The first part of the evening had gone well, Quinn decided, fidgeting even as he kitted up for skulking about in the shadows. Well, well enough. He could never tell if he had seen everything and was totally in control and badass or if he was being bamboozled and about to be ambushed as soon as he poked his nose out. Something about the Daughters’ compound made Quinn feel bamboozled, even though all the data he got back said everything was clear. He wished he could trust his instincts, but with all the insidious little side effects of death magic poisoning building up in him, the last person Quinn could trust was often himself. Adam thought they were good for stage two and that would have to be good enough.

Quinn totally changed into his butt-kicking boots though. Just in case.

Skulking called for different gear than his normal goth style. Quinn wore a mish-mesh of clothing in shades of greys and blues since those blended better with darkness than pure black did, all in styles to break up the lines of his body and cover all his pale, light-reflective skin. He still had a bag with his combat mage kit and both his collar and bracelet with the ghost gems, but they were hidden under long sleeves and a scarf. He drew his stretchy neck cover up and over his mouth like a ninja or pandemic victim and tugged his hood strings tight.

Zeren and Ingrid floated nearby. Zeren was charged with watching and guarding. Ingrid was scouting for hidden magics as they progressed. Both ghosts were shielded by an effect of Quinn’s that dampened their presence, making them invisible to most ghost scans and other spells. It wasn’t perfect, but he liked that spell since it also made them glow less to his ghost sight and thereby preserved his night vision better. Granted, he was also activating one of his own vision spells that highlighted everything around him in that soft silvery gray ghost glow, a form of death magic night vision. With so many active spells, Quinn’s eyes had gone evil again, switching from tired bloodshot grey eyes to something out of an anime, with black sclera and highly reflective silver irises. They made him feel secretly badass when they looked like that, even as they terrified him. The change was a sign of how bad his physical corruption was becoming, only starting to do that over the last year.

It wouldn’t be much longer now. Quinn estimated he had another one or two years at his current pace, a bit longer if he took it slow. A lot shorter if he ran into something truly terrible. Of course, there was no way to know for sure, since no one else had managed to get this far using this method. Everyone else had slipped up earlier and let the spiritual corruption start earlier, cascading the eventual decay.

All of that was irrelevant to the moment and Quinn hauled his attention back to the task at hand with a mental lurch. He needed to focus. On the mission. Not on all the other things swirling around in his brain. Like Riordan. That man was sexy and sin on two legs and completely oblivious to it. Every so often, Quinn thought he got a flash of interest from Riordan, but it felt like a different sort of interest. Not a desire to jump Quinn’s bones, but one to hug him and hold him tight and tell him that everything would be okay, even if they both knew it wouldn’t but that was alright. Most of Quinn was totally on board with that image, but at the same time, it was also why he couldn’t pursue it. Sexual flings and one-night-stands were one thing, as ill-advised as they were either when the subject in question was part of the active investigation, but emotional intimacy? Quinn wasn’t so cruel as to let someone get attached to him at this point.

A tap on Quinn’s shoulder did what his own brain could not and brought Quinn back to the present. Adam stood nearby, dressed in very practical skulking clothes instead of his typical suit, even if his style was more military and less eclectic than Quinn’s. With a gesture, Adam pointed towards the start of their approach path and Quinn nodded.

Quinn led because really Ingrid was leading. Adam held the rear. He actually wore perfectly mundane night vision goggles, both because his magic wasn’t suited for changing his vision and because it could be advantageous to have non-magical sight to compare against his magically-augmented vision. He wasn’t sure what sort of illusions these death mages might employ, but Quinn was invading their home turf. They seemed to have better access to complex ritual and enchantment spells, which would be deployed here. Riordan hadn’t mentioned any near the killing tree ritual. Quinn wasn’t sure if that was because the man had missed them in his rather harried escape or if the ritual prevented their use too close in or even if it was just because Riordan was exiting out from the site and not inward. Any of those things could have contributed.

The complex in question here was centered around a community hall for the cult itself. Their main public-facing class building was closer to the entrance into this property. It also included a couple of administration buildings, but no records were kept there and any clients were not allowed to stay there, for their own safety. This complex was the living and worship center of the cult itself, protected behind a short wall that ostensibly kept the wildlife out of their farm gardens. It had the hall, used for ceremonies, meetings, and group dining from what Quinn could tell. There were also several dorm-style residences, a small school and administration building, a storehouse, a chicken coop, and several small structures that Quinn hadn’t been able to positively identify.

He also suspected it had extensive basements and that the woods behind the complex held a wealth of secrets and sins. If they couldn’t make an approach on the complex itself, they would swing around and see if they could find any trails out there. Or mass graves.

Their remote surveillance had spotted a mundane security system and several women on watch. They weren’t military sharp about it, but they were motivated and vigilant. Quinn thought back to the notes he’d read over Riordan’s shoulders about his theory of the four aspects as applied to the cultists and suspected those women were either Warriors or aspirants to that position. He had to respect that one side effect of the mundane genesis of death mages was that they didn’t discount the technological and practical solutions in favor of the magical.

That said, the Daughters weren’t some masterful organization. They clearly had someone with some military discipline, perhaps Helena from the reports about her, that guided their placements, but they had more enthusiasm than refinement. These women weren’t soldiers. Yet. If the Daughters were left unchecked long enough, fostering death magic in its corrupted heart, then they might have ended up fully militant and fanatic, but they weren’t there yet. Thank god. Quinn was still hoping to resolve this with minimal loss on either side.

Ingrid pointed out several technological and magical alarms on their approach route, giving them plenty of time to work around them. The holes were wide in their alarm net, probably from lack of resources, but it would have been enough to catch anyone coming in on any single route. The wall was likewise warded. Quinn could see the magical circles supporting the wards down in subtle mosaics on alternating sides of the structure. It wasn’t strong enough to stop anyone from entering, but it would alert someone when touched and the spell changed effect to also shock anyone who touched it too long in the dark. Another spell more complex than Quinn expected to see from new death mages without years of practice and focused research, though this spell wasn’t necessarily unique to death magic. It seemed to be a force and mind effect at heart, shaped by the circles and powered by unfiltered death magic. Wasteful and inefficient, but effective.

Death magic had its specialties, either relating to causing death or in dealing with the byproducts of death, but Quinn knew that most people who turned to death magic did it in search of some other type of power. What most people didn’t realize is that the same death corruption that drove everyone mad is what allowed death magic to emulate effects that belonged to other specialties. That stain was made up of all types of magic in a dense unhealthy ooze. It bridged the gap, allowing death magic to interface with other specialities at the cost of an even more rapid decay of the caster. Quinn didn’t share that observation with others, not wanting anyone to view the corruption as some sort of condensed ambient magic because he didn’t see any way to deal with it safely. The temptation would be too great.

So many things that Quinn knew that would be lost because sharing them would be too dangerous. It was bad enough that he knew some of these things-- there was a reason the Department of Magic was afraid of him and what he’d become-- it would be worse if someone with actual delusions of grandeur had them. Quinn’s own lusts for knowledge and justice were manageable when enhanced by death madness. Barely. And getting less so over time. He always felt that the corruption stripped away his inhibitions inch by inch, exposing the raw nerve of his wants and needs. The only person who could safely be corrupted would be someone with absolutely no wants and that didn’t exist.

Quinn stumbled over a tree root in the dark, freezing to make sure no one heard him. Right. The mission. Why did they let him be a field agent again? Well, because he was good at adaptation and calm under pressure. But it certainly wasn’t because of his ability to focus on a specific thing at a time. His mind went where it wanted, which let him make some amazing leaps of logic and to spot things that others missed, but wasn’t great for the kind of discipline they kept telling he needed.

Fortunately, no one seemed to respond to him, beyond Adam glaring at Quinn in a way that promised words later. His heart just wasn’t in this scouting run. It felt wrong and he hated it and he didn’t want to be here and all that made him focus even worse than usual. If he could point out even one solid piece of evidence to back up that mood, Quinn would have gotten them out of there in a heartbeat.

Adam made a sweeping gesture that Quinn knew was a question regarding magical or otherwise hidden dangers. Ingrid’s incredibly acute magical vision let her see through solid material to the heart of things and distinguish one thing from another based on its essence and signature. Great for spotting hidden cameras on a wall. Less great for spotting hidden cameras in the middle of some other piece of technology. Here was great for her, since every piece of tech stood out starkly from the forested surroundings.

Quinn shook his head, pointing out places to avoid. They weren’t using standardized military signs, but had worked together long enough to have their own series of hand signals for type of effect, center of effect, and radius of effect. Adam’s spatial magic made him really really good at both recognizing where Quinn was indicating when he pointed at something and to make it clear where he was pointing too.

Avoiding the wall, they skirted around the perimeter of the compound, noting each alarm and trap and spell. Adam would remember all of it and exactly where it was placed, another of his personal spatial effects that Quinn envied but never seemed to manage to replicate, likely because it partially relied on the man’s own very impressive memory and focus. They’d at least be mapping things out, even if they didn’t feel up to slipping past the wall without leaving traces. Because Quinn could totally get them past the wall without triggering it, but it might leave fading bits of spells he used to be stumbled upon later and they weren’t up to that point in this mission.

He wasn’t sure how much the Daughters knew Riordan and his allies knew about them. Or even what they thought Riordan and his allies were. Riordan’s report had made it clear that the lead death magic was confounded by at least shifter magic if not all non-death magic and how it appeared in others. He doubted they would know about packs in that case. Quinn did wonder if they suspected something like the Department existed or not. They could just be paranoid, but their defenses seemed to include being prepared to fight other death mages. They had gotten their magical spells and rituals from somewhere. Somewhere that included leaked information from the Department. Or from someone adjacent to the Department at the very least. Would such a person have warned these fledgling death mages about agent response teams? To what end? Quinn wasn’t even sure he could come up with a valid reason someone would have spread advanced death magic to militant feminists in rural Michigan regardless.

What was there to gain?