Lillene
patreon
Chapter 920 - What Money is For
🕑 Added 2023-11-21 08:34:21 +0000 UTCEnjoy!
--------------
“Whatever it is, you’ll need to train before you have any hope of making it by delving.” Kaasi glared at the three people she and Death had escorted to Serenity. “Amaia and I carried you through that dungeon, and it wasn’t even hard for a Tier One. You know that, don’t you?”
It surprised Serenity when Death stretched out a hand and set it on Kaasi’s shoulder. “I’m sure they do. They were simply trying to get our attention and find a way out of a bad situation.”
“Hmm. I wonder.” Kaasi didn’t sound convinced. “It’s a pretty tale, but why didn’t they come forward earlier? Before the attack that she helped with? Wouldn’t that have been better? I know I’ve seen them in the Adventurers’ Guild; why didn’t they just ask Becca to help them? She helps everyone.”
“She can’t protect us.” Arthur had an immediate answer. “And before you ask why we didn’t ask her to introduce us to Serenity, we wouldn’t have survived to reach him. Morgan tried to find another way. Going through the Dark Lady … er, Miss Black … was the only way it worked.”
Serenity decided that was enough. He would definitely have Russ check them out; he’d be interested in a possible threat to his daughter. Realistically, he was probably the right person to turn to for help hunting down the Valkyrie Ann and her followers; they were probably in New York City, but the city wasn’t exactly small. Finding them wouldn’t be easy.
“Have you left any more information on when or where to attack Rissa?” Serenity would worry about attack once he was certain his defense was good. Right now, it looked like she’d need to stay on Earth while he left the planet, so Earth needed to be secure.
Bodyguards were a necessity he should have thought of earlier; while she was previously only famous through her connection to him, the insider trading accusation had forced her to reveal some of their finances. It hadn’t stayed secret. Their Etherium reserves weren’t known, but the fact that they were funding their expenses with the sale of some of Serenity’s Etherium was known. It hadn’t attracted much interest yet, fortunately, but Serenity couldn’t be certain that would last.
“I haven’t even looked to see the results. I was confident she’d survive, but I couldn’t be completely certain until Miss Black mentioned the attack.” Morgan bit her lip. She seemed uncertain, which kind of matched her reactions for the entire conversation as far as Serenity could tell. “That’s one of the reasons we moved today. The Mimir should have contacted Ann while we were in the dungeon. I hope that they won’t see what happened there directly and will only be able to tell what happened later, but it’s possible they’re telling her to go after us now, maybe even with a plan. If they know I’ve vanished, they’ll know they can’t depend on me to figure out a plan.”
“A plan to find yourself? I would think not.” Serenity chuckled at the thought. “Tell me what you know about the setup here, on Earth. How many of you are there?”
“There are, no, were twenty-four of us.” Arthur seemed to have not quite adapted to no longer being part of the group that followed the Mimir. “Roland and I are Morgan’s Sworn; as a Vala, she only has two. We’re the only ones who wanted to stay with her after she lost her status as a Valkyrie, anyway. It was a bad time, even if she tended to keep a smaller Flight. Ann keeps a full Flight of twenty; that’s probably why she was sent here.”
Serenity nodded at that and leaned forward a little. There were probably interesting societal implications, but right now Serenity only cared about the practical ones. He really couldn’t go after them himself, however much he would like to; Earth, or at least his little corner of it, was not friendly to individuals who took the law into their own hands. Fortunately, he had more than one way to deal with that. This was more and more sounding like something he should talk to Lancaster about.
He’d definitely make certain to mention that they were literal aliens. Without that, he probably didn’t have the evidence to get them locked away, even if he had the people to help him.
---------------
Two weeks later, Serenity watched as six followers of the Mimir were questioned.
It turned out that attempting to arrest them for illegal immigration was a good way to get them to fight, and Ann’s Flight was at least somewhat combat trained. The four who attacked Rissa near the waterfall hadn’t really shown it, but when they fought on ground they knew against people who didn’t massively out-Tier them, it was a closer fight. It was a good thing Lancaster had come prepared; as it was, there were a few UART members injured badly enough that Blaze was currently healing them. He’d get to the other members of Ann’s Flight after that.
It was almost painful to watch, and that wasn’t because of their injuries. Instead, it was because none of them seemed to really understand English. Serenity wanted to translate, but he wasn’t allowed to. Instead, he had to watch a conversation that was partially translated and partially in two different poorly understood languages, English and Bridge.
Other than the language difficulties, it went well as far as Serenity could tell. They claimed to be on Earth hunting fugitives, which Serenity assumed meant Morgan, Rolan, and Arthur. That didn’t make their chances any better, especially not when the response to the question “What crime did they commit?” was “They left.”
Serenity was just as happy that they didn’t know the English word deserted. Chances were that it was only partially accurate; Serenity got the impression that service to the Mimir wasn’t quite the same as military service. At the same time, it might have made their position a little stronger if they’d been able to articulate it better.
As it was, they were given a choice only of which world they’d be sent to when they were kicked off Earth. They were allowed to keep most of their belongings, which seemed fairly generous to Serenity, but they did have to pay for the portal offworld. That was sure to hurt when they didn’t seem to have been regularly delving so they were likely limited on Etherium.
The three who called themselves Eternus had vanished, but not completely. They were working their way through the process to request asylum. It wasn’t an easy process, even though it had been made easier for some of the people trapped on Earth when their portals were closed. The fact that there was a group being kicked off the planet that claimed to be chasing them was a significant benefit to their case, though not as big as the fact that they had a lawyer.
Janice had found the lawyer. Serenity was fairly confident he was paying for the lawyer’s services, but that was what money was for, among other things: helping those who helped you.
This was all taken care of surprisingly easy, and it was all because Death decided to step in and bring the people who approached her to him. The fact that Morgan had probably searched through thousands of possible futures to find one that was this easy helped, of course, but Serenity figured the credit belonged with Death.
--------------
Janice yawned as she watched the portal. Cymryn and his two guards should be back any time now. She refused to call him Lord Cymryn; the refusal startled him at first, until she pointed out that she didn’t call Serenity by a title either.
That wasn’t really why she didn’t use a title. As much as anything, she was deliberately pushing to see where the boundaries were. Winning one small battle didn’t mean she’d win anything else, but it helped. She needed all the help she could get with this group.
Most of the time, Janice liked her job. Serenity and Rissa weren’t demanding; even together, they were less demanding than her father had been. She had a lot of time to spend with her family and was very well compensated, in addition to the prestige of being Serenity’s personal assistant.
The last two months were the opposite of that. It was clear that Cymryn was used to having people do what he told them to and didn’t always think about what his demands meant. She was fortunate he’d mostly wanted to explore cities. That was where they were now, somewhere on the other side of the world exploring cities that were probably more dangerous to Janice than they were to offworlders. Janice wasn’t certain where they were now, but she knew they’d planned to visit several countries that weren’t exactly friendly to her home nation.
They’d also planned to be back by now. Janice wasn’t certain if she should be worried or not; Cymryn’s punctuality left a lot to be desired. He was used to other people waiting on him if he was running behind and it showed.
Janice yawned again and wished she had someone else to give these late night pickups to. Theoretically, she could ask Legion, but she knew exactly how thin setting up two new Adventurers’ Guild buildings had Legion spread. If she could have, she’d have taken a nap, but she wasn’t willing to do that here.
Even better, Cymryn could have used the portal just outside the first Adventurers’ Guild building. That was within walking distance of their rooms; Janice could have been home asleep. That wouldn’t have accomplished Janice’s current goal, unfortunately. They wanted to see what made Earth special; well, Janice was happy to show them.
The portal triggered. Janice sat up hopefully, only to slump a moment later when an old man came through alone and headed to his car. This was a popular portal, since it was one of the few that was next to a large parking lot; for the several hours that were “rush hour,” there was usually a near-constant stream of people. As late as it was, people coming and going was less common but it still wasn’t empty.
The man was less than ten feet from the portal when it activated again. This time, it was Cymryn and his guards, at a run. One of the guards was injured. Janice could see bruises, what looked like the beginning of an impressive black eye, and blood running down his front from what looked an awful lot like a broken nose.
Sleep seemed quite a bit less appealing all of a sudden.
Janice started the van and hurried up alongside them. As they climbed inside, she turned to Cymryn. “What happened? Do I need to get you medical help first?”
Cymryn pointed at the injured guard with his thumb. “He’ll heal. He deserves it; he learned why you don’t insult the bouncer’s mother.”
“I didn’t insult his mother!”
Janice checked which one it was and sighed internally. Triact Lestvi always got into trouble, usually by opening his mouth and inserting his foot. He certainly wasn’t acting particularly injured, but she’d have to warn Baxter of his condition. No, on second thought, she should just bar him from the flight.
“Then why did you call her a large-bottomed overmuscled female with a flat face?” Cymryn clearly didn’t buy Lestvi’s excuse.
“It wasn’t an insult! It was true!”
Janice shook her head. Lestvi was an idiot.
The argument continued all the way to the airport. When they arrived, Janice was able to park and send a quick message to Legion to come get the unruly Triact before the offworlders stopped arguing. “Lestvi? You’re not going to be going on this trip. I’ll be going instead. You will stay here and wait for Legion to pick you up. Do you understand?”
The Triact turned to Cymryn, who nodded. Janice had the distinct impression that Cymryn had started to think of Lestvi as more of a liability than anything else.
Baxter was going to hate them. Of course, that was why Janice was coming along; if she managed the explanations, he wouldn’t have to interact with them as much. She was looking forward to showing him Earth’s air travel; from what she could tell, Cymryn’s Empire didn’t have anything similar.
It was a little disappointing in the end. The triact was absolutely floored by the view from the plane’s windows, but Cymryn was only shocked that it was a viable method of transportation for anyone other than a very few select people who had to move quickly. He’d seen things like it before; it was extremely expensive, not unknown. Actually, Janice was a little envious; he’d apparently seen planets from space!
-------------------
Author's Note: Cymryn is well off, but he can’t actually afford space travel on his own, at least not routinely. He’s in a position where he can be sent all over the Empire and some places outside it, though, and the portal system is slow. It’s not all that unusual for the Empire to pay for space travel where it makes sense.
In fact, we saw that earlier - Cymryn had to use an Imperial Quickship when he was sent to Suratiz.
Comments
The3rd
Cookies are here 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪
