It turned out that he couldn’t push as much onto other people as he wanted, but it was still more than Tasi wanted to handle. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone else. At least the dungeon run and the issues they’d had in the Necropolis had given him a chance to get to know Tasi better; Serenity felt like he could trust the man to do the best he could.
He still never wanted to go diving in a municipal water source to find a giant undead prehistoric crocodile skeleton again. As bonding experiences went, it worked but was definitely “1/10, would not repeat”.
At least it wasn’t the sewer system, what there was of one. That would have been worse.
In the past two days, they’d found out who’d been handling things in the Necropolis other than the City Lord: whoever was willing to take care of things without approval and who managed to stay under the radar enough that Stojan Aith didn’t kill them. She’d killed anyone she decided might be thinking about becoming a threat for the decades she’d ruled the Necropolis.
There were several “city services” that seemed to run fairly well - the Watch and City Water were the ones Serenity had the most familiarity with at this point - but they were both based on having a strongman at the head. A strongman who wasn’t Stojan Aith, but was someone who was willing to work with whoever the City Lord was. The problem was all of the things that didn’t have someone managing them or that had simply become fronts for “legal” extortion.
Serenity didn’t even want to think about what they’d found when they looked into city land ownership. He was going to push that mess off on whoever became his City Manager to figure out. If all went well today, that would be Tasi and Hale.
It wasn’t a recipe for good governance. It explained the damage and lack of repair throughout the city - if there wasn’t someone specifically keeping watch over a building, it was scavenged and often destroyed, either for the building material or just because people could.
It was possible to tax the city through the City Crystal. For the Necropolis, it was more of a tax on the dungeons than the city itself; each time you left a dungeon through the Necropolis portal door, you paid a small percent of the Etherium you’d won from the dungeon to the city. With as few people as there were on Tzintkra and how many of them regularly ran dungeons, it should have been plenty to keep the city running, even with a lot having to come in as expensive imports.
Stojan Aith had taxed the dungeons, but she hadn’t spent any of it on the city. They hadn’t been able to find where she’d stashed the Etherium or whatever she’d bought with it. When Serenity had finally been able to release her body, they’d checked it before burning it. While the equipment was better than he’d have expected for her Tier, it wasn’t as much better as it could have been. They’d burned the gear with her; some of it was at least partially Bound, and there was too much of a chance that she’d added some nasty side effects for anyone other than her who tried to use it. Many people did.
Serenity had been floored when he’d found out she was Tier 5. It explained why he’d had trouble hurting her; his axe was the only piece of equipment he had that was able to fight at that level - and it was a throwing axe, not exactly the best equipment for a difficult fight. He also didn’t really have the stats to back it up.
At the same time, Tier 5 seemed incredibly low for the ruler of a city like the Necropolis. All Serenity could think was that she must have used the shard of the World Core to boost her effective power. If she had, perhaps that was why she was only Tier 5; working with power she didn’t understand meant she didn’t grow, even if she did gain XP. Perhaps that was where the Etherium had gone; the only other option they’d thought of was a stash somewhere in the City Lord’s quarters, and they hadn’t found one yet. A stash didn’t really make much sense, but they’d looked anyway.
“So now what?” Tasi’s voice pulled Serenity out of his thoughts. “I really thought appointing Hale as your City Manager was inspired, he knows how to manage a city after all the time he’s spent building encampments with his father. Some of them basically are cities, with as many people as they have.”
“Towns, maybe, but that’s not the problem.” Serenity had tried appointing Hale this morning after determining he was willing, and it hadn’t worked. The City Crystal had refused to accept Hale as the City Manager for the Necropolis.
Serenity and Tasi were seated in two of the comfortable chairs Serenity had added to the room with the City Crystal. The five of them had spent hours trying to deal with issues, and it was easier to use the Crystal room than always go back and forth to the Audience Chamber, since many of the things they needed to know were things Serenity could quickly find in the Crystal.
Serenity had pulled Tasi in to talk to him and asked the others to stay out for a bit. Hale had wished Serenity luck, but Serenity didn’t think he’d need luck. Tasi could have gone home two days before, leaving the Necropolis to its own devices, but he hadn’t.
“I have to find someone I can accept who also knows how to run a city and will be accepted by the City Crystal. It has to be someone with some knowledge of Death; the City Crystal really wants it to be a DeathLord.” Serenity knew who he wanted, now, and was amused that Hale’s joke might yet become reality.
There weren’t many options, and so far he didn’t trust anyone in the Necropolis; he simply didn’t know them well enough. He didn’t really know Tasi that well either, but at least he knew how to run a city with other strong people, unlike his sister.
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“There isn’t another DeathLord on Tzintkra, you know that.” Tasi’s voice revealed his puzzlement.
Serenity smiled. He wasn’t good at trapping people, but he thought this one might work. “True, but I also know how close you are to it. Didn’t you say you’d had to stop studying Death for fear that you’d hit the requirement and your sister would hunt you down?”
Tasi’s expression flattened. “You’re serious, aren’t you? I don’t want to be the City Manager for the Necropolis. City Lord of the Shining Caverns is bad enough. There isn’t enough time to do both.”
Serenity grinned. “The Necropolis City Lord can allow people to portal between nodes. Aith had it disabled, I assume to make it harder for people to get away from her. I’m planning to allow it. It’ll cost Etherium, but portals for City business will be covered by the City. The strange thing is that it’s a World choice, not a City choice - so when I allow it for the Necropolis, it’ll be allowed by the Shining Caverns as well. Fees for the Shining Caverns will go to the Shining Caverns, not the Necropolis.”
That took care of the time problem; now to demolish the next objection Tasi probably had.
“The cross-city portals can be limited to people who are registered with a city; I’m planning to add that restriction. Only someone who can use portals in both cities can portal between them. That seems like the best way to prevent certain issues.” Serenity didn’t mention things like groups of young bloods from one city attacking the other on a lark, but he was sure he’d managed to imply it. “There will probably need to be some coordination between cities to reduce issues, so wouldn’t it be better if both cities reported to the same ruler?”
Tasi started to speak, but stopped himself.
Serenity decided to restate something he’d said when they’d first started talking about the situation. He was wearing down the other man, and that meant he might be able to go home soon without leaving a mess behind him. “I’m not the best choice for a ruler. I don’t want to rule and I doubt I’d be good at it. I’m also not powerful enough to rule the Necropolis. Yes, I can deal with Death mages, but I can’t deal with anything else.”
Tasi sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not a DeathLord. I’ll start working towards it again, but it won’t be fast.”
“Where do you stand? It might be easier than you think.”
Tasi snorted. “I quit gaining Death Affinity long ago, apparently a dhampir can only get so high before the Life Affinity interferes with it, so it’s all on Concept. I know that’s how Aith did it, she gloated about having some sort of tool that let her gain Concept easily. I’ve looked for it and I didn’t find it.”
Serenity’s mouth twitched. He knew why Tasi hadn’t found it; he’d eaten it. Maybe he should have waited.
Nah.
If he hadn’t eaten it, they wouldn’t have known the problems in the water supply were from an undead; it had been too far out in the water for Serenity's aura to notice easily. Everyone had assumed it was just broken equipment, when it was something breaking the equipment.
“I do have a Death Aspect - that’s when I stopped trying to gain Concept. I can’t - couldn’t - afford to go too far. I figured I was safe until I Initiated an Aspect…” Tasi trailed off.
His problem with dual Affinities didn’t make sense. Affinities didn’t interfere with each other; that was probably a mental block rather than reality. Serenity knew a mental block could be enough; he’d been told more than once that that was the reason he couldn’t get a Healing affinity - he either didn’t want one or didn’t think he deserved one.
It also had to be the reason he hadn’t just picked up a Technology affinity, he’d been so convinced it didn’t exist even though he now knew that was nonsense. Even a dhampir shouldn’t have problems with Affinities interfering with each other; why would Species change how Affinities worked?
Serenity started to say that, then stopped himself. He’d nearly died when he Evolved because of how different his Life and Death Affinities were. He was an extreme case, but what if there was a requirement that Affinities be similar enough for dhampir? Maybe the problem wasn’t Tasi’s Life Affinity preventing his Death Affinity from increasing but his lack of enough Life Affinity? “Which started higher, your Life Affinity or your Death Affinity?”
“Death, of course. It almost always is in the Stojan family. We don’t have a strong human bloodline to counterbalance having several strong vampiric bloodlines, and that means a high Death affinity. Traditionally we learn Death magic first since it’s easier and move to Life magic when we get stuck.”
Serenity blinked in surprise. If he was right, they were doing it exactly backwards. He could see why you’d start there - early power was hugely helpful - but it meant they’d been trapping themselves in eventual mediocrity.
That probably explained why Stojan Aith had gone to the trouble of breaking her world’s Core: she couldn’t gain Affinity. It also explained the strange conundrum of why she’d seemed to have lower Affinity than Serenity expected.
“Has your Life Affinity gone up since you started learning Life magic? Is it as high as your Death Affinity?”
“Higher, now.” Tasi smiled. “If there were such a thing as a Life Lord, I’d probably have the title. I think I like it better, too. Makes me wish I hadn’t spent so much time with Death magic, even if it is generally more useful here.”
“Would you be willing to try something? I think there may be a way to fix this relatively quickly, then.” Serenity didn’t want to say that Tasi's assumption about how Life and Death worked for dhampir was wrong until he was sure, but there was an easy way to find out; if you had the power, raising someone else’s Affinity was easy if your Affinity was sufficiently higher than theirs.
“Speed is good. I do want to get back to the Caverns soon, it’s already been six days and who knows what some of the more determined people on the Council are doing.”
Tasi looked worried, so Serenity tried to pull his attention back where it needed to be for now. “Concentrate on your Life Affinity. I’m going to send some Death mana into you. Make sure you know where it is, then push Life mana into the area. Try to make me move faster.” Serenity stood up and walked behind Tasi’s chair, setting his hands on Tasi’s shoulder.
It wasn’t exactly the way he’d been taught to increase Affinities, but he thought it might work better for a dhampir whose very nature was rooted in the exchange between Life and Death - both conflict and cooperation.