I loaded up into the local simulation that Shade was running, this time taking the same place as she was, where her body was represented in the real world. There was a slight mismatch where she was moving in the simulation as a transparent ghost and the outer world her wasn't moving.

"You should be dead," Shade said. "When you ran away before should have been the exact time that the assassin struck and killed you."

"That is what happened, I agree," I said. "The assassin put the dagger through my head hard enough that it came out the back, and the neurotoxin on the blade was particularly nasty too. I got better. You were a bit too hasty in dismissing the stories of my immortality."

"Okay, sure," Shade said. "It isn't as though you could be lying and killed the assassin despite my distraction. You're right, you must be immortal. More importantly, what have you done, why can't I move my body?"

"What do you mean, your body?" I asked. "You were warned about the consequences, it's my body now."

"What-" I ran my hands up my new body and cupped my breasts. "You bastard, stop that," Shade said.

I stopped. To be honest it was more of a distraction than I wanted, but I wanted to get a rise out of Shade.

"You're only second in your organisation," I said. "And you claim to have been coerced by an oath. I want the First, and I will use your body to get to them and make enough of a splash that it should deter stupidity of this sort in the future. If you want to get your body back then you will do your best to help me. First off, what is the exact wording of the oath that is binding you?"

"I don't know," Shade said. "Part of the oath is that I can't clearly recall the exact oath. It limits attempts to subvert it."

"You swore an oath to work towards the betterment of the fortress and its people," I said. "How were you able to attempt to kill me in spite of that oath?"

"A new owner would be better for the Fortress and its people," Shade said. "The World Magic agrees, or we wouldn't have been able to do it. Or... If you were telling the truth and you cannot be killed then the World Magic didn't restrict us because it doesn't matter what we do."

I had a moment of disorientation where my human body was being shaken, pulling my focus to it. I opened my eyes there, closing my Forest Keeper eyes. Chantelle was leaning over the bed from the side that didn't have the dead body and was shaking me by my shoulder.

"Are you okay?" Chantelle asked. "You're covered in blood."

"I'm fine," I said. "It's mostly the assassin's blood, I think. Some of it might be mine, though, come to think of it. I'm dealing with it, the organisation that Shade is a part of sent him."

"What about Shade?" Chantelle asked. "I liked her. And what is with the spikes of lust you felt? You feel... odd."

"I isolated Shade as a Demi-AI," I said. "And I have my consciousness split into her body as well, which is very distracting and probably the oddness you felt. The lust was... I felt up the new body to get a rise out of Shade. I'll be using the body to get to the head of their organisation."

"Typical," Chantelle said with a smile. "I'll leave you to it, then. But try to be safer? I don't like you being in so much pain."

"I will," I said. "I'll put stone over the portal at the top of the fortress that you and the assassin came through. It's been there since I set up the Fortress and I had glossed over it as a security hole, it was convenient when there weren't as many people in the Fortress."

Chantelle nodded, placed her hand on my chest and kissed me. Which caused both of my bodies to react. Having multiple bodies was more trouble than it was worth.

Chantelle stood back up and then grimaced in distaste at the blood that covered her hand, and some had gotten on her dress as well. I ran my power over the two of us and the feeling of steel wool scouring our skin accompanied a gentle breeze as I turned the grime and gore into air.

Chantelle kissed me again and then left through the portal back into the fortress. As soon as she was gone I moved a slab of stone over it, incorporating the two presences into it. Which reminded me that I wasn't getting any of the feeds from the presences, as they were all routed through to me using the interface that Shade had forced me to close off.

It was the work of only a few minutes to repair the connections I had smashed. I was notified of three portal connections I had missed in the time I was down, which I waved away. They were connecting through now.

I shifted my focus back to my digital self in Shade's simulation and played back what she had been saying at faster speed. Accusations of ignoring her, insults, justifications of her actions. She was in the middle of talking about the indignities that the First had forced on her when I caught up.

"I am going to go have a talk with the First," I said.

"I avoid him as much as possible," Shade said. "I never go there voluntarily. His guards always strip me, of weapons. They're under his protection, and my oath forces me to obey them."

I sighed. It would have been nice to know that before I'd taken the body. I pulled up the model of Shade's body and added the retractable claws from my model, adjusting them to fit the Forest Keeper's longer fingers.

After a bit of thought and design I added a larger retractable claw that would emerge from the end of the tail. Loading up the repair program, it would take a minute and a half in serial mode. I wasn't in any rush at this point so I set it to that and triggered the program.

I came to with both of my bodies curled up, hugging their knees, and the Forest Keeper tail was wrapped tightly around me. I stood up and extended the claws from my fingers, at full extension there was two centimeters of claw past the tip of my fingers, and the pad of the fingers to the first joint was split by the claw as well.

Next I extended the claw at the end of my tail. It was much longer, and thicker, extending ten centimeters, and was more of a spike than the curves of the claws on my fingers were.

"What have you done to me?" Shade asked.

"You said the guards would take any weapons," I said. "They won't take these."

I slashed down across the wooden railing I was standing at with one hand and then the other, leaving large gouges in the wood, and then stabbed through the wood with the spike on my tail. I nodded in satisfaction and retracted all of the claws.

"I can remove them from the body before I return it," I said. "I don't mind either way."

"That won't be necessary," Shade said. "The feedback from my, your, the, senses indicates that it's painful to do, but it will be nice to have a backup."

"Where can I find the First?" I asked.

"He lives and works out of a warehouse on the other side of the Heart," Shade said. "I have guards that will escort you through the city, one of them is outside the door."

She created a map that floated in the air of the simulation, showing the way down the street to the right. I waited for a gap in the flow of pedestrians on the street below me and vaulted the railing, dropping the five meters and coming up in a roll. Several Forest Keepers were staring at me as I made my way down the street.

"Subtle," Shade said.

Shade's directions took me on a nearly direct route through the city, only avoiding the Heart of the Forest tree in the center, and I was to the back door of the warehouse within five minutes with no troubles. The door itself, however, was magically locked.

"You can unlock it," Shade said. "You just have to do this."

She sent me a data packet, which I sandboxed and then opened. It was a direct walk-through of how to open the lock, like a matching combination in magical symbols.

I followed along and was surprised when it actually worked. There was a muscle memory involved that made it almost automatic, I just had to think the right symbols in mana to make, and the door swung open.

There were two Forest Keepers standing at the end of the hall on either side of a door, and they both began grinning when they saw me enter.

"The First is here," Shade said. "Those are his main enforcers. You're in it now, they won't let you back out."

I walked down the hall and came to a stop two meters in front of them.

"I'm here to see the First," I said.

"You know how it goes," the first guard said. "Place your hands on the wall and spread your legs. You're overdressed for a visit."

Shade wasn't saying anything, so I followed his instructions expecting him to frisk me for weapons. He slowly drew his dagger and stepped close behind me, pressing my tail against me and slipping the edge of the dagger under the hem of my dress.

There was a tearing sound as he slid it upwards. When he got to the top he grabbed a bunch of the fabric at my back and tore the rest of the dress off leaving me naked. He grabbed my tail and pulled on it roughly, moving it out of the way.

"You mean to rape me, then," I said. "I really would advise against it. Go tell your boss that I want a word with him."

"It's been a while since you tried to resist," the first guard said. "By your oath you are bound, Greenleaf. You will take what we give you, and then the First can have you."

He ran his hand up between my legs. Before he could reach what he was aiming for I extended the claw in my tail and stabbed it up through the under side of his jaw and into his brain. He fell to the floor with a twitch and I turned to the second guard as he drew his dagger. I extended the claws on both of my hands and with my left hand sliced through the wrist of the hand holding the dagger, my right went through his throat.

I turned around fully and watched the second guard die, bleeding out on the floor of the hall, feeling entirely satisfied. I retracted all of my claws and knocked firmly on the door.