SN Chapter 21

The smell hit before anything else—the kind that makes the face scrunch involuntarily, before the mind has decided to object.

Itserion was navigating a space that was dark and deeply dim. Not a single thread of light reached this far, but the lantern carried by the soldier ahead provided just enough to move by. A winged insect—something that looked like a moth—flew past Itserion toward the back of the procession. He startled and waved his hand vigorously to shoo it away.

It was for Rikardis, walking behind him.

"Was there truly any need for Your Highness to make the journey to a place like this in person?"

Rikardis answered while dodging the flutter of Itserion's hand around his face.

"You would task the soldier, that soldier would task his subordinate, that subordinate would task his subordinate in turn. By the time any answer found its way back to me, half a year would have passed." A pause. "I'd expire from waiting."

Itserion grumbled. Truthfully, even if Rikardis hadn't come himself, Itserion would have simply tasked someone below him to find out. In any case: an impatient master.

They descended several hundred steps, spiraling in endless circles, until they reached the lowest floor. From inside the iron bars, figures crouched like animals howled and thrust their hands outward wildly.

"Pretty thing—come here, come over here, pretty one."

"Kill me. Kill... me. Please!"

"I'm hungry, the rats ate all the food! You sons of bitches! I'll kill you all!"

A soldier doused the prisoners with cold water. It gouged into their wounds. Screams and moans rang through the level, then quieted—less than before, though not by much.

Itserion gritted his teeth. Still a deeply unpleasant sight.

He turned to look at his master—radiant and entirely out of place in the filth. Rikardis had narrowed his brow slightly. He appeared displeased. But considering he always wore precisely that expression, it was probably safest to conclude this was entirely normal.

Rikardis moved on with an impassive step, apparently not sparing a thought for the scene in any direction. Itserion snapped himself back to attention and hurried after him.

The solitary cell was deep even within the lowest level—a walk that required continued commitment once you'd already descended as far as anyone should have to go. The soldier struck the iron bars with the shaft of his spear.

Clang-clang-clang.

The sound rang loudly through the prison. The bars smelled of rust. Or perhaps of blood—the distinction was difficult to make here.

Something dark stirred inside: a figure moving with slow, labored effort, crawling forward. Hair that might once have been bright gold was matted with dirt and dried blood until it looked brown. She came slowly on her hands and knees. The handcuffs fitted over both wrists scraped along the floor—clunk, clunk—as she came. The woman, dirty rags wrapped loosely around her body, grabbed the iron bars and barely managed to stand. Through the hair half-covering her face, her white irises shone.

"Has Idelabheim's hound come?" Her voice was rough as stone. "I can smell it."

"I've come to see Kreyan Tithanion's slave." Rikardis, arms folded, leaned against the bars opposite. "From how radiant you look, I take it you've been quite at peace these past years."

"All talk and worthless with it,—you must be the second laurus."

She moved without warning: her hand shot through the bars. Despite being unable to see, she aimed precisely for Rikardis. The handcuffs caught on the iron with an ugly sound. Clunk! Her dirty fingertips arrived an inch from his face.

Rikardis didn't blink.

The distance fell just short. She couldn't reach him.

The watching soldiers moved to beat her back with their spear shafts, but Rikardis raised one hand to stop them.

"Still the same habits with your hands."

"I was trying to comfort you." She pulled her hand back, then composedly retook her seat. "Did your brother bother you again?"

Itserion considered briefly whether he should call for the soldiers anyway. Rikardis gave a slight shake of his head—whether he'd sensed Itserion's thoughts or not. Itserion clicked his tongue quietly.

"Still just as gifted at fouling people's moods."

Rikardis drew a small glass bottle from his breast pocket and dropped it onto her hand, which was still reaching toward him through the bars. She stiffened at the cold, hard sensation against her palm, then drew her hand back inside. She ran her fingers over the bottle and shook it—testing, identifying. Through the thin glass she felt something swish about, and gathered it contained a liquid.

She stared at the bottle in her unseeing hand.

"It's a gift I've brought for you, Ketrin," Rikardis murmured, in a voice sweet enough to be concerning.

She hesitated briefly. Then opened it.

Thick-settled darkness, the smell of blood and filth clinging to the cold air, the sharp ringing of iron. And through all of it—entirely incongruous with this bleak prison—the aroma of black tea drifted around her nose.

She let out a pfft of laughter.

Her comrades had failed again, it seemed, in their attempt to assassinate the Second Prince. Still the same old method.

"Rienta's Aligarté?"

Aligarté was a black tea from the Rienta region. Amid the sharp gazes around her, she appeared composed enough to identify the variety.

"What refined sensibilities you have, my lady." Rikardis's voice, arms still folded, was quite unhurried.

She smiled crookedly and poured a little tea into her palm. She brought it close to her nose, then touched it with her fingertips.

Then shuddered.

From the shallow pool of tea gathered in her palm, she felt a familiar energy. It gave her—though she could not see—a vivid vision. Something like dark-red-stained haze bloomed from her palm. An extremely faint amount, but she knew precisely what it meant.

Balta's long-cherished dream. The ambition her homeland had held for generations.

While she had been held captive in Illavénia, they had succeeded. They had manufactured Fragment—the union of poison and magical power.

She clenched her fist without meaning to.

That was all Rikardis needed.

That she had reacted to a colorless, tasteless, odorless poison meant it contained an energy she was capable of sensing. As a mahin possessing magical power, even a trace amount would be detectable to her.

She raised her eyes from her hand and looked toward Rikardis again. Her face was full of smile. Rusted handcuffs on her wrists, the most threadbare clothes of anyone in the room, more physically depleted than anyone present—and yet she appeared more triumphant than any of them. More genuinely happy.

Her hoarse voice rang with pleasure.

"What do you want to know?"

"What do you know?"

She settled comfortably into her position. Itserion muttered a small oath behind his teeth at the impertinence of it.

"I know..." She let the pause stretch. "Rikardis. I know a great deal. I know what it is you want to know. I know that Idelabheim's light has begun to wane—and I know that now that this has appeared, you no longer have any chance of winning." A pause. "I know it all."

"Very impressive, all by yourself."

"……The nerve."

In three years of captivity, she had not once handed over information to Illavénia. Even information extracted after relentless torture had been useless by the time it came, the events it concerned having already occurred. That she was choosing to open her mouth now was not because Rikardis was less objectionable than First Prince Elpydion—nor because she had seen her long-cherished wish fulfilled in what he'd brought as a so-called gift.

It was because she was certain: everything would now proceed according to Kreyan Tithanion's will, and revealing one poison's true nature would change nothing of real consequence. She could feel the black curtain descending on the Illavénian Empire.

She trembled with small shudders, exhilaration moving through her in waves.

"From what you've brought me, you already know." Her voice carried the ease of someone delivering news they'd waited years to give. "Yes—that's right. This is the product of the great Kreyan Tithanion. A domain of perfect chaos where the likes of Idelabheim dare not even intrude—"

"Did you always have a talent for talking such utter garbage?"

"……This poison has magical power mixed into it."

"Clear and easy to understand. Perfect."

Since he'd already been anticipating the poison's true nature, no fresh shock arrived. Rikardis and Itserion both nodded impassively. The many people following behind them were considerably less composed—the prison swelled with their agitation.

Poison combined with magical power. Impossible to believe. And yet the shabby woman before them had been an executive of the Dark Moon. They could neither trust her nor easily dismiss her words.

A poison divine power could not cure. The Dark Moon, which worshipped magical power and possessed many mahin. And now the words from the witch Ketrin's own mouth.

Many circumstances and situations supported Rikardis's view. Behind him, the men bent over small scraps of parchment, scratching away with methodical intent. Those testimonies would travel—to the Emperor, to Elpydion, to the nobles.

Rikardis waved a hand to indicate the business was concluded. The secretaries and aides filed out like an ebbing tide, apparently eager to escape this space of foul smells and insects as quickly as possible.

He watched their retreating backs and clicked his tongue. Then cast his gaze toward her one last time.

"What remains is the gift, Ketrin. It won't be good for your body, but it should benefit your mental health."

He was offering her the opportunity to end, by her own hand, a life of torture in this dark and damp space without light—unable to eat properly or move. That was what Rikardis was saying.

Ketrin let out a small laugh.

Unlike Elpydion, who carried out all manner of vicious torture as a matter of course, this was a prince with a kind of cuteness to him.

Rikardis, reading her meaning in the sound of it, grimaced sharply.

"I won't be using this gift, pretty one."

This woman, honestly. Rikardis's voice went sharp.

"You won't die comfortably."

"Everyone will return to the embrace of Lord Kreyan Tithanion." Her voice carried no concern about this whatsoever. "I've gone blind, but that sight I shall see clearly. I have a duty to witness that scene while alive." She paused. "Do keep on struggling, little one."

As the last of them filed out, the prisoners set the bars ringing again.

The prison erupted into screams and shouts in an instant.