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Chapter 96: Council Maneuverings
🕑 Added 2025-07-27 20:00:46 +0000 UTCCashmere had no interest in the performance unfolding before him.
His coin, golden piece etched with black sigils, danced between his fingers in slow flips, catching the ambient light with its perfect luster. He’d already flipped it before the meeting began.
The result…
[Investigate Further].
Yet again, something in-between. Vague. Dangerous.
A reading like that wasn’t common, and it rarely came without complications. Still, he played the fool investor well, slouching in the Greed Faction’s gilded seat as though bored out of his mind.
The council chamber itself was far from dull. Forty devils sat around a deep stone ring of tiered benches, each representing one of the nine factions, excluding Gula and her feasters.
Stained-glass murals loomed above, depicting the original accord between the Capital Council and the devil territories. Their beauty clashed violently with the false civility of today’s meeting.
At the center of the chamber, an empty pedestal and a black ring of sealing glyphs from the Mirror Faction, placed after the incident at the Hazy Mountain fortress. The same incident that now painted targets on the backs of the Dream Faction.
And so the performance began.
“Unprecedented recklessness!” hissed a Lady of the Jealousy Faction, her voice sweetened venom. “You’ve embarrassed this council and endangered our citizenry!”
“Unstable magic,” added the Mirror Faction’s speaker. “A breakdown in collective trust, soul tampering, forbidden shards. All while ignoring sanctioned procedures. What should we call this if not betrayal?”
“The Dream Faction has always been… eccentric,” said the man from the Decay Faction, his voice as slow as molasses. “But eccentricity has limits. When you flirt with calamity, you risk falling.”
The Dream Faction’s three remaining delegates said little. The one with the thick glasses muttered something about protocol. The one with the dream shifting butterfly mask scribbled endlessly into a record-scroll. The youngest simply stared at the glyphs in the center of the room, biting his nails.
Cashmere almost pitied them.
Almost.
The others hadn’t come to debate. They’d come to corner the Dream Faction, and now they were circling like wolves. The incident had only hastened what was already underway.
“I move that we officially classify the Dream Faction as a House in Regression,” said the Love Faction’s representative, hiding her smile with her paper-fan. “Unless you can provide countermeasures… and reparations.”
“And what, pray tell, do reparations look like?” muttered the old sloth devil beside the Dream faction’s scribe. “We haven’t even concluded the incident investigation…”
“It’s already been a week, we don’t need an investigation.” snapped Pride’s speaker. “We have enough evidence of failure. The only thing left is deciding whether you remain on this council or not.”
Cashmere leaned back and watched it all with an investor’s eye.
They weren’t even pretending to be neutral. The real reason was obvious to him. They’d already planned to offer a council seat to Baku and the Dreamveil Compact, especially after the Jealousy Faction leaked footage of Baku carving his way out of Caldeon’s sealed dreamscape with nothing but raw swordsmanship. They all knew he was strong, thats why they never tried their luck so brazenly on the mountain, but that kind of devastating force frightened the council… and intrigued them more.
What better way to frame Baku’s ascension than by discrediting the entire Dream Faction and replacing them wholesale?
Now the same factions who had stalled the Dreamveil’s invitation were suddenly insisting Hazy Mountain and the Dreamveil Compact be granted formal council representation.
Reluctantly, of course.
With grim expressions and reluctant head-nods.
“With this loss of oversight,” said the Mirror Faction, mirroring the tone of the Jealousy rep, “it’s no longer responsible to not include these outer camps. The Hazy Mountain Lord and his allies have demonstrated greater command of their dreamline boundaries than the Dream Faction itself.”
‘How ironic,’ Cashmere thought. ‘They speak of due process while gutting one of their own.’
But it didn’t end there.
“If you wish to remain in the Capital Accord,” continued the Decay Faction, “you will hand over your remaining technology concerning shared dream channeling and dream imprint stabilizers. All of it.”
“And you will accept an increase in territory tax by 22%,” added Hoard’s proxy. “A small price to pay for forgiveness.”
The sloth devil’s glasses fogged.
“That would bankrupt our current dream-forge sectors…”
“You should have thought of that before playing god with a forbidden shard.” said Mirror.
Cashmere flicked his coin into the air and caught it without looking. [Investigate Further] still pulsed at the back of his mind. The trap was obvious, but something else remained buried in the chaos. Something not part of the council’s plan.
And when the boy, the only survivor, was brought in later, maybe something would bloom.
But not yet.
For now, Cashmere simply smirked and let the others speak. His voice wasn’t needed yet. Not while the false outrage served its purpose. Not while the Dream Faction squirmed under the weight of a punishment they didn’t fully understand.
After a while, after the insults were thrown and the indignance smothered. The final nails in the coffin were finally revealed.
The lights in the council chamber dimmed.
Mirror Faction’s speaker gestured, and a curved pane of polished etherglass rose from the platform’s center, the seals on the floor lighting up. The large embedded dream crystal inside it pulsed once. Black, misty, and thin, and then it played.
Static.
Then the field.
Then the storm of grey rain and sparkling pink aura clashing.
In the footage, Dozeuff screamed, but the sound was warped, eaten by static. His voice flared with rage, directed at two figures, but the recon crystal’s recording was too degraded to make out who they were clearly, but many had their guesses. His gestures were frantic, one hand grabbing a black shard from his coat, the other pointing toward the sky.
Then, silence. Just before he stabbed the shard into his own chest.
The air around him warped. His body surged with unstable power. Static devoured the screen.
And then…
A still frame.
Frozen, almost accidental.
A fan.
Painted silk. Hanging mid-air. Elegant. Unmoving.
The footage then collapsed.
A short silence followed.
No one commented on the fan. It was likely dismissed as background, a minor atmospheric detail caught in the collapse of the recording. No name was spoken. Certainly not Noh. Why would they? She was a ceremonial geisha who held no weight on the Hazy Mountain.
Instead, attention shifted immediately to the next speaker.
“That was all of it?” asked Mirror, her voice suspiciously casual.
Jealousy nodded. “That’s all that was left. Every recon crystal from our division went dark the same way during the raid.”
“Sabotage?” suggested Love.
“It should have all been destroyed if that was the case.” murmured one of the younger Decay aides, as he tapped a black throwing dagger strapped to his waist."Tch!"
“No,” replied Cashmere softly. “We needed to see it. Or you would have pretended you didn’t.”
Some turned toward him, surprised he’d spoken at all.
Jealousy’s representative recovered first, smiling at him like a jackal playing courtier. “Investor of Greed. We weren’t sure you’d stay quiet forever. Have a new theory to peddle, or just commentary on the ruin?”
Some on the council did not enjoy his presence here, but a greater majority knew that respecting the investors of Greed would only benefit them. They welcomed the presence of one that ranked so high, his status evident by the extravagant business uniform.
“I have investments in all directions,” Cashmere said, flipping his coin once. “Including truth. And what you showed us wasn’t the whole of it.”
Mirror glared. “Explain.”
Cashmere leaned forward. “I’m curious who tampered with the crystal before it arrived here. The etherglass shows signs of memory fracture, purposeful redaction. But I don’t believe the Dream Faction has the talent to make a splice that clean.”
Several council members shifted in their seats. Indeed there were parts in the scene where something felt cut out, words that should have been said, exchanges brushed over. The rage seen in the young devil’s eyes said this wasn’t purely a reaction of reflex.
The footage wasn’t even long.
All they saw was the point he grabbed the shard, static, the plunge, more static, and a fan...
Before any could speak, the Dream Faction’s butterfly-masked scribe stood shakily. “W-we didn’t alter anything. It was like that when it was recovered from the field.”
Cashmere raised a brow. “And what of that shard, did it survive?”
“No,” said the young one from Dream, his voice flat. “We don’t know what survived. Only that it was in his chest… and when he died, it melted inward and left only ash.”
“How lucky,” murmured the Mirror Faction’s speaker. “That so little remains. And yet… enough to indict.”
“Enough to distract.” Cashmere muttered, shaking his head in disapproval.
Then the chamber doors creaked open.
Two guards escorted forward a young devil, a Dream Faction soldier, barely nineteen years old. His eyes were glazed, and his uniform torn and dirty. He looked as though he had barely escaped death’s grasp. His skin had once been red, now pallid like rotting fruit. Claw marks traced his arms, none fresh. His horns had been shaved down at the tips, as if someone had tried to erase them from memory.
He stood there quietly, and just hummed.
The guards parked him before the council and stepped back.
“Is he lucid?” asked Pride.
“He’s… talking,” said one of the guards. “In rhymes. And sometimes not to us.”
“Say something for the council.” Mirror prompted.
The young devil opened his mouth.
And from that withered mouth came a poem:
“Snip the root and drink the doom.
Loose threads were told they could go soon.
The rose said Gramps said not to choose the fight.
Just walk, just walk, into the night.
The mask was white. The voice was red.
The flower danced, the field bled.
I saw the stem, I smelled the sin.
The garden let the rot back in.”
Silence. A few of the younger devils looked to their elders for clarity, but none came.
It wasn’t the words that struck the room cold.
It was the cadence.
The rhythm, the strange meter, it prickled like needles beneath the skin of those old enough to remember. Half the council members leaned back, suddenly wary.
But because they remembered hearing something like this once before.
The very same cadence was the reason why the devil council had no one even close to the age of Baku.
Devils weren't mortal, they don’t die from old age.
Cashmere blinked.
For a moment, a memory flickered, blurred and faint.
He was younger then, far weaker. Still just a minor investor running coin games out of Neel’s beastkin kingdom borders. Not a lord yet. Not even close.
But once, while traveling on ‘business’, he’d been pulled off the road by a tremor of power, the kind that made magical beasts bark and insects flee. He remembered a hill he was used to. A white glove he recognized. A woman’s glove, sinking into a pool of blood. And above it all… a lullaby without a lull.
The wild magic of the Void Song.
He cut the thought off immediately, reminding himself of the tenet he lived by.
‘Money solves all problems.’
He breathed out, his greedy eyes scanning the room once more.
The others didn’t say anything. No one would. No one dared.
Instead, they let the silence stretch and smother.
“I believe his mind is broken,” one Pride representative said carefully. “A side-effect of Dozeuff’s tampering. The black shard was clearly forbidden magic.”
“Yes,” added a devil from Jealousy, “and as such, whatever remnants he brought back should be cataloged and sealed, not speculated upon.”
The young devil simply began humming again.
Cashmere leaned back in his chair, coin flipping through his fingers. He said nothing more. But the gloves and blood refused to leave the edge of his thoughts.
The hall quieted once more after the boy was escorted away. The silence he left behind was a strange one, like the windless hush after a funeral, where not even grief dared raise its voice. No one referenced the cadence of his poem, but a few of the older council members shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Those who had lived through the Wild Magic Era avoided eye contact, suddenly busier with their notes than before.
The Dream Faction’s lead scribe, marked by heavy robes and a face-concealing butterfly mask, finally rose again with ceremonial slowness. “On behalf of our house… we concede our failure. The company formed under our banner was done without proper sanction. We overstepped our boundaries, and we accept the sanctions decided upon by this council.”
A few murmurs stirred, but the real surprise came as the butterfly-mask continued, voice wavering. “Effective immediately, all experimental Dreamtech not ratified by inter-faction law will be surrendered to the Vaults of Decay for neutralization. We also accept a 25% percent tariff on Dreamline commodities exported through Greed and Mirror channels… until such a time that we prove ourselves again.”
There was no applause for their accountability.
Only the solemn confirmation from each faction, recorded one after another like notches in a coffin lid.
“Then it is agreed,” said Pride’s lead magistrate, rising. “The Dream Faction will accept penance through reallocation and reduced privilege. In exchange, the council acknowledges the need for Dream to continue its work under scrutiny, and for the Hazy Mountain to be recognized formally as an observer’s seat under the Capital Council.”
A few eyebrows lifted, especially from Love and Jealousy, but no one spoke against it. The Compact’s influence had been growing quietly. Baku and Hannya’s names had already spread far beyond their mountain. Their inclusion now was not generosity. It was strategy.
The decision was sealed with an emblem burned into a sigilstone by the clerics of Decay. Magic sizzled at the act. Binding. Final.
Cashmere watched it all from his seat, one leg folded over the other, flipping his coin as if the room’s temperature were irrelevant.
Pride turned toward him.
“Lord Investor. You stayed silent long enough. Speak.”
He caught the coin.
“Gladly.”
He rose, slowly and politely, letting his coat settle like fog behind him. “I came here not to gloat over Dream’s fall, nor to twist the knife further into a failed raid. I came for answers. We’re dealing with something else. In Greed territory, there’s a sickness growing… and I don’t mean metaphorically.”
Mirror leaned forward. “A plague?”
“Of a sort,” Cashmere said. “We call it Apple Fever. At first, it seemed a joke. Simple-minded cult behavior, citizens hoarding apples, talking about orchards replacing currency. But it’s escalated. Trade centers have converted into orchard exchanges. Miners have abandoned veins of gold to plant saplings. Coins rot in their hands, but bruised apples bring them to tears. They trade in seeds now. They fight over who gets to feed a tree water first.”
A rustle passed through the room.
Cashmere continued, voice sharper now. “Families bankrupting themselves for rare varieties. Export roads flooded with carts of apples…only apples. Temples empty, sermons replaced by fruit-sharing ceremonies. We have nobles turning their mansions into cider farms and judges quitting law to tend to roots.”
“And this is… spreading?” asked the Pleasure representative, arching a painted brow.
Cashmere nodded. “Slowly. With intent. It began near one of the abandoned slave hubs where The Cherrymaid attacks had been reported before. You’re aware of the Cherrymaids, yes? The pink-skinned demons, wrapped in strange charm magic? Destroyed a dozen slave routes, torched black coin trade lines. We assumed they were rogue vigilantes at first.”
He wanted to scowl at them, there was no way they did not hear of the Cherrymaids at least, the apples could be excused, but such wanton violence wouldn’t slip passed these devil’s eyes. They simply turned a blind eye, hoping to get another edge.
“They vanished, didn’t they?” murmured the Decay scribe, not even bothering to feign ignorance. “Weeks ago.”
“Yes. But the fever didn’t. And now something stranger has crept into the narrative.” Cashmere’s fingers tapped his coin against the chair. “Locals began whispering of Pain Demons. Hot-pink women with dead eyes and veils of black. They clearly speak of these Cherrymaids and they are linking them to apples spreading around.”
“That doesn’t sound like a demon.” scoffed Mirror.
“No,” Cashmere agreed. “It sounds like a warning.”
He stepped closer to the central table. “We thought Apple Fever was a spiritual faze. A strange contagion of thought. But I believe it’s tactical. A slow infestation of values, designed to gut Greed from the inside out. You remove coin from the mind… and all our levers vanish. You replace incentive with fruit? Then loyalty, fear, and trade vanish too.”
Pride leaned back, contemplative. “Have you identified a source?”
“No,” Cashmere admitted. “But the fever seems to worsen wherever the Cherrymaids last struck. It may not be them… but the trail of madness they left behind has roots.”
“Roots,” muttered Jealousy’s advisor. “And doom.”
Cashmere’s eye flicked to him.
“You heard the poem too, then.” he said.
“Don’t flatter yourself.” the Jealousy replied.
Cashmere smirked.
“Regardless,” he said, “I request two things. First, permission to investigate deeper into the affected zones with a mixed escort under Greed and Mirror command. Second, that this council issue an interdiction on Apple-related exports from Greed territory until we understand whether the fever is magical or memetic.”
Murmurs returned.
“It could cripple your economy,” warned Mirror.
Cashmere gave a half-smile. “I’ve made stranger investments.”
There was a pause, then Pride raised a hand.
“We will vote by sundown.”
And with that, the meeting turned again. Toward proposals, warnings, denials. But Cashmere simply sat back, flipping his coin again as if watching the fruit rot in slow motion.
…
…
That night.
The candlelit room was quiet, deep within one of the guest manor wings sealed off for ‘accounting reconciliation’, a phrase Cashmere used when he didn’t want anyone near. The reinforced walls hummed faintly with layered privacy seals. A single crystal orb pulsed on the desk, violet and muted, waiting to connect.
Cashmere tapped the rim of a golden ring against the orb. Once, twice, then, with a flick of his nail, he ignited the call.
The comm-crystal blinked. Light bent and spun. A familiar silhouette appeared within the shimmer.
The Magic Hero, Abigail.
Her cloak was lighter now, her expression more tired, but the steel hadn’t dulled in her eyes. She waited for him to speak first.
Cashmere’s voice came smooth and wrapped in faux warmth. “You again. I must be getting sentimental.”
“You called me.” Abigail said.
“I did.” He leaned forward into the light. “And I bring gifts. Information. As promised.”
She straightened slightly. “Tell me.”
Cashmere clasped his hands, then separated them with a dramatic air.
“Hannya. Mysterious, pink-haired, priestess…of sorts. Turns out she’s a disciple of a devil named Baku.”
Abigail blinked. “Baku?”
Cashmere smiled thinly. “The Dream Eater. An old name. Ancient, last of his generation, maybe apocryphal. More bedtime story than flesh and horns. But he’s real enough to show up in sealed contract remnants tied to wandering dreamlords and the knights that followed them. Notably, he was the oldest signatory of the Dreamveil Compact.”
Abigail tilted her head. “Dreamveil Compact?”
“Yes,” Cashmere said, tapping a document off-screen. “It’s a collective of lesser devil houses, wandering devils outside capital charter, demon tribes from the mist-belts, even some independent core-distributors. Mostly fringe operators. Hazy Mountain is their unofficial stronghold. Self-governed, rich in dreamcore, independent for now.”
Abigail’s voice was quiet. “But not a priestess?”
“No records. No cult registries, no known ceremonies. Her name never touched Luxuria’s administrative trees, and Luxuria doesn’t let undocumented priestesses walk their halls.” He frowned, eyes narrowing. “And that… bothers me.”
“How so?”
“Because all signs point to her being real. Influence, power, even some unknown magic, but she’s invisible in the ledgers. I hate blind spots. Which brings me to the part I don’t like.” He sighed.
He leaned forward again, this time sincerely. “Abigail. What god does she worship?”
The room fell still. Even the magical relay seemed to tense.
“You know,” Abigail said slowly, “it’s unusual for a devil to care about that sort of thing.”
Cashmere didn’t blink. “Unusual isn’t the same as unwise.”
“She called herself a priestess of the Court of Gilded Woe… under the Caged God.”
Silence.
Cashmere froze mid-thought. His rings stopped tapping. His pupils dilated slightly, betraying a twinge of unease.
“…A Court?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
He didn’t speak for a full five seconds. Then he hastily reached into his sleeve and drew out his coin. He flipped it without thinking. The coin spun, hovered, and landed in his palm.
[BUY IMMEDIATELY]
Cashmere scowled.
Abigail noticed. “What did it say?”
“Doesn’t matter.” he lied. He turned away from the crystal, staring at the shadows cast by the wardlight on the far wall.
“A Court…” he murmured to himself. “That term’s been out of circulation for centuries. And gilded… of all things. Hmph.”
He was tempted to go to the council for more information.
He flipped the coin again.
[SELL IMMEDIATELY].
That one made him curse under his breath. “Now that’s confusing.”
“Do you trust it?” Abigail asked.
“When it flips twice with opposing advice, I pay attention. Especially when it disagrees with itself.”
He folded his hands together.
“So. Either Hannya is forming something new, something dangerous. Or something old is resurfacing under a new name. Either way… no, I won’t tell the council yet.”
Abigail’s expression didn’t change. She expected as much.
“Let them enjoy their victories over the Dream Faction,” he muttered. “They’re still patting themselves on the back for the Hazy Mountain recognition vote. This would only ruin their mood.”
He tilted his head. “Speaking of Hazy Mountain…”
Abigail raised a brow.
“I’m going there.” Cashmere said.
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
He smiled again, but this time there was no mask. “To retrieve Hannya’s summoning mark.”
Abigail straightened. “You found it?”
“Rumor says the Hazy Mountain dreamlords keep their summoning sigils in their archives, a protocol for unexpected rifts. If she was a disciple of Baku, it’s possible her mark, or some version of it, was archived there after her acceptance.”
“You trust them not to kill you?”
“No. But I trust that they like my coin more.”
Abigail hesitated. “And what do you want in exchange?”
“I already took the Phoenix Eye,” he said. “And frankly, I’m feeling charitable. Let’s call this an investment in chaos.”
“Strange, for a devil of Greed,” Abigail said dryly.
Cashmere grinned. “Greed is just calculated generosity.”
He rose to his feet. The relay dimmed slightly as he paced.
“Oh,” he added casually, “before I forget. Apple Fever.”
She frowned. “Still spreading?”
“Yes, and worse than I thought. Entire settlements in the upper greed-ridges have stopped using money. They’re trading apples instead. Red ones, to be precise. Some are converting storefronts into orchards. It’s not a fad. It’s fanaticism. They panic over bruising. They argue about which tree is blessed. It’s spreading like rot with perfume.”
Abigail crossed her arms. “Is it magical?”
“Maybe. Or memetic. Or worse, religious.”
Her face grew still. “You think it’s tied to Hannya?”
“I think everything strange is tied to her now.” He touched the coin again, gently. “And I think something’s feeding.”
He didn’t want to say a 6-star, there was no real proof, but with a Court in play…
Abigail nodded once. “Get me the mark.”
Cashmere smiled faintly. “As you wish.”
The crystal dimmed, then went cold.
Cashmere stood alone for a moment longer, flipping his coin one last time before turning toward his travel trunk.
“The Caged God…” He muttered.
[Investigate Further].
His grin was sharp now.
“Oh, I intend to.”
Comments
ShadowTycho
Hmmm. Cashmere walking into Hannyas garden expecting to be able to buy his way out reeks of even more entitlement then even sleepy had. I really hope Abigail is playing cashmere and wants to summon hannya to make a deal. Iirc a 6star can undo another 6star's curse, and hannya has the mirror to boot. I don't think she is predisposed to hating Abby, just looks down on her for being associated with Damian
Butch Perterson
lol I’m glad you think so! I was wracking my brain how to tie a good bit of events together for the ending and the council meeting was perfect for one half, I think you’ll like the second chap as well a similar flow will be done for that one as well!
Prent
there's so many things going on in this chapter, but it all flows so wonderfully this is amazing
Aune
ahhhh i'm complete. Now time for bed.
Xalibur
Today we feast on apples. And chapters.
Wintermelody
Thanks for the chapter
