Chapter 451 - Hopefully Within Context Problem (Patreon)

Notes : A new lore file has been written and added to the queue !

Or, more accurately, the first part thereof. With scrambling to prepare for the riots this weekend, I wasn't in the right headspace to write a chapter (or more accurately finish one), so I switched to a lore file.

It ended up being a bit too big to chew though, as it's one covering Crystal's airships, written by Cassissa and just the Raider and Corsair-class took almost 1.5k words. So splitting that up.

Notes at the end of the chapter, I recommend you read them before commenting.

I hope you'll enjoy the chapter !

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Chapter 451

Red Sands Desert, Aurorean Empire

Erisian Dreadnought Hautfort

The Admiral closed the door to her cabin, made sure all of her privacy and security systems were on, and then sat down in the middle of the floor.

She'd had to make excuses. Get out of the reception. Her training was good but not good enough for this.

She hadn't even been able to double check. She couldn't trust herself to be near the dungeon core. Not with what she had just realized.

She staggered up, and went for her music box. She entered the right melody, the complex device being made to play a variety of songs, and licked her lips as the hidden communicator popped out.

The Admiral reached towards it...And stopped.

What did she have, exactly, in terms of proof for this?

A feeling? She could barely even trust her impression. Even now she was in total disbelief.

Behavior? Joachim had signed off and not blinked at what 'Crystal' was doing. He might believe her if she told him what she'd found, but...

No one else would. And he might bury it.

After all, he was in hot, very hot waters since Eriksen Dragonslayer had found out who he had sacrificed. Finding out it was all in vain...

He was a climber. Always had been. There were rumors he'd had a renewal of faith but she'd believed that when she saw it for herself. And she hadn't. His career had taken one hell of a hit from the sacrifice. What she brought would almost certainly see it destroyed.

Which meant he could simply decide to make the problem disappear. People had done stupider things.

She took a deep breath, and calmed down, her hand falling onto her lap. She hadn't even realized she'd sat down as she thought.

No. No rushed, garbled, panicked message that would see her dismissed or sidelined. Even if Joachim listened to her, what if she was wrong?

One catastrophic mistake, sacrificing the Butcher of Europa, because they were in too much of a hurry to wait, had cost them so much already. They couldn't afford hasty action now. She needed to be certain. And to act slowly, and deliberately.

Of course she couldn't just go to Lesly and ask her questions. If it was her, that could blow this entire thing wide open. But 'Crystal' had underlings. Underlings that had regular contact with the surface. Some prodding through them might work.

If nothing else, Lesly had come in with the best of the Cerberus Battalion, her own elite unit within the Order, and a good chunk of support staff, to make sure tricks like the Republic's little kidnapping attempts wouldn't land or do any significant damage.

She could try and contact them. It would be insanely, ridiculously risky. There was a reason the Order had given a blanket directive for no one to interact with her. Every plan to suborn a dungeon core directly to the Order before had failed. Spectacularly so. They couldn't afford anything that would allow the Church to sniff Lesly and her people out.

This was going to need finesse, some good preparations, and a solid helping of luck.

All the while she was the emissary of a foreign power who was, though no one wanted to admit it, in a de facto state of cold war with the Aurorean Empire. And she brought a battle fleet with her.

She sighed. She was going to be under a microscope. By the Aurorean Empire, who would be watching her like a hawk.

On the other hand, that fleet and her mandate could open up a lot of doors for her. She wasn't just a diplomat, she was a military officer with a lot of firepower at her back.

She wasn't a material, meaningful threat to Rebirth, she knew that and so did they. That mesa fortress would eat her for breakfast, and though the city's defenses weren't exactly the best, there was still that Tarkian Dreadnought, and she was sure 'Crystal', Lesly or whoever else she was, had given 'her' Empress a few surprises to spring.

But she was still powerful and she could be an immense danger in the provinces. If she hinted she might visit Lorenz or Sunrise, there would be an attempt to mollify her first, even under the guise of 'coordination' meetings. 'Crystal' ran the Imperial army, and had her 'golems' form the backbone of Knight-Governor Philia's pacification force. Some of her people would attend, even if she was here in person. Though, the admiral really hoped she would give the task to a flunky.

If it was Lesly, though she was almost certain it wasn't the case, she would be furious at what the Admiral was doing. If she wasn't the High Commander...

Well, better not to lose her composure and do something rash, like she almost had.

The Admiral took a deep, steadying breath, and changed the melody on the music box.

There was a click, and the communicator vanished into its stealth compartment. She stared at the box, hearing the soft music as its mechanisms, arcane and mundane both, worked to fill the air with noise.

A small machine, with even smaller gears, all working together to make something they would never be able to do alone.

Just like the Order.

Except she'd found out there was no speaker at the end, to give voice to the harmony. Instead all that energy, all that work...

Was going to something else.

And she was going to find out what.

*****

"She seemed in a hurry." Said Emilia, as she cuddled up to Alexandra.

Some people still raised eyebrows at that sign of affection, in the vast ballroom the reception was still going on in, but none of them had been in the city long.

After their summit with the dungeon advisors, and her revealing of her avatar, any public ambiguity as to their relationship had gone out the window. Not that they'd ever been shy talking about it, but they hadn't really demonstrated their affection publicly.

There was no way to miss the vampire cuddling up to and nibbling on her girlfriend in the middle of a government function however, and people quickly got used to the sight.

"Well, it was not exactly a welcoming atmosphere." That was, perhaps, her fault. They knew the Admiral was probably not linked to the attacks from the remnants of the adventurers Guild, and they were fairly sure somebody had tried to draw them into war, but there was no certainty, and no risks could be taken.

So she'd warned the Imperial guard, and their general antipathy towards the foreigners with the giant fleet rolling into their capital like they owned the place had been turned up to eleven, which meant that even the officers the admiral had left behind as sacrificial offerings for the ceremonies and small talk were looking distinctly on edge.

Then again, the city had just gone through a major terrorist attack and, you know, a full scale battle when she'd unleashed an army without warning. Poor bastards had to be afraid everyone was sharpening a knife to stick into their backs.

"Mmmmhhh...true..." Emilia went to the tip of her toes, and nibbled on the dungeon core's neck. "At least they're unlikely to start anything. It would end poorly...for them."

Alexandra nodded.

The fleet the Admiral had brought used to seem so mighty. Now...not so much.

It was kind of a terrifying concept. In the time that fleet had taken to get here -admittedly while getting caught in a few large quagmires along the way-, she'd outscaled it. Not in terms of ship power, sure, she'd only built two capital ships and they were battlecruisers, the smallest classification befitting of the title. But Rebirth itself and her Mesa fortress could blow it out of the skies. Rebirth wasn't invulnerable to conventional attack, but the capital city was becoming one hell of a tough nut to crack, even ignoring the fact that it was in the middle of the Empire, and anyone trying to get to it would have to go through the rest of it first. That or one hell of a wasteland journey, either through the Lost Sands death zone, or Gorromar.

In either case, they'd detect the incoming forces far before they arrived, and they'd require a relic to get any significant amount of troops through...and she'd already found a way to compromise Sagitarian IFF transponders so a Sand Kraken would attack.

"True. She knows that too." Alexandra smiled as Allya approached them, shedding her small crowd of hangers on and flunkeys as she did. "Getting restless?"

"Just needed a minute to breathe." Allya put her hand against the wall and leaned against it. "Gods this is suffocating. Every time I do one of these things it feels like I'll have to carve my way through the supplicants to get some air."

"You're the Empress, everyone wants a piece of your time. You'll have to get used to it."

"Yeah, and guess why I'm the Empress? Thanks a lot."

They exchanged smiles. Allya didn't mean it, but she liked to play the 'I am only fabulously rich and powerful because of you, oh mean dungeon core'.

"No problem. I do see you are keen to take advantage of my aura however."

"Yep. Everyone's so shit scared of you, you're basically a flunkey repelling forcefield generator."

Alexandra's smile widened.

"That's one way of describing things."

"Also she gets protective when I'm here." Purred Emilia.

"No I don't." Protested the dungeon core.

"'Crystal', you threw the last guy who made a pass at her through a window." Pointed out the Empress.

"He lived."

"He was resurrected. We're not exactly at ground level here."

Alexandra frowned, but had no retort, and the vampire and Empress just laughed at her discomfiture.

To be fair, Allya was right, she had thrown a guy out the window. He'd been drunk, she'd been angry...And honestly she hadn't realized quite how much stronger her avatar had gotten after her fight with Starvak. And the ballroom was stupidly high up, being a late addition to the palace, as it expanded upwards to tower over the city's sprawl.

"Well, at least now we know you need better windows." Said the dungeon core, and Allya nodded.

"Point taken. Though I'd like to note that they are covered by one way shields, so that we can return fire on any attackers. We just hadn't anticipated the contingency of someone being rapidly removed from the party."

"I made an excellent bouncer, I think."

"He didn't bounce very much, he just went 'splat' I think."

Emilia grimaced.

"Girls, please. I know you're both inured to this by virtue of being hands on badasses, but I'm a mage. Don't talk about splattering people while I'm trying to enjoy my canapés."

"Sorry." They both chorused.

Emilia smiled toothily, and then took a nibble of her canapés for effect, then went back to nibbling on Alexandra. Every time the dungeon core asked, she maintained that her girlfriend tasted better than any chef's food.

Alexandra blushed slightly.

"So." She started, trying to ignore the sensation of Emilia's fangs on her skin, and failing miserably. "How's Pyn? Left her to the beasts?"

"With me holding Sylvia in open disfavor for courting her, people tend to avoid going too far now. Especially since I reinforced it with a few examples. Nothing as flashy as you of course, but sufficient to establish some deterrence."

"I see."

"Plus, she actually enjoys the attention and she's much better at wringing anyone who comes to her out of everything they're worth. If a merchant approaches her for a business deal, she'll get much better terms than I ever would, even just as the basis to start the negotiations."

"That's true. But you're the better politicians."

"And I have shaken hands, talked to our various national representatives, and pretended the Erisian ambassador and I were on good terms. Didn't have to pretend to be unhappy to see the admiral go however."

"Oh?"

Allya smiled, as she flagged down one of the golems touring the area with a platter. It nodded and moved towards her. There were living and breathing servants of course, but the golems reinforced the impression that the dungeon was integrated at every level into the Empire, their loyalty was absolute, and also they were still military golems and could throw down when needed. Not very well, given their lack of equipment, but sometimes in a fight all you needed was a split second bought by a disposable meatshield. Metalshield? Cannonfodder.

"I can't say for sure however, but she seems to think bringing the fleet in is ill-advised. Especially as she has been making some progress at least opening avenues of communications with us, even if limited ones." Alexandra nodded, they'd talked about that, briefly. Better to start opening some channels, to avoid having to entirely go through back ones. Besides which, official channels could also enable some more private messages to go through unnoticed. "Though, it could be just her bristling as suddenly finding herself upstaged and de facto sidelined."

"I don't think she's that petty."

"Petty? No. But she was given a minor posting that was just one step up from a punishment detail, and now she's rapidly becoming one of the most pivotal Erisian diplomats in the ministry. Every Erisian conglomerate is either trying to get through her or the merchants guild, usually both, and the Empire at large is starting to get mighty anxious about us. Well, the upper echelons at least. Most of the population is largely bemused and doesn't quite grasp what's going on. The highest levels of the nobility and government though? Oh they know, and they're worried."

"Worried enough to do something stupid?"

"Certainly. But I doubt it'll be some kind of attack."

"What are you expecting then?"

The golem arrived, and Allya snatched a glass. Then after a second's hesitation, a second one.

She downed the first without blinking, and put it back on the tray, before nursing the second one.

Alexandra gave her space. She clearly wasn't happy at what she was going to say.

"What I'm expecting? Lots of things. But given how powerful we are, they're probably going to pull out the big guns and do something of truly breathtaking stupidity."

She downed the second glass, gazing at its bottom.

"I'm expecting them to start talking to my family."

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Before you comment, yes, for the first part, I'm aware, some think she should instantly realize it's Alexandra. No, she's not reaching for that conclusion immediately, for several reasons, some of which will be covered in chapter 454. Plus, on an out of story basis, I think it would be deeply unsatisfying for most readers for this plotline to bloom and be resolved inside of a single chapter.