I walked by myself through the lavish hallway. Back in the capital, I had once again been summoned to the imperial palace by the unnaturally ordinary emperor, Gilzerius Urd Alegreif. Not Amyu or Fiona—me alone.
I proceeded through the palace silently. There wasn’t a servant to be seen in the hallway, perhaps due to the vast size of the palace grounds. I came to a stop. At the other end of the hall, a lone figure stood facing me.
“Hey there.” Leaning on a cane, the figure raised his left hand. “I heard His Majesty summoned you,” the sunglasses-wearing young man said, a smile on his face. It was the first prince, Hiltzel Urd Alegreif.
“It’s an honor, Prince Hiltzel.”
“No need for formalities,” Hiltzel said, cutting off my noble etiquette. “What does His Majesty want?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t told anything,” I answered, looking away ever so slightly. That much, at least, was true.
“Hmm?” Hiltzel appeared surprised by my response. “It’s strange, no? You were summoned here alone rather than alongside the Hero. Still, I’m sure it can’t be for anything bad. After all, you were successful in putting a stop to the revolt,” he said with a gentle smile. “I was astonished to hear that the rebel army was in fact an uprising led by a single necromancer controlling an army of corpses. But that threat is gone now, thanks to you all. I’m sure you’ll be handsomely rewarded.”
“You exaggerate,” I said, shaking my head. “We didn’t do anything special. We only neutralized one part of the army. If the empire didn’t take action, then that can only mean the enemy withdrew on their own. We don’t deserve any reward.”
“How modest. I like that about you,” said Hiltzel, his smile unchanging. “But you should acknowledge your achievements. Both for your own sake and for those supporting you. May I ask you a question, Seika Lamprogue?” Hiltzel looked directly at me.
“I received a report from one of my subordinates that traces of a repulsive experiment had been found in one of the fallen cities. We believe the enemy necromancer used it as a base. However, there was no sign of the necromancer or any undead—only evidence of large-scale destruction and a vast, eerily barren stretch of land. It’s not impossible that the necromancer was responsible, but it doesn’t appear to be the work of any necromancy. The destruction, perhaps, but merely controlling corpses shouldn’t allow for the creation of a completely leveled wasteland without so much as any rubble left behind. I’m of the belief that the necromancer was defeated by someone in their base, and that the uncanny wasteland is the work of that someone.”
“Was it you?” The prince’s question pierced right through me. “Did you do it, Seika Lamprogue?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I answered, looking away.
“Serve me.” The smile was wiped off Hiltzel’s face. I turned back to him, and saw his eyes locked on me from behind his dark glasses. “Money, power—I can give you whatever you desire. In return, I ask for your strength, Seika Lamprogue.”
“What do you want from me?”
“The throne,” the first prince replied without a moment’s hesitation. “That is my only desire.”
A heavy silence fell over us. Our eyes remained locked until I finally closed mine and shook my head.
“I can’t do that.” There was only ever one way I could have responded. “Even if I needed money or power, I would never serve you.”
“Why not—” Hiltzel suddenly cut himself off. His gaze was fixed on a small light flickering before me.
A faint green glow, barely visible in the daylight. It was a firefly.
“Truth is, I can use a bit of necromancy myself. Though it’s a completely different system from that necromancer’s and doesn’t remotely compare.” Onmyoudou had a form of reviving the dead. It was considered something of a heretical art and wasn’t often taught, but any practitioner with sufficient power could perform it, provided they knew the proper procedures.
“This is the corpse of a firefly. A firefly turned undead.” I stuck out my finger, and the firefly landed on it. The green light flickered. “Are you still wearing that necklace, Your Highness? The firefly magic item you showed me at the party. If you still have it on you, could I take another look at it?”
After a brief pause, Hiltzel slowly pulled something out of his clothes. It was a pendant intricately crafted in the shape of a firefly. It was faintly flickering, just like the undead firefly.
“There was something I never understood,” I began. “It was clear the necromancer had a collaborator. But then, how were they communicating? They wouldn’t use something as conspicuous or interceptable as a courier or carrier pigeon to pass messages. Sending letters using animal corpses would be simple enough, but once it became known that the enemy was a necromancer, anyone could guess such a method. If the messenger were tracked, everything would be exposed.”
The collaborator had to be someone with deep knowledge of the empire’s geography and cities—someone with enough influence to acquire the corpses of demons, monsters, and people for the rebel army. Such a person would no doubt be cautious in how they contacted the necromancer, the one actually carrying out their plans.
“After it was all over, I recalled one thing that felt off to me. Your Highness, why were you wearing that necklace at the party? You said you bought it to illuminate dark places, and it wasn’t even useful for that, so why wear it to a daytime party? It doesn’t even serve as an accessory when you wear it beneath your clothes.”
The prince remained silent throughout my questioning, so I continued.
“I began to suspect you might not have wanted anyone to notice it. There were many unseasonal fireflies on the western side of the empire, particularly around the undead. I was never confident they were truly alive.”
Things that look the same must be the same. Humans were prone to such thinking, and it served as the foundation of curses. If one could transmit their necromancy over long distances using corpses that bore the same face, then it stood to reason that it would be simple to synchronize the light of a dead firefly with another that was far away—or a magic item crafted in the likeness of a firefly.
“Communication only requires the transmission of zeros and ones. To be specific, merely by assigning short flashes to zero and long flashes to one, you have a functional system. A single flash gives you two possible signals; three flashes, eight; six flashes, sixty-four different pieces of information. With that much complexity, you could even assign them all phonemes and communicate using words.”
Yin and yang were represented by two simple lines. Combine them in groups of three and you have eight trigrams. Use groups of six, and you have sixty-four hexagrams. I was by no means the only person capable of coming up with the idea to apply that principle to communication.
“You wouldn’t be able to send messages that were too long, but it would be perfect as a means of discreet communication. It’s fast because you don’t have to cover any physical distance, and more importantly, it’s secure. The human eye can’t tell if a nearby firefly is alive or a corpse being controlled by a necromancer. If the pendant happened to glow, you could simply brush it off as a function of the magic item. Even if someone grew suspicious, they would never imagine the flickering light held meaning.”
By placing undead fireflies at regular intervals all the way from the western side of the empire to the capital and establishing the firefly pendant as the endpoint, they could establish a hidden network of light-based communication. And if the prince could make the magic item glow by channeling magical power into it as he had said, then even two-way communication was possible.
“Of course,” I continued, “this is all speculation. If I’m completely off the mark, please say so. Say that the pendant lighting up in concert with the undead fireflies was purely coincidental. Say that you wore it at the party simply because you liked the design. Say that there were others who could’ve learned about the revolts your brothers were plotting and schemed to use them as undead. If that’s the case, I’ll apologize for my rudeness and swear to never show my face in front of you again.”
Hiltzel maintained his silence a little longer, then finally gave a weak laugh.
“That code was actually something I came up with myself.” Unlike before, the prince’s demeanor was now calm and gentle. “Frankly, I would’ve been content just using an undead bird for communication, but that man had a peculiar sense of aesthetics. He refused to use such a dull method, so I proposed the code. It was a crude cipher I came up with as a child lost in my dreams.”
Hiltzel continued with a faint, self-deprecating smile. “Just remembering it embarrasses me. In that fantasy, the imperial palace is attacked by a mob. My brothers and I are taken hostage in a room in the palace, and to keep them and the servants safe, I negotiated with the leader of the mob while secretly communicating with powerful warriors under my command. Tap-tap-ta-tap, tap-ta-ta-tap-tap. I knocked on the wall in two rhythms, combined in patterns to form words. In that dream, I used five sets—thirty-two combinations. Then, when the moment came, my warriors burst into the room at my signal, and I took up a sword and fought by their side. I became a legend, praised by the people of the capital. Even after starting with how embarrassing it is, it’s still a humiliating story.” Hiltzel awkwardly scratched his cheek.
Certainly, it was a childish fantasy. Yet there was no doubt he was a prodigy to understand exponents of two and be able to devise a cipher at such a young age.