Chapter 387 - Negotiations

Gaaaaah. I'm stressed! Publication soon. Sometime next month I think. Big big ups. Big scares. Big jumps.

Also, the Fallen Kingdom (and every part of the story rly) are so rich that I feel like I need two more chapters of fights and an extra 2k words in every chapter but I simply do Not have the time and pacing to spend every waking moment describing every part of this setting. In spite of the inspiration this is actually novels and not a true eternal light-novel of infinite volumes, I want to finish out the plot before chapter 1000 pls. Wish me luck with that.

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Negotiating is like being in sales- both involve the acts of telling people what they want, finding a way to convince them they can get it, and then figuring out the ways that they’re doing the same thing back to you.

-Nascent Soul realm Diplomat Chen Hua, Division Of Mortal Affairs

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“I think we should consider the proposition,” Kai Valdir says from across the room, his crimson eyes gleaming. “There’s a few good points being made here.”

Most of the other eyes in the chamber turn to stare at him, glaring at him with varying degrees of violent intent. He doesn’t seem to particularly mind, sitting comfortably, loud and proud, calm and collected. He gives off an aura of someone who is very nearly at ease, even when surrounded by evidence of his betrayal.

There’s no one in the room that doubts his intention. He’s made his placement clear from how blatantly he’s standing to one side of the chamber, opposite Raika and using it more as a way to pen others in than to face against her. Two co-conspirators, blatantly. 

And he seems to love it. How clearly he’s on one side of things, ‘against’ his own people, and seems utterly unbothered. And what’s more interesting is that no one seems particularly surprised about it.

Arrayed about a chamber that seems old, designed for meetings just like this and holding a shape a lot like a minute amphitheater, are the rest of the cast of the conversation. Not everyone involved, not whole bloodlines, but a few, sent here as a good mix of dependable, expendable, and dangerous enough to matter, each of them taking up a different section of the hermetically sealed chamber and its seats, leaving the space in the middle empty. Low candles provide a pale and sickly illumination, leaving the eyes of the life-drinkers bright as stars in the night sky, all of them trained towards her.

“You would say that, Valdir,” says one of the elders. It’s the same one that saw the ritual fall to completion, the one who held back his… companion? As Raika made her demands. He’s skinnier than a lot of the others, almost stick-thin, but the emerald glow of his eyes is bright, framed against the dark colors that the Bishops (or “elders”) of the city of Viviae seem to favor. He’s taken center-stage, at least for now, as they discuss what she’s done.

“It is not a burden to be predictable, Darus Eneru, so long as one is not so predictable as to be undercut.”

“Predictable?” Roars another, his eyes wide and glowing. “Deplorable, perhaps. I would not classify the fact that you act against the interests of your fellows so consistently any sort of virtue or neutral truth!”

He just laughs, politely bowing his head to his fellow Valdir-clan Bishop. “I would agree, if my acts were to ever harm another in such a way. Instead, I’m confident that the greater choices presented to us here are only an advantage, and to the benefit of all of Viviae.”

Raika avoids rolling her eyes at that. He’s maybe right, but she’s inherently biased. Standing on the far side of the room, with almost a dozen Bishops arrayed against her, she’s not really in a position to be causing problems, at least not yet. 

The chamber they’re in is secluded, well-maintained but deeply quiet, hidden away. There are others, larger chambers in larger sections of their palaces, but she has the impression that they don’t really want to parade their negotiations out in front of their “lessers”, be it within their own clans or otherwise. 

All three great clans are present, in varying numbers, standing in vaguely-aligned groups. The Eneru clan’s group contains the ten-foot centipede-wielder that Raika fought, as well as the skinnier, emerald-eyed scholar. Beside them, there are two more, one of them a plump and matronly woman, bright eyed and soft yet exuding a strange sort of fecundity, and to one side, a stranger figure sits, cloaked so completely that only the emerald of its eyes are visible. 

Opposite them, the Valdir clan sits, with Kai standing to one side. Two more of his clan are represented- one, the crimson-eyed brute that the scholar seems so fond of, the other, hanging towards the rear, a tall and svelte woman, more of her skin exposed than most and small spikes emerging from her joints. 

Separate from the other groups, even moreso than might be expected, the Dreyus clan is represented by just one figure, whose face is completely covered by a strange mask of glass. It seems to reflect the faces of anyone looking into it, while revealing nothing of the appearance beneath. Besides slight changes in their clothing, making them grow or shrink or change posture very minutely now and again, they are almost entirely vague.

All three clans, all three using at least some of their Bishops as representatives, have come to negotiate.

Raika, meanwhile, is sitting all on her lonesome. Li Shu is outside, waiting for a signal to indicate that they should shut down the spread of the seedling infection or if they need to ramp it up into a Lot more of their planned shenanigans. They wanted her to come too, obviously, but Raika put her foot down- losing a body and some anchors in case everything goes wrong is plenty to have on the line. Having Li Shu, someone who can’t just “not die”, taken to a secondary location would be too much of a risk, and so she remains back in the fungal fields, guarded by an “escort” of Viviae’s clergy.

Raika’s confident that she’s not in any trouble there. She’s only gotten harder to pin down with time, and frankly, they have enough prepared that anyone who moves against her will be in for a messy surprise. 

And so- detente. Room for actual negotiation.

“I’m biased, but I tend to agree with sir Kai over here. Don’t see this as a surrender- see it as what it is. A trial run for little old me, to determine that I have what it takes to do as I have promised.”

“And what have you promised?” The brute asks. “To embroil us too early into the worst conflict of the modern age, before our forces are prepared? When all will be far more vulnerable?”

She still hasn’t asked his name, which is sort of fun, but it’s a little reductive- he actually looks very refined, with a startlingly well-groomed style to him. It’s just the personality, is all.

“Best to strike while the iron is hot rather than when it’s cooled,” she replies. “And frankly, I think that it’s not a secret how delayed your armament has been. Each city I’ve seen so far, in spite of varying degrees of activity, has been stagnant. I’ve seen what you can do. I’ve seen what the Empire can do. You and the Pack, together, could eliminate the entire eastern side of the Wall in a month. Less, if you don’t count the Bastion city.”

“At what cost?” asks the Eneru scholar, who Kai called Darus. “You claim to be fighting your Empire, but there is no fighting it. Breaking the Wall unleashes it against us. You would have us confront the skyships, the evergreen legions, the more esoteric weaponry of the deeper rings. We have seen the Empire at war, child, and it is not this paltry ever-slaughter it holds against the Overgrowth and its beasts.”

“Yeah? Then why do you think it will be any different against the End? Why do you think you’ll be able to do something the Empire can’t?”

Immediately she can tell it was the wrong thing to say. Their whole mythos is about how special they are at dealing with the End, and they’ve built up for millenia around that idea. She’s not going to manage to push them with that. The whole room has shifted, and she does see Kai Valdir give a little wince.

“We have fought back our own End more times than there are stars left in the sky,” says the scantily clad spike-woman of the Valdir clan. “We have conquered it, comprehended it, matched it in every regard. Your Empire is only good at feeding it. You challenge what you do not understand, and do so poorly.”

She raises her hands, blacksteel and corpse-flesh both, trying to pull back the conversation. “Granted. I’m not an expert, but even I’ve managed some victories on that front. I believe that getting things to change would mean more against the End than trying to mantle it, or at least would buy you much more time to do so. That seems fair. However, while we won’t know who will be proven right until that final day comes, we do know that only one of us walks away from my trial here the victor.”

A snort, this time from the matronly woman on the Eneru side. “Arrogant, but endearing. You come to us clad in your anchors, and believe we will be unable to grant you the final Death you challenged us to?”

Raika just smiles, shrugging. “I’ve been under no doubts of that since the start. You all keep holding back because you all don’t want to lose face, having to go all-out against some brand-new Bishop, but I’m well aware that there’s plenty I haven’t had to face. You’re torn about me. Some want to stay, some want to go, and no one wants to be the first one to mess with things as they are. Except me.”

“And you think that your role as chaotic interloper grants you some special privilege?” asks the red-skinned woman with the spikes, her eyes narrowing.

Raika laughs. “No. I think that I get to factor in all of that, and then I get to add my own pieces. Like, say, a few dozen plagues ready to cause environmental ruin in the food supply of your food supply.”

“You wouldn’t,” says the giantess of the Eneru clan. She’s almost impassive now that the fight is “over”, standing calmly and just staring down at Raika.

“Maybe, maybe not,” she replies. “I’m pretty sure that Gu of mine you’re holding onto could wreak plenty havoc if it went out subtly, and I’ve got more of those ready to go, nevermind all the rest. It’s not quite mutually assured destruction, but it’s close.”

“Or we kill your son.”

She doesn’t need to turn to face the newest voice, as it’s already positioned close to Kai’s position, opposite her. The member of the Dreyus clan stands there, and its presence starts to leak out as Raika sees her own flower-eyed face staring back at her.

The room goes quiet at that.

Polite threats, discussions, the nuances of laying things out, all get lain aside in favor of the absolute weight of that one threat. Not tied to the wider ideals, to the intrinsic threats they’re facing, not a point that can be argued.

“You have defenses upon him. He moves quietly. He is a child. He is weak. He is known to us. We have watched him, in spite of his smoke and quiet. What would you do then? Would you continue to threaten, bargain, cajole?”

Raika shakes her head.

“No. I’d kill you all.”

There’s a snort from the red-skinned woman, and a patronizing smile from the matronly Eneru- but most of the people in the chamber stay silent, staring at her.

“You couldn’t if you tried,” says the brasher woman of the Valdir line. “I witnessed your fight with Bri-ah, and you’re not that special. She had you on the back foot the entire time, and she wasn’t even trying. To fully slay a Bishop, nevermind a kingdom, is beyond you, and your empty threats only make you look weak.”

Raika notes, distantly, that their whole clan seems a bit more emotional, more openly aggressive, even as most of her attention remains dedicated to deciding her next words very carefully.

“I agree. Empty threats would make me look weak. I also think that none of you are particularly aware of how much of my personal stability and well being is built around being good enough to care for my son. I think that you have absolutely no idea what I can do when I’m not play-fighting through this ridiculous trial to convince a bunch of stagnant necromancers to move out of their graves.

“Having said all that. If you hurt my son, I will kill each and every one of you. Then I’d probably move on to every other city in this kingdom, every hamlet and church that hasn’t even been worth my notice yet, every hint of the civilization you all rot in. I would call the End down upon you so truly that the only thing left of you would be dust and memory. If that.”

“And what then of your war?”, asks the mirror across the room. “What then of the purpose for which you seek to drive us?”

“The point is to make a better world. Right now, that means a world where the Empire gets some of what’s coming to it, and better people get to grow.”

A corpse-throat flexes, speaking in tones that have less to do with biology and infinitely more to do with the ontology of that which is speaking.

“If you hurt my son, my definition of a better world becomes one without you in it.” 

The weight of Truespeak echoes in the room, language transmuted through Qi and meaning itself into something more. She doesn’t hold back, either- her Killing Intent floods the room, turning the stone chamber from a pristine audience space into something else. Cracks that were barely relevant become signs of disuse and destruction to come. Shadows change from an absence of light into avenues of attack, even as the air itself becomes charged with the possibility of a sudden assault, the meaning of the room and everything in it turning towards the murder of everyone in it.

Several of the Bishops push back, but as she saw in Godsfall, they don’t seem particularly well-equipped for it. So many of them seem capable of a truespeak of their own, but Intent is derided as baser, simpler, more for the beasts of the Pack. 

She doesn’t mind being viewed as bestial. What’s effective is effective.

She lets it hang over the room just long enough for the Bishops to begin to prepare, to show some degree of reaction- and then she retracts it back into herself, removing its presence from the chamber.

“So!” she says, smiling wide. “Let’s try to avoid that outcome, alright? We’ve been having fun, wasting time, doing what needs doing to get this moving, but I am in a bit of a hurry. I’d rather work alongside the bright lights and burning vitality of Viviae to accomplish my goal, rather than make more of a mess of things. I imagine Mortaria and New Inquisum will be their own special hells in that regard, but you’ve most graciously allowed me to have this little negotiation. So. Shall we?”

To her surprise, one hand comes up almost immediately. 

The reflective face of the Dreyus’ representative, its posture and scale ever-shifting beneath its robes, stares back at her.

“The Dreyus clan accepts the victory of Bishop Rai Ka.”

The chamber is left stunned for a moment, before Kai throws his head back and laughs.

“Well! What a delight this is turning out to be!”