Greed God chapter 207

April 8th 2016 Brightedge City, Grayson Pier, 2:00 PM EDT

Naturally,  we turned that fucking house upside down. With Cherry there to scour  the halls with her ghost powers, we even found a sizable chunk of hidden  compartments. Most of them seemed to have been made recently, but the  house had apparently had a few when they moved in too. Fucking Gotham.  Even after the merge this place was annoyingly dramatic in way too many  ways.

As expected, we found quite a bit of useful shit,  but sadly nothing super high tier. I guess it was too much to expect  them to cart around expensive magical artifacts. I really wished I could  have gotten my hands on that damn amulet, that thing had tanked my  brandy breath head on. It had to be at least C rank. Just thinking about  all those points made me want to punch a baby.

Looking at  the objects on the table in front of me though, I was happy to see I'd  gotten at least a few items of value. Mostly G rank stuff, but a few F's  and even one or two E ranked artifacts. Mostly stuff the vampires had  been carrying on them in the latter cases. I guess Mary had kitted out  her minions so they could cause more trouble.

[Appraisal  function activated. Treasure detected. Ravenscar binding- E rank.  Unleash the monster within. Hands restrained, heart unburdened. Power  ever soaring.]

I was getting better at figuring  these out. It took me a while to get the knack for it. The higher the  rank the more abstruse the description. This thing was a goth-y looking  straightjacket with silver buckles. Based on the description by wrapping  yourself in it you could get stronger, but the power came with a  berserking attribute. Plus...y'know, no hands. Regardless I wasn't  turning down free points. I checked the next one. An F rank umbrella.

[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Misty  Moon Watergleam Parasol- F rank. Gathering deception into physical  form. This powerful artifact can condense illusionary mist that only the  keenest eyes can pierce, as well as allow the wielder to dissolve into a  misty form themselves, hiding amongst the fog to appear and attack.]

That  one was impressive. I'd gotten enough of these little party favors to  bump myself up to five million two hundred fifty thousand exactly. That  would make things much easier to keep track of, but I stuffed them all  into my pouch when I saw Cherry hurrying over with a box of what looked  like old books. A quick appraisal told me what it was, and it was more  valuable to me than any of the high ranked objects lying around.

"I  found something." My ghost yelped excitedly. "This was in a hidden  bricked over room in the basement. Along with...frankly a whole shit ton  of dead bodies. I assume they were the early attempts at 'sacrifices'.  They have runes carved all over them, mostly variations of the same  thing. Looks like she was practicing. At least one of these books should  tell us what we need to know right?"

I grinned at her,  pulling her in for a rough kiss and a pinch on the ass. She squeaked but  beamed at me. She'd been sulky since I snapped at her about the  werewolves but this seemed to perk her up. I dropped down to start  skimming the books, and Barbie quickly appeared to help. My redhead  loved research. I opened the first book, scanning through it to  find...blood magic. Obviously. I'd have to give these to Strega to work  through later, for now I needed details on what she wanted from me.

Starting  with the first book I tried to sort out references to sacrifice. Pro  tip, sacrifice is not a viable search term for a blood magic grimoire.  Like half the fucking spells were sacrifices to something, and the rest  of them INVOLVED sacrifice to function. Which, admittedly made sense  since...blood magic.

There was a surprising amount of  variety. Curses, augmentations, constructs, transmutation, bindings, and  dozens more types of spells that would be useful but didn't tell me  jack shit. Eventually though, the answer came, not from me, but from a  softly gasping Barbie. I looked over at her quizzically and she held up  the book. "I figured out what she wants, and it isn't good."

She  cleared her throat. "And lo, when the heartland of darkness joins with  the shining city, the path will be revealed. Good intentions will pave  the path to hell, and unearth the dark mother, she who walked second,  and the blood of the beast will awaken her, and his power shall course  through her veins, and her rise shall be unstoppable. The sun will snuff  out, the waves will crack the shores, and eternal night will belong to  the dark children."

That was...huh. Not really ideal  sounding. "Prophecies really love those fucking run on sentences huh?" I  said dryly. Though inside I was kind of disturbed. This prophecy was  about me, and despite being written in a notebook, it didn't exactly  sound recent. Someone had predicted Brightedge, and the whole 'the blood  of the beast will awaken her' thing didn't sound like it would be fun  for me. "Any idea who this supposed Queen is? She who walked second?" I  had a dark mother, but this sounded like someone elses dark mother,  which honestly didn't seem fair. There should be a limit of one per  person.

Her pretty face was scrunched in worry. "Based on  this notebook...Lilith. The mother of vampires. She was Cain's wife and  the second ever turned. She's...OLD. Like truly mindboggling ancient.  There are references to her throughout these notes, Mary has been  looking for her a long time. Centuries. She's found traces of Lilith's  legend in Mesopotamia in 3000 BC or so. And she was already ancient by  that point. I think letting her wake up would be a bad thing for the  rest of us. Like really bad."

I agreed with her.  Considering Mary was a fucking C rank vampire at less than six hundred, I  wanted no fucking part of whatever vampire goddess creation myth queen  bitch she was trying to pop the top on. Especially not if she needed my  blood to awaken. The question was, why the fuck was the Fear host here?  How did he get mixed up in this? And how the hell had some prophet  predicted my merge of two cities that shouldn't have existed when they  made their stupid prophecy in the first place?

None of  this was lining up, and I refused to believe it was all some bullshit  coincidence. I tried to find some common thread here, some inciting  incident. Was it really merging Gotham and Metropolis? And if so,  exactly how long had they been waiting for that to happen? And had Mary  somehow gotten in contact with the Fear host or was it the other way  around.

I turned to Cherry.  "These practice sacrifices, I don't suppose they're next to some deep  hole in the ground with mysterious energy coming out of it, or better  yet a fancy magic sarcophagus that may or may not contain an unspeakable  evil? We could skip a lot of possible annoyance if I could just launch  Lilith's body into the sun or something. See how much good being a  vampire queen does her then."

Cherry  giggled at that. "Nope. Just a room full of mutilated bodies. They're  mostly intact, though I think some of them have been chewed on. Weirdly  the torture rack in the room is crazy well maintained. Like...every part  of it is buffed and shined to perfection. It looks old but they clearly  care for it a lot." She looked mystified by the fact, which I kind of  understood. It was a weird thing to focus on.

Looking  at Barbie, who was skimming the notebook again, I asked. "Any chance  there's a convenient map to Lilith in that thing? Or any more details  about what relation they have with the monster maker?" I was keeping the  systems to myself, but the monster maker being so active was easy  enough to explain away as random magic bullshit. It would be useful if  they had some info on him.

She  paged through the book, biting her lip. Barbie read almost as fast as I  did, and her memory was nuts, she scanner through the majority of it  while we'd been talking and after the last few pages snapped the book  shut with an annoyed frown. "Nothing recent. She mentions a monster  creator in Germany in the eighteenth century. His name was Victor.  Apparently he was pretty famous at the time, they even wrote a book..."  She froze. "Oh you have to be fucking kidding me."

I'd  caught where that was going too. Fucking Frankenstein had been a Fear  system host. I supposed that made sense, given Crassus had been pretty  famous for his greed. It gave me somewhere to look anyway. I gestured  for her to continue and as soon as she shook off her disbelief she did.  "Anyway, no. They don't know where Lilith is. In point of fact, they've  been out every night looking for her. She has all kinds of diagrams and  maps trying to use leylines and shit to locate her, but since the city  is completely different now she hasn't found shit."

I  snickered a bit at that. Good. "Well, then we need to find her first.  Does it give any clues about her possible location? Not a map or  anything but some kind of details about where she's being kept. Evil  castle, forbidden swamp, creepy underground crypt, fucking DAIRY QUEEN?  Literally anything would be useful." This city was bigger than Gotham  had been, and while I felt like we could use the map somehow, I doubted a  tracking spell would work. The vampires would have to be fucking idiots  not to have tried that.

Barbie  picked the notebook back up, paging through it to get to a certain  page, clearly trying to make sure she was getting it right. "It says  this isn't the first attempt to revive her. Her location was lost after  the last time they tried, but apparently they 'submerged her in the  water of life' to try to resurrect her. It says her very nature tainted  the waters, turning them foul and unclean, but her vampirism made the  power of regeneration in the pool even stronger. They couldn't get her  out though, you can only stay in there for a minute or so before you  fucking explode unless you're dead, and then you wake up crazy."

That...actually  sounded almost familiar. The revival not the pit. I'd have to ask  around, but I thought the Court might have some ideas of where to find  it. Their electrum was the same kind of weird shit. I sighed. "Alright.  Well looks like we've stripped the place bare. Better get going before  the vampires try to firebomb the house or something. It's what I would  do."

The rest  of them nodded and I followed behind them, covering the retreat since I  was the strongest person here. For now anyway. I really needed to get  around to kicking some of my girls up to D rank. Amy fell into step  beside me. She'd been giving Barbie and I space for our little research  party, but put her arm around my waist as she sidled up next to me. I  smirked at her. "You worried about me?"

She  nodded seriously. "Yes. Though not too much. You always pull through in  the end. We have a direction now, a goal. From what I've seen that's  when you do you best work." She smirked. "Well, that and in bed. But I  know a certain little redhead who won't be able to walk straight after  tonight, so one of those issues is solved. We can solve the other too." I  snickered and draped an arm over her shoulders. She was right. We'd  just take things as they came.