Chapter Text
It was a long standing tradition for lords of the Alliance to keep a few mercenary groups on retainer, and Claude von Riegan was no exception. Unfortunately, it had been almost a year since Shez had signed on with him and she hadn’t seen a single coin yet. She wasn’t abandoning him exactly… just shopping for side gigs. She’d killed a few monsters, stopped a few poachers, but she was barely eating at this point. Her contract with Claude stopped her from signing onto a real company, and jobs for a solo merc just… didn’t cut it. She was getting ready to call Claude in for a serious conversation about money, when she saw the posters: TOURNAMENT!!! REWARD OF FIFTEEN THOUSAND GOLDEN STONE!!! Well, that was kind of a ridiculous prize for a little tourney, but it was something she could probably win alone. Besides, the Ashen Demon was around. If they took some time off to come to the event… well. She could feel that idea beginning to spur her heart with anticipation.
“Excited to finally be moving forward with the real goal, are we? Well, hopefully you’ve learned enough to actually defeat them this time. I have faith in you.” Arval’s voice reverberated, as it always did, and Shez took some comfort in it.
“Yeah. Guess I need to tell Claude I’m taking some time off. There’s a prize calling my name in Phlegethon.”
— — — —
It was a long standing tradition for lords of the Alliance to keep a few mercenary groups on retainer, and Acheron Lethe Phlegethon was no exception. Unfortunately, he had been having trouble finding reputable groups to hire of late. It had truly become unbearable when Lady Albrecht had outbid him for a rough-and-tumble gang of the Guardians of Fodlan. They had no standards, it was well known and, to be frank, why he had been pursuing them! But no, no, they were better suited to assassinating drunken gamblers and kidnapping foreigners who spurned the Lady Albrecht than simply guarding a bridge. What was this nonsense? So in his desperation he had emptied one of his savings vaults. Fifteen thousand golden stones, five hundred gold bars stamped with the seal and signature of Godfrey von Riegan. He’d advertised all over Leicester and Adrestia, hoping established mercenaries and aspiring sellswords from around the continent might come to win glory and money.
The turnout, then, was depressing. There were around two hundred people, mostly the unassuming sort you saw in every rural village begging for guard detail. No companies. No famed heroes. But so be it. Perhaps he would find a diamond in the rough. Acheron, with a reluctant sigh, welcomed these riffraff, thanked them (ugh) for their time, and declared the games to begin.
— — — —
Shez was pretty depressed herself. The Ashen Demon wasn’t here, obviously - not a single one of Jeralt’s guys was. Leonie was busy fighting off Sreng pirates for Judith - she had asked to make sure - so she didn’t even have any friends to chat with. And the actual games were basically nothing. Arval’s power was a cheat she didn’t even NEEd to use - warping space around herself would have made the fights trivial, but even without, none of these mercs could stand against her. There was one guy she was keeping an eye on though. He moved with easy grace like a predator, but there was something erratic to him. Like a mountain cat that needed to be put down.
Eventually, inevitably, the two of them got matched together for the last fight. The man looked at her with an expression that made her skin crawl. Shez had been thrown out among the lower end of the food chain when she was only twelve, so she wasn’t a stranger to men eyeing her up like a piece of meat. Usually she, or Getz or Lazley, would have given him a warning in the form of a knife near his hand - and if that wasn’t enough, somewhere more uncomfortable.
She was alone now. The old wound didn’t act up often but the scar was still there.
She put thoughts of her old friends out of her head. This man was good at fighting, almost as good as her. Worse, she’d seen him kill three people. That was a risk at tournaments like these, with real blades, but it was poor form. Usually one kill would get you disqualified, and if it didn’t you had the decency to drop out in shame. She’d seen him after the last one - licking bits of chopped flesh and sprayed blood off his sword hand.
Her initial assessment was right; this man was a rabid animal. He needed put down. If killing wasn’t off the menu, it would probably be a service to all Fodlan to just…
When his blade whistled by her ear, Shez was startled enough that she used her power. She reached into the emptiness between space and yanked herself into and out of shadows. She’d been told it looked like a line of purple light, but she never saw or felt that - she was just one place, then she was in the nothing, and back in the real world somewhere else. That sword had glistened with something discolored.
Poison. This lunatic had poisoned a tournament blade, sapping his enemy’s strength with every nick. Not that she got the impression the judge would care all that much. But Shez did. That kind of unfair treatment wasn’t going to fly. She let loose, pulling herself through space again and spinning to slash forward with Arval’s arcane blade - the one that cut smoothly through… pretty much everything she’d found yet. But she wasn’t fast enough - the man managed to get just one cut in on her in the flurry of exchanged slashes that followed. She could feel herself starting to go down, her heart pounding and driving the poison through her body. She tried to fight him, struck again and again, but the flurry of blades just seemed to make him angry.
“Won’t you just die? I deserve this reward!” He demanded with a cruel arrogance that would have made Shez all the more fired up to stop him if she wasn’t… just a little… too… exhausted…
She supposed she was lucky that when she collapsed the man spun before killing her.
“That one isn’t long for this world, Viscount! Come down then!” Through her swimming vision, Shez could see Acheron scurrying down.
“Of course, fine sir! I’ll have my servants bring your reward out shortly. Until then, shall we- oh!” He stopped talking when that vicious blade slid to his neck.
“Fifteen thousand, did you think that was enough to bait me?” Fifteen thousand gold was a small fortune, for a merc doing a single job. But yeah, whatever. Not like this asshole was very stable in other contexts. He continued to ramble.
“With all these other mercenaries dead, no one can stop me. This… flaccid flesh wouldn’t even sell for fifteen thousand if it was still alive!” Acheron started to blubber in about the same way Shez would have expected.
“P-Please, no! Spare me! I’ll give you a ransom, any ransom! I can spare thirty- no, fifty thousand!”
“Ransom?” The madman cackled. “Fool! I’m going to take it all! Then, I’m going to carve you like a pheasant. Pound your body flat and fry it for a sandwich with-”
Okay. This was getting ridiculous. And Shez wasn’t going to just die here. She inhaled sharply.
And Arval’s power filled her lungs and veins. She came aglow, the pounding rhythms that accompanied the Awakening filling her ears. Suddenly, the pain of the poison and her wounds were gone. She pulled herself across the tournament grounds - directly to Acheron and his assailant - and stabbed Arval’s blade into the merc’s side. He howled in pain, stumbling away.
“You!-” He stopped when he saw shez glowing. She wasn’t sure exactly what she looked like - most descriptions were along the lines of “terrifying” or “like Tomas.” But that was apparently enough. The man tried to crawl away. Shez figured he wouldn’t get far - after all, Acheron’s minions couldn’t be so incompetent as to let a man get away while crawling and bleeding out, right? Instead, she dropped the Awakening and sighed, suddenly unsteady. The poison was still killing her…
And that was her last thought before she collapsed into unconsciousness.
— — — —
Shez awoke with a terrible headache. She was in a fancy noble bed and there was tea on the bedside table. Still warm, so it had been replaced pretty regularly. That was considerate. Maybe Hilda was around, or Ignatz? Claude must have-
She stood with some effort and looked out the window to the Airmid River flowing beneath the Great Bridge of Myrddin. She… was still in Phlegethon.
“Uh…”
“Oh, good. You haven’t died. It is a pity to have to give you this reward, but I arranged this tournament in hopes of a different offer.” He cleared his throat.
“Shez, am I correct? I would like to contract you as a permanent retainer. I understand you are not directly beholden to anyone at the moment, yes?” That was… technically true. Claude had made an agreement, a formal one, with her to room and board her as long as she waited around for any jobs, but if she could make real money….
“If the Alliance leader gets a job for me, I have to take him up on it.”
“Hmph. If you insist I could allow for that. It isn’t as though he has any need for mercenary labor.” That, at least, was true.
“...I want that fifty grand you offered that crazy guy as a sign on bonus. You said you could spare it, right?” Acheron seemed dumbfounded.
“What? You can’t possibly expect-”
“This is clearly gonna be a risky business. Fifty thousand up front. Then five thousand a month after. You control the Goddessdamn Bridge of Myrddin. You’re good for it. And no one else is going to work for you after this fiasco.” Acheron seemed to recognize he was beaten.
“...very well. Shall we go draw up a formal contract?”
“Sure thing, boss.” He stiffened.
“Please, address me respectfully. Lord Acheron will do just fine.” Shez pretended to consider.
“Hm… nah.” She expected Acheron to complain, but he just made the most ridiculous pouty face she’d ever seen and let out a sad whimper that almost reminded her of some pampered show puppy before marching off in a huff.
Huh. If he was always gonna be that ridiculous maybe this job could actually be kinda fun…