Editing Autia (section)

====Excerpt from Magical Beasts and Where to Kill Them, By Magnolia Keeling: Chapter 14: The One Where I Finish That Bitch Victoria====

Like all great heroines, I had a rival, several actually, but this one was the most annoying.

Lady Victoria Swann of the Eastwood Swanns was the heir of a minor Alkorian noble family (one of the newer ones, which is why she doesn't look like the offspring of a hairless pug and a featherless ostrich). She was a treasure hunter, monster slayer, bounty hunter, mercenary, celebrity writer, and occasional operative for Alkorian Intelligence, Order of the Black Hourglass, Alkor Demonology Museum, Alkorian Research Council on the Occult, The Royal Privy Council, and/or the Church of Shomdar. So basically just like me except with significantly more resources at her disposal, and willing to sometimes work for her government at discount rates. Also, she was six years older than me, so everyone assumed she was my role model. Which was extremely annoying. Also annoying was the fact that:
- She was a massive prude, and strongly disapproved of my choice of attire, even when (especially when) we found ourselves in situations where she herself had to lose a few layers of clothes, like in Chapter 5 where we had to slip into an orgy den via some poorly maintained steam tunnels, or Chapter 12 where we spent a week travelling through the jungles of Nantel. I imagine this is why we came up with similar plans for disposing of each other in this Chapter.
- In her own memoirs, released before mine, she refers to me as a slut, whore, harlot, etc. at least once in every paragraph in which I am mentioned, about (exactly) 1,487 times in her book in fact.
- She is a backstabbing cunt (see Chapters 5, 7, 8, 11, and 12). But she crossed a line in Nantel when she stomped my fingers when I was dangling over that precipice. Stupid urn wasn't even worth that much money.
- She solved most of her problems with money, hired muscle, or calling in government favors. Why steal good contracts from hardworking individuals like myself when you don't even breakeven most of the time?

And yes, I am aware I have already described extensively how much I didn't like her in several other Chapters.

Sue me.

Besides, I am pretty sure half of you will skip straight to this Chapter anyways, assuming you didn't stop to "enjoy" Chapter 5 for a while first.

Anyways, so needless to say it was a bit strange that I found myself sipping tea at her mansion in Alkor. She had sent me a letter several weeks earlier asking for my help in dealing with a mutual problem in Central Lapus. Which is of course a reference to that time we teamed up to steal a shit ton of gold from a certain Lepre Khan warlord named McMiddis (see Chapter 8). I, of course, had also received a letter from McMiddis, so I was fairly confident I knew what both of them were up to, but I will admit, it was a bit nerve-wracking entering her lair. Who knows, she had been smarter, she probably could have arranged for me to be petrified or transmuted then and there. But she always liked convoluted plots, and was probably too much of a prude to have a naked statue in her house anyways, even temporarily.

In order to save time, we agreed to take a magic portal to Lindgrub. The portal mage was a reliable, if extremely expensive fellow, far beyond my normal budget for travel expenses, but Victoria was paying, so why not. Victoria knew another mage in Lindgrub who could get word to the portal mage when we were ready to come back.

Lindgrub is a rather desolate nation of rocky foothills and grasslands on the eastern coast of Lapus. A former Alkorian colony, it rebelled with the help of the Lepre Khans, and has been independant ever since. The locals have close ties with the Lepre Khans, including some cross-breeding, which probably accounts for their short height, annoying accents, and whimsical nature. Much like my kinfolk in Napan, or those in Hoogivs, Falconhead, Hagarta, the Tavern Woods, and other places where ties between the spirit world and this world are strong, folk tend to get a bit strange.

The inhabitants of Lindgrubish town of Potato Creek, where the portal mage dropped us off, are an irritating bunch, never really seem to talk about anything other than potatoes and that poorly fermented beer they like. No idea why they never learned how to make decent potato vodka like my mentors in Hagarta. They don't like Alkorians though, so they aren't that bad. It was fun listening to Victoria put on a fake Union accent when dealing with the locals while trying to make contact with the mage who would send the message to the portal mage to come pick us up for the return trip.

From there, the portal mage brought us as close as he could get to McMiddis's fortress without the fey nature of the area messing with his magic. I didn't mind walking the rest of the way though, the Lepre Khan Hills are impressive in their windswept emptiness, just endless hills with the occasional ruin or creek to mix things up. It reminded me a bit of the Hagarta valleys.

Depending on your viewpoint on these things, Lepre Khans (also known as Leprechauns, Lepres, etc.) are either spirit folk or fey. Strange, mischievous folk, they are mostly found in the central mountains of the continent of Lapus, but can show up anywhere where the boundaries between worlds is thin. Like most fey, they have an odd form of magic unique to their race that makes sense only to them. Most of them are fairly weak magic users, but some are frightfully powerful. Among their tricks are enchantments (particularly persistent illusions and behavior alteration, but sometimes mind controlling geas), the ability to make items disappear and reappear, and most importantly, the ability to conjure up gold coins from nowhere. You never know how things will go when you encounter lepre khans, one day one may give you an extremely generous amount of gold to see your "ladies" or borrow a sheep for "reasons", the next day, one will make your clothes disappear, and cause all your farm animals to suddenly become extremely amorous. Note, lepre khans are extremely greedy despite how easily many can conjure up gold coins, and any coins they give you will probably disappear after a few days, as they were either illusions, or got stolen back.

McMiddis is a eccentric even by fey standards. Despite being highly proficient in both conjuring gold and turning pretty much any object into gold, he is obsessed with acquiring as much gold as possible. Beneath the ruined castle in which he makes his home, a massive gold mine is worked by slaves under the power of various geas. Probably a fetish thing.

Definitely a fetish thing is his love of turning attractive young women into statues of pure gold. He claims all of them are thieves, but I doubt there is that many attractive thieves in this corner of the world (myself and Victoria excluded obviously). Probably just slaves that he got bored with.

In theory, my agreement with Victoria was to team up and kill McMiddis. As much as I hate to admit it, Victoria was a capable combatant, and the two of us shot, stabbed, and burned our way through the token resistance in the castle as we headed to the throne room (luckily Victoria didn't notice I wasn't carrying any of my usual combat gear, and was using cheap replacements instead). McMiddis is an immensely powerful magic user, and I am sure fully intended to take care of us himself, but appearances had to be maintained apparently. Maybe by forcing us to kill some of his servants, and by providing us with plenty of opportunities to help ourselves to some of the endless piles of gold coins and trinkets that covered every flat surface, including the floor in most places, he could add a bit to his own reputation when he stopped us himself.

Sure enough, we eventually ended up in McMiddis's throne room, where McMiddis sat in the middle of a large room filled with massive piles of treasure. Such was his love of gold, that he had even started replacing parts of his own body with gold (not sure about his schlong, but won't be surprised).

First McMiddis used his magic to create gates of pure gold across all doors and windows.

Then he called some of his inner circle to come out of their hiding places to witness his genius.

Then came the long winded monologue where McMiddis laid out his cunning plan, and myself and Victoria pretended to be surprised, and McMiddis pretended not to notice us pretending.

And then things got interesting...

First McMiddis hit us with a powerful wave of magic that caused all visible objects on our persons to disappear. Then a second wave to remove any remaining objects and clothing.

I had expected this, but managed to pretend to be suitably cowed. Victoria was genuinely upset though, prude that she was. Her plan had relied on some extremely expensive runes of protection woven into her clothing protecting her from McMiddis's magic. Unfortunately for her, the runes didn't work quite as well as expected since I had managed to slip a small but powerful disruption rune into one of her pockets during the confusion of one of the earlier skirmishes.

As I had hoped, as the third wave of magic hit, the one that was supposed to turn us both into gold statues, Victoria panicked and tried to pointlessly preserve her modesty, while I adopted a bold stance, and made a rude gesture. In case things didn't work out, I wanted my statue to at least look suitably awesome.

But I didn't get turned, though as planned, Victoria did.

Step 1 = Complete.

Gloating would have to wait though, in her case at least.

I gleefully informed McMiddis that the reason his magic didn't work is because we were related, so his magic couldn't directly harm me as per the strange rules of Lepre Khan magic.
I did a bit of research into my family tree, and it turns out McMiddis is my great grandfather, and at some point in his youth, slept with my great grandmother (the giant magic carp). Fish, even magic spirit animal fish, have lots of eggs, so I have a lot of relatives on that side of the family I don't know about. It was in fact for this reason I targeted McMiddis's fortress for theft all those years ago, though at the time I had been unwilling to try going toe to toe with McMiddis himself.

Anyways, McMiddis got hopping mad (literally), and gave a long winded rant about how my great grandmother lied about using contraceptives. Or at least that is what I thought he said. Something about "lion 'arlot" and "said she pud a pod on 'er potaters" and "taw-zines of wee liddle taters".

At some point though he realized this restriction doesn't apply to any henchmen not related to him, so ordered some lepre-khans to kill me while I was standing around empty handed in my birthday suit.

So step two of my plan involved exploiting the other big blind spot in lepre-khan magic, its inability to harm servants of Deadicorn.
Apparently Deadicorn has some ancient ties to the lepre-khan race, something about rainbows and pots of gold. I wasn't really able to understand it despite weeks of research, but basically not only can't they harm servants of Deadicorn, but their magic doesn't work nearby such servants.

Mindful of the fact I am in the presence of a (distant) family member, I turn sideways, then [CENSORED FOR LEWDNESS].

I quickly activate the runes on the still damp unicorn statuette, summoning a unicorn, one of the feared servants of Deadicorn.

I then hop on it, and blast my way out of the castle with its flaming breath and incinerating rainbow blasts of jizz, grabbing a large sack of gold on the way out.

Unfortunately, I couldn't bring Victoria's statue with me at the time, though I did retrieve it decades later (see Chapter 34), and converted it into a water fountain at my Westphallica villa for several years before events intervened. Likewise, though I probably could have had the unicorn kill McMiddis, Napanese culture frowns on kin-slaying, and besides, someone needed to keep an eye on Victoria's statue until I found the time to retrieve it. He tried to assassinate me several times after that, but we eventually became great friends.

After much bloodshed, I left the Lepre-Khan Mountains, and made my way to Potato Creek with a stolen potato cart, and some stolen clothes (made of poorly processed wool infested with fleas, not recommended for sensitive skin).

This is where step three of the plan comes into play. I summoned a succubus "friend" (bound captive really, it was Nala from back in Chapter 5). I had Nala transform into Victoria, made contact with Victoria's mage friend to get the portal mage to come pick us up (luckily Victoria paid the return trip in advance), then with "Victoria"'s assistance, I smuggled out a ton of high value goods out of Victoria's mansion, including several pieces she stole from me on past adventures. Then I had "Victoria" [CENSORED FOR EXTREME LEWDNESS] and [CENSORED FOR EXTREME LEWDNESS] for several days, then [CENSORED FOR EXTREME LEWDNESS] which resulted in her family quietly sending her to an asylum, from which she of course escaped and was never seen again. This kept her buddies in the Alkorian government from figuring out what happened to her for many years, and by the time they worked it out, no one really cared anymore.

Long story short, I defeated a rival, humbled a powerful relative, and acquired a great deal of wealth, not bad for a three day adventure.