Redux: Lineage

"Why not just destroy it?" I asked, fastening my belt as I looked at the corpse.

"Too valuable," Twilight said, shaking her head.

"Something worth risking the fate of the world?" I asked.

Twilight stopped in her circling of the body, eyes locked onto it for a long moment as her hand twitched, tensing and relaxing as she raised a finger.

"I'm going to give my counter to that argument, and I hope you see it the same way I do," she said, looking up at me while gesturing at the silver-sealed corpse. "Sanguine's regenerative abilities don't come from magic. Anyone can regenerate tissue with spells and sorceries. Her healing factor comes from her genetics, and it's beyond anything I've ever seen. Her cells seem to be able to create new organs, new limbs, regrow hair from dead follicles, probably cure blindness, illness, and any other kind of malady that would plague a being, mortal or immortal."

I looked between her and the body, turning my head sideways slightly in a gesture of confusion.

"And... what?" I asked.

"And I want to find some way to harness that," she said, gritting her teeth in a frustrated manner. "I can't think of any other specimen that has this ability with a genetic code so close to a human that I won't have to restructure it from the ground up in tens of years of trial and error experiments. If I can crack her genetic code, isolate the gene that causes her to regenerate, I can probably synthesise it and give it to anyone that needs it."

"You want to use her as a a miracle fix?"

"Yes... I may spend hours a day burying myself in necromancy spells, toxins, poisons, plagues, and all other kinds of deathly maladies and magics, but it's because I've been trying to hard to find a way to eradicate, or at least nullify their effects, for the good of everyone else. I'm not just a chancellor or a mage, but I've always viewed my life's goal to be saving lives any way that I can. Sanguine is a miracle that's been literally gift-wrapped for me to use in that effort and that... and that's why I can't bring myself to destroy her. She's too good an opportunity to throw away."

"Even if keeping her alive keeps the danger of enslavement or eradication very much alive?" I questioned.

"You cure a disease by infecting and testing people. You can fix a limb by breaking it and rearranging the bones to heal properly," Twilight said, once again an expression of pained conflict and self-doubt on her face that told me she was split down the middle about this choice. "There... there is no scientific or magical progress without risk involved, Richter."

"This is bigger than a plague cure, Twilight," I pointed out.

"In more ways than you think," she said. "If I can figure this out, harness her natural power, nobody has to suffer anymore. No more lost limbs, no more organ failure, no more broken bones, no more scars, and no more mutilation. This is the closest I have ever come to getting the human race, and soon all other races, to evolve past their natural limits without the need of powers and abilities not everyone has access to."

"And how do you plan to help everyone?" I asked. "Get everyone in the world to line up and get a genetic reorganisation?"

"If I were a normal woman, then this may be an issue," she said, shaking her head and pressing her fingers into the tabletop hard enough to turn them white. "But I am an immortal. Time is no enemy of mine and my body shall never weaken nor falter as it passes. I can get ten people, maybe one hundred at most, give them the regeneration gene, and let survival of the fittest take its course. They breed, reproduce, have a litter of four children each, all possessing the regeneration gene. Their children breed, create even more people with the gene."

"And as the years go by, the gene gets spread around more and more family trees until we eventually end up with an entire generation of super-humans," I finished for her.

"Exactly!" Twilight exclaimed, her head lashing upwards to lock eyes with me and a faint glow of magic in her purple orbs. "Even if it only works with one... one is all I need."

"And yet your saving the world also comes with the risk of dooming it," I reminded her.

"It's a fifty-fifty shot at worst, Richter. A coin flip," she answered.

"You gonna leave that to chance?" I asked her.

"No, I'm going to rig the odds in my favour," she said. "There's no chance of it landing on tails if it's a two-headed coin."

"And what if Selana does the same?"

"She won't," Twilight growled.

"How can you be sure?" I asked, wanting her to see what I was seeing.

"Trust me," she said. "No harm will come from this. I just want to do what's best for all of us."

"Some of the worst things have been done with the best intentions, Twilight," I said in a sombre tone, looking at her deep in the eyes. "You're smart. Smarter than all of us. You don't need Sanguine. Please, for the good of us all, just find some way to destroy her."

"I..." Twilight began, biting down hard on her lip as she screwed her eyes shut.

Her shoulders tensed, brow furrowed, and eyes screwed as tight shut as they could go. She was at war with herself mentally, her brain perfectly understand both sides of the argument and knowing that, depending on who she asked, both were valid reasons for whichever action she chose. Her chest expanded, breathing deeply before releasing an almost-pained, shaking sigh.

"You're right..." she said, eyes opening and looking at me with a cold, hurt expression. "She... she needs to go. It's too much of a risk..."

"Thank you," I said in a relieved expression, a warm smile spreading to myself.

"It's... it's gonna take a while to figure out how to get rid of her," she said. "The silver's a different compound than normal, resistant to almost all forms of damage. That means I can't just dump her in a volcano and call it a day."

"Take your time, alright?" I suggested. "Just... just make sure it gets done."

"Yeah, I will," she said, lowering her head as she turned away from the silver-bound corpse.

I turned myself away, leaving the room and Twilight alone with her thoughts, knowing she'd have something up her sleeve to get rid for Sanguine before she became a bigger problem than she already was. I decided the best course of action would be to find Verella, as I wanted to ask her about that family member of hers I'd run into while at the Fort, see if she knew anything about him.

I asked around for a while, learning that she'd retired to a bath house several hours ago and hadn't been seen since. I imagined she was having some kind of de-stressing bath, as she was in quite a state the last time I'd spoken to her. Upon learning which bath house she was in, I made my way to it and knocked on the door.

"Verella?" I called out to the room on the other side of the wooden door. "It's Richter. Have you got a minute?"

"Uh, yeah... just give me a second..." she called back.

I waited around for a few moments, hearing the sound of water splashing quietly before Verella called out for me to enter. I did as instructed, walking into the warm, steamy room and seeing that Verella had a soaked towel across her chest, no doubt bathing nude and wanting to maintain her modesty.

"What's... what can I help you with?" she asked, watching me as I walked over to a bench by the wall of the room.

"I ran into a family member of yours, if my guesswork is as good as I hope it is," I began. "Big guy, green hair, dresses in plate, not much of a combatant."

"Oh," Verella spat in a disgusted tone. "That's Alistair."

"That's some serious vitriol there," I commented, leaning forward in my seat. "You two not get along?"

"About as well as water and oil," she said, looking up at the ceiling with a bitter gaze before explaining herself. "I can't stand his type, he can't stand mine. He's a complete mommy's boy who can't ever do anything without his mother bouncing him on her lap and petting him on the head. Everything he does, he does it with her, and everything she says, he does it without hesitation."

"Damn... sounds like me," I chuckled.

"I hardly doubt you're as bad as he is," she said, shuffling closer to the edge of the pool to sit up straight as she spoke. "Even as a grown man, he can't keep himself off his mother's lap."

And even as a grown man, I can't keep myself out of my mother's ass. I would say he wins in that regard, but I get to be intimate with one of the most perfect women in the world. So I'm putting that on my scoreboard.

"His mother's a controlling bitch as well, chasing away anyone she doesn't want associating with her darling boy and trying to wrangle every single piece of power she can just to spoil him even more," she went on.

"She get him that Thrall of his?"

"Of course. 'Hand picked from the finest lineage, with over ten generations of beautiful and perfect women selectively-bred into the perfect servant'," Verella snarled.

"Ah, so she's the 'Hippity-Hoppity, women are property' type?" I asked with a cocked eyebrow.

"Very much so... which is something I'd never expect from a woman," Verella sighed.

"Life lesson for you: anybody will oppress and degrade anybody if it gets them somewhere in life. Doesn't matter what skin colour, class, creed, or affiliation they have, or even if they share it."

"What a shitty life," Verella muttered, splashing water on her shoulders to keep them wet and warm. "Did you kill him?"

"No. I spared the little bastard and his minotaur-fetishist girlfriend because I'm such a wonderful person," I said with a shake of my head.

"You beat her minotaur form?" Verella asked, looking at me with a shocked expression.

"Of course I did," I nodded. "I'm a born and raised monster hunter. The day I can't beat a big, stupid minotaur in a one on one battle is the day I hand in my hunting license."

"You need a hunting license?" she asked.

"Well... it's more of an affiliation form. You need to present it whenever you accept a contract on a monster so it can be logged with whatever guild you're accepting it from so they know who killed what and who's accountable for what if shit goes wrong."

"Have you killed anything else impressive?" she asked.

"Friends and I killed a dragon," I shrugged.

"Really?" Verella asked.

"Yup... well, the way I worded that makes it sound like it was all me and my usual group," I said, wanting to clarify. "What actually happened was that I managed to wrangle together a crew of people strong enough to take down the dragon, and I kind of helped here and there while they did most of the work."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing besides get everyone together and strike the final blow," I answered.

"That's quite impressive," Verella said with an approving nod.

"I'd rather say I was the guy that slapped it into submission than the one that stole the finishing blow from everyone else," I said with a wave of my hand. "And to be honest: we'd all be digested bones by now if it wasn't for Svea."

"You're very modest for a royal dragonslayer, Richter," Verella said, leaning back slightly and smiling at me. "I've never heard of a Prince slaying a dragon and not trying to take the credit for it."

"Hey, I probably would take the credit if it was all me," I countered. "But the way I see it, is if you're not good enough to take the credit, which I'm not, and didn't actually do it by yourself, which I didn't, you should never, ever take full responsibility for being some dragon-slaying badass who kills dragons and beds wenches left right and centre."

"How come?"

"Because the next time a big, scary dragon comes along, the entire populous that's been throwing their gold and virgins at you is gonna immediately expect you to kill it all by yourself," I went on. "So you're either going to die or be branded a liar when you fight it and lose or pussy out."

"That's a smart view to have, Richter," she chuckled.

"The only reward for arrogance is humiliation," I said. "I'm no good at slaying dragons. Am very good at bedding wenches, though."

"Really?" Verella asked with a cocked eyebrow. "And who would these wenches be, hm?"

My mother and aunt so far.

"If I were to count off the most recent ones in order, it would be the Court Sorceress Celana of Winter's Maw, Angela the Hunter's Guild Master, Karra the Knight-Captain of the Barb-Tails Mercenary Group, and High Priestess Jenevive of the Blades of Illuminia."

"Wow... that's, uh, quite the roster you have there," Verella said, clearly expecting me to be joking and being rather surprised by how much of a whore I turned out to be.

"It's been a busy month and a half," I shrugged.

"W-Wait?!" she exclaimed, physically recoiling in shock. "You slept with that many women in a month and a half? That's almost a different one for every week!"

"Would it make it better or worse if I told you the first three were over the space of a week?" I asked in a flat tone.

"A... A week?" she stammered, a heavy blush coming over her cheeks as she put a hand to her face, eyes wide in shock and horror at my slaying time schedule. "I couldn't imagine doing it more than once a week... how does anyone find time for... three in a week?"

"Do you need some time alone to process that?" I asked her with a chuckle.

"How... how do you seduce three women in the space of a week?"

"It wasn't really 'seducing' as it was payment in one case, a mutual agreement in one, and a payout to a bet for the last... and Jenevive was just... well, a little pent up, if the She-Demon she turned into was anything to go by," I said, shivering in fear at the animal I'd unleashed with that one.

"You made a bet and demanded sex as a reward?" Verella asked in a disgusted manner.

"No, I didn't make the terms, she did. But, to be completely transparent, I did put her in a situation where she'd willingly make the offer as a method of exploiting my horn-dog nature in an attempt to pay up nothing if she lost," I shrugged.

"You psychologically manipulated her into offering you sex?" she asked me, still no happier with the result.

"No, I moreso stacked the situation to where her belief that she was outplaying me allowed me to outplay her," I said with a shake of my hand in a fifty-fifty-esque gesture. "Which... now that I've said it aloud... it does not sound very good, does it?"

"So, what the hell did you do?" she asked.

"Well, the initial idea was to get her to agree to a bet where if I beat her, she'd have to give me more of her mercenaries than she originally wanted to, so knowing how she knew how I worked, I was expecting her to offer sex-" I began, only to be cut off as an explosion rocked the entirety of the castle, causing dust to fall from the ceiling and cracks to spread all along the walls of the room we were in.

"What the fuck?!" Verella exclaimed, leaping out of the water.

"No idea," I growled, drawing my sword and shield and readying myself as I headed towards the door. "You get your clothes on as fast as you can. With any luck, it might just be Twilight fucking up a spell, and we might be getting a little ahead of-"

I was cut off as the door was blown off its hinges, slamming straight into me and knocking me several feet backwards. My sword tumbled from my hand as I tumbled heels over head before skidding to a halt. Pain rocketed through my entire body, from head to toe, as stars danced in my dazed eyes, fighting desperately to figure out what the fuck was going on.

"Richter!" Verella roared, my eyes shooting upwards just in time to catch a metal boot from a familiar green-haired Vampire and his large, burly minotaur behind him before the impact caused everything to go black immediately, losing consciousness and slipping away from the screams of the dying all around the castle and Verella's own aggressive roars as she tried to fight off the attackers.