D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

Chapter 2010: Chapter 2010 Problems on the Horizon

— Kat —

When they made it back to Steel’s house, they found the man in question finishing up a meal. “Ah, you’re back,” said Steel with a touch of surprise.

“Wait, why do you seem so surprised about that?” asked Kat.

“A number of people, myself included, sort of assumed that you’d both take the chance to leave when you could. Considering the issues you’ve had here,” admitted Steel with a slight shrug.

“Perhaps,” agreed Kat. “We ultimately decided to stick around for now though.”

“Hmm, well we might need to look into getting you your own place if you plan to stick around more long term. For now though, it’s not an issue. The reason I called you over, assuming you came back, is that Jen Halebloom woke up while you were away. Not for long, and we didn’t even try to question her at the time. All that’s happened so far is she’s woken up, eaten, and then collapsed again.

“The important thing here however, is that we needed to notify her family. While she is a criminal, she also nearly died while within our care before being formally charged for something. Now… somewhat luckily we were able to contact one member in particular… and well…” Steel trailed off.

“It’s Lin isn’t it?” sighed Kat.

“Exactly. We could’ve told someone else… but she qualifies under the law and while not ideal for many, many reasons, is likely still the best person to tell. We were hoping you might be willing to come along because of that,” offered Steel.

“Why?” asked Kat. “I mean, I’m fine with it… but how would it help?”

“For some reason Lin seems to like you. How far that really stretches is up in the air, but we’re hoping that some combination of you three will allow us to get the most information. You by potentially placating Lin or convincing her to go easier on the guards, while Hedera and Lily can act as the intimidation if we need. We’re not sure it WILL be needed mind you, and as scary as they could be for her…

“She did get blown up by her own people. As far as we can tell anyway so we’re hoping that information, confirmed through Lin, is enough. That being said, we’re not entirely sure she’ll be willing to say anything at all. Depending on how devoted she is to her cause. Which, at this point, we’re not even sure we know what it is anymore,” explained Steel.

“Do you know when she’s going to wake up next?” asked Kat.

Steel shook his head. “No but if she’s not up by eight maybe eight thirty we’ll be waking her up so she can eat. Now that she’s proven to be healed enough TO wake up it’s important she actually takes in some real food. The chance to interrogate her is one we’re going to have to take. It’s not ideal, but considering the stakes we aren’t going to be too gentle about it,”

Kat nodded along. “So, are we heading out soon? Are you coming with us? What’s the plan?”

“I’ll be going along, but likely won’t be the interrogation room with you. I’m security more than anything but frankly, I’m exhausted,” admitted Steel. “I’m not going to be taking the lead on the investigation, as it seems like, whatever was happening, isn’t an immediate problem.”

“You don’t think it’s related to… everything?” asked Kat. “And what about the stolen orbs?”

“The stolen orbs almost certainly were used to help in the siege,” explained Steel. “There’s very few ways they could equip such a large amount of people with acceptable levels of enchanting without them. It’s not entirely solved of course. The ’how’ and ’who’ exactly were responsible are still on the table but we don’t think it’s likely they’ll be after more orbs in the near future.

“As for exactly what’s happened with Jen? That’s a more complicated issue. Is it revenge for the Haleblooms pulling out? What about the Fleurs? Were they involved on either side? It’s not like we captured that many people. When someone went down they did well extracting them. It could be so many various things that caused Jen’s assassination. Especially considering the enchantment that caused the explosion was old. Perhaps they didn’t intend to do quite that much damage.

“It’s why we contact Lin rather than anyone else. We’re hoping she can shine some light on the issue and point us in at least vaguely the correct direction. Sadly, involving her means that anything she wants to keep hidden is likely going to remain so. We’re hoping that whatever she decides to hide isn’t so important to us.”

“That seems… a bit defeatist?” offered Kat unsure.

Steel shrugged, “We’re juggling a few too many plates at the moment to be overly concerned about it. The King doesn’t want to start using heavy ordinance in the city and considering the Diggers are a mining family they are… sadly, authorised to keep such enchantments around to help with the digging.”

“That seems… shortsighted,” commented Hedera.

“It’s one of the rights they maintained from before the city was ever shut off and we didn’t realise quite how… problematic it could potentially be until some time after that. By the time it was even in contention as something we might want to remove there was far too high a chance they’d just set all of the enchantments off instead of returning them. Plus, back in the earlier days they weren’t such a large faction, nor did we know how close they were with the other two.

“It would’ve been quite the nuisance to enforce, and shortsighted as they really do need those enchantments for certain harder sections of rock and metal. Sadly… just because they have a legitimate use for them doesn’t mean they can’t be exceptionally damaging to the rest of the city,” sighed Steel.

“And there was no other way to force the issue?” asked Hedera.

“Forcing the issue has always been the worry,” countered Steel. “We don’t want to risk this escalating into a proper war. Even that skirmish we just had wasn’t truly that bad. We had good defences and the enemy wasn’t pushing too hard because they didn’t want us to capture or kill anyone.

“If it really was ’the city’ versus ’the Diggers’ then I can imagine explosives across the sewers, civilians constantly being harassed or attacked. Things aren’t ideal but they could be much, much worse. For all that the Diggers want to leave, the fact they aren’t willing to escalate to the point of destroying the city on the way out is a big relief for us you know? We don’t want to push them to that point because stopping them would be hard. Sure we could ’win’ every battle but if the city is destroyed we’ve lost the war.”

“I suppose with you lacking the ability to move or focus on forcing them all out, it makes the ordeal a lot harder,” acknowledged Hedera.

“Indeed. It’s why the tunnel that Weaver has set up is so key. If we can start to show we’re willing to allow them to leave, and bleed off that tension we will be in a far better position. Sadly, while the advisors are quite fine with just about anyone leaving. They are a lot less ok with new people coming in even temporarily. Same as having people return. It’s the big sticking point right now that’s preventing us from opening things up asap. I’m not sure they’re wrong to debate over it either,” sighed Steel.

Kat nodded slowly herself. “What are the current plans?”

“We’re hoping to sit the Diggers down for a long talk and offer some sort of collective deal for a large chunk of the family. The problem is, we don’t really have too many options for filling the hole they’re going to leave. They’ve quite aggressively defended their near monopoly on mining, something we do really need for the city. Simply getting rid of all of them isn’t ideal.

“I’m unsure if the other two families would be involved or not. If we want a swift resolution… it could go either way. The Diggers might just hold the talks hostage and then get advice at the end of the day. Or perhaps having the three of them around as a solid block against the city administration would make them think they can force us to make a number of concessions we don’t want to,” sighed Steel.

“Will we be involved in that?” asked Kat.

Steel shrugged, “At the moment it’s all up the in air. No firm time or location for such a discussion has been accepted, we haven’t reached out to the Diggers seriously about it either, though we haven’t tried to keep it a secret. We want them to know, just no ’officially’. If you’re still around, you’d make for a strong somewhat neutral guard… but that might just been seen as an intimidation tactic. Then again, if they try the same thing…” Steel finished with a shrug.