Ashok was a country that closely bordered Venris’s wonderland wastes. Baldo was a township that sat on the most distant edge of Ashok.

High poverty, high unemployment, high crime, with brigands and bandits taking residence while calling themselves hunting groups and security companies.

A small podunk town, with all the businesses having either moved out or gone under. A town with no grounding, with everything up in the air, under influence of rampant magic.

Or at least that was case before the Samhain Foundation moved in and the Octobers took residence.

In the three month period, that came right before a certain floating isle first began anchoring over Baldo, all the gangs were run out.

A few months after the isle came, a grounding tower was built, and the walls outside the outer edge of Baldo was torn down and rebuilt.

Several businesses that had gone down or were in the process of closing shop were either bought up or replaced, and within a half years time, Baldo was alive again.

Revitalized and strengthened, its population rising and expanding to that of a small city’s.

*****

Desmond looked down at what he had done, from the top most floor of his tower. Watching the lights and the people of the city below. His lights, his people.

He held a glass in his hand, recently emptied. Just as he was considering pouring himself another drink, a small waterfall of amber liquor came flowing down into the cup in his hand.

“...Mhm...Thanks.” said Desmond.

“Not all, sir.” said Jack.

She stood at his back, in one of her older iterations, looking somewhere between twenty and thirty. Dressed sharply in navy-blue business formal.

While Desmond and Henri were having dinner with the old-young man and his dark haired wife, Jack, or at least one of her iterations had been occupied in negotiations with one of the man’s doppelgangers.

It would seem that Jack wasn’t the only one who had more than one copy of herself running around. However knowing what Desmond knew of the man, it wasn’t that surprising, just yet another trick up the blank-faced man’s sleeve.

“So how did things go between you and the illustrious Mr.Asphodel?” said Desmond. Punctuating his words by taking a sip of brandy.

“Well...he’s...a strange fellow, sir. Strange and objectively disturbing on a conceptual level...But on the good side of things...He seems to think very well of you, sir.”

Desmond chuckled, tugging on the tie he was wearing, pulling it loose. For once it seemed that he and Jack were on the same page.

“I know right...I think it’s because him and future-me were once rivals or something…”

“Future-you, sir?” said Jack. Her brow both gathered and raised.

Desmond shook his head.

“No...don’t worry about it. Not like it matters now.”

She shrugged.

“If you say so…In any case he’s given you his blessing, so long as you don’t break the world again….Sir, have you...um, broken the world before?” said Jack, cutting her words half-way through.

“Don’t..Worry about it…” said Desmond. Stressing the first word.

“...That was more that giant’s fault than mine, anyway…”

Jack frowned then shook her head, swallowing whatever following comment she might have wanted to make.

“....In any case, Master William said so long as your actions don’t interfere with the workings of the system and overall flow of the world...you may do as you please.”

Desmond nodded, finishing off the last of his drink and grinning.

“Nice...Let’s get Operation Escargot wnderway…”

Jack nodded and bowed before disappearing in a neat aperture that her power had cut into the fabric of time and space.

“Right away, sir.”

*****

Jacqueline stepped backwards through the portal, instantaneously moving from Baldo to Cadeyrn.

While they had indeed moved part of their operation out of Cadeyrn they’d still kept their headquarters there active.

Correctly, believing that the world’s tolerance for a man of mystery wouldn’t extend to the, little heard of, organization behind him. Which turned out to be the right call when they had to firmly step on the necks of a few troublesome voices that had wanted to spin Fiendlord Aspersum’s attempted invasion, as being partially, if not wholly, the fault of the Samhain Foundation.

The portal lead to Jack’s office, which was currently occupied by two other iterations of her, one a child, around six years old. Another much older, her face wrinkled into a venerable, grandmotherly rendition of what Jack would look like, if she hadn’t levelled past the point of being affected by age.

Old and young, they were the Cadeyrn offices head of human resources and head of internal affairs, respectively.

They barely registered Jack entrance, the little girl sucking on a lolly while she went through some reports.

The old woman typing at a console with a furrowed and her chained spectacles perched on the very tip of her nose.

Jack plopped herself down at her own work space, a small area that was occupied by a circle of phones, consoles and laptops. An impromptu cubicle with stacks of old, boxed up, paperwork for walls.

Since she’d started her relationship with Desmond, three to four years ago, her life had been slightly hectic, filled with endless toil.

However it was gratifying toil, exhilarating.

She met her master just a few months after his return to consciousness. While he was still pretending to be a mere boy. And in that same year he was able to use raw force to take over, not only this continent, Venris, but many of its neighbors.

After force came guile, he used tricks and schemes to alter the structure of power of all those lands. Investing in friendly politicians, and up-and-coming levellers.

Putting alternate iterations of Jacks in as many vital positions as he could without risking its becoming conspicious.

As of now there were ten Jacks holding high-sovereignty over a major nation, and more than thirty sitting as the heads of sects or as the CEOs of powerful corporations.

There were countless more Jacks in smaller positions, all of them quietly in cahoots with each other.

The end result of all his work would his dominion of that was spread over a full one- twentieth of the entire planet. An immense amount of territory when one remembers that the world was constantly expanding.

The work setting up the foundation in the years that followed was more a way of legitimizing his authority.

According to him he’d done everything so quickly and quietly that he was like a landlord, who’d killed the old landlord, taking all the riches, and deeds of ownership.

The hardest work would be making the tenants accept him and his power over them without too much trouble or fuss.

“Desi...Desi...Desi...You sure do make a girl work for it don’t you?” she sighed.

Preparing to make the calls to certain people, in certain groups that were all already in position near the temples and centers of power for a certain Snail-God.

Jack had once asked her employer, what he intended to do with all this power he was gathering, he’d simply stared at her, blankly.

Eventually coming back to her with a few incoherent mumbled replies that all more or less just reiterated that this was the sort of thing “normal” Immortal-Kings were supposed to do.

It was at this point that she realized that the man she was in love with, was more than a little off in the head. Starting massive global conspiracies and campaigns for world domination for no other reason than, that he didn’t see a reason to do otherwise.