Sidis bowed his head. “First, let me apologize for selfishly ruining what you had planned, Your Majesty.”
“Hmph. You really don’t want me to abdicate, huh? Hence all the excuses, like how I’m supposedly connected to the Light and we shouldn’t have an emergency ascension?”
At this, Alcede chimed in to say, “No, actually, I don’t doubt either of those points. When you poured your magic into the ground during your coronation, Your Majesty, I believe it may have bound you in some way to supply mana to the Light of Origin. Though it’s said that the ritual offering is for the gods, I do believe it’s functionally replenishing the Light with mana.” He paused there, demonstratively holding up his index finger. “However, we are about to relight the pillar, so it’s not like that really matters in the grand scheme of things.”
“Precisely, Your Majesty,” concurred Sidis.
The emperor sighed again. “So you’re really just making a mountain out of a molehill?”
“These half-truths do stem from the truth, and that makes them believable for our audience,” Sidis answered nonchalantly.
Egbert plopped onto his belly and shot a piercing stare Sidis’s way. “Do you really hate the idea of me stepping down that much?”
“Absolutely, Your Majesty,” he answered with nary a hint of hesitation. “I don’t want my long-awaited wedding to be marred by any sort of trouble or woe. And once Lyse and I are married, we’ll live happily ever after in the wing built just for us.”
“Wha—” Egbert instinctively rose to his feet upon hearing this. “Would handing over your villa wing really be so terrible?”
Sidis quizzically beheld his cousin’s reaction. “Isn’t that obvious? You do understand I had it designed specifically for Lyse and myself, right? Why should I happily surrender our happy future home to anyone?” he asked brazenly. “I already compromised by allowing you the pet room. I shan’t cede the whole wing.”
“Aha ha ha!” Alcede interjected through his laughter, “How very like you, Sidis. Still, part of me is relieved that’s your motivation in all this.”
Lyse, on the other hand, was none too amused. Naturally, she was already aware of Sidis’s true motives—but listening to the men openly discuss how his every move was all to safeguard his dream wedding made her squirm.
Nevertheless, Sidis paid no heed to her embarrassment and continued fervently, “Listen, Your Majesty. The first floor is open concept so that when Lyse and I have children, they can play in the courtyard while we watch over them from the dining area inside. Meanwhile, the bedrooms are all on the second floor. And the third is closed off to the outside so that our children may—”
“Please, Lord Sidis, say no more.” Lyse begged for him to cease his monologuing, though he didn’t seem to understand why. She knew this was simply his nature. It was how he’d been for the past hundred years. And she was fine with that—as long as he stopped gushing.
“Okay, I get it. You’re fussy about your upcoming marriage,” Egbert said to calm Sidis down.
“Remind me never to bottle up my love for a century...” Alcede quietly quipped to himself. “Anyway, getting back to the topic at hand, I don’t think we need to worry about keeping this all a secret since we’ve already established that only those with very strong mana—like His Majesty or myself—can withstand being so close to the Light. All in all, my thoughts on the plan are that it’s brilliant. Well done, Sidis and Miss Lyse.”
He flashed a smile at the couple before continuing, “However, the biggest question now is how to preserve and retain the Light of Origin.” He pulled a bag of cookies from his pocket to keep up his energy and offered some to everyone.
“I’m good,” said Sidis.
“Not in the mood for anything sweet,” responded Egbert.
“None for me either, thank you,” said Lyse, rejecting his offer.
“Well, more for me then.” Alcede began gobbling up the treats by the fistful. “For now, we’ll get Seren to fill up the underground reserve. Then in the future, if we can make it easier for monsters to fly into the Light, that should buy us another millennia or so of fuel. We should also think about how to discreetly leave the truth behind for future emperors.”
At this, Sidis raised his hand. “Um, I have a request, if I may. Could we perhaps prevent people from making contact with the Light as well?”
“Making contact with it?” Alcede asked.
“What do you mean?” Egbert pressed. Both men were rather confused.
“I understand that we’ll need to ensure monsters can reach the Light, but I’m hoping we can encircle the pillar itself with a wall about human height just to make sure that no one can touch it from inside the villa,” Sidis explained.
“Ah, right...” Egbert nodded. “You make a good point. We’ll be rebuilding the Light anyway, so we might as well take precautions against anyone else becoming a living sacrifice like Qatora.”
The three imperial men all looked at Lyse, who smiled in return.
“I think that’s smart. If the Light had been inaccessible back then, I—and everyone else there, I’m sure—would have found a safer way to save Lord Sidis. Perhaps we could include something in the magic?” The Light’s spell circle was intricately complex as it was, so what would a few modifications hurt?
“Hmm, good idea. We could include different magic for situational contingencies. We could even use your made-up protection ritual as a cover to do it,” said Alcede as he polished off his bag of cookies. “The only potential ramification is that cutting people off from the Light will prevent any new Light bearers in the future.”
“As long as Lyse and I pass it on, that shouldn’t be a problem. We can simply say that the gods have deemed that we no longer need the assistance of new Light bearers. We just need to ensure that future emperors know the truth of the matter,” replied Sidis.
Egbert agreed. “Very well. Then let’s have Seren keep up the good work while we remake the Light.”
“There is one potential problem in that regard, Your Majesty. And if things don’t go according to plan, it might be a really big problem,” Alcede said, crossing his arms. “Our scale model worked well, but making a full-sized Light is still something of a question mark. We ought to prepare an excuse we can fall back on if it comes to that.”
“Better safe than sorry...” Just imagining the fallout if the operation went awry sent shivers down Lyse’s spine. Trying to pick up the pieces from there would mean a great deal of trial and error.
She, too, put her mind to wondering what kind of excuse might buy them the time they’d need in the worst-case scenario. If the Light was extinguished for anywhere between a few minutes and half an hour, it would be easy enough to write off. But if the outage lasted for days, it would undoubtedly cause a major scene. And the scariest part of all, as Alcede had pointed out, was that none of them knew what outcome they’d be in for until they took that courageous step forward.
“If we flounder for a day or two, then we can blame the failure on me being a dog. Then I’ll abdicate and install Sidis on the throne, which should prevent any tarnish to the Razanate name,” Egbert proposed casually.
Sidis looked thoroughly disturbed by this idea. He loomed over Alcede, begging, “Do not allow that to happen! Please! I beg you!”
“I know, I know! Just give me my personal space, will you?” the duke pleaded, physically bending over backward as he tried pacifying the despairing prince.
Following that meeting, Seren toiled ceaselessly day and night to fill the farthest reaches of the underground chamber with black stone. Alcede, meanwhile, turned the treasury upside down in search of the necessary gemstones for the spell circle. Finding ones of suitable size was proving difficult.
“Your Majesty, may I borrow the gem on this staff here?” he requested before swapping the ruby on the royal scepter out for a fake.
“Your Majesty, may I borrow this jewel from the empress’s heirloom necklace?” he petitioned as he replaced the large chunk of jasper with a glass counterpart.
Egbert had no problems with any of this for the sake of mending the Light of Origin. They would have plenty of time to find new precious stones afterward. Besides, it wasn’t as if anyone looked at the scepter but so closely anyway. All they had to do was keep the chamberlains silent and no one would be any the wiser—or so Egbert told himself. His practical approach to the matter helped Alcede complete all his preparations for the ritual, save for double- and triple-checking the spell circle personally.
Progress with Seren, however, wasn’t so smooth. It was now apparent that the Light had been consuming black stone at a much higher rate since the onset of the aberrations, and it was nigh impossible for him to keep up. To help out, Lyse and Sidis traveled to the seaside cliffs three nights in a row to gather enough supplementary stone to fully pack the underground reserve.
“Why do we need to fill this place all the way up to reignite the Light anyway?” Sidis asked as he was tending to the job.
Alcede, who was there in a “supervisory” capacity, replied, “It behooves us to replicate the conditions under which the Light was originally created. And since we don’t know how many times it’ll take before we finally succeed, we really ought to minimize opportunities for things to go wrong. It’s important to make sure everything is in order for a project this grand in scale.”
“Can’t argue with that. Let’s eliminate any uncertainties that we can then.” Thus convinced, Sidis got back to work and carried another load of black stones underground. While there, he also made sure to stoke the flames as well. “I feel for you, Seren, having to drudge like this for our happily ever after. Hey, when everything’s all done, maybe I’ll ask you to come over for dinner or something. I mean, I spent so much time perfecting our home to make Lyse happy, I really should show it off a little, right?”
Seren’s expression betrayed his heart. He was dead inside. “Why can’t that be meeeee?!” he wailed, clutching a chunk of black stone as more of it sprouted from all corners of the cavern.
Lyse felt absolutely terrible, but she wasn’t about to jump in and risk jeopardizing the whole plan. She silently apologized to Seren and made a mental note to make this up to him in the future.