Where the Heart Is, Part 33

Having spent the night in restful sleep yourself (after replacing Alicia's nightmare with the more comforting dreams of her family) you face the morning refreshed and full of purpose. Ceriss and Nevati wake soon after, and you ask them to focus all their efforts on preparing contingencies against the possibility that the Lust Queen's gift is a trap to strike at you.

They both agree with your concern, and soon leave to work on their collaborative task. You, meanwhile, find a quiet room where you won't be disturbed, and sit cross-legged on the floor. Zethuriel's escape has made one thing abundantly clear: you cannot afford to leave the Incubus King any more opportunities to sabotage you. His malice has already cost you much, and it will only grow worse the more runes are activated.

You look down at the brand, and the seal containing it. The seal's power is already staggering thanks to Lily's contribution, applied onto the foundation that Ceriss laid with the tiefling's inborn affinity for demonic energies. Now it's time for the final touch. It's time to hone all that power to counter your enemy's influence.

Closing your eyes, you think back to the memories you stole from the Incubus King, detailed knowledge of each step of the brand's creation. For a few hours you simply study those memories, refining the ideas you'd already been considering, making sure there are no mistakes. You're going to use that knowledge to enhance the seal in ways you never would have considered otherwise, targeting weaknesses you never could have known existed.

Then, once you've settled on the best approach you can think of, you place your finger on the spellwork of the seal. Gathering demonic power right at the fingertip, you start to make minute adjustments, altering the function little by little.

It's slow, taxing work, requiring incredible care and precision. Sometimes it takes hours before you make a single, tiny change. Without any outside reference you soon lose track of time entirely. Only when fatigue starts to set in do you realize how long you've been at it. And you're still not nearly done.

Eventually you go to sleep for the night. As much as you want to keep going, it's dangerous to be doing this at anything less than your best. A single mistake could be catastrophic, and you can't allow that to happen. You resume your efforts the next day, again doing nothing but work on your task. And the next day. And the day after that.

In this conflict with your foe, there are no dramatic flashes of light or bursts of power. This time, your struggle against the Incubus King is measured in calm consideration and methodical precision, down to the very millimeter. Step by step you entrench the defenses of your mind, laying down an impregnable wall that you're confident will resist anything short of the final rune's activation.

But while outwardly there is no sign of the struggle taking place, inwardly you can feel the rage of the crazed demon lord as you tighten the chains around him. In his current state he's in no position to resist... but he still makes the attempt. You can hear his now-familiar voice howling threats and curses, straining against his bonds in an attempt to throw off your focus, if only slightly.

You do your best to tune him out. The ravings of an impotent madman are of no concern to you.

Day after day of painstaking effort goes by... until finally you realize that you've done everything you can. The seal is as strong as it's ever going to be, taking advantage of every opportunity you could have exploited. The howls of the Incubus King that echoed in your thoughts are now little more than irritating whispers. And eventually even those fade, as he realizes how useless his straining is.

At this point, even if you were to seduce a heroine by allowing her to take a more dominant role, you doubt that the Incubus King could do anything about it like he has in the past. With this, you don't expect that he'll be able to cause any more trouble for you.

Not until the final rune activates, that is.

Taking a deep breath, you lay back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Another hurdle cleared. You can feel the seal constraining the brand. The extra cost of Lust to use the abilities granted by the brand will likely be a little steeper now, just as it has been on every other step so far. But that's a small price to pay if it means keeping your actions your own, and absolutely denying the mad king any ability to ruin your plans with his twisted, festering spite.

You spend that night with Khaytala and Verika, replenishing your reserves of Lust after the long, isolated struggle. Then, once you're at full strength, you head over to check on what Nevati and Ceriss have prepared while you were locked away.

On entering the room that the two heroines have taken over, you see the result. It's an impressive sight, no question. Layers upon layers of magical circles drawn into the floor, each of them alight with arcane power, many of them inter-connecting in some truly fascinating ways. It's a display that highlights each of their ingenuity working together, including several precautions you doubt you'd have thought to take.

And in the center of all those circles is the place where Rysanial will be summoned.

Nevati glances up as you enter, then rushes over to you, eager to share what they've come up with. The young gnome tugs at your arm, guiding you as you walk the perimeter, explaining all the intricate parts of the design with her usual stammer. You listen carefully, making a few suggestions of your own, which the three of you use to tweak the spell formulae even more.

But time is running short. Every day you delay is another chance for the remaining heroines to prepare their traps. Another chance for the Incubus King to grow closer to escape. Another chance for Melca to search for her own countermeasures. You need to keep making your own moves... and that means you need to bring Rysanial back.

It's a tense group that assembles in that room. All the heroines gather there, as well as Filathia, the priestess from the elf village. If anything goes wrong, she's the most powerful cleric that you can trust right now, even if she doesn't hold a candle to Elianna's healing abilities. Lily also wanted to be there... but you strictly forbade it. While she did help Nevati and Ceriss by contributing some of her raw magical power to the defensive wards, she's the one person you cannot risk like this. Not when you know what her fate would be, if she did somehow die.

Everyone watches in silence as you stand outside the concentric rings of magic circles, your palm outstretched toward the empty space in the center. You exhale, clearing your mind in preparation. Then you call out the name of your succubus. "Rysanial."

The summoning glyph appears at the very center of all the wards, and you feel the unmistakable connection to Rysanial's soul. It's only a matter of minutes before her familiar figure appears, smiling brightly at you, with a rolled-up painting slung across her back and a new dagger at her hip. Then she glances down in puzzlement at all the defenses layered around her. "What's—"

But before the first word has even left her mouth, the dagger at her hip tears free from its sheathe, spinning through the air toward your heart with impossible speed. It hits the border of the first magic circle immediately. As it does, countless magical threads erupt upward, winding toward the projectile in an attempt to hold it in place. But the instant a thread touches the spinning blade, it triggers a nasty counterspell. Pale blue magic pulses out from Passion's Sting, disintegrating the threads as it tears through the first layer of defenses unhindered.

The next layer is a solid wall of magical force, which does impede the blade for a half-second... until the edge starts to glow blue and it carves through that as well. But there was a second trick to that layer, one not foiled by simply cutting through. Right as the knife is passing through the barrier, the magic circle triggers a secondary effect, hitting the blade with a powerful dispelling pulse of its own, contained by that layer so it doesn't affect any of the other defenses. The blade wobbles, its trajectory faltering... but then it recovers and continues to hurtle onward.

But the delay has made it more susceptible to the third layer, as one of Nevati's truly clever ideas activates. The spell in that layer doesn't target the blade directly, instead activating a powerful surge of localized gravity magic to pull the weapon down and back, causing its trajectory to falter even more.

That buys enough time for Khaytala to move, pushing you back and leaping directly in front of you. Without any hesitation, she instinctively interposes her own body between you and the attack. You let out a shout of protest... but it turns out the blade has other ideas as well. Rather than strike Khaytala, it immediately makes a hard right-angle turn—in defiance of all sense of momentum—curving around to come at its true target from the side.

But that redirection exposes it to even more of your mage's preparations. Even now, Nevati is kneeling at the edge of the magical circles, making frantic repairs. Soon the magical threads from before are back, reaching out to snare the blade as it cuts sideways to try and find an angle on you. And it seems that first powerful dispelling pulse was the only one it had in store. This time, when the restored threads wrap around the blade, they remain.

Even so, the blade still forces its way forward, albeit slower now. It slices toward you from the side... but Khaytala lunges again, her hand clamping around its hilt. You leap back, even as the big half-orc digs in her heels, straining with all her might. The blade slows to a crawl... though it's still dragging Khaytala forward, inch by inch, her heels skidding on the floor as she fights to hold it back.

Verika, meanwhile, leaps toward Rysanial in a flying tackle, carrying both of them safely clear of the magic circles. Ceriss is moving as well, coming up beside the struggling Khaytala and hitting the blade with even more targeted dispelling magic. That weakens it enough to stop its movement entirely.

Looking closer, you see that there's now a purplish-black haze around the blade's edge, along with an unpleasant smell. A death curse so powerful that it's moldering the very air around it. You swallow. Even with your enhanced constitution, getting hit by something like that would probably have had severe long-term effects. If you'd even survived at all.

But the heroines are slowly gaining ground now, pulling the deadly weapon away from you step by step. "Th-throw it back to the center!" Nevati shouts. Khaytala complies, turning and hurling Passion's Sting with all her might, right back into the magic circles.

More and more of the magical threads wind up to enfold the weapon, until finally Passion's Sting is pulled to the very center of that ring of powerful wards, cocooned in a cluster of magic connecting it to both the floor and the ceiling. Even then, it still vibrates angrily, the blade straining back and forth in a ceaseless, frenetic attempt to find some way out.

Rysanial stares dumbstruck at the scene before her, hurt and betrayal in her face. She really had been charmed by the Lust Queen's words. She really had believed all those assurances. Then she turns to you. "I'm sorry!" she says, dismayed. "I swear, I... I didn't know!"

You walk over to where she's sitting and kneel next to her. "Don't worry," you reassure her, lifting a hand to stroke her hair. "I never thought you did. Fallhazel warned me that the Lust Queen would try something like this. Fortunately, we were one step ahead."

Glancing back, you see that Nevati and Ceriss are already at work locking down the wards. Passion's Sting is contained, and shouldn't be a threat anymore. Though if you want to make use of its power yourself, you'll probably need to assign Nevati to carefully remove all the curses that have been cast on it. Still, given its legendary power, that might well be worth the effort.

You don't touch Rysanial directly, knowing that she still had worries about the Incubus King's geas and its effects on her. Which is why it surprises you when she initiates an outright embrace instead, clinging tight to you for quite some time. You only pull apart after she's regained her composure, once again in control as the smirking, seductive succubus. But you can tell that beneath it all, she's still unsettled by how close she came to being the vehicle of your death.

To distract her from that, you instead focus on what she's accomplished, taking the painting off her back. Nevati insists on checking it before you open it. But she detects nothing, nor do you. Just as you suspected, while the Lust Queen might take a chance to kill you, she isn't going to jeopardize something this important to the fight against the Incubus King on a long shot.

Once Nevati is satisfied that the painting is safe, you unroll it. You recognize it immediately as the correct one, each detail unmistakably that of the woman whose likeness you captured all those years ago. Not an exceptionally beautiful woman... but one that you spent a great deal of time with all the same. Old memories wash over her for a while, until you finally turn to the others who are all watching you.

"Her name was Eyrsa," you say, your voice distant. "She... asked me to paint this for her, when she felt that she would be reincarnating soon. She didn't think she'd ever accomplished much in her life. And she wanted someone to remember her, as she was in that moment."

A half-smile flits across your face. Soon you'll be able to grant her request, far beyond anything you could have imagined at the time. Soon, the fate of the entire Second Circle will be shifted by what the two of you shared so long ago. If this works, then history will remember what happened here—and her own contribution to it—even millennia into the future of the Planes themselves. Not bad for a poor village girl who died in a plague when she was still young.

Nerves are still on edge after the close call. But once Passion's Sting has been completely sealed, your group heads back to the main council chambers to discuss your options. Lily is anxious to hear what happened, and Rysanial explains what happened during her time in the Second Circle. Though it's not much beyond what you'd already learned from the dreamwalk you shared.

Once those matters have been addressed, the conversation then turns to your next moves. The rest of the council is called in. And the first order of business is what orders to give your agents in the various regions.

"If we want to take the Underworld, then we likely don't have much time left," you say. "And I think it will be important. The divisions plaguing the Melcan nations are exactly what have allowed our enemies to last as long as they have. Our foes band together against us, while we squabble among ourselves. But think what we could accomplish if Kovora and the Underworld were truly united as one! With my power, that will become a possibility."

Of course, the real reason you want to take the Underworld is to weaken Melca by abolishing her worship and desecrating her shrines at the key moment. But you obviously don't say that out loud, instead reinforcing a more acceptable rationale to Melca, who is almost certainly listening.

Velaria—Verika's drow sister and the ex-matriach—speaks up. "Our agents in the Underworld have used their troop movements to distract the human armies, which has allowed us to take a Nelin town without reprisal," she says. "Now we stand poised to make a strike at the Twilight Fortress, the ancient bastion that guards the physical entrance to the Underworld. The question is... should our agents in the Underworld continue their distractions? That might make the Twilight Fortress itself easier to take, if we strike right away. Or should they weaken the defenses of the Underworld capitol itself, working to make that later conquest easier?"

For a while the council discusses the benefits and risks of either option. Eventually, though, you move on to discuss the Great Forest. "The Old Mothers have been focused on strengthening the forest's aphrodisiac pollen," Verika says. "From what I've heard, it's extremely potent right now. Anyone going through that route will be left horny beyond belief on the other side. Which means that any forces one nation sends through the forest to support the other will have vastly reduced effectiveness. Especially against our... particular approach to combat."

You muse over your options. Now that the pollen's potency has been boosted, the Old Mothers could work on extending the range of the pollen beyond the borders of the Great Forest. If it's as potent as Verika says, that could let you pick up more border towns—and their supplies—with hardly any effort at all.

Alternatively, you could ask the Old Mothers to focus on actively subverting any soldiers or merchants that come through their paths. The effect of that corruption would be far less potent... but it would be more widespread, beyond the smaller border towns. Finally, there's still the option of the plant soldiers that you could ask them to cultivate to bolster your forces directly.

Finally, Ceriss speaks up, recounting information that she gathered from her recent stay in Vekmar. "Last time, you told our people there to focus on setting up precautions and defenses, rather than any active measures," she says, looking at you with gratitude. "And it's a good thing you did. Somehow... someone left an anonymous warning at the Inquisition that Lord Kovar was misappropriating Vekmar's food supplies! But thanks to your foresight, they were able to get ahead of it, and none of them were outright implicated."

It's obvious how relieved Ceriss is that her old pupil, Annabeth, is not in any immediate danger of being outed as a spy. Of course, there's still the question of how anyone knew that Lord Kovar was passing food to you. But you suspect you know who was ultimately responsible. Especially since the report was specifically targeting the flow of food. Just like the arson attempt on the granary, this was probably another move by Melca, aimed at forcing you to bring Fallhazel back.

But you were one step ahead this time as well.

"Unfortunately, there's still too much suspicion going around for Lord Kovar to resume the food shipments yet," Ceriss continues. "They could focus on seducing the right people to start that up again without being noticed. Or they could just focus instead on seducing people in the military or political spheres, increasing our influence there."

You consider this as well. Even at best, if the Vekmar cell manages to restore the flow of food, they'll at least end up missing the shipment that would have arrived while you're on your next mission, though they'd pick up after that. On the other hand, influencing the military would make it easier to take targets in Vekmar, while influencing the political leaders might reduce the help they might provide to Nelin once you do truly kick over the hornet's nest.