith Anlur.

Camilla, visibly uncomfortable, glanced over at Roderser for a moment. "Ah, Ambassador Bagozkal, I believe it would be presumptuous of me to comment on internal affairs of your realm with only superficial knowledge," the blonde said after a moment of awkward silence. Her gaze furtively darted towards her oldest sister Dandel, who was standing guard nearby and carefully failed to make eye contact, her expression serene.

"Oh, you should find the situation familiar to your own or the good Duke's, I'm sure even Roderser must agree," the dwarf from Sirith Anlur said. It earned him a look of barely-concealed loathing from the monk-like diplomat, which he completely ignored in order to continue, "I would be more than happy to elaborate on the details during," he glanced back over his shoulder, perhaps noticing the ambient conversation volume lowering as Ami approached, "during… excuse me please something really urgent came up I must go!"

Ambassador Bagozkal's speedy departure left Camilla blinking in relieved confusion until she noticed Ami approaching. At that point, she just barely managed to disguise a brief laugh as a cough.

Roderser glanced at Ami, frowned, looked back at the departing Ambassador Bagozkal, and when he turned back to the approaching Keeper, his face had settled in an expression that looked, on average, pleased.

At that point, baron Leopold stepped in front of the dwarven representative like a human roadblock, impeding Ami's path.

Ami hesitated, thrown a little off-script by the fact that he was another noble guest, not a bodyguard. Was this him being rude and running interference, or did he simply want to talk to her? She wasn't even close enough yet for the gesture to be unambiguously directed at her. If this was intended to be a subtle snub, it was a plausibly deniable one. Should she be confrontational about this for her act? She wished Duke Libasheshtan was around to help sort things out.

She looked over at the wide doorway, trying to see if he was close enough to smooth things over. Unfortunately, he was at the other end of a long hallway lined with columns and statues, standing near a hero gate carved into the wall. Bright white light spilled from the portal's back wall, which turned into a featureless white rectangle.

A tall, wide-shouldered silhouette stepped out of the pane of white, and golden reflections spilled out into the hallway.

"Lord Avatar! Welcome to Nailcastle!" the Duke's enthusiastic greeting drew attention to the tall, armoured figure who had just appeared from the hero gate.

Word of the Avatar's arrival spread within moments, and a tide of guests swept out of the reception area and into the hallway, towards the perceived safety of his proximity. They did try to look nonchalant about it – of course they weren't fleeing, they were merely eager to meet the esteemed Lord Avatar! However, the way the crowd streamed around Ami at a distance revealed its true intentions.

The herald, whose job it was to announce newcomers as soon as they stepped out onto the terrace, was wringing his hands as he frowned at the crowd now congesting the hallway.

Ami shot him a sympathetic look. Having everyone ignore protocol and preventing him from announcing one of the most important guests had to be awkward.

Noticing her attention, the dwarf paled and looked ready to run off too.

Smile turning brittle, she looked in Jered's direction instead. By now, the terrace was practically empty aside from the nervous staff and her own small delegation. Even Jered's mercenaries had abandoned him.

She exchanged a questioning look with the wavy-haired man, who just shrugged and pointed in the direction of the entrance, where the guests were slowly being pushed back out onto the terrace.

The noise level rose as people loudly vied for the Avatar's attention. Despite the press of bodies, the dwarfs somehow managed to show proper respect and deference by clearing a path for him and Duke Libasheshtan.

The Avatar, however, was currently listening to the tall elf fortunate enough to have gotten hold of the spot to his left. Unlike the dark elves Ami was familiar with, the androgynous figure had both a deep tan and not only long, flowing hair, but also a matching blond beard.

The elf, who was wearing some kind of polished breastplate made of artfully interwoven twigs, was gesticulating widely even as he leaned in closer to the Avatar with a pleading expression.

Ami strained to hear what they were talking about, but couldn't listen in due to the noisy crowd. Her Keeper senses didn't work on foreign territory unless she had an employee nearby, and both Jered and Umbra hadn't moved from their spot yet. She wished she could have smuggled in some rats inside her golems, but dwarven senses made that plan unfeasible.

"My lip reading isn't great, but I'm getting that he's requesting a visit to his homeland due to increasing Keeper pressure," Jered sent her a mental message. "Also, people might get nervous if you keep frowning that hard in the Avatar's direction."

Ami froze and noticed that, yes, she was staring and yes, people were starting to notice. With a faint blush, she turned aside and told one of her disguised golems to fetch her a snack. The Duke could fill her in on the details later.

Meanwhile, a dwarven courtier had somehow managed to replace the elf at the Avatar's side. Lacking the height of the pointy-eared man, he couldn't stop others from addressing the Avatar straight over his head. Unable to get a word in, his frustration was visibly rising.

The fairy sisters had to be feeling the same way. In a scramble with dwarfs, they were physically at a disadvantage, and occasional glimpses of bare skin in the crowd revealed that they were being pushed farther and farther away from the golden-armoured man.

The pressure let up only when he finally stepped out of the hallway and people spilled back out onto the terrace, dispersing a little. The poor herald's redundant announcement of the Avatar's presence went completely ignored as the group slowly rotated around him.

Amadeus endured the attention with remarkable patience, returning smiles and exchanging brief sentences with the people trying to engage him in conversation. After a few minutes though, he raised his hand. "A moment of quiet, please," his voice echoed out.

Within a few breaths, the shouts and clamouring died down, and even the orchestra stopped playing.

"Thank you." He lowered his hand and turned to the dwarf to his right. "Duke Libashestan. As our gracious host, you must be keeping track of everyone who has arrived so far."

"Indeed, Lord Avatar," the Duke replied, nodding in confirmation.

The Avatar straightened to his full height and turned one full circle, his gaze sweeping over everyone assembled. "Correct me if I am wrong, but it appears to me that all the important guests have already arrived?"

"We are not missing anyone above the rank of court scribe, Lord Avatar," the Duke said.

"Good. In that case, I request that we proceed with the ceremony straight away," Amadeus said.

A few surprised gasps came from the guests.

"I realise that the request may appear rude, but my duties are many, and strictly adhering to protocol is most assuredly not the most beneficial use of my time," the Avatar continued.

A murmur went through the crowd. Some dwarfs looked scandalised, but nobody seemed ready to argue with the Avatar that slaying monsters was less important than the gala's timetable. A few glanced over at Ami with thoughtful and satisfied looks, interpreting his words as a faint insult aimed at her.

Duke Libasheshtan drew in a deep breath. "That is, well, I am sure nobody would find fault with accommodating you, Lord Avatar, unless perhaps her Imperial Majesty disagrees?" He turned towards Ami expectantly.

People held their breaths as they awaited the dark empress' reaction.

Put on the spot, Ami remained quiet for a tense few seconds. The faster this awkwardness was over the better, in her opinion, but she was supposed to sell the idea that she was being coerced into this. "I suppose it would be rather petty of me if I dragged things out," she said with a faint smile, as if she was considering doing just that. "Fine, go ahead."

"Thank you for your cooperation, your Imperial Majesty," the Avatar replied in a tone so dry it made a mockery out of his polite words.

"Very well," the Duke called over several servants, who darted off to convey his orders.

A loud fanfare preceded the herald's next proclamation. "Esteemed Majesties, Lords, and honoured guests, your attention please! By personal request of his Exalted Lordship the Avatar and with agreement from her Imperial Majesty, Empress Mercury, his Grace, Duke Libasheshtan, will formally be accepting the regency over the realm of her Imperial Majesty slightly ahead of schedule! Please assemble at your assigned positions around the podium!"

Two servants were unrolling a red carpet down the three stairs that led up to the raised platform he had indicated, and dwarven soldiers in parade armour arrived, walking in formation as the orchestra started playing a solemn march.

On Ami's cue, her own guards joined the forming honour guard, their darker-coloured full plate contrasting with the shining silver tones of the dwarven armour.

The Duke inclined his head towards her in an invitation, and she joined him at the far edge of the red carpet.

She took the lead, walking one step ahead of him through the honour guard due to her higher rank. Now that the ceremony proper had started, she was feeling calmer than before despite the many eyes tracking her every move. For this part, everything was planned and rehearsed, so she knew exactly what to expect. It also helped that she mostly just had to sit on her throne and look regal while the Duke handled most of the talking.

He walked up to the pedestal and began his speech with a long-winded introduction about how this occasion was grounds for celebration as it provided ample opportunities to redress an unfortunate situation.

Ami had heard the speech so many times during the rehearsals that she wasn't paying attention any more. Instead, she watched the audience as the Duke went on about responsibility, duty, and proper upbringing.

The faces looking up at her remained impassive, though some twitching mouth corners and subtly arching eyebrows suggested that people were contemplating Duke Libasheshtan's words with a healthy amount of scepticism.

She couldn't really blame them when she agreed that the idea of handling a Keeper with pedagogy was, well, hopelessly optimistic at best. Thinking of Keeper–related issues, she had some time to check up on her dungeon, because the Duke would be talking at length about tradition and ancestors. Carefully keeping her eyes looking straight ahead, she moved her Keeper sight back to Salthalls, where her warlocks were working with crystal balls.

The huge list with potential Unraveller crystal locations pinned to the wall now had all but two entries crossed out. Her warlocks had split into two groups, each of which was working on putting together a small-scale model of a sprawling dungeon. With how little they had mapped out so far, they would be busy scrying for some time yet.

If they found any traces of gem furnace experimentation, then Ami would have to deal with those complexes.

Certain familiar parts of the Duke's speech caught Ami's attention before she could really get deeply into strategising. The next part required her participation.

The dwarf turned towards her with a stern look, his purple cape billowing. "Your Imperial Majesty, I hereby accept the duty of wielding the imperial authority and governing your realm in your name. As your regent and guardian, I shall ensure the well-being of yourself and your subjects until you reach the age of majority."

Ami stayed silent for a moment as if she was having second thoughts. Finally, she rose from her throne and nodded once. "I, Empress Mercury of the Avatar Islands, thank you for your service to my realm." That the service wasn't to herself was the important part here.

"I, Avatar Amadeus, witness and confirm Duke Libasheshtan's appointment to the position of Regent," the Avatar said, his eyes shining with faint light. "Congratulations, Regent Libasheshtan."

Following his example, the audience offered reluctant applause and congratulations too. The clapping from Sirith Anlur's representative was particularly slow and sarcastic. He also broke protocol as he failed to get in line to offer personal congratulations to the Duke. Instead, he directly approached the Avatar with a drink.

Of all the glares directed at the shameless dwarf, those of the fairies were the fiercest as they politely waited in line. When they finally got close to the Avatar too, Roderser had already joined the conversation.

"…preposterous! The situation is completely different! He is not working for a Keeper, but in a position of authority over one! Do not be taken in by his honeyed words, Lord Avatar," the bald dwarf said, frowning all the time. "They have learned nothing! Ambassador Camilla, isn't it true that the dark empress commissioned some goods from Sirith Anlur?" He turned his head so suddenly in the blonde's direction that he startled her.

"Wha- yes, but-"

"And that's willingly and knowingly serving a Keeper!" Roderser said, not letting Camilla finish her sentence.

"You have some gall twisting a simple business transaction into something supporting your continuing agenda of discrimination!" Ambassador Bagozkal growled. "Ambassador Camilla, your own trade experiences support my view?"

Camilla perked up. "Actually, I have a different issue to discuss with the Lord Avatar-"

"Which I'm sure you'll be able to do to your full satisfaction during the feast," Bagozkal interrupted again, drawing a frown from both the fairy and Roderser. "To stay on topic-"

"No." This time it was Amadeus who interrupted, reddish eyebrows narrowed in irritation. "Unfortunately, I cannot spare the time to stay for the feast."

His careless statement, while intended to support Camilla, neglected to take the audience into account. The guests who hadn't had the opportunity to talk to him yet overheard that he would be leaving soon, the crowd surged, and the poor fairy was swept away in the stream of bodies despite her vocal protests.

"All right, enough is enough!" Anise declared. The ruby-eyed fairy drew some curious looks as she jumped high into the air and fluttered her wings to escape from the bodies pressing against each other.

Ami, still sitting on her throne and neither inclined nor expected to mingle, was a little surprised when the fairy landed nearby and stomped in her direction.

Anise leaned down and whispered, "You told us we could plead our case to the Avatar, so come along and help us out!" With that, she grabbed Ami by the wrist and tugged.

A full stein shattered on the ground, and people stared wide-eyed. Someone stuttered "Sh-shameless!" and a few dwarfs tried to duck behind the standing tables for cover. One of the drummers missed a beat.

Ami, for her part, had already let herself be dragged along for a few steps before she really started thinking about how this might affect her image. Empress meekly following a girl who's half-naked by dwarven standards? She felt her ears burn. Oh well. In the end, she did owe the fairies a favour, and she would have to start interacting more with people at some point.

Not that it looked as if she would get to do so; Anise's plan to use her as sycophant repellent was working very well. The servants watching her move towards the Avatar fled first, alerting the guests at the rim of the crowd. Their departure in turn alerted the guests deeper in, causing a chain reaction that parted the sea of bodies before her.

Ambassador Bagozkal yelped when he noticed how close she was all of a sudden and ran without a thought for propriety, leaving Camilla, the Avatar, Roderser, and Baron Leopold to form a small, isolated group of their own.

Again, the moustached baron interposed himself between Ami and Roderser, glowering down at her. "Lord Avatar? Why don't you just deal with that Keeper brat right now? I mean, she's right here."

Ami shot him an incredulous look, wondering if he had a death wish. No, with the way he was smirking now he had to be testing her? She quickly closed her mouth.

"Trying would be pointless," Amadeus replied with a frown. "That's not her real body."

"Huh. You are the Avatar. I'm sure you have some way around that." He paused, considering. "If it takes some time to deploy, I can hold her off for a little."

The Avatar buried his face in his palm, incidentally flashing a ring on his finger. "Baron Leopold, why must you do this every time? Besides, you know I am unable to bring my full power to bear like this."

The adamantine-armored figure slumped and let out a long sigh. "How unfortunate." A moment later, he perked up again and grinned at Ami. "So, Empress, I hear you have a new reaper. Think it's up for a fight?"

Ami found herself actually taking a step back. She was far from the only one staring at the baron with a wary expression, though the Avatar only looked exasperated. "Well, um, Rabixtrel is always ready to battle, but he probably wouldn't want to make the journey," she finally replied.

"Lord Avatar!" Camilla said, jumping at the opportunity offered by the awkward silence. "My sisters and I were caught in the magical accident that recently befell Salthalls. This leaves us in a shaky position as far as the laws of the Shining Concord Empire are concerned. Could you please help us convince our superiors that we are still fit for our duties?"

It wasn't the most diplomatic request that the Avatar had ever received, but he thought about it for a moment. "Provided that is, in fact, the case, I'm inclined to assist you. However, this is neither the time nor place for the thorough examination required. I will instruct my seneschal to schedule a proper meeting and contact you."

"Thank you very much, Lord Avatar!" Camilla said, bowing deeply.

"We'll be eternally grateful," her sisters chimed in, bowing too.

The dinner gong rang loudly, which answered Ami's question about where Duke Libasheshtan had disappeared to during all this.

"And that is my cue to bid you farewell, your Imperial Majesty, your Excellencies, Lords and Ladies," Amadeus said. Using Ami's presence as a dam that held back the tide of his admirers, he strode towards the hero gate at a fast pace.