Blood Shaper

Kay looked up as Eleniah walked into his office. "Hey! How's your day been?"

"Fine?" She looked over at Meten, who was sitting down in front of the desk, then back to Kay, "What's going on?"

"Did no one tell you?" Kay frowned and leaned a little to look out the door. No one was there, and he scowled a little. "That's twice in one day. We need to talk to our message runners about giving people all the details."

"What's going on?"

Kay waved his hand in Meten's direction. "Our still unnamed scouting slash adventuring group found us a lovely Dungeon nearby, which seems to be perfectly set up to training up Combat Classes."

Eleniah slowly walked up to the open chair next to Meten's and sat down. "Seriously… That's…"

"It's something." Kay finished her sentence. "It could be bad or good, and I don't think we have any way of knowing till we get to the end of it." He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk.

"Mandy's going to yell at you," Meten warned.

"She's off for the rest of the day." Kay idly wondered if he could get someone to make him something like his old leather desk chair from back home. He then actually decided to write that down because what if someone could? "So, the two of you have the most experience dealing with the Adventurer's Guild out of everyone here, at least at a higher level, so I brought you in to plan how we're going to deal with them about this Dungeon."

"Deal with them? Are we going to try and kill their representative or something?" Eleniah asked with an incredulous look.

"No, deal with as in making a deal with them." He corrected her.

"Oh, right, that makes sense."

"You thought I'd be stupid enough to even think that might be a good idea?"

"Let's just blame that on me spending half my time recently dealing with kids almost old enough to get their classes all thinking they're going to be the next Sapphire Crusader or The Merchant or someone like that." She sighed and shook her head. "I love teaching, but sometimes…" She trailed off as she stared into space, then shook her head. "I'm just glad I can take time off and go beat things up."

"Who's the Sapphire Crusader?"

"Old high tier person from far enough back that no one is really sure if they're real." Meten answered, "They 'solved'," He made air quotes, "a lot of problems with brute force. The tales make them out to be some kind of heroic figure, so a lot of younger kids look up to them, even if they don't make the best choices in the stories."

"Like destroying entire towns to prevent the spread of plagues that might have been treatable. Or not real."

"Or the uncountable number of times they attacked and killed goblins for no apparent reason."

Eleniah nodded. "Yeah, did the same thing to a few dragons too."

Kay stared at them, agog. "And these stories get told with the Sapphire Crusader as a hero?"

"Not those stories," Eleniah explained. "They did do a lot of actually heroic things too. They saved a region that was being terrorized by a tier six giant toad monster, killed a lot of bandits and raiders that were hurting people, and they even destroyed a fortress full of Necromancers by themself."

"That last one is bullshit." Meten cut in.

"Huh?" Eleniah looked over at him with a confused expression. "Every version I've heard of that story has them doing it solo."

He shook his head. "Not that part. The part about it being a heroic deed. They destroyed a chapter of the Order of Bone with no provocation and roped them into the war against Necromancy by blaming them for a bunch of things that didn't even happen."

"I feel like we're going off track here."

Both of them ignored Kay.

Eleniah frowned. "The Order of Bone isn't real."

"I've been to one of their chapters, they are very real, and they are very serious about their oaths."

"Since we're going off-topic," Kay said loudly enough to get them to pay attention to him, "Mind explaining?"

"The Order of Bone is a fictional..." Eleniah started to say, then paused and glanced at Meten, "Or I guess, believed fictional group of Necromancers said to take oaths that bind what they can do with their Classes, kind of like what you did when you got your first Class."

"Necromancy is not evil." Meten continued the explanation, "People just hate it because it is disgusting."

"And because people don't want their body or the bodies of their loved ones being desecrated like that," Eleniah added.

He nodded, "Very true. The Order of Bone realizes that, but their members do not want to give up their Classes. So they take oaths to limit what they can do and make them less of a target. They refuse to work with the corpses of intelligent beings, and they only use bone, not rotting flesh. They also don't make intelligent undead like Liches and such."

"Alright," Kay held up his hands and cut off the explanation, "So the Order of Bone sounds chill, but I have several questions. Necromancers can make intelligent undead?"

"At higher tiers, yes. They can also form without a Necromancer being involved, though."

"Are they considered people?"

The two of them shared a look, then Meten shrugged. "It depends. Certain types are basically insane and need to be put down to keep people safe. Others are just intrinsically dangerous due to things like miasmic effects around them. The ones that aren't immediately dangerous to living beings are sometimes treated like regular people in certain regions or nations."

"Alright, that's good information to know. Back to the main topic, though, the Adventurer's Guild and the Dungeon we have now."

"Right." Meten pointed at Eleniah, "She's your best bet there. I just did some harder jobs for them; I never had any policy-level interactions with them."

"I wouldn't say any of the interactions I've had were policy level either," Eleniah protested, "I just got yanked around a lot."

"Well, the level of yanking you've been through is above anything anyone else from our people has dealt with, so you're the best we've got."

She sighed. "Fine. What is our position going to be?"

Kay leaned back in his chair again and rested his head against the top. "The problem is I don't know what stance we should take. I'm still pissed at them for using you the way they did, and I feel like we'd be seen as weak once it eventually gets out that we let them get away with that. But at the same time, the Adventurer's Guild is way too strong to antagonize."

"And they are incredibly useful." Meten offered more information to make a decision with, "Especially because we're a small village, we don't have the administration, infrastructure, or manpower to really run access to a Dungeon well. We'd have leaks all the time, and it would waste time and resources. Letting the Adventurer's Guild control access and collect fees for us reduces all the hassle."

"So we let them do what they normally do but demand some kind of lower percentage of fees or something in exchange for their messing with Eleniah?"

"They were doing it at the behest of my cousin."

"At her behest?" Kay frowned deeply, "I thought they both had issues with Nelam."

"Well… yeah, you're right about that. It just seems weird to me that the Adventurer's Guild would act like that on their own. They're known for their strict neutrality."

"Neutrality in fights between other factions is not the same thing as fighting their own enemies. Besides, we already know that they did what they have done in using you as a tool, so we don't need to debate whether or not it happened, just how to react to it." Meten leaned forward and organized some of the paperwork on Kay's desk. He pushed Kay's feet off the desk as he finished laying down some of the documents.

Kay frowned at him and opened his mouth. Before he could say anything, the door opened without a knock.

Meten smirked as Amanda walked into the room and paused just inside the door.

"Sir, we have a bit of a problem."

"What's wrong?" Kay asked, giving Meten a small nod of thanks.

"There's a merchant that's shown up outside the northern gates."

Kay frowned. The territory that Avalon had inside the walls extended from the southern entrance to the valley, which was the same slope Eleniah and Kay had first entered through to partway through the wooded area to the north. There were work crews taking down the trees that had been walled inside, making more room and gathering wood to use for building and crafting. The lake wasn't walled off since the waters made a good enough defense for the time being. They hadn't made walls farther north than that and didn't have constant eyes on the passage out of the valley, although that was going to change since the finding of the Dungeon. "Why is that a problem? And how did they get past our scouts?" He looked at Meten, "I thought we sent people to watch the Dungeon and the passage in."

"The scouts you sent are the ones who spotted the merchant first," Amanda informed him before Meten could speak, "They sent one person back to report, and the rest went to their posts. The merchant made it to the gates right after they finished reporting to me. They appear to be traveling quite quickly."

"Alright, why is this merchant a problem?"

Amanda grimaced. "They're a slave trader."

Kay's frown morphed into a snarl, and he saw Eleniah's expression make a similar transition. Meten's face turned stony, and his eyes had a dangerous light in them.

Kay thought silently for a moment, then made a decision. "Let them in the walls."

Everyone snapped their gaze to Kay.

"Have them taken to a secluded location, and keep everyone away." He started walking towards the door, and a wave of blood crept over his clothes, solidifying into armor with each step. "Meten, grab some of your people. Eleniah, you're with me. Amanda, send a runner to get Head Guard Huento and anyone she's got recruited at this point."

"What are you going to do?" Eleniah asked quietly from next to him.

Kay paused after opening the door. He took a deep breath and turned his head to look at her. "Slavery is illegal in Avalon. And since we don't have a court system yet, it's my job to judge criminals."