There were virtually no consequences to airing all the world’s dirty laundry and then mic dropping a deific portal on the way out.
Mm-hmm.
Of course, that’s all a complete lie. Folks were rabid. We were insulated from most of the resulting trouble because, well, people couldn’t get to us. They could fuck right off with their demands for an in-person eting. We did get a lot of very firmly worded letters passed along through Varrin, which Grotto scanned and then incinerated. He said he’d let know if there was anything important in those. He probably wouldn’t, actually, but I didn’t really care.
The letters were also joined by persistent psychic requests, which was kind of like non-stop doorbell ringing for your brain, endless scrying and divination attempts–had a lot of fun ‘showing off’ to those–a few weak-ass curses, and even an attempt at besmirching our na using a troupe of counter-minstrels to attack the lore being established by the other, now very successful, troupe of minstrels who were currently on tour in Timagrin.
Not only did that fail, both because of my surprisingly potent developing legend and also the incredible skill of the minstrels in question, but it even had a kind of Streisand effect where the attempt at suppressing our myth only amplified it. Between the phase two announcent, our ongoing interactions with the world’s powers, the minstrels, and now the global phenonon being called the Xor’Drel files, we were as famous as it got.
All of this was intensified by my feather boa, with an effect that stated: “Tales of your heroic deeds are more likely to spread and take on an exaggerated form.” That had taken a long ti to cook, but the boa might have quietly been my most powerful item this entire ti. I wasn’t even sure how it worked. It was a System-issued item, so SC1 might be out there whispering juicy rumors about into people’s ears.
Co to think of it, I had no idea where those minstrels had heard about all of our exploits in the first place. Could SC1 be the source of the power anthem Oblivion’s Bliss? Or maybe it had composed Four Arms are Better for Huggin’, which was a spunky kind of sea shanty. That one was my personal favorite.
Regardless, so people loved us, other people hated us. The lovers won out by their sheer numbers, and the haters won out by their sheer numbers of hired assassins. Again, they couldn’t normally get to us, but sotis people wanted to go in and out of the Closet, which gave more nefarious people opportunities to sneak in. We ran out of Grotto’s little prison cubes to house the more harmless, in-over-their-heads assassins, which he was very smug about. The more dangerous or reckless sort of assassins got donated to our Dominion Ivy Plant of the Endless, which I was just going to start calling Ivy for short, or maybe Ivy d’Endless.
I was very confused as to how people were still underestimating us, but maybe they thought the rumors were exaggerated, which they were, but not as much as people seed to think. Or maybe high-level Delvers didn’t need to lower themselves to taking on high-risk hit jobs to make ends et. Or maybe the kinds of Delvers the people trying to kill us were willing to hire were idiots.
The positive attention was nicer, but not by much. The sheer quantity of personal sketches we’d received from thirsty fans was way too high. Most were directed to Varrin, probably because of the sensual serenade, A Weapon Oiled and Ready, which was usually followed by the ballad, Raven’s Eight-Inch Lily. Etja was a close second, but her sketches were mostly wholeso and ca from a younger crowd.
I seed to mostly attract the, uh, more senior suitors for whatever reason.
I an, yeah, Myria had been 10 or so years older than biologically, and Khigra was 40-sothing, but they were both Delvers with slowed aging and in their physical pri. Yes, Ishi was in her 80s, which might be seen as getting into cradle robbing territory by so, but 80 was very youthful for a dragon, and what did age even an with an immortal anyway?
Putting the noise aside, my presentation at the summit netted a few skill levels, and my duties around the kingdom over the next month helped push Statecraft up through a couple more of those early levels.
Your Leadership skill has increased to Level 37!
Your Diplomacy skill has increased to Level 26!
Your Statecraft skill has increased from Level 15 to Level 18!
We also got a reciprocal dossier from King Celeritia telling us about an assassination attempt made on the empress during the summit, which he and Ayamari had foiled. That had scratching my head, because what kind of single-digit IQ dumbass dense enough to collapse into their own singularity decided to go after a VIP at that eting? I an, one of the attendants was a Delver who used the honorific Godking, and there were exactly zero people willing to say that, maybe, she was overhyped.
The only reason I got that report was because the assassin had claid they were sent by soone nad simply ‘rcy’ before falling into a coma. That sounded a lot like an avatar, so the na went up onto the pinboard, although I wasn’t sure why an avatar with ‘rcy’ as its concept would try to assassinate an empress. Mysteries for another ti.
Eventually, it was ti for the beginning of Operation Forest, and we were forced to erge from our isolation. We’d agreed to help the Littans, and I could only hope that anyone trying to antagonize us would be dissuaded by the presence of the largest and second-most Delver-heavy military in the entire world.
It was a fool’s hope, but I hoped nonetheless.
*****
I currently had a permanent reality anchor portal in Foundation, along with Checkpoints in Eschengal, Fort Ruiz, Club Dragon, the Xor’Drel tribe lands, and the site of New Krimsim, na not pending. It was the last of these I activated on the fateful day that the Littan invasion– I an, ‘pacification’ of the Forest was to begin.
This Checkpoint location had been decided by the Littans, around which they’d built what was to be a Closetland embassy. It was a basic two-story structure devoid of any equipnt or furnishings, but it was ours to do with as we pleased. There was a single Etja-clone golem keeping the place tidy, one of a more recent batch Grotto had designed, of a much lower grade than the flagship models. The Core had a Golemancy evolution that allowed him to direct an absolute shitload of lower-level golems, but could only have a few of the mightier versions.
Once everyone from Fortune’s Folly and Team Princess was present, I–
“Is ‘Team Princess’ really the best na we can co up with?” asked Drift. Everyone stopped to turn and look at Varrin’s older brother.
“I’m happy to hear suggestions,” said Ishi, “but no one has complained thus far.”
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“It needs Princess in the na, right?” said Ember. The archer triplet looked between Joma and Ishi. “Since it has two princesses?”
“I’ve probably been stripped of the title,” said Joma, crossing her furry arms.
“I like ‘Princess’ as a concept, but we shouldn’t be married to it,” said Drift. “And, Joma, you’ll always be a princess to us.” The Iskarim pugilist gave him so side-eye. “What I don’t like is the prefix ‘Team.’ It’s so… vanilla. Who decided that anyway?”
Everyone then turned to look at . “What?” I said. “It was always ant to be a placeholder.”
“Well, I do have a few suggestions,” said Drift.
“Oh no,” said Xim. “Here it cos.”
“Here what cos?”
“The Ravvenblaq talent for naming.”
“Why do you sound critical? We have a long history of–”
Varrin placed his hand on his brother’s shoulder and shook his head.
“Putting aside your family’s penchant for naming,” said Ishi, “what are your suggestions?”
“Right, now stay with on this one, there are two princesses, a triplet, I’m the fourth of my na, and Vaulty is made of however many spirits.”
“Right,” said Xim, grinning.
“So, we have a strong connection to numbers. Monarchs are royalty, like princesses, and regnal numbers differentiate between monarchs who share the sa nas. So I think ‘Regnal’ might have a shot.”
“I’ll pass,” said Joma. No one hopped in to defend Drift’s suggestion.
“Princess Numbers,” he offered.
“Nope.”
“Two-P.”
“Hate it.”
“I prefer ‘Party’ to ‘Team’, so how about Party Princess?”
“Why not Princess Party?” asked Xim.
“That’s just telling you what it is,” said Drift. “Like saying Delver Party.”
“That’s my favorite so far,” Joma added.
“What about moving beyond ‘Princess?” Drift said. “The Spectral Court.”
“Two of Crowns,” said Ember.
“That’s not terrible,” said Joma.
“Darkest Eminence,” said Drift.
“Why ‘Darkest?’” asked Ember.
“I like how it sounds.”
“I don’t,” said Joma.
“How about Royal Disaster?”
“What’s the disaster?” Ember asked.
“Guys,” I said. “This really isn’t the ti or place.”
“We’ll circle back to it,” said Ishi. I gave the group an evaluating look, noting that they were definitely still having the argunt via psychic comms.
Regardless, with everyone from Fortune’s Folly and Two of Crowns present, I closed the portal behind us, then led the crew outside the front door.
We found that the Littans had been busy over the last six months, and though they didn’t have a small army of free golem labor, they had an actual army. A very big one. Where we had repaired and improved upon the ruins left behind in the Closet, the Littans had started an entirely new construction atop the cut off remains of Old Krimsim, na now Pending, and had already completed a working city. It wasn’t wholly finished. The bones of the rest had been laid down, but the Littans had been less concerned with ensuring the comfort of the rugged frontier citizens who called the city ho, and more concerned with big-ass defensive asures.
Where before the Littan magitech cannons had obviously been retrofitted onto the city’s walls, they were now built directly into it. Their main bodies were hidden behind the pseudo-magical wood harvested from the Forest’s edges, which was further reinforced and lined with defensive mana weaves.
Gone were the ss of side-alleys and pedestrian pathways that riddled Old Krimsim. New Krimsim was a well-defined grid with every road capable of accommodating two, or even four wagons abreast. The buildings were no longer separated by alleys, but were primarily large, multi-unit structures, creating architecture that had a heavy skew towards military utilitarianism, but which was undoubtedly sturdier than the buildings of old.
The guns that had been inside the city were no longer exposed on raised platforms; they were integrated with the larger architecture. They erged from rooftops with upward-facing barrels that could pivot as needed, and were similarly defended by weave reinforcents. There were platforms and pathways built onto the nearby roofs, giving easy footing to Delvers or other defenders to fight or repair. There were even low walls for cover and small redoubts that defenders could duck into, and which presumably led deeper into the building they were atop.
The city’s w, where the Hamrhead falcons were kept, was now integrated with the city, rather than farther afield, and expanded to handle more birds. There were a variety of other bells and whistles, making it look significantly more advanced to my eyes, but I didn’t know much about bird upkeep, so I didn’t really know what I was looking at.
To top it all off, a massive defensive ward glowed throughout the ground in my mana sight, expanding in every direction. I couldn’t tell quite how large it was, but from what I could sense, it went all the way to the city walls. This one was much larger than the one that we’d found protecting Fort Ruiz back when it was mostly a pile of scorched dirt. It also looked more robust, but less complex. The best that Etja could determine about its function from a brief scan was that it reinforced the buildings, which would have seriously reduced casualty numbers during the Battle of Krimsim. Those bird minions had mostly crawled into structures through windows or open doorways, but when it ca down to it, they’d been able to treat solid walls like they were made of thin plywood.
A ward like this would require so serious upkeep, however. I had no idea what quality of chip would be required to maintain it, but a sapphire wouldn’t have surprised . That was a thousand rubies' worth of power compressed down into the sa coin-sized space.
Given everything before , my prior statent crediting the Littans with building a functional city was inaccurate. They’d built a city-sized fortress. It couldn’t stand up against sothing like the Hierophant directly without so powerful Delvers defending it, but it looked like one hell of a force multiplier.
I took this all in at a glance, since I didn’t have much ti to appreciate it before the sowhat hostile army surrounding our embassy demanded my attention.
The military presence was much larger than I’d anticipated. I knew that the Imperials were fielding a massive amount of firepower for this campaign, but there was a suspicious amount of it parked in front of our front door. What made it even more curious was that there were clearly two different factions amongst the soldiers.
Our embassy had a courtyard with a twelve-foot defensive wall and gate. There was what looked like a company of Littan soldiers, being led by a few Delvers, who’d surrounded the facility outside of the courtyard walls. These Littans weren’t paying a whole lot of attention to us, however, and were more concerned with the second company of Littans just beyond their own ranks. Those soldiers were giving us the real stink eye.
It wasn’t exactly a standoff. The first company was keeping the second at bay, but not through a display of force. It was more like the second company had to respect the first company’s personal space, but they really weren’t happy about it. The troops closer to our facility were either neutral towards us or possibly even advocates for our presence and involvent. The troops that they were politely keeping at a distance were clearly from groups that had so bone to pick with us for any one of a number of reasons that I could imagine.
Then there were a few higher-level Delvers standing on rooftops and an-mugging us from a few blocks away. They were being held in check by yet more Delvers who stood casually a building or two over from their targets. That looked like a friendlier status quo than the two companies of soldiers staring each other–and us–down, but I was betting the Delvers represented a more volatile situation.
Before I was forced to decide how to disarm this ti bomb, General Thaddacleus Connatis appeared on the other side of the gate. He wore a military uniform of tan and crimson, with his rank insignia one of only two things that caused it to stand out against the troops around him. The second was that his uniform was snug and fit around the chest and upper extremities, like a normal soldier’s, but it was much looser around the forearms and shins. Even that wasn’t so unusual, since a number of Delvers received modified uniforms based on their builds.
Despite his size and generally placid deanor, General Connatis was one of the deadliest n on the planet. He was Level 35, full Platinum, with a healthy representation of Special Delves in his soul. I’d had only a few interactions with the Grand General, and he’d seed friendly throughout. The fact that his army was literally surrounding us at the mont made hesitate on that evaluation.
“Greetings, Your Majesty!” General Connatis called out from the other side of the gate. “May I enter the grounds?”
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