All right, Ashtoreth said to Frost through the telepathic bond. We’re coming down.

  We’re ready, Frost said.

  “You look nervous,” Dazel said, burning a circle into the floor of the grand hallway outside Set’s massive chamber.

  “These are basically going to be the first humans I’ve met in a year,” Ashtoreth said, fidgeting. “Do you think Frost told them about the shard, and everything?”

  “If you’re asking whether I think he told them about how you forced them into a year of constant fighting to train up and save the Earth?” Dazel asked. “Yeah. Yeah, I think that probably came up. It’s pretty hard to leave that part out of the story.”

  “Yeah,” she said, looking into the distance with a sense of growing dread.

  Soon she was stepping into the rune circle and beginning the warp spell. “Okay,” she muttered. “Gotta focus up. Good impressions.”

  “Wow, you are nervous.”

  The circle began to glow around her as the spell charged.

  Dazel was right. Even the rare meeting with her mother hadn’t been as nerve-wracking as this. But in a meeting with human officials, there was just too much at stake for her to relax.

  It was all about managing their expectations and slowly building their trust. The bastion she was gifting to them would surely help, but she was still a fiend—a pointy-horned, red-eyed, barbed-tailed fiend.

  While she was sure they’d appreciate her help so far, she was also sure that they wouldn’t want to rely on her for anything, not if it could be helped. They’d want to phase her out of the most important matters in the long term, for the very understandable reason that someone from Hell who had already betrayed her loyalties was of questionable trustworthiness.

  The trick, Ashtoreth figured, would be to capitalize on her usefulness in the moment to build a long-term relationship. They at least needed her help for the moment, and somehow she had to use that to engrain herself in their defense effort as too valuable an asset to be pushed out.

  And then there was Dazel. So far, he’d been nothing but helpful, but she didn’t want him to gain too much rapport with the humans. She should have power in whatever systems the humans built to defend the Earth, but she didn’t want him to have any.

  Not until she knew who he was, and was sure of what he wanted.

  Of course, if she came in and told the humans that the person currently managing her own team was a untrustworthy demon cat that she’d forced into being her familiar and then been extorted by, that might give the wrong impression. The trick would be to undermine him, if she could, without making it clear that he was untrustworthy.

  “You think this is how humans feel when they do job interviews?” Ashtoreth asked.

  “Who cares?” Dazel said.

  She knew from experience that she’d never perfectly fit in with humans, no matter how much she tried. But she also knew that if she tried too hard not to seem zany and weird, she’d come off as inauthentic. But she also knew that a certain amount of inauthentic formality was just considered respectful among their kind.

  There was a flash of light from the rune circle, and Ashtoreth soon found herself appearing in the midst of an office building, one lit by conjured lights instead of the fluorescent bulbs overhead.

  A man with a greying beard and a military uniform on approached her immediately.

  “Princess Ashtoreth,” he said, extending a hand. “It’s good to meet you. I’m General Matthews.”

  “Great to meet you, Sir Matthews!” she said, vigorously shaking his extended hand with one of her own while she saluted with the other. “You can just call me Ashtoreth!”

  “Would you come with me a moment, Ashtoreth?” he asked, gesturing to the room behind him.

  “Sure thing!”

  He began to lead her through the building, out of the room they currently occupied, which mostly just contained various rune circles.

  “Officer Frost tells me that you’re a very powerful military asset. He says you’ve been destroying infernal military installations that are acting as staging areas and that the sooner I’m done with you here, the sooner you can resume that task, correct?”

  “That’s right!” she said. “Also, I should give you some of these cores. Grab my hand?”

  Matthews reached out and touched her, and his eyes widened as she transferred the millions of low-level cores that she’d gotten for nuking several bastions on the way to the nexus. “That… certainly does something to confirm Frost’s account of things,” he said softly.

  “He should have had some magic items in the house, too,” she said. “We labelled all of them, and—”

  “If I can interrupt,” Matthews said.

  “Sure!”

  “What I’d like to do is make this conversation as fast as possible so that you can get back to your work. You can probably understand that we’re in a state of chaos right now—the government, the military, everything.”

  As he was speaking, he led her into another room where people in a mix of military uniforms and tutorial-granted armor were gathered around three tables that had been covered in papers.

  “Right now we’re establishing a communications network and determining how best to mobilize our people,” he said. “The pamphlets you and your people have been distributing are a big help, believe me.”

  “Thanks!” Ashtoreth chirped. “They were mostly Kylie’s idea.”

  Kylie had insisted they come up with a way of disseminating information quickly when electricity was scarce, then had the other humans compile a list of everything they’d needed Ashtoreth to explain to them so they could inform the humans once they got back.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “We’re grateful for the cores you just gave me, too,” he continued. “But there’s some pressing questions this all raises. We’re trying to formulate priorities when it comes to the abilities granted by this, ah… System.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And we’re about to have Earth-wide communications, heating, food, water, and medical problems. Apart from just killing these damned infernals—uh, if you’ll excuse my saying so—”

  Ashtoreth laughed. “Damned is lore-accurate, Sir Matthews.”

  “Right,” he said. “We don’t have the familiarity with the kind of abilities that aspects grant. Not that you do. I understand we don’t have the time to grill you on everything you know, but is there anything you can recommend at this very moment that will help with international relief efforts?”

  She frowned in thought. As much as she didn’t want him to gain purchase with the humans, it was a better question for Dazel than it was for her.

  “Dazel?” she asked.

  “This is the familiar?” Matthews asked as Dazel rose out of her arms and into the air.

  “Pleased to meet you too, bossman,” said Dazel. “And a lot of these problems will take care of themselves once people reach the second tier. A single person with a [Life] aspect can grant a few different ways to meet or negate the nutritional needs of hundreds of humans, and a [Water] aspect can do the same for thirst, purifying water and even creating it. [Mind] and [Spellcasting] will handle communications, and a lot of aspects will give people the power to keep themselves warm even in the coldest climates.”

  “So you’re saying we should prioritize those aspects?”

  “Sure,” said Dazel. “But mostly I’m saying that this is a problem that should take care of itself. Tier 2 won’t take long in these circumstances, even without your interventions. You won’t need to juice up your telepaths for people to start establish interconnecting networks naturally, either. When it comes to priorities, go for the [Warp] aspects so you can move people around across the planet en masse.”

  Matthews eyed Dazel, looking somewhat displeased. “You’re seriously telling me that we should ignore food and water? Medical care?”

  “Bring healers with you wherever you go,” said Dazel. “But the rest? Don’t worry about it, it’ll handle itself.”

  The people around them were all taking notes with pen and paper as they spoke. None of them made eye contact with Ashtoreth as she looked around the room.

  Matthews turned to Ashtoreth. “And you agree with this assessment, Your Highness?”

  “Oh, definitely,” she said. “I guess I hadn’t thought much about it, but most of Earth is inhospitable to humans, isn’t it?” She shrugged. “You do a lot of work just to meet your basic needs, but the system will render most of that obsolete.”

  “That’s… going to be a hard paradigm to adjust to,” said Matthews.

  “Magic changes everything,” Ashtoreth said, giving him an another, more apologetic shrug. “The only infrastructure you really need to address the horrors of war are people, now. And when we’re talking about healing, or rebuilding, or purifying water, [Mana] will be more of a limiting factor than total personnel.”

  Matthews nodded, seeming to think. “That changes a lot,” he said. “We’ve been as focused on relief efforts as fighting.” He looked at Ashtoreth, his expression serious. “But before I move on to my next line of inquiry, is there anything you can think I should know right away?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Hell will have little operational flexibility. In fact, now that we’ve taken out the nexus bastion, they’ve lost contact with the Circles and their operational flexibility should be disastrously bad.”

  “The Circles?”

  “The Circles of Hell,” Ashtoreth said. “That’s the main realm.” It was detailed in one of the pamphlets, but she doubted Matthews had read them all, yet.

  “All right,” he said. “As for their operations, you’re certain they have a vulnerability?”

  “Sure am!” she said. “For starters, these are all infernals who were made to wait for this invasion without gaining any levels. I mean sure, we trained in war games, but everybody’s mostly pretty young.”

  “And cut off from Hell’s high command,” said Dazel.

  “Exactly!” Ashtoreth said. “Then you’ve got to consider the fact that our whole method of engagement is designed to level the commanders with the most authority. They put themselves in the middle of battle, collect cores from their underlings, and make sure they’ve got a chance to fight all the strong enemies that they think they stand a chance against.”

  “And don’t forget the infighting,” said Dazel.

  “Yeah, the infighting!” said Ashtoreth. “A lot of my people, devils especially, are generally conniving and treacherous. Our operations are affected by the fact that we need to keep ourselves guarded from the enemy within—which is just anyone beneath us who might want to take our spot. We can’t give them opportunities, see.”

  The room was filled with frantic scribbling as Matthews’ minions took notes.

  “I see,” Matthews said. “But I have to ask: if you know about these vulnerabilities, why haven’t they been fixed?” Matthews asked.

  “But then what would we exploit?” Ashtoreth said. “The fiends, I mean.”

  A look of surprise crossed Matthews’ face before he regained his normal composure. “I see.”

  “I make it sound pretty bad,” Ashtoreth said. “But don’t underestimate them, either. They’re still used to waging war with System-granted abilities. They know how to use teleportation networks and how to fortify positions using enchantments and auras much better than you do. They know how to use telepathy to relay orders, and how to interfere with enemy operations using illusions and disguises.”

  “Understood, Your Highness,” said Matthews. “It seems to me that what you’re saying here will necessitate a much longer conversation when we’ve got the time.”

  “Right you are, Sir Matthews!”

  “We’ll table that, then,” he said. “I need to know if you can help us make contact with the Eldunar Alliance.”

  Dazel let out a short, humorless laugh. General Matthews had named the alliance of realms that administered the easiest tutorials, the ones the children were usually sent to. Its governments were mostly elves, dwarves, and orcs.

  “Nope!” Ashtoreth said. “When Earth is close enough for one of us to warp there, you should probably send a human. They won’t want to talk to a Princess of Hell.”

  “I see.”

  “And when you do contact them, you should probably downplay how much I’ve helped,” she said. “At least at first.”

  “I see,” Matthews said, his tone a little more forlorn.

  Ashtoreth shrugged. “Sorry,” she said. “But even you probably want to get to a place where you don’t need to rely on me for help as quickly as possible, right?. For now, that means clearing the rest of the bastions.”

  Matthews regarded her for a moment, his expression changing as if he were reconsidering his opinion of her.

  “At some point, I am going to want to understand it,” he said. “Why you changed sides. What you get out of all of this. Somehow you went native before you even reached the planet you were supposed to conquer.”

  Ashtoreth flashed him what she hoped was a trustworthy smile. “Exactly,” she said. “Do you need to visit another country to fall in love with it through the internet? It’s like that movie Avatar, but you guys are the blue aliens who get shot at a lot.”

  “I… see,” said General Matthews. “Well, you’ve been a great help, Ashtoreth. If there’s nothing else, I’ll wish you luck on continuing your mission.”

  She grinned. “When you’re ready, I captured a bastion for humanity’s use.”

  “Captured?”

  “Sure,” she said. “You can use it, study it, blow it up—whatever you want. “I’ll fill you in through the telepathic bond while I’m in the field,” she said. “Until then, I’m here to help! So just let me know if there’s anyone you want murdered or anything you want completely destroyed.”

  “Uh… will do, Your Highness.”