Chapter 532 - Underhanded Plots (Patreon)

Flying back home was a joy, eager impatience warring with my enjoyment of flying. I redoubled my resolve - shortly after Auri was back home, the Eventide Eclipse should go exploring around the world. Problems for Iona to fix, people for me to heal, and sights to see. Iona was fully mortal, and as long as I didn’t draw too much attention to myself, we shouldn’t have any problems. If I contained myself to healing sick children in villages who needed specialized care, and not flexing by mass-healing entire cities all at once, I should stay entirely off the Warden’s radar. Night might be a little annoyed that I wasn’t easily contactable in case of emergency, but I was on vacation. I was allowed to…

Actually, I kinda wasn’t allowed to do anything I wanted. I was a special military asset, and I assumed there were a number of countries and nobles who’d be unhappy at me poking around at sensitive things, plus there was image and reputation to concern myself with.

As long as I was discrete and didn’t cause problems, I could do what I wanted.

Exterreri was much better mapped out than Bhutai was, thanks to a strong central government and me living here, and I was able to easily navigate my way back home. A smile blossomed across my face as I spotted Iona from several miles away, sitting on top of our villa with her sketchpad in hand, quietly drawing out the beautiful vista.

Chuckling to myself, I retracted my wings and activated my [Greater Invisibility] rune on my chest, having new appreciation for how many sub-variants of the rune existed, and by extension, how long it had taken to get the rune down perfectly. Kunchenjab had shown me a wrist full of dozens of different variants one lesson, and I’d explored them one by one. It was a little hard to properly understand them when I was both casting them on myself, and had [The World Around Me] to pierce all but the best-crafted illusions.

I invisibly fell through the sky, utterly unconcerned with my landing. I was pretty sure I could simply absorb the impact with my body, and if I landed badly and sprained my ankle going from terminal velocity to zero, my healing would fix me right back up. I glanced down as I was about to land and swore.

Fuck! Sheep! I was falling like an anvil, and dense enough to utterly ruin some poor [Shepherds] day. They’d instantly know there was a problem as well, what with that global wish letting them all know where their sheep were at any time.

Fully trusting that the sheep would do the stupidest, most suicidal thing possible, I snapped open my wings, killing my invisibility, and tumble-rolled to the ground, where I had the presence of mind to immediately recloak. I ended up with my eyes inches away from a sheep’s teeth, getting a close-up view of chewing, and a hot blast of sheep breath in my face.

Baah.

I picked myself up, and jogged down to the road, dodging the few travelers who were out this far, not even leaving a trace of myself like the morning breeze. I made it home at an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound, feeling a little like the rest of the world was stuck in molasses.

I snuck up on my wife, waiting for the perfect moment. When she paused her drawing for a moment, putting her pencil up to her lips, I struck. I wrapped her in a hug from behind as I dropped my invisibility, resting my chin on her shoulder.

“Hey love, I’m back.” I said. She didn’t jump up, much to my disappointment. I snuck a peek at what she was drawing.

Iona was going for the full vista view, but with a little twist. With her skills, she was able to manipulate and control her pencil so finely that she could draw tiny details on the extra-nice paper I’d bought for her.

Ahhh. That’s what the fancy paper did. It let her make details at a level only a Classer could manage.

She reached a hand up and stroked my cheek.

“Missed you love. Give me just a moment to finish this, and I’ll greet you properly.”

I flushed at the words, and couldn’t wait.

“You have been on the road quite a bit…” Iona hinted, and I got it.

“Meet you in the baths!” I shouted, teleporting through the roof to get to them faster.

Praise Titania, there were fresh-ish mangos waiting for me in the kitchen, and I blitzed through the house at top speed to better eat them in the bath. I stripped down and slipped into our large, hot bath, billowing clouds of steam giving me some minor privacy from the Valkyrie I knew was also taking advantage of the place.

Hey, it was the semi-public one, and we’d invited them into our home. I wasn’t going to begrudge them using the place. I made my way over to the far corner, and let myself float in the hot water, letting the warmth seep into every bone. In a hidden display of economically using every part of the fruit, of the very essence of waste not, want not, I sunk my teeth into the skin of the most beautiful of fruits, the blessed and holy mango.

The sweet juice exploded in my mouth and ricocheted across my brain, lighting up every nerve. For one brief, glorious instant, I was utterly blissed out, wrapped in the sweet embrace of hot water and mango. Alas, cruel mastication and sensory adjustment quickly dulled the pleasure, and I was forced to take yet another bite.

This was the life.

The only disappointing thing was I couldn’t do it forever, all the time. It’d lose its effect if I tried. Sweet, delicious things had to be done in careful moderation, unless I wanted to forever ruin it for myself. Had to be a little more aware of that as my timeline and horizon stretched longer.

Such a thing would be a nightmare, if I somehow managed to ruin mango for myself forever more.

Iona came in less than a minute later, the timing suggesting she’d finished a tiny part of her sketch then came down here as quickly as possible, stopping only to store her art supplies. Even after all these years, even after all this time, seeing her made my heart race and butterflies flip in my stomach.

She spotted me, and a look of pure love and adoration lit up her face, the silly smile never leaving as she slipped into the bath next to me.

“Love you.” I whispered.

“Love you too.”

============================

I’d just finished tending to my mango grove when the distant sound of falling trees reached my ears. I paused, focusing in a bit, hearing some voices celebrating.

Huh. That didn’t sound right.

I took to the air, scanning around our mountain, and saw a small group chopping down trees by the base of the mountain. It didn’t look like a small operation, nor did it look like a bunch of teenagers screwing around.

Actually, if a bunch of teenagers wanted to ‘screw around’ by getting in several good hard day’s labor cutting down trees, I’d be all for it. Tell me where to sign. It’d be good for them, and the bulk of the reason we hadn’t done a ton with the mountain was to encourage enough game to flourish that feeding Fenrir wasn’t a logistical nightmare. Kids learning valuable skills and gaining experience by chopping a few down? Yeah!

Oh no. I think I was officially getting old. The prospect of seeing kids working hard was exciting and the potential highlight of my day! Help! Help! Turn back the clock! Let me party all night with no consequences in the morning!

I spun off an extra thought process with [Luminary Mind] to ruminate on age, and how at least I didn’t hurt myself by sleeping wrong, thank you magic. There was something interesting in there how I matured mentally at a similar pace to what I expected, and vitality not slowing down the evolving thought process…

I folded my arms and pursed my lips.

They were not supposed to be here, but it wasn’t exactly like this spot in particular was the easiest timber for anyone except maybe exactly one crotchety old farmer, and he was content to do his own thing. If - big if - if he decided to pull some bullshit, he wouldn’t be doing it openly in broad daylight. I briefly debated confronting them myself, but no. I was acceptably good at social work, but the mistress of silver tongues herself was around.

She was up with Fenrir in his cave, reading him a story and scratching a spot under his chin. The wyvern puffed his pipe in obvious contentment, barely cracking an eye open as I approached.

“Hey!” I waved to Iona, sitting down gratefully on an overstuffed chair Fenrir kept in his cave.

“What’s going on?” Iona looked up from her book and paused.

I waved my hand at them.

“Nothing that can’t wait until you’re done.” I settled deeper into the chair, enjoying Iona’s storytelling. She did the voices so well - velvety for one character, then seamlessly switching to the smoke-scarred voice of another. I’d missed half the story, and I quickly caught up thanks to [The World Around Me] and [Manuscript Mastery], resisting the urge to read ahead and simply listening to Iona.

The book ended on a nice plot twist, and a quick re-read through the entire story reframed a number of items I hadn’t put together before, which was nice. It had been there the entire time - if only I’d seen it.

Iona snapped the book shut, and gently headbutted Fenrir.

“How’d you like that one?” She softly asked, the mighty wyvern puffing an extra-large cloud of smoke in response.

“What’s up?” My wife asked me a moment later.

“Bunch of people are logging at the bottom of our mountain.” I said. “I know the accursed [Tax Collector] wanted us to sell off a good portion of the land and we’d get significant benefits for it, but last I checked it was all ours, and I can’t imagine why anyone would pick here to log trees. Want to come check it out with me?”

Fenrir’s eyes flew open, the cave shaking as he moved his bulk around.

“Case!” Iona’s bond shouted as he carefully moved his pipe to the rack, where a dozen more pipes rested. The wyvern charged out of the cave with a roar, taking to the skies where he reigned sovereign. Iona facepalmed, and muttered to herself.

“Auri burns flowers and Fenrir takes cases. It’s fine. It’s all fine.”

My ears picked up the sound of distant thunderclouds.

“I swear it wasn’t supposed to rain today.”

Iona got up and stretched.

“Well, let’s go see what they want, shall we?”

============

The two of us made our way down the mountain, and I had a sudden pang of loss, of something wrong.

Auri wasn’t on my shoulder, gleefully chirping up a storm into my ear. I missed her. Only 413 days until she was back - worst case. For all I knew, she could be back any minute now.

We spotted the [Lumberjacks] with a bit of distance to go, and they spotted us. There were six men and two women, all of them between level 120 to 320, the only one who might possibly have a combat class tagged [Leader]. Given that he was level 230 and the deadliest thing he had was a standard knife at his belt, I suspected it was more focused on civilian life.

To my surprise, the [Leader] looked excited to see us, and like he recognized me. He thunked his axe down in a stump and waved at me as we approached.

“Heeeey! Elaine! Great to see you!” He cheered at me, the rest of the group choosing to take an impromptu break. Waterskins and lunches were broken out, and their sandwiches smelled good.

Iona shot me a wordless look with a single eyebrow raised past her bangs, almost to her hairline. I went down [Astral Archives], trying to match his face to anyone I’d met before.

There were a lot of near-matches to people I’d seen on the streets of Sanguino here and there, but that was true for everyone. I couldn’t match him to anyone I’d met and talked to enough for them to be familiar with me.

And, terribly, the ball was in my court. I’d hoped to have Iona do most of the talking, but now it was on me, by the ten thousand unwritten social rules. The interaction was friendly so far, and there was no reason to change the tone. It was easy to escalate to unpleasant, it was difficult to go from mean to nice.

Okay!

“Hi! I’m Elaine, yeah. I think you’ve got the advantage of me, what’s your name?” I asked.

His face froze, and I could almost see his heart dropping into his shoes. He got clammy, and his hands started to tremble a little.

“I’m Kalesius?” He asked, almost like it was a question. “We met last week, you sold us some land? Hey! Alektryon! Bring over the contract!”

Iona and I traded stunned looks as Alektryon hurried over, pulling a scroll from a satchel. I didn’t need to full see it to read the whole thing.

In short, it was exactly what Kalesius claimed. A contract between me and him, selling a modest portion of the mountain for a reasonable sum. Naturally, the date was when I was at the Jakhong Monastery in Bhutai, far, far away from Sanguino. I’d been meditating and gardening that day, not signing contracts and selling land.

Alektryon unraveled the scroll, and Iona leaned over it, taking a quick look. The mood was starting to turn… I wasn’t quite sure, but things were a lot less joyful and happy. My wife hooked her arm in mine.

“Whoops!” She steered me back to the woods, and I was inclined to let her drive. “We’ve got to chat a bit ourselves! Sorry for disturbing you!”

Iona and I slowly hiked until we were a respectable distance away from Kalesius, then picked up the pace and moved at high speed until we were back home, far away enough that they couldn’t hear us.

“That wasn’t me.” I said. Iona held up her hands.

“I know. It’s obvious we’re a target of a scam, fraud, or some other bullshit. It’s possible they’re trying to pull wool over my eyes, but with my skills, it’d be exceptionally hard for all of them to fool me. I pulled us away because you had the paper memorized already, and anything we said would either escalate the problem, or cause them to start covering their tracks better.”

I nodded in agreement.

“I’m pretty sure the Rangers have [Jurists] that could help us out here. We’ve got resources, no reason we need to solve everything ourselves.”

Iona shot a baleful glare in the direction Fenrir had flown off. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, nevermind the wyvern being far out of view.

“You hear that!” She yelled. “People can work together to solve mysteries!”

I couldn’t tell if Iona was serious or cracking a joke, but it put a smile on my face and lightened the mood.

“It’s a good idea. Let’s go bring someone who does this for a living into the loop.”

=================

A bunch of bouncing around later, and we found ourselves alone in Addolorata’s office, eating a pair of wraps. Marley, Night’s dog, had followed the sweet smell of chicken, and was busy sitting on his hind legs and begging for scraps. Iona and I were suckers, and he knew it. Each step in the process had seemed logical, but I wasn’t sure how we ended up with one of Night’s team members, instead of one of the Ranger’s [Lawyers] or [Solicitors].

Then again, she was a devil, and at the risk of stereotyping too much and getting myself in trouble, they did tend to have an unusual fascination with law, order, and rules.

“I miss Arachne.” I said. “Just go to her, and ZAP! Paperwork problem solved.”

Iona swallowed an extra-large bite, eyeing my half-eaten wrap hungrily. I passed it to her without a word.

“You also miss Night’s meetings and being able to regularly chat with him.” She pointed out, attacking my half-wrap like it had done something wrong.

“Sure, but who knew paperwork could take so long to handle, even with Classers dealing with it.”

“Cross city paperwork filed in six different spots?” Iona pointed out one of the things we’d learned on our merry-go-round. “Pure logistics dictates it takes time, and we’ve ended up with one of the best helping us out. When someone needs a healer, they go to you. When someone needs an injustice righted, they come to me. When a lot of wood needs to be burned, Auri’s the one to ask.”

I crossed my arms, none too happy with the answer but accepting it. I wish it was Night directly helping us out, but in spite of his vast skills, he did know when to delegate, and I couldn’t insist that he directly fix problems for us, not when he had someone dedicated to fixing these sorts of issues. A bit of a shame that both Iona and Night overlapped on the ‘fixes problems that can be punched’ axis, it’d be nice to work directly with him more often.

I was having a sudden realization and medium-sized crisis about my mentors and preferences in partners - both Artemis and Iona were fit, blonde, and with green eyes to start - when Addolorata walked in through the door, a stack of files in one hand. She tucked her wings in to not bump them, and sat down on her stool behind her desk.

“It’s all bad news, but it’s about a one on the disaster scale.” The devil said without preamble. “We’re all busy people, so I’ll get right to it. A [Saboteur] or related class has impersonated you, Elaine, and sold off a considerable amount of your property. Given the timeline, you’ve discovered it about as quickly as possible, which helps. We have more options than we otherwise would. Now, it can all be unwound, but the [Saboteur] was clever. The property was sold to upstanding up-and-coming citizens of Exterreri, each one well-considered by their peers. In addition, each one is relatively well-connected with a strong [Solicitor], and while we’d eventually win the case, everyone would be spending vast sums to work it all out, all while your name and the Sentinel’s reputation is being dragged through the mud. It’s an impressive piece of work, and if I’m ever able to work out who’s behind it I’m going to send them the exact same problem, but with a twist. In the end, I have to give them credit. This is a successful sabotage on the part of our enemies, a sign that people are taking the impending war seriously, and are already starting to act.. It’s far, far easier to throw rocks than repair windows, especially when you throw them at intangible situations that a skill and a wave of the hand can’t fix. We’re either forced to fight each other, causing deep resentment among the population, or you need to take a significant blow to your personal finances and holdings, which only the most generous of [Saintesses] would be able to accept without sour feelings or resentments.”

I wasn’t sure if Addolorata had noticed my fists curling in my lap, and even Iona had an angry spark in her eyes.

This sort of thing was technically possible with the System, but given the vast chaos that could be caused by impersonators and the massive miscarriages of justice that could result, it tended to carry the death penalty. Civilization ran on trust, and if the trust was shattered, everything would collapse.

“We should tell Nina about this, it’s the sort of thing she lives for.” I muttered out of the corner of my mouth.

Iona caught herself in a laugh, turning it into a snort instead.

“All this ignores the sums of arcs that are undoubtedly far gone from Exterreri at this time.” Addolorata continued on. “Another aspect I hate saying is the tier of this case is a little below me. It would be taken up by the Ranger’s finest [Lawyers], and I have no doubt they’d succeed. Naturally, the Rangers would be footing the entire bill, although there is only so much budget for fixing sabotage. There are only so many arcs in circulation. As the wronged party, the decision is yours. What do you want to do? Please let me know when you’ve decided, but time is sensitive on this matter. The sooner we move to fix it, the better. I need to draft several laws to present to the Senate to fully lock down Sentinel’s and Ranger’s property to prevent similar issues from occurring again.”

On one hand, Addolorata wasn’t even a [Senator], and being a non-human, non-vampire probably worked against her. On the other, she spoke with such easy confidence that I had no doubt I’d be hearing about the new law next week. Maybe I could even sneak into one of the Sentinel meetings to see everyone’s reaction.

We made some polite noises and excused ourselves, taking a walk around the city to figure out what we wanted to do. When Iona got a sparkle in her eye and bought me an extra-large mango-banana smoothie, I knew I was being mangoed up.

I lifted an eyebrow as I greedily slurped the drink down, not wanting to waste precious mouth space talking.

“I think I’ve got a solution!” Iona was grinning, her charismatic energy flowing off her in waves. “Alright, the money doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

I shook my head. Supporting the Valkyries in our small way barely put a dent in my Sentinel pay, let alone the occasional bolus I got selling Immortality gems. I had some loans, yes, but they were being paid off, and I had beer tastes on a champagne budget. The finances didn’t matter.

“Well! Let’s mentally reframe this a little. We’re not losing chunks of the mountain - we’re finally getting a bunch of new neighbors! We can meet them, we can socialize, we’ve got people we can say hi to. Auri can bake them cookies, and the endless drama will keep Fenrir working as a Private Weyevern forever. Let’s flip it around! We’re getting friends! We could host parties twice a week - uh, once a week,” Iona hastily amended her sentence at my horrified face. Her terrible suggestion almost made me spit out my drink! It would be a crime against creation to waste rare mango like that! “Maybe have some more people around, be the start of a village or even a small town! What’s not to like about it?”

I gave Iona the old stink-eye while I seriously thought about it, the gears turning in my head.

“I want significant room between us and the closest people.” I laid out my demands, noticing how Iona was guiding us back to Castle Stormwatch. “I’m also worried about Fenrir and his food.” I chewed over the idea.

It… frankly sucked. The entire situation was extremely frustrating. I’d gotten some diplomatic-related training, but it more revolved around ‘how to not make absolutely everyone hate my guts when I needed to deliver unpleasant news’ sort of thing, along with the elements that were associated with investigations. Rangers and Sentinels were generally pointed at problems that required overwhelming violence or System skills to solve. A mess like this? I couldn’t snap my fingers and solve it, nor could anyone else. Unraveling it was going to be long and painful, no matter who I decided was going to get the short end of the stick, and there was going to be no shortage of hurt feelings. Such bullshit. I mentally elevated Arachne’s protection high up - I had no doubt there were dozens of plots every year that she quietly removed in the background. Now that she was on her break, they were actually coming to fruition. Made me wonder how they had anyone qualified to do it - or if they were watching and waiting for the guardian to leave before striking. I wasn’t happy about it, but it was hard to deny that I’d been had. Someone had to absorb the loss, and I was frankly in far better of a position than almost anyone to absorb the loss. I could always ask the government to cover it for me - a discretionary fund had been mentioned - but I was self-aware enough to know Rangers and other ‘smaller’ members of the organization were also getting hit, and once the fund was empty, it was empty. I didn’t want to donate to it and supplant our enemy’s funding, but simply not tapping it when I had Sentinel-level pay and significant alternative income was possible.

The frustrated feelings bubbled up inside me, and I mentally marked that I needed some significant self-care time to feel alright. Just after a calm vacation to boot. It was like insult added to injury - came back after a long vacation, and WHOOPS! Something’s so wrong at home that I ended up more stressed than I started.

Silver lining though - next year the [Tax Collector] would only be getting a tiny fraction of what he’d scalped from us this year.

Iona had a bounce and a gleam in her eye after we informed Addolorata, who looked relieved that we weren’t about to tie up a bunch of resources on something stupid. With my demands that we get a certain distance, there was one sale that needed to be unwound, and the fact that we weren’t suing everyone was going to be a demerit to our case, and-

[Lawyers]. There was a reason everyone hated them until you needed them, and EVEN THEN it was such bullshit that ‘trying to be nice’ was translated into ‘AHHA! We can try to fuck them over!’ in legal-ese.

I had a brief surge of desire to be like a pampered [Noble] where my word was law and I didn’t need to have any of these pesky ‘court’ things. Alas! We were all believers in the rule of law, even when somewhat weaponized and turned against us.

By Ciriel, it was a devastatingly effective attack in some ways. It was absolutely trying to worm its way into my brain. I had to wonder if whoever orchestrated the attack knew about the Valkyrie's history, and was trying to also get them evicted again for a trauma redux.

I made a mental note to bribe Night to tell us the after-action report of Addolorata doing the same things to our enemies. Maybe see if a Mirage Classer could be close enough to see and reenact the whole thing later.

Iona picked up an entire keg on the way back home.

Literally.

“Hey, think I can get a ride on that?” I asked Iona, who slapped the side of the keg she was one-handedly carrying.

“Hop on! No way to make faster friends than the two magic words.”

I accepted my ride, and joined Iona in chorus.

“Free beer!”

A little less free when I was the one paying for it, but eh. Silver linings! Do my best not to think about how I’d been screwed!

===========

I had no fucking idea how Iona had managed to invite a bunch of our new neighbors we hadn’t met yet to the party - I’d been with her all day! We traveled through the city together! SHE NEVER HAD A MOMENT TO SEND INVITES! Agarblogag, it didn’t make sense! - but she had, and the party was in full swing.

Auri would love this many people to eat all her baked goods. I was coming round to the thinking that ‘someone else had spent a ton of time and effort to make a whole village and get us a bunch of new friends.’ I was still frustrated over the whole thing, but trying to stare at the positives helped.

We had more money than we knew what to do with, what was losing a bit? Ugh, if it was just that, it’d be fine, but it was the violating feel that drove me nuts. It was like a robber breaking into my home and stealing the spare change and the cat litter. It wasn’t about the cat litter, it was about the invasion.

Iona had been tasked with explaining the situation to people, and had somehow turned that into loyal pledges and steadfast outrage on our behalf, our new neighbors chomping at the bit to obtain JUSTICE, however they could. She was being loaded up with quite a few promises and gifts, and somehow making heaps of gold out of spun thread.

It was a miracle to watch.

I wasn’t a fan of blood sports, but I had a brief moment of thanks towards how popular they were in Exterreri when Fenrir dropped half a bloody elven body into the middle of our party. Laughs and drunken cheers greeted the wyvern and the dead body he’d dropped in the middle of the dance floor instead of screams and shouts. Fenrir happily puffed on his pipe.

“Case closed.”