That evening they hosted dinner guests for the first time. The guest was a beautiful, dark skinned, doll-like man. His face and tone of speech lacking any discernible expressiveness, but his manner seeming warm and affable all the same.

He was apparently a friend of Desmond’s and according to Desmond he was also the head Administrator of this world. Holding even more authority than the gods of the various pantheons and responsible for the operation of the leveling system around which Agarthan society revolved.

An outrageous claim but one amongst many others that her husband had made and then substantiated with proof and introductions to a fair amount of other mostly pleasant people with scary sounding positions. .

Henri wasn’t sure exactly how much of that was the truth, but either way the general lack of tension to the man, certainly made her feel less intimidated than she’d have been otherwise.

The man was accompanied by a beautiful dark haired woman, who said fairly little, and had eyes that shined with the light of a million devoured stars set against a night of perfect black.

She and Jack seemed to get along swimmingly which left Henri feeling, a little like the odd girl out.

At least that was case, till the woman started bringing up her kids and her grandkids and her great-grandkids, which was a surprise since the dark haired, shining-eyed woman didn’t look a day over thirty. She started asking if Henri and Desmond were planning to have any kids, any time soon.

Which seemed a frightfully forward, frightfully awkward, turn for the conversation to make. Henri tried to change the subject which lead to the woman talking about her hobbies which sounded a lot like she worked on sci-fi genre resource management games, but turned out to about her management of an actual nursery of young planets.

Which actually “did” end up leaving Henri feeling just a tad intimidated, if only just the little bit. Making her reassess her position on whether the blank-faced man really was the Administrator of Agartha and the creator of the level up system after all.

Or whether the two were just your ordinary run-of-mill god and goddess pair, out on the town, which in afterthought wasn’t any less terrifying a prospect for Henri. Or at least shouldn’t have been so...

*****

In any case, the evening passed pleasantly. Now here Henri sat, alone with her thoughts, sitting on the front porch of her new home. Dressed in a light green sundress that went well with her dark sea-weed green hair, and a pair of tan, silver buckled sandals.

After all her thinking, and rumination, the only thing that young Henrietta Eloise October could make up her mind on, was that life truly did move faster than one would think.

Just a short three months ago, she was just a teacher, an exile from her family, an exile from the Moon-fire sect and only technically married to her husband.

Now she was thinking of starting a new family, now she was getting calls from other sects who were interested in being friends, now she was married to what, if she understand him right, and if he was telling truth, might well have been one of the most powerful beings in this section of the planet.

A being capable of dominating one twentieth of the world within a single years time.

And honestly, Henri wasn’t sure what to make of it all or what to do about it. The shift in realities was too dramatic.

She hadn’t been poor before but she now suddenly had access to the kind of wealth that let one buy as many minor hereditary, noble titles and townships as one pleased.

Her new house was a mansion, a palace bigger and more ornate than those belonging to many of the continents’s rulers. A mansion that was currently sitting on a private isle. A private isle was currently floating, drifting amongst the clouds.

The shift was so extreme she’d spent the first day or so pinch herself, because the distance between this and the projected future reality she’d had set up in her head, for her future-self, was wide enough that her life was starting to come across as some kind of nonsensical delusion.

“Ah….It’s raining down there isn’t it? Or maybe it’s going to rain?” said Henri. Realizing that the clouds below her island had begun to darken.

She leaned forwards, standing up so she could see over of the edge of the porch watch the ground drifting below.

She watched a cadre of pumpkin masked fighters firing into a castle of spiral shells. The castle trembled and then collapsed, as blazing, black and pink, horned figured emerged from its highest point.

His shoulders drenched in blood, his eyes crackling with pink flames.

The door behind Henri opened and Jack came out, sans her former maid's uniform. She’d stopped wearing it of late, sticking to casual wear after Henri and Desmond officially became an official thing.

The iteration of Jack climbed onto the porch railing and leapt off, transforming into something akin to a mammoth, sub orbital satellite, its form a mixture of the mechanical and the feminine and the draconic.

The ground shook and rumbled as the mechanical creature landed, the monstrous satellite strode towards where the former castle lay and then planted itself down. And just like that, a new fiendlord was born.

According Jack, this Mechanical Monster would be the fifty-somethingth such existence that Desmond had scattered across the Wonderland Wastes. Its influence and the influence of the drones it would create would spread for several thousand miles dominating the area.

The people of the civilized world wouldn’t notice the difference but the beasts and fiends of the wastes would, either accepting the new management or being erased by the new regime.

And all wasn’t even something they’d set out to do, this little subjugation of the last of Fiendlord Aspersum’s territories was just something that Desmond had decided to do while they were on their way back from taking in the sights at the shore for a few weeks.

The masked levelers scattered going separate ways, the horned king became a pink haired man with light brown skin. He vanished as the house and its floating foundation drifted over him, and Desmond appeared seconds later.

Standing beside Henri on the porch.

With the show below seemingly over, Henri sat back down in the chair she’d been sitting on.

“So I guess you’re done with that whole er...thing you were doing?” said Henri.

Desmond nodded.

“Pretty much.”

Henri didn’t ask what that “thing” was, after understanding the full breadth of her husband’s secretive operations, Henri decided that maybe didn’t need to know every single detail of what he was up to.

Or rather, he was up to, too many things for her to spend her time just focusing on his business. Enough for an entire college course to be based on. Political coups, takeovers of sects and mega corporations, kidnappings, assassinations and installations of different bodied Jack’s into positions of opportunity.

It was all too spy movie-ish for her tastes, far too cloak and dagger for this t-shirt and sweatpants girl.

She was fine just knowing the broad strokes and trusting that the man would inform her of anything important that went beyond that.

Henri might have held more reservations over the whole issue if the man hadn’t assured her that all this was just a means to an end.

Less about him trying to climb his way up the steps of power, and more about him making sure that he was in control of his environment.

*****

It took a few hours but eventually the floating isle brought their home back towards the civilized territories that the couple called home.

Three months ago they’d left Cadeyrn to avoid Desmond’s falling into the public eye but it wasn’t particularly desperate flight.

They left the continent for a bit, taking in the sights while Desmond and Jack did business with a few overseas partners.

It was nice, Henri had always wanted to see the Pagodas of Xin and the Art Houses of Kamala, not to mention the sunny shores of Astor’s beaches and beach side resorts. Now she had about twenty photo reels on her cell phone to commemorate having seen them.

All in all, their three months abroad was something more like a them finally getting a proper honeymoon than anything else. Pleasant, but oddly sexless, which Henri wasn’t sure whether or not to be concerned over.

She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to just jump into bed with the man, but they “were” married now and he “was” a luxuriae a demon of lust.

So she wasn’t entirely certain what was going on there, or whether there actually was anything going on. It was entirely possible that she was just overthinking it.

*****

Eventually the floating isle reached its’ destination, anchoring into place above a tower whose ownership belonged to both the Samhain foundation and one Lord October.

The tower had been built recently, built while the small family of three was abroad.

Built in the town of Baldo which lay just a few miles east of Cadeyrn, literally just one town over, close enough that it was almost as if they might well have just stayed in Cadeyrn.

Close enough that Henri could still keep her job at the Aybek school.