Amdirlain's PoV - Material Plane - Kragashin

Amdirlain drifted on the underwater current a few kilometres from shore, studying a planet nearly devoid of external plant life except that in the oceans. The populace was only alive through a mixture of technology and magi-tech that recycled the air and supplemented food supplies. As she cycled essence through her body, she changed the filtering of Phoenix's Symphony and took in the compartmentalised layers of the planet's cities. Masses of malnourished individuals filled jam-packed slums, kept away from areas that contained the devices that provided essentials which even the rich needed: power, fresh air, and water.

The wards showed signs that the civilisation had encountered mental powers with detection elements tailored for psionics. She observed people crossing through wards and traced signals back to biometrically encoded access chips implanted at the base of their skulls and wired to their nervous systems. Unless they ventured through the shielded archways, those who worked or lived near checkpoints kept their gazes averted from the guards and their devices. Throughout the slums, she heard residents lashing out at each other in frustrated violence, packed into rooms with triple and quad bunk beds everywhere. Yet among the elite high rises, one person could have thousands of square feet to themselves.

Can those chips induce pain? Or can they do more? With all the psionically targeted wards surrounding the control districts, it won't be easy to dip into someone's brain to find out.

Stop! What's my goal here? This is just a testing ground for breaching a Planar Barrier. I'm not ready to launch a rescue on this scale. Yet what do I want to do after hearing this place? So many people are barely surviving while the rich in their central towers live obscene lifestyles. How did it turn out this way?

I could move billions of them off to other worlds. If I did that, I'd have to remove their memories of Moloch and the other dark gods here, or I'd be enabling their spread.

For now, I need to ensure I can safely move to worlds without causing surges.

She refocused on her purpose for visiting this world and returned through the rift. Within her Domain, she sprawled out in an isolated glade to continue cycling to recover from her essence loss.

Andirlain adjusted her Domain to let Sarah freely pass, then sent her a Message with details of the surrounding glade. "Hey Sarah, finished recovering the souls that had been waiting. The lady of the forest pointed me at a world where Mooner and his boss have their claws into. The place is an overcrowded mess. I'll use it as a practice site to move through a Planar Barrier. I could use some help to brainstorm what to do about it."

Sarah appeared and crouched on the grass by Amdirlain. "Are you sure you want to do anything about it until you get more established?"

"I thought changing some people's lives for the better might help me figure things about myself out."

"Civil wars are messy."

"Not sure I'd try to change the society. I thought I could steal away the population base and give them new chances in new worlds."

"Are you going to play truck-kun?"

"No. So many people live in misery, but I don't think just offering them an out will go well. They're probably culturally indoctrinated to respect an authoritarian figure."

"Have to break their respect for the authority figures first. Whoever is in charge won't be weak, but they probably used their wealth and position to gain the levels—lots of killing of political prisoners and the like."

Amdirlain flexed her arms mockingly. "The strength of my bloodline means I have better gear. Never mind, I'm punching you from behind magical armour that might as well be a battleship."

"Do you have to act right away?"

"Not exactly, I just hate leaving people in such misery and under their sway." Amdirlain created a copy of the access chip and handed it to Sarah. "They all have those in their skulls."

Sarah turned it over idly. "If you break them, they'll punish anyone with a defective chip. The best bet to dismantle them is to break the gadgets that read them."

"Which would then get the person replacing them or building the units punished," Amdirlain countered.

"Without knowing more about them and their culture, you won't be able to devise an effective plan." Sarah frowned. "Since they have interplanetary travel, the orbital surveyors would draw attention. Maybe leave one sitting on the sea floor gathering information?"

"I'll get a list of names from Gideon and monitor the ones he's involved with," Amdirlain said.

Sarah stroked her cheek. "If you want to counter his progress while learning, you've two choices: work on the worlds where Livia encountered him, or bite the bullet and mess up his worlds in unsubtle fashions. If you start civil wars or social collapse, people will die, so prepare to pull everyone you don't want dead out first. I'll point out that even if someone hops to another world willingly to escape them, you should still remove the memories of the dark deities' names. All it takes is coming up in conversation too often, or someone feeling hard done by and praying to them for more strength."

"Yeah, I had the same thought, but it's best to be careful. Recruiting dissidents in that place would be difficult if I wanted to take a stab at social engineering. There are a lot of controls around movement."

"Can you hear the atheist types? Not believing in a god is hard when blessings are about, but you could find some lacking dedication to any of those gods, then shift them with True Song."

Amdirlain grinned viciously. "I could leave dead bodies behind and make it look like someone slaughtered them. Then, if the priests tried to speak with the dead, the blessing would fail, making them look ineffective."

"Or like they were covering for the killer. Given what you heard, how many do you think you'd remove at a minimum?"

"Billions." Amdirlain sighed. "Many of those in the slums are too desperately trying to live to care about anything but food and shelter."

"Considering the sort of opportunities you will provide them, anyone you rescue will be better off. Do you think they'll know you're interested in the world?"

"I lost a lot of essence getting through the rift, and I don't know who I alerted."

"Yeah, but how big of a Mana surge did you cause? Gideon said the ratio to convert your Psi to Essence was twelve hundred to one."

"That's to refine it to boost my permanent essence capacity. On the way through, I lost about a fifth of my capacity and caused a flood of a few hundred million Mana points through the local ley lines."

"Did you have fun being noisy?"

"Both times it was uncomfortable, so I need to get better at it."

"Would you explain what it feels like?"

Amdirlain frowned. "The teeth of a cog raking across my skin, pulling strands free in different directions. I tried to turn with them and redirect the momentum, so they stayed with me, but I was only partly successful."

"If going through that rift was basically a signal flare, I suggest you stay off that world until you've got it down pat. If you're focused on knowing about all the worlds Mooner has worshippers on, ask Gideon for a list of True Song coordinates."

"We put surveyors in orbit around low-tech worlds, spot the rifts, and then drill for the theme of their farside."

Sarah patted her head. "Brain engaged, I approve."

"Hell is technically in breach of an agreement with you, so I can provide you with knowledge to remediate the situation." Gideon's presence rang in their thoughts before a list of coordinates followed their words.

"In breach?" Sarah asked.

"Thanks for the list, Gideon. Hell's agreement hinged around restraining the expansion of demons, making a Demon Lord a Dark God with Abyssal forces still at his command violates its spirit if not the letter of the agreement." Amdirlain brushed Sarah's arm as her muscles tightened. "I also remember the argument I had with the Great Mother about demons."

Sarah's fingers dug into the grass. "You remembered more?"

"Bits and pieces while I was gathering souls. Since things are coming loose, I need to start from the beginning and get the proper context. I've asked Lethe to organise the shelves for me."

"I know you can go through most memories fast, but I wouldn't count on that for Ori's memories." Sarah frowned.

"I'm not, yet it's still an interesting challenge. Since I'm not yet a match for my previous capabilities, the more I grow, the more I pick up from the memories, and the harder it is to take everything in." Amdirlain rubbed her forehead and sighed as she created hundreds of basketball-sized surveyors hovering overhead.

"Are you going to investigate which worlds have advanced technology?"

"If they spot them, they still have to figure out what the sphere is capable of," Amdirlain smirked. "Having them wondering when the other shoe will drop could be fun."

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"Except you've already been to one world, and created a Mana surge. They might put two and two together."

"Yet there weren't surges on the other worlds, and I'm also going to put the sphere in the VIP section of their orbital station, to tweak his nose," Amdirlain winked. "Heavily shielded, of course, since it will cause officials inconvenience."

An image of a blazing phoenix manifested within each of the spheres.

Sarah briefly squeezed Amdirlain's cheeks. "Why attract attention?"

"It's so they're looking at the spheres, wondering what will happen, and diverting attention from other places. Does misdirection count as subtle?" Amdirlain caused an illusion of a coin jumping between her hands, only to disappear when she turned them over.

"No."

"Spoilsport."

"I'll give you points since you've made it look like a bomb threat instead of a scanning device."

Amdirlain winked and sent the spheres on their way. "Do I get points if I tell you I set it within an old asteroid mine instead?

"A few points," Sarah grimaced. "What disturbs you most?"

The question had Amdirlain pause and consider her emotions about the situation. "You want me to pick the worst part?"

"Knowing your motivations will help you."

"The way they live, they're slaves to the oligarchies. Instead of a collar around their necks, they have chips in their heads. I need to change their lives. Since my Primordial Will is too low, I'll use True Song. With it, I've enough strength to slip through the wards around the lower-class districts. Then see what I can do with no one at risk."

If I empty the slums and damage the districts, there might be enough interlinks to short the wards in more protected regions.

"It's workable. Once you've collected them, you don't need to rush. If they've no way to contact anyone from their old world, have families with them, and everyone's still the same age, they'll believe no time has passed."

"There are so many people in the slums that it would cut the world's population by nearly two-thirds."

Sarah sighed. "Figure out a starting population to determine how many worlds. You've got a bunch with no sapient species, but you'll probably need more."

"I'll consider it while I'm practising breaching Planar barriers."

"You know you don't have to fix everything."

Amdirlain laughed. "I know there are bound to be other worlds with similar issues, and I can't solve them all. However, I can screw with the people that worship my enemies."

"We've got the skills training approach we developed for the Celestial slimes. Do you want me to work on variants to teach them life and survival skills while in stasis?"

"I'd appreciate that," Amdirlain said, sitting up to hug Sarah.

Sarah snickered. "You're so formal. Did speaking to a fey Primordial get you all paranoid?"

"Absolutely. Her theme says she likes me, but she's unhappy that our dealings are more me providing her with things."

"Point out that her contributions made the realm successful and allowed you to eliminate old enemies. Especially since her celestials helped train the original Wizard companies that crushed the Greek Gods' offensive."

"Perhaps when I next speak with her."

Sarah eyed her. "What else is bugging you?"

Amdirlain frowned. "Having their oaths is so odd; I can feel a background murmur from them. It's like hearing the details of the surrounding plants."

"You've had plenty of practice dealing with billions of songs at once, yet a couple of hundred thousand Enyalië can keep you on your toes?"

"I hope I'm enough for them. Their births were an accident, and I'm worried I won't be able to give them enough time."

"Can you hear them right now?"

"Yes, even without trying to listen to their songs. They're cooing excitedly over souls being reincarnated. The Enyalië are so different personality-wise that before I left, none of my conversations with them were the same. For example, even those interested in plants have different things that intrigue them."

"Have you tried using the Oath links?"

"Not as yet."

"Mental contact with someone is extremely different once they have an Oath link. It will take time to get used to them, but it makes that mental network you set up a lot easier. Try just talking to one of them."

Amdirlain considered the mental imagery for a mind palace, seeking something friendlier than she'd used while working with Athena in the maze. Sunlight through the trees prompted a thought, and a kitchen table awash with sunlight appeared. The heat from the cooling oven mingled with the warmth of the summer sun, while the memories of baked scones topped with clotted cream and jam tickled her nose and taste buds. A steaming pot of tea, with mum's heresy of tea bag tags poking from beneath the battered metal lid, sat on a tray next to a pair of worn mugs with their decorative pattern starting to fade. Amdirlain wiggled her toes against the cool white tiles and remembered the hours spent scrubbing them during those times she'd found herself in strife with her folks. The dish rack gained the utensils and trays from baking the scones, and the kitchen windows acquired the details of the backyard grass, browned from the summer heat. The glass panels of the cupboard showed the mismatched pieces of the everyday sets while an intact set sat on the top shelf, reserved for special family dinners.

I wonder if she's been reborn?

The light floral scent of her mother's favourite perfume hit hard, surging up from memory, causing Amdirlain to draw a sharp breath of surprise.

"You okay?"

"Wonderful memories sometimes hit hard as well. I was constructing a mind palace template for speaking to them when details of scones and tea at Mum's kitchen bit."

"Loose leaf or tea bags?"

"Mum's battered pot with the tea bags poking out from the lid," laughed Amdirlain.

Sarah snorted. "Goodness, I think it's the only thing I remember your folks regularly arguing over."

"It was her perfume that got me. I thought I'd feel her hand on my shoulder any moment, and I'd get to apologise for all the grief she experienced. With the Anar no longer doing the adult memory rites, she'll have none of those memories."

"The good with the bad."

"I can share the comfort of her kitchen with others." A hitch in her voice had Amdirlain exhaling slowly. "All the practice I've had maintaining my composure and thoughts of home still hit hard."

"That's because you've not yet settled roots in place." Sarah cupped her face and kissed her gently. "Make a home with us."

Amdirlain smiled. "You'll have to fill out adoption paperwork for all of them."

With her fingers trailing along Amdirlain's face, Sarah sat back. "Time to start the mind melds rolling, sweetie."

Amdirlain brushed the first Oath links and sent out greetings and invitations.

* * * * *

Her ready acceptance translated into the door to the back porch opening and Tinu stepping inside, eyeing the place curiously. Amdirlain maintained the detailed environment within the mind palace, but her surroundings didn't fade out.

"What did you want to talk about, Mother?" Tinu chirped as she paused near the closest chair. Her fingertips played along the waratahs carved into the pine.

"Will you help with an experiment?"

"Of course! What are we going to make?"

"I want to see the biggest group I can handle speaking to together without having issues tracking conversations. Hopefully, I won't fry my brain."

"We're lab rats for mum!" Tinu mentally squealed.

I'm glad they can be informal.

"Yes, you're all playing in my maze."

Tinu laughed maniacally and waved her arms about. "We're going to take over your brainwaves and find the cheese."

"It's well protected. I don't even know where it is." Amdirlain quipped. "Let's talk about what you've been up to?"

"I'd rather talk about what cover story I can use for visiting Qil Tris."

"It might only be a quick visit. Who says you'll need a cover story?"

"But Sarah's folks get to sneak into trials and help people," Tinu protested. "Can't I go in disguise and learn about their lives?"

"Disguises can take on a life of their own."

"What would Am do?" Tinu laughed.

"At the moment, it all seems like a good idea."

* * * * *

Irini didn't eye the place curiously but immediately plopped down at the table across from Amdirlain and poured the tea.

"Are you going to make some more worlds? We've been repairing environmental disasters in different places, but setting up the environments on those worlds was the best fun."

"I might require more worlds shortly," Amdirlain tapped her cup's handle to add more sound to the mix.

"It's weird not hearing the songs in here." Irini tilted her head. "It doesn't feel quite right without that detail."

"One thing at a time, first to see how much individual time I can give to my daughters at once."

Irini giggled. "In your own unique way. You gave us all unique personalities. I don't understand how you did it."

"Maybe because I wasn't expecting the outcome at all." Amdirlain shrugged. "Do you always get on?"

"We're sisters, so we have things we disagree about, yet we don't let things get heated," Irini reassured.

"Such as?"

"Tinu wanted to add some sapient species to the planets we made environments on, but the majority voted her idea down. The compromise was that those interested in sapient species get to take part in as many of those choirs as they wanted."

* * * * *

Amdirlain repeated the process with more Oath links, until thousands of individual mind palaces bloomed into life. She increased the connection count until she had eighty thousand ongoing conversations.

"You've got a furrow developing," Sarah noted, running a finger down the centre of her brow.

"I realised I invited them into conversations in the same order as last time."

Sarah shifted around and lay down on the grass beside her, holding her hand. "That's your biggest concern?"

"I don't want to show favouritism."

"It was the easiest way to decide who got to go first. I'm sure none of them are going to complain. How is your brain handling the strain?"

"The strain is kicking up a bit," Amdirlain added another thousand links and hummed thoughtfully. "I think I'll limit myself to eighty-five thousand, so I can still do other things."

"You'll find your limit is much higher once you get used to your new state."

Amdirlain created a crystal plate and set it hovering above them. "Yes, but one step at a time. Information gathering and catching up with friends."

The laughter and cheers in the ongoing conversations eased the tension that Amdirlain felt examining the worlds where Tingeth and Moloch had the most significant influence. The sour, cruel notes that heralded the locations of their temples stood out from the surrounding themes upon every world they assessed.

While they worked, Amdirlain gave passage through her Domain to key individuals before she sent out messages with the details and invitations. In minutes, Klipyl appeared beside them and flopped to the grass to rest her head against Amdirlain's free shoulder.

"The surveyors are out. Are you plotting the takeover of a world?"

"I've learnt to step through rifts, and there are a few worlds where a former Demon Lord needs a kick in the nuts."

"Do you ever take a proper rest, Ammie?" Klipyl asked.

Amdirlain turned slightly and kissed her forehead. "This is a rest. How is the family?"

Klipyl purred happily. "Kadaklan is having fun, encouraging people with their healing and brewing. The children are wonderful and can't wait to meet their auntie."

"You could have brought them with you."

"Faisal and Rustam are brewing up a storm at the moment, while Arief and Yuda are busy with their students. Kadaklan will bring them later once they're all free."

Amdirlain smirked. "I didn't know that alchemists could mess with the weather."

Klipyl blew a raspberry and looped her arm through Amdirlain's.

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