“Things don’t look good,” said the handsome man, who had appeared as quickly as if he’d used a Gate spell. Yet he was the epitome of calm as he spoke.
The chamber in which King’s Sister now slept was somewhat too ornate to be called a sickroom, but in any case, they had moved from there to an equally sumptuous area for receiving guests. Guild Girl looked extraordinarily tense, while Cow Girl seemed to realize only that they were in the presence of someone important.
That was understandable enough, but this was someone Priestess had met before.
In fact, between kings and queens…
…this was three or four times.
The queen of the elves, the húsfreya of the north, as well as the princess of the centaurs—Priestess was practically used to meeting royalty by now.
Used to it! Ha!
She had to smile for even thinking that about herself—but of course, she understood that this was no laughing matter.
“I don’t believe this is any ordinary sickness,” she said as she sat, her small butt practically floating on a couch softer than anything she was accustomed to. “You’ve seen the brand that was put upon one particular noblewoman. I suspect it’s—”
“A curse,” the young king concluded and nodded. “Seems likely.”
Yes. Priestess nodded back but couldn’t summon the word. Instead, she spared a glance at her companions. Some of them had their arms crossed and stood by the wall; some sat on the couch with her; all looked somber and thoughtful as they listened to the conversation.
The grimy man who was their leader was the most silent of all, and he simply stood there. Priestess couldn’t help being amused to realize that somewhere along the line, she had been tasked with being their spokesperson.
When had that started? While she was happy to be so trusted, it also made her uneasy, even a little lonely. She found herself worrying that her rank tag, which she hoped would soon be Emerald, was just plated—a fake like her.
She realized, however, that her private insistence that she must do well was just that, her problem. It was self-centered.
After all, the one now under a curse was her own dear friend.
“Truth be told,” the king added, “I can’t claim I have no inkling as to what might be going on.”
King of the land, find ye brave fighters, and then—
Just as in that silly children’s song, the young king looked at the adventurers and said gravely, “When I was an adventurer myself, there was a deathless vampire who troubled the capital.” Those who refused to obey such creatures could expect to face terrible tragedy.
“Where was his lair?” Goblin Slayer asked.
The king tapped his foot on the floor with a mixture of nostalgia, regret, and a coolness bordering on ruthless. “A magic cavern, an ancient place beneath the capital. He was sealed away, but the seal has been weakening.”
Such had been one act of the legend about the battle in the earlier—no, now former—Dungeon of the Dead. It had happened around the same time as the All Stars, the six great heroes, were facing the Demon Lord in the abyss of the Dungeon. The young king-to-be and his party had defeated the demon, the undying king who had ruled the magical cavern, thus saving the city and earning the adventurer’s place on the throne. Then he had led his forces against the Army of Darkness and repulsed it. Priestess was too young to remember it, but it was the subject of a particularly beloved saga.
“So we just have to duck back down in this cavern and fix up the seal. Problem solved, right?”
High Elf Archer’s lovely voice sounded perfectly natural there in the conversation. She spoke with an ease that only fellow royalty could have, as well as the born superiority of the high elves, not to mention her natural charm. All these things came together to make it sound as if she was speaking to a friend.
Priestess noticed Guild Girl’s cheek twitch, but the king paid the elf’s tone no mind. He simply shook his head. “You’ve got the right idea, but the cavern would not be our destination. The crux of the seal is elsewhere.”
“The map, sire.”
Oh!
Priestess hadn’t noticed the silver-haired girl attending the king until she spoke those three words. She seemed as slender as a shadow, almost fae-like. She was like High Elf Archer in that respect but different; she was as delightful as a passing breeze.
In any case, she unrolled upon the table a parchment scroll bearing a very old map.
Priestess nearly exclaimed again when she saw the place to which the young king pointed.
“There’s an ancient shrine to the Earth Mother on this mountain,” he explained. “Her staff is there. It is what holds the seal in place.”
“I’ve heard of that,” Priestess said, her voice trembling. “But I thought it was lost…”
“It was to our benefit that people should think it was.”
The Earth Mother’s staff was a divine instrument capable of creating a mystical barrier that repelled evil. It was supposed to have vanished, yet here the king was saying he knew where it was as casually as anything.
No…
The most important members of the Temple of the Earth Mother must have known everything. Priestess was simply too low in the hierarchy to be in on the secret.
“There is, however, a problem,” the king said. “The shrine appears to be crawling with the forces of Chaos.”
Was it Priestess’s imagination, or did the silver-haired attendant shoot the king an urging look? If so, he didn’t so much as flinch but only continued his explanation:
“The scouts we sent to investigate reported seeing goblins in the vicinity…”
“Now, that is a most unsettling detail,” said Lizard Priest, raising his head like a dragon stirring from a long sleep. “The key to the capital’s security fallen into the hands of Chaos?”