Thank you for your support!

  Chapter 222 Part C6

  The fae intelligence agents stared in shock. Their 2 chief leaders were dead. Their bodies were face down. With their heads removed. It was beyond shocking. And the weird part was… they weren’t even in the room with an entity or a person. Just the mage’s movie picture program pyed, and the bde came out of the movie projection to slice off the 2 heads of both the mage himself, and the head boss in charge.

  Before the bodies could evaporate one of the mages casted a spell to prevent them from dissolving into mana ash. That preserved the evidence, which they needed.

  And just then the movie projection didn’t stop and turn off. It should have since one of the 2 bodies on the floor had cast the spell moving it. Instead it just froze. The frozen image still showed an angel like fae woman with half her face scarred up, but the other side of her face looking so hypnotically beautiful as to turn all women into hardcore lesbians. The men were staring at the picture also frozen with her sword being the only thing that had emerged out of the image projected on the wall.

  “What… is this?” one of the agents reached out to touch the glowing sword that was coming out.

  “Don’t touch that! Holy shit that’s dangerous. If you touch that your hand will catch fire,” a mage in the room said.

  “Wow, I can feel the heat still. It shouldn’t even be able to do that,” a nearby agent said that was 4 feet away.

  “What is it? The spell should have turned off. It also shouldn’t be able to kill someone with just an image viewing spell,” the fae continued to ask.

  But other agents had instead ran to do first aid to the 2 headless corpses. Their job mandated that they try to administer first aid if they could while healers were en route.

  The dozens of agents in the room in suits were all trying to look at the 2 bodies now. So they gathered around to … stay busy, help, earn their paycheck… all of them had various motives as they stared down at the 2 bodies.

  “Wait. What’s that?” someone said.

  “The heads are changing.”

  “What… no…”

  “I see it too!” someone said in awe, wide eyed.

  “Oh my g-d!”

  “No this is impossible…”

  “Wait. He’s right. Look,” someone else said.

  They were staring at the 2 severed heads in horror. And then slowly inch by inch over the next 10 seconds the heads turned and twisted changing.

  “Illusion magic! OH my g-d! They are demons!” someone shouted.

  The agents gasped in shock.

  “What the freak… our bosses are demons?!” someone said.

  It turned into a tumult of shouting, emotional shock, and various problematic emotional outbursts. Some were swearing, some were asking for more guards in the room. A couple of agents still in denial were still asking for healers.

  “Quiet down! Lock the door!” someone said.

  “Lock it? No. Open it!” another argued.

  “Wait, don’t call for healers. What the hell are we doing? These are demons. We aren’t going to heal demons. And these fuckers must have taken our real bosses and assumed their identities!” someone shouted.

  “So were they always demons? Or did they just get… their skin worn?” someone asked.

  “I knew one of them from way back. He began to act weird a few months ago. But we thought it was just a mid-life crisis,” one of the older fae agents in a charcoal suit said with a sigh.

  “So probably they were turned within the st year then?” someone said.

  Several agents froze as they realized that this was complicated.

  “Wait! Everyone stop! We have to seal the room!” someone said.

  “Hell no! We need to get everyone in here and expose this!” another agent shouted.

  “Yeah but did you figure out what would happen when the others like them in the building realize they are going to be exposed?! Think about this clearly. They’ll run and get away, or take people with them! Most likely both. They could also ignite sabotage pns while they cut their losses. So we have to contain this. We need to contain this so they don’t know they are exposed. And then we screen the everyone in the building, one by one!” another agent shouted.

  “Damn it. I already called for healers,” someone said.

  “So cancel the mage mail or whatever you did to call them. Tell them it was an illusionist doing a prank. Or better tell them someone didn’t tell us it was a training simution,” someone else said.

  “Good idea. We can expin it…” an agent was pacing.

  “Either way, we need to seal the building and bring in detectors,” another agent spoke up. “We have to do this FAST! Like yesterday fast!” the agent said.

  “Wow. I see what you mean. This is dangerous…”

  “OK. Let’s work it out. We have what 12 floors in this building? And each floor is full of tons of people. We have to get the detectors all on the entrance and exits. Someone get them here quick,” the second lead agent said.

  “Wait, you think they’ve infiltrated this building?” someone asked.

  “Of course they have! Those 2 heads are proof right there! And who knows how many others are like them!” someone scoffed.

  “Quiet down! If you get too loud and excited it will pull other people to this!” someone said.

  “He’s right. Everyone stay calm and chill,” someone said.

  They took a few seconds then began talking again.

  “Yeah but to what level is this spreading? Is this a 1 off, or is the whole building infected with those things?” someone said.

  It got dead quiet as they worked this out.

  “Likely both,” one of the smartest advisors said.

  “Come again?”

  “They’d bring in as many as they could. But its also true that they’d be attracted to positions of power,” the advisor said.

  “Shit… you mean our bosses…”

  “Yes. Very likely high level managers and bosses are compromised. You’ll have to not allow anyone to not do a test.”

  “So we’ll have to lock down the building. Then we start evacuating them room by room through detection mages at the exits,” someone said.

  “Wait. How do we know the detectors aren’t compromised?” someone said.

  “But they are the number 1 defense we have of finding these things. They wouldn’t be compromised. They have dozen ways of detecting these things,” another agent said.

  “Are you sure? They were already supposed to be keeping those things out of the building. Yet the building is swarming with them. So who is letting them in?” another agent said.

  “Shit. He’s right. We have to first check if the detectors are compromised,” someone said.

  “OK. Bring in the detectors to the 2nd level auxiliary office rooms that aren’t being used. They show up on the map here,” an agent pointed to a map they were looking at.

  “That’s close to the stairs. That could work. But it would let us screen the detectors privately. Then we can let the detectors work fast,” an agent said.

  “OK. I just mage mailed the head detector and his 2 assistants, both are coming here. But they are acting pissy about being interrupted and want to know why. They keep demanding answers,” one mage said.

  “Don’t give them an answer. I don’t like how they are acting it smells weird. Tell them instead if they don’t show up here within 5 minutes to look for a new job, and they’ll be bcklisted from all government jobs,” the acting head agent said.

  “That’ll get them here. If anything will,” someone muttered.

  “Done..” the mage confirmed a few seconds ter with his air screen still out. “They are acting weird though. Kept demanding to know what’s up.”

  “If that’s the case we have to act as if 1 or more of them are compromised,” another agent said.

  “OK, everyone. We need to hide those 2 bodies for now. But make sure everyone has proof of them being demons in case someone tries to destroy the bodies. That way if 1 evidence set is destroyed we still have other sources. Also we want to divide you into 3 groups. 1 group will act as the checker to verify the detectors aren’t demons or demon allied. You’ll also be screening other leaders one at a time. The other 2 groups will go to the rear exit and entrances. The st group will take the main entrance,” the head agent ordered. He then started having his right hand man counting off on 3s on every person in the room.

  “Wait, we’re not detectors. How are we supposed to detect detectors? Their magic for this particur skill set is better than ours. They’ll know and counter us,” an agent said.

  People stiffened.

  “Well you’ll have to use the old school test they used to use 200 years ago. You know they covered in basic training,” the lead agent said.

  “That test? They phased that out of training 20 years ago,” an agent said.

  “What?! That’s one of the most important techniques for detecting enemies! How could they phase that out,” the second in command said.

  “IF they did that… how bad are we compromised?” another woman fae agent said.

  “This isn’t good. They knew to remove our techniques out of training to stop them. And its been going that long?! This is serious,” someone said.

  “OK. Look. I’ll give you a very quick. Here’s a quick expnation of the text. You pull their hand back, you make sure there’s not clothing or other jewelry on the back of the hand. Then you pour a mixture of silver, and holy water on their hand. You can also add light essence magic if you don’t have silver. But if you have both silver and light essence together with it it makes it even more powerful. You let the drops settle on the back of their hand for several seconds. Within a minute you will know if you have a demon or not,” the lead agent said.

  “I don’t have any silver,” someone said.

  “I don’t either.”

  “Neither do I,” said another.

  “I don’t have holy water,” one said.

  “I don’t have holy water either. Do we have some in the supply rooms here?” an agent said.

  “What? You guys are supposed to keep this in your emergency kits. Its part of your rules. You are required to always have in your emergency kit, materials for a demon testing kit, 3 healing potions, and 1 mana potion, and bandages and cure disease potions for weres and undeads. Its the w,” one of the team leaders said.

  It was clear especially that the newer agents didn’t have any of that. And everyone was afraid to say it. Peoples eyes were wide with fear as they realized how open they were. Defenseless.

  “We can get some holy water from the supply room. We can rig kits on the spot,” someone said.

  “Wait. IF these guys sabotaged the leaders in our building and weren’t caught, and got in this far, we have to also make sure the holy water supplies here aren’t faked or tainted somehow,” someone said.

  Everyone froze. A LOT of them had been about to rush to the supply rooms. It was very quiet.

  “Shit...we’re in so much trouble,” a team leader said.

  All the suits in the room got pretty upset. Nobody moved.

  “What do we do?” someone said.

  “Wait, I have an idea,” one guy said.

  “Yes…?”

  “Bring all the holy water in this room. We can test it on those 2 bodies. We go through all of it. We can still have the lock down in pce on the building,” an agent said.

  “Wait just a minute. We can send holy water to all 3 locations after we test it. But those 2 groups guarding the building exits have to have something to at least hang on for the first hour,” someone said.

  “Damn it. This is one of the most important buildings in our entire country. The most secure site, the most protection, the most concentration of mages, and all of our government depends on the intelligence going through here. And you are telling me it might be infested with demons,” the room’s current acting leader swore.

  It was very sobering.

  This meant…

  The whole fae country could very well be completely defenseless right now! Even while surrounded by those 13 other demon teeth fortresses!

  They had to wait 2 minutes. And then a big supply cart full of the holy water was pushed in by 2 agents that looked like they were hurrying their asses off. Because they’d been hurrying so much, a third guy was following those 2 with a bag picking up any bottles that spilled off the cart.

  “We have to hurry. 2 people saw us running through the halls with the holy water. They’re bound to suspect something is up. This means we have only a few minutes before people figure out what’s up,” the first guy holding the cart said.

  Already people were pulling off bottles from the cart and mixing up tests. They also had 3 light mages as agents in the room already, that just added light mana to the holy water directly which made it glow like radioactive white energy.

  And then they applied the first test of the first bottle on the corpse’s hand.

  A few seconds passed.

  “Nothing.”

  “Give it a second.”

  “Will it still work if they are dead?” a young agent asked.

  “Come on. You should know that! Its basic training! Of course it works even on dead demons,” one said.

  “We can’t wait. Apply a 2nd bottle’s drops to a foot or something. Get a third and fourth bottle tested too. Get as many as you can testing but don’t mix them up,” another team leader said.

  Several agents began rolling up pant legs and removing foot gear on the 2 corpses to expand testing area.

  The room was hurrying with a feverish energy as they all realized something bad was about to happen. And they had only minutes until all hell broke loose.

  A minute passed.

  “Hey, someone go grab those 2 people who saw you pushing that cart like mad men. And bring them in, get them silent before they talk,” one of the room leaders aid.

  The dozens of agents were all occupied as everyone began to work quickly.

  “This bottle’s a confirmed dud. Its 2 minutes in and the test didn’t pass on the corpse’s palm. It should have acted right away. It rarely takes even a full minute for a test to prove itself,” one agent sighed depressed.

  “Mine’s a dud too. Its been on it for 1 minute 45 seconds,” a woman agent said.

  “Shit… this looks bad. They knew to sabotage our supplies,” someone breathed out.

  Bottle after bottle turned into duds.

  “I’m thinking we’re in serious trouble,” one of them said.

  “Shit…”

  “How are we going to test the detectors?” one agent said.

  “Detectors are arriving down stairs. The gate guards just confirmed it. We have only a couple minutes before we have some hard expining to do,” an agent with his mage mail screen open said.

  “Wait. That woman in the image, who is it?” someone asked.

  “Are you daft young man? That’s the Scarred Fae. Everyone knows who she is.”

  “Man, training really is down if you don’t know who the Scarred Fae is. She saved our country from destruction from 3 demon wars personally and single handedly. Its well known she protects this world, but nobody’s seen her for a long long time. She’s also one of the only mage’s that knows how to call dragons back to this world,” one of the team leaders said.

  They passed by the newb agent as they began to work things through.

  “Wait. We do have 2 options we can do,” someone said.

  “Yes?”

  “What are they?”

  “First, the Scarred Fae’s legendary sword was rumored to be a light element sword. Since its sticking out of this picture image spell we can take advantage of it. If its her sword, that means it will burn demons. We have the detectors come up here and we’ll already have our test,” one agent said.

  “But the sword is too powerful for even fae to touch. It’ll burn us too,” someone said.

  “We can still use it. If they are fae we just figure out how close a normal fae would have to be to pass their hand close to that bde without actually igniting and getting burned. And then compare that distance with how close a demon can get. A demon’s hand should catch fire much quicker,” someone said.

  “That’s good that’s good.”

  “OK, that’s risky though. In theory they might demand our jobs if we screw it up. Nobody likes getting burned,” one said.

  “We have to risk it.”

  “OK, what was the other testing method?” one of them asked.

  “That Shun guy. He knew that guy was a demon didn’t he? Get him in here,” one of the advisor fae said.

  “Wait didn’t we arrest him?” someone asked.

  “We did. But it was these 2 demon fuckers that had him arrested, had us chasing him without cause. I’m thinking they figured out he was a threat to them somehow. And they wanted to eliminate him,” one said.

  Everyone gnced at the current acting leader.

  “Do it! Now!” he confirmed.