Author note: This is a rewrite of my monsterfuckers ssn 1 story. I wasn't liking the way I had originally set it up, so here's a retooling with the completed 1
st
part of Eliza's and Lisa's story. The next chapter will take awhile since I want to make it a complete part instead of splitting it up into bite-sized chunks. Anyway tell me what y'all think. Feedback is always appreciated.
When the world was young, and the gods still walked the lands, and the heavens rained dragons, and the seas writhed with leviathans, two behemoths collided. One was clad in shadow speckled with starlight and had eyes the color of molten iron. The other was silver-haired and had eyes the color of polished gold. And, on the day, the two met, the world was never the same again.
For they had command and none but themselves were equal.
Thus, from their footfalls the valleys and gorges were made. From their punches and slashes, they split the heavens and razed mountains to scatter the gods and reign in the dragons. From their rage they boiled the seas, desiccating leviathans. From their tears they drowned the oceans and quenched the land. From their magic, they brought the stars to heel, setting the constellations for all. And, from their blood they birthed the million, million creatures of the land, sky, and sea.
For they had command, and in their wake... the world was forever changed, and an age was born.
- Canto of an age
Excerpt from the Liberum Princeps
~Eliza
"I...I," Tom slurred, his bald and rounded head flushed red, his eyes glazed and unfocused, and his usually chatty mouth a drooling mess as he held his half-empty mug of ale in his stubby hands.
Kroc scowled down at his subordinate as the fat fuck fell face first into his plate of marginally serviceable muck.
Eliza smirked behind the rim of her mug, trying her best to hide the amusement in her eyes," looks like I win," she mused, resting her booted feet onto the chipped tavern table.
The motley crew of soot-covered mud-spattered miners and townsfolk hooted, turning Croc's already ugly scarred mug into an even uglier red scarred mug.
Kroc glared; the throng fell silent," like hell, you won," he spat," Tom ain't nothing but a lightweight. Double or nothing," he added, slamming a sizeable coin purse onto the table.
The supposed lightweight had managed to drink four mugs of ale in 10 minutes before he passed out, and as far as she was concerned the now unconscious miner had done all-right, but she wasn't about to tell Croc that. The mining foreman was an asshole at the best of times and a dick at the worst.
Eliza sipped, making a show of thinking the offer over as the gathered crowd of once more rowdy workers waited with baited breaths or as baited as rough-nosed and callous-skinned men could manage. There were few things Eliza was any good at beyond losing more gold and silver in a single night than most people made in a year, and that was drinking inordinate amounts of alcohol in a single sitting. She'd discovered her talent for this after she'd been dared by one of the many shit-eating nobles she'd had the pleasure of growing up with challenged her to a game of shots. The smug-faced idiot was flat-out after 8 shots, his friends after nine, while she was still going after 20. The hag had punished her for it once she'd found out, but in the end it was worth every day she spent grounded just to see Harold Sumter, third heir of Carl Von Sumter pass out and piss himself.
The memory brought a smile to Eliza's freckled face, filling her green eyes with amusement as she took in Kroc's brutish appearance stuffed into a leather jerkin too small for his obscenely bulging muscles.
She wasn't going to turn down the bet, given how much money was on the table, however, it didn't mean she wasn't going to make a show of it after all. And, as Lisa had once said, she had more pride than sense.
Placing her empty mug onto the table as the words of her acceptance slipped out from between her lips, Eliza wondered for a moment where the former bar maiden had gone off to, since they arrived in the tiny mining village.
~Lisa
Lisa bit her lower lip, water dripped in a steady staccato, the room was a stuffy muggy mess, and proprietor Jen watched her with all the affection one gave a particularly nasty stain on a good piece of clothing. It was meant to make her feel small, but after all the nonsense she'd been through with Eliza over the years, the contempt of a ruddy-faced hatchet-headed man barely even phased her anymore.
"Is it," he started, his voice sharp and brimming with irritation.
She raised a finger," there's an issue with the reimbursement clause," she interrupted.
He scowled, adding more wrinkles to his already prunish face.
"Here," she said, pointing to the already twice rewritten section," standard operating procedure is for a hundred percent of the products value determined at the time of departure, plus 5% in the event of lost profits based on the goods market value at the time of the intended delivery."
"What of it? This is a freehold contract, not some imperial delivery contract."
She nodded," but..." She said, trying her best to keep the smirk from her face," that is the freehold's standard operating procedure. What you're asking and what we agreed on are two entirely different things Mr. Jen."
"There is no..."
"There is," she cut in as she placed several contracts on the worn and lacquered desk," if you'll take a look at these you'll see that to be true, and if you'll note the seals they are all from freehold guilds, including yours. Which I'll have you know was authorized by guild-masters Renard and Jacques."
He scowled, snatched up the proffered contract, read, and looked like he was about to blow a gasket.
She allowed herself to smile then, for just the barest of moments before adding," now, shall we renegotiate."
It took another hour and a half of nitpicking and glares sour enough to curdle milk, but she'd gotten it done and aren't like Eliza she'd done it without someone losing teeth and them losing money. How a woman born with the wealth of kingdoms at her fingertips could be so bad with money was utterly beyond her, then again it was probably why Eliza was so terrible with it.
Lisa shook her head at the thought. What she needed now was a bath and a bed. The Jen's contract hadn't been the only one she'd negotiated that day, just the biggest, given that the Iron guild owned most of Iron-thorn and all the outlying mines surrounding the place. It was after all a guild settlement built with all the care of a boomtown in the middle of a desert. Though in the end, it didn't matter because, the contracts were going to make them a pretty-penny, even after Eliza's debts and the Blackfish.
She sighed, stretching her arms over her head as the cool breeze tickled her olive skin and tousled her brown locks. The moon hung full in the sky, stars twinkled, an owl hooted in the distance, and few people roamed the streets. It was a pleasant night by all accounts and a welcome relief from what they'd been up to a few days earlier. Life was...
A crash of glass, a scream, and Lisa sighed tiredly.
