Honored Lord Marksman

As impressive as it is that you have commissioned the creation of a lovely Stronghold right beside my territory, this will only expand the number of residents that I must make considerations for.

I know you mean to exchange Emilie and her Stronghold for the Burning Court set, but that is by no means enough to justify giving you such a dangerous artifact.

As you know, I am a new Lord struggling to get his feet under him.

More than stone buildings and fields, I need resource nodes. I have Vassals dedicated to generating Influence, but it still only amounts to a modest amount. It will take months before I can afford my first resource node.

I’ll take Emilie’s stronghold gratefully, but I will also require three hundred thousand Influence in addition.

Do this, and the Burning Court set is yours.

“You do realize that my home is a hermitage on the dead 8th Floor right? Because I hate politics.” Ghoul said. “Next.”

“Who else am I supposed to ask?” Will moved on to connect the next plastic box that Ghoul had retrieved from his Floor. There were dozens of copper wires in strange, brightly colored sheaths made of a substance that Will had only encountered a few times before, primarily on the 8th Floor.

‘plastic’, Ghoul called it.

Each box corresponded to one of the tubes from the pod Will had found on the 11th Floor. On the outside of the box, lightning miasmatic structures had been impregnated into giant’s bone to passively provide the power needed.

According to Ghoul, the pod was powered by ‘electricity’, an application of controlled lightning that the society that had spanned the 7th to 9th Floors had apparently mastered.

Will glanced at the preserved corpse crouched beside him studying the wires.

Ghoul was the oldest among the Lords Will knew of, and he had a deep understanding of undead and the 8th Floor specifically.

Was he a leftover from that Coil?

That would make him at least eight thousand years old.

He didn’t seem to know Will like every other immortal though, so maybe Ghoul was only approaching a thousand, and had simply dedicated a few hundred years to studying the technology of the 8th Floor.

That would certainly be enough time to decipher it.

“You say you don’t like politics, then you press-ganged Void into being your janitor.”

‘Saw that, did ya?” Ghoul asked, wiping grease off his hands before returning to the strange plastic box called a ‘computer’. On the back of the machine was another block of giant’s bone carefully doped to render atmospheric changes in Charge into lightning.

“I’m just looking for some advice. What’s the worst possible move I could make in this situation?” Will asked.

“Hmm…The worst possible move? Probably raising Emilie to Lord status. That would piss everyone off. Her loyalty would be torn multiple directions, and you would have a permanent competitor whose actions you would have a very hard time predicting.

Will’s first impulse was to piss everyone off and then navigate the chaos to seize some kind of advantage. That worked well enough in a straight-up fight, but it didn’t seem like a good idea in this situation.

“Why not just sell him the set?” Ghoul asked.

After the Norworm situation had been resolved, Will had put out feelers to determine where the Burned Court had come from.

He’d discovered pretty easily that Fabron had been a criminal slave in Bakton Keep, and he’d been assigned to cleaning up the massive lump of glass that had once been Kincaid’s fortress filled with fae.

It wasn’t a hard connection to make.

The seven ghosts of the Burned Court were an amalgamation of hundreds of dead Fae with a grudge against him, and that was likely why Fabron had been acting irrationally antagonistic and panicky around Will.

The set was cursed.

That reminds me. Will mused. The Family Gathering set had been created using the ashes of hundreds of immortal serpent half-breeds. The set worked well for him. Almost as if it had been tailor-made for William Oh.

It seems like sets require a large quantity of the same creatures gathered together and killed.

No, there has to be more, otherwise every Lord in the tower would set up Set-making farms. I would have made a set when I hunted at the watering hole on the 14th Floor. there were thousands of similar monsters there, after all.

The grudge?

Emotion?

A story?

A dark thought occurred to Will as he glanced towards the crystal giant settlement on the other side of the mountain.

Would I get a set if the crystal giants were gathered up and killed by something?

Will squashed the idea as soon as he had it, taking a deep breath and running through his Memory Key to ensure nothing was influencing his mind.

That crossed the line. Even if he was sure he was on the right track, there were some things better not considered.

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Besides, Giant’s bone is a good enough resource.

None of them had died yet, but the giants themselves carried quite a bit of it with them when they fled the 11th floor. They also didn’t have any qualms about using an ancestor’s bones after they passed away. It was part of their culture.

Will had plans to purchase any giants bone he could get from the family of the deceased.

“If I sell him the set, I piss off Carrie, and possibly Akul.” Will replied after he brought his thoughts back to the conversation.

“Can’t please everyone.” Ghoul replied, holding up a new box of wires. “Sometimes it’s good to know who your enemies are.”

Huh. That’s a good idea.

With the barest mental nudge, Titan’s Grasp spliced the copper wires together with the ones jutting from the tubes.

“…Annnnd we’re done.” Ghoul said, as the brightly glowing red box turned green.

“Now just stick your left hand in the machine and we’ll calibrate it.”

“This better not end with me losing my hand again.” Will said, rolling up his sleeve.

“No guarantees,” Ghoul said.

Will shoved his arm into the small box connected to Ghoul’s ‘computer’.

“Try not to move.” Ghoul said.

Will’s hand tingled a bit, but when he took it out, he didn’t feel any different. No miasmatic structures had been implanted into his bones, either.

Ghoul took the metal plate off the jury-rigged calibration box and re-applied it to the series of plates placed around the crystal egg.

“Here goes,” Ghoul said, tapping the keyboard.

The array of metal squares gave off a faint whine that Will could feel more than he could hear.

In the center of the array, Steve Junior twitched.

“Huh. I was almost positive that wouldn’t work.” Ghoul mused.

Under the effect of the array, crystal was rendered pliable as flesh. This seemed to have restarted the crystal snake’s life-cycle.

The crystal egg split apart and Junior emerged into the air, its crystalline tongue tasting the air.

Despite being newly hatched, Junior was at least six feet long. It’s gaze locked onto Will’s and it began slithering towards him with determination in it’s crystalline eyes.

“Brianna, would you mind grabbing some steak bugs?” Will asked as the glittering snake approached. “I didn’t consider we might be feeding this thing so soon.”

“On it.” Brianna said, nodding.

Will held still as Junior approached, passing the edge of the array. The creature’s body didn’t return to lifeless crystal as it passed the threshold, instead retaining its ability to move even after removing itself from the array.

The snake reared up to Will’s waist, studying him for a moment before it began wrapping itself up his leg, forcing a shudder up Will’s spine before it eventually settled with its head draped over his shoulder, nestled against his neck.

“This thing is cold!” Will whispered while Ghoul struggled to hold back his laughter.

“Seems like it likes you.” Brianna said, cautiously approaching and patting the crystalline snake.

Junior glanced at Brianna for a moment before going back to sleep.

“Steak bug?” Brianna cooed, tempting Junior off of Will.

They watched in fascination as Junior gulped the fat insect down, the steak bug sliding along Junior’s semi-transparent stomach.

As soon as Junior was done eating, he returned to Will, stealing Will’s body heat, just as cold as an actual piece of rock would be.

“I think he likes you!” Brianna said with an innocent smile.

Will sighed.

“The instant it poops on me it’s coming off.” He said.

“If he poops crystal, he couldn’t mess up your clothes could he?” Ghoul asked.

“...We shall see.” Will said as ominously as he could manage with a lump of crystal sucking heat out of his neck.

Was it a monster or was it an animal that had been modified by magical experimentation? It didn’t seem mindlessly aggressive like a monster might be, but it had come from the ovaries of one, so…

So what the Abyss is it?

“I have a theory,” Loth chimed in for the first time in a while.

“Eh?”

“The crystal giants were living and dying inside Steve for generations, yes?”

“Yeah?”

“Steve must’ve digested more than a few of them. If a body is exposed to a toxin or irritant for a long period of time, that body may attempt to isolate the irritant. In this case, I wonder if perhaps Steve couldn’t quite process all of the crystal giants that died inside of it and its body shifted the waste product to its eggs.

I think perhaps it dumped the majority of this waste product on the runt of the litter, crystalizing it over hundreds of years. In the end it became an inanimate object. Until you brought it to life using the same techniques that created the crystal giants.”

“Huh.” Will grunted, peering at the gem-like snake head resting on his shoulder. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

Loth shrugged.

Great.

They still had other experiments to do, so they turned their attention back to the giant’s bone.

Over the course of Ghoul’s visit, they managed to accomplish two more things:

Firstly, they were able to use the machine to create wands and enchanted items like the Charge-operated propulsion engines identical to the ones produced by Zodiac’s Stronghold…which might piss Zodiac off.

Mass production was a ways off, but just the ability to create them on demand was quite the achievement.

The other thing they did was create Will’s practice cube.

It was a six-sided cube of clear crystal twice the size of a man’s head on a steel base.

Typically when making miasmatic structures, as soon as they destabilized, they were gone in a flash, making figuring out what went wrong a matter of guesswork.

With the cube, Will was able to place his fingertips on the crystal, start forming miasmatic structures, and stop concentrating whenever he wanted to study it.

The cube preserved the structure just as it was when he stopped concentrating, and allowed him to resume right where he left off, allowing him to review and modify his own process mid-use.

This sped up the development of his new Ability drastically, as well as allowing him to experiment with minor cantrips he’d seen before.

When Carrie Envar arrived, Will’s new Ability was nearly complete.

Will took the other Lord out into the wilds, flying high in the clouds where there were no sharp ears to overhear their conversation.

“What are you wearing?” Carrie asked.

“It’s a snake made of living crystal. It likes me and it poops crystal.”

“Of course it does,” Carrie said, seeming a little exasperated.

“I’m considering selling the Burning Court set to Marksman.” Will said, skipping right to the business.

Carrie blinked. “Did you invite me out here to make a counter-offer?”

“Not exactly. I’d like you to be my enemy for a bit.”

Carrie tensed. “Explain.”

“I strongly suspect that the set is cursed, and that the owner will be driven to attack me. If I’m right the set will eventually drive Marksman’s vassal to betray him and come after me.”

“A poison pill, huh? What if you’re wrong?”

“Well, then I’m wrong,” Will said. “I’d like for us to adopt a somewhat adversarial position towards each other. Bloodless, of course. I’ll lend you some specialists as a peace offering, provided that you treat them well.”

“I’m listening.”

“And in the future, you may become the focal point of plots against me.”

“Ah…I see where you’re going with this. You want to be my enemy on paper so that if someone tries to ally with me to attack you…I can tell you.”

“That’s about right.” Will said. “The other lords immediately around me are neutral or in good standing. You would become the first person people would think of with both the power and motivation.”

“That’s a lot of trust you’re offering me, and likely more valuable than a handful of specialists. What’s your insurance?”

“Insurance?” Will asked.

“What’s to stop me from just actually becoming your enemy and actually working against you?” Carrie asked.

“You think you could win?” Will asked, genuinely confused.

“Oohoh, the balls on this kid,” Carrie chuckled, waggling her finger at Will. “We’ve both got Advanced Classes now, so don’t think it’d be the same as last time.”

“No, I didn’t get so far in my plan as to come up with insurance,” Will admitted, “But if Marksman should come to be betrayed by the vassal he gives the set to, you’ll owe me for doing your faction a huge favor.”

“And you get the set back, too,” Carrie said, tapping her chin. “Alright. For that price, I suppose I can performatively hate you. Although if I’m approached with a plan to kill you, I’ll play it by ear.”

“That’s fair.” Will said with a smile.

“By the way, if you were to put in a counter-offer, what would it have been?” Will asked.

“Why?” Carrie asked.

“Because it’ll help me drive up Marksman’s price.”