"Presenting Lady Max of the House of Max, Mate Consort Merrick, Hugo of the Hometree, and Priest William of the House of Max."
The four (mostly) fleshies, one hidden golem, and two wonky shadows arrived at the council chamber and stood in front of a semicircle table on a tall dais that had several self-important people sitting at it.
Why the fuck do they have a godsdamned crier? Max's eyes took in the cavernous room with a tacky display of the world's wealth and sighed. This is some gaudy shit. Even the table feet are gilded in gold. For fuck's sake. They are all sitting up there and looking down on their petitioners like some fucking political drama while wrapped in wealth. That this exists concurrently with the fucking slums is a godsdamned disgrace. Max's brain spit smoke and her chest hitched an angry breath-- but her face remained impassive yet pleasant. I should make the slums mine if these assholes aren't going to do anything about them.
It had taken two and a half weeks. Two and a half weeks of constant grinding and putting ducks in rows, shooting them, and then putting them back in even better rows, for Max to feel confident enough in her plans and The Plan™️. Finishing up polishing some rough edges and beginning to hammer out even grander plans that would maximize security and minimize risks. Weeks of finishing print materials for Beasty and the King's foray into financial domination, and finding just the right particle cannon emplacements on the walls she put up around her new little neighborhood. Tweaking wards just so. Placing subtle but hopefully unbreakable anchors that encapsulated a few thousand humans turned fairies (who had no fucking clue that their lives just became a lot fucking safer, healthier, and richer at the cost of an unrealized and unnoticed passive mana tithe and a small change of species designation, but what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. Probably.). All taking place right under the council's noses, and all within the letter --if not the spirit-- of the law.
She even double-checked the legality with her lawyer and he couldn't say shit because of confidentiality. When he realized what she was doing and that it was all legal, every bit of it, he looked at her like he wanted to punitively dick her down and then have her return the favor. He did ask that she put a small beacon ward on her walls so that any lost fae might make their way into her mound so that she could shove them through their betrothal anchor and into his mound.
I asked him to keep his flags to himself, but what do I know? If he wants to be a [Hero], he can be a [Hero]. Fuck it. Light the beacons, I guess.
That was beside the point. The point was: Woe be to the fucks who should want to measure dicks with her.
All while she was tying her mound to a neighborhood, teaching a few new people how to cast offensive spells, and scheming with Miles on how to launch hardware into orbit without being noticed (glamouring the shit out of them and running stealth tech was the eventual solution), Max debated on what body to wear to meet all these world leaders-- and ultimately decided that Dirt Max is what they were going to get. This was this world's face. It was the face that the world gave her. So it was the face she would give to the world.
So, driven by Steve, she trudged this world’s face through town with her entourage, walked up through the fuck-me opulent building with riches dripping from every corner, down long, echoing marbled halls, up and down carpeted stairs that were obscenely lavish, and into this room full of people who "ruled the world," all while fighting the compulsion to go back to her mound, back to the safety of walls around her. Back to safety and obscurity. Back to her world built with her own mana and guile. Beholdened only to the rules she could understand and accept. But needs must. She girded her non-cloaca sheathed loins and did what needed doing.
"Heya," she half-waved and half-smiled at the people sitting at the table, looking down on her and her Court members. "Call me Max."
She eyeballed them hard.
From left to right and with a few feet separating them around the disgustingly obnoxious table, there was an elegant lady with tentacles for hair and fins on her cheeks (aquatic people from the Bay, probably), an obvious female mage who was almost toxically full of low-grade age-defying potions (we can sell her the good shit if she has an available wallet big enough), a blushing Hadrian sitting next to a flirty-faced and indolently amused Green (his umph isn't lessening. Like at all. Even outside of a mound. If anything, it's getting heavier everyday), an old and very ugly man who smelled like a bossy dog staring at Puppy (I may have to kick that dude's ass on principle), the wistfully smiling spooky-looking guy that brought Puppy a haunted head in a box, next to Princess (who was eye fucking her and Puppy openly), an obvious witch dude with a nose that crinkled as if he was smelling an open sewer pit, and a scared smelling man in a suit who looked like he competitively sucked lemons while wearing military fatigues.
They all looked at and dismissed a sheet of paper that Max asked Green to supply them. It was an agenda for their meeting, with four--and only four-- items listed. She wanted to get to the fucking point and get home. The world outside of her mound made her skin uncomfortable, but she was trying her best to not show it and be at a noticeable disadvantage.
"Hello, Max," said Hadrian with a question in her eyes. She skimmed the piece of paper and put it face down on the table.
"My brides," said a blushing Princess, not looking or acknowledging the agenda at all. Max had already asked his opinions on all of it anyway. He rubbed his bargain rune and looked uncomfortable outside of her mound, too. He whispered to the guy sitting next to him while looking over Max and Puppy.
"Consorts," said Green. He nodded at them and she realized how wrong his glamour looked on him. She hadn't seen him in it in ages and it dulled out his wildness. It was safe when he was not. It was wrong. She nodded back at him.
"Oh. So, you've met a few of us already?" asked the mage, looking back and forth between all who spoke, Max, and her group.
"Yup." Max grinned. "Green is my Conclave Head and my tentative consort. Hadrian works for my lawyer's office. Is it surprising I've met them before?"
The mage quirked her eyebrow, which was very obviously alchemically lifted. "What about the Herald?"
"Princess is a prisoner of my court after he tried to eat one of my elves." Max pointed at a rune on the vampire's wrist. "I've entered into a [Bitter Bargain] with him, which is allowable under your own laws. He will be an unwilling guest of my Court until the [Bargain] concludes. He has only been allowed out for this meeting so that I may meet his progeny to discuss my second agenda item." She gestured to the paper that only the human had shown any interest in.
"I never tried to eat him. I just stalked and then flushed him back to your court. Like prey." He pouted at her.
Hugo's arm made a sound like it was a charging energy weapon. She raised her hand to stay his without looking back at him.
The vampire continued with a smirk, "And you know I'm ecstatically willing, my bride."
She sighed. "I know, Princess." She nodded and sighed again. She rubbed the bridge of her nose with her fingers and closed her eyes. "I'll get you back into your tower as soon as this is concluded. The faster the better."
The human stared at Hugo's prosthetics with contemplative greed.
Princess stage-whispered to his kid and gave her eyes the size of the moon, "I have the best brides. Look at them, my progeny. Gorgeous."
The ugly man knocked his knuckles on the table and his eyes had not left Puppy since they had entered the room. Puppy was staring right back at the old fucker and she didn't know if it was friendly or not. It pissed Max off for some reason.
He opened his old, ugly mouth and said: "Brides, you say. Mate Consort Merrick, he's called." He knocked his knuckles again and then pointed, "Well, I was told about a Merrick that was lost from the broken pack at Valleyview. That boy is one of mine. If I had to guess, I'd say he's too dominant for a different pack and was seduced by the fairy lord. He should have been surrendered to me when he first turned to be groomed as my heir or put down as a threat." The old man continued to court death with one last question, "How'd you end up lost to a fairy mound, son?"
Green cleared his throat and tried to shake his head at her, but she was too busy seeing red and curling her lip to show the old fucker her pointy little teeth. She was contemplating causing a governmental shutdown by blowing up the building when Puppy pleasantly answered the question he was asked with a charming smile on his face-- like he wasn't bothered by anything at all-- while maintaining intense eye contact with the bossy dog.
"Dominant. Now that I see where you've been this whole time that my family was either dying or suffering, someone else who wasn't me could be hard-pressed to blame you for never showing up, even though we begged you to. That chair looks super comfy." He chuckled good-naturedly. Max stopped clenching her teeth and her jaw fell open a little. She side-eyed him. The Puppy grinned, all while giving the old dude the staredown to beat all staredowns. "I'm not too dominant for a pack, for the record. I fit really well in Max's pack with my siblings and the others. I'm not even the alpha." He shrugged and grinned wider, "It was explained to me that I'm the Assistant Manager in Training and third from the top."
Max snorted.
The two shifters continued to stare at each other, not interrupted by the rest of the room.
"Mangy mutt business aside, I appreciate your Court providing an agenda. It keeps things neat and on track." The human said. "Max, the first order of business on your agenda says that you have to tell us about a human threat? A threat to humans or a threat by humans? Can you elaborate on that?"
"Thank you, sir. Yes." Max gave the little powerless man a brilliant smile and nodded. Stroked the lil guy's ego with feigned respect. It doesn't hurt anything. And he'll be a customer the second I have anything for sale. His eyes betrayed his greed and that's alright by me. "Both, I would think. I brought our Priest, William, here as a witness. We were concerned it could be either bigger or smaller than what we know."
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William stepped forward and recounted his time in the mountains being a priest to a dying and then dead god. The humans who invaded. The experimentation. The eventual sanguina. Being rescued by Puppy and his deliverance to Max's court. He mentioned that his people were now in charge of the magical library. After his recounting, he stepped back, standing even with Hugo.
Max handed William a potion she pulled from a very obvious bag of holding because he looked like all the walking and talking might have been a little much for a man who was regrowing his insides.
"What was that? What did you just give him?" The human's eyes blazed with greed again.
Max turned back to the table. She tucked the empty vial back into the obvious bag. All eyes, minus the old fucker's, who was still in a stare-off with Puppy, were on her. "Hmm? Oh, stamina potion. He's been medically fragile and although he has been strong in his trek here, letting him suffer for suffering's sake is stupid. And I assume this room has been warded against magic casting of all types, and I'd rather keep my head where it is instead of casting a heal and getting moleculed, thanks."
"Yes... it's ... warded against... You can ward against casting? Even healing spells?" The mage asked, flabbergasted. She'd been contemplative and speculative, along with the witch, since the mention of the library.
"Well, yeah?" Max shrugged. She turned back to the human. "So, Princess and Green suspected that this may be a capstone quest that the humans from the shadowy organization stole from? Ouroboros is kind of a big deal. Think of your devourers but scale it up a magnitude bigger." She nodded at him, "My court and I have begun making defensive preparations just in case this cabal pulls off the apocalypse snake, but I wanted you all to know, too."
"How big do they grow? If they are the size of mountains, I'm relatively sure we would already know about it."
"Maybe twenty or so feet. It's not the size that makes it a threat, really. It's that it can eat all the magic in the world. And then it moves on to biologicals. And then plain old carbons. It usually only leaves behind a half-eaten snake floating in a pile of space rubble when it's done."
"Terrifying." He used his pen to check off the first agenda item. "We will hand this information over to our government investigators and they will research your concerns. The contact information we have for you is an email address. Is that the best way to contact you should we have any questions?"
"Yes. My court sometimes has office hours, but it's best to make an appointment with Puppy first. The appointments get prioritized over walk-ins."
"Noted." He wrote on the paper. "The second agenda item. You wanted access to our archives to do additional research into capstone quests?"
"Yes. I was intrigued when I was first informed they existed and want to know more."
"I don't see the harm in research to sate curiosity. All in favor?"
Everyone sitting at the table, minus the old ugly guy and the smiling aquatic lady, was taken aback by how the human had taken over their inquisition and was guiding the meeting along. He was pleasant to her, which Max assumed he wasn't usually, gauging how they were looking at him as if he had started uttering deviant confessions. They all, minus the old ugly guy who wasn't paying attention, voted yes to her request.
The human checked that item off the list, too.
"Your third item states that you wanted to ask for our opinions on opening portals. Can you explain?" He clicked his pen and laid it on the table. Folded his hands and gave her his undivided attention.
"Sure. One second, please." William, who was breathing heavily and tired of standing, was provided with a chair out of her bag of holding. "Sorry, Will. I didn't think it would take this long." She patted his shoulder. As she glanced over the others at the table, she noticed the aquatic lady was still smiling with a hidden knowledge smile. One of those, I see what you're doing smiles.
Yeah, I'm not being even a little subtle. I know. I'm glad that at least one of you can see that I'm working the room. You're not all greedy idiots or greedy enablers.
She addressed the human again, "I can open temporary or permanent portals. I was thinking of opening a few in my mound to sister realms in case the snake was a bigger threat than the world could handle and throwing out some tethering anchors so that I don't, you know, die. And if that's not the case and the snake is a nonissue, for tourism and trade purposes." She cleared her throat. "I know you used to have one opened in the Dead Monster Cavern before my elves destroyed it-- which was the right thing to do because it keeps ender beasts away from your planet, and I wanted to know if you wanted access to the new one I was going to make. Think of it as a [Bargain] assessable escape hatch, or maybe a tourist destination?" Max shrugged. "I don't know. It's an option and would be secured by me and mine. I just wanted to float the option."
"What kind of [Bargain]?"
"I don't know. Hadn't thought that far ahead yet." She rubbed her chin. "Probably nothing too strenuous."
The aquatic lady snickered. When everyone (but Puppy and the old dude) looked at her, her face was blank but attentive.
"I will note this too, and a representative for humans will be sent by appointment to your office to hammer out details and negotiate." He looked at everyone else at the table. "Does anyone have questions before we move along to the last item on the agenda?"
"The last item on the list just says 'Online Sales/Catalog Drop'. What does that mean?"
Max smiled a smile that said she was up to no good. This will be fun. "Oh! One of my scions and her assistant are launching an online shop and wanted me to hand out her first issue." She nodded to Hugo who began handing out shiny, thick magazines of listed products for sale. "We had an overflow of produced materials and wanted to see if anyone would be interested in anything we had to get rid of."
The table, even the old ugly dude, flipped through pages to see what she was talking about. The aquatic lady snickered again.
"You're selling enchanted goods? Weapons?" The witch asked.
Max nodded. "Sure. They were just taking up room in our vaults."
"You have potions?" Ugly dude asked.
She shrugged. "Yes."
"Spellbooks? Arcane ingredients? Casting classes if someone joins your Court? Those are restricted, you know. You can't do this." The mage huffed and laughed down at her from the obscene dias as if Max were a precocious commoner child showing a queen a finger painting.
Max didn't get mad like the mage lady probably expected her to. She simply laughed back. "I am not restricted in selling them. No one has bargained that from me."
"You are a Shining One. You fall under Shining One rules." The mage lady pointed at Green as if asking for backup. Or for him to rebuke her audacity.
Max grinned in the mean way that showed teeth. "You all negotiated with the Shining King for rules laid on the Shining King's Court. Which would mean I would absolutely and completely fall under his banner and would be beholden to the laws set upon him; but, only if I was not also a Lord of my own court nor a King of a sovereign land by right of my own magic." Max's eyes glinted in victory at a gloriously dropped shoe. "Which is not the case at this moment, I'm afraid."
The room was silent as a tomb.
It was clear that the Conclave Heads, other than Green and Princess, hadn't even considered that she would be a power unto herself. They wrongly thought Green would firmly hold her reigns and they could milk her for all she was worth. But, sadly, that was not how the kin operated. She had to give it to Green, though, for leaving such a glaring loophole in the laws so that she could eventually show up and exploit it.
No wonder he murdered all the other Lords that popped up.
Max's eyelids lowered into a smiling scowl at the mage lady. She put a hand into her bag of holding and pulled out a handful of business cards that read, 'The Beast's Magical Menagerie, Online Royal Magic Sold Wholesale'. She slowly walked the length of the table, handing out one card at a time to each representative starting with the fish lady, skipping the mage but still addressing her.
"You, College Head, had a representative come into my court and insult, degrade, and threaten my scion. While standing in the heart of my mound."
A card for Hadrian and one for Green.
"Then, you blockaded my business so I could make no sales."
She put a card down in front of Princess and his kid and kept walking. He was whispering up a storm to his scion and they were eyeing her like she was about to explode. She wasn't.
"I told him what he needed to do to make it right --which was a price much less steep, barely a trifle, compared to what I could have demanded-- and it's been months without recompense."
A card for the ugly, asshole dog. She raised her lip at him to show him her little elf fangs. He quirked his hideous eyebrow in amusement as if she couldn't fucking kill his entire fucking world. Idiot. When people tell you who they are, believe them. I laid all the fucking clues out, you moron.
"So, yes. I do believe I can sell these things according to your laws."
One for the near-silent witch. She nodded her head at him. He was watching her, warily. Hmm. This guy gets it. She, surprisingly, had no bones yet with the witches this go-round, weirdly. They were baseline evil fucks most of the time. She took his catalog, flipped it to the witch section, and laid it back down in front of him. She was going to try her best to make these witches a bit more cruelty-free, at least. She continued her trek.
"Your laws, I might add, that I am not even beholden to-- yet. I even checked it with my lawyer and everything." She turned and winked at Green. He smiled at her indulgently.
Max placed the last card in front of the human, who was looking at her with his usual greed and less with the fear he was sporting earlier, and then turned to look at the mage and smugly smiled like an asshole.
"Beats the all-out war that I had standing rights to claim, huh?" She slight-of-handed a card to the mage. "Special rates apply to the College. Just so ya know." Max winked. Like a dick.
***
"I think the only people you didn't piss off in there were the fish lady and the human. If we aren't counting your consorts." Miles stopped being a beautiful belt buckle and climbed up to her shoulder. They were in the car on their way home.
Max was confused. Her eyebrows furrowed. "I didn't piss off the witch, though?"
"Meh. He is sleeping with the mage."
Max startled. "What? But I didn't smell that. And witches and mages famously hate each other. How do you know?"
"I hacked their phones while we were inside. I got bored while Puppy and the old guy were swinging their dicks around, deciding if they were gonna throw down."
Traffic slid by out of their windows and the city crawled by like a wounded animal. She was disappointed, but ultimately, it didn't matter. "Oh. Well, whatever. They don't have to like me. They only have to buy from me."
Hugo, Romy, and Rigel all grinned at her. "The Beast's Menagerie?" Hugo asked. "She named it for herself?"
"It's fine. It's her project and she can do what she wants." She muttered tiredly, "None of this really matters, anyway. If no one can play nice and they end up threatening our court after all of this bullshit, I'll drop virus bombs and start over."
Romy gasped. "Lost gods, my Lady. Do you think that's something they will do? Why would they do that when you've posed no outward threat?"
"Nah. Probably not. Either way, my court can tank whatever."
William nodded his tired head as if he were an old hat at someone talking about wiping the world clean and starting anew. She guessed, what with the teachings of the death god of knowledge with his pocket snake that wasn't the fun kind, he probably was.
Puppy chimed in from the seat behind her, obviously to try to get Max to stop theory-crafting the end of days. "The mage was more confused than anything. I don't think she was angry. The witch didn't smell angry, but a little scared. The Dominant wasn't mad at you. He was challenging me."
She rolled her eyes and snickered. "Why would he do that? Does he want in my glorious pants, too?"
"Not everything is about you, Max." He snipped at her. "Gah. Sorry. Challenges make me fucking angry and I've never had one that over-the-top and vulgar thrown at me. It was like a fucking hammer to the head. Dickhead." Puppy growled a little. Shook it off and continued, "No, he wanted me to challenge him so that I would be his heir. He has famously wanted to retire for decades and can't find anyone to take his place."
"You can't, though. You're a fairy." She winced. "I mean, you're fae now."
Puppy shrugged and put his hands in the air. "I don't think he cares. Just as long as I started as a shifter, his challenge says he'd take me."
She curled her lip up, turned around in her seat, and scowled. That asshole can't have him. He's mine. "You want me to kill him?"
Puppy startled. "What?! No. He isn't a threat. To any of us, really." Puppy patted her head to diffuse her anger. "I can cast healing spells while fighting in wolf form and I don't think even he could do more damage than I could out-heal."
"Dang. I made a Heavy even heavier." She thought about all the times she faced a well-fed void wolf and barely survived. She shivered. "Scary pup."
Miles had his leg on a phone and started laughing. "All five non-consort seats and the two alternates to your love interests have already booked appointments, by the way. As soon as the meeting ended, they all logged on and sent their request emails. Six out of the seven are browsing our online store. Four have already bought stuff."