“So you saved their lives, huh?”
Intrigue flashed across Kristoffer’s stern countenance. He gestured with a jaw towards the Imperials; the motion indicating he was happy to give them a little time to catch up. Alec read the intent of this gesture from his longtime friend, and walked over to Frol and Julia Rakhmanin. Shiori, Nadia, and Clemens followed, and the group shared handshakes and hugs.
“I’m so glad to see you doing well,” said Alec. “I didn’t even recognize you.”
“We owe it all to you,” replied Frol.
His face no longer bore the dark hopelessness that had once haunted it; his smile was filled with the light of hope.
“Are you both fully recovered?” asked Shiori.
“Yes. We almost caught pneumonia, but managed to fight our way back to full health. The knight corps was good to us, as well as kind. And as you can see, we’re both much better for it. But truly, we owe you more thanks than it is possible to give.”
Both Frol’s and Julia’s hands were hardened and worn—a sign of all the work they’d been doing since their arrival at the refugee camp. But neither looked pale or sickly, and there was a luster to their skin. Even under their current circumstances, Frol and Julia seemed to be making the most of the life they had, and this was no more evident than in the lively expressions of their faces. Shiori was surprised to think that the look on someone’s face could so vastly shape the impression they gave others.
“It is Alec, yes?” said Frol. “I recognized you straightaway, but I had no way to be certain that you were in fact one of the people who saved us. But when I saw the mage by your side, I was sure beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
An Easterner in a triangular hat was, it seemed, something that stuck in a person’s memory. And while Frol had refrained from phrasing it in that exact way, Shiori still cringed slightly.
“Oh, well, I...what to say...?” she muttered.
Triangular hats were, in and of themselves, not particularly uncommon. Shiori had chosen to wear one because it would both block out the sun and hopefully help to hide her identity and her dark hair. Nevertheless, she smiled amicably, though her thoughts wandered for a moment.
But if it’s only serving to make me stand out more, then maybe it’s time for a change of outfit...
“So what are you doing here?” asked Alec.
The question caused Frol and Julia to look a touch concerned. Pained, even.
“It’s embarrassing, and a case of having to clean up someone else’s mess, perhaps, but it would appear that our own people are involved in all of this. Some of them said that we were behind it all. The frozen lake was once home to the Rakhmanin family, and so we were brought here in case we knew anything.”
Frol and Julia sighed; they wanted nothing more than to be with their fellow refugees, who were racked with worry, yet now they had been brought to the knight corps’ leadership. They had been dashing around the camp when they’d been brought to the knights’ camp as prime suspects. That was the reason they were surrounded by guards.
“Cleaning up someone else’s mess...?” asked Alec.
“In other words, it’s not just a beast attack; deliberate human meddling is behind it,” said Kristoffer. “And by the former Empire, no less.”
“How does that work?”
“It’s the work of remnants of the emperor’s supporters. They awakened an ancient monster.”
Kristoffer then raised a hand, and a knight by his side strode forward.
“Allow me to explain,” the knight said.
He held in his hands a sheaf of documents, but it seemed that he’d read the information in them so many times that it was now committed to memory. As he explained the situation, he did not even glance at the papers.
“The former emperor’s supporters disguised themselves as a group of hunters and took a long detour around the border fort from the Empire to enter Storydia. Yesterday, sometime before dawn, they arrived at Dima Frozen Lake by the southern ravine. There, they broke the seal that had kept a test subject in slumber since the end of the Empire’s reign over the area. The test subject awoke, and in the subsequent attack, half of the Imperials were killed. The security patrols investigating the strange magical beast behavior following the attack apprehended a number of the survivors, at which point we knew for sure that the dragon’s awakening was no mere accident. According to scouting reports, the test subject in question is an earth dragon. However, it has wings that are more common among smaller dragons, and shares similarities to a number of other magical beasts, including basilisks and wyverns. We believe it likely we are dealing with an amalgamate magical beast.”
It was a flood of information, all of it delivered in a cold, toneless voice. The adventurers dropped into silence as the facts of the report sank in.
“They sealed away a test subject at the site of a mythical legend. Unbelievable.”
“Were they trying to bring that legend back to life a second time?”
“If they were telling the truth, then yes, it would appear so.”
“What a sick joke,” spat Zack, ruffling his hair with a hand. “And then they threw two of their fellow Imperials to the wolves for good measure, huh?”
Given that the dragon had been sealed away at the end of the Empire’s dominion over the area, that would have been more than a hundred and fifty years ago. Considering how much time had passed, the dragon would have awoken with a fearsome hunger. Unaware of this, the Imperials had thus sealed their fates when they had unleashed the dragon, and become its first meal. But had they been enough to sate the beast’s appetite? Or would the dragon move again soon in search of more food?
“And what connection does the Rakhmanin family have with all of this?” asked Alec.
He glanced at Frol and Julia, uneasy with the idea that the two people he’d saved were prime suspects.
“While we can’t say anything with complete certainty,” said Kristoffer, shrugging, “it’s our conclusion that those two have nothing to do with it. Both were brought to the knight corps infirmary in early December. For two months they were watched over while they were nursed back to health. There’s no way they could have possibly been in the former Imperial capital in mid-December, gathering comrades for the restoration of Imperial rule.”