“Meat!”
Inside a pantry built around the back of the royal villa where Ras and company were staying, a beastfolk girl wearing a maid uniform looked up at the shelves with stars in her eyes.
In front of her was a large block of ice, about ten meters across, inside of which was frozen a single giant fiend in its entirety.
It was an earth dragon, covered in liver-red scales. While not quite as dangerous as a Greater Dragon, the beast was still counted among their kin.
“You’re not wrong,” said Ras with a grimace. “But I wouldn’t call it ‘meat’ just yet. It’s still alive.”
The frozen earth dragon had suffered many cuts, some of them quite deep, but none of them were enough to count as more than a scratch to the extraordinarily tough fiend.
“Could this be the ‘ingredient’?” asked Kanalayka, staring at the ice block in wonder. Her mind went back to the dragonfish served at the ball the previous night. Whoever froze this fiend had made use of the same technology. Someone had smuggled it in here disguised among the rest of the ingredients.
“I can believe it,” said Ras. “Barlama needs to import a lot of food to keep up with demand from the alliance summit.”
He shook his head, feeling a migraine coming on.
Fiend meat was a sought-after delicacy on the mostly barren continent of Danakil. It was even common for fiends felled on the front lines to be transported back to the nearest city to be cut up and sold. It was particularly valuable in cities, as the meat from some of the larger varieties could provide enough food for up to hundreds of people at once. As it was so in demand, it wasn’t rare for the meat to be brought inside the walls after only a cursory examination.
“This block of ice is covered in aura crystals,” said Ras, reaching out and touching the surface with his hand. The ice should have been cold to the touch, but Ras felt nothing. That was due to the thin layer of crystal isolating the block from the outside world.
Ras recognized the phenomenon immediately, having seen it once before. It was in the mausoleum of the imperial palace in Vif Arger, when Ras discovered the sleeping Vildhjärta. It too had been coated in a thin layer of crystals, thanks to which it had slept untouched for over twenty years without even beginning to rust.
These aura crystals were what meant that the huge block of ice had not yet melted despite being kept at room temperature.
But of course, if the ice didn’t melt, then the beast inside could never be cooked. The chefs of the royal villa had begun gossiping about this marvelous never-melting ice, and from there the rumor made its way to the ears of Emma-Leonie, who passed it on to Princess Tishna.
Fiarca turned to Valdemar, his left arm in a sling, and said, “Thank you, Val. This is all thanks to you.”
It was Valdemar who had first learned of the danger this “ingredient” posed by listening in on Countess Knauss’s conversation.
“I’m just glad I could be of service,” Valdemar replied in a somewhat subdued tone. “But since I’ve been such a good boy, I hope you don’t mind if I take my leave. The doctors say I shouldn’t get too excited, or I shall faint.”
It was little wonder that Val wished to be excused from his duties. About half a day ago, he had been a patient suffering from acute blood loss.
“Didn’t the physicians patch you up with auramancy already?” asked Fiarca.
“They’re not miracle workers like the priestesses, you know. It’ll take more than one night’s rest to recover from this. Damn, that silver-haired bastard really got me.”
Despite standing in the presence of the crown prince, Valdemar saw little need to hold back vulgarities. To him, Auriol was an old schoolmate from the same military academy. It probably had nothing to do with the fact he was wounded and irritable.
“A silver-haired aura knight by the name of Hilbert,” mused Kanalayka. “Could it be Hilbert Farias, I wonder?”
Ras turned to see the imperial legate with a brooding look on her face.
“Someone you know, Kanalayka?” he asked.
“Just the name,” she replied. “He’s a dragonslayer from Registan. I’ve never met him in person, but I heard he visited Kidea around the same time I did.”
“Which means it’s possible he brought the secrets of this new technology back to his home country,” Ras muttered.
“Quite right. And if that’s the case, then this ‘ingredient’ must be some kind of trap brought here by the empire.”
“It’s not the most elegant of plans, is it? I suppose it could probably take down this villa without much trouble, but beyond that…”
“Yes, I was just thinking the same thing.”
Chasseurs were more or less prohibited within the city, even for members of the royal guard. The reasoning was that Barlama’s thick walls kept fiends out, so there was no need. The only exceptions to this rule were the personal Chasseurs of the royal family, but these were treated more like works of art than fighting machines.
If a dragon were to suddenly appear in the center of the city, that would be a big problem, but not so much if it was spotted in advance like this. There were plenty of Chasseurs defending the walls from the outside, and it would be a small matter to bring a few inside to deal with an emergency situation.
The earth dragon was a powerful foe, but immobilized in ice, it would pose no problem for even a single Chasseur. If this was Registan’s grand plan, then Ras couldn’t help feeling underwhelmed. It basically amounted to little more than a nuisance.
“Is this the only one here?” asked Ras.
“Yes,” Tishna replied. “The storeroom may be large, but hardly big enough to hide multiple beasts of this size. I believe it was my uncle who smuggled it in, though it was surely Registan who manipulated him into doing so.”
“The prince of Lumede? Was he trying to pin the crime on you, do you think?”
“That was probably Anita’s intention, yes. It sounds like what she would do.”
If a fiend suddenly appeared in the royal villa and razed the place to the ground, it would be the owner of that villa, Queen Maia, who would face suspicion first. Princess Tishna’s reputation would fall even further than it already had, while Duchess Knauss got to watch on in glee.
For such an ill-natured and frankly inconsequential plot to be Registan’s undoing, well, it was just embarrassing.
“…In any case, we now have proof of the empire’s involvement,” said Ras, a weary tone to his voice. “Once we hand this over to the authorities and round up the perpetrators, Barlama will be safe, right?”
It was Fiarca who answered, still gazing at the crystal-preserved ice.
“I’m afraid not,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because these aura crystals are set up to dissipate on their own after a predetermined length of time,” Fiarca explained, making use of her genius-level aptitude for auramancy to swiftly reverse engineer the technique’s makeup. Having seen the technique in action once before on the Vildhjärta, such a feat was child’s play for her.
“What’s more,” she went on, “there’s not a lot of time left. Once the crystals dissipate, the ice inside will soon melt. What do you think will be the first instinct of a fiend shoved inside a block of ice against its will?”
“You’re kidding…”
“I’m afraid not. This block of ice is a ticking time bomb. And I’m willing to bet good money it isn’t the only one in the city. If they all wake up at once, it’ll be devastating. I can see how things might end up like Tishna described.”
Fiarca glanced at the royal princess, who was already turning pale with fright. Even Ras was hard-pressed to keep his courage while imagining the horrifying scene that would follow. Only the most exceptional aura knights like the Black Blade were capable of slaying a dragon without the aid of a Chasseur, and there were none to be found in the capital. How long would it take for the garrison outside the city to notice the commotion and send their Chasseurs inside? And what if even that wasn’t enough?