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I felt exhausted.

The visions, despite seemingly requiring little to no mental or physical exercise other than merely wait and watch, attempting to maintain my bearing on the situation, were quickly proven to be extremely tiring, a burden I couldn't reasonably offload to anyone else.

The 'Displacers' were the ones doing all the legwork - or rather portal work - but for some incomprehensible reason, they needed the coordinates relayed through the other members of the host, or through me as some form of central node. Even Sora, developed into the graceful and gorgeous panther-like shape, couldn't receive the visions from our increasingly erratic ally.

My named 'Displacers' and their 'Alpha' were recalled for this, given the mutating fruit, supercharged with the upgraded 'Defiler' magic, yet they weren't participants valid for the whole divination procedure.

The only thing it managed was to irritate our poor felines.

"This is such an arbitrary limitation," I thought to myself.

I didn't understand why this condition existed.

Kirke claimed I was their light. A beacon to guide them. A heart of the swarm.

Despite the bond between me and the girls - I was part of them as much as they were part of me - there simply wasn't a logical reason to necessitate me serving as an intermediary, or as some form of antenna, transmitter, or whatever my role was supposed to be.

Although my girls could perceive speech, the disembodied voice of the 'Lady', this was where the limits were drawn. The coordinates were beyond them.

The whole celestial dragon magic wasn't exactly our expertise, and there was neither mood nor time for argument.

The situation was, nevertheless, surely draining, at least mentally, if not physically.

Whether it was the dragoness' attitude seeping through, or the necessity to sit through the tedious process bridging between two diverse power sets, or the piling casualties from the humans we were supposed to save, I suffered through it.

There was this throbbing sensation behind my eyes, a haze descending upon my mind, like an aftermath of the sleepless night would be - it left me wondering whether the priestesses suffered from crippling migraines from overusing powers they were blessed with.

My girls tried their best; the 'Defilers' worked their magic, even sacrificing the arcane tree, while others tried to provide support and comfort, and while it helped a little, it was still difficult to continue.

I wasn't the only one who struggled.

Whatever the 'Lady' did, it didn't provide a blank immunity to all humans, leaving the associated mechanics a mystery; I had to ponder whether there was any rhyme or reason to it.Genetic lottery, an obscured supernatural attribute that governed this world, or merely a mathematical probability, luck. Or maybe pure mysticism, a matter of fate, destiny.

Everything was possible at this point, but it still didn't stop me from trying to comprehend the limits.

Around a dozen still died from exposure to the magic, give or take.

Around eighty made it through, which would make for a twenty percent casualty rate.

Even those who made it through were apparently more permanently scarred by the experience and were in shock. Some turned apathetic, while others jabbered madly or screamed hysterically. Some scratched their heads and faces, almost like they tried to remove crawling ants only they saw.

The healing by 'Defilers' provided them with no respite.

The 'Fleshspeakers' were, however, at least able to stun them, and I was forced to allocate some bat-girls to watch duty. However, with the zombification process being out of question, my chiropteran companions could only do so much with their paralysing shrieks.

The 'Lady' certainly wouldn't approve of turning her clergy into the fleshy drones.

To the dragoness' credit, however, it wasn't necessary - not even one of her followers turned hostile, despite being maddened out of their senses.

Nevertheless, having eighty 'casters' around in one place, each supposedly capable of magic designed to harm us, with each of them in bad mental shape, felt like juggling a torch atop a gunpowder magazine. At least this village, or town, has a palisade, which would prevent priests from just wandering off on their own into the wilderness.

I underestimated how many followers the dragoness could have. Even though, in hindsight, it shouldn't be a surprise. We still didn't have a tangible idea of how large the kingdom was, how large of a following the 'Lady' had, or even if there was any straight parity between the dragoness and her supposed brothers.

Her priests certainly appeared volatile, but I suspected it was our doing.

She wouldn't appreciate it if I tried to lock them up, though. With her as our only diplomatic contact of sorts, I had to honour the pact.

"Lady?" I spoke, still unsure how to address the female dragon. Her official title was rather mouthful and if she had some unofficial name for closer acquaintances to use, she didn't share it. She wasn't a monster-girl in our horde to be given a name by me, to rename her to 'Jade' or 'Tiamat' or whatever, so calling her simply 'Lady' was the only option.

It was awkward, addressing the thin air, too. Even with the thousand whispers at the back of my head, it was weird, since the dragon wasn't part of our... collective, so to speak.

There was a quiet, sombre atmosphere - she stopped laughing a long time ago.

"There were too many dead." She said, her voice no longer filled with this manic, insane laughter, but was more quiet, sad, reserved, yet with some underlying growl to it, like a hint of the storm in the horizon on the clear spring skies.

"We are doing what we can!" I said in our defence.

"Yes, you do, Root." was the response, and the dragon's head suddenly materialised in front of my face only to disappear the eye blink later, as if it was never there. It made me jerk in both surprise and annoyance.

Miwah let out a low growl, not appreciating the jump scare, but caught me in time.

The rules governing when the dragoness could or couldn't manifest in the physical world were as vague and as confusing as the ones guiding all that damnable divination, and twice as frustrating.

"I was not expecting I would call on your help this soon." She continued.

I crossed my arms over my chest. The dragoness' tendency for rapid changes in mood was getting on my nerves.

"Do you need to transport more?"

"No." she intoned sharply, as if she was unexpectedly distracted by something. Considering the pressure she had put on us before, I had to ask,

"Are there more?"

"Yes," the 'lady' cut off and then continued in a more collected manner: "All of my priests in the larger town and cities are now either dead, or in your hands. There are still souls lingering in my small, warded shrines in outlying villages. They would perish eventually..."

"Perish? I can transport them, too. Just..." I offered. If wards made by her own clergy didn't affect us, and had no enemies to fight, it would be child's play to transport them as well.

"No. You can't. Not yet," she intoned as the massive snout of the dragon appeared in front of my eyes between the eye blinks, only to be gone immediately after. Maybe that was it - 'Lady' manifested in the physical realm only when agitated - but even that proved to be a pointless observation considering her proclivity for rapid mood swings.

It made me wonder what this was all about, but I received my answer before I spoke the question itself.

"You need to reestablish my..." she said, but paused, and quickly rephrased her statement: "...our cult."

"Our cult?" I was confused.

"You, your sibling and I have to join forces." She said, her tone very serious, distinctively losing its undertone of madness. She had now reminded me of her old self from our brief dialogue back in the shrine.

"Didn't we already agree on exactly that?" I queried, didn't quite understand joining forces - I was already providing all the help I could, and all of that for the promise of finally ending the fight.

Instead, I got involved in a feud between the 'Lady' and her dragon brothers. A feud I wasn't originally even aware of.

"I am losing my grasp of this very realm as we speak. In weeks, you may remain as the only anchor I have to the mortal realm..." She continued, "...should my brothers pursue their attempts to dislodge me from this realm with such a ferocity."

"You need worshippers." I guessed, "This is how you manifest in this world. That's why I needed to save your clergy."

"No, Root. We need worshipers." She said, once again putting the emphasis on the word 'we'.

"We?"

I asked then kept gazing wordlessly in front of me, waiting whether the dragoness would deign to show itself once again, but currently, she was once again just a voice from heavens echoing in our ears.

It was already tiring.

Be at it may, I had no desire to be worshipped. Strangely enough, as the silent partner in this non-existing arrangement, it didn't spark the Serpent's interest either. Hunting in shadows, where those above could not see him, then retreat to the safety of the roots - it was odd how our strange passenger communicated in concepts when he wanted.

The 'Lady' had no such restriction, though, and when I didn't say anything, she continued,

"Yes. We. We are keeping each other alive..." she said, her voice sounded like she just admitted a flaw, and after another brief moment of silence she continued her speech:

"Without you, I cannot maintain my presence in this world. As for all my might, I am sustained through worship. Without me, you cannot resist the combined powers of my brothers. And without the Serpent, you can be permanently destroyed. Without us, your little sibling would be doomed to hide, forever, and eventually perish."

I considered her words.

"And should your brothers be gone? What then?" I asked, the next logical step - although the demise of her brothers was not guaranteed to be possible ...after all, the dragons supposedly are divine - would lead to 'Lady' betraying us sometime down the line.

"Then, I would certainly suffer from the loss of worshippers, again, tied as I am to your own power," she said, and quickly concluded.

"Since neither of us could ever dominate the other, we should rule together as equals. A rule of three."

"Triumvirate?" I supplied, recalling the proper term for such a system, rather than an expression of agreement.

"Triumvirate." The 'Lady' confirmed, taking my words as if we just reached an accord on the matter, while I was still rather undecided. For me, it was only a matter of practicality, a matter of survival for me and mine, rather than ambition to build a kingdom. Or a faith.

"Root. I have to tend to my remaining worshipers to weather the days to come," the 'Lady' announced. Then, her presence faded away, which was strange enough in concept, considering she wasn't physically present in the first place, another weird concept I would rather not think about.

When I thought the dragoness was truly gone, her voice had returned to say,

"Thank you..."

Then, once more, silence reigned - or rather, our surroundings returned to normal: the organised chaos of our horde continuing to remake reality in their image, reminding me once more what a thousand 'Corruptors' could do when given free rein.

Still, I waited. So did my followers. Perhaps the dragoness would decide to speak with us more, elaborate on her plans for the future, but it doesn't seem like it in the following moments of silence from the 'Lady'.

When nothing more came forth on the 'Lady's' part, I decided to wrap the madness for the day:

"Kirke, I need you to take your sisters elsewhere."

"Master?"

"I need you to re-create the Tree of Arcane somewhere else." I decided. "In Mai's personal garden, perhaps, at that old pagoda? It is a central location, deep within our territory, and could be even walled off."

"Yes, Master," Kirke responded, and her sister immediately stopped working on the new plant, now little more than a growing sapling, still struggling to provide its glowing fruits, the only living tree in a fifty metre radius devoid of plant life caused by 'Defilers' excessive power use.

Even with the rest of the greenery already starting to get its dark, nightmarish fairyland vibe, it was still an additional patch of work for my little reptilians. Even if my girls could work together seamlessly, I hated to waste their hard work.

"Or the abandoned quarry, should Mai have complaints about her place being rearranged." I added. She went through a lot of effort to make that place a showcase of her work, but she was stuck back in the city's palace.

"She doesn't mind." Kirke translated after a brisk moment of silence, likely dedicated to some telepathic exchange, "She expects to spend a night with you, anyway."

"We all do." Tama added, but feeling tired, I opted to not react to the tease, focusing on important things, as opposed to banter.

Miwah held me close, but kept silent, a watchful eye on the surroundings. Her smaller kin already tried to move the rescued priests away from us, giving us relative privacy.

"Very well," I nodded, and then ordered: "Sora, gate the Kirke."

"Yes, Master." The 'Displacer' said, opening the eldritch portal for the "Mutators' to pass through.

Kirke didn't say anything, but I could sense her mind, obsessively urging the other girls to keep me safe in her absence. I had an unexplainable hunch that several 'Eviscerators' indeed lurked around invisibly, almost as if my mates weren't enough.

Even Ekaterina and Kuma were looming nearby, their enchanted armour glistering in the fading sun of the day, while the few 'Fleshspeakers' circled above. Their newest creations, the roach-hounds, were crawling around the village - some on roofs - yet any noise they could make was lost amid the eternal din of my busy horde.

"We need to keep you safe, Master." Miwah said, suggesting we should move away from the village, and while it was only a sensible thing to do, I relented.

I watched moth-girls leave, and the closing portal caused no less than a flinch in a few humans who glimpsed it, along with a few wailing cries. The upgraded 'Displacers' - apparently called 'Warpstalkers' now - somehow made their rifts several times more distressing to humans. At least, the priests didn't have to watch all the portals opening and closing for the past hour.

Or how long it was?

I didn't know.

Yet, there was no incident still. The dragoness' clergy was well-behaved, considering the circumstances, and especially considering the magic their counterparts tied to the different dragons wielded.

For the first time, I wasn't dealing with natives suicidally aggressive, but I well remembered the maddened gaze of those priests we recovered for 'Lady' and thought it wasn't necessarily better. Unsure whether their status was a result of our involvement, they were even more unpredictable.

Their patron was silent for the moment, unaware or unconcerned by the issue.

"We need to bring Ari here." I said, with a sigh: "She is the only one who can reasonably talk with them."

Perhaps Ari should have her personal 'Displacer' companion at all times, I thought briefly, but was interrupted by Sora's: "Yes, Master."

They would bring her in.

She would be our best, if not only chance, to rein in the dragoness' priests, since we couldn't imprison them, or cut them off from their powers. Or at least, I assumed they weren't cut off from their power by whatever 'Lady' did to make them compatible with our inherently hostile magic.

Since those priests were at least willing to listen to us, or were supposedly instructed by the 'Lady' to cooperate, it seemed rational to let only friendly humans induce them in...

...our faction. It seemed a more approachable term than 'cult',' that much was certain.

Only problem was that Ari couldn't be in two places at once, and I was in dire shortage of reliable humans. Someone else would have to talk with the Viceroy should he wake up, I thought. Perhaps Arke, thought a puppet? At least, the city wasn't a powder keg ready to blow up at any moment.

That was doable.

However, even with the viceroy's full cooperation, I wasn't even close to reliable and safely handling eighty slightly deranged 'casters'.

Scattering them to different settlements across the river would even allow them to cause the most damage should they go for the barrier spells, and the fickle nature of our magic made me uncertain whether they would survive another portal transport.

There simply wasn't a suitable solution, other than completely trusting the 'Lady' and her word that wards made by her priests wouldn't affect us anymore, which was less than ideal.

I looked around.

Perhaps I needed a safe zone, like those around ammo dumps, or power plants.

Fortunately for us, there seemed to be a natural limitation to the powers that the humans would wield. The priests, their power, were limited either by the line of sight, or the generous, but still finite radius of the warding.

I was about to calculate the imaginary perimeter, estimate how large the barrier encasing the fortress used to be, and discuss with Sora using her perfect estimations of distances, but I wasn't given a chance.

A couple of 'Eviscerators' materialised out of the customary burst of ruby fog.

Then the 'Fleshspeakers' did, too, all of them announcing themselves with their typical: "For Master!"

I looked around. - did one of the 'casters' cast a spell?

"What happened? Enemies?" I demanded.

"Enemies. A relay station, several kilometres down the road, to the north-east." Miwah said. The werewolf's eyes fixated on the horizon as she held me even closer, directing her smaller kin elsewhere. I was worried.

"At least one could see us, Master." Miwah added,

"I am sending my sisters, Master." Tama announced, and all the 'Purifier' in the vicinity echoed her words with their own chant "Master! Master!" and our telepathic network flared with the countless minds, expressing their desire to cast everything down in flames.

Burn!

A horde of monster-girls stopped what they were doing, all preparing to rush to the fray as the several 'Displacers' had slipped through their portal, ready to transport the reinforcements to the unseen, distant fight, in a supposedly coordinated manner. They formed ranks - they never did this before.

Some 'Warpstalkers' appeared, ready to facilitate the transport, quickly gathering their wits about the fact they weren't bound by the limitation of their unevolved sisters, their ever shifting, unstable tears within the reality turning into a gate.

The air began to dance as their magic prepared to hear the holes through the space itself for the 'Purifiers' to rush through. However, I was suddenly overcome by the sense of danger that might await us at the other end of the 'Warpstalker' tunnel, especially if I didn't quite understand the rules that governed the immunity, nor the improved portals.

"Stop!" I ordered. If the enemy group has a 'caster' of their own, my people would charge into the barrier only the 'Displacers' reliably saw since it interfered with their own magic.

"Is there a priestess in that group?" I asked, sensing a trap.

"One of those considerably more powerful humans. With some escort." She confirmed, her words interrupted as even more of my girls materialised from the sudden outburst of the ruby fog, several bat-girls among them.

"An Elite..."

Yes, as far as I knew, the best of the best the humans could offer were barely deterred by walls, but my chiropteran girls, they could fly. Did they run straight into the barrier because they couldn't see it? Or were simply hit by arrows?

"Archers?" I asked, "Or the barrier?"

Then several more 'Eviscerators' appeared out of the burst of ruby smoke, all increasingly agitated by their unexpected rebirth, joining the excited chant, and then another 'Fleshspeaker' and then another. They paid the price for my hesitation.

However, with the small mob of casters nearby, and all the worry about the damage their magic would randomly cause, I wasn't going to risk a charge into the heavily warded area.

"For Master!"

One of the freshly resurrected bat-girls rushed towards us, covering us in the hug with her wide, leathery wings, visibly more shaken than the others in the whole re-birth affair. Her wings trembled around us.

"For Master!" she cried, her mind touching mine, filled with bizarre concepts and ideas on how to combat the already extremely outlandish dangers we faced, creating a mumbled, disorienting mess of thoughts.

Miwah, caught in the wing-hug, didn't seem to mind, and scratched the nervous bat-girl behind her large ears.

"For Master!"

"You were ... hit by a flying sword? How? Was it thrown?"

Even the sympathetic link didn't help me in understanding what she meant, leaving me confused, and not reacting for a valuable couple of seconds, until my pale werewolf provided me with the explanation.

"No. It is the man we had encountered before that easily overwhelmed our girls. We caught up to him by accident..." Miwah said, her words interrupted by yet another batch of my girls appearing from the red fog, resurrected. The collection of minds heaved together, with me still having no insight on the situation.

"Is there a caster?" I paused and looked towards the village. The humans who were brought in didn't seem to know what was going on. There was no ruckus, aside from the unease my girls had experienced, but there was this sense of wrongness still lingering in the air, causing me more than enough discomfort.

For a second, I even thought the fight was over.

A 'Purifier' and a 'Displacer' went down, and were brought back to life by the mists, and I had enough:

"Kill that bastard with the gate!" I ordered, my eyes dancing around my surroundings, finding no purchase: "Have a Warpstalker teleport him into the sky, then portal in to get the rest."

I had enough of humans and their super-powered swordsmen, dodging the attacks, and massacring my pretties.

The notification that soon appeared had filled me with satisfaction, while the creeping feedback urged me to continue, to bring more of our kind into this world as the blood-coloured fog blessed me with another batch of my beautiful cat-girls.

|

*Major Enemy killed. Six more to advance the General level. *

Skill "Stalker on the Boundary lvl. 10" Gained.

|

I blinked it away.

However, the moment the new portals opened for the reinforcements to pour through, possibly to just comb through the bodies, the impossible happened.

A blade powered by unseen force flew through it, leaving a trail of death as it cut through my assembled girls. The blood, guts and limbs splattered all around in one gruesome display, defying all expectations and all our precautions.

"We should have waited before opening the second portal." it flashed through my mind in that infinitely quick moment when life rushed in front of someone's eyes.

Miwah managed to push me down the ground along with the disoriented 'Fleshspeakers' a moment before the flying sword cut her through, spraying me with the burst of gore.

The fog reclaimed her soon after, the blood, flesh and limbs evaporating into the mists as if none of this carnage ever happened.

The shock left me shaking off the ground as the battle took its own course, without my direction or input, and without any control, as the 'Displacer' kitten jumped on me dragging me through the void to safety.

"No!" I thought as I landed on the courtyard of the fortress, held by the little 'Displacer' that refused to let me go even as Helmy, along with the rest of the garrison we left out there, rushed towards me among the still raging storm of the red-fog, bringing my slain followers back into my embrace.

A screen flickered in front of my eyes.

|

*Major Enemy killed. Five more to advance the General level. *

Skill "Slayer of Champions lvl. 18" Gained.

|

I tried to wave it away.

"For Master! For Master!" the little feline that held me down chanted as more and more of my followers were brought back by the fog, while the notification invaded my view, informing me of their success.

|

*Major Enemy killed. Four more to advance the General level. *

Skill "Slayer of Champions lvl. 19" Gained.

*Major Enemy killed. Three more to advance the General level. *

Skill "Slayer of Champions lvl. 20" Gained.

|

And then, just as suddenly as it started, it was over. The ruby mist retreated once again, leaving me in the company of the countless fresh additions to my horde, all happy to be alive, all concerned for my well-being over their own.

I was, however, doomed to remember their bodies being turned to shreds, even if they were brought back from the dead by the very mist that gave them life.

Then, among the guilt, and shock and confusion, came the foreboding sense of dread.

Embedded within the stone wall of the castle, there was a sword, still shaking and rattling as it tried to free itself from the solid rock, driven by the invisible force, to continue the path of destruction even though no hand laid upon its hilt.

A flying sword.

Then, it ceased, almost as the animated blade had lost its will to fight, but for me, it was anything but over.

I wasn't any closer to understanding just what the limits of the native's magic were.