In the end, it didn't take much to convince the vengeful vampire.
She calmly processed Greem's question, asked his opinion on the matter, and inquired about the plans he had in place. As she'd come to expect with her man, he gave her two fully detailed ones and explained their most likely outcomes.
For one, if they concealed their advancements, they'd have to wait possibly months until Anderson was ready to start his blood sacrifice ritual. When that happened however, it would be too late to stop him killing the other apprentices.
Not to mention, there was a huge risk involved in letting him leverage his supreme control of the tower to suppress their abilities and bolster his own when the time for the confrontation arrived.
These points served as enough reason for Mary to accept the second plan to reveal their advancements, even though it set back the revenge on her enemy by a few months.
She could tell her lover had grown tired of hiding and playing weak. Imagining herself in that situation, particularly, staying hidden for as long as he did, drew up a completely different story in her mind.
She wouldn't last a single day, and this only heightened the admiration she had for him.
Taking advantage of the extra two months he was supposed to spend outside the tower, she stayed in the hideout with him and enjoyed a blissful honeymoon period.
Apart from the abundant bouts of enjoyable sex and feeding sessions, she frequently trained with him, adjusting to their respective strengths, discussed various things about their collective futures, and spent a good deal of the time working to increase their power.
Both of them almost didn't want to leave. Almost.
At the end of the day though, they knew what was most important to an Adept. Pleasure and relaxation was all well and good, but power and authority were their utmost priority. Everything else was secondary.
Because without it, you were naturally and hopelessly subject to the one who did have it, as Mary learned painfully a few months ago.
So after packing up and leaving their love nest clean of any traces of their extended presence in there, the duo concealed their auras and boarded an airship back to the tower.
Upon arrival, they stopped holding back and unleashed the potent ripples denoting their improved statuses and marched straight in, catching stupefied gazes and causing noise to erupt or silence to reign wherever they went—depending on the location and who could be found in there.
Taking in stride the uproar their drastic changes caused, Greem and Mary went straight to the fifth floor, something that would have gotten them into trouble even with their former "untouchable" Pseudo Adept status.
When they arrived, Anderson stood in the hallway waiting for them, his expression one of someone who'd been force fed manure.
He stood with his back bent and skeletal hand wrapped around his staff, eyeing his apprentices—no, former apprentices—with immense confusion, his gaze moving back and forth between their faces.
Greem was calm and even had a slight smile. Mary, on the other hand, didn't bother hiding her hostility. She wore her heart on her sleeve, and Anderson could tell it was filled with nothing but hate and contempt for him.
The questions dancing through his mind were numerous.
What is this? Which Adept paid for their advancement ceremonies? Do they mean to go against me? Are you here for revenge?
Each of them were blaring horns and vying for his attention, but only one of them shone through.
"You think you're a match for me because you've advanced? Little girl, don't push your luck. Or I'll show that there are differences even in the realm of Adept."
'You're definitely bottom of the barrel…' Greem and Mary thought at the same time, the two oblivious about the similarity of their inner retorts.
A smile overtaking her features, the vampire Adept bared her fangs at the confused Anderson in a smile that wasn't a smile. "Old man. I'd love nothing more than to rip you apart, but that's not why I'm here. You have something that belongs to me."
His wrinkled face stuck in a deep, perpetual scowl, Anderson said, "I have nothing of yours."
"Really, I could think of a couple of things in your lab the Zhentarim Association would love to hear about."
"You—"
"I want everything. Notes, blood samples, knowledge, anything you have pertaining to the bloodline experiment you conducted on me. I want it all."
"Or what?" The enraged Adept spat out in a venomous tone, the creaking of his hand around his staff audible in the hallway.
"Or I'll go straight to the association and relay everything to them. They might not have listened to me at all as an apprentice, but I'm not that anymore, am I?"
Gritting his teeth and leveling a scathing glare at the emboldened girl that only a few months ago begged him for mercy, Anderson was fully convinced that the planar consciousness was disgusted with him.
Not only had she advanced to match him in an impossibly short period, she'd somehow grasped the political landscape of Adept culture and a few of the rules they were supposed to adhere to.
And now she was using both against him.
As he wondered how this giant pile of shit could have possibly landed on his balding, his gaze was drawn to Greem. The latter stood beside Mary like a small giant, his massive arms crossed over his wide chest as he silently watched all this unfold.
All of a sudden Anderson wondered how he could have missed not just one, but two of his apprentices scheming right under his nose. When he tried to remember Greem, he felt even more apprehensive.
Because nothing in his memories showed anything remarkable about the guy. It's like he popped out of nowhere and decided to be a gigantic pain in his ass.
Finding this whole situation an unfavorable mess and increasingly enlightening on the plane's opinion on him, Anderson forced out a tiny and near imperceptible "wait here," and vanished in a flash of light.
Five minutes later, the light flashed once again and he tossed a storage ring to Mary. "Everything you asked for is in there."
Having been warned prior to this and cognizant of the craftiness of Adepts, Mary passed the ring to Greem and the latter scanned it and its contents with his various crafting abilities.
Confident no curses or traps had been left for his lover to find, Greem nodded at her and they both turned to leave. Though Mary had some last words for Anderson.
"Oh, in case I forget. If I don't find the contents of the ring satisfactory or I feel you're holding out on me, I'll forget our deal and you know what'll happen."
She didn't stop to gauge his reaction and joined Greem, both of them descending to the floor below and beelining to their room.
Back in the hallway, hidden beneath his dense flowy robes, Anderson's thin, bony chest rose and fell as his whole body trembled.
With a loud shout full of curses, he vanished from his position, completely oblivious of the tiny coin that latched into his robe and shifted to match its color and texture.
☀☀☀
"How is it? Have you gotten control of him?" Mary asked fervently from her position beside her lover, a crystal ball, blood vial, and some goatkin sheets splayed on the bed before her.
"Not yet. Still mapping out his memories," Greem answered from his reclined, seemingly relaxed posture on the same bed.
When Anderson left to go get the stuff Mary wanted, he slipped one of his creations onto the spot their former master vacated.
It was a small coin filled to the brim with enchantments, all of them with the goal of mind-controlling the cowardly Adept.
Creation Magic had been used to imbue it with the Invisibility, Camouflage, and Partial Transformation spells Greem had learned from Snorlax, giving the piece of metal a passive ability to mask itself and match its surroundings whatever they may be.
Gravity magic turned it into a magnet for the specific elementium particles that could power and sustain its stealth abilities and also allowed it to move on its own.
When and where the coin moved was controlled by the intelligence granted to it by the dual use of Metamorphosis and Spirit magic, the latter in particular, ensuring that it only obeyed Greem's instructions.
With these abilities and Evolution magic's ability to manipulate information, the coin managed to slip into Anderson's abode undetected, his deep connection with the tower not even able to alert him to its presence.
Focusing on one of the many rings on his fingers, Greem channeled droves of his life force into it and sent it over to the coin using Spatial magic.
He achieved this by enchanting a single piece of metal with the magic before using it to forge the ring and coin, making them beacons of one another.
This allowed him to—through the ring—seize and maintain control of the coin, communicate with it, access the information it obtained in real time, and also power its active abilities.
One of said abilities was Memory Reading.
Through the use of Spatial, Evolution, Spirit, and Restoration magic, Greem was currently sifting through Anderson's memories.
The application of space allowed the coin to ignore any boundary between itself and Anderson's mind, be it distance or an energy barrier.
Riding upon this penetrating wave was Spirit, Evolution, and Restoration, the first making it possible to interact with his soul and memories, the second streamlining the accessed information, and the third responsible for reversing his mind to the moment prior should he detect the intrusion.
Saying this process was lifeforce intensive was an understatement.
Due to Evolution magic, the coin had been elevated to the level of a Second Grade artifact. This ensured that with enough energy, gaining Anderson's total allegiance would be a piece of cake.
However, with Greem's "pitiful" Beginner First Grade life force, he couldn't eat this cake in a short time. He had to constantly output peak levels of his energy throughout the whole process.
It's why he laid down and made himself comfortable.
It would take a while, but before the day ended, he would be the real master of the tower.
☀☀☀
In a hall on the Swamp Tower's fifth floor, Greem and Mary stood with their heads lowered before the three Adepts observing them with suspicion—one of them even with anger.
Of the three, only Anderson and Keoghan were familiar to the duo, the third, elderly one in the middle a complete mystery.
What wasn't a mystery though, was the obvious aura of a Second Grade radiating from him.
"How did you do it?" The elderly man asked, his tone dripping with iciness.
Grateful to a certain nosy Adept far away from here, Greem recounted how he always felt like a noose was gradually and slowly tightening around his neck whenever he advanced.
He also recounted his contract with Angus back in Dagon, explained how he asked for advice on he and Mary's advancements, and also laid out all the preparations they made towards that goal.
Silence filled the hall as the three visiting Adepts contemplated the words.
How could they not know what the noose around Greem's neck signified? The planar consciousness was warning him of trouble. And the fact that it wasn't a one off thing meant he was a chosen of the plane.
It lined up with the freakish description of his advancement. Without the planar consciousness' favor, he would have most likely died down in the volcanic underground.
As for the Adept he'd signed a contract with, they'd do some minor research on him and leave it at that. After all, this was a good thing for their clan. There was no need to waste time and effort on someone who had his own backing.
"Master Fügen, how should we handle them?" Adept Keoghan shifted his gaze from the duo to the elderly man.
"Nothing has changed. They've signed the contracts haven't they? When the time comes they'll join the planar war. All three of them," Adept Fugen said and turned pointedly to the defeated and fearful Anderson, his gaze full of contempt.
"If they live, they can enjoy their improved power and status. If they die, well, that's just their rotten luck."
****
Author's note:
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