Chapter 55 - The Maids

Chapter 55

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth.

Dungeon Factory, Command Center.

"Sara! Ella!"

Emilia stopped pacing mid stride, and practically pounced on her handmaidens. The taller one, Sara if Alexandra's guess was correct, caught her in mid flight with the ease of long practice.

"Young mistress!" She said in a surprisingly soft voice given her....build, hugging Emilia back. "It's good to see you again." She let the vampire girl down, and smiled, with Emilia beaming back, before turning towards Ella, and hugging her, although with a bit more restraint this time. Which was probably due to the fact that the other maid had a variety of sharp instruments of death strewn about her body. What was it with people on this world and covering themselves in knives?

"Young mistress." Simply said Ella, before letting Emilia go. Her voice was...almost a whisper. At least she did sound happy, and her expression, which had been as blank as a diplomat's until now showed some warmth. "I'm happy to see you again."

"So am I!" Emilia took a deep breath, and took a step back, before gesturing at Alexandra's avatar. "Sara, Ella, meet Alexandra, my bonded dungeon core."

Both maids curtsied with surprising elegance, and more notably in complete unison, which rang even more alarm bells in Alexandra's minds.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, lady Alexandra." They said simultaneously.

"The pleasure is all mine. I'm delighted to meet the people that kept vampy here safe and out of trouble."

Alexandra smiled slightly as the maids looked at her, puzzled, before Sara positively beamed. Apparently she approved of the familiar relationship.

Seeing that Emilia was about to explode from anticipation, Alexandra gestured at both maids, smiling.

"Come on, why don't you catch up. I'm sure there's a lot of things you want to ask them that you couldn't your family members. Go ahead."

Emilia had the grace to blush, before descending on her maids, peppering them with questions, and Alexandra simply leaned back against a console, and took the time to observe the vampire maids.

To say that she was...a bit apprehensive was an understatement.

Sara was...tall. As in almost as tall as Alexandra's avatar, at a full two meters in height at least. And stacked, but that was less important. With red eyes and stark white hair, she also had a faint family air with Emilia, although her face was quite different. She also...well, she looked like someone had stuffed a EuroFed marine sergeant into a maid uniform. Her muscled physique, face, expression, scars and even the way she moved screamed 'soldier' so hard it was almost painful. But to her, who had worked with EuroFed Special Operations it also screamed 'spec ops commando'. There was a way that special forces moved that was...particular. It wasn't quite describable, but it was some mix of just absolute confidence and total paranoia that was encountered nowhere else. The twin longswords on the maid's back, as well as the pouches, potions, and....was that a hand grenade?!? Strewn on her 'belt', the sort of maid pseudo belt on old uniforms that was under her chest instead of around her waist.

As for Ella, well....She was almost the complete antithesis of Sara. She was small, around 1 meter 60 in height, and of a much slender build than her companion, although Alexandra could still see that she was still muscled, just....less obviously than her colleague. She also looked...cold. Very cold. Her face was almost devoid of expression, and she moved with the grace that befitted the maid of a scion of a noble family. Overall, she would have looked the part, if you ignored the daggers and pouches strewn about her.

Until Alexandra met her gaze.

It wasn't cold. No, that would have been outright reassuring. Ella's gaze was burning. Burning with the sort of internal, all consuming fire of a true believer, an absolute fanatic.

Alexandra knew that gaze well. She'd seen it in the mirror every day until Europa.

She'd already made a note to watch her closely. She knew, better than possibly anyone else could, what this kind of people was capable of. She was going to keep a very, very sharp eye out for her. She didn't think the maid would turn against her, but...she couldn't be sure of anything. Plus, she was more worried of her getting....overzealous in protection Emilia.

Which was ironic, to say the least, given her earlier reaction to Emilia crying, but she would have limited herself to the perpetrators and a bit of collateral damage. She was fairly sure that if someone from, say, the dungeon town even so much as nicked Emilia Ella would level the town if she could.

Overall, Ella carried herself like Sara did, although with more subtlety, which indicated covert operations to Alexandra, although she couldn't be sure. She'd worked with the commandos onboard the Dawnstar after all, not the intelligence units.

Alexandra stretched, and settled back, half listening to the myriad of question thrown by her advisor as she started on some of her personal projects in her interface design system. It looked like it was going to take a while. Besides, she was almost ready to start CQ's pet AI systems, and she wanted to go over the code one more time to make sure it was perfect. It was, after all, CQ's present.

*****

"Maids?" Said Allya.

"Yes milady. Two of them. They said they were on behalf of the Oswards." Said lieutenant Estar.

"Oswalds." Corrected Allya automatically as she processed the information. The quasi-riot had immediately become the talk of the town -not that it was very surprising, given the demonstration the golems had given of their combat abilities three days ago-, and Allya had arrived personally to deal with the situation. A bit late, of course, as Crystal had resolved things in her usual straightforward fashion, but still.

At least her men were happy. Crystal had resurrected the poor bastard that had gotten sliced up, and authorized him to come cultivate whenever he wanted for the next month or so, with unlimited access to the floor elevators. Which also meant that said guard wasn't complaining in the slightest, keeping his mouth shut and a low profile, especially after Anders had made some....pointed suggestions to him to not brag about it.

"Right. Well, whoever they were milady, they're some serious fighters. Albor never stood a chance, I didn't even see that psycho move, just one second he was standing there, the next he was falling apart in pieces!" He shook his head. "That's impressive. Very impressive."

"Yes, it is. Thank you for the report lieutenant, dismissed." She waited for him to salute, turn around and almost arrive at the exit of the room. "Oh, and one last thing!" She locked gazes with him as he turned back around. "Don't go around calling those maids psychos. They're probably related to the dungeon's advisor somehow, and dungeons are very protective of their advisors."

"Ah, yes milady, understood."

"Good, you may go lieutenant."

She turned towards Anders as the lieutenant left.

"Captain, I want you to pass the word around. Barring them barging into this very tent, or a secure location, I want the guard to leave these maids alone. I don't want another accident like this, am I understood?"

"Yes milady." He formally bowed. "Your will will be done."

Allya smiled at the formality.

"Relax captain, I'm not angry, just....frustrated. This was fairly stupid, and could have been avoided pretty easily. Well, at least Crystal seemed to have been pretty lenient about it."

"The maids did attack first."

"And one of your guards groped her. I emasculated some people for that when I was particularly frustrated captain, I understand the feeling."

Given the captain's face, it was not the answer he was expecting. She laughed.

"Relax, I'm well over that phase. A good knee hit does the job just as well, and it doesn't necessitate as much cleanup." She quickly picked up as Anders' expression became even more complex. "Anyway, now that this is dealt with, how is the installation of our esteemed Estogan guests going?"

Anders rallied, clearly relishing having something else to focus on than the mental images Allya's almost casual comments had created.

"Right. Their installation is going well. They are currently camping in a set of field barrack tents they brought with them, although they set up a particular warehouse tent to store their supplies and especially their weapons. I have lieutenant Issira liaising with them, but right now they don't need much help. They've already established their own defensive perimeter and put themselves at our disposition should an emergency occur."

"That's excellent! Much smoother than I had expected honestly."

Anders shrugged.

"They are House Estogan troops ma'am. Integrating into wasteland expedition security is routine for them. They are, after all, the closest military units if something goes wrong for said expeditions, at least on the Asarian side of the border."

"Fair enough captain. Well, let us hope that our cooperation will continue to be this smooth in the future. Now, Pyn." She turned towards the only other person present, besides Valker who was almost disappearing into the background at this point as she was getting so used to her bodyguards' constant presence. "How is the building construction going?"

"Ready to put the roofs on now. There aren't going to be enough buildings to house everyone at first, but there should be enough for the shops to move into solid buildings, and for most adventurers to at least get a roof over their head, even if they'll have to share some bunks. The administration building is also almost finished, so I've instructed our staff to pack everything for movement."

"Excellent!" Allya looked around. "No offense to the expedition organizers, but it will feel good to have solid walls around us again."

"Indeed. I also took the liberty to have the most important room fitted with sound proofing enchantments, just in case."

"That is probably for the best. Which rooms exactly?"

"The council meeting rooms, the offices of every council members, plus our bedrooms."

Allya pointedly ignored Anders' slight twitch of his mouth, which might have been the beginning of a smile. Besides, the sound proofing was for when Pyn and her drew private plans and discussed things that they really didn't want anyone else to know.

....And they could be very loud during their bedtime activities from time to time, but that was besides the point.

"Good. Do you need some help spreading the word around that some housing is about to become available?"

"No, I already discussed it with Melia, it's her speciality after all. She'll handle it from her end."

"Fair enough. Very well then, does anyone has anything to add?"

Pyn and Anders shook their heads, and Allya smiled.

"Well, dismissed then. We all have things to do I'm afraid."

*****

Alexandra raised her head from the prototype staff she was working on as Sara entered. Despite her best efforts she just couldn't get the damned thing to work as she wanted to. Granted, the other staffs were doing better, but it was still a royal pain in the ass that one in the whole set was still having issues. At this point it was as much professional pride as not wanting to drop a project she had invested so much time into.

"Yes?"

"Apologies milady." Said the maid as she bowed, and Alexandra winced internally. They seemed to be treating her like royalty, which was...annoying. Although this time there was a certain...tense undertone to her speech. "But lady Emilia requires your presence in the communication room."

Alexandra's eyebrows rose.

"Why is that?"

"Well...Permission to speak freely?"

"Of course!"

"She's in communication with her mother. And...CQ happened to walk by and got included in the conversation." Sara licked her lips as she saw Alexandra's confused expression. "CQ called her 'mommy', milady, and referred to you as her 'mom'. Lady Etheria wants to....talk to you about it."

Alexandra's face went white.

"I'll be there at once!"