The prior day.

Seminaris was standing at top of a building and looking down on a hotel entrance, watching the Gamer and this interesting companion enter. Well, about to enter. The small girl stopped for a moment and looked in Seminaris' direction. Standing perfectly still, she trusted in the invisibility that the other woman on the roof had put around the two of them.

The girl turned around again and Seminaris took one last glance at her aura. John Newman was as strong as ever, a blue that gradually shifted into a golden white, tinged with the colors of the elements, all overlapping and separating again. Strong, but not strong enough to be of any more interest for her ends of strengthening her king candidate.

The crimson onslaught that surrounded this woman, however, was a different topic. Like a thick drop of blood in the pond of reality it hung around her, edges continuously dispersing in an archic fashion, but the core strong and nigh impossible to see through, like thousands of sheets of stained glass stacked on top of each other. Each as thin as paper. Each cracked.

“So, what do your eyes tell you?” Thresta asked.

“That you're correct,” Seminaris looked over to her sister with a moderate amount of repulsion. The Third of Darkness held true to her title. Brown skin of a shade that it was almost black, a bald head, even the clothes of this age she wore were of the same style of the one she had preferred in ancient Akkad. Where the athletic woman's eyes had normally been a dark brown, they were now a bright silver, two shining stars on a being of stealth.

It wasn't Thresta's choice, at least Seminaris sure hoped so. Foregoing their search for a new king in favor of some god's ambition was unacceptable. No matter if that god had an important part to play in their creation.

The Third of Darkness' own aura was almost invisible, even to Seminaris' eyes, a very thin smoke centimeters around the skin, dominated by an artificial blue that mimicked the aura of a mundane person. “Enki sends me valuable information,” Seminaris returned, having already heard why the Gamer was in this corner of the world. Apparently, the girl with him was possessed by a powerful spirit, something that Seminaris' eyes confirmed. However, that something wasn't making her more powerful. The aura displayed shows no power sealed underneath. “This 'Eliza' truly would be a challenge for my Sigmund. A somewhat easy one, but I won't complain about this find.”

“Father Enki,” Thresta corrected with a sharp tone in her voice.

“A father of mine he might be, but not in any involved enough capacity that I would honour him with that title,” Seminaris denied and challengingly stared back. There was no need to kiss up to her. She was just a puppet dancing to the star god’s tunes, with no autonomy, nevertheless power, to hurt the First of Patience.

“One day, all shall call him by what he truly deserves,” the Third of Darkness promised, then vanished into thin air, the invisibility spell that had previously covered Seminaris now limited to only herself.

Unafraid of being seen by the normal people in their houses or on the streets, Seminaris walked away. While not as impressive as Serestra’s cloaking spell, the weakest of the trio wouldn’t be foolish enough to simply spit the First of Patience back into view. Gaia would do more harm to her than to Seminaris in such a case.

She descended off the roof via a staircase. Certainly, she could have created a portal back to her stay by opening an Illusion Barrier and casting there, but the little walk gave her time to think. This was the first time since Babylon that Enki had approached her. Millennia passed in which she hadn’t even been sure if the whispered mentions of his name were truly him. Even now, she couldn’t be sure this was truly the god or some form of imposter.

‘Perhaps I should have looked into this in the past,’ Seminaris thought but didn’t keep herself on that for too long. Rarely had she operated in as much as the same continent in the past millennia and there was only so much information she had the time to uncover. Even rarer had it been that she had been given as free reign as she was currently. Much of her time had been spent serving an entirely unworthy man. One whose murder at the hands of her current master she still remembered fondly.

‘Should I tell Sigmund about this?’ Seminaris wondered, weighing her options. Attacking the Gamer again could prove detrimental in the long-term. The First of Patience was playing a finely balanced game between providing new challenges to her master and weakening every power around them equally while doing so.

Should Sigmund just smash the leadership of one area, they would be left for annexation by another force. If repeated too often, they would grow an opposition that even the Contender wouldn’t be able to beat. Seminaris couldn’t have that, so she guided her master into different directions. Whenever there was nothing more to fight, she would put it to him that being king was a challenge all of its own.

Of course, Sigmund wasn’t fit to be a ruler, every oaf with a pair of eyes could see that. He was an impatient man, with an appetite for everything in spades and who liked to solve things by himself rather than to lead an army. However, all he needed to be was king, the ruling he could always leave to her. Seminaris smirked at the idea. Administering an empire from the lap of a powerful lord, that was the position she had been born for and the one she yearned to fulfil once more.

Sigmund was ideal for this.

Right now, they were facing a shortage of enemies, however. The Contender was strong, not strong enough that Seminaris wanted to goad him into conquest yet, but too strong to find enemies for him easily. A problem she had seen coming years ago but couldn’t do much in preparation for. Not like the supply of challenges was in her hand.

Her original plan had been to invade the Lake Alliance, only to go and face whoever led the Hidden Tradition in their inner sanctum afterwards. Getting that information without the internet had been a truly grinding effort. ‘Soon I can afford carrying one of these phones with me everywhere,’ she thought, making an annoyed expression as she strutted through the mostly empty streets. The knowledge of the entire Abyss Auction at her fingertips and she couldn’t use it because that was simply asking to be located by Technomancers.

Instead she had to rely on the old-fashioned informants that hung out in shady corners at the edge of town. Those always had a bit more to tell in specifics, but never told the broad stories. Luckily, her eyes and those specifics were all she needed to make out who was a proper challenge and who wasn’t.

Eliza was a bit weak. Clearly strong enough to fight Sigmund but nowhere near equal. That was better than being stronger than her master, but not quite what she wanted. The Contender had to be carefully presented with enemies he could beat while still presenting a danger, but not enough danger that Seminaris had to be worried. Sigmund himself had no idea she was doing this, since he trusted her so deeply. Which was good, his power seemed to reward him more the more threat he went through; there was no telling how him knowing his road was paved would influence this.

This placement made Eliza someone to be confronted sooner rather than later. One more power boost and Sigmund may not even gain anything from fighting her anymore. That would be a shame. ‘Resource management aside,’ Seminaris thought, ‘the Gamer survived and this could become a problem in the long run…’

Currently, John Newman wasn’t a threat, but he may very well grow to become one. Sigmund’s final attack had miraculously spared him, but left him blind if those informants could be trusted. Once more, Seminaris clicked her tongue in annoyance. Being off the grid truly was bothersome for details like these.

There were two good reasons to fight Eliza at the current, therefore. Just her alone wouldn’t be the challenge needed, however. ‘Then all we need to do is drag some more people into the fight,’ Seminaris thought and the situation finally formed in her head. “Thresta, come out, I need to talk to you again,” Seminaris said after stepping into an alleyway.

The dark-skinned Third of Darkness suddenly appeared once more. Seminaris hadn’t sensed her, not exactly anyway, but there was no way Thresta would ever leave without her mission confirmed. Since Enki clearly, for whatever reason, wanted Sigmund to fight Eliza, she would be around until that fight concluded. Seminaris figured that the star god wanted to remove either competitor from the match, which one didn’t matter. ‘A truly arrogant way to approach this, to feed the lion with a wolf and assume it couldn’t come back to hurt him,’ Seminaris thought, her aristocratic composure hiding her amusement.

“What is it?” Thresta asked, clearly still annoyed about earlier.

“If John Newman leaves with the Hidden Tradition, inform me,” Seminaris smirked; if that woman alone wouldn’t be a true challenge, how about another small army, with the two top members of that guild, on top? That might actually prove a little too much, so Seminaris would remove the Gamer from that engagement and take care of that problem herself. What struggle could a blind man put on compared to Metra?

In one fell swoop, Seminaris would strengthen her master, get a possible favour with Enki and remove the future threat of John Newman. It all worked perfectly. It wouldn’t work if he just went home, but maybe he wanted to further his diplomatic efforts or something. She didn’t particularly care. If he went home instead, well, then they would just continue as previously planned. An opportunity wasted, but an opportunity out of her hands.

“When that happens, Sigmund will fight Eliza, Enki will get what he wants and so will we.”

Thresta agreed with a grim expression.

__________________________________________________________________________

The day of the ritual

Seminaris still felt his thrusts against her groin when she peeled out of the sheets and hugged Sigmund’s massive back. A hand trailed his muscles, rippling with strength far beyond the natural. She remembered a time when she could have counted the ribs on his narrow frame with her eyes alone. Three or four years back. The transformation had been steady.

Together with the power came the scars, however. Fine lines from clean blades joined the unclear outlines of fire blasts and the forked figures of electrocutions. Although the bed was not the silk she craved and Sigmund, sitting at the edge of the bed, was quiet, she felt happy. A puppet, that was what she used him for, but there was no reason not to love one’s puppet. Gepetto had done so enough to create a real person, Gilgamesh’s brother had formed a dragon god from clay and metal, declaring him his favourite creation. Compared to that, what she felt for Sigmund was almost normal.

“Today you will fight again, Sig,” she promised him. The Contender suddenly tensed and turned to her. This was the first he heard of this.

“You have found someone?” he asked with excitement. While he may have been clueless as to Seminaris balancing of his encounters, the fact that she was the one guiding him was the very fundament of their relationship.

Two working eyes glared at her with excitement and Seminaris grinned back. The eye he had lost when fighting a lesser dragon had returned to him after the recent victory. Indeed, all of his body had been repaired through his magnificent ability. The half of his left foot that he had lost to the maw of a Deepmaw. A hollow part of his right biceps where a Shadowcrawler had ripped the muscle in half. Even the arm that John Newman had obliterated had returned, although having regenerated around the demonic energies of Ifrit had left it with scorched black marks running over every single vein. Only the scars remained now, the crippling wounds had been removed.

Not only had Sigmund grown stronger from that fight at the White House, his body was entirely restored. Even Metra wouldn’t stop him now. If they just kept her away from the ocean, Sigmund would clean the floor with Seminaris’ wrathful elder.

Like every great man that the First of Patience had ever known, the Contender’s body was a canvas for his story, made up by the myriads of people who managed to wound him before their own tales ended. Every scar was a battle, a mistake and a lesson. Eternalized into flesh and seldom gotten rid off for some reason. Those who fought for their beliefs often wore their scars as marks of pride.

“Yes,” Seminaris confirmed, she didn’t need to explain it to him. All he wanted to know was where. Who or why wasn’t important, and the when was already clear. ‘Such simplicity,’ she mused to herself.

It didn’t take too long for Thresta to inform Seminaris that John Newman had begun to move. By car of all things. They followed them invisibly, the Third of Darkness cloaking their moves until they arrived at the mountain side. Sigmund wanted to go after them immediately, but Seminaris convinced him to wait for a few hours. She knew the location of their target already and it was best to give them time to gather.

But eventually they ascended to the ritual site. It was an annoying path, one where Thresta refused to aid them any longer and once more returned to her private invisibility. If she was still around, Seminaris could make a very educated guess on.

“Why don’t we just teleport there if you know the location?” Sigmund wanted to know, his entire body trembling with anticipation. Branches snapped wherever her passed, the giant of a man, more than two heads taller than Seminaris, uncaring for the nature he trampled through.

“I will need my strength to remove a pest from the site,” Seminaris explained simply. A special ability that she carried through every incarnation was her Blessing of Preparation. The longer she waited between two spells cast, the stronger the next one would be, up to a maximum. To assure that she could fight John Newman somewhere else, maybe even kill him outright, it was best to have that tool charged. “Teleporting there would ruin my preparations, as annoying as it is.” She stared at a thorny plant that got stuck on the skirt of her grey dress. The Astrotium didn’t tear, of course not, but it was annoying nonetheless. Sigmund stomped the branch down while she ripped herself free, then he pulled her up a rock.

Brutish and at times pretty simple, her master was at least courtly towards her.

They passed by a rock that overlooked the phenomenal landscape and the path they had come from without taking a single look around. Their goal wasn’t far from there, and so they tested for an Illusion Barrier every few metres. Although Seminaris knew the area, the exact entrance was still something they had to find.

Or would have, rather, if John hadn't sat in their path.