“We now convene this Round Table conference.” The Knight-Commander spoke, the room full of individuals bringing their full attention to the man as he did so. To be frank, I felt next to nothing at his words, and if I didn’t know that he might have been doing something, I wouldn’t have been able to tell.
Even being aware that the man might be psychic didn’t help. I was focusing on any kind of external influence or change in my mental state, trying to see if perhaps I was being affected. Perhaps that was the point, but judging from what little information I already had about the situation he might not have even been doing it consciously.
“For the sake of our guests I would have the Lords introduce themselves.” He continued, “I am Harris Gran, Knight-Commander of Argedwall. Leader of the Round.” He gestured beside him, an unspoken issuance to have the rest of the men introduce themselves.
I filed each away to memory in case I needed to speak to any of them later. The only two that especially mattered to me were Ned and Peter at this point, aside from Harris. Though, I did have to note that some of the Knight’s Coat-of-Arms were quite amusing. Ned wasn’t the only person with an Order of Chivalry that was less than reverent to their seeming status.
“I am Matthew Reaper, Leader of The Reaper’s Legion of Gilramore and New Damond.” I introduced myself at the end, “I appreciate the Orders consideration in allowing us to be here.”
Harris nodded seemingly satisfied with the response. “With introductions taken care of, I would have information from the Lords regarding their districts readiness.”
Each Lord dutifully and succinctly highlighted what had been done in the areas they presided over recently. There were a lot of reports of repairs and introductions of new defenses, but there were just as many that admitted where issues still existed. None had shame when they admitted to shortcomings on their lines, and it seemed that the next Lord on the table would be listening the most intently to the details.
The reason why became evident as Harris spoke again.
“Excellent. Most excellent. The Legion-” at this he inclined his head towards us, “-has given us valuable time. Time that I’m happy to see hasn’t gone wasted. As per tradition, we will now take the district from the man to your right. See to it that its glory is built upon, and that its mettle tested.”
That was an interesting notion. These various areas outside of the city were divided into several districts, that much I knew. But, each Lord and his Order would be cycled through them, ensuring that a new pair of eyes would peruse the defenses each time. There were some problems that I could think of with the system, like if there was a Lord that was less than competent. Someone who wasn’t properly doing their job would weaken the whole. But, at the same time, such a thing wouldn’t be able to be obscured.
I wondered what kind of punishments awaited someone who was found to be lacking.
“With that taken care of, I’d like to bring attention to matters of more imminence. Matthew, I’m aware that you and your Legion have gone well out of your way to come here, and have also built infrastructure for continued contact. Before I hear your reasons, I would hear what my Lords have to say on the subject.” He then leaned forward, “please wait until it is your turn to speak, we are civilized folk, here.”
I would have been mildly insulted at that statement if he didn’t seem to be looking more at his men than at me.
Peter spoke up first, “I have no complaints, and instead find myself wholly in favor of the Legions presence, and continued presence.” His tone was official, but not without warmth, “they have proven themselves to be sincere to all I’ve seen.”
That didn’t really surprise me, of course they’d want to see what we were about. The fact that this seemed to be more of an opportunity to voice concerns, support, or discontent was interesting.
“I like ‘em, some of them get my jokes,” Ned shrugged irreverently, but then more clinically added, “they’re armaments are the real deal, too. We could use an ally with the foundation to put out this kind of gear.”
The man next to him, Garland Tucker Lord-Knight of The Hungry Dark, a grim-faced man with what appeared to be a drooling, macabre shade as their Coat-of-Arms spoke next. “I am concerned that there are strings attached… but so far, as Peter said, I have detected nothing but sincerity.” He then turned his gaze directly to me with a twinge of a smile on his rather expressively pale face, “refreshingly so, in most cases.”
“I argue that the fort they’ve built outside of city limits is excessive,” a Lord-Knight woman by the name of Penelope Kilgore leading the Chivalric Order of The Sun spoke. “They could just as well have a small outpost.”
No one seemed surprised at that, and while others wished to say something about that, they held their tongue. The round went as such until it terminated back to me, at which point, Harris seemed to indicate I could speak freely.
“It goes without saying that the Legion needs to maintain its supply lines over much longer distances than merely to Argedwall. We intend on expanding our influence incrementally, and wish to create reliable and safe infrastructure in our wake. To a reasonable extent, of course. As to that measure, we have two roads being created in transit to Argedwall, a third had been repurposed to create a communications station for non-Obelisk based methods.” I paused briefly to expand on that point, “we’ve run into situations where an Obelisk can be tampered with. I’ll share what I know on the subject at a later time.”
There were several nods to that, many of which now bore contemplative expressions.
“The fort outside of Argedwall is a major staging point for any operations we have in the area. While you have all shown us good will and have not shown any indication that such would cease, in the event you would have us leave the city, we would prefer to not have infrastructure based within its bounds.” More nods, such was a reasonable thought process, even if it did leave room for something to go wrong between us. That was a given, though, considering the state of the world. We weren’t naive enough to believe that everything would always be comfortable between us, nor would we stop doing what we were doing because of a disagreement between powers. Hunting biotics was the entire point as to why we existed, after all.
Which would be something we’d have to address a little more closely in the future, I imagined. If a city didn’t want us hunting around them, then would we continue to do so anyways? Would we need some kind of allowances or recompense for hunting for them? I’d have to have another discussion with Doug sooner or later about that.
Or just leave it to him. That might be the better option.
I dragged my attention back to the topic at hand, “our long term goals are flexible, but ideally - for the Legion - we would absorb Argedwall and its people, or have you all as a compartmentalized faction. More or less with autonomy. Even without that, the highways would allow for commercial interactions in the event that we decided to keep as separate entities.”
I stopped then, deciding that was enough information for the time being. The Lords were, however, looking at me with mixes of disbelief, amusement, and outright shock.
Harris laughed, evoking a similar set of emotions across the table as they looked to him.
“You do realize you just admitted something akin to wanting to take over Argedwall - casually - right in front of its leaders, yes?” The man said with mirth, his posture relaxed in spite of the very slight tightness around his eyes.
“I do, yes.” I then met the gaze of a few of the other Lords, “as you may have heard, I have little interest in politics anymore. It’s best for everyone if we know what motivates each party, I imagine. Besides that, don’t want to take over your city, realistically. The intent for us was to introduce the Bulwark to any city that needed it, but frankly I don’t think you all need that kind of aid.”
“From my point of view, Argedwall’s primary resource is its people. This city has virtually fully mobilized for combat, and I’d be crazy not to extend an offer for you all to work with the Legion on a wider scale.” I then broadly shrugged, “but, that’s a choice, not something I’d force on you. Beyond that, you all could do to have the expertise the Legion can offer you in terms of technology, personnel you don’t have, and in the event you’re not interested in continuing to fight biotics, then you can leave that to us and primarily become a manufacturing hub.”
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
“That is assuming that we wish to cooperate with you in the long run,” Harris pointed out, “such would be left to the vote of the Lords here.”
“Of course,” I nodded, “I doubt Argedwall would stay neutral, but that’s a bridge that can be crossed later. As I said previously, we have no interest in forcing a political decision now, and the only reason why I’m bringing it up is so that you know where the Legion is coming from. Our entire purpose is to hunt and exterminate hostile biotics everywhere, including here. The fact that you needed a hand just made us come here first.”
“Hmm,” Harris nodded, seeming to be more relaxed at that, his eyes panning the room and searching the expressions of the Lords.
There was a certain tenseness in the air, but I felt that might have been due more to their concern over Harris response than anything else. The topic was, of course, just a verbalization of what everyone knew would be on the horizon. Though, I’m sure that the fact that they would be just as willing to leave them to their own devices was interesting to them.
In the end, if we could at least utilize their capabilities for manufacturing, we would profit. An exchange of heavy metals and goods for finished products was a trade I’d make all day. Right now, the Legion wasn’t light on Matter Energy, if anything we were flush with it. The problem was that in order to advance to higher technologies, we needed the foundation to use it. With only two cities, one of which wasn’t genuinely occupied by a civilian population, we needed manpower. Having people who knew what they were doing, who could successfully create and fabricate the gear that we needed, was more valuable at the moment than having more people who could fight.
At least, for the time being. Eventually we’d need more Legionaries as well, but for now we were outrunning our supplies. New Damond had strained us, and while factories were being constructed, I couldn’t say that we’d ever catch up fully with demand at the rate we expanded.
“We’ll table this matter for now,” Harris said, “in the meantime, we do still have biotics to take care of, after all.”
“Agreed. The Legion and Knights have been clearing the area fairly rapidly, but it would be best if we could set up early warning systems further afield.”
Harris glanced to Peter then, who took his cue to speak, “we were intending on following up with just that topic, actually. We of The Wolf have mapped out several locations where we can put motion sensing equipment that should help with warning. If you had anything else, we’d certainly be willing to negotiate for them.”
The hologram in the center of the room lit up, an overview map sprawling out for everyone to see. The blue image was permeated in spots with red, just outside of the city. They were assuming that the sensors were old world technology, which was something that I could happily say we were beyond.
“May I modify the map?” I glanced to Peter, who blinked in confusion.
“Ah, well, that would be fine?” He turned his gaze to Harris, who looked on stoically, giving no indication to stop me.
The man reached over and pointed out some kind of small sensor on the desk, one that I presumed would connect to the Obelisk crystal. I nodded to him, reaching out with my own mental connection through to the sensor which then lit up. From his viewpoint, I hadn’t moved at all and the sensor was registering activity. What happened next drew a frown from Peter as the dots suddenly shifted position and doubled in number, a greater distance out. “That would give fairly optimum coverage.”
Peter glanced down at the table in deeper confusion, and Ned was quick to murmur, “that was fast.”
“These sensors, they’re accurate at these distances, yes?” Penelope asked, expression thoughtful as she perused the locations.
“Very. They’re motion, thermal, electro, and radiological.” I nodded, then noted the frown on her face at the mention of the last one, “we haven’t run into anything that puts off radiation, but better to be prepared.”
“Good policy,” she nodded, “though, this one here and here might be… problematic.”
I blinked, looking toward the map and the two highlighted regions. “Why is that?” I asked after spending a few seconds and not finding anything geographical that would pose an issue.
“Those two spots are…” she paused, looking at Harris whose expression tightened.
He answered in her stead, “those are Graves, they are a few of them out there.”
“That’s a problem?” I tilted my head, and then looked back to the locations. Neither were close to the city, “why would you have graves that far out?”
I murmured the phrase, but a memory began to flare in my mind, as though Wolvey was particularly feverishly drawing attention to it.
“We didn’t build them.” Harris stated, “officially, we don’t know what did. They’ve just been there. But I doubt a human made them.”
In spite of the insistent tug in my memories, I didn’t miss the phrasing of what he said, ‘officially don’t know, huh? What about unofficially?’
But I didn’t voice that, not yet, because I’d just dragged the memory from the background.
“Do they look anything like this?” I asked, pushing the imagine that I’d seen outside of the hive in Sunvilla onto the holographic display. A clearing, with a stone suspended above a grave, seemingly void of any and all biotic interaction.
Silence reigned as the Lords took in the image, and something akin to suspicion leaked into Harris voice.
“Where have you seen this?” He asked, gaze still locked on the image.
‘Bingo,’ I thought, and then spoke, “outside of Sunvilla. I take it there are a lot of these around here?”
Harris turned his attention to me fully, “Sunvilla? That far?”
He sat back, the rest of the Lords murmuring their own conversations. For some reason, this seemed to be a bigger deal to them than just some random mystery.
“What made this?” My gaze hardened nearly imperceptibly as I studied Harris’ face.
He turned his attention back to me, and for the first time I saw a flicker of wariness dance across his gaze. “That…” he sighed, “give us a minute, if you would. I need to discuss this with the Lords.”
My fingers danced across the desk contemplatively for a few seconds, my thoughts rounding on what the possibilities were. But, I relented on any thought of attempting to force the issue.
“Fine. I’ll trust all of you to operate in good faith.” My words weren’t subtle, it was obvious that I’d rather know than not.
As we stepped out of the room, I noted Fran’s expression.
“What do you think?” I asked her after we left, the noise from the Lords picking up as we left a fair distance away. I could have eavesdropped, but if I was discovered then any chance of a working relationship between us would probably be shot.
“I think that it’s definitely complicated.” Fran pondered, “and likely whatever it is isn’t exactly hostile.”
“Why do you think that?” Daniel asked, “maybe they ritualistically sacrifice people to it to appease it, and that’s why they’re not sure we should know about it.”
Everyone turned to look at him with exasperation.
“What?” He held his hands up defensively, “it might happen someday, you don’t know.”
“I think it might be friendly, but they’re not sure how we’ll react to it.” Fran said, “imagine if someone with a dangerous force was entering discussions with us at New Damond. And they proclaimed that their job was to kill biotics.”
It didn’t take a moment before I sighed, “I’d be worried about them finding out about Yaga.”
Alice winced, “ah, yeah, that’s fair. I was just thinking that maybe it was too elusive and they’re embarrassed about it?”
That gave a moment of thought, but Richard shrugged it off, “I don’t think that’s a problem for them. Remember when they were talking about unfinished projects and such? Admitting failure here isn’t a big deal, I think.”
The bubbly woman wrinkled her nose, “I guess that’s true, huh?”
“Well, hopefully they’ll open up about it,” Terry sighed, “I’d rather not accidentally fry a friendly.”
We idled around in a waiting room, Daniel trying to be careful so he didn’t accidentally scrape a wall. These rooms were somewhat less outfitted for out kind of party in waiting.
But, after a few more minutes, Peter entered the room with a neutral expression, “alright, we’re ready. Thank you for your patience.”
We followed him back into the room, one that seemed a touch more filled with nervous energy that I’d expected.
“The vote was in favor,” Harris waited until I sat down, “given that, we’ll discuss the topic. But, I need your word that this does not leave this room. Understood?”
I frowned at that, “so long as it doesn’t hurt myself or the Legion, I can assent to that.”
He tapped the table, considering that addendum carefully before sighing, “fine, that’s fair. Well, first, let me show you this…”
He gestured to the map, and I saw several dozens of yellow icons appear.
“What the hell?” I murmured, seeing images brought up one after another. Harris only smiled sadly.
“Graves for the fallen, as I’m sure you’ve surmised.”