"Maybe not 'right here' beneath our feet, but close by at least." Inta explained to the dumbfounded Entoma. "Those lizardy whatevers, they were big, slow, lumbering creatures, and they made up the majority of the ones we saw, right?" He asked, and Entoma reluctantly nodded along.

"So they have to have places to hide, but also places they can reach with ease, and find with ease. So they need landmarks, plus I hinted that I already knew where their safe house was, and that gave me some additional information… it's close to us." Inta promised, and then put his hand close to the place the bug armor was now protecting her, but did not touch the injured spot. "We need to hide you first, though, before we think of doing anything else."

"Hide me?" Entoma asked, "Why? I'm injured, not dead. I will kill them." She hissed out through her pain.

"Because I can't bear to see you injured." Inta said in response, "Let me do this for you. I'm your bodyguard, you're a diplomat… for now. There's papers that will need to be graded and things that need to be done back at the University, and I'm sure you'll want… no, need, a vacation after-"

"What I've been through?" Entoma asked, her expression didn't change, but her voice did, "It hurt like hell, but I've been hurt worse. I'm not Keeno, needing to be carried beneath the arm of her hero like baggage. I'm the created being of gods. I'll avenge myself." She chittered back, almost shaking with rage until she felt his hand relax.

He moved that gently resting hand away and put it into her golden palm instead. "Can you stand?" He asked her quietly, leaning forward a little as if afraid to give life to the question.

"If you'll support me, yes." She said, and clasped his fingers tight, allowing him to help her stand again.

Curete reached for the glass of drunkard's blood and tilted it down her throat. Despite being neither hungry nor thirsty, the fury savored every drop. 'I never realized how much variety there was to this stuff.' She thought as she whorled the liquid around in the silver goblet.

"You favor Nazarick's selections, I take it?" Albedo asked, and Curete bobbed her head up and down like a happy bird.

"I never knew it could be like this. Everything I ever consumed was just so bland. Tasteless. But this?" Curete licked her lips and her dark eyes brightened like obsidian when it caught the light just right.

"Good, isn't it. It's meant for vampires, but demons seem to enjoy it as well. Drunkard's Blood is infused with a high concentration of alcohol, we have many varieties, but that one," Albedo pointed to the silver cup, "is sweet cherry bourbon infused. Even if you're immune to poison based intoxication," she licked her lips in a sultry, slow motion, "it is delicious."

Curete felt a shiver run up and down her spine, the fury felt the eyes of the demoness in front of her and knew in a heartbeat, 'I'm no match for this one.' But no overt threat had been made at all.

If anything it had been more of a star treatment, with baths that, a slime massage that was far more refreshing than she imagined, given the name, a large meal of fresh meat and the silver chalice of what might as well have been divine nectar put before her.

And yet that predatory look in the yellow eye of the statuesque demoness before her, never wavered. The questions came with every little pleasure, as if she doubted Curete would reveal anything.

'It's hardly a secret though, so… why not?' Curete wondered about all that… the demoness who found her in the pool and retrieved the stone had only been interested in the last man to bear it, not the stone itself. But she indulged the questions as best she could.

"Barintacha, or… Inta, as he's known now…" Curete carried on with the story she'd begun before Albedo's prompt about her drink, "I saw him fall in love so many times…" Curete's eyes welled up. "The Mocking Stone is very cruel. It hates me, I think. Even my family task, it used it to mock me, enslave me, chain me to it in isolation… and whenever I wanted to see my beloved, it showed me him in ways I never wanted to see. Wife after wife, wedding after wedding… he's had hundreds of wives since me."

Albedo bristled at that, intuitively distrustful as Curete described it all in vivid detail.

"And then when they died… they were forgotten, just like me. His memory would vanish and he would wander off and become a monster again before he would return to something like himself. And I would have to watch my noble Barintacha become everything he hated until he came back to himself, and it would all start again." Curete tried to swallow the lump in her throat, but it bobbed up and down, resisting her effort to swallow the misery that consumed her in that moment.

"The cad." Albedo muttered with contempt. 'This is the man that Entoma wants for herself?' She shook her head, the battle maids may have been subordinate, but they were of Nazarick, and her care for them was no less than anyone else's.

"He has no choice, I know that. Who would choose that life? It's my fault he suffered that fate. I went out myself, I just wanted to protect him, to protect everyone. I never dreamed what the Mocking Stone would do to us, to him, to me." Curete said, her lower lip quivering until she bit it hard enough to draw blood and stop the motion.

"I have been severely punished." Curete bowed her head.

In a detached sort of way, Albedo turned the thought of that curious curse and strange resurrection or remaking, it was far, far too much like the one used on Vanysa for the Guardian Overseer to overlook. 'Lord Ulbert made the artifact for demon summoning, Lord Peroroncino could just as easily have created the Mocking Stone to compete with him… most of the Supreme Beings fiddled with creations other than us.'

All that, made Albedo move the priority up for searching the west beyond the sea in search of evidence. 'It's several months of sailing by normal means, the Supreme Beings could easily survive that journey. If they are alive… it may be on the new continent.'

Curete finally swallowed the lump in her throat and drowned it with the last of her Drunkard's Blood. "Is there anything else I can tell you, My Lady?"

"No, nothing. But when Vanysa returns, you will tell our master everything you have told me." Albedo gave the order, and Curete nodded, her heart was too numb to care any longer.

"I'm glad you understand, now I will show you personally to your quarters, where you will remain until summoned, am I clear?" Albedo asked.

"As you command." Curete answered, then stood, bowed, and only when Albedo walked past her did she straighten up, turn, and follow her new lady out of the Nazarick bar.