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Our current task was a two-parter consisting of to getting ahold of Veris's list of redheads left to be kidnapped (and if lucky, the whole list), as well as jail-breaking the redheads she currently had drugged up in her palace.

It was decided without much discussion that we should use eight “Snap Gates”, mechanical constructs of Grey's, that would be activated by Boyce using Spatial Gate powers that could be carried by each of us during our incursion into the palace. We would each take one (so four), and the other four would remain in a fortified cave of our choosing somewhere as the exit points.

Also, since we would be funneling almost completely drugged up people through the gates, it was decided that we'd need someone to manage things on the exit side to ensure there were no traffic-jams or anything of that nature. The boys decided quickly that Sigurvan would be a good person to manage this task.

So, we headed up to Celestia and Vana's keep to talk to him. Actually, the boys set about helping Grey to construct the gates and I got tasked (by Boyce's extremely implicative insistence) to go recruit Sigurvan by myself.

Sigurvan was, of course, hanging out with his mother (was there anything else to do up here in Vana's keep?). I was struck by how much better Parnth looked as I entered the room. She seemed to be well on her way to making a full recovery. Thank goodness, and quickly too, as we were running out of time.

They greeted me pleasantly, and I got right to the point. Sigurvan agreed immediately without me even having a chance to explain what it was we needed him to do. I tried to explain that it had the potential of being extremely dangerous given that any of the big five could show up with swords waving (Grave, Nemesis, Serendipity, Anzja, or Veris). He still said sure as if it were no big deal. I eyed his mother skeptically. Was he some kind of idiot? She smiled and shrugged at me, but did tell him to be very careful. He nodded to her and we headed back to the boys who were just finishing up with the construction of the snap-gates.

I explained to Sigurvan as we joined them what we were going to do with the gates and what his role would be. I mentioned that we needed him to manage the outgoing traffic, as the girls coming through the snap-gates would probably be drugged and incapable of doing much of anything on their own. At that statement, I heard an “allll-right!” from Boyce's direction. I rolled my eyes and made a bemused “pfft” at that statement, and so Boyce added that Sigurvan should help himself to them, since I wasn't being cooperative.

Sigurvan looked at Boyce who gave him a thumbs-up, then me in turn, with a cocked eyebrow. I shrugged at him with a slight smile on my face, as if to say “ehhh, it's just Boyce being Boyce”, and then went on to finish my explanation without any further interruptions.

After that, we gathered up our stuff and headed back down to Farne, to the cave which we'd use as an exit, located in Masayume.

Boyce began his ritual which would take an hour or so to activate and link up all the snap-gates. I sat down against the side of the cave and watched Grey as he paced back and forth, mumbling to himself about how we should get into the castle grounds in Tusbel. Every now and then I would interject a comment during Grey's ramblings, rejecting a lot of overly-complex ideas or pointing out obvious things that he had missed in his calculations by focusing too much on the details of the plan.

While this was going on, Sigurvan stood next to me chatting with me about box socials. I have no idea how we got on the topic, but I guess it was a common type of party to have pretty much anywhere. He seemed… pleasant, but a little bit sterile in conversation. A little boring, but given the circumstances… not too surprising I suppose. Anyway, I think maybe I could learn a lot from him about how a noble is supposed to behave and what a noble is supposed to do, since I was more-or-less clueless.

It certainly made me realize that I was no prim-and-proper lady at all, like the way Sigurvan talked of the young girls at the box socials he attended; I was nothing more than a peasant wearing the mask of a noble. But, then again, maybe I was lucky. I was nobility now but I had absolutely none of the responsibilities of most nobility. I wasn't set to inherit a family business, land, or fortune really. No one was counting on me, no parents hovering above me restricting my every action and desire. I had all of the benefits of the title but none of the responsibilities of such a life. Hmm… I had never thought about it that way before. Perhaps I was pretty lucky after all?

Sigurvan saw me spacing out for a minute and asked me what was up? I replied that it was nothing, and smiled up at him. He smiled a little bit in turn and we continued our conversation.

In fact, I was so engrossed in conversation with Sigurvan that apparently I had accidentally tacitly agreed to the most ridiculous incursion plan in the history of warfare. It seemed our plans were finalized and it was time to leave. I stood and said bye to Sigurvan, heading over to where the boys were gathered around an open Gate to Tusbel. He waved back and said he'd see us again in a few hours. With that, we all stepped through and the Gate closed behind us.

We spent about an hour on the rooftop of a building near to the outer walls of the palace while Grey constructed a catapult device. We tried to remain as quiet as possible during the construction, and luckily for us no one noticed.

When the device was completed, everyone climbed into my bag of holding but me. I placed the bag of holding onto the catapult and turned into a cockroach and hunkered down on the outside of the bag. Grey had made the catapult invisible so it was a little bit disorienting to watch the goings-on, but anyway, Swift Wind pecked at the tension rope and eventually broke it, catapulting the bag of three people with the cockroach riding it over the wall of the keep. Swift Wind flew with us till we made it past the wall (to make sure we would) then turned back.

Unfortunately, we landed in a place where this cook guy was able to notice. I quickly turned into a big scary spider under the bag and then crawled out from under it in a dramatic way and then made a bee-line for the cook. He froze in place as I climbed onto his foot and then shrieked like a little girl and immediately set off running in the opposite direction.

Before he had gotten too far I hopped off his foot and let the boys out of the bag and told them what happened. Grey told Boyce to go kill the poor guy but surprisingly, Boyce was like “why bother?” and declined. In the end, the cook was able to escape. I picked up the bag of holding and forced Trent to give up one of his mundane bags, which we left there instead for them to find. We ducked out of the way and headed toward the castle itself, and up the stairs to the special library floor just as the cook returned with two guards in tow, screaming frantically about a non-present scary spider and an empty bag.

Unfortunately, despite my “magic papers”, the librarian told us the library was closed in a very meaningful way. Grey turned invisible to go see what the guy had been nodding meaningfully toward that door about while the rest of us headed out to wait in an alcove in the hallway.

Grey said over the link that Melfir was in the room reading. Oddly enough, apparently he was reading… children's books and giggling. Oh, that didn't bode well but wasn't too unexpected. I kinda felt sorry for the poor guy.

Anyway, Grey had Boyce slip him some roofie shots and he used them to knock out both Melfir and the librarian, and the rest of us headed back in, locking the door behind us.

Since the librarian was down for the count, we'd have to find this information on our own (last time the librarian told us what room it was in). Grey used some Matter powers to speed up the search. While this was going on, I analyzed Melfir's mental state. He seemed to be under some kind of spell that regressed him to childhood. I poked at the potency a little, and it was extremely high so even if I had wanted to do something about it (which i kinda did… a little), I really couldn't do it right now. It would take a ritual to break that potency of magic.

Furthermore, there was some sort of giggling sound in the room with Melfir. Boyce and Trent tried to figure out what was causing it, but alas, could not figure it out. To try and get an idea of what it might be for, Boyce made like he was gonna cut Melfir's throat and a large feeling of doom descended over the room. Great. :P

So anyway, we left Melfir alone and headed back out into the hallway. Grey then nagged Boyce into helping him search and almost immediately Boyce found the right area of the library and the info was successfully retrieved within minutes. From there we made our way back out into the hallway. From the central area of the tower, I did an extremely large-radius magical detection on red-headed humans and got the impression there were about 30 in the palace grounds. 20 of them were together in a big central area in the keep and the others were at various spots outside of the central area, like the main library and the kitchen.

We decided to split up from there. Boyce and I headed to the central area, while Grey and Trent headed out to catch the stragglers.

The main hall was guarded by two gargoyles. Without Trent here, Boyce and I decided to take a more Grey-like approach. We went around the side and I used Matter to open a wall for us to slip through and into a broom closet in the guarded area. I got the layout of the area and explained there were five “human” guards and 20 girls in 10 rooms up each side of the hallway (so, rooms 1a and 1b, 2a and 2b…. 5a and 5b).

Boyce slipped out to take a look around. I turned my hair red and wandered into the hallway saying sleepily that I was hungry in sort of a tired, whiny, childish voice. The guards didn't even look up, saying that dinner was an hour ago and telling me to go back to my room. I headed into room 1a and dumped the two sleeping girls through. They did not awaken in the slightest despite my man-handling of them. While I was doing this, Boyce headed to room 1b and sent those two girls through.

I wandered back out into the hallway mumbling something about the wrong room, and this time the guards looked up, noted they didn't recognize me, yelled out. I hurried into room 2a which I was already next to anyway. I dumped the two girls through and manifested my weapon. Just as they opened the door, Boyce stabbed the one in the rear in the doorway, while I took out the first guard coming into the room.

Unfortunately, we heard the two unmistakable sounds of teleports. Two of the devils had to be here. Boyce teleported to the end of the hallway saying that the big guy and the hot chick devils were here. I ran across the hallway to room 2b and dumped one of the girls through my snap-gate before Grave came thundering in.

I set a defensive stance as he pounded on me with his gigantic sword. When I had a chance, I yanked the other girl through the snapgate recklessly and took another blow from him, this time a huge one, putting quite a gash in my abdomen+side. Well that hurt like a motherfuck! I jumped through the gate after the second girl, hoping to be able to destroy the gate, or at least split them up, but Grave dove through without hesitation.

I could hear over the telepathic link that Boyce was having about as much trouble on his end. As expected, Serendipity was using mind tricks on Boyce which he has historically been susceptible to, especially when wielded by a hot chick. I heard him mention he got room 5b emptied out through the gate before he used Vana's bracelet to plane shift back to Celestia to get Serendipity off of his tail.

I came bumbling through the snap gate all bloodied and looking like hell. Sigurvan's eyes were as wide as saucers, but he was fortunately already manifesting his weapon as I told him, “prepare for battle, very LARGE demon coming through with huge sword.”

With that I chugged my healing potion and activated my Accelerated Healing power, took a deep breath, and held my weapon's point straight at my exit-gate as Grave came flying through.

Luck was on my side here, and I got a pretty good hit on him as he emerged. The three of us exchanged blows, Sigurvan and I both getting hits in on Grave, and Grave attacking mostly me (which I wanted him to do, since I could now heal it blow-for-blow as he dished it out, reflexively).

Several seconds later, Grey and Trent came shooting up through their gates just after launching the last two girls near them through (they had rescued five) and joined the melee. Grey told me through the mind-link to use my power to drop Grave's Dex, which I did… desperation driving the potency of the magic to be exceedingly high. With a significantly lessened defense, Sigurvan and I were able to get better hits in on him, and then Grey simply snatched his weapon from him. Without his weapon, Grave reached forward and did a harm-touch on Grey, leaving him wounded and staggering, but still holding onto Grave's sword.

Around about that time, Boyce and Serendipity appeared. She started charming everyone in range as I finished off Grave, sending him back to hell for a year and a day.

I turned to Serendipity, to see all four of the boys near her but unable to act. I heard Boyce say “I got this one” over the telepathic link. Boyce stepped forward, toward her, and made some lewd remarks, saying they should go off somewhere and get down to “business”. I prepared as potent a mental shield as I could manage, and was about to step forward to attempt to skewer her when she suddenly grabbed Boyce's hands and the two of them disappeared.

Oh shit!

(list acquired, and 15/30 girls rescued from Veris palace)