Where the Heart Is, Part 11

The two of you stand there, surrounded by the silent, unmoving memory of that long-ago battlefield. But it's a new battlefield that concerns you now. And you quickly settle on which tactics will serve you best.

"I see..." you muse. "That does make things more difficult. If this group in the Church really is as secretive as you say, then Verika is probably the best person to track them down. In that case, I would ask only three things of you. That you would take Ceilyn under your protection if we do bring her to you. That you tell no one who was responsible for her entering your custody. And that you treat the exchange as one carried out under flag of truce. With all the protections that honor demands of such a meeting."

Alicia studies you, her piercing blue eyes searching your demonic expression for any signs of a trick or a gambit. She knows this is a risk. She knows that you could be playing some longer, more insidious game. But eventually she nods.

"I give you my word," the paladin says solemnly. "So long as this Ceilyn acts in good faith, I will take her under my protection. I will tell no one of your involvement in finding her. And should Verika deliver the girl to me, I will not use that meeting to take her back by force."

You give the paladin a knowing look. "Then you have my gratitude," you say. "So long as you agree not to take her back by force, I will have no complaints."

The emphasis of your reply makes it clear that you noticed how carefully the heroine phrased her promise. There is no doubt in your mind that Alicia sees the exchange you've offered as an opportunity to plead with Verika. An opportunity to try and convince her friend to come back to the side of good.

But you don't mind in the slightest. In fact, the chance to talk freely with Verika was part of the bait you laid out for Alicia to go along with your plan.

The paladin's eyes narrow. "You seem quite confident in the strength of your control."

"No," you say, shaking your head. "What I am confident in is the strength of Verika's compassion."

You turn away from Alicia, your gaze sweeping across the frozen battlefield. You look at the soldiers. So many of them dead and dying in the muck, their bodies burnt and broken. All of the horror is carved into Alicia's memory, remaining vivid in her dreams. Even all these years after the event, she still carries it with her.

"I know you can see it too," you finally continue, gesturing out at the battlefield. "You must see it! It wouldn't be seared this deeply into your memory if you didn't. The awful waste of all this! Verika isn't following me because she's a puppet under my compulsion, or any rubbish like that. She's following me because I showed her there's a better way than all this butchery!"

You turn back to the paladin, meeting her piercing gaze directly as you try to convey the depth of your sincerity by sheer force of will. "No one should have to lose what you lost to this stupid fucking war," you say quietly. "Not you. Not your soldiers. Not the orcs. No one."

A hint of surprise flickers across Alicia's face, displacing a little of her anger. "You actually believe that..." she murmurs, mystified. "You... actually think that what you're doing is helping us."

"Of course it's helping you!" you say, frustration seeping into your voice. "I can give you mortals a way to settle these endless conflicts of yours without all this killing! A way where even the conquered side will enjoy their loss beyond anything you've ever imagined! Why would anyone ever turn something like that down?"

You're not even acting now. The words just spill out of you, without any of your usual analysis and crafting. "How much more suffering will you mortals put yourselves through for these... useless principles of yours?" you say, pleading with her. "How much more blood needs to be shed? How many more people will need to be cut down? How many more girls will have to mourn their fathers? It doesn't need to be this way!"

Silence falls between you. You don't see the heated anger in Alicia's expression anymore. But neither do you see any indication that you're getting through to her. Instead, when she gazes at you, she just looks...

...sad.

Before responding, Alicia also turns to look out across the battlefield. Once again she revisits her own traumatic memories, not shying away from any of it. You can see the pain and regret in her eyes. A regret that it ever came to this senseless brutality. A regret so similar to your own. You can see that she understands.

Yet despite that, she does not budge an inch. "You are not wrong that war and violence are grievous tragedies," she agrees. "But even so... I cannot condone aphrodisiac-fueled rape in their place. I cannot let you do to the rest of this world what you did to the Great Forest."

"Why not?" you say, your voice raw with utter incomprehension as you try to wrap your mind around this alien mortal mindset toward sex. "You were there in the forest, weren't you? You saw how much everyone was enjoying it once they experienced it for themselves, once they realized that there wasn't anything to fear!"

"It should have been their choice whether to experience it or not," is Alicia's quiet, firm reply. "That is the right way to prevent these tragedies from happening. By changing minds with reason. Not by overwhelming them with sensation."

Then she exhales. "If you do truly wish to avoid suffering and bloodshed... then please, please, just convince your mistress to come to the negotiating table. If she would only agree to stop the raids across the border, and commit to a peace treaty, then I have faith that we can find a way to coexist."

You let out a dark, mirthless chuckle. "Believe me," you say. "If that were possible, my mistress would have done it a long time ago. If that were possible I never would have been summoned in the first place. I'm only here because it was the least-violent way of fighting you that she could still sell to Melca."

Even as you speak, a tug on your mind warns you that the dream is ending, that Alicia is close to waking up. You don't have much time left. But before you depart, there's one last thing you want to leave her with.

"In fact..." you say. "Let me give you one more gift. I heard that you asked Nevati to investigate whether Melca had any leverage over the Witch Queens that would constrain their actions. Well... I can answer that question for you."

With a snap of your fingers, you shift the dreamscape. Now, instead of the battlefield, you show her the full horrors of Melca's divine realm, pulled from your memory, just as Melca once showed it to you. The fire. The screams. The stench of endlessly burning flesh. Over and over again for all eternity. The wretched victims of a mad goddess, a goddess whose wrath no amount of suffering could ever be enough to satisfy.

For the first time in this entire exchange, Alica looks shaken. She slowly turns in a half-circle, taking in the horror that surrounds her. "This..." she begins, before faltering. "Is this...?"

"It's what awaits the Witch Queens after death," you say, your voice hard. "It's what the first Witch Queen offered Melca in exchange for her power. And it's what my mistress will face, if I don't succeed in saving her."

Alicia has no words. She simply stands there in shock, her fist clenched so hard that it's trembling. You decide that's enough for one night. There will be more opportunities to push further, and you'll need to decide exactly how to pursue those. But for now, you decide to let her sit with this realization, giving it a chance to fully sink in.

Around you, the dream is already starting to unravel. Rather than rush anything more, you instead withdraw of your own accord. And with that, you awaken back in Mother Vernier's room. Rolling out of bed, you quietly walk over to the window and crack open the shutters to peek through. Outside, the first tiny hints of dawn are just barely starting to illuminate the eastern sky. For her dream to end so soon, the paladin must be accustomed to rising early. Not that that's any surprise.

You suppose that encounter went about as well as could be expected. At the very least, you cannot imagine Alicia being willing to use lethal force on Lily after this. And it may have even softened her opinion of you a bit. That's probably about as much as you could hope for, short of seducing Alicia outright.

After all, everything rests on appeasing Melca for as long as possible while hiding your true goal, until all your preparations are complete. To do that, you'll need to keep hunting Alicia's friends. And Alicia will need to keep hunting you. Stopping either would be too suspicious. It's not a risk you're willing to take. Not until you're as ready as possible to face Melca.

You shapeshift into a random man with the look of a servant, and help Yvette to clean up her room, hiding any evidence of your passionate tryst. Then, with one final kiss, you slip out of the rectory.

A new day brings with it new decisions. But before deciding on anything, you walk into a nearby alleyway. The meeting place you told Rifek to send a messenger with his update on the investigation you asked him to pursue.

To your surprise, however, you find Rifek himself waiting there for you. You also note that his demeanor is much more serious than it was at your initial meeting.

"The information my sources found was too important," he says grimly, in reply to your wordless raised eyebrows. "I decided that I should give it to you myself. We looked deeper into the man you asked us about. The one who was asking questions about Mockingbird."

"What did you find?" you ask.

"Nothing," the ratfolk replies. "Absolutely nothing. No matter how hard we looked, no matter what stones we turned over, no one had ever heard of him. Not even the out-of-towners. There weren't even any reports of him entering the city. It's as though..."

"...as though he didn't even exist before he interrogated those people," you finish, an unpleasant suspicion starting to form. "This isn't the first time I've been given a report like that from the Thousand Eyes, on someone I asked them to investigate."

"Oh, it gets worse," says Rifek. "We might not have been able to find anything about where he came from... but I had my sources investigate everyone he talked to. I also had them put together a list of exactly which questions he was asking them. They weren't always the same. Some questions, he only asked of people who said they'd seen Mockingbird recently."

The ratfolk reaches up, handing you a small piece of paper. You open it to see a detailed list of questions, with tally marks in the margins to indicate their relative frequency. Most of them are the sort of basic questions that Cavros the fence mentioned, back when you first learned about this interloper. But your eyes are drawn to one less-frequent set of questions that the ratfolk investigation has uncovered.

Have you noticed any unusual behavior from Mockingbird lately?

Has Mockingbird been associating with any new friends that you don't recognize?

Does Mockingbird have any recent romantic interests in her life?

If there was any remaining doubt, this discovery puts it to rest. It also makes sense of the question that had puzzled Cavros. Why would this mysterious figure would go to such lengths to learn about Mockingbird... but then not take any action against her?

Because Mockingbird was never the target. Mockingbird was just the bait.

A cold chill runs down your spine, as questions race through your mind. How many of them are there? Just the one? Or more? How much do they know? How much have they prepared, as they lay in wait, staking out the place they knew you would eventually arrive? Have they done a similar investigation of Elianna? Have they been following her? Do they know about Alicia's hideaway? Have they been watching this whole time?

Have they realized who you are? And if they have... what will their move be?

You can't say for sure. Even with your demonic senses, you haven't noticed anyone following you. Which means that if they are keeping an eye on you or Elianna, their ability to conceal themselves far surpasses any mortal, even a heroine like Verika. But that may well be the case.

If it is, then if you wanted to try and pick them out, you'd need more than just your passive awareness. You'd need to devote some time to—surreptitiously—searching, while pretending to do other things. If successful, it could allow you to see these new threats with your own eyes, as well as learning more about their tactics.

But then there's also your primary mission. It's crucial for your long-term plan that you seduce one—if not more—of the heroines here. And despite all that you've done to ingratiate yourself and form connections... you haven't actually stoked any outright lust yet on either of them.

And of course, your cover identity has a mission of her own, where she's supposed to be getting work to Mockingbird to come in and meet with her allies.

Finally, you'll need to decide what your next task for the Thousand Eyes will be. You could have them investigate leads on any suspicious newcomers or happenings in the city, no longer limiting their search to people who match the description you had previously been working with. Though, while that might get you some useful information, it wouldn't give you the in-person identification you'd need if you ever wanted to dreamwalk the enemy.

Alternatively, you could fulfill Kavia's task by asking them to spread word that Elianna needs to talk with Mockingbird. Though, while that would get the word out, it would do so without a chance to get any temptation in on Mockingbird yourself.

Any of those tasks could prove crucial. You'll need to decide how best to divide your efforts, as well as what needs to be prioritized right now.

Current Lust: 200/240 (-15, shapeshifting)