Vacant Throne

Watching the monstrosity that was The Farmer in action was relieving in a strange sort of way. It certainly presented a terrifying visage, but that was about all it had. In terms of speed, Alyssa was pretty sure that her grandfather would have been able to outrun it with his walker. While it had been extremely quiet for its size during testing, it was quite noisy while threshing and chewing up all the crops it processed. Between that, the pistons thumping, and the treads causing minor earthquakes, it was unlikely that even someone taking a nap in the middle of the field would not wake up with plenty of time to get away.

Probably.

Alyssa would definitely have some words for Jason later about having a small team do a sweep of the fields ahead of their machine harvesting everything. Or some other precautions.

Despite the elderly speed at which it moved, The Farmer did work. It did a lot of work at that. The speed was enough that it kept the conveyor belts loaded, but not fast enough to overload them. Which likely meant that the speed was not its top speed and had been chosen specifically for optimal reaping. It had been twenty minutes and a huge swath of the field had been cleared and processed already.

Taking her eyes off the wondrous machine, Alyssa glanced about at the crowd of onlookers. They were all standing a healthy distance away, though she did note that several people were much further away than they had been before, as if the thing would suddenly turn around and advance toward them.

The event was attended by a gaggle of onlookers, both wealthy merchants and nobles who might be interested in such technologies as well was a much larger crowd of less wealthy individuals. The latter were largely those who would normally have been working these fields instead of The Farmer. It made her wonder if there would be protests about losing their jobs to robots. The Farmer was crewed by only six people and was doing the work of about forty to sixty, just in terms of reaping the field. Another few dozen for all the extra processing work and it might be totaling out at a good hundred people…

None of the peasantry seemed upset at the moment, however. Perhaps they hadn’t realized the implications of such a machine and what it might mean for a few more of them to be built just yet and were too enamored by its appearance to think. But that would be something for Jason to deal with. And possibly the Pharaoh. Progress had to be made. They might reeducate in the fields of engineering—such a device could hardly be maintained by only Jason and Guillem, even with the small team they had put together; more machines would mean more engineers would be required—or they could be hired to simply scout ahead of the machine and look for dangers such as rocks, poor terrain that wouldn’t support the thing, and, especially, people. Which brought things back around to her initial intention to warn Jason not to run over any poor kids playing in the field.

As for the merchants and nobles, reactions were harder to judge. The nobles were especially trained at hiding their expressions. Decorous was present, stony faced, with his brother. Alyssa had seen both of them at the feast. Martin and both his son and granddaughter were here as well, making good use of the portal between Illuna and Lyria. There were a few other faces that Alyssa recognized from the feast. None who she actually recognized. Some seemed excited. Others, like Decorous, were obviously not. Whether that was a racist thing, or because they had actually considered the ramifications of such a device, was something that she suspected would come out during the meeting this evening.

Brakkt, at Alyssa’s side, was one of the ones who didn’t actually look that happy or excited. Which Alyssa had expected given that they had talked about The Farmer over some drinks the night before. He wasn’t going to try to obstruct the invention of such devices or impede technological progress. It was just that the device somewhat offended his sensibilities. He was a man who believed in self-sustainability. Everyone should be able to hunt and farm for themselves, even if they didn’t do it all the time. It was one of the reasons he didn’t particularly like most nobles or much of the merchant class.

“That thing is going to kill a lot of people.”

Alyssa glanced to her other side, where her mother was looking on in obvious disapproval next to Companion. Lisa, along with Oz, Lumen, and Catal, all arrived just yesterday morning. Apparently. Alyssa hadn’t even found out until Lumen Messaged her later in the evening. There had been a mild incident on the way involving a few bandits, but nothing the four of them had been worried about. The bandits had not recognized Lumen as an arcanist and were taken by surprise when the laser beams started flying. Further details were less than forthcoming, making Alyssa a little worried, but her mother hadn’t been harmed, so she wasn’t too concerned.

As for her mother’s concerns about The Farmer… “I’m already going to talk to Jason about making sure the field is clear before running this thing.”

“Not just that. The thing has no guard rails. All the moving parts are exposed. The entire thing looks unstable, like it will shake itself apart. Someone is going to stretch an arm in the wrong direction, reach for a fallen item, or just straight up fall off and into the grinder.”

“Oh.” Alyssa looked back to The Farmer. Her mother was… probably right about that. She hadn’t even considered how much danger those who operated the device were in. And all the engineers who had to perform maintenance. Had there been any incidents during the construction that Jason and Guillem had neglected to mention?

Very possibly.

Now she had even more to ask about. But that would have to be another time. Alyssa had a few things she wanted to get ready for the meeting. She wasn’t going to have a presentation or anything, but there were a few notes she wanted to make. Mostly, she was expecting to listen to a bunch of old men arguing and complaining. She wished there was someone like Volta in Lyria. A monster who knew all the monster secrets that were surely in a city like this. Kasita was close, but not quite there.

She technically could ask Volta to come over, but that would reveal that a doppelganger was acting as a human, advising a human, and otherwise appearing as if a monster might be trying to usurp human land. Especially with Volta being from the city that just granted territory to a group of monsters. Besides that, she was less interested in Volta’s position in comparison to the knowledge of pockets of monsters within the city that operated in a manner similar to Guillem. Public or not.

Guillem was, essentially, a business owner. A monster business owner who provided a service for the community. Sure, she was technically a slave. Few actually believed that. Those who did were quickly being disabused of that opinion. The actual owner of the smithy had shown himself for today’s event. He was a portly man, one with a beer gut and not simply fat. It was quite obvious that, while he might not be as bewildered as some of the other onlookers, he didn’t know much more than them. Several people had gone up to him to with congratulations or to ask a few questions. No matter what was said to him, all he said in return was that Guillem would be around to answer everything once the demonstration was over.

“Aside from the dangers, what do you think of it?” Alyssa asked her mother.

“Too big. Too impractical. Likely too expensive. Modern technology could make something like this, but doesn’t. Or rather, there are machines that can do at least most of what this does, but smaller and less…” She just waved her hands toward everything.

“Yeah. I get that. But as a machine, it is impressive. Imagine what else they can come up with. And elves are generally known for their engineering skills. Imagine if there were a dozen Guillems all running around, helping to share their expertise with humans…”

“I’m having nightmares already.”

Alyssa gave her mother a bit of a flat look.

The demonstration went on for a few hours. Not everyone stuck around for the entire thing. Once someone had seen a half hour of The Farmer work, they had seen hours of it working. The main reason it kept going was to show just how quickly it could clear out the entire field. Which it did well.

At least, Alyssa assumed it would finish its job. She headed back to the palace with Brakkt and Companion after only a about half the field got done.

Court for the day would apparently be held in the great hall. It was already in session by the time that Alyssa arrived, though the meeting portion wasn’t to be until later. At the moment, it was just the Pharaoh, the First Prince, and a few advisers. A whole variety of people came in who would state their petitions, concerns, or simply matters that needed to be brought to attention. It was, apparently, a common event to be held after a feast.

Alyssa had to wonder about the timing of holding open court. Looking at the majority of petitioners, she assumed that lots of them had been the ones to receive the trencher bread. If they were really poor and couldn’t afford food most of the time, having their bellies filled with meat juice-soaked bread probably helped… lessen their grievances.

To their credit, neither the prince nor the Pharaoh looked bored or dismissive of the matters brought before them. The First Prince held his posture forward, obviously attentive. The Pharaoh had his shoulders back against the tall throne, but it wasn’t a slouching posture. He would frequently nod and even ask questions. When one peasant—though Alyssa really didn’t like the connotations that term implied, it was what they were—brought forth the claim that water quality was extremely poor in some southern housing district, the First Prince immediately summoned up a small team of investigators to go out and take a look at the problem for themselves. They were to report back and advise on possible solutions, assuming there was an actual problem to begin with and not just someone tasting funny water for an unrelated reason.

It wouldn’t be fixed today, but they were definitely taking the matter seriously.

Alyssa sat around and watched while making a few notes for the later meeting, more out of curiosity than necessity. For all she associated with the royal family, she really didn’t know that much about the kingdom or how it was run aside from the very basics. Hearing people come in and talk about how rats got into a storehouse and ate all the grain or the wealthy neighbors kept dumping their waste around the poorer streets didn’t really help her get a big picture of it all. In fact, it seemed strange that peasants would come all the way to the Pharaoh with those problems instead of the captain of a local guard house.

Which probably meant that, despite how seriously the Pharaoh and the First Prince were addressing the problems, it was all mostly for show. A placation and appeasement. Especially because she had insider information that a real meeting would take place afterward with all the important members of society. Alyssa wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Sure, the peasants had concerns and they were being addressed, but it felt… disingenuous when taken in that light?

Later, she might ask Brakkt about that. Though she was already interfering plenty in Lyria’s government, mostly completely unintentionally. Changing more of what worked was probably unnecessary. Especially because no one had brought forth any serious claims. Though she supposed such people could be screened and suppressed, she had been around enough to know that they likely weren’t doing that.

It wasn’t long before the open court came to an end.

The stream of petitioners had thinned out in the last hour. The guards eventually closed the doors, signifying that the open court had come to an end. The meeting the Pharaoh wanted Alyssa to attend did not start up right away. There was a break of a good hour, during which the Pharaoh, his son, and the advisers all headed out to get freshened up or meet with each other about the petitioners’ requests.

Although he had said that it wouldn’t be a feast, there was going to be food and Alyssa doubted that it would be significantly less grandiose than the meal she had eaten the other night.

The arrangement was different. They weren’t using all the tables in the great hall. Rather, they disassembled the tables of the great houses so that they might reassemble them into one moderately large table in the center of the room. There were going to be fewer people at tonight’s meeting than there were at the feast the other night and they all needed to be close enough to hear each other talk.

Sure enough, servants started setting out those same bread trenchers again once the table was assembled. Alyssa was a bit embarrassed to say that she didn’t recognize all the servants running about. She shouldn’t be expected to recognize all of them, but one of them, upon noticing her sitting off to the side, brought over a goblet of mulled wine.

She accepted the one, but told him that she would be only be drinking water for the rest of the night. No matter what she asked for later.

People started trickling in shortly after. There was little formality to it all. Everyone was wearing their finest suits, but there was no order to their arrival. Decorous and his brother walked in together. Martin and his son arrived without any fanfare. Others came who Alyssa might have been able to put a name to if she was really trying, but it seemed like far too much effort. Especially when she didn’t really need to figure out their names. They sat around the large table in such a way that their backs were to the giant flags of the great houses. If she were to sit right in the empty space at the center of the circular table, she would be able to look around and see the exact dividing lines of everyone’s houses.

For her part, Alyssa wound up directed by Brakkt to sit next to him, with Irulon a seat away. Irulon apparently did not often attend these kinds of things. Neither did Brakkt, for that matter. But today, they both had some expertise with monsters and were, therefore, relevant to the topics on the table for discussion.

The Pharaoh eventually walked back in, surprisingly being the last person to arrive. He didn’t take his seat, choosing to stand for at least the early part of the meeting.

He addressed the gathered group, thanked them for coming, laid out a series of topics that they had planned for discussion, asked if anyone had additional matters they wanted brought to attention, and generally acted like this was a completely routine meeting. Right up until he introduced the evening’s guests.

“Many of you are aware already of the hellhound who has been working with the plague containment team, Fela,” he said, waving a hand toward the indicated monster before moving on. “Kasita is a mimic that has been operating in the city for quite some time, assisting in fending off assaults by the Juno Federation among other things. Companion is the name chosen by a dragon now inhabiting the mostly human body you see before you.” There was a great deal of murmuring about that, but the Pharaoh ignored it, moving on. “Finally, we have Alyssa.”

“And what kind of monster is she?” someone blurted out when the Pharaoh didn’t offer any further explanation for her presence. Alyssa didn’t recognize them, though they sat with their backs to a banner covered in green filigree, decorated with the iconography of a lion.

“I’m not a monster,” Alyssa said, more on reflex than actual irritation.

“She’s the one who created the body in which the dragon now resides, mediated a peace agreement between a large group of monsters and the city of Illuna, among other things such as closing the pit at Owlcroft and destroying a Juno outpost near our borders with the assistance of my daughter.”

Murmurs started up again, though Decorous and his brother as well as Martin and his son were notably not among those chatting with varying levels of discontent. “Created a body?” one voice said a little louder than the rest.

Alyssa decided to use the opportunity to put the discussion to rest. They weren’t here to talk about her. “I can create anything I can imagine,” she said, which might have been a slight exaggeration. Lots of things still turned into those leaking balls of sludge. But to these people, she didn’t need to experiment on anything, just produce a demonstration. So she just waved her hands over the table and created a number of small statuettes. A little figure of Brakkt, one of Irulon, the Pharaoh, Kasita and Fela, and finally Companion. Each were made from different materials. The Pharaoh got gold, Irulon was onyx, Kasita and Fela were marble, Companion was a turquoise jade, and Brakkt appeared in his full armor, except in silver. She thought the Black Prince having the look of a knight in shining armor was mildly amusing, even if no one else was smiling at the little statue.

She intended for the figurines to be handed out so that people could look at them and see that they were real, not an illusion. But her lack of spell card usage was apparently the catalyst for another round of much louder murmuring.

The Pharaoh did not silence it right away either. He plucked his own statuette off the table, looked at it for a moment, then… it disappeared. He didn’t move his hands toward his pockets, but the figurine still vanished. Alyssa had a feeling that it went to the same place that he pulled his spell cards from. But after that, he cleared his throat. The murmuring died down instantly. The Pharaoh wasn’t the kind of man who had to speak loudly to get attention.

Surprisingly, the first topic was not related to monsters. The agenda started out with issues in the great houses’ territories. Two of the houses had not attended, still protesting the Pharaoh’s decision to incorporate monsters into human daily lives. But the others all aired their grievances in much the same manner as the peasants from earlier.

Though their grievances were on a bit of a different scale. Trade disputes, territorial claim disagreements, poor crop growth, and so on and so forth. It wasn’t for a good two hours, well after she had finished eating, that the topic finally switched over to monsters.

“It has been demonstrated that monsters have a great deal to offer humanity.”

And the arguing began in earnest.