[Intermission] Gathering Shadows part 2

Arkmadyos the Wise's lodge: undisclosed location, regional Cabal headquarters.

Four individuals were waiting in a nicely furnished room, red velvet drapes, leather seats and sofas, bookshelves full of arcanic knowledge, a dozen statues of a tall, old man with a long beard were surrounding the room and a few portraits of the same person were hung on the walls.

Individuals was the right way to describe them, because not two were alike. One of them was standing, for no piece of furniture would have supported the weight of Horfax. The hulking mechanical construct was made of hundreds of pieces of steel and brass, he was standing silently, scanning the room of his big cyclopean red eye.

Laying on a sofa, his boots on a priceless coffee table, a slender man, wearing a long brown coat was checking his handgun, sliding vials of a glowing green liquid in the magazine. He was impossible to identify, his head fully covered by a steel mask looking like a bird's beak, with glowing green eyes. A worn down hat was resting on the sofa next to him. Califaux had better things to do than to attend such a meeting, they always started late, dragged along and presented little interest to his research. Little of what would transpire here was a mystery to him anyway.

The third individual was resting, pensive on a leather seat just on the left of Califaux. The young woman, ivory skinned, ebony haired, was smiling while reading a book. The ornate armor black, red and gold with a few checkered patterns would looked like straight out of a fairy tale, if she had been the evil witch queen. Priscilla the Black was always very careful of her appearance.

By far the oldest of the group, the last individual didn't look like it at all. Wearing what could only be described as some lingerie and a few leather straps on her body, the Elf girl was on one of the seats. She had a leg on one arm rest, bent at an angle that showcased her flexibility, and one of her hands was between her leg, proving that the stripes and panels of fabric falling down in front of her crotch were not actually covering it. She has a whip and a few daggers strapped on her person, her pointy elf ears were pierced on their top, covered in silver trinkets and the long glove of her free hand ended her finger with razor sharp, small blades. Kuralae was horny, she only wanted for this to end so that she could pick a few well hung slaves back to her quarters.

Suddenly a fifth individual entered the room. Only it only did so figuratively, the robes hung on a coat hanger near the fireplace were enchanted with a powerful spell allowing someone to use them to attend such meetings without actually being there. The newcomer was only a bit over three feet tall, the size of a child. But the shape that the robe assumed confirmed that it was no child, just as it made clear the feminine nature of its user. The fifth individual sported a pair of tits that would have looked big on a regular woman, and she was half as tall.

Suddenly, another one of the robes took life and walked to the center of the room. Everyone else turned their attention to it and bowed in respect. "Magus!" they all muttered as they waited.

"My regretted Philosophus, Arkmadyos the Wise picked each of you as Practicus. In this day of mourning as he outlived his utility, I come to you to settle some matters. First item would be to explain how this did happen." exposed the presence with a natural authority which was making the proud mages gathered here cower in fear. He manifested an illusion next to him, depicting a giant humanoid creature, distorted, with uneven limbs, a tortured face and dozens of eyes growing on his body. Priscilla looked at Califaux, who nodded in response. She got up from her seat to face her master's master.

"Magus! Our great Philosophus was on the brink of discovering a serum which would grant him immortality and a power beyond limits. You don't ignore that such work takes time and a lot of trials before it can be called a success. Recently, despite our warnings and the brilliant work we were providing him to refine his formula, he began convinced that the issue came from something else, Califaux?" she stopped, pushing her colleague to continue.

"Ah oui, le Master, he is very wise. Inferior slaves were making his perfect formula fail, he said. And he thought of something, when the serum works it would grant one of these slaves the immortality and limitless power. Mauvaise idée, très mauvaise. So he asks me for a new serum. I tell him we need to continue stabilizing the elements of it, but he's the Maître, so I do it exactly like his recipe says. La jolie Priscilla, she works the wards and runes, like on the paper he gave us! And then, malédiction! Maybe he was too old, or his formula wasn't good enough. But in a sense he is now really resilient and very strong," finished the alchemist.

"How foolish of him, to say that it took 55 years for him to get there... What a waste! Then I guess this means a vacant position as Philosophus of this lodge and a mutant ogre to use however you will judge fitting. But who would be worthy of such an honor? You! Small one, have you made any progress in your mission? Have you identified who is the new healer contracted by the Order?"

"Magus, I have not found yet, but I'm very close. I'm sure that it is only a matter of days before I give you the name!" replied the small animated robe.

"Failure, as usual. Have any of you made any progress on this new player in town? Arkmadyos' reports were somehow confused about him."

"Biological Entity, John Newman, Human, 18 years. High Intellect. Interests: video games, written and visual erotica. Appears to be a mage. No blood link to any known line. Atypical attitude: multiple contacts, Warden of the Golden Rose, Scarlet Witch, Northern Wind Executor, other entities... Suspected of having access/owning a kingdom... Investigation in progress! More data will be acquired!" recited Horfax monotonously.

"Interesting, anything else?"

"We have someone! Priscilla and I, we are trying to get more out of him. Le garçon ne sais pas! We sent a Zelator to the school, the witch probably knows, but has not interviened against us so far," explained Califaux.

"Reports indicated uncanny abilities. Won't your agent be discovered by the target?"

"Just let me approach him, master!" begged Kuralae. "an hour with me and this young, horny boy will tell us everything we want, he will join us, do anything for us! I will show him pleasure, pain, play with him until he yearns for both and becomes unable to tell one from the other!"

"Too direct an approach! After this other business we have to be careful with the Order. This agent?"

"The perfect tool for the mission. He's from Micellia, you might remember. This heavenly kingdom which no one wanted to leave until it was too late. It is home to a species of memetic spores, they grow into psychic fungi. We managed to get one of them in the school by making it eat and absorb a janitorial worker, no friends or family to look for him. The zelator, he looks like he is supposed to be where he is. You know him, he is your friend. You can't suspect him, he's innocent. Tonight he had dinner with the target, his mother and girlfriend. He confirmed traces of magic on both of them and the girlfriend wearing a magic ring, function unknown," he explained.

"Hmm, dangerous. How can you control such a creature considering his... Abilities. Did you take proper precautions?" This time it was Priscilla's turn to reassure their master.

"Rest assured that we took every precautions needed. Horfax was indispensable in going there to capture a specimen, being impervious to their powers. Califaux had prepared a fully isolated room with an ingenious system allowing us to communicate with it without risking his memetic mind alterations. And I personally devised a ritual to bind him to us, he is now cut from the entity ruling Micellia and obedient to the Cabal instead," she explained. She had smiled as she omitted to mention the other two members of the lodge, Kuralae might not care, being more focused on the search of pleasure than power, but Priscilla knew that her little friend was squirming and raging in whichever hole she was hidden to accomplish her mission. It was her who had pointed the old fool to send the half-pint on this wild goose chase, going after a simple rumor, without much support and no leads. It was visible in the ways that the small robe moved that its user was doing all that she could to stop herself from saying something.

"Interesting, it is good that you are able to exploit the talents of others for the furthering of the cause. How to continue the approach of this new mage will be left to my new Philosophus, but before this... Could you explain to me what in the seven hells happened in Springfield?" shouted the tall robe. Everyone in the room started to look anxiously at each others. " We do not need to be seen, we do not call upon us unwanted attention! Ipssimus Keraytalos was insane, the council left him on his own when the Order came for him. They denounced him to avoid having the purge spread to our whole organization. Our opponents' resources are limited, we gain nothing from conflict; as long as others are seen as more dangerous targets we are free to continue our most important work. Let these fools fight each other and it only will be child's work for us to sweep them aside once we rise triumphant."

The tension in the room was palpable, no one willing to attract attention to themselves and praying whatever entity might hear for one of their colleagues to be the one to fall.

"Who, then, is the absolute imbecile who broke the agreement we managed to strike with the order? To unseal Keraytalos' folly, continue his censored work? The practice of necromancy on mundane individuals has been banned by the council! It attracts too much attention. It always fails! Its fruits run wild and spread chaos, or it makes its practicers lose their minds! Abducting dozens of girls? Using Outsider material? In the city where a damn Warden is based? Breaking the truce? I imagine that none of you know anything about it."

Priscilla moved forward, to the amazement of everyone else.

"Magus! In the end, our Philosophus was acting strangely. He was rushing projects way ahead of any reasonable urgency, asking constantly for materials that were not used in any research he involved us with. It is possible that he was pursuing a whole new approach on his search of immortality, one that he would not trust any of us with. From what we gathered, the order only killed simple research workers and specimens in their raid, as well as destroying all of the research material. No one who seemed powerful enough to truly be in charge there. I want to assure you that no one in this lodge would be insane enough to engage in such abominable stupidity, even those of little talent. We only live at your leisure, to further your goals."

"Arkmadyos had only praise for you, Practicus. I'm beginning to think that you are the only reason that this senile fool managed to do anything. You will become my new Philosophus for now, prove your worth quickly, or expect swift and merciless punishment. And you, Practicii, serve your new mistress well, she speaks for me now! We are the Cabal, this is the way!" the long robe fell on the floor, empty. The powerful Magus had more important things to do than to clean after himself. The small robe fell soon after while the other people in the room bowed to their new Philosophus.

Motel room : Springfield

Juniluny Snickerbottom spat on the floor and threw a spell at the closet's door, making it explode in a cloud of splinters. The halfling mage was only wearing underwear and standing at the center of a circle burnt on the cheap carpet of the motel.

"The whore! Damn long legged harlot, she did it. Keeping me away, conspiring with the bird face and the broken clock! Of course the Magus would follow the old fool's advice and give the position to a pretty face rather than anyone of real talent! I'm sure she was probably sucking his cock, why else would he keep her around? The old pervert even made that whorish elf Zelator a Practicus! It isn't finished! I'm sure there's a way... Maybe if there was proof that she involved in this undead stupidity... Yes, that's it! I'm sure she was behind it!"

These asshole had someone in Ashcroft and told her nothing, not even after she lost her precious spying glyph, one that she had to steal materials in Arkmadyos' lab to create...

They would see, soon enough she would rise to the top, not a mere Practicus, not a Magus, she would find her rightful place on the council and then all would bow to Ipssimus Juniluny Snickerbottom.

This is the end of this small intermission. Pictures of the Cabal lodge's members are available in the Discord server. The link bellow will take you back to the storyline
TheDespaxas

Small note on Cabal hierarchy:
The council: 13 Elder/Ipssimus
The inner circle: Cabalist/Magus, serving one council member.
The middle circle: Initiate/Philosophus, trusted lieutenant of a Magus.
The outer circle: Apprentice/Practicus in training under a Philosophus.
Auxiliaries: Cultist/Zelator hired muscle and low powered individuals rarely worthy of raising above.
Slaves: rarely worth mentioning, or worth anything.