Blood Shaper

Book 4: Chapter 29

“Nothing?” Kay repeated.

“The last link in the chain led to an empty apartment,” Isla confirmed. She shifted deeper into the tiny chair on Kay’s desk. “Whoever our quarry actually was, and we can confirm that she wasn’t a traveling Bannerthrust merchant, she’s vanished.”

“So we don’t know who hired the duelist to work with the assassins?”

“No, I’ve got some idea of who did it; I’m just stuck with a good hypothesis because we didn’t get any solid proof.’

“Oh?” Eleniah leaned closer in her own seat across the desk from Kay. She’d only left his side when he was sleeping, bathing, and using the bathroom over the past day after the assassination attempt. Her reason for wanting to be ready for a follow-up attack wasn’t worth arguing against, but Kay was pretty sure she was just being anxious. “Is it someone we can go after?”

Isla shook her head. “Sadly, no, it isn’t. I put out a few feelers and sent some people around asking questions about a group of professional assassins that match the ones we care about and get some decent intel. Based on where they were hired, how they got paid, and the little bits of info we got from mister Quenrev of Vaihren, it was one of the Coalition of Fang’s End’s groups. Without real proof we can show off as a justification, hitting any of them would be a public relations nightmare, and that’s assuming we even find out which faction ordered the hit.”

“The Coalition of Fang’s End, that’s the not-so-popular vampyr hunting group, right?” Kay asked, “I’m not happy that any of that kinds of organizations are ignoring me not being a vampyr, but having it be one of the groups people aren’t too pleased with is better than it being the Shatterplate Order or those Crusade people.”

“People don’t like the Coalition because they’re terrorists.” Eleniah spat.

“Both of you are technically correct,” Isla said, making a face and pretending to balance weights with her hands. “But that’s not the complete picture either. To Kay’s comment first, the Coalition of Fang’s End isn’t a ridiculously named organization of vampyr hunters; they’re roughly two to three dozen different smaller groups or notable individuals who all want to eradicate vampyr, divided into three disorganized and constantly shifting factions that have decided to sit on each other's shoulders with a big cloak on and pretend that they’re one group. Oh, and they’re all constantly fighting about who gets to be on top and talk to people.” She held up her hand and counted off on her fingers, “The first faction is the least radical of the three. The main source of leadership and resources for that faction comes from a decently powerful band called ‘Blood’s Requiem’, and more specifically, a man who calls himself ‘The Requiem’. No one knows his actual identity. Apparently he’s always seen with a mask on and has some kind of Identify blocking item or Skill. He and his faction claim to be the founders of the Coalition and say that they still act on its true spirit or some-such. They give speeches.”

“I mean, the bad naming sense seems to hold true if they are the original founders,” Eleniah muttered.

“I agree. The Requiem are all…” She looked up at Kay, “What’s that term you told me about? The people who wear all black and mope a lot while they mutter to themselves about how dark and mysterious they are?”

“They’re all edgelords?”

“Yes, edgelords. They all had some kind of traumatic past with vampyr, and they won’t shut up about how each and everyone of them is some misunderstood dark figure, but they really want to do what’s best, even if it goes against the grain of others. Or something in that vein, at least. They do kill vampyr, and while their numbers are better than the other Coalition factions, they’re abysmal compared to the real vampyr-hunting organizations. They try not to cause collateral damage or hurt innocents, but they don’t try that hard. They’re also the smallest faction at this time.”

“Be more specific on the not trying that hard part, please.”

“Of course. Why don’t I go into more detail for each? The Requiem faction has the largest number of single individuals of note among their members. Those are individuals who are a minimum of tier-four and have killed a pwerful vampyr or dealt with a complex situation involving vampyr single handedly.” She took a breath to continue before sighing, slightly disappointed. “The one trait you could say all of the Coalition shares is that they’re lazy, although, again, the Requiem is somewhat better than the other two factions-”

“How are they able to fight vampyr then?” Kay cut in, “Or get tier-four fighters? I’d think lazy people would be off doing something easy and less life-threatening.”

Isla paused with her mouth open, thinking through her explanation. “They’re lazy in their execution. They’re willing to fight and train to get stronger, but they aren’t willing to truly push themselves to do it better or smarter. The Shatterplate Order is where you go if you want to kill vampyr and are willing to put in a lot of time and effort into investigating reports and rumors and getting everything just right before they push in at their target. Shatterplate hunting teams are the main discoverers of vampyr that are sane enough to hide themselves in population centers or have secret bases and such. If you’re the kind of person willing to train night and day and become part of an army dedicated to wiping out vampyr and mainly dealing with loud and obvious vampyr problems like an entire town being taken over and turned, you end up in the Itarian Crusade. The Coalition are the people who hear that there might be a vampyr in a village, go there, then kill the first ‘suspicious’ person they see. They put no effort into anything other than the actual act of fighting and killing.”

“Then they are terrorists.”

“I wouldn’t call the Requiem faction terrorists because they aren’t trying to push a message or an ideal. They’re murderers, absolutely, but that’s really all they are.”

Eleniah was sitting at the edge of her seat, listening intently. “Then which faction are terrorists?”

“The third one, but we’ll come to them last. I privately call the second faction ‘the purge faction’, but they don’t have an official name that I have found. I’d say they’re the most fanatical of the three factions, at least when it comes to their actual stated mission of killing vampyr. There are a handful of groups that are part of the purge faction, and while they will coordinate together to take on larger enemies, they mostly work as independent bands. They’re also the faction most people think about when you’re talking about the Coalition, except the terrorists. The thing that sets them apart from the Requiem faction is that they don’t care about collateral damage and their idea of what counts as collateral damage is heavily skewed. When they kill a vampyr, they also find the people that were the most around the vampyr and kill them too, to stop ‘the spread of corruption’. It’s not uncommon to hear about an entire village being put to the sword because someone who got turned into a vampyr was from there. Every group that is a part of that faction is considered wanted criminals by most nations, and every once in a while, they wipe one out, but there always seems to be more of them. Again, while they are mass murderers, they aren’t trying to force or scare anyone into actually doing anything, so I consider them separate from the terrorist faction.”

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“Do they have a leader?”

“There was one figure who was seen as the nominal leader of that faction, but they were recently caught and executed for their crimes.” Isla crossed her legs and leaned back. “And that leaves the faction, I believe, paid for you to be killed.”

“The terrorists.”

“Correct. They’re led by an unknown figure or group of figures whose true identities are unknown. The fact that they have leadership at all was only revealed when someone broke during interrogation. The terrorist faction likely splintered from the purge faction at some point in the past as their ideology changed. They don’t actively work to fight vampyr, though they will kill one if the opportunity presents itself. Instead, they perform assassinations and terror attacks targeting leaders and high tier individuals they feel are helping vampyr in some way, or aren’t ‘putting enough effort into combating the vampyric scourge’.”

Kay sighed as he mirrored Isla by leaning back in his seat. “And by killing me or having me killed, they win on both of their fronts. Dead vampyr and dead leader they imagine must be supporting vampyr.”

'Right.”

Eleniah scowled, “And why can’t we go out and crush them? I know the other countries that have to deal with them are constantly hunting them down. Taking something like this lying down will make Kay a more open target to others.”

“The first and most important reason that we’re not retaliating is that we don’t actually know who paid for the hit, and I don’t think our esteemed leader wants us to kill people that don’t have anything to do with this.”

“It’s true, I’d rather we didn’t,” Kay responded.

Isla pointed at him and continued, “I don’t think you’re actually interested in that later. The second reason backs up the first reason, which is even if they all fight like rabid dogs amongst themselves, the instant anyone from outside of their factions tries to touch one of their own, the entire Coalition bands together against the intruders. We’d have to take out the entire Coalition just to eventually get the one cell of the terrorist faction we want. It’s just not worth it when we don’t have better info. The last reason we’ve already talked about is that we can’t afford the public perception we’d get from doing it. Not retaliating to an assassination attempt does make us look weak to certain parties, and some people will think Kay is an easier target and step up their attempts to attack or otherwise harass him. We can deal with that by having Kay destroy them utterly when they do attack.” She held up a hand to cut off Kay before he could speak, “Within reason. No one is expecting you to take out an entire team of assassins that are at tier parity with you by yourself unless you have a serious advantage. Anyone else, though? Destroy them. If we did go and start wiping out pieces of the Coalition, though, it would completely wipe out any goodwill or eve neutral feelings we might have or could gain from the organizations and nations out there worried you are a vampyr. We can’t afford that.”

Eleniah slowly relaxed her clenched fist. “I don’t like having a threat looming around that we can’t do anything about.”

“That’s a ridiculous way to feel.” Isla scoffed, “Well, not in general, but for these particular circumstances it is.” She amended, “I may not be taking immediate, direct actions toward completely removing the problem form the board, but I’m not doing nothing. We have several members of the Blood Guard personal protection division going into retraining to help mitigate future events like this; Amanda, Ahthia, and I are all looking into finding specialized barrier-breaking Classes or Skills, and-“

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Oh. Well, I can’t do anything about that if you need to be taking direct action against the threat to make that feeling go away, but I do have something you can do.”

“What’s that?”

Isla reached into a tiny pouch on her hip and pulled out a card. As it moved out of the container and into open space, it began to grow until it was larger than Isla was. It gently fluttered out of her hand and landed on the desk. “You can go to a nice dinner.”

Kay reached down and snatched up the card before Eleniah could, ignoring her glare. “How will that help?”

“Do you remember Kolm Davidson?”

“The suspicious man with a Class from Bartender that asked for permission to open some kind of restaurant in Avalon from Kay that’s probably higher tier than us?” Eleniah cut in, “Of course, why?”

“Technically, the first establishment he opened was a bar and eatery. He started constructing a restaurant after that, and the grand opening is apparently tomorrow. He sent a lovely personal invitation for Lord Kay here to attend for a free meal in celebration.”

“So? Lots of people invite Kay to things to make them look cooler. Why is this one important?”

“I’ve done some looking into Mister Davidson, along with anyone else of note that we need to know more about, and what I learned is… honestly, it’s almost nothing at all. He seems to be a man of mystery, and anything I’ve been able to dig up has been completely mundane and useless or contradicts other information I’ve found about him. That, combined with the fact that no one has been able to follow him when he leaves the city, yet he somehow regularly shows up with new ingredients, items, or employees from all over the world, makes him quite high on my list of people to watch. The reason I want you to do to the dinner, however, is this.” She stepped out of her chair and flew up to Kay’s hand. She got him to flip the card over so he could see its back, then tapped it once.

A message appeared written on the back, where previously it had been blank paper. It read, “I have some information I’d love to share with you that I believe you’ll find quite important.”

“Anyone trying to send you secret messages is automatically interesting and looked in to. Usually, it turns out to be something stupid, and we ignore it, but when that person is already someone interesting, it makes me take extra notice. However,” She stressed, “I definitely want you to go and see what he wants when the secret message is disguised with an illusion I could definitely see through, but almost anyone else wouldn’t even notice it was there.”

“That is mildly alarming.”

“And intriguing. As your spymaster, I strongly recommend you go to the dinner and see what he has to say. It is in public, and us knowing exactly who sent this points to him that it isn’t a trap, but take guards who can safely test for poison anyway.” She spun in the air to look at Eleniah, “I think you should go with because you’re an experienced individual who can be helpful in any discussions or negotiations that take place, and you can be an additional string to our lord’s bow if anything happens.”

“You mean I can kill anyone that looks at him funny.” Eleniah smiled savagely.

“That’s a little more excessive than I meant, but otherwise, yes, exactly.”

Kay glanced between the two women who were waiting for his decision. “Eleniah, would you like to go to a fancy dinner with me that might include some espionage or trickery?”

“Why, Kay.” She placed a hand over her heart dramatically and replied breathlessly, “I’d love to!”