Blood Shaper

The Shatterplate War Chapter 39

Kay glanced up from the huddle he was in as Cindy was escorted into the room. His Ministers looked up, and all of them turned to look at her.

She took a step back with a hesitant expression, bumping into the Blood Guard behind her as she saw everyone staring at her. "Um… hi?"

Kay took a moment just looking her over. He'd been busy enough that he hadn't had much time to spend just hanging out with anyone, so he hadn't seen her or anyone else in a social setting in a while. He mainly regretted not being able to spend much time with Murunel, but he also considered Cindy and her team friends, if not incredibly close ones, so he'd missed them too, if not as much.

"Can we trust her enough for this?" Curcius Mapsight asked as everyone in the room looked at her.

"That's what Oaths and Agreements are for," Eleniah told him, still staring at Cindy along with everyone else, "Although I would say yes even without those."

"Hmm," Curcius leaned back in his chair with a contemplative frown.

"Lord Kay says she's the best choice," Cyrus shrugged as he addressed the group, "Let's just make the offer and see what happens."

"… What's going on?" Cindy asked nervously.

Kay pointed at the only open chair at the table everyone else was sitting around. "Sit down, Cindy."

Slowly and glancing around at everyone as she did, the young redheaded Outworlder made her way over to the chair and gingerly sat down.

"… Did you see this coming?" He asked her.

Cindy blinked a few times. "Did I see what?" She scowled at Kay, "You're talking about my foreseeing? It's not like I get detailed visions of what's going to happen, I dream about things that could be, and since they're dreams, I mostly get things in weird omens or symbolism that I have to interpret."

Kay nodded slowly as he took her response in. After a moment, he slumped slightly in his chair as he sighed. "Look, Cindy, I really need to get a direct answer from you about this. I think of you as a friend, and I think that you're trustworthy enough for what we've been discussing, but I have to be sure. So, I'll ask again. Did you foresee this coming if you came here? To Avalon, I mean."

Cindy squinted at him and rubbed her head like she was frustrated. "I thought I did answer, but whatever. No, I didn't see anything specific related to coming here and meeting you. The farther out something is from when I dream it, the less clear it is. So when I met my team and some of the others I dragged out here, I saw them pretty clearly, but not the details of why they would be important to me; that was all nonsense stuff that I had to decipher." She shrugged one shoulder. "My dreams pointed to coming here, and that things could be better for me than they were, and the same for the people I swept up to come with me…" She trailed off, and her eyes got glassy as she stared unblinkingly at Kay, "I saw…" Her voice somehow became distant as if she was speaking from somewhere far away, "I saw hope, for me. Thrown into a world that wasn't my own and turned into a playing piece on a game I didn't want to be involved in, shuffled about and traded from player to player who only wanted me to tell them what they wanted to hear, and refused to listen when I told them of the handicaps that come with my power, I saw hope. A chance to become what I wanted to be, in a way that would be better than any of my other choices…" Her voice echoed for a moment in the empty, silent air.

Everyone started when Cindy shook her head, and her eyes cleared.

"Fuck, sorry." She smiled ruefully, "That's been happening recently. Stephen thinks that I'm somehow gaining or waking up some seer magic that I have or might have earned or something that's different than my foreseeing dreams." She shrugged, "Or maybe it's the same thing, and it's just changing or growing."

"What did you mean when you said that thing about 'A chance to become what I wanted to be, in a way that would be better than any of my choices'?" Kay asked.

"Well," She huffed in frustration, "I want to be a real part of the team with my friends. They're all adventurers, state adventurers, now, with combat Classes. They get on the front lines and deal with problems. I just hang out in the back, never getting near the fights, and try and help by telling them things that could happen. I've always wanted to get a combat Class and become a real part of the team."

"Why haven't you then?" Ahthia asked her.

"Because of that vision, I just told you about." She looked into space again, and her eyes glazed over, but this time in memory, "There's some opportunity in the future that I might be able to grab that'll get me a Class that's perfect for me. Or at least better than any of the other options I've had so far."

The Ministers all looked at each other again.

"She's been a benefit to Avalon," Ahthia restarted the discussion they'd been having.

"Why are we even debating giving this to someone else, though?" Isla's illusionary figure, that of the same nondescript human man, asked, "Why aren't we just letting Lord Kay have this?"

"Because I don't need anything extra added to my plate." Kay replied, "More reasons to go with that: I have less experience than she does, and putting all of our eggs in one basket makes us even more vulnerable if something happens to me."

The illusion of a man nodded. "Alright. But someone had to ask."

"That's fine." Kay looked around, "Other comments, concerns, or questions?"

"I've only experienced good things from her," Meten told everyone, "She's right that she hasn't been on the front lines of any of the battles against monsters we've had, but she's a good worker, is kind to others from my experience, and her teammates say good things about her."

"Like Kay said, I consider her a friend. We have to ask for the Oaths and Agreements, but I trust her."

Kay waited for anyone else to speak up. "All right, the final decision is mine, but I'm not going to disregard your advice. All in favor?"

Everyone raised their hands.

"Well, that makes things simple." Kay grabbed a sheaf of papers and pushed them across the table to Cindy. "Those are the Oaths you'd have to swear and the Agreements you'd have to sign in order for me to tell you the information I have."

Cindy started flipping through the papers. "… All this just to hear something?"

"You'll find that those are, almost word for word, the same Oaths and Agreements that the Ministers had to sign." Kay gestured at the rest of the people sitting at the table, "The rest are taken from Oaths I swore less than a week ago when we held the first session of Parliament."

Cindy looked down at the papers again, then back at Kay. "I… think I figured it out. Or at least part of it."

Kay raised one eyebrow, "What are you going to do then?"

Without breaking eye contact, she slowly rose to her feet and raised her right hand. "I Cinderella Donovan swear by The System the following…"

Some time later, once everything was done and Cindy had sworn all the Oaths and signed all the Agreements, Kay looked at her solemnly. "Your name is Cinderella?"

"Shut up. Call me Cindy."

"Yeah, I'm never letting this go."

"Shut up! Tell me the thing I just swore my soul to Avalon for."

"Fine." Kay stopped teasing her and got serious, "After I fought that Eldritch Being and its monster, I got a reward from the Quest. It's called 'System Access (Minor)'. It's been giving me some random insight into the System itself, including a new thing that just popped up today." He paused for a breath and also for a slight amount of drama. "It was a changelog for a newly released update."

Cindy gasped.

Kay nodded, "Exactly. Most of it was redacted, apparently my access is too low to see everything, but I learned quite a bit. The most pertinent thing right now, though, is that the new 'Firearms Update' got released today."

Cindy's eyes widened. "You mean…"

"Yes."

"You're letting me…?"

"Again, yes."

She pushed up from the table violently and spun towards the door. "I've been using some of my money and working with a couple of people to make working models so I could tinker and see if I could figure out why the System wasn't accepting guns." She paced in front of the door, almost manically. "And it was all because they just hadn't released it yet!?"

"Apparently, there was some kind of bug in the programming built to detect when guns made it to this world."

"It was a programming issue!?" She threw her hands in the air, "That's so stupid!"

"Yeah, well." Kay's gaze snapped to the guards in the room, "Blood Guard."

The three of them snapped to attention, "Sir!"

"Cindy is to be escorted to where she needs to go in order to finish the task she's been given." He looked directly at her, and she nodded once.

"I understand. I'll make sure I get it."

"Good." He turned back to his Blood Guard, "Immediately after that, bring everyone that she just mentioned that's been working with her on this to me as soon as possible."

Cindy stopped in place, "You don't think…"

"No, I really don't. I think the concepts are too closely related to preexisting things to get the same prize, but we should be able to get second best." Kay nodded at the door, "Now go. The sooner, the better, literally in this case."

Cindy nodded and sprinted out the door, the Blood Guard on her heels.

"Meten."

"Yes?"

"Go find her team, please. They're probably worried at this point, and we might as well bind them to her and to us as best we can."

"I'm on it."

After Meten had left, Kay slumped back in his chair. "What a fucking day."

"You realize we're going to be even more of a massive target to everyone else in the world now, right?" Eleniah asked.

Kay shrugged lazily, "I think we're going to be able to handle it. Maybe not perfectly, but we'll be able to weather the storm."

"Well, to make sure we do, I'm going to go check in on all the training I'm in charge of and do my best to help make sure we're ready for the storm to come."

With that, everyone else started filtering out to go do their jobs as well, until Kay was the only person left in the room with Isla's illusionary duplicate.

Kay glanced at the image of a man, "Are you actually here, or can you run that remotely?"

The illusion faded like melting snow, and a second later, Isla landed on his shoulder. "I can see and hear through some of my illusions, so sometimes I'm not in the room, but your summon today sounded serious enough that I showed up in person." She grinned up at him, "And I'm so glad I did!" She did a little twirl. "Two Class Line Progenitors in one place, both sworn to the same goals?" She giggled happily, "Coming here was the best idea ever! Everything's so exciting!"

Kay stood up, carefully balancing her, so she didn't fall off of him. "Yeah, well, what can I say? Apparently, we Outworlders really do bring adventurer and excitement everywhere we go.

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