Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 9.1 - Chapter 4

Ending

Ending

Just because the affair has been brought to an end doesn’t mean that everything will wrap up nicely. If the players wish to continue their adventures at the table, the conclusion to one affair can be the precursor to ever greater incidents.

“A duller conclusion than I imagined,” Nanna muttered to herself. The mage was crumpled on the floor with a sack on his head. Nanna gave his stomach a kick as she muttered.

Evidently, she didn’t want to believe that all the chaos caused to Marsheim came from a man who merely wished to share his unhappiness with the world.

The man known as Durante was a talented mage; he’d concocted something so complex that neither Nanna nor Kaya could trace the product back to its base ingredients. Yet his motives were bottom tier.

After Durante had been captured by the Fellowship of the Blade, he spat nails and hellfire at Nanna, claiming that she was a fool who knew nothing of despair. It was probably in that moment that her interest in Durante evaporated. Although he had played his role in this well, he was just a depraved fool at the end of it all. Not only that, the kind who felt that their despair was the worst that the world had to offer.

As if despair were anything precious, anything rare. Each person’s suffering was unique, to be sure, more so than their happiness; joy tended to resemble itself no matter whose it was. But all despair was alike in its habit of swallowing folk whole when they went probing for where it bottomed out.

Nanna was all too familiar with it. When she found her talents paled in comparison to others; when she realized she couldn’t do a thing for her friend’s color blindness; when in the wake of her pursuit of taboo spiritual affairs she had to escape all the way here to Ende Erde. From time to time she would clutch her head in her hands and wish for death before a deeper despair that she never knew existed would come knocking once more. It refused to abate even after she realized that both pain and joy could be conjured from less than a medicine spoon’s worth of powder.

“Death, indeed... In the end, his anguish was cheaply bought...”

While Nanna was neutralizing the blue smoke, she had touched upon Durante’s heart in quite the fundamental manner. Apparently Kykeon was but a catalyst by which he wanted to flood his despair into the hearts of the masses. Kykeon pushed the brain into a state of trance, and the empty space left the user receptive to anyone who knew how to broadcast.

However fair his grievances, it was over the line for him to want to immure the whole world in his mourning for his family and home. It was a pitiful script, written by the untethered pain of an angry man. Perhaps that was what made him so pliant.

“He’s been able to read all sorts of communiques...from Seine, the old languages used by the local lords, and even branch languages from the satellite states... How pitiful to be so used...”

A vehicle needs an engine to run, but no one would stop you from putting a different engine inside. Durante had been used because while he’d come up with quite the ingenious little drug, if he had failed, someone else would have been found to take his place. And the truth of the situation was that here he was, cut off and abandoned alongside his lackeys.

“Ahh, but the roots run deep...too deep... What to do...?”

Even if the script itself was cheap, the fact that Durante had such powerful backers was not a good sign. From looking through the various documents that Erich and his people had brought together—left in the basement, apparently having missed their ship to be incinerated—it looked like this incident couldn’t just be swept under the rug as an outburst from the local lords. Powerful players who sought to gain from the Empire’s weakened state were making their move on Ende Erde, planting seeds of strife that only needed a little water and encouragement to sprout.

This case with Durante and Kykeon was but one of these seeds. It wasn’t worth celebrating the extermination of this one weed when you thought of the many that would crop up before too long.

Durante’s fundamental beliefs had led him and Nanna to be like oil and water. All the same, she acknowledged his skills. He had managed to work with the capricious arcane furnace, create a drug that even Nanna couldn’t deconstruct when she had it in front of her, and had almost succeeded in bringing a whole city to its knees through a magically powered addiction. And here he was, easily tossed aside. She didn’t know how many irons the true engineers of this plot had in the fire, waiting to be revealed.

“I feel quite the headache coming on... I want to head back...and resume my research... Although...his techniques won’t be all that useful...”

The Empire had become, for better or worse, far too settled. Not only that, it had reached the dismayingly logical conclusion that if it were able to make a display of its strength, then it would be possible to silence all of those around it for good.

The Trialist Empire of Rhine was truly a haven for bureaucrats and people who foolishly believed in said bureaucracy, tucked up safely in their bastions of logic and knowledge. However, their optimism blinded them. The irrational belief that no one would wage a war that they couldn’t win had taken all too many victims throughout the long course of history.

Nanna was annoyed that they had perhaps made too big a show of demonstrating the aeroship. Even out here in the Empire’s western periphery, despite having long since left the College, Nanna still received information from her connections. Plans had been sped along over the past few years and now they didn’t have a mere prototype—no, they had plans to mass-produce these things. By now they were deliberating on where to place the munitions factories.

Aeroships had been unreliable things over the course of their history. It took vast amounts of mana to supply lift and strength to these gargantuan crafts, and earlier models could only just about carry themselves through the air. Carrying cargo would have been impossible, and so military use had been out of the question. Many had seen them more like art pieces, like a nice model that you could place in your garden pond and watch on a calm day.

But what of it now? The prototype ship, the Alexandrine, could hold hundreds of people and enough provisions to feed every mouth for a month without stopping to restock. It had a strong outer body that would protect it from Great Work magic, as well as multilayered arcane barriers.

A ball had been hosted in its bilge, and although many deemed the size a waste of space, those with a keen military eye all had the same thought in their heads as they walked in: How many soldiers could we fit into this ballroom? Or how many combustibles could be packed in here, ready to be off-loaded onto an unsuspecting city below? Any present-day doctrines about how best to protect your city would become relics of the past in a flicker.

On the day that a fleet of ten or even twenty of these aeroships came over the horizon, any and all preexisting national philosophies of war would be a thing of the past. Imagine you were faced with these unreachable beasts, with half a million soldiers in their bellies, flying at the speed of a drake. It didn’t matter what protective measures you had installed where—your city, your capital even, would receive a direct and devastating assault.

If a nation decided to pool its efforts to build a city that could withstand the assault, the mobility granted by the aeroships would allow the Empire to simply take their business elsewhere and strike at any weak point they wanted. It was impossible to claim the advantage in any clash. If the Empire’s forces were pushed to a location that they didn’t like, they could pack up and leave.

The scale of their potential power was a nightmare.

In the face of the terrifying presence of thousands upon thousands of soldiers in the sky, there would be many territorial leaders who would desire to switch sides. Some of the more patient members of longer-lived races would spend decades weaving plans that would allow for a gradual transition to the Imperial side.

The aeroship was a strategic wild card—both in the realm of politics and on the battlefield. Without a large ice-free port, the Empire had begun work on how to improve its shipping capabilities. This technology had evolved into something that would shake the world to its core. Its impacts would be far, far greater than those who’d dreamed it up could have conceived.

Various other nations had laughed at the Empire, berating them for their foolish attempts to conquer the realm of dragons and to deliver goods by the air. Even if they made attempts to try and play catch-up, the advantage given by the Empire’s head start was incalculable. Technology and talent weren’t something you could just bring into the world by throwing money at people. Even if you did have one such genius, it was all too much work for a single person to complete on their own.

If the other nations played their cards wrong, the skies would be Rhine’s for the next hundred years.

The fear of the Empire would drive other great nations to nip the problem of their neighbor in the bud. If that weren’t possible, then they could at least attempt to create a situation that would make it difficult for them to focus on putting their time and money into the aeroship enterprise.

It didn’t matter that the Empire wasn’t taking an expansionist approach right now. To their neighbors, the fear that they could take over all who surrounded them meant that the situation could not be tolerated.

Even the satellite states who dreamed, just like the local lords of Ende Erde, for the day they would escape from the yoke of the Empire and reclaim their independence and glory could not sit in peace.

Buffer states were a compromise that only existed because two larger nations didn’t want to share borders. If they saw a future where a distant emperor decided on a whim that they were no longer necessary and they would be subsequently swallowed up, then there was no chance they would sit still. They would gather people, resources, money and set to work on schemes that would make the scales tip in the right way.

“People...truly are foolish creatures...”

Nanna imagined future evils that would make Kykeon look positively cute. She almost wished she could surrender herself to her despair as easily as this fool had. Unfortunately it wasn’t so easy a task to sit down with your knees in your arms and let the void take you. Maybes, possibilities, the idea that perhaps an inexhaustible amount of effort might get you to the ideals you sought offered a battered life preserver that you could hang onto in an ocean of despair. There was always that thin ray of optimism that kept a body clinging to life even as the spirit begged for death, blind to the idea that holding fast only invited more pain. And even if you did realize that, the hope would still hurt.

“Now then, I suppose we should hand this one off to the Madam Manager...and see how much cleaner things will become here...”

Nanna didn’t sound convinced. It was a tricky situation. There were too many people involved in this scheme. If they made drastic cuts without enough forethought, then it could lead to the very revolts they were trying to quell. They couldn’t deal with all the relevant parties in secret either, as the scope stretched too wide. They didn’t even have enough decent evidence to pin down everyone who was implicit in this scheme.

Documents remained that detailed certain aspects of the Kykeon plot, but in truth most of the important documents had already been burned. The contents of Durante’s own personal safe in his room had turned to naught but cinders before anyone had even got there. The circumstances meant that they had to treat this as essentially a one-man scheme.

“Ahh... It’s all so...small... How tiring indeed...”

Nanna gave Durante’s stomach another kick, but all she got in response was a weak groan. She wouldn’t get anything she wanted—not the answers around the Kykeon plot, not the truth of how to create a world free of malady, not the method to remove pain and suffering from this life.

It was no surprise that Nanna let out a deep, tired sigh as she realized that this huge and roundabout plot they had worked together to bring to close was merely one weed in a field rife with them.

All the same, she settled herself with the satisfaction that she had won today’s little competition to see whose despair trumped whose. With these thoughts in head, Nanna let out a puff of smoke.

[Tips] Although the concept of global hegemony does not yet exist, wise folk around the world are able to sense that such a thing is nigh.

And so we destroyed the wicked mage’s base and rounded up his underlings. The end.

Obviously none of what we’d been through up to this point would have been half as difficult if we could wrap things up that easily now. If you asked me this whole affair was orders of magnitude too complicated.

After we cleaned up the makeshift bedroom in the factory, I peered at my reflection in my hand mirror and let out a groan.

“Jeez,” I said. “And again it looks like I’m the most injured one out of us all...”

“Looks like? You totally are,” came a curt reply from my comrade.

With a bandage wrapped around the left side of my face, I looked like a complete wreck. Luckily my hair had avoided any damage, but I didn’t look good.

“Yeah, but Etan apparently fractured his clavicle tanking that arrow,” I said.

“Did you see the size of it? If I’d been the one with the shield I totally would’ve died. He got off lightly if ya ask me.”

“Well, what about our Fellows? They got injured too.”

“Hello, Erich? What’s got you so inclined to turn this into a pissing contest? Wasn’t it you who said that anything other than losin’ your thumb or arm should count as a ‘minor’ injury...?”

Our people had come out the other side of a bloody fray; now they were readying some booze they’d brought along for a little postbattle celebration. It didn’t feel good that I was the only one who had to swear off alcohol and smoking for bed rest yet again.

“Whuh?!”

“What is it now, man? You havin’ one of your usual weird outbursts? Put it in words that I can understand.”

It just felt bad, man! Everyone else was up and walking, but here I was, looking thoroughly chewed up. I didn’t want people to get used to worrying about me, if only for my rep’s sake.

“Tch, I was stupid for wantin’ to come in and check on ya...”

“Sorry for leaving most of the cleanup to you, Siegfried.”

“You don’t gotta apologize. Kaya’s the one who said you need to stay put.”

The Fellowship of the Blade’s resident herbalist wasn’t one to be ignored. When she finished patching up my face, she told me to drink another antidote and hit the sack. After the five assassins had been nicely tied up, Sieg had been left in charge of all the other boring stuff to do.

But I wasn’t lying about how I felt, despite my appearance. Compared to breaking my arm the other day, I was downright peachy. At least I didn’t have a fever this time.

“Kaya took off their clothes and put them in some stuff we prepared just in case they were hidin’ anything. Then we tied ’em up again in those knots you said no one can slip out of. People from the Association are gonna come pick them up later, so just chill out, okay?”

As Siegfried had said, we had made sure our quarry had no means of causing harm left to them and tied them up in the basement. Fortunately the three who had been heavily injured were out of the woods. We couldn’t reattach Beatrix’s lost limbs, but she wouldn’t die, at least.

Lady Maxine would decide what to do with them. She had told us that we had permission to kill them if the situation demanded it, but I felt it would be better to keep them alive. I had been waiting to do any questioning until they came back around, but it might be days until they woke up, considering the extent of their injuries.

“Hey, Boss, they’re awake and kicking.”

Speak of the devil...or Diablo. Gerrit had walked in right on cue. I put down my mirror.

“All of them?”

“Yes, seems so...although one of them can’t really speak.”

“That’s fine, as long as their leader talks.”

Siegfried shot me a fiery glare that said, I ain’t covering for you if Kaya blows up on you, but I could worry about that later—this interrogation was important.

The Kykeon affair was over now. The problem was that the noisy mage who had made the stuff wasn’t the true instigator of this whole mess. He was behind a lot of the scheming this time, but if you asked me, he was little more than a wild dog fed scraps from someone else’s table to keep him eager to stir shit up.

There was no way that a plot that had almost toppled an entire city and put an entire region into chaos would fizzle out like this. If you asked me, it felt like we had merely cut short one scheme out of many.

Given that we’d found Kykeon’s inventor here, odds were good that the other factory Mister Fidelio and the others were neutralizing wouldn’t yield much more useful evidence than we already had. There were only a few mages and one unorthodox-looking priest left. The room they were working in seemed far too large for only a handful of people, so it was almost certain that many people had been here until only recently. Even the stacks and stacks of documents pointed toward that.

It was a shame that most of the evidence had been destroyed, but we did have one slender thread that would lead us to our mastermind’s mastermind: the five assassins.

“There you go walking off again,” Margit said. “It’s dangerous with only one eye, you know?”

“I’m fine, Margit,” I said. “My dominant eye is my right one. My depth perception is fine.”

Despite our assassins’ horrible wounds, they were still professionals of their craft. I had asked Margit to stay on guard on the off chance they tried anything. The other three would cover her shift when she took some rest.

“Mmf, mmf.”

As I walked into the room, Beatrix greeted me.

“Oh yes, I forgot about the gag.”

Beatrix used her left arm to force herself up. Her right arm was gone now, so I guessed that Kaya must have decided it’d been beyond recovery. Around her mouth was a gag. Beatrix and the others would be valuable sources of information, so we didn’t want them biting their tongues off to take any information with them to the grave.

“Take this gag off,” she said. “I promise you I won’t run or end my life prematurely.”

Well, I assumed that was what she said—the gag really was on tight. As long as I kept my wits about me I could stop her from doing either of those things, so I decided to accede to her demand. That wasn’t all. I didn’t actually have totally foolproof means to keep her staying put. She had mixed metals into her tattoos to make them focus points for her magic, so when her mana recovered she could simply use that slippery shadow-meld trick of hers. Still she wasn’t likely to get far without her legs, and I couldn’t remain super paranoid forever.

I carefully removed the gag. Beatrix was surprisingly docile. She had tried to give me a kiss of death just earlier; I had braced myself for projectile venom-spittle, but it seemed my concerns were misplaced.

“Whew... You do have particular tastes, Goldilocks,” she said. “I know we’re all fetching women, but you didn’t have to tie us up and throw us in here quite so roughly.”

“Down to your last limb, and still you act like this,” Margit said. “I shouldn’t be surprised, really.”

“I have an inkling of what you wish to ask,” Beatrix went on. “However, I know little more than you.”

“And you think I’ll take you at your word?” I said.

“I could tell from clashing with you that your head isn’t completely empty. I need not spell it out for you—we are tight-lipped and used to torture. You may not believe me, but there isn’t an inch of my body that hasn’t already been tainted by someone seeking revenge or information.”

In truth, I wasn’t surprised. Judging from today, she hadn’t been working out of a sense of obligation or justice; their pride would keep them from spilling any intel. If you didn’t have a psychological angle to work, torture was nigh on useless as an information-gathering method.

“You don’t look the type to engage in such unsavory pastimes,” she went on.

“You never know—looks can be deceiving.”

Beatrix laughed. “Yes, quite right. Well, I’ll concede it’s not completely bad if the other person is good-looking.”

Bluffs just fizzled to nothing in front of her. Hoo boy, she’d one-upped me in our little game of “who’s got the edgier background.” She looked impossible to break.

If that was the case, I’d just be honest.

“You five are incredibly talented, so why?”

It was a pretty vague and open-ended question, but it had been sitting at the back of my mind this whole time. Through crossing blades with all of them, I could tell that they were seasoned veterans that you couldn’t find on any street corner. I knew that hlessil and kaggen were persecuted in certain regions, but this was the Empire. Sure, they might’ve struggled, but they could have made decent livings as honest adventurers.

What had led them to work under a madman whose only desire was to sow his own deepest despair in the hearts of others?

“Why? Why, you ask? A difficult question indeed...” It didn’t look like Beatrix was playing dumb or trying to deflect my question—she looked as if she were genuinely ruminating on how to answer. After a while, she went on, “The only reason I can give is because that was my decision. But I suppose...it was to return a favor. To clarify, I didn’t owe him any favors.”

“So to whom?”

“To someone completely irrelevant to this entire affair. I was told to help the mage in his ambitions and in return I would be told how I might avenge one of my lost allies.”

The way Beatrix spoke so easily about things that wouldn’t harm anyone was truly impressive. She was a real pro at this too—how many times had she fallen into the enemy’s hands only to return alive?

“You wish to know more about the one who was backing Durante, I am sure, but I am afraid that they are no longer in the Empire. I had followed Durante once in hopes that I might do some prying of my own, but the name and identity I dug up are fakes, proxies. I dared not dig any deeper to avoid meeting my own end.”

I was pretty confident in my own ability to see through lies, but Beatrix spoke so easily that I honestly couldn’t tell. All I was certain about was that she was talented at singling out the questions whose answers mattered most to whether she lived or died.

No matter how much our Madam Manager squeezed Beatrix, I doubted there would be much to gain.

The only certainties we had were that she had aided in Durante’s wicked deeds and that most of the evidence of said deeds had been dealt with. We had more than enough to stick her with a death sentence, and I had legitimate cause to kill her now if I wished. I couldn’t do much about any loose ends being disposed of in the coming days and weeks.

Folk like these with decades or more of experience doing other folks’ dirty work, completely unnoticed, scared me a hell of a lot more than any major league villain with a hefty bounty.

“What I can say was that they were quite the savvy individual,” Beatrix said. “They spoke Rhinian with a terribly thick Seineish accent, but it was most likely a cover.”

“Yes, any intelligence agent worth their salt can fake an accent or two,” I replied.

“Indeed. My affected manner of speaking leaves you uncertain of where I’m from too, does it not?”

That was it, wasn’t it? Her striking image and ever so slightly out of date dialect confounded the question of where she’d come from. This was no mere dramaturgy; this was a mask she wore every day, refined through necessity and ingenious reasoning.

“This leaves me ever more uncertain as to why someone with your knowledge and skills would embroil themselves in such foul doings. I ask you again, why?”

“I must say I’m a little surprised myself. This is just my own impressions talking, but from the looks of you, you’ve spent some time walking in the shadows yourself, have you not? Why can you stay out there in the light?”

Hold it there, Erich, I thought. I was playing too far into the home field of a talented manipulator. I had shown my hand too clearly. Leaning into my familiarity with her methods was all but a confession to my own dubious history. I would say that my own mental catalog of these skills had been built up from my past life at the table and during my dabbling in undercover work for Lady Agrippina, but I shouldn’t have let her catch on.

Still I had to admit it was useful, being able to perfectly code-switch from palatial speech to the way people spoke in the rougher part of town. With the right foreign affectation you could deflect attention away from nearly anything else.

“Well, I can call it nothing but effort,” I said.

“Effort, you say... I’d say that I put in quite the effort myself. All of us did, yet here we are. Such is fate, I suppose.”

We had been talking for longer than I’d anticipated, but still Beatrix’s voice seemed rather light. I didn’t sense any mana waves coming from her lips either.

Ugh, she’s probably realized by now that I’m talking to her more out of personal curiosity than anything else.

Could you blame me? She was the kind of battle-defining named NPC that couldn’t not have a juicy backstory that the GM would resent me for overlooking. We had put our very lives on the line as we crossed blades and fists. It was completely natural for my interest to be piqued. In my past life I’d spent ages poring line by line over splatbook after splatbook full of deadly NPCs with bespoke flavor text unpacking the secret of their strength.

Unfortunately it looked like Beatrix wouldn’t be quite so forthcoming with her past. I guessed she would take her secrets right to the grave. This was the sort of lore that you would only get from the GM once the story had wrapped up.

“So what do you want from us, now that fate has dealt its hand?”

“Nothing. All that’s left to do is to hand you all over to the Association manager.”

“Is that right... An appeal, if you would... Would you take my head alone in exchange for their lives?”

“Bea!”

The hlessi squeaked at Beatrix’s unsurprising request. Her lapine bone structure meant that the gag didn’t work properly on her nonmensch mouth.

I could only shake my head in response. The fact of the matter was that our outlook was better with them dead than alive. While I wouldn’t mind adding a group of talented assassins to my connections column, Lady Maxine was one of the people in charge of my home. If I let them go after all this, who knew what hell she would bring down upon me. That wasn’t even touching on Schnee or Fidelio. These five had almost brought complete disaster to Marsheim. They would not forgive me if I let them go now.

It was a shame, but my emotions didn’t weigh heavier than the reality.

“I thought that would be your answer,” said Beatrix. “A shame. My looks have reeled in plenty of your sort before, you know.”

“And how many of your catch are still alive?” I asked with a sigh. Beatrix merely shrugged her shoulders with the silent message that I was asking a ridiculous question.

This group traded in debts. It was obvious what would happen when the accounts were settled.

“Well, I think I’ve asked most of what I wanted to,” I said.

“Hold on, Goldilocks Erich.”

Just as I was about to reattach the gag, Beatrix raised her hand to stop me. She had something important to say. I tensed up in case she was going to try something funny, but there wasn’t any point.

“Don’t become like us,” she said. “Even when you are looking at the world through clear eyes and working with steady hands, the world can fall out from beneath you with one mistake. Choose jobs that serve your goals. This is the least advice I can give you as your senior.”

“Your advice has been well received,” I said after a moment’s pause.

What was she warning me about?

I reaffixed the gag and Beatrix slumped down onto her back, all energy leaving her body. In almost no time at all her breathing slowed, and she disappeared into deep sleep.

Why did it feel like I was on the losing side right now?

Just because you didn’t fail, that didn’t mean you were doing the right thing... Her words were heavy. If I served the wrong ends, it didn’t matter how good a job I’d done—it wouldn’t be a success. I had no way of knowing for sure, but I imagined that was why these women had begun their dirty work.

“What a troubling character... I can’t tell if she’s incredibly bold or merely too obstinate for her own good,” Margit said.

“It’s fine. They aren’t causing a fuss now. Uzu went off to report our victory, so someone should be coming to pick them up soon enough.”

What came next wasn’t our job.

Right; I supposed it was time to draw back and get some sleep. I didn’t want to draw Kaya’s ire. I was too old to be lectured about how I needed to get my act together...

[Tips] Although the GM might spend nights drawing together the details of the world, it’s an unfortunate fact that they won’t be able to introduce all of these moving parts during the actual session.

After receiving a furious lecture from Kaya, I spent the next three days resting properly. I made sure not to do anything too taxing, but I drew on my mana to help speed up the healing process. It wasn’t all too fancy though—just pumping up my metabolism to let my body heal faster. There was a trait which allowed you to use mana to directly patch yourself up from within, but it cost a boatload of experience, so I had to make do with this slower method.

It was better than nothing, though, so I put in the effort to make a dent in my healing process. The salves for my face hurt and stank ten times worse than the stuff I used to relieve my stiff shoulders.

The eyedrops were a pain in and of themselves—like a dollop of wasabi rubbed straight into my cornea, stinging like nothing else and leaving my eye streaming tears for hours. It honestly was on par with the allergic reaction I’d had to the cursed cedar’s pollen. But this stuff was purging Beatrix’s lingering toxins, so again, I had to grin and bear it.

A final complaint—the medicines made my face crazy itchy all night. It was so distracting that I could barely sleep. In addition to the painful side effects from my recent bone fixing, I was starting to wonder if Kaya was leaving me to deal with all these side effects to make a point. Her logic probably went as follows: If healing was an easy and painless process, then people would throw themselves into danger over and over again, convinced that a potion could quickly and painlessly patch things up.

“Oh...? I can finally see again...”

I carefully removed the bandage around my eye—taking care not to touch the eyeball itself—and peered into my hand mirror. My sclera was still white like wax, but I could see. My vision was a little blurry, but I could write now, at least. I’d been writing up some reports with just my right eye to go on, but when I asked Margit to go over my draft—she was my go-to copy editor—her first comment was “Should this be slanting up so much?”

It was probably because I hadn’t had much trouble grabbing things with one eye out of commission that I had assumed that my depth perception was totally fine too, yet it seemed that was far from the truth. I used a ruler to check and, lo and behold, it was swerving horrendously off course. I decided that any writing that needed to look neat would have to wait until I was better. I would be receiving an envoy from the Association soon; I was glad that I seemed to have recovered just in time.

Just as I was about to dip my quill in my inkpot, I felt a strange presence in my temporary room within the workshop.

I stood up and readied my fey knife, but all I got in response was a small sigh.

“You’re struggling to muster your usual charm. I expected better of our first late-night rendezvous in ages.”

“Miss Nakeisha!”

The sigh and the voice—with its uniquely muted touch—came from a familiar sepa clinging to the outside of the window frame, her face as rigid and passionless as a doll’s. What was my age-old nemesis from my days working undercover for the Empire doing kicking around in this sordid little burg? Sure, Ende Erde was still the Empire, but it was so remote that it felt more like a foreign country than home to many. She hadn’t even given me forewarning that she would be making a house call.

“It has been quite some time, Erich,” she said. “I would like to say that I am pleased to see you in good health, but...”

“Yes, with my face as it is, I would only take it as the most crass irony.”

“Indeed... Now, could you open the window? I have something I wish to discuss.”

After a few seconds of thought, I opened the window. Miss Nakeisha deftly slid her long body inside, without even touching the inner frame, before landing without a sound. She readjusted her posture before speaking once more.

“First, please take this. I am here today as an envoy from Marquis Donnersmarck.”

“An envoy? At this hour? I’m not sure envoys typically come in the dead of night.”

Miss Nakeisha revealed her four arms from the sleeves of her cloak. She first showed me her palms, then the backs of her hands, and then her palms once more. This was a display of trust practiced by those who walked on the darker side of life. I responded in kind and sent my fey karambit back into my sleeve with a twirl.