Chapter 8: Shell Game

With Supervillainy came a certain amount of subterfuge.

Oh, sure, everyone talked about the lying, the grand schemes, the ‘you’ve fallen for my diabolical trap!’s, but cloak and dagger games were usually far less… romantic.

And when you were my size, more often than not they involved being smuggled somewhere in a container that looked too small for me and felt even smaller.

Case in point, I jolted as I felt the people carrying the bale of hay I’d been rolled up in set me down. I couldn’t really open my eyes; not only was hay pokey and dusty, but my face was also pressed against my knees. I didn’t really know how farmers made bales of hay without equipment—hell, I didn’t know how they make them with modern day farm equipment—but suffice it to say, I’d been carried to more dangerous places in even more obvious containers.

I waited until there was a large bang that signified the barn door closing.

Once the cows started to munch on the hay, I pulled the string I’d been holding onto this whole time. It released the knot, and I burst (silently) out of my erstwhile tomb and sucked in a big breath of air.

“Ugh.” I stared back at the cows. They gave me unimpressed looks. Well, that was only to be expected, considering we’d done this trick a couple of times in the last few days. “Remind me to come up with something more glamorous next time.”

“Empress! There you are.” I glanced up at the sound of Electra’s voice. She was up in the loft, peeking through a narrow crack in the barn’s roof that had been covered from the inside with a piece of thin cloth.

Thin enough to see through from this side.

I stood up, brushing myself off, and moved to the ladder. I nodded at the handful of other people we had smuggled in. I reached out, grasping Rel’s hand and giving it a squeeze. She smiled back. She’d been here the longest, hiding in a dusty old barn.

We had picked this one because it was roomy enough to hold a small army, not because it was comfortable. It’d only been about three days, and already the hastily-dug latrine in the corner almost stank worse than the cows.

There were multiple reasons I waited until today to smuggle myself out.

“Anything?” I asked as I pulled myself up into the loft next to Electra. She shifted to the side, and I pushed my eye up against the cloth, looking out at the woods. Right now I couldn’t make out anything. It was already nearing dusk.

“I caught a flicker of something moving out there when the guards came through.” Electra jerked her head back towards town, where our guards would be heading now that they’d ‘fed’ the cows. There wasn’t another soul left on this farm.

Well, except for the small army hiding in the barn, of course.

“Looks like they’ve noticed the bait,” I said.

Electra huffed. “Gotta say, I like you a lot more now that I’m on this side of your schemes, Em.”

“You would.” I rolled my eyes. “At least you’re not afraid of getting dirty.”

“Heck no!” Electra gave a quiet laugh. “If anything, I’m relieved that the PR team isn’t riding me to try and be more ladylike when I take down a villain.” Her smile grew a bit wider. “So, do you think it’ll be tonight?”

“I honestly thought it would be earlier.” I shrugged. “But yes, it will be tonight. That’s why I’m here.”

“Good.” She rubbed her hands together. “Oh, this is gonna be so cool.”

I couldn’t hold back my answering smile. “Just keep watch.”

“I will.”

She was right though. If it all goes to plan, it would be epic.

Over the past few days, we’d been smuggling men from Electra’s new combat training out to the barn, along with a few heavy hitters like Electra herself, Rel, and now me. Of course, there were a lot of farms, so really, turning one into a booby trap would have been a crap shoot at best.

But that’s the thing about subterfuge: it’s always the little details that go into selling it.

The farm was a small one, to the south side. It was one of the farthest from the river. To the north, one of the larger farms was now playing host to all the other animals that we’ve been slowly moving there over the week.

Slow enough for any enterprising bandit to notice what we were doing, but fast enough to look like we were still in a hurry. As of today, this was the last farm we hadn’t moved yet.

And, as the piece de resistance, ‘Via’ would be ‘sneaking’ herself and her demons into that heavily-defended farm to the north, as I’d done every night since we had picked it as the anchor for our northern defenses.

This would just be the first night it isn’t actually me. Rel had her cute little assistant put on a pair of stilts, and I’d given the raptor carrying her very specific instructions.

That was how you did subterfuge. Set an obvious trap, then dangle the hint of opportunity in your other hand. There wasn’t a mark in the world who wouldn’t feel clever when they attacked your exposed weakness.

Only to realize that they’d walked right into the real trap.

I’d admit, there was an element of chance to these things. There always was, when you needed someone other than Electra to play the fool.

That being said, I was confident in this plan. If the bandits attacked, it would be here, not the northern farm, and certainly not the town.

The reason being that they’d already as much as told me their plans.

After the first encounter at the edge of the village, they’d sent a representative to bargain. When I’d turned them down, the Bandit Guild didn’t do anything immediately. Instead, they’d done nothing, letting me grow my support base far more than they should have, before attacking an isolated farm and vanishing before I could show up.

Then, nothing again.

Those weren’t the moves of someone who had an army of trained Adventurers at their beck and call.

It marked the leader as someone timid, or else someone who didn’t have a large support base. Either way, they wouldn’t have the resources to hit either of the hard targets. With the window of opportunity slowly closing, they’d almost certainly go for a quick win, trying to snatch a victory from right under my nose

I’d been wrong before, when I’d played these games, but this time I wouldn’t be. I could feel it.

All that remained was the waiting.

With one last nod to Electra, I climbed back down the ladder as the light slowly faded. We had a single hooded lantern, kept well away from our peep hole, and the rest of the cracks in the barn’s walls had been painstakingly plugged with mud and black cloth.

I moved over to the lantern and began my part in this whole affair: summoning demons.

A real shocker, I know.

For this, I’d decided to go back to my old standby, the humble hobblefiend.

They were small, obeyed simple orders, and attacked with reckless abandon.Plus, they could see in the dark.

All in all, they were the perfect little monster to throw into the meat grinder for our counter ambush, and then my troops would form a second wave, pouncing on disoriented foes. I called them troops because that’s what they were; Electra’s training was apparently more regimented than people usually went through, leading to a large number of ‘Soldier’ class unlocks.

On one hand, more rare classes were always a plus. On the other, though, I could work some magic of my own with standardized classes.

I was a tech villain. Give me a warehouse and a long enough assembly line, and I could rule the world.

“My Lady.”

I smiled at Rel as she came to my side. “Rel. Good work keeping everything under control here.”

She dipped into a short bow. “It was nothing, Mistress.” She shared a quiet grin with the fifteen soldiers we’d smuggled out here. Cows ate a lot, after all. “We’re all eager for some action.”

“Well, with any luck, we’ll get it tonight.” I summoned another wave of demons, the last I could support without giving up all of my mana regeneration. I smiled at the men and women who were my vanguard, my soldiers. “And then you can show me and the world both everything you’ve learned.”

The grins I saw were answer enough.

Well and good that they should be so eager. Electra was no slouch of a drill sergeant; no one from Aegis pushed themselves harder than my old rival, and she’d demanded everything and more from those who wanted to fight.

As for myself, I hadn’t been idle either.

Full plate was still beyond me, but each man and woman had a solid spear with a good steel tip, and a short sword of the same. For armor, we’d managed to get padded gambesons and bucklers, smuggled in as barrel lids with the water. They were hardly a legion of doom, but with a pinch of luck—and a lot of demons—we should be able to get through the night without anyone dying.

“So,” I turned to Rel, “how’s your little buddy liking her new job?”

Rel flushed lightly. “She wants to be fighting…”

I chuckled. A diplomatic way of saying ‘she hated it like only a child can’. “Just like another little guttersnipe I found.” I reached out, knuckles brushing her cheek. “I know I’ve asked this before, but why didn’t you run away? I gave you so many chances to.”

Rel twitched away from my fingers, eyes fluttering. “Well, My lady, that’s…”

It was a shared exhale, more than a laugh, that ran through the crowd of soldiers, and Rel flushed even deeper. I smirked. Ah, I’d been so busy, I’d forgotten how much fun it was to tease my favorite Minion.

“In truth…” She shrugged. “It didn’t seem so much worse than any other apprenticeship I’d tried.” She gave a shy smile. “And it has turned out so much the better.”

“Amen to that,” a woman murmured. “We ain’t have nothing to do out here but tells stories. To ‘ear Lady Rel tell it, ya damn near took over all of Silverwall.”

I smiled, seeing a familiar glimmer of interest in the crowd. Everyone wanted to know about the Villain that pulled it off.

“Well, I wouldn’t say the whole city.” I waved a hand. “And I hardly conquered it. Just… turned it upside down for a day.”

“Woulda been a sight to see,” the woman replied.

“Indeed it was.” I smiled. There’s nothing like a successful scheme. “And it all would have been impossible without Relia.” I reached out, tracing my fingers down the side of her face again. This time she didn’t pull away. “I asked a great deal of her, but she performed beyond my expectation. And in return?” I shrugged. “We broke the corrupt Adventurer’s Guild, and slipped out of the city with a wealth of resources both magical and not.” My smile turned sharp. “This time, let’s see if we can’t finish the job.”

Another murmur ran through the group. It was no secret that the remnants of Silverwall’s Adventurer’s Guild had turned to banditry. They were brave enough to attack small villages without a combat classer to their name, but so far they hadn’t been able to pose a real threat to my village.

With this trap, I hoped to make sure they never would.

I nodded, letting go of my ‘evil smirk™’. “Still, I bet you’ll all be glad to go back to your own beds once this is done.”

“In the house you built me?” A man rubs the back of his head. “‘Course we are.”

“You’re not the only one who’s looking forward to sleeping in Lady Via’s beds…” one murmured.

Rel jerked next to me, and I smiled wide. “Oh my… do you—”

There was a sharp rap of knuckles on wood behind me.

I turned to see Electra leaning down from the loft, eyes sharp.

“Empress. They’re coming.”

I sucked in a breath. “Well then,” I said.

“Let’s give them a proper welcome.”