AMBROSIAFrom Zuran, we''d normally head to Ghobli to take in some shopping, or head to the Hidden Forest to see some natural beauty. But I had a kid with me, and we''d already climbed a mountain together and taken a long boat ride. I was concerned that she''d quickly become bored and start whining about having come on this trip. Tamashii was always looking for adventure, but it was a shame that she didn''t understand that while adventure was an end to boredom, it also meant troubled times. As soon as we docked, we marched directly over to the Aiken Monastery, which was always entertaining.

    Maybe it was because unlike many nations that welcomed all visitors, the Aiken Monastery had this seemingly backwards notion of complete sovereignty from all unwanted influence (that somehow worked, because the place had apparently never had any spies or invasions). Maybe it was the fact that in order to be let in, we literally got put through a fortuneteller predicting what we might do, and the last time she basically trolled us. Or maybe it was the whole matter of having an army of the dead located directly underground from their main tower, and everyone was somehow cool with this.

    In any case, I came there fully expecting to have an interesting experience. I was unfortunately let down. Gwen, the resident fortuneteller/lie-detector was sick in bed with the cold. The guards simply stamped our fingerprints, checked our passports, and harvested stem cells from our bone marrow before letting us through. I swear, without her running things, the whole system was pretty lax!

    Aiken Monastery had changed quite a bit from the time I had last seen it, roughly nine years ago. For a place that only allowed a select number of people in, it had become a boom town. I had heard that Lilith had originally bought the upper part of the Aiken Monastery tower, but it looked like she had built a tavern at ground level since then.

    Lilith was working full-time as a chef, and making good money. It seemed like she was the breadwinner, and Aqorm just worked part time as a musician for the restaurant while helping raise Sastra. It was Friday night, the one day of the week when she took a break from being a mother, and worked on her art. Her act consisted of stripping down to nothing (as an elf, lack of modesty was part of her culture) and playing her heart out for roughly three hours. Initially, she had gotten some public morals types saying that she was playing evil music or corrupting the youth, but since she wasn''t doing anything sexual, eventually people just called it art. Like Andy Kaufman, it was weird, but it was her thing. People typically cut her some slack because she was a mother.

    With the money that Aqorm got from performing, Aqorm was able to buy an omnimusica, something that looked like a mix between a pipe organ and keyboard, which allowed someone to solo an entire band''s performance, since it had five levels of keyboards stacked atop each other, plus some foot pedals for organ pipes. It really required someone super-fast or to be six-handed to be able to play though. Yet she utterly rocked it. Then she noticed us, and suddenly felt modest playing in the nude.

    “Hey there!” said Aqorm, fastening a tight black dress (that was obviously a loan from Lilith) to her body. Lilith finished cooked a coq au vin, and called Aqorm to deliver it to table six. After this, Lilith promptly closed the restaurant and told everyone they could finish their meals but after that everyone had to go. The restaurants doors were designed to swing open from the inside even if locked, so the clients gradually left the building, allowing us to talk in earnest. The doors locked, and we talked with the two of them.

    LILITH

    I teased her a bit, “You''re kinda looking chubby, Ambrosia!” Ambrosia had gained maybe 10 or 11 lb since she had become a mother, mostly because she ate real meals and stopped living on scraps. For her height, her weight was actually healthy, but years ago she was actually almost underweight as a result of being a beggar. At least, I hoped she knew I was teasing. Sometimes Ambrosia could get oversensitive.

    After a tense silence, she smiled and said, “Well, what about you?” She pinched my cheeks as though I was overweight and there was something there to pinch. To be honest, as a demon I did have a lot of weight, but this was mostly due to muscle mass and bone density. I looked 130 lb or so, but my bones weighed closer to 450 or 500 lb. S~ea??h the N?vel(F)ire.nёt website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

    Aqorm spoke next, trying to keep everyone from possibly getting self-conscious. “Hey now, cut that out you two! Both of you can probably fit into a size 8 at most. Anyway, what are you guys doing here? Last I knew you were shacked up together in, well...” A shack. Yes, this is what I heard too, that they were living in some run-down place out in the middle of nowhere. Were they really happy being away from any major town? “So what you been doing here lately, you two?” Ambrosia asked.

    Aqorm and I explained our buying the tavern. I originally had been a butcher as I liked chopping meat, and my specialty dishes tended to involve copious amounts of blood and guts. A demon chef was a popular selling point, it turned out, and I kinda made a foodie tourism movement, gradually expanding my repertoire to include many classical dishes like escargot or baked Alaska. More interestingly, well... you know how there was a movement awhile back to make tofu and other vegetable products look like meat? Well, I believed in the importance of meat and more meat in the diet, so I began molding and shaping meat to look convincingly like veggies. It was a hit, and just one more reason I had a cult-like following. Besides how creepy my eyes got while cutting.

    As for Aqorm, she played everything from hits from the 20th century, to the mid-30th century, to modern music. As you know, after 2030 or so, big business record labels no longer had a hand in music production for nearly 1000 years, since all evil was banished from the Earth (and let''s face it, some of those deals are pretty unscrupulous), so all music was experimental. Then Ungorr destroyed all the new music he could get his hands on, because it hurt his ears. And for awhile, music had to find its place again, especially since the New Earth had no technology until alchemy was invented. Now we have all these cool new instruments. And we have genres like Goblin Metal, Elysium, and Dragoncore. I’m also told that Vaporwave is making a comeback. Aqorm had also made great stride in the last nine years toward developing new Protection power as an elf, and learning how to use geomancy more frequently than once daily.

    Then I noticed Tamashii, “What a cute kid she is! I just wanna eat her up.” Ambrosia glared at me, so I added, “Not literally.” I''m not a monster or anything. I''d met Tamashii before when she was young, but she''d seen Aqorm a lot more than me because I was always working. Tamashii spoke, “Hi there! Mommy tells you that you''re a lesbian.” Not that there''s anything wrong with that. I shook my head, “Well, you see, that''s not true at all! I happen to be a bisexual. As long as my men are pretty and my women are strong, that is. It wouldn''t matter if you were a boy or a girl, I''d still think you''re cute. Too bad you''re young.” Ambrosia loudly cleared her throat, “*Ahem* Anyway, you two, I was wondering about...” I was way ahead of her, “You were wanting my help, right? I already know. I''ve been out of the house lately. The underworld keeps me informed about all kinds of events, so I know that you probably are likely to have another of your missions.” She told me how her sources knew of an angel making trouble.

    As she was asking me to come and Aqorm and I were discussing how to make sure to watch the kid (because unlike Tamashii''s parents, we weren''t actually ecstatic about the idea of a kid roaming wilderness), Tamashii decided to play with her friend using an imaginary ball. And by that, I don''t mean the two of them pantomimed throwing and catching. Tamashii literally thought a purple ball of pure energy into being and lobbed it at Sastraneth. They caught and threw for awhile, while we debated among ourselves. “We could hire a babysitter!” I suggested. Aqorm shook her head, “On top of having to close the restaurant since nobody cooks quite like you do, we might be on this trip for a year or longer. This might make it harder to open, even given our success.” I tried again, “What about sending her to be with God? I mean, Michael is there, Portia is there, and it''s probably...” Aqorm snarled, “Not happening. Michael will probably join us, so that''s two minors by themselves, and I dunno how God is at raising kids but I would guess laissez-faire is an understatement.” I suggested her parents, and she shook her head there too, without offering an explanation. Then I told her that she would probably be okay at her grandma''s house, but Aqorm reminded me, “Not after the Great Schism.” Sastra had been a bit of a mess when she was a kid. The elves still had a hard time forgiving us after that one! The mayhem that child got into when she was bored!

    Ultimately, Ambrosia suggested that Nevras''s parents were always okay with having kids around, and they would be able to keep tabs on them even if they wandered a bit, on account of the number of guards and other staff they employed. Nevras sent word by cellphone, and we were able to leave our child with her. I also contacted Michael, and after a slightly strained conversation, Michael invited Portia to spend time with her friend so things weren''t quite so boring for her. As for Ambrosia, since she had really already learned her lesson, I gave her my Crest as the Oracle of Darkness.

    Our group was near enough to the Aiken Monastery that this was an easy destination to head to next. We climbed up to the very top, in order to talk to the Aiken Master, but he immediately told us, “Nope. You''ll need to collect all of the others first. Rules are rules, after all.” He didn''t explain these rules, but Aiken apparently created an odd sort of stubbornness as he refused to change his mind despite pleading, bribing, flattering, threatening, and so on. What the people of Aiken Monastery didn’t want to do, they didn’t do unless they personally liked your reasons for convincing them to do it.

    And so, we began the climb down those many stairs, before persuading the man at the bottom to open up the basement for us. With a different group than before, fighting the undead and other creatures presented different challenges. Aqorm''s Twin Daggers easily defeated the solid undead for us, but they kept coming back as ghosts. Yazim Jianne, on the other hand, had few sorcery abilities to use against the likes of undead, but he was able to fend them off and prevent himself from being bitten or scratched by creating a ritual circle that fended off undead. Ambrosia had similar problems, since both she and Nevras had night blindness in the pitch black. Also, her Oracle powers didn''t really work, since my Crest mostly thrived on darkness (well, except for her Hellfire abilities, which she didn''t really understand) and undead were immune to the former. The Hellfire could help her, but she couldn''t see, so I wasn''t gonna tell that because she might miss and burn us all to dust. And then there was me. I could see normally in a dark place like this, and I could probably burn these things down. I blew some skeletons and zombies up, but then they too became ghosts. And I had to hold back because we were underground, and near rope bridges and such, and the Hellfire could burn the bridge and cause a cave-in. Selqui and Tamashii had some measure of psychic powers, so even though we did not have Azrael there, we were able to sweep away these ghosts, and Elias using Light prayers did the rest.

    At last, we came to the stone in the corner of the basement. After it had been translated, it apparently said, ?Believe in yourself.? Ambrosia seemed to think that this was different from what it originally read, but it didn''t seem to matter. This time, there was no guardian here, so we quickly headed out. We had just completed two Crests in record time. If the rest were this easy, we should be done with our quest in no time at all!