Chapter 52
I joined Solara in Sanctuary’s new library.
We converted storage space originally meant for my secret silk soldier army.
The hidden level beneath Sanctuary ran the length and the width of the whole kingdom.
Proper supports occupied a fourth of the square footage, at most, and we had yet to fill it completely.
I moved a batch of soldiers to an unused space so that I could put this trove of knowledge directly beneath the castle.
This was another area only accessible by teleporter that functioned only for select people. The public would never see this, and they wouldn’t ever hear we had these texts unless a celestial came to the material plane to gossip about it for some reason.
The whole of the Safina collection was down here, shelved and organized according to Solara’s standards. Book by book, a team of scribes duplicated the library so that the originals could be returned as I promised.
We shared a table, both of us searching texts for mentions of the tower designer.
He appeared in a few art history books, but none of them credited him with building the towers, which made me curious.
I knew they killed him in order to keep the tower locations a secret, but it didn’t seem like the public knew he was ever involved at all.
That was especially troubling because Queen Lace had found sources who had.
Then it occurred to me, she did the exact thing Solara and I were doing now.
She found every book she could and searched them for clues, many of the same books we were reading now.
In that case, she may have withheld something, but I didn’t think so.
I might already possess the best leads this research could yield. If Queen Lace had already searched all of this material, was it reasonable to expect I could find something she did not?
Repeating that effort was a waste of time, an exceptionally precious resource that seemed to endlessly slip between my fingers no matter how hard I tried to manage it.
“What are some of the topics connected to the tower designer that might be worth looking into?” I asked, trying to think of what subjects Queen Lace might have overlooked.
Solara thought. “His contemporaries, history from the time period when he was alive, the rulers and other elite who might have influenced what he could do, umm…”
“Influences are an interesting topic,” I suggested. “Perhaps we could learn more about who he was by looking at the people he admired.”
“‘Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.’ That’s how it goes, right?”
“I think so.”
“That sounds smart to me.” Solara pushed her current book to the side to make more room for her notes.
She flipped from page to page for a few minutes.
“I knew I had seen something about that,” she said, passing me a page. “These were famous seraphim artists the designer admired. The mentions were brief, so I don’t have a lot yet.”
The page listed four names and their specialties: 2 sculptors, 1 architect, and 1 enchanter. I went searching for mentions of them.
The seraphim art world reached a level of pretentiousness I didn’t think was possible.
In one book I picked up, the author had a list of requirements a reader had to meet before they had permission to read the actual book.
This didn’t happen in person. There were no enchantments involved.
It was simply another page, and the author wrote as though the unworthy would know they weren’t welcome and put down the book themselves.
I didn’t know what I was even looking for at this point. All I gleaned were some interesting facts, nothing that revealed how to access the tower core.
One of the sculptors was famous for using petrification magic in novel ways, such as petrifying a grigori, reshaping their statue form, and then releasing the petrification.
Most of them died almost immediately from the modifications, but the few who lived became “living” art.
One example was a grigori who was made faceless from having her statue’s face sanded off.
She suffocated, of course, but critics hailed it as “the most emotionally thrilling piece of silent theater ever conceived.”
The other sculptor was less creepy. His statues were known for their moving pieces, like stacks of cubes that endlessly rearranged themselves or a waterfall whose water defied gravity to loop back up and fall again.
The water was carved out of marble, by the way, but it still quite literally flowed.
The movement was slow and, supposedly, still felt like hardened marble when you touched it.
The architect earned his fame from designing parks and gardens.
He bred a species of hedge that could reshape itself repeatedly.
That was how his mazes could change periodically, which included the hedge sculptures inside.
One version might feature a variety of animals while the next was dragons and warriors.
According to what I read, no version of the hedge maze ever repeated itself, which I found hard to believe but made for a nice story.
The enchanter was the most interesting. He developed a technique that responded to a viewer’s perception of a puzzle. The simplest ones were solved by understanding what a piece of art depicted. The more complicated uses of perception changed how a puzzle operated.
You have likely seen the illustration that looks like an old woman or a young woman, depending on how your brain interprets the shapes of the art at any given time. With practice, you can make your mind alternate, seeing either version at will.
In that vein, one of his puzzles required moving pieces across three different states of perception in order to complete. I wished I could see these items in person just to experience how they worked. Sketches and written descriptions weren’t enough to bring something like that to life.
“Have you come up with anything to try?” I asked Solara.
She shook her head.
“Maybe Queen Lace is lying,” I said. “We probably shouldn’t put too much more time into this effort if we don’t have anything new in the next couple of days.”
“Agreed.”
“I’ll come back to this in a bit,” I said, tidying my half of the table as I stood. “I have a celestial princess to greet.”
Princess Lace had arrived in Sanctuary, and yes, I agree that not appending “the second” or “junior” to the name Lace is confusing.
Anyway, her presence was meant to foster peace.
If her mother acted against me, then I could easily take out my anger on her daughter in retaliation.
So, in theory, she would keep her word to protect her daughter.
Yes, it also occurred to me that many parents don’t like their children.
Ashley’s own mother hired assassins to kill her, after all.
What I mean to say is that the system was imperfect. If Princess Lace was my only guarantee of peace, I might have been concerned, but I presently had an army inside of Queen Lace’s walls, preparing to invade the plane of the archangeli. If she turned on me, her whole capital was doomed.
I promised to treat Princess Lace like a guest, so I gave her an apartment in one of the castle towers. I arrived at her door about an hour after she got in. Two Byron bots guarded the passage, and they didn’t react when I strolled between them and knocked.
“Come in!” a woman yelled. “I’m in here!”
I had expected to follow her voice down the hallway to her living room, which had an excellent view of my masterwork of a city, but that was straight ahead. Her call had come from one of the rooms off the hallway.
When I stepped into the bedroom, I was greeted by an angeli with the same blueish marbling as Queen Lace.
I eventually learned that her eyes were opal as well, but I didn’t see her face when I entered.
Instead, she kneeled on the edge of her bed, her face down in a pillow, her ass in the air.
Her silk wings draped limply around her like she was a wounded bird.
She was a pointy kind of skinny, where her hips and shoulders seemed sharper for how thin she was.
We had a few of these body types in the Silk, and I always forgot how hard a pelvis could be.
I could recall several occasions when I smashed my groin into one of their asses, expecting butt cheek but mostly hitting bone instead.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved fucking this kind of girl.
I did, however, learn that not all women were meant to be fucked the same way.
Leaving preferences aside for a moment, bending a girl like Princess Lace over still felt incredible, but she wasn’t built for doggy style.
She was best for picking up and tossing around.
I could grab her by the hips and put her anywhere I desired.
If I wanted, I could hold her by the hips the way the schlubs who used Penny’s Blessing held their toy and use the Princess like she was nothing more than an object.
Her lips were dainty, like she was, and I had to give it to the tower designer. I had an example of a marble vagina right in front of me, and it was exactly as the sculpture on the 101st floor had depicted them.
I turned my back to her. “Put some clothes on.”
“Is this not what I am for?” she asked, still holding her ass high.
“I made it clear to your mother that you would be treated with respect.”
“I assumed she was lying,” Princess Lace said.
“Please cover up.”
I heard some shuffling. “Okay, you can turn around.”
I did. She sat on the edge of the bed with her legs spread. Her chest was completely flat, which is not an insult. Every kind of breast was worthy of appreciation, and hers suited her form perfectly. She was exquisite, actually.
“You were supposed to cover up.”
“Well? Let me serve my people by bedding the God of Silk.”
I shook my head. “Stop it.”
Since she wasn’t going to do it herself, I used Silkmancer to do it for her, wrapping her in her sheets. I triggered Sense Weakness to get a better idea of who I was dealing with.
Her weakness was doubt. You might even argue that her assumption that her mother lied to her was an expression of that weakness. She would be easy to break because she was already broken.
If I were trying to break her, but I wasn’t.
“You have one obligation this evening–a dinner–and then your life is yours. You are free to come and go as you please. All of Sanctuary is open to you except for Penny’s Bar and the gates out.
If there is something you desire but can’t find, tell me.
I’ll try to procure it for you. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a guest, so I only care about keeping you safe. ”
-3,000 good-aligned levels.
-3,000 good-aligned levels.
Two shadow Byrons appeared in the room.
“These are your bodyguards. They will be with you at all times and will follow any order that doesn’t conflict with mine.”
“Okay.” She waited.
“What?”
“Give them your orders.”
“No,” I replied. “They already have them. They’re exact duplicates of me, so they have the memory of how I want them to perform.”
“Oh. When are you taking me to dinner?”
I shook my head. “I’m not. My wives, Penny and Autumn, will be taking you into the city to help you learn your way around. They have a restaurant picked out, and from what I understand, angeli palettes are pretty close to a human palette, so I think you’ll like it.”
“Why aren’t you joining us?”
“Do you find my presence comforting?” I asked. “Do you feel more at ease with me nearby?”
“Well…”
“It’s okay. I know that the answer is ‘no’ for both. Making you endure that for a few hours isn’t the welcome I want you to have.”
“And you’re really busy killing angeli.”
“That too. Can I do anything else for you before I go?”
Princess Lace looked at the two shadow Byrons. “Can you watch me through them?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Can I order them to go away?”
“No, you can’t.”
“Will they always follow me?”
“For as long as you’re under my protection,” I answered.
“They’re creepy.”
“The alternatives are constructs with replicas of my penis and always covered in slime. I thought you’d like the minimalist shadow look better, but I can switch them for you if you like.”
“No, thank you.”
“Anything else?”
“No,” she said with a pout.
“Welcome to Sanctuary South. I hope you enjoy your stay.”
I felt her dagger eyes follow me out of the apartment, and that was fine. She didn’t need to like me to serve her purpose. If she wanted to make herself miserable for however long she was here, that was her problem. Not mine.