Chương 241: Day Two Hundred And Thirty-Nine

Dear Diary, Bad guys are supposed to be stupid. Like, mouth breather stupid. How else am I supposed to outsmart them? I sure as hell ain't smart enough to outsmart a smart person. Anyway, yesterday ended with a lot of campfires on the far bank of the Susquehanna, just on the far side of the southern bridge. I hopped to the village, landing myself right outside the door of the local inn, where our Volunteer unit was nominally taking up floor space.

The innkeeper, who was also the mayor, because in a podunk town connecting two nominally hostile powers of course he was, was only charging the Alliance for floor space, but with the lack of any actual customers he'd been letting the Volunteers stay in actual rooms with, like, beds and stuff. Intellectually I know that there's got to be some black market traffic, and some of it probably comes through here, but that falls thoroughly under 'not my problem' as long as the fuckers didn't break quarantine.

Since we'd spent the time describing exactly what happens to folks who get the plague, even those who are cured, the locals seemed to get the point that a few bucks now didn't help when you were dead tomorrow. Amazing the wisdom out here in the hinterlands. Either that or the smuggling went through the little fishing camps, and everybody there would be dead by spring. Not a happy thought, but we'd sent word, and if they didn't follow the rules and died, I could live with that.

It's the collateral that I'd get pissed about. Anyway, I stepped into the inn and said, "hey there, Mayor. Is the Sergeant about?" The Mayor slash innkeeper nodded and said, "she's over by the bridge with the current watch."

"Cool, thanks." I stepped to the bridge, because with all my hopping around anybody who didn't know about me being able to Translocate was so deeply deficient I wasn't worried about them coming up with some brilliant tactical maneuver to counter it. Also, it meant folks who were breaking rules I cared about knew I could pop up right behind them at any time, which cut down on people willing to do shit that I'd thrown people in the stocks for.

I mean, they'd probably get a little less worried in the spring, but right now it still hit 'freeze your tits off' cold in the middle of the night. The Sergeant saw me before my eyes had slipped away from wireframe vision. At some point I'd have to ask Saffron about the physics of that, but right now neither of us had the time for theoretical discussions; we had too much shit to do trying to improve quality of life for everybody, and that came a few steps after making sure people didn't die in job lots.

Before I'd quite picked her out from where she stood in the shadow of a building, she said, "Good Evening, Commander," in a tone that wouldn't carry much further than me.

"Good Evening Sergeant. How goes everything?" She shrugged.

"Not as good as training, when I could get Drivers' on the way home, but nowhere near as bad as when we were burying bodies."

"Fair. Anything moving on the far side of the bridge?" She shook her head.

"Not much. Now and then I see folks moving around on the far side, enough that I know the village isn't abandoned, but it's just at that inconvenient range where you can't really make out any details, just that somebody's moving around."

"So no big blocks of soldiers then?" She smiled and shook her head.

"Nothing like that, ma'am, no. Just singletons moving from building to building. Not really surprising in this weather." She blew on her hands a little, then put them back in her pockets.

On the one hand, I remember all the ROTC instructors talking about how folks standing like that were just begging for some enemy recon trooper to perforate them with a knife, but on the other hand the woman was probably older than my mom, and was one of the Sergeants who had more or less been on active duty of one kind or another every time there'd been a call up. I certainly wasn't about to teach her how to suck eggs, y'know?

"Okay. Lot of fires over there though." She nodded.

"Yep. That's why I've had four of us at the bridge, rotating every four hours or so, all night every night." Curious more than anything else, I asked, "what about daytime?" She shrugged.

"I keep two guys for day watch, but during the day there are actually people on the street on our side, and I've gone around and talked with the locals. They know if they see a bunch of people coming across the bridge, they're to come and wake me. Really, what with the bridge being flat like it is, instead of arched like the Franklin bridge? Pretty much anyone in town with eyes will see an army coming across during the day."

"Sounds like you've got things handled. I'm gonna head up to the other bridge, then head back to Lancaster House if nothing's going on up there."

"Any change to standing orders, Ma'am?" I shook my head.

"Nope. Yellow flag if you need support, red if it's urgent, if you see troops coming red and yellow flags and evacuate north." She nodded, and I stepped north. The north bridge belonged to Lancaster House, and the local guy in charge of bridge maintenance was the Mayor. I walked down to the bridge and found three Volunteers watching; one in the toll booth along with a local working night shift, and two in secluded spots where they could observe the bridge without being seen from too far away.

I walked over to the guy with the dragon-scale shield and nice armor.

"Sergeant?" He shook his head.

"Just Veteran, Ma'am. Two units of us were split up to fill out units where people had died from the plague and there weren't anybody else to fill them." I tilted my head a little, "and you didn't make Sergeant?" He smiled when he shook his head.

"Nah. I'm barely a Veteran, and that only because ain't nobody gonna say fighting against a Dragon doesn't count." I smiled in return.

"Where's the Sergeant then?"

"She's got us split into five shifts, each one doing about five hours. She'll be relieving me in a few hours, but I could go wake her if you like?" I shook my head.

"Nah, it sounds like you guys have this handled. Have you noticed any extra chimney smoke across the road?" He frowned.

"No, Ma'am. Kinda the opposite, really. Only a couple chimneys leaking smoke. I half expect the plague hit them hard over there." I nodded.

"If they don't come across the Susquehanna before we've got all the roads cleared, I might just take a few units over and offer them some humanitarian aid." He tilted his head, like the idea didn't really sit right, but shrugged.

"If you think it's best, Ma'am." I nodded, then stepped back to Lancaster House. I'd taken to returning via the Scrying Room, and I found Larry there trying to make the shape for scrying, Bonnie sitting on a chair to the side, leaning her elbow on the arm of the chair, just watching Larry. I watched him as well for a moment, then said, "Yeah, punching the hole through to Metaphoric Space is tough, but once you've got that? The rest is a cake walk in comparison." He shot me a wry smile.

"I'm glad to hear that, at least. I'm not sure I've got enough Mana to open a big enough hole to Underhill though." I realized right then that while I'd been basically hammering a scrying-pool sized hole through into M-Space, the Spell totally didn't need that big of a hole.

"I know I'm sloppy about it, but I think if you punch even a tiny hole through, it oughta work."

"Really? That would be a lot easier. I think I'll wait for morning though." With that, Bonnie hopped out of her chair and came over to mold herself over his side. No idea what she'd been doing all day, but frankly I think if you've died in a war, you should definitely get some R&R time to shake it off. Hell, even if all she did was raise Larry's morale, that was still pretty fuckin' effective, what with him arguably having more authority than me on Lancaster House lands.

We walked up, ate dinner with the other in-house Cadets, Saffron and Isnomi, and a bunch of kids and moms. I noticed something, but in an amazing turn of events, decided to ask Saffron about it before blurting it out. Hey, Kitten? I'm noticing a lot more kids than moms out here. Unless they pop them out more than one at a time, some of these kids' moms aren't here. Something Bonnie suggested, implemented as the Lancaster House residents are most comfortable doing. What's that?

These are pretty much all the kids Isnomi plays with, which means all the kids from about seven years old and younger. She doesn't see a need to distinguish between Bag and Dan and Human, and I've been watching; they're following her lead, which is why there are so many dark-haired tots at the table. So, where are their moms? Instead of answering, she just nodded behind me; I turned to look and saw one of the local maids standing there. You mean the Bag moms are working as maids while their kids sit at the table?

She shrugged. Baby steps. Then she grinned. Besides, the Bag moms being servers and maids mean they've got jobs to do. The Dan moms are having to learn how to change diapers, and do so for all the kids. That got a bark of laughter out of me, which made everybody look at me. I shrugged, and they all shook their heads and went back to eating and chit-chatting about the food, the day, and all the other shit you talk about when you're focused on food. Mimic dreamt of more of the stones game.

The barely seen white stones in the near left of the board seemed to have gotten closer to the areas with the black stones. I wish I'd paid more attention to that anime now; maybe I'd have some idea what that meant. Woke up to another impromptu living room sleepover; kids got baths, which weirded some of them out what with the frequency of bath time being 'just about every night we stayed at Lancaster House', but none of them actually objected.

The collective Dan moms, who really seemed like glorified babysitters, appreciated the hour or so it took to cycle all the kids through the tub and get them into clean clothes. The maids might have griped about how much laundry we'd been making, but Marie seemed to have decided to take them all under her wing and bring them up to her standards, which meant, among other things, 'you clean the living shit out of anything that's not clean, no matter how much cleaning that means'.

Fuck it; given how Marie stood up to the fuckin' Headmaster and let him know which of them would be there serving the school while the other was so much dust, I figured the local maids could use a little bit of Marie training. Larry came with me to the Scrying Room. Bonnie followed, toting some big ledger looking books. While he and I moved the scrying basins around, she sat down on her ass with one of the books open and examined the books column by column. I nodded to her and asked Larry, "what's up?"

Bonnie answered, "the Lancaster House books are a mess." Larry shot me a rueful smile and said, "apparently my predecessors, even my father, have more or less ignored good bookkeeping, instead preferring to just let overwhelming wealth fix the problems they personally had." Bonnie called out, "which would be fine if the only people living on Lancaster lands were Lancasters, but if we're going to start providing some kind of minimum standard for everyone, we'll need to stop being sloppy with money."

Larry chuckled a little and said, "you are, of course, correct, love. As always." He turned to me and said, "apparently her family's tannery isn't nearly as lucrative as Lancaster House, so they've had to actually track every obol."

"Wait, isn't that her maiden name?" She called out, "I'm not the best accountant in my side of the family, but living there as one of the two family heads' eldest daughters, and the only one without some other obvious talents, I couldn't help but pick up the basics. Whoever did these," she hefted the book on her lap, "didn't even have that." Something clicked somewhere inside my head.

"Bonnie?" Without looking up from her books, she called out, "yes, commander?"

"If a team of forensic accountants descended on the Aetos and Obol tanneries' books, how likely would they be to find several revenue streams not associated with the production of leather and leather related products?" She shrugged.

"Not likely at all." She grinned without looking away from the book.

"That would take a better accountant than the ones who keep our books. Which you'll not likely find short of New Amsterdam. Or, really, Newark and the smaller Cities New Amsterdam has completely absorbed." Holy shit. I'd realized a while ago that the tanners in the Yards were maybe doing some tax scamming, but what Bonnie'd just said made me think they were some kind of Mafia.

Like, the actual kind that made money doing all the black market shit, as well as being the de facto regulators for all the different nominally illegal industries in the town. Also the kind that wound up being a kind of shadow government for all the people who did maybe shady shit for a living. At the very least they were money launderers for those kind of folks. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Fuck it, I might look into it if organized crime became a bigger problem than, y'know, invading armies and plagues and asshole Deities being assholes. What with them having to choose between 'buy an apprenticeship with an artist' and 'paying an Oracle to find a use for a daughter', they couldn't be skimming all that much off the top. Maybe I'd ask the Drivers about it. At any rate, after about a half hour spent shifting scrying bowls around, Larry and I started scrying on the farmsteads.

What with my advice, he managed to get one Scry done for every three I did, but then he didn't have Mana blowing out his ass to brute force shit. We got through all the stuff I hadn't done yesterday by lunch time. Took a break for lunch. No idea how she'd done it, and they had no real 'sauce', but... Tacos. My magnificent Maenad Maid Marie had made tacos. I mean, ground beef, leafy shit, diced onions, little bits of sour cream, shredded cheese, spices. The spicing was a little off, but not in a bad way.

After watching me tear into them, everybody else at the table gave it a try, and tacos were deemed an absolute success. When Larry and I returned to the Scrying Room, we each took one bridge village and opened a scrying portal to it. I did the north one, and when I panned the view around, saw like zero chimneys with smoke coming out. Bad sign, what with winter still having a firm grip on shit. Even worse, the most recent snow hadn't been cleared.

I mean, we didn't have all our roads cleared quite yet, but the farmsteads cleared their own courtyards at least, and most of the functional ones were keeping the connecting roads clear as well.

"Anything over on your side, Larry?"

"If my estimates are correct, and the number of houses across the river haven't changed meaningfully, I'd guess at around a thousand, maybe two thousand troops on the far side."

"How do you figure?"

"I can't be absolutely sure, but I'm counting at least a hundred different distinct sources of smoke. I think. I'm still a little iffy on the scrying end of things. But according to my logistics teacher, an army at bivouac will have at least one fire for every twenty soldiers." Well. Shit.

"Okay, I've got an idea. You come over and keep an eye on this village, I'm going to step over to the south one and see if something works the way I think it should." He nodded, and I grabbed ahold of one of the scrying bowls. After stepping to the south bridge village, which I'd learned just that morning had the brilliantly creative name of 'Southbridge', I stepped up to the top of the highest roof in town, bowl coming with me.

After nearly losing it off each side of the peaked roof, I managed to Mineral Bond the sucker where I wanted it. I went through my whole scrying routine, but instead of using a picture or person, just kinda pointed the other end at the furthest edge of my line of sight. I looked down on a bunch of campfires, with like ten tents around each of them. As I watched, a dude ran out of the nearest building in the village and added a couple logs to one of the fires that had been smoldering down to nothing. That...

wasn't right. I stepped to the middle of the encampment and charged into the biggest tent I could see. Empty. Just to be sure, I sucked in as much Mana as I could hold, then hit the campsite with the biggest air shield I could. Tents flew skyward. Empty tents, without even bedrolls inside them. I stepped back to the Scrying Room, called out, "get in touch with everyone, just scry on them and yell real fuckin' loud, the outbound connection is shitty, but all they need to know is we need to evacuate Northbridge.

Shit, to be safe we need to evacuate everything from the Susquehanna to Lancaster House."

"Yes, Commander. What will you be doing?"

"Trying to find the actual Calverton troops; that whole bivouac was one big decoy." With that I stepped back to the Southbridge rooftop where I'd left my scrying bowl, sliced it free of the roof and stepped to the equally imaginatively named Northbridge, where I duplicated my trick of jumping to the highest roof, then scrying to the edge of my line of sight. A mass of bodies stood waiting, breath steaming in the cold winter air.

I stepped down to where our sentry Volunteers stood and said, "we need to evacuate the village immediately."

"Yes, Ma'am," the Volunteer replied.

"Where to, Ma'am?"

"Pull back to Lancaster House. Carry any supplies you can."

"What about what we can't?" I thought about it for a second. We'd want those supplies ourselves, but the Calverton army would absolutely take them anyway.

"Pile them up and burn them." The Volunteer winced.

"What about the buildings, sir?"

"Leave them be. If the Calverton troops get used to staying inside, maybe that'll give us an edge when they get to Lancaster House. If they burn them down or some shit?" I shrugged.

"We can rebuild buildings. We can't rebuild people." If he looked a little shocked at that, he sure as shit didn't look upset about it.

"Yes, Ma'am!" He looked at the other two guys with him and said, "you two start clearing houses, starting here. I'm headed for the bell." He then took off for the center of town. I looked at the two guys he'd left, who were already knocking on the nearest doors, and barked out, "I'm gonna go see if I can slow them down any." Kitten? Yes? I think I've found the Calverton Army. Far side of the Susquehanna from Northbridge. I'm gonna go buy some time for people to evacuate. Be safe. Never am. Love you.

Love you too, Goof. With that, I jumped into the middle of the mass of troops I'd seen mustering behind the far village, Mana Blades crackling out from me the moment I did. Before I'd even extended the blades, the small open space I'd dropped into spread outward, like a spark burning a hole in flash paper, as raggedly clothed men, women, and children screamed and ran at the sight of me.

"Fuck! Everybody on the ground, NOW!" The clear circle around me widened as people straight up dropped into the snow, toppling like dominoes. Eventually the perimeter of fallen people around me hit someone who didn't fall; a couple guys whose outfits glinted in the sunlight. Armor or jewelry, it didn't matter, they hadn't fallen, which meant they were the ones in charge.

I stepped over to them, cut the truncheons of two armored dudes who stepped to me in half with my still-extended Mana Blades, and stepped up to the fanciest asshole in the group.

"YOU! What's your name!" He drew himself up as like a dozen truncheon armed guys surrounded me on all sides, just out of reach.

"I am Mayor Paedric McCann, butcher." I blinked. I knew I'd eventually run into someone who'd heard of me in a bad way, but I kind of expected it to be in New Amsterdam or some shit.

"Mayor of Northbridge?" He spat at me, and I backhanded the filthy gobbet with a Mana Blade without breaking eye contact.

"No, fiend, I am Mayor of Calverton City." A horrifying thought wormed into my mind.

"Why the fuck are you here instead of there?"

"Because all that remains of Calverton is here! After your plague nearly wiped us out, the fires you set destroyed everything. The people here are the ones who managed to escape the fires, but with no source of warmth other than each other, the plague has spread faster even than your unholy fires." I saw tears in his eyes, running down his cheeks, but couldn't tell if they were from sorrow or rage until he spoke and I realized those weren't mutually exclusive.

"We are all of us dead men and women walking, but we will have our vengeance!" With that, the guys with truncheons leapt at me. I spun, turning their weapons into so much kindling before Co-Locating behind them all and hitting them in the backs of their knees, then slamming knees and fists into the backs of their heads. Most of them were definitely bigger than me, and a couple of them took more than one hit, but these guys were obviously hired muscle, bouncers maybe, but not trained soldiers.

When all of them lay groaning, I stepped back into myself, pulled in all but one of my Blades, and said, "okay, Paedrig. I got no clue why the fuck you think we set the plague on you, or why you think we set fires, but I'm not about to start killing random sick folks, let alone little kids."

"Liar! We've seen the carnage you wrought at the walls of Camden Yards, the brutal decimation of the soldiers bravely defending the walls of Newark, and the silent streets after you murdered that poor city! Only your 'Volunteers' and some turncoat Levies walk those streets now, likely going house to house looting valuables!"

"HEY!" I matched him for volume, and was getting more pissed off by the second, because everywhere I looked I saw little kids freezing their fucking asses off.

"Where the fuck did your army go, then?"

"When your butchers raped and pillaged their way through Calverton's lands, they managed to destroy one man in ten of our army, who were sent out to face them assuming they were one rogue rather than a coordinated force. But even that doesn't matter, for our Army has been blessed by the same God your city scorned! His High Priest came to us, warned us of your treachery, but it was too late! Shortly after he arrived the Plague struck even those who had managed, by breeding or proven worth, to remain healthy!"

I facepalmed, dragging my hand down to my chin before replying.

"Look, Paedrig. I get that the plague hit you. That sucks, because it was definitely aimed at me, but Apollo's aim is for shit." He opened his mouth, but I shouted, "LET! ME! FINISH!" When he stared in horror at the twin Mana Blades crossed in front of his neck, I pulled back, took a deep breath, and continued.

"As for fuckin' Ares, the asshole you're listening to ran like a bitch instead of supporting Phileo and the Yards. Not surprising, considering how shit his High Priest from New Amsterdam was. Also, those eight assholes who attacked you? We executed their asses right after we'd found out what they'd done."

"A likely story." I rolled my eyes.

"Look, I get that you're not likely to believe me, but I can't even go get their heads or some shit, because Larry Lancaster executed them by turning everything above their shoulders to puree."

"You would have me believe that not only did you execute eight of your own Heroes, but the Lancaster runt was the one that did it? How naïve do you believe me to be?" I sighed.

"Yeah, if I hadn't been there, if I'd only known him from hearsay and shit? I wouldn't believe it either. Not really important, though, since I can't bring you proof. But..." I shook my head, trying to think of something.

"Look, I'm the commander of the Phileo relief Expedition to Lancaster House. I've just told the people on the far side of the river to evacuate, because I thought you guys were the Calverton Army. There aren't going to be any supplies, but there are intact houses there and in Northbridge. Get your people inside out of the cold."

"You will not bribe us into giving up our vengeance, murderer!" I grabbed him by the collar and shook him. Shit, I almost popped his head off with a Mana Blade, but I didn't see anybody else who even looked vaguely 'in charge', and the terrified looks that greeted my arrival had been replaced into bitter looks of vengeful longing.

"Look, at least get your fucking kids in out of the cold. I swear to you that none of my troops will touch anybody who's unarmed, and I will personally execute any of them who hurts a kid, right in front of you so that fucker sucking Ares' cock can't lie to you about it. Now, where the fuck is that cowardly asshole?" He coughed at me, familiar phlegm splattering the area around us.

"Lord Ares has shown him how to take our Army across the Susquehanna without the need for bridges. By now they've taken all those shitty little fishing camps and march on Lancaster House as we speak. We are to follow them the moment they take Northbridge." I took a deep breath, closing my eyes in order to keep my temper from giving this fat rich asshole another imaginatively placed orifice. He struggled, and some instinct had me reach out and catch the arm he'd flailed at me.

I opened my eyes, twisted his arm, and drove him to his knees. The crowd around us drifted a step closer, filtering until the inner circle was mostly men and larger women.

"FUCK!" My shout made them all jump just a little bit.

"Are you fuckin' deaf? I just told you, Northbridge is evacuating as we speak. Yours for the fucking taking, just get your fucking kids in out of the cold. Now I'm gonna go see what the fuck this asshole thinks he's doing, and when I get back here, if you haven't all done something obscenely stupid, I'll take my best shot at helping you out. Capice?" Confusion seeped into the angry eyes around me, and I shook my head. I didn't have time for this shit.

I pushed Paedrig down to the snowy ground, then stepped to the middle of the bridge. Translocating my way along the Lancaster side of the Susquehanna, leaping forward as far as I could see each time, I finally came across something that lit the fire of rage that I'd barely kept throttled down in front of those poor sick kids and their families. Bridges. Made out of cheap, shoddily made ferries strung together.

"FUCK!" I screamed to the uncaring sky as I looked at the burning remains of the fishing camp where the bridges ended. A few mutilated bodies lay in the fires. Fury burned in me, but I couldn't let it take charge. I stepped to each of the farmsteads along the river, kicking in the front door and screaming, "Calverton invasion! Evacuate to Lancaster House, NOW!" before stepping to the next. By some stroke of luck, I got to each before the Calverton army did.

I didn't even see it, which was a good thing, since I doubted they'd try to face me when they could just split up and have the runners go commit more atrocities. Instead, I stepped to the Inter-City Council Building. The Council members all looked up, startled to see me jump into the room with Mana Blades lit.

"Where the FUCK is Oliver Orange?" General Lancaster replied.

"He does attend some meetings with his father, to provide moral support to his sister, much as Mr. Driver does for his wife. It has been a while though, I'd heard he was feeling poorly. Not the plague, thankfully, just the after-effects of being savaged in combat." My eyes snapped to Saffron.

"Do you know where he'd be?" She nodded.

"Bring him." She disappeared, and a second or two later she showed up holding Oliver by his collar. He struggled a bit, moaning out what I took as imprecations, but without hands or feet he couldn't really get any leverage. I stepped up to him, but looked at General Lancaster.

"Did anybody talk about our pontoon bridges in front of this asshole?" Leonard tilted his head, thinking, then nodded once.

"Yes, we have, when talking about expanding our ability to send relief forces across the Hudson." I looked back at Oliver, grabbing him by the collar and, retracting my Mana Blade, punched him square in his magically restored nose.

"You told him, didn't you?" I screamed in his face. He didn't answer in words, just looked me in the eye and began laughing that smug, asshole laugh I'd heard from so many pieces of shit who thought they'd never face consequences for their wrongdoing.

"I'll take that as a yes."

"A yes to what, Commander?" asked General Lancaster.

"This asshole told Ares about the pontoon bridges. And Ares told his former High Priest to Phileo, who just led Calverton's entire army across the Susquehanna on them." I turned back to Oliver.

"Isn't that right, you piece of pig shit?" Speaking slowly, just to make sure I understood, he said, "adda oo gunna oo a-out i?" then went back to his laughter.

"Just this." I popped out a Mana Blade and shoved it through his crotch. When his eyes popped and he started screaming, I lifted my hand up, extended Mana Blades from my index and pinky fingers, and shoved an inch long Mana Blade into each of his eyes.

"And just so you can't hear any fucking more secrets to tell your piece of shit God..." I sliced both his ears off, then wiggled a one-inch Mana Blade inside of each one like the world's least pleasant Q-Tip. Then I shoved my fingers up his nose and, instead of ripping it off like last time, I Mana Bladed the front of his face smooth.

Almost as an afterthought I took his legs off at the knees and his arms off at the elbows, then dropped his moaning carcass to the floor, kicking him square in his burned-out crotch for good measure. I looked up to see Ophelia Orange trying entirely unsuccessfully to break free from where General Lancaster held her by one arm.

"How dare you! How DARE you! By what right have you done this to my brother!" Before I could respond, General Lancaster cut in.

"Perhaps your knowledge of basic military governance is lacking, Lady Orange. Your brother admitted to betraying state secrets to foreign powers in time of crisis, and those foreign powers have now used those secrets to attack us. I find Commander Diaz' restraint quite admirable, as she could have executed him for High Treason. I'm still tempted to do so, save for the fact that she obviously desired to be merciful, and I will accept her judgement in this."

"Merciful? Merciful! You've left him deaf, blind, mute, and limbless! How is that merciful?" Lancaster pulled her around so she looked at him rather than her brother.

"Because I have been recently made aware that destruction of souls is now an option in these matters, and as it is? He can always ask to be sent to meet his God in person." When the General mentioned destruction of souls, Ophilia blanched, but went limp.

"Yeah, don't mean to be rude and rush out, but I've got to deal with some fuckin' Calverton assholes who've been lied to by another High Priest of Aphrodite's fuckboi." Before I could step away, Saffron called out.

"Commander!" I turned to her, snapping to attention and saluting.

"Yes, Imperator?" Her eyes dark, she stared into mine and said, "End this. And as for the traitor Priest?"

"Yes?"

"See to it that he does not return to his God." A predatory grin stretched across my face, and my Mana Blades pushed out unbidden.

"You got it, Kitten."