“Did you miss me?” she asked.
The steadily deepening scowl on the young man’s face told Lucille that no, he had not missed her, and in fact wanted her gone, but she ignored the obvious and gave him a wide smile.
“I mean, who wouldn’t want a chance to meet the new Head of the Aurelian Commission once more?”
Her rhetorical question quickly turned the dubious expression of Sedric’s into a repulsed one, but he shook his head wearily and ran a hand through his lank hair, ignoring the black grease he smeared onto his face in the process. He looked at her with a dark expression.
“Why are you actually here?” he stressed, placing both leather-covered hands onto the countertop.
Lucy grinned and gestured to him. “I’m here to see if you’ve decided to accept the contract yet.”
He stared at her in silence as he leaned against the bench, scowling at her.
She smirked at his reaction and waved a hand. “I’m kidding. I’m here to give you this,” she said, pulling out a black card with golden detailing and a tiny purple gemstone in the centre. “Here. This will give you access to my personal floor of the Headquarters. I say, ‘personal floor’ but it’s massive, so don’t believe I’m giving you access to my private quarters or anything.”
Confused, the brown-haired man took the shiny black card that had been shoved into his face, looking between it and her. He eventually just looked at her again.
“I still have a month, don’t I? Why would you give me this?” he asked, more puzzled than he had been in his entire life.
Lucy leaned her elbows on the table between them, exaggeratedly looking around for eavesdroppers. She cupped a hand to her mouth and stage whispered.
“Don’t tell anybody, but four representatives of the Counties will be arriving this week and staying for a while for several discussions with me. They’re very likely to be the Counts themselves.”
The wordless statement of ‘Why tell me this’ was written across Sedric’s face, so Lucy gave a big shrug as she lifted her arms off the countertop.
“Because of security and privacy concerns, gaining access to the Headquarters will be an issue. Very few people outside the Commission know there’s a new leader, after all. They’d prefer to keep it that way until the discussions are over. So, this,” she said, pointing to the black and gold card, “Is your way of bypassing it all. I’m not sure how long the representatives will be staying, so it’s possible I can’t leave the Headquarters until they return back to their Counties, which could be at the very end of the month.”
She saw him turn the card in his hands around, inspecting it curiously. “But isn’t it dangerous to leave something with that much power to me?”
Lucille grinned and pulled out her pocket watch, spinning it around by its chain. “Not when you can disable any access pass remotely with a click of a button. If anybody tries to stop you, press the gem on the front of the card to send me a message. It’ll come up in my Faction Authority.”
She stopped swinging it, pressing the clasp to pop it open. She hummed as she read the time on the top face of the watch. “I need to get going. Because I said it was a short trip, I could come without an escort, but now it’s over, I have quite a lot of things to organise at the Headquarters, so I won’t stay any longer. See you soon.” She snapped it shut.
Lucy gave him a goodbye wave and turned around to walk out the door. Behind her, Sedric looked down at the card in his hands, then looked at the form of the girl opening the door in front of her. Then he jolted.
“Wait! How do I return this if I don’t-”
Slam!
“Want to accept the contract…” he finished as the door shut, dislodging dust from the ceiling. He was once more alone in the room, only the sound of creaking boards in the wind to accompany him. He frowned down at the card in his hands, turning it slowly.
Then he widened his eyes, astounded.
“Does the Aurelian Commission use Ether Crystal Amethyst in their business cards?!”
...
Back at the Aurelian Commission’s Headquarters, Lucy whistled tunefully as she walked through the extravagant entranceway of the building, hands in her pockets. Normally, the main reception hall was full of hundreds of people going in and out every hour, but today, the hall was rather silent, except for the sound of a few panicky rushed clerks dashing to and from the elevators to their destinations. She looked around to inspect the huge room in more detail than she had time for earlier in the week.
As was written in the name of the ‘Aurelian’ Commission, gold was the main theme of the place. From the fixings of the sconces holding the warm-yellow glow of magical light, to the luxurious chandeliers above her head, and even to the embroidery of the tall curtains, gold was present everywhere you looked. Even the floor was covered in a thin plating of metal, polished so well you could see your reflection in it and causing the room to look bigger, and even more impressive, than its already large size seemed. The reception hall reminded her of some of the really expensive older hotels she had been to on Earth in the past with its design. She could say it did partially function as a hotel for the members of the Faction.
The roof above her was arched like the ceiling of a church, but a light beige, giving the entire place a warm atmosphere. The wallpaper was a creamy white patterned with slightly darker beige designs of floral likeness. Many desks were available for people to talk to clerks, although most were empty due to the ongoing preparations for the arrival of the four Counts or their representatives, a rather big event for the nobles of the Faction.
I suppose it’s like an unexpected visit from the CEO for these permanent Headquarters employees.
As she walked she could hear the footsteps caused by her heavy boots echo around the hall. Near the series of magic elevators next to the front desks Lucy saw two men talking, one of which she identified as Vincent in his white suit, and the other as a stout, middle-aged man she had met once before when she became the leader a week ago. A thought strand dutifully informed her that the man’s name was Gordon Merst.
Her footsteps made the men look up, and Vincent nodded to her in acknowledgement, while Merst hastily gave her a scraping bow. She nodded to the man while she made her way over to Vincent, and he stood back up with a relieved expression.
“Did I miss anything important while I was gone?” she asked them. Vincent shook his head, while the other man gave another deep bow, rubbing his hands together nervously.
“Oh no, definitely not sire! Er, I mean miss. Sir Evisenhardt here has absolutely everything under control, no need to fear! In fact, why don’t you head upstairs and just relax, leaving everything in our capable hands, and let us do… it… all…..” he slowed his words, withering under the intense glare Vincent gave him.
When Vincent pointed angrily to a door to dismiss him, he bowed deeply once more and quickly scurried off towards the nearest exit, two pairs of eyes watching him leave, one mildly amused and one very exasperated.
Lucy turned towards the silver-haired man next to her with a raised eyebrow. “Remember how yesterday I mentioned nobles are always eager to please?”
Vincent didn’t deign to respond, just letting out a long sigh as he pinched his nose bridge. They started walking towards an elevator.
“So, was there something he was trying to hide from me, or did he just misunderstand the relationship between us?” she asked.
“The latter I think,” Vincent grumbled, taking out a handkerchief to clean his glasses. “That man can flip a switch between grovelling or condescending quicker than somebody could blink. The instant he feels like he’s in a stable position status-wise, he’ll push for his agenda, and when he gets anxious, he’ll try to flatter every single man with even somewhat significant status to cross his path. This has to be the most fearful he’s been in his entire life.” He finished, looking a bit happier at the end of his sentence, by Lucy’s reckoning.
Vincent put his glasses back on. “But in all honesty, there was something I wanted to discuss with you. Namely, how you’re going to approach interactions with the Counts.”
Lucy gave a sound of acknowledgment as she placed her own black card into a slot in the elevator. Some things in the Mystical Realm were uselessly high-tech, like the access cards, and some were just backward. The elevator buzzed with the sound of mana circuits, and it moved upwards. Lucy directed her attention back to Vincent.
“You mean all the political schemes that will occur before the meeting even starts.”
“Indeed.” He responded as they stepped off the elevator into an empty corridor on the 40th floor. They headed to Lucy’s living room, and she threw her black coat onto the side of the indigo couch, Vincent taking up a seat on the couch opposite her. She sat down on the plush cushioning and crossed her legs. Vincent looked around.
“I haven’t seen your snake friend anywhere recently. Is he fine?”
She waved a hand dismissively. “He recently discovered that Ashale’viaf has a few garden biomes he’s trying to keep hidden from him, and so has decided that finding them is his new pet project. Our bond’s at least advanced rank, so I know where he is and what he’s up to.”
Vincent seemed like he couldn’t be bothered to react to the casual reveal that Lucy has an advanced rank bond with Scytale at 18, which normally takes 20 years to develop, and just nodded. He leaned back.
“So, what direction will you be trying to approach the Counties from? You seem well-versed enough in politics to understand you need a proper method.”
Lucille nodded absentmindedly, slowly drawing on the room’s mana to form a small clear orb of mana spiralling in her gloved palm. The orb began to gain a white hazy glow.
“There’s going to be several messengers who’ll arrive before the meeting to talk to me privately, likely one from each County. So, instead of talking to a specific one or accepting the private talks in any sort of order, I’m going to turn them all away.”
He rubbed his chin, frowning slightly, and ignoring the strange new action of Lucy. “Are you going to act like you’re indifferent to politics and the Counties?”
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She shook her head, white spirals beginning to form on its surface as the orb rotated at higher speeds on her palm. “That’s a recipe for disaster. I can’t offend the Counties in such a way. No, I want to keep my impression as being as neutral as possible.”
He looked up from the table. “But you’ve already made a connection with me.”
She looked around the room, frowning in concentration. “Obviously I’ve tipped the scales somewhat already, but I won’t show any more favouritism to a specific family. Until the meeting, I won’t accept any private meetings or gifts and will refuse them all. I need to make sure the benefits each family receives will be equal, so they all increase in power evenly. It would disrupt our supply chains and operations if one family grew inadvisably large in power.”
She kept looking around the room, staring at the roof. Then her eyes narrowed when she spotted what she was looking for.
“Then I suppose my family won’t be a part of any plans for the short term if I accept your offer of becoming an-”
“Hold on a moment.” She spoke abruptly, holding out a hand to pause him. He stopped when he noticed how still she had gone and tried to see what she was looking at too. Then Lucy’s mouth curled up in a wicked grin and she spun around on the couch to point the hand with the mana orb at the corner behind her like it was a gun.
BANG!
The white mana-orb at the end of her index finger flew into the corner of the room, and something fell to the floor with a crash. The noise made Vincent violently jerk, and he jumped up.
“What in the realms was that?!” he shouted, heavily alarmed.
Lucy blinked and pointed at the ground behind her couch. “There was a fly.” She told him innocently.
Understandably aware that whatever had fallen was not a fly, he warily leaned to the side to see what was on the ground. There, on the light-brown carpet behind Lucille’s couch, was a humanoid figure dressed from head to toe in black, frothing at the mouth, with his eyes rolling up into the back of his head. He was unconscious.
Vincent stared at Lucy. “That is a fly?”
She gave him a casual shrug and he barely suppressed a groan. He slowly came closer, dropping down to one knee to look at the eavesdropper better, and lifted the collar of the person’s clothes to look for identifying symbols. Lucy tilted her head as she rested it on her arms, peering over the back of the couch.
“Someone from black?” she asked curiously.
Vincent gave her an unamused look, not fooled by her attitude. “From Ravimoux? Undoubtedly so.”
He got up and brushed himself down, then folded his arms. “I’m surprised you could even spot him.”
Lucille turned around and flopped back on the couch, looking up at the roof. “I think you’ll find, if you stick around long enough, that I can do quite a lot.”
He didn’t answer, just watching the assassin with a complicated expression. “Is he permanently injured?”
She shook her head. “No. Just a mild concussion. My arcane orb didn’t have enough force to break anything, as I made sure it would dissipate on contact. It got him here.” She said, miming a ball hitting her against the back of her neck. “Most humanoids become unconscious when force is applied to this spot. The spin of my orb made it curve around him.”
He eyed her with suspicion. “That’s unusually high precision for a low-ranked spell shot by an 18-year-old.”
“He wasn’t exactly a moving target.” She told him wryly.
Vincent rolled his eyes at the lack of a proper answer and looked back at the interloper. “What are you going to do with him?”
She tapped on her chin, thinking. Then she got up off the couch and raised a finger for Vincent. “Wait a minute.” She told him.
Vincent raised an eyebrow but did as she asked. Lucy went to the opposite corner of the living room and opened two side-by-side doors, leaning back to look at the man behind her. “There’s a kitchen back here.” She said by way of explanation, which didn’t explain much at all in reality.
He waited with his arms still crossed as he heard the sounds of cupboard doors opening and closing and the metallic clanging of an assortment of unknown objects being pushed aside. A moment later Lucy returned, this time holding a large jug cast out of solid brass in her black-gloved hands.
“So, as Scytale and I were exploring,” she began, “We discovered that the kitchen here had a cupboard that was linked to the Founder’s vault, allowing us to access a few magic items from there. I had unsealed the cupboard with my Faction Authority.” She said. She raised the jug higher for him to see.
“When I was going through the vault’s records, I discovered a particular item had been donated one year. Lo and behold, when I checked the other day, it was part of the kitchen’s collection. It can transmute mana into any liquid or drink Rare ranked or under, at whatever temperature one wishes.”
She moved over to the intruder and looked at Vincent. “I had originally wanted to use this for another purpose first, but I suppose it can be used this way too.”
Then, she tipped the jug entirely upside down above the man’s head. Out came bitingly cold chilled water that splashed all over the interloper, drenching his clothes and making him wake up with a startled gasp. He looked around with wide eyes while shivering.
“W-Where-”
“Did you have a nice nap?” Lucille asked him pleasantly.
The man froze as he looked up at the other two people in the room, Lucy leaning down with her hands on her knees, and Vincent just watching him with a cautious expression. He scrambled to get up and sat pressed against the wall, looking between the two with a panicky expression.
“W-What do you want from me? U-Uh… information, I can give you information?! Or money!”
The man went pale as Vincent narrowed his eyes at the intruder, shifting his glasses, and Lucy rolled her eyes as she straightened up to look at him with a hand on her hip.
“If this is the standard quality that Ravimoux employs in its services, I fear they won’t survive much longer,” she said derisively, smirking.
Vincent, having realised what she was doing, held his chin in ‘thought’. “I believe he’s a disposable piece. They must have planned to cut him off if the plan went awry, so they could claim ignorance. He won’t have anything useful to tell us,” he stated with an indifferent professional voice.
“Reaaally?” Lucy mused, narrowing her eyes, and smiling wider at the man. “Should we get rid of him?”
Vincent nodded. “I believe that would be the best if he has nothing to contribu-”
“Contribute?! I can contribute! I can be useful!” the man pleaded, trembling violently.
Vincent narrowed his own eyes at the man. “No, I don’t think-”
“Wait,” Lucille said, holding up a hand to pause him. She looked down at the intruder with an unreadable expression. Then she smiled brightly, hitting a fist against an open palm with an audible smack.
“I have a better idea.”
She squatted down so she was eye-level with the dark-cloaked figure, a hand on her chin in thought. “You heard me mention my plans for the private meetings with the representatives, didn’t you?” she asked, watching him intently.
The man almost shook his head, but when he saw the look in Lucille’s eyes, he understood that would be a mistake and gave a tearful nod of his head instead. “Th-The p-p-part about sending them a-away?” he stuttered.
Lucy gave him another bright smile and straightened up, putting her hands behind her back, and pacing the room. “If I do that, my intentions of remaining politically neutral within the Faction will be known, but I have the chance of offending the representatives as well. That may cause me some difficulties, so if you play your part well…” she said, looking over her shoulder at the man with narrowed eyes.
“I can reduce the hostilities before they overreact.”
The interloper vigorously shook his head in agreement, anxious to please the people who held power over his immediate future. Lucy smiled cheerfully once more, continuing to pace around the room. Vincent had a strange expression on his face as he watched her, but when she raised an eyebrow at him for an explanation, he shook his head slightly, so Lucy gave him a slight shrug and moved back in front of the intruder.
She kneeled on one knee and leaned forward to look at the intruder, smiling wickedly.
“If an intruder who was luckily caught by me at the right time heads back to their clan, head held high, and reveals everything that occurred up until before they were caught, then it will work. It’ll even be of benefit to the intruder!” she announced, spreading her arms wide as she grinned at the confused man.
“Instead of a subordinate who failed their mission,” she told him, “They’ll go back as someone who successfully infiltrated the leader’s room and discovered their secret plans. Their future will be full of potential when they return in triumph!”
She waited as the man slowly stopped shaking in fear as a dawning realisation of what she meant lit up in his eyes. She leaned forward again so he couldn’t look anywhere else but at her face and poked his chest with a long finger.
“A rise in status is guaranteed, so long as you play your part well.”
The man still looked a bit unsure, so she stood back up, and then after straightening her clothes with a calm smile on her face, she gave him an exaggerated shrug. “I don’t want them to know I found them spying on me. I want to take what advantages I have, and let them stay in the dark about my abilities. Our little agreement won’t be revealed from my side.”
She spread her arms wide as she took a step back, giving him an ‘encouraging’ smile.
“What are you waiting for? This opportunity only comes once in a lifetime, you know.”
Like a lightning bolt had struck him, the man froze and quickly stood up. He gave them a hasty bow each before he activated some skill that caused his figure to fade from view, his presence disappearing. Lucille watched with narrowed eyes as the soul in her spiritual sense distanced itself from them, and then she moved her gaze to the floor where he had been, gazing at it expressionlessly.
Vincent frowned when she didn’t move and walked next to her. “Miss Goldcroft?”
When she still didn’t move, he leaned forward to look at her slightly cold expression and waved a hand in front of her. He dropped the formality. “Lucille!”
“Hmm?” she started and turned to the side to face Vincent, her carefree smile back in place. She grinned widely after a moment and held up the jug next to her for him to see. There were no more signs of her strange state. “Well, now that that’s done, would you like some tea?”
Vincent couldn’t help but be stunned for a second by her nonchalant reaction, but he sighed, having gotten used to it by now, and nodded wearily. He went back to the couch and slumped down on it. Lucy went back to the kitchen to retrieve two cups, whistling merrily and returned holding one teacup and one mug, placing them down on the coffee table.
She poured out some steaming hot tea into the teacup for Vincent and poured a dark liquid into the mug for herself. Then she picked it up and sat down on her couch again, crossing her legs. They enjoyed some silence before Vincent spoke up.
“He could reveal everything to Ravimoux right now, and your plans for him would fail.”
Lucille took a long sip of her drink with her eyes closed. “Why would I have plans for someone like him?”
He looked up from his drink with a silver eyebrow raised. “Did you not just tell him to reveal your plans on interacting with the representatives to Ravimoux?”
She opened her eyes to look at Vincent for a moment, before turning sideways to lie across the couch with her feet kicked up. She placed her mug on the table between them and put her hands behind her head.
“Technically it was all the intruder’s idea. I told him nothing.”
Vincent placed the cup down on the table and crossed his arms, looking at her as if wondering whether to rise to the bait. Eventually, he just shook his head and ignored it.
“Well, if you’re so all-knowing to know of a Legendary class in this city, know whether I have reported to my grandfather or not, and whether there was a hidden intruder in this room, then surely you’re all-knowing enough to know what my point was?”
……maybe he didn’t ignore it then. Lucy gave him a sideways glance, but then huffed and shifted to face him better.
“That wasn’t what I meant. What I’m saying is, there was no agreement between him and me, there was no implementation of this on my behalf, and I certainly did not suggest to an assassin of the infamous Ravimoux to not tell their boss that someone is capable of seeing through their County’s unique invisibility skills at Rank-0.”
That made Vincent blink and with a belated “Ah.” he nodded and picked up his tea again.
“Right. Nothing happened. This is all purely hypothetical, not based on true events in the slightest, but what would be your intentions if you had somehow manipulated an intruder into revealing your stance for interactions with the Count’s representatives, and had gotten them to pretend their mission went to plan, with no interaction with us at all?”
She smirked at his phrasing and answered him. “I would intend to deal with the intruder in a way that would not incite conflict between the intruder’s clan and me while ensuring the intruder has the incentive to prevent knowledge of this event from spreading.”
Vincent raised an eyebrow as he took a sip of his tea. “Couldn’t you have done that by letting the intruder live and you personally telling their clan about it so Ravimo- I mean the hypothetical intruder’s clan would be in your debt?”
“That would make things complicated,” Lucy said. “A clan wouldn’t care about the life of a disposable piece like the ‘hypothetical’ intruder, so placing them into my ‘debt’ would give them a way to plant one of their members closer to me in an attempt to pay back said debt. Then would come a trying series of discussions and events where if I took even a little too much aid from the family under the excuse of this ‘debt’, they would push and pull at me to gain benefits for abusing this lack of equal relationship.”
She looked at the man opposite her. “That is the case if I initiated it. If the hypothetical intruder went back and revealed everything voluntarily without my intervention, but kept the supposed deal secret so he wouldn’t seem untrustworthy, then the clan would become aware of this ‘debt’ on their end, and it would then be considered a weakness of theirs because they believe I don’t know the intruder revealed everything. They would fear I would discover this ‘debt’ at the wrong time and force them into a difficult situation.”
“If the interloper doesn’t reveal all this,” she continued, “But then the clan senses something off, pressures him and that causes him to eventually reveal the truth, they’d prefer to stick with the interloper’s original story, because the fact I instigated it meant that I am willing to ignore this mistake of theirs for the sake of their goodwill, and there would be an unspoken deal that they would leak my neutral stance in return for forgetting this event.”
She leaned forward to grab the jug and pour some more of her drink for herself. “If they don’t discover the intruder’s story is fake, then they’d be a disappointment to the Faction, but the situation would progress almost the same as if they had later discovered the intruder’s story was false, just with less proactive leaking of my neutrality on their part. In the end, the hypothetical intruder in this situation was only a piece, with any of my future actions relying on the family behind him, and so the interloper was never a proper part of my plans.”
“Hypothetical, completely fictional plans,” Vincent added.
She smiled slyly and nodded. “Hypothetical, completely fictional plans.” She agreed.
Vincent hummed and leaned back, tapping his fingers against his other arm. “Why show goodwill to Ravimoux though? This isn’t me speaking as an Evisenhardt, but it seems you’re emphasizing that County specifically.”
Lucy nodded and crossed her legs while lying down, idly kicking a foot up and down. “Paradoxically, to maintain my neutral stance, I almost need to show more favouritism to Ravimoux than the others.”
“Oh?” Vincent responded, curious.
“Ravimoux has never had a good reputation.” She began, as the man opposite her nodded. “They’re the biggest force in the Empire’s underworld, and run all the Commission’s casinos, black markets, entertainment districts and dark guilds. If it was all illegal, they wouldn’t be capable of functioning as a noble clan of the Empire, but, indeed, they’re not as well-liked or someone’s first choice when it comes to collaborating with one of the four Counties.”
She took another sip of her drink and looked at Vincent with a smile. “I can understand why they made such a hasty move in trying to discover my plans. Young nobility can be… rather impressionable and very few of the more mainstream future nobles have the flexibility of mind to accept using a clan like Ravimoux in their forces, or if they did, they wouldn’t use it as much as the more ‘honourable’ or ‘praiseworthy’ methods.”
She smirked. “A proud young naïve leader who decides to wipe out the ‘dark, evil, and treacherous’ Ravimoux clan is the best choice for the prosperity of the Commission would be an understandably terrible catastrophe for the Faction and Ravimoux. Dealing with them in the way I did means I’m acknowledging the fact that Ravimoux is a necessary evil and that I’m willing to treat them as equals to the other Counties. It also shows them that I’m not someone who can be easily manipulated.”
Vincent gave a nod of acknowledgment at that, seemingly content with her explanation, although he still raised an eyebrow as he took another sip of tea. “But if they didn’t discover the intruder’s story was false, then they wouldn’t receive your message.”
Lucy scoffed and waved a hand dismissively. “You’ve seen the personality of that intruder. With that backbone, he could only ever be a sacrifice or a good actor. In the first case, do you think he’d be able to keep the deal secret when pressured by the clan?”
Vincent thought for a bit, his arms crossed, but had to nod in agreement.
Lucille continued. “In the case that he’s a good actor… then he’ll probably reveal everything that happened and then Ravimoux would know what I wanted. In the end, any private meetings we have after I meet with the four Counts will clear things up. In the large scheme of things, this tiny hiccup is irrelevant.”
He nodded in understanding and drank his tea. She blinked and turned to him when she realised something. “I’ve actually been meaning to ask you about something. Have you ever heard of the Vadels?”