*Janus*
After a brief exchange, the king prompted me to give my report on this year's siege and what exactly went down in Aldmoor. And so I did.
I barely finished the first part of my story before their eyes fixed on me, wide with disbelief, as if I had spun them some wild fairytale. I hadn't even reached the siege itself, or the ridiculous things Ruby had done, or the part where Rodrick killed me. And still, they looked at me like I was trying to make them laugh.
Unfortunately for them, though, the joke wasn't a joke; I was dead serious.
While the others were still trying to get their heads around what they had just heard, Duke Winslow seized the opening and launched into his barrage of questions.
“Who do you take us for, boy? Are we really supposed to believe that just fifty men could hold off a force numbering in the tens of thousands for months on end? Especially a backwater like Aldmoor. And what is that about Titus losing his leg? The last time I saw him at the teleportation circle, he looked absolutely fine. Telling such lies to his majesty!”
I let the silence stretch for a moment, gathering my scattered thoughts and watching the others, trying to read the flickers of doubt and suspicion in their faces.
King Henry didn't seem too impressed by his brown-nosing. Duke Solaris' sunken eyes seemed to agree with the line of questions so far, while Duke Lunae appeared more sympathetic, since he had already heard all about how the siege went when he picked up his daughter Gertrude. Cardinal Marlo didn't react at all, or I simply failed to see any reaction buried in his pudgy, hairless face. He barely reacted at all... was he sleeping?
“I'm not taking you or anyone here lightly, my Lords. I'm simply stating the truth. As Duke Lunae can testify, since he arrived shortly after the fight together with the Solar Knights, who must have given their report back to the higher echelon of the faith, which would include you, Cardinal Marlo.”
At the sound of his name, Cardinal Marlo shifted, his chair groaning beneath him. Heavy eyelids parted, and for a moment, I caught a glimpse of those startlingly bright, azure eyes—like gems hidden in a mound of dough. It almost felt like a waste, those eyes on a man like him.
“Yes, yes, absolutely. *Yawn*”
*internal Sigh*
“As I said, it’s the truth, even if it sounds like something out of a fever dream. Their numbers were terrifying, but the undead aren’t like any army you’ve ever seen. They just shamble forward, slow and stupid, attacking whatever’s in front of them. They don’t dodge, don’t defend, don’t even seem to care if they’re cut down. Most had no armor, no weapons, nothing but rotting hands and empty eyes. It wasn’t just my men holding the line, either. The townsfolk picked up whatever they could find, and even though they were just ordinary people, they fought better than those pitiful, stitched-together corpses.”
Duke Winslow’s face soured, clearly not pleased to have his questions brushed aside so easily.
"Urgh!" You little…”
But then his majesty King Henry lifted his hand, making him shut up immediately before he went on to say,
“Tell me more about that hooded figure that attacked you, as well as that traitor Rodrick and that Necromancer. Are they still at large?”
Unfortunately, we failed to catch them. The Necromancer's trail ends in a collapsed mining tunnel, which they must have previously cleared after it had initially been sealed by the dwarfs. By now, his whereabouts are unknown to us. We caught Sir Rodrick twice, but both times, he had people on the inside who freed him. The hooded man simply took to the skies after his attack as soon as he saw my father charging at him. We believe him to be a high-level wind mage.
For all that, the king just nodded, almost too quickly, as if none of it surprised him. Maybe he’d already heard most of it through his vessels that he had stationed in Rosedorn, or maybe he just didn’t care to show what he really thought.
The others—especially Duke Winslow and Duke Lunae—weren’t about to let our failure slip by so easily. Cardinal Marlo tried to look like he was following along, but it was obvious to everyone that he was lost. No one bothered to call him out on it. No one seemed to care.
“Pathetic, you couldn't even catch a single one of them? How can you even show yourselves after this?”
“Baron Moorenberg must be an utter fool to have chosen your side. "I would have…”
“Not done anything at all. Do I have to remind you as to why we were there in the first place?”
Everyone heard a loud *Bang* as Duke Winslow furiously smashed his fist into the table and stood up.
“Humpf, you dare! You little upstart, you should know your place!”
Once again, the King had to raise his hand, and once again, the room fell silent. It was one of the great upsides of being King: shutting people up.
“First, the boy is right in that you have failed to protect the people from your own faction. Even when we believed that it was just an unusually large group of bandits, the forces you sent to their aid were woefully insufficient. So them changing sides is not something I want you to complain about at all. Second, if not for them, Aldmoor wouldn't exist anymore, not to mention the chaos they prevented from befalling your lands by completely eradicating the undead horde right then and there. You should be thankful you have any lands left at all.”
Duke Winslow’s anger simmered just below the surface, but he managed to swallow it down, at least for now. Still, I knew they wouldn’t let the matter of Titus’ leg rest, no matter what the king said.
“I agree with his majesty. Though I, too, wonder how Titus was able to regain his lost limb. It was still missing when I left Aldmoor.”
I really didn’t want to talk about Ruby here, not in front of all these people, but there was no way around it. She was at the heart of everything that happened, and I was sure the king already knew more than he let on.
“Sir Titus' leg was regrown by my wife Ruby Yuwen, who is a highly skilled healing mage. She also was the one who made the assessment that the hooded figure most likely wasn't the Necromancer but a highly skilled wind mage instead.”
I was right—when I said her name, only the king kept his composure. The rest looked as if I’d just told them the moon had fallen from the sky.
Duke Lunae’s face went pale, a shadow of dread flickering in his eyes before he managed to compose himself. I could almost see the thoughts racing behind his eyes—wondering how Gertrude would react to the news of my marriage.
Duke Solaris’s disappointment was almost comical when he heard the word wife, while Duke Winslow and Cardinal Marlo just stared in disbelief. I knew I’d been a bachelor longer than most, but I didn’t think my marriage would shock them this much. Not that Cardinal Marlo cared about my love life—he was hung up on something else entirely.
“She regrew his leg?”
“Yes, I thought you already knew since she visited her Holiness Pope Lucrezia yesterday.”
“Oh! Y-yes of c-course how could I forget that now I remember.”
The others must have known about what happened shortly after we arrived, and a sense of understanding swept through the room. My words finally answered the questions they had amassed so far about what the Solar Knights wanted yesterday.
“But before you ask any more, you will hear more about her in the second part of my report, so I would kindly ask you once more to keep your questions till I'm done.”
I could tell that everyone wanted to hear more about Ruby, but I felt that if I did, we would be stuck here forever. So I went on, telling them all about this year's siege while making sure to add enough context so they wouldn't bog me down with endless questions for the rest of the day. Even so, once I was done, I could already tell that this meeting was far from over.
Sigh,
Thankfully, they started to believe—or at least pretend to believe—that Ruby was as powerful as I claimed. Or maybe the rest of my story had unsettled them more than the idea of regrown limbs ever could.
“The elves are you mad?”
“Do you realize what you are saying?”
“This is simply preposterous! The elves are some of our closest allies.”
“Have you any proof of this?”
I knew they’d lose their minds when I said it—I had, too, the first time I heard. Just the mention of elves as enemies was enough to make them forget every impossible thing Ruby had done. Even the king looked taken aback, though he didn’t shut me down like the others. In the chaos, he raised his hand again, and it took longer than before for the room to quiet.
“That is a rather dangerous claim you make. I hope you didn't just make this all up.”
Every eye in the room was fixed on me, waiting for the next piece of the story to fall from my lips.
“I do have proof, though, as I said, it is still just a suspicion so far. First, the adversaries in Aldmoor and the ones attacking Rosedorn were both aided by strong mages who were most likely in contact the whole time. Second, we have a prisoner who confessed to working with one of them. We hadn't even said the word elf during the interrogation; he was the one who brought it up first.”
“Where is this Prisoner you speak of?”
And this is where the box I brought along came into play.