Taylor and the Twisted Game Part 35 (Patreon)

Pedron Niall looked up from his paperwork when he heard someone breathing in the otherwise silent room. "How did you get in here?" he asked the nondescript man dressed like a member of the king's guard.

"Does it matter?" Taylor asked as she studied the leader of the local Inquisition. "Do you even care how many innocent people your followers kill?"

"You can't blame me if some of the Children are overzealous in their efforts to deal with darkfriends," Pedron replied.

"I'm afraid you're mistaken, you're in charge." Taylor gestured and hit him with her Widow Venom spell, freezing him in place.

"Channeler!" Pedron shouted.

"You can scream as loudly as you want, no one can hear us," Taylor promised him.

"What do you want, darkfriend?" Pedron demanded, wishing he could grab his sword.

"I'm not a cultist," Taylor replied.

Pedron glared at the man. "It doesn't matter, you're going to go insane."

"Maybe, I came here to learn what type of man allows a bunch of murderous bastards to run around the known world pretending they have the right to hang innocent people. What gives you the right?" Taylor asked.

"If we didn't root out the darkfriends, they'd take over," Pedron argued.

Taylor shook her head. "I could almost respect that if you had a method of actually finding them beyond torturing people until they confess to things they didn't do just so the pain would stop."

"No one that truly walks in the Light would confess to being darkfriends just because of pain," Pedron argued.

Taylor pulled her headset out of her inventory as she walked around Pedron's desk. "I could argue the point but you're a fanatic." She cast her charm spell on the old man. "Thankfully, magic doesn't care. You're going to tell me how the Children fund themselves, where all of their valuables are stashed and what you have on the king and the various nobles in his court that allow you to get away with murder."

Pedron screamed in the back of his mind as he started spilling secrets despite his best effort.

0o0o0

"Light preserve!" one of the Whitecloaks blurted when he came around the corner and saw the dead Hand of the Light members sprawled over the ground and an injured man with a sword sticking out of his stomach resting against the wall.

"Bloody traitors," Sophia rasped, doing her best to sound injured and male so they wouldn't question her disguise spell.

"What happened?" the older Whitecloak asked.

"One of the king's guards is a darkfriend," Sophia snarled. "Bastard went insane and started ranting about how we'd killed his father and that we should prepare to die…" she trailed off as she slumped against the wall.

"Great," the whitecloak muttered, wondering what the fuck the questioners had started.

"You're all going to die!" Phase called out as she walked around the corner holding Rhadam Asunawa's severed head. "I'm going to burn every last darkfriend, you're all going to die!"

"Kill him!" one of the older Whitecloaks ordered, recognizing the man walking down the hallway as one of the King's guards.

Phase charged forward and stabbed the first man then phased through the next man's sword while laughing.

Sophia watched Phase run down the hallway with the soldiers chasing her then pulled her phased sword out of her stomach and stood up. 'Idiots,' she muttered as she headed down the hallway in the opposite direction, looking for more torturers to kill.

0o0o0

Vicky stared at the map of the docks that Skitter's puppet had spread out on the lounge table. "You realize you spent a million dollars on junk, right?"

"Technically speaking, I only spent about a quarter of a million on junk, the rest was spent on the marina, warehouses and the ferry terminal," Taylor replied as she pointed at the section of the map she'd highlighted in orange.

"I've flown over those warehouses, some of them would fall over in a stiff breeze," Vicky pointed out.

"And some of them are concrete bunkers," Taylor replied with a grin. "I grabbed the rest because it gives me an entire stretch of the bay and the land was cheap."

"Because everyone is jumping into the simulation," Vicky complained.

"I'm pretty sure the economy was screwed up before the game showed up," Amy pointed out.

Vicky shrugged. "That's what happens when you sink a cargo ship in the bay."

"On the upside, it's giving me a lot of iron and steel," Taylor said cheerfully.

Vicky stared at Skitter's puppet. "What do you mean it's giving you iron and steel?"

"I have a pickax, actually I have a lot of pickaxes and minions, did you think I was just going to leave it there?" Taylor asked with amusement.

"Should you be telling us this?" Vicky asked, not sure how many laws Skitter was breaking.

"It's technically marine salvage, legally there's nothing anyone can complain about, especially since I already cleaned the tanks out with magic," Taylor replied smugly.

"How much steel are you getting?" Amy asked thoughtfully.

"Enough," Taylor replied with amusement. "It's one of the reasons I needed the warehouses."

"Don't you have an inventory?" Vicky asked.

"I don't need a couple of thousand tons of steel in it, especially since if it's in my inventory nobody else can use it," Taylor explained.

"That makes sense," Vicky admitted. "How long do you think it's going to take to finish harvesting it?"

"No idea," Taylor admitted. "I have twenty cloth minions working on it but it's going to take a while. That reminds me, now that I actually own the warehouses, I can rip entire sections of the cargo ship apart and haul them over there."

"Shouldn't you make sure the warehouses are actually cleaned out first?" Vicky asked.

"That's what I have minions for," Taylor replied with a grin.

Amy shook her head. "That's your answer for everything, isn't it?"

"If you had minions that you could actually put to work, wouldn't that be your answer for everything?" Taylor asked.

"Speaking of minions, is Shaper behaving herself?" Amy asked, ignoring the question because she would have answered yes.

[Of course I'm behaving myself], Shaper complained.

"She's currently working on dentistry," Taylor explained.

Amy raised her eyebrows. "And she's not bored out of her mind?"

"Not currently, she wanted something easy to work on while she's sorting through the 'medical' information she got from an ancient mad scientist," Taylor explained.

"Ancient mad scientist? You're making this up, right?" Vicky asked.

[I wish], Shaper complained, not sure Aginor was a particularly good scientist as he'd never cared to refine the process of creating constructs to an acceptable level.

"No, the world used to be a magitech utopia or close enough before they cracked open a dark god's cage and had a massive war that rearranged continents," Taylor explained.

"Rearranged continents?" Vicky asked in surprise.

"Yeah, some of the magic users went nuts," Taylor admitted.

Vicky shook her head. "Why are you still there?"

"Technically, I'm not, I'm currently spending time with my family," Taylor replied with a shrug. "Some of my puppets are there because I'm curious if I can pick up more magic and because they might have useful magical items that we can replicate."

"Are there any hints of advanced tech left?" Amy asked, knowing the tinkers would ask.

"Not that I've seen," Taylor admitted. "Of course, it's been three thousand years and they basically rearranged the world so I'm not expecting to find much."

"Speaking of trouble, have you done any patrolling around town?" Vicky asked.

Taylor shook her head. "I'm not technically a parahuman."

"It's fun and it's not like anyone can tell the difference," Vicky replied.

Taylor gave her a less than impressed look. "Never mind that the director knows I'm not a parahuman."

"There's that if you want to be all technical about it," Vicky admitted with a grin.

"I didn't notice any problems when I had a couple of puppets wandering around buying supplies but I wasn't really looking," Taylor admitted. "I was sort of expecting more people to be out looting but I think most of the idiots have already jumped into the simulation."

Amy glanced at Vicky. "Hopefully, we don't need Vicky getting into trouble when Carol isn't around to bail her out."

Vicky snorted. "I haven't gotten into trouble recently."

"Only because you haven't been running around playing hero." Amy turned to look at Taylor. "Have you found any magical items yet?"

Taylor grinned as she pulled the gold ring out of her inventory and showed Amy. "It boosts the amount of magic the channelers can draw from their source without exploding or having their magic go out of control. I also found a ring that stores magic so they can use magic in places they normally can't reach the source of their magic."

"Did you learn anything that would help improve your mana batteries?" Vicky asked.

"It's giving me some interesting ideas but the capacity isn't particularly impressive. I wonder if the channelers could use a mana ruby," Taylor mused, wondering if it would try to dump too much energy into them at once or if if they could control the amount they absorbed.

"You should probably give it to someone you don't like in case they explode," Vicky suggested.

Amy stared at Vicky. "Are you sure you're a hero?"

"Yep, it's printed on my ID," Vicky replied with a grin.

Amy turned her attention back to the ring that Skitter was holding. "We should probably talk to Janna about duplicating the ring."

"Not a bad idea," Taylor agreed, wishing the game had included reverse engineering magical items in their professional skills so they wouldn't have to piece things together.

"Did you find anything else?" Amy asked, more than a little disappointed.

Taylor stuck the ring back in her inventory. "One of the local witches has a figurine that functions like the ring and one of them mentioned a couple of locations that might have decent collections of magical items but I haven't checked."

"Why not?" Vicky asked.

"I've been busy and the local magic users can see our magic which means trying to sneak into a magic school to raid their vault is problematic at best. The other location is a three thousand year old stronghold that might have ancient and rather nasty wards over the vault," Taylor explained.

"Can't you just send a puppet to test it?" Vicky asked.

"I'd still have to fly there or at least fly in the general direction and use portals to cut the travel time down to something reasonable considering both of them are a couple of thousand miles from my starting location," Taylor said.

"In other words, you're just being lazy," Vicky teased.

Taylor shook her head. "Not really, one of my puppets is drawing symbols on a couple of cultists to test the magic boosting ritual before I start helping the local village girls, one of them is looking at maps and enjoying music, one of them is helping Leet test his portal device, one of them is working with Admin trying to replicate the local magic threads so we can weave their spells and the other one is talking to you."

"You could always make another puppet," Vicky pointed out as Dennis walked into the room.

Taylor turned to look at Clock. "I'd have to turn the puppets human to teach them magic and I'd rather not open that can of worms right now."

"Probably for the best, the Director is a bit on edge," Dennis said as she walked over and flopped down on the couch.

"What happened?" Taylor asked.

"The Empire got word that Lung had vanished so they sent some capes to cause trouble in his territory, they'd made it halfway there when Purity opened fire on one of the vans and obliterated Crusader, Krieg, Fog and Night," Dennis explained.

"What the fuck!" Vicky sputtered.

"Pretty much. Her next blast managed to kill Alabaster and cripple Hookwolf, at which point she wrote 'I quit' in the ground and left," Dennis explained, fairly sure someone had managed to master Purity.

"Master?" Amy asked warily.

"Or she went insane," Dennis replied, not really believing it. "I'm leaning towards master. Do you know where Stalker is? She's off the grid and that makes the Director a bit twitchy."

"Officially or unofficially?" Taylor asked as she used one of her other puppets to cast mind vision on her.

"Let's go with unofficially, that way you don't have to lie," Dennis replied.

"She was helping Leet with his portal test, she's currently blowing off steam kicking the crap out of another world's version of the Inquisition." Taylor conjured a phone then typed a text message on it, 'Call the Wards console, you need to report in.' She opened a void portal and tossed the phone through, knowing Sophia was agile enough to catch the phone.

Sophia caught the phone and glanced at the message then stepped through the portal. "What's up?" she asked, doing her best to pretend that she wasn't covered in blood and that she wasn't surprised to be in a room that looked like Skitter's lounge.

Vicky stared at Sophia. "What the fuck?"

"Self defense, I ran into some people that were trying to hang a girl, they didn't appreciate me telling them to stop," Sophia replied as the portal closed behind her.

Dennis shook her head, fairly sure self defense shouldn't involve that much blood. "Purity just murdered half of the Empire's capes, you should grab a shower and head back to base or at least call and check in."

Sophia stared at Dennis for a couple of seconds as she tried to figure out if he was joking before deciding that he wasn't. "It's a day late for Christmas but I'll take it."

"Try to avoid mentioning that in front of the press or online," Dennis warned her.

Sophia snorted. "No shit. Can I borrow your shower?" she asked Skitter's puppet.

Taylor gestured at Sophia and cast her cleaning spell, removing all of the blood. "Or I can just use a cleaning spell."

"Thanks," Sophia replied, glad that she didn't have to try to clean the blood out of her outfit. "Can I get a portal to the PRT building?"

Taylor opened a portal twenty feet above the parking lot outside of the PRT building. "Watch the first step."

"Thanks," Sophia replied then jumped through the portal, phasing when she realized Skitter had dropped her twenty feet in the air.

Taylor closed the portal then turned to look at Clock. "Did you need something else or were you just tracking down Stalker?"

Dennis grinned. "Mostly I was just seeing if you had any plants that I could turn into magical ink."

"Sure," Taylor replied as she opened her inventory and started looking through the plants that she'd collected from the garden. "That reminds me, Amy, do you think you can copy some of the magical plants if I turned one of the warehouses into a greenhouse?"

Amy shook her head. "We'd need a team of lawyers and safety gear if you wanted to do things legally, you'd be better off planting something in the other world."

"Speaking of the other world, what's it like?" Dennis asked.

"It's a low tech world with magic or at least it's currently low tech, it used to be higher before everything fell apart three thousand years ago," Taylor replied then continued explaining what she knew.

0o0o0

Sheriam Bayanar shut the door to her office and shivered when she suddenly found herself in a rather cold mountainous forest looking at a pair of extremely tall blue skinned young women. "What is going on?"

"We're making sure our informant didn't make a mistake," Shaper told the magic user as she reached out and poked her hand so she could check her genetics.

Taylor used her inspection skill on the Aes Sedai, wanting to make sure that Verin's information was correct before she accused her of being a cultist. "I'm curious, what made you think the Father of Lies would actually keep any of his promises once he won?"

"What are you talking about?" Sheriam asked, trying to keep her expression neutral despite the sudden spike of fear when she realized she couldn't sense the source.

Taylor cast remove curse and broke Sheriam's oaths. "You swore oaths to help a dark god destroy the world in exchange for political power and immortality."

"You're mistaken," Sheriam lied, hoping the stranger didn't have any proof.

"I can see the oaths you swore Sheriam," Taylor replied coldly.

"What do you want?" Sheriam asked.

"You're the Mistress of Novices, you know the accepted and novices better than just about anyone which means you're uniquely suited to help us find the girls we're looking for," Taylor replied.

"What are you looking for?" Sheriam asked.

"Girls willing to have sex with other girls for a chance to increase their power and talents. We found an interesting ter'angreal and we need additional test subjects before we're willing to use it ourselves," Shaper lied.

"How many test subjects do you need?" Sheriam asked, fairly sure most of the accepted wouldn't have any problem having sex with just about anything for a chance to increase their magic.

"We need at least five," Taylor admitted.

"If I give you the names, you'll let me go?" Sheriam asked, knowing it would be remarkably easy to give them a list of names.

Taylor shook her head. "No but if you cooperate, we won't execute you for being a cultist."

"I'll even give you immortality if you agree to help us test the ter'angreal that increases your talents with some of your fellow cultists," Shaper offered.

Sheriam studied the woman's face, trying to tell if she was lying. "You can give people immortality?"

"We have a ter'angreal that can," Shaper replied with a shrug, not seeing a reason to explain the actual process she'd use to change her biology.

"Let me guess, I need to give you the names of my fellow sisters?" Sheriam asked, fairly sure they were lying.

Taylor pulled a copy of the list of Black Ajah members out of her inventory and showed it to her. "We already have a list of your fellow cultists, we just need the names of people that you'd be willing to have sex with for power."

Sheriam winced when she saw three names she knew were also members of the Black Ajah along with a number of names of people she suspected were Black Ajah. "Are you going to blackmail everyone on the list?"

Shaper shook her head. "We don't need to, we have a weave that lets us summon people, we're going to go through the list and offer everyone immortality and other prizes if they'll sell out their fellow cultists, that should give us a decent collection of names."

Sheriam shook her head. "You'll never get everyone."

Taylor shrugged. "The chances of finding every last cultist in the world are remote but we can certainly shatter your networks and clean out the rot in the Tower."

"Do you have any plans for dealing with the Forsaken when they find out what you're doing?" Sheriam asked.

"I've already dealt with them," Taylor replied with a grin.

"How!" Sheriam blurted.

Taylor gestured at the battery powered lava lamp she'd set on a large flat rock. "We have a ter'angreal that lets us summon people, we just summoned them then knocked them out, dragged them out of the stedding and scrambled their minds with a compulsion weave before banishing them."

Sheriam stared at the strange ter'angreal in disbelief. "That worked?"

"Well enough," Taylor replied. "Can I get the names of the women that you'd like to have sex with and the list of accepted or novices that would love a boost to their talents?"

"Do I have a choice?" Sheriam asked warily.

"I'm not a monster, I'm not going to force you to be a test subject or to have sex with anyone, I just figured you'd want the chance to increase your talents. On the other hand, the names cost you nothing so if you don't help, I'm going to treat you like a cultist and toss you through a portal to the void where you'll die screaming," Taylor explained, not seeing a point in playing nice with someone that had joined the cult of a dark god to increase her political power.

Shaper wasn't particularly surprised when the Aes Sedai started listing off names, locations and their various crimes, showing an appalling lack of loyalty.