Blood Shaper

“What?” Cindy leaned across the table, her hands bracing at the edge. She stared incredulously at the disheveled man across from her. “They asked for what?”

“They haven’t actually asked, milady, but the idea was brought up in some of the council sessions they’ve been having to deal with the current issues.” The man, who wasn’t quite a spy but certainly wasn’t just one of Avalon’s scouts, was doing his best to remain professional and unfazed by his surroundings, but his exhaustion was evident and he was starting to flag. “They discussed it during a meeting that I managed to listen in on, but it didn’t seem like many were interested in actually trying.”

“I hope not!” Cindy dropped heavily into her seat. It felt like the weight of her responsibilities were driving her down into the floor and the only thing keeping her up was the chair. “Technically at war or not, we can’t afford to start annexing pieces of Nelam, and certainly not whole towns. I’m sure at least one person would insist that Kay didn’t leave me with enough power to make that kind of decision, but my vote would be hell no. That would be a massive tangle of problems we don’t need.”

Amanda both in agreement and in appreciation of how far Cindy had come under the short amount of tutelage Amanda could give her. “Correct, as things stand we wouldn’t be able or willing to take control of any of Nelam’s territory through annexation or conquest. Avalon remains at war with Nelam, but we won’t be initiating any battles with them unless things change dramatically.

The part time spy looked very uncomfortable, and Cindy didn’t blame him. Decisions at that level were very much above his pay grade. He was instrumental in gathering the information needed to make important decisions, but he normally didn’t have to deal with the Prime Minister and Avalon’s first duchess start reacting negatively about the information he’d uncovered. It would have been better to learn what he had to share and let him leave before reacting to the absurdity, but Cindy felt like she was on her wits end and hadn’t thought that far.

The sudden outbreak of civil war in Nelam had been startling, and to call it just a civil war might be toning down the situation slightly. It was more like at least one revolution against the government by internal actors, multiple simultaneous slave rebellions, and a cascading chain of conquered countries that had been taken over by Nelam recently enough that they still had partisans and key figures to rally around starting individual wars for their freedom all bundled up into one civil war.

It was even worse than it sounded too, because none of the factions were cooperating with each other. Some of the countries fighting to exists as their own nations again were against slavery and were doing their best to free slaves in the territory they had a level of control over, but some had no issues forcing slaves to be disposable soldiers for their “honorable battles toward freedom from Nelamian control”. That left groups of freed slaves attacking or at least refusing contact with forces that were absolutely on their side, out of fear of it being a trap.

The entire clusterfuck was made even more chaotic by the “traditional” rebellion taking place in the heartlands of Nelam. The nobles who’d served in various levels of power in the nation had revolted against King Glowl, citing tyranny and other concerns that made it “righteous and true” for them to try to overthrow the king. At the same time a portion of the military had decided that their general was now in charge and that the king and nobility should be dismantled entirely. Both sides of that nonsense were fighting each other and Glowl’s loyalist forces, with all three of those factions using slave soldiers to do a lot of the fighting. That brought the slave rebellions and fragmented nations that were against slavery as a whole into the fray against them.

With a minimum of seven factions fighting a nine-way war, no one was entirely sure who was who and who was fighting who at any given moment, the entirety of Nelam’s territory had devolved into a compete mess. Glowl hadn’t been seen publicly since his loss against Kay, and the border regions around Nelam’s control were also jumping many different directions under the pressure caused by the sudden disarray. A swathe of the towns and cities under threat of Nelamian invasion or annexation through subterfuge were making what Cindy thought was the right choice, sitting quietly while reinforcing their borders and waiting to see what happened. Others were being way too hotheaded and actually trying to conquer the now less defended fringes or jumping into the tangled discordant jumble of a war on one side or another, adding more fuel to the fire. The entire thing was a problem, and with refugees fleeing the fighting and unstable areas looking for any port in a storm, it was quickly becoming Avalon’s problem and thus Cindy’s.

She opened her eyes and nodded to the scout. “Thank you for your report. Go get some food and some rest, unless something drastic occurs you’ll be on your normal schedule.”

“Thank you, duchess.” He quickly stood and made his escape before anyone could stop him. It was obvious that he was jonesing for a meal and a bed, not necessarily in that order.

Cindy waited for enough time to pass that the man, who definitely had at least one expanded senses Skill, definitely couldn’t overhear her, deliberately or not, before looking up at the ceiling. “Isla, are you here right now?”

The tiny spymaster faded into view perched on the top of the chair the scout had just been in. “Yes, of course I am. Why do you keep looking up when I’m out of sight and you’re trying to talk to me?”

For a moment Cindy debated explaining what she thought was the reason, something about how her culture had developed based on the idea of God being “up”, whether that was in the sky or that heaven was somehow above them even though it wasn’t actually, but that seemed like it would be too big of a sidetrack. Torotia didn’t have anywhere near the same level of organized religion or worship as her Earth and bringing up certain ideas or topics usually had her spending several minutes explaining one thing. “It’s a cultural thing. Have any of your sources come in with info that collaborates what he just reported?”

“You realize he is one of my sources? Actually, even more than that, he’s one of my subordinates. He is one of the people that collaborates information.”

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“Is anyone seriously discussing trying to be annexed into Avalon?”

“Seriously, no. That is to say, a few voices have been serious about proposing the idea, but they’ve gained no traction with their respective communities. The intelligent ones know that we’re too far away to do any such thing and the belligerent ones don’t want anyone telling them what to do anymore, so they’ll stay far away from us.” Isla sat on the edge and crossed her legs, one atop the other. “What I’m more interested in than blathering that won’t accomplish anything is some of the rumors and stories we’ve been getting out of the refugees coming our way.”

Cindy held up a hand to stop her and turned her whole body to face Amanda. “We’ll get to that. I’ve got some questions for our esteemed Prime Minister.”

Amanda looked back at her stoically. “Oh?”

“How much of this is your doing?” She remembered some of the visions she’d seen, the things she’d learned in her dreams.

“What do you mean?”

“Did you start the complete and total breakdown of Nelam leading into what is very quickly becoming a horribly brutal war with civilians and salves dying left and right?”

“No.” Amanda replied seriously, “No I did not.” She turned and looked in the general direction Nelam was from Avalon City. “My plan was significantly tidier and involved much less widespread suffering. I was going to have a multitude of key figures keeping slavery somewhat stable in Nelam’s territory assassinated. With my own personal connections and promises to a few others that didn’t work directly for me ensuring that I could, when it was time to strike, get a most of the slaves that were in dangerous positions free from their collars and safely away from any reprisals, I had hoped to be able to control the fighting that came afterward. At least enough to prevent any true atrocities.” She looked back at Cindy with a very sad smile. “Unfortunately one of the groups I have no connections with made a move of their own and things have escalated quickly.”

Cindy resisted the urge to bury her face in her hands. “Tell me everything please.”

Amanda watched her carefully. “We planned to keep Kay separate from this so he had plausible deniability, but it’s gone far enough that it really isn’t necessary anymore is it? We were already at war with Nelam and they aren’t in a position to hurt us anymore either. Very well, it isn’t a long story. I made several connections with, or outright took over several resistance and abolitionist movements in Nelam. There were plans in place to make moves once Glowl’s condition was verified, namely the assassinations I spoke of. We were ready to hide or rescue several thousands of slaves and channel them, plus the necessary manpower and equipment, to a select number of the nations that have now declared independence in order to assist them in their fight, in exchange for protecting everyone we freed. There were, or may still be, several higher tier fighters that were willing to fight if they could get their collars off. Someone ruined all that by trying to assassinate Glowl.”

“Did they succeed? And how does that ruin things?”

“No one knows yet, he could be dead or have survived. It ruins things because Glowl would have been both a stabilizing force and an impediment that would slow down anything getting done in reaction to my plans. He was, or is, a very micromanaging ruler, which I believe was both due to his Class and his personality. If a coordinated series of assassination of key figures and a simultaneous mass breakout occurred, everything would freeze up as they waited for Glowl to tell them what to do, especially if we could remove many leaders and leave their deputies unsure what to do. That would have given us enough time to enact everything and get people to safety. With Glowl potentially dead, people are reacting on their own, creating the chaos we’re seeing now. The people I had contact with but didn’t lead myself all decided that my plans were out the window if pogroms and retaliations were about to start and kicked things off completely on their own recognizance without support.” She shrugged. “I’ve been getting as many people, refugees, escaped slaves, innocents, civilians, even Nelamians that don’t deserve to die in the chaos, headed this direction via my people and we should have more than enough space and resources to help them, but it’s a far cry from what I wanted to happen.”

“Oh, it’s much worse than that.”

They both turned slowly to look at Isla.

“Like I was saying, there are rumors and stories coming with the refugees from that direction. Stories that we’ve heard before about giant monsters and things that hurt the mind to look at, the general evidence of eldritch things that have been coming from all over. But there are other stories too. Ones about concentrated groups of vampyr making attacks on settlements, and at least one of the leaders of one of the armies running around is said to have become a vampyr and is now causing even more damage.”

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Staring incredulously at the much smaller woman, Cindy decided that it wasn’t the time to hold back. She buried her face between her palms and groaned. “Why is this happening while Kay is gone?” After a moment of self pity she forced herself to sit up. “I know I’m not really in charge, but my vote is that the two of you use your connections and subordinates to get us as much information on that as possible. The timing of vampyr’s attacking Nelam right after we finished driving them back is suspicious as hell. If its a false story someone’s put in place to bring down Kay’s reputation we need it crushed asap.”

Isla fluttered closer and landed on the table near Cindy’s arm. “It would be even worse if this were a concentrated movement by whoever is leading all the vampyr.”

“…What does that mean?”

“Well, it’s a theory I’ve mulling over. Sudden widespread incursions by eldritch… things right after Kay wipes out a group of vampyr doing something unknown in a village near our territory. Most of the cities we heard anything from had some kind of incursion or phenomenon occur, but Tumbling Rapids didn’t, and we had less than most places. My thought was that the vampyr in that little village were going to do something to cause the same otherworldly breaches that occurred elsewhere. The only way that could happen world-wide is if there’s a coordinated effort, which implies some kind of leadership. They obviously weren’t in position to bombard us with threats, or maybe whoever it is wasn’t able to, but marauding vampyr attacking people in the chaos that’s relatively close to us? That sounds like someone using vampyr as a weapon. What happens when they start following the refugees felling to us?” She did a spin in place and stopped in a pose, tapping her chin. “Actually, it slipped my mind, but didn’t Kay say the vampyr who attacked him say something about taking him back to a “great one” or some similar title? And the female vampyr leading the events in that village mentioned somethins that sounded like that too."

Cindy had a brief flashback to one of the first prophetic dream’s she’d had. It was as muddled and blurry when she’d first had it as it was in that moment of remembrance, and she’d honestly forgotten it she’d had it so long ago. It had never become clearer like some of her other foretelling dreams, and she’d never encountered anything that made her thing the moment had come true. Some dreams never did, thanks to someone making a different choice or Cindy meddling with things, and she’s assumed that it was one of those and let it fade from her memories. There only three things that she could make out from it, a sensation of something alien, something from somewhere beyond, a scope that encompassed a massive swath of area, much larger than she thought the continent was, and blood. Rivers, seas, oceans of blood covering everything across that great distance.

“Fuck.”