“Why me?” Eileen asked after agreeing to their offer. There were no contracts, only verbal agreement that she had best not break.
“You are suitable,” Joshua said, finally deciding to break his silence.
“There will be no more explanations.”
“Josh…” Vivian looked at her husband reproachfully and turned back to the guest. “But he’s right. We had four hundred and twenty nine search filters for a clan leader, and you matched all of them. Joshua wanted to make you an offer three years ago, but you refused to even discuss it.”
“I thought he was talking about something else,” Eileen blushed.
“It no longer matters. The clan has been created. It is growing and completing its missions. Its current leadership does not suit us.” Your task is to accept an invitation to the Widowmakers and forge a career there. Your character will be leveled up very quickly. When you are ready, you will take leadership.”
“How? The current leader is just going to retire?” Eileen laughed nervously.
“Something like that…”
Half a year later, an unhappy accident struck. The building that was home to Sequoia, leader of the Widowmakers, literally collapsed into the earth. Something about cavities beneath the foundations, design errors, greedy construction companies…
Eileen was unanimously chosen as the clan’s new leader.
Unlike the Children of Kratos, the clan was constantly at war—it chose the fattest targets it could and quickly deprived the victims of all their castles and territories with a fast, treacherous strike. The Widowmakers got rich faster than anyone else in the world, transforming in the space of a few years into a force that even Modus and the Travelers respected. Eileen was proud of herself; nobody knew of the support from Children of Kratos, and the clan’s success was believed to be entirely her achievement.
The Gallaghers were also pleased with her. So pleased that they didn’t object when Eileen, after doing so much to promote the progress of the Widowmakers, asked for a seat at the table in the Alliance of Preventers. The Alliance was an impermanent union that united only for particularly high-ranking Threats. Its members changed from year to year, but the clans of Hinterleaf, Horvac, Colonel, Glyph and the Gallaghers always remained as the unshakable foundation.
Eileen achieved incredible progress of her own, too, somehow managing to change her game class of priestess to Striking Blade of Innoruuk. This was made possible thanks to a dark god with whom she was the first to level up maximum reputation. That was no easy task, especially considering what amorous Innoruuk, Lord of Hatred, valued most of all (that something), but the reward was all the sweeter.
Chronos’ Hourglass— a divine artifact with a yearlong cooldown—came into Eileen’s hands in the Pirate Treasury. She got there by eliminating a Threat with a pretty’ high potential. Incidentally, Eileen was the only one from her clan to participate in the elimination. The other nine party members were from Children of Kratos, which was not very fair—the Widowmakers were the ones to find and capture the Threat. But Eileen made her peace. This was the way it always would be. Sequoia’s sad end told her all she needed to know of the value of loyalty over any contract. But Eileen never shared the artifact with anyone, or even showed it to anyone. It became something like an insurance policy for her, a ‘golden parachute’ in case everything went to shit; not wanting to risk the item, Eileen kept it in a bank slot.
The artifact’s action exceeded that of any other she knew— Chronos’ Hourglass allowed you to put Dis on pause. Time stopped (or slowed almost to a stop) for a minute for everyone except the owner. Not long enough to take out the strongest boss in a dungeon on her own, but enough to steal something valuable. Or someone.
Last year, Eileen visited the goblin auction house specially to check whether her idea could work there. As soon as she entered the hall, the artifact turned inactive. Disappointed, Eileen forgot the idea of pulling a particularly valuable lot straight out of the ASS. But as soon as the auctioneer’s hammer struck and the auction was declared ended, the Chronos’ Hourglass turned back to color. She still had to make sure. Eileen activated the artifact… And it worked!
She didn’t risk stealing anything then. There was nothing particularly outstanding for sale that day anyway.
It wasn’t easy to recover reputation with the Goblin League after the first battle with the undead. The entire Alliance suffered when the Threat took control of Hinterleaf, but nobody held it against the Modus leader after he presented the logs for examination. They lost took stock of the losses, then beggared themselves paying to recover their reputation with the little green folk. It cost enough money to buy a space fleet, but the preventer clans managed to achieve only ambivalence with the Goblin League. Still better than hatred.
That made it all the more surprising to get an invitation from the ASS to bid on an incredible item—a Portal Key to Holdest. The idea of capturing the Threat didn’t come right away. At first, Eileen was thinking about how to win the auction and be the first (at least, after the Threat) to set foot on the snowy continent. Although, would it be snow? The world was magical. Maybe the climate in the southern hemisphere of Dis was different from earth’s?
Then it hit her! The Threat would surely be there. The goblins wouldn’t just change the rules of the ASS for his sake! And that meant… She couldn’t do it without help from the Children of Kratos.
The Gallaghers listened to her idea and gave the required orders at once. Their masters of artifacts and magical engineering settled on a cell in the basement of the Widowmakers’ main castle, equipping it with the same limiters and blocking shackles that were used for criminals in the Commonwealth. There should be no problems with delivering the ‘cargo* either—a Space Splitter* put aside
