Chapter 137. All Your Base Will Belong To Us

As any con artist worth their salt will tell you - if you started strong and made a first impression, keeping the pressure is how you work it. Give them no time to think, and they will keep nodding their heads and rolling along with your confidence. Hence my strategy here is going to be simple - I will constantly badger and talk over the old crone, behave as if she's the one trying to be uppity in my house and smack down hard any attempts by third parties to interrupt on her behalf. Unbalanced like this, she is more likely than not to blab something worth my attention, and if she knows nothing of the sort to blab, at the very least I will be amused. I rarely indulge that side of my character, because even I don't like myself when I'm behaving like this, the less said about other people and their impressions the better. But, that being said, I do derive a certain amount of black humor out of the reactions.

"Well?" - I interrupt, ascending the stairs at the same time - "I'm listening." Reactions speak louder than words, at times. For example, the white-knuckled grip on the balustrade tells me loud and clear that I continue to nail it. She is discombobulated and furious at the same time. Wants to say a LOT, but can't figure out what to begin with. What comes out, in the end, is just a strangled hiss, the like you'd expect from a weathered kettle getting to the boiling point.

"Good grief, speak up already. It's like it was not you who wanted to talk." - I continue to push at her, as I reach her balcony and stop at a distance that is definitely impolite - "Do you Norns have some sort of mental deficiency, maybe? The late count was definitely soft in the head to do what he did."

And that finally, FINALLY, unhinges some gears in her head sufficiently enough to say something. That something being "HOW DARE YOU!", not so much spoken as outright hocked out. For a moment, I am profoundly grateful that I am dealing with an old woman. If she were my apparent age, this would be the point where I'd be literally sprayed with saliva. As it is, she just gets some of that on her own chin. Ew.

"Who dares, wins. Not that you'd know much about winning." - I riposte - "One foot in the grave, and schwagerin is the best title you managed to accrue in all those years? Pathetic."

"HOW DARE YOUUU!" - she repeats, abruptly transitioning from a furious whisper to an enraged shriek, stamping her foot to underline the point - "You misbegotten wretch, you foul murderer, you shameless bespoiler, hrrrrh!"

The last bit is her running out of breath, I have no doubt she had lots more unkind words for me. Fun fun fun fun fun.

"I think we already established that daring is what I do. Not so quick on the uptake, are you? Having troubles with Albish, maybe? I'd switch languages, but you frankly aren't worth that much effort to me." - I continue needling her. I want her in a blind towering frenzy, spitting mad so to speak. With that in mind, I continue, raising my voice to speak over whatever it is she tries to say - "Get on with it, will you? I'd just shoot you from the doors, but I am morbidly curious about what kind of delusion you might be laboring under to invite someone in a blood feud with your family for a palaver. Are you tired of living, perhaps? Don't worry, I will rectify that soon enough."

"....YOUU DARE!" - and now she sounds like a broken record. Was I on the point with my accusations, perhaps? Mentally quick she is not.

"Enough! You shall not speak to mistress HBLUF!" - aaand we have someone maidly looking trying to stick up for old crone. Two mistakes - one, even if you are old enough to be my mother, you are still a commoner and should not speak without permission, two, getting within arms reach was unwise. I'm pretty sure mistress is not actually called "HBLUF", but that's the sound maid made when I backhanded her across the face. The force is sufficient enough to make her recoil, flip around and stumble down the stairs - and over the railing, culminating in the loss of balance and haphazard attempts to grab a hold with a brief flight, startled scream and a dull thud from downstairs. Not a lethal fall, but she will be feeling that one in the morning for a while.

"Let's make one thing clear." - I smile tightly - "I am disrespectful, violent and utterly unrepentant. Now... what was it that you wanted to tell me? Do not tell me that you just wanted to know how dare I. Easily, obviously enough."

Oh, finally the guards are about to do something. About time, they should have tried to block me from coming up the stairs, to begin with, if we're gonna be brutally honest. If I were a hashishin, that's where I would've underlined their mistake with a poisoned knife to the throat of their principal charge. Since we are doing dominance games, I let them take a couple of steps before hitting them with lightning. High voltage, low amperage. Not lethal, but makes them dance in place and fall over twitching. I take the final step while doing this, finally within grasping distance from the crone. I'm pretty sure this is the point where she bolts, so I preempt this by grabbing her lapels and proceeding onward, into the room beyond the balcony. Which, if I gauged it right, should be some sort of salon to receive more important guests in. Less important ones would have to put up with being downstairs the whole time.

Hrm. She's surprisingly light. Even taking into account that she is an old woman. Some kind of nutritional deficiency? Or, as I suggested before, a mental one? I wouldn't be surprised if she intentionally starved herself on some misbegotten notion. Bones should be pretty frail, then. No overly rough handling, I guess. I sort of half-drop, half-push her on the chair, pull up another one and sit down on it firmly.

"Just so you know - I do have signed endorsements for blood feud with Norns and their associates, signed by princess Katherine and crownprince Hiram personally. Yes, two different endorsements from two different royals." - I proffer in the ensuing silence - "Makes one wonder, does it not? That you lot would be so repugnant in their eyes that they'd offer the endorsements before I could even ask. Could it be the association with the governess Hershnbukh, I wonder?"

And now she has a very surprised expression. Did not expect me to know this much, huh? I absentmindedly lob a lightning ball toward the doors just before they swing open. The assortment of armored guards who opened it all stiffen up and fall over spasming. Ah, voltage. The gift that keeps on giving in this technology-deficient reality.

"Picking your servants to match your own wits, I see?" - I needle her again - "Did you honestly think I'd come here if I was not confident in my ability to extirpate any resistance you could possibly offer? There is a REASON why they announce me as "White Witch" at the court, you know."

What she does not need to know is that I already infiltrated the whole of the mansion and have an eye on everyone within. For example, those four men all clustered around a vase with highly illegal chrysanthemums. They normally don't smell like almonds, though. That's my doing. Prussic acid is very convenient for preemptively dealing with an undesired magical ambush. I guess they were the reason old crone felt so confident to just invite me in - she expected I'd be mind-controlled from the gates, most likely.

"So. Were you perhaps counting on your mages to do something nefarious?" - I guess with a smile - "My, my. Even if I had no permission for a blood feud already, I'd get one simply for pointing out you have fresh chrysanthemums. They're gone, by the way. Mages, not chrysanthemums. I just visited Evergreens a little while ago, you know. Learned about the magics in question from the experts. Trying to ambush me with mind magics now is more than a little foolhardy."

That, finally, loosens some mental barricade and I am subjected to a shrill diatribe about how I am but an unruly child in dire need of correction and guidance. And... Oh, jeez. Just, what the fuck. No, ew, just... ew. Falstaff warned me, but hearing it in person is... something else. All the anger, the thrill of, well... bullying someone? Gone. Washed away by a wave of sheer unadulterated DISGUST. Imagine taking an apple... and feeling your fingers sink right into it just as you realize it was rotten through. Now multiply that disgust by an order of magnitude or two, and that's the feeling I have right now. I wouldn't have such a problem with the old woman vividly describing her dearest hopes for me to be brutally raped if she was not blatantly nigh-euphoric thinking about it. Somehow, in a perversion of the reason I do not want to think about, she wholeheartedly believes that this is how "womanly happiness" comes about.

Fuck this. Fuck the information gathering, fuck everything. I have her documents, that should be enough. If not, Falstaff can just go suck a lemon. I'm NOT... EW. Ew. Ewewewewewew! I don't want to even TOUCH her now. EWWWWW. In a fit of ironic echo, I blast the hand I used to throw the crone around with fire, erasing everything on the surface of me with prejudice. The last time I did that intentionally was after dealing with Konistan. Ok, this is IT. I have something very special for her now. Very, very special. And, if I am not grossly mistaken, she would probably blab whatever I want to. In a fashion.

"Bored now." - I interject during a brief pause that occurred due to schwagerin von Norn needing some air to continue shrieking - "My turn to scream. And remember - right now, my name is Simurgh."

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WenCYI_Bn7I

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So. Plus - I pulled it off just fine. Minus - I've been overheard by some of the domestics. Plus - unlike old crone, they will survive. Minus - good luck to them living on with eternal compulsion to confess any and all crimes they may have ever committed. Plus - I believe the crone would stroke out by the evening, she is still confessing everything at the top of her lungs, over and over and over again. Minus - I had to hear all that.

"A drink?" - Falstaff is in fine form today. Very on point. I take the bottle of rectified alcohol out of his hand and guzzle it.

"I wish I could get drunk..." - I mutter, returning the empty bottle to him after double-checking it is indeed empty. Falstaff takes it back, his eyebrows trying to climb into his scalp.

"I was under impression that much would be enough to render an adult man insensate." - he comments cautiously - "Some sort of poison protection, I imagine? Efficient, if so. Spirits are among the hardest liquids to philter out."

I sigh. "Sure, let's go with that." - I agree - "Falstaff, have you ever felt like the atrocity you've planned is just... not sufficiently malicious? Because I did not plan on doing what I actually did to schwagerin von Norn. In fact, I didn't quite know I actually COULD do this. At least, not without actually opening up the skulls in question. Finding out that I can do it just by screaming loud enough is a little... disconcerting."

"For the sake of clarity, can I get an explanation for what is that you actually did?" - he hedges - "I mean, I do have some ideas on what it looked like, but..."

"Imagine having a statue of a woman." - I proffer after a second of contemplation - "Then imagine taking a chisel and cutting the words "This is a cow" all over it. That's essentially what I did to her brain. It's not really survivable, she will stroke out by the evening at the very latest. But until she does, the only thing that concerns her anymore is confessing her actions. Her personality, beliefs, urges? All irrelevant now, the new commandment had been cut into her. As you can guess, it's not reversible. Not the "not easily reversible", but outright "not possible to revert"."

"Brutal but... deserved." - he agrees with a grimace - "We had to offer final mercy to dowager von Norn. She is... was no longer capable of comprehending herself as a person. Can I have whatever documents you have managed to locate in the estate?"

"How do you know I have gotten anything?" - I quip. Falstaff is unnervingly observant sometimes.

"Spider golems... Do forgive me, but I am definitely borrowing that idea." - he proffers with a smile that is excited and disturbed in almost equal measure - "Bird-shaped golems were known for occasional use in spying before, but the flight is a complicated skill to master. A swarm of artificial insects, however? You truly are the font of ideas both beautiful and horrifying."

He shudders, rubs his shoulders and continues - "I will also be putting a fire under our scholars to devise some countermeasures to that. There's no gathering that spilled milk back into the bowl. While we are on the topic... his excellency crownprince has given me dispensation to offer you compensation for your efforts at my own cognizance. Upon reflection, I would like to offer an assortment of obscure books and manuscripts and documents detailing on the unusual and odd occurrences, objects and people. Obviously, we will also recompense whatever monetary expenditures you might make in pursuit of our common goal here, but to my understanding it is the obscure and odd that has the best chances of gaining your interest."

"Oookay? And what do you want from me in that case?" - I riposte - "Out with it, man."

"Nornburg is home to seven noble families ranking above a baron. ALL of them are complicit to Norns and their crimes." - he says bluntly - "All of them aged above thirteen are condemned as of this morning. Nobles may be forgiven for many transgressions, but that only makes the punishments for what they can not be forgiven of that much harsher. Knowingly promulgating and furthering the studies of mind magics in defiance of royal edict banning the practice is one of such sins. Most of them by now are aware that Norn perished due to conflict with you. We offer you the first dibs. Anyone you elect to spare, be it by mercy or apathy, will be dealt with by my men or Klaus himself and his aides. Really, the chief reason why I am talking to you about all this is simply in recognition of your, frankly speaking, outrageous ability to end lives in a briskly plentiful manner."

"OOkay? What do you know about their locations, disposition, available resources?" - I don't see a problem, frankly. If Hiram wants to give me a bunch of rare data in exchange for being his hitwoman for the day, why not? I already know the people connected to this fiasco should be returned to the great carbon cycle of nature as expeditiously as possible for the great justice. So I may as well take off all zig.

He passes over a couple of paper sheets. Hand-drawn maps, really? Huh. "Unless there is something in the documents you took just now, we're looking at two locations." - he proffers - "This here is the manor keep just outside the city limits. According to what I know, all of the children of the people in question are there. The manor is protected by the city guard, but the inner halls are all staffed with their personal servants. The ideal resolution to this place would be if the children could be smuggled outside without the city guard becoming involved in any hostilities. I don't care about losses among the manor staff, if they elect to be hostile, they deserve everything that happens to them. There may be some of the less important family members as well, but with them going on the defensive and grouping up, the exact distribution of blood relatives is a bit... uncertain. And this here is another keep. It is situated about two hours by horse away from the city, next to the Schvartsebrik bogs. It's where we believe the bulk of conspirators had grouped up. It is a convenient location when you are calling out the levees out of surrounding areas, but a bad place to dwell otherwise. Bogs nearby are the never-ending source of insects and damp stink. Brikhiters own the keep and, if the old books are right, there is a smaller keep located directly within the bog as a fallback option. I know nothing about that second one, by all accounts it was abandoned and forgotten decades ago. No one even knows the way to it through the bogs anymore. Supposedly. I would not be surprised if Brikhiters actually kept the knowledge and the keep itself as their safe haven."

I blink. "Wouldn't some of the commoners know if the keep is in use or not?" - I suggest - "Peat diggers, for example?"

He shakes his head - "The bog was mined clean of peat by the city of Nornburg before the Kraut kingdom even became a kingdom. I made sure to inquire with the people, but the consensus is that no one goes into the bogs, for there is nothing worth the risk of drowning to be had. Even the berry pickers avoid the area, saying that all that grows there is poisonous. If it is of any use to you, the only truly unusual fact that I was able to glean is that bog borders are defined by scent. If you can smell rotten almonds, then you need to turn back."

...Almonds. Just like what I did to mind mages a little bit ago, mayhaps? Would explain why no one wants to go into the bog. Cyanides are no joke.