Dragon King Part 14 (Patreon)

'How's the recruiting going?' Myst asked Dawn via telepathy as he watched a group of whitecloaks leave the tavern, more than a little drunk.

'Better than I was expecting," Dawn replied as she closed her eyes and enjoyed the heat from the hotspring. 'We managed to talk Mat's mother into helping supervise the girls and we picked up Egwene and her sisters along with a half a dozen girls from the village that couldn't sleep and needed something to keep their minds off the attack.'

'Probably for the best,' Myst agreed as he followed the whitecloaks, 'Natti is pretty solid and she knows everyone in town and the surrounding area. If she tells them that the training works, they'll believe her.'

'Have you had any luck tracking down more instructors?' Dawn asked, wanting the girls to have a more well rounded education so they didn't get set in their ways.

'I got sidetracked hunting whitecloaks,' Myst admitted as he snuck up and stole one of the whitecloak's coin purses, mostly because it was tied to his belt and easy. 'Nothing like silenced boots and invisibility for robbing people.'

'Cheater,' Dawn replied with amusement. 'Is there a reason you're going after the whitecloaks first?'

'I wanted to check on Min and copy some trade skills, I ran into some annoying whitecloaks and a handful of people that can channel,' Myst replied as he hit the whitecloak in the back of the group with a stunner and shoved him into his spatial ring.

'How many is a handful?' Dawn asked.

'One blacksmith apprentice, three miners and a tailor that can learn to channel, one of the miners has a daughter with potential,' Myst replied smugly as he circled around and dropped another whitecloak as they turned to look for their friend when they realized he was being quiet.

Dawn took a breath and sank under the water. 'Your luck is insane.'

'Says the girl that found over two dozen channelers in a single village,' Myst teased as he dropped and stashed another whitecloak in his spatial ring.

'Emond's Field doesn't count,' Dawn replied with amusement. 'Besides, that doesn't count the people in the surrounding area, it's probably more.'

Myst smiled as he stole another coin purse as he walked past the whitecloaks. 'The best part is their silver veins just ran out so they're willing to relocate and the blacksmith is looking for a shop to run.'

Dawn sat up and wiped the water out of her eyes. 'You're almost as bad as Mat.'

"Bastards," one of the three remaining whitecloaks swore as he looked around and realized that half the group had slipped away without saying anything. "Where did Avin go?"

"To take a piss?" the sandy haired whitecloak offered with amusement, his words sort of slurred.

"And Ewal?" one of the other whitecloaks asked.

Myst slipped around and dropped the complaining whitecloak in the back with a stunner then shoved him into his spatial ring when the other two looked the wrong way. 'Nothing wrong with being lucky as long as you can back it up when it fails.'

'That's why we have skills and regeneration,' Dawn replied with amusement as Loise al'Vere walked over, not bothering with a towel or a robe unlike most of the girls. 'At least some people aren't hopelessly modest.'

"Can I join you?" Loise asked hopefully. "I was hoping you had some stories of distant lands."

"Of course," Dawn replied with a grin, trying not to be too obvious about her staring as Egwene's sister slipped into the hot springs they'd modified with stone benches. 'I'll talk to you when you get back, I have stories to share.'

'Have fun,' Myst replied as he dropped the last whitecloak that wasn't a darkfriend with a stunner. "I'm curious, why work for a god that will gleefully torture everyone and everything when he wins?"

"What?" the last whitecloak asked in confusion as he looked around the 'empty' street for the voice he could hear.

Myst picked the answer out of his head. "Eternal life? Did you seriously miss the part where people call him the Father of Lies?"

The man in his late twenties drew his sword and started swinging it in arcs, moving towards where he thought the voice was coming from.

"How many contacts do you have in the city?" Myst asked, lifting the answers from his mind with telepathy as he took a couple of steps back to stay out of range. He slipped around behind the man, taking several quick and silent steps. "How many contacts do you have in the whitecloaks?" he asked, making notes on his HUD's notepad about each name that he pulled out of the man's mind.

"Show yourself or I'll stab him," the guy said as he pointed the sword at his fellow whitecloak.

Myst laughed when he realized the idiot actually thought he cared if his fellow whitecloak lived or died. "Go ahead and stab him.'

"What?" the man asked in disbelief. "You think I won't?"

"No clue," Myst lied, knowing the man was twisted enough to stab his fellow whitecloak if he thought it would help. "I just don't care, he's a whitecloak. I dislike them almost as much as I dislike darkfriends."

"The Great Lord has a place for people that can channel," the man assured Myst. "He can even save you from madness."

"Pretty sure that ship has sailed." Myst hit the guy with a stunner then walked over and stuck him in the spatial ring he was using for cultists. 'No point killing you when the Dark One can ask the dead questions.' He looked through the other whitecloak's mind and edited the last twenty minutes to include a discussion and argument about the rest of the squad sneaking out to head up to the Blight to fight shadowspawn rather than accuse innocent people of being darkfriends.

'This would be a lot easier if they weren't zealots,' Myst mused as he woke the man up and headed towards the tavern where he could collect the channelers. 'Just because we can't train the channelers yet, doesn't mean we can't recruit them and move them to the island.'

0o0o0

"You can't be here," a girl in a white dress with seven bands of color at the bottom of her dress complained as she glared at Hermione.

Hermione looked up from the book she'd been looking over in one of the Tower's rather extensive libraries and focused on the girl, realizing that her invisibility had slipped while she hadn't been paying attention. "Of course I can, just ask Verin Sedai."

The girl frowned as she tried to figure out if the girl was lying as normal people weren't normally allowed in this particular library without an escort. "Are you saying she gave you permission?"

"How else do you think I got here?" Hermione asked, lifting the location of the Brown Ajah's location from the girl's mind.

"We're going to have to check," the girl warned her.

"Great, stairs," Hermione muttered as she carefully closed the book she'd been reading, trying to sound like an escort wasn't exactly what she wanted. 'You'd better be right about Verin,' she told Dawn via telepathy.

'You're a telepath, it doesn't hurt to check. Get her notes on dreamwalking if you can,' Dawn told Hermione as she worked on getting the kinks out of Loise's back, rather amused by how much the other woman had relaxed over their conversation of distant cities and places.

'I'll see what I can do,' Hermione assured Dawn as she stood up.

"I don't suppose you have a written pass?" the girl asked hopefully when she realized that she'd have to walk up twenty flights of stairs to check on the girl's claim.

"Sorry," Hermione replied as she started walking towards the hallway, wanting to get going before the girl decided tossing her out was the better choice.

'No good deed goes unpunished,' Elsie thought as she headed for the hallway.

Hermione smiled as she carefully lifted details about the Tower and Else's life as they made their way up to the brown quarters, wondering how going to the Tower compared to Hogwarts. It didn't take long before she realized that it was a bit like a protracted boot camp where they broke people down and reforged them into arrogant witches that didn't bother to show emotion in public. 'At least the history classes are better than Binns, of course, that's not saying much.'

"Where are you from?" Elsie asked once they'd walked up five flights of stairs.

"Hampstead," Hermione replied absently, distracted by looking through the girl's memories of her old roommate, that had been put on hold because Elsie had become an accepted.

"Where is that?" Elsie asked, not recognizing it.

"Andor," Hermione lied, hoping she wasn't all that familiar with Andor.

"Must be strange being in a large city," Elsie said thoughtfully.

"It's certainly impressive," Hermione replied, looking forward to getting a chance to explore once she finished 'recruiting' some of the Black Ajah for Dawn's project. She moved to the edge of the stairs when she saw a woman with a red dress walking down the middle of the stairs like she owned the world.

"What is she doing here?" the red sister demanded, looking at Hermione like she was a speck of dirt on her wine glass.

"She claims to know Verin Sedai," Elsie offered quickly.

"I have a message for her," Hermione replied as she used telepathy to check on the woman's reason for stopping her and her ajah. 'Huh, she's actually not part of the Black Ajah, she's just a bitch.'

"Give me the message, I'll make sure it gets to the right hands," the Aes Sedai 'assured' her.

'Right hands, being yours? Yeah, no thanks.' Hermione used her telepathy to put Elsie into a trance then hit the red sister with a stunner before she could react. She caught the unconscious Aes Sedai with her telekinesis. 'This would have made getting rid of Umbridge so much easier,' she mused as she started rifling through the woman's mind for secrets.

Hermione scowled as she realized she was going to need more than a couple of minutes to write down all of the woman's crimes when it came to severing men and leaving them to die along with a number of incidents that her fellow Reds had committed that needed to be investigated. She stuffed the Aes Sedai in her spatial ring then gave Elsie a memory of the aes sedai telling her to stop wasting her time and leave.

Elsie shivered as she 'woke' up and realized the aes sedai was gone. "We should hurry."

"Might be for the best," Hermione agreed as they started moving again, fairly sure some of the Aes Sedai could give the purebloods lessons on arrogance. "Do you like being an accepted?"

"It's better than being a novice," Elsie admitted.

"Less chores?" Hermione asked, knowing that was one of the things that bothered Elsie.

"Unless you screw up or catch an Aes Sedai on a bad day," Elsie grumbled then blinked as she realized what she'd just admitted. "Forget I said that last part."

"Don't worry, I won't say anything," Hermione assured her.

Elsie was quiet for another flight of stairs before she started talking about the Tower, details about her day and things that frustrated her.

Hermione offered the occasional words of agreement and encouragement as the girl chatted about life in the Tower, parts of which required using telepathy to fill in the details that she didn't mention or weren't obvious. 'They need more social events and ties to the rest of the students, it's almost like they want people to run away. Then again, they're not particularly interested in teaching anyone that doesn't fall in line.'

Hermione reached out with her telepathy and started scanning the Aes Sedai wandering around, trying to get a better feel for the Tower and what the Aes Sedai actually did with their time.

'Knitting, research, snipping at people they don't like, teaching, no wonder one in five Aes Sedai snap and go darkside,' Hermione mused as they walked into the entrance area of the Brown Ajah and saw a woman wearing a brown wool dress and a matching brown shawl sitting in a chair reading a book. 'Looks like she's in her early twenties which means she's probably new.'

"Is there something you need?" the woman asked as she looked up from her book.

"I have a message for Verin Sedai," Hermione told her.

The woman studied Hermione and Elsie for a couple of seconds. "Very well, you may leave accepted."

"Thank you Sedai," Elsie replied as she turned and left, not wanting to get in trouble and figuring the sooner she left the less chance of the Aes Sedai remembering her.

The Brown sister put a marker in her book then stood up and started walking down the hallway. "Follow me."

'Next time, you're dealing with the crazy cultists,' Hermione told Dawn via telepathy.

'Trouble?' Dawn asked as she skipped Loise's behind and moved onto working on her left leg, rather amused by Loise's giggles and the look of interest on Alene's face.

'Not yet, we're just playing with fire,' Hermione replied as they stopped in front of a wooden door.

'Worse than fire, we're immune to fire,' Dawn teased as she continued working her way down Loise's leg. 'Joking aside, Verin should be safe enough to deal with considering she's not actually a cultist.'

'Assuming we're in the right timeline,' Hermione replied as the Aes Sedai knocked on the door.

'You're a telepath, check,' Dawn suggested, fairly sure Hermione was getting herself worked up for nothing.

'Have you had any luck duplicating Myst's ring of doom?' Hermione asked as she reached out with her telepathy and tried to get a feel for Verin's personality.

'Not yet, it seems to be a mishmash of enchanting techniques and styles and I'm not familiar with any of them, we'll have to compare notes when you get back and let someone use it so we can look at their memories of the maze,' Dawn replied as she worked on Loise's calf.

'I'll let you know when I get back,' Hermione promised as the door opened, revealing a stout woman with a touch of gray in her brown hair.

"This girl claims that she has a message for you," the brown sister told Verin.

"Here." Hermione pulled the message she'd written out of her belt pouch and handed it to Verin, making sure that the other woman couldn't see the writing.

Verin glanced at the words on the scrap of parchment. "It's fine, eyes and ears, though she should have used the usual methods. Come in and shut the door behind you."

The other aes sedai laughed then turned and left, wanting to get back to her book.

Hermione walked in and glanced around Verin's library as the Aes Sedai shut the door and wove a weave against eavesdropping. "Before you worry about how you're going to dispose of my body, I'm not a darkfriend."

Verin channeled and lit the message on fire, letting it burn almost to her fingertips before walking over and dropping the remains on her tea tray to finish burning. "Explain the message."

"You were curious if the oath the Black Ajah takes against betraying the Black Ajah except in the last hour of their life can be circumvented by poison, the answer is yes." Hermione gestured and cast remove curse on Verin, causing the bindings the oath rod had left to vanish. "Of course, there are other ways to remove it."

"Such as?" Verin asked warily.

"Certain spells. Your bindings are gone, feel free to gleefully betray the Black Ajah," Hermione replied with a grin.

"They're currently planning to steal sleep…" Verin trailed off in surprise as she realized her oaths were gone. "How?"

"I can cast a spell to break curses, the bindings from the oath rod count as a curse," Hermione explained.

Verin studied the teenager. "How did you know I wouldn't attack you?"

"A friend had a glimpse of a possible future that can't happen but was rather detailed in parts and wasn't in others," Hermione replied, figuring that would be easier than explaining that she'd read a series of books about her world.

"And I did something that makes you think you can trust me?" Verin asked thoughtfully.

"You gave a twisted ring to a novice because she was a dreamer, you kept the notes on the dreamworld because you were ordered to by the Black Ajah. You helped her gut the Black Ajah later by drinking poison and carefully timing things, seventy years is a hell of a long time to be a spy."

"I was too curious for my own good," Verin admitted. "Does that mean you want my list?"

"It would certainly make things easier but I don't actually need it," Hermione admitted.

"What are you planning?" Verin asked, wondering if she had a decent plan or if she was going to get herself killed.

Hermione scowled as she thought about her fallback plan. "Alviarin is the leader of the Black Ajah, she knows the names of the rest and I can break her oaths and make sure she swears an oath to follow orders."

"At which point you can hunt them down and have them executed?" Verin asked thoughtfully.

Hermione shook her head. "As much as I'd like to see them brought to justice, I don't see a point in wasting the chance to have them experiment with weaves and ter'angreal."

"How much do you know about the forsaken from your friend's vision? There are rumors that some of them are free," Verin warned her.

"Ishamael should be free considering he replaced the last leader of the Black Ajah with Alviarin fifteen years ago, Aginor and Balthamel might be free, they were close to the edge of the seal. If they're not, it's a matter of a couple of weeks or months. They're also more than half dead and the rest of the forsaken were freed a few months later without aging a day."

"I doubt Ishamael is going to be happy with us for destroying his pet project and costing the Dark One useful servants," Verin warned her, fairly sure Ishamael would make them beg for death for destroying the Black Ajah.

Hermione gestured at her blonde hair and average appearance. "This isn't my real face or voice, I'm hoping I can avoid anyone realizing what I look like or who I am until the Dark One is dead or properly sealed. I'm also planning on telling the Black Ajah once I've captured them that we offered Alviarin a better deal."

"How are you planning on keeping them contained? There are over two hundred members of the Black Ajah," Verin warned her.

Hermione scowled as she thought about the Seanchan. "My friends have access to a ter'angreal that creates a forced link, the person with the collar can't channel without permission and can't attack anyone without crippling pain. We're also looking at ways to keep them from touching the world of dreams in their sleep."

"If we're going to do this, we're going to need to cover the details," Verin mused, curious if she could gut the Black Ajah and get away with it.

"I'd love the help, you're the local expert," Hermione assured her.

0o0o0

Myst scowled as he slipped into the whitecloak commander's room behind the servant. 'You should have spent more time with your father.' He stepped to the side so the servant girl wouldn't run into him on the way out. He reached out with his telepathy and carefully lifted the location of the whitecloak's vault from Dain Bornhald's mind along with the location of Rhadam Asunawa's room in the Dome of Truth so he wouldn't notice.

"Thank you," Dain told the servant before he went back to reading reports about his unit's progress in stirring up trouble.

'Is it too much to run into knights that are worth the name?' Myst mused as he waited for the servant to close the door. He hit the twenty something 'lord' with a stunner and walked over to the lockbox.

'I captured Fain and I'm on the way back with his wagon,' Zara told Myst via telepathy as she stuffed the unconscious peddler into her spatial ring.

'Any trouble?' Myst asked as he stuffed the lockbox into his inventory.

'Not so far,' Zara replied as she climbed up on the wagon and checked to make sure he didn't have captives or guards in his wagon. 'You'd think he'd have guards or something.'

Myst walked over and shoved 'Lord' Bornhald into his spatial ring with the rest of the Children of the Light. 'I doubt he wanted to spook the horses with trollocs or abandon his wagon.'

Zara released the break, grabbed the reins and flicked them, getting the horses to start moving back towards town. 'It just feels too easy but I'm probably just feeling paranoid.'

'All things considered, there's nothing wrong with being paranoid,' Myst assured her as he opened a portal to the vault under the Fortress of the Light and stepped through.

'What are you working on?' Zara asked as she watched the road, wanting to make sure the wagon didn't hit a pothole or something that would break a wheel.

'I'm looting the vaults in the Fortress of Light and trying to figure out the best way to deal with the cultists,' Myst replied as he started shoving chests filled with gold and gems into the spatial ring he reserved for loot.

'Which cultists?' Zara asked.

'The Whitecloaks, ripping the darkfriend networks apart is going to cause Ishamael to get involved and I'd rather avoid that until we have a way to make sure he stays dead,' Myst replied, not particularly interested in dealing with Ishamael without a copy of Mat's medallion and something that would let him trap his soul since he wasn't sure how many defensive ter'angreal the man had stashed away.

Zara frowned when she noticed a crow with an aura of dark magic sitting in a tree watching her. She raised her hand and sent a series of arcane missiles at the crow, a touch surprised when the crow managed to dodge the first ball of arcane energy. 'What are you planning?'

Myst scowled when he glanced around and noticed a painting of a woman in a green dress being hung from a tree lying against a wall. 'I'm trying to figure out the best way to destroy the organization and cripple the kingdom that is willing to kill people because they have magic without doing something I'll regret.'

'How much do you want to hurt them?' Zara asked as she used telekinesis to fill in a divot in the 'road' a hundred feet in front of her so she didn't have to try to avoid it.

'More than I should,' Myst admitted, thinking about various events in the book where the whitecloaks had been less than useless.

'In that case, you probably need to take a step back and send the blue girls in to capture everyone. They'll be less likely to start stabbing questioners or cutting throats. It also gives you the chance to make sure everyone is sufficiently guilty with telepathy before you give them a public trial and execute them,' Zara suggested.

'Better than they deserve and closer to justice than just burning the entire fortress with everyone locked inside,' Myst agreed as he continued looting, knowing he still had to be able to look himself in the mirror when he was done.

'Especially if you dress people up as the king's guard and declare all of the executions as backed by the king. If we hit the groups of whitecloaks scattered around, we can probably break them and send the people that aren't guilty of high crimes to the borderlands to help, especially if we give them a nudge,' Zara suggested.

Myst glanced around the vault at the crates, boxes and chests filled with gold and other ill gotten gains and realized he was wasting his time. 'I'll tell the girls then I'm heading up to Manetheren to check on the waygate.'

'Going to ward the gate?' Zara asked.

'I have a couple of things I want to try,' Myst replied as he closed the portal to the inn in Baerlon and opened a portal to the Iron Islands so he could talk to the slime girls about dealing with the whitecloaks.

'Scream if you need help,' Zara teased, fairly sure he'd be fine considering the local monsters and his boosted gear.

'That's the idea,' Myst replied as he stepped through the portal and closed it behind him.