The Cathedral August 3rd 2010 8:00 PM EDT

I expected to be able to crush the third floor with our new ringers, but unfortunately I had momentarily ignored something fairly important. Fucking skeletons had a magic immunity. As did zombies. I briefly checked my points, I was at a hundred and twenty after some minimal use over the last week or so, leaving me another hundred and eighty left to my next power. Even with level ups in between it would probably take at least a few days for me to get, and that was without power use.

Reggie and Kitrina didn't actually know about the ritual, Zee made another of those glamour necklaces for Artemis, but there was a marked difference in how efficiently we cleared the floor even with Zee's magic not working on half the enemies. Artemis had truly insane dexterity and her arrows were dropping everything she could see. We'd had one of her old bows still and with her new archery skill mixed with her old archery skill and buffed with that dexterity she was a terror.

Unfortunately arrows also worked less well that expected on skellies, even perfectly aimed ones. Basically our new heavy hitters were nerfed for this stupid level, and for one of the strongest bosses early game. I stood beside Zee, tanking any magic immune enemies necessary, though with her new dexterity being higher than mine along with her strength the only reason I could do that was my skills. My ability to tear through flesh with my fingers was particularly effective against zombies. I ducked under a lurch and ripped out a spine. "So babe, how does it feel? The new abilities?"

Zee drifted in then shifted her footing, seeming to vanish from in front of the fallen one trying to gut her and appearing behind it with my demon bane dagger, which I'd given her while switched to my tanto. "It feels amazing! The extra thirty percent damage from my fatal attraction help me even things out, and I have this...natural grasp on combat now. Nothing crazy, I'm not a martial arts master like you, I just kind of feel which way the wind is blowing when I fight if that makes sense?"

It did, since she was kind of a war elf, but still it was very cool. I dipped in and de limbed a zombie going for Zee's back, finishing it off by stomping on it's head. I spotted Artemis off to the side working with Reggie and Kit to take down a pack of scavengers. I turned to my girlfriend as we finished off the last of our group. "So how have things been at home. Your dad notice anything?" She'd been a bit worried about her father noticing her nature. Her glamour was powerful enough now that he shouldn't detect it but the man was a pro, his instincts were good.

She giggled at than. "Yes. My glamour held but he picked up some sort of subtle difference in the way I moved and asked about it. I told him my boobs had gotten bigger again and asked him if he could take me bra shopping. He got so horrified I think he actually ran out of the room away from me. Hasn't mentioned anything about it since." She snickered. "He's so easy, any oblique mention of my sexuality and he bolts like a spooked horse." She ducked under a blow as another skeleton came darting out of nowhere. "So, I was thinking about dinner, when is your mom getting back? I know a good Italian place."

So did I actually, which she realized with a blush. She sometimes forgot that I was almost as Italian as she was. Despite that, I had a better idea though. I earmarked twenty of my hundred and twenty points for cooking lessons. I'd found some great ones. I figured that would be a skill with long term use. "I'm going to cook actually. But she gets back on the ninth. Or, well late on the eighth but I'm guessing she'll want to rest her first day home." I'd actually always loved cooking, but had never been great at it, so I was really excited to get a new skill.

We finished off the late arrivals and started picking up the loot. Zee was oddly quiet and when I looked over at her she had a worried frown on her face. "I', just...do you really think she'll like me? I know how close you two are. I want to get along with her so bad. But we got together so soon after you broke up with Annabel. What if she thinks I'm just a rebound. Oh god what if she thinks I stile you?" She looked horrified and I stopped looting to walk over and pull her into my arms. My poor girlfriend was nearly hyperventilating at the idea of my mother thinking she was a home wrecker.

At least, hypothetically. But I was pretty sure I knew what this was about. "You're scared because you think my mom is going to react to you like your dad would react to me." She looked a bit ashamed at that and opened her mouth to try to explain but I just smiled and waved it off. "What you don't get is that it doesn't matter. I love my mom, but I...love you too." Her eyes went wide and I swallowed hard and pressed on. "Even if she doesn't like you that won't change how I feel about you. Just like knowing your dad will hate me doesn't change how you feel about me, right?"

A lot of bad had come out of my relationship with Annabel, but the biggest positive I could think of was that being with her showed me what love wasn't. I'd briefly thought I might have been in love with Annabel, but compared to what I felt for Zee it had been nothing. I felt so safe with her, so happy and cared for. With Annabel I always felt kind of looked down on, even before I'd known she thought of me as a pet her constant social berating and need to change me had grated slightly, I'd just been too infatuated to notice.

Zee wasn't like that. Zee didn't want to change me, she wanted to be by my side. She wanted to go on adventures together as equals and keep each other safe. It was a hard thing to put into words but my aura vision made it plain as day. I just knew. I was in love with her. It had been a month sure, and I'd been dating another girl during part of that time, but Zee was just perfect. I was constantly in awe of her. Of her strength and beauty and of her ability to make everyone around her happy just by being there.

She was staring at me, her eyes a bit damp, and her lips were parted. Before I could worry she hadn't taken it well she hurled herself on me, long legs wrapping around my waist as she kissed me soundly through tears and laughter. "Oh baby I love you too!" She kissed me again harder and I joined in her laughter as I kissed her back. It wasn't even a sexual thing, it was just joy. We were both so happy and we just wanted to share it with each other. I held her against me as we kissed slowly, smiling at how amazing it felt to hold someone like her.

We'd both been alone for so much of our lives. With no one to rely on or believe in, and even though I had Artemis now it wasn't the same. I felt...whole. Like I'd found a missing limb. I knew that as long as Zee was with me I would never feel alone again. I also knew that most people would dismiss me. I was sixteen so this was just a phase or a crush. People thought being young meant you couldn't feel things, but I did. I was in love. I would die for this girl if she needed me to, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

A throat clearing tore our attention away from each other to where our three teammates were standing. Kit was trying to look anywhere but at me, Reggie looked kind of fascinated and Artemis was glaring. "Stop it or I'll get the hose. Can you two go five minutes without being sickeningly sweet and obsessed with each other? Some of us don't have our boyfriends readily available and you make our relationships look bad just by existing. I have the indescribable urge to call and yell at Wally for not being more romantic."

Zee blushed prettily and climbed down with a cough. "Sorry Arty." Despite that she took my hand with her free one, twining her fingers with mine. "I can only commit to stopping with the kissing for now though." He aura blazed with adoration that went straight to my head. "I can't commit to a full five minutes without being obsessed with Morgan." That time I actually heard the sickening sweetness, but I was grinning so dopily I couldn't really be bothered to care about it. I heard Artemis gag and was able to perfectly envision her eyes roll but we just ignored her.

It reminded me of my determination to take a break and spend more time with Zee. With all the leveling and the nonsense with the ritual I'd been too fixated on the dungeon. Of course, Zee wanted to level up too, and I couldn't deny my girl anything so I supposed we would get that alone time later. Still holding Zee's hand I turned to look at the others. "So. The next boss is going to be rough. The Skeleton King, Leoric. Scary guy, huge sword and basically magic proof." I had been dreading this fight.

Skeletons were annoying enemies at higher levels. The baby ones on level one crumpled under a stiff breeze, but the actual monster type was kind of built to counter us. Hard to hit at range, no flesh to shred for me, and magic immune. I laid all this out for my friends before I got to the worst part. "Leoric is about nine feet tall and wears a unique crown that steals life when he hits you. But the big pain in the ass is that he can indefinitely summon more skellies if given the chance. We have to take him out first before his army because if not the fight will go on forever."

I'd actually briefly considered using him to farm skeletons so we could level, but letting an enemy build a never ending army seemed like the kind of thing that could easily snowball. Stuff like that worked fine in video games but it wasn't so workable in real life. I shook that off. We had to prepare for this fight like we'd prepared for the last one and that took planning. I turned to Zee. "So we can keep grinding down here until we clear everything else out but we should wait on the battle with the Skeleton King. Just until we have a solid plan. That work for you? I know you wanted to see what you can do."

She looked pensive but finally nodded. "We can do that. In the meantime I think I'd like to see these cooking skills in action. How about you make me dinner tonight? Daddy is out running the Labyrinth with the League and I haven't eaten yet anyway." She gave me a sweet smile and leaned up to kiss me softly before whispering in my ear. "Besides, I have a present for you. Just a thank you for being so patient with me about sex and to show you how happy I am that we could say we loved each other." My earlier dopey smile came back. I was pretty sure this was going to be very nice.

Shadowcrest August 3rd 2010 9:00 PM EDT

It wasn't hard to use my phone to buy a skill book for cooking. The book only cost twenty points as I had figured, and insisted it could make someone and iron chef quality cook. It didn't promise a time frame, and was probably cheaper than the DVD or private lesson emails because it was much less comprehensive, more of an all round primer than elite level chef abilities. There were lots of people on the iron chef after all. Luckily with speed reading and perfect recall I managed to tear through the thing on the cab ride to Zee's place.

With my reflexes and precision mixed with the skills in question I should be more than capable of becoming a better chef. I'd actually chosen something cheap on purpose. I liked cooking and wanted to learn on my own. It would have spoiled the fun to instantly become the best in the world. A good foundation across the board combined with my memory and skills should make my progress pretty smooth and I looked forward to learning the arts of the chef. Tonight however I had slightly bigger concerns. I was pretty nervous about this date tonight.

Dinner at my girlfriends house after I told her I loved her was a whole different ball game than dancing at a club. Not to mention her dad might come home early so we had to keep an eye out. I wished we could have had dinner at my place, but it just felt wrong using it when mom was out of town. The Court seemed to have mostly backed off, whether that was because Morgana was gone, Annabel was in the Labyrinth, or because they were all running the dungeon for power themselves I honestly didn't care. We were being left alone and that was all I needed.

Zee had teleported back to get ready and left me to do my cooking lesson thing and take a cab over for our date. We'd gotten back to the clock tower at a bit after eight, and with my speed reading and memory the book had taken me ten minutes or so. It helped that it acted like a skill book and just dumped the knowledge in as soon as I finished too. The cabbie had gotten me here in good time and I took my kitty key chain out and used it to clear a path through the yard and up to the front door.

I knocked purposefully, and when the door opened my jaw just dropped. Zatanna looked...amazing. She was wearing a short black dress with a flared skirt and with two straps of cloth around her upper arms, leaving her creamy pale shoulder fully exposed and making the very generous cleavage she was showing incredibly obvious. She had her hair braided with little crystal flowers, shoving off her swanlike neck and the sharp delicate features of her chin and face leading up to now pointed ears. It was like looking at a world famous work of art. I used to be proud of my tailored suits, but not anymore.

I made a mental note to invest in some kind of appearance enhancer, I was ripped but I felt the need to make my face a bit better looking, less plain. At least to tide me over until that fallen angel transformation I was eyeing for later. Eventually I scooped my jaw up off the floor and chuckled in embarrassment, stepping forward to kiss Zatanna as she let me in. I'd stopped on the way and got her a bunch of dark blue roses (her favorite color) and I passed them to her as she let me in. She was ecstatic and gave me a long kiss before turning to basically skip inside.

Watching her short dress tease her very full ass as it bounced up was extremely pleasant, and I saw she was wearing the thigh high fishnets she knew I loved instead of the full coverage ones she wore with her costume. My girls could rock a pair of garters. She led me into the kitchen and I got started prepping the meal. I'd decided to make chicken parm from scratch, and she kept me company as I cooked, chatting with me from her seat on a stool at the marble counter while I prepared our food.

I was hamming it up a bit I admit, throwing down spices with an overused exclamation of "Bam!" and Zee was giggling up a storm. I just raised an eyebrow. "You're mocking me now huh? I'm here slaving away for you in the kitchen and this is the thanks I get?" I wiped an imaginary tear and simulated a dramatic tone. "Why do you hurt me when I show you nothing but love?" Zee seemed to react well to the whole dinner and a show bit and couldn't stop laughing at my dramatic proclamations of being taken for granted.

Finally she managed to calm down, wiping away a single tear of her own, this one from laughter. "In all seriousness though it smells really good. I'm not surprised we have the ingredients for chicken parm, daddy likes to cook dishes from the old country sometimes when he's home, but this is by far the best smelling thing I've smelled in this kitchen." I was pleased to hear it, though I didn't think this was anything special. Aside from the iron chef skill I'd looked up a few dozen recipes for chicken parm and was picking and choosing the parts I thought would work best.

It wasn't a perfect success of course. Despite my baseline I was pretty new to this so I made a few bad calls, but I'd been able to fix them mostly. I'd had to add more breadcrumbs because the chicken was too greasy, and the sauce had been a bit thin and needed more tomatoes, but I'd managed to fix it better than ever and hey, it was a learning experience. After fifteen minutes or so Zee got bored and hip checked me out of the way, forcing me to give her something to do, so I tried to pass on some of my new cooking skills.

It turned out cooking Italian food in formal wear sounds better in theory than in practice, I ended up getting sauce and flour and grease all over, as did Zee, but weirdly neither of us cared, laughing as we cooked. For a while we were feeding each other tastes of the parts of the dish we were making, but then that devolved into just smearing each other with sauce, which devolved into licking it off each other. At that point we had to stop, because we would definitely have burned the damn chicken.

We were a mess when were sat down to eat. Zee looked back at the kitchen with a wince. "That's going to take a bit to clean up. Daddy always checks to see if I used magic to clean up, he says doing chores by hand builds character." I grinned and shot her a wink and activated my tracelessness skill, which wiped out all traces of our cooking and playing from the kitchen, completely returning it to my pre arrival state. I fucking loved my powers sometimes. Her eyes widened. "What the fuck was that?"

I laughed and reveled in the shock. "It's one of my ninja skills. Removes all traces of me from any place I've been. The time constraints are pretty tight, only a few hours, but situations like this are a loophole." I grinned as I realized something. "Holy shit, I'll never have to do dishes after cooking ever again. I just have to activate my skill and bam, clean pots and pans. Shame it costs a point to use though." Though at my new levels a single point wasn't that big of a problem. I was sitting at ninety nine right now, and if I put all my stats into my point values I would be getting two hundred fifty per day when I hit the max level of fifty.

We enjoyed the dinner, with Zatanna commenting on how much she loved it and smiling so hard I thought her face would strain. Her dress and my suit were both clean thanks to my skill and it felt...nice, to be sitting here like this. Zee even snuck out a bottle of wine and opened it so we could each have a glass. I wasn't a huge drinker, but the sweet white wine she picked to pair with the chicken parm was delicious. She knew wine much better than I did since in Italy kids could drink it from a younger age and her dad didn't mind her having a glass with dinner sometimes.

Finally we finished our food and she led me to her room and sat me down on the bed. She looked nervous. "So. I said earlier I wanted to do something for you to show how much I love where we are in our relationship. I'm not ready for anything below the waist or anything yet." She swallowed hard. "But I thought it might be nice if I..." She blushed bright red. "Used my mouth." She was chewing on her lip, looking almost terrified and I almost cut her off but before I could she dropped to her knees in front of me.

I could see down her dress so much better from this angle. Her plump creamy tits almost busting out of the black material, and the way her almost glowing blue eyes shone up at me as she stared at me from the floor made me feel almost drunk with lust. I forced myself to breathe and cleared my throat. "Zee. Baby, I love that you're happy but we don't need to do anything you aren't ready for. I know you've never done anything like this." Neither had I actually, and I desperately hoped I could hold back if she did.

She shook her head cutely, partly to inform me that it didn't matter and partly to clear it. "No. I want to do this. I've been watching videos online for a while now. To try to learn how. Boys like this. And you've been so sweet and patient with me." She unbuttoned my pants, slowly fishing out my cock. She swallowed hard when she saw it. "I...um I thought that the guys in the videos were bigger than usual. If anything this seems even bigger than them." Her hand felt soft and a bit cold on my dick as she stared at it.

She clenched her hand experimentally and started moving it up and down. I stifled a moan. "Baby I'm so happy with where we are right now. If you don't want to do this you don't need to. I don't need any rewards for loving you. I-" I shut up. Or rather I was cut off by the groan from my mouth as she leaned forward and inhaled my cock. I had seen her aura, she was nervous and she'd been telling the truth about it being her first time. These were both facts. They were also apparently irrelevant.

Zatanna took me to the back of her throat. I didn't have any experience with this but I was positive fourteen year old virgins were supposed to have a gag reflex. Zee did not. At all. It felt like the inside of her throat was giving me the worlds wettest softest handjob. Or I assumed it did based on how jerking off felt. Regardless she was fucking amazing. I did not, in fact, last very long. Zatanna brought me to a humming slurping smacking gagging orgasm right down her fucking throat within minutes.

She pulled off, licking her lips and cocking her head in confusion. "Huh. I expected that to taste worse." She grinned up at me. "So apparently part of my nature as a godly sex elf makes me really good a blowjobs. Makes them fun too. I think if we'd kept going I would have cum just from that." She stood up and adjusted her dress with a naughty smile. "I think I'd like to do that more often." I agreed wholehearedly, my brain still buzzing from the hummer she'd just given me. I added something for sexual staying power to my mental list. I had a feeling I was going to need it.

The Clock Tower August 5th 2010 8:00 PM EDT

We were exhausted. All of us just collectively beat. Zee was home tonight, her dad had taken time off to spend time with her because the Labyrinth didn't appear to be going anywhere. Despite my intention to avoid the dungeon we had gone back in the last two days, but without Zee we were benched now. I was sulking because I missed my girlfriend and Reggie was texting Bette while Artemis talked animatedly on the phone to Wally.

Wally had been in town the last few days apparently, but his relatives needed help around the house. He swore that he would have time soon and spent every night on the phone with Artemis. I kind of got her point about Zee and I because the two of them were nauseating and it made me smile. My best friend deserved to be happy, and loud mouth or not the redheaded seemed determined to get the job done. I wasn't going to be inviting him to dungeon delve with us anytime soon mind you but still, he was ok in my book.

We were all interrupted from our various introspections by a loud bang. Jim was standing at the foot of the table with a big ass book he had just dropped. Our mentor sadly couldn't get into the dungeon, but he said he'd had enough adventure in his death anyway. He had been out and about pulling jobs while the League was busy and stocking his coffers, but he seemed to finally have something for us to do, and I for one was excited. With no dungeon tonight some thieving was just what the doctor ordered.

I grimaced at myself for becoming one of those guys that felt like shit after not seeing his girl for a day, but was momentarily distracted as my mentor picked up the book and tossed it in a corner, clearly not intending to use it. I glared at him. "Was that a prop? You brought that huge book in here just to drop it on our table to scare us didn't you." I sneered at him, with very little malice but plenty of mockery. "You know, prop comedy is the lowest form of humor." Jim leveled a single white gloved middle finger at me then sat down.

Kit had been dragged away from her studying and pulled in here though I'd just noticed her, and he gestured for her to sit down as well before turning his monocle to face us as Artemis said goodbye and hung up the phone. "It was an instructional aid. You're all horribly dense at times. Regardless, I come with news." He reached into his white coat and pulled out a series of invitations. "Through some string pulling, I managed to get us invited to a rather grand event. An auction of sorts, where the most powerful and dastardly objects are sold. A market of menace proprieted by none other than that grand duke of graft and larceny. The Dealer."

I was intrigued. I didn't know who the dealer was, but if Jim was hamming it up this much he must have been a big deal, no pun intended. Artemis however, was not so sanguine. She shot to her feet, eyes wide. "You got us invited to Mirror House?" We all turned to look at her in puzzlement (except Jim I assumed though since he didn't have a face currently I couldn't be sure.) She noted the looks and grinned excitedly. "Mirror House is a moving auction, only the highest class of Gotham criminals get invited, they sell all the coolest stuff. Supervillain tech and magic items and everything in between."

Jim nodded approvingly. "This year's auction will of course contain more than it's fair share of powerful artifacts from the Labyrinth, but there will be plenty of other amazing objects to bid on as well. A few years ago Icicle won the lease on some kind flying weather fortress. We will of course also be contributing to the auction. Which will be held in two days, so if any of you have any spare gear to get rid of, anything relatively potent can be put up for bid." We did of course have a ton of stuff. We'd been running the dungeon for about a week and only a portion of our loot was usable for us.

Reggie looked excited. "Do they accept gold? Because all my money is in gold right now, but I have a ton of it." Reggie had been fucking over the moon about all the gold. To the point that we actually gave him most of it. I had plenty in the bank and the others didn't seem as attached to it as he was. I swear I'd seen him sketching plans for a scrooge mcduck style gold swimming pool at one point. The next time we'd gotten some gold I'd casually mentioned the old show and the infeasible nature of swimming in gold coins and he's seemed pretty miserable about it, but I was glad to have saved him from breaking all his bones.

Jim chuckled, aware of our friends draconic gold madness but just nodded. "Dungeon gold is accepted. They've been testing it around town and apparently it holds enchantments incredibly well. It's actually more valuable piece for piece than regular gold, though people have started minting dungeon coins out of the normal stuff to try to cash in so they're careful when they accept it. Expect to have whatever you bring in thoroughly vetted." He reached down and pulled something out to set on the table. "One last thing of course, you'll all need one of these."

He pointed at a white gas mask, and Artemis nodded. At our inquisitive looks she explained. "Mirror House is completely anonymous. Everyone who enters has to wear a gas mask, it gives low rent villains that swing an invite a choice of anonymity and prevents most people from using their reputations to bully other bidders. There are exceptions of course, people who have obvious physical differences, but for the most part it keeps the bidding pretty fair from what I hear." She seemed fascinated by the place and I smiled at her teasingly.

She blushed a bit and coughed. "I always thought the auctions were cool. My dad was never invited but some of his clients were and I heard about them when I was young. I did a ton of research on the streets about them." She narrowed her eyes, once dark grey but nor a shining silver after her transformation into a Heavenly Punishment Elf. "I don't want to hear any shit from any of you nerds, especially not you Mr. Graveyard Expert. I might have been a bit of a researcher as a kid but at least I wasn't an emo."

I scowled at her, standing to glare back. "I was kind of gothy but it's not like I was jerking off to Tim Burton movies or something. Between this and the Greek mythology research you were pretty much a mini librarian. Does your boyfriend know he's dating a brainy nerd chick? You've clearly blinded him with your tight track pants and convinced him you're this kickass jock girl. Poor Wally." Her mouth was open in an outraged gasp as she glared at me, and I flicked on aura vision to watch her work through the mockery. Schadenfreude was so much funnier when you could enjoy it visibly.

She raised a finger at me, leaning over the table to shove it my face. "First of all, Wally is a science geek. He LIKES my nerdy hobbies thank you very much. Second of all, maybe I should tell your very catholic girlfriend that you used to sleep in coffins and compose sonnets about death? How long do you think it'll be before you get some if she finds out you're a wrist slitting my chemical romance listening bitch."Now it was my turn to be outraged. That coffin thing happened one time! And I had never slit my wrists.

There was another thump and we looked over to see Kitrina, my cousin having gone and picked up Jim's book and brought it back over to drop it on the table again. "Enough. Knowing you two this could go on for hours, and there's a non zero chance Artemis might start throwing lightning at you Morgan, so we're separating you. You aren't allowed to speak to each other unless it's to apologize." She glared at us as if daring us to respond but we just looked down sulkily. Kit smiled and gave us a nod.

I exhaled slowly, not really mad any more than Artemis was. Under her mild outrage her aura was seething with amusement and fondness. This wasn't fighting just a bit of sibling rivalry, Artemis was family and she felt the same. But Kit wasn't wrong about the bickering escalating and I'd prefer not to get a bolt of holy super lightning to the face. We hadn't tested that yet so we had no clue what it did. I just turned to her and mumbled. "Sorry Arty." And she did the same thing, each of us giving a brief non and silently agreeing our busbody friends were annoying,

I shook off my irritation, turning to my boss. "Anyway how many tickets do you have. Because I was hoping since we'll all have masks we could bring." Jim moved his hat in that weird way that made it clear he was rolling his eyes at me despite not having any eyes or a face for them to sit in and passed me a pair of white cards embossed with gold leaf. "Yes you can bring your lady love. You're insufferable now boy, I wasn't even this bad when Nimue and I were together. Just make sure she knows not to start trouble. These auctions are heavily defended."

I had pretty much assumed that honestly. Any place where people sold powerful magic and supertech would be watched like a hawk by the owners, to prevent theft if nothing else. Not to mention they would have their own stock to use to enforce security, and I didn't relish the thought of trying to keep up with that. I gave him a somber nod and took the the invitation, slipping it and it's counterpart into my jacket with a grin as I imagine dhow happy Zee would be about a date to an underground magic and super science auction. She was going to be so psyched.

Jim snorted and waved us off. "Well, go ahead. I can tell you all have various things you're itching to do. Don't let me keep you." We all scattered. Me to call Zee, Artemis to get back in touch with Wally, and Reggie to go count his gold and text Bette back. Their relationship was going surprisingly well actually, and it was nice to see my excitable friend settling down a bit. Bette was a calming influence though I suspected my spaz teammate would forever remain a spaz to at least some degree. I wouldn't have it any other way.

I shot a text to Zee on our burner phone line where I knew it would be safe and told her about the tickets (my top tier computer expertise made hacking into the phone company and creating a pair of untraceable ghost lines easy) and she was as excited as expected. I closed my eyes to check my points, already up to a hundred and sixty after two level ups worth of points brought me to thirty per day. I wished I had a way to make it to three hundred before the auction so I would have that extra layer of protection but between all of us we should be fine. Two more days until the auction, two more after that until mom and Paula got back with Reggies family. It was going to be a big week.

The Clock Tower August 6th 2010 8:00 PM EDT

The next day was another dungeon free day, but not because of Zee. In fact, my girlfriend was here now. She came through the town portal so she didn't know where we were, but Jim admitted that she would be useful to have for item identification, seeing as only she was able to cast the damn spell. So we had her here sifting through mounds of stuff we'd brought back over the course of many, many trips. Town portals were damn hands for dropping off loads of stuff mid delve, so we'd built up quite a collection with that staff.

I was sitting at a hundred forty five points now, almost halfway to shadow dancing and I could almost taste the new power. Not a passive power like the ones I mostly had, or even a one off skill like my ninja stuff. I could tell from the description shadow dancing would be a powerful ability, letting me burn more points to accomplish bigger tasks. That had been one of the main reasons I'd resisted getting a stronger power until now. I knew that if I did I would treat it like a mana pool instead of a points pool. I'd use it when I needed it and it would make buying new powers exponentially harder in the future.

The only benefit I could see to the whole thing was that as far as I could tell I had no limit. I could keep accumulating more points forever, which meant theoretically I could cast and maintain titanic spells with enough prep time. Depending on how high my points could go and how much power certain abilities took I would be able to wield every bit as much power as someone like Jim. I was a long way from that though. At thirty a day I'd probably need months to build up enough points to throw around that kind of power for even a few minutes.

For now we had shit to get through. Dozens of unidentified rings, blades, a few shields, some bows, a staff or three, three times that many ordinary weapons we had no idea what to do with, and above all, gold. So much gold. Absurd amounts of gold. Enough to cover the floors of a whole room (that wasn't a random example, Reggie had literally decorated his floors with the stuff, he had taken my warning about diving but he enjoyed making gold angels). It was just absurd amounts of gear, and even though not all of it was any good we would surely find something for the auction.

I stepped up next to Zee, who was watching us cart all the stuff out of our rooms. She'd stashed her own gear in my room because she didn't want her dad to find it so I got to carry twice as much. She gave a low whistle. "This...seemed like a lot less when we were stockpiling it. Damn, how many trips back up here did we make? Though I guess it makes sense. Almost every enemy drops something and we killed a LOT of stuff down there. But still. I hadn't realized exactly how big that place was."

She wasn't kidding. The loot really piled up, I wasn't sure how much power a dead human could provide, especially a strong one, but it had to be a ton for this to be sustainable. Then again Madame Xanadu had said that people here carried tons of native magic because of Gotham being an evil curse riddled shit hole. We brought a lifetimes worth of passively accumulated dark magic with us when we went in. One of the many reasons Morgana chose Gotham for her little ascension plot.

I picked up a ring, but it was unidentified so I tossed it back on the pile and pulled Artemis aside, letting my girlfriend work. "So Arty, you figure out any more about those mysterious powers of yours yet?" Despite having the character sheet the powers the girls had weren't something easily quantified. Holy lightning isn't really a description of anything, like what does that even mean? Teleportation and fatal attraction are technically more straightforward, though the mechanics of a percentage based boost to damage are a bit hazy.

Artemis just shrugged. "I can't keep either up for long. Teleporting drains my stamina so with my higher strength I can actually do it more. Basically it applies the cost of actually traveling to the spot I'm porting to all at once when I get there. Like the concentrated effort of sprinting there packed into one burst. I've been investing in vitality to keep up with it and trying it out. I want to have it licked before I try it in combat." That sounded rough, but I'd been wondering how it worked. It was an interesting development.

She glanced down at her hands worriedly. "The lightning...it feels weird. Not bad or evil but like it WANTS things. It hungers for blood and conquest and sex. It's like the lightning is the primal nature of our race and the closer I get to tapping into that part of me the more I can bring out. Holy lightning sounds boring and simple, but it's anything but. The lightning is...I think it's our divinity. Or the little piece we have. It's love and death and war all at the same time. I want to say it's creepy but...it feels good. Freeing. Drains magic like a son of a bitch though I can barely even arc it between my fingers."

That was kind of alarming to hear to be honest. She noticed my expression and smiled. "It's not...not changing me. More like showing me. Like there's a road in the lightning I can walk to greater power. I think it's because the ritual made us purebloods. We're both first generation one hundred percent pure nobles of the Heavenly Punishment Tribe. The bloodline that made our ancestor a goddess is still in there somewhere, if we're willing to find it." Her face had gone a bit vacant but she snapped out of it. "Which I'm not anytime soon so don't worry. We have plenty of growing to do both physically and in levels before we can even think of digging deeper. If that makes sense."

That was great to hear. I'd been terrified that I might have done something that would change them in the wrong ways. The ritual said it wasn't harmful, but there are different ways to define harm. Changing someone might not be considered harm to them but I didn't want to lose my best friend or girlfriend to some kind of elven princess bloodline. Luckily that seemed a long way off apparently and I trusted them to be able to handle it with years of prep and gradual exposure. For now it seemed like it was just a powerful trump card.

I put a hand on her shoulder. "If it becomes an issue just tell me. I can help." And I could. I could feel it. If I wanted to I could destroy their bloodline or Reggie's powers. They were made from my points and I could unmake them. I wouldn't get that power back but it would be gone from them. But their bodies would still be acclimated to their ability. I could never give them another power if I took theirs away. That would be a last resort. For now I would look into some kind of willpower training device. They couldn't get any more powers from me but they could use objects I created.

I was interested to see if the character sheets would add a willpower stat if they gained the ability to train it. I knew they could change to match their owners so it was a possibility. Artemis just smiled. "It won't. It's not something bad. I know it sounds like it but it isn't. My bloodline is part of me, it won't hurt me and it won't force me to become something I'm not. I can't really explain it better than that but you'll just have to trust me. Even though I don't have the words to explain it I know what I'm doing." Her voice was confident and strong, and I took a moment to reflect on the person my best friend was.

I knew she would take care of herself, and Zee too if she needed it. Artemis was one of the strongest people I'd ever met. I smiled. "Fair enough, but if it gets to be too much just come talk to me. I'll tell Zee the same thing. You guys also have each other though. Speaking of your new blood sister how is that going? You guys have seemed pretty close when we go dungeon delving. You been talking outside of our raids?" I'd noticed them clicking pretty well in the dungeon, it was nice to see but I was curious if it was an active effort or if their shared bloodline made them just naturally compatible.

She smirked at me. "Worried I'll tell your girl all your most embarrassing moments? Your mom has given me plenty of ammo after all." I actually hadn't been, though that had now changed, I wasn't sure them becoming friends was so heart warming anymore. My best friend snickered at my obvious panic. "Oh relax you big spaz. We've been talking on the phone at night. At least when you haven't tied up the line having your own conversations, which I assume are half giggling and half 'no you hang up first'."

I wanted to sneer at her but we actually had done that more than once so it was hard to get up enough venom to make it stick. I just rolled my eyes and turned to stalk away toward my now panting sweat drenched girlfriend. Apparently even her incredibly high magic power couldn't support this much casting non stop. I caught her as I approached, holding her against me as she wobbled a bit. She smiled up at me softly. "Thanks. Overdid it a bit there. That's everything I have for now, but there's plenty of stuff to sort through."

She wasn't kidding, she'd identified a metric fuck ton of items. I scooped her up in a princess carry, ignoring her squeak of surprise and carried my laughing girlfriend over to sit down. She rolled her eyes but snuggled in close to my chest. I looked down at her with a smile of my own. "So I was talking to Artemis. About the lightning." Her smile slipped a bit, her nose wrinkling cutely. I sat down with her in my lap. "I'm not going to tell you how to handle it or anything. Artemis said I wouldn't get it. Just know if you run into any problems I'm here and I can help."

I also had access to her character sheet, which I assumed would tell me if she was turning into a...I didn't even know what. Sex murder elf? But the holy portion of the bloodline should counteract some of the violence so honestly I had no idea. Her eyes were wide and intense and she leaned up to kiss my cheek. "Thank you. My dad would have tried to force me to get rid of it or seal it or something. Knowing that you trust me...it means so much Morgan." Her electric blue eyes literally glowed with adoration.

I leaned down and kissed her softly, thinking about that. I'd considered freaking out about it, but in the end it was about trust. I trusted my girlfriend, I trusted my best friend, and I trusted my power. I could feel deep down that it wouldn't do something to hurt the people I cared about, so even if this seemed scary I was going to let it go. I shook of my thoughts and turned to smile at Zatanna. "Now, tell me about the things you identified. We need to get ready for the auction." Because I definitely wanted to be able to afford some fun stuff.

Mirror House August 7th 2010 8:00 PM EDT

Arriving at the auction was somewhat underwhelming. The Silver Ghost pulled up outside an abandoned building and we all got out, already wearing gas masks. We mostly had our costumes on under them, except Zee because no one with a working brain could miss those legs when she's in costume. The girl can rock a pair of fishnets. So we were all ready for the big auction, and when we climbed out of the car in a dingy alley behind a run down movie theater I wasn't the only one disappointed.

I turned to look at Jim. "This is the famous Mirror House? I'm pretty sure the basic definition of a house requires four walls. Complete walls." I gestured at the large hole next to the car that had been shoddily patched with particle board and what looked suspiciously like scotch tape. There was even a recessed alcove that was blocked off by a dirty chain link fence, which of course had plastic bags and garbage hanging from the links. I understood the brilliance of hiding in plain sight as well as the next thief, but there had to be standards.

Artemis was the one who answered. "This isn't Mirror House. Or actually, I guess it is, but it won't be tomorrow and wasn't yesterday. Mirror House is less a place and more a title. It's the moving location where The Dealer holds his auctions, the inside will be heavily made over for at least tonight. They'll take most of the stuff and wreck the rest before they go. Don't let the outside fool you though, Mirror House has crazy security, so everyone keep their sticky fingers in their pockets unless they want them chopped off."

Jim nodded. "She's right. Even I wouldn't try to rob Mirror House. Now come along children. Places to be, things to do." Jim strolled across the alley, once again floating just above the puddles and trash, and walked right through the chain link, something we unfortunately couldn't do. After slipping between the fence poles and under the chain holding the gate closed we followed him up to a door in the recessed wall. A very shiny, very new looking metal door, humming with arcane energy.

A quick flick of my aura sight showed a spiraling pattern of runes across the metal. Nothing I recognized, but nothing too complex either. From the aura of the door I get the impression that the being who created this was going for function over form. They had a system of runes that could be laid quickly and efficiently and had solid higher end power and they spent time perfecting that layout rather than individual protections. I imagined this ward schema had been carved into many, many doors. Still, it was stable and sturdy, nothing fancy but very dependable.

The point of the door wasn't to be unassailable, it was to make sure the person assailing it had to stop and work on it for a bit. This was meant to hold forces at bay while the defenders got in position. Jim reached out with his cane and rap rap rapped on the metal, the sound echoing for a minute before the view slot halfway up slid open. A pair of blank lenses stared out, clearly from a gas mask. A low dull voice echoed from within the door. "Invitations." It wasn't a request. It was a demand. We either gave him invitations or very bad things were about to happen.

Luckily we had them with us, and we handed them through the slot. He studied them for a minute then opened the door, stepping back to let us through, He didn't say a word, but once we were through I observed the masked man and was pretty glad we had our invitations. He was big. Like, Andre the Giant big, seven to eight feet of ass kicking goonish power stuffed into an almost bursting suit that probably could have double as a fucking car cover. I nodded to him as we walked by but he just turned back to the now closed door and ignored me.

As we rounded the corner I leaned in to mutter to Zee. "Wow good service here. Very friendly." She giggled a bit and grabbed my hand, a gesture I returned with a squeeze of my own and a smile under my mask. Artemis hadn't been kidding about the redecorating. As we walked I took in the whole place and I was impressed. Plush red carpet, understated white wall paper with gold trim sconces with white candles in gold settings and I suspected this place might be bigger on the inside.

Whoever their decorator was had the magic touch for sure because there was sorcery practically rolling off the walls here, but regardless of that with my aura sight I could just barely make out the reality underneath. I couldn't tell if this was an illusion or some kind of construct but at this level I doubted it really mattered, whatever the case the bones of this theater were still visible to me under the lovely elegant skin. Oddly it didn't make the feat any less impressive, if anything it added an air of menace to the building, like being able to see the darkness beneath a beautiful face.

Another thing I noticed was that there was no guide or map. Nothing was leading us to our destination except the halls themselves, and I caught slight flickers the the world twisting behind my eyes as we walked. I knew that all the hallways here would lead where they wanted us to be, no one would end up behind the stage or wherever they kept the auction items. We were on the fast track to the main room and nothing would take us off of it. I was pretty sure we could turn and punch through the wall and it would take us the same place this hallway was leading.

When we emerged from the hall we came out into a massive room. The place had obviously been given the same magic treatment as the halls, the kept most of the seating on the ground floor, but added private boxes up top and replaced the screen with a huge sprawling stage. White and gold columns formed rows down either side. Jim led us down a few rows and we dropped into a set of seats. Closer inspection showed that they hadn't kept the same seats, just the color. The red cushioned chairs were more plush and further apart and small groups of them were sectioned off.

The lines on the floor around the seats hummed with magic much like the door. The magic looked like some kind of privacy bubble, and I was impressed by their preparations again. I turned to Jim. "So how does this work? Do we go get a paddle? Just shout out a value? Can they even hear us?" I didn't love the paddle idea, it felt like an easy way to sneakily track someone. I'd seen too many movies where something innocuous was used as a bug and with magic they didn't even need an actual bug to do it.

Luckily we had Jim here. He turned his white gas mask (still wearing a monocle and floating on an invisible head) and fixed his gaze on me, or I assume he did it was hard to tell between the mask and him not having eyes. "They can't hear us, but we can hear them." He reached into his coat and pulled our an ivory paddle with a golden number forty three on it. " The paddles are the only things visible through the wards and only to the auctioneer, the rest of us are all obfuscated. They call the number of the winner and reserve the goods and we trade in the paddle for them at the end of the night in private rooms."

That was an interesting system. Since no one had seen our paddle coming in there was no way anyone could tie them to us. The auctioneer could call our number with no consequences and since we would trade things in elsewhere no one would know who was who. We didn't even have to worry about the paddle being used to trace us because we would be giving it back. I cocked my head. "So we can talk without worrying about being overheard here? Because I'm sure I'll have questions and being able to ask about things seems important."

He just chuckled, his voice somehow not muffled at all through the mask, though that made some sense considering he had no vocal chords in the first place. "Feel free to speak about anything you wish. I've laid down a few privacy bindings of my own since we sat down so even if they have have recording spells in here we're fine to talk. Your instincts are as on the spot as ever lad, I'd have been disappointed if you just bought a mess of items without consulting any of us. It's your money of course, but it's hardly smart to waste expertise."

I grinned under my mask and turned to Zatanna. "So did you notice the spatial folding on this place? Because it's definitely bigger in here than it should be. I can see some of the structure of the spell and it's fascinating." I loved all the crazy ins and outs of magic but not nearly as much as my girlfriend. Zee was a complete nut about any kind of mystical construct and I knew she would be as fascinated by this place as I was. I didn't even need to see that pretty face of hers to know she was grinning right back at me.

She literally squealed with delight. "I know! Not to mention the pathfinder enchantment on the hallways. It's a fascinating spell. There was a similar though much larger scale enchantment in Italy back in the day. The phrase all roads lead to Rome was actually pretty literal for a few years there." She sounded as excited as I expected, and I heard Artemis and Kit groan as I set her off on another tangent. Reggie was distracted looking around at the auction hall. I loved it when Zee got all research crazy, it was so cute.

We spent the next half our comparing notes and talking about rune structures and construct styles and mana throughput. My girlfriend really was the biggest nerd on the planet. Jim actually chimed in here or there, and I was flabbergasted. With his whole gentleman thief persona it was easy to forget Jim was one of the most powerful magic users in Gotham, possibly in the world. He had centuries of experience and just listening to him make casual comments seemed to lead us down new and exciting paths.

I had gotten lucky as hell with my mentor, I knew that for a fact. If I stuck with Jim I would learn magic other people couldn't even dream of. The crazy part was that he wasn't a dedicated researcher. He just kind of read everything and remembered it. Jim experienced magic, mostly in Gotham these days but I knew he'd been a world traveler for a while. Finally our conversation had to come to an end because the auction was about to start. A hush fell over everyone in the crowd, including us, at once. As if the man who had appeared on the stage had brought silence along with him.

The man in question was, of course, wearing a gas mask. Other than the same absurd piece of gear everyone was sporting he didn't seem to have any outstanding features, but when he spoke his voice was deep and resonant. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I bid you greetings. I am The Dealer, and this is my Mirror House. The artifacts that cross my stage are strange and mysterious, items of power of infamy. Tonight you will bear witness to treasures and horrors, and you will wage a financial war to claim them as your own. Now, with that said. Let the auction...begin."

And the auction starts! This side plot won't be long but pay attention because the things that happen here will have serious ramifications down the line. Meanwhile in the advance chapters Leoric falls! pat-reon has the advance chapters at that site /malcolmtent. Hope you enjoy and let me know what you think.