So far, Hugo's surgery was going well. They had been at it for four hours and had finished up the arm and were currently attaching the leg. By his calculations, they were far more than halfway through, and maybe an hour away from waking Hugo up for baseline calibrations.

Max and his surgical assistant Miles were completing the augmentation faster than they had expected. Probably because Max had slipped into his best surgical suit, and he thought he did a great job of dressing for the occasion. It wasn't the fanciest meat suit he had, and it wasn't as flashy and dashing as a vengeful fire mage with a tragic love story, but he did spend a lot of time soldering cyborg soldiers back together with these hands after the fighters were crushed to shit by man-eating space bugs. Seven feet of height and pearlescent skin were coupled with overly large eyes the same color as his other features. It also had a set of puffy blue wings that matched his tied-back, long blue hair. His fingers were lithe and agile. His eyes could focus on small things much better than his fae/elf body, much like a bird of prey.

So, all things considered, it was a topical outfit with decent bonuses.

 

Hands that had handled hundreds of surgeries and thousands of augmentations remembered the process better than Max would have had he stayed in his Dirt Planet form. Cutting off unneeded bits, cauterizing necrotized nerves, severing skin to attach the diodes to the bones, and attaching all the parts to the cybernetics seemed like he had never stopped, never died on the station eventually lost to the bugs in the war. Like he had never been handed a firearm and asked to defend the line against a wave of chittering death. Had never been eaten alive when the defense failed and the station was overrun with hungry mouths with scything appendages.

For moments, seconds, hours, years, minutes he was elsewhere, remembering his team, all the while his hands automatically continued a surgery he had once done on wounded soldiers delivered by the shuttle load. Remembering the handsome assistant he had fooled around with when the station's lights went low and off-hours were engaged. His hands were soft and his lips were hungry. What was his name? Remembering the snarky AI and the overbearing station captain. He had died right next to Max, right? Screaming up blood and crying for his mother when the chewing started.

That really happened, right? All those people were real once upon a time, long, long, ago, in a universe different than this one, weren't they? And they all died in a bad way, right? They existed, right? They had, hadn't they? It was a bad run, but it was real, right? Or was Max just some mad, infant god who dreamed up an insane backstory while marooned on a dead world with a lonely system? It seemed as if it --the body of the Max he was wearing-- was all a bad dream now. Even if he saw the [Station Medic]'s hands and knew they had existed and did all (and possibly more than) Max remembered.

It occurred to Max that, even after an uncountable, unfathomable amount of time and lives and deaths, the asshole AI was probably still stuck on a station on the frontier, abandoned and floating in empty space that was absolutely riddled with big bugs that shit and fucked in the same piles. Served him right. The shitty little AI was a primadonna who couldn't handle the idea of filthy humans crawling around in him and never stopped bitching at him, even as he was being masticated by chitinous monsters. The bugs had probably driven quite him mad by now. By now, he was probably just a gibbering mound of incomprehensible code that was still bitching at bugs to clean up their condensation rings off of countertops.

He attached the last micron-thin wires to what would tether themselves to the missing or rebuilt nerves, closed the outer shell on the lower part of Hugo's shiny new leg, and opened the case to the upper thigh. He hit the button again to keep flooding Hugo's body with the boot-legged, cobbled-together nanites he and Miles had developed. He pulled on his goggles and lit up his welding torch to spot-weld the parts together and watched as the nanites did their thing, connecting man to machine.

"Max, there's someone at the door who says they are an emissary from Mr. Green. They said it was important." Ines was standing by the door in what Max was using as an operating room, but what was really a hole in the ground inside of a jungle, partitioned off by opaque glass walls that covered the original rock walls. It was added to the rooms under the tree that Hugo had been using to make wine and had once harbored sleeping children. It had a new glass ceiling that let in sunlight. Her eyes were focused on a pile of Hugo gristle that had been discarded in a messy stack on a tray next to Mile's thorax as he was facing the anesthesia machine.

Lighting was important. Too bad the bits of flesh were well-lit by a sunbeam much brighter than any shining on Hugo's body.

Ines looked peaky and was entirely too squeamish for a soldier, Max thought, but blood sensitivity came in all shapes and sizes. He couldn't judge anyone for their hard limits. His limits were multitudinous and manifold.

"I guess you can show to the tearoom to wait. We should be done soon." Max didn't bother to look up again while he was doing the connections of nerves right in Hugo's upper thigh area. Any mistakes here would be debilitating for both biological and machine systems. Can't fight if you get cramps in your dick when it's time to sprint.

Max was gathering up wires that would be the main information arteries connecting meat to metal when he heard a throat clearing in the doorway. He had forgotten all about Ines and had been solely focused on matters at hand. He didn't pause when he continued soldering flesh to metal at the hip and the smells of heating meat were overwhelming.

A low voice whispered, "Fascinating. And the patient will be able to use the prosthetics as weapons, as well?"

"That's the idea," Ines said. "You should be in the room and not here." Ines sounded like she was choking back her vomit.

Max put the welder down and removed his goggles. He glanced over to the door and saw a red-headed woman watching his process closely. She didn't scream kin at him. He didn't feel overwhelmed by a feeling of familiarity, home, and hearth, which made him less wary of her. Green's heady aura of umph made Max's mind light at the best of times. It was different than the elves' initial umph. Theirs was a "let's get naked" umph. Green's was an "I think I've been lost without you, let me sell you my soul and you can take everything" umph.

It's magic/class/species bullshit and doesn't really matter at the end of the day. Just trying to get me to tie myself in ways I don't understand yet. Doesn't matter.

The children and dark elves were all accumulating a similar feeling, but not as mind-fucky. Theirs was a light rightness in their proximity. Family. Safety in numbers. Of us. Max assumed it was what came with making someone part of his House. The elves and Puppy all said that they smelled like Max's magic, so it was probably pheromonal. He didn't understand why Green would feel the same way, but he was by no means an expert in hidden fairy lore that wasn't covered in the stupid primer book.

"It seems Green decided to do what I expect him to do and show up, even by proxy, at the exact right moment when it would put me on the back foot." Max snickered, "Classic Green. Making my day confusing and interrupted." Max focused his eyes on the red-head's hands. She was holding a big bag. "What does our local King wish of me, then? Since in the past month, he hasn't been able to answer a phone to hear my answer after making me a wonderful offer? And it's urgent enough to barge into a reconstructive surgery?"

Max turned his eyes and most of his attention back to Hugo's iliotibial band and the wires he was fusing to them, and then guiding them to lay back in the correct position."Don't puke on my operating theatre's floor, Ines. Sanitation auras only go so far." He subconsciously shook his wings out in a defensive motion, waiting for the bag in his visitor's hand to open up and spill Green's bullshit all over the floor. Minutes passed, and with no words spoken and no actions taken, the surgery continued. Max had almost forgotten all about the interloper after a while of her silence. He closed the last outer cover and began fastening it closed.

A feminine throat cleared. "My king found some ancient texts in a ruined shrine and thought you'd be interested in them." The redhead brought Max's attention back to herself, now that his focus could be responsibly split, and she stepped into the room past a green-faced Ines, who began walking away. "I wanted to come to meet you because you are a topic he has been focused on for some time, and we were also concerned about your business incorporation and what future moves you were making." Her eyebrows raised. "Also, I am interested in a trade."

Max snickered at that. Right. "If you would be so kind as to wait in the tearoom two doors down, that'd be swell. I can't imagine my patient here being cool with waking up vulnerable, after heavy sedation, with a stranger in the room who has a fuck-big bag in her hands, and him having new heavy weaponry to try out."

"Sure." She crookedly smiled and walked away. Max listened to her retreating footsteps. Far enough to go to the tearoom? Doubtful.

Whatever, even if it was a ruse, she could spy. No one from Green's House would go out of their way to hurt mine. Or I'll blow his up. Pretty sure he knows that, too.

He moved his eyes over Hugo and all his added metal. "Miles, how are the readings? Is connectivity a go? Structural integrity?" He ran some final calculations and made a few last-minute tweaks. Miles crawled over Hugo's chest, touching here and there to test the lace's integration with the wetware. Max monitored readings from the computer screen on the counter next to the bed and then wiped off the blood from the shiny chrome-looking limbs.

"It all looks good to me." Miles said, "Is it time? Do you want me to stop sedation?"

"Yeah. Let me hit him with a few heals and we'll see if I'm as good as I think I am, or if he wakes up screaming." Max cast several healing spells and hoped for the best.

Light flashed and Hugo's skin pulled tight. It fused seamlessly to the metal as if the meat and hardware were one. His eyes blinked open.

"Ugh. Screens." Hugo mumbled.

Max's hands started moving slower, unhooking medical leads to the monitoring equipment. He stopped, both hopeful and full of dread. "Screens? Did you get a system initiation?"

"No." Hugo's scratchy throat was dry, as one would expect from someone coming out of surgery. "Not a System like that. I think it's a control screen and internal system for my new appendages. It did make me nostalgic, though." Hugo slowly sat up and slid both legs, metal and flesh, over the side of the bed. The metal one moved sluggishly. "I was going to slaughter my way through some humans to get to a decent level for a moment." Hugo looked at Max with a sardonic grin while wiggling his new metal fingers. "I am only joking."

"Hmm." Max blinked hard. "Right. Any pain?"

"No. The new bits feel like the old ones, but like they are asleep."

"Try rebooting the operating system from the screen, then." Max was running baseline calibration tests, making sure he hadn't attached anything wrong. He rechecked the coil in the base of Hugo's spine that was responsible for creating new and removing old nanites. It was firing nominally. He hit Hugo a few times in different places checking reflexes.

Hugo nodded at the screen only he could see, "Oh. That makes sense." After a few minutes, he started smiling like a crazed man. "They both have swords and guns? Holy shit, these are awesome. A leg sword. Holy shit."

"Yeah. You have plasma weapons, too." Max grinned at his computer screen and looked back at his patient, "It looks like it's all clear on my end. Anything you have questions about? Are you good?" Hugo shook his head no and then nodded yes, looking out into the forest. "Wanna go take them for a spin around the demesne?"

"Yeah. Will you send Lord Puppy my way so he can make sure I don't explode? If I do, I'm using him as a crutch to wobble back here." Hugo had a really nice grin that Max could appreciate.

"Sure." They both heard rapid footsteps moving away from the door. "That wasn't subtle."

Hugo's smile fell. "No, it wasn't."

Max was happy the grief-stricken man seemed like he was less shattered and had determination. Like he wasn't the empty vessel that showed up in his Court weeks ago, dead-eyed and crushed. This is good. One project down, several hundred to go.

"I guess I'll go deal with our guest while you get to go play. I'll hunt you down for light observation after she leaves. Try not to overdo it. You're still absorbing the nanites that make all of that connect. Don't shake anything loose." Max thought for a moment. "Don't fire the particle cannon yet. The backlash could rip your arm off and if I have to reattach it the same day I installed it, I'll do it without anesthesia."

"Okay."

---

 

Hadrian, Seneschal of the House of Greenleaf, Conclave Council Proxy for the Sidhe King, the Many-Tailed Muse, The Eternal Afflatus, was intrigued.

Her King, although of the shining blood, was a very determined man. She had watched him from time immemorial grow from being a puck of a fae -- one who enjoyed leading travelers astray in their ancient woodlands and spoiling townsfolks' milk and cheese for fun-- into a commanding force for fae voices in the world. He used his accumulated influence and power he'd amassed after centuries to hold a space in the world that would see their people eaten or sacrificed for parts, or enslaved to be mana batteries for the covens or the mages. Her King had made the idea of exploiting their people a bad idea for most, and an act of war for the rest. He was always savage in protecting his own, but these days, "his own" encompassed numbers he'd never imagined back when they played in the sun-dappled meadows of their wild forests. Back before their woods were poisoned and the world changed.

Hadrian respected and loved him as a doting elder sister would. She followed him because of his vision of a world where the smallest magical beings could hold court with the mightiest.

She did not understand this new fascination with the new Lord in town. She expected her King to destroy any Lords that popped up in his territory like he had the last handful-- with a whispered word and a shattered anchor. She did not expect him to moon over them.

That is, she didn't understand until she saw inside the anchor of this new Lord and witnessed what they had built in the span of less than a year. It was less than half a year! Her King's demesne hadn't been this impressive until he had been a thousand years in and had an entire court to tithe most of their mana to its construction. And then she saw the hunk with mighty blue wings and piercing eyes and she, herself, was a goner.

Oh, she thought. That's why he's been beside himself. I get it now. Powerful and beautiful. The King said they were smart, too. It seems Max is the full package, then.

Hadrian was certain she had been caught eavesdropping earlier but didn't much care. She knew they expected her to, so she fed into their expectations. Her King would be mortified. He could deal with it, though. He had been withholding details, and details were important, godsdamit.

The reaction to being caught was what Hadrian had to see. Would Max be a petty asshole, or handle it with grace? Make a joke, or ignore it completely?

Max, with a small amount of blood still gleaming on his cheek, walked into the quaint room and flopped down at the table across from her. "Now that that's out of the way, what can I do for you? I'm going to be honest, I haven't had much sleep since the vampire incident, so I might be less than what would be considered hospitable. That, and you were unexpected. And you interrupted a surgery. You said it was important?" His voice was pleasant and pleasantly pitched, so she was sure he wasn't as perturbed as his words would lead one to believe.

She cleared her throat and asked, "Vampire incident?"

"I have an elder imprisoned in a lower demesne because he thought he could stalk one of my elves and enter my court without an invitation. I have it handled and didn't want to cause a fuss. No big deal." Max shrugged like it was indeed, 'not a big deal.'

"This elder-- does he have auburn hair and pretty doe eyes?"

"Yeah. Why?" Max poured hot tea into a cup and drank it down quickly. Like he was taking a shot of liquor and not piping hot, but delectably delicate tea.

Hadrian began uncontrollably laughing. Oh lords and ladies of all the lost courts, Max has trapped the Herald of Blood. And is keeping him prisoner! Oh, this is hilarious and wonderful.

She choked out through chuckles and unladylike snorts, "Are you planning on releasing him soon, or...?"

With a straight face, Max replied, "Oh, no. He told me he was going to kill my court and told me he wanted to eat me, so here's here for a bit. Seems he is in desperate need of manners and rehabilitation. Hope it doesn't ruffle any feathers."

She wiped a tear away. "None ruffled. And, lower demesne? Did you become a King so early?"

He sighed, "I didn't want to, but I couldn't lock up the blood drinker in the same place I keep my elves. They were uncomfortable and would probably kill him. They are surprisingly, delightfully bloodthirsty themselves. I figured imprisonment could be easily explained in the right context, but killing a Conclave Head would probably bring more trouble than stealing him would." Max rubbed the bridge of his nose, blinked hard, and poured himself some more tea. "Any other questions?"

"I'm not here to interrogate you, Max. I'm just, well, surprised that your court was already powerful enough to subdue one of the eldest beasts of the world. And becoming a King after just becoming a Lord is ... I'd say impossible, but I guess it's just improbable."

"Yeah, we're great here. Super duper masters of the mystic arts." Hadrian raised an eyebrow, Max couldn't lie --he was as fae as they came, just by smell-- but was saying that in a joking manner. Hadrian took it as the truth it wasn't meant to be taken in. Max waved both hands in the air and sighed again, "You said Green sent a book? What's the cost? It's not a favor, is it?"

"I think he intended it as a courting gift, really. Do you two exchange favors a lot?" Hadrian reached into her bag and pulled out a small book. She slid it across the table.

"Never. I don't want to be indebted to someone who plays the game better than I ever could." Max picked up the book and looked at the cover. "Courting, huh? He never let me answer if I wanted to be courted." He put the book face down on the table and looked up at Hadrian.

"That's probably why he has been avoiding you. Fear of rejection cripples even the mightiest of beasts, I'm afraid. That, and if you rejected him after he made you of us, the magic defining the relationship between the two of you would make you feel like a sister instead of a potential paramour. He'd lose the ability to see where possibilities could go in that case."

"Ah. I didn't know that." Max's eyes tiredly reflected the questions that ran behind them. "For the record, I wasn't going to reject him." Max blinked and looked at her, "Any other details would need to be discussed between him and me, don't you think? Or is this done by committee? I'm not so keen if that's the case."

"Of course. I'm not here to test the waters for him. He can talk for himself. I'm here for other things instead."

"Like what?"

"The change in your business licensing. You folded the potion store under a corporate umbrella, branched out to online sales, and changed names. What's the deal with that? I'm curious. And I'm the paralegal, so I do the paperwork."

"Oh, nothing much. We decided to launch a mercantile empire and declared a shadow war on the College because they pissed me off. And I needed the legality for a [Bitter Bargain] and to cover myself lawfully should someone raise a stink about the basement vampire dungeon. As I said, no big deal. All quite legal and binding."

"Mercant...wait, what?"

Max sighed and explained as if he thought she was slow. Like he wasn't shattering her expectations for a meek and weak Lord who had beguiled her King with simpering beauty. Like he wasn't slinging power around with artistic flourish to make her life oh, so hard in the next coming weeks. Like he wasn't acting like a lost Sidhe King of Old, destroying enemies and conquering the world, all from the shadows and safety of a powerful Court. "We are going to clean out the College by harnessing the market for magic items. I am sitting on a mountain of them, so why not? One of the mages tried to bully my Scion. While standing in what was the heart of my court. That is plenty of cause and precedent has been set enough for a shadow war, subclassed: economic to be waged-- even if they said otherwise, which no one has. None of them have tried to [Bargain] with me, either, even if they are fully aware I'm here. It's a blatant insult." Max emptied his teacup. "They also blockaded my business so that I have yet to make a sale. As far as I'm concerned, they fired the first shot and this is just my response." He deftly moved his empty tea cup around the table with an artist's finger. He stopped and gave her a sharp look with his blue eyes. "So, yes. Shadow war. I don't have to inform anyone of that, per Conclave law, yes? Not unless I wanted to employ assassins, and in that case, I'd only have to tell my Conclave head. Which I'm not there yet. Maybe it won't even get to that point."

Hadrian nodded, conceding the point. Redirected to another alarming point, "...and you cast a [Bitter Bargain] on the Herald of Blood? He let you get through the whole cast time without disagreeing?"

Max smirked. "He was unconscious for most of it. And eye-fucking me for the rest. But yeah."

After a moment of silence, she nodded again seriously and said, "Well, it sounds like you have all of this handled then."

"As I said, yes. You said you want to trade? For what?"

"Well, I ... I don't even know if you'd be interested now. I brought a brownie. She asked if you'd be willing to host her in your court. And a Ban Sidhe stone, if you can get it to work. We never have. It's considered one of the lost magics."

"Interesting. And what did you want in exchange?"

"Initially, I had questions, but you've answered them. So, I guess... you said you had magic items? Any that would be worth the exchange of a laborer and an ancient class stone?"

"Is it a class stone or a [Class] stone? And a 'laborer' means they wouldn't be a member of my Court, and it would be dangerous for them if they weren't. I have this place trapped to the low hells for anyone inside who doesn't have the right magic effects. So, no deal for the laborer if she's unwilling to join my court."

"It would be up to her if she joined or not. She was hesitant to join the House of Greenleaf. She's wild, you see. We found her on the edges of the slums, caged by the humans. They enslaved her with wild magic and made her clean their brothel. It was a nasty bit of spellwork and she doesn't interact much with anyone now." Hadrian backtracked to answer the first question with, "It's a [Class] stone, but since there's not a system anymore, it's more of a curiosity piece, really."

Max made a humming noise and looked like he was considering his options. "Did you bring her? The laborer?"

"Yes... I'll... " She reached into her oversized bag and pulled out a mouse-like humanoid. She was tiny. Hadrian explained, "Being outside of a mound makes her panic. She's afraid she'll get snatched again. I'm very proud she made this trip with me, even if you decide you don't need her help."

Max looked at the small brownie. He raised his eyebrows and smiled. Hadrian's heart did a swooping motion. Sylvan, the brownie, blushed through her fur. "Hi. You can call me Max. Are you here of your own free will, little lady? Or are you being trafficked and I need to kill your tormentor?"

She squeaked and then answered in her high-pitched voice, "Ha ha no, Max. I'm here willingly."

"Are you interested in joining my court? You'd never be asked to do anything you're uncomfortable with, and we all have had bad experiences with either slavers or not having any good choices."

Sylvan took a moment to think about it. "How big is your court?"

"Ten adults and six children."

"Oh! So small! How big is your demesne, then? It must be small with so few."

Max looked to the side and furrowed his brow. "The upper demesne is maybe a hundred square miles? My elves haven't mapped it all yet." Max paused and then added, "The lower one is just ten square miles. I'm trying to grow it as fast as I can, but it takes effort and I've been busy. It's only existed about two days, though."

Hadrian choked on her tea.

Sylvan looked at Max like Max had personally put the moon in the sky for her. "Yes, I'll join your court. Your House, if you'll have me."

After clearing her airway, Hadrian saw something moving in the corner of her eye. She looked over and saw a beautiful, bejeweled spider dancing. It looked happy. That's... That's a war golem? Dancing? She put her cup down and wondered if Max had slipped her mushroom tea.

Max looked at the dancing spider. "Miles, would you give... I'm sorry, I didn't ask your names. My manners are really shot. I'm so tired."

She jumped as if startled and answered, "I'm known as Hadrian, and this is Sylvan. Thank you for asking, my Lord."

"'My Lord', now, huh? What'd I do for the sudden formality?" Max had a rueful grin and a raised eyebrow.

"I think I know now why he wants you so bad." She felt a little defeated when she remembered the King had already marked Max as off-limits. Hadrian herself would have considered giving up her precious bachelorhood for a moment.

"Not for my sparkling wit or my tight buns, but because he wants my power?"

"No, not at all. How can I explain it without sounding weird?" Hadrian gathered her thoughts and said, "Once you reach a certain age, after living in the same world for so long and seeing all the same things over and over, you start to become increasingly bored. Everything can be extrapolated to lead you to a conclusion you've seen already. It's all rote. Nothing is new. Nothing fundamentally changes. It's why we humor the humans as a group... They don't live long enough to get bored with the world so they sometimes change things, like with their technology. They still find novelty in this world. Life gets... stale, for we kin especially. That we live for games and tricks, after the same trick doesn't bring the same joy as it once did, life becomes... less." She cleared her throat, "That said, I haven't had the bone-crushing boredom I've lived with for every moment in the last several centuries while I've been in your mound. You're a breath of fresh air."

"Ah, I'm new and shiny. Understood. We will see if I'm interesting enough to keep after the sparkle wears off, then." Max turned to the golem, apparently named Miles. "Can you show Sylvan around and then take her to the apartment? I'll add on a room to her preferred specs when I'm done here and after I check up on Hugo and the Pup." Max looked back at her. "I have some really great magic pieces that I didn't want to set loose on the unsuspecting public, but I'd be willing to trade to you. Want to see them?"

"Oh Lords and Ladies, yes."