Nephthys sat with her back straight, her face featureless, impassive, the contrast with her chaotic mind stark. For once, she was grateful for the dissociative disconnect between her mind and this body. This felt like an inopportune moment to reveal her panic.
She studied all fifteen of her guild members as they knelt, heads bowed, and eyes closed. The scene made her violently uncomfortable in a way that was difficult to describe. Was it the attention from so many people at once? Probably. The reverence? Definitely. Imposter syndrome? Absolutely. It was not even a syndrome; she was an imposter.
It was probably a mixture of all these complicated emotions and more.
"Thank you all for gathering. Please, rise," she said, holding her voice steady and attempting grace.
The members rose to parade rest. They stood tall, heads high, feet shoulder-width apart, hands clasped behind their backs. This was not exactly what she meant.
"At ease," she tried, hoping the words she knew from military movies would translate to this world.
They all seemed to get the message, relaxing into several different postures. Some stood with their hands relaxed at their sides, others with arms crossed, and still others had their hands on their hips, as if waiting patiently to be dismissed.
With no help being offered by either the members themselves or any deities she hoped might suddenly appear and relieve her of this burden, she plowed ahead.
"It has been…quite some time since last we spoke. I hope the wait was not too hard on any of you?" she prompted, hoping to toss the ball to someone—anyone—else.
"Any of us would wait until the end of time were it required, my lady," Ramose responded, his hand over his chest.
The rest nodded their agreement, and a silence descended.
Great, thanks, Ramose, she thought, annoyed.
"I would like to hear what the scouts have found, what we have learned about where we and the world stand, having been absent for two centuries. However, I will answer any and all questions you might have before that. Ask if you desire," she declared; another excellent handoff, if she said so herself.
The guild members glanced at each other, obviously confused by the request. A few seemed to have questions on the tip of their tongues, but none spoke. Perhaps they needed someone to be the first to speak? Well, she could help them with that.
"Neferet, you seem to have something. Please ask, unless it is something you would rather speak privately about?" Nephthys questioned.
At the suggestion that they might speak privately, eyebrows rose around the crowd, though she did not understand why that might be unexpected.
"No, no need for that, ma'am—uh, my lady," Neferet said, hastily bowing.
Neferet was an unusual summon, even among her eclectic bunch. Some fusion of necromancy and summoning, she was the departed spirit of a dwarven weaponsmith, summoned from the ether and bound to the flesh of a fresh corpse.
Such summons were generally used in Prelude for crafting bonuses. One could call upon the departed spirit of a skilled craftsman to provide a temporary bonus to one's own crafting prowess. This act was common, as every small bonus gifted by gear was significant in PvP.
These summons were meant to last only minutes, but thanks to the summon glitch Nephthys was so fond of, not only was Neferet a permanent summon, but also assigned to a role within Nemesis, a function normally reserved for NPCs captured in the Ashreach wilderness.
She had always found it strange how many easily-exploited bugs there were in Prelude. The devs just…never fixed them. The only thing they seemed to do was release expansions, yet these expansions contained only new content—no fixes for legacy content.
"No need for such formality, Neferet. We are at ease, yes? Please, call me Nephthys," she said, attempting a gentle smile.
Everyone gathered's eyes widened, though whether at the thought of addressing her casually or because she butchered the smile, she could not tell.
"Ah, well then, my la—Nephthys…uh, I were hopin' that I could start makin' stuff again? We been holdin' onto resources as much as possible, what with that energy barrier trappin' us in. Didn't know how long we'd be stuck, so we didn't wanna waste no resources.
"I were just hopin' that, seein' as you're awake, and your ascension were a success and all, I could get back to makin' weapons. It's what I love the most, ya see," she explained, and though they were behind her back, Nephthys could imagine her fiddling with her hands.
"Of course, Neferet," Nephthys said, her smile genuine this time. Crafters would be consistent no matter the circumstances. "Do not deplete our stock immediately. We still do not know what is happening in the wider world yet. However, feel free to start making whatever you think is necessary and working the rust out.
"Please work with Ramose to inventory Nemesis. Whatever you think we need, go ahead and make. I trust your judgment. Do also feel free to maintain your own personal projects, so long as you do not bleed our stocks dry," Nephthys said, nodding to Ramose, who returned the nod.
"Oh, thank you, my—Nephthys! I been lookin' forward to this for a long time!" she exclaimed, rubbing her hands in front of her like a fly.
Neferet, though a dwarven spirit, was not a traditional dwarf. She was vaguely shaped the same, but the corpse Nephthys had used for her summoning was an Ifrit, a max-level spirit of fire that wandered the Crater near active lava flows.
She thought it made sense for a smith to have access to her own source of heat, though that was mostly just for flavor, as the summon gave the same crafting bonus no matter the corpse it possessed. It only affected the summon's combat strength, which was typically a non-issue with temporary crafting summons.
Neferet was shaped like a dwarf woman, but that was where similarities ended. Her skin was made of a dull red stone that glowed subtly, like a cooling ember. Her hair was an active flame atop her head. Her eyes were small holes that seemed to have been poked into her stone shell, revealing an inner fire hidden just beneath the surface, like magma boiling beneath a layer of cooled lava.
Her voice, while intelligible, was like rocks grating against each other, and her every breath carried heat sharper than any forge. She was beautiful, a work of art. Nephthys was quite proud of her, though the pride she felt from her creation vaguely brought to mind lessons from an old book about a mad scientist tampering with forces he should not.
She decided not to think too hard about that or about what lessons the book might hold that she was ignoring. Wait, Ifrits were also a type of Djinn in folklore, right? Better not think much about that, either.
"Anything else?" Nephthys asked.
Neferet shook her head, and Nephthys scanned the crowd for other questions. A man in armor similar to the Hellknights stepped forward. He was shorter, perhaps just over six feet tall, but his armor was far more decorated. He had the same black plate with blue inlays, but his pauldrons were edged with gold, his gauntlets had glowing blue claws and knuckles, and a cape of blue energy fell to the floor behind him like smoke.
His helmet was in his hands, and it seemed a traditional barbute, yet a close inspection revealed two latches on either side. What they were for was obvious, as the man's head was crowned with two enormous horns of a black bone, sharp and powerful. He had a strong jaw and a thin nose above equally thin lips. His hair was neatly slicked back, and his eyes were a sharp, slitted blue.
"Hannibal," Nephthys acknowledged with a nod.
This was her general, the leader of Nemesis's military forces. She generally followed a theme with her names. Nephthys and Nemesis hailed from ancient Egipt and Grease, respectively, but how could she have a military leader without referencing the legendary Punik general himself?
Hannibal was an archdemon. Truly, she overdid it when she summoned him. In her defense, if the devs never corrected the bug, did it not become a feature? Archdemons were generally raid bosses, not summonable by players. Indeed, calling him a summon, while not incorrect, was misleading. His 'summoning' was more 'exploiting a nearly game-breaking bug.'
Once again, a warm pride blossomed in her chest. She clamped down on it quickly, not just because pride cometh before the fall. She felt gross about herself for being proud of essentially capturing and enslaving a living being. Granted, he was a mindless juggernaut of destruction at the time, but still.
"My lady," Hannibal greeted, his voice deep and thunderous, like an underwater earthquake. "May I have your permission to secure the perimeter? Sending out scouts was wise, but I would be more comfortable detecting potential threats before they arrive at our gate."
"Of course, Hannibal. That makes plenty of sense. In fact, I trust your judgment on all things military. Do whatever you think necessary, just do not act aggressively toward anything or anyone that is not threatening us actively for now," she said.
He slammed his fist against his chestplate in salute, the sound ringing out into the space like a gong struck by a titan. He stepped back in line, and no one else stepped forward. Nephthys took this exchange as a small victory, resisting the urge to gloat at Ramose.
See? I'm not some puppet princess sitting on this throne.
"Right, let us hear the report, then. What have the scouts observed?"
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