Blood Shaper

Two couches with thin pillows sat across from each other with a low slung coffee table in between them, with Kay sleepily sitting on one of them and enjoying the view out the window. The sitting room attached to his suite was a nice little addition and the view was nice. As he’d tiered up his body had needed less and less sleep and even with the travel borne exhaustion he’d had the night before he’d still woken up after only a handful of hours feeling rested. He’d had a quick drink of blood from the supplies he’d carried with him and sat down to relax before things inevitably got hectic.

“I’m getting hungry.” He muttered, mostly to himself, but that didn’t stop him from being heard.

“I’m sure we can find someone to help with that<” Lauren replied, sounding amused. “They do have a full staff here, after all.”

“I don’t want to bother people into making me food if breakfast is already planned though.”

Her tone carried a faint hint of exasperation. “This isn’t only a palace for the queen, it’s a workplace for hundreds of people, there’s probably meals being cooked every moment of the day so that the guards alone don’t go hungry while standing watch. You’re also a visiting king. They’ll make you food and not have a single complaint.”

“… Sorry, still working on this. It feels like a long time on one hand but on the other a few years isn’t long enough to really get used to all the changes in my life.”

“You’re doing what anyone could ask of someone who wasn’t raised into this and ended up being a leader of this level, which is only bitching in private, so it’s not the end of the world.”

“Well, I probably don’t say it enough but thanks for putting up with me.”

“It is my pleasure, your majesty.”

Kay snorted a laugh and waved lazily at the door. “Please send someone to find someone to bring me food. Then let’s talk about a related subject and something I’ve been dragging my feet on because it’s another big change I don’t like.”

“Oh?” Lauren poked her head out of the door and gave some orders to one of the guards outside. “What’s that?”

“Getting me a staff. Or at least the first part of that, which is getting me a butler or personal servant or whatever title we decided on. The person in charge of taking care of me so I can focus on things that aren’t taking care of me. I know you’re heavily involved in the selection process since you’re captain of my guard. What’s the hold up been outside of my hang ups?”

Lauren looked back at him with one eyebrow raised and a slightly surprised look on her face mixed with some relief. “It’s good you’ve noticed yourself and are bringing it up.”

“I’ve been looking at my own behavior and trying to be better. Seeing another monarch in person and looking around at all of the finery she has, it felt natural for her.” He sighed. “I obviously still have to work on meshing my expectations from before with the ones from now, but I grew up in a society that put a lot of importance on self sufficiency and doing things on your own. The idea of having someone around who’s job is to do things for me has been… unwelcome. But we’re pushing past that. What can I do to make things smoother?”

She took a moment to think about it. “Beyond being more open to it, I can’t think of anything. My part of pruning the list has been security concerns, which Isla’s been helping with, and anyone that could be bribed, blackmailed, or just intimidated into working against you is obviously out, as well as the people with other loyalties. Nothing you can do about those people. Everyone else has been failing Amanda’s standards, which are pretty high, but deservedly so. Some of them she’s held on to because they’d make good staff for you or might be trainable, but no one has been good enough to be basically a part of you.”

Kay nodded along with her reasoning. “You’re right that I can’t do anything about candidates that fail, but just to check, there’s nothing you can think of for me to help?”

Lauren shrugged. “Not while we’re months away from home. When we get back I’d say start being a direct part of the selection process to see if there’s anyone that stands out to you that would fail under Amanda’s scrutiny, but…” She shrugged again.

“Maybe I’ll see if any of the rewards Queen Alahna is willing to offer for helping her out can include introducing me to some good candidates. She’s been running a nation for longer than me, she’s got to have some extras laying around.”

“That’s not how people with jobs work.” She noticed Kay’s smirk and rolled her eyes. “That could work, we’ve already used connections you’ve made to get recommendations and recruits for other important positions. We’d need to get them to swear Oaths like some of the ministers did, of course.” There was a knock at the door and Lauren’s armor crawled up her head and covered her face in the Blood Guard’s typical faceless helmet.

“Yes?”

The door swung open and a palace servant stood in the frame. “Your majesty, a meal for you will be available in the suite’s dining room momentarily.”

“Ah, thank you.” Kay moved to his feet, then paused. He hadn’t even looked through some of the doors in the suite. “Where is that?”

“This way, your majesty.”

The meal was quick and tasty and Eleniah joined him a little later in the morning. They made a little small talk but the conversation soon petered out due to the tension Eleniah was exuding. With nothing else to do, Kay went back to practicing with quick and dirty uses of his non-combat Skills to pass the time. Mapping out the suite and other sections of the hall his people had been assigned rooms in using some blood to make a three dimensional map of the area was a fun little exercise that lasted him until it was time for the meeting with Queen Alahna.

As it was a private meeting, they were led to a meeting room tucked deeper into the palace’s less commonly used hallways instead of the large public audience hall. It was similar to the sitting room Kay had been enjoying the view out of, with two couches facing each other and a table in between, although this table was high enough to write on comfortably. Queen Alahna was already seated on one of the couches when they arrived and she silently waved at them to sit. Her outfit of the day was much more casual, looking like a slightly fancier of Eleniah’s usual outfits and while she wasn’t lounging against the pillows she was looking much more relaxed that the day before. Behind her stood two of her own guards, and the Lauren and the other of Kay’s guards mirrored their position behind the couch as he and Eleniah sat.

She stared at Kay for a while without saying anything. Just when it was starting to get awkward she began speaking. “So, you’re the Outworlder that stole my cous-“ She stopped speaking, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “No,” She continued without opening her eyes, “That’s not helpful, polite, or even correct.”

Eleniah’s growl died in her throat.

Alahna slowly opened her eyes and looked at Kay. “I apologize. Things have been difficult and I’m feeling quite testy but that’s no reason to treat you poorly. Hello. It’s nice to meet someone else that can actually understand what it’s like to build a nation out of scraps. Most of the small powers that build a little base around themselves end up stalling at the town or city level and can’t get any bigger. You have the advantage of being a Class Line Progenitor, but that doesn’t change the fact that you started with even less than I did and have built something impressive in a very short time.”

“… Thank you.”

She nodded and turned to Eleniah. There was another long pause that began to get awkward as she slowly opened her mouth and just stopped, letting her jaw hang there. She looked uncertain and hesitant as she took a deep breath. “Eleniah… I’m sorry. I can’t apologize for everything I’ve done that might have hurt you or made you unhappy with me, because there’s some of it that I wouldn’t change, but I am sorry for a lot of it. I was unfair to you in a number of way’s that I regret and I’m sorry that it led to you leaving.”

“Thank you for your apology,” Eleniah replied, her voice neutral and tinged with a trace of neutrality.

If Alahna noticed her cousin’s reservations she didn’t react to them. “Once the issue I called you here for it resolved or even if there’s some time while it’s dealt with, could we speak in private? I can’t… This isn’t the moment and we need to focus on the problem at hand, but I do want to take some time to talk to you, about a lot of things.”

“We can definitely make some time to talk.”

“Good.” She took another deep breath, and as she exhaled her expression changed from a grateful relative to a steely, determined queen. “The System says you’re equipped to deal with eldritch nonsense.”

Kay nodded to himself, glad to have the explicit confirmation that proved several of his theories. “So you have System Access too.”

“Yes, I do. We can compare notes later, I’m sure we both have some insights into it the other won’t have based on our circumstances. While I’ve never had the System outright lie to me though, there have been moments where it’s description of a person’s capabilities don’t match my own. So, is it correct in pointing at you as the source of my problems?”

“I can’t snap my fingers and make anything eldritch go away, but I have some advantages to dealing with them. I can passively resist eldritch corruption to an extent, I can do increased damage with specific Skills, and I can somewhat better detect any sources of taint or corruption.”

Alahna looked at him with one eyebrow raised. “Detection? That’s very useful. How does it work?”

Kay glanced at Eleniah, who shrugged before nodding. “She’s got System Access, so she can probably find out even if you don’t tell her.”

“It’s a racial characteristic. When I got bitten by a vampyr, I used one of my Skills to try and purge the taint that was turning me into a monster. I kind of succeeded, but in a way that would have just killed me instead of saving me completely, and the System helped me turn into a vampire in exchange for a boon it owed me. I guess it saw an opportunity there so it added some tweaks to the final product. Any vampire can intrinsically detect eldritch corruption or sources of it and instinctively track it down, although we haven’t had any chances to experiment with it. The only time it’s activated has been when a giant fuck off monster came out of the sky, so there wasn’t much tracking it down necessary.”

“Interesting. Finding the source of the problem is one of the problems we’ve been having, so having a vampire around will be very useful then. Eldritch nonsense hasn’t popped up regularly until relatively recently, but its always a giant pain in one way or another when it does, so having an entire species that can assist is quite the boon.” She thought to herself for a moment. “How quickly could you track down a source for or a location of some of the taint we’ve been dealing with.”

“I don’t know.” Kay said with a shrug, “Like I said, I haven’t had any chance to test that side of it.”

“Then, if you don’t mind, I show you what little we have regarding this issue and explain what’s been happening on the way to where we’ve been storing the evidence we’ve managed to keep intact.” She stood and gestured to one of her guards at the door.

“That’s not a sentence I was expecting. Most of my direct experience with eldritch things has been giant monsters, vampyr, vampyr who mutate into giant monsters, and a cult that summoned a giant monster. What have you been dealing with?”

“Dopplegangers of some kind. People have been replaced with some kind of shapeshifting monsters, and we have no idea who is actually who they appear to be.”