The air crackled as they stared each other down. But then a quiet hand went up, drawing all eyes in the room like a magnet. Following the account she had given at the start, Luciana had sat passively at Lion’s side like an ornament, but now she spoke.
“Those things don’t understand language. No matter how you cut them, they feel no pain. Some of my soldiers and civilians who were attacked even became like them. Soldiers who moments earlier had fought with all their might to protect me suddenly came at me, teeth bared and hungering after my flesh. Such...such creatures!” She was trembling as though she might have a fit. Lion softly laid a hand on her shoulder. He felt her stiffen for a moment, then the tension gradually drained out of her.
“Thank you, Lady Luciana, for your instructive words.” Lion took his hand from her shoulder, then rose slowly from his chair to address the room. “I think Lady Luciana has made it clear enough just how dire our situation is. The truly terrifying thing about the ghouls is that, while not all are afflicted, those they bite are in turn transformed into ghouls. In other words, the more of our soldiers they kill, the more their numbers will swell. I said they numbered fifty thousand before; now, there are likely far more. You don’t need me to tell you why, I hope?”
Leisenheimer folded his arms tightly, his mouth now set in a hard line. Satisfied that there would be no more unnecessary noise thanks to Luciana’s input, Lion tucked back the locks of hair that fell over his eyes and took a few steps forward.
“That being said,” he continued, “it is no easy task to make someone accept that which they have not seen with their own eyes. General Julius, see to Lady Luciana.”
With a nod, Julius helped Luciana to her feet, then led her off to an adjoining room. Lion waited, feeling the suspicious eyes of the other lords and ladies on him, until he was sure the two were gone, then turned to the soldiers who stood at attention at the entrance.
“Bring it here,” he said.
“Yes, my lord!” The two soldiers together opened the door wide to reveal eight other soldiers, all of their faces stiff with terror. On their shoulders, they supported an iron cage covered with a black cloth. As they carried it carefully into the room, those around the table watched with bated breath. But only for a moment. As a dreadful noise emerged from beneath the cloth, they all began to speak at once.
“Lord Lion, don’t tell me...”
“It is exactly what you think it is, Lord Shaola.” Lion went over to the cage, seized a corner of the cloth, and tugged hard.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeek!”
With a shriek that could have pierced stone, Cassandra tumbled ungracefully from her chair. While the others’ reactions to the ghoul were not as obvious as Cassandra’s, as the creature rattled at the bars with its mottled arms and let out a moan to chill the blood of the living, palpable fear swept over the room. Lion himself had unconsciously recoiled the first time he saw it.
“That’s a ghoul, all right...” Leisenheimer muttered, a faint sheen of sweat on his brow.
“Now, just how much of a threat does our friend here pose? Rather than me simply telling you, you can see for yourselves.”
Lion beckoned to one of the soldiers, and they handed him their sword. He slipped it between the bars, then slowly pushed it into the ghoul’s stomach. It pierced through without much resistance, but this did not seem to trouble the ghoul. Instead, it began to beat its head against the bars, trying to tear at Lion with its teeth.
“This... This is what we have to fight...?!” There was a shrill note in the voice of the lord of the Thirteenth City that none could fail to hear.
“I can see now just how Rue Shalla could fall to a force such as this,” the lord of the Fifth City added. “How is the empire controlling these things, exactly?”
Lion still had no answer to this question. Even as they spoke, Heaven remained down in the bowels of the castle gleefully running tests on the ghouls, but no results seemed immediately forthcoming. He replied, with the qualification that he was only speculating, that he thought the creatures’ existence the work of a mage.
“A mage...” Lady Diana of the Eighth City regarded the ghoul with revulsion. “Yes, this sort of perversity is certainly their specialty.”
Naturally, all of them there understood the threat a mage posed. The air of foreboding that settled over the room was, therefore, inevitable.
“As I said, this is mere speculation, nothing more,” Lion said. “And right now, our attention is required elsewhere.”
“You mean the ghouls on our doorstep, I assume,” said the lord of the Ninth City. “But how do we even fight a creature that doesn’t blink when you stick a sword in its gut? I’d sooner go head-to-head with a dangerous beast than this thing.” The previous ruler of the Ninth City had had skill enough with a blade before succumbing to a sudden illness, but children did not necessarily inherit their parents’ talents. In Lion’s evaluation, the current lord was the very picture of mediocrity.
“A valid concern. For all they lack in intelligence, it’s true that the ghouls are nastier than any dangerous beast. However, they are not invincible—as I will now demonstrate for you.”
In one motion, Lion withdrew the sword from the ghoul’s stomach. A few of the others, seeing the turbid yellow fluid that oozed off the blade, covered their mouths with their handkerchiefs. The ghoul was still entirely unconcerned. It went on moaning and rattling savagely at the bars.
“The way to incapacitate them—” Lion began, then drove his sword through the right side of the ghoul’s chest. The loud moaning filling the room cut off as though it had never been. He drew the blade back, and just like that, the ghoul collapsed. “—is to stab them in the right side of their chest.”
For a while, no one spoke. Their eyes were glued to the fallen ghoul. Diana was the first to break the silence.
“Rather ironic that their weak point is on the opposite side to the heart, isn’t it?” she said, shaking her head in a show of morbid amusement.
“Is that their only vulnerability?” Leisenheimer asked.
“Lopping their heads off works fairly well too,” Lion replied. “The trouble is, even without the head, the body keeps moving. I tried a range of methods, but if you want them to go down immediately, the right side of the chest is your best target.” He tapped the right side of his own chest with his finger.