The Portal opened up, veins of Shadow were extended and diverted without breaking any of them, and the three people inside it stepped through and paused instantly.

Their eyes slowly rose up as the Portal spiraled out of existence behind them, returning the exit passageway to unbroken integrity. The Netherlord involved wouldn’t even know anything had happened.

The three ‘winners’ of the trip to the Nether World were staring up at a High Emperor and True Emperor looking down at them. None of them were inexperienced at judging their opponents, and they could totally tell they didn’t have a chance in Hell of winning a fight if one started here.

Then they started noticing they were inside a miles-high dome, there were forested islands floating in the sky, the stars beyond were vivid and weird, and I was standing right there.

“Lady Fae!” Mok Fan was the first to blurt out, some relief managing to come through in his voice. Ruronalee, the Dark Daughter, lifted an eyebrow at me, looking me up and down in appraisal, while Archangel Gabriel got an odd look on her face. “Where are we? How did we come out here?” he blurted out eagerly.

“I cut into the passage bringing you out of the Netherworld. You were in a temporal eddy set up by the Netherlord involved in your chess game. It was going to take you most of a year to come back if I had not,” I informed him calmly, looking over the three of them. “May I make introductions?” I swept my hand back at the forms of the massive Beast Emperors behind me. “This is Flowing Silver, the Nine-Tailed Silver Fox High Emperor of the Beast Realm. Next to Him is Thunderbird Emperor, the True Emperor of North America. My Emperors, this is Mok Fan of China and the Cold Rice tribe of Humans; Ruronalee, called the Dark Daughter of the Acropolis in Greece; and Gabriel, the newest Archangel of the Synod of the Church of Light.”

-If you don’t want to be reduced to bloodspray for rudeness, it is considered polite to kneel to a High Emperor, and they are all about politeness when dealing with ants,- I /told them telepathically as I turned and went down to one knee.

They got the hint, even the arrogant and proud Mok Fan, and went down to one knee each. The two Emperors looked them over, tilted their heads slightly, and then resumed their telepathic conversation as if we weren’t there.

“Please follow me. I’ve bought you all some time, but that is only useful if you take advantage of it.” I rose to my feet, waited for them to do the same, and ignored the Emperors as I was being ignored in turn. I headed over to a pavilion nearby, near the waters of the lake surrounding the Central Area of the Imperial Zone. Trying not to be spooked, the three of them trailed after me, looking around as much as they could while they did so.

Mok Fan made to ask some inane question, and I just quenched it and held up my hand in warning. He glanced back, and decided that it would be prudent to just shut up until we reached our destination.

----------

“That was a rather ominous introduction,” Gabriel was the first to speak up, forthright and wary as I waved them to comfortable seats about the table there. There was a nice breeze, the foliage around us and across the lake made for a spectacular view, the Mana was heady, and Birds and water Beasts were active and a delight to see and sense around us, many of them of Commander-level power or greater.

The hundreds-foot-long body of a Midnight Finback Whale breached a few hundred yards out. I waved at her and her calf as they moved past, on their way to an exit Portal which would dump them on the opposite side of the world from where they’d started at Leviathan’s Domain.

Gabriel was a very attractive young blonde woman, with dark eyes, a very proper bearing, and she fairly radiated an upper-class upbringing. She couldn’t keep her suspicion out of her eyes as she regarded me, no doubt having heard a great deal about me and how I’d trashed the reputation of her Church.

Also, she had a White Aura. So, she was trying to fight a Good fight, which was a very difficult thing to do in the Synod.

“Indeed. Right now, there are a great deal of subtle moves and countermoves being set into place by all your patrons, all of them believing you won’t be coming out of that planar tunnel until almost a year from now... which you will be, as we don’t want them to know that you know what they are doing.”

“Patrons?” Mok Fan blurted out. “I don’t have any Patrons!”

“Oh?” I asked him calmly, just lifting an eyebrow. “You are a Dark Mage with a Compact to the clan of a powerful Emperor of Shadow, who in turn serves the Realm Lord whose chess game you just played.” His mouth dropped slightly as I turned to the dark-haired and eyed, pale-skinned, and luscious-figured former Candidate of the Acropolis. “I understand you think that Realm Lord might be your foster father? He is not.”

All their eyes widened. “You, you were watching the match...” Ruronalee deduced quickly.

“Your foster father is now happily ensconsed as an advisor at the side of that Realm Lord, a position not too different from what that Netherlord intends for Mu Fuxian in time.” Mok Fan blinked at the statement. “Thus, He didn’t kill you for your theft, merely punishing the Shadow Knight who served you in your place.”

Her lips thinned as she realized I’d seen her thievery, too. Both of the others promptly looked at her, wondering what she had stolen.

“You obviously have a reason for bringing us here,” Ruronalee shrugged off the detail, her dark eyes calculating now. “Yes, I have a Compact with the Shadow Knights, and thus their Emperor could be said to be my Patron, as well.”

“I... am a servant of the Synod,” Gabriel openly admitted. “I serve the Lord of Light!”

“Lords. There are four,” I corrected the Archangel mildly, the sympathy on my face throwing her off-balance. “I am sure you think your service has been exemplary, but that is not the reason you were given your station, Miss Afione. Your respect and admiration are only going to be met with betrayal from your masters.”

Her face hardened, and she started to stand, freezing abruptly and looking at her shoulders. “My Wings!” she exclaimed in shock.

“Still in the netherworld passage,” I told her, and my Will drove her back down into her chair helplessly. “If you had been wearing them as you emerged, Flowing Silver High Emperor would have reduced you and them to stray atoms instantly. He will not allow things of the Lords of Light in His Broom Closet.”

They couldn’t help but look around at the immense size of the domed world about them, clearly miles in radius up and to the sides. It was pulsing with a higher level of Mana than the mortal world, and richer and more varied than the Netherworld, as well.

“I do not believe what you are saying, and I do not have to listen to your lies!” Gabriel warned me, and I just raised my eyebrow again.

“TRUTH.”

Mok Fan instantly vomited up a spray of black not-blood. Lines of oily jet erupted out of all of Ruronalee’s orifices, her eyes rolling up as dark veins rose on her fair skin.

And Gabriel, Gabriel’s eyes rolled up, shaking and shuddering as bright, living glows of Light began to leak out of her eyes, nose, and mouth, evaporating with misty speed in the Manafield here.

“You do not have to believe my lies, for you will know explicitly when I am lying, as they sound very blatant. On the other hand, you actually do have to listen to the truths I am going to be speaking, and telling you of them, my little sacrificial Archangel.” I waved up glasses of cold, icy fruit juice for all of them, and watched as they finished reeling, coughing, and reclaiming their mental faculties after receiving the full force of something they either thought they knew, thought they played with, or ignored outright.

The two young women’s hands were shaking more than Mok Fan’s, who looked to have bit down on his lip and was determined to show no more weakness as he watched the Shadowy vomit he’d spewed out break into misty unwhite flames and start to burn away, just like Gabriel’s golden tears of Light were doing.

“Please do not say that Word again,” Ruronalee breathed softly, clutching her glass and sipping at it.

“I make no such promises,” I returned heartlessly. “You won’t want to believe me, you will want to misinterpret or downplay what I am saying, and you will disregard me. I am giving you absolutely no choice in that matter. You will believe everything I say, so that you will know that the decisions you make and have made have consequences, and those consequences are now coming to a head.

“Everything that happened to you recently is part of a great long game between the Lords of Light and the Netherworld. That you won your ‘chess game’ is no surprise whatsoever, it was all arranged. The only chances that existed there were among the least of the players, the sacrifices made to sell the game itself. Even the fact that there were no Ruler-level guards on that Pool you visited was not a coincidence, Miss Ruronalee,” I informed her.

The Dark Daughter tried to hide her swallow, and failed.

“You are calling me a sacrificial Angel,” Gabriel whispered, still extremely pale. So many borderline experiences had exploded in her mind, forcing her to look at them and confront the meaning of them, leaving her reeling and staring at the absolute clarity of those memories and the falseness of those she’d been dealing with at the time. “Why?”

“You are young, you are sincere of heart, you believe in doing your best and trying to see the best in others, and you are far too powerful for your age,” I informed her calmly, and her face twisted as she couldn’t sense any falseness in my words. “You aren’t as talented as you think you are. You have been repeatedly gifted with progress and power by the Synod, who are raising you up to be taken as an Avatar by one of the Lords of Light directly, your soul sacrificed to bring a powerful being into play to lead the Synod in preparation for the End Times.

“You are a good and kind White soul, and the Lords of Light have very little use for the White except as generators of Faith. They cleave wholeheartedly to Axiom, the emotionless truth of Law and Decree, and your body is eminently suitable to be turned into a Host for one of them.” I pointed at Mok Fan. “You are meant to counter him and his Demon Element, and you will totally be able to, once you are dead and a true Sattivan Avatar is possessing your shell.”

She and Mok Fan looked at one another in shock and dismay, then back at me.

“And me?” Ruronalee asked, trying to sound lazy, but her keen desire to know and burgeoning dismay were too obvious to me.

“You are meant to murder the Goddess of the Acropolis and take her place, and your position at the side of Mok Fan, who is to become the Netherlord of Magic of the new Terra under the domination of the Netherworld.”

Mok Fan also gaped at me, clearly trying really hard not to believe that, and finding it impossible to believe I was lying, or even guess, while Ruronalee just stared in disbelief.

“I’ve been Timesighting into the future and the past, watching those threads coming to fruition in multiple layers of reality, following them back into the past when move after move was made, sometimes thousands of years so.

“Nothing of chance has come about in your lives, except the most minor of incidents. Mok Fan, the man who gave you that Pendant there was a Dark Mage of Shadow, and likely didn’t know even at the end of his life that he was being manipulated. It likely would have been a completely blasé move on his part, except that you chose the Shadow Element after being exposed to it by one of your teachers, AND the Demon Element was inflicted on you, one of the very, very few people on this world who could survive it being Awakened.

“The fact the Red Cardinal of the Dark Curia is your mother-in-law is also not a coincidence. Truly, what Archmage of her ability would fall in with a simple man like your father? Just another game to her in her play for vengeance against those who arranged for the death of her first lover, Ruronalee’s foster father. Yes, Ruronalee, your foster mother and first mentor is indeed the Red Cardinal, and of her own free will.”

Mok Fan swallowed, and even the woman who loved to play the information game looked unsettled at the relationship between them.