Now the first thing I need to enchant on Sammy is some base magic. I go with a Greater Talisman of Good Fortune, for the automatic once per day ability to fix particurly bad luck… partly because it's one of the few things I can't easily duplicate with spells. That takes eight and a half days to forge, during which time I spend eight hours a day on it… which means I have sixteen hours a day to spend time with Last Shadow and the kids, check on the minions I have running the Industry in my ship, collect the loot my minions extract from the dungeon, work with folks to sell it off, py, and study spells in my library.

  Once I find “Lesser Time Stop” in there, it goes faster. It's a seventh level spell from the exotic section that takes a standard action to cast and gives one round of actions back… for most people, that's a net gain of one move and one swift action, not generally worth a seventh level slot… but that one round is expressed as a duration. When I cast it (with Extend and Fleeting Spell, the first so it qualifies for the second, the second so I can easily turn it off) that duration becomes permanent: I have all the time in the world.

  I still can't work for more than eight hours in a day on enchantment, but some discussions with Last Shadow net me a demipne where the day/night cycle is six seconds. I may not be able to work for more than eight hours a day enchanting things, but I can manipute what's meant by a day.

  Which means while enchanting Sammy with sixteen grand and change market price in enchantments to grant a one a day reroll cost me over a week… spending three hundred three thousand and eight hundred in intelligent item enchantments to grant her amulet form Speech, Telepathy, hundred twenty foot senses, Darkvision, Blindsense, Read Languages, Read Magic, flight, three spells of fourth level three times per day each (Dimension Door to get away, Emergency Force Sphere to stop incoming things immediately, and Dismissal in case of pnar shenanigans), and a seventh level spell at will (when doing things in line with her purpose… which I set as “Defend the servants and interests of a specific deity” - namely myself - for maximum flexibility… and give her Limited Wish for the same reason)... takes just a little over fifteen minutes of real time.

  Once Sammy is all enchanted, I have a fun trick for using her: The Duplicate Familiar spell. It's a fifth level spell that makes a temporary copy of a familiar. It's good for using Teleport to send people pces without going yourself (perfect for hired wizards who want to sell teleportation spells but don't want to go with the customers), using them for scouts in dangerous areas (for dungeon crews without a proper trapper), for delivering messages and packages short distances (although there are better choices for that), and others. In my case, the temporary copy is Permanent, pre-buffed, and a powerful magic item… that can make temporary copies of herself in a pinch by using Limited Wish to copy Duplicate Familiar. So I hand one out to everyone I want to keep alive: My thralls, my kids, and Last Shadow.

  I also start using Sammy as my new general purpose minion: Twin and Repeat spell on Duplicate Familiar gets me four of them. One copy in human form, one in amulet form, and I have two equipped and buffed minions good to go that can contact me via my running Hear the Name and Power of the Name (from Spheres Divination school), they can contact me trivially by referencing me as Marty Stu… and I can go visit via Speak and I Listen, which lets me teleport to or scry on them… and Scrying, in turn, let's me use the Remote Casting talent to fetch them for more conversation or drop an illusion on site for communication. I don't get rid of the existing ones, of course: They're still useful, even if dated. Any I repce I just reassign to wall duty. Which works out to a lot of them: Sammy's skills rival my own, and her magic is better than any of the “Vancian” (as Mom calls it… something about it being styled after a book series by Jack Vance? Whatever, Mom says a lot of things) so I end up repcing a lot of the workers… and we end up with a very well-defended city.

  Not that anyone is going to try another frontal assault after the survivors from the st one get word out.

  Of course, I do “research” on the gnome problem: And by that I mean I interrogate Uncle C, “So… can you tell me which retive the gnome's undead copy possessed?”

  “Not this way, no… you want Contact Other Pne,” my Uncle helpfully replies.

  “I'll probably still need help narrowing things down for a starting point…” I consider, “Can you go into a bit more detail about what his ‘closest retive’ actually means where the rubber meets the road? The book I remember wasn't perfectly clear on that.”

  “Ah that… it's based on two things. First and foremost, it's how many steps away in the retionship - direct children are a single step away, while a grandparent would be two steps; a child will always take priority over a grandparent as a result,” Death considers, “and between multiple retives that are the same number of steps apart, he ends up grabbing whichever is closest, physically, to where he st fell.”

  I consider that, “And he died here, and his kids are all one step, so it's probably someone in the orphanage.”

  “That's likely, yes,” The Comforter agrees.

  I nod, “so I should be able to sort this out just by visiting the orphanage and paying attention to Aura Sight. Kids don't have the strength to register an alignment, so any Evil auras on the kids should be our target.”

  “Good chat…” Death pauses, “Do come along with the child; that will simplify returning the little one.”

  “Sure, I can do that,” it's not like my uncle has any nefarious pns.

  “Be seeing you….” Death's voice fades from my head.

  I Greater Teleport to the orphanage, and my aunt's eyes go slightly pink and she licks her lips... so I switch to female form. She blinks at few times as the pink fades, frowns, and adds, “So what can I do for you, my dy?”

  I look around using Aura Sight, “I have reason to believe one of the kids may be possessed by a familial lich; I have arranged with Uncle Death to cleanse the little one, but I need to…” yep, evil aura on Hope, currently sleeping, “...get this little dy to him.”

  “YOU WILL NOT HURT HER!” Looking at the daggers a quarter inch from my eyes, I realize I've never seen anyone move that quickly.

  I blink, “I have no pns to harm the little dy,” come to that, where was she keeping the daggers? “I pn to Pne Shift us both to his office, then bring her back after Death cleanses her, not send her to your brother with a knife or anything. My uncle despises murder, and so do I.”

  She frowns at me, not backing down, “How'd you get the focus?”

  “I don't need one.” Fortunately, honesty should actually work here, “It's part of my Prophet's Gift.”

  “Would I even know if you were lying?” Betty is staring daggers at me while holding two at my eyes.

  “Probably not,” I shrug, “but then, non-magical daggers aren't really a threat to me. You're going to need some support to actually hurt me with those, eye shots or no.” Of course, she appears to still have some divine spark kicking around… “Good show, though. Oh, and nice touch using your lower pair of arms to turn a table into an impromptu shield.”

  “You don't have to rub it in… “ She backs off, stashing the daggers in some of her cleavage and righting the table, “You promise not to kill her?”

  “I swear to you I have no intention of harming the girl...” I pause, “...although I can't exactly prepare her for my uncle's appearance, so there may be mental scars.”

  Betty rolls her eyes, “As long as he acts nice and you don't act scared or armed, that's not going to be a problem,” She chuckles, “for the most part, babies take their cues from the adults around them.”

  I nod, “good to know. So… may I?”

  “Yeah…” She shakes her head, “I suppose I shouldn't be too suspicious of the person paying for all this… especially when I've seen you personally feeding the kids. How do you…”

  “It's a Gift from the person filling in while you're on leave,” I interrupt, “My chest goes through the natural adaptation of milk production much more quickly than anyone else's. When I put a baby to my chest, I adapt to have enough milk, instantly. If I don't have a child sucking, I adapt to not produce… again, instantly… at least, that's how it seems to work.”

  She considers, “...what'd you do to get that?”

  I smile, “I rescued Hope from neglect. The Gift meant I could feed her properly immediately.”

  “Very on-point, unique, and given to fill the role you were trying to fill already…” the old Life considers, “...a proper choice for a Gift, fully as they're intended.” She chuckles, “Tell you what, nephew, if I end up in the role again, I'll continue it.”

  I smile, “Thanks. Back soon….” I cast Pne Shift, and the world stops making sense for a moment….