And away from all that spreading information, it has finally occurred to Aire to ask if anyone happens know how long it is until dawn. 

At which point she learns that dawn was hours ago.

Okay, she can still recover from this. She forms a plan. All it requires is that she be able to stumble off back to Christa and Annabelle's flat before too many more hours pass. She doesn't know precisely where she is, and ideally she would use Rele to transport her to an alley near to her destination, but she should be able to manage something similar herself with some illusion magic to ensure everyone just sees a nondescript young man walking down the street until she finds an opportune alleyway to emerge from in the guise of Christa.

Is Rele still off somewhere? Where did she go, anyway?

According to Jasmine, Rele went to go learn the names and faces of all the important people in Library Gemini.

Really though, Rele should've been back hours ago. It's a little strange that she's not.

That's concerning. Did killing that spy come back to bite Rele so soon?

Do they have any way to contact Rele, if needed?

(Aire herself isn't aware of an obvious method by which they could do that, but she's painfully poorly informed about an unfortunately large number of things.)

There's a signal they can raise.

Probably Aire doesn't have time to wait for Rele to see it, though?

They don't necessarily need Rele, though. The faithful stand ready to serve. (The ones who aren't still passed out in post-orgy comas, at least.)

Okay. Aire needs to be transported relatively quickly to somewhere near Christa's flat. She'll want Christa's body for this, the telepathy will be useful.

Her plan is to stumble off to Christa's flat from an alleyway not far from there, with an illusionary bruise on her head, claiming to have embarrassedly run off home early in the morning only to run into a mugger, foolishly resist, and be knocked unconscious. This will neatly explain why she wasn't at Alard's or Annabelle's. She can then use the trauma of this near-death experience to explain why she's leaving the city to go live with Christa's family. 

The primary restriction is that she needs to arrive back at Christa's flat before too long passes, or the lie will not be plausible. If necessary, she can simply wear an illusion and run in that direction, but ideally the cult will have a better option that that.

The cult does not have a better option than that.

Off she runs, disguised as a young man of average height, slight wealth, and in an evident hurry to be somewhere.

The trip back to Annabelle and Christa's flat is long enough for Aire to see the news about the Red Queen, but not long enough for anyone to happen to see through her disguise.

Aire arrives to an empty apartment, stuffy with mid-day heat. Her cover story proves unnecessary, at least to make it that far, since she's not challenged on the way there.

The apartment looks like someone broke in, actually. Or at least made a mess. It's not wrecked, but almost everything is at least a little out of place.

One of Christa's uniforms is missing from the wardrobe, but nothing else appears to have been stolen.

The Red Queen is a problem. Aire would like to be the one using pleasure to erase people's minds, not the one whose mind gets erased, thank you very much.

That assumes the Red Queen is even real, of course. Aire's heard these people's thoughts enough to know what ridiculousness they can believe. At times they seem almost completely untethered from reality. 

But it seems the rumors are mostly the same. Oh, there are differences, but as she passes through the crowds she thinks she can trace them around, see how things changed in the telling. The things people think are more similar to eachother surrounding certain locations, shifting slightly as she moves further away. And then shifting back towards similarity again. This idea spread quickly from a number of nuclei, she thinks. An initial informed group or organization, spreading it to others? And the tone of people's thoughts is different, somehow. It's not just a salacious rumor they're passing around, but many of them want to think it is. It's this that convinces her the rumors likely reflect something real.

The false rumors carry with them notes that the spreader wants them to be true, this carries notes suggesting the bearer wants the idea to be false.

The disarray in the flat reeks of another plotter's involvement. Is this what Rele was doing? Or is this the Lord-Commander's response to Rele's murder of the spy? The obvious first guess for who might have committed the murder is Christa, after all. Oh, she'd have to be hiding rather a lot. But, well, she is, and so are so many others in this city.

She pays careful attention to Christa's telepathic senses, and moves away from the doorway. In fact, why doesn't she position herself out of the view of all of the windows, as well. 

She puts together the incantation for a spell of Portal Magic to use to flee back to her cult's headquarters, ready to cast at a moment's notice.

And she inspects the alterations as close as she can. And look around for any suspicious droplets of fluid on the floors; Rele's host is constantly orgasming, and perhaps that would leave traces.

Telepathy does not reveal any concealed presences. Whatever happened here, it is not still happening.

On inspection it seems like a lot of things were handled and then put back in their approximate places. There are a couple of large boot-prints on the floor that don't match her or Annabelle, too. Men were here, and they weren't being subtle.

If Rele has been here, she was far more subtle than even that; there is no sign of her that Aire can find.

Aire is becoming increasingly concerned. What could have caused this? What explains it? What would she expect to have occurred given what she already knew before she walked into the flat?

It is not the obvious first thought that Annabelle just reported Christa missing. One of her uniforms has been taken. That was done deliberately, and nothing in Christa's memories suggests a reason they should have done that in the course of an investigation. Not and left the rest of them.

Well, she already thought Rele killing that spy was suggestive of far worse things than Christa's dalliance with Alard. Who is the obvious suspect, in that circumstance? Christa, of course. After learning that Alard was, apparently, secretly even to Alard of incredible importance to the Lord-Commander, she is entirely willing to believe he could come up with some clever scheme involving one of Christa's uniforms. Framing her of something, perhaps? Or simply "solidifying" his case that she killed his spy?

So, have the Lord-Commander's agents been to Christa's flat?

Are they, perhaps, still waiting nearby, patiently awaiting her potential return?

If so, they could very easily have seen her enter.

She needs to stop being in this flat as quickly as possible.

A portal forms in front of her and in the wall of her cult's secret sanctum. She steps through, and closes it behind her as quickly as she can.

Nothing unexpected has happened to the cult or the orgy sanctum in Aire's absence.

Rele still isn't back. No insight there.

What's going on. She needs to know.

She would already know if anything too large was occurring after her run through the city, but the news of the Red Queen has overtaken more moderate rumors.

Have the agents of the Lord-Commander of the dragoons been active? How would one tell? She suspects they'll be good at remaining mostly unseen, if they contend with the likes of Rele. Well, if there is some other explanation for the searched apartment, that would provide evidence against the Lord-Commander's involvement. Unless he was using that secondary explanation as cover.

But no, both mutually exclusive outcomes can't be evidence for the same conclusion. If no other explanation is evidence in favor of his involvement, another explanation must be evidence against. Weaker, though, due to the possible use of cover, but still against, and not for.

She doesn't know how she knows that, but she does.

If Christa is a fugitive, she wants to know. Christa's still locked in a half-asleep fugue state. Aire hasn't even explained the situation with the Black Eyes to her. No, when she woke up Aire just went over and fucked her back into unconsciousness. When she wakes Aire wants to have a full explanation ready.

She retrieves Jasmine, woken in her last rush to figure out the best way to get to Christa's flat. Who among her cultists would be best chosen to head out into the city and determine facts like that?

Rele, first and foremost. She is not here, but Aire should know the correct balance of capabilities, here.

Aire herself with Christa would be the next best option. But her safety is paramount, and she must not be risked, not while they do not even know the state of things.

Beyond that, they have a number of members of the cult who maintain completely blemish-free presences in society. Many of them are relatively well-placed. There are of course the younger members, present in Library Gemini. There are others who serve as minor figures in various organizations, including those which would be tasked with disseminating information about a fugitive, or investigating a person's disappearance. They are not here now, it being the time of day where they must be present at their occupations, but other members of the cult could depart to discuss the matter with them.

Would Aire like them to do this?

Aire would. 

And while she waits for them to report back, she can take a bit of time to drive Christa a little further into pleasurable euphoria. Buy herself a bit more time before Christa surfaces fully and thinks to wonder what's going on. 

The fact that it will be an intensely pleasurable and satisfying experience for Aire is perhaps also a weight on the scales of her decision-making. 

She slowly blinks herself awake. Huh. She had a really weird dream where she was in a room full of women having sex with each other and one of the women was Aire and then Aire fucked her so good. Wait, is she still in that room?

Lick.

Ooh, that feels nice.

She looks down. One of the lesbian dancers has her mouth around Christa's cockhead. That's odd. What's. What's going on? Where is she?

Lick. 

The dancer's tongue swirls.

Oh, that's so distracting. She can worry about where she is after she gets off. She'll be less distracted then. 

Lick.

Christa's awareness narrows down to those eyes, those lips, that tongue.

Lick. 

And then Christa's head falls back and her tongue lolls out of her mouth and she cums. Her hips rise up of their own will and she spurts down the dancer's throat. She finds herself compulsively thrusting with each spurt.

A minute later, after her orgasm finally finishes, the dancer lifts her mouth off of Christa's cock, pulls back, and begins to dance. Hips sway from side to side, breasts jiggling. She pivots, and then Christa is staring at her swaying ass instead of her tits. She can tell that there's a lot of other people in the room, see them out of the corner of her eye, but she can't take her attention off the dancer. She faintly notices someone's face moving towards her lap. But she can't look away. And soon enough she's forgotten about that entirely.

As she stares, she feels each movement of the dancer's hips like a tongue on her cock. And then like lots of tongues on her cock. And when she cums this time it just keeps going, longer and longer and longer. Her thoughts dwindle with each spurt as her mind is pulled under a blanket of pleasure, and eventually she drifts off into something like sleep.

And that's Christa taken care of for the next several hours. 

And that's enough time for one of the younger members of the cult to have returned from a half-day at Library Gemini, and another to report on information they received from a short conversation with someone who cooks for the inquisitors. 

What information did these two discover?

The Lord-Commander's son fed a girl to his dragon!!!!

The Lord-Commander has a son? Yes! Didn't you hear? Some long-lost lovechild from his Captain days. Seriously? Who knew about this? Everyone! Obviously not!

The young man is in the cells right now. The inquisitors apparently found evidence proving some girl got fed to his dragon, no fooling! Boy the Lord-Commander must be furious! At who? Yes.

Apparently, Lord-Commander Drystan has a son, Alard Drystan. This was already known to the cult, but now it is known to society at large. That is because this son has been accused of murdering Christa through the method of feeding her to his dragon. And the cultist who prepares meals at one of the inquisitors' compounds specifically reports, through the cultist now reporting to Aire, that she overheard two inquisitors mentioning apparently conclusive evidence, although not exactly what that evidence was.

Alard has already been arrested.

Well. That's not what she expected. 

Did the Lord-Commander set that up? Why? In what sense is that the obvious next move against a Christa capable of assassinating spies? Perhaps he wants to be well-positioned to dispose of her afterward, since she's already "dead"? But that risks Christa reappearing and puncturing the whole idea. Does he have some way to prevent that? Or did Rele simply forget to retrieve Christa's uniform? But no, a uniform was missing from Christa's flat. That is most likely the evidence the inquisitors found so conclusive, she thinks. So it is a deliberate forgery, rather than a mistake. Could the idea be to respond to Christa's potential reappearance by accusing her of setting up a forgery to get Alard falsely convicted? Perhaps Alard has been detained because the cells are safer from outside threat, and that is the plan.

Either way, if the Lord-Commander was not already her enemy, he is now. Either this is his first move in what is most likely a sequence of them, or Rele did this and was then caught before she could report back. If that is the case, the Lord-Commander's first move should come soon. 

She already nearly fell victim to the way he hid his own investment in Alard, he is not an enemy she wants aware of her.

It all hinges on whether Rele did this, or the Lord-Commander did. If it was Rele, Aire can arrange to frame someone else for the framing. If it was the Lord-Commander, perhaps the wisest move is to flee. Or at least swap with her secondary body so Christa isn't at risk.

Aire does not think Rele will break to torture, and her mental shields seemed strong, although her ability to discern things like that was restricted by Christa's relatively low telepathic strength.

What would explain Rele's absence beyond the Lord-Commander's agents capturing her? She assumed that was the case, but on closer mental inspection there could very easily be other causes. What did they say she was doing again? Investigating Library Gemini? Who there would even be capable of it?

Lavich.

But that only makes sense if Rele had not been in the environs of Library Gemini within the time since Lavich began teaching there. Or else any confrontation would have happened long before now, as Rele overheard the thoughts of those Lavich was indiscreet with and decided to investigate something far more dangerous than she was. But if Rele had been near Library Gemini recently, she wouldn't have to learn the names and faces of the important figures there. So she hasn't.

Well, there's her main other option, then. But which is more likely?

Wrong question. She can get more information, she doesn't need to spend a bunch of time agonizing over which option is likelier. At this time of day, she expects Lavich should be in and around her studio. If she's not, that's suggestive. She can send one of the dancers off to check. 

And off goes a cultist! She's one of the ones with mental shields. She can walk by Lavich's studio and see if it's in use.

Is it?

Indeed it is.

It's late enough that about half the stealthcraft students have already left, while the remainder gather around an illusion of military palace grounds. A tiny illusory dragon flies around and dives at a little figure in the diorama. Lavich is standing back and letting them chat about it.

She notices their guest, and catches eyes with the passing dancer.

She breaks the eye contact quickly, not stopping her walk as she passes by.

She doesn't know why Mistress sent her off, but her instructions were clear. Walk by, look in as though your eyes are wandering, and keep going. Her only object is to see if Lavich is in the room. 

She has accomplished this.

If not interrupted, she'll make her way back to her flat, where a portal will open in the wall fifteen minutes from now.

This portal will not, of course, open directly to the cult's headquarters. No, it will open to the basement of another cultist's home a distance away, where Aire will be waiting. It is from there that Aire and the dancer will portal back to the cult's headquarters. In fact, Aire intents to, herself, travel from the cult's sanctum to the basement in question by portal, bare moments before she opens the portal from there to the dancer's flat.

When the portal in the dancer's flat opens it will not be facing Aire, but Aire will have view of the opening through the use of a hand mirror "conveniently" placed propped up on a table against the wall. And she will be able to sense any approaching minds through the use of Christa's telepathy. If there are two or more in the cultist's flat, the portal will snap shut as quickly as it opened.

Arranging this took a bit of time and quite a few orgasms from Christa to power all her portals. She was guided up to the cult's high lookout and had the dancer's flat and a convenient cultist-owned house pointed out to her. After that, a number of uses of [Warp] and [Skim], followed moments later by [Bore] allowed her to work her way though through the series of portals she would take later under less time pressure. Sanctum to basement, and then basement to the dancer's flat, and afterwards basement to sanctum. Her skim moved from three different starting points to three separate locations, one after the other. And then she decided to simply go over every possible combination of these three locations. If she's done it once, in the future she should be able to do it much quicker, and who knows when that might prove to be valuable? So three more initial starting points for six routes in total between three locations.

Her time viewing the city from up high in the light of day should also allow her to more quickly portal between streets and perhaps even buildings within Arcadia in the future. If she knows in advance approximately where to put the other end of a topological anomaly created by [Warp], she can use an application of [Skim] to get it there quickly and without much fumbling.

No one is in the cultist's flat who shouldn't be.

It doesn't look like the dancer was followed.