The New Chimera

Lilith dropped Alex off after their investigation had finished, then met up with Eve in one of the kitchens to discuss their next move.

“So, how are we going to go about this?” Eve asked, kicking her feet back and forth. She had reverted to her usual form and had taken a seat on top of the island, where she was absentmindedly munching on some crackers she had made. “It’s not like this is the first time a government has funded a terrorist organization. If we jump on them for every infraction like this, then we’re going to get a bit too active.”

Lilith frowned. “You’re right, but just letting this slide isn’t going to cut it, either. I was thinking I’d go and interrogate the heads of intelligence for the relevant countries and see what their intentions were before I take action.”

“Yeah, but, like, say they’re innocent.” Eve argued. “Or as innocent as possible when funding terrorists, then what? Do we just let them be? Because that sounds lame. I mean, they’re funding known terrorists, surely we can’t just let that slide.”

“You’re a known terrorist.” Judy said, walking into the room. “I don’t believe you have much room to punish people for that. Either way, I think that’s out of your wheelhouse. You only really have grounds to punish them if they were giving money to those organizations in hopes that they would break your rules.”

“I was thinking along the same lines.” Lilith said. “I’m more worried about what an appropriate punishment is.”

“That is rather tricky.” Judy agreed. “Unfortunately, directly removing people from power would, ultimately, negatively impact the citizens of the affected nations…probably, but you also can’t let it be.”

“Eh, let’s just strip them of all their levels and a bunch of Skills.” Eve said. “That should do the trick.”

“Which countries are involved in this, anyway?” Judy asked. “Nuwa didn’t fill me in on the details.”

“From what I saw, the usual suspects are all involved.” Eve said. “The United States, Russia, China, a few countries in the European Union…they’re definitely testing the waters with regards to us, I can sense it.”

“But that’s still to be seen.” Lilith said. “I’m going to strike while the iron is hot and visit the people who are awake. That’s…probably just the people in the United States right now, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.”

Eve nodded. “I think we have enough Adjudicators left to thoroughly search one more base without our input, so I’m going to go clear one out and get them started on that while you’re away.”

“Thanks, Eve.”

“What would you do without me?” Eve said loftily. “You’d be a mess.”

“Sure, sure.” Lilith replied, giving her a pat on the head. “Seriously, thanks.”

“Don’t pat my head!” Eve said, brushing Lilith’s hand away. “We’re the same age!”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t like it.” Lilith teased. “I know you too well for that.”

“This conversation is over.” Eve said, hopping off of the counter. “I have important business to get to.” She hurried out of the room, putting her out of the way of any further teasing.

“Will you make sure someone’s watching the kids?” Lilith asked. “I know Raphi was before, but I’m not as sure now.”

“Yeah, I’ll take care of it.” Judy said.

“Thanks Judy, I appreciate it.”

“Of course.” Judy said, smiling. “I’ll let you know if I pick up on any more major movements from the Society.”

“You’re too good to me.” Lilith said. “I’ll be going now, hopefully I’ll be back within ten or fifteen minutes, unless things turn out to be more…involved than I thought. Once I’m done with that, I’ll stay here until Eve gets back, which I’m thinking will be a few hours.”

“Got it, I’ll see you then!” Judy replied, giving her a wave. “Good luck!”

Lilith smiled and nodded, then left for the teleporters. As she walked, she began carefully prodding at the CIA headquarters’ wards. She had the general idea of what they were like thanks to Judy, but she wanted to test them herself before she teleported in.

As she had expected, they were an order of magnitude more powerful than those of the Society; the United States simply had far more resources available to them than a group like the Society. She expected most of the intelligence agencies she would be visiting would be the same way, though perhaps not quite as tough to crack as the CIA.

Unfortunately, it seemed the brute-force method of just dumping enough Mana into the wards to overload them wasn’t going to work. Or it would, if Lilith was willing to dump all of her Mana, all the Mana of the Parallels, and some of the stores she kept in the dungeon into it, but that was too much investment for the payoff. Even if it wasn’t too much investment, she would rather keep some of her Mana on hand in case things went awry.

That left her with two options; circumvent the wards the “normal” way, or use some Worship to bypass them entirely. The former, though entirely within her capabilities, would probably take at least an hour or two, and she wanted to finish this before the workday was through, so that was out.

She paused in her thinking to speak with Nuwa. Nuwa, can I get you working on cracking the wards for the intelligence agencies I’ll be visiting later?

Way ahead of you. Nuwa replied. Do you want me to work on the CIA too?

No, I think I’m just going to bite the bullet and use a bit of Worship to get through. It’s not ideal, but I want this done fast.

Alright. I should have it done by the time they start business tomorrow.

All of them? Lilith asked. Are you sure you’ll have enough time?

You know I’ve looked at them in the past. Nuwa replied. They probably haven’t changed too much, so I’m pretty confident in my abilities to figure them out over the course of a night.

I’ll trust your judgement, then. Lilith said. In that case, I’ll be off. Lilith stopped at the teleporter out, then charged it with a little Worship before teleporting out.

The Worship allowed her to punch right through any and all resistance, and she soon found herself in a large boardroom, where several important-looking people appeared to be in the middle of a meeting. A multitude of weapons were already pointing at her, but she just flashed them a smile. “Put those away, please.” She said. “I’m not on the warpath right now, but I’m more than willing to defend myself if necessary.”

“Explain yourself.” A woman said, stowing her pistol. “I don’t believe we’ve done anything to break your rules, so your presence here is a breach of conduct.”

“You have not.” Lilith confirmed. “Directly. I have uncovered evidence suggesting that your agency, among others, has been funding the Society behind closed doors.”

“That’s still not against the rules.” The woman said cautiously. “I fail to see your point.”

Lilith stared her directly in the eyes, reaching tendrils of magic into her brain as she spoke. “You are correct again. However, given the circumstances surrounding the Society and the incident in general, I have elected to conduct my own investigation on all the major backers. If I find that money or aid was given with the intent of seeing my reaction when the Society inevitably broke one of my rules, then I will be doling out punishment as I see fit.

“If I find this organization innocent, I will, of course, be taking no further action. That being said, I hope this incident should illustrate that I am not going to allow anyone to wiggle out of punishment by means of using proxies. I am very serious about my work, and I expect my rules to be followed.”

She paused for a moment, then clenched a hand into a fist for effect as she cast a spell that tore away the wall next to her, revealing a group of soldiers running through the halls towards the boardroom’s door. “I would advise returning to your posts.” Lilith said calmly, waving a hand dismissively and pinning the soldiers against the hall’s wall while activating Horrid Fascination and Aura of the Arbiter. “You’re out of your depth.”

She walked over to them, grabbing their weapons one-by-one and sending them back to the dungeon. “Confiscated for attempting to hurt me with them.” She explained. “And I’m not even close to being out of Mana, so don’t think you’re going to win any sort of battle of attrition here.” She waved her hand again, dismissing her auras and dropping the soldiers to the floor.

She turned back to the people in the boardroom. To their credit, their faces remained neutral; they were clearly better trained than the people the Society had working for them, but that was to be expected of highly experienced spies.

I’ve finished looking through her mind, that lady isn’t the boss. Mae said. The boss is that guy on the far end.

Lilith turned to the man Mae pointed out. “You’re in charge around here, yes?”

The woman from before opened her mouth to speak, but Lilith turned back and gave her a glare. “Don’t bother.” She said. “I know you’re not in charge.”

Lilith once again looked at the man, who nodded slowly. “That would be me, yes.”

“Good.” Lilith said. “This won’t take long, and will be painless so long as you choose not to resist. Should you attempt to shield your thoughts, then I’m afraid this will get extremely unpleasant extremely quickly. Understood?”

The man held Lilith’s gaze, but elected to say nothing. Lilith began attempting to read his mind, only to find that he was trying to, very subtly, redirect her searches to certain places. He was giving her crumbs of info on why it was chosen to fund the Society, but it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t the whole truth.

Lilith shook her head and intensified her spell, causing the man to wince slightly. She tore through his thoughts, bulldozing over all of his attempts to redirect her before, eventually, finding what she was looking for.

As it turned out, testing Lilith’s responses to broken rules was part of his reason to fund the Society, but it wasn’t the only one. There were a few others, but forefront among them was the hope that the Society would destabilize the existing government of Haven, allowing the United States more control on that plane.

Satisfied, Lilith ceased her search, then gave a sigh. “I’m afraid you’re guilty.” She said. “As such, I am hereby removing all of your levels, and most of your Skills.” She looked through the man’s status while Mae calculated how much could be removed with Mana without completely depriving her of Mana, and how much Worship would be necessary to finish the job.

Fortunately, though the man had clearly been working hard to get all his levels high, it wasn’t to the extent of similar individuals from Haven. They had had centuries with which to train themselves, and talented as this man may or may not have been, there just wasn’t enough time to catch up.

So, she was able to get away with only spending a relatively small amount of Worship to strip him of everything, leaving him with only a smattering of basic, unevolved Skills at level zero. Satisfied with her work, she glanced around the room once more. “Should I find your organization involved in a similar scheme again, I will not be this lenient. I would advise that you do not test me on this.”

With those words, she teleported back to the dungeon, leaving the rest behind. It was likely that some of them shared their leader’s guilt, but Lilith simply didn’t have enough Worship to deal with all of them. They were only tangentially guilty anyway, and if she was going to do the same to multiple other agencies, she needed to conserve her resources as best she could.

She stepped off of the teleporter pad and began looking for her children. Normally, she would just ask Nuwa to locate them using the dungeon’s senses, but she didn’t want to bother Nuwa when she was so busy. Fortunately, Nuwa and Mae had managed to put together some sort of approximation of the dungeon’s senses to send to their other bodies, so it wasn’t too hard to figure out that they were both in their room.

Mai was playing a video game, while Aria was reading on her bed. And, in the corner, Lilith’s father, Mike, was on his phone and occasionally looking up to make sure the kids weren’t getting into too much trouble.

“Thanks for watching them, dad.” Lilith said. “I can take it from here.”

“It’s no problem, sweetie.” Mike said, walking over and pulling Lilith into a side hug. “They were well behaved, so it wasn’t any trouble at all.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Lilith said. “I feel like we haven’t had a long talk in a while, how have things been?”

“They’ve been great!” Mike said happily. “You probably already know this, but your mothers and I have recently taken up exploring Haven as a hobby, and we’ve found quite a few really nice places. In particular, there’s this one valley that’s only accessible by air, with a gorgeous lake taking up most of it.”

He paused, looking at the children. “Actually…can we talk about this elsewhere?” He asked.

Lilith’s face grew serious, and she nodded. “Yeah. Head to the living room near here, I’ll be with you in a bit.”

He left the room, and Lilith moved over to her children. “How are you two doing?” She asked.

“Good, mom!” Mai said cheerfully. “We’ve been good girls while you were away!”

Aria looked up from her book. “I brought her back here so we wouldn’t make any more trouble for you while you were busy.” She explained.

“Thanks, Aria.” Lilith said, leaning down and giving her a kiss on the forehead. “I’m going to talk with your grandfather for a bit, then I’m going to come in and tuck you two in for the night, okay?”

“Okay, mom.” Aria said. “Promise me you won’t overwork yourself, though.”

Lilith smiled. “I promise.” She said. “Don’t worry, the work isn’t that hard.”

“Are you sure?” Aria said doubtfully. “It seems like pretty serious business.”

“They’re nothing compared to some of the other things I’ve had to deal with.” Lilith said. “Don’t worry about it, we’ll be done before you know it.”

“Yeah, mom’s the strongest!” Mai said proudly. “She beat us, there’s no way some chump like this will be able to even make her sweat!”

“I’ll sweat a little, but that’s beside the point.” Lilith said, giving Mai her own kiss on the forehead. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?” She left the room, and hurried over to the living room where her dad was waiting. “What’s up?” She asked.

“Well, your mothers and I were thinking about…well, building our own house in that valley I mentioned.” He said, watching Lilith’s face carefully. “We were hoping to move out there, where things are a little…slower. We’d still come visit often, of course, but we just wanted to see what being out there would be like.”

Lilith thought about that for a long moment. “It’s not really my place to really have any input on this.” She said. “If it’s what you want, then I think you should go for it. Just remember that my door is always open, and you don’t need to ask before you visit. You’re more than welcome here at any time.”

Mike’s face broke into a relieved smile. “Thank you.” He said, hugging her. “We really do appreciate it. We’ll probably start moving out after this whole Society business is done, and of course you’ll always be welcome to visit us or ask for our help babysitting or whatever.” He stopped awkwardly, clearly not sure what to say next.

“I’ll do that.” Lilith said. “Could you get me the details on the location? I just want to know where it is for future reference.”

“I’ll have to double check with your mama, but I can probably get that to you tomorrow.” He said.

“Thanks, dad.” Lilith replied. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” He said.

The two were silent for a moment more, then Lilith spoke up. “I need to go tuck in the kids, so I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah. I’ll see you then.”