Envoy: Part 2

Vyktor was waiting for me. "Did you find anything interesting while you were away?" he asked, a little too cheerfully. Did he know that the rulers were puppets?

"I'm beginning to think that the rulers are puppets." Vyktor blinked in surprise. He was getting better at hiding his emotions. A good ability to have for a master of spies. "Your network on this continent is adequate. This continent. I need spies everywhere. For the conference, make sure you have at least four unaligned pixy spies get underground. Make sure their stealth is at least level fifty and race shifting is also necessary. They can sneak in behind the bottom feeders as we talk. Get your spies working." Vyktor nodded. He vanished as he headed for his spy barracks. I'd built a couple of towns for him. The only neutral npcs on my continent were raised in those towns. All were pixies. Parasites were the best spies. An orc would stand out underground. A tiny bit of Assassin glamour could hide their giveaway eyes. And Shifters were even better infiltration units. Not to mention the fact that pixies in their natural form were puny, and thus harder to see regardless of their stealth abilities.

I turned to the governor of Zezhria. He was the definition of a puppet. He didn't do anything I didn't ask him to do. He might as well have been my mouth to the npcs of Zezhria. I could just give them orders as my vassals, but I preferred it when they obeyed me of their own free will. They were more creative that way. "Commission a town to be built on every island we've discovered except for the one we've designated for the council. If they're too small, make them bigger."

"What would you like the towns to be built of, Master? Carting stone out that far to sea would be…expensive. To say the least. Especially with the fleet we currently have access to." It was nice that he'd gained all of the knowledge I asked him to from the bankers. His whole job was to know that sort of thing and make sure I knew what I was doing when I told him to convey my orders. A puppet, but a very competent one. "Might I suggest creating more coastal towns, creating more ship-building capabilities first?"

"Make those too. And one coastal city. I need a port that isn't named Ocean. Make the city directly east of Zezhria. Name it…Hate. Make sure they know that a navy is required." I had more than enough lumber. Delfina had cut down millions of trees as she made my pets teach me to be a level one hundred lumberjack. It was the only skill I'd maxed out because of her town. I needed more towns like it. "And label it a city for the undead. The only npcs it will host will be the governor and his family. Just enough to keep the city 'legal'."

"Master, building a city from nothing costs a good deal more than ten towns, and if you don't plan to have npcs, I don't really see the need of the elevation. And that's avoiding the fact that you can't make a new race without a set of mythic gear to make their crown. Even then, since the basis is a monster species they'll never be full npcs." I stared at him in response. He started fidgeting in seconds. After ten had passed he decided against questioning me again. "I see your wisdom, Master. You don't need to make the undead into npcs to make a city for them alone. A simple declaration should suffice. As you say. It will be done." He'd given me an idea, though. I could create an npc race, but couldn't use monsters because they were intrinsically different from npcs. So how could I make a race of npcs?

"How do I make a race of npcs? What are the requirements?" that would be a nifty trick. I could create a swimming race, that would make my navy much more deadly. I might even make a few completely submerged cities. Atlantis not existing on the map seemed like an oversight. And since I was a Shifter, I could visit them at will. That would make fighting and taming the aquatic uber-monsters much easier. Keeps would mean I didn't need to hunt them with my dragon.

He was shaking like a leaf. He was one of the few in Zezhria that was actually terrified of me. I liked his terror-driven need to please over the fawning of the other Dark Elves. It felt more…honest. "You would need a mythic set, which cannot have another crown attached to it. You would need a rendition of the species and their appearance, which nobody alive has the skill to make, at the moment. Stone or metal sculptures would work, but all art existing currently already has a race attributed to it. You would also need a mage of sufficient skill, you are the only one in your empire with the mp required, to change a willing npc couple into the new species. The last requirement is a city to call capital."

Something to think about. I didn't have a high sculpture skill, so I'd want someone with a higher skill-level than me. That was hard to find, so early in the game. Eventually people would settle into their desired career, but not until the game was old enough that everyone had grown accustomed to the world. So, no naval species quite yet.

"Looks like you haven't even moved since I left. Months ago, in case you hadn't noticed I wasn't part of your sycophant gaggle." It wasn't a gaggle. They were just waiting their turn for me to tell them what to do. A gaggle would be a static group that never left, these people were constantly cycling through. Hell's voice silenced the crowd as it echoed through the massive room, making it sound even louder than it really was. And that was a feat. Maybe they were, slightly, gaggle-like. "Have you been petrified without any of us noticing?"

"Hell. You've conquered the rest of the orc towns, I take it." He nodded, grinning. He looked like he belonged in the heavy plate of the Orc Warlord. It was plate armor that was more Corinthian or Viking than anything else. It had the Corinthian helm with massive horns ripping out of either side. It even had the crimson Mohawk. The rest was definitely not Corinthian, but less orc. Black plate made to look huge. That's what it was. I wore spikes, he wore blades and ridges. Getting a hug from him would be so uncomfortable…almost as bad as a hug from me. The only parts I could think of as being orc were the horns on his helmet and the cloak made from some massive furry creature. "How about you, Lethe? You finished with the pixy towns?" I'd taken all of the elven towns, but I'd needed to manage my empire.

She appeared and nodded. Her armor was black leather with red and black ridged crystalline plate mixed in to protect the vital areas. The only cloth she wore was the cloak and hood. Her hood showed the grinning red skull of her mask. It wasn't as obviously imposing as me or Hell, but she was terrifying in her own right. Orcs and pixies weren't "dark" races just for show.

"Why don't you just name her Empress and stop all the useless dancing?" Hell laughed as Lethe punched him. She was looking at me, though. Wondering at my response, maybe. Did she want to be Empress? I didn't know. I'd never asked her. "Even you think that's a better option than him ogling you every time you show up, right? Now he's just being creepy, marriage is the perfect excuse." She definitely wasn't looking at me anymore. He cleared his throat. "So, what's next on the list of things to do this year?"

"I'm going to meet with the leaders of the other empires. Not sure what it's about, but we're meeting on a random island in the middle of the ocean. Should be fairly standard." Hell was so surprised he dropped the massive ax he called a weapon. Luckily, it didn't count as an attack, so my floor wasn't wrecked. I'd accidentally destroyed several buildings by misusing my gear in a similar way.

"You realize they'll try to kill you, right?" Lethe demanded. I shrugged and nodded. They might. I didn't care. I could survive anything they sent at me. And if I couldn't, I'd respawn here. No problem. "What if they don't know they can respawn? You'd give them information like that?" She had a point. I'd just have to do my best not to die. The risks were still worth it, though.

"We need to meet them eventually. If I don't show up, they'll see it as an admission of weakness. I'll be slaughtered as they march from every direction. I can't take all three empires on at the same time. Camelot, maybe. If the underground people decide to attack, I'll destroy them, but if Camelot moves at the same time…my pets are powerful, but they have limits." When my living dragons grew up…maybe. Right now, though, I'd be destroyed. Bonehead couldn't be everywhere at once. Even he had limits.

"Speaking of pets, when do we get dragons? Or is it your plan to hog them to yourself. Forever. Like the best crown gear." I wasn't going to give them dragons. No way. Maybe Lethe. Definitely not Hell. Not yet, anyway. Eventually, they'd probably need ubers to not drag me down. "Come on, man. I want one!"

"Then go catch one. If you kill the monster on top of the mountain, the next one hatches. The babies can be converted without too much effort." It was just that easy. The only hard part was killing the dominant dragon. They all started at level four hundred, so there weren't any weaklings for Hell to pick off. Dungeon monsters were also impossible to tame, so even those weaker dragons weren't an option. Unless he went to the mountain I'd gotten my dragons from. That natural beast was weaker than my pets since it hadn't explored the whole continent to find the best hunting grounds even if it had started with a fifty level advantage. It had killed the pets I sent to subjugate it, though.

I'd need to personally bring it to heel like I had its progenitor. Its predecessor had proved to be irritatingly difficult to manage. I'd find a way, though. Eventually. I'd get around to it when more eggs spawned. Five more dragon eggs for my familiars, and one for Hell and Lethe maybe. That first beast had crawled out of the mountain after a week, already level one hundred. The second a week after that. No eggs yet, though. The first hundred levels weren't that hard to get, but taming it at that point was really hard. I hadn't been able to lure it or the one before it to a city and without the amplification I couldn't keep it on the edge of death. I wanted the uber-monster fountain to give off monsters that would become my pets without me being there. Maybe I'd have my dragons roost there, providing the correct level of force required to make pets out of the monstrous beasts. Maybe I'd have my familiars' dragons do it when they grew up. It would have to be multiple, since Bonehead wasn't enough to force a level one hundred dragon to bow.

"Just kill the big beast and torture the babies. No big deal. Not even difficult." Hell replied sarcastically. He must really want a dragon. "Easy as that. Oh, wait. I forgot to mention that the beast is four times your level, Hell. Did I, oh I'm sorry. I've changed my mind. Here you go, Hell. You can have one of my dragons, because I'm just nice that way. That's how this conversation should have gone, Void." Only in his imagination would it go that way. Ridiculous.

"Stop bitching." Lethe growled at him. He picked up his ax and moved as if to swing it. She vanished before he'd gripped the ax, moved way faster than she should have been able to, and slammed her jeweled knife into Hell's thigh before he'd even wound up properly. He howled and danced away. "And don't pick fights you know you'll lose." she hissed.

He held his thigh as the blood trickled through the hole in his armor. It sealed almost instantly, but he continued to hold the wound. The poison on her weapons was extremely painful. I'd only tried it once, whereas Hell was a regular, but it had been too much even for me. "You two were meant for each other. What are we supposed to do, now? Sit around and wait for a war to start?"

"You can go rule the orcs. Get your own 'gaggle' to lord over. I don't have an active governor over there, yet, so you can take over. I would ask Jennifer, but she's having trouble keeping one city together that would work fine without her there at all. Do whatever you want so long as you keep my rules of every single npc belonging to the Black Hole Knights. Make an army. Pit cities against each other. I don't really care. Just make sure the orc nation stays strong enough to destroy Camelot. And make sure none of the supply trains to Zezhria get disrupted. Take the whole southern half of the continent. Leave the pixy cities to Shyndyn, but the rest is yours." Hell pulled off his helmet and grinned at me. He'd taken off his helmet just for that? Odd. He was giggling and doing a little jig, so the smile was completely redundant.

"Dude! You're giving me the whole orc nation? That's so…cool!" apparently he was over the fact that he didn't have a dragon. "Still doesn't get you off the hook for hogging the dragons, but it'll tide me over for a while." So much for that theory. I sighed as he turned and headed out to his new territory.

Lethe was next to me when he knocked the doors aside with casual ease. I could remember the days when it was hard for him to open the gates of the keep. "Do you really think that's wise? He'll turn on you, given time."

"Not as long as he couldn't benefit from turning on me. He runs half of my empire, now. Over half, if he gets Shyndyn to accept him as an overlord. He couldn't get a better deal anywhere else." I glanced at her, trying to read what she wanted to do. Hell liked ruling stuff. Lethe didn't seem like a queen to me. Another master of spies, maybe, but not a queen. She liked operating from the shadows. "Hell wants a bunch of subordinates to order around." Not the grandest of dreams, but one that suited him. "I want a world to bow to me." What better means to show I wasn't the weak human I had been than to make others bow and quiver in fear as I had? "What do you want?" I hadn't been able to understand what she was thinking before she started wearing a mask all the time. Now I had no chance.

Lethe took her time answering. I didn't doubt she'd put a lot of thought into figuring out what to say when I asked that question, but it was a hard one to answer. "I want to be the one forcing the world to bow to you. The invisible one with her boot on their neck. Unseen, but felt." I'd guessed right. She wanted to run everything without being the one with a target on her back. The question was how to give her a position to do that. I couldn't make her an advisor, that would be a step down from where she was. "I want to break the wills of those who oppose you. I want to stand at your side as the resistance cracks and ruptures beneath your feet." Maybe she didn't want to be a total shadow, like Vyktor. Maybe she wanted to be the public shadow. A force that everyone knew was there, watching them. Shadows they expected, making the true shadows even harder to spot.

"How'd you like to run my advisor system?" she cocked her head. Apparently she didn't get what I was working toward. "I have a spymaster, one who operates everywhere. How'd you like to be my eyes and ears inside the system. You publicly torture and kill the instigators of rebellion. You are the face of his operation, so to speak. You have your own system, of course, but you'd be more on the side of action than information gathering. I'll be the enforcer, you'll be the spook, and he'll be the shadow nobody suspects is really there. I don't hide. You pretend to hide. He hides. See how it works?"

"How do I pretend to hide? I don't get it. Am I gathering information or killing people?" her mask hid her expression from me, but I could hear the confusion and frustration in her voice. "What would I be doing, exactly?"

"You'd run the underground. There are always black markets, everyone knows that and even I don't think I can stop that part of life. Controlling it is much better. All the thieves and assassins report to you, the fences and mercenaries. All of the guild members that gather information are yours. Think of yourself as the Inquisition. His agents are all neutral npcs. They infiltrate the rebels, pretending to be resistance fighters that have survived. Yours would be the ones that bear my sigil that work in the shadows. Your operations would be comparatively open. All the ambassadors I might end up sending to Camelot or below would be yours. I'd come to you if I needed someone assassinated or made to look bad. Vyktor works solely in information. There is no action potential. A fly on the wall can't hurt anyone directly, that's why nobody swats it. You can. If I am the army, you are the secret service. I openly slaughter, you covertly slaughter, and Vyktor just makes sure we're killing the right people. See the difference?" it wasn't entirely true. Vyktor's people could kill. I'd just use them if I wanted someone to be killed from within their own guild. They'd start rebellions in the other empires while Lethe did more to root out rebellion in mine.

"What would my title be?" She wanted a title? What would be the right answer, in this situation? I'd never been asked to give someone else a name before. Terribly fragile ground. I could almost feel the ice crack beneath me as I considered possible answers.

Finally, I arrived at a very neutral one. Nobody could be offended by this response, right? "What do you want your title to be?" Now I didn't have to give an answer that would be offensive no matter which one it was. That couldn't be misinterpreted, right? 

She took a breath so fast it sounded like a hiss. "Empress." Her voice was burning with some emotion I couldn't identify. Was that ambition, determination, embarrassment, anger, or uncertainty? I couldn't tell.

Empress. In that one word she showed that she understood the position. It was open, but not the center of attention. It was known, but disregarded as being a position of my whim, not merit. It also brought up a few issues I'd never needed to think about before. "You realize that that particular title comes with…extra responsibilities, right?" That was a good way of putting it, right? Granted, bearing children was a lot less uncomfortable in this world than the old one, but it was still a fairly new concept. Most of the players were teens. The adult population wasn't small, but the teens won out. There hadn't been a census or anything, but that's what I thought. Lethe's nod was jerky. But she nodded. Awesome! I reached around and pulled her onto my lap. That was the least of her problems if we ended up screwing. If she got offended or something, we'd have to reconsider our options. She squawked in surprise, but didn't try to pull away or attack me. She actually relaxed into my arms like she was comfortable, though I knew my ridged and spiky armor couldn't possibly be comfortable. An excessive constitution rating probably helped that, but I still didn't think it would be the sort of thing to relax into. So far so good. "All hail Empress Lethe!" I bellowed. There were always a few npc nobles lurking around my throne. They turned and stared at us, eyes wide.

All they did was stare. Seconds ticked by, and the pin drop silence continued. I couldn't even hear them breathing. Their silence was an insult. I'd just claimed an Empress and they didn't do or say anything. No cheering or requests for a day of celebration or anything. They just stood there. Silent. 

I amplified the burning red light of my eyes. I loved this helmet! "Hail Empress Lethe of the Dark Elves!" I hissed. The silence was broken instantly by their cheering. They cried out in exultation as they cowered in on themselves. Even those that worshiped me had a healthy dose of fear in them. I settled back into my throne and let my helm resume its normal appearance.

Lethe was staring at me. I wasn't sure it was a good thing, seeing as how her mask still hid her features from me and there was no voice to read. "You really are an emperor." She was breathless, though with what I couldn't tell. Was she appalled or awed? Or maybe she was terrified. That would be a total downer. "So that means…we're married now? Your word being law, and all that?"

"Of course it does. Just let a priest or whatever call it fake." Maybe I should make a religion. The oldest means of adding more legitimacy to my rule sounded just about right. "No ring, though. Sorry. I guess the pixy crown gear will have to suffice. It's definitely more expensive than any ring I've ever seen." Stupid tradition, anyway. It was beyond irritating that I felt the need to justify the fact that mythic gear should be able to replace a cheap rock. She giggled for a few seconds. There was an edge of hysteria to her voice, though. That wasn't, generally, a good sign. I realized I had no idea what I was supposed to do at this point. The only person I'd ever had sex with was an npc. And that was just prostitution. It may as well have been a cutscene. This was completely different. I didn't need to worry about what the prostitute thought through the whole process. I needed to worry, this time. If there was a "this time". Maybe Lethe would bolt in a second. I hoped she did for all of a microsecond. I opened my mouth to ask her what happened next, but no sounds came out. I'd let her be the first one to talk. That sounded like a good idea to me.

"Time to take on the title-specific responsibilities." She was still breathless. I was about to respond when a spell wrapped around the both of us. I was about to destroy it when I noticed it was Lethe who was casting the spell. I decided to let it play out.

I felt the compression of a teleport spell press in on me, but my spell resistance was so high it felt like landing in a bed of feathers instead of being pulled through a mile of spinning two inch thick pipe.

We landed on my bed. I didn't have to look around for Lethe. She was still glued to me, though I seemed to remember initiating the contact. Whatever I'd done, it had results I wasn't prepared for. I moved my gear to my inventory to match her. "You look so confused. And here I thought guys were supposed to be so much hornier than girls." She giggled. That was when I realized she hadn't been taken by surprise when I insinuated we'd need to have kids. She'd been excited. I'd totally misread her. Whoops. Thought was banished within two seconds of that realization.

All those religious assholes had tried to convince the world that lust was a thing of the body that needed to be overcome so a soul could reach true righteousness. If that was true, a soul without a body wouldn't have felt lust at all. They were so fucking wrong I didn't even have words for it. Without bodily needs competing for dominance, lust took on a whole different perspective.