"In the eyes of Hell, we will be launching an attack against Fallen Harana with the intent of seizing its monarchy, sealing it off, and then liquidating its infernal population for cores while we plunder its coffers for all the resources we can take. And in the eyes of Hell, this attack must fail."

"They don't know about the Eldunari post, do they?" Ashtoreth asked, eying the white point that marked the end of the line that Matthews had drawn to Earth.

"No," said Matthews. "This point here is a secret installation, a stealth demiplane. The Eldunari are certain Hell isn't aware of it—it's a post that they intended to use as a staging area for assaulting one of Hell's resource worlds in the event that their cold war with our enemy ever escalated."

"Cold war," said Frost. "I get it."

Matthews paused, seeming to consider what Frost had said, then nodded. "Yes," he said at last. "They intend to supply us because we're the enemy of their enemy. The parallels to Earth politics aren't lost on anyone in High Command—nor is the fact that this is an act of Eldunari self-interest more than charity."

"But that's good, though," Ashtoreth said. When everyone turned to her, she added: "Well you can trust them to do what's best for themselves. Just saying."

"High Command was of a similar rationale," said Matthews. "In any case, the fact that our connection point is unknown to the Powers of Hell should, theoretically, keep them from assuming that the attack on Fallen Harana is a ruse meant to disguise our real goal of establishing a warp conduit to connect to the Eldunari Alliance."

Ashtoreth was frowning at the map. "It could work," she said. "I want it to work. But you need to cut their external conduits—all of them, almost immediately. Portal travel isn't instantaneous, and takes longer the higher-level the traveler is… but Hell's defensive network is no joke. As soon as Fallen Harana gives off an alert, there are appropriately leveled elite infernals spread across the whole of the cosmos who have snap contingencies that will teleport them to their current realm's nearest portal and stuff them into it. They're going to be catapulting toward Fallen Harana before they even know what's happened to them."

"Yes," said Matthews. "Which is why we'll be striking quickly."

"Quickly is right," she said. "You need to pre-warp to Fallen Harana, then warp to every nearby realm with a conduit that can feed it, then disable all of them within a window of several minutes."

"Five and a half, by our calculations."

"Hunter and I can move fast and stealthy and take out one of them, maybe two if things go well."

"No," Matthews said, shaking his head. "We're not risking you except where there is a clear and extraordinary benefit to Earth's chances of survival. If human soldiers can do the job, they will."

Ashtoreth worked her mouth, unsure of how to ask what she needed to next. Finally she simply said, "And can human soldiers do the job?"

"We believe so," said Matthews. "Dazel helped us design a very sloppy form of warp bomb that we've been building out of materials plundered from the bastions we've captured."

Ashtoreth gave her familiar a squeeze. "Well that was nice of him!" she said, smiling.

"We won't need to destroy the conduits," he said. "Just detonate the bombs close enough to interfere with them for several hours.

"This is what those were for, huh?" Dazel asked. He yawned. "Not bad."

"If they were routing through Primeval Karaz, we'd be in trouble," said Matthews, gesturing to the green dot. "Large realms are big enough that we'd struggle to know with certainty that we'd hit them all. But Karaz is on the outside, unconnected to Hell except through Fallen Harana. Instead, our targets are a number of smaller demiplanes similar to the bastions we've seen already—outposts that do little more than host the conduits and their defenses."

"You can hit them as long as you're stealthy about passing through Fallen Harana," Ashtoreth said, nodding.

"And Harana is a resource world," said Dazel. "Heh."

Matthews seemed to take his meaning. "Hell does as much mining on Fallen Harana as they do on Primeval Karaz. Their activities are spread across the whole surface of the world—they don't restrict travel to certain locations."

"Anyone with [Warp] and a stealth aspect like [Darkness] can come and go quietly," Hunter said from where he was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.

"Precisely," said Matthews. "They will be vulnerable to this sort of strike."

"All right," said Ashtoreth. "It could work. Though I suppose even if disabling their conduits fails, it'll still look like the failed assault that you wanted."

"We'd prefer something a little… further from failure," Matthews said. "You see, the Eldunari have also given us intel on several locations where Hell stores high-value metals, crystals, and contained essences."

Ashtoreth laughed. "Fantastic! It's a smash-and-grab disguised as a conquest."

"Precisely," said Matthews. "If everything goes well, the enemy will think that we tried a daring move—bridging the gap into the inner realms with stolen bastions, then using the element of surprise to try and steal one of their strongholds from them without realizing that despite our cunning, we were in over our heads. The kind of victory they can hopefully be comfortable with.

"But what we will actually have accomplished will be far more valuable than the conquest of this one world. If we play things correctly, enemy intelligence will surmise that what we steal from Dereemo and Fallen Harana, not the supplies that we'll be getting in secret from the Eldunari Alliance, will be the material used by our newborn military industries. They won't expect us to have the capacity we will."

"Question," said Kylie. When Matthews turned to her, she asked, "You're still going to need a conduit on Primeval Karaz, yeah? But that's going to stay Hell's mining world after the dust settles. Won't there be infernals everywhere?"

"Yes," said Matthews. "After Hell routes our staging area on Primeval Karaz, scattered human remnants will hide across the realm—the team responsible for building and maintaining the warp relay will be much harder to find, and even if they are found, their presence will be taken as more stragglers."

"Hmm," Kylie said. She shrugged. "Okay."

"I think it'll work," Ashtoreth said. "We just need to take Dereemo. Everything after that is mostly optional." She frowned. "Your attack on Fallen Harana, though—it's going to be a mess."

Stolen story; please report.

"We know," said Matthews. "But everything we've learned from you, Dazel, and the Eldunari Alliance suggests that our conventional weaponry will be enough to severely disrupt their on-world communications and teleportation network. It'll be just the mess we need."

"And what about us?" she asked.

"You'll be held in reserve," said Matthews. "We'll likely deploy you once it's time to get our people out. But Ashtoreth—we not deploy you at all."

"Yeah, I figured," she said. A part of her wanted to participate in the heaviest fighting, especially when she knew she'd be fighting alongside humanity in all its strength… but it was a clear mistake. If Hell happened to have the power to take her out on Fallen Harana, it would be worth it for them to hold that power in reserve until she appeared—even if that meant the difference between losing and keeping the world.

What was one realm, compared to Ashtoreth?

"Still," she said. "I think it's a pretty good plan. At the very least, we can take Dereemo."

"Good," said Matthews. "The five of you will get more details as the date of the strike approaches. Until then, you're dismissed."

* * *

"Psst. Ashtoreth."

Ashtoreth removed the glasses she'd glamored for herself and set them on her bedside table. She was sitting in bed, writing out an essay meant to address a lot of High Command's questions regarding how an infernal defense network would react to various forms of assault, including situations where they were receiving conflicting reports.

The humans were thoroughly curious. She'd probably written them hundreds of pages already, but there was no satisfying them.

Dazel had landed on her knees, which were pulled close to prop up her clipboard. "Mmhmm?"

"My chance is coming up, boss."

She considered this. There was only one thing he could really mean, and so she set her clipboard under her fake glasses and prepared for a long conversation. "What's up?"

"If we can connect Earth to the Eldunari conduits, and we can use them… we can get to an outer market. Do you know what that is?"

"Uh-huh. Black market on the edge of the inner realms."

"Well… okay, pretty much."

"They're not supposed to be very safe," she said. "And they don't have long lifespans—they get looted, and everyone who lives moves to a new spot. But you can pick up a lot of fancies."

"...Fancies?" Dazel shook his head. "You know what, never mind. I want to go to an outer market. There, we can buy me a soul map. Once I have that I'll know exactly what I need to do to free myself."

"What's a soul map?"

"It's when a soulseer gives you a detailed accounting of all the magic tied to your very soul," said Dazel. "I'll be able to get a look at the binding that ties us together."

Ashtoreth considered this. "And you can only buy one from an outer market? Why?"

"Because people in power generally don't like people who can interfere with bindings like mine," he said.

"Huh," she said. "Makes sense." Then she grinned. "But sure, Dazel! We can hop-skip across those outer worlds, then pop into the outer market and pick up everything we need. We'll take Hunter for stealth."

"Yeah…" Dazel said slowly.

"What is it?" she said, eying him suspiciously.

"That is what I had in mind. It's just that there's a bit of a problem with the plan—right now we can't do it."

"Huh?"

Dazel sounded vaguely amused. "We can't do it."

"Why not?" she asked, frowning. "And why is that funny?"

Dazel snickered. "Well, we're missing a crucial element that you haven't considered," he said.

"Which one?"

"I'll give you a hint," Dazel said. "It's something fungible."

Ashtoreth blinked. She thought hard. "...Penicillin?"

Dazel cackled. "You tried, boss."

"What?" she said. "What is it?"

"You've got quite a lot of cores, but they're useless to anyone your level and higher. Valuable for some things, and maybe with a few transactions you could trade them for a soul map… but it's probably not wise to show up in an outer market selling tens of thousands of infernal cores."

Ashtoreth's eyes widened as she at last took his meaning. "I don't have any doubloons!" she exclaimed.

"You need cash, boss. Or something worth trading."

Ashtoreth frowned and thought about this. It was the first time it had ever happened to her, and the experience felt surreal.

Back in Paradise, she'd simply… well, the worst case scenario, whenever she wanted something of value, was that she would have to go and get it. The more frequent occurrence was that someone went and got it for her.

Shopping, or as near as she'd ever come to it, hadn't even involved copious amounts of riches, or even transactions at all. She'd just picked things. She was pretty sure that someone else had handled payment after the fact.

Earth obviously didn't have a massive treasury anywhere, at least not filled with anything more valuable than diamonds, gold, or biological diversity… all of which were only really worth a pittance anyway.

She frowned. It was a real conundrum. "All right," she said. "You got me. Where do you go to get valuables when there's no treasury?"

Dazel made a wheezing noise as he tried to contain his laughter. "Depends on the valuables, Your Highness. Normally you trade your own labor for them."

"Work," she said, her tone of voice conveying an absolute vacuum of enthusiasm.

"Cheer up, boss. No one's going to stuff you in a salt mine."

She cocked her head. "How about I labor to kill someone who has already done a lot of labor themselves, then take all of their rewards?"

Dazel couldn't stop laughing. "You got there fast."

"I'm sure it runs in my family. More realistically… what do we do? The bastions we've taken are valuable on the whole, but only because they're so huge. The most valuable parts are the control crystals… if we strip them, we'd still need to move them across the cosmos by the ton."

"Correct."

"So what? Smash and grab the outpost? The humans already expect to plunder it, and there's no guarantee it'll something we cant trade, even if the prospects are better. If the level 400 cores don't work, then our extra magic items probably won't, either." She frowned. "Is Uranium-235 valuable, you think?"

"No," said Dazel. "Plutonium might turn out to be… but it's no sure thing. Plus… I don't think you should ask the humans for a substantial amount of plutonium."

"Why not?" She smiled faintly. "We'll just tell them I'm going shopping."

"On that note," Dazel said. "Do you want to let them know what we're doing?"

"I don't see why not," she said. "The risk of intelligence leaks is low, right now, right? And who cares if Hell finds out where I went after the fact—we just don't want them to ambush us in the market."

"Normally I'm all for secrecy," said Dazel. "But I think you're right. Finding out won't make a different. Even if they know you've been fighting with a demonic familiar, they'll probably just think you're trying to find and remove a tether. They'll have no reason to think you're trying to free your familiar, let alone that it's me."

Silence fell between them as fast as if it had been made by the falling blade of guillotine.

Dazel blanched. Ashtoreth stared at him.

He seemed to struggle to think of something to say… and then simply shrunk in on himself, recoiling back from her slightly.

Ashtoreth drew in a hiss of a breath, narrowing her eyes at him. "That, Dazel, I just… can't ignore."

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