"What's the point of demanding us to register separately? The Slayer's Guild and the Newman Sect might as well be the same entity. Same people, anyhow," a heavily-muscled young man complained as he strapped on a beaten-up, refurbished chest plate. A fresh decal on the left breast marked him as a trainee, not yet proven enough to have a permanent license with the guild. The rest of his equipment was much the same; used and abused, mostly salvaged, but more than usable.
An older man, wearing a bulky belt on his waist, rebuffed him: "You only think that because you're from the sect. Who do you think does the jobs we don't take? You ever see a sect member pick up a pest extermination contract?"
"But why not just fold slayer qualification under sect membership?" he asked, letting his thoughts spill out while he mind was mostly focused on getting his gear strapped on properly. The room - one of the sect's armories - was slightly chilly, despite the warm weather outside. All of the sect's underground compound had been like this lately. Approaching footsteps echoed down the hallway just outside, and the monolithic metal door swung out of the way without so much as a sound.
"It's politics, as I understand it," came a third, female voice from the newcomer. She turned to the older of the two men, stating: "Elder Makhus, the blitzgandrs will be ready in fifteen minutes."
She sounded more rugged than both men combined, and looked the part as well. Everything visible of her right side was covered by burn scars, and in place of a right eye she had a pitch-black stone that glowed with a horizontal slit of light. In her hands she carried a sword as long as she was tall sheathed in a scabbard the length of a quarterstaff, and twice as thick. Most of her form was concealed at all times by a ragged-looking cloak.
"Ah, Lydia. Good. Help Lucian with his armour while I double-check that we have everything we need for the hunt. Don't forget your own, either," Makhus instructed, turning to walk off.
The woman impassively did as was asked of her, looking Lucian over and tugging on the straps of his gear to ensure it was all correctly in place. Lucian, meanwhile, mustered every bit of his extremely limited aura pressure training to keep his shit together. Her presence was well-contained, but she seemed either unable or unwilling to suppress its intensity even a bit. Even the slightest grazing touch felt like being shocked and cut simultaneously, mercifully without any real pain. There was no wonder why she had been invited to join the sect by the founder herself; that monstrous woman knew when she saw one of her own kind.
After those agonizingly long few seconds, she walked up to a particular spot next to the wall and simply placed her hand on it. With a pulse of white light, the stone panel fell away, revealing a walk-in closet behind it. Lydia emerged moments later, the only apparent change to her attire being the replacement of her ever-present cloak with a different, sturdier-looking one.
"If you uh, don't mind me asking, what did you mean by politics?" he asked in an effort to lighten what he perceived as an awkward atmosphere.
"You've been in the sect far longer than I. Should you not know?" she questioned in a deadpan tone. Nonetheless, rather than let him stew in his own ignorance, she explained: "The sect which resided here before us used their position to control the guild. I would guess that keeping the sect and the guild as separate entities controlled by different people is intended to prevent it from happening again. Come, don't leave the alchemist elder waiting."
Lucian didn't quite understand the sect's hierarchy. In fact, nobody did. Being submerged within it granted a sort of instinctive understanding, but besides the obvious like the two elders at the very top and their inner circle, the Newman Sect's internal politics were at once murky and flexible. Theoretically it lined up with the view of the Sanger and Black Horse sects, but in reality, it felt different. For one, Lucian didn't fear that he would punished or expelled just for asking questions without the express permission to do so.
He got up, taking his sword in hand, strapping it to his waist. A simple kriegsmesser, left to him by a crippled defector who had come to his home village in the midst of the war.
It had been a man with iron talons in place of feet.
A man with a hooked hand.
A man with iron teeth and a bladed tongue.
It was that man who had taught Lucian the fundamentals... And a bit more. A bit of something special. That something was the reason he had come here, rather than to either the Sangers or the Black Horses, knowing he would be rejected as a heretic. That something was, paradoxically, also something he had been keeping to himself since before he had come here. Not out of fear of rejection, but because he couldn't make it work yet. Indeed, he had been passed a unique body cultivation method and he had only gotten as far as the very first step: Iron-blackened, abnormally sharp teeth. However, he couldn't actually do anything with his cultivation yet. Lucian didn't worry, keeping in mind the cripple's words. Results would show eventually, he just had to keep at it. Part of that included comprehending the true nature of any given blade and becoming like it in some aspects; Lucian was fairly certain this was the part that was keeping him from advancing. He just wasn’t good with metaphors.
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