Swarming Sovereignty

Lucia, Regent of the Glens, was going about her business as normal, receiving reports on the mobilization of her troops and the organizing of requests from the outlying villages, all to be put in reports she would send her mothers at the end of the day. It was exhausting work, but it was all stuff that would, eventually, die down.

Still, she was happy when she was interrupted by the door to her office opening, Meg entering the room with a white cloth in hand. “Um…We just got this from the Sapphire Empire.” She said, unfurling the cloth to reveal a letter. She shook out the cloth, and it became immediately clear that it was a flag. “It seems they wish to talk.”

Lucia frowned. “Can we even trust the white flag? I’m not completely certain about the God of War, but the Goddess of Law is against us for sure.”

“Probably?” Meg ventured. “Probably best to run it by Lia, though, she’d know.”

Lucia nodded. Lia always did seem to have a strangely good grasp of how the gods viewed the swarm, which almost certainly meant she had some method of contacting a god or listening in on them somehow. Normally that was a notion Lucia would dismiss outright, but Amelia’s presence made that much more plausible.

“I’ll draft a letter.” Lucia said, pulling out a fresh sheet of paper. “Would you be willing to take it to the drop-off for me? It’ll only take a moment for me to finish.”

“Sure!” Meg said. “Can you ask if I can be teleported back to the capital, too? I want to say hi to Neph and everyone else. Being home is nice, but I want to see my friends too, you know?”

“Making a note of it now…” Lucia said, scrawling a quick addendum to her letter before rolling it up, stamping it as urgent, and handing it to Meg. “Amelia should be checking for our daily report in about an hour. Let’s hold off from checking the letter until then, just in case it’s somehow a trap.”

Meg nodded, taking the letter Lucia handed her and leaving the room. Lucia turned back to her report, picking up the pace slightly as she resumed working. She could potentially be summoned to the capital, and she wanted to have a little time to prepare, eat, and generally make herself presentable before she was summoned.

As it turned out, that was a good idea. Shortly after the designated pickup time, Lucia found herself whisked away to the capital, deposited in the residential area, Meg by her side. Moments later, her mothers walked up to them. “Lucia, Meg, it’s good to see you!” Nailah said warmly. “Have you been well? You’re not overworking yourself, right?”

“You’re not one to talk, Mom.” Meg said. “How’s the multiple bodies thing?”

“Like Ophelia said, it was overwhelming at first, but I’m already starting to wonder how I ever made do with just one.” Nailah replied. “Five is the limit before things start getting hard to keep track of, but every day I’m getting better.”

“I thought you only got more than three bodies when one died.” Meg said suspiciously. “You haven’t been purposefully killing your bodies, have you?”

“I got an item from Amelia that does it instantly and painlessly.” Nailah replied. “It’s really only as uncomfortable as pinching yourself hard, and even that goes away after the split finishes. I just put the thing up to my forehead, push a button, and then that body goes numb and the brain is destroyed, killing it instantly. Then we just feed the body to the drones, and the work is done.”

Lucia shifted uncomfortably, not sure how to respond to that. It was so…casual, like she had disregarded all sense of danger surrounding literally killing one of her own bodies. “You…feed your own body to the drones?” She finally said. “Isn’t that…morbid?”

Nailah shrugged. “It’s just meat.” She said. “If you pick off a bit of a scrape, you don’t feel bad about what happens to it later, do you?”

“Well, no, but…” Lucia replied.

“We have to do something with them, and burying them isn’t a permanent solution in the slightest. Maybe they’ll disappear after a while, it hasn’t been long enough yet, but the hope is that if they’re converted to modeling wax, they’ll just sort of…stay. At the very least, that’s what Amelia thinks will happen, and I’m inclined to believe her.”

“We can talk about this later.” Titania said gently. “I believe we have a meeting to attend.”

“A meeting?” Lucia said. “We just sort of got teleported here. What’s this about?”

“Everyone with experience ruling or negotiating is being called to discuss this letter.” Titania explained, turning towards the portal to the work floor and beginning to walk towards it. “Yourself and Meg included, of course. Now, we need to get going, or we’re going to be late.”

“Why didn’t Amelia just teleport us to the meeting place?” Meg asked, moving to keep up with her mother.

“We asked to pick you up, have some time to catch up on the way.” Nailah explained. “Rose is out, so it wouldn’t make the meeting start sooner or anything.”

So, they made their way over to the meeting room at a leisurely pace, making small talk and generally catching up with each other. It was nice, and the atmosphere of the capital was oddly relaxing, despite the important meeting she would soon be attending. It was strange; it was only her second time here, yet it felt…comforting, like she would be safe no matter what while she was here.

That was probably the effect of the World Tree, right? It had such a sense of gravity to it, like it was some unassailable fortress, despite the fact that there were probably ways to damage it. She just…hadn’t seen them yet. Then again, she hadn’t seen many extremely high leveled people in action, nor had she seen very strong monsters. And, of course, Amelia could almost certainly deal with the World Tree, but Amelia didn’t count.

They eventually reached the meeting room, where Lia, Amelia, Alisha, and Ophelia were waiting. “Lucia, good to see you!” Lia said cheerfully. “How’s work treating you?”

“It’s super busy, but I’m guessing it’ll die down after a while.” Lucia replied. “This is just the transitional period.”

“I can step in if you would like.” Nailah offered. “It is somewhat unfair to thrust this on you.”

“Absolutely not.” Lucia replied sharply. “You’re supposed to be taking a break, regardless of how hard the work is right now.”

“But –”

“No buts.” Titania said firmly. “It’s not happening. If she needs help, I’ll do it, not you.”

“Fine, fine.” Nailah said. “But the offer is on the table.”

“It is not.” Ophelia replied. “Lia, please, you’re always on about the importance of breaks, tell her.”

Lia sighed. “I would rather not intrude on your personal matters.” She said. “All I’ll say is this: Nailah, you know as well as I the importance of work-life balance. You were the one who instituted policies banning excessive labor, I would think about what you would advise your wife or children to do were they in your situation, and then do that.”

Nailah nodded reluctantly. “I suppose.” She said. “But I am capable of more now, that’s why we got me multiple bodies. It seems a waste not to use that.”

There was a bit of an awkward silence, and then the floor opened up next to Lia, Rose emerging from it. “Sorry I’m late.” She said. “I came back as fast as I could.”

“You’re fine.” Lia said. “A little faster than expected, even.”

“So, what’s this about a diplomatic meeting?” Rose asked.

Lia held up the letter and white flag. “We received this from the Sapphire Empire.” She said. “I’ve read over the letter, it seems their coalition seeks to have some sort of discussion with us, though I’m not sure what they intend to propose, given how adamant I was that we won’t accept anything less than total surrender, but we need to figure out whether or not we’re going to attend this meeting. What do you all think?”

“Is it safe?” Lucia asked. “The Goddess of Law is against us, but what about the God of War?”

“One of our biggest supporters among the gods.” Lia replied. “I think we don’t need to worry about the sanctity of peace talks being broken, especially after what happened when the Goddess of Law went out of line last time.”

Lucia nodded. “I see. And, sorry to derail this slightly, but I need to mention this before I forget; I was hoping we could get Amelia to patch up the hole in our warding after we send a reply; I don’t feel comfortable with it there while we’re at war with each other.”

“I was going to suggest the same thing.” Amelia said. “Thank you for reminding me.”

“Thanks.” Lucia replied. “My only other question is…what benefit do we gain from opening talks with them if they’re not going to surrender?”

“There’s a chance.” Lia said. “A slim one, yes, but I would prefer to talk things out before resorting to violence. And if we can spread doubt among the minds of the individual rulers, that could weaken the alliance.”

“Still, what do they hope to gain?” Meg asked.

“I assume much the same as us.” Rose mused. “We know they are unlikely to surrender, and they know we are unlikely to stop our offensive. Perhaps they will try to make a show of force in an attempt to scare us off, but I think they’ll find we’re far more equipped to intimidate than they are.”

“When and where?” Nailah asked. “And who can come with you? If at all possible, I would like to be present.”

“Tomorrow, at the international meeting grounds, wherever that is. And it says I am free to bring you, Alisha, Izumi, and anyone else important.” Lia said. “I assume you know where these meeting grounds are?”

Nailah nodded. “We have coordinates to teleport to, ones excluded from that place’s wards, though…I imagine the wards aren’t a concern.”

“They’re not.” Amelia said confidently. “Give me the coordinates, I’ll locate the meeting room and teleport us directly there. It should be a good way to start our intimidation.”

It probably was, now that Lucia was thinking about it. She had gotten so used to Amelia’s casual disregard of what should and shouldn’t be possible that she had almost forgotten the fact that most anti-teleportation wards around important locations were relics of the Ruby Empire, things long deemed unbreachable without the concerted effort of multiple mages over several days. Even now, hundreds of years later, they were barely learning how the things worked, and had only succeeded in modifying the wards if they had access to their physical anchors.

“You know, I might as well touch up our wards while I’m closing those holes.” Amelia mused. “I don’t feel comfortable having our important locations guarded by such flimsy spellwork. I’ll need to make a ward for here, too, but with my power sealed I’m not great at this sort of thing, so it’ll be a little iffy. I guess that’s my fault for using it as a crutch, though.”

Lucia had to resist the urge to snort. Amelia’s “iffy” was probably as good as the wards around the Glens’ castle, if her skill in other types of magic and clear disdain of the world’s best wards was any indicator.

“Whatever you can manage will be plenty for now, I’m sure.” Rose said. “Would it be better than the wards currently in common use?”

“Yeah, two or three times better, I think.” Amelia said. “That’s not a high bar to clear, though, once you know where to look those things are full of holes, I’m just patching those holes up, really.”

“Then we’ll be fine, at least until this plane is conquered or the Lord of Monsters arrives.” Rose said. “People can’t bypass the wards currently in place, I highly doubt they’ll be able to thwart whatever you come up with.”

Amelia frowned. “If you say so.” She said warily.

“But, to steer us back to the subject at hand, we need to think about how we’ll approach this.” Rose said. “We can assume a full surrender is not in the cards, so we should instead be thinking about what else we want.”

“The most obvious answer is to cause a rift among them.” Nailah said. “It always seemed like their alliances and treaties were constantly on the edge of falling apart when I was trying to hold them together, but now I’m having trouble imagining them splitting up. I suppose nothing unites people like a common enemy.”

“Well, we can start by sowing doubt about who is part of the swarm.” Amelia said. “Though I’m afraid that might end up with Emily being discovered.”

“I made her into an infiltrator, Mistress.” Alisha said. “I haven’t checked, but I assume that means she has a built-in way to disguise her status, right?”

Amelia shook her head. “No. Statuses are very hard to fake, and any time I wanted to grant an ability that would let someone do so, it would end up costing an exorbitant amount of my power, and I would have to wait weeks to recover it. The best I could do was mimic stuff from existing Jobs and make a Skill that can prevent others from seeing your status at all if their Skill level isn’t high enough. She almost certainly has a Skill like that, but it won’t help her if the act of not showing her status would essentially be the same as admitting she’s part of the swarm.”

“Is there a way we could make it so they don’t want to reveal their statuses to each other?” Lia asked. “Like, surely there are some things they want to keep secret, is there a lever we could pull there to make them hesitant to read the statuses of everyone else present?”

Nailah frowned. “Usually, they already think that way; even if they have nothing to hide, they’ll hide their statuses anyway, because every bit of information given to outsiders is a risk, even if that information is just that you don’t have anything shady. In this scenario, though, that goes out the window if they get desperate enough. I think that if we pushed too hard in saying that any one of them could be part of the swarm, it would just backfire and end with Emily being exposed.

“In my opinion, it would be best to keep the fact that we could have a spy among them unconfirmed. They already assume we’re capable of it, but we don’t need to outright say it and put them more on edge.”

“I think that’s probably the right call.” Rose said. “We have plenty of other ways to make them antsy, we don’t need to go with that one in particular.”

“So, what will we do, then?” Lia asked.

“I have a few ideas…”