“Another day, another pile of land purchase offers to reject…” Retvik muttered to himself as he sat down. He could have had an assistant do this. He could have had Gath do this. But deep down, a small part of him liked doing this. He got to say no to all these weird beings who wanted to waste time and money building needless things. An excuse to use and misuse his powers. Really, Retvik was partially jealous of his brother, who was now Vice General. He had basically gotten there by being nice.
Retvik though didn’t want to ponder that. Anything related to that infernal family always hurt his feelings. So he concentrated on the task at hand.
The first few offers were insane. Various Cassid plans to trash forests and build hotels in their place. If there was one thing Vriskera didn’t need, it was hotels. There were ten of them in the city of Palaestra alone, none of them ever reaching peak capacity. Really, Retvik couldn’t understand how they were all running. Palaestra had a strong tourist market, but it was never THAT large.
Really, anything Cassid, Retvik always treated with caution. It was racist of him, and Retvik would readily accept that accusation. But considering what the Cassids could do, how they treated other races and all that, Retvik stood by his caution. And his racism. He considered it deserved. After all, he knew what they did to beings like Vel.
With a sigh, Retvik went back to work. Most of these were more Cassid offers, separated by offers for Thanatians, Vrekans and Rethans to build new homes. Some of the Cassid ones were genuine too, also just to build small homes. Those were fine. New homes were almost always accepted. People needed houses to live in, after all.
One of the last offer on the pile though was unusual. It was an offer to purchase a large chunk of land right on the edge of Palaestra. That wasn’t the thing that was strange, it was what they wanted to do with it. The buyer wanted to build two hundred and fifty ‘mini homes’ on the land. But the plans they had submitted also included a huge amount of security features. This being wanted to build a gated community. There was nothing wrong with that, he had no reason to deny this offer, but it was still unusual.
Retvik glanced at the buyer’s name. Since this was just an offer, the name was a pseudonym, to protect everyone involved – the document was public information after all. They did have the real name on file though. Well, they had to. If an offer is accepted, that information needs to be known.
After a bit of rummaging around, Retvik realised who wanted to buy the land. Someone using a second pseudonym, going by the name of Ksielian Theanosis. The name seemed oddly familiar. A bit like the sort of fake name a Ksa would use.
Retvik paused, looked at the paper again, then picked up the phone, dialling a number.
“Hello?” a voice squeaked at the other end.
“Good evening, Psiksi. Could you tell me who Ksielian Theanosis is?”
Psiksi didn’t reply. “Um…”
“Come on, kid.”
“I don’t know! I didn’t think Ksiel was that dumb to use such an obvious fake name! The L-Class have been trying to all move over here for ages! What’s all this about anyway?”
Retvik sighed. “Your friend…”
“I don’t even know Ksiel. All I know is that he’s one of Kayel’s buddies! Everyone seems to think I know everything!” Psiksi protested. “Can I call you back please? I’m right in the middle of something!”
“Fine, I will call you back later.”
Retvik closed the call, then looked back at the last few offers. They were all exactly the same, except for the pseudonyms. But the pseudonyms were all just as obvious as the first. All various Ksa.
“Those Ksa are planning something…” Retvik muttered under his breath. “I wonder what they are up to?”