Canvas Town, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fifthmonth, 1634 PTS
Shortly after the memorial service finished, Nahalken arrived at the meeting room, along with his retinue. They had been sitting in on the service from the side, expertly achieving the goals of showing their faces while not interrupting the Canvasian service. Rachel had kept a close eye on them, and while the Staiven seemed bored, their temperament remained quiet and respectful for the entire time.
As expected, she thought, they were giving a great deal of face to Cyrus and herself. This meant that they had interest in Cyrus’ plan. Rachel was still not sure whether she agreed with his plan to partner more firmly with the Venin Group. It was essentially allowing the corporation to construct a franchise inside of the sect, and give them the authority of a Palace Leader. It would be risky to give an outsider such influence over them.
Still, she could see his point. On Canvas, wars had been fought many times over the legacies and techniques of spiritual doctors, a resource that, on Tseludia, was held solely within the hands of the clan. The Redwater Sect did not even have mundane doctors, and relied on incredibly expensive Staiven hospitals to treat their wounded.
It was not a positive cycle. If they did not intend to fight with the clan, the sect’s medical resources would forever limit them. She had considered attempting to offer one of the doctors a great deal and poach them from the clan, but even if the attempt succeeded, the clan would never allow it.
“The goddess would condemn me if I were to discard such an… interesting offer outright,” said Nahalken as he settled down into one of the meeting room’s chairs. “But I do have reservations.”
“Name them,” said Rachel. Beside her, Cyrus nodded in agreement, fingers folded before his chin in a rather domineering pose.
“There’s one problem,” explained Nahalken, posing as if he were exasperated. “You see, this partnership would require us to further develop our understanding of the Seiyal genome. To replace the role of a spiritual doctor with only science and medicine… This is not a simple task. The Goddess knows that my Venin Group is up to the challenge, of course. Except... recently, our supply of test subjects has dried up. It seems that the organization they were volunteering through has had some issues.”
He was dancing around the point, but Rachel knew exactly what he was referring to. It seemed that the Venin Group had been using its connections to the government to buy some of the kidnapped Seiyal from the retirement facility that they had rescued. While the facility would undoubtedly be rebuilt, it would be some time before they fulfilled even their internal experiment quotas.
The second implication of the Staiven’s words were clear as well. Since his supply of subjects had been interrupted, Nahalken wished for them to acquire more. It was a bold proposition to offer to a largely Seiyal force. There were many who might kill him outright just for suggesting it.
Cyrus hesitated for a long moment, then shook his head.
“I’m afraid that’s one step too far. I can kill my own people, but giving them up for experimentation is…”
Nahalken pursed his lips as he heard the refusal, causing a piece of skin to flake off of his knotted brow.
“We would fund the effort, of course,” he said.
“I’m sure there are plenty of criminals nobody will miss,” Rachel added, attempting to persuade him.
Cyrus paused again hesitating , and then shut it down.
“Part of the sect is made up of those we rescued from that fate. We cannot be involved in trafficking Canvasians.”
Rachel sighed, but let the matter go. It did not seem that he would be persuaded.
Cyrus was an interesting man, she thought. To him, death was better than slavery. She paused, realizing something. Was she not the same way? Her people had once prided themselves on that idea.
Rachel chuckled, leaning back on her simulated chair with a self reflective chuckle. The difference, it seemed, was that Cyrus cared because they were his people. If they had been human, she might have been more concerned about such actions. Ultimately, she thought, it was natural for someone to care more about their own people than others. One could die from being too kind in a cruel world, particularly when all the world seemed to wish for your people’s destruction.
Even Rachel had her limits, of course. She liked to think she still had her humanity. Innocents such as children and civilians would be off limits. But there were always more criminals in Tseludia. Getting rid of some of them could almost be considered a good deed, in her estimation.
Sensing something in the air, Nahalken frowned, and changed the topic.
“Apologies, let us put this to a hold for a moment.” He was taking a step backwards, but Rachel expected him to push harder for this as one of the terms. From the perspective of a corporation, what was the purpose of working with an underworld organization if they would not handle such things for you?
She knew that while he could not do it himself, Cyrus’s morals were flexible enough to look the other way when someone else was at fault. He was no apostle of justice. And so long as he was unaware that the supplier was actually Rachel, there would be no issues. She would need someone with a physical body to handle acquiring and moving the unfortunate souls, but that was easy enough to find. Kein would certainly not allow it, but Ran and Orion were a bit more flexible.
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It would be trivial for her to find sufficient benefits to entice them. Life form trafficking was, after all, quite a lucrative business. Rachel had considered expanding the sect’s businesses to include it for some time now. They were already criminals, after all. What was one more crime on the list?
Before the conversation could recover and the negotiations to continue, a misshapen lump in the hands of Nahalken’s second, Redias, began to buzz quietly, drawing his intention. He carefully kneaded its surface, inspecting the contents of the message he had received. In moments he froze, and turned his attention to Rachel’s holographic form for a moment before leaning in to whisper in Nahalken’s ears. She simply smiled at him, knowing the contents of the message that the terminal had just received.
Addressed from herself, the message read: “I can handle this matter. Terms can be discussed later, so long as you do not mention it in front of Cyrus.” Having read the message, Nahalken handed his terminal off to Redias with a wide grin.
“You’re in luck, Riverfiend. It seems the problem has solved itself. A supplier just contacted me, so let us discuss other terms.” He smiled, as if he was just coming up with an idea, and it was not something he had thought through in advance. “That sword of yours is rather unique, I hear.”
Cyrus glanced down at his waist, where the Downpour Sect’s heirloom always resided, and then back up to the empty green eyes of the Staiven businessman. It seemed he had finally found out, she thought. He would certainly have made an attempt to study it had he known about it during their earlier transactions.
While it remained a mystery to the less advanced races such as Seiyal and Staiven, to Rachel’s eyes the nature of the sword was far less abstruse. The unnamed weapon was not a product of advanced material science, despite what one might expect. Instead, it was a localized planar anomaly, a plain steel blade warped in an incredibly precise manner to grant it durability far surpassing its composition. Though she could not see the physical world with her true body’s senses, the warping contained within the blade was clearly identifiable even from the Brink. It was almost strange to believe that such a simple weapon by appearance was actually an ancient masterwork of an Osine artisan.
In any case, Nahalken’s greed was doomed. As this was not a product of mundane materials science, they had no chance of replicating the weapon. The technological foundations of the Staiven were simply not advanced enough. She would be impressed if they could detect what it was without inference.
“...I can’t give this to you,” Cyrus said, his hands moving defensively over the ancient relic. Rachel firmly agreed with his position. Most spirit refiners had to regularly replace their weapons, which made such a uniquely durable blade indispensable for Cyrus.
Nahalken held his hands out consolingly.
“You can have it back afterwards, but I hope you’ll allow my scientists to inspect it. That was forged by an Osine, was it not? There are few such objects in the entire territory, much less a place like Tseludia.”
“That can be allowed,” Cyrus replied. “With supervision, of course.”
“Of course. We would also want a palace leader role, as previously mentioned, and permission to levy the soldiers.”
“The first is a given, but the second is not. Control of the soldiers lie fully under the control of Palace Leader Orion and myself. However… You may rest assured that we will protect all interests that are ‘a part’ of the sect.”
Nahalked nodded, as if this was an expected outcome of the negotiation, and had clearly known that they would not wish to merely become the Venin Group’s personal military force.
The negotiations went on for well over another quarter hour before the basic terms were decided. We would handle several more of the corporation’s military needs, while they would increase their research and investment into the field of Seiyal medical science, particularly for martial artists. The hospital constructed within the sect would be considered an independent palace, and its leader could have a say in the sect’s activity. In essence, it was nothing but a scaled up version of the collaboration the forces had before, but the meaning was very different. This was a true collaboration between the financial world and the underworld, and was information that would certainly be leaked to the other underworld forces. The effects of that were not something Rachel felt confident in predicting.
Before leaving, Nahalken turned back to her, a satisfied expression on his face.
“We’ll be in contact to iron out the details, but I imagine this will be a successful partnership. Before long we shall be thanking Estrivai, I suspect.”
“Let us ensure that is the case,” smirked Rachel as he made his way out. “Ran and I will send you a proposal for the financial side of the partnership”
Nahalked gave her an approving nod, and then he was gone. In all honesty, Rachel still was not sure whether this was the right idea, but activity was certainly better than remaining passive, given their current situation.
“It seems you will receive your wish, Cyrus,” she said.
The martial artist nodded sagely.
“This will solve many of our problems.”
Rachel sighed.
“I just hope it will solve more than it will create.
Suddenly, she was interrupted, as a notification from a subsidiary program she had left watching over the minutiae of the sect’s sensors informed her of a presence at the sect’s main entrance. Rachel split off a portion of herself to observe, and it quickly frowned as it peered at the image the security camera was showing.
“Unexpected,” she muttered, “but the timing is quite good.”
Standing at their entryway was the figure of the ‘Demon of Twinjade,’ Karie Hadal.
Rachel turned to Cyrus.
"We might as well sit back down. We have another guest."
Planar Warpings: [If the use of miasma to alter physical reality can be considered cutting edge science, warpings are several steps beyond even that. They can be considered the imprints left on reality by structured ashata itself. This is a level that has only been theorized by races such as the Staiven and the Celans, and claimed by some to be beyond the limits of technology- the realm of the divine. Osine and Ascendants, of course, are all fully capable of creating and utilizing warpings. In isolation, a warping slowly disappears, the universe returning to its rightful state. When multiple warpings are placed too nearby one another, however, they interfere with one another, causing extremely dangerous chaotic effects, and greatly increasing the planar torsion of the region. Some scholars have theorized that such issues and discrepancies may be the reason for the unique nature of the Incursion.]