The Power of Ten

All of them had full sensory input, so they could all exult in the feeling of strength, power, and control that so far exceeded what they’d had on their own, even the former Amazons.

They didn’t have to worry about eyestrain, either, because right now, they just had a Mask of Clarity; they didn’t have eyes, courtesy of the lilitu queen being refined away behind them. She was responsible for a nice chunk of their demonic appearance, along with a long-refined erinyes, from what she’d been told.

The bastard of a Warlock who’d Consumed her had been using her identity to arrange smuggling trips bringing Mexicans into America, fleeing the gang violence, and then opportunistically picking off some of the immigrating women to Consume. That was where Selena, Nanai, Maria, and Sharice had all come from, Consumed by the bastard wearing her face and identity like a glove.

The bastard had torn apart the psyches of most of his victims, patching in aspects of their personalities into a gestalt, only keeping her intact to serve as a flawless, helpless cover identity while it lasted.

The Warlock had not been ready for a silver-eyed Heavenbound with a resonant Hellpact to walk in the door of the restaurant she worked at and get promptly Consumed in return, binding up the perverted Hungry Kiss Pact, letting the rapist bastard burn in hellfire in the screaming agony of the silent back of their Pactspace, while Master Fred had tried to save the rest of them that he could.

Only the five of them had managed to survive, Master Fred having to rip aspects of the other four out of the Warlock they’d been fused to, a process which totally drove that Warlock insane as it tore their jigsawed mind apart.

She’d seen and been forced to participate in the process of Consuming at least a score of women. Master Fred had said he’d felt the traces of at least fifty on the bastard, although most had been burned off them and floated free, caressed in angelfire and wrapped gently around the Pact here and there.

If they wanted to, their group could go up to some of them and absorb them, memories of another woman’s life, and take the parts of another’s soul into themselves. Everyone had done so at least once, and so Daisy found herself recalling the life, desires, and emotions of an older businesswoman from New York City, a former rival of the Warlock who’d had literally everything taken from her...

The mindless fucker deserved it all, she spat to herself, but even the fleeting brush of her attention drew spits from the rest of the Legion at him, too.

Most of the others were sitting at the edge of Markspace if they had nothing to do, voyeuring through kind souls out there to watch their favorite TV shows, or listening to music, or in the case of Selena, attending services to Amana faithfully.

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One of Lady Azaia’s thoughtstreams was watching along with them, mixing right in, chatting with all of them, clearly enjoying herself while she engaged in some intense killing on the far side of the world with the rest of her family and some additional Irish volunteers, putting down smiling Buddhist soul-slavers that made her skin crawl with revulsion to look on them.

Daisy knew she was supposed to feel embarrassment over their relationship with Azaia, but alas, embarrassment was fear, and their Heavenbound Pact didn’t let them. She was instead stuck with feeling joy and wonder and relief and tenderness and boundless protectiveness.

Letting Azaia go to the far side of the world alone had been unusually hard for all of them. She was a bright ray of light they didn’t want to lose. But they had a job to do, and the siren song of Karma and her touch paled before the obligations to Heaven, and they all knew it.

Azaia was fully capable of taking care of herself. With Lady Traveler’s guidance...

Daisy looked /up despite herself.

The swirl of peace and contentment from Master Fred’s incredibly rigid emotions swept past her as soon as she directed her thoughts at the woman at the top of the Markspace, and that direct bond between the two of them.

Lady Traveler had moved away from them physically, but that link was still there, and had never been taken down. Physical contact with a Good person was not hard to come by, but spiritual contact with someone like that...

She was too powerful for this world, that was basically a given.

They cannot stop me..., echoed past her once again.

Shared memories from Master Fred, resonating, absolute with Truth. The undead couldn’t stop Lady Traveler, she was just too much by herself... but she wasn’t enough, not for what was coming afterward.

That was their job. That was Azaia’s job.

Heavens, that was the whole Allegiance’s job. They all had to get stronger. It didn’t matter how strong Traveler was, because she couldn’t do everything alone.

Daisy exhaled despite herself. The Heavenbound Pact clearing away fear, letting her think without dread and horror and everything overwhelming her with terror over the future, was literally Heaven-sent.

For all practical purposes, she was a slave and a prisoner. Master Fred could consign her to burning against his Pacts, and take anything he wanted from her as he did so. He could also just let her and the others go, and the Shroud would snatch them up, turning them into slaves for the undead, their own deserved afterlives denied them.

We are stronger together than apart, and I’m not the judge or jury. If you want to sit off somewhere quietly and just endure until the Shroud is down, that is fine. If you want to help out and do something about the complete wastes of existence like those that got you into this mess, you can do that, too.

It should have been hard, almost impossible to trust him after what she had gone through. But how do you distrust a person in that much pain, carrying that much endless sadness from somewhere, with that much determination, all beating with the Light of Heaven?

She was dead. She knew she was dead; her soul had no anchor, and all he had to do was let go and she would be set free... into whatever hell was in the Shroud.

He didn’t let go, and she knew, KNEW, all the way, deep down, that he wouldn’t let go unless she wanted him to.

And in the meantime, she got to feel as if she was still alive.

More than alive. More alive she had ever been in her own life. Way, way more than it meant to be human.

She reached out for the memories Master Fred had of the Illuminati, and reams of dry reading and data unfolded in her mind.

The Illuminati were an arm of the Magi, the former pre-eminent Wizard organization in the world. They were strong believers in necromancy to a soul, and consumed with the idea that necromancy was the greatest of magical arts, able to subvert death itself, and they, as the masters of it, were naturally the most qualified beings alive to rule!

This naturally put them at odds with just about every other secret organization out there, especially the Magi, and endless amounts of Heavenbound over the centuries had defied them and killed them. The things the liches who led the Order (and the lesser mummies, ghoul sages, wight lords, and the occasional vampire) had done to mankind over the century were all there, including alliances with truly foul powers, manipulating them to weaken their opponents and claim sly power and influence here and there.

But they had no way to stop the Heavenbound, except to kill them over and over, and the rarer Paladins and true Priests who could draw on the power of Heaven had not been any less opposed to them.

Still, it was hard to kill the liches, as their Phylacteries allowed them to turn any corpse stashed nearby into another body if they were slain (and they always had bodies nearby...). Certainly, if they were slain enough times, they would die, but they had been among the most powerful necromancers in the world before the Shroud, so killing them multiple times as their powers lessened and they grew ever more paranoid was difficult.

Then vivus had come along, and was now scaring the absolute shit out of them.

Daisy let Maria fly completely, just channeling the Pure Wrath in support as she went through the reports, smiling as she read of at least three liches over four hundred years old being permanently slain, along with dozens of lesser Illuminati, living and undead.

All of that had happened in the last six months. Vivus did not care if you had a Phylactery. Indeed, the existence of one only made you more susceptible to vivus, because your negatively-infused soul was split and so even weaker...

Baron von Nachtal was an old, old member of the Order, and had been around since the Black Plague, which the Illuminati were believed to have helped arrive in Europe and then spread around savagely. The undead armies that had whelmed in the dark and been put down by Heavenbound totally overturned her history lessons on Europe, what little she could remember of them.

History from before the Shroud just wasn’t as important as afterwards, and going forwards, would probably be even less important. The machinations and corruption of religions that didn’t have true links to deities and were split between warring factions of the powers with true magic, nation-states that were pawns of movers in the shadows dominating the minds and souls of hapless men...

There were at least three Popes and Orthodox Hierophants who had been Poison Kiss Warlocks, which Daisy found both perverted and ironically amusing about the old patriarchal religion, the remnants thereof mostly taken over by Amana, Aru, and Harse.

It was amazing how many Warlocks there had been around, and the fact was simply unknown to common mortals behind the veil of magic and superstition, treating most of them as simply powers of the gods and spirits old and new, warring among themselves for their beliefs and the powers of their Pacts, as they continued to do today.

The unity of the Heavenbound was their greatest strength, but at the same time, the absolute limit in numbers and the pure greed of mortals for power, wealth, influence, and all other manner of desires meant that it was impossible to ever truly keep rival Pacts down. Through the many churches they’d helped build, and which they continually had to war against the corruption within, the Heavenbound had arguably become the most open and influential of the Pacts... but that just meant the other Pacts warred and dominated in the shadows, growing in their own ways with the times.

Being part of, or assisting a Heavenbound, whatever her situation was, Daisy still wondered how to help more.

He just jumped...

Everyone turned their attention to the plane a couple miles ahead of them. The Mask of Clarity let them see the invisible, and the magnification of their Mask easily identified the plummeting bony figure heading towards the ground below.

It was only an open door and closed, no need for a parachute or pausing. The pilot continued on his way.

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A spellcaster naturally didn’t have to worry about any cold, wind, or a parachute, just like them.

They did draw closer as the skeletal lich fell, watching him dive face-first casually, clearly used to all this. Their location on the GDS popped up, one long stretch of fjord looking much like another.

Molde. It has a small regional airport, there. They saw the long strip, not really made to receive larger planes, probably for emergency purposes. Most significantly, it is not an island. My guess is he’s looking for a place to reach a Seal and Teleport away.

The lich had never displayed anything like Eagle Eyes, and there was no way he could spot them at this range as a result, especially with just the slightest amount of cloudy obfuscation the lich could not see through regardless. The only problem was if they got too close, and there were ways around that, too.

They dove for the ground, easily moving faster than the lich was. Everyone was now paying attention and helping chart the ground ahead of them, and Demi reached out to the Land here to swap their Citypact out for a Landbound while they were in the area.