With the destruction of the Wandenreich's fortress, Ambrose's scrying spell also collapsed, most likely because the "location" it was targeting no longer existed.
Really, given the forces that were in play, it's kind of a miracle that the sensor held out for as long as it did! You can only assume that Ambrose burned a foretelling or two on picking a good spot from which to monitor the proceedings.
You and your Shadow didn't have a chance to go over the event with Ambrose and Balthazar in any great deal just then The former had been dragged from his very comfortable bed to catch the latter two-thirds, maybe three-quarters of the planar collapse, and quite wanted to go back to it now that the show was over; and while the latter would have been willing to discuss things, you had an appointment in Japan to be getting to.
Your Spell of Teleportation drops you outside the Shuzen Estate at around ten in the morning, local time. You go through the usual security checks, but are told that most of the Shuzens are actually "out of the house" for once, leaving Akasha to hold down the fort and host the Bus Driver, who will be giving you a lift to your meeting with Mikogami and the unfortunately and unwillingly transformed Ms. Boley.
On that subject, you and Batreaux have spoken with the Exorcist over your Magic Cellphone a couple of times since your last face-to-face meeting, playing trans-oceanic and cross-continental telephone tag as you worked out where to hold this meeting.
Castle Shuzen was ruled out pretty much from the start. As charming as Batreaux finds the environment, he also admitted that a location so steeped in Darkness wasn't well-suited to hosting the heavily Light-based ritual that the Gratitude Crystals are meant to empower. On Mikogami's end, the Dark Lord said that convincing Miss Boley to visit a house full of vampires was fairly unlikely, regardless of the reason.
Youkai Academy was also ruled out as a meeting place. It shares a similar environment as the Shuzen Estate, but more pressingly, classes are still in session there for another month or so. Not only does this mean that the place is a LOT more heavily populated, and so far more likely to result in unplanned meetings or uninvited observers, the school's students and staff are just starting to get nervous about exams, prom, teaching reviews, and other end-of-year business. The Dark Lord figured that dropping a couple of human-seeming sorcerers into that mix would simply be asking for needless complications.
In the end, you agreed on a safehouse of sorts that the Exorcist maintains on the fringes of a small town in Japan, a place where he and his employees can hold low-profile meetings, spend a night when they have to travel and the Bus Driver is otherwise occupied, or just go to take a vacation.
It's not where Miss Boley has been living, but that's actually a selling point, as the young woman will be just as happy NOT to have a couple of magically powerful strangers knowing where she sleeps.
Other than calling up your sorcery tutor and readying your usual Spell of Mind Blank, are there any preparations you'd like to make before meeting Miss Boley, the Unfortunate Half-Demoness?
Since you're not exactly going into hostile territory, you kept the bulk of your enhancement spells to social boosters. It's been mentioned repeatedly that Miss Boley isn't happy about her circumstances, and not particularly trusting of the supernatural world she was dragged into.
You don't really blame her for that reaction, but it is something you'll need to work around if you're going to work this ritual on her, so a few improvements to your interpersonal skills seem merited.
Speaking of the ritual, you've spoken with Batreaux over the last week about what exactly is involved in the transformation.
For one thing, you were concerned about whether or not your PERSONAL involvement in the ritual would be an issue, due to the Curse of Demise hanging over your head. Not that you were going to be leading this one, of course - Batreaux has not revealed its precise working to you in your studies, and even if he had, it would make more sense for the person who's actually USED the ritual before to be the one to cast it now - but you could stand in as a secondary caster and just provide power for your teacher. You're just not sure if even that much would be a good idea.
Batreaux confessed to some uncertainty on the matter.
"You bear the BRIGHT BLESSING of the Golden Goddesses, which opposes the demonic in general and HIS particular brand of DESTRUCTIVE DARKNESS in particular, yet at the end of the day, that CONTEMPTIBLE CURSE lies at the core of your magic, in all its forms." Your master made a weighing gesture with both hands. "One counters the other, leaving the outcome to chance, or external factors - and speaking of such, I would NOT recommend that you ever attempt to convert a HYRULEAN monster to humanity. The HATEFUL ONE's lingering influence upon them would without a doubt call to that within you, to most DREADFUL consequence. As to whether a SEPARATE branch of demonic descent could trigger such a result..." He trailed off with a helpless shrug.
You also inquired about whether or not performing the ritual on another plane, such as one aligned with the concept of Good would not be beneficial - but Batreaux shot that down at once.
"The goal is to take that which is in some measure CONCEPTUAL and render it MATERIAL," he reminded you. "To that end, the ritual calls upon the essence of the Material Plane and the creatures which are born of and dwell within it, seeking the closest match to the transformee's intended state and form, and then using that template to guide the change."
Ah. So attempting the ritual on one of the Outer Planes...?
"Would fail outright, due to the ritual not being designed for the Higher Realms - and if one WERE to reformulate it to work on a celestial plane, the conceptual Goodness being channeled into a DEMONIC subject would come directly into contact with the conceptual EVIL already there." Batreaux made a face. "The results would be... messy."
So you will definitely NOT be attempting that.
As to the matter of assisting in the ritual, even a Divination-powered entreaty to the Goddesses on the matter turned up a neutral result, suggesting that it could go either way if you got directly involved. Perhaps it'd be better for you to be a neutral observer...?
Well, you'll make your final decision in a bit.
After the Bus Driver finishes the brunch that he'd been working on when you arrived, Akasha sees the two of you to the Bus, which drives into the shadow of Castle Shuzen's gatehouse-
*Blink*
-and then drives out of a tunnel on a mountain road somewhere in greater Japan. As you turn a corner, your destination comes into view.
The Exorcist described it as a "small town," but you're used to applying that term to Sunnydale, which has a registered population of 40,000 spread out over a fairly large area - to say nothing of the Hellmouth's distinctive aura. At a glance, the settlement perched on the side of the mountain seems quite a bit smaller, both in terms of population and of actual size, and is pleasantly devoid of any ambient sense of DANGER/TERROR/HORROR. There's a number of buildings clustered together in a spot about as large as Sunnydale's downtown district, but which have a much higher proportion of residential structures than commercial or municipal ones. Most of these are only two stories tall, with half a dozen three-story buildings scattered about, and one four-story hotel with an inactive ski lift nearby.
"What's the traffic like around here at this time of year?" you ask.
"Less than during the winter," the Bus Driver replies easily, "but they still see a fair number of out-of-towners. You can't see it from here, but there's a hot spring behind the hotel, and a nature trail runs along half the mountain, passing a heritage site or two along the way."
That makes sense. New arrivals tend to stick out in small towns, which would make the use of any "safehouse" here rather obvious, even if the occupant(s) stayed holed up indoors the entire time they were here - but if the locals are used to a lot of strangers coming and going year-round, they'd pay less attention to any given individual or small party that passed through.
The Bus Driver steers his vehicle down a side road and some ways up the side of the mountain, coming to a stop in front of a quite ordinary-looking building that you could easily take for a private residence or seasonal retreat, built by someone that liked their privacy and had money enough to purchase it even in Japan. There is the faintest whisper of youki about the place, hinting at the nature of its ultimate owner and usual occupants, and perhaps the length of time they've been making use of the place, but you have to stretch a bit to make it out.
An unmarked grey van sits in the driveway, and as you pass it after disembarking from the Bus, a glance inside reveals that most of the rear seating has been removed and replaced by a singular, rather customized seat. The size of the thing suggests its intended occupant was expected to take up half again as much space as a typical Japanese passenger, and its shape implies the presence of a rather large tail.
There's also no rear-view mirror in the front; in its place, you can make out an electronic display set into the roof of the vehicle, and currently turned off. This leads you to believe that the passenger's greater-than-average size included a boost to their height as well.
Are you going to regret not turning up in Adult Mode for this...?
The Bus Driver leads the way to the door, where a push of the buzzer is answered by a nondescript man in a suit and dark glasses. He looks the two of you over briefly, then nods and steps back to allow you in, while tapping an earbud and murmuring aloud to someone that, "They've arrived."
You're escorted into the living room, where you find Mikogami talking to a woman who's almost tall enough while sitting down to look him in the eye. The muscles of her chest, shoulders, and upper arms are very developed, excessively so when contrasted with her almost gaunt midsection, and while the upper portions of her legs are relatively normal, her feet are three or four times larger than the human norm, and reshaped so that she'd have to walk on her toes - of which she's lost over half, leaving just two to a foot, and those with nails overgrown into claws that look to have been sanded down. Her fingers fared a bit better, numbering four per hand, but like the toes, they're clawed - and again, trimmed as short as human fingernails. The leathery fabric of wings is folded up under her arms, though it also extends past the joint of her wrists in a somewhat awkward-looking manner, her head is crowned by a pair of forward-pointing horns, and her skin is a slightly greyish shade of blue.
Her face is caught somewhere between human and beast, with a flattened nose at the front of a snout that is much too pronounced for homo sapiens, but doesn't look quite right for... well, whatever the other part of her heritage is. Her teeth have changed in a similar manner, larger and longer and quite possibly more numerous than they started out, but as many of them are blunt as are sharp, and in no discernible pattern. That would make eating... difficult... and that's before considering how her lower jaw looks like it can now open widely enough to bite someone's head off.
Where tooth and maw have extended, the lady's ears have gone the other way, shrinking from the usual shell-shape to little more than nubs on the sides of the head. They almost disappear in the stringy mess of her hair, which... actually looks fairly normal, straight and dark as is normal for Japan's mundane population, though with a hint of rather becoming purple. It's about shoulder-length on her now, but probably reached most of the way down her back before Dracula grabbed her.
Then the gargoyle-woman's head turns your way, and you see her eyes. Fairly ordinary dark brown irises are surrounded by sclerae the hue of blood, which glow faintly in the shadows that dominate the room even at mid-morning, thanks to the thick curtains drawn across the windows. There is wariness in that gaze, but it is far outmatched by weariness.
The malformed maw moves, half-speaking and half-chewing the words, "A kid?"
"I did say he was young."
"I thought you meant he went to your school!" comes the rumbling response, more disbelieving than angry.
"That's still to be decided."
"So it is," Mikogami agrees.
While you have looked over the brochure that the Headmaster gave you, you haven't yet had the time to look into just how well Youkai Academy stacks up to other modern educational institutions, or if there are other schools on the supernatural side of things that you might qualify to attend and/or be better served by. And that's not even getting into the matter of discussing things with your parents.
Really, there's a whole lot of other stuff that needs to be taken care of before you start seriously considering attending a school in another country - on another continent, at that - like getting your family out of Sunnydale.
Your brief statement draws Miss Boley's attention back to you, and when her brown-on-red eyes look down at you, you have to shrug off a momentary annoyance at not using an adult form.
"Alex Harris, Sorcerer," you greet her with a Japanese-style bow. "Nice to meet you, ma'am."
"Boley Hannah," comes the reply, and as much of an equivalent bow as the woman's altered physiology will allow. Japanese style greeting, but not Japanese names, you note. "And... the same, I guess." You catch a whiff of brimstone as she sighs. "Thanks for not screaming, anyway..."
Honestly, it would take more than what you're looking at right now to get a scream out of you: Miss Boley hasn't grown a single eye in a place where it shouldn't be; while she is wearing a tunic of sorts, it's white rather than green, and doesn't come with a matching cap; and there's not so much as a hint of clownface about here. A mere mutated demonic gargoyle is really nothing to worry about next to THOSE nightmares, especially not when she's so visibly dispirited.
You don't say any of that aloud, instead just offering, "You're welcome." Then you turn to Mikogami. "So, is there a room where I can set up a summoning circle, or should I use the yard?"
"Right this way," the Exorcist says, guiding you towards the next room. "I had my people clear out the dining room, and I double-checked the wards on the building myself, to ensure we weren't spied upon or disturbed for the duration."
There are those that might try, anyway.
Within the depths of his hood, the Exorcist's eyes glow above a slasher smile. "That would be most unwise of them. ...and rude."
In short order, you have called up Batreaux-
"ON WINGS OF DARKNESS, I COME!"
*Kraka-THOOM!*
"Demon!"
*Shoom!*
"Mind the fire-breath, please!"
-convinced Miss Boley that you are NOT, in fact, dealing with a devil or demon-
"I am a FORMER demon, my dear," Batreaux says firmly, hands raised and held open in a concilatory gesture. The smoke rising from his singed left hair-horn adds a certain... something... to the display. "One who was BORN to such status, and later surrendered it through the very ritual we mean to perform for YOUR benefit this day."
"If you're not a demon anymore, then what's with creepy monologue and the thunder and lightning?"
"STYLE!"
*Kraka-THOOM!*
"Stop doing that!"
-and gotten on with analyzing the environment and the jumpy lady herself. While you don't learn anything truly new in the process of investigating demonic energies, this IS the first time you've had the opportunity to examine a human-turned-demon, as opposed to the various more or less natural hybrids you've seen (mostly at a distance) since getting involved with the darker side of the world, so it does allow you to view particular subjects from a different angle.
Gained Corruption Sense B (Plus)
Gained Demonology C (Plus) (Plus)
You also slip in an experimental nudge or two against Mikogami's ward-work, but it's a pretty straightforward example of Abjuration Magic, akin to a Spell of Nondetection or a Spell to Create a Private Sanctum. It's less remarkable for what it does than for the mix of youki and divine energy that's powering it, and even that is more of an interesting novelty than anything else, at least at this point in your studies.
After about an hour, Batreaux is satisfied that the Ritual of Mortal Metamorphosis can be utilized in this location without worry, and that it will be effective on Miss Boley - though he does caution that he can't promise it will return her to her original appearance.
"This ritual was originally designed with demons with a particular origin in mind," your sorcery tutor explains for Miss Boley, "and also for use in a land with rather more ambient magic than the modern Earth. We can compensate for the latter to a degree-"
Especially if you help provide power for the rite, and through that, some trace of the blessings of the Goddesses.
"-but there are as many different kinds of demons as there are ways to commit atrocity," Batreaux continues with a sigh, "and your... 'ancestor', as it were, is not of an infernal lineage that I have encountered before. That will unavoidably limit how much the ritual can do, unless you would be willing to delay- no?"
Miss Boley's misshapen head started shaking back and forth at the D-word. "I understand what you're saying, Mr. Battoro, but being stuck in this... this FORM... has been a nightmare. It took me weeks to figure out how to move without falling over or tearing gouges out of everything I touched, and even today, I can hardly take care of myself. I can't eat without making a mess, I can't go outside without freaking people out - even the MONSTERS avoid me! - and NOTHING is built to work with a body like this. Clothes, books, electronics" - she gestures around sharply - "furniture, buildings, vehicles-!"
Her chest was starting to glow from within, similar to how it briefly appeared when she reflexively spat fire at Batreaux, but Miss Boley takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and exhales nothing but hot, bad-smelling air through her nose. The burning in her chest diminishes accordingly.
Everyone gives her some time as she works to calm down.
"I don't want to wait," the woman-turned-demon finally says, "and I'm not sure that I can. I haven't felt right since that night I woke up in Fuyuki, and it hasn't been getting any better. This body, it... it just isn't ME. If you can give me a form that's human, or at least CLOSER to it than... than THIS..."
She gives Batreaux a look that's searching, almost pleading.
Gravely, your tutor nods.
"...then it doesn't matter if the face in the mirror isn't the one I remember. ANYTHING would be better than what I look like right now."
"Then we'll begin promptly," Batreaux replies.
With that, the two of you clear away your summoning diagram and start setting up a different spell-circle. As you work, Batreaux asks you a few final questions.
Firstly, do you wish to take part in the ritual? If you participate, you'll be able to provide the power - and the trace of divine blessing - that working this spell in Hyrule would normally gain automatically. There will, however, be a chance that the Curse of Demise could act up, a probability that Batreaux estimates as "low, but not zero."
Secondly, is the matter of the Gratitude Crystals. You'll need to expend forty of them for the ritual to work at all, but it would be possible to use more to try and enhance the effects, or to offset your lack of participation, should you choose to sit the spell out. That said, it might be better to take a conservative approach to this, as it could be a while before you gain such a windfall of Gratitude as you did from saving the lives of the Quincy families.
Batreaux blinks. "You are certain?"
You nod. "The way I figure it, this is the first time the ritual's ever been performed on Earth - and like you said, the magical environment is different. Even if it should be easier to convert a half-demon to full mortality than it would be to do the same thing for a full demon, we can't be sure that the weaker version of the ritual will work properly on Earth."
"So you're proposing that we perform the ritual with as much power as possible, and hope for the best?"
"In so many words."
Batreaux hums. "A most Dinnite approach."
It is, isn't it?
"VERY WELL!"
*Kraka-THOOM!*
The "magic circle" which takes shape on the floor of the cleared-out dining room is really three circles, each of which encompasses a single third of an oversized Triforce Emblem, and so slightly overlaps its two disk-shaped neighbors. Batreaux has you get out the Gratitude Crystallizer and begin extracting the Crystals, which he places within the ritual diagram, alongside - but not directly ON - the various lines.
Your master takes his time setting everything up, and then double-checks his work, but even so, he has enough experience as a sorcerer that he's finished within half an hour.
"Miss Boley," Batreaux says, "if you will enter that circle, minding the lines of the array, we will begin."
It takes some careful maneuvering and a bit of assistance from the Exorcist to avoid smudging or breaking any part of the diagram, but the gargoyle-woman gets into position, holding one of the last Gratitude Crystals in her claws. You and Batreaux do likewise with the other two circles - Briar having opted to keep an eye on things from the outside - each holding an orange crystalline starburst of your own.
And then Batreaux begins.
After all the preparations your tutor made, to say nothing of the time and effort that went into securing the Gratitude Crystals, the Ritual of Mortal Metamorphosis proves to be obligingly straightforward. Your role is simply to gather power and channel it through the Gratitude Crystal you're holding, and from there into the greater array; you have enough experience with ritual-casting spells by this point that doing so is no great hassle, though it does take enough of your focus - and more importantly, your available energy - that you can't get as in-depth a look at what Batreaux is doing as you might have wanted.
"Hrrgh..."
And then Hannah Boley starts to grunt in pain.
"Is it... supposed to...?"
"The discomfort... is temporary!" Batreaux assures her. "Bear with it... just a bit longer!"
"Arrrrgh..."
"Nearly there!"
Arms raised to the ceiling, one claw still desperately grasping the now brightly-glowing Gratitude Crystal, Miss Boley throws back her head with a cry of, "GRAAAUUUGH!"
*Ting*
*BOOM*
And then she vanishes in a burst of orange-hued smoke, which has you worrying that you may have accidentally blown her up. Even as that thought forms, however, you hear coughing coming from the center of the cloud, and from a much smaller pair of lungs than you think the gargoyle-woman had a moment ago.
Sure enough, as the proverbial dust settles - or sublimates into the ether - instead of a looming, misshapen demon, you see... a woman in her early twenties, wearing a white tunic several sizes too large for her. Her features are mostly Japanese, though there are also indications of Western heritage not too far back in the family tree; she's also a few inches taller than average, but that could be an entirely personal quirk, or even a lingering consequence of her transformation.
Her hair is still dark and straight, her skin is an entirely human flesh-tone, and her eyes are brown against white sclerae... but with a slight red hue to the irises that wasn't there before.
Miss Boley stares down at her hands, counting her regrown fingers and considering the somewhat over-large and excessively sharp-looking nails that came with them, and also unclenching one hand to let a dull, brownish powder that used to be a Gratitude Crystal spill onto the floor - where it mixes with the similarly shattered and expended remnants of the rest of its kind. Even as you watch, the "Gratitude Dust" dissolves away into nothing.
Spent 80 Gratitude Crystals
For a moment, nobody says anything.
Then, Hannah Boley says, "Mirror."
"What was that?" Batreaux asks.
"I need a mirror!"
And the young lady takes two quick steps out of the circle, heading for one of the dining room doors-
!
-before the long months of working with a different sense of balance come back to bite her, and she stumbles and falls-!
Fortunately, the Exorcist is right there to catch her. "Careful, now, Miss Boley," Mikogami chides. "It would be a terrible shame for you to injure yourself so soon after recovering your natural form."
He pauses for a moment, considering the woman's eyes and fingernails, and then rather thoughtfully does NOT comment on them, instead giving Hannah a shoulder to lean on as they head out into the hall, where you saw a mirror near the coat closet.
A moment later, joyful crying begins.
Wincing at the sound, you turn to your tutor. "So, would you call that a successful ritual?"
"Indeed I would, my student! A TRIUMPH OF SORCERY!"
*Kraka-THOOM!*
There are some follow-up tests to conduct, of course, plus the matter of getting Miss Boley some clothes that actually fit. Fortunately, the safehouse is stocked with several different varieties of clothing, and the Exorcist's people find things that reasonably fit. Later will come a period of observation and re-acclimation, as the woman gets used to having a human form again - and deals with the lingering traces of her demonic heritage that weren't entirely suppressed or removed - after which is the task of re-introducing her to regular society.
Explaining where she's been since the Fourth Grail War went down is going to be... fun.
But most of that isn't your concern. In fact, aside from seeing to those tests, your personal interest in this affair is essentially over.
That said, Miss Boley now owes a not-inconsiderable debt to Batreaux.
Practically speaking, there isn't much that Miss Boley has to offer. Getting dragged into the Fourth Grail War pretty much ended the life she had before, and after six years or so of living as a monster, getting any of that first life BACK is going to require at least as much work as the Ritual you just assisted with. Not to mention how much she's going to owe the Exorcist for his support when all is said and done.
In short, it's likely to be quite some time before Miss Boley is able to pay Batreaux back using any sort of material means, if she ever can. And being an ordinary- okay, MOSTLY ordinary human once again, she doesn't really have a whole lot to offer in the way of immaterial rewards.
With all that in mind, you're considering just leaving the arrangements to your tutor and the Exorcist - but then, an idea comes to you.
You take the Gratitude Crystallizer out of your pocket again, considering its baseball-sized starburst shape. Before you started taking Gratitude Crystals out, an orange glow lit it up from within, the auras of dozens of individual concentrations of solidified emotion blending together into one comforting radiance; now, it sits empty and dark in the palm of your hand, looking a little forlorn but still filled with its own particular magic.
That magic doesn't strike you as overly powerful or complex. Duplicating it might require a more in-depth examination of the dveice than you've attempted before, and perhaps some pointers from Batreaux, but you think it should be within your abilities.
And the notion of giving Miss Boley a Gratitude Crystallizer to help pay off her debt, thereby using one half-demon's purification to help pay for future endeavors of the same kind, rather appeals to you. Actually, so does the idea of making a spare Crystallizer for yourself, or more accurately, for Shadow Alex to use when he's off doing things separately from you.
You broach the notion to Batreaux-
"OOOOHHHH!"
-who agrees it's worth considering, provided that you keep your expectations realistic. After all, Miss Boley doesn't have your... prodigious magical capacity, or even any developed magical ability at all, so she's not about to start going on cross-continental adventures and reaping a bounty of goodwill.
"And I have noticed that your Shadow is, perhaps, not the sort to so readily inspire feelings of true gratitude," your teacher says lightly.
Shadow Alex will undoubtedly remember that.
Leaving that aside for now, you have tests to run, and the noise in the hall has died down enough that you think Miss Boley has gotten her emotions under control. As such, you step out of the dining room-
*Whoosh-THUMP*
"Ooof!"
"Thank you!"
-and reflexively dodge the sort of flying tackle-hug you're used to seeing in certain little sisters, as the newly ex-half demon grabs Batreaux about the midsection and expresses her gratitude.
"You're very welcome, my dear, but MY RIBS!"
Gained 10 Gratitude Crystals
Eventually, with no bodily harm incurred, you get on with that follow-up exam.
You'd previously noted the mutated state of Hannah's eyes and fingernails, but those prove to not be the only changes to her human form. Her toenails have also ended up thicker and sharper than they used to be, and when you measure her height, Miss Boley is quite certain that she's added a few centimeters. She's also put on more weight than she remembers having before she was abducted, and while some of that is a result of the unnatural late growth spurt, more is bound up in a degree of muscular development that faintly echoes the powerful chest and limbs of her demonic form.
She has mixed feelings about that. The new muscle doesn't look BAD on her, by any means, but she's not used to being so visibly fit, and the manner in which she ended up this way...
Given the physical holdovers, you were concerned that there might be spiritual effects as well. Fortunately, those tests return results that are far more consistent with a human's life-force and soul than they are for a monster's, let alone a first-generation naturalized demon-spawn's. She's not a "pure" human, but if you had to pin a number on it, you'd say that Miss Boley is at least ninety-five percent human. You can't be much more precise than that; as Batreaux has said before, assigning hard values to the soul is difficult, and not a particular moral way of thinking.
Overall, the end result of the Ritual of Mortal Metamorphosis may not have been perfect, but it's still very, very good for a first attempt.
With the tests concluded, you move on to the matter of payment. Mikogami explained the issue of sorcerous debts to Miss Boley well before today, and while she might have previously been somewhat indifferent to the matter due to a mix of desperation to return to being human and doubt that it was possible, now that she IS back to very-nearly-normal, the young woman is KEENLY intent on the matter.
As you'd expected, Miss Boley's financial situation can best be described as "uncertain" for the foreseeable future. The Exorcist has the connections necessary to get her back into mainstream society, but that will take time, and it's really only the beginning; actually building a life, whether entirely from scratch or out of the ruins of the old, is going to be the work of years, and it won't be until AFTER that that Hannah will really be in a position to repay debts in a financial manner.
Your suggestion about having Miss Boley collect Gratitude Crystals, then, gets not only her attention, but Mikogami's as well. When you explain that you're considering making a new Gratitude Crystallizer, the Exorcist wonders if he might "place an order" for one such device: the phenomenon of solidified emotion is something he finds rather fascinating; you've just gotten done demonstrating the utility of Gratitude Crystals; and in his role as the Headmaster of Youkai Academy, the Dark Lord is the recipient of people's gratitude on an irregular but fairly recurring basis.
"Although if there were a way to collect FEAR," he adds, grinning, "that would be much more reliable."
"Technically, there is," Batreaux admits with a grimace, "but Fright Crystals have a nasty tendency to coalesce into malignant spirits. Haunters, poltergeists, possessors, the odd phobophage..." He shakes his hair-horned head. "They're not really worth the trouble to keep around."
The Exorcist considers that, tapping his crucifix. "By any chance, if one were to lay such a spirit to rest, would the 'Fright Crystals' that gave it being be salvageable?"
"Generally, no, or at least not without considerable deterioration."
Mikogami huffs in annoyance. "Of course; that would be too easy..."
That aside, once the concept of Gratitude Crystals and how they can be obtained is explained in more depth, Miss Boley is open to the idea, though she admits she has no idea how successful she'd be at gathering the things.
Not having made a Gratitude Crystallizer before, you aren't entirely sure how long it would take, but discussion with Batreaux suggests it shouldn't take you more than two weeks at the outside. Three of them might be doable in a month, if you wanted to go that far.
It'll take some time and materials out of your budget, but you think that obtaining three new sources of Gratitude Crystals would be worth the expense, even IF the aforementioned budget wasn't about to overflow as a result of your recent exploits.
After all, even if his attitude does result in a hit to his productivity, Shadow Alex still has all your capabilities, so he shouldn't have any trouble finding and "harvesting" sources of Gratitude, and a minor reduction in output from any one source can be made up by exploiting multiple sources. Indeed, isn't that exactly why you considered making more Crystallizers in the first place?
The Headmaster may not enjoy the same unfettered mobility that you and your not-evil twin do - though he could likely make up a good portion of the difference with the Bus Driver's assistance - but as he said, being the guy in charge of Youkai Academy puts him in a position where people will come TO him for help, possibly to a level that's competitive with the results of your far-flung wanderings and social networking. Even if you have to split the "profits" of his work between the two of you, that could still add up to a goodly quantity of Gratitude Crystals... though another method of payment does have your interest...
You inquire of the Exorcist if he'd be willing to pay you an equivalent value of information on countering and breaking curses.
"Oh? Exactly how much value are we talking? Because I feel I should warn you that my skills in that particular field are nothing to boast of, certainly not when compared to some of YOUR demonstrated feats." He grins over hands clasped together as if in prayer. "I am but a humble priest, after all."
...right.
Miss Boley is likely to offer the least return on this investment, but the objective here was to give her a non-monetary way to repay what she owes Batreaux. The knowledge that she IS paying that debt - however slowly - and so "earning" the miracle you and your master delivered, instead of having some nebulous sorcerous penalty hanging over her head and growing larger until you come to collect, will go a long way to settling the woman's mind.
There's also something to be said for the opportunity to compare the results of a non-magical Gratitude-gathering effort among a (presumably) normal human population to those of three supernatural entities working with mixed groups. Who knows? Maybe a (mostly) mundane person helping out other ordinary people will turn out to be more productive than you were expecting.
Gained Minor Priority - Be Grateful!
With the agreement struck, Batreaux wishes everyone a good day-
"And now, I must away - FOR THE NIGHT BECKONS!"
*Kraka-THOOM!*
*Poof*
"I thought I said- and he's already gone."
-and departs.
Taking your cue from your tutor, if not quite so dramatically, you head home, arriving with plenty of time to spare before sunset.
With Silbern destroyed and the Drakes' employees still sorting out and assessing the value of your plunder, you have an abundance of free time over the next week, and put it to good use.
The day before Navi's demiplanes are due to disperse, you make one final sweep of the pocket realms to ensure that nothing and no-one was left behind. You find a few odds and ends, like three missing socks - none from the same pair - a broken hair-tie, an entirely mundane charm from someone's bracelet, and so on. Some of these you simply toss in the trash; others, you use Divination rituals to identify the proper owners, and then either return them directly, hand them off to the nearest relative, or make a quick phonecall to let the discovery be known and arrange proper delivery.
While you're leaving a few things with Balthazar to be passed on to the Archers - as you're trying to avoid direct contact with them until the Wandenreich have calmed down - you also hand the Merlinean Master the final bill for his use of the accelerated demiplane.
Balthazar has kept a simple log of the time he and Dave spent on that demiplane, which works out to thirty-two hours of Earth time. This does not include ALL of the time that Mr. Blake himself has spent assisting you, Ambrose, and the Knights in your larcenous endeavors, but he did log a few hours that he spent showing Dave How To Safely Assess Stolen Goods.
"You were busy," you note absently, as you run down the list.
"I made the most of a limited resource," Balthazar replies.
At the agreed-upon rate of ten silver pieces per hour of "normal" time, and your preferred medium of precious metal, you make a neat little profit of three gold pieces and twenty silver pieces out of the deal.
Gained 3 Gold Pieces and 20 Silver Pieces
With that business cleared, you inquire of Balthazar how his part in sorting the Silbern spoils is going.
"I'm about halfway through the items that were dropped off here," he replies. "I've identified six cursed items so far, and twice that many objects that were booby-trapped, locked, or otherwise secured against unauthorized access."
You wince. "Puzzles?"
"There was a puzzle-box in the lot," he tells you. "But just the one, so far."
...well, it could be worse. You could have looted a Hyrulean temple, or something...
...
What, no objections to that idea?
"I mean, the Hero kind of does it all the time," Briar says with a shrug.
What she said.
It's not looting! They're his rewards for overcoming the temple trials!
While you're on the matter of... divine gifts... you've been meaning to get a special offering for the kami of the Hakuba Shrine, as a "thank you" for his passing the information you obtained about Auswahlen up the celestial chain to Takamagahara.
Some off-the-cuff calculations by the Headmaster suggest that he can pay at least half, and perhaps as much two-thirds of your asking price for a Gratitude Crystallizer in an equivalent value of information on countering and breaking curses. He'll have to check his books to get more concrete numbers.
He's a little surprised when you ask him to pay the remainder of what he'll owe you by giving you a cut of the Gratitude Crystals he acquires, rather than with cash or other conventional valuables - but he isn't exactly complaining.
"Budget limitations, and all that," he says simply.
While material offerings are all well and good, it's occurred to you that you're in a position to provide a degree of magical support which the Hakuba kami can't normally provide to his adherents, due to the non-interference agreements enforced by the Powers That Be.
As such, you've been in touch with the Hakubas about the possibility of repaying their kami for his assistance by providing healing magic to locals in need.
As it happens, aside from the assorted injuries the Hakuba menfolk sustained as a result of their involvement in the Demon Castle War - and which you've already provided help for - there's something of a lack of significant injuries or degenerative conditions among the community. Some people getting older, yes, but no one that's suffered such a severe hit to quality-of-life that resorting to magical means seems warranted.
...which is good, obviously, just a bit inconvenient for your hopes.
Now, if anything is guaranteed in life, it's that people are going to get hurt. So you COULD leave that offer of magical healing as an I.O.U., and let the Hakubas call it in at some point in the future when it becomes necessary. This has a couple of downsides, the first of which is that the longer an acknowledged mystical debt goes unpaid, the more likely it is that something will come up to force its repayment - and said something will not be coming down on uninvolved third parties, but on YOU.
This is obviously unappealing.
Another, somewhat lesser issue is the fact that leaving a debt unpaid is just plain rude, which will nag at your conscience and could impact your dealings with others who are aware of said obligation.
The Hakubas are aware of that, and asked if you would prefer to perform a different sort of service. Miss Suzuka came up with a list of mystically related issues for you to look into once before, and this would be more of the same.
The other alternative is to simply get the kami a suitable material offering and call it square. If you're really having trouble settling on something, the Hakubas have some ideas.
What's your preference?
The last time you took on a list of tasks from Miss Suzuka, it led to you rescuing a little girl from a crazy fox-lady, and also curing said fox-lady of her craziness - by using a Hyrulean artifact that you had to recover from an ancient not-Roman base full of Gohma, fighting Dark Link in the process.
"Exactly," Briar says. "So WHY would you want to risk doing something like that again?"
The question is, why WOULDN'T you?
Exactly.
You tell the Hakubas of your preference, and Miss Suzuka immediately pulls another list out of her sleeve, to the bemusement of Ichirou and the laughing approval of Kojiro.
The greater portion of the list covers a series of minor incidents that have taken place in the neighborhood over the last couple of months, all of which are either confirmed or suspect to have to do with the side-effects of the ritual the Hakubas performed to help combat Dracula's latest resurrection. Your first visit to the shrine in the wake of that event revealed a worryingly dark aura over the grounds, which Miss Suzuka wasn't sure how to handle and none of the priests were available to advise or assist her with. That's since changed, and the shrine now feels much the same as it did before the apocalyptic eclipse, but the Hakubas are still slightly concerned that the time and effort it took them to clean up the residual taint may have allowed something to sneak into or spawn in the neighborhood.
The incidents in question are minor in nature, including a low-end haunting here (already exorcised), some arcane vandalism there (cleaned up, but without the culprit being identified), and a dog that went missing for a time and then came back wrong-
"That was not a fun day," Ichirou sighs.
-as well as half a dozen other similar disturbances. Nothing that's happened has been outside of the priests' experience or their ability to handle, but the rate at which things have been happening has them a bit concerned, particularly since the incidents haven't noticeably slowed down since the dark aura hanging over the shrine was cleansed. If you'd be willing to investigate the as-yet unresolved matters with your own resources, and back the Hakubas up when they go to deal with the source(s), that would square most of your debt to their patron.
The only other item on the list concerns Mai, the girl you rescued from Lady Takara - and it's actually good news, of a sort. While her parents are still having some issues with the whole "kidnapped for a year by a nine-tailed fox" thing, they're handling the "odd hair color and magical abilities" that came out of it fairly well, and they haven't even tried to forbid Mai from keeping up her correspondence with her ex-kidnapper.
...not more than a couple of times, anyway.
Per month.
Suffice it to say, it's a work in progress. But they ARE making progress.
Leaving some not-unreasonable parental protectiveness aside, the reason Miss Suzuka is bringing the reunited family to your attention now is that Mai's folks are aware that she's also been writing letters to Lady Akemi, and have been angling to meet this non-kitsune woman that their daughter has been calling "Cousin."
"Any idea why?" you ask.
"I think they're looking for additional assurance that Lady Takara means no further harm," Suzuka replies. She gestures at herself and the two priests. "At the end of the day, we don't really know the Lady well enough to say with certainty what she will or won't do, but a grown woman who was raised as her daughter and gave her grandchildren would be able to offer much greater insight."
"...they ARE aware that Lady Akemi is dead, right?" Briar asks suspiciously.
Suzuka pauses. "...maybe?"
...
You think Mai's acquired prankster instincts may be at work, there.
Your own sense of mischief is certainly twitching.
Gained Suzuka's List 2.0
You spend the next few hours walking the neighborhood with Ichirou, visiting some of the locations and individuals to have been recently afflicted with supernatural misfortune and performing assorted Spells of Divination to determine what exactly you're dealing with. Not only will this give you a better idea of how to deal with the currently ongoing issues, it'll also help to establish your credibility within the community, most of whom don't currently know you, unless it's as "that odd foreign boy who's always coming and going from the shrine."
The people you talk to have varying reactions. Some are welcoming to Ichirou and politely puzzled by your presence, while others start to visibly fret as soon as they lay eyes on the young priest. Some are helpful and even eager to talk-
"It was like the walls were alive!" the kid says, as his mother tries to curb his enthusiasm. "All wriggling and groaning and dripping slime! It was so cool!"
-others understandably reluctant-
"He was a good dog," the young man protests, looking like he wants to hit something. "He never bit or chased anyone, he followed instructions, he never made a mess... why would anyone DO that to him?"
-and one old man refuses to give you the time of day, while chewing Ichirou out about respect and privacy.
For the most part, seeing you cast a spell reassures people and encourages them to get cooperative, if they weren't already-
"Cool!" the kid says with stars in his eyes.
"Shinji, hush! Let them work."
Shinji hushes obediently, but you catch him silently mouthing the words, "So cool," to himself.
-although that unfriendly old man blanches, shuts up, and gets out of your way entirely, refusing to say a word whatsoever.
Of the five sites you have time to visit today, none were "haunted" recently enough for simple spells like Detect Magic or Detect Evil to turn up any traces of activity. When you call on a ritually enhanced version of Detect Magic that approaches the functionality of the Greater version of the spell, four of the locations start returning useful information - and then, by attempting to modify Detect Evil in a similar manner, you get additional data.
In this way, you're able to confirm that three of the incidents - the "living walls," the arcane alley graffiti, and the old man's place, where the priests told you a phantom of his dead wife had been manifesting - were definitely connected to the dark aura that briefly covered the Hakuba Shrine. They share the same feel of that menacing energy, just at far lower intensities. The site where that poor dog's zombified body was put down doesn't yield such results, suggesting that the animal's reanimation wasn't a DIRECT result of the aura, and leaving you to wonder if the culprit was attracted by the disturbances and/or intentionally using them as a cover, or if the whole thing is just a coincidence of bad timing and worse taste.
The fifth and final address you stop at is actually one of those with an ongoing problem, this being an unsettling, red-tinted mist that springs up around the building without fail after the sun goes down, and grows thicker as the phases of the moon advance towards full.
The time difference between Japan and California works out in your favor for once, allowing you to observe the emergence of the mist, though not its progression.
With an active event in front of you, your lesser detection spells have no trouble picking up the auras of Darkness, Necromancy, and Evil that runs through the low-laying cloud as surely as Air and Water. The energies in question vaguely remind you of the Spell of Obscuring Mist, if it had been spliced with the Spell to Cause Fear, both effects were weakened in the process, and the whole thing was attached to a location rather than a person.
"Am I the only one who smells blood?" Briar asks.
You pause in your magical investigations and sniff the air.
...
It's very faint, but the red mist definitely carries the scent of blood.
Gained Scenting C
"Out of curiosity," you ask Ichirou, "did the Demon Castle include... atmospheric features... like this?"
"Oh, yes," he sighs.
Do you want to purify this bloody fog, or would you prefer to keep it around for future observation? The new moon is approaching, it'll be a couple of weeks after that before you can witness the "thickening" of the mist, or a full month if you want to chart the entire cycle.
Your decision is one part laziness, one part personal entertainment value, and one part minor paranoia.
In reverse order of explanation: It wouldn't be the best idea to go walking around parts of Japan in your preferred adult form right now. It's only been a couple of weeks since your Shadow was opening up Gates in various locations around the country, and even though you and he took the precaution of having the Spell of Mind Blank up and running at the time, it's not impossible that somebody on the supernatural side of things laid actual eyes on your Shadow while he was going into or coming out of one of those Gates, and spread the word.
There's also the Shinigami to consider. They're undoubtedly going to be keeping an eye open for the Sorcerer's Shadow and his creator for a while as well.
Either way, it'll probably take a few more weeks, maybe a couple of months, before you'll feel comfortable showing your idealized older self around these parts, at least outside of friendly and relatively secure locations.
On the second note, you just get a kick out of watching adults' reactions when they see a kid who looks like he hasn't (quite) hit his teens throwing around magic like a master sorcerer-
"AWESOME!"
"Shinji!"
"Can you teach me how to do that?"
-although the responses of younger kids are also definitely not to be dismissed.
Gained Big Brother C (D (Plus) (Plus) w/little boys)
And finally, laziness is self-explanatory.
Your first impulse is to break out the Abjuration Magic and scour the blood-mist from existence before it has a chance to harm anyone, but no sooner has the thought formed than the academically inclined portion of your awareness protests it. Said corner of curiosity points out that you know this phenomenon has some sort of connection to the power of Dracula, and then reminds you that the Goddesses have warned you that Dracula's Servant incarnation is still somehow active after his apparent destruction in the Fourth Grail War.
Although you'd like to say that you and your allies will have removed said Avenger as a threat before the Fifth War gets going, you can't guarantee such a thing at this point in time. Given the non-zero chance that Dracula will make another showing in a few years' time, would it not be beneficial for you to have a detailed, personal analysis of the environmental conditions found in and around his stronghold, so you know what sort of defenses would be required to operate there, just in case the Demon Castle reappears as well? For that matter, wouldn't having a better idea of what even such a minor manifestation of Dracula's power looks and feels like give you better odds of finding signs of the Dark Lord's activity in and around Fuyuki, and thereby tracking down his Servant self and ensuring Avenger doesn't become a problem again?
You express this thought to Ichirou, and then broach the idea of leaving the blood-mist alone for the time being.
The young priest definitely sees where you're coming from, but is uncomfortable with the idea of leaving the dark fog alone for the next whole month. The level to which its power grew under the previous full moon was nothing to be concerned about, but Ichirou is concerned that it will be stronger this month - perhaps enough to be dangerous - simply because it's had time to take root and feed on the local energies. Evil magic is like that.
You're aware of that fact, and propose to work a Spell of Divination to see if there will be untoward consequences from leaving the mist undisturbed. Even if you can only get a single answer about a week in advance, that's enough to inform your decisions.
Ichirou is rather reassured by your caution, and helps you find and clear an area on the edge of the fog - but definitely not inside it! - to set up your incense burner. He then stands watch while you get to work performing the ritual.
"O Goddesses," you begin, "will any harm come to the people of this neighborhood if this blood-mist is left alone for the next week?"
There is a pause.
"The scent of blood thickens, but remains only a shadow in the mist."
...
Okay. A bit cryptic, but it sounds like that's a, "Nobody will get hurt."
"I will convey that to Father and Grandfather," Ichirou says slowly. "Perhaps an inquiry to the kami... merely to provide a more local perspective on the matter, of course."
Of course.
As it's gotten late locally, you clean up the ritual site and make a quick circuit of the blood-mist just to be sure nothing of note is happening within it, after which the three of you head back to the shrine. When you arrive, you find that Kojiro has already called it a night, but Suzuka is still up, waiting for you. Ginta is with her, and the two of them hear your report on the sites you visited, as well as your request to leave the mist alone for the time being.
"We can give you the next week," Ginta says firmly. "Anything after that will depend on what the kami and your Goddesses have to say in the future, and what we see happening."
That's fair. The priests do have an obligation to protect the people in their neighborhood, and a week will be time enough for you to get at least some study of the phenomenon done.
On a separate note, Miss Suzuka was able to get in touch with Mai's family to arrange their "meeting" with Lady Akemi.
What day did you prefer for this? It's currently Thursday, June 29th, and you have a trip to southern Germany scheduled for this weekend - Saturday, July 1st at the very least, possibly Sunday and even longer, depending on what you find in the Memorian Base and how it goes - so you have to keep that in mind.
While you are looking forward to seeing how Mai's parents reacting to meeting a ghost, you must admit that there is a fine line between playing a supernaturally assisted practical joke on someone, and freaking them right out. Since you'd rather not completely alienate these people, you figure that it makes the most sense to leave the choice of venue up to them; ideally, they'll pick the location they're most comfortable with, and will feel more assured going into the meeting simply because of that small bit of "control" over the situation.
And being in familiar surroundings should make it easier when you pull the rug out from under them, as it were.
You explained as much to Miss Suzuka before leaving the shrine with Ichirou, and added that you had an opening on Friday, but were booked for the rest of the weekend.
The response that came back was that Mr. and Mrs. Yoshida wouldn't be able to make any meetings tomorrow, and that since they'd prefer to avoid further disruptions to Mai's attendance at school, a meeting next week didn't appeal to them.
"Is that just her original... absence... that they're talking about?" you interrupt. "Or is there more going on?"
"There have been a few issues with Mai's education since she came home," Miss Suzuka admits, while not going into detail on the subject. "Things are getting better, but..."
You nod.
A girl goes missing for a year, and then comes home? People will talk. Some of that talk will be harmless, but some won't.
Said girl comes back with a completely different hair color that is NOT the result of a dye-job, and also isn't normally found in the local population? People will talk a LOT.
And if anyone has seen Mai meeting with Lady Takara, or even just seen the kitsune's preferred human guise in the area, and considered the similar shades of their hair? The talk may become problematic, or simply... unpleasant.
Anyway, given the choice of when and where to meet, the Yoshidas picked the Hakuba Shrine, some time next weekend.
With that resolved, you head home.
You spend a few more hours visiting Japan on Friday, questioning witnesses and performing Divination Spells at another half-dozen sites. The results you get are generally similar to the previous batch of locations, with the incidents having been too weak and too long ago for any traces that cantrips can pick up to still be present, and fleeting hints of Dracula's power turning up when you call on more powerful magic.
Incidentally, since the alley that was defaced by vaguely mystical graffiti has already been cleaned up, you have to rely on pictures that were taken of the scene to really see what was done to it. These reveal a nonsensical and rather poorly drawn ritual circle that contains a mish-mash of elements, as if someone with unsteady hands tried to inscribe a spell matrix fusing three different magical traditions: one using distinctly European symbols; the second obviously Japanese; and the last employing characters you don't recognize, but which Ichirou says were identified as originating in the Middle East.
The end result bears a vague resemblance to a Spell of Protection From Evil, but inverted. Not in the sense of it being turned into a Spell of Protection From Good, mind; rather, instead of hedging out Evil entities and influences, it seems to have been intended to draw them in and concentrate them in this location.
In theory, at least. Your rather extensive magical knowledge - especially as it applies to the Forces of Evil - tells you that the ritual diagram was never completed, let alone properly activated. The energies that the Hakubas cleansed and you're picking up the fleeting echoes of now were just who- or whatever tried to create and "cast" the spell.
That they had to do it the long way, for a mere first-circle spell, says quite a lot about how much power they DIDN'T have. That's not even getting into the utterly failed attempt to blend diverse traditions.
You also come across another incident like the one with the undead dog, where you don't detect any traces of the unholy aura that darkened the Hakuba Shrine. Said incident was another case of vandalism, this time of a phone booth. The frame was heavily scratched, the windows had been hit hard enough to leave them as spiderwebbed panels - though thanks to the design of the glass, most of the fragments held together rather than spilling all over the place - the phonebook was torn to shreds, the phone itself was yanked halfway off its mounting, and the overhead light was entirely shattered.
What's particularly memorable about this is that all the damage appears to have originated from WITHIN the booth, as if someone stepped inside to make a call and then just went violently insane. The lack of bloodstains does suggest a different explanation, or else that the culprit just didn't bleed.
You make notes on all the incidents, and then set them aside for later re-examination, for you want to get a good night's sleep and have your magical energy maxed out and ready to go.
Because tomorrow, you visit the Memorian Base in Germany.
What more needs to be said?
You wake up at your usual pre-dawn time on Saturday morning, get out of bed to perform your quiet morning calisthenics, and then shuffle downstairs for breakfast.
As you eat, your eyes drift to the calendar, and you allow yourself a moment of regret that circumstances aligned so that you had to miss Kahlua's birthday party this year. Uninvited guests aside, last year's event proved quite enjoyable, and it might have been nice to see how the events of this year compared. You'd suspected that the Shuzens were discussing some upgrades to their security after seeing Hyrule Castle in the Trials on Bali Ha'i, and of course, there was the Castle-spirit's presence to take into consideration...
The silver lining is that you'd anticipated months ago that something might come up that would keep you from attending birthdays and other parties this year, and you'd already gifted your closest friends their presents. Missing the party still stings - on both sides, you expect - but a couple of visits to Castle Shuzen over the last week eased things a bit.
After finishing your meal, taking a quick shower, and getting dressed, you leave a note for your parents - who have already been informed of and given their consent to your planned absence. They weren't entirely pleased to hear that you'd be delving into an ancient and probably haunted and/or demon-infested ruin, but it helped when you mentioned that there would be knights like Arthur Drake at the scene, and that you had permission from another bunch of ghosts to be there, as well as some magical devices to help you gain access to the place - and hopefully calm down any spectral inhabitants.
Tacking the note to the fridge with a magnet, you head down to the basement and open up your Mirror Hideaway. Before sliding through the glass, you make a Magic Cellphone call to Wales, to let Ambrose know that you'll be on your way shortly.
"I'll be expecting you," the wizard replies.
Once inside your extraplanar spellcasting chamber, you refresh the Spell of Mind Blank-
-and then open a Gate to Ambrose's teleportation room. It's a little past one in the afternoon here in Wales, to your not-quite quarter-after five in the morning in California, and from what you've been told, the site of the Memorian Base is roughly another hour ahead.
Depending on how things go, this might turn into an overnight trip, which is part of the reason why you let your folks know in advance.
And speaking of possible unexpected developments, you ask the wizard if there's been any trouble reported by Mr. Pritchard since you were last informed, which was a couple of days ago.
"Weather's been reasonable, the hired help have continued to keep their noses clean and their mouths shut, and there's been no sudden collapses or ghost attacks," Ambrose rattles off. "Roddy DID mention they'd seen their first actual, not-actually Roman ghosts last night."
Oh?
"A few soldiers standing the night's watch, or walking the perimeter," he clarifies. "No indication they were really aware of the living presence, and certainly no hostility."
Mixed results, then. The lack of hostility is definitely a preferred result, but the lack of recognition that living people were... how close, again?
"No closer than fifty feet at night, once the spookiness started."
So, within visual range, anyway. That Mr. Pritchard's people weren't challenged is not the best indicator of lingering consciousness in the legionaries, although the fact that actual ghosts have started appearing after months of mortal presence and weeks of prior, lesser phantasmal activity DOES suggest that the spooks are at least REACTING to their guests.
This whole thing will go a lot more easily if you can shake some self-awareness out of the spirits, like you did with Captain Marcus...
On that subject, you've picked up a few items that might help provoke a positive response from the spirits. You'll be bringing the Memorian Map and the Memorian Sending Stone along regardless, even if you might end up not using them, but what of your Warmage's Robe and the Standard?
Seeing as how you're going to be venturing into Memorian territory again, it felt appropriate to don your Memorian-inspired Warmage's Robe and to bring along the Standard that the Legion awarded to you. Quite aside from the increased odds of jarring some sense of recognition and positive reaction out of any ghostly legionaries you might encounter, both the Robes and the Standard offer useful defensive benefits - and in the banner's case, to more people than just you, which might be beneficial today.
It would have been even better if the Robes included a hood, as that way you could have concealed your face from purely mundane observation, but for better or worse, the Memorians didn't design their military mages' gear in that manner, and you hadn't wanted to compromise on the authenticity.
It's probably just as well, though. Living guards assigned to secret military outposts would tend to be suspicious of mysterious hooded figures found in or near their security perimeter, and that's likely carried over to any ghosts those men left to kick around the Base for the last millennium. Assuming they didn't attack such a figure on sight, one of the first things they'd do would be to demand you show your face, so...
Aside from the Robes, you also don your Boots of Air Walking and Vambrace of Force Shielding, ready your Blessed Blade at your side, and then - after a moment's thought - get out the Aries Crystal.
Then you summon Shadow Alex, who manifests wearing (or holding) copies of all that gear.
But not the Memorian Standard, which you left leaning to one side against the "wall" of the Mirror Hideaway. Showing up with two identical legion banners wouldn't go over well, and it feels wrong anyway.
Perhaps because of how you're dressed, you recall something that has you and your Shadow holding off on casting the fairly extensive list of buffs you had in mind for this venture - most of them, anyway.
The Memorian Outpost in Faerie included several methods for keeping intruders out, starting with the fact that the main base only allowed access to and from Faerie proper through portals that automatically dispelled any active magical effects on those that passed through them. You don't know for sure that there are such devices built into the defenses of the Earthside Base, but you also don't know for sure that there AREN'T, and you're likewise uncertain if any other, unprotected methods of entry exist - whether as part of the original structure or as a result of centuries of neglect and erosion.
While your magical abilities have grown over the last year, you think it makes more sense to leave off your less potent enhancements - the ones most likely to be dispelled by defenses of this nature - until you have a better idea of what you're up against, and also whether or not you can make peaceful contact.
That said, you DO still cast Mind Blank, Foresight, and Walk Through Space, while Shadow Alex sticks to Mind Blank. You were going to cast Mind Blank regardless, and between the potency of the three spells and your skill in the relevant schools of magic, the odds of any theoretical automated defenses managing to knock them out are pretty remote.
Once you're prepared, you ritually open a Gate while your Shadow fetches and readies the Standard, after which the two of you and your fairy partners march through to Ambrose's quarters.
When you question the wizard about the state of the ruins, he confirms that Mr. Pritchard's team found a couple of portal-entrances that matched your description of the ones from the Faerie Outpost. One of those had completely shut down, making it impassable - at least to the living; the ghosts have been seen going in and out without any real problem - but the other appears to still be active, and is your current prospective point of entry.
"I haven't seen it yet myself," Ambrose replies when you ask about the potency of the dispelling effect. "By the time they found the doors, I was a mite busy with other projects."
...yeah, between raiding Castle Dracula, getting the Grail War records out of the Mages' Association, readying his small army of Simulacra and making other preparations for the assault on Auswahlen, and most recently helping to sort out the loot from that little campaign, the old man HAS had something of a busy year, hasn't he? And that's just the stuff that you know about, on top of his usual duties in and around the Drake Estate and whatever else he got up to in his own time.
"Even if I'd had the time to spare," the wizard adds with a sour note, "my association with Roddy is hardly a secret, the German magus clans get jumpy if I turn up in their collective backyard uninvited-"
"Does anybody NOT?" your Shadow wonders.
"-and since the Einzberns reside a hundred miles or so from where this buried ruin of yours turned out to be, I figured it would be better for our future plans in the region if I didn't subject myself to the temptation to go sock Old Acht."
Ah.
"Is that going to be a problem?" you inquire. "Digging near the Einzberns, I mean."
"It hasn't been, thus far," Ambrose replies. "The site isn't on their territory or directly neighboring it, it's not on anyone ELSE'S private property - mundane or supernatural - and it was pretty clear that nobody had any idea the base even existed before Roddy's people started digging it up. Which is somewhat unusual for a magical structure of this size in the middle of Europe," he adds with a thoughtful frown. "Then again, if the anti-scrying measures taken for this base match your account of the ones in the Faerie Outpost, that would go some way towards explaining how the place was missed for so long."
"So would being buried," you add, familiar with - and occasionally frustrated by - mundane earth's ability to foil attempts to just go out and divine valuable or interesting things.
"So it would. Though I DO wonder how that happened..." Ambrose shakes his head. "Anyway, Roddy took precautions to avoid drawing too much local interest in this project, from the Einzberns or anyone else, even before his people found the site. False trails, deliberately failed digs, that sort of thing; it's another part of the reason it took them this long to make serious progress."
"By your use of the words 'too MUCH local interest'," Shadow Alex notes then, "I presume that there HAS been local interest, all the same?"
"There has," comes the answer.
You and your Shadow trade glances.
"Alternate form?" you venture.
"Alternate form," your Shadow repeats, nodding. "And given the possibility of a dispel..."
"Adjustable Polymorph, rather than Alter Self?"
"That's what I was thinking," he agrees.
You can see why. It's a fifth-circle spell, so it's got a reasonable chance of resisting any attempt to dispel it. The Spell of the Threefold Aspect is the same in that respect, but turning into any of your three idealized older selves wouldn't be a good idea, given how easy it would be to connect any of them to your actual appearance - and doubly so when you consider that at least SOME of the Wandenreich are trying to reestablish themselves in Germany at this very moment.
You've been told that magi and Quincy tend to avoid each other, but if some of the former start asking around after a guy who looks like the sorcerer that helped the Shinigami to seize Silbern and kill Yhwach, there's a distinct possibility that the Wandenreich will hear about it. Which would be Very Bad.
And while Adjustable Polymorph doesn't normally last nearly as long as Threefold Aspect, you can easily compensate for that.
On that note, as your Shadow ritually casts the extended reach spell, Ambrose studies the results, laughs, and casts a Spell of Illusion that produces a hat on your head and... a whip at your side?
You look around for a mirror, or at least a shiny surface, but finding none in the room, you cast the Spell of Prestidigitation to conjure a hand-mirror and look yourself over.
...
Okay, you can see why your dark side went with Harrison Ford as he appeared about twenty years ago, and Ambrose got the accessories right. That said...
"If we run into Nazis because of this," you say, as you dismiss your conjured looking-glass and give your counterpart a grim look from beneath the brow of your phantom hat, "I'm blaming you."
Shadow Alex's ritual chant almost misses a syllable.
Once your disguises are in place-
-Ambrose calls up an image of your destination in his observatory, while also providing coordinates. The location he's zeroed in on is a large rock that seems to be either on the edge of a forest, or on the edge of a clearing within said forest. The stone is about five feet tall and between four and five feet across at the base, which settles into the loam in a way that tells you more of the thing lies below ground; the exposed part is half-covered by a thick layer of moss, and has been greatly worn down by the elements elsewhere, with no sign you can detect that it was ever anything more than a big rock. A tent has been set up in the lee of the stone, and next to it stand four tall wooden stakes have been driven into the turf at the corners of a square big enough for five or six people to stand inside at once without being completely squashed. The poles stand about hip-high to a typical adult, and have been roped together to form a simple barricade.
"Designated teleport site?" you ask mildly.
"Long-standing practice with the knights," Ambrose replies in the same tone. "People appearing out of thin air in the middle of a camp is distracting at best, and occasionally leads to friendly fire incidents."
Sometimes with literal fire, you would expect. On that note, there are a couple of people - a man and a woman - standing watch near the teleport area, and if neither of them are exactly ready to join the Hyrule Castle Guard, they're at least paying attention to their surroundings.
You ARE expected, after all.
You and Shadow Alex both take the time to lock in the image and the coordinates, and then you return to Ambrose's teleportation room, where your dark doppelganger begins the ritual casting of the Spell of Teleportation.
"Any final advice?" you ask Ambrose, as you balance the Memorian Standard in your good hand.
"Mostly just the obvious stuff." He starts ticking items off on his fingers. "Avoid using high-end spells while you're outside the fortress; try not to break the established laws of magic where any of the locals can see it, and warn your allies before you do it; don't call on your Goddesses or that golden energy unless you really have to; don't tick off the undead legion that might be laying in wait; don't tick off Mars; that sort of thing."
He did say it was the obvious stuff.
"Also," the wizard adds, "while the wards on the fortress are still active enough to hide at least SOME spell use, you may want to avoid stressing them - and you should definitely give some thought to cleaning up after yourself. That base isn't going anywhere any time soon, and we can't exactly guarantee that the locals won't find their own way in eventually."
That is something to keep in mind.
Shadow Alex completes his spell, and you give Ambrose a final nod as he and his chamber disappear-
-and are replaced by the smell of a forest in early summer, the feel of earth beneath your boots, and the sight of a mountainous woodland stretching out in three out of four directions. In the last direction lies a modest-sized clearing, where Mr. Pritchard's people have set up their camp - a mix of tents, pre-fab structures, and vehicles and pieces of equipment not completely hidden from the elements.
The two guards regard you with some caution and a bit of confusion, the latter directed partly at your banner, but also at your face(s).
"Mister... Sorcerer?" the woman ventures, in a respectable British accent.
"That's me. This is my Shadow. I believe Mr. Pritchard is expecting us - or at least me."
"He is. If you'll follow me, I'll take you to him... and welcome to Baden-Wurttemberg."
Gesundheit.
You have yet to meet anyone else on Earth who has a fairy partner, save for Kokoa - whose relationship with Thistle came about entirely because of their shared connections to you - and while you know that a lot of people on Earth can't perceive fairies, you also know that the ability is relatively common - or at least easier to awaken - among the portion of the population involved with the supernatural. As a final point, you didn't take any particular measures to hide your identity back at the World Tournament - in fairness, you kind of HAD to register under your real name, and your magical stealth capabilities were much less developed at the time anyway - so at least some of the people who were there probably spotted Briar. That's not including the people you outright told about her.
In short, if you mean to conceal your identity from any local magi or other observers that might be kicking around, disguising the Briars would be a good idea.
As the two fairies discuss what forms they should take, your attention shifts to the image of the whip at your side. Succumbing to temptation, you reach down to unlatch the looped length of braided leather-
!
-but while your hand doesn't seem to go through the whip, you also don't feel anything under your fingers.
Guess Ambrose must have just cast Silent Image or something similar...
Not going to lie, you kind of wanted to crack a whip.
While you're wrestling with your disappointment, the Briars decide to disguise themselves thrice over: first, and at least in part because there aren't really any small animals strongly associated with Indiana Jones-
"Unless it's snakes or rats," Briar notes.
"Which aren't happening," her Shadow adds.
-they assume their human-sized forms; then you and Shadow Alex exploit one of the advantages of a familiar bond to cast the Spell of the Adjustable Polymorph on your respective partners; and finally, you ritually cast the Spell of Adjustable Disguise to give them the appearance of suitable clothes.
Briar now looks like... ...a student-slash-professor's assistant.
It's honestly a pretty easy disguise for the two (or four) of you to put together, thanks to the attendees of UC Sunnydale you've seen around town. You are careful to look Briar's costume over to make sure she didn't include any insignias, mascots, or obvious team colors that might give away any connection to your hometown - or for preference, your home state.
You can't exactly be sure about the latter, since you're hardly familiar with every sports team in California, but you can at least rule out the big-name universities and major franchises.
As the guard shows you to where Mr. Pritchard is waiting, you look around, taking in the camp and its occupants. There are half a dozen tents set up in neat rows of three, while the four prefab buildings are a bit more scattered around, due to their greater size - both in terms of floor space and in overall weight. A few additional temporary buildings of the sort that are more or less just big frames with canvas pulled over them, as well as some poles with lamps on them (currently turned off, as it's a fairly pleasant afternoon), round out the site - at least this part of it, you can make out a couple of overhead lights not too far to the... east, you think, probably erected over or adjacent to the actual dig site, and thus the fortress.
You count twenty or so people standing or moving about the camp, perhaps a third of whom are dressed and subtly armed and armored like the guardswoman and her partner; the rest are kitted out for an extended expedition into the woods, with tough yet comfortable gear, boots, hats, satchels, and a few other odds and ends.
You're directed to one of the temporary buildings, which - from its larger than average size, central positioning within the camp, and the presence of a radio antenna and possible satellite uplink on the roof - you guess to be a command post. Once inside, the main room proves to be divided in two parts: the one further on seems to be a miniature theater, with a number of collapsible benches set up in front of a projection screen, the actual projector being at the middle point of the divide; and the portion you've stepped into is dominated by a large central table, which has a map - presumably of the dig site and the surrounding area - laid out over top of it. There's a security station in the next room, with two people keeping a watch on a small wall of a dozen small TV monitors that show different parts of the dig site and the camp.
Roderick Pritchard is standing next to the central table, waiting patiently - maybe he saw your approach on one of the security monitors? Regardless, you were half-expecting to find the man in armor, but instead, he's dressed much like the other members of the camp. He's also not alone. Another pair of guards stand quietly behind him, flanking the door to the security room - a position that gives them a rather good view of the entire main room - while four more people are arranged around the table. Three of them don't immediately draw your attention, but the fourth...
Well, eerily beautiful women with pale skin, white hair, and red eyes are rather attention-getting, even when they're dressed in the same, less-than-entirely flattering sort of gear that the rest of the camp is wearing.
While you're considering the implications of the presence of a member of the Einzbern family, Mr. Pritchard greets you with a smirk. "We meet again, Dr. Jones."
"Does that make you Belloq?"
"Touche," Mr. Pritchard concedes.
The Einzbern woman tilts her head to one side, looking faintly puzzled by the remarks.
Having noticed you noticing the unexpected guest in the room, Roderick begins introducing you to his companions. The fit but not exactly muscular fellow who almost disappears into the shadow of the knight's massive shoulders is his aide, Fred Clarkson; the tall, athletic brunette standing across from him is the head of site security, Leanne Griffith; and the short, swarthy man whose own broad-shouldered build makes him look a bit like he might be Roddy's Mediterranean cousin is introduced as Dr. Pavlos Megalos, who's been leading the actual digging.
"And this," Roderick concludes, turning to the almost albino woman, "is Miss Irina, of the Einzbern."
"Hello, Dr. Jones," a soft, lightly German-accented voice greets you in English, as the woman nods.
"Hello, Miss Einz-"
"Irina," she interrupts quietly, but firmly.
"...I'm sorry?"
"Servant, not family," she states, as if that explains it. "Also, informant, guest, and/or prisoner."
You blink, once at the woman's impassive tone and expression - which haven't shifted this entire time, save for her muted confusion at the Indiana Jones references - once at her actual words, and then turn to Mr. Pritchard.
"There's something of a funny story, there," the big man begins. "A few days after we first moved into Germany looking for this place, a party of Einzbern homunculi turned up to observe us. They were... politely obvious about it-"
"He means we were bad at it, but is too nice to say so," Irina clarifies.
"-well, yes," Roderick admits with a tectonic shrug. "Distinctive pigmentation, limited skills in woodscraft, unsuitable attire, and a general lack of concern about any of the above do not a good operative make. In any case, they followed us around for several weeks, while we made it look like we had no idea what we were doing-"
"Very convincingly," Irina agrees.
"-and eventually their human handler got fed up and left for the nearest town, putting the homunculi on a rotating watch. It happened to be raining one day when it was Irina's turn, and, well, I don't know if you've ever seen an abandoned puppy out in a downpour...?"
No, but you're familiar enough with dogs that you can picture the abject misery. Mentally superimposing that image on someone with Irina's looks and demeanor, you experience an urge to wince that you don't bother suppressing.
Mr. Clarkson nods. "That was about how we reacted."
"Those of us that weren't busy dragging the poor girl into a tent and drying her off," Dr. Megalos adds with a bright grin.
"I'm in charge of security around here," Ms. Griffith grumbles. "We would have stopped BEING secure pretty quick if we'd let a less-than-friendly party's asset die of pneumonia."
"And yet you got into a shouting match with that same party, that ended with you punching out the handler."
"The witch had it coming."
"Was she actually a witch, or...?" you inquire.
"Usual magus," Ms. Griffith replies gruffly.
"She doesn't like it when people swear around me," Irina informs you with the faintest of smiles. "It's cute."
"I am not cute."
Ms. Griffith's statement might be more convincing if you couldn't see the guards trying not to laugh at their boss.
"Long story short," Roderick picks up, "we kind of adopted the girl. Her handler is still following us, after a fashion, but hasn't actually come near any of our campsites since before the snow flew. Irina's siblings turn up once a week to check on her condition and hear her reports, which have been remarkably devoid of anything we wouldn't want the Einzberns to know at this time."
"It would be a violation of guest-right to reveal or convey to others information that my hosts have asked me to keep secret, while I remain in their care," comes the calm statement. "Meanwhile, prisoners are not permitted unmonitored contact with visitors, and their privileges are reliant on their good conduct. I have come to enjoy my privileges, and have therefore attempted to conduct myself as a model guest and prisoner for the duration of my stay." She pauses, and another faint smile emerges, this one ever-so-slightly vindictive. "Also, I hope to see the look on the witch's face when the truth of events here comes out to the family head."
...
Well then.
While it is somewhat reassuring that Irina hasn't revealed anything to her family so far, that doesn't entirely settle your nerves.
For one thing, she's indicated that she means to tell the rest of Einzberns about at least some of what she's seen at a later time. While that outcome might be less damaging than if they'd found out about the Memorian Base in a timely manner, you can't say it would be harmless.
For another thing, even if it turns out that Irina is entirely on your side - or perhaps more correctly, on the side of Mr. Pritchard and his people, or maybe just Ms. Griffith - you're still going to be dealing with the attention of a clan of Magi capable enough that Ambrose evidently prefers not to cross them without backup and preparation. At least, that's your read on things, based on how he HASN'T gone off on his own and punched their family head in the face yet, like he's been saying he wants to for a while now.
With what you know of their abilities and culture, for a Magus lineage to give a wizard of Ambrose's talent and resources pause like that would require them to be pretty powerful, and would in turn necessitate their having been around for a fairly long time. You don't recall anyone ever telling you exactly how old the Einzbern lineage is, but you have good reason to suspect they've been practicing Magecraft for half a millennium or more: the Grail Wars have been going on for most of centuries at this point; and it likely would have taken that much time again for a clan of Magi to build up the knowledge and resources necessary to put together a ritual like that in the first place.
A single family would never have survived for five centuries if they were all a bunch of idiots. Individual idiocy is one thing - everybody has their off-days and moments of bad-decision making, and every bloodline has its prize dolts - but the clan as a whole has to have been relatively competent just to have stuck around for so long, never mind building up the power and respect they obviously enjoy on the supernatural side of things.
With that in mind, then, you have to ask yourself: if YOU were part of a family of alchemists that had managed to survive and thrive in the Magus community for five hundred years or more, while developing your art to the point where you could mass-produce powerful human-like homunculi, what sort of contingencies would YOU enact to protect your bloodline's hard-earned secrets and precious assets?
...
Okay, this may have been a bad question to ask, because Ganondorf's memories are offering up all KINDS of nasty little safeguards.
"Miss Irina," you say, with a calm you don't really feel.
"Yes, Dr. Jones?"
"Have you ever heard of the Spell to Analyze Dweomers?"
"I have," Irina replies quickly, "and I must politely request that you not attempt to cast it on me, Dr. Jones. The Spell to Analyze Dweomers is considered a threat to the sanctity of the Einzbern Magecraft, and I would be forced to take action to protect my family's secrets." Red eyes look you over. "As I am not a combat model, and taking the presence of Mr. Pritchard and his associates into account, I must conclude that any physical method I might employ would be ineffective at deterring you, thus forcing me to resort to my self-termination function, even if I would rather not do so."
Erk.
"'Self-termination'?" Briar echoes.
Irina nods calmly. "It is one of several magical effects upon my person whose existence I am aware of and permitted to mention to outsiders. I have already described the others to Ms. Griffith as best I can."
You look to the security chief.
"I had one of my people take a quick look with Mage Sight, after we determined that wasn't considered dangerous-"
"Common Mage Sight lacks the ability to comprehensively break down and analyze Mysteries," Irina explains. "It is also easily fooled or foiled by various measures; thus, it is not considered a threat."
"-and his findings more or less match to Irina's account," Ms. Griffith replies shortly, before giving you the run-down.
Arguably the least offensive of the various effects is the Spell of Status, basically a combination of magical GPS tracker and vital signs monitor. Speaking as a professional security officer, Leanne admits that it makes perfect sense to include something like that in a valuable asset's kit, she's just ticked that it was built right into Irina without her consent.
Next is the Spell to Endure Elements. Yet again, it's a useful bit of magic that makes sense for Irina to have - her family lives and operates mainly in a mountainous area of Germany, after all - but it's also one that was clearly being abused by her handler, as while the spell protects against mundane extremes of heat and cold, it doesn't keep one dry or comfortable if they're standing out in the rain without proper gear.
The third spell is a curse akin to a Geas, which actively forces Irina to employ any means available to her to avoid revealing sensitive information - such as the workings of Einzbern Magecraft - to anyone that is not a member of her family and/or has not been given permission to know.
Finally, there's the "self-termination function," a nasty piece of Necromancy that's half-curse and half-death spell. Irina can trigger it of her own free will, but it's also designed to go off automatically in response to certain pre-set conditions, one of which is an attempt to investigate the Einzbern magic with high-powered Divination effects.
"I am not a bomb," Irina says, as firmly as her soft voice will allow. "The termination switch is designed to immediately and painlessly end my life, send my Magic Circuits into a destructive overload, and ruin my body in a manner that will deny any and all information regarding the Mystery of my creation to any who attempt a subsequent examination."
...
So, you will NOT be using Analyze Dweomer on Irina at this time. Your Mage Sight is still on the table, though, while Power Sight... might be, although you were kind of disinclined to play that particular card to start with, and are even more reluctant to consider it now.
It's unlikely that Irina could know what Power Sight is, beyond a powerful equivalent of Mage Sight - but that might be enough to force her to kill herself.
You decide to be as thorough about this as you can, without putting Irina's life at risk. With a slight frown of concentration, you engage your Mage Sight-
"Pretty," Irina comments.
-and resist the impulse to protest the homunculus's use of that vexing description for the glow of your eyes as you examine her aura.
As expected, your Mage Sight picks out four active magical signatures upon - or perhaps within - Irina's person. While you technically can't distinguish the structure of the magic in question well enough to identify the individual spells, you likely would have recognized the Spell to Endure Elements even without Ms. Griffith's quick summary; it's just too common a spell for it not to be recognized, which is likely half the reason the Einzberns didn't bother trying to conceal it. The Spell of Status is only a bit less well-known, and still well within the means of most of the spellcasting priests you've met on Earth, despite the divine injunctions, which likewise explains why it wasn't masked.
As for the other two spells Irina admitted to being under, the aura of Enchantment Magic focused on her brain and mouth is most definitely related to the Spell of Geas, while the kill-switch she mentioned manifests in your sight as a dark aura of Necromancy primarily focused on her heart, but also reaching throughout her entire circulatory system, with another heavier presence about the head.
It's a little disturbing to see someone's veins and arteries glowing like that, but you have to admit that the placement makes sense. The heart IS a major symbol of life, so focusing a death-curse there would increase its odds of taking the victim out in one go. In addition to that, accessing the circulatory system would allow the magic to spread throughout the entire body over time, so that when it was finally triggered, it could be counted on to kill every cell, as opposed to being focused on specific areas. The curse's presence around Irina's brain could reflect several things: the Einzberns wanting to make extra-certain that no information could be accessed in or through her brain; links to her senses, both mundane and mystical, so that the curse would "know" when it needed to go off, in case Irina was unable or unwilling to trigger it; and perhaps a secondary trigger, whether in case of the "primary charge" on her heart failing to go off for some reason, or just for added thoroughness.
Oddly enough, once you account for how it's spread throughout Irina's body, the failsafe mechanism is remarkably contained, its presence not extending beyond her body or even to the outer layers of skin. That would seem to suggest that there isn't a remote activation function, or at least not one that's built into the curse.
That is... interesting. You aren't going to rule out that an Einzbern couldn't order Irina to self-terminate, of course, or that the clan doesn't have another spell that can be used to compel a homunculus to die from a distance, but...
You put a pin in that thought for the moment.
There don't appear to be any other spells on Irina, which honestly comes as a bit of a surprise. Between your generally suspicious nature and Irina's precise mention of spells she was AWARE of being on her person, you were more than half-expecting to find some variant on the Spell of Magic Aura or the Spell of Nondetection being used to mask additional signatures, thus explaining why Ms. Griffith's investigator only picked up the four effects that Irina declared outright.
But as far as you can tell, there's no such thing present. And given your success at divining your way through such formidable defenses as a nine-tailed fox's illusions or a Quincy fortress's spirit-warded walls, you can't really credit the idea that you'd be beaten by a mere Spell of Magic Aura, even if it were personally cast by that Jubstachoo guy.
Granted, there are more powerful spells for the purpose of playing Abjuration/Divination Information War - even discounting Mind Blank, which is more or less the "nuclear option" for the defensive side of that equation - but there's a limit to how many independent effects even the best artificers and enchanters can build into their creations, and the cost and difficulty of implementing such things scales as the number and potency of those effects rises. It wouldn't exactly have been trivial to... implant... those two curses into Irina, and if she's meant to be an "expendable" unit, it wouldn't make sense to pack her with too many hidden features - that would simply be a waste of resources.
With the spell effects at least tentatively sorted through, you now focus on Irina herself, bringing her personal magical aura to the forefront while the energies of the spells fade and blur in your perception. While you can't directly see her Magic Circuits this way - Mage Sight not granting the ability to see through solid objects - their outermost elements do appear as particularly bright points and lines amid the "cloud" of Irina's energies. She's got quite a few of them, and there's a fair amount of energy running through them, even if she's not currently using any of it.
Overall, the female homunculus registers as an arcane magic-user with access to spells of the fourth circle. Maybe not a lot of those, and probably not combat-focused, given her comment on her own design, but still, that puts Irina almost halfway up the ladder of conventional magical ability. Her magical reserves are also distinctly above-average for her apparent level of skill.
Considering she's one of the products of what is effectively a magical mass-production process, that's honestly impressive. It speaks a lot to the skills and resources of the Einzberns, and also goes some way towards explaining why even Ambrose is treating them with some degree of seriousness.
Taking on a fellow archmage mano-a-mano would be one thing. Taking on a fellow archmage backed up by a small army of mid-tier spellcasters and probably comparable physical combatants would be quite another.
At that thought, you glance at the other people in the room, taking their magical measure for comparative purposes. Roderick's aura is stronger, though as one of Arthur Drake's peers, you know that his energies will be focused on internal reinforcement and other methods of self-enhancement. Mr. Clarkson's magical aura is considerably weaker, barely above the level of a regular person, while Dr. Megalos reads as a more traditional second-tier magic-user. Ms. Griffith also seems to have access to that level of magic, as well as signs of a moderately strong and trained ki aura, while her two subordinates give off only trace levels of magical potential but are likewise trained in ki use.
You also pick up a scattering of magical items among the group. They're most concentrated on the three security people, whose body armor and weapons all bear low-level enhancements, but the other three men in the room all have at least a couple of items each.
Irina, incidentally, isn't carrying any magic items.
Although you are tempted to run some additional scans of Irina's person to try and get a better idea of how the various magical effects on her person - mainly the curses - are affecting her, your desire to limit the amount of information the Einzberns might be able to extract from her after all of this overrides that curiosity.
It's one thing for a guy dressed like a magic-user to use Mage Sight, and quite another for that guy to call on half a dozen different forms of energy-perception. You don't know how common it is for a Magus - or indeed, any other "community" of magic-users on Earth - to have access to such a breadth of sensory abilities, but if your circle of acquaintances is any indication, it's rare enough to significantly narrow the field of candidates for "Dr. Jones's" true identity.
Not nearly so bad as a display of Power - which is, so far as you know, unique to you and your Shadow, and perhaps to other extensions of your will and person - but still fairly concerning.
While you aren't sure what Irina's sensory capabilities are like when it comes to registering and identifying non-magical sources of energy, some degree of awareness of life-force is likely, given how Magi power their craft, and you can't rule out spiritual awareness, either, in light of what Magic Circuits are and do.
There's also the question of whether or not the Einzberns were as sanguine about having their creations investigated via alternate means as they were about Mage Sight. You don't think it's terribly likely, but at the same time, you aren't keen on risking someone's life over the matter.
That said, you ARE willing to let your passive senses get as much of a reading off of Irina as they can.
Activating a couple of mind-enhancing effects, but foregoing a Ki Overload due to the telltale glow that you still haven't entirely managed to suppres, you power down your Mage Sight-
"Aw," Irina sort-of pouts.
-and you relax the normal restraints on your Ki Sense and Spiritual Sense as you briefly turn away from the homunculus to let the rest of the room know that your findings concur with their existing information. You add that, even with this verification, you would still prefer to have Irina escorted to another building or tent while the meeting goes forward.
"Good to know we're on the same page, there," Ms. Griffith notes, as she gestures to the two guards. The men form up with her, and the three of them escort Irina to the door. The homunculus makes no move to protest or resist, and you take the opportunity to cycle through a couple of your enhanced visual modes.
You quickly renew your restraints when Irina pauses at the exit to curtsey politely to Roderick and the rest of you. From the way Leanne and her men stopped in time and are waiting patiently for their charge to finish, she's done this before.
"It was a pleasure to meet you, Drs. Jones, ladies," Irina adds. "I hope we can speak again, about many fascinating matters that will drive members of my family to distraction."
You get in your last passive reading as Irina leaves the room, though the psychic probe of Mental Sight is a bit obscured by the presence of the guards.
All in all, Irina feels very close to human, but... faint, or maybe pale, in a way you've never encountered before in this lifetime, and which isn't ringing any bells with Ganondorf's partial memories, either. You think that oddity - which is present in her ki, spiritual, AND mental signatures - must have to do with her origins as a product of alchemy, a "copy" of humanity that is technically a kind of construct, but one far removed from the nature of golems, Ironknuckles, and other such things. She's also distinctly unlike a Simulacrum or one of your Dark Selves, having not a trace of active Illusion Magic in her make-up.
You'd suspected that it would take a more active and in-depth examination of Irina to yield any significant information, and you weren't wrong.
"Sorry to have sprung her on you like that," Roderick says, once the young lady is out of the building and of earshot.
You raise a hand. "Is Ambrose aware that she's been in your camp this whole time?"
"He is," Mr. Pritchard sighs, "but I've known the man more than long enough that I should have figured he might 'forget' to mention her to you." He pauses, looking at you - specifically at your disguised form, you think - and adds, "Did the old pest know you were coming here looking like this?"
"It was a discussion about the sort of interest the local Magus population had taken in your activities that convinced us to change our appearances," you reply, gesturing at yourself, your Shadow, and the Briars.
"...better than knowingly letting you walk into meeting her wearing your actual face, then," the knight finally says.
"Barely," your Shadow grumbles.
Do you have any questions (or complaints) to make to Mr. Pritchard before the actual meeting gets underway?
"Ah. I understand."
It's difficult to tell with her impassive expression, but you think Irina is both a little disappointed by your response, and perfectly honest in her words.
There's not much help for it, though. Your priority on this excursion is to fulfill your promise to the Memorians, ideally without having to deal any more closely with the Einzberns than you already have. If circumstances align such that you finish clearing out the ruin and none of Irina's "relatives" have showed up, then maybe you'll have something to talk to her about.
And then again, maybe you won't.
While waiting for the security chief to return, you ask Mr. Pritchard if he and his people would have any objections to you casting a few spells to ensure privacy.
Maybe you're still being paranoid, but your brief examination showed that Irina does have the raw magical power necessary to cast assorted Divination Spells, such as Clairvoyance, which are quite useful for eavesdropping.
"We actually do have a few such measures," Roderick replies, nodding at Dr. Megalos. The shorter man obligingly digs into one of his pouches and pulls out a device that your passive magical senses register as... nothing in particular, actually.
The good doctor slides the device onto the table and activates it, causing a spherical shell of magical energy to sweep out and fill the room. Now that it's active, you have no trouble picking up the aura of Abjuration Magic, its similarities to the Spell of Nondetection, or the little flourishes in the spell structure that signify it as one of Ambrose's creations - thus explaining why your passive Mage Sight couldn't get a good read on the device itself.
"That said," the knight continues, "Ambrose didn't exactly make this particular device as powerful as possible, so if Irina's magical skill measures up to her power-"
"And from what Leanne has said, it does," Mr. Clarkson notes.
"-she'd have a fair chance of beating the ward. So I'm certainly not going to object to an additional layer of defense, just in case."
Once again, you and your Shadow trade glances. You'd initially considered casting the Spell of Blurring and the Spell of the Silent Table, but the former would just give everyone in here a headache, while the central table is actually too big for the latter spell to be any use, unless you all crowded together towards one corner of it. Given the number of bodies and the size of certain people's shoulders, that just isn't going to be practical.
Also, not going to lie, you're kind of in the mood to one-up Ambrose's anti-scrying device.
"Private Sanctum?" you muse.
"Private Sanctum," your duplicate agrees, before turning to get started on the ritual.
"I'll wait outside to let Ms. Griffith know," Shadow Briar offers. "Just so that she doesn't come in shooting when she opens the door and finds an impenetrable wall of fog."
"Please and thank you," you reply, before asking if Mr. Pritchard would object to you calling in some additional individuals who have an interest in this location and its... hmmm... handling?
He doesn't, and you get started on a Spell of Sending, saving the Memorian Sending Stone for when you're inside the base itself. If the wards are working well enough to block scrying spells from the outside, they'll likely interfere with magical messages originating on the inside, and the Sending Stone was designed specifically to be able to bypass that interference.
As it happens, Ms. Griffith returns before Shadow Alex is much more than halfway done with the spell.
"Got her set up in the usual place?" Mr. Pritchard asks.
"Yes, sir." At your politely inquisitive glance, the lady adds, "Tent on the far side of the camp from the ruins, no direct lines of sight to them, this building, or other sensitive locations, magically-aware guards on watch, and her current favorite books as a distraction." She sighs. "It's not an ideal arrangement, but it's about the best we can do without moving her out of the camp entirely, or applying actual restraints. Not that we exactly came equipped to take a magus prisoner..."
Seems like a bit of an oversight, but then again, one doesn't carry something like anti-magic manacles around without anticipating the possibility of needing them and being willing to do so - which wouldn't exactly go over well with the local magic-users, if and when they noticed.
That aside, either course of action would have meant that Irina was no longer a "guest" even under the most generous interpretation of the term, and thus had no further reason to comport herself as one. Depending on which measures were used, that might have been enough to provoke a response from one of those curses in her system, the other Einzberns in the region, or whatever training-slash-education-slash-"programming" the magus clan gives to its homunculi.
In any event, there is minimal conversation until Shadow Alex finishes setting up the Sanctum, at which point he explains to the other humans in the now fog-lined room just who and what you're making contact with.
"Wait, you WANT to summon the ghosts in here?"
"Different ghosts," your Shadow replies to Mr. Clarkson's nervous outburst. "The ones my Original is going to talk to are conscious-"
Dr. Megalos suddenly looks VERY interested.
"That doesn't reassure me," Mr. Clarkson sighs, running a hand through his hair.
"-and they'll be able to tell us more about the layout and security measures of the base," your dark doppelganger goes on, "maybe even knock some sense into the rest of the spooks and get them to let us in and help."
In due course, you complete the spell, shift back to your usual appearance to avoid any misunderstandings, and speak your message: "Captain Marcus, I am meeting with the team excavating the Base. Would you and Priest Cato care to join us?"
There is a pause.
"We absolutely would," the Memorian officer's otherworldly voice echoes in your ears. "But give me five minutes to make sure Cato doesn't come out smiting."
...right, undead priest of Mars. Might be a little cranky to get summoned without warning.
Good thing you thought to call ahead!
"And if possible," Marcus continues, "bring Hermanus as well. We may-"
Blast that limit on message length. Still, bringing the Outpost's top magic-user along does make sense.
Since you've got three spooks to summon, and they're powerful enough that you can't get any two of them with one spell, you and your Shadow start setting up for simultaneous castings of the Spell of Planar Binding. This involves moving a lot of the furniture in the "movie hall" part of the command center to get the space you need, but fortunately, there's room enough to stack the benches up along the walls and fit your summoning circles in.
The Spell to Summon Monsters wouldn't have required such preparation, but using that spell in this situation would have been sub-optimal, as the Memorian trio wouldn't really be "here," which would have limited some of their abilities and might have affected how their former compatriots responded to their presence - if they did at all. It would also have needlessly complicated the triumvirate's own ability to remember this meeting and whatever else happens during their visit.
Besides, it's been a thousand years or so since these men set foot on their home soil. You think they're due the chance.
You have the circles set down, but as you're about to start the ritual to call forth Captain Marcus, a thought occurs that has you measuring the distance between the floor of this room and its ceiling.
There is, you believe, enough space for what you have in mind.
"What are you-" Mr. Pritchard begins.
"Just had an idea," you reply, as you step outside for a moment to fetch the Memorian Standard, which you left standing to one side of the door before coming in.
When you return, Dr. Megalos begins making strangling noises.
"What- where- who-?"
Mr. Pritchard and Mr. Clarkson are also staring, while Ms. Griffith - who would have seen the Standard when she came back from dropping off Irina - just looks on expectantly.
"In order, it's a Memorian Legion Standard, I received it as a gift at my last birthday party, and it was presented to me by members OF the Legion in question," you reply, as you maneuver the pole across the command center and into the movie hall. "Sort of an 'in gratitude for services rendered' thing."
This does not help the good doctor find his words.
"...I'm sorry, I must have misheard you," Mr. Clarkson says bemusedly. "Did you just imply that you invited GHOSTS to your birthday?"
It takes a little work to set up the Standard, since there's an actual floor in here keep you from simply jabbing the downward end of the staff into the ground, but you manage. Once it's in place, you get on with the summoning ritual.
Ten minutes later, Captain Marcus manifests within your binding circle, wearing his full combat regalia.
He promptly blinks at the sight of the Standard set up behind you, and greets you with a bemused, "Hail, Legionary."
"Hail, Captain," you greet him. "I hope the spiders haven't returned in my absence."
"They have not," he replies.
"The Little Folk have been minding their manners as well," Priest Cato chimes in from the other circle. "I understand we have you to thank for that as well."
You nod. "Welcome back to Earth, gentlemen. In case you're wondering, the Base is about a quarter of a mile in" - you gesture eastwards - "that direction."
You quickly sort out the remaining formalities of the ritual, "binding" the two spirits to assist you in securing the Memorian Base and the portal within from any demonic infestation or other invaders that might yet linger, allowing their cohort in Faerie to return home at last, and thereby putting them and their allies in the Earthside Base to rest. Hopefully. Then you and your Shadow release the soldier and the priest from the circles, with you dismissing your array while Shadow Alex gets on with calling up Magus Hermanus.
As you wait for the late arrival, you make the necessary introductions.
Roderick Pritchard and Marcus Valerius Faustus are soon engaged in a polite but informal conversation about the structure of legions, and how the Memorian model varied from its well-known Roman precursors.
Dr. Pavlos Megalos has his attention split between listening in on that conversation and talking about religion with Marcus Porcius Cato.
Leanne Griffith is looking on all of this with the troubled expression of a woman faced with a problem she isn't sure how to solve - on a hunch, "how to take down a couple of ghostly not-Romans if they try anything funny" - while Fred Clarkson is just trying to make himself as unnoticeable to the two ghosts as possible.
Then your Shadow finishes summoning Magus Hermanus, the last round of introductions are made, and the meeting finally gets going.
Mr. Clarkson clears away some of the papers that were spread out on the table-top, revealing a topographic map of the area with a few of those write-on sheets of translucent plastic on top of it. The lower of those sheets has very neatly drawn lines of black ink depicting the excavated portion of the base - which doesn't amount to much - and grey lines representing the estimated size of the overall structure. The middle sheet has several points that overlap the base's outer wall marked - most of them small red dots, one a larger circle, and then another circle of purple - and trails of red ink leading from them out into the surrounding wilderness and then back again; there are also spots of green and brown, which you take to be representations of the trees and stones. Finally, the topmost page is blank.
"I take it these are the gates?" you inquire, tapping at the two circles in the walls.
"Purple for the active one, red for the inactive one that just has ghosts marching through the wall," Roderick confirms. "The rest are the sentry posts we've observed and the trails of their preferred routes, at least as far as we've been able to map."
"Bit tricky when they only show up at night, and we've been trying to keep a safe distance," Ms. Griffiths agrees.
Based on this, the ghosts don't appear to be venturing too far from the base, just making a circuit of the wall every hour. The three Memorians in the room state that if the ghosts really are just re-enacting their normal duties, there SHOULD be five two-man teams walking the perimeter at a distance of about one mile every three hours, and a combined group patrolling out to two miles every six hours or so.
That Pritchard's people haven't seen any such thing yet is a little concerning, as it implies the ghostly soldiers are acting as if they can't spare the manpower - so either there aren't enough of them currently active in the base or even present at all to meet that standard, or something is distracting them.
You'd like to believe it was the former, but...
When it comes to the internal layout, you're informed that the Earthside Base has a rather different floorplan than the Faerie Outpost. This was partly due to the differences in geography, but also a security precaution taken by the original builders, just in case anything from Faerie managed to fight its way through the Outpost to the Gate connecting to Earth.
No sense making things TOO easy, you suppose...
"It's not a real party until you've raised the dead."
Fred stares at you for a moment, and then quietly says, "No offense, but I think I may have to take a preliminary rain check on any invitations to your future parties."
"No offense taken," you reply with a shrug.
"Though I kind of want to invite him, now," Shadow Briar murmurs.
You had to briefly resume your normal appearance while casting the Spells of Sending and Planar Binding, as the Memorians wouldn't have recognized your voice or appearance while disguised as Harrison Ford, but once they were all present, you shifted your Adjustable Polymorph back to its original state, explaining the need for the disguise and letting the ghostly trio know to address you as "Jones" in public for the time being.
"Sounds like it might be derived from 'Iohannes'," Cato muses, mostly to himself.
"Through the Greek 'Ioannes', from the Hebrew 'Yochanan'," Dr. Megalos adds.
"Point is, it's the name of a well-known fictional character who studies and digs up ancient relics, and usually gets into trouble along the way," you clarify. "So it covers my actual identity without putting any real people at risk."
"That, and it's funny," Briar comments.
"Also that."
On the matter of the restless ghosts, or lack thereof, you inquire if Marcus knows the commander of this base.
"The base was under Brennus's command at the time," Marcus replies. "When last we spoke, he'd received orders for reassignment and made himself and those of his men due to depart ready for the transfer. He was just waiting for their replacements to arrive - his was a man named Tertius, not someone either of us knew terribly well, though his record seemed suitable."
"Do you think either of them were involved in the mutiny?"
"Tertius's appointment with a unit of fresh troops would have been a good opportunity to smuggle in the force that attacked us through the portal," Marcus admits with a faint growl. "By the same token, Brennus's departure would have created enough of a bureaucratic smokescreen to cover for a unit going missing, and he WAS the one in command when the saboteur and sappers that undermined our defenses initially crossed over. Whether he was complicit in that or deceived along with the rest of us, I don't know for certain, though I would tend to think the latter."
"Personal insight?" Roderick inquires.
"Brennus and I were the only two captains assigned to this duty," comes the admission. "Aside from our closest aids, we were each other's only real options for company during off-duty drinking for the better part of three years." There is a ghostly shrug. "After a while, you get to know a person."
Mr. Pritchard and Ms. Griffith both nod at that.
"I will note," Cato interjects then, "that in my prayers, Father Mars revealed that neither Tertius nor Brennus have made their way to the Underworld."
"Brennus was Gallian through his mother," Marcus replies. "He followed her gods, even if he did respect ours. We were fairly certain that his lineage was why he was being transferred - a concession to the paranoid and the bigots, or perhaps spite over my actions in preserving my command."
That's right, Marcus did mention somebody trying to remove him from his post due to his own kin-ties to Gallia.
"Regardless," the captain continues, "whether Brennus died in disgrace or was buried with full honors, I would not expect to find him awaiting me in Pluto's realm. I cannot speak to Tertius's fate."
Okay, then.
When you inquire about the sort of magical defenses you should expect, you're told that they largely match those you saw in the Faerie Outpost: the wards against scrying and unauthorized extradimensional travel; the dispelling effects on the portals that serve as the exterior doors; further warding on the stone surfaces to prevent elemental manipulation; a Divination-based detection system capable of monitoring the entire facility; communications on the same scale; combat-grade constructs; magical locking mechanisms for various internal doors; some interior force-fields; some old-fashioned architectural trickery; and of course, the legionaries themselves, with their physical and magical training and enchanted combat kit.
That said, since this base IS on Earth and was therefore more concerned with preventing access by human intruders, some traps based on Enchantment and Illusion Magic - which would have been largely ineffectual against the Fae - were set up in and around the facility. Most of the external ones will have long since failed, since they were basically magical tripwires and booby-traps set up in the surrounding area, and would not have survived a thousand years without maintenance; those on the immediate exterior of the base might still be operational, however, and those within almost certainly will be.
These traps included various spells meant to chase off, misdirect, impair, and disable any mortal intruders, ranging from variants on the simple Spell to Cause Fear that would spook the merely curious, to Spells of Charming meant to convince more serious intruders to explain themselves, to Spells of Confusion, Sleep, and a few low-end Power Words to take out the actively hostile. Nothing directly lethal - the Memorians had their own people to worry about, after all - and unlikely enough to deter a serious attack by anyone that knew where the base actually was, but plenty to give the defenders an advantage if needed.
Figuring out the actual state of the Earthside Base's internal systems was unfortunately beyond the ghosts' abilities before this. There WAS once a reliable two-way communicator, but the damage to the Faerie Outpost's control systems ruined that, and even if they'd been able to repair it, odds are good that nobody would have picked up on the Earth end. That said, Marcus, Cato, and Hermanus all had clearance to enter this base, and might yet be able to gain some degree of control over it - IF the systems are still functional, IF they haven't compromised by demonic contamination, and IF there's nobody in control of them already.
Even though you're pretty sure he couldn't hear your quiet exchange, Mr. Clarkson still regards you and your Shadow's partner warily...
Once you've gotten what information you can about the base itself from the ghostly trio, you inquire about their ancient "neighbors" - specifically, the nation of (or within) Gallia that was apparently infiltrated and overturned by a demonic cult, and had dispatched agents to sabotage and destroy the Faerie Outpost and its Earthside counterpart.
"I'm not sure how much of what we can tell you about them would still be relevant," Marcus replies. "Like so much of the rest of the continent, the Gallians had a mix of Roman and barbarian influence even before Memoria's founders returned from their exile in Faerie. The tribes that originally dwelled in that region had some supernatural blood themselves - from the beast-kin, from the local Fae, and from their gods - but the strongest of those lineages were either the fiercest and most warlike, and hence were crushed by the legions of old when Rome took those lands, or else were too strange to survive in the civilization that followed in the legions' wake. The remnants of the broken clans and those that surrendered mingled with the legion retirees and camp followers, as well as the colonists sent up from the heartlands to settle the area, and their original ways were largely forgotten or mixed with those of their conquerors."
"The powers the old tribes worshipped diminished alongside them," Cato says then. "Great beasts that had been honored as gods or the messengers thereof were slain or driven out; nature spirits either bowed their heads in service to the gods, lost their followers and diminished until they faded, or became monsters that needed to be slain for the good of all; and the ancestor-heroes of the tribes became mere tales. By the latter days of Memoria, only faded shades and faintly-remembered stories of what had once been remained, and the demons and their patsies took advantage of that."
The cult that the Memorian spirits describe evidently began by taking over one of the ancestral faiths that still persisted in Gallia, using subtle demonic sorceries to gradually replace or control the existing faithful, assume control, and subsequently alter the original beliefs and practices to suit their masters. Once they had a successful cadre of "converts," the cult began to spread, still using the guise of spirit-worship and the stories of heroes of old to deflect the attention of the authorities while drawing in prospective members, stirring their pride in one side of their heritage even as they downplayed the other.
That this involved twisting stories of Gallian warrior-chieftains and small gods to exalt the society that DESTROYED them, and then using these "true sons of Rome" to destroy their not-so-distant kinsmen and fellow Roman inheritors, is a kind of double-think that honestly gives you a headache to contemplate, though you have to admit that it does seem like something a demon would enjoy coming up with.
As members were drawn deeper into the cult and learned more of its "mysteries," the demonic influence seeped in and denigration of all those ignorant of the "truth" grew, until the central circle of each branch of the cult were wholly dedicated to their new "gods" and the destruction of "the Enemy and all who stood with them."
The cult agent that Marcus and Hermanus saw questioned claimed that some of the descendants of the "sacred bloodlines" of the Gallian tribes had their ancestral powers reawakened by the cult, but while the truth-telling magics used in his interrogation confirmed that the man believed he was telling the truth, no supporting evidence had been presented in those hearings.
"There WERE rumors coming out of Gallia of beasts in the night," Marcus adds thoughtfully. "Things like werewolves, but with the swiftness and loyalty of the wolf and the wit and skill of man replaced by mindless bloodlust and brute savagery. No such creatures were part of the force that invaded my command, but as to this one..." He trails off with a spectral shrug.
So, in addition to ghosts, rogue constructs, and maybe another case of demonic infestation - hopefully not involving Hyrulean monsters this time - you might run into... ghostly demonic werewolves?
...
That's actually kind of cool.
Your latest adventure was preceded by an extended period of scrying on the enemy fortress, locating the primary target and mapping out a suitable invasion route to reach him. Given how well that worked out for you, you're inclined to try the same thing again, even if - or perhaps BECAUSE - you don't have an army of psychopomps and magical knights on hand to support you this time.
Of course, you ALSO don't have a magical key giving you a sympathetic connection to the structure you're about to spy on, but you're also on the same plane of existence that it is, so things more or less even out.
First of all, Shadow Alex checks the tabletop map to lock in just how far away the Memorian Base is from your current position, and then casts a Greater Spell of Scrying, aimed at a point outside the active entrance.
The usual scrying globe pops into existence above the table, and within the twenty-foot sphere of space that it reveals, you see a wall of stone shaped in a familiar style, with a single stone arch carved in a manner that evokes the shape of a more primitive trilithon, the open space beneath it filled by a curtain of arcane energy that lies flush against the wall behind. The ground before and around the portal is so much bare dirt and a few small rocks, with fading signs of tool-use all about, including the tracks of a large set of tires - a backhoe or something, you would venture.
Mr. Pritchard and his people mentioned that the ghosts were only really active at night, and it's currently three-ish in the afternoon, so you weren't really expecting to see any ghosts, but luck or the Goddesses are with you, as the spectral silhouettes of a pair of Memorian legionaries are standing at attention alongside the portal. A normal person might not be able to see them, the sunlight rendering their forms transparent and faint to the point of near-invisibility, but your magically and spiritually sensitive eyes can pick them out readily enough through the medium of your Shadow's spell.
"What do you think?" you muse, looking around the table at your associates. "Would it be worth leaving a Spell of Scrying on one of those guys, to try and follow them when they go off-duty?"
"If I'm reading your timekeeping device correctly," Marcus notes, glancing at an analogue clock on one wall, "it's currently the third hour post-meridian. Standard duty shift would end by the fourth hour."
So there'd be a bit of a wait, but not an unreasonable one.
"The portal would also attempt to dispel any active effects on those who enter or exit," Hermanus adds.
You hadn't forgotten that, but based on the readings you're getting off of that gateway, the magic powering that aspect is essentially the Greater Spell to Dispel Magic. Given how your abilities have grown since you entered the Faerie Outpost all those months ago, as well as your particular expertise in Divination Magic, you're fairly confident in your Shadow's ability to slip a spell past the defenses.
Or maybe you ought to cast this spell yourself? It would let Shadow Alex focus more on what he's doing, as well as leave him more "room" to work with if he finds a need to cast other spells.
Shadow Alex greatly shortened the duration of this first Spell of Scrying, since it was only intended as a temporary starting point for the process of mapping the base. Now that he's seen the door and can fix the direction and distance he needs to adjust his "aim," your dark duplicate dismisses his first casting and then casts the spell a second time.
And like that, you're looking at at a room that appears to have been carved or magically-reshaped from solid, dark grey stone. It's... more than twenty feet across - you can't tell exactly how much more, given the limits of the spell, though you don't think it's much - with a ceiling that's about ten feet high. Torches line the walls, ten feet of space between them, crackling and dancing like mundane fire and giving off an aura of magic. The only "doorway" that you can see is the portal, which is flanked by two more ghostly guards.
Looking at the image, you are struck by a sense of deja vu. For all that the three Memorians said about the Earthside Base being built on a different floorplan to the Faerie Outpost, this chamber looks a LOT like the one you and the two Hakuba priests first stepped into, on your way to meeting skeletons, ghosts, and demonic spiders.
Speaking of which, you don't see or sense any corruption in this chamber. So far, so good...
Your musings are interrupted by a sigh from Hermanus.
"Problem, Magus?" Marcus asks.
"No, I'm just being reminded of how utterly ridiculous our young auxiliary's magical talents are," Hermanus sighs like the dead man he is, as he slumps in his place. "Wards might as well not even have been there..."
After a moment, Marcus reaches out and gives his brother-in-law a sympathetic pat on the back. "There, there?"
"I will curse you, Marcus."
It makes sense to have Shadow Alex cast the spell, since his mana is both expendable and relatively easy for you to replenish, but it also makes sense for you to be the one that scries on one of the ghosts, as you're not currently doing anything else that might require attention.
After a brief discussion, the two of you agree to share the load, as it were, each casting Greater Scrying on a separate spook. In light of the dispelling ward the magic will have to pass through, you enhance the spells for greater resilience - a course of action you wouldn't have considered if not for the Private Sanctum being there to mask your spellcasting - but you otherwise leave them unmodified.
Seeing another potential source for information, you opt to spy on both of the ghosts standing watch inside the portal. As you're about to cast the spell, however, a thought occurs that has you signaling for Shadow Alex to pause in his own casting.
"Problem?"
"Idea."
"...problem," one of the Briars sighs.
Sparing a moment to frown in stereo at your partners, you turn back to your Shadow. "I was thinking one of us might try boosting the effectiveness of the scrying spell, to reveal a larger area."
"...I think I see where you're going with this, but what words would we use?"
"Excuse me," Dr. Megalos interrupts, "but what sort of 'words' are you talking about?"
You and your dark side trade glances, he gestures for you to go ahead, and you explain for the benefit of the rest of the room. "I'm a sorcerer, so the exact limits of my magic are a little less rigidly defined than some other magical traditions. I've found that, if I 'push' a spell in the right way, I can sometimes get a greater result out of it than I would simply from casting it by rote."
The team's archaeological leader nods slowly. "Okay, I think I follow you so far. And would these 'words' you mentioned be some of the famous Power Words?"
"No," you answer. "For one thing, I haven't run across 'Power Word Scry' in my studies - although given how widespread the concept of that particular subset of magic is, I figure there's a fair chance that the Word actually DOES exist."
"No idea what the effects would be, though," Shadow Alex murmurs.
Yeah, from what you know on the subject - a mix of vague memories, brief mentions by Batreaux, and your recent use of the Resonant Word (which isn't QUITE the same thing) and Ambrose's employment of Power Word Sleep - Power Words tend to have fairly limited range. They don't exactly have to be HEARD by their targets to be effective, but if such a target is far enough away from the speaker for the Word to become muddled by background noise or other energies, it generally fails. Given scrying spells are meant to find things that are at least out of your immediate line of sight, if not on the far side of the planet or in another plane of existence... well.
"Anyway," you continue, "the 'words' I need aren't magical in and of themselves, they're just ways to help me direct my energies to greater effect than I normally would. The catch is that they either have to describe what I'm trying to do, or suit the situation in which I'm trying to do it."
"...and now, you've lost me," the good doctor admits.
"If we knew a spell to pull out someone's heart," Shadow Alex offers, "it might work better if we chanted 'Mola Ram' or 'Kali Ma' while casting it."
...
"Maybe not the best example," you mutter to your dark self.
Shadow Alex gestures to your currently disguised faces. "First thing that came to mind. Blame Lucas."
"Wait," Roderick says then, a look of dawning comprehension and dismay on his face. "You're saying... your magic runs on DRAMA?"
"It's exploiting the principle of sympathy," you begin.
"But drama and ham work, yes," Briar answers, nodding.
"...this explains SO MUCH about Ambrose," the big man groans.
"As far as I know, wizardry doesn't work like that."
Mr. Pritchard frowns. "So it's just Ambrose?"
"It's just him, yes."
The two of you sigh, with several others joining in.
"The more I hear about this fellow, the more I think I would be just as happy not to meet him," Dr. Megalos observes lightly.
"From your mouth to God's ear, Doctor," Mr. Clarkson says.
Okay, you think you've got something. A little rhyme, a little pop culture reference that you've used before, if perhaps not to any GREAT effect, then at least to no ILL one...
"Sight beyond sight-
No big cat noises, this time?
"-might beyond might-"
I like that part.
"-with these words, let all be made clear: ZOOM OUT!"
...
Nope.
While the Greater Spell of Scrying worked just fine, even with the Memorian wards in the way - to another sigh of resignation from Hermanus - your attempt to increase the viewing area failed. You're not quite sure what went wrong, there. Not enough rhyme? Mistakes in the meter? Or maybe you just didn't pick the right words?
Whatever the reason, it's kind of embarrassing to have failed after all that talk.
Shadow Alex shrugs and casts his own spell on the other guard, foregoing the attempt entirely. Then he lets the scrying spell he was holding on the room lapse, and reaches for his sword.
"If you're going to try quoting Lion-O," he says, drawing the weapon, "then you shouldn't hold back." Raising the weapon before his face, your dark doppelganger looks past the base of the blade and intones, "O Blessed Blade, grant me sight beyond sight!"
And still nothing.
...
Again, nope. The viewing globe your Shadow conjured up this time shows you the far side of the entry chamber, as well as the short passage that leads into the next room and a bit of said space besides, but it's still only revealing a spherical volume twenty feet across.
That said, you actually feel a little better about your own lack of success, now that you have company in failure.
Your Shadow shrugs and puts his blade away. "It was worth a shot."
"Makes sense that it didn't work, though," Briar adds. "Your swords don't have any Divination Magic worked into them."
Not yet, no. A possible avenue for future improvement, perhaps?
Putting thoughts of magical manufacture aside for the time being, you focus on the matter before you. While your attempts to employ Words of Power have failed, you could try again, but having already failed twice at this task, you think it's likely to be even harder to find the right phrase or command to get the effect you want.
You want DRAMATIC EMPHASIS to feed your magic, not a sad comedy.
If that's not the path, you might try a different Spell of Scrying. Most such spells tend to be fixed on their initial targets and so won't help you here, but you DO know the Spell of the Arcane Eye and the Spell of Prying Eyes, both of which can create mobile sensors. And while both such spells create their respective sensors close to the caster and then move them out, which is a bit of an issue due to that dispelling ward that overlies the portal, you could try to Heighten them to resist that effect.
Alternately, you might try to cast a Greater Spell of Scrying with the mobility elements borrowed from Arcane Eye, but considering you'd be trying to blend two ritual spells together, that feels a bit unlikely to work out.
Your only other options would be to have Shadow Alex resume "leapfrogging" castings of Greater Scrying through the base - which will likely exhaust his reserves before he maps more than a fraction of the place, even with that trick of reorienting the "gaze" of your scrying sensor so that you can see the maximum distance in a given direction - or wait for those ghosts to end their shifts and follow them wherever they end up going - which likely won't show you as much as you'd like to see of the interior.
While you are tempted to experiment with your Divination Magic - or rather, to have Shadow Alex do it - you remind yourself that you're in the middle of a strategy meeting with half a dozen other people. It's one thing to spend your own time in magical experimentation, and another to use up other people's time on something you can't guarantee will work.
What you KNOW will work, even if not especially quickly or cheaply, is having Shadow Alex use shortened Spells of Scrying to gradually map out the interior of the base. And since you can always re-summon him after he's expended his mana to top off his reserves, it's fine if he empties out the tank - at least mostly, you DO want him to hang around long enough to make use of those two Scrying Spells he's holding on the ghostly guards.
You convey your thoughts, and Shadow Alex nods and gets to work. Magus Hermanus helpfully conjures a Silent Image in the form of a map based on his best recollection of the interior layout of the base, ready to make adjustments and mark the presence and movement of "troops" as your Shadow's probes find them.
Marcus and Cato add their own input, altering or filling out parts of the base that didn't survive in the Magus's memory - or so the other two ghosts claim, to a certain amount of grumbling from their companion.
Ghostly memory issues aside, the second chamber is a large hallway, which proves to be some fifteen feet across and six times as long. There are stone archways at each end, and two doors set into each of the walls at points equidistant from the ends of the hall and their "neighbor."
You're immediately struck by a memory of the entrance you used to get inside the Faerie Outpost, and what lay behind it, and consulting with Hermanus's illusionary map confirms that the rooms are laid out in the same pattern. You comment on that, asking if you should expect the contents to be similar.
"Similar, but not the same," Marcus replies, as he begins pointing at the hovering image. "The room that was a stable in our base is a barracks here, though it does retain the teleport ring at the far end for quick deployments. The storage room should still be the same, and the other two chambers were set aside for the temporary holding and questioning of non-hostile intruders."
He explains that his unit's horses were stabled underground to protect them from whatever whimsy or torment the local Fae might get it into their heads to administer. Even in the founding days of Memoria, Fae activity in this part of Earth wasn't so high as to require such extraordinary measures; sensible precautions like barring the stable doors, hanging up a horseshoe, and leaving out a bowl of milk would do.
Not all in the same place, you would hope.
While you and Marcus are talking, your Shadow works with Hermanus's map and (your) memories of exploring the Faerie Outpost to calculate where to place the sensors for his scrying spells, seeking not to map the rooms, but to get an idea of their contents.
The two rooms on the right hand side of the hall appear to be devoid of anything except a few rotted-down husks of furniture. Despite the mention of these rooms being used to hold intruders, there's nothing to suggest anyone was ever imprisoned here - no rusty bars fencing in part of the room or chains hanging off the wall - and no sign of any bodies, be they animate, corporeal, or spectral, undead, demonic, or construct.
The storage room on the far left holds what's left of a bunch of ancient boxes, some of them smashed apart, under a carpet of dust.
The barracks turns out to have a few ghosts moving around inside, which merits further investigation. Three of them are clustered together in one corner, dressed in casual tunics and apparently rolling dice. Others are performing basic maintenance on their gear, honing the edges of phantom blades and polishing ethereal armor whose material shells are likely long past needing such care. A few more are just kind of hanging around, sitting on the memories of beds and chairs, staring in each others' general directions or at empty space between their hands.
None of the restless dead react to your Shadow's magic, but you would have been rather surprised if they did. The blurriness of their forms and the lack of expression on their half-forgotten faces; the dully staring darkness of the memory of eyes within spectral sockets; the absence of energy in the movements of even those of the gambling trio; it all points to a lack of consciousness on the part of these ghosts.
This is something of a piece of good news, and it's accompanied by two others, in that you haven't seen any of those soldier-constructs so far, and there's likewise been no sign of demonic corruption.
Just as Shadow Alex is about to dismiss his latest Scrying Spell, you see one of the three ghosts that are visible in the sphere get up and don the memory of his old equipment.
"Shift change," Marcus notes.
Here we go, then. Hopefully this will show you more of the base with less effort than your Shadow has had to use so far...
For all that they seem to be running on autopilot, the ghostly soldier's movements still display something of the efficiency born of countless drills, inspections, and preparations for actual battle. Shadow Alex's Spell of Scrying still lapses well before the Memorian finishes gearing up, but that's fine; the two of you and the rest of the audience just re-focus your attention on the viewing spheres tracking the four guards stationed at the portal.
A couple of minutes later, four Memorian ghosts soundlessly march into visual range of the sensors anchored to the "interior" guards. A series of salutes and acknowledgments take place, after which the original pair stand down from their post and are replaced by two of the newcomers, while the other new arrivals move through the portal to repeat the process with the external guards.
Said outsiders step away from their posts and wait for their replacements to take up the positions before saluting, after which they death-march into the portal-
!
-and you lose the scrying globe that Shadow Alex cast. Your own, however, doesn't so much as flicker.
"Lucky break for the wards?" one of the Briars muses.
"Could be," her counterpart agrees.
There is always the outside chance that Dispel Magic, at any level of intensity, will hit an active spell just right to collapse it, and even without that, it wouldn't have been unthinkable for the sixth-circle Abjuration Magic placed over the portal to bring down your eighth-circle Heightened Greater Spell of Scrying - provided that the two spellcasters involved possessed equivalent skill and power in the relevant schools of magic.
You think you can safely say that you outclassed whatever long-dead Memorian lasted worked on that particular defense in at LEAST one of those categories.
Now relieved of their watch, the four guards return to the barracks, where they divest themselves of most of their equipment in a mechanical fashion, though one does retain his short sword, another keeps his mail shirt on, and all four have visible knives. Two of them - one the ghost that you aren't directly tracking any more - turn and "mingle" with the rest of the ghosts in the barracks, the one still being tracked crouching down to join the group of gamblers, while the other just walks over to stand next to another spirit and stays there.
The remaining pair exit the barracks and make their way down the hall, going through the archway at the far end and a short passage beyond that. In the Faerie Outpost, the next room was a large circular chamber, with a partially collapsed floor that had a swarm of Gohma living underneath it, and a ceiling high enough for a full-grown adult Gohma to rear up and storm around with room to spare.
Here, the room seems to be more rectangular - though your overlapping scrying spells don't reveal enough of the space to be entirely sure of that - and the floor is mercifully both intact and not covered with demon-spawn. Instead, the area around the door has been reinforced with guard posts akin to small indoor towers, openings in their walls and crenellations on top providing just enough space for men armed with spears, bows, or good-sized rocks to make life painful and short for any invaders coming out of the portal area. The room's architecture opens up after that, with two rows of pillars marking the edges of an aisle that leads the rest of the way across the chamber, to another arched doorway.
Moving through that, the two soldiers enter a long, wide hallway that once again stirs your recollection of the ruin of the Faerie Outpost, with four storage rooms to the left and a mess hall to the right. They make for the latter, joining a crowd of a couple dozen ghosts that are alternately sitting at the tables - perhaps remembering eating, perhaps not - or standing around not-talking to each other.
At this point, you figure Shadow Alex should probably resume his scrying for a bit, at least until one or both of the ghosts you're following move on from... dinner, you suppose it would be, even if it would still be a bit early for you by the local time (let alone Californian).
Looking at Hermanus's Illusion-map again, the Earthside Base has an E-shaped wing to the right of the room with security towers, and a long hallway lined with smaller rooms to the left. As in the Faerie Outpost, the former was the cells for actual prisoners - including one Fae ghost - while the latter was the officers' quarters - one of which you found Captain Marcus in - the latrines, and the baths. In this base, however, that area is marked for occupation by more of the common soldiery, with extra accommodations for those guests who don't merit being locked up. The inactive portal connects to this part of the base through another secured area similar to the one backing the first gate, though it's oriented towards the "west" of the compound rather than the "south" like its peer.
The area "north" of the dining hall becomes more mazelike, eventually leading to the base's main armory, magical workshops, vault, and command center, although the shape of the defensive portion is different for this facility - differences in the terrain, you're told. The officers' quarters are to the north of that, with another portal for their use, while the room with the Gate that you're looking to restore is off to the "west" of the confusing tangle of rooms and passages, past a series of straightforwardly fortified rooms that Hermanus has indicated should have active magical defenses on them. The base's actual main entrance - a physical, fortified gate, as well as a contained courtyard and stables - lie to the east of the maze-area, but like the officers' portal, they're still buried under about a thousand years' worth of built-up earth and overgrowth, the ghosts having started to appear before Mr. Pritchard's team could get that far in their digging.
The knight informs you that based on the scans his people have taken, the gate and the part of the wall it stood in collapsed a long time ago. Whether that was in the fighting that occurred here or later on, nobody can say for certain just now.
Where do you feel it's most important for Shadow Alex to scry for changes or issues?
It seems pretty straightforward. Check on your primary target first, then the next-most relevant location, and then work your way down the list according to threat potential and/or usefulness.
And yet, you find yourself most concerned with the cell block. You aren't quite sure why. Maybe it's Briar's influence, and your efforts to cultivate positive relations with a relative majority of the Fae that you've met, being pricked at by the memory of that spirit's tormented appearance. It could be the fact that the Fae ghost took the combined efforts of you and two Shinto priests to subdue, and you're currently lacking the holy men for a repeat if something of that nature proves necessary again. Or maybe you just feel a certain kinship with and sympathy for beings that have faced a thousand years of imprisonment.
As Shadow Alex takes your suggestion and starts casting, you note that Dr. Megalos is looking at the other scrying globes and shaking his head.
"Problem, Doctor?" you inquire.
"Hm? Oh, just some academic frustration on my part, Dr. Jones," the short, burly man replies good-naturedly.
"How so?"
"It's the layout of this place," he explains, gesturing between the viewing spheres and the tabletop map. "I've spent the better part of three decades studying the ruins and records of Rome and the peoples influenced by her, and this base isn't anything like I would have expected to see in a legion stronghold."
"There are reasons for that," Marcus admits.
"Such as?" the archaeologist asks with interest.
"Well, for one thing, as solid and reliable a design as the classic legion encampment was, it was never intended to defend against aerial attack - and many of the Fae can fly."
The good doctor blinks, clearly not having considered that. He rallies quickly, however. "Is that why it looks to have been built partly underground to begin with?" He indicates Hermanus's map, which shows the passages leading to the Gate Room on a clear decline from most of the rest of the facility.
"In part," Marcus agrees, "though there were also mystical reasons for that."
Hermanus explains that it had to do with how the two aligned Gates were created in the first place. The original builders didn't have anyone with the ability to casually open holes between the planes wherever they wished, so they had to make up the difference in power by other means. One of the ways in which they did so was by leaning on the principle of sympathy.
The two forts reside in regions that were relatively close together in planar terms all those centuries ago, which made it easier to travel between them. Even then, the expeditions sent to Faerie to scout out potential sites for the base there needed very extensive rituals to build up the power necessary to make the trip - a form of ceremonial spellcasting lasting hours, days, or even weeks at a time, depending on other factors like the time of year, the phase of the moon, and the number and ability of the participants.
As Marcus noted, Roman defenses weren't built with flying foes in mind, and since the Faerie Outpost was IN Faerie - and a part of that realm that was hostile territory at the time, no less - they built it underground for maximum security. This necessitated some... unusual architectural choices, due to the local geography.
You think back to the Gate Room with the shattered floor, the modest chasm beneath that, and the swarm of Gohma that had nested down there and in the connecting tunnels.
"Unusual" is one way of putting it, you suppose.
"Almost Hyrulean" might be another - which, now that you think about it, has you wondering if that sort of similarity might not have played a role in how the Gohma, the Mirror of Shadows, and Dark Link ended up in that place to begin with.
You rather hope not.
In any case, since the Faerie Outpost's Gate Room was built underground, its "partner" in the Earthside Base was placed in a similar location, which necessitated similar forms of atypical architectural creativity.
"There was also a persistent legend among the troops that the designer was half-Fae, half-mad, or drunk when he came up with the plans," Cato notes dryly. "If not all three."
Ah.
While you've been talking, Shadow Alex has probed most of the cell block with short-lived Scrying Spells.
The good news is that he's found no active hauntings, or any traces of spectral activity strong enough to suggest there are unquiet spirits waiting to manifest whenever a living soul draws near enough to disturb them. Even better, there's no signs of demonic contamination.
The bad news is that there ARE several skeletal bodies shambling around in the cells, clad in the rust-eaten and rotted remains of Memorian gear. Nothing too dangerous, as far as the walking dead go, but they're there all the same, and you have no way to tell just from looking at them if these were loyalists imprisoned by the traitors, or the reverse.
You consider having Marcus speak to them via a Message Spell, but decide to hold off on that, as it could provoke a response Mr. Pritchard's people aren't prepared for just yet.
After completing the sweep of the cell block, your Shadow readies to investigate the Gate Room-
!
-and you join him in wincing at the sight revealed by his first Spell of Scrying.
Shadow Alex managed to place his sensor just in front of the Earthside Gate, which gives you a pretty good view of the carpet of bodies laid out around - and partly WITHIN - the stone ring. At a glance, you estimate better than a dozen skeletal forms in Memorian armor, half of them run through by each other's weapons, and most of the rest missing distinct pieces of themselves. The cause of THOSE deaths would seem to have been one of the two misshapen forms laying at the center of the bone-pile, their bodies too large and their heads too wolf-like to be human.
It's a bit like looking at a couple of Wolfos, except that you can't remember ever seeing one of those monsters that had a third eye in the middle of its forehead, a right arm half again as large as its left, scabrous growths that might be scales peeking through its fur, or any of the half a dozen other such deformities spread out between these two corpses.
Combine that with how unnaturally well-preserved the bodies are, and you hardly need Shadow Alex's casting of the Spell to Detect Evil to tell you that demonic corruption lingers there.
Though it IS helpful to know that said aura of evil is strong enough that these things are undoubtedly capable of some degree of reanimation, given a reason to stir from what should have been their final rest.
"Ugly sons of bitches, aren't they?" Ms. Griffith comments.
"Literally," Marcus agrees dryly.
Turning to the Memorians, you ask, "Are there any tactics besides 'kill it again' to keep in mind for when those things reanimate?"
Emphasis on the "when."
"We only knew the beasts as rumor," Marcus reminds you, "so I can't offer sure tactics. Looking at this, though?" He nods towards the scene of ancient carnage. "From the way those bodies have been laid out and savaged, the brutes were likely stronger, faster, and more agile than their size and deformities would lead one to think. Tougher, too, from the wounds I'm seeing, though silver doesn't appear to have been necessary to kill them."
Fairly standard demonic package, then. The transition to undeath would have made them even more durable, since they're no longer subject to the need for air, blood, or vital organs - barring odd cases like vampires, anyway - and is more likely than not to have increased their strength as well, or at least allowed them to keep exerting their full strength at all times, since fatigue is no longer an issue. Mobility could be greater, less, or unchanged compared to what it was in life - you're inclined to go with "greater" until you see evidence to the contrary, since that way, if a blindingly fast undead demon-wolfman comes barreling at you, you'll at least be mentally prepared for it.
"No obvious signs of fire or acid damage on any of the corpses," Marcus continues, "so it's unlikely the brutes had such capabilities, or required such to be used against them to kill them. There's also nothing that suggests they were poisonous or miasmic, but nothing that rules it out, either, not after all this time. As to their tactics... even with the reach they'd have, those two are too far apart to support one another, and they died surrounded by their enemies."
"But how much of that was thoughtless savagery on the part of the beasts," Cato muses, "and how much was the chaos of battle and the work of their foes?"
The captain nods in agreement, and says he'd need to see more examples of the beast-demons before making any definite claims about how they fought.
On that note, Shadow Alex's lets the Spell of Scrying lapse, and casts a new one in a different part of the Gate Room, giving a different angle on some of the bodies that were piled up around and within the portal device, and revealing several new ones.
Over the next few minutes, you piece together an image of a battle involving some fifty-odd combatants. There's only one of the canine-headed abominations for every nine humans, but there's also plenty of evidence that it took the combined efforts of half a dozen men to put one of the monsters down, with the doers losing half their number in the process every time - and you know that the Memorians were divided that day to begin with.
While you can only read the state of the ancient underground battlefield so far, Captain Marcus and Mr. Pritchard see more. In their eyes, the Memorian loyalists seem to have been trying to take the Gate when they died.
"It has to do with how the bodies lie," Roderick explains, when you ask what led them to their conclusion. "Most of the Memorian corpses that were savaged by those monsters look to have been facing the Gate when the brutes hit them, and they're not all wearing full armor - not even when you account for what got ripped apart. There also aren't enough weapons scattered about or shoved through various bodies to account for the rest of the soldiers' kit, and three of the demons have a mess of javelins and arrows sticking out of their backs, besides. If we assume that the savaged bodies were all from the loyalist faction-"
Not an unreasonable assumption, although it's also not an entirely guaranteed one when demonic creatures and/or berserkers are involved.
"-the combination suggests that the traitors had already captured or killed enough of the loyalist forces to think themselves in control of the base, or at least its most critical areas. They were likely preparing to send a force through the Gate to support their allies in the Faerie Outpost when some of the surviving loyalists hit them from behind. The state of the loyalists' gear means they didn't have access to the armories or the barracks, but they tried to make up for that with the element surprise, and no small bit of desperate fury, I would suspect."
"Probably had a magus or two covering their approach with illusions," Marcus says, nodding. "Wait for the enemy to be distracted, get into position behind them, pick your targets, and then hit them as hard and as fast as possible." He sighs. "It could have worked."
Gained Investigation F
Gained Science D (Plus)
Having learned as much about the Gate Room as scrying will reveal, Shadow Alex begins probing the control room, and finds more bodies. Three desiccated forms wearing rags that were probably Memorian tunics, and one more clad like a wizard - the doubtlessly somewhat-enchanted robe having held up better over the centuries - lie on the floor in different parts of the room, as if all were killed quickly, pushed out of the way by their murderers, and then just forgotten. Half a dozen bodies in armor are also present, four fully equipped, the other three somewhat patchwork, with another wizard thrown in for flavor. Where the first spellcaster seems to have fallen to treachery, this one died to a javelin through the heart - from behind - as the opening move of the fight that left the other bodies in their place.
One bit of good news: when Shadow Alex places a scrying sensor within range of the control array for the base's security system, Hermanus tells you that it seems to be mostly intact. Depending on how much functionality the systems retain after a thousand years of neglect, and whether or not the traitors managed to change the security codes, it might be possible for your three Memorian allies to take control of the base.
"Would this, by any chance, let us deploy those construct-troopers against any unfriendly undead?" you ask.
"It would," Marcus replies.
From there, Shadow Alex moves on to the main barracks area. There's no evidence of pitched battles or ambushes here; instead, when your doppelganger sends a spell into one of the barracks rooms, he finds three of the four beds in the room occupied by corpses. You can't make out any obvious wounds on two of the bodies, but the third is positioned as if in the last moments of a losing struggle, several stab wounds to the chest still evident after all this time.
There is some quiet cursing from the audience.
Cato murmurs a prayer for the murdered men.
Several more of the troops' rooms reveal similar scenes before Shadow Alex gives up on scrying the rest and peers into one of the guest chambers. It's empty, and after scrying the next three rooms turns up the same lack of occupants, he moves on to the officers' quarters.
The counterpart to Marcus's office proves empty of any spectral presence. If his friend Brennus died in the base, it wasn't here.
And with that, you've hit the major areas of the base that you meant to scry.
While sweeping the base, you kept an eye out for any obvious marks that could help you to distinguish between members of the two factions that fought and died here a thousand years ago, so you'd know which ghosts and corporeal undead needed to be sworded, set on holy fire, or otherwise exorcised with prejudice, and which might be open to a dialogue with your Memorian allies.
Some allegiances are obvious, of course. The demonic mutant wolf-men, their victims, and several soldiers who died killing the brutes are all easy enough to put on their proper sides, and odds are good that any soldier not in his full gear was one of the loyalists who survived the initial purge.
For the men that were fully equipped, however, you come up empty. If any simple identifiers like a colored band worn around one arm were used, they were either ruined in the fighting or have since decayed past the point of recognition. You also didn't see any battle-standards in the areas where fighting occurred.
On that point, Marcus notes that your own Standard won't be one hundred percent reliable as a method of determining loyalty.
"The Fifth Legion didn't HAVE a Magical Auxiliary at the time we all died," he explains, "and on top of that, it bears a Boar instead of the Eagle. At best, I think we can expect both sides to either ignore it, because they don't remember enough to make the connections, or else be confused when they first see it."
"And at worst, they attack us on sight, because they think we're insulting the legion or they just recognize us as the enemy?" you guess, glancing at the banner.
"Exactly."
...not going to lie, after hearing that, you're honestly a little tempted to leave the Standard behind.
Before that, however, you still have some information-gathering to attend to. You inform your allies that, while it is getting close to the point where you'll soon have to actually enter the base to learn anything, you do have one more spell you can cast to try and gain more actionable intelligence on those demonic corpses before that.
Absolutely no one has any objections to this, and since it makes more sense for you to perform the spell personally and pass on the knowledge to the next Shadow Alex when you call him forth, you begin the ritual chant required to invoke the Spell to Know the Enemy.
A minute later, information enters your mind-
!
-which you promptly regret, as it includes some of the details about HOW those brutes were originally created, and ugh, you did NOT need to know that!
Sorry, but you DID ask.
"Why do I have the feeling that you learned something nasty?" Briar asks.
Some of the others look at her in puzzlement, your emotional restraint and perhaps not Academy Award-winning acting having disguised your natural reaction.
"Because I did," you reply, allowing yourself to express some of your revulsion before you start filling the others in.
Marcus's original comparison of the demonic mutants to werewolves was accurate, as they had the same ability to shift between human and bestial forms, and did gain a degree of resistance to mundane weaponry. The use of demonic blood in the rites that empowered these monsters weakened that defense, however, making them less resilient than true werewolves. What protection they had wasn't enough to render them immune to the bite of steel, merely resistant, and silvered or potent magic weapons would still bypass their defenses entirely - although the Spell of Magic Weapons wouldn't be effective, even in its Greater iteration.
In regards to that earlier discussion about battlefield tactics, the cultists who underwent the transformation generally did come out of it more aggressive and less rational than they'd been before, making headlong charges at the nearest enemy their preferred approach to combat. They weren't stupid, however, and could be made to fight in relatively organized "packs" if there was a strong enough leader on hand to direct them, whether that was a fellow wolf or one of the unchanged human cultists. If the leader was killed or otherwise separated from his pack in combat, however, unit cohesion would generally go out the window, resulting in the sort of disorganized fighting Roderick and Marcus described.
Did the Memorian loyalists figure that out, or did they just get lucky and kill the pack-leader early on?
Moving on, you state that unlike some other varieties of demon-tainted or curse-triggered lycanthropy, this "Gallian strain" wasn't contagious, and the wolf-men didn't have any other exotic powers, just the physical qualities afforded by their transformation and various mutations. That said, the transition to undeath and a thousand years spent stewing in a murk of corruption and murder has empowered them in some ways, such as bites that are infectious in a non-lycanthropic sense, the ability to induce supernatural fear when they howl, and the ability to heal themselves by devouring corpses - fresh flesh or dry bone will both work, though from what the Goddess of Wisdom allowed you to see, the former is more effective.
"...was that the nasty bit?" Mr. Clarkson ventures.
"Only part of it," you reply. "The other bit had to do with how the things were made in the first place. Let's just say it involved cannibalism, cruelty to animals, and the usual demonic psychopathy, and leave it at that."
Because once again, ugh. You're grateful Nayru didn't send you any pictures or anything, but even so, you're pretty sure this falls under the category of Too Much Information.
Blasphemy! ...is what I WOULD say, but when it comes to demons, yeah.
Anyway, given the bit about damage resistance, when you ask Mr. Pritchard if he'd like to have one of his weapons enhanced when you go into the base, he's quite amenable to the idea.
When it comes to the Spell of the Heart of the Metal, will you be having Shadow Alex give your Blessed Blade and his own Shadow Blade the essence of silver? Or do you prefer something else?
No, on second thought, you can't leave the Standard behind. It was given to you by the Memorians as a sign of gratitude, fellowship, and trust, and is a direct sign that the Legion knows and approves of your being here, to say nothing of your promise to aid them.
Seeing a new emblem above familiar insignias may confuse the undead that you encounter, and it may even provoke some of them into threatening or attacking you, but you HAVE to take it with you. To do any less would be disrespectful to the souls of the men who have accounted you as one of their own, and cowardly.
You'll just have to deal with the dead as they come.
When you were preparing for the Quincy apocalypse, you were able to ritually modify the Spell to Bestow Insight to grant yourself multiple different forms of enhanced sensory and cognitive ability, and you consider trying to adapt the Spell of the Heart of the Metal in a similar manner now, to grant your weapons the natures of multiple metals.
Then you shake your head as you realize that it won't work.
Bestow Insight could be modified in that manner because you were enhancing different aspects of yourself - different portions of your knowledge and experience, different applications of your senses. You could have achieved a similar result by casting the unmodified Spell to Bestow Insight several times; doing it all as a single ritual simply saved you some mana and kept from "crowding" your aura so much.
The Spell of the Heart of the Metal can't be modified in that way, as it affects the SAME aspect of the target weapons. Casting the spell on the same weapon twice in succession wouldn't give that weapon the essence of two different metals, the second casting would just override the first. The equivalent for Bestow Insight would be trying to augment your skills at deception twice, instead of making yourself better at bluffing and better at reading people.
You have a bunch of other spells in mind for Shadow Alex to cast, but before that, you should finish sorting out the "battle plan," so to speak.
At the moment, you've got a reasonably good map of the base, an idea of where the most active ghosts are, and a Legion Auxiliary Standard, the presence of three spectral Memorians, and Mars' unspoken blessing to give you some official sanction. While you didn't scan every inch of the place, what you saw suggested that most of the path from the portal to the control room was clear; more to the point, once you're actually inside, you'll be able to cast the Spell of the Arcane Eye and send the resulting sensor to verify your findings. As long as there aren't any forcefields, vault-like doors, or otherwise blocked off passages along the way, it shouldn't take more than a few minutes for that, after which you could potentially have Marcus and Cato call for the loyalists to wake up, (re)assemble, and begin cleaning house, as the ghosts in Faerie did.
Unless of course, you had a different idea?
There's also the matter of just who is going in. You more or less need to go, to uphold the spirit of your promise, and you'll be re-summoning Shadow Alex shortly regardless - inside the base, just in case that veil over the portal might dispel him. The Briars will naturally be with you, the Memorian trio are also going - it would take quite a bit to STOP them doing so, you suspect - and Roderick is coming along to lend some additional armored muscle, general knightly expertise, and perhaps a bit of archaeological insight.
And again, you think you might have to knock him out to STOP him from accompanying you. Dr. Megalos is at least able to restrain his own obvious enthusiasm because of the clear and present danger.
While keeping the initial team small certainly has its advantages - not the least of them being stealth, efficiency of mana use, and lower likelihood of somebody who doesn't know what they're dealing with poking something they should - you DID recently take part in storming a hostile fortress with an army. The idea of doing so a second time is appealing.
Do you want to suggest bringing some of Ms. Griffith's security force along, or perhaps summoning extra support once you're inside? You've seen the former carrying guns, which wouldn't be ideal for the situation due to the noise and reduced effectiveness against things that are already dead, but given what you've seen of the Drakes' security forces, you think it's a safe bet that Mr. Pritchard's people are similarly cross-trained in the practical use of "archaic" weaponry and would have a cache of such things on-hand, beyond the knives, fighting sticks, and other "modern" close-combat weapons you've spotted.
You don't exactly intend to take point on fighting the undead demonic wolf-men. Quite aside from the possibility of injury - which will be rather reduced by your defensive gear and assorted enhancements - it's just bad tactics to have a group's primary spellcaster tied down in melee instead of watching the field and providing support to his allies as needed.
With that in mind, it makes sense to enhance your sword with the essence of silver, so that if one of the brutes DOES manage to get in close, your efforts to kill it (again) won't be hindered by its resistance to steel.
While similar arguments could be made for augmenting Shadow Alex's weapon, weighing against them are the fact that he's ultimately expendable where you are not, and the still-incomplete picture of the interior of the base. Some of its security automatons MAY be active after all, and if you run into some of those when everyone is kitted out for corpse-hunting, things could get a bit ugly.
So he'll get an adamantine weapon enhancement, when the time comes.
One of the drawbacks of your near-mastery of Divination Magic and according ability to pierce common anti-scrying defenses is that it makes it a little difficult to tell how effective such wards are against other magic-users. At the moment, you're mostly concerned with how well the wards on the Memorian Base would conceal high-level spellcasting on your part, whether from immediate notice by any scriers already looking in on the area, or in the longer term.
You already have Mind Blank up and running, of course, but that won't hide spells whose effects aren't centered on you, Shadow Alex, or the Briars. And that includes... well, a LOT of your repertoire.
Deciding that it's better to be safe than sorry, you turn your attention to the tabletop map of the area and Hermanus's illusion of the Memorian Base, trying to estimate its size and interior volume, and how much of it you could cover with a Spell to Create a Private Sanctum.
After a moment, it becomes apparent that even if you opened up its range and allowed the spell to cover as much area as possible, you wouldn't be able to shroud the entire base with a single Private Sanctum. You're not too bothered by the prospect of Shadow Alex having to cast the spell several times, even if the time it would require is a little annoying, but there are three other issues that need more serious consideration.
The first of those is that you're actually not sure if covering a building with a Private Sanctum from the outside would actually keep unwanted magical eyes out. The "fog" blocks attempts to scry WITHIN its area of effect, but it doesn't do anything to stop someone from scrying PAST it, so if you were to surround the exterior of the Memorian Base with a Sanctum, that wouldn't actually stop anyone from scrying on the interior, if they could get past the Memorian wards.
The second issue is that if you cover the Base from the outside, the resulting "fogbank" would be blatantly obvious to anyone watching. More concerningly, its size would provide a pretty good benchmark for your skills in Abjuration Magic, at least for anyone familiar with the spell in question who got a look at (part of) its formation. This could be avoided by casting the spell inside the Base, but that would limit how much of an area your Shadow could cover at one time, requiring more castings. Having a mental map of the place - and later, added intel from an Arcane Eye - will help fill in some of the corners, as it were, but there will still be places Shadow Alex won't be able to extend the spell without an unbroken line of effect between him and them.
The last matter is that once the Sanctum goes up, anyone on the outside won't able to see in. This is normally one of the selling points of the spell, but here and now, covering the Base from the outside would blind Mr. Pritchard's people to the actions of the ghosts standing the watch. Shadow Alex would hardly be covering the entire area between the Base and the camp, of course - more like a few feet from the walls, to avoid interference from the fort's wards - but even so, it could present problems if the spirits turn unfriendly, or if something else emerges from the Base.
Similarly, if you were to shroud the interior of the Base, your party would basically end up moving through a series of "bubbles", blind and deaf to anything that happened inside one of them after you'd left it.
That said, trying to gather more information on the two ghosts currently standing watch outside the portal is an idea with no downsides, so you go ahead and cast the Spell to Know the Enemy again.
...
"I may have good news," you announce after a moment. "I think the guards outside the portal are loyalists."
"'You think'?" Marcus repeats.
The Spell to Know the Enemy is meant to provide information about general KINDS of creatures, not specific INDIVIDUALS. That having been said, "a soldier's ghost that lingers because of a failed duty" is reasonably distinct from "a soldier's ghost that lingers because of personal malice and demonic taint," and these two guards definitely feel like the former kind of spook.
And if they aren't, using the Spell to Command Undead would make it relatively easy for you to convince them that you are an ally and could be trusted with the truth of their allegiances - provided you can coax them into "waking up" far enough to carry on that sort of conversation, of course.
The three Memorians agree to this plan, with the understanding that if the ghosts prove to be loyalists, you'll release them from your influence.
On a somewhat related note, you inquire of Priest Cato his feelings about using illusory copies of foreign psychopomps to force any verified traitor ghosts to move on.
"...I think I'll need you to break that down for me a bit more," Cato replies after a moment.
He isn't the only one in the room giving you a confused look after that suggestion.
Rather than cover the base from the outside with an obvious and not entirely effective barrier, you opt to save time and energy and ensure at least SOME secrecy by having Shadow Alex cover specific, sensitive areas within the base with Private Sanctums. Shrouding the entryway so that your doppelganger can buff up you and your allies is just good sense, you DEFINITELY don't want anybody seeing the Memorian Gate if you can help it, and dropping another Sanctum over the command center might be merited, depending on whether or not your allies can get access.
You remind the Memorians how you were working with some of the Japanese kami, and then explain that there's a semi-independent faction of psychopomps that oversees the passage of fallen souls to the afterlife in that land. You've recently worked with their organization in a combat situation, which gave you a chance to observe a lot of their abilities in action, and in turn leaves you reasonably confident that you could put together functional Shadow Conjurations of them.
"Making sure that lingering ghosts move on is one of a Shinigami's top duties," you go on, "and they're equipped to force the issue, if they need to, in a way that doesn't harm the souls involved. I don't really have any other means of guaranteeing that an unfriendly spirit moves on when it's defeated, and considering how the cultists were involved with demons, there's a reasonable chance some or all of them will get dragged into a Hell-dimension if they cross over any of the normal ways."
"And you think getting... replicas of psychopomps involved would avoid that?" Cato asks, his tone doubtful.
"Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But if there's a chance we can avoid some demon continuing to profit off of a thousand-year old plot of treachery and murder, I'd like to at least try it."
The ghosts nod in agreement at that. Cato is still a little leery of the possibility that the traitors won't face their proper punishment in Pluto's realm, but you raised a valid point about their souls potentially not going there anyway, and spiting demons is generally a worthwhile exercise.
With that settled, you get out the Aries Crystal... and then pause, as a thought occurs.
"Do the wards on the Base include defenses against Earth Elementals?" you inquire.
Hermanus nods. "Aside from the general ward against summoning within the base, the exterior walls are reinforced so that various elementals couldn't freely pass through them." The magus shrugs. "Summoning such creatures was no more difficult for the Fae than it was for mortals; if anything, they had an easier time negotiating with and controlling such things than we did."
That tracks, unfortunately. While elementals and the Fae are fairly different orders of being, they'd still have similar ties to natural forces, and the Fae are generally quite clever, whereas your average elemental is... very straightforward.
Anyway, this presents another issue. You were hoping to summon a couple of Greater Elementals to provide some smashing power, but if the Base's walls have been built to prevent them from simply walking in, the only ways you can get them in would be to move them through the portal, or through some hole that's opened up in the defenses over the last millennium. MAKING a hole is not currently an option; if all the portals were down, you could argue it as a necessity to getting inside and upholding your oath, but with things as they are, the Memorians would definitely object to any, shall we say, aggressive renovations.
The good news is that the only thing that would really keep the elementals from passing the portal besides physical size is the dispelling screen across it.
As you turn the problem over in your mind, a secondhand memory comes to the forefront. Your Shadow summoned an unusual Elder Earth Elemental to... deal with Yhwach, one that had actual martial arts training, well beyond the typical "EARTH SMASH" of its common kin. Instead of summoning two powerful brutes that would be too large to enter the portal, you could try to summon smaller elementals with better training. The other option would be to summon a lot of standard Earth Elementals, and make up with quantity what you'd lose in quality.
While numbers have a strength and utility all their own, you're about to go into a ruin haunted by the restless dead, some of whom are also warped by demonic power. In such a situation, having a genuine holy warrior in your ranks would be rather advantageous, perhaps enough to make up for losing out on a few common brawlers.
Granted, you aren't sure if Earth Elemental paladins are even a THING, but in an infinite multiverse, you figure there must be at least a few. The real question is whether or not any of them will fit the parameters of your spell, and if so, whether or not they're "close" enough to you in the planar sense for your magic to reach, while also not somehow being protected against Spells of Summoning.
If nothing else, the results of that summoning will be educational!
While you could summon your backup now, you think you'd prefer to wait a bit. You mean to use your Aries Crystal to extend the paladin's term of service, and since that will involve physically melding Beryl's gift into the summoned entity, you wouldn't be able to re-summon Shadow Alex with a copy of the crystal.
From that perspective, it makes more sense to see if Shadow Alex can get through the base's entrance portal first. If he can, great; you'll have him create Private Sanctums on either side of the gateway - making the external one VERY temporary so that it doesn't hinder the watch Mr. Pritchard's men are keeping - summon your new minions, and march them inside for a buffing session. If not, you'll have to raise the Sanctums yourself.
With that decision made, your plan is finalized. You head over to where you had the Memorian Standard held up between a few pushed-together seats, and work it out of its supports. While you're doing that, Roderick Pritchard steps clear of the meeting table and the rest of the group, pulls a medallion of some sort out of his collar-
"Par la grace de la Dame!"
*Flash!*
Gained French F
-and like that, is suddenly wearing his armor.
You and your Shadow trade glances, and you see the same thought in his eyes that lurks behind your own.
Making a mental note to consider adding a gear-storing device of automatic armament to your List of Things to Craft, you maneuver the Memorian Standard across the command room and out the door, while your Shadow dismisses the Sanctum.
Eyes follow you as your party marches through the camp, with even some of the security personnel giving you confused or cautious looks, and you can't honestly blame them. A knight in full armor, two battle-sorcerers similarly clad, a couple of apparent college students, and three dead men whose phantasmal forms waver like transparent flames in the light of the afternoon sun, all moving together under a banner that would not have been out of place in Ancient Rome?
It is, as they say, not something you see every day.
There is a brief pause at the edge of the camp, as the guards on duty there check in with their employer, but Ms. Griffith radioed ahead, so that only takes a few moments. After that, you spend a few minutes walking through the glade, the camp diminishing behind you and the actual dig area growing larger with each step. At first, all you can see are a couple of the spotlight towers that ring the area, simple as they are, but as you draw near, you start to make out where machinery was used to clear the centuries of accumulated dirt and detritus from the Memorians' ancient doorstep. The heavy equipment itself is not in evidence, having been moved back to the camp when the ghosts first started appearing.
There's another set of guards posted a bit back from the edge of the excavation, watching the portal, and as Mr. Pritchard stops to check in with them, you take a good look at the dig site.
Much of the Memorian Base was built into or underneath the hill that rises above the area, and what wasn't effectively "buried" to begin with probably didn't extend very far from the earth and stone even in its heighday. Over the last millennium, erosion would have worn down the hill, covering the once-exposed portions of the facility from above and allowing sediment to gradually accumulate against the walls. Additional runoff from the surrounding area, layers of dead foliage, fallen trees, and more than a few dead animals would have piled up as well, while the weight of the structure may have caused it to settle deeper into the earth besides. You don't know if there's been enough tectonic activity over the centuries to account for any further changes, but that might explain why the main entrance gave out...
That said, it appears that a fair portion of the base's outer wall either wasn't actually buried, or had been exposed by natural forces before anyone started digging, because there's a large stretch of stone wall off to the left that looks more weathered than what lies to the right; it is perhaps telling that the access portal which stands in the weathered area is the one that no longer functions, although the shadows of the forest that fall over there are deep enough that you can make out a pair of ghosts flanking the blank stone of the closed door.
The other portal, however, is fully active, and casts enough of a glow that you have to squint a bit to make out its guards - but they are there, and at the moment, they don't appear to have noticed your presence or that of your allies. The Standard, too, seems to have escaped their notice. You spot flickers of ghostly presence along the still partially buried top of the wall as well, and a similar lack-of-response from the guards on watch up there, some of them standing half-buried in the earth and greenery.
"Sloppy," Marcus mutters, shaking his head. "If they'd let us this close without challenge while they were alive, they'd be getting the lash." He turns to you. "Is this close enough, lad?"
You eyeball the distance, and nod. "It is, although I'd prefer to be closer, just to make sure the two we're interested in can hear me clearly, without me having to raise my voice and potentially alert the others."
After due consideration, you decide that getting closer to the two ghosts you're planning on sort-of-Enchanting, so that you can speak to them in a normal tone that won't risk drawing the attention of the other spectral sentries, is worth the risk of being attacked by the guards.
After all, ghosts or not, they aren't equipped with bows, their spears aren't the sort really meant for throwing, and - you squint - neither of them has the aura of a magic-user. They'd have to come to you to pose a real threat - or to go through the motions of doing their duty, if they're semi-conscious enough for that - and that will just put them in speaking distance sooner.
Just in case, though, you take Marcus along, leaving your Standard to Briar. The rest of the party will remain at the edge of the dig site-
"Are you sure about this?" Roderick asks, eyeing the ghosts manning the fort's outer wall.
-if not without some reservations.
As the three of you half-walk, half-climb, and partly slide down the rim of the dig, you speak to Marcus. "Is there some sort of traditional greeting you would have used in life to get soldiers you'd never met before to be less suspicious of you? Or maybe a pass phrase?"
"We did have a series of recognition phrases," Marcus replies. "Whether or not they'll hear the words in their current state is another matter."
You nod. "Hold off on speaking until we see if I can wake them up myself. If I can get them even halfway conscious, you might be able to pull them the rest of the way."
With that, you start quietly chanting the Spell to Command Undead. It's only second-circle magic, so you can easily adjust the usual single-target limitation and cut down on the considerable duration, freeing up several spell levels' worth of mana to heighten the effectiveness. As to how far you boost the spell, you'd initially thought to raise it all the way to the seventh-circle, but a part of you rails against the idea of casting such a powerful spell when you're in the open like this.
You don't SENSE any scrying sensors in your vicinity, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't one around somewhere.
Your decision made, you complete the spell and hold it at the ready, wanting to get as close as possible before the ghosts react-
!
-which turns out to be about twenty feet.
One of the guards by the door and most of those spaced out along the nearer part of the wall remain motionless, staring into the distance - or perhaps the shallow slope of the excavated hillside - with the vacuous, eternal patience of the dead. The portal's OTHER guardian, however, visibly starts at your approach - and more than that, you realize, as the ghost's eyes begin to glow and his aura shifts in a manner that's difficult to describe, but vaguely akin to that of a sleeping figure coming awake. He's not just REACTING to your presence, he's actually REGISTERING it.
The nearest of the guards above you also seems to have seen you, but the feel of his aura lacks that stirring awareness.
Over the sound of an afternoon breeze blowing through the eaves of the forest and the not-too-distant, but definitely not-too-close calls of birds and animals, you hear an unearthly, groaning whisper: "Iiiidentifyyyy yoooouuuursellllvessss..."
You could let Marcus take it from here, but casting Command Undead would ease your negotiations. Alternately, you might cast it on the portal guard that didn't react to your approach, and perhaps the one on the wall that did - you can't quite make out what that one is doing, due to the crenellations.
While there is a temptation to push the spell as far as you can to get the best result, your wariness of potential observers has you holding back.
The prospect of having at least one semi-mindless ghost aware of you and not under your control is an unsettling one, but the spirit on the buried battlement hasn't taken any aggressive action yet, and Marcus and his fellows DID want to minimize the amount of time you spent bending their fellows to your will, so you refrain from casting the Spell to Command Undead just yet, holding it on standby.
You signal for Marcus to answer the challenge, which he does by stepping forward and making a bold, but not too loud declaration: "I am Marcus Valerius Faustus, Captain of the Fifth Memorian Legion, commanding officer of the Gateway Outpost in Faerie. 'We must remember our enemies.'"
"'We... must not... forget... our allies,'" the guard replies after a moment, eyes slowly glowing brighter. There is another, shorter pause, followed by, "'If we forget... our enemies...'"
For a second, as the guard trails off, you wonder if he's lost that thread of consciousness he managed to find, but the light in his phantasmal sockets stays steady.
"'-we invite defeat,'" Marcus returns. "'If we do not remember our friends-'"
"'-we deserve it,'" the other ghost finishes. "Welcome back... Captain."
"Identify yourself, soldier."
"Lucas Durant, Fifth Memorian Legion, under Captain Brennus Bricius." The guard's voice becomes steadier and clearer as he speaks.
"And your status?"
There is a long pause, and you can just make out the soldier's bony knuckles tightening around the haft of his spectral spear.
"...I think I'm dead, sir."
"Welcome to the club," Marcus replies with grim humor.
From there, your ally is able to get an account of this legionary's last day of life - or rather, the last evening, as Lucas claims to have been assigned to the night watch on the day the base fell. He and his partner passed an uneventful couple of hours before one of the four-man forest patrol teams returned from their circuit - and killed them both.
Speaking of his partner, Lucas turns to "Aegidius" and tries verbally and then physically nudging him to awareness. The first try fails, but the second rouses a semblance of awareness and responsiveness, if not the recovery of full-blown consciousness that Lucas managed.
While you're doing that, Briar turns - keeping the Standard upright - and signals for the rest of your party to join you before the portal.
Shadow Alex spent the short hike from the camp and the shorter delay while you spoke with the spirits to ready a Spell to Create a Private Sanctum. He raises it now and gives you time to summon the elemental allies you planned on raising, before venturing through the portal.
The summoning of the regular elementals goes without issue, netting you three of the burly brutes.
As for your attempt to summon an Earth Elemental Paladin-
/ In the name of Earth, I COME! /
I think I may like this one.
-it leaves you looking up at an Earth Elemental that is slightly larger and distinctly more symmetrical than the other three you called up, who radiates a fairly strong aura of holy power and is wearing equipment. Huge plates of dark grey stone have been attached to its body in the manner of a truly massive suit of armor, and it carries with both hands a tremendous hammer carved from a similar material. The elemental's stone plate is encrusted with crystals that look like they might be of gemstone quality, and the Aries Crystal has fused with it in the center of its broad, armor-plated chest.
The warrior's emerald-green eyes look down from a curiously striped face, though they assuredly can't see the focus crystal past the bulk of its body and armor, and it rests its immense hammer on one shoulder so as to run the fingers of the other hand over the area where its armor has been... modified.
/ A strange sensation, / the creature rumbles. / Yet I sense the magic of this world's bedrock at play. / It turns to you. / But I forget my manners. I am known as Hornfels the Hammerer, summoner. I would know the origins and purpose of this device you have... attached to me. /
You have no reservations about explaining what the Aries Crystal does or even how you acquired it, but if the elemental wants to know about Beryl...
Deciding to put your trust in your allies, you let your readied spell disperse.
You give the elemental the basic run-down on what the Aries Crystal is meant to do, and that it was given to you as a gift by a sorceress of your acquaintance. Not surprisingly, the paladin expresses an interest in meeting the unnamed magic-user, but you tell him that you'd have to speak with the lady in question before giving up anything about her.
/ I quite understand, / Hornfels replies. / It is never wise to presume to know the mind of a sorceress, or to speak for her without her agreement. I shall remain hopeful of meeting her someday. / Then he hefts his hammer. / In the meantime, what is our quest? /
Humorous impulses aside, your next move is to summon some additional backup. You had a particular sort of Hyrulean beastie in mind for this-
*Poof*
-and a single casting of the seventh-circle iteration of the Spell to Summon Monsters gets you three bell-like shells, easily knee-high to a grown man and colored a dark shade of red, with half a dozen stubby clawed feet poking out from underneath. As the smoke of their summoning clears, the shells pick themselves up off the ground and tilt back, causing their solid-looking bodies to wobble slightly while revealing somewhat shaky legs, buggy heads with oddly cute eyes, and small but sharp mandibles.
/ What the-? / one of the lesser elementals wonders.
"Hardhat Beetles?" Briar says as she looks your way. "Really, uh, Boss?"
You shrug. "I figured a defensive line or two wouldn't be a bad idea."
"Pon?" one of the creatures inquires.
/ Ha, / another elemental rumbles in amusement, as it leans forward and extends one arm. / They look squishy. I wanna poke one. /
And then a rocky finger the (normal) size of your arm pokes the critter.
*Boing*
That's literally what it sounds like, and everybody stops and stares, both at the noise and at how the elemental's finger recoils off of the Beetle's rubbery shell. The Beetle itself has to set its feet to keep steady, but it wasn't that hard a poke; the elemental's hand only gets deflected about a foot away.
/ ...huh, / the elemental muses, looking from its thick finger to the Beetle, and then back again. / Squishy, but also bouncy. /
There is a pause.
/ ...I wanna poke it again. / And it reaches forward.
"Poooon," the Beetle growls, hunkering down in anticipation of the next touch.
You're honestly not sure if it's protesting being prodded, threatening retaliation, or just daring the elemental to give its best effort.
While you're sorting out your summons, Marcus - shaking his head at the strangeness of your newest allies - Hermanus, and Cato take Lucas and Aegidius through the portal to confront, and if necessary, contain their two partners. A minute passes, and then Hermanus re-emerges to let you know that they've succeeded, though only about as well as with Aegidius.
With that settled, Shadow Alex goes through next, followed by Sir Pritchard, and after him, you begin herding your summoned creatures through.
While none of the Earth Elementals are entirely thrilled about having to use the "tiny" door, Hornfels takes the lead in doing so, hunching down, turning sideways, and shifting his mass about a bit - not quite like a human sucking in their gut, as there's no breathing involved, but not entirely dissimilar, either - before shuffling through. When you don't sense the Spell of Summoning holding the warrior on this plane breaking, you send the next elemental in, and then the next, and finally the last of them.
Your magic holds fast every time.
After that, you send the Beetles, and once they get through in one piece, you summon up a second batch of the bouncy things, getting four of them for your trouble. The Briars go through while you're doing that-
!
-and you sense a spike of discomfort, surprise, and vaguely amused relief from your partner.
/ Briar? / you send down the bond, using a little of your psychic energy to do so. / You alright? /
/ Fine. Just lost my disguise is all. Also, spooked the local spooks. /
She seems more entertained by that than anything else.
Gained Telepathy E (Plus) (Plus)
Shaking your head, you send the second batch of Beetles through, and then follow after them.
Your own Adjustable Polymorph washes away like mud under a good steady rain as you cross the threshold, reminding you that for all your power, you still can't discount the skills and works of others - especially not if they get lucky. Still, the rest of your buffs remain intact, and with the Private Sanctum still going, nobody not in this immediate group would have noticed your sudden case of shrinking.
/ Who's the little guy? / one of the elementals asks, as you step into the Memorian Base.
It's very unlikely that any of your summoned creatures would get the reference, although there's a non-zero possibility that Hornfels might know of the Grail. Christianity's a couple millennia old, which is time enough for its reputation and perhaps even its practice to have spread to other planes, and learning to recognize the major symbols of other faiths seems like the sort of thing a holy warrior would do.
All the better to know who to smite, and who not to smite.
The Memorians, meanwhile, probably WOULD have heard of the Holy Grail in life. Christianity had a LOT of history with Rome, and eventually ended up the dominant religion on the continent besides; there's no way the religion didn't have contact with the Roman successor-state, although the specifics of their interaction remain elusive. The ghosts haven't really offered anything, you haven't really asked, and that one time you had a deacon walking around the base, nobody commented on it.
Then again, a dozen Shinto priests, their respective kami, and a few Buddhist monks were ALSO touring the Faeire Outpost at the time. Deacon James may have simply been overlooked in the crowd.
That said, the Memorians have certainly never seen Monty Python, which would ruin the joke you were trying to make. And while your Shadow, the Briars, and Sir Pritchard would undoubtedly get it, you'd then have to explain to everyone ELSE what was so funny, which, again, would spoil the humor.
So you put that one back into storage, to await a better chance.
You decide that, with as long as your Summoning Spells are set to last, and as long as there's no harm being done, you can spare a minute for this elemental to amuse itself.
*Boing*
*Boing*
*Boing*
"Poooon," the Hardhat Beetle growls, in what you're pretty sure is annoyance.
/ Hehehe, / the elemental chuckles, a sound like gravel sliding down a slope. / This is fun. /
/ Are you about done? / one of its compatriots sighs.
/ I could do this all day, / comes the cheerful response.
Okay, time to interrupt-
/ You, uh, DO remember that we're summoned right now, right? / the third member of the group says, its thick neck grating slightly as its flat-topped head turns ever so slightly in your direction, and then back to its companion.
/ ...oh, right. Sorry, my fault! /
That apparent contrition doesn't prevent the creature from getting in one last poke, however.
*Boing*
/ Hehehe. /
"I'm the one who summoned you," you reply to the question.
A quick glance has Shadow Alex obligingly shifting his own, still-active Adjustable Polymorph to match your current appearance.
/ Oh, you were in disguise! /
"Yeah, and before you ask, the disguise wasn't aimed at you. I had reason to believe that people who aren't my friends or allies would be watching the area outside. It shouldn't be too big an issue now that we're inside, since this place has its own wards and none of the people I was worried about are in here with us - but when we LEAVE, I would appreciate it if you didn't tell anybody we meet what I actually look like."
/ That is fine by me, / Hornfels says.
/ I suppose. /
/ I don't like sneaky stuff very much, but I guess it's fine... /
*Boing*
/ Hehehe... I'm sorry, were you saying something? /
Repressing the urge to sigh, you have your summoned servants spread out a bit while you begin shaping a Private Sanctum to cover this chamber. With Shadow Alex's mana as low as it is, it just makes more sense for you to shroud this area, have him expend his remaining energy buffing your party, and for you to then recall him. Since the Spell of the Dark Self is technically a Spell of Illusion rather than a Spell of Summoning, the wards against planar travel shouldn't interfere with it any more than they would the Greater Spells of Shadow Conjuration you were planning on casting in a bit.
There is one point to consider before proceeding, however. With the completion of this Sanctum, you'll have used up about a third of your maximum mana, and while you can ritually cast the Spell of the Dark Self to avoid further expenditure, your next Shadow Alex is going to come out with a fair-sized chunk of his reserves missing.
But you do have a few restorative draughts in your pocket, if you really feel they're necessary. You have to admit that they might not be, given the force you've already brought to the table and the spread of enhancements you're planning on applying to them.
While you are tempted to down one of your greater restoratives, you decide to hold the draughts in reserve for the time being. Even two-thirds of your mana will go quite a long way, and it's not like you can't drink the potion later and re-summon Shadow Alex again to benefit from it.
There's also the fact that if you use a mana potion, you'll miss out on an opportunity to give your reserves a workout. Granted, that might happen anyway, depending on how much spellcasting you do or don't do today, but you already missed out on two such chances recently, when you had your Dark Self take your place in the raid on Silbern and the sparring match with Captain Zaraki. It was the smart thing to do in those situations, but a lost opportunity is still a lost opportunity, and how many more of them are there going to be, if you keep using Shadow Alex as your proxy in hazardous situations?
Better to try and make use of this chance than to throw it away out of hand, you think.
With that out of the way, you focus on getting the Sanctum up. Rather than its usual duration of a whole day, a few hours should be time enough for your needs, so you reduce the spell a bit to save yourself some energy.
A wall of impenetrable grey fog spreads out to fill the room holding the interior portal, and then down the adjoining hall. You aren't able to extend the effect into the rooms lining the hallway, nor do you have the reach to get the Sanctum to cover any of the large circular chamber that lies past the far end of the hall, but having this area shrouded so you can buff and organize your force without being spied on or disturbing the undead denizens of the base is plenty for your purposes.
You take a minute to make sure of that last point, waiting to see if any ghosts, skeletons, or other entities shamble through the edges of the Sanctum to investigate its appearance, but when nothing shows up, you decide that you managed to slip the casting by them.
As such, you draw your Blessed Blade and gesture for Shadow Alex to get started enhancing it.
"Should I...?" Roderick says, gesturing to his own weapon.
"Give us a minute, first," you reply, as your doppelganger casts.
The Spell of Hardening, the Greater Spell of the Magic Weapon, and the Spell to Align a Weapon roll out one after the other. The first is permanent by nature and so would persist past your Shadow's dispersal regardless, but the other two take some adjustments in that regard, and even then, only get up to indefinite duration.
"I think I might manage one more spell before I disperse," your doppelganger says then, his form and that of his partner looking... misty, which provokes some surprise among your summons and the conscious ghosts.
Shadow Alex casts the Spell of Keen Edge, and as expected, he barely manages to hold himself together long enough to finish the spell, before the expenditure of mana takes him below that critical level. You have to say, it's rather unsettling to watch "yourself" strain to complete a spell as "you" fade from existence, "your" energy being drained away to fuel the very magic "you" are casting.
"And we're out," Shadow Briar declares. "See you in a few!"
And then they're both gone.
And then, as the words of the Spell of the Dark Self fall from your lips, they're back.
"Ta-da!" Shadow Briar declares.
On a side note, the lack of resistance to or distortion in the results of that spell bodes well for your plan to use Shadow Conjuration to call up pseudo-Shinigami.
There is one sticking point that you've just realized. Shadow Conjurations normally only last as long as a normal casting of whatever spell they're emulating - in the case of the Spell to Summon Monsters, anywhere from a few seconds to two minutes. You can extend that duration, of course, but your skills in Illusion Magic aren't as developed as your mastery of Summoning Magic, and the Greater Spell of Shadow Conjuration is close to the limits of your abilities in its basic form.
In short, if you summon a "Greater Shadow Shinigami," it's only going to persist for a few minutes at most. If you want something that will be able to hang around as long as your actual summons, you'll need to use the standard Spell of Shadow Conjuration, getting something much more unreal. Ritual casting to boost your power isn't an option at this time, since you already need to use a ritual - however shortened - to cast a Greater Shadow Conjuration as it is. Your only realistic alternative, then, would be to hold off on pseudo-summoning Shinigami until you need them.
While you're considering that, Shadow Alex casts the Spell to Splinter Spell Resistance and the Spell of the Unerring Weapon on your sword. Given the possibility that your Shadow will disappear again, he makes these of indefinite duration as well.
That leaves the Spell of the Heart of the Metal. Due to the limits of your skills with Metamagic and the cost of supplementing mana to make up for the material reagent this would normal require, your Shadow has to limit himself to a single-target version of the spell, casting it once on your sword, and then on Sir Pritchard's.
He foregoes enchanting his own sword for the moment, since it would be pretty pointless if he disappeared after buffing your troops.
On that note...
While it will mean throwing unaugmented pseudo-Shinigami at your opposition, you think that the greater level of realism and power the shadows will enjoy, the presence of your various summoned allies to serve as support, and some on-the-spot casting by you or Shadow Alex will be more than enough to make up for the downsides of not casting Shadow Conjuration right now and buffing the results.
Besides, your lookalike has enough work to do already, without you giving him extra targets.
Shadow Alex focuses first on the Briars, applying indefinite versions of an array of sensory-enhancing spells, but also a Spell of Mage Armor to help them stay safe.
In passing, you wonder if you ought to look into developing an improved version of that spell at some point. The standard form isn't bad, by any means, granting a level of defense comparable to a good shirt of mundane mail without imposing any sort of discomfort on the wearer, but it's not so good that improvements would be impossible.
With your fairy partners buffed, your Shadow turns to the larger party. Given the presence of the undead in the ruined base, every living member of the group could benefit from having the Spell of Death Ward applied, so you aren't surprised when he starts casting a version of that modified for greater duration and number of targets.
After that comes the Spell of Greater Heroism, with similar adjustments - and similar targets, since it wouldn't have any effect on your undead associates.
While Shadow Alex is making magic, you call up your ki, psychic, and spiritual energies in turn, readying further boosts and defenses for the exploration to come.
Gained Ki Aura E (Plus)
Just as you're getting done with that, Shadow Alex informs you that he's used up the lion's share of the "free" mana he had to work with when you re-summoned him. Since the plan was for him to serve as a vanguard rather than a spellcaster, he'd like to reserve what mana he has left to spare to apply a couple of self-enhancement spells.
Plus, he wasn't about to try covering every one of your allies with the Spell of Greater Augmentation regardless. The only one of your summons that might merit that kind of across-the-board improvement is Hornfels, while among the small group of Memorians, only the command trio could make full use of the benefits.
While Shadow Alex dons the few spells he can still afford - one of which he shares with you and your fairy partners, enhancing your healing in case it proves needful - you take over. You'll be casting General Augmentation on yourself, of course, and can accommodate your Shadow, Sir Pritchard, and one of your other allies - probably Hornfels or Captain Marcus - with a single modified use of the spell. But as for the larger group, which do you prefer for your front line of elementals and Hardhat Beetles?
After finishing off the buffing, you get moving-
/ Finally, / someone rumbles.
-to the relief of your allies, most of whom were starting to get fidgety. One part too many bodies crowded into a space, one part curiosity to explore an ancient ruin-
"Guilty," Roderick admits without shame.
-one part unease at seeing so much magic thrown around in such a short period of time-
/ That has to be some kind of cheating, / Hornfels rumbles.
"Where did he GET that much power from?" Lucius wonders.
-one part undead spirits REALLY looking forward to settling an ancient grudge, and one part honest boredom.
Summoned monsters usually see action right away, and a few thousand years of that sort of thing may have led to a certain bias in the selection process the magic uses - assuming such a thing wasn't built in from the start, which you aren't going to rule out.
Although that said, the Hardhat Beetles HAVE been jittering in place pretty much since you summoned them. The rubbery, slightly wobbling nature of their shells doesn't really help-
*Boing*
/ Will you STOP that, already? / one of the elementals exclaims, with exasperated body language.
/ Hehehehe. /
-ANYWAY.
Your not-so-small force moved into the Sanctum-shrouded portion of the entrance hall while you and your Shadow were spellcasting. To your right are the two rooms that were previously used to interview new arrivals - and, if necessary, temporarily hold them - while to your left are the barracks and the storage chamber. Directly ahead is the large circular chamber that connects to the greater base.
You dig into your pocket, take out one of your mana potions, and hand it over to your Shadow.
He looks from you, to it, and then back again. "You sure?"
"Pretty sure, yes."
From one perspective, it would have been more efficient for you to drink the Liquid Starlight before projecting your Dark Self again, but this approach has its advantages as well, mostly in the area of building up your natural recovery.
Your Shadow shrugs, takes the potion-
*Glug*
*Glug*
*Glug*
Used Liquid Starlight
Gained Glass Bottle
-and then hands back the empty bottle.
"Right," he says, flexing his fingers. "Let's try that again."
/ What, MORE magic? / Hornfels exclaims.
"Just a few more spells," you assure him.
Shadow Alex casts the Mass Spell of Bull's Strength on all of your summons other than Hornfels, and still has enough "room" to enhance the Memorians you've picked up as well. He repeats this with the Spell of Bear's Endurance, but doesn't bother to include the ghosts - being undead, spells meant to boost vigor and vitality will, at best, have no useful effects.
After that comes the Communal Spell of Stoneskin, cast on yourself, your Dark Self, and the bouncy Beetles. Normally, spells modified with that particular Metamagic end up not lasting for very long, but you have just enough skill in the field of Abjuration Magic that your Shadow is able to substitute mana to cover the cost of the diamonds normally required, and still have enough energy available to extend the duration to a useful degree.
*Boing*
/ Still bouncy, hehehehe. /
"Poooon."
...also, that.
And then your Dark Self pauses and turns to Hornfels. "Would whichever Power you serve take issue with you being temporarily gifted the strength of another Power?"
/ It would depend on the nature of that Power, / the warrior replies gravely - or perhaps gravelly. / My allegiance is to the Boss of Earth, Grumbar. /
Oooh.
"And if I were to offer the strength of a Goddess of Earth and Fire?" your Shadow asks.
/ I do not believe the Boss would have any real issue with that. /
That's convenient, and so, after a quick check to see if Sir Pritchard has any objections to being included in the effect-
"Absent the counsel of my priest, I believe it would be best if passed on that," the knight answers. "Thank you for the offer, though."
-and then to see if Captain Marcus would object-
"Cato?"
"Father Mars has no quarrel with the lad's Goddesses," the priest replies, "and one who rejects aid freely offered on the battlefield may not live to regret it."
"We're already dead, though," Hermanus notes.
"Don't get clever with me, Magus."
-your Shadow casts the spell.
A couple of castings each of Mage Armor and Haste, extended and expanded as needed to cover the entire group, and your Shadow finishes by casting the Spell of General Augmentation, tweaked to affect multiple targets.
In the process, your personal suite of buffs threatens to grow excessive, and begin interfering with one another.
Your exploration of the Faerie Outpost involved a fair amount of room-by-room searching, enough that you ended up having to make two separate visits to fulfill your objectives there - and even then, once you found Marcus, roused him from his state of torpor, and convinced him you'd come to help, you pretty much made a straight shot to the command center.
While there would be some advantage in performing another exhaustive sweep of the Earthside Base - chief among them the chance to "recruit" more of the ghostly loyalists, and put down any scattered traitors you encounter in the process - the fact that you already have a good map of this place and the company of three of the legion's officers means you're in a position to be more... efficient, in how you approach this.
You voice this thought to your compatriots.
"I can see the merits of the idea," Sir Pritchard replies, "but I have to say, I don't like the thought of going that deep into the base without making sure we've got a clear path back to our only known way out, if we need it." He indicates the portal down the short corridor behind you. "Particularly with that mess hall full of ghosts and such that we'd be passing."
"I could stop off there and yell some sense into them," Cato offers.
"Only if you keep some backup with you," Marcus says firmly.
"Well, of course. Even leaving aside the possibility of a traitor or three in there, caught in the memory of time spent hidden in the ranks, I couldn't reliably control that many undead if they woke up cranky, or just decided to run rampant."
Do you have any preference for who to send with Cato?
Seeing as how Mage Armor isn't that much better as a defensive option than the Warmage's Robe you're already wearing, you can live without it.
While you are technically leading this expedition, you're also the least experienced at directing a (relatively) large number of troops in a combat situation. At least in this lifetime. You aren't ashamed to admit this shortcoming, or to let the adults with actual command experience decide how to divvy up the troops.
It's immediately decided that Marcus and Hermanus have to go with you regardless: you need their security access and knowledge of the base systems to actually get anything done once you reach the command center; Marcus IS the ranking officer on site, and so has both the best claim to take command and rally the troops, as well as the responsibility of actually doing so; and Hermanus needs to be present to see what the state of the control arrays is.
It's also quickly determined that the Hardhat Beetles are best left with you. They're not much brighter than most animals, and Cato wouldn't have the limited control your Summoning Spells grant you over them to make up for that. In addition, they're not creatures that the Memorians are remotely familiar with, which could cause problems with the souls lingering in the mess hall.
Cato considers the three regular elementals-
*Boing.*
/ Hehehehe. /
/ I am going to smack you if you don't stop that. /
-before visibly writing them off. He approaches Hornfels about lending a hand, or a hammer, as the situation merits.
The elemental paladin asks for clarification on just how many ghosts there are in the mess hall, and when you describe the number that Shadow Alex's earlier scrying revealed, he agrees it might be wise for him to accompany the undead priest.
/ Ghosts are actually even MORE annoying to fight than those irritants of the Air, / the warrior rumbles, / but I have a few tricks that will help, should it come to that. /
Hornfels does have some reservations about leaving his summoner's side, but you've got enough other defenders around you - to say nothing of your many-layered defenses - to satisfy his concerns about your safety.
He does ask that you limit yourself to the command center until he's able to link up with you again, rather than go hunting for demonic skulls to crush without him.
Aside from that, Cato also takes Lucius and the rest of his small team with him. The presence of these souls may help awaken their brothers in arms as much or more than the sight of a priest of Mars, and if it comes to a fight, they'll be able to face any traitors or confused loyalists on equal footing. Better than that, even, since they're actually wearing their full kit, whereas most of the crowd in the dining hall were in their off-duty robes.
With that sorted, your oversized party proceeds down the hallway. A couple of the Hardhat Beetles take the lead, with Hornfels rumbling along behind them, and the Memorians in two rows of four - minus one - behind him. You, Briar, and the Shadows are next, with two of the elementals and four of the Beetles behind you, ready to move up and guard your flanks when you reach the next room and have the space for that sort of formation. Sir Pritchard, the third elemental, and the last lone Hardhat Beetle bring up the rear.
The group is moving steadily enough that you don't hear any further bouncy noises from the end of your train, but you're sure it's just a matter of time.
Upon reaching the end of the hall, Hornfels and his two attendant Beetles move through the corridor to the next room, the big warrior managing to fit within the passage without too much trouble. The Memorians follow in pairs, and one of the elemental/Beetle groupings moves up after them, before you, your partner, and your Shadows follow.
The rectangular room you enter is about fifty feet across, in a straight line from the doorway you just exited to the one opposite it. As you move past the squat, tower-like structures flanking the door, you see that the chamber is about fifteen feet wider than it is long, and the "open" area that the earlier scrying session didn't get a good look at is actually fairly cluttered. There's a sandy circular space taking up most of the far left hand corner of the room, about twenty feet across but not so deep as to even half-bury the armored bones scattered upon its surface. Opposite that are the remains of wooden and metal objects, their shape and purpose lost to violence and decay, with a few more bodies scattered about among the wreckage.
Although Hornfels spares a glance for the dead bodies to the right, it's the circle of sand that seems to hold his attention.
Considering the lupine-skulled form at the center of the pile of ancient corpses, and the aura of undeath, Shadow, and corruption radiating from it, you're not surprised.
The Memorians, too, have turned their gazes to the wolf-thing and their long-dead brothers.
You will do your best to avoid trouble while Hornfels is absent, but you can't guarantee that you won't get into a fight or something.
After all, if a particularly nasty demon appears while you're en route, it would be a shame to just leave it alone. Kind of against your religion, too.
/ What a coincidence, / the paladin chuckles. / It would be rather against mine, as well. /
This seems like a good opportunity to test your "Shadow Shinigami" idea, before widespread violence ensues. It takes a little doing to get the attention of the paladin and the not-Roman ghosts and then explain your intent without making too much noise - as while your Spell of Mind Blank is likely "blinding" the demonic wolf-man to the presence of your life-force and thereby preventing it from being roused by your presence, the ward won't stop sound - but you manage to convey enough to get the spooks to back off and Hornfels to rumble into position between you and the still-unmoving monster.
!
/ Its eyes are glowing, / the elemental paladin reports immediately, as he shifts his stance slightly and readies his hammer. / Best hurry if you mean to do something! /
Shadows gather before you, first as a thin haze, then an opaque cloud-
At once coming from the direction of the sand-pit, and also as if from a great distance away, you hear a howl.
-and then taking on the form of three-dimensional humanoid silhouette, devoid of any specific features beyond an athletic build and a... somewhat pronounced lack of height.
The image that forms around the core of the thing wears one of the black uniforms, lower face-concealing masks, and distinctive footwear that the Shinigami ninja your Shadow met during the Silbern raid were clad in, but past that, it kind of looks like Captain Sui-Feng.
Even as you're putting the Shadow-reinforced Illusion together, you can hear the sound of sand shifting and bones clattering as something doubtlessly unpleasant happens past Hornfels' mountainous bulk. There is some snarling, followed by another howl - which, thankfully, doesn't provoke any IMMEDIATE response, or at least not any that you can perceive in the adjacent rooms - and the next thing you know, there is the sound of something hard but not all that heavy colliding with something quite a bit bigger.
Hornfels isn't even budged by whatever impact just took place. Instead, as his opponent snarls, the paladin quickly raises his hammer - one rocky hand grasping just below the head, the other holding the butt - moves it forward, and then brings it down and back.
/ Ha! Gotcha! /
There is more snarling, and a scrabbling that sort of reminds you of the sound Moblin's claws make on a sidewalk, except bigger and nastier.
/ Struggle all you want, foul thing, you're not going anywhere. /
Having competent help is really nice, you know?
Shortly after that, you finish conjuring your fake Shinigami, and issue... her, you guess... her marching orders.
Silently, the ninja-Shadow draws a dagger-like blade and races away from your position, circling Hornfels to come up behind the struggling beast he has pinned between his rocky body and the hard haft of his hammer.
You also move, hoping to get into a better position to observe the outcome, but the number of the beings around you and the fact that most of them want to keep themselves between you and the known threat makes that a bit problematic.
Before you can sort it out, you hear a crunching, rasping sound that some inherited memory of Ganondorf's identifies as the sound of steel biting into bone.
There is a pained yelp, but it's almost immediately followed by more sounds of anger and aggression.
/ Whatever your little shadow is supposed to be doing, summoner, it doesn't appear to be working! /
Sui-Feng is one of the handful of Shinigami that you have actually encountered in person, even if it was at a distance, while you were in disguise and under Mind Blank. More than that, your Shadow fought alongside the Captain of the Second Division during the raid on Silbern, and not just in the general sense of their both being present and on the same side of the battle; the two of them worked together to take on two of the stronger Sternritter and assassinate Yhwach, which gave your Dark Self the opportunity to see Sui-Feng's zanpakuto in action.
It's true that recreating the initial release of her sword's power isn't what you're trying to do here - you just want the purifying, soul-exorcising aspect - but having witnessed (by proxy) the active invocation of that power will make it a bit easier to reproduce in Shadow form.
At least in theory.
Recalling that buzzing presence your Shadow detected when Sui-Feng stabbed Yhwach, and which he briefly envisioned as a fairy partner-equivalent, you try to incorporate it into your Illusion. You haven't forgotten the fire-bleeding Man in Bandages that Isshin faced for his final round in the Ring of Trials, or how that individual was identified as a Sword-Spirit; if you're attempting to create a functional copy of a Shinigami, it simply wouldn't do to leave her partner out.
As to how well it works...
This is your first attempt at creating a Shadow Shinigami, much less at trying to get it to send on a soul - an ability that you've never actually seen utilized in person, only read about in the Japanese Spirit Dossier. The file didn't go into the mechanical details of the process, and it also only mentioned the Shinigami sending on Plus souls and purifying Hollows. Exactly what happens when a zanpakuto is utilized against OTHER sorts of spirits, like youkai or demons or different sorts of undead, was not even hinted at.
It's not impossible, then, that you either didn't shape the Shadow Conjuration correctly, due to a lack of information, or that "Shadow Feng" HAS the ability, and just doesn't know how to use it correctly against a demon-tainted undead abomination.
It's even possible that the skeletal wolf-man saw through the Shadow-reinforced Illusion, but you consider that fairly unlikely.
Whatever the reason, you think it's worth giving your creation a chance to prove herself, and ask Hornfels to wait a bit, while the Shadow Shinigami tries a few different moves.
Right after that, you hear a dull "thwock," as of bone being hit by something fairly solid, but not with enough force to crack or shatter anything.
The sound the wolf-thing makes then is one of confusion, almost a whine, but without any hint of pain or fear. Its snarling struggles do not abate, nor do you sense any change in the darksome energies that make up its aura.
Alright, so the hilt-to-the-forehead trick didn't work, either. Maybe, then, the Shadow needs to "kill" the undead entity to properly trigger that purification...?
A flurry of bone-breaking strikes ensue, prompting angry, alarmed, not-quite-pained sounds from the beast on the receiving end. A final howl begins and is cut off in the same breath, as a final *Crunch!* is joined by the sound of bits of bone falling away and bouncing off of stone - small fragments at first, but swiftly followed by the clatter of much larger parts, as the bony body Hornfels was holding pinned simply goes to pieces. The aura of tainted Shadow and Spirit fades but doesn't wholly disperse, and you don't sense anything like the cleansing burn of Light or the cool absorption of Darkness that you would have expected in a proper purification.
/ Well, it's down, / Hornfels says, using the butt of his hammer to prod at the small pile of remains spread out in the sand in front of him. / But I think your little shadow just beat it until it broke. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you were hoping for something special to happen, it appears not to have happened. /
That was your conclusion as well, unfortunately.
Maybe it's your imagination, but the way Shadow Feng is standing there, head slightly bowed and eyes turned towards the broken skeleton, makes you think the Shadow Conjuration is a bit annoyed by her own performance.
Once it's clear that the demonic undead werewolf is down and not going to be getting back up any time soon, your party forms up to continue deeper into the base.
Do you want to grab a souvenir of this first "kill"?
One failure is no reason to give the whole idea up as a bad job, so while you let the pseudo-Shinigami disperse for now, you do so with the resolve to conjure her again later for another attempt.
On that note, it would help if you could figure out what, if anything, you did wrong this time around. The most effective way of doing that would be to speak with an expert on the subject of conjuring illusory Shinigami, but the only person you're aware of who'd have experience with that particular skill would be Captain Aizen - and quite aside from the moral and ethical issues of going to that guy for advice, he doesn't use Illusion Magic the way you do.
Instead, you'll have to be satisfied with "just" an expert in Shinigami stuff, which means getting in touch with Urahara. The Spell of Sending won't work for that purpose, as not only is the base warded against Summoning Magic, the limits of the spell itself make it extremely unsuitable for the kind of discussion you had in mind.
But you still have Ambrose's Cellphone on you. Could it work?
Thinking back a bit, you recall Sir Pritchard getting a handheld radio out from some pouch or armored pocket once he was inside the base, and checking in with his people. The signal wasn't perfect, but it was clear enough for him to be understood.
Precedent established, you reach into your expanded pocket for the Magic Cellphone and dial Urahara Shop.
...
...
No signal.
Frowning, you cast a glance at the ceiling of the room you're currently in. It IS a MAGIC Cellphone, after all, and the long-range function in particular is reliant on the magical enhancements Ambrose included, so it makes sense that the wards might have caught that, even if the mundane portion of the signal slipped right by.
Assuming it DID get out. You've never tried making a transcontinental phonecall from an underground structure before, the stone walls surrounding you and the earth and plants piled upon and around them might have smothered the signal even without the magic.
"Problem, lad?" Sir Pritchard asks.
"I'm not sure if I'm having a technical issue or a mystical one, sir."
"One minute, maybe I can help." Roderick fetches his radio again. "Camp, this is Pritchard."
There's a crackle, and then, "Pritchard, this is Griffiths, go."
The knight and his security chief quickly work out a test for your Cellphone, giving you a number in the camp to try calling.
No dice.
Gained Electronics F (Plus)
Even as you're being a little annoyed by this, you allow yourself a moment of amusement.
"Something funny?" Sir Pritchard asks.
"Ambrose is the one that enchanted the phone," you reply as you turn off your phone and put it away.
Roderick gets it immediately, and chuckles. "Something to poke fun at him about later."
The notion of using Greater Shadow Conjuration to mimic the Spell of Sending occurs to you, but after turning the variables over in your head a few times, you realize it wouldn't work. While Shadow Conjuration is very versatile, it can't reproduce every Spell of Summoning - teleportation and true interplanar travel effects in particular, which Sending includes enough aspects of to make it unworkable.
Inconvenient, but every spell has its limits.
As you look over the scattered mass of broken or just disconnected bones, your senses home in on one piece in particular, where the lingering aura of corruption-tainted undeath seems strongest. It's located inside the ribcage, and yet, you think it isn't actually PART of the ribs or the sternum. What exactly...?
Stepping around the body a bit and crouching down, you see... something... sitting inside the torso. Is that a bone, or... what?
Using a quick cantrip to conjure a piece of thick cloth, and sparing a moment to be grateful that your hands aren't that big yet, you reach down the top of the ribcage, wrap the cloth around the whatever-it-is, and give it an experimental tug. It's certainly attached to the other bones, but not fused to any of them, and with the essence of undeath fading and a thousand years of decay finally coming into full effect, you manage to work it out.
It's not bone, you realize, but rather a shard of something dark, dark red. And by the location...
Is this the creature's heart?
Gained Demonic Werewolf's Heart
Hoo-boy...
With a central piece of the creature's essence in your hand, you consider trying to look for energy signatures that match what you're feeling right now. You immediately rule out most of your enhanced visual senses, as none of them let you see through walls, and most of your non-visual senses as well, since the energies they try to track down wouldn't show up.
Corruption Sense and Spiritual Sense should probably work, though, and there's always the possibility of using a Power Scan. That said, the latter has a history of being very "noisy," and would probably start waking things up. The other two would be much quieter, but they do involve sending out probes of spiritual energy, which undead creatures would be somewhat sensitive to.
With that in mind...
