We left soon after, me being worried about what bullshit Anders and Chione would get up to. I had them firmly under watch in the outpost near the dwarven Outpost Nine. Emma had also conceded to keep an eye on them, but I was afraid it would not be enough. Chione had more mana at her disposal than me, probably had access to some of the more obscure forms of magic too. I knew how dangerous a person I could be with my toolkit, I did not know about Chione, as she had rarely flexed her magic in front of me.

However, with the priest and Unifiers around me, there was little I could do at the moment. Besides the precautions I had already taken, there were little else I could do without going to war with the rebel faction and its allies.

Despite my doubts, which ran contrary to all evidence provided by my magic, about her sincerity, the safest route would appear to be to get the quest she had issued completed and claim her as the reward. That would make me almost sleep well at night. However, I could not shake the feeling that she was playing me somehow.

It was less than two hours later that some knucklehead had to rock the boat. A particular stupid example of the human species had slapped one of my female trooper’s ass. It had happened when we were changing vanguard. After eating dust for a glass, it had been time for the rearguard to become the vanguard. I had paired each of the Unifier squads with a platoon of mine. This way we always outnumbered them.

As the stupid twit rode forward, he had slapped the ass of the female he had been riding behind for the last glass. It was the female shouting “You fucking pig!” which had stopped the entire column. I had not seen what was happening but was there soon after the shout.

When I got there, I found the offender on the ground getting the living shit kicked out of him. By his own squad.

The squad leader looked fearfully up at me. “Milord, please don’t punish us for Bertram’s action. We’ll deal with him. Give the word, we’ll kill him!”

I was having a hard time keeping a strict demeanour, when all I wanted to do was to break out in a big smile, maybe with a maniacal laugh thrown in there. It would seem I had scared them more than I had thought. I did not even know what he had done, but they were willing to kill him to escape punishment.

“Report,” I demanded of my own senior squad leader.

However, it was the Unifier who subserviently reported. “Milord, begging your pardon, but as we were riding rearguard, Bertram kept staring at the young Miss. Nothing untoward, really. However, when we rode forward to take over as vanguard, he took liberties with her—uhm—”

Here the offended trooper helped the squad leader, by saying, “He slapped my ass, Milord. The rest of his squad immediately knocked him off his horse and, well, you can see the result.”

“You want me to kill the lot of them?” I asked with a scowl.

She shook my head. “No, Milord, I think he learned his lesson.”

From my horse I leaned forward, looking down in the battered face of the man. “Well did you?”

He just groaned in response. I gestured one of the healers forward. “Remove his pain temporarily.”

He did so. He was one of the relatively few male mancers in my employ. He had the misfortune of being the child of a Lord and an elven pleasure slave, with his mother’s feature being prevalent, so he had been collared, despite having magic.

I repeated my question, this time the man answered, “I know I did wrong, please don’t castrate me, please don’t!”

“Fine, let this be a warning then. Heal his wounds enough that he can keep up with us. However, make sure he’s still in enough pain that he’ll be feeling it,” I ordered and rode away from the group. I had to let my people stand up for themselves. Not because I was not willing to protect them, but to show them that they could actually do it. If I was to use them in a direct confrontation against the Thirteen Kingdoms, I needed them to be brave enough to stand up to the Kingdoms and the Church, and not subservient like they had always been.

What worried me was that my mysterious passenger in my mind had pointed something out to me. When the hubbub had started up, she had taken hold of my eyes, changed them somehow so I could see the flow of mana. It clearly showed a flurry of mana being exchanged between the priest and one of the senior squad leaders.

I was not sure what they were, but I would be keeping an eye on the senior squad leader. At the same time, I would have to hope that the enigmatic woman would allow me into that dream space or whatever the heck it was, so I could get some answers. Answers I sorely needed.

If there were two priests, or more, in the squadron of Unifiers that meant they were up to something sneaky. My mind flashed back to when Yathanae died. Somehow they had prevented Ethan’s messages from getting through to Emma or Shenarah. At least that was what he told me, and I believed him. He had earned that much. He had been crucial in dealing with most of my targets so far.

When I rode up to Shenerah, I whispered in elvish, “I need you to periodically check-in with Emma. There’s something fishy going on, I’m not completely sure what.”

“I’ve already been doing that. We’ll not have a repeat of what happened to Yathanae,” she responded with fierce determination. Not giving a flying fuck about what other people would think, I hugged her and gave her a kiss on her forehead.

We continued the rest of the day without any further incidents. When it came time to make camp, I made sure that Caspar arranged it so that the Unifier squadrons were scattered about. It took them almost three hours to prepare the camp. With almost five thousand people, the same amount of horses almost, a hundred wagons and the oxen that followed.

The Unifiers actually had a look of awe as they saw my troopers prepare the camp for the night. It was something they had spent a lot of time training for. Which sounds ridiculous, however, being able to create a well-defended camp in just a few hours were of major importance. I remember reading that it was one of the reasons why the roman army was so successful. Amongst other things.

It also helped that the troopers were not just normal people trained for war. No, every squadron contained a support platoon. Most of that platoon were mancers. Healers, stone mages, wood mages, water mages, and so on. Each squadron would also have at least a handful of offensive type mancers.

When it came time to sleep, I was undecided on what to do. I had a lot of preparations I needed to work on if I was going to pull off my plan. However, I was also interested in seeing what the enigmatic lady had to tell me. She had been very quiet since just after Yathanae’s death. Maybe because she could feel I was angry with her for a long while.

In the end, I decided to work on my plan first. I needed all the time I could get to prepare. Mainly because I did not know when it became a necessity to kill the priest. Or rather priests, depending on how many that were hidden amongst the Unifiers.

However, I still needed the camp to quiet down before I could go about doing that. Until then I would have to find something to entertain myself with. I went into the large tent that I shared with Shenerah. It had an actual bed that one of the wood mages had constructed for us in no time. A large affair that could easily hold five people.

At the edge of it, I saw Shenerah sitting there in a very sheer dress. It might as well not have been there for all that I could see through it. Normally the sight of the dusky beauty in a playful mood would be enough to get me going. However, it was the additional people in the tent that made me stop and stare.

In one of her hands, she held two leashes, each attached to the collars of two people that were kneeling at her feet. Naked as the day they were born. One of them was Nishka, I was not surprised by this. She was after all one of the lovers I was approved to have. The other one was quite a surprise. It was the young trooper that had been slapped on the buttocks earlier in the day.

“What’s going on?” I asked, my eyes darting over the erotic display in front of me.

“Present,” Shenerah barked, not at me, but at the two other women. Immediately they spread their thighs and leaned backwards until they had to support themselves with their arms. They raised their pelvis as well. It effectively put their tits and pussies on full display for me to ogle as much as I wanted.

“Milord, may I present this evening’s entertainment?” she said huskily. “We got these two delectable ladies that wished for your personal attention.”

“A lovely presentation,” I said with a smile. I looked at the green-haired trooper, whose name I did not know. “And her?”

“You got permission from all your wives, and her,” Shenerah said and reached out caressing the trooper’s throat eliciting a small moan. “Michelle here was a good girl earlier. When I approached her about the incident, I asked her if there was anything we could do to alleviate the pain and suffering she went through.”

Michelle had started moaning when Shenerah’s hand found the way down to play with her nipples. Shenerah smiled predatorily. “All she wanted was to be one of your women.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Tell him, Pet,” Shenerah barked.

Michelle whimpered for a moment as Shenerah stopped caressing them. “Milord, you saved my brother’s life at the Bastion. You allow me to write to my family. The merfolk blood only manifested in me. My brother was with Lord Erthal’s troops. You saved them.”

“Everything, Pet,” Shenerah ordered.

Michelle blushed furiously. “I also have a crush on your wives, especially Emma. I saw her in panther-form once, so magnificent.”

“You’re evading, Pet.”

The blushing got even deeper. In a small whisper, “Shenerah promised me a chance to be with you in—”

The last words were whispered so lowly I was not sure I heard correctly. I looked at Shenerah for confirmation. I smiled widely. “Kinky.”

I took a step forward, reaching up to unlace my shirt. Shenerah held up her free hand. “Ah ah ah. I said entertainment. That’s what they’ll be doing. Entertaining. Your spot is over there.”

She pointed to the corner where there was an uncomfortable-looking stool. “If you behave while we put on a show for you, I’ll let you fulfil Michelle’s dirty little fantasy. However, you’ve to remain seated. No touching, not even yourself. Understood?”

I gulped. Both with excitement and a pang of sadness. She was emulating Yathanae. Despite Shenerah and I did not have a very intimate relationship, we had shared the love for the same woman. Yathanae had known how to push my buttons, and she liked playing games like these. Shenerah had done the best to learn.

As soon as I sat down the entertainment started. With a few tugs of the leashes, Shenerah had directed Nishka and Michelle to where she wanted. Michelle dove beneath the dress between Shenerah’s thighs, while Nishka freed Shenerah’s breasts and started to worship them.

I groaned. It was going to be a very long and very hard session.

Much, much later, I had been thoroughly satisfied and had to spend a bit of healing magic, otherwise, Michelle would have been unable to ride with the rest of us in the morning. Despite the delectable pile of flesh that was there in my bed, I had to very reluctantly get up. I had a job to do.

I could just have turned invisible, however, invisibility was not as foolproof as one might think. I was not entirely sure how the magic turned you invisible, but you still cast a shadow and you still left footprints, and so on and so forth. There were a lot of ways you could be discovered by an observant guard. So while it would have been the easiest, I turned into a cat and scurried out of my tent.

Out in the camp proper, I made my way through the farthest away collection of Unifier tents. The tents were home to the platoon with Bertram in it. Unknowingly he had not just volunteered to get beaten by his own platoon-mates, he had also volunteered himself and everyone else in the platoon, to be subjects in an experiment.

I had beforehand made a handful of spell crystals, formed with memory magic. Bertram would have been my first victim, but it seemed he had won the honour of being the guard on duty for most of the night. So I would have to use someone else. I was only slightly disappointed by this fact.

As a cat, I could sneak around the camp more or less unperturbed. We had a flock of cats that belonged to the convoys. It was to keep rats and other scavenging vermin out of the provisions, and the fact we had provided me with a great camouflage. The only problem was where to keep the spell crystals. I solved that problem by swallowing them. Not the most pleasant feeling I had experienced in cat form.

I slipped into the tent, belonging to the squad leaders and the senior squad leader, ready to bolt if needed. A precaution that was unnecessary, They were snoring away. I erected a barrier of silence around myself, turned my healing magic on to block the pain, and then started hacking and wheezing, dislodging not hairballs but spell crystals. Once done with the disgusting chore, I turned back into my human form. The senior squad leader would get the honour of being my first test subject.

With a gentle touch, I started to read his memory. I did not have the time to actually do the work I wanted to do, so I just dumped a lot of his memories into the spell crystals I had prepared. I whispered a few keywords into his ear, hoping to prod his subconscious mind to provide the answer I needed.

I did the same with the two others before swallowing the spell crystals again and leaving the tent in my cat form. No one had become any wiser, or at least I hoped not.

I returned to my tent barely an hour before dawn, and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I found myself asleep and in the dreamscape where I met the mysterious woman. As always she was there. It had fully recovered from the last time it had been destroyed when she helped me.

As soon as I sat up, I asked, “Did you make me able to see strands of mana?”

She nodded with a slight smile.

“Teach me,” I demanded.

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Not ready,” was her simple answer.

I growled. “Stop being mysterious and aloof. You’re trapped in my mind, right? That’s why you get angry when I make decisions you don’t agree with.”

“Soon,” was her only response. Everything started to get a bit hazy, meaning I was being ejected from the dreamscape.

“Wait—” I called but found myself being kissed awake by Nishka.

While I enjoyed her morning ministration all I could think was, ‘Goddamn infuriating woman, why can’t she just answer my fucking questions?’

During the next day I went through the recorded memories and I learned something a bit weird. It would seem that all of the Unifiers came from different battalions, only two or three people knew each other before being thrown into this squadron. Which happened two weeks ago.

I could only hazard a guess that it was to hide priests within the squadron, but I could not be sure. However, it was a blessing in disguise so to speak. It would make it so much easier to implement my plan, sowing discord in the ranks.

When evening came around, I spent several hours carefully crafting a complex spell crystal for just one of them. To complete the task for all of them I would need several days. It was just a memory spell crystal, but it went through a lot of the target’s memory and slightly altered them. Not so much what was happening, but what he was feeling about what he observed or did.

I started with the senior squad leader, Anatolie, because from what I had seen of his memories, he was a competent leader with a pretty good grasp on tactics and keeping his men happy. The only bad part was that he was a raging racist Church-worshipper. It would take a lot of gentle moulding and prodding to get him to my side.

I started early, not in his childhood, but his teenage years after he joined the Unifiers are his parent’s behest. It was the last day before he left for training. His family had gathered what little coin they could spare to buy an elven prisoner. Female of course, because they had to be the greatest assholes ever.

The whole family had participated in raping her, humiliating and degrading her, before his parents made Anatolie kill the serf. At the time it had excited him to no end, he felt proud of what he had done.

Reviewing the memories made me want to kill him in the worst possible way. Maybe bury him up to his neck, and then pour some offal out to attract the ravens and crows to peck him to death. Or maybe stake him out next to a bullet anthill and then cover him in honey.

Despite what a terrible human being he was, I would need him in the future. I started changing memories like that, one by one, so he felt revulsion and shame instead of excitement and pride. All these changes were copied into a memory spell crystal. However, it would not replace his memories without me giving the command to activate.

I did the same with the two other squad leaders, and after almost a week, I finally slipped into their tent again. Here I carefully and with a lot of pain management, I implanted the spell crystals into their chest cavities. Unless someone was really looking for it, they would hardly find it. I also made the change to their soul imprint so it would not reject the crystal with the first round of healing magic.

It would take a long time before I was done with all the Unifiers, but it was a job that needed to be done. Even if it would have been easier to just kill all of them and blame the orcs, but it was the best course forward. My end-goal had changed slightly. Before I wanted to get to the priests’ hideaway to kill every last one of them. With the revelation that I most likely had a daughter on the island, she became the top priority.

What better way to make the Hierophant’s position tenable than by turning a squadron of their own men into the instrument that breaks the bond between the kingdoms and the Church. While I would like nothing more than to kill Alfred myself, I would have the unifiers do it. Or at least attempt it. Whether they succeeded or not would not matter. Just causing a rift between the two pillars of the power structure would be enough.

It was around midday almost two weeks after we left Fort Kiril that one of my scouts spotted something of note. In a hurry he galloped up to me. “Milord, there’s a lot of orcs just a few hours ride away from here.”