"Four thousand…" Sama trailed off absently, as we came up on a high-walled and magnificent home that looked as much or more fortress than mansion. The men in familiar blue and black plate armor standing outside it stiffened upon seeing us approaching.

"Golden Hag Sama Rantha!" the captain of the guard announced her, half-sneer and half-wavering respect. "What business do you have with the House of Eischler?" he demanded, his hand on the longsword at his waist. He had the lightning spear of the Blitzengard on his pauldron, too.

I, of course, was not worth noticing as a mere elf, although their eyes couldn't help jerking my way as I hovered there above the ground, and Dread's jeweled tip caught the dying sunlight like a bloody crystal eye.

"None, Grunden," Sama answered the man familiarly, stopping out of easy charge range while looking up at the building and momentarily wrong-footing the guard she obviously knew. "<Would you happen to know if that Immortal is in residence?>" she asked me in quiet Elven in an aside. Naturally these racist twats wouldn't stoop to learning Elvish, of all languages.

I didn't react to her words, Dread just reaching out and sipping mana for the after-taste of Immortal Power.

"<It looks like he departed a short while ago>," I informed her. "<Via Airship, if I'm reading it right.>" Naturally a flex of his power. Why would an Immortal have a problem procuring an Airship? They could likely just will one into existence if they desired to...

"<Huh. Okay.>" She turned around, I turned with her, and we headed away, leaving the resentful guards befuddled behind us. "<That knucklehead has a new daughter now. I'm sure he'll want to send her home to be a breeding sow,>" she mused to me.

I laughed inside. "<You are a cruel woman, forcing hypocrisy to be revealed for what it is!>" I replied with a straight face.

"Is Tenya capable of doing the gender-change thing?" she asked me, her eyes twinkling as we made distance and she reverted to her own natural Human. That humanity wasn't picking it up had to be another sign of Immortal influence...

"Certainly. And as an Ur-Priest, totally capable of stealing Tenya's own Faith to apply both that and the Cursemark. It will look exactly as if one of Her own priests did this to them, and with any investigation, Tenya Herself will back what is being done to them. In the past, She has wiped away whole cultures who venerated Her for doing what they are doing," I informed Sama. Said cultures being subjected to manipulation by Thanatos, of course, subverting the rise of a new military power by exploiting barbaric weaknesses among the Vangol hordes...

"Couldn't happen to a nicer group of wanna-be Nazis!" Sama smiled cheerfully, looking forward to some interesting times. "You know, we could also use one of those Cursed Belts to do much the same thing…"

"The Curse on those Belts is powerful, but passive." I reminded her. "In contrast, the Ritual I put the fools under is very active, indeed, because it is very targeted. Even if they try to change their gender using temporary or lesser magic, they are going to be unable to, and that includes the Belts themselves. As a punishment tool without having need for a Powered Caster, having a Belt handy would be highly appropriate, however," I conceded.

"Could you make one for my use?" she asked cheerfully.

"One-way, only works on sexist males, uses the power of Tenya to give it bite… oh, I think I could whip something up in fairly short order," I agreed.

"I think I'm going to utterly decimate the rank-and-file of the Blitzengard, and see how their doctrine survives it.

"You are avoiding the hanging topic?" I pointed out smoothly, noting we were taking a different way home. Maybe she was hoping we'd be ambushed again.

"I have a spy in that household who only communicates when out and about town, one of the maids. Quiet, astute, invisible, deferential, retiring. She's been raped six times, and each time her rapist has come to a rather graphically horrible end in public, too." I nodded slowly at the display of iron will, to be expected of a student of Sama. "I was trying to think of a warrior or secret priest skilled enough who was close to House Eischler to be your Thanatos, and started matching up some times and dates.

"None of my candidates were aboard that airship that left, except for Helmud Eischler himself."

I nodded once. "Very good. Helmud Eischler was murdered and replaced by Thanatos when his son was barely born. He's taken the place of the Duke of Angrus for a good twenty years.

"He is just another in a long line of Blitzengard leaders to have been replaced or suborned by Thanatos. The Immortal has been bending the ears of the Angrusi leadership since the moment Tenya Ascended to Immortality, and was likely the main reason why the Siricilan Empire was born in treachery, rather than cooperation."

"Why is that so unsurprising?" Sama muttered under her breath.

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"They are fifth-dimensional beings. Their only constraints with Time are the interference with other entities like themselves, or those sufficiently warded that they cannot be seen, or events so powerful that they block out standard temporal vision about themselves, and can only be experienced from within the timestream, instead of outside it."

She considered all the angles to that and nodded. "So, someone who can move through time can actually thwart Immortals, by plying their own future knowledge against them, and making it seem like the actions of other Immortals?"

"That's on you." She turned her head to lift an eyebrow at me. "Absolute timeline. They can't fuck with it and test out variations endlessly. You Null-locked the timeline, and the only variation is the one required by the establishment of the Time Portal itself. I will note I can move into neither the future nor the past of that Timeline, while I can still zip back and forth in the absolute four thousand years of ours, and if I'm careful, not be wiped or shunted into a dead-end temporal trap.

"In short, the Time Loop gives me flex room in this timeline's history, but in return the other timeline is now locked tight and its only future is tied to my Source-locked future here."

Sama shook her golden locks in mock dismay. "Temporal mechanics and fifth-dimensional idiots make my head hurt."

I had to smile ever-so-slightly. "Oh, that promises to be nasty. Dish!" Sama exclaimed instantly upon seeing it.

"If there is a future where the Divine are truly coming, there is no way the Immortals can see it," I stated firmly, "and thus they can't see the steps that lead up to it, either."

Sama had a much wider and more ferocious smile than I did. "Oh, that IS good," she admitted, while taking a corner and closing in on another mansion ahead, which had bright lights and music going within it, and some noble conveyances actually passing us by as they headed that way.

"Party-crashing?" I asked drolly, already reaching out with Dread's ability to sense Immortal Power. "Well, well, well…" I mused, as we slid to a halt on the side of the street and beneath the wall of a much quieter noble's residence.

"I'm guessing you pinged something," Sama said drolly, her blue eyes narrowed in thought.

"Very much so. Not familiar to me personally. My Sim Stalker might recognize the IP. One of her personal tasks is to be familiar with the IP of as many Immortals as possible, so their deeds can be recognized and presence acknowledged. I really don't have direct experience with many Immortals and their traces, overall. It's surprising how rarely IP is present around most churches, for example."

"Interesting. Which Immortals, as of right now?" Sama inquired of me.

"Nifl. Grimr. Clangyr. Sophilisa. Gulguz. Gaebrel. Thaum. Tzentotl. Thanatos. Jillius, who seems to be unknown in this time and whose faith faded from disinterest after Iberon fell." My eyes narrowed as I considered the festivities ahead. "This one isn't familiar to me. What keyed you off here?"

"No one thing, but several things that did not add up. Specifically, a lovely and charming young noblewoman shows up, with a background that is very suspiciously empty, with an endless supply of money that comes from no discernible source… and she is known to secretly sell yyoyta fruits from time to time."

"Yyota." My lip curled in distaste. If there was one thing that shot down Delpha's attempt to seem a wise and mature magocracy, it was the existence of yyota fruits. They were magical fruits, could only be grown in special environments, and were addictive euphoria-inducing disasters waiting to happen. Yyota addicts would let the world and themselves waste away while lost in euphoric fantasies, going from one fruit-induced haze to the next.

In Zanzyr, the hypercompetitive atmosphere meant a yyota addict's days were numbered, their rivals totally willing to jump on them while they were in a drugged haze. In Delpha, such worthless folk were basically ignored as doing things their own way and they'd best find a way out themselves, unless a good friend could get hold of them and break their addiction.

Yyota fruit's reputation stained Delpha's image badly, and added a distinct air of decadence and degeneracy to them they couldn't shake, nor could they seem to stamp out the damnable fruit, as too many addicts wanted some and it was too profitable to ever truly stop growing. Supposedly it had contributed to the downfall of their former homeworld from overindulgence of the noble and wealthy classes.

"So, either Delphan origins or contacts, then, which, given the amount of trade between the empires, is not unbelievable. But if it's an Immortal guise, the backstory would be lacking, more than likely? A few key people with artificial memories inserted here and there, but no depth to them, and tons of people who simply have no memory of her at all."

Sama nodded. "She's coyly mysterious about her background, too, which only adds to her appeal as an entertainer and influencer. She's actually a good person to know if you want to start a fashion trend, get started as an artist or entertainer, or need to be introduced to anyone in high society, given how popular she is, and she's a wonderful matchmaker, by all accounts."

"I can discern Sphere of Matter, that is all," I squinted. "If I were to guess, I'd indeed say she's a Guise of Liisana."

"The goddess of love is desporting herself in Siricil?" Sama was amused by that, but turned away rather than join the festivities. I was certain they wouldn't dare turn her away. "No wonder she had the nerve to make a pass at Briggs. She was rather shocked when he was completely uninterested in her, too." Her smile was wide and beaming.

"And she wasn't petty about it? Definitely a goddess. A human would have been irritated she was turned down," I offered, and she laughed low and slow, bouncing just a bit and swaying her hips just so. A passing drover almost drove his carriage off the road craning his head to get a better look at her.

I marked our newest course directly, glancing at her as we glided swiftly towards the political heart of the empire, the Imperial Palace. "Well, someone has ambitions," I murmured softly, considering that.

"And what Immortal might want to have her thumb right on the heart of power in Siricil the most?" Sama teased me.

"Tenya?" I mused aloud. "What, a general or something was promoted? Why would she be in the palace?"

Sama snickered. "Concubine? It's widely-known the Emperor and Empress hold no love for one another now. He basically treats her like a wall ornament that is supposed to look good for the Empire, and she's just a woman who thought she married a shining hero in the Siricilan mold… and found out that she married a shining hero in the Siricilan mold, exactly." Her smile was quite grim.

"Ah. Truth, so often unkind…" I nodded understanding.

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