Chapter 57: Negotiations

"I have some demands as well, if I am to go along with your fever dreams, Tommy," Lucius relaxed in his chair, and helped himself to a glass of blood.

"Such as?" Thomas was barely holding himself upright. Only Chem's mana was keeping him from falling. He wanted to go to bed and sleep off what he had done. He wanted to mourn.

"You let me pick who the next king will be," Lucius spoke. "Don't worry, it won't be you. It is a bit hard to crown a dungeon master. Besides, you come from a ranch, if my memory serves me correctly."

"There are enough nobles in the land to trip over at every third step. Pick one. Control them," Thomas said. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead.

"This is no normal sickness," Lucius commented. "Have you tried some of that medicine you were supposed to deliver?"

"I did. It didn't work," Thomas closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.

"Well, if you drop, then that is on me, I suppose," Lucius said. He drank another mouthful of the blood. It was familiar. "Whose blood am I drinking?"

"Whose do you think?" Lester Vermont looked at Thomas pointedly. Lucius ran to the nearest washing basin, and spat the blood still in his mouth.

"Thomas, how dare you pull a contract on me?" Lucius snapped.

"As if you have ever been trustworthy," Teri said, brows knitted together.

"All I have done, I did for the guild," Lucius said. "For Yima, and the rest."

"Yima still suspected you," Rina spoke, clearly having seen the screen as well.

"I can't afford to squander the mockingbird on you. You drank the bottle dry, did you not?" Thomas asked the vampire. "A bit too late to be spitting out anything."

"Clever, but I will have you for this," Lucius went back to his seat. "What are your demands? Apart from clearing your name?"

"My name will never be cleared. I am a dungeon master," Thomas spoke. The bloodletting had weakened him further. His forehead felt like it was on fire. His throat was dry. "I want your assistance with contacting a face changer."

"No face changer can make you thin," Lucius told him.

"No, but they can change my face and hair enough so that I won't be the same Thomas. Although, I will keep the name," the siren told him.

"You know that is stupid," Lucius barked a laugh, to make his point come across. "Keep your face, keep your name.  Build a reputation. People will figure out who you are eventually. Then, all the pain the face changer would have put you through would have been for nothing."

Lucius couldn't help it, some of his old concern for the man he had known as a simple receptionist seeped through his voice. He was truthful in his observations.

"I am not strong enough to..." Thomas was cut off by another laugh.

"Do you have to be the strongest, with a soul harp and a dungeon core around your neck? My eggs are in your basket, it seems. Blood contracts with a dungeon master are until the destruction of the dungeon master. At which point, I will turn to dust. I am a survivor, Tommy. If I tell you that my advice is a good one, then it is a good one," Lucius leaned forward in his chair, and rested his chin on his hands.

"What is a soul harp?" Rina asked. She had never heard of such a thing.

"Considering you have on a soul bow, and he has a soul shield, you three should know," Lucius never ceased to be amazed at how ignorant some people could be.

"Let us say we don't know," Teri murmured. Whatever had to do with a soul, couldn't be good.

"A soul weapon, is linked to the user's soul. You can't just leave it behind. They are stronger than normal weapons. Plus, they help their users when they near death. Which is probably why Tommy here could still speak, after giving me so much blood," that explanation was not good enough for them, but they didn't want to show Lucius that he had the cards in his hand.

"Yima is dead," Jeremy said, from the door. "Tough bastard, tried to free the rest until his final breath."

"And the rest? Are they alive?" Lucius sounded hopeful, even if his hopes were small.

"No, why should they be?" The alchemist then went out of the room.

"You can't control him fully," Lucius observed. Thomas nodded.

"Once he eats Yima and the rest, he will become even stronger. So far, the contract that he has with Chem is the only thing that keeps him with us," Thomas didn't want to show weakness, but his emotions and the fever were getting the best of him. "What have I done?"

"Oh, no, boy! You don't have the right to say such a thing now. All those deaths are on you," Lucius yelled, standing up and pointing a finger.

"Yaranhold has a population of five million, eight hundred thousand of those are children," Lester snapped. The vampire winced at that. Being reminded that he was not innocent himself stung.

"The adventurers protect, when the army cannot. That is what you told me, when I became a receptionist," Thomas rose his eyes to meet Lucius's. The vampire nodded at him. "What would Yaranhold's destruction could have protected?"

"I told you already," Lucius had told him the official story. The one the higher ranked adventurers had been privy to.

"What the king wanted could have been achieved by an embargo. What other reason is there?" Thomas snapped. He needed to know why he had killed off his friends. Why he had sacrificed the few for the many.

"There is someone else with a better claim to the throne of Orestria than the king. It just so happens to be him," Lucius pointed at Lord Vermont.

"How is that possible?" Lester sat down in his seat. Him, an heir to the throne?

"Well, it just so happens that the king is a bastard, and you are a prince through your grandmother: Princess Arelia," Lucius saw the princeling shake his head. "Not that I will pick you, either."

Lester breathed a sigh of relief.

"No one must know," he said. "Even if we have to claim that the king is legitimate and take him down as a rightful ruler."

"As you wish, Lord of Yaranhold," Lucius agreed. Thomas swayed dangerously to the side, and tipped in his chair. Rina caught him just as he was about to fall from it.

"I take it the negotiations are over?" Lucius's eyes didn't leave Thomas's frame. His life depended on someone this frail. He smirked. Well, he couldn't let him die now, could he?