Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

The bay city of Lululalia, once a promised land for the less fortunate homed humans, demis, and beasts alike. The humans with their shrewd minds charted the blueprints for the city and the others worked hard to turn those pages into a reality. A harmonious union of wit and labour, but it only took a single generation to ruin that union.

The children of humans, like a king ordering his followers, were taught to order the other races to build, construct, and tear down on their command, and just like a king too shallow for introspection, they grew unearned pride for something they had little understanding over. But why wouldn't they? After all, the beast and the demis built houses, and bridges out of rubble to their command, and none dared to defy their intellect much less bare a word of complaint against it.

Unopposed they stood on the corpses of overworked children, men and women, not in the least concerned about their limits for their plans were perfect in their eyes and the dead ones were the defected. But even amongst the defective were those desired by these kids turned adults, and with their earnings as barebones as ever, the demis and beasts sold their own for gold, food, and whatever the humans offered.

Those who defied them were imprisoned, lashed, re-educated into action or outright executed in public–only when the queen got wind of the atrocities did she make the humans keep the slaughter out of the streets of her beautiful city.

"All we ever hoped for was to be treated as equals, just as our ancestors were when they settled here alongside those humans…"As the winged woman's explanation came to an end, Mercedes yawned out of boredom as she was already aware of the lay of the land.

The others saw her lack of care as an insult to their cause, yet being the only weapons trader in town, she was granted the luxury of acting as free as she wanted.

"The lecture is over," leaning forward on the table, the merchant glanced around at the wolf and rhino seated in front of her. "Now are you gonna tell me what you want from me or do you plan to kill me out of boredom?"

Although anger flashed in their eyes, both beastmen kept it sheathed. They had no choice but to rely on her, and making her an enemy would blow up their plan in an instant. Thus, shoving disservice to the side, they pushed forward a plan.

"Arthur Reins, the appointed duke of our humble city–he has a son and a daughter and we need to snatch them from him," said the white wolf, his eyes sharp with focus.

"You wanna kidnap his kids from his house and make demands, is that it?" The beasts nodded in response, and a smile crossed Mercedes' lips. "And you think that will help the relations between humans and your kind? By kidnapping the duke's kids."

Planting her hand on the table as well, the winged woman chimed into the matter.

"They're gonna stay with us for as long as it takes for us to be declared and treated equal to the humans!" As fierce a look as any other reflected in the woman's gaze, but to Mercedes all there was to see in their eyes was a lot of faith behind a foolish plan, naivete was the word, and it was practically showering from the ceiling.

"Again…" Turning her head to the men at the table, she enquired once more. "What do you need from me, exactly? Weapons, bombs, floorplans of his mansion or maybe a few magic items, I only have a few of them so you better be quick about this."

Glancing sideways at a demi-human girl with a dog tail, the wolf gestured her in. Reluctant, the girl marched forward and with another nudge from his gaze, placed a sack full of gold from her purse on the table in front of Mercedes. Snatching it quickly, the merchant was left somewhat disappointed by its weight but didn't let gold affect the deal just yet, after all, these people were bound to pay in more than just currency soon enough.

"We need a distraction for the guards in the mansion, an explosion would be ideal…" Gesturing Mercedes to come close, the wolf leaned even closer to her as he whispered. "We have a tunnel that leads into one of our houses in the city and the very same arches further to the mansion's ground. We plan to get the kids through there but we need more explosives to blow the tunnel so that the soldiers cannot follow us back to our base."

'Mighty elaborate for a bunch of dimwits, I wonder how long they've been working on these tunnels.' Looking around, the merchant noticed yet another cave leading further into the mountain–possibly the spot from which the tunnels were dug into the town and right under the mansion. 'So that's why so many of them have gathered here, to dig this damned tunnel. Not like it matters to me, I need only follow her…'n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Closing her eyes for a moment, Mercedes could hear chuckles of her patron from the back of her skull. Smiling in return, the merchant opened her hand and quickly got off the chair with the gold.

"I'll have it delivered by tomorrow, send someone to my shop at night and make sure nobody follows him," extending a hand towards the wolf–the apparent leader of the rebellion, Mercedes shook his hand before taking her leave. Enjoy more content from empire

Watching the merchant walking away, a joyous spirit spurred through the air. Everyone was hopeful towards a future akin to the past, but amongst them were plenty who were still dubious of the merchant and one such person was their leader, the demi-wolf.

"Keep an eye on her…" He said to the winged woman, and despite being curious as to why he would order her to do such a thing, she trusted his instinct and began following the merchant from afar.

Even so, Mercedes' patron expected such an act and thus began the downfall of the little peace left in this land…thanks to none other than the bloodfed fairy holed up inside of Mercedes's eye.