Blood Shaper

Cindy did her best to keep her expression neutral and her bearing unworried despite the nervousness coursing through her. It wasn’t her first time having to be professional, she preferred to be casual when possible but she’d had a job and responsibilities back home and knew how to handle herself. Maybe that word was why she was feeling so anxious about this no, though, “home”. She was never going to stop thinking of the world she’d come from as “home”, home is where the heart is and she had some people she loved and desperately missed back there, but Avalon had become her home too, and because of that the world of Torotia was feeling like a home that it hadn’t been up until then. On Earth if she said the wrong thing or made an incorrect assumption in a serious situation, a customer might be upset and there might be minimal problems with a project, but she hadn’t progressed in her career enough to really mess things up. Now she could really cause problems if she got something wrong.

Having Amanda and Ahthia as backup was incredibly reassuring and they had actively and passively helped her work through her nerves, but that didn’t squash all of them as she sat down across from the Elder there to represent the Shattered Clans. Cindy didn’t know if she counted as a diplomat, a representative, a delegate, or what but the timing of things had worked out so that Cindy was there meeting with the woman instead of Kay. It was hard to gauge her height while sitting, but Cindy decided she was just under Ahthia’s height and slightly broader. Her graying hair was pulled back into a no-nonsense bun and her slightly wrinkled face was impassive as the dwarven woman stared back at Cindy. This was the first person Cindy had met with noticeable signs of aging, other than Cyrus, Avalon’s Minister of Finance, who had past circumstances to explain his appearance. Cindy knew that elderly looking people in this world had either approached the end of the lifespan of their tier and had managed to tier up before dying of old age, buying them more time but leaving visual reminders of that close call, or were at the other end of that, closing in on their last days and not jumping the gap between their current tier and the next. The feel Cindy got from the dwarf was that of the later, not the former.

“Elder Metanis,” Ahthia greeted the other woman carefully, “I thought Elder Bronzearm was going to be to be representing the Clans in this matter.”

“Elder Bronzearm was kind enough to assist me in a little duplicity bent toward some of the more volatile Elders, the ones who sent most of a Legion here to be bothersome.” The Elder replied in a surprisingly beautiful voice.

“Is that why he was stalling?”

Metanis nodded, “It was, yes. There are more than a few Elders who are acting less like wise leaders and more like impulsive hotheads with anger management issues. If they had their way they would end up causing all sorts of problems for the Clans and for Avalon, so those of us who would prefer peaceful relations pulled a small bait-and-switch on them. Bronzeplate is off distracting them listening to their demands about how we handle this situation while I take care of the actual discussion. I would have liked to be able to speak to King Kay himself, but I understand the needs of one’s nation requiring one to travel.”

“So the Elders are finally splitting into factions, then?” Ahthia asked , acid dripping from every word.

“Please!” Metanis snorted and shook her head, “You know as well as I do that the ‘unbreakable unity’ of the Elders of the Shattered Clans is more theater than truth. There have been factions since the second generation of the Clans, constantly shifting based on the times and on personal feelings.”

No one expected Cindy to make any significant contributions to these discussions, she was here both as the figurehead Kay had left behind and to learn to be more than just a figurehead, but Amanda had been very clear in letting know Cindy was not required to sit silently. She’d coached her not to accept anything herself or make any promises, but anything else was acceptable. “I’m interested in knowing why you’re sharing as much of your internal workings as you are. I know Ahthia was originally a member of the Clans, but she’s part of Avalon now, and you’re here to negotiate with us because your nation attacked ours. Telling us about factionalism and maneuvering against the other leaders of the Clans doesn’t benefit you.”

The Elder let out a snort again, a harsh breath through her nose that conveyed both amusement and aggravation. “That’s because you don’t know as much as I do, at least about my motives. Letting you know the nitty gritty details is the only way I get what I want out of this.”

“And what’s that?”

“Peace. And to be left alone long enough to deal with our own problems without outsiders coming and mucking everything up.”

Amanda leaned a minute fraction of an inch forward. “You seem to have come prepared with what you want to say, so please, go ahead and tell us.”

Metanis stared at the younger human woman, scanning her face for something. After a few seconds passed it changed into giving Amanda the stink-eye. “You’re one of those, are you? And that King managed to make you into his chief adviser and the person who runs his government for him? Outworlders really do get all the damn luck,” She grumbled.

‘Why thank you.”

“Bah.” The Elder placed her hands on her knees and stared forward, her eyes narrowing as she thought to herself. “If I were any of you, I’d be wanting to know why the Clans are suddenly all up in your business. You’ve had some breakaways immigrate here and the Elders aren’t too happy about that, but there’s always people coming and going from any nation and we’ve never attacked anywhere else our more fractious younglings and outcasts travel to.” She glanced over at Ahthia with an apology in her eyes, “No offense girl, but you didn’t fit in in the Clans. I’m happy you found a place to make yourself happy.”

Ahthia replied with a tense nod but didn’t say anything, watching the Elder closely.

“I think it’s best if I start with a little history lesson. Some of this you might know but others you might not, I’m not really sure how much you’ve dug up yourselves or how deep into the restricted archives Ahthia managed to get herself before leaving.” She took a deep breath and sat back in her chair, changing her from a tired older woman to a teacher giving a lesson. “Back in the past, many centuries ago, there was a dwarven nation in the lands that Avalon now claims. The area your King has decided is his wasn’t ruled by one nation or people at the time, there were a few splitting up this chunk of territory. One of them was a country that was predominately dwarves, and that’s where our ancestors came from. During the time period before the last cyclical collapse, you know what I’m talking about when I say that?”

Cindy nodded along with the other two women. It was part and parcel with the idea that history repeated itself and every empire would eventually fall. The people of Torotia especially held onto this idea, pointing out regular historical Golden Ages followed by societal collapses that led to the end of old nations, the rise of new ones and the loss and rediscovery of many Classes and Skills, which led to a new Golden Age before repeating. According to the proponents of that belief, this period was the part where new countries rose up from the ashes of the previous collapse and started building toward a new age.

“Well whether you believe it’s regular and cyclical, there was definitely a big collapse on this side of the continent. Before that happened, th dwarven nation I’m talking about was in a friendly competition with their neighbors over who was best using the arts, developing new techniques and technologies, who had the best Classes and Skills among their important figures, and things like that. They weren’t hostile to each other, but they were competing, and it got a bit heated, with each one rushing to prove they were better than anyone else. Our histories say that led to the collapse. One of the countries around here, we don’t know which, was experimenting with something new, something not everyone agreed with. Whatever it was, it ended up causing a cataclysm that saw the beautiful cities of the nations in this area to collapse, and the survivors fled south. A large group of dwarven families from the nation I mentioned, who were apparently already on the outs with their leaders about some of the changes that were occurring, managed to stay mostly intact and kept going farther than most of the others who fled, eventually stopping to found the Clans.”

“I think I can see where this is going,” Amanda said quietly. “They blamed whatever the cataclysm was on the newness of what had been going on before that. If the people in charge had just stuck to the old and traditional ways there would never have been a cataclysm at all.”

“Aye, that’s exactly what they believed, and that became codified into the culture and traditions of the Clans. The ‘Shattered’ Clans, because even though many of our ancestors made it out, they lost many of their families and loved ones when the cities fell.”

“When you say ‘fell’ and ‘collapsed’…” Cindy gingerly inquired.

“According to our records I’m using both literally. The buildings broke apart into chunks and fell on the people, across multiple nations and cities hundreds of miles apart.”

“Where are all the ruins then?” Ahthia demanded, “We’ve barely found a handful, not enough to cover multiple cities in multiple countries.”

Metanis held her hands out, “I don’t know. A lot of the records of that time were suppressed or disposed of in fear of ever recreating whatever the experiments that caused everything were, so we lack a lot of details. Buried, not where we thought they would be, less in number than we assume, or just gone, I have no idea.”

“While an interesting subject to study and discuss later,” Amanda interjected, “Let’s focus on the immediate topic for now.”

“Sorry,” Ahthia muttered.

“Right, well, the Clans have remained very slow to adopt or adapt to new things or change at all since then. We focus incredibly strongly on how things have been done n the past and following tradition, which isn’t wrong in and of itself, but too much of anything is poison, and the Clans are starting to poison themselves. We’re stagnating and at the same time growing more and more ossified as the Elders refuse to see that we need to move forward before we freeze in place and die. The continuous increase in how rigid we are as a society is clashing with the young and the brave who want to do and see new things, leading them to break away from us.” She waved a hand in Ahthia’s direction. “The most stubborn of the Elders believe that we should be even stricter and hold those who want to leave in place and show them how they’re wrong and the Elders are correct, which is a recipe for disaster. Then your Outworlder King shows up.”

Metanis raised her arms and gestured around them. “Right in the place where our ancestors were ruined by the exploration of new things, an Outworlder shows up and starts making a new country. Outworlders are already beacons of unrest and change, and now one is digging around in the most dangerous of areas with the help of a group of never do wells who don’t understand that the Elders know best about all things and that running off to explore and taking those dammed boomstick contraptions with them is a terrible idea!” She waved her hands dramatically and rolled her eyes. “Then he manages to get the System to acknowledge the weapon that those same Elders have been bitching about for decades and then gets turned into a vampyr, except he’s not a vampyr he’s something else new! The hidebound idiots who Bronzearm is distracting decided your king is the herald of a new calamity and we need to destroy him as soon as possible.”

“So they arranged for a Legion of the Clans led by someone who agrees with them to join in on attacking us.”

“Exactly. The Elders who aren’t that paranoid about every new thing being evil but who still want to come down on those who don’t want to follow the old ways the exact manner in which they dictate them managed to catch wind of it all right before they left and included those nonsense demands you received about refusing anyone who comes from the Clans as immigrants. The one’s who wnt to remove your King Kay from existence wanted to start a fight that they could drag the rest of the Elders into by sending our people out here to die as martyrs against an evil king.” She pointed at her own chest, “Those of us among the Elders who can see that we need to change in order to survive only got wind of all this later on, but we managed to work around our dramatic colleagues to get me here to negotiate and keep all that bullshit from going anywhere..”

‘And what is it that you want?” Amanda asked, “You said peace and to be left alone, but give us specifics.”

“I just said that there are some of us that see we need to change to survive, but we want to do it on our terms. I understand that not everyone wants to be like us, as traditionalist as we are, but we don’t want to become something different. Me and the Elders working with me are trying to buy us time to shift the Clans into something that can survive while still staying the Clans and not becoming something different. I’m here to negotiate the release of our troops back home and a guarantee from Avalon that you won’t start poking your nose into the Clans’ internal business while we ride out the storm we built for ourselves. I’ve read a lot of history, and I know how growing nations like to start meddling with their neighbors.”

Amanda’s eye took on a predatory gleam that was quickly masked by pure professionalism. “Well then. Shall we start with the easily defined portion of that? What are the Clans offering in exchange for your soldiers that attacked us without provocation or a formal declaration of war?”

Amanda shifted in her seat so she could see both sides of the table clearly and settled in for the real reason she was accompanying these talks, witnessing and learning from the intense negotiations so she’d have some experience when it was time for her to be the one making offers and demands.