Cless was lost in the catacombs. Fortunately, Jason knew the way. She followed the vampire, collecting crystallized stone panes in several Deeppockets. As they made their way through the catacombs, Jason told Cless his life's sad story. She didn't want to make comparisons so she decided to keep her sad and his sad out of the scale of sadness.

"So, Your Majesty, you are the Queen of what exactly?" Jason became quite inquisitive.

"Nothing really," Cless rebuked with an air of mystery. "I have a parish a few days to the east with a newly discovered Dungeon, but I really don't have a Realm."

Myrkheim is overrun by monsters. The Infernal Realm is impossible to reach without breaking a Dungeon Core. Besides the Parish, Cless only has her estate in Glauchester. She didn't even designate a second stronghold.

An awkward silence took over and Cless broke it. "I'm sorry, Jason. I'm not comfortable sharing my story right now. Maybe later."

Later being when Cless was sure he wasn't some kind of infiltrator. Jason could betray her. He'd die right after, but he could. And she was pretty sure his vampire shenanigans wouldn't save his fangs. No. Cless was going to kill this "Auntie" and whatever vampires nested with her and then cleanse the catacombs. She didn't tell Jason, but she could sense the location of the two dust piles of the vampires she defeated. Since they were technically still alive and touching stone, she could track them through [Tremorsense].

Her clothes were sagging from the weight of the stored crystals. She stopped making the panes and returned upstairs. In the first basement, Jason halted.

"I should stay here and rest. Could I ask you to make me a stone coffin? I need to sleep in it for a year and a day to make it my new coffin and unbind the old one. Better get started."

"Indeed. Might be good to wrap it up," Cless agreed. "I think this small room in the back might be perfect. Let me get some things first."

She went to the room where she kept her smithing tools and crafted a few sturdy iron hinges from the metal bull plates. They were done ridiculously fast. Cless went to a room in the back where one of the support pillars gave it the shape of the letter P, minus the hole in the middle, and used the slabs of crystal in her pockets to make Jason's coffin and a door for the room. She mixed tin and lead to make pewter. The metallic bluish-dark gray metal would corrode fast and become poisonous but she created a very thin sheet, fractions of a millimeter and sandwiched it between two layers of crystallized stone.

With that material she created the coffin, placing three iron hinges to hold the lid in place. These were slightly skewed so the lid had two resting positions, closed and open. With time the iron might wean but she could fix it with a few minutes and no tools.

"Are you going to put me in a crystal coffin?" Jason asked.

"Yes. Pretty much. I'm putting a door in the room too. You can lock it from the inside."

The door had the same lead pewter-crystal sandwich scheme. It was heavy since it basically was made of stone but the hinges for the door were sturdy enough. A simple bolt lock would allow Jason to close the room behind him. After she finished that, Cless dumped all of the crystal slabs she crafted in a corner of her workspace before returning to Jason's room.

"Now, rest here. We'll see each other next evening. I'm going to sleep a while before daybreak."

Jason dove in his new coffin and checked it out. For once, the gloomy vampire was perky. "This is amazing. Thanks a lot, your... Cless."

"Do you want some blankets or pillows? It is a slab you are laying on."

"Nonsense," He shrugged playfully. "When we rest for the day our bodies enter a torpor. We're dead, comfort is a thing for the living."

"Well, good torpor for you then. Lock the door before you do though."

Cless left and waited by the stair hub of the basement until she felt Jason closing the lid of his coffin. She dashed back to the catacombs. In the pitch blackness, she pumped her Agility and speed Skills to the maximum and flew down the levels, using Blink spells whenever it came out of cooldown to move even faster. In a matter of minutes, she was looking at the stairs leading down into a world of stagnant, putrid water.

Two piles of ash were standing there idle as if two small campfires had burned entirely. She used a spell and quickly shaped the stone around them to trap the ash inside these boxes.

"Construct!"

She channeled the spell and closed the boxes above before the ashes could pile up and seep out, following with an order to detach the bottom from the stone steps and finally compressing the boxes into balls. She picked up the two prisons and felt the ashes stirring inside.

"Gotcha. Now, let's go to the surface, shall we? we are going to become best friends, you and me."

She returned to her room, keeping track of Jason. He never moved from his coffin. Storing the two balls in notches she created in the floor of the secret passage from the basement to her bedroom, Cless slept until morning. She was thankful she only required half as much sleep.

The next morning they converged on the kitchen for breakfast. Helga brought three females for interviews. Two of them were human with their heads exposed, the third didn't feel like so because of the hood she was keeping over her head.

"These are the girls I recommend for working here, guild master," Helga showed with some exaggerated mannerisms. "Meet Tina, Gracie, and Hope."

Cless looked at them and measured their reactions. They were uncomfortable, afraid. She could brush it to nervousness. "Pleased to meet you. If you want to work here, you should know we have some secrets we want to keep that way, so I am going to take a secrecy oath from you. The pay is as Helga said, fifty solidii per day. Helga will be the governess and you should take directions from her. And as you can see my guild is mostly non-human and I am a monster tamer. I hope that is okay with you."

The girls nodded. Cless looked at the third one. "Hope? Is this your name, right? Could you remove your hood?"

Cless saw trembling hands pulling back the hood to reveal curly white hair and two round horns on the sides of her head. It looked amazing. She noticed Hope had a broad nose with flat nostrils and a thin white fur covering her face. You could mistake the fur for glossiness or just makeup if you weren't paying attention. Hope was absolutely embarrassed.

"Hope. Look at me," Cless candidly asked. "Please correct me if I am wrong, you are a sheep-kin, yes?"

She nodded but failed to meet Cless' eyes.

"Hope, look around. I have a Lamiak, Mawarpy, Gnome, and Lycan in my guild. I was called an inhuman monster several times because of my scars," Cless pulled the long sleeves of her shirt back to show the deformed skin of her arms. "I don't know your story but I am sure you have suffered prejudice out there. You are safe here."

Hope sniffled and Cless wanted to hug the girl, however improper that would be. It was Gracie that came to her rescue.

"Hope was tricked into debt and forced to work for some shady individuals. They would fleece her and sell her wool besides other unsavory requests."

Hope burst into tears. Everyone understood what Gracie meant. Cless kissed proper etiquette goodbye and hugged the sheep-girl. Her embrace was firm and kind but she was trembling with rage. Given Cless' history, it was understandable she would react badly to that kind of violence.

"Hope, work for me and you'll never be afraid of anyone else ever. This I swear to you. I'll help you."

It reminded her of the whores at the brothel Jason's mother died at. Cless vowed to help these girls too. She wasn't so foolish to think she could help every prostitute in the city, as it would only open the way for other girls to enter this industry. The lust of delvers' and men, in general, demanded the existence of whores. But Cless could give them a choice.

"Does any of you three object to taking an oath to keep guild master Cless' secrets to yourselves?"

"I offer you housing, three meals a day, employment, wages as specified, training in some proficiencies you might find useful, guidance regarding your development and leveling, and protection from the outside world as long as you don't break the law or more importantly, betray me. You are forbidden to speak of what happens in our household or about the people that live here to outsiders. If you are ever placed under torture or mental magic, you'll just forget the information they want. In exchange, I want your best service and loyalty. Should you ever desire to leave our employ, you'll remain bound by the secrecy forever."

The three agreed and Cless bound them to their vows using her Skill. She even renewed Helga and Heimdall's.

"Guild Master, there is one little problem," Helga said after they finished. "They need to get their things at their homes, but there are thugs from a loan shark waiting for them..."

Helga trailed off before Cless cut her off with a glare, but she still glared fiercely, making Helga step back. Cless almost triggered her Fear Aura but kept her head cool enough to avoid doing things harshly. She wasn't above helping people, but an advance warning would be good.

"Okay. I'm dealing with it personally. I want Kurt and Venaris with me. Vic and Silverfang will stay behind and defend home. I'll rush back if there's any trouble. Tina, Gracie, and Hope, you girls are with me."

Cless and her away team left in a hurry through the front gate, Heimdall closing and locking it after them. After following directions from Tina, they found the humble wattle and daub house the girls lived until today. It was a far corner of the northern ward where humble houses like the one belonging to the girls huddled together across a packed dirt street. A crowd of seven or nine men blocked access to the place.

"There you are, little runaway mice!" One of them, probably the leader, taunted. "I knew I had to come personally to ensure your compliance with our contract."

Yes, definitely the boss. The way he and his thugs were looking at them was disgusting. Cless could see Hope flinching in the corner of her eye, the fear toward her abusers patent. She thought about her options and decided she had little time to deal with these thugs. What she was about to do was not okay but these were criminals. And she was mighty pissed. A dark cloud muddled her mind.

Cless hissed between clenched teeth. "Venaris and Kurt, protect the girls. These are mine."

Focusing on affecting only the thugs, Cless triggered her [Fear Aura] and the thugs froze. She dashed between them and, with the strength of eleven people, slapped each one of the low-level thugs in the head in the five-second window of paralysis she had. Only the one that spoke remained conscious. That one took a punch to the jaw that sent him sprawling and bowling over the other thugs while she deactivated her Aura at the same time. Might might not make right, but had a frightening similarity.

Cless traded a glance with Venaris and nudged her head toward the house. Venaris gave Cless a wry smile. The brutality with which she dealt with the bad guys was terrifying and Cless damn knew it.

"We'll pack everything and wait while you deal with them," The gnome almost read Cless' mind.

A quick reading of the expressions on the maids showed that they were mildly affected by the aura. She needed more practice. While the other five entered the house tiptoeing over the unconscious thugs, Cless looked around and found the streets empty. A few people were watching from cracks in window shutters but she didn't mind. It was time for some theatrical performance.

"Scum like you deserve worse than this!" She shouted to the unconscious thugs. Cless stopped to think about her choices and came up with a plan. Some thugs were starting to come back to their senses. She summoned stone from underneath the street and bound their ankles with hard loops. They could try to wriggle but it would be hard to even sit up. Now that she started to bully the bullies, she would go all the way.

"Now, now, let's negotiate your continued survival, gentlemen. You got only one warning. Any attempt to insult or aggravate me will be dealt with swiftly. You will behave," She put [Intimidating Authority] to work. "First things first, who is your boss?"

They pointed at the one she punched. She threw a Mending spell his way and the guy spat several teeth. "Okay, lady. You win. What do you want?"

Even more, rage boiled and threatened to rise up her throat along with her breakfast.

"Everything. Rapist scum like you should not be allowed to live, but I'll be merciful. Now, I'll offer you a deal. You either take it or you die..."

Later that day the guards at the north gate would report a group of nine men running away from town with little but clothes. Cless had no idea what would become of them, but they wouldn't go far. None of them was left with a level above twenty and they also were missing around then to fifteen Stat points and their crappy Skills. They were so bad she wrote them off in parchment contracts just like she did with [Virility] back in Karen's inn to paste in targets where the lack of a Skill could be missed.

The darkness within was claiming more and more of her. Cless knew she did the wrong thing with these loan sharks but part of her didn't mind. Was it the Infernal nature she inherited from her father springing up? She was afraid. Afraid she'd lose it.

As they returned to her manor, Cless dumped more than a hundred Stat points on Wisdom to round it up to four hundred, hoping the boost to her willpower and comprehension could counteract these impulses.