(Vol 2) Chapter 64: Mistress Dark Helmet

Samantha ensured everyone continued to take precautions and stayed on alert for trouble. No heavy drinking. Lookouts, guards, eyes staying sharp, so on. She moved Dart to Geirkos for another lookout from above, and had Athos on standby for deploying wherever and whenever needed.

Meanwhile, she was sure to refresh her illusory enchantments on the items for her people in Caneboro. Once more and they’d be permanent. The trio of Dax, Bob, and Estara were on their way to meeting with members of her underground org, getting the ball rolling on the supposed network she would connect Samantha’s religion with.

Sammy made herself and Michael invisible, had him change to the Pegasus form, and they took flight over the rooftops to get to the rundown alehouse, a small building in a cramped quarter next to numerous wooden houses. The building was not even labeled, making it all the more obvious as a front.

They landed in the alleyway immediately adjacent. Sammy switched to her [Shining Knight] outfit for the full plate, but disguised it as something foreboding, dark, and intimidating. She stayed female but toughened up the voice to match a tall badass.

She had the still-invisible Michael wait outside the front door to cover the escape. Then she activated her shield mirror and dropped a Create Illusion use to cloak herself, knowing what she was about to do would spoil Invisibility anyway.

She triggered Mirror Walk, stepping from the mirror in front of her into the one she’d been spying through inside the alehouse. It was much like slowly stepping through a vertical pond of clear water, though there was the vague sense of the world getting bigger as she shrank into it, and then returning to normal as she stepped out on the other side. The process was only a few seconds.

There was no sign she was seen, but she had her illusions suppressing any signs as much as possible.

From the corner, she made her way around a table and chairs to run parallel to a long bar to approach the men. There was no bartender at that hour.

Despite efforts at canceling it out, her heavy armor made subtle shifting noises, and her armored boots scraping the floor made one of the toughs turn around to look in suspicion. Sammy stopped on a dime right before, a bit faster than his sudden shift thanks to Split Prediction’s speed.

She used her illusions to make a scurrying noise and a vague shadow of a rat flash from under a table. The man cursed with a sour expression and turned back around, taking a glug of ale, determined to ignore it.

Ah, the reliability of mook laziness. Fuck… maybe I should’ve gone with the stealthier outfit… and maybe a Rogue level would help a bit, too…

She moved very slowly and carefully until she was in range, then took a quick dash and clonked him on his head with her staff with all her might. This was a complete coup de grace equivalent, so by the powers of her staff’s conversionary enchantment, he slammed down onto the table and slid down, completely unconscious, his drink splashing and clattering to the floor as well.

She couldn’t really hide the sounds or the shimmering despite her crude camouflaging of the surroundings, so the other two shot up immediately, and with different reactions. The thug was pulling a club and peering around trying to find a target to bash, blinking at the lack of anything terribly obvious.

Andemen’s man took off running for the door immediately like the scared punk that he was.

The thug had no real chance. Sammy dashed into his hesitation and unleashed a one-two clack in his face with either end of the staff. He stumbled once then dropped, quickly followed with a last crack over his head to make sure he stayed down.

I am so fucking badass now!

The other guy was at the door, eyes frantically looking behind him in fear as he unlatched and pushed through… right into a suddenly materializing giant bruiser. Michael in his Angel form, though under his own disguise.

The man was grappled immediately like a child. He tried to scream but Michael slapped a hand over his mouth and whispered something that made him settle down immediately.

Samantha withdrew her illusion as she pulled out a chair from the table and sat, crossing one armored leg over another and tossing her cloak behind her, waiting, leaning back at her ease. Then she made a lit cigar appear in her fingers, pretending to smoke it through a grate in her helmet’s mouthguard.

Now I get to be a cool villain!

Michael brought the terrified guy over and sat him down in another chair directly in front of Samantha. His enormous hands folded over the guy’s shoulders from behind the chairback, ensuring his cooperation.

The guy tried his best to bottle his fear up, though he was sweating profusely. He swallowed and asked, “Wh-who are you? I represent-”

Sammy stalled his words by blowing an enormous cloud of cigar smoke into his face. Despite being an illusion, he squinted his suddenly watery eyes shut and coughed from it, in distress.

Overpowered low-level believing things absolutely.

Villain-Sammy declared, “You may call me Mistress Dark Helmet, scum. And I know who you represent. King Scum himself. Andemen.”

The man’s eyes practically popped at that. He got over his coughing to shake his head. “If you… if you know, you know that you might be starting a fight you can’t win, coming here like this and killing his men.”

“They aren’t dead, you buffoon. They were in the way, and now they’re taking a nap. And I’m not going to kill you, either. Play nice and you won’t even have to suffer.”

He swallowed a dry throat again, obviously not comforted at all. Being asked to rat on his boss would not put him in a better situation. “Wh-what do you want?”

Channeling coldness into her voice, she said, “Are you forgetting my title? Do you disrespect me?”

Michael’s hands seem to squeeze ever so slightly in response.

After a panicked noise, he exclaimed, “No, Mistress! Please! Forgive me, Mistress Dark Helmet… my lady…” He looked ready to throw out other titles, too.

“Good boy. Mistress will do.” She puffed her cigar at her ease for a few moments, aiming to continue showing she was in control. Ruthless. Best obeyed immediately. “The subject is who you’re hunting. Azure. Do you want her? Alive or otherwise?”

The man blinked at the sudden shift of conversation. His face was one of authentic confusion. “We’re just to observe and report, not…” He blinked again, as he’d slipped somewhat. But he shifted, cleared his throat, and continued, “I don’t understand, Mistress. Are you offering something or… warning? I can of course d-deliver a message. Mistress.”

He was looking much more hopeful at that point that he’d get out of death or torture.

Sammy allowed a little mad cackle to escape her throat. “Good. You do that. Chats are wonderful, aren’t they?” She leaned and reached over to jam her cigar down between the man’s legs on the chair, which caused him to yelp and do his best to scooch away. But she just made to squish the cigar out on the wood, however close to his… leg.

Then she rose and jerked her head at Michael while strutting out of the building.

“Wha-... Mistress Dark Helmet? What’s the message?”

But she didn’t answer, she just left, with Michael in tow.

I have what I came for. She’s not being directly set up for kidnapping. Not right off. This guy doesn’t know Andemen’s plans after finding her. He has to report the incident, and Andemen won’t know absolutely ‘my’ intentions. But he knows about the illusions from before, so he’ll likely connect the dots. If he wants to talk, he’ll have this guy stay put for me. I’ve communicated that I want to extend an olive branch about her.

Whether she’d actually go physically back to that place or operate through a proxy, she wasn’t sure. Andemen might want to set up some means of his people seeing through her illusions, which she’d prefer they not. But perhaps she was being paranoid.

Sammy utilized her illusions to make her and Michael pretty much disappear as they went several blocks away and found another dark alley to occupy and turn invisible within.

Constance at the inn contacted her. “Your Majesty, something passing unusual is going on here. I’ve been noticing things being a bit dusty throughout the bottom floor. But it is no ordinary dust upon inspection. Brown, yet chalky. Not showing up easily on wood. I had Dart sniff it as a hound, and he said it was stone. Rock. And then we tracked it to this.”

She had a mirror she was directing for Sammy, and surreptitiously sitting in a corner on a stool behind a chair was a simple oil lamp, unlit, with its top open. The oil inside was dark and thick, and around it upon the wood, one could just see a thicker dust accrued. Somehow, it was sifting it into the air.

Sammy felt immediate dread as she turned her eyes upon it, and Detect Magic triggered. Effective Level 7, transmutational. Elemental, something to do with [Earth] and [Air].

Fuck! Not good.

‘The Laws of Sympathy. Something you must come to understand. So you will. Will you be able to handle it when you do?’

She sent out to all her Followers in the place, “Drop whatever you’re doing and run. Get the fuck out of there! Everyone is in danger! Out of the inn — go, go, go!”

To Constance and Dart, she sent, “Help them get out and protect them. Use illusions and shapechange, cast buffs, whatever you can do.”

Acknowledgments were sent from multiple parties as they made for the exits, but many of her core were upstairs already, including Orswyth, Galynth, and Bast.

She ceased focusing on them or the inn, because she had to jump onto Pegasus-Michael and get moving to get there as fast as possible, while staying ready to sling REX buffs at a moment’s notice. Otherwise, she hoped and prayed she was being paranoid again. But it seemed very bad. The dust was… preparatory.

Those on the ground floor were quicker to flee, including Azure — whom Sammy found herself relieved the most to have ‘safe’ of all the party.

Sammy was barely in the air before — through multiple senses of bodies, minds, and angles — there was a shaking and groaning in that building like an earthquake. And then it collapsed in on itself, to the sounds of many screams, including Sammy’s own.

But every one of her Followers had a wound-negating defensive REX buff dropped on them in the instant that it happened. Dart and Constance polymorphed into treants and held up a section well enough to keep everyone from being buried alive. The core group had been close to an exit when everything collapsed. Meanwhile, dozens of screaming non-Followers were surely dead in the catastrophe.

“As fast as you can, Michael. Fly! Fly!” Panic in her heart, she urged the pegasus on, and they soared through the air like a vertical lightning bolt.

No notices of dead Followers…

Dust and continual shifting made visibility negligible, and sudden darkness cut it out entirely. Nonetheless, she could tell Orswyth, Galynth, and two other soldiers were pinned down by rocks and debris. Bast soon dropped a strong light spell in the ‘cavern’ of sorts made by the wall and ceiling of treant branches. From what they could tell, debris blocked them to the exit, but they had a chance.

Constance was straining in particular, being the smaller of the two, and grunted as one of her branches broke off and more rubble dropped from the top floors down. It was at least some blessing that most of what was above was wood instead of stone.

“Hold on!” Sammy sent. “I’m coming!”

The collapsed inn building was a horrifying sight. A giant pile of rubble, with a few people being pulled out and others using staves or other makeshift items to try and dig through to save others. Sammy wanted to mentally direct her people to flee, but it was clear they weren’t inclined. Instead, she directed them to what spot they could help from the outside to get Orswyth and the others free.

“Michael,” she sent as she prepared her mirror shield, “take your Angel form when you can and help dig from the outside, under illusion again.”

That said, Sammy Mirror Walked through the shield in midair and popped up inside the cavern from out of the Staff of Vision.

I’ll dig them out with my bare hands if I have to!

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Note: Gonna keep posting daily until Chapter 70, then take 2 days off from posting. I will absolutely be setting up Book 2 to Book 3 to have some measure of time skip/summarization. Note this can only be so long due to the progress of the war.