II
Fort Caspar, Base of Imperial Command Operations in Southern Fernest
Captain Samuel has been killed in action.
It was the middle of the night, but an urgent report borne by a watchman from the Canalia Highway sent the outpost into an uproar. Crowds of nervous soldiers stood watch under the flickering torchlight of additional beacons lit along the main gate. Body after body was carried into the fortress through a small entryway to the side of the portcullis.
“The report is true, then? Captain Samuel was killed in action?” asked General Osvannes. A man of fifty years, he was Supreme Commander of the Southern Imperial Army and a figure of considerable influence in the Asvelt Empire. As a soldier, he was renowned for his airtight offensive and defensive strategies on the battlefield.
The officer kneeling before Osvannes looked up.
“Yes, m’lord,” he said. “The soldiers stationed at the town of Canalia went there at once. They found the captain’s headless body, along with those of about ten others in a similar state of decapitation. We are in the process of recovering them.”
“Without his head? I suppose they took it as a trophy. I doubt there’s a soldier in the royal army who doesn’t know Captain Samuel’s name.”
“Ser, this was not Fernest’s work,” the officer said tersely. Osvannes frowned.
“If not Fernest, then who? You can’t be suggesting that Samuel was taken down by mere bandits or the like.”
“No, I... Erm...” The officer’s voice faltered. Colonel Paris, another high-ranking officer in the room, smoothed back his hair and regarded the officer with cold, narrow eyes. He inclined his head, signaling for the officer to continue.
“What... What we’ve heard from the surviving soldiers is that they were slaughtered by a monstrous girl wielding a black sword.”
“A monstrous girl?” Paris repeated in spite of himself.
“That’s what they said. And that she told them she was headed to Fernest’s capital to enlist in the royal army.”
Paris let out a snort of laughter at the delusions spilling out of the officer’s mouth. “Idiocy,” he said. He’d heard minstrels’ tales more believable than this. As a former agent of the intelligence division, he wasn’t about to believe such a preposterous story. The account must have been exaggerated somewhere down the line.
“Very well. You can spare us the tall tales,” he said. “Bring me the soldiers, so that I may question them directly.”
The trembling officer shook his head limply.
“I’m sorry, ser, but their minds have been affected—they can’t speak any sense anymore. And the soldiers who saw the state they’re in are all panicking over the news that a monster has allied itself with Fernest.”
“That bad...” said Osvannes, looking at Paris. “Maybe there’s a grain of truth in these reports after all.”
“My lord, you can’t be serious. This—”
“That’s enough, Paris. We’re wasting time,” said Osvannes, raising a hand to cut the colonel off. Paris still had plenty he wanted to say on the matter, but it was true that if the soldiers had lost their minds, they would provide no further information, in which case this was undeniably a waste of time. Their time was always limited.
“Yes, my lord. Please forgive my outburst.”
“Think nothing of it. All right, I see what we have on our hands here. You are dismissed.” Osvannes motioned for the officer to leave.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but might I have a moment?” came another voice, cutting off the general. The voice belonged to a man cloaked in a robe dark as night, its hood pulled up over his head. His appearance was, in a word, sinister. The man’s face was just visible beneath the hood, gaunt and sallow with a fierce glimmer in his sunken eyes, and though he looked over sixty years old he could not have been older than his midthirties. This was Chancellor Darmès, here to observe on the emperor’s behalf. Paris had heard that he had once been on the military analytical team, a nobody with zero prospects. But over the past few years, he had risen to power with unprecedented speed. In the entirety of the glorious Asvelt Empire, he was now second only to the emperor, and as the emperor trusted him absolutely, most saw this as unlikely to change. Rumor had it that the emperor’s plan to unify the continent had in fact been originally Darmès’s idea. Usually, though, the taciturn chancellor rarely offered his own ideas, earning him the moniker of “The Silent Minister.”
“Did something concern you, my lord Chancellor?” Osvannes looked in askance at Darmès. Darmès gave them an oily smile.
“Oh, it is of no great import,” he said, making a show of waving off the general. “I merely wondered about that black sword. You don’t happen to know anything more about it?” he asked the officer. The man looked greatly alarmed to be so suddenly addressed, and his eyes darted madly about.
“No need to be nervous. Just tell me what you know,” said Darmès, his voice kind. Even in the pale light of the candles that illuminated the room, they could all see the nervous sweat on the officer’s brow. His anxiety was understandable—under normal circumstances, the idea of the imperial chancellor directly addressing a noncommissioned officer was unthinkable. But when the officer still showed no sign of opening his mouth, Paris quickly became irritated.
“How long do you intend to keep the lord chancellor waiting? Answer the question!”
“B-But... I don’t... I don’t know anything else!” cried the officer at last. “A black sword, that was all they told me!”
Darmès smiled at him. “Thank you. In that case, you may go.”
“Yes, m’lord!”
With a brisk salute, the officer hurried from the room. Darmès also stood up from his chair, like he intended to follow suit.
“I will leave you here as well. Please do not hesitate to call on me if anything else comes up.”
“Your presence at this late hour was appreciated, my lord,” said Paris with a deep bow.
“Not at all,” replied Darmès, waving him off. He carefully brushed out the creases in his robe, then made his way from the room. Osvannes stared intently at the door the chancellor had exited. For some reason, all the color had gone from his face.
“My lord, are you unwell?” asked Paris. He got no response. “My lord!” As Paris grasped him by the shoulder, Osvannes started and seemed to return to himself.
“You can hear me then. What on earth was that about?”
“I-It’s nothing. Pay it no mind,” said Osvannes, forcing a smile.
“Nothing? Well, if you say so. In any case, if what we just heard about this monster—this girl—is true, we should be getting reports from our agents in Fernest ere long.”
“Er, yes. Yes, indeed. For now, tell the guard to be on high alert.”
“Of course, my lord. Now, if you will excuse me. I must attend to the matter of Captain Samuel.”
Osvannes waited until the sound of Paris’s footsteps grew distant, then pitched forward heavily onto the table. A chill ran along his spine, and his heart hammered in his chest.
With shaking hands, he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and struggled to light it. Then, violently blowing out a puff of smoke, he sagged into his chair and thought back on what he had just witnessed. It had been like a bad dream.
What the hell was that? he thought. Paris didn’t notice, but the chancellor’s shadow, the way it writhed... It was like it was alive...
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