Blood Shaper

“Alahna,” Eleniah called out, interrupting the tense conversation conversation her cousin was having with one of the leaders of her guards.

“What?”

Eleniah held out some papers to her. “Do you have any additions to this?” She glanced over her shoulder at the two people coaching Kay on being sneakier and more subtle. “Your investigators said they’re just ready to start checking the first batch of people.” The two men were taking turns giving Kay various bits of advice and running him through scenarios, with the counterintelligence agent Eleniah knew as a distant relative teaching Kay how to suppress subtle facial expressions while the guard officer more experienced with actual criminal investigations tried to teach him various cues that people under suspicion might give off. Kay’s Class Line Progenitor title only boosted his learning speed for Classes and Skills related to Blood Manipulator, so he wouldn’t reach even a novice level of skill in any of the things the two of them tried to teach him today, but something was better than nothing and Eleniah didn’t think anyone believed they’d be rooting out the entire problem in just a few hours. “Are we going to be getting one of your spymasters in on this?”

Alahna pressed her lips together and glanced at the door. “I’m hoping Janielle or Bev’roa show up. I sent missives to both of them but there’s not telling if or when they’ll arrive.”

Eleniah’s eyebrows met the top of her head as she gave her cousin a surprised look. Kay hid Avalon’s spymaster through a combination of illusions from Isla herself and careful control over who knew Isla was even a real person. Alahna hid the Seramist Isle’s spymaster using an elaborate shell game, where dozens of potential candidates rotated between tasks such as giving reports when Alahna took council with her advisers, performing interrogations or questionings, and collecting information from spies and information brokers. Any one of them could be the real spymaster, but Eleniah was sure none of them where. She suspected, she didn’t know because that kind of information was something Alahna had deliberately asked her to not pay attention to back when she’d lived in the Isles, that the shell game was just another layer of obfuscation with the real spymaster hiding behind it.

The two people Alahna had just mentioned were the two people Eleniah would have bet good money on being the spymaster. Janielle was one of Eleniah and Alahna’s aunts and had run Clan Selthoran’s intelligence operations for decades before the Seramist Isles was more than just a way to refer to a geographical region, and Bev’roa was one of their old adventuring party members, a rouge from one of the more interesting human settlements among the islands and one of Janielle’s proteges.

“You’re that worried?”

Alahna shot her a fierce glare. “Of course I am! What if one of these things goes after family? What if they’ve already replaced one of my husbands, or my children?”

Stepping forward and grabbing her cousin’s shoulder, Eleniah pulled Alahna into a side hug. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking in those terms. You’re right, I’d break out the big guns too.”

“Of course you didn’t jump straight to that possibility.” Alahna sniffed and turned her nose up, assuming a haughty posture to suppress the fear in her eyes. “You haven’t had any children yet, you don’t have that instinctive fear for them every time something might go wrong.” She looked over at Kay who was practicing looking at people without being spotted. “Not that that’s going to stay the same forever.”

“Let’s not talk about that.” Eleniah interjected. “For now,” She added when Alahna gave her a teasing look. “You can rib on me all you want and we can discuss everything related later, but we need to focus.”

“I’m interested that you didn’t immediately tell me I was wrong, but you’re right, that can wait.” She straightened her shoulders and schooled her expression, the brief flash of vulnerability ignored by those around her out of loyalty. Her complaints about her cousin aside, Eleniah was glad that Alahna had built a nation mostly free of shark-like power hunters that would jump on any hint of weakness or humanity like blood in the water. They still existed, but they weren’t common or in any positions of true influence.

“I hope he is able to find the fakes.” Alahna continued, “Just being able to detect them will take a massive load off of my shoulders, but there’s no way to know for sure until we get a positive reaction as opposed to all negatives.”

“It’ll work out,” Eleniah reassured her, “He’s not going to be any kind of competent investigator or sleuth any time soon, but he’s getting damn good at dealing with eldritch bullshit.”

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Kay stood off to the side behind a curtain in a small room connected to a larger room that Alahna’s people had gathered the first group to be tested in. After, hopefully, clearing all the important figures in her government and all of Alahna’s family members that were easily accessible Kay worked with a couple of investigative types to get some quick practice in being less obviously worried about the people right next to him being shapeshifting eldritch monsters. He didn’t do terribly well, but it spent the time waiting for a list of who to be tested got finalized and the people with actual experience in holding witch hunts to decide on a methodology. Not that anyone actually hunted Witches here, they were apparently a useful Class, especially in wilderness areas with a limited supply of other magic users.

One at a time the people in the room next door were led through the curtain and sat down in front of Kay. They all complied with what the guards with Kay ordered and presented their arms to him. It was simple to make a small gash, push some blood in, focus his mana on Purify Blood just to boost the effectiveness, and pass them on without finding any fakes. He was surprised at how easily everyone just did as they were told and not a single person asked questions. Kay had been told that the people who were going to be tested had been prepared beforehand with some story that resembled a version of the truth, but nothing else beyond that. Kay wasn’t sure if the people working with him were suspicious of a foreigner, naturally inclined to not share too much information, or if it was just a culture that permeated from the top, stemming form the queen that was so entranced with sneaky planning and deception.

The limited explanation he’d received had told him that the people that were being tested right then weren’t the most important people they could be testing, but they were the most vital. They didn’t have decision making power of the ability to sway the nation, but they did have direct and personal access to those that did. It wouldn’t matter if they cleared a general if his lieutenant wasn’t really his lieutenant. There weren’t any military officers in the next room, but that was the vibe Kay got. If he assumed the people running this were smart, which he would until proven otherwise even if that was probably a bad idea in general, he’d also assume that there would be at least one suspect in the group, someone that could finally tell them if Kay really could detect the shapeshifters, even if the suspect wasn’t part of the original group of vital people to clear.

One by one, maids, butlers, assistants, aides, bureaucrats, cooks, and more of the vital manpower that kept an organization and a nation running passed in front of Kay with no muss and no fuss, only to stand back up again after a moment with no ill reaction, get thanked by the person running the show who Kay was pretty sure was a spy of some kind, and leave. A dozen people became dozens and Kay realized they must have been gathering others outside the attached room he’d seen, because this many people wouldn’t have fit.

Now, Kay wasn’t up to the standards of the high end investigators, detectives, and spy catchers in Queen Alahna’s service, but he wasn’t a complete pansy when it came to noticing tells in people’s behavior. So when the next person in a line of practically faceless people Kay didn’t know pushed through the curtain, the intelligence agent doing the talking didn’t react at all. The guard standing directly opposite Kay however, tensed her arms and let her hand drift ever so slightly toward her weapon. He started paying a little more attention to the man who entered, a nondescript human man with brown hair and eyes who was dressed in a uniform Kay didn’t recognize and couldn’t place. Chef’s were easy to identify, as were bureaucrats thanks to most of them having multiple writing utensils on them, which Kay found a stereotypical. Everyone else’s clothing tended to blend together, especially since Kay was mostly looking at their arms anyway.

The man sat down and Kay made his small cut after letting the spy make the same spiel he had been. Blood went in, Skill got activated with mana, and Kay pulled his blood back out. The guard slowly relaxed as the man left, and the spy took a brief moment to stare at his back as he left. Kay wondered what the deal was, but didn’t bother asking while they still had people to test. It could have been any number of things that had gotten him on the radar, including the man being suspicious for other reasons outside of being an eldritch monstrosity that had taken the place of the person he appeared to be, and it wasn’t worth Kay’s time to speculate. Unless that was the only suspect in the batch that he was testing, and that meant they didn’t have a way to sort the bodysnatchers from the real people.

Another six people passed through without a positive result before a larger man came through the curtain and pushed enough of the opaque cloth upward that Kay could see there was only one person left waiting. He was starting to think that there either weren’t any shapeshifters in this group, or that he couldn’t find them this way. Both thoughts were alarming in their own way, but Kay also noticed the guard tensing up again as the man sat across form him. As the spy gave the same old boring speech that Kay had heard almost a hundred time by now, Kay started to feel uneasy. It was like something was running down the back of his neck, a thick viscous goo. Slowly, keeping his expression as relaxed as he could, he began to draw more blood to wait just beneath his skin.

The reaction, when it happened was much faster and more dramatic than Kay expected. Less than thirty seconds after pushing a bit of blood into the man’s veins and activating Purify Blood, his arm collapsed into sludge. The flesh sagged for a brief instant before it burst like an overfull water balloon, with almost all of the goop dropping straight down onto the table. The man and Kay both stared down in shock at the exposed bones, bones that weren’t bones at all but metal shaped like bones with wires and cabling running throughout where muscle, veins, and flesh should have been. Kay dragged his gaze and to find the man staring back at him, with glowing red eyes.

A spear of blood burst from Kay’s chest and slammed the shapeshifter into the wall, pinning him as the sharpened point pierced through his torso. The creature shaped like a man reacted instantly, swinging his arm out and slamming it into the guard at high speed before she could draw her weapon. The spy jumped back, fumbling at his side for a weapon. The thing’s eyes glowed even brighter, and Kay decided that now was not the time to try and take a prisoner, as much as everyone he’d spoken to had asked him to try. He turned the spear into a collection of buzz saws and ripped the thing into pieces.

Limbs and bits of body flew all over the room, most of it almost immediately liquefying into the same goo the thing’s arm had become. Kay generated a shield across himself and the two other people in the room to keep any contaminants off them. The still solid pieces bounced for a moment before coming to rest. They too started turning into residue after settling, although at a much slower pace.

The curtain was flung open as the last occupant threw herself into the room, brandishing a candelabra above her head. She skidded to a stop at the sight of the dismembered monster turning into goo and stared around at the three people who were all still slightly in shock from the sudden descent into violence. “Well,” She said in a surprisingly calm voice, “That explains what the point of this nonsense was. I knew it wasn’t some kind of health test. I suppose you want to test me to make sure I’m not whatever that is now?”

Kay completely ignored her, still stunned by what had just happened. As the guard and the spy slowly recovered, Kay demanded an answer to a question he’d never thought he would ever ask in seriousness. “Was that a fucking Terminator!?”