“How about Patrons for the other Elements?” Sama asked me reasonably.

I had Thunderbird for Lightning, Thunder, Air, and Void. Fire Phoenix would take of Fire, Chaos, Blessing, and Healing. Queen Gichigumi would do Ice and Water. It basically left Light, Earth, Psychic, and Plant.

“I think Endless Fire could take Light, and Eternal Ice could take Psychic. I’m sure Fire Phoenix will share Fire and Healing authority with them, too, and Thunderbird Air. I’m not sure on who to negotiate with for Earth and Plant, however. I don’t know any viable Imperial Plants I’d trust with the position. Babe would be ideal, but he’s not strong enough.” I could only sigh.

Babe was only a half-Emperor, although we were working on improving that with the Michigan Formation. He naturally had no knowledge of Sage-level stuff, and so would make a poor Patron that way, although it wasn’t an issue for the Mage-tier stuff. Also, he was happy to help the Stormcrown Eagle with the Air and Void Magic permissions.

I hadn’t even finished rolling out all the Adept-level stuff yet in the Spellhouses. Hotly anticipated Lightning was coming up soon. Everyone wanted the improved versions of the spells, and to see what the new ones did. Even if they were only minor differences, it was more versatility, more utility!

“Babe should be fine for now, if he can do the Mage-Tier stuff. My suggestion for Plant, if you wanted to be restricted to America, is General Sherman, but the Sasquatch tribes around it are unfriendly at the best of times,” Sama offered.

“A planetary constant.” The furry beastmen tribes were more Beast than Human, a different direction of evolution, far more physically powerful, and with their own innate magicks, which varied by Tribe. They also considered Humans acceptable prey, and so relationships between us were never good. Nobody would bat an eye if a mage slaughtered a whole clan of sasquatch, yeti, beast-men, or whatever they were called, anywhere in the world, which naturally didn’t help matters much.

“No doubt they are servants of the big Tree and the surrounding Redwoods,” Sama agreed. The natural temperate rain forest of northern California had the biggest trees on the continent, reinforced by the magic of the great Redwoods and the creatures who lived in and about them... who also happened to defend the area ferociously, or Humans would come in and chop all the Trees down for their wood and cores and stuff, idiots that they were.

Babe didn’t allow clear-cutting in the Fingers of Michigan for a reason, because some Humans would totally do it in a heartbeat for their own enrichment. Bunyan’s Line had kept a steady flow of magical Herbs and other Plants coming out of the forests for a good century now, proving the wisdom of the Line.

“You’d think a friendly Earth-Beast was possible, but noooooo, most of them are ultra-territorial arseholes, and maaaaybe Humans have been teeing off on them and their kids for centuries. Um, especially after they came over from Europe. Your ancestors were total arseholes, Hag!”

“Aye, I come from good, hearty, extremely violent Northern European stock, I do,” the very blonde Rantha Hag agreed cheerfully. “Briggs has some Chippewa in him, probably why he’s such a total softie.”

“Total softie, right-o.” Multiple visions of Briggs drenched in the guts of Aquatics rose in my head, although he’d been backing off on a lot of that stuff, keeping himself ready for emergency situations as the numbers of littoral assaults around the shorelines of the world continued, well beyond the default zones. Given the defenses he was helping put in place, he was busy with all that stuff in addition to running Coralost... but he was fully capable of it, especially with Sama taking care of all the hostile, stressful wetwork stuff.

Oh, and he still had a huge revenue source of money to play with. That always helped.

“What are you cooking up right now?” I kept a general idea of her schedule and plans, but she always had new stuff going on. Evolving world, have to add on new elements of carnage to go with it.

“Black Curia stuff.” I popped an eye open to look at her. The Curia could be said to be the foremost organization of totally heartless and Evil bastards in the world. Criminal organizations and random arseholes looked to them for leadership in the art of being total dipshits, slaughtering innocents, causing random terror, and frightening powerful people into doing their bidding. “The state of Ohio has totally dropped the ball on the investigations surrounding the county around the Breach they had. Happily, a great deal of the evidence available for analysis found it into the hands of certain people before it could be buried or altered.”

We hadn’t managed to retrieve a whole lot of skulls for questioning after that event, for the simple reason that the bodies were all burned to vivus.

Of course, the ones we did have Sama had snaffled up, and they’d proven very informative.

Or, at least their skulls had. We had some White Necromancers, most of them familiar with the work of the Black Curia, and they were anything but squeamish when interrogating the spirits of the dead.

Removing the Curia’s agents in government and military positions was a happy side-benefit as those people moved to try and suppress anything about the Curia, arrange accidents for evidence and witnesses, reclaim funds and send them off, and so forth.

Curia agents were disappearing, one after another, which was panicking the leadership and inspiring them to leave North America en masse, in many cases abandoning identities they’d built up over years to do so. Their average destination of choice was South America, always in a chaotic state and with multiple ethnic populations, and so it was much easier to hide there.

They really weren’t prepared for people who were killing them with sharp steel instead of spells. It was kind of funny to think about, really. So much knowledge of mundane techniques had been lost because magic was so much better, and when Typeless people trained as operators did their thing, even combat-experienced mages were often taken by surprise.

When a certain Null Hag came in and shut their spellcasting down, they were just meat!

“Anything soul-shriveling?” I had to ask, shutting my eyes again.

“Based on analysis and statistics, especially for the amount of income the Curia has and a record of its activities over the past forty years, we’re pretty sure that its Hierophant is in the Acropolis.”

I popped my eye open to look at her grim face again, and then just closed it. She wouldn’t have skimped on the scutwork, going over many obscenely wealthy Families, Royalty, corporate owners, and the like before making that statement. “Ah. No wonder there’s such a Dark Magic stain in the place. Someone high up has been moving malleable servants into places of power to redirect the resources of the Acropolis.”

“As well as its immense pool of labor resources to sift through for servants. Everyone comes to the Acropolis eventually, and the place has its own files on the important and powerful people who do, as well as being in the very center of political and economic forums around the planet. A sacrosanct reputation makes them the best place to hide. After all, try as they might, the Curia can’t hide Dark Magic from the Synod, so there’s no infiltrating the Angels with true servants... although we’ve found at least three only two steps below.”

I made a severely unimpressed sound with the competency of the Synod, although I shouldn’t have. They didn’t have Divination and Alignment-detecting Magic available to them... and I was not giving it to them.

We had a couple wizards sitting outside the Synod’s headquarters in Rome, and all they did is Assay and Aural Scan those going in and out, dumping the results into Markspace for collation. It was minor magic, Non-Detection hid what they were doing, and we’d built up a very long list of the operatives of the Synod and those who did business with them.

Those of the Synod proper rarely had Dark Magic, as the Synod still distrusted it, but people in the Mage Association were much, much looser in what they were allowed to have, which made it much easier for the Curia to send in an operative or two...

It was also very interesting how many retainers the noble and wealthy had who were more powerful than them and had Dark Auras of multiple types...

“How much chasing are you going to do?” I asked her.

“Just enough to make them nervous,” she smiled nastily. “After all, it isn’t like we aren’t doing a lot of stuff, and the situation with the seas is not helping matters... although it does mean we’re going to have more combat-trained mages working with us than anybody is going to be comfortable with.”

“Military connections?” I had to ask. Getting the Army and Marines behind us would give us massive support against pressure from anyone, but we had to cover our asses on the political side, too, which involved a completely separate set of skills and connections.

“The military is really interested in arcane guns and ammunition, and some superior transport vehicles. There have been some strong attempts by outsiders to get into the departments overseeing this matter, which we’ve had to dissuade. You may have heard of a couple of resignations and retirement among the Joint Chiefs, and some Congressional staffers decided leaving was good for their health.”

“Really? That’s... kind of mild?” I had to say.

“There was an Archangel involved. I cold-cocked him and stole his Wings.”

THERE was the Sama I knew. “Tremble, I trust you fed well?” I asked her Sword.

“I DID!” her Sword exclaimed, popping up over Sama’s shoulder and wagging her quillons merrily. “I am totally ready to be upgraded to Teleport VII, too!”

The Wings of the Archangels of the Synod were their signature magical items, nearly Relic-class items offering massive defensive benefits and mastery of Light Magic, as well as flight and several other abilities. Given every single person wearing a set was already a Sage, they were some of the most dangerous and powerful magical items in the world.

Sama had Burned that set and fed the magic into Tremble. There was no chance to track or recover the things now. All that was left of them were scattered metallic dust and flakes.

“Also took many pictures of him and sent them to multiple governments and groups. It was ‘Phanuel’. He’s now in the Basilica sulking in utter disgrace, which is a dangerous mindset for a Sage. He desperately wants revenge... it’s the first time in three thousand years an Archangel has been taken down but not killed, yet he lost his Wings and they haven’t been able to track or recover them.” Did she sound smug? She sounded smug. I gave it to her.

“So they know someone out there is capable of taking them out, but held back. I doubt they’d do the same, as the loss of face is probably hitting them in the feelsies right now. Can they suspect you?” I had to ask.

“I was demonstrably in the Baja Littoral Zone at the time of the incident,” Sama sniffed. “Not only would I have to be in two places at once, how could I, precious no-casting wuss that I am, possibly cross the country at precisely the right moment to waylay such a powerful Sage at the optimum time and place, and then leave again so quickly?”

“But they still suspect you.”

“Well, sure! The main thing he was involved in was trying to get his hands on the firearms and their technology. That points a finger at us regardless. I imagine they might even be suspecting you as the guilty party, given how you pop around, but they just can’t believe you could take out a Sage so smoothly.” She smirked despite herself.

“Ruby, non-lethal assassination?”

“He was meat on the table!” Tremble piped up, her Blade going crystalline red for a fleeting moment. “I really wanted to ding-ting him, too!”

Oh my, my Seraphamic Shield isn’t protecting me against the Senior Null attacking me! I guess I shall just fall unconscious!, I thought in amusement.

“There are motions in multiple governmental forums overseas to outlaw firearms as dangerous and unstable tools of death,” Sama went on, her heavens-blue eyes as hard as sapphires.

“Which means, unless you’re wealthy and powerful enough to ignore the law, you don’t get firearms... which bars them from the hands of those they’d actually be useful for.”

“It’s like you know how the wealthy and powerful try to constrain useful things from the general populace,” Sama nodded slowly. “On the side, how’d you like to feature in a new cowboy movie?”