Well. That rather settles things, doesn't it?

What is Rele's opinion of Aire's plan?

Rele thinks its well-prioritized but dangerously ambitious. The danger can be mitigated, however, and the priorities upheld.

Rele has no objections in principle and is ready to carry out Aire's will.

There are additional details that shouldn't be discussed with those without Rele's strong mental shields. Parts of the plan, and more importantly additional pieces of information that make those parts viable. Beyond ordinary paranoia, there is now the possibility of the Red Queen suborning a member of the cult. Hopefully she will be stopped before her forces are knocking at the gates of Arcadia, but if not, it would be better for certain abilities of Aire's not to spread.

Aire has an additional body. It is several hundred miles from this location, safe, and well-hidden. In the event that this body dies, she will simply make a new one. This is important context for why the next part of Aire's plan is not rank foolishness.

Aire plans to impersonate Living Clothing serving the Red Queen and "fail" to take control over an individual to sell the idea that the Red Queen's agents are already active in the city. Ideally, they will gather more information first, and Aire can "fail" to take control of someone who would be well-placed to cause conflict between the Lord-Commander and someone else of importance by "discovering" that some organization or individual had framed Alard for Christa's death. Aire's "failed" attempt to gain control over this individual can then include a supposed attempt to puppet them to lie about having discovered damning information about whoever they end up deciding the Red Queen's agents should be trying to frame.

There are, quite obviously, a number of holes still to be filled in. That said, is Rele opposed to what Aire has laid out here?

Violence to Aire's person is not the only danger.

But no, Rele is not opposed to this plan.

An obvious candidate for someone else of importance to pit the Lord-Commander against, is the High Inquisitor. Perhaps too obvious. The Lord-Commander and the High Inquisitor plotting against each other is more cliché than reality. If the actual Red Queen actually tried that, it would be doomed to failure.

To be entirely clear, and not risk miscommunication, Aire's goal with this plot is primarily to control the Lord-Commander's state of information. When Rele was forced to kill the Lord-Commander's spy, the obvious guess for the culprit of the murder was Christa. This was cemented when she vanished and Alard was framed for her murder the next day. The Lord-Commander certainly knows that Alard is not the type to feed a girl to his dragon. To the Lord-Commander, this will look like a relatively well-informed person deliberately moving against him by disabling one of his pawns. All of that suggests Christa had some rather interesting secrets, and was not who she appeared. This is, unfortunately, true, and very much not something they want the Lord-Commander investigating, lest his investigations lead him straight to Aire. Or at the very least to deducing that something took Christa's place after her return from her most recent trip. Aire is safest if nobody outside the Black Eyes even suspects she might exist. 

The result that the Lord-Commander ends up pointed at the Red Queen was, initially, a happy accident; she doesn't know who she'd have chosen, if the news of the Red Queen hadn't rolled in that day, but she would have picked some group or another. The goal, when forming the plan, was simply to ensure that Lord-Commander Drystan would not continue investigating Christa in too much depth. If he thinks he has already solved the mysteries involved, he is less likely to keep investigating. The importance of that changed drastically when Christa's astrology responses came through and they learned that opposing the Red Queen is their holy mission, but it was not, initially, the primary goal.

Hmm. Perhaps even attempting to pin things on the Lord Inquisitor would not ring too false, as the culprits of the plot are supposedly relatively new fresh from the Pink, and so plausibly working on cliches themselves. But no, that's an option of last resort, better to have something that doesn't rely on the supposed Red Queen agents being incompetent.

Are there figures in the hierarchy of the Dragoons who would benefit from scandal falling on the Lord-Commander? Someone nearly well-positioned enough to make a bid for the position, but held back by the Lord-Commander's good reputation? This would not be enough on its own to change that, she thinks, but it could plausibly be the first step in a longer plan with those aims in mind.

There isn't anyone within the hierarchy of the Dragoons, no. No one obvious, anyway.

However.

There is the Veterinarian-General. The Lord-Commander's left hand, and, it is rumored, his jilted lover.

Well, she seems the obvious target to beat, then. What else is known about this woman? She would also appreciate some information about the position of Veterinarian-General, and how precisely that caches out in terms of power within the organization, if Rele knows.

The Veterinarian-General attained her position through sheer incomparable competence at medical care for dragons as well as breeding dragons for desired traits. Most dragon breeding efforts are multi-generational affairs for the handlers, but her claim to fame is finishing not one but two of those multi-generational projects in a single decade.

The timeline for one of those projects producing Yui, Alard's dragon, lines up perfectly, but it is not known if that is a coincidence. After all, once a novel trait is bred into one dragon, fleshcrafters can copy it onto others.

Her power within the organization is mostly the soft power of having the Lord-Commander's ear as well as knowing more about each dragon ridden by a Dragoon than most of those selfsame Dragoons. She knows all the dragons, and all the dragons know her.

Hmm. Whether or not she's actually a jilted ex-lover, she seems like an obvious choice to frame for the Red Queen's agents. Solid enough that there would be a genuine prospect of the framing doing damage, while not requiring them to be implausibly well-informed.

The next thing to do, then, is decide who the Red Queen's agents would attempt to control to sell the idea. There's the option of someone in the inquisitors, but perhaps the best choice would be the Veterinarian-General herself. No, that runs the risk of causing questions about why they didn't do that before risking putting people on high alert with the framing of Alard. They can try and "fail" to control an inquisitor who was involved in investigating Alard, thus alerting the city to the idea that the Red Queen's agents are present at all and hopefully causing the Lord-Commander to make the obvious extrapolations. From there, if that doesn't cause the results they desire, or perhaps even if it does, they can have the hypothetical Red Queen agents try to recover by forcing the matter and attempting to control the Veterinarian-General personally.

It's always better to have fallback options.

Rele is silent. Aire is doing a lot of talking and talking here in the sanctum is safe no matter what she says.

There's a few murmurs of confusion among Jasmine's support harem.

"Why not the Veterinarian-General?" Jasmine asks curiously. "That seems to fit the narrative you're constructing much better than some random inquisitor. Having the Veterinarian-General 'resist' your control would also be more believable. People expect greatness from the famed."

"So, your point on the Veterinarian-General being expected to resist control is correct and important, and a strong argument in favor of targeting her. But, when I first decided going for the Veterinarian-General now would not be what actual Red Queen agents would try to do, it was because I was trying to think about what I would do, if I arrived in the city at the head of a small cell of Red Queen agents and had the power to control important figures with Living Clothing. I don't think I'd frame Alard and then grab hold of the Veterinarian-General. Framing Alard risks alerting the Dragoons that someone is moving against them, and so possibly makes the Veterinarian-General more difficult to suborn. Instead, I'd grab hold of her immediately, and perform any further scheming with the additional resource of the Veterinarian-General under my command.  That feels like the order of operations more likely to succeed."

"You have a rather twisty manner of thought," Jasmine... compliments. "I cannot say you are wrong, and perhaps you are simply more blessed than I am, seeing things I do not, but I worry you are focusing on the wrong details, and leaping to conclusions about your opponents that may lead you astray."

That is something of a risk. Aire has four and a half days of memory of living somewhere outside a cave, and is flying rather blind, here. 

Probably Jasmine's right.

She nods. 

"The Veterinarian-General, then."

While Rele and other cult agents are off gathering the information needed to go after the Veterinarian-General in her own home, Christa blinks muzzily awake and starts properly processing what's going on.

Those weren't dreams earlier, were they? She's woken up in this room twice already. And one of those times she wasn't wearing Aire, although this time she is.

It is time for Aire to answer some questions!

Well, if Christa wants of course she'll answer questions.

But her cock is so hard. See, here it is coming out of her sheathe. Is she sure she doesn't want to masturbate first? Just so she can focus better. 

Well. She is really hard. Maybe just a little?

Her hands reach for her cock. Then she shakes her head and brings them back to her side.

No! She is wise to Aire's tricks! There's something awkward she doesn't want to talk about. Christa won't be distracted so easily!

Okay, maybe something like that's going on, yes.

She contemplates just boosting Christa's libido with her arousal seal until she's so horny she decides the best way to learn is to ejaculate all over some cultists, but she decides against it. She's going to have to explain eventually, if she wants to have a Christa who's together enough to be amusing to corrupt. She's got enough of a hold on Christa to ensure things don't go poorly. 

So. Kind of a lot has happened since Christa's date with Alard. And. Well, it's not so much that its awkward as that it's tragic. If it was just awkward Aire would have explained a while ago.

Christa is pretty sure she can take it. Even if it's terrible, it's better to face reality than to flinch away from it.

Or, well, that's what her mom always used to say, anyway.

So. Starting from the beginning. It turns out they were being spied on while they were with Alard. Unfortunately, the Lord-Commander is the type of man that spies on his son but leaves him convinced he's been abandoned. And also the type to respond to the situation with Alard and Christa by blackmailing Christa into doing things for him and then killing her and Aire. Just because Aire isn't human, and Christa would be a loose end.

Fortunately, they were saved.

That's. Um. A lot worse than she was expecting.

Really? The Lord-Commander is evil?

Aire wouldn't lie to her. 

But. Now that she thinks about it. It is true that everyone thinks that people like Aire should be killed, isn't it.

She. She sort of knew that. But she didn't really think about it. It was too sad. 

Christa doesn't want her new friend to die.

Who saved them? And. How.

She thinks she already knows. Some poor spy had to die, didn't they.

Aire decides she doesn't like it when Christa is sad.

Yes. They did. 

But! Not everyone believes people like Aire should be killed. Some of them think people like Aire are really great. Divine, in fact. They worship a pair of gods who were once one, the gods of parasitism and mutualism, and believe they will one day become one again. Commensurably, people like Aire, that combine with their hosts so thoroughly, are holy. 

That's who all the people in this room are. They're leaving Christa and Aire alone in this corner for now, but if Christa has any memories of being taken care of earlier, while she was recovering from having fun with Alard and Yui, those are the two who were helping her, over there.

And, well, since their belief system implies that Aire is holy, they saved her and Christa from the Lord-Commander's spy. And, um, also listen to Aire now, and do what she says.

Christa has been aware of the orgy in the room for a while now. Since before she was properly awake, actually. She's been very carefully not paying attention, because this conversation is important, and she can't afford to be distracted. She manages to keep her eyes looking down even when Aire mentions "the people in this room", but it's a close thing.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can make out a woman reclining on cushions only a bit farther into the room than she is. Legs spread. Playing with herself. 

She can hear so many moans. 

But no. She needs to focus. Something Aire said stands out to her. A god of parasitism. The only god she can think of that's associated with that is-

Twitch.

Her cock is so hard. And the air in this room smells lovely. 

What was she thinking about? It was important, right? Something about a god. A bad one?

Twitch.

Fuck, she can't focus. She's so horny.