Effective

Ooh, I feel terrible.

I take a breath… and realize I'm alive.

“Adam? How…” I'm not sure how to phrase it.

‘He’ answers anyway, ‘The artifact cuts through all otherwise-absolute defenses, has no save, does not respect SR, and devours the soul while it slays the body: The Eternal Soul Mythic ability is not absolute, and could still function. That let you make a save vs. having your soul devoured, and Divine Providence supplied the roll needed to pass the save, because you were still Mythic at the time. That meant Rejuvenation could still work.'

Yay for paranoia… they really play hardball… I open my eyes and look around. Trees. Bushes. Sunlight. Wilderness somewhere. Right… recovering where I fell has some weird implications when space collapses around me when the power sustaining the extra space all fails when I die.

But I don't stay dead. Well… I need to rebuild… worship myself… accept myself as a worshipper… name myself my high priest… I'll need to fix that once I locate the others. I prepare spells, and get to work rebuilding and buffing myself up, rebuilding an extraplanar palace to use as my staging ground for making minions… the whole thing takes a few days, because I do some Pathfinder and Starfinder gear as well.

I'm feeling better when I'm done: I guess I got used to all the mental and physical boosting, so now that's normal, and missing it is terrible? Makes sense, I guess. They chose Mutually Assured Destruction, huh? That sucks.

For them.

A little illusion and I'm visible. Then Wish Transport gets Adam, Brian, and Charles into my stronghold… and all three are collared. Well, easy fix… I put them to sleep, take the collars, and wake them back up.

“We thought you were permanently dead,” Adam cries as he awakens.

“Dying sucks,” I growl, “How long was I out?”

“It's been… maybe two weeks?” Brian scrunches his face as he resummons his Eidolon, “Hard to tell exactly… there are no clocks in the **** pens, and we can't even tell when they change the guards… they just switch controllers, they keep the same meat puppet in place.”

Charles stands, whimpering… and I see a small river of sticky white liquid pour slowly out of his baby bakery,

I purse my lips, "The Heart's Ease spell explicitly resolves the effects of ****. It's technically mind control, and it's Permanent, not Instant. You'll still remember, but…”

“Yes please…” he whispers.

I nod as I apply the spell, “Okay, now… this is NOT the right way to deal with this. At some point, we will need to get you to proper therapy. This is a shortcut so you can function, a temporary measure only.”

He calms down to an almost eerie degree, “We have a war to win,” he agrees. “After that is done, we can turn it off and do it right.” He pauses, “I'll admit I am not looking forward to it.”

“Ah, as long as you can speak freely about it now…” Adam begins.

“What's there to say?” Charles shrugs, his bare baby feeders bouncing with the motion. “It was a couple weeks of being a pleasure ****. They'd order me to feel whatever they wanted for the shot they wanted, and I would. Sometimes that meant screaming orgasms. Sometimes that meant abject terror. Most of the time it was a complete stranger or a John sticking it in me, occasionally me sticking it in someone else, occasionally...”

“...I was planning on starting with, ‘I am so very sorry,’ myself,” Adam cringes, interrupting.

Charles pauses, a mix of emotions playing across his face for a bit before he responds, “You were operating under a magical compulsion, as was I, as was Brian. I am certain my feelings about the matter will be a bit less rational once we shut off the spell keeping me together, but… I GET IT. I forgive you.” He pauses, looking at Brian, “Both of you. And I should probably get a pregnancy test every week for a while. There weren't any rubbers in sight, no pills, and they apparently LOVED the cream filling.”

“There's a third party spell for that…” I cast Detect Pregnancy, then sigh, “You're carrying. So. What do you want to do?”

Charles considers, “Can I count on your support?” The rest of us nod, and Charles continues, “Then I can deal with having a baby. Let's get the Pantheon back together and show them a little Divine Wrath, hmm?” He smiles.

“Sure,” I kick myself out of my High Priest position. “I needed the Wishes, so it's going to be a day before we can be fully set back up.”

“You got this place warded with a Private Sanctum first, right?" Adam shrugs.

“Oh yes,” I confirm.

“Then it's going to be fine,” Brian grins, “A day more to prepare, and then…” he pauses, “Do we have a plan yet?”

I crack my knuckles, “Yes. I'm done playing nice. I should have done this when I leveled to eighth… but I absolutely have a way to end them. It's…” I pause, “...boring, though.”

Adam raises an eyebrow, and I shrug, “I can take them out one at a time from here, giving them zero chance to fight back.”

Brian smiles, “That sounds completely unfair.”

Charles grins, “Makes it the perfect plan, doesn't it?”

“Absolutely,” Adam and Brian agree in unison.

I nod, “I don't even need to wait on my Mythic power to get started. Let's go…”

And it IS boring. Quicken Spell on Diagram from the Conjuration Sphere of Spheres of Power. Quicken Spell on the Call Planar Creature talent from the same, and in two rounds, I have a person of my choice trapped in a small circle on the ground in front of me. One casting of Dominate Person (it's a 4th level Bard spell, so I can get it via Secret of Magical Discipline), and they do everything I say… which is ‘answer all our questions honestly and in full’ followed by a bunch of questions about everyone they know who are involved in the Bureau, how the Bureau operates, their finances, their resources, their facilities, and such. I then remember all of the answers (via the Autohypnosis skill from the Expanded Psionics Handbook), and I have a Permanent Summoned Conjuration Companion put the person on ice in Extradimensional Torpor and Stasis Storage. Then I go through every name they gave me, doing exactly the same thing. If anyone passes a save, I just cast again and again until it takes. It is completely, utterly, and totally unfair.

Which makes it the perfect plan.

I get everyone involved, from the real guards at their public offices to the secretaries at their branches to the board that makes global policy decisions to the committee members that oversee their funding. Adam, Brian, and Charles stand ready in case anyone actually manages to break the magical circle, and ‘Adam’ counts the experience points for every one of them as they're defeated, spread amongst the four of us.

We take breaks as needed to set up the Pantheon again when the time rolls around, to level up, and to milk my knockers. I issue Simulacrums of Solars to their various facilities to free the Mythics from their collars, instructing the ex-prisoners to play nice with the baseline humans (so that we don't end up with another BMM, which the Simulacrums explain). I use the Remove Fatigue spell so that my companions don't need to rest.

We're at it for basically a week. The organization has several hundred thousand people involved world-wide… and even a lowly first level commoner is worth twenty-five experience points after splitting the reward four ways… and a lot of the folks mapped to third to sixth level Experts, Warriors, and Aristocrats… and Pathfinder does not have the same ‘not worth any experience if they're too weak’ clause that D&D 3.X does.

Which means we're using our planned Epic Pathfinder 3rd party supplement by the time we're done.

And then, all of us Permanently buffed to the gills with all of the useful spells (that don't have effects that make actually living with other people difficult)… we re-enter the world and check the news for the month or so we missed.