Chapter 240 – House of Cards

Lilyth - Day 4 of the Serrezht Crisis

I forgot how hot summers could get. The climates in both the realm of Air and Ror-Bhyk were mild, so I haven't had the dubious pleasure of experiencing a proper heat wave since I left Earth.

The worst part was that I couldn't just sit in my underwear next to an electric fan as it wouldn't be “proper” for a “queen” to do that in her “pavilion.” My friends were insistent on that bit. Fuck my life.

For all its worth, my wives were “happy” to suffer alongside me, though they did make liberal use of some of my new abilities. Specifically, my newly acquired ability to create clothing. It was one of the two “for fun” abilities I asked Ere to teach me, the other being [Create Food]. Both drained mana like a motherfucker, which only showed me the vast gulf between the actual gods and me.

That feeling when the leg-up you are given might be just the “bare minimum.”

At first, I wanted to keep my quasi-apotheosis secret from everyone and pass off my new outfits as gifts from Ere. Still, Ren noticed something was off immediately and made the mistake of asking me about it with Aki and Caeileera in attendance. In the end, they agreed to keep my secret. There were two conditions attached to this, though. First, when we were alone, I would provide them with Terran drinks and snacks. The second… my wives wanted “gifts from Ere” of their own.

And so Aki sat there in an icy blue crop top and denim shorts, brushing Veenaya as our poor fluffy bundle of joy was shedding like crazy; Caei, dressed in a black light robe with pictures of cartoon bats on it, was reading a book on gardening and Ren, having picked a bottle green summer dress for herself, was playing with Chirpy with a piece of yarn. This was the usual end result of her attempts at knitting, a hobby she picked up during our travels.

Myself, I was wearing a black tanktop shirt with my new crest of a rabbit and fox cuddling emblazoned on the chest area and, just like Aki, a pair of jean shorts, and occupied myself with building a cardcastle. It was a great way for me to get a hang of my new arm, as the task required a lot of delicate movements and precision. Of course, there were no decent, sturdy decks of cards anywhere in Kalaade, so I had to improvise by making myself a set of a hundred card-shaped-and-sized metal plates.

As for the active cooling, that bit wasn’t much of an issue as I was able to make a three magitek ones: two for us, and a floor-level one for our pets, something I saw Chirpy and Veenaya appreciated.

The only one happy about the heat was Fluffy. He just sat in a sun patch, looking like the world's happiest pet rock.

I was finally getting the hang of the cardcastle building as I managed to build a five-floor one and was about to start working on adding the sixth one when Persephone entered our tent and quickly reported:

‘I’ve spotted Princess Zaevi along with Nevahl and some Vukodlak woman approaching the town.’

‘A werewolf?’ I asked, vaguely remembering the name.

‘A what?’

‘You know… a person that turns into a wolf when it's a full moon.’

My friends looked at me dumbfounded. As it turned out, the concept of wereanything never developed on Dwynveia, and while I have never seen a dog anywhere, it never occurred to me that canines as a whole just weren't a thing. Funnily enough, between the Kitsune, Lumizu and now Vukodlaks there were plenty of canid-related beings running around. We were all simply magic.

Dwynveia would give Terran taxonomists a raging hard-on. I imagine they could have multiple symposia dedicated just to deciding whether the Kitsune were canids or hominids.

‘Let’s get the others here,’ I said after pacing around the room for a moment, bringing the discussion back on track. ‘It seems our brief break is over.’

Then I turned towards Ren.

‘Witch Queen Ren of the Bloody Perch Clan, it is your show now.’

Aki - Day 4 of the Serrezht Crisis

After Rennie accidentally revealed Lilyth’s secret and we named our conditions for keeping it, we held some discussions and the general conclusion was that Lilyth could no longer hold any political positions. From what she had told us, her power boost came with unwanted benefits, and the information she gained from it would make it impossible for her to be… fair.

‘You can see the sins of others again?’ Rennie guessed when we were talking it over.

‘It is not as pronounced as when I had access to Ere’s powers, and I can turn it on and off, but yes,’ she shook her head.

‘Can’t you just not activate it?’ I asked.

‘Would you be able to resist the temptation?’ she retorted sadly. ‘And let's say you activate it to check the person you are about to hire. They are a seemingly good person and are otherwise a highly recommended professional. But you activate your [Sin-O-Meter] and discover that they are a murderer. Do you hire them?’

‘Well… no,’ I replied quickly.

‘Do you know the full context of the murder though?’

‘Murder is murder, isn’t it?’

‘Not really,’ Ren shook her head, having figured out the rhetorical trap before I did. ‘There is a difference between killing someone in the heat of a moment, as a revenge for some wrong or just for the pleasure of it. And you don't see that context, do you, Lilyth?’

‘No,’ my foxy cutie shook her horned head. ‘At least not yet. I would have to heavily invest in developing the power to be able to. And I don't want to. That power is not a burden I want to bear and not something interacting with people on the regular should have. And so… I would be stuck making decisions with the knowledge that I can just… take a peek. Just one. And then never again. An exception, you know…’

‘And then an exception becomes a rule, and in a few years…’

Lilyth becomes a tyrant.

And so we agreed that she would step down the moment making diplomatic decisions became necessary.

‘You are abdicating?’ Persephone asked, confused.

‘Remember I am the Marquess of Hell,’ Lilyth said. ‘I had a heart-to-heart with Ere, and we decided that me being a public figure would disrupt my duties in Hell. Can you imagine me looking into some gang there and people pointing out that I am not just another Hellborn?’

That's a good point. I imagine rulers are very “popular” in Hell.

‘Makes sense,’ Persephone shrugged. ‘I can imagine people of the land wouldn't be happy about having a God-Queen either.’

‘You knew?’ Lilyth was aghast.

‘Now I do,’ the sorceress smiled. ‘I noticed that something about you changed after you returned from your family day. There is some poetry to it too. You shot your essence into Ereshkigal, so now she gave you some of hers.’

I could see Lilyth was about to flip her off, but we were interrupted by a series of metallic clacks. We looked towards the source, and it turned out to have been caused by Lilyth’s house of cards collapsing. Chirpy was sitting next to the pile of metal plates, looking completely unapologetic.

My foxy cutie stared at the mess in complete disbelief, took a deep breath in and exclaimed:

‘MOTHER-’

Izartiel - Day 4 of the Serrezht Crisis

‘Is that someone flying?’ Zaevi pointed at the figure in the sky.

If the observation wasn't so pantshittingly terrifying, Iza would have rolled her eyes. As it stood, it made her realise how close to dying she came when she went against the Witch Queen. She had heard rumours that she had someone who could fly in her party, but she was always sceptical of them. Now she had proof before her very eyes and well… they would be turbo fucked if they actually tried to follow through on the bounty.

The figure in the sky must have noticed them because they descended to get a better look at her group, which, in turn, allowed Iza to see it was a white-haired woman in a black short-sleeved shirt and blue trousers.

Huh.

The flier, apparently uninterested in Zaevi and Nevahl, focused her gaze on Iza for a few seconds and then flew off in the direction of Kalaade.

‘That was one of the Witch-Queen’s courtiers,’ Nevahl confirmed her suspicions. ‘Her name is Persephone, I believe?’

‘That means we are in the right place,’ Zaevi agreed. ‘Hopefully they will be willing to help us now.’

Iza met the pair the evening two days before. After putting a lot of distance between herself and her dying companions, she was wandering aimlessly around.

The Vukodlak had no idea what to do. She was broke and had nowhere to go. Cashing in on that Witch Queen bounty was supposed to be her ticket to a better life, but instead, Iza almost ended up buying one to the afterlife, instead.

Maybe I should head back home? But how?

Getting out of the Endless Forest was easy. Getting back in, however… The mortal world wasn't terribly flush with easily accessible and preferably free portals.

Hopefully, the locals will need a farmhand or a serving wench.

With that in mind, Iza set off towards Kalaade, and after finding corpses of people strewn along the road, she realised that yes, there likely would be a few openings. Selling her leather armour and her sword would also get her some emergency money.

Iza briefly wondered whether she should start searching the corpses for money, but decided against it. She would have no issue doing it to her former partners in business; they would have no issue doing it to her, but robbing bodies of random people would be one of those things that would piss off the Dread Queen, and she didn't want to do that. Especially not if there was a decent chance she would be meeting her soon.

Her luck changed when, after the sun went down, she saw a fire burning by the roadside. The old man and dragonblooded girl were initially wary of her, but they ended up accepting her into their party. Nevahl and Zaevi said they were a travelling scholar and his apprentice, but in the two days she had known them, they provided her with little evidence to support their claims. If anything, the old man was highly deferential to Zaevi.

What was even more peculiar was the attitude the pair had towards Iza. Zaevi immediately became her constant companion, asking her about every single detail about Vukodlaks and the Endless Forest.

Nevahl, meanwhile, was mostly indifferent to all that. Sure, he showed visible interest from time to time, and even asked a few questions, but it was clear that either he somehow knew all of that, or simply straight-up did not care.

Ultimately, Iza was not in a position to question him but she would bet good money that the man was no scholar.

While Zaevi and Nevahl warned her that what they would find in Kalaade would likely be bad, nothing could have prepared any of their group for how bad it actually was. The sight of listless people wandering the almost empty streets would haunt Iza’s dreams for months.

‘Wh-what happened here?’ she could only ask, feeling completely helpless.

Uncertain how the meeting with the Witch Queen would go, they decided to rent rooms at one of the local inns, discovering that all but one of them were closed.

‘The Fae are saying that it was the food that was the cause of the Sprouting,’ the young man running the place explained. ‘A bunch of nonsense if you ask me, but the people are scared. The Fae began distributing free “safe” food so nobody is interested in getting it here.’

Yes. Terrible shame that.

Shockingly enough, despite the man’s clear disregard for public safety he still did, somehow, have customers in the inn, though judging by their looks the men have long resigned to drinking themselves to death, so they were past caring about certain things.

Like eating edible food.

And, judging by their smell, hygiene.

‘Nothing for us here then,’ Zaevi ruled. ‘Let’s go see the Fae.’

‘Fucking Faelovers,’ the man muttered.

They were intercepted by a pink-haired demon when they entered the field camp. As the day was fairly hot, so hot in fact that Iza had no idea how Nevahl survived wearing his suit, the girl was wearing a simple t-shirt and skirt combo.

‘Heya,’ the girl smiled. ‘Long time no see.’

‘Miss… Zevri?’ Zaevi said, unsure.

‘Savri,’ the demon corrected with a smile. ‘I gather you are here to see Her Royal Furriness?’

‘Among the other things, yes. We are also looking for a place to stay.’

‘And judging by the fact you are here, I gather you met the innkeeper. Terrible man.’

‘Good thing most people have common sense not to go there,’ Iza said.

‘You can't argue with free food,’ Savri laughed. ‘Especially since it is better than the shit locals were serving. I’m Savri by the way.’

‘Izartiel,’ she replied. ‘Or Iza for short.’

‘Nice to meet you, Iza. Anyway, let me take you to the Queen. We’ll figure out accommodations for your group later