“No, thank you, that was fascinating,” Howie replied. “I just… I can’t believe I’ve visited one of Saturn’s moons, you know?”
Amanda smiled at him and the look of awe and wonder he had. She felt the same way towards the majesty of the cosmos. Even now, having travelled widely through it, it still had the power to surprise and stun her.
“Oh, I know, it still amazes me,” she said.
“Are you not coming back with us?” Sabine asked.
“Not right now. I have some errands to run,” she explained, which wasn’t too far from the truth. Sabine nodded and walked through the door and Howie followed, the Portal’s Magic flaring as they stepped through.
“Liz,” Amanda said quietly.
“Hmm?”
“Be careful. I think things are about to get dangerous.”
Liz looked up at her, pausing for a moment before speaking. “They’re not just regular errands, are they?” Liz asked.
Amanda shook her head.
“You’re going after her. Yasmin, I mean, aren’t you?”
“I have to. She’ll find out about that little display before the Council soon enough, and when she does…”
“I understand,” Liz replied, her voice solemn. “I’ll be careful. I’ll tell the others, too.”
“Thank you.” Seeing her apprentice looking at her with an expression that both wished her good luck and said goodbye was kind of heart-breaking. She hoped this wasn’t goodbye, but she understood why Liz might think so. Yasmin was not someone you messed around with. She was powerful and dangerous.
“Do you have a lead on her?” Liz asked as if reading her mind.
“Not on Yasmin directly, but I have solid leads on a few of her coven.”
“The Black Knights?”
“The same,” Amanda confirmed. “I think I know which one I’ll visit first.”
“Okay, well, good luck,” Liz said, smiling.
“Thanks,” Amanda answered and watched her apprentice disappear through the Portal.
Amanda took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly. She needed to do this. She needed to take the initiative and try to find Yasmin before she stole that too. Walking over to one of the windows, she looked down over the Earth far below and knew where she wanted to start.
Over the years, as she’d learned more about Yasmin and her intentions, especially after Koschei the Lich had told her of Yasmin’s plan regarding the Lazarus Scroll. Since then, she’d attempted to monitor Yasmin’s coven more closely. The Black Knights were a large group. They seemed to consist of a core group who were more active in Yasmin’s plans, such as Kez, Nate, and Anastacia, through to those on the edges, who, although they were still a part of the group, took a less active role.
Nomads such as Madame Gabrielle Delacroix.
She was an old Magus who seemed to be relatively close to Yasmin, but who also kept the core of the coven at arm’s length, preferring to follow her own path.
Gabrielle had founded a fashion house that designed haute couture clothing for the rich and famous of the world. She was based in Monaco, living in an ostentatious apartment in the city most of the time, which is also where she worked.
The fashion house had offices as well, but Gabrielle rarely visited them, from what Amanda could gather.
Concentrating, Amanda sent her senses down into Monaco and placed them outside the building in which Gabrielle resided. As expected, an Aegis protected the apartment. She’d need to break through it, which would announce her presence to the Nomad inside, but there was little she could do about that. Amanda worked her Magic and with a whip crack of displaced air, Ported down to the rooftop of the building, just outside of the Aegis that surrounded the penthouse. Working her Magic, Amanda created another Aegis around Gabrielle’s. It wasn’t terribly strong, but it would give Amanda the time she needed and would stop the Magi inside from Porting out.
With the new shield in place, Amanda closed her eyes and concentrated hard, pulling as much Essentia into herself and around her as she could. It was the work of a few seconds, and as she neared being ready to use it, she felt the first flare of Magic from inside the Nomad’s Aegis as someone attempted to Port out.
Amanda smiled and unleashed Essentia on the Aegis. This shield had been here a long time, and although it wasn’t the most powerful she’d come across, it was no slouch, either.
However, she didn’t need to destroy it, she just needed to get through it.
She channelled the Essentia down into a single point and focused on pushing through, prising apart the Magical barrier as if she were forcing her fingers into the gap between lift doors and pulling them apart.
The shield was strong, but Amanda was stronger, and after a few seconds, a crack appeared, allowing her to pull it apart creating a hole in the shield. She didn’t wait any longer and Ported inside, picking a central spot in the complex of rooms and corridors that made up the spacious apartment.
Amanda’s first impression of the place was one of ostentatious wealth, as everything was either gold, glittering, or made from the most sought-after materials in the world.
Amanda felt that this gaudy show of money and power was both distasteful and distracting, which was never a good combination.
It was the heavy clomp-clomp-clomp of boots running on the gleaming white marble floor that snapped her out of her thoughts. She looked up into the faces of two approaching security guards in ill-fitting suits running at her.
The first one swung for her, going on the offensive right away without even a word of warning. They were clearly under orders to show no mercy if a big guy like this would try to punch a young woman.
Amanda wasn’t a formidable-looking opponent by any means, at only a short and slim five-foot-six. Any ordinary Riven female without any combat training would have been flattened by the punch that this man had thrown at her.
Amanda was far from defenceless, though. She anticipated the swing and caught his hand in hers, stopping it dead. She smiled at the confused guard and twisted her hand.
He doubled over, falling to the floor, with a grunt of pain as Amanda twisted into the second man.
Dodging his outstretched arms, she came up beneath him and threw him over her shoulder. He flew across the room, and into the far wall. He hit it with a crunch and fell to the floor, breaking a table and the no-doubt-priceless vase that was on top of it in the process.
Glancing back down at the man who she held in an arm lock, she smiled nicely. “Night, night.” Her fist slammed into his face, and he dropped to the floor, out cold.
“Feckers,” Amanda muttered to herself, hoping she had instilled some caution in them for the future.
Turning from the fallen bodies, she walked in the direction they had come and into another room that was just as over the top as the one she’d appeared in. A Riven woman in a black skirted suit moved out of the next room as fast as her six-inch heels allowed and did a double-take when she saw Amanda. Turning, she spotted the defeated guards in the next room and fear spread over her face.
“Gabrielle?” Amanda asked.
The woman tried to speak, but terror seemed to steal the words from her mouth, and she ended up simply pointing back the way she’d come.
“Go,” Amanda said, as a girl carrying clothes on hangers also left the room, followed by an effeminate-looking guy with a haircut that told her he spent a long time in front of the mirror each morning.
He stopped mincing from the room and gave Amanda a look up and down.
“Oh, darling, ripped jeans? That’s so last decade, I could do so much wi…”
“George,” the first woman barked from Amanda’s left.
“Oh, sorry, duty calls,” he said with a fake smile. He spotted the beaten guards and let out a little squeal before running after his two colleagues in melodramatic shock, waving his hands in the air.
Amanda blinked, shook her head, and took a moment to get her head back in the game. Her focus regained, she walked t
hrough the ornately carved wooden doors covered in gold leaf into a huge room with a bank of panoramic windows along the far wall.
A white grand piano stood in one corner, green and gold striped sofas and chairs stood close by with brocade cushions sporting gold tassels arranged just so on them.
Nearby, a woman in a slinky black dress that fell all the way to the floor, stood looking out over the city and the Mediterranean Sea. Her hair was tied up in an elaborate style that she must have either used Magic for or a skilled hairstylist.
The woman turned to face Amanda as she walked in and gave her an appraising look.
“I wondered if I’d ever have the pleasure of meeting you,” she said.
Amanda recognised her from her years of surveillance. It was Gabrielle, and in her Aetheric Sight, she glowed with Essentia, confirming her Magi status.
“The pleasure is all yours, I’m sure,” Amanda replied, walking further into the apartment and looking around. She got a good look at the room, making sure no one else was lurking unseen.
“You managed to get through my Aegis easily enough,” she said.
Amanda returned her gaze to the Nomad woman. She was a youthful fifty in appearance, but Amanda knew she was several centuries old, at least. “Where’s Yasmin?” she asked.
“Ah, so, now we get to the crux of it. You’re looking for Yasmin. Well, you see, that’s not such an easy thing to help you with. Yasmin is rather careful who she allows to get close to her.”
“Enough with the shite, Gabrielle, do you know where she is?”
“And what makes you think I would tell you, if I did know?” Gabrielle answered, her voice taking on a harsher tone.
Amanda looked at the woman. She was hoping that the Nomad would be reasonable and just tell her without the need for a more forceful technique, but it looked like that wasn’t to be, and Amanda was not in the mood to wait around or get delayed. The longer she took doing this, the more time Yasmin would have to find out the truth and take action.
Still holding a significant amount of Essentia within her from breaking through the Aegis, Amanda split her mind into many separate parts, a collaborative hive mind, all working together in harmony, and threw a powerful blast of Essentia at the Nomad. She followed that up with a bolt of lightning that lit the room up and sounded like an explosion had gone off.
Gabrielle twisted and fell back against the reinforced window as Amanda sent a battering ram of Kinetic force against her. The force held her down as Amanda stepped closer.
“There it is. I see it now,” Gabrielle gasped. “I understand why she holds you in such high regard. That was impressive. My, my, you are truly incredible, aren’t you?”
“Enough, I only want to know one thing: where is she? Tell me, and I’ll make it quick.”
Gabrielle eyed her, her Aegis sparking and hissing as it tried to hold off Amanda’s Magical force. “You’re willing to kill me, then?”
“If that’s what it takes. If I need to do this by force, I will. I can rip the knowledge I want from your mind, eventually.”
“I’m sure you can. Go on then, do it.”
Amanda raised an eyebrow at the woman’s almost playful tone. She really wanted to do this?
Amanda threw as much Essentia at the Nomad’s Aegis as she could, wearing it down, tearing at it as Gabrielle did her best to resist. She started laughing partway through like a madwoman. Amanda did her best to ignore it, though.
“That’s it, fight for it. Go on, break me, bend me to your will,” the Nomad urged, enjoying this far too much.
Seconds later, Gabrielle’s Aegis cracked and Amanda’s Magic rushed in. She reached into the woman’s mind, fighting past Gabrielle’s Magic as she tried to fend Amanda off one last time, and hunted for the information she needed.
As it turned out, Gabrielle didn’t know where Yasmin was, but she did know where other members of the Black Knights were, including some who were much closer to Yasmin, such as Marmaduke from the Hellfire Club.
Gabrielle could contact Yasmin through the usual Mental Link that all Magi could use, but that was all.
What Gabrielle did know was that, like Amanda, Yasmin used a Null Realm as one of her homes. This didn’t really surprise Amanda, and had she thought about it, it would have been the obvious place for Yasmin to reside. Null Realms were nearly impossible to find and were one of the best places to live as a Magus if you wanted security. They were, however, also difficult to create and took a certain amount of maintenance.
Amanda had what she wanted, which was a lead that she could follow in the form of Marmaduke, the leader of the Hellfire Club, and, more importantly, where they were right now.
“Thank you,” Amanda said.
“It’s been a pleasure,” Gabrielle answered, her voice strained from the Magic holding her rigidly in place.
For a moment, Amanda pondered what to do with her. Whenever possible, she preferred not to kill people, even Nomads, but she knew that if she left her alive, the moment she left, Gabrielle would tell Yasmin exactly what had happened. With that knowledge, leaving her alive was no longer a choice.
With a thought, Amanda used the Kinetic force that was holding Gabrielle in place and twisted her neck sharply around. There was an audible crack of bone and suddenly the woman was dead.
Amanda released her Magic, and Gabrielle’s body fell limply to the floor with a thud. She stood there for a moment and sighed. She longed for the day when she wasn’t put in this kind of position anymore, but she also knew that was a dream which was not likely to come true for a long time yet.
Thinking through the information she’d gleaned from the Nomad, she now knew that the Hellfire Club, which moved around the globe putting on elaborate ritualistic sex parties, was currently in Turkey. Amanda reached out with her senses and within moments, she was looking at a huge mansion. Again, an Aegis prevented her from sending her Magic through, but Gabrielle had also known of a key that would allow her safe passage.
She merely needed to keep a word in her head and the Aegis would allow her through.
The word, predictably, was ‘dominance’. Keeping that keyword foremost in her thoughts, Amanda pressed in against the Aegis with her Magic and found that, sure enough, the Aegis granted her passage.
The location of the party was a lavish mansion on the outskirts of Istanbul. There were a whole range of expensive-looking cars outside the building, with a few security guards nearby, looking ominous.
Moving her senses into the building, she started to hunt around the rooms, trying to keep her Magic to a minimum to avoid casual detection.
Several rooms played host to the festivities and had been decorated with drapes and lit with soft, ambient lighting. They were filled with people, most of them engaged in sexual activity and in a state of undress, apart from the masks that everyone wore to hide their identities. The bodies writhed and undulated to the soft music that was playing in the background, and for a moment, Amanda couldn’t help but be a bit distracted by what was going on.
She could see the appeal, even if the setting was a little creepy. She’d heard about these events before and knew that the people here were usually powerful Riven men and women, leaders of business and industry, as well as people from governments, and even royalty. Besides the sexual aspect, there were also a lot of backroom deals going on, with money and donations being passed around. If you were invited to one of these events, you often found you suddenly had some anonymous benefactors wanting to help you out. In return for services rendered, of course.
These stories were rife amongst the Arcadians, passed around between those who’d heard them, with embellishments of all kinds.
This was the first time she’d seen one of these parties actually happening, though. Moving from the room her senses were currently in, Amanda hunted with her Magical sight for the Magi that she knew would be here, and soon spotted two of them in a hallway.
She recognised them both from Gabrielle’s recollections and worked he
r Flux Magic immediately before they spotted the flare of Essentia and fled.
Amanda Ported from Gabrielle’s apartment and into the building in Turkey, being careful to keep the keyword in her head as she went.
With a snap, Amanda appeared in the corridor, about fifteen feet from the pair of Magi.
Marmaduke wore a sharp business suit with his slicked-back dark hair and self-important attitude, while the other Magus, who she knew from Gabrielle’s memories, was Olivia, the co-founder of the club, and also Marmaduke’s lover.
“Marmaduke?” Amanda asked as she appeared.
They both turned and looked at Amanda and started to pull Essentia in.
“Amanda, isn’t it?” Marmaduke answered, a look of slight surprise on his face.
Amanda was already working her own Magic as they spoke. She conjured an Aegis that snapped up around the three of them, preventing them from Porting away, while Amanda’s other Multitasking minds unleashed a volley of Essentia Strikes and energy attacks at the pair. Flashes and bangs filled the corridor, followed by the smell of ozone from the bolts of lightning.
“Aaagh, shit,” Marmaduke cursed while Olivia yelled in surprise and anger.
The Aegises of the two Magi held for the moment. Olivia’s face went red with fury as she ran at Amanda. Lightning lashed out from the Nomad as she sprinted, screaming.
The attacks smashed across Amanda’s Aegis but didn’t penetrate, as the Nomad stepped up to her and swung at her with an Essentia-charged fist.
The attack was clumsy and untrained. Amanda caught it easily, grasping Olivia’s fist in her own before suddenly twisting it. Olivia spun to keep from having her arm broken, the Aegises of both women fluorescing as they interacted with each other.
Marmaduke lashed out, launching a wave of Essentia attacks at Amanda that hit her Aegis hard.
“Let her go,” Marmaduke called out.
Amanda grimaced and pushed more Essentia into her Aegis, keeping it topped off as best she could.
He was a powerful Magus.
Her eyes flicked between the two Nomads. He’d been her main objective, but Gabrielle’s memories had shown Olivia to be almost an equal partner in the Hellfire Club. She might be an easier target.
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