As soon as I got off the phone with Dan at McPherson Medical, I placed a call to Grell. After the first ring, the Artificer answered, “Hey, Tae, what’s up? There isn’t much here in the warehouse right now if you’re thinking of moving stuff home. If you want to know the status of the signal booster for cell and internet coverage in Varüus’kiel, it’s done, but I had some great ideas for improvements and there might be a small hiccup.”

“What kind of hiccup? And what improvements?” I started to ask before realizing that was getting off-topic. “Wait, never mind that for now, you can tell me after we’re done with delivering the medical stuff. Our order for the hospital and clinics is ready and waiting to be sent to Varüus’kiel but given that the DCA knows we were ordering through McPherson Medical, I’d like to check everything as we’re sending it through the portal to make sure there aren’t any surprises in our shipment.”

“What would we be looking for? Bugs, transmitters, and stuff like that?” my Atlantean friend asked with a thoughtful hum. “Would those even be a problem? Wouldn’t they stop transmitting once they’re inside Varüus’kiel and the enchantment that protects the island? I’ve got something here that I whipped up to scan the deliveries coming to the warehouse for anything like that, and explosives and such too.”

I would have playfully accused him of being paranoid, but he seemed to be thinking along the same lines that I was, and it was better to be safe than sorry when one wrong step could endanger my people. “We’re looking for anything out of place. We didn’t order any kinds of diagnostic or monitoring equipment since the Atlantean medical tech has the most ‘modern’ stuff beat, so anything of an electronic nature should be a dead giveaway. We may have to check the sample freezers that we got for the clinics thoroughly though. I’ll be checking everything magically as well.”

“Okay, cool, I’ll get my stuff ready. When did you want to come get me?”

I thought about it for a moment and decided to strike while the iron was hot, as Thor seemed to be fond of saying. “We’ll be there in a few minutes, Grell. I’ll move anything in the warehouse to Varüus’kiel while I’m there and then cast a portal to our medical supplier so we can check the shipment and then send it home as well.”

It didn’t take long to send what little there was in the warehouse home to Varüus’kiel and check in with both Whisper and Kinara. Whisper had her artificed worm, Jim, scouring the internet and getting into places that it wasn’t supposed to be, looking for any signs of other black sites or prisoner camps holding Fae or the Changed. It hadn’t found anything new since yesterday though and I already passed on the suspected sites to the Queens of the Courts to arrange rescue missions. Both Whisper and I had a feeling that there were a lot more sites that were being kept off the books and would be difficult to find though.

In the meantime, the Witch Assassin and computer genius was working on a few other things, including some new Artificed computer programs. One was sort of the opposite of Jim, a smart firewall that would add an extra layer of protection to the server that Grell had built for the future Varüus’kiel government websites. Grell was certain that nobody would be able to access it without knowing the Atlantean coding language, being an Artificer themselves, and being able to crack the integrated magical firewall that I would be blessing and empowering myself, but we all felt better having another layer of protection.

Her other project was the Artificed software to go with Grell’s hardware that was supposed to solve our problems with getting internet and cell coverage in Varüus’kiel. If I knew Grell, he had probably gone above and beyond what we had originally talked about, and it looked like he was bursting at the seams with the desire to show it off. I was looking forward to seeing what the pair had come up with later today, but we had other things to take care of first.

As for Kinara, while the rest of us were in Toronto, the Yseil’dhraí from the Summer Court had been dutifully continuing training Caitlin Summers in magick and helping the new Witch to get ready to move her business to Varüus’kiel. Now that we had the last of her stock of environmentally friendly monthly supplies transported to her new business site there, and the Atlanteans had finished setting up a workshop at that same site to produce more of her products in sizes suited for various Changed and Fae species, everything was ready for Caitlin’s move to Varüus’kiel. Kinara and the Succubae watching over the pair were going to help her move anything she wanted from her office and home today, and my apprentice was hoping to have her officially relocated sometime tonight.

Once I had gotten my reports from both Whisper and Kinara, Grell joined my usual entourage to head to McPherson Medical in Mississauga. Just as we had the last time we were here; we entered by the front doors openly and without glamours. As soon as Dan caught sight of us and began walking toward us, Lillith and I opened holes in our auras for him and I got right down to business.

“Good afternoon, Dan. I got your call; everything is ready for shipping?” I asked as soon as he was in conversational range.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he replied with a smile. “You mentioned last time that you had the means of shipping the order yourself, right?"

“That I did,” I agreed.

“I’ll take you back to the warehouse then. If you would like, you can check the shipment against the manifest before loading it for shipping,” he offered gesturing for us to follow. We got quite a bit of attention from other sales staff and the few customers in the storefront though as he led us toward the promised warehouse.

Dan was as good as his word, leading us into the back, which turned out to be a warehouse that looked close to the size of the one I rented in Vancouver. It was mostly clear, with pallets of products out of the way on the wide shelves that lined the walls, the upper levels accessible only by forklift. Near the loading doors in the back was a veritable maze of pallets stacked with the various goods that we had ordered.

Not everything was there, of course. Some things, like the vaccines we had ordered, needed to be kept away from UV light, and either refrigerated or frozen. Those were waiting for us in the appropriate cold storage areas. The shipment would all be moved to the hospital’s storage floor, which was already equipped with Atlantean-made freezer and refrigerated storage units, but I would have to make sure that those moving the shipment there ensured they all went to the right one.

Dan walked us through it all, checking everything against the manifest for the order I made. Grell ran the Artificed device he had brought with him over every box, no matter what it was supposed to contain, and we opened several to check that the contents were what we had ordered as well. I quietly and subtly used some magic to check for any surprises as well and, we did the same for the unboxed sample freezers and the examination tables.

We found five tracking devices, similar to the ones that the DCA tried to put on my ride and Nishalle’s motorcycle, but nothing else that shouldn’t be there. When Grell found the first one, his device letting out a high-pitched shriek that startled everyone but the Atlantean himself, it was an unpleasant surprise for everyone. Dan frowned as I reached inside one of the drawers of the top-of-the-line, three-thousand-dollar examination tables and extracted the familiar little bug from where it was stuck to the top inside.

“What is that?” he asked, squinting at the bug I held pinched between my fingers.

“That is a familiar piece of tech,” Nishalle replied with a grimace, “and proof that a certain shady government agency got to this shipment before it arrived here. Probably when it was en route, and that means that they probably got a look at your records somehow. They would like very much to know where this is all going, probably in hopes that they can find and kill us.” Dan looked uncomfortable at that but also surprised enough that I didn’t think he was involved.

Thankfully, the five tracking devices seemed to be the only unwanted additions to our delivery and everything else checked out as the hospital supplies that I ordered. After I finished destroying all the loathsome devices, I turned my attention to Dan. “Well, it seems like everything is accounted for, so you can just pull…”

However Dan was going to finish that sentence, it was abruptly cut off as he noticed me drawing the sigils for a spell in the air and speaking their names with intent in Elvish. Then the poor man was flummoxed as he gaped at the portal that materialized in front of us. “W-what is that?” he asked, as he stared at the circle of light with a clear view of the storage floor of the hospital within.

“It’s a portal spell,” I nonchalantly replied as if it was the most common thing in the world. The look on his face was priceless. “What? Did you think I was just going to pull a big truck up to that loading door or something?”

“Yes?” It was more question than answer, but his tone told me that he was expecting exactly that. Until now, he probably didn’t even really fully believe that I was who Daenyss had introduced me as. For him, it was probably more of a case of ‘the customer is always right’, no matter how outlandish and strange they may be, as long as my money was good.

“You do realize she’s a Demigoddess of magick, right?” Salem pointed out helpfully, causing both Lissany and Harley to try to conceal their smiles by pulling the faceplates of their helms into place. The others had no such means to hide their mirth, nor did they care to it would seem since Grell guffawed and my sister, Daenyss, and Rei were all openly giggling.

“She has much more efficient ways of moving things around than mere human vehicles,” Lillith agreed as she just as nonchalantly summoned a dozen Succubae to our location the help move the stock from the warehouse we were in to the storage room on the other side of the portal.

My High Priestess was just as amused as I was it would seem, and summoning the members of her brood, who poor Dan couldn’t keep his eyes off, was more meant to shatter his world view further than because we really needed them. The girls, who all seemed just as amused as their matron, did get right to work though and would make things move along much more smoothly. Though that didn’t stop them from flaunting their assets, especially the non-human assets, for poor Dan at every available opportunity though.

Pete took sympathy on the poor man as he clapped him on the back. “First time seeing magick up close, Dude?” When Dan just nodded mutely, his eyes still locked on the portal and the Succubae moving our goods through it, my large protector grinned. “Yeah, it does take some getting used to. As the only pure Human of the group, I can totally get it. You’ll have to get used to it though, Man, because the world has changed.”

With that, the rest of us got to work helping the Succubae move the goods, and things were made faster as I used my telekinesis spell to move entire pallets worth of goods at once. We saved the stuff that needed to be kept temperature regulated for last, which the Succubae obediently moved directly from McPherson Medical’s freezer and refrigerated storage areas to ours. Once everything was finally moved over, I closed the portal, thanked Dan for his stellar service, and promised him that I would place future orders for pickup on the website on a monthly basis.

Honestly, that probably wouldn’t be me though, it would be whatever poor soul I put in charge of the running the hospital and the clinics. They would probably be working under whoever I put in charge of the health and wellness of the people of Varüus’kiel though, and I still needed to choose someone for that eventually. Like Rei, Salem, and Daenyss kept telling me, I needed to delegate more, or I was going to burn out, Demigoddess or not.

Once we were done at McPherson Medical, I cast a portal to send Grell back to the warehouse in Vancouver and then we returned to our hotel room to gather our things and check out, bringing our trip to Toronto to an end. I was glad for that since I was starting to feel like a zoo exhibit with all the people staring whenever we were out trying to be seen, and I was at the limits of my patience with the anti-Changed and ultra religious people hounding us whenever we spent too long in one place. Soon we and my Mercedes SUV (which we checked for bugs even though my security spell would have warned me if someone tried messing with the vehicle again), were back at the safehouse in Vancouver.

The safehouse was empty at the moment with Grell and Whisper at the warehouse and Kinara and the Succubae assigned to her at the moment helping Caitlin move her things to Varüus’kiel. Daenyss didn’t waste much time before asking, “What would you like to do now, Mistress? If you would like to relax here at the safe house, I could make us a nice meal. We haven’t eaten since breakfast and I’m sure we are all getting hungry.”

Daenyss made a good point. It was now midafternoon on the west coast, and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast on the east coast. We were about to find someplace to have lunch in Toronto when Dan called and then that was set aside, so I was starting to feel pretty hungry. I imagined that the others were feeling the same way, and it was Daenyss’ gentle reminder that brought it to mind.

I smiled at my Attendant and gave her a loving kiss. “No need to put yourself through so much effort, Sweetie. We can go check in with Grell and Whisper to see what they have for us and then get something to eat in Varüus’kiel. I’d like to check in on Luna and the other Draklings anyway and see how our latest raids to free imprisoned Changed went. Salem, do you think you can find your daughter and let her know that all the supplied for the hospital and clinics arrived, and where we put them?”

The tiny Liyun’shael quickly claimed a kiss of her own from me before nodding. “Sure, I can do that, Tae. She’ll spread the news to all the other people who will be running clinics and anyone we have with medical training.”

Lillith nodded in agreement and added, “I would like to see what progress the Sül’shael are making on the Temple of the Moon as well.”

The construction of temple was something that Xixie was overseeing personally. The High Priestess of Danu was hard at work on the temple that would be dedicated to both me and Danu, wanting to please both the Mother Goddess and her Inu’Mahair. She had practically every Sül’shael working with her who was not currently working on fashioning Nythrin into window shutters and doors for the Moon Palace or assisting Hadrick with making Guardian armor and weapons.

With that decided, I cast a portal to take us back to the warehouse first. Ignoring the currently empty warehouse, I led my entourage toward the office where Grell and Whisper were set up for resting and working on their projects. Both the Atlantean Artificer and the Witch looked up and grinned as we entered the currently cluttered office. No poker faces at all there, they were both practically going to explode if they didn’t get to tell me about whatever they came up with soon.

I decided to show mercy on them and asked, “So, what do you two have for me? And what is this hiccup you mentioned?”

Grell looked at the Witch who was leaning back in chair beside him with her feet propped up on the desk before taking a deep breath. “While I was working on this, Whisper and I had a talk about how to best serve the needs of the people of Varüus’kiel for cell coverage, internet access, and the like and I realized that I was thinking too small at first.” With that, he gestured to a pair of objects on a desk that looked maybe a little bigger than my head and vaguely satellite shaped.

It was Rei who started to ask, “Are those…”

“Yeah, one is a telecommunications satellite, but an Artificed one that’s probably ten times better than anything already up in orbit and it has some features that no other tech companies will be able to replicate anytime soon. For one thing, it’s mana-powered so it will run on renewable energy without having to deploy solar panels or anything like that. For another, once activated and in place it will generate a magical cloaking field, rendering it invisible to anyone who might go looking for it. The one painted blue is a relay satellite and has similar features.”

“And the hiccup?” I pressed.

“Well, about that…” he began nervously, “the main comm satellite needs to be placed in a geosynchronous orbit above the equator after you bless them and the signal booster, which we’ll have to attach to the tallest spire of the Moon Palace. The relay satellite needs to be in a fixed orbit above Varüus’kiel to send and receive transmissions and sent them down to the signal booster or to the comm satellite. The comm satellite should also receive signals from other comm satellites and send them along our network as well, so we can get radio, television, and such.”

I found myself staring at both Grell and Whisper, who was nonchalantly stroking the fur of her ferret Familiar, Shadow. “How do you expect me to get those into space? Even if I was familiar enough with the right positions in orbit to make a portal, we’d probably be sucked into space along with it from the resulting vacuum. I imagine just yeeting them into space wouldn’t be precise enough, even if I didn’t overshoot or give it too little juice.”

“Well…” he pointed out uncertainly, “You do have wings, and you are a Demigoddess, right?”

I groaned at his implied suggestion. “Demigoddess, Grell, as in still demi-mortal. Even if I could break atmosphere, I don’t know if I could go without air if something went wrong, and I’m not really eager to find out. I can’t think of anyone crazy enough to…” Everyone’s eyes were on me as I stopped ranting in realization and then I grumbled, “I might know a guy… or girl, whichever they are today.”

Loki was happy to get my call, and happier still when I told her that my business in Toronto was finished and we’d be able to get back to Goddess lessons with her, Sif, and Thor tomorrow. When I asked her if she and the other pair of Norse deities could come to join me to discuss an interesting problem, she seemed intrigued. At least that probably meant that she hadn’t been watching me all day today like my life was some reality TV show. She was probably trolling, or screwing with trolls, online.

She appeared with Thor and Sif at the entrance to the now-crowded office in a flash and, ever the show-person, announced, “Rejoice, for we have arrived! Now why don’t you tell us all about your interesting little problem.”

“Oh, this should be entertaining,” Lissany said with a grin that would have been ear-to-ear were her ears not on top of her head.

Loki immediately grinned back at the Beastkin girl. “Have I told you that you’re my favorite, little Lissy? You know how to have fun.”

I ignored her teasing shot at Nishalle, Lillith, and me and quickly pointed to the objects in question. “Those are satellites. Grell here tells me that after I bless them and bring them online, the blue one needs to be placed in orbit above Varüus’kiel and the other above the equator in a geosynchronous orbit.”

“They just need to get up there in orbit at the proper locations,” Grell quickly assured everyone. “Once they’re up there, Whisper and I can remotely maneuver them into the optimal position and set the relay satellite to maintain a fixed orbit in position above Varüus’kiel.”

When I turned my attention back to Loki to see if she might have some ideas or suggestions, I found her grinning like a maniac. “Thor… Buddy,” she said with an affectionate tone, “Do you recall the Lokabrenna incident?”

Thor frowned in reply. “How could I forget? I still get…” He didn’t finish that sentence then, as he glowered at the Goddess of Mischief. “No. No, we are not going to…”

“Come on, Thor. For old times’ sake,” Loki pleaded as she pouted at him prettily.

“No, Loki, we are not doing that again. Honey, please talk some sense into your cousin, you remember the last time as well as I do.” As he said the last, Thor turned to look imploringly at his wife. I’m not doing that again, let alone twice.”

Whatever this Lokabrenna incident was, it seemed that Sif remembered it as well as the other two did, and now, instead of ‘talking some sense into Loki’ she was matching her cousin’s pretty pout. “I do, my love, and if I recall correctly, we had a lot of fun. Please, let’s do it, not just for me and Loki, but for poor Taelya and her people as well.”

Thor sagged where he stood and let out a long-suffering sigh as he folded like a napkin in a five-star restaurant. Wow, they used double team, and it was super-effective. “Fine,” the God of Thunder grumbled. “Let’s get this over with… and never speak of it again. I mean it this time!”

I figured that it was probably best not to ask. It wasn’t my business. My involvement began and ended with charging and blessing that satellite and handing it over. I didn’t need to know anything more than that it was going to be placed where it was needed.

With that in mind, I infused both the satellites and the matching signal booster with my magick and blessed them to bring them online and allow the signals sent between to penetrate the enchantment protecting Varüus’kiel. Once I was finished, Loki took the relay satellite while Thor took the other in hand, still grumbling something under his breath. As the trio left to complete the task, they promised that one of them would come to the safehouse in the morning to pick up the Demigoddesses among us for training.

I wasn’t sure how they managed it, and I wasn’t sure that I even wanted those details from how Thor had reacted to the proposed idea, but an hour later I received a message from Loki that the satellites were in place. Grell and Whisper were then able to maneuver them into the right position with Whisper’s laptop and then Grell came with us back to Varüus’kiel to set up the rest of the devices he had made. He assured me that these devices would give us connectivity throughout the island and my other domains.

I had to fly up to the tallest spire of the moon palace to secure the signal booster in place at an angle that Grell was very insistent on. As for the relays for the other domains, those had to be placed in the arches of the crystal gates I created to link my domains, on the underside of the peak of those arches. Only then did we take a break for dinner and have Grell explain how it all worked.

It was actually fairly simple. The main comm satellite worked like any other telecommunications satellite and as long as the signal booster was pointed up at the relay satellite and the relay satellite maintained it’s orbit to get transmissions from the comm satellite and signal booster, it would allow the people of Varüus’kiel to send and receive signals for things like radio, television, cell phones, and internet. The signal booster would only receive signals either originating from our satellites or redirected through them and would act as a sort of radio tower from its new position, but differently as well with its massive range, making all Varüus’kiel like one big Wi-Fi hotspot. The relays had equally long range and would extend that connectivity to my other domains with the assistance of some signal repeaters placed on sky islands in the largest of my domains.

The plan going forward would be for Whisper, Grell, and Grell’s Atlantean girlfriend, Ashura, to start a business called Var-Com communications, something that I approved under certain conditions. It would act as a cellular service and internet provider for the people of my growing nation but needed to remain low cost, charging enough to cover their operating costs only. Most of the money that the trio made going forward would be from their product sales rather than the outlandish service fees that many ISPs and cell providers charged.

Grell said that he and Ashura had been working together on some completely Artificed cell phones and laptops that were better than anything on the market right now, and more environmentally responsible, while we were still in the game. They wanted to finish their prototypes and have them available to be mass-produced soon by the workshop that Ashura was already setting up in their future place of business. He had been talking with Whisper about joining the project and coding an operating system for both the phones and laptops now that she had gotten her feet wet with Software Artificing since that had been their weak point up until now. She had written the software for the satellites, signal booster, and relays, and now she was working on a user-friendly OS and apps for their future products.

We were able to test the connectivity of both internet and cellular service by making calls both within and outside of Varüus’kiel and using the second laptop we had bought alongside Whisper’s. We were connected and had rejoined the modern world, and for now, people who had their phones and laptops would be able to do so for free, which I thought would put smiles on some faces. It was something people had been missing since arriving in our remote nation. As for those of us venturing outside Varüus’kiel, Whisper had a patch for our sim card emulation programs that would have our phones connect to the Var-Com network until their new phones were available.

Once we had finished both dinner and our discussion, we split off to see to different tasks. Salem went to seek out her daughter, Vivian, to let her know about the delivery of medical supplies that would benefit the new hospital and clinics like hers. Grell went to spend some quality time with Ashura and discuss the successful first step of their future business and their potential partnership with Whisper. Lillith was headed to the lakeshore, not far from the Moon Palace, to see how the Temple of the Moon was coming along.

Me, Rei, Daenyss, and my quartet of protectors all broke off in the opposite direction of my High Priestess once we reached the Moon Palace, as we walked along the lakeside searching for the Draklings and their Succubus caregivers. It wasn’t long before we found them. The Succubae were bathing them by magically manipulating water and from the small pile of bones I saw, it looked like they had just finished eating. I was on my way toward Guiyen and my very shiny Radiant Drakan when I saw a small group of people who I didn’t recognize gaping at the Drakans and their caregivers and stopped mid-step.

Rei, Daenyss, and the others were immediately asking if everything was okay, but I could only stand there, looking at one member of the unfamiliar group. She was a Yseil’dhraí, and not just any Yseil’dhraí, but one from the Autumn Court. She looked much like I did when I was the Princess of the Court, slender and pretty with long, crimson hair, and her golden eyes were wide as she stared at the Succubae bathing the baby Drakans.

I think that the others might have caught the direction of my gaze because I heard a couple of gasps and Nishalle let out a nearly inaudible, “Oh.” That Yseil’dhraí could only be one person and we both knew it, even though we hadn’t known about her existence until recently. It was Aine, the half-sister we had never met.