Sell you a Bridge chapter 348

July 4th 2016 Quadratum, 8:00 PM EDT

"So."  I said slowly. "I can't decide if not checking here first was  ridiculous, or just common sense. Because...that." I gestured broadly to  the absolutely humongous gothic castle slapped down in the middle of  this otherwise totally modern city. A castle I really didn't want to go  into because the aura around it was not only equally massive, but also  sentient and super fucking hostile.

"That...Wasn't there  before." Said Mickey uncertainly. "I came this way during my earlier  searches, and even though I didn't enter this section of the city I  definitely would have noticed something like that." Zee had already  started working on the ritual diagrams for my implant, but since the  thing was more than a bit complex and she didn't have Master Yen Sid or  the others to help it was going to take her a while. In the meantime  we'd come to investigate the last area in town and found...this.

"Well,  I have good news and bad news then." I replied cheerfully. "The good  news is that I'm ninety percent sure Riku and Kairi are both inside that  place. The BAD news is that I don't think this could be any more  obviously a trap if they'd rented out a billboard and posted a  disclaimed in neon lights." What's more, despite not knowing who was in  there exactly, I knew WHAT was in there. That castle had the same dark  abysmal aura that the Devestator and the Drowned had. Weirdly, the EXACT  same. If it wasn't fucking stupid to think it, I'd assume that the  thing was a version of Batman itself.

Then again, it was  sentient, so what the fuck did I know? Still, this was...worrying.  Barbatos had come up against me a few times now, through his minions. He  probably had a decent understanding of what I could do. The Devastator  hadn't returned from fighting me, so the details of my Domain might  still be secret, but I had to imagine that he'd made some fairly  terrifying preparations in there.

That said, I NEEDED the  other two wielders. I couldn't just leave them. I frowned at the castle,  then grinned widely as I got a devious idea. Closing my eyes, I reached  out to conjure a series of clones. Ten clones, as a matter of fact. One  for each of us. As they manifested, I reached out with my Deception  abilities and TWISTED. My clones were meant to decieve to begin with,  illusionary replicas of ectoplasm with almost no substance and warping  them into a different form was almost too easy.

As the  appeared, rather than me, there were perfect copies of my entire team.  The clones were outstanding. The art of disguise was the purview of  Deception, and as I became more and more adept at my powers and using my  Domain, I found that I was gaining a greater and greater understanding  of the aspect of reality I would someday govern. Lies in others became  easier to detect, and lies of my own easier to conceal. These clones  were basically flawless, and would be extremely convincing.

Which  is why I got annoyed when Sora started poking his with his keyblade.  "Whoa." Said the brown haired keyblade wielder. "That's wild. It looks  just like me." He dismissed his keyblade and started making faces at it,  sticking out his tongue and tugging on his cheeks. Rana giggled at his  antics, but I just sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. This damn  kid.

"Sora." I snapped. He jumped and turned to look at me  guiltily. "Please don't mock your doppleganger. It's ridiculous." I  looked at the others. "Now, since whoever is in there went to all the  trouble of setting a trap, it would be rude not to spring it. Zee,  Mickey, can you guys put some shields on these? They're  indistinguishable from the lot of us, but they're also basically soap  bubbles at our current level."

My clones weren't meant for  combat in the first place. I used them for recon and infiltration. If  we wanted them to trip the defenses that were waiting inside they needed  to be sturdy enough to manage it without dissolving like sugar in hot  tea. The only shields I knew were too big and obvious to be viable.

Zee's  eyes lit up. "Oooh, that's genius. I've been working on a few new  defensive wards actually. I've been studying the magic patterns in your  armor while you sleep." I gave her a strange look and she just shrugged.  "I wake up to get a drink or a snack at night sometimes, and you're  right there anyway. Point is, I've been working on merging the void  theory I learned from the grimoire with the defensive magics in your  armor. Watch." She looked at Mickey. "You sit tight your majesty. I've  got this."

She turned to the clones, closing her eyes, and  began to chant. I watched in my aura sight and was blown away. The  spell she was using was...amazing. It reminded me of the massive void  construct I'd used during the assault on Infinity Island, except instead  of a weapon, it was armor.

I could see that Zee wasn't  anywhere near the level of being able to create magical defenses at the  level of my armor, specifically because the size of the spellwork she  was engraving on the void was massive. She had to craft huge spell  arrays to attain the same level of defense that the literally invisible  magic on my armor could boast, but I could see that she'd put an absurd  amount of work into creating the structures.

While they  were much larger than a normal spell construct, the building sized spell  construct was in the void, and because of that it was both real and  unreal at the same time. As I watched, she completed her armor construct  and then condensed the space to create an overlapping state on top of  the clone she was working on. By taking advantage of the spatial warping  of the void, Zee had effectively created a super large spell and shrunk  it down to person size.

The spellwork was so densely  packed on the defensive structure that I had to turn my aura sight off,  because I couldn't see the form under the light of the tightly  interwoven magic. Zee was swaying and panting by the time she finished,  and I realized she'd mobilized both her keyblade and her bloodline to  effectively engrave that energy on the void, since she lacked my natural  interface with that side of reality through my Hole bloodline.

After  she rested a bit she went ahead and did the next one, slowly condensing  the armor onto each clone. As she did, I used some of the tricks I'd  picked up watching Tommy to keep anyone from picking up her workings,  with a bit of help from Mickey and his concealment magic. Master Yen Sid  really taught him well, his casting was extremely intricate.

Within  an hour or so she was done, and I let her rest while I asked Mickey  about a spell to help us keep track of the clones. "Can you do some kind  of remote viewing for us? I need to see what they're doing for this to  be effective. Sadly even with those defenses I'm positive they won't  soak up all the damage themselves, I need to know whats in there so we  can figure out how long they last."

The plan wasn't just  to blindly let them wander in and die, the plan was to let them blindly  wander in and die while we snuck in the back. I'd been scanning the  nearby area with my aura sight on multiple levels, and managed to  isolate a spot that wasn't protected in the void. I could use my shadow  porting to slip us all through unnoticed, but if we went in while they  were still waiting chances were good they would just post up near the  cells to watch for us.

This way they had something to  focus on, but I was going to need to know when the clones popped because  they would realize what was happening and book it for the prisoners  immediately. I really wished I could send one of my clones in to scout,  but without my main body or a connection to my Domain they couldm't use  my powers well enough to conceal themselves.

When he  indicated that he could, he and Donald laid down a working that created a  weird sort of screen in the upper right corner of my vision. I popped  some NZT just to be sure I was running at peak efficiency, and then  gesture for the others to gather together. Then I sent the clones right  in through the front door and started a long cast shadow port.

Like  I'd learned when I was younger, long casting let me keep the power  consumption down, but it ALSO let me fine tune the spell, I was able to  maneuver us through the void in this form by tapping into my bloodline.  It was much slower than the corridors sadly, but that was still pretty  damn fast, just not instant.

As we manifested inside, it  was my turn to stagger. Sora and Roxas caught me, each under one arm,  and I nodded tiredly to them. With my vitality I'd recover in a few  seconds. Even with my advancement in power my head was starting to hurt  from all the subtle manipulation of my power, but I blocked it out.  Tommy was right about delicacy and offsetting the burden. Brute forcing  this would never have been possible, but a few tricks to suspend  disbelief made the lies flow smoothly.

Inside the castle, I  finally caught my breath and looked around. "Alright." I said quietly.  "I have the power to keep us from being noticed externally, but keeping  this shitty living castle from seeing us and preventing scrying is the  best I've got, which means if we run into someone directly, we can only  fight it out."

"Living castle?" Asked Rana, disturbed. She  looked at the walls with an expression of disgust, which to be fair I  totally got, and stepped toward the middle of the hall.

I  nodded. "Yup. Pretty sure it used to be Batman. Fits the theme B-guy  insists on using." As I watched the clones enter the front hall out of  the corner of my eye, I was relieved we'd taken this route as a MASSIVE  spell formation snapped into place around them, freezing them in place  as a tall, rangy figure with bleached skin and a crazy grin stepped out,  laughing maniacally.

The reason there was a fucking  bat-joker currently monologueing to my clone was something best left  until later, at least it bought us time. "Namine." I said quickly. "We  need your connection to Kairi, I can't track in here unless we stumble  on her trail, and even then it might be tough given the messy aura  signature."

She nodded. "I've got it. She's that way." She  pointed down and to the left of us. "We're close enough that our  connection is pulling on me." Good, I'd been hoping that would happen.

"Let's  go then." I said firmly. "We've got team members to rescue, and then  we're getting the fuck out of dodge before this trap realizes it closed  around the wrong prey." We set off at speed, following Namine's bond  with Kairi. I was pretty sure even without the bat-joker noticing us  right away or the castle figuring us out we had plenty to deal with in  here.

There would be other things in the dungeons. Even if  they thought we were caught, it would be stupid to leave the keyblade  wielders without guards. I just hoped we could take them out without me  needing to let my defenses slip, or we were going to have a bad time.  Finally, we reached....a clock. Because of fucking course the bat castle  would put its dungeon where the Batcave normally was. Finding the  normal button on the bust I opened it. I was really starting to hate  that staircase.