Ashtoreth.

  Ashtoreth groaned as her wings twitched. She ground her face against the pillow. She’d been having a strange dream… she’d done something awkward in a supermarket, but couldn’t figure out what it was. Everyone had been looking at her…

  Ashtoreth.

  It was Kylie. She didn’t sound particularly happy, either.

  “I’m awake,” she muttered, rising out of bed and tucking her wings back. Realizing she’d spoken aloud, she said, I’m awake.

  Sorry to wake you up… but I think I found something.

  She stifled a yawn. Okay. What’s up?

  My scouting specters look for regrouping stragglers, right? Anywhere that the infernals we haven’t gotten yet might be hiding out.

  Uh-huh.

  And I’ve also… look, I was never really forthright with the leadership on how well I can stealth my ghosts, or how good they are at detecting magical energies.

  Makes sense.

  Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t mind. Anyway, they told me not to check certain areas because they have them covered.

  And they’re hiding something there?

  They moved several big patches of Siberia into the no-go-zones shortly after you became the monarch. And they’ve got a base here.

  They were building all kinds of new bases and facilities all over the world, she knew. Securing the VIPs was a completely different game now that they’d been initialized. And there’s something special about it?

  They’re digging a gigantic hole.

  She blinked, suddenly interested. Something buried?

  Dunno. They’ve got it covered. And they’re trying to cover up all traces of the magic they’re using. But with the amount of dirt and rock they’ve pulled out compared to the size of the opening… this a deep hole. And the magic is weird.

  Weird how?

  They’re trying to suppress it, but it’s like someone cast a [Warp] spell here that’s a hundred times bigger than anything Sadie could manage. I’ve found all kinds of weird construction projects… but I don’t know how this is possible. I’m just going to say it: I think that something under the ground here might be allowing them to access the other realms that Dazel hinted at.

  Ashtoreth sighed. And they didn’t tell me.

  Nope, said Kylie. And like—look. I know you really, really want things to work out with the human bossmen….

  I’ll say.

  —But if they found something like this and aren’t sharing it with you, I’d be really worried that they plan to get rid of you.

  Ashtoreth fell forward onto her bed, belly-first. She groaned. If the humans weren’t going to share something like this with her, then they didn’t want her to be the monarch. And if they didn’t want her to be the monarch, they probably weren’t going to wait around for her to die of natural causes.

  We have to make sure you found what you think you did, she said. And not… I don’t know, some new warp conduit that the Eldunari want them them to test, or something.

  Yeah, I figured.

  If we can get to the other realms that Dazel mentioned, though… She couldn’t imagine what they might find. The ruins of an ancient civilization? Or would it even be ruins? Had the ancient humans just stashed themselves away, somehow?

  How long until morning? she asked.

  Uh. Depends where you are.

  How long until Hunter wakes up?

  Oh, I get it. Uh… three hours?

  Right, said Ashtoreth. I can wait.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Frost asked. “Remember that the elf we saw told us they were going to test Ashtoreth. Try to get her to make a mistake. You don’t think this could be that?”

  They were all in the living room, crammed onto the furniture around Ashtoreth’s tiny coffee table. Sadie was sitting on the arm of the couch next to Hunter.

  Kylie shook her head. “You understand that if we’re right, they’re almost certainly planning to kill her? They’re not hiding something from Earth’s most important defender because they want to keep her around like a pet golden retriever.”

  “It’s a big ‘if.’”

  “I’m happy you picked a golden retriever, at least,” said Ashtoreth.

  Sadie laughed. “Just what a golden retriever would say.”

  “They’re highly inbred,” said Kylie.

  “Hey!” said Ashtoreth. “I’m not inbred!”

  “You sure?” Kylie asked.

  “Yes!”

  “Huh, I thought you’d hinted at it a couple times, to be honest.”

  “What?”

  “—And you’ve definitely got a whole ‘Fire and Blood,’ thing going on.”

  “Okay, hold up,” said Ashtoreth. “My father sired me by Baphomet, which I’ve definitely said before. Baphomet is one of the oldest demons. She’s not his grand-niece or anything—she’s probably older than he is.” She crossed her arms and glowered at Kylie. “Human royals are the ones who keep it in family, thank you very much. And for no reason at all, I might add, given that you’re not perfecting any species.”

  “Maybe we just found that sort of chin attractive,” said Kylie, shrugging.

  “Anyway—the other humans probably track every move I make,” said Ashtoreth. “Hence our cover story.”

  She nodded to the kitchen. She had invited her team to try a new kind of breakfast that she’d invented, bringing up the fact that they hadn’t spent much time as a group since leaving the outer market. The breakfast itself was a scrambled egg and hot dog salad—and nobody had liked it at all, which just made the whole thing all the more plausible in the eyes of the humans who already saw her as eccentric.

  She’d also moved the house onto a random small landmass in the middle of the Amazon River, just in case they’d been watching or listening in on where she’d had it last night—Mount Kilimanjaro.

  “Breakfast was abhorrent, Ashtoreth,” Kylie said. “Please never try again, but if you do—no mayonnaise. You just… you don’t know what mayo is for. You don’t know how to apply mayo. You just don’t… look, something godless happened in that kitchen this morning.”

  Ashtoreth grinned. “That was the idea! Anyway, the elves are definitely watching us while we farm on their primordial world, right? And the humans know where I am almost every second of every day while I’m here.”

  “Seems reasonable,” said Frost.

  “If we make a move on this place and they figure it out, then the next time I go to our farming spot to kill some bugs, dinos, and fungoids, I’m probably dead.”

  “Sure,” said Kylie. “But… we are checking it out, right?”

  “Definitely!” Ashtoreth chirped. “Hunter—stealth mission!”

  “Hmm,” he said. “I’m not against it.”

  “Won’t they spot him?” Frost asked. “We boosted all those soldiers to 300. They know what Hunter’s capable of.”

  “It’ll take a lot to see through my [Shadowcloak],” Hunter said.

  “I’ve thought of this,” Ashtoreth said. “See, when we were planning my spells, spell number six was chosen to be a stealth spell. Not something to make me invisible, just hard to sense. But I—in my wisdom—was very insistent that it be something we can also use on Hunter to stack with the strength of his existing stealth.”

  “Good,” said Kylie.

  “Now, I’m only on spell five, currently.”

  “O-kay,” said Frost. “But you can replace one of your current spells, right? That’s how spells work?”

  “I’ll do it,” said Kylie. “I doubt Ashtoreth can manage to permanently have higher [Magic] than me anyway.”

  “You’re probably right!” Ashtoreth said, beaming.

  “Kind of crazy that it’s at all in question, since I’m a pure magic user. But whatever, Ashtoreth is overpowered.”

  “You’re probably right!” Ashtoreth said again.

  “Your dad really wasn’t fucking around when he made you,” Kylie said.

  “Well, technically—” Sadie began.

  “—Let’s cut that off right there,” Frost said quickly.

  “We don’t need to make me perfectly undetectable,” said Hunter. “It just needs to be good enough that truesight will only detect me from up close. And my bloodline already puts me well above the detection strength that a normal human is capable of.”

  “This reminds me of that time you freed all those civilians from the devils and dwarfs in our scenarios,” Ashtoreth said. “Remember I kept making D&D jokes?”

  Frost frowned. “That went horribly, from a stealth perspective.”

  “But from an overall perspective,” Ashtoreth said. “It went interestingly.”

  “To be fair, I did get all the slaves out,” said Hunter.

  Sadie lightly punched his shoulder and flashed him a smile.

  “So what’s the plan, then?” Kylie asked. “You’ve got the spell script somewhere, right? We send Hunter in tonight after you get back from the daily farm?”

  “What do you mean?” Ashtoreth said. “I’ve got lab hours until noon, so there’s no risk of getting wrecked by a tier 5 elf if someone figures out what Hunter’s up to.” She burst into a grin. “We’re doing it now.”