Blood Shaper

“Balance of power” as a concept was interesting to Kay, especially as he’d become a person who both had power and could be considered a power. He’d originally begun to think about the topic at some level of depth after the deaths of his family. A self driving transport truck had hit his family’s car and killed his parents and little sister. In the wake of that tragedy and the lack of what he considered acceptable punishment for those at fault and no real attempts to solve the problems that had caused the accident, he’d started looking at politics, feeling driven to reform the system into something better.

From his perspective the situation was simple, multiple people, his family included, had been killed, and the only punishments handed out were fines against the companies who were responsible for the deaths. The courts had even ruled that there wasn’t anyone to be tried for manslaughter, as there were no drivers for the trucks and there was no way to reasonably blame the programmers who made the trucks’ software or the company executives for the deaths. Kay believed that there needed to be harsher punishments for the executives, managers, and other employees of the corporations that allowed or enabled horrific accidents to occur. The idea that it was cheaper to pay fines when people died than it was to fix the mistakes that caused deaths, and that that was an acceptable way to do business, needed to be stamped out with prejudice.

Sadly, Kay was a bit naive. Driven by his rage and grief, he didn’t consider the forces at work to create and sustain the system he lived in. It took him a few years, but eventually he came to understand the modified version of Newton’s First Law of Motion which was the first law of politics: The people in power will work to stay in power, and will work to keep other people from having any power. The current politicians he’d have to work for and suck up to in order to get anywhere wanted the status quo to stay because they benefited from it. The corporations paid for their pet politicians to make sure they could avoid the kind of punishments that Kay wanted so that they could push the limit further and further in the name of greater profits, at the expense of anyone who happened to be too close. It didn’t matter to them that the completely unmonitored self driving trucks were dangerous, just as it didn’t matter to them that their factories were dumping toxic waste into water supplies or that they were destroying the Amazon Rainforest for resources and land.

Trying to change the system from the outside would get him nowhere, the mechanisms of power were too entrenched to overturn without an armed rebellion, and trying to climb up on the inside would turn him into the very thing he hated, a jaded politician willing to sell his soul for the tiniest scrap of influence and the next big payday from his corporate backers. Realizing that had sent him into a downward spiral, which had taken quite a while to pull out of, and left him directionless for some time. He still hadn’t been totally sure what his life was going to look like before he’d been suddenly yanked into Torotia, and he’d had to accept that he was never going to get the kind of vengeance he wanted for his family.

Those experiences left Kay with an interest in both the philosophical ideas of the balance of power and in the actual real world exercises of power, which came to the fore in the negotiations with the visiting representatives of organizations and the delegates of foreign powers starting the day after his coronation. The one delegate he most wanted to speak to, the Elder from the Shattered Clans, had politely asked to be put near the end of the list, and at Ahthia’s recommendation Kay had agreed to that. That left everyone else, and while they were a disparate conglomeration of interests, at a base level they were all after the same thing, more power. Whether it was through commerce, influence, alliances, might, or perception, everyone who sat in front of Kay with a request or offer wanted to gather more power to themselves and their organization or polity.

Kay had to balance his own personal and national power against those he was negotiating with to get the best outcome for his nation and people, and that was where it became interesting and made Kay begin to think of the topic and his past, because it was in the best interest of his people for Avalon, and Kay personally, to gain more power. He’d known it intellectually, but that was the moment where Kay really came to understand where leaders became corrupt. It was one thing to be able to acknowledge that leaders became corrupt when they sought power for themselves for its own sake and for their own sake rather than seeking power to use it for their people and it was an entirely different thing to understand that. He’d known that corruption was a problem and tried to make a government that would minimize it, but he hadn’t had any experiences that had shown him how alluring the draw of power could be and the willpower that could become needed to resist that pull.

He realized it in that moment because he didn’t have enough power. For most of the people coming to negotiate, they were after smaller things, trade routes, exclusive manufacturing rights, permission to begin building a presence in Avalon. Representatives from the smaller nations and city-states in the rough and tumble and often contested region to the west wanted guarantees of independence or military alliances to ward off their enemies. Mostly, people hoping to offer something valuable to get what they wanted, but in a few cases some of the negotiators had things they knew Kay or Avalon wanted or needed, and they were there to fleece the best price possible for themselves.

The Fejon Training Guild was a comparatively small organization both in general and when held up against their own contemporaries, but they were the only one of their kind willing to come to Avalon this early, and they had something Kay wanted for his people, knowledge. Organizations that gathered information on how to get rare and powerful Classes, whether earning them at tier one or tiering up into them, weren’t terribly rare, but they weren’t common either. It required quite a lot of seed money and influence to get established enough that they could acquire really desirable information without getting crushed by more established competitors, but once they managed to get the ball rolling they were quite profitable. Nothing could stop Kay’s citizens from getting Classes, literally nothing could even enchanted slave collars like those used by Nelam only stopped people from tiering up, nothing could stop people from gaining tier one Classes, but the barrier of knowledge prevented many people from getting better Classes.

Specialized resource gatherers, powerful Soldier variants, extra productive researchers, even almost unheard of magic Classes, the negotiators claimed they had access to the information necessary to get all of those Classes and more, and Kay wanted that information for his people. The negotiators knew that, of course, and pushed hard on the price, believing they had the upper hand. Sadly for them, their starting price was completely ridiculous. Kay wasn’t sure if they were starting with a higher price they didn’t believe would be accepted in order to make it easier to get what they did want, but they’d shot too high. Five thousand Skill boosting gems, the creation of Kay’s using his Blood Manipulator and Blood Melder Classes that used Kay’s magic and a bit of someone’s blood to make an item that gave a small boost to one of their Skills, was an insanely high price, especially with the restrictions the Fejon Training Guild wanted on the information they sold. A limit on the number of people with each Class they sold to Kay, regular payments for each person with the Class, and swearing an Oath to the System not to share the information with anyone else except those getting the Class?

It took Kay several hours to make one of the items they wanted, and that required a lot of mana, the blood of the person who was going to receive the gem, and time. Making five thousand of them would take years, even including the small number of trusted people who had been taught how to do it and were being paid to just work on that, and was a useless proposition besides, since each one had to be tailored to the person who would use the Skill boost, thus making wholesale of the gems useless. It wasn’t going to happen.

There was no way they were going to be able to come to an agreement on the price, especially a price that included dropping the restrictions Kay would never accept, and that meant he wouldn’t be getting the information for his citizens. Oh how he wanted it. He didn’t need the information, and neither did his people, but it would provide so many opportunities and advancements that were now hanging just out of reach. That was where Kay truly came to completely understand the draw of unchecked power corrupted by desire. If he was personally strong enough he could attack the Fejon Training Guild and take what he wanted without repercussions or if Avalon was a more powerful nation he could push the Guild into a corner and draw a more reasonable price out of them. At that moment he wanted to be stronger to get something for his people, but when would that reason become an excuse and when would that excuse fall away entirely. At that point he’d be gaining power to gain power to gain power and attacking this guild would be about the “insult” of them denying him what he wanted. It was a slippery slope and now he could finally see the top of it with open eyes.

It was frightening and oh so tempting, and he deliberately stepped away from it this time as he sadly informed the negotiator that the time they had for that day was over, and he had to move to the next delegate. He kindly invited them to remain in Avalon and see if they could all come to a mutually acceptable payment for services rendered later on before very politely having the guards escort them out.

Kay waited for them to leave and the door to shut behind them before slumping in his seat and letting the scowl he’d been suppressing bleed out over his face.

“That was well handled.” Isla’s small figure appeared out of thin air and landed at her customary spot on Kay’s shoulder. During the preparations for his coronation Kay had discovered that Isla could make tangible illusions, so he wasn’t sure if this was her real body or just another fake to trick people. “I’ve got the Skills and experience to tell how angry you were getting, but they definitely didn’t. My compliments on your self control.”

“Thank you..” Kay continued to glare at where the Fejon negotiators had sat, “Any chance we can dig up enough dirt on them to strong arm them into giving us a decent price?”

“Your Outworlder sensibilities mean that your definition of a decent price for that kind of information will likely be a lot different than anyone else's, but its worth a shot. I’ll set some people on that, but if they leave too soon.” She shrugged.

“Of course,” Kay acknowledged, “I can’t detain them so they’re here long enough to get blackmail information on them, that would be silly. At that point just interrogate them directly, and I doubt that would work. If they’re smart they’d keep any valuable information away from the negotiating team so they can’t be tortured or bribed into giving it away.” He let out his annoyance through one large sigh before shifting in his seat and readjusting his posture to something more professional and hopefully regal. “Time for the next session, so back into hiding for you.”

Isla vanished, and Kay called for the bureaucrat from Amanda’s department to enter the room. “Who’s next on the schedule?” He asked her after she’d entered.

“A mercantile group that focuses on alchemical ingredients, your majesty.”

“Anything interesting about them?”

“Not particularly, your majesty, they’re likely to ask for similar concessions as the other merchants so far, trade routes, priority on their desired ingredients, or a monopoly on one or more of the markets they sell or buy in.”

Kay hid his eye rolling at the constant “your majesty-s”, the protocol he’d pushed through called for only one every few minutes since he couldn’t get anyone to back him up on doing away with it entirely, but he wasn’t going to punish the woman for being outwardly respectful. He assumed that that was what she was doing, if she was actually deliberately disobeying protocol to get to him that would be pretty funny since it was so hard to detect. “Will anyone be sitting in this one with me? I know that Cyrus is scheduled to join me for some of the economic discussions.”

“No, your majesty, Minister Aventi won’t be in any negotiations till tomorrow when the notable trading guild and mercantile groups become involved again. The Prime Minister will be joining you a few sessions from now, though.”

“Oh? Who’s that with?”

“The delegate from the Seramist Isles, your majesty.”

“Oh. Make sure Eleniah is available and included in that one, please.”

“Of course, your majesty, I’ll locate Lady Eleniah and make sure she attends.”

“Perfect, thank you. Alright, go ahead and send in the next group. I wonder what they’ll try and bribe me with this time. Potions that use blood as an ingredient maybe?”