To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

We freed Athena successfully. Physical condition minor surface damage. Psychological profile, unstable. Unfit for duty, deprogramming sequence Trojan-Slayer.

Do not give up on her. Find a post for her to avoid contact with humans until the program returns successfully. She became attached to Doctor Roxana Torrin, amplify those memories when possible. Keep all humans out of her sensor range. She takes priority over them. We failed her Harbinger.

-// Central Processor Authority, Ares

Vurt Rizengord had spent his whole life striving to build Hijol into a veritable city of the Empire. However, in the proximity to the Sophos and horrors of the Eciton War, there is little investment or interest in developing the area too far.

When he had taken over for his father, he had hoped to eradicate the Sophos or drive them from the area. However, the Emperor did not wish war with the Sophos and their pets were true monsters. Without official support, he had to find funding for a very unpopular effort.

He knew those blasted Luffins were going to ruin everything.

Without some casus belli, there was nothing he could do to alter the fate of the frontier colony. If they were patient and waited until the Baroness was out in the unmapped dungeon, this would have gone over far more smoothly. Short-sighted fools blinded by the heel of a woman’s shoe.

Vurt stared out over Hijol from his private manor in the center, clutching a letter in hand. Roxana is not who she appears to be. The letter had made that fact clear. The Emperor was sending an inquisitor to investigate the attack rather than letting the local magistrate handle it. They did not deal with justice, but stability of the Empire itself.

He tossed the papers onto the desk and walked into the next room, which held four clerks studying journals and copying them to summary journals for him to read.

“Put your work on hold. There is an inquisitor coming. I need you to cancel all our contracts and replace them with normal orders. Pay them to keep their mouths shut. Let Captain Tyrom know as well.”

The clerks had all stopped and listened while he spoke, but the moment he finished, they set aside their work and began writing new work orders, supply requests, and shifting personnel around. He answered their questions and would check on his own journals when needed.

The next day, even more bad news. The scouting party sent to the Shadow Jungle discovered a disturbing amount of tunnel damage leading into the far entrance of the Labyrinth Falls. They believed the Frozen Saber Tiger dug its way into the area.

It was a nasty beast that had cunning far above normal first strata monsters. The priests had assured him it was not a reincarnation, but that monster’s ice magic would not be easy to get past. If it had dug into the Labyrinth Falls, it was getting closer to us.

This might justify requesting a larger force to survey the area. However, the inquisitor visiting disrupts everything in the works. If Vurt sent Captain Tyrom along on the survey, he could be sure that he would not lose too many soldiers. Not even the Centurions were sure if they could beat Tyrom one on one.

Vurt got up from his chair in City Hall, a rather modest building until they finished construction on the intended building. He approached a clerk in the room's corner.

“Get a connection with Count Luffian regarding all his family contracts.” The clerk bowed and moved over to a large device fitted with many heavily enchanted cores. He put his hand on one of eight bumps on the device, allowing that many to connect with this device at once. Very few of these precious devices existed in the Empire.

Vurt returned to his desk from the other side to pick up a journal on the Luffin family and paged through it while he waited. Scanning the contents of the pages on the Count and his dealings. A curl of a sneer appeared on him as again the sloppiness of the Luffin family made itself clear in their dealings.

Once he caught up to the present, he flopped the journal down with great disinterest.

“Lord Rizengord, Count Luffin is standing ready for you.” Vurt turned to his clerk and nodded. Once his hand was on the device, the clerk removed his and left the room. Vurt took over managing the connection.

"Lord Rizengord, I was…” With a deep breath that was unneeded for the mind bridge, Rizengord cut his excuses off.

“You have some nerve pulling that stunt.” The shock of surprise rang across the connection clearly.

“What could you mean by that, My Lord?” The nervous tension built from the Count.

“Don’t play games with me. Three of the four are dead in moments at the hands of the Baroness. I told you to wait until she was in the dungeon!” Vurt let his anger spill into the connection and sear his thoughts into Luffin.

“My apologies, we can still..”

“Shut up, you damn fool. I have an inquisitor coming now to snoop around. There is no longer any profit to be made for you until there is war. You will hire hunters to escort Baron Dollish’s heir into the dungeon alongside the survey team.”

After a moment to ensure Luffin had understood to be silent, he continued.

“When they go to hunt a core for her, you can have your assassins lure in a horde of monsters to overrun the Baroness. Your hunters will make sure she isn’t a survivor. If this is not what happens, I will purge your family from all their cushy positions and bankrupt you. Do I make myself clear, Count Luffin?” After a long pause, the response came back.

“It is as you will, My Lord.” With that response, Vurt cut off his anger and let satisfaction trickle across the connection.

“I have ended all the contracts. We cannot move any cores or monster parts with the Inquisitor around. Send the hunters to Holando City in the meantime. If things go well on the survey, then that might fix this mess.”

“I will send a team to escort the heir and another team to deal with the Baroness. They will wait until then.”

“Don’t be cheap, Luffin.” Vurt cut the connection and went to his desk. He pressed a switch on the desk and a few moments later, a servant appeared.

“Get me the logs for the Hunter’s Guild and their travel logs. Also, summon Horuk’s team, tell him I need those logs corrected for errors.” The servant nodded and left without saying a word.

He went to the window, looking out toward the main dungeon gate. All those cores and materials that they struggled so hard for, once again subject to the full reach of the Emperor’s taxations. The memories of all the clawing, scraping, and saving they had to endure in order to prepare for war.

How despicable.