NOVEL NEXT Chapter 59: Beyond Power
Jake manages to calm himself down as the even where he came face to face with an unchained demon quickly becomes a memory. He can only imagine what the rest of the paranormal division is up to while he's not actively paying attention to, despite not wanting to. The mermaid is currently playing around with a now flaming idol of... herself. From what he understood, these are usually meant to summon something, as he can imagine someone calling your name at an interdimensional level would make one quite curious to go check it out. For a moment, Jake works up the courage to ask what he actually wanted to ask her.
"Esstrey... I do need your help with something, I believe a set of nobles is using a get-together as a disguise to plot against me in room 3-F, and I need a way to know what is going on in there. Do you have a way to investigate it?" Esstrey turns to look at Jake with a predatory look, she puts the idol down next to some books about beacons she got from Plynka. If she works on this, it might slow down whatever it is she's planning.
"Yes... yes, I believe I can help with that. Give me a second." She looks around for a bit, and slowly wanders through the room. Right up until she stops at a random point, slowly gets her claw ready and... smashes a hole into the wall. In her claw coming from the hole is a rat, a small one that must have made the walls its home while preying on the kitchen. Now it has the unfortunate experience of meeting the good doctor as well. She puts the rat on a table, and begins cutting it open.
"You see young master Jake, power comes in many forms. What you asked of me just now was information, information, after all, is half the battle. The other half is violence, they do go so well hand in hand. As the future Duke of Malencia, it is your duty to know how your subordinates handle power. Had you asked this of Rowan, he probably would have sent one of the guards to spy on them directly, a method so crude it just might work. Kharn would have probably sent a spy to cling to the window or something, while the paranormal division would... I actually don't know what they would do." Esstrey begins to dig into the rat with gusto, tiny organs are removed as her blood magic killed the rat at some point.
"My specialty is blood magic, something normally only found in vampires. When possible, I try to abuse this to the maximum that I can, since it's pretty hard to find a teacher in blood magic that doesn't suspect you of trying to overthrow them. A lot of this is a learning experience for myself as well, and in my studies I found something interesting. Tree sap counts as blood, do you know what this means?" Jake simply looks at Esstrey to wait for her to explain things, he only knows some degree of dark magic and only ever had blood magic performed on him.
"It means, that blood magic isn't about the blood. An incorrect term, it would be more accurate to say that blood magic is about... fuel. A useless distinction in practice, but a distinction nonetheless. It is also the self, you can have someone else's organ, but they will never function as well as one's own. Even the organ of an identical twin is... not perfect." The rat she's working on begins to show noticeable mutations, its fur falls out while its skin becomes unnaturally pale. The cranium begins to bloat, and Esstrey begins to close up the rat.
"Get up soldier, scout 3-F in this building, and report your findings." A rat ghoul, an undead resulting from blood magic, the enlarged cranium existing to accommodate the brain, while most organs were removed as to not burden the rat with any other concerns than its mission. It gives a curt bow, and runs off much more polite than ghouls are thought to be capable of.
"Power takes many forms, yet I have never seen a power stronger than good teamwork. If humanity got its head out of its ass here for just five minutes they would put every noble to the torch and conquer this world under a singular banner, the same can be said for non-humans." Jake looks at Esstrey like she's truly babbling now, overthrow the nobles? Fat chance, after all the power of nobles is...
Esstrey then shows Jake a newspaper, one with a big headline and a flashy picture of a noble getting beheaded. The headline leads as follows;'Revolution in Rila! Dangerous men have declared the second Rilan Republic, and this time is even bloodier than the last! The Rilan forces loyal to the crown were quickly overrun by these agitators, and the Republicans have declared intentions to invade their neighbors, no doubt thirsting for more righteous blood!'. The newspaper scare Jake, despite not knowing which country Rila would be. What does Esstrey mean by this?
"See those weapons they are holding in the picture? Those are muskets, it allows a peasant to blow a hole in a knight at great distances. They look a little different than the muskets I knew with the glowing underbarrels, but they very clearly serve the same purpose. I want those weapons, when every man can pick up a weapon and become a knight's worth of power, can dragons really stand up to anything at that point?" Esstrey seems to have minimal interest in the Republicans at first glance, but her ideology has far more overlap with them than anyone in Faerune. The nobles will import the muskets, they crave power after all, but muskets are the prelude to revolution.
Jake isn't given much time to think about Esstrey's proposition to import these weapons, not that Esstrey has any doubt he plans to accept it. Soon after Esstrey finished the scurrying of a rat could be heard, a rat with a skin far too pale. It makes a little salute in Esstrey's direction before painting with it's blood.
The picture it paints is a very bloody one indeed, as it depicts people sitting around a table with a map in the center, pictures adorn the map, and with some help from Esstrey the rat manages to draw as close as possible as to what it saw. The map is Malencian terrain, and the pictures depict various members of Malencian court. A plot in the making exposed by a rat, one that falls dead the moment the task is accomplished, and is carried of by a black cat that came from...somewhere.
Esstrey didn't even set the rat up in a way to convince Jake to import muskets, nobles do the whole plotting against one another all on their own.
