Of course, I also need to get that blasted dagger.

I have the address now. Got it from one of the schlubs sitting in a fancy bottle on a shelf that's buried in stone in an extra dimensional room with a key buried on another plane.

Online mapping software gives me a picture of the front gate from five years ago. Good enough for a Greater Teleport to the front door.  At 18th, I have easy access to 9th level spells, so I cast a Fleeting Time Stop, and go there via Greater Teleport.

Time Stop, if you're not aware, basically does what it says on the tin - it makes time stop for everyone but the caster. Well, technically it speeds the caster up, but that’s a petty distinction. The big thing, for me, is that the extra time is expressed as a duration. And anything I cast has a duration of Permanent. So I have, literally, all the time in the world - and nobody can react.

The spell has some restrictions: I can't enter an anti-magic field, I can't attack anyone, I can't cast spells on anyone. That includes anything they're holding. It does not, however, extend to the terrain or anything they're not holding. I can open doors, lay traps, break walls, take their computers, and even set things running that will hurt folks after I let time tick along again.  But this place is empty, theoretically, and I'm immune to anti-magic fields, so the restrictions really don't matter for me.

I walk through the snow in my light dress: The cold doesn't bother me in the slightest. The place doesn't look like much - just a simple steel building with a parking lot and a gatehouse. There's no guard. Frank is sitting in bottle #487.

The parking lot has some expensive cars that no longer have any owners in this world. But what am I going to do with a Ferrari? I can outrun the silly thing. The front door is locked… for about a second. Knock opens it just fine.

I'd like to say there were a dozen security doors, or an elevator that went a thousand feet down into the rock.. but nah, that'd be silly.  That kind of construction would draw more attention, not less, due to the specialized equipment needed to make it happen. No, the building is just a break room, a bathroom, the security monitoring room, a bunch of offices, and storage. And of course, storage is what I'm after. It's not even close to midnight, so - theoretically, anyway - the dagger should be safe right now. Should be the only thing stored in the room I'm after.

I go to the security office first, and shut down the cameras, including powering off the PoE switches that run them, in case the cameras themselves have backup storage. Reasonably confident that I won't be observed even if I did miss someone, I continue on for my actual goals.

First up: The Devil's Dagger.  I head toward the storage, and find there's a double door with no obvious lock barring entry. It doesn't open when I tug on it, and after a bit, I get it: It has to be opened from the security office. Not wanting to backtrack, I use Greater Knock, more commonly known as Disintegrate. It fires a black ray which, when used on a nonliving object, simply destroys a ten foot cube of matter, reducing it to a small pile of fine black powder. It solves the door problem handily.

The dagger is on a pedestal, and the surrounding floor is bloodstained. It's black in color, the blade is about a foot long, the handle six inches, and the cross guard is the same. There's what looks like a black diamond in the hilt, and the cross guard curves up and in towards the blade, ending in points.

I reach over to grab the dagger… and it doesn't move. I pull harder… and still nothing. I knock the pedestal out from under it, and it simply hangs there. I grab the dagger again, and it refuses to move, even with nothing under it.  

Oh. It was human, once. And apparently it's still a creature. I check Mindsight for confirmation: Yep, an intelligent construct.  Int-12, a little above average.Which means to get it out of here… I put my hand on the dagger and let the flow of time resume.  Now it moves easily, and it doesn't fade from view as I hold it.

Teleporting requires a creature be willing, so I try talking to it telepathically: 《Can you understand me?》

《Oh thank Satan,》I get back from the dagger, 《I have no idea how long it's been since I could talk to anyone. Where are you anyway? I can't see you.》

《Holding you up. I'm invisible.》

《I suppose that makes as much sense as me turning into a dagger that everyone wants to use for suicide so they can kill their enemies. 》

《Indeed. So I'm told your name is Derrick…》

I can feel its nonexistent eyes rolling,《Derrick the Devil's Dagger? Who sold you on that load of huey? I'm Samantha. My parents sold me off to some fancy rich white guy who said he needed a young girl for a project. I can't blame them too much, we were starving, and he had coin for food. He treated me awful, whippings daily, stuck his thingy in my holes regardless of how much I screamed. His butler was OK, fed me well, read me lots of stories revolving around… well, what I've become… don't know why he worked for that evil son of a snake. I hated that man more than anything, so all those stories… well, the ability to kill anyone, anywhere seemed so worth the price. Then one day the butler gives me a wonderful apple tart, and the next, I'm this. Nothing more than someone else's tool.》

Well… I was told by an upper echelon guy in this organization who literally could not lie to me.  Which means that bit of misinformation has been around a long time.  Still, I let her talk. I expect I'm the first one she's been able to talk to since… well, she became a weapon. Centuries, at least. Selling one's kids into slavery… well, it’s been a long time since that was considered normal.

《I'm occasionally put in a box and taken somewhere. But mostly I just get set out in a locked room until someone wants to die.  Then I'm used to slit a throat, or stab a heart, cut a wrist from palm to elbow… ooh, there was the one guy who used me to cut off his thingy so he could bleed out. That one was strangely satisfying.  There was also the eye guy….》

OK, yep, she’s a talker.  I interrupt, partly because I really don’t like descriptions of gore, partly because this has gone on a while, and we are in real time, now,《I think I can get you a human form if you’d like.》

That makes her stop dead,《You can do that?》

《I can try, at least. Interactions between myths are… not something where I want to guarantee results, but I do have the ability to give folks the ability to change forms, and can apply that to your current state of being.  There is a promise I want from you, and the ability has some drawbacks…》

《Tell me what you want.  I don’t care about the cost.  Gimmie!  Dying would be better than being stuck like this!  I’ve been stuck in place basically forever.》

I’m a big fan of letting people make informed decisions.  Sometimes I’m told it’s annoying,《I’m not going to let you agree without telling you.  I’ll have a constant telepathic link to you, wherever you are, can take away the power at any time - which would hurt you - and whenever you’re using my power to take on a different form, I’ll be able to listen in on your thoughts.》That’s the drawback, and why I’m here:《The oath I want from you is that you’ll never let yourself be used like that again.》

《Sure, no problem!  Anything’s better than this!》

《Then give me your oath,》... wait, did I just… oh Carla, not again!

《I swear to be Your weapon, killing only those You select, being Your loyal vassal in all things, serving You in whatever way You deem fit.》

Say no, say no! 《I accept thine oath,》that’s not what I wanted to say!《Rise, my knight.》

Already holding her, I can feel my Profane Gift flowing into her, and she immediately makes use of it, turning into a tall olive-skinned beauty, her raven tresses falling back to her well-rounded rear, perfectly-formed legs, and of course, her front… tiny toes, a hairless front door, child-bearing hips, a smooth stomach, melons the size of soccer balls topped with three inch radius saucers and two-inch points, a narrow face and …

… her eyes are twin black voids that absorb all light and seem to be trying to suck my soul out of my body.

Samantha says her first words in who knows how long, “Thank you my goddess!”

I find I’m still holding her, but now rather than a handle, my hand is on one of her faucets. She makes no move to change that. It feels nice, but I choose to let go. I can feel her disappointment across the link. I suppose that was the best human contact she's had in a long time.

She makes no move to cover herself up, and I succumb to my baser instincts and don't offer. Also, looking at her chest gets me away from those eyes…

I go ahead and make myself visible via an illusion, and tell her, 《I’m going to be here for a while; there's a lot of people who need notification that the watch has changed. I can take you with me when I'm ready to go if you'd like.》

"Oh yes please. I probably don't know anything about the world anymore with how long I've been out and how strangely everyone I saw was dressed and oh what's that…." I largely tune her out as I work. I'll need to get her up to speed with the modern world - or maybe ask a friend - but for now she's not doing any harm.

I go to the offices, and systemically go through the workstations (I have the usernames and passwords from my interrogations), dropping all of their myth files and contacts into some web space under my control so I can go through it later.

I also have Debbie Diplomat use the dead company accounts to send out an email to all of their contacts:

"The Guardians of Free Will, as an organization, is dead. They tried to kill me without trying to talk to me first, so I got rid of them.

"But they have a point. We break the rules everyone else must follow. It would be very easy for many of us to take whatever we like, whether by stealth, force, guile, mind control, or other means. This includes taking over entire countries. I know it would be easy for me. Fundamentally, that's why they feared and controlled us.

"So let's prove their fears unfounded. Yes, we could bend the world to our whims… let's be better than that. The world thinks we don't exist. Let's keep it that way as long as we reasonably can.  Be good people, don't break the world's rules in public, earn your wages. Play nice with humanity, so that they don't spawn another iteration of The Guardians of Free Will.

"And I really do not want them returning. If you think about *not* being nice, please remember:

"I killed the nightmare. What does that make me?"

I also record a version of it, using Debbie Diplomat for the vocals, and load it into the organization's wardialer for mass distribution to their phone contacts for the various supernaturals.

l also drain the company accounts. They're not going to need the money anymore, and I have all their contacts already. It's a cool twenty billion. Dunno what I'm going to do with it, yet. Not like I really need much money anymore. Just a bit for salt, internet, and property taxes.

When I've recovered everything I plan to from this place, I do one last sweep for anything magical or intelligent… and then bury the place via Move Earth.

I drop Sarah and Debbie off in my Divine Realm, and repeat the process for all of their other physical facilities.