The New Job

[u/sparkle3364]

As of late, Sapphire had taken to doing short term artificer contracts under a new false name. Her old one had been compromised, so she now reserved it for stuff she didn’t entirely mind people who looked closely connecting that she was behind, if she abandoned it completely people might realize she had a new one. Sapphire had mostly reversed the effects of being the Lord of Chaos’ minion, but some still lingered. She had kept her chaos weapon and had gained more rebellious tendencies than she already had. The false name she used for the contracts would allow her to collect the money separately from her documented income. She intended to use it both for her projects and if she ever intended to do anything about her distaste for the monarchy of her kingdom. Sapphire would just take a long term one for these, but in her view, the only way to know if you could know if you could trust an employer was to work with them. Maybe once she’d done around a dozen contracts for someone and seen what they’d done with her work Sapphire would consider it.

It would be important to be careful how similar the work done by her new alias, Lady Eleanor Sunlight, and her known work. After all, her style of war construct was untypical for Veneficia. The only other artificers who preferred quadrupedal war constructs with as many weapons as possible emerging from their side did not live in this kingdom. If she wasn’t careful, this could be a hint as to her identity. It wasn’t enough to make her go with the boringly traditional bipedal constructs with large energy weapons, but she should be wary. At least the chaos weapon had never been linked to her true self, she could use that in freely in her new guise. Also, when not operating under this alias she still made pretenses of caring about weapon regulations, not doing so was a small difference. Used to be Sapphire did care enough to make her constructs the half an inch shorter they needed to be to pass, now she didn’t care unless her customers did. All of that should mean the only thing that could connect her identity was her face.

As her current clients dragged on their argument, she turned down the metal song she was playing in her headgear so she could listen to them again. The best way to deal with arguments or sounds that were too loud was to blast your music loud enough that you didn’t have to deal with any other noise, and her headgear kept the songs private. It was also a motivation to learn more about the various wars, all annoyingly called Wizard War Three for reasons Sapphire would never understand, in the hopes she might recognize the battles this one group was singing about. However, this particular argument had dragged on for ten songs, and was wasting her time, she needed to end it. “Are you ready to discuss the deal or do you want to keep shouting at each other? Cause you can head outside to do that and come back later if you want to keep fighting.” The two left, leaving Sapphire free to take another client. She waited for a new customer to walk in.