The dragon’s harem

Lydia took a sip from her drink and, after thinking a bit about Merida’s story. In short, they needed Jack’s skill to investigate this entire case and find a way to ruin those wizards’ plans. Any other day, Lydia would’ve rejected this since it would’ve been too dangerous to send Jack alone, but that won’t be a problem since he was already a demigod.

Even if she was worried about him, she could send him with one of her incarnations to make sure he stays safe.

“I’m more worried about your demons. Do you think he can work with them?” Lydia then looked at her drink. “Sorry, let me rephrase that. Can your demons follow his orders and not mess things up?”

“Since I’m the one giving them orders, they’ll obey him whether they like it or not. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try anything funny if given the chance. It would be best for Jack to keep his guard up even against my demons.”

As Merida explained, Lydia sighed and smiled, “I see. If that is the case, then I’ll send my Midnight incarnation with him. If anything bad happens, I’ll just purge them, and we’ll be done with it.”

Merida shook her head, “No, that won’t do.”

Lydia couldn’t help but smile. “Hoo, you don’t want to owe Amaterasu any favor. Fine by me; if Jack gets into trouble, I’ll snatch him away to safety.”

“Don’t worry, he isn’t the only one I’m sending.” Merida smiled, “I’m sending someone who actually knows how to dismantle and tear people like them apart. An Inquisitor.”

Lydia looked at her with a surprised face. “So Mesharra is back on the move?”

“She has always been on the move. It is just that her missions are always, subtle.” Merida leaned back, and looked at the full tavern they were sitting outside of. “Jack, my demons, and Mesharra. With those three, those wizards won’t even know what hit them.”

“It is very much like you to strike first.” Lydia stood, “I’ll inform Jack about it. He didn’t have much to do in the past days, so he should be happy to get some work.”

As Lydia left, Merida stood, paid the tavern for the drinks, and headed back to the castle. The tavern manager looked at her back as she left, and could barely remember her face or voice, feeling like she was just a random person that he passed by in the busy street.

“Who was that?” He asked, and one of the waitresses working there approached the counter, gave him a gentle smile, and then whispered as her eyes flashed red. “Who was it indeed? Does that really matter? Probably not. Just a random drunkard.”

“Yeah… who cares?” He mumbled back and went back to work as the waitress also got back to her work, sending a quick message to all vampires informing them that she had finished covering up Merida and Lydia’s tracks in the tavern.

Arad and Eris’s vampires were spread across the entire city so that they could be found everywhere, and they were the ones allowing Arad and his family to confidently walk down the streets without being swarmed by people.

Those vampires also gathered information and spread rumors as they were ordered, turning them into a powerful propaganda machine that Arad and his queens could use to sway public opinion in their favor no matter what.

So if those wizards and druids from the merchant union think they can sow discord through the empire, they are just dreaming. Neither Merida nor Arad would allow them to achieve any of their goals, and even if they were secretly supported by the goddess of peace, that won’t help them against the tightly packed and well-oiled machine that is the vampire network.

From churches to inns, markets, and even brothels and houses, the vampires were everywhere and acting as direct spies for the imperial court, and Merida was now keeping a close tab on everything, counting all the people coming in and out of the cities.

A strange wizard walks through the city, a random man on the streets recommends him to a cheap but decent inn, and he gratefully takes the advice, not knowing that he was just talking to a vampire.

The inn that man stops in was run down by a widow and her son, and the rooms were cleaner than the wizard ever expected. The food also was good, far better than anything he had ever tasted, even back in his homeland.

Little did he know that those sweet and exquisite mushrooms were picked right from the heart of Merida’s layer, and that his room was under surveillance, all because of what he said to a little girl on a far two-days walk away from the capital.

The little girl herself wasn’t a part of the vampire network, but the cat she kept as a pet was, and it had reported him back to the castle before he even left.

What followed for the next days, it wasn’t a battle, nor a confrontation, but a total war of information, rumors, and deceit on both sides.

The wizards and druids, numbering in the hundreds, all started spreading rumors about how Merida could be a vile necromancer and that she was secretly conspiring with the demons to take control of the empire.

An elderly druid whom the hunters sought for advice about the forest once told a hunter that there were some strange undead zombies around, and all of them seemed to have a magic similar to that of Queen Merida, only to get insulted back and kicked in the face. The hunter refused to take any insults about his queen.

The wizards and druids had never seen such a thing in their lives. All kingdoms and empires had cracks in their population, and rumors like that were easy to spread, but not here. It seems that almost all of the people living in the capital were deeply in love with their emperor and queens, and that they didn’t take any slander.

But what got in the way most was the holy church of Amaterasu, which horrified the wizards. When one of them pretended to have been mauled by a zombie and rushed into the church to get treatment, Amaterasu’s divine magic burned him, and he got kicked out of the church without getting treated.

The nuns didn’t even entertain him since their goddess rejected his presence, and to them, he was seen as a demon. Meanwhile, literal murderers were getting treated normally before their trial or before being sent to the slavers.

For the time being, the wizards and druids had to retreat a bit and revise their plan, as it seemed the entire capital might’ve caught up to them, but it was strange that the guards weren’t trying to arrest them. Which in and of itself was strange.

If this were any other kingdom, the guards would already be hunting them for trying to spread such rumors about the queen, and the wizards were planning to use that to their advantage. But each time the guards were called on them, the guards simply laughed, told them off, and didn’t make an arrest.

In the empire, it seems that speaking against the royal court isn’t against the law, but it is against the people’s common beliefs. So rumors would never stick, and only cold, hard, and brutal evidence would convince the people, and anything less would just cause a mob with torches and pitchforks to hunt whoever was babbling.

Those wizards and druids had to take a more extreme approach if they wanted to cause a rebellion; they had to do something and frame Merida directly. They had to resort directly to necromancy.

Little did they know that half of their people were already replaced by vampires, demons, and thieves all working directly under Merida and Mesharra’s orders.

“HERESY!” One of the vampire nuns growled as she watched from afar.