Somewhere past the hall of doors.

Frederick grinned as he watched the boy in his scrying pool thoughtlessly choose to enhance his sprite, his innate desire to be a decent person still overwhelming his common sense in a way that Frederick completely approved of. Flame may have chosen to gift the sprite to the boy, but the sprite was still Bran’s property and charge, and one must always choose to protect and encourage one’s property ahead of personal strength. It showed a certain flaw in his character that would likely grow to be his greatest strength one day, just like it was Frederick’s.

It had taken barely any encouragement. Sprites were so easy to manipulate. She was already half in love with the boy, as was proper for her kind. All it took was a thread of encouragement and the young man’s own desires to connect with a girl, and she was flicking her hair and batting her lashes at him like an old whore and not even realizing it. Poor Bran thought his emotions buried so deeply, behind such a wall of unassailable will, that it took little more than a hint for him to throw gifts of his own power at her.

It helped that sprites tended to choose a form that matched their master’s desires. He had to hand it to Kozmina. That girl had manipulated Bran’s thought processes into just the right avenues before his sprite had shown up to ensure that he would be in the perfect state of mind to bond with her. That comment about states to awaken a desire for a guide had been utter genius, although she had been risking the boy’s life.

Most of the pre-band guard that had bonded with sprites had been centuries old before they could obtain one, and at that point their instincts to impress the girl were long dead, using them exactly like the familiars they were designed to be instead of letting them gain a real soul.

Kozmina had also handled Flame amazingly well, finding the loophole in Bran’s not-prayer and exploiting it ruthlessly. She may have just been a demigoddess, but demis had both less power and fewer restrictions than gods did, and she used every single inch of that freedom. Frederick was grateful they had common interests, she would have made a truly aggravating enemy. Her husband Radavel was certainly a natural ally, but her sister-wife, Kira, was a goddess that was occasionally directly opposed.

Mnemosyne was playing her part perfectly, her naivety and desire to please a perfect mirror to Alister’s ham-handed attempts to garner human soulbonds by throwing fake sprites at them and calling it their ‘harem’. Bran had chosen to display his affection of his own free will, and that garnered ten times the potential power from the soulbond, even if it took far longer to mature. Natural soulbonds took time and fortune. Simply throwing lots of people at someone that matched their proclivities and hoping that they bonded with one of them was a fool’s gambit.

Good. If he had chosen what his common sense would dictate, one of the aspect paths or what the boy had hilariously named ‘beefy’ before his foundation was set, it would have stunted his foundation permanently and guided his path directly into becoming yet another of that bitch Alister’s puppets. Frederick needed a potential ally, one firmly under his influence to help strip power from Alister, not another worm paying lip service to their king and seeking nothing but their own strength under Alister’s banner.

Speak of the devil, the door at the back of his comfortable study slammed open, and Alister himself stomped in. “What the hell do you think you are doing?” he asked imperiously.

Frederick’s brow raised as he regarded his shortsighted peer. “Relaxing in my study, which has been invaded by a rude jackass demanding answers he has no right to, obviously.” He lifted a decanter from the table beside his comfortable chair, sliding his scrying bowl on its small stand to the side. And opened the door under the table without moving from his chair. “Would you care for a drink?”

“No, I don’t want a drink!” Alister shouted. The idiot was over nine thousand years old and he still acted like some kind of warlord that hadn’t ever had to shave. “You know what I am talking about, the dungeon! Its secondary spawns tore apart my carefully planned quest heads, and now I am going to have to spend extra effort to get the war with goblin valley started! You broke the deal, and interfered with my war.”

Frederick laughed. “No, you are breaking the deal by invading my home. When your genocidal gnome threw away BOTH of his successes and wound up killing one, I collected her soul and put it to use. That is both my right and my responsibility. The kobold is MINE, and the second child was mine too. I told you not to let him use kobolds, they are my property, not yours, and the minute her soul merged with it that became mine too, and you know it.”

“Let me guess, the location where you spawned it was random? It just happened to drop on top of my raiding party’s hide in the newbie zone? And it just happened to appear right in the path of my next champion before he’s even bonded to his sprite?”

Frederick shook his head, pouring himself a nice drop of the brandy into a tumbler and taking a sip before replacing the crystal top of the decanter and speaking again. The delay seemed to infuriate Alister, and that was the point.

“No, I placed it right in the path of my kobold and used a minor miracle to do it. In fact, I could even say that you owe me for putting it in the way of your future champion to help him grow stronger. But I am magnanimous, and won’t claim you owe me a favor for the assistance.”

Alister shook his head, “He is not even close to ready for a dungeon with a core! I need him to connect emotionally with Shiana BEFORE his first death, or he might ragequit. If he does, his guardians get protective, we lose access to SRE and the gravy train ends.”

Alister sneered evilly, “If that happens, we lose our best source of channelers. Without that, when we punch the core, we take your precious world with us. Do I have to remind you of our deal?”

Like you aren’t going to eat our world if you punch the core anyway, deal or no deal. Frederick thought. Who came up with that stupid term anyway? Punch the core. You aren’t even going towards the core, you are moving farther and farther away from it. Oh right, Alister did, the inbred twit. If it’s up to me, you not only will never wreck another world, but I will see your kind removed from the universe and sent to the outer darkness where you belong.

Frederick shrugged, “The first kobold is with him, plus the changechild illusionist your band bonded and one of Brogan’s children it still might bond to him. Three girls and a creature that laughs at the most dangerous challenge a Dungeon has access to, its traps. Even if he dies, I am betting his dick will lead him back into the game and your claws, and with that group, it will barely even be a challenge.”

Alister shook his head, “Bullshit. The core has a grudge now. You should have let her soul die. You know damned well that sentient dungeons are killer dungeons, especially if they have a grudge. Besides, isn’t it against your rules to trap souls in cores? Maybe I should spawn the same sort of quest you do every time someone starts making channeler soul gems, but with you as the target. How would you like having tens of thousands of immortal mercenaries banging down your precious door all night and day?”

Frederick smiled slightly, “You don’t have the slightest clue the rules we labor under, MORTAL. If you ever do manage to become a god, I will look forward to ripping your soul apart and eating it while leaving you a thread of consciousness so you can understand what is happening, and why. The rules against directly harming mortals are the ONLY reason your parasites weren’t destroyed thousands of years ago. You found a loophole, and if your quest ever succeeds, I will pity you for the eternal anguish you will suffer. The power that is, does not take abuses lightly.” Frederick scowled at the idiot.

Alister ranted, “The power? That old bastard abandoned this universe more millennia ago than there are flecks of sand on a beach. When we punch the core the final time, we will BE the power that is! We are already mortal gods, more powerful than you and your ilk. We can smash your realms at any time. The only reason you and your play gods still live is that we don’t want to waste the energy smashing you would cost, and Katra foolishly cut a deal instead of just eating you as she should have.”

Frederick shrugged, “It still binds our power the same way it does yours. It is as present today as when the world first formed. You cut a deal in its name. Go ahead and break it. Smash our realms, destroy the soul havens to power your little apocalypse. See what happens.”

Alister raised a clawed finger and made a swirling motion in the air. “Be careful what you wish for, old beast. When we punch the core, if you stand in our way, we may just do that. We are already better than you, name one thing you still possess that we would even want.”

“Immortality.” Frederick snickered, and then started laughing, his laughter following Alister as he stamped out of the study, slamming the door like a child as he left.

Frederick tugged the scrying bowl back over in front of his chair, his rich golden crest rising and his tail flicking in anticipation as he used a claw to reset the spell. The brandy still warmed his long throat, much tastier than the fire that was its usual guest, and he started again watching the adventures of Bran and his little team.

After all, there wasn’t much else to do.